RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5)

by Phillip Richards

  ‘Move!’ Weatherall shouted from over my shoulder. I saw that he had gone firm alongside me on my right, not far from the two men we had shot.

  I pointed at the spot where the two figures had fallen. ‘Keep eyes on them, Weatherall! Confirm they’re dead on your next bound!’

  ‘Roger!’

  We weren’t taking prisoners. We didn’t have the means, or the will to do so.

  ‘Myers, let’s go!’

  The pair of us took another bound forward, and as I moved I listened to the continuing conversation between Puppy and the sergeant major.

  ‘One-One-Delta, do you have eyes onto the contact ahead of you? Who’s firing at who?’

  There was an uncertain pause. ‘I’m trying to move myself to get a look . . .’

  As we completed our bound, the OC’s disembodied voice cut in to our net. ‘Blackjack-One-Zero, this is Hammersmith-Zero-Alpha. I’ve got Richelieu looking into your area now. Dropships are on standby. Wait out.’

  I checked to see that Weatherall had taken his cue to advance. Sure enough, the trooper was already up, cautiously stepping toward the fallen enemy with his rifle raised.

  ‘This is Zero-Alpha.’ The OC spoke again. ‘Richelieu has a good viewing angle into the valley from the north. She has eyes onto a small group of firers who have emerged onto the southern bank, approximately section strength, engaging a group attempting to escape along the valley base.’

  ‘FEA?’ I wondered aloud.

  ‘What? That’s FEA?’ Myers nodded toward the distant firing, having heard my suggestion. ‘They’re getting a bit necky coming out here, aren’t they?’

  He was right to be sceptical. Surely, having suffered such horrendous losses within Cellini, the battered young conscripts wouldn’t dare venture out into the forest?

  ‘Andy,’ Puppy announced, ‘I’ve got no more targets in your area. I think they’ve all done one, mate. All the firing is directed onto the fleeing enemy.’

  ‘OK,’ I replied, flicking to the platoon net immediately afterwards. ‘One-Zero, this is One-One. Position clear.’

  ‘Roger.’ The sergeant major’s reply was abrupt, indicating that he was no longer interested in my situation on the valley base. He was far more concerned about the unknown contact ahead of us. If there were FEA out there trying to engage the fleeing enemy as well, then we were in serious danger of a “green on blue” - a friendly fire incident involving us and our not-so-well-trained allies.

  ‘Andy!’ Weatherall called from behind me, causing me to forget the net as well as the battle raging ahead of us. The tone of his voice told me that something was wrong . . . very wrong.

  I slowly looked around, and saw the trooper stood beside the fallen enemy. There was something funny in the way he stood, fully upright with his rifle at his side, as if he had decided that the battle was over and it was time to go home.

  I frowned. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘They’re not Militia . . .’

  ‘They’re Guardsmen, then,’ I decided for him. Of course they were Guardsmen. If they weren’t one, then they were the other. ‘Are they clear?’

  ‘They’re civvies.’

  My frown deepened into a scowl. What the hell was that idiot talking about? ‘Say again?’

  ‘They’re civilians, Andy.’

  The blood rushed away from my cheeks as realisation of what Weatherall was saying sunk in. For a moment, my mouth hung open, until I came to my senses and screamed over the net. ‘Check fire! Check fire! They’re civvies! We’re shooting fucking civvies!’

  7

  Collateral Damage

  To contents page

  There are moments on the battlefield when things can happen that are so awful, they seem to cause everything else to become little more than background noise. The gunfire was still there, just as loud as ever, but somehow it didn’t matter. Nothing outside the valley mattered anymore.

  One of the two civilians that had run from us was an old man, perhaps in his sixties. It was me that shot him, square through the heart, which perhaps might have been a small mercy. The other was a middle-aged woman. She had lost a huge chunk of flesh from her thigh, presumably as the dart had chipped a bone and the resulting chip had become a secondary projectile. She had been silent initially, perhaps due to the initial impact having knocked her out or something. Now she was conscious, and she had begun to scream.

  ‘Don’t just fucking stare at her, Weatherall!’ I barked as I approached. ‘Get a tourniquet on her, now!’

  Weatherall knelt over the screaming woman, looking panicked as he fumbled with his med pouch.

  I knelt by her head and placed a restraining arm against her shoulder, stopping her from attempting to look at the wound. ‘It’s OK’ I tried to sound soothing. ‘It’s OK.’

  It was pointless. My reassurances had little effect. The woman was in agony, her respirator face piece already clouded by her screaming and heavy breathing. Through the material of her jumpsuit I could see that her wound was extremely deep, and wide enough to fit my hand in. Flesh quivered and pulsed as blood ran freely over it.

  ‘Oh my god!’ Myers exclaimed.

  I turned to see that the young trooper was stood a metre away, in the same stupefied stance as Weatherall had been a moment earlier.

  ‘Myers!’ I snapped, pointing away. ‘Get back to where you were and cover!’

  Sensing that my words brooked no argument, Myers quickly returned to where he had been.

  I looked over at Weatherall, who was now attempting to move her trousers to get to the wound. ‘Don’t worry about the material, you belter, put the tourniquet straight over!’

  Why was I having to tell him this? I wondered. Weatherall had the same medical training we all had, and he knew that he didn’t need to mess around with clothing to get a tourniquet on.

  Snapping back to his senses, the trooper wrapped the tourniquet around her thigh, just above the wound. He fixed it together and then began to turn the toggle attached to it, tightening it around the thigh.

  ‘Keep going!’ I ordered as an increase in the woman’s screaming caused him to hesitate. ‘Don’t be gentle! You’ve got to cut the blood supply right off!’

  Stepping back from the casualty, I gave Weatherall the space to do what he needed to, as well as giving myself time to comprehend what had happened.

  What had we done?

  I looked around me, searching for more casualties. Guilt stabbed at my heart like a knife, driven deeper with every scream from the agonised woman in front of me.

  What had we done?

  ‘All call signs, let’s consolidate.’ The sergeant major sounded firm over the net as he tried to restore clarity. ‘Now is the time to keep a cool head. Keep your eyes outward. This is clearly a come-on intended to break our formation and fix us in position. Anticipate an attack. One-One, send situation report.’

  ‘I’ve got one civilian casualty and one dead so far,’ I answered gravely. ‘We’ve engaged more of them on our way up the valley, though, so there will be more.’

  There was no reply. I imagined the sergeant major was as dismayed as I was, with no idea how to respond to such an unexpected and ghastly predicament.

  Guilt turned into anger as it began to dawn on me what the Militia had done, and how we had fallen for their ploy like a band of amateurs. We knew that the Militia raised and controlled slave gangs of captured civilians to do their bidding. Before our arrival at Cellini, they had already used the village population to move tonnes of supplies and ammunition across the border into Europa. They were probably using them to move the missiles as well. Now, knowing that a platoon of Union troopers was in hot pursuit, they had sent the civilians toward us in the hope that we would confuse them with enemy in the reduced visibility of the forest. Their plan, though simple, had worked spectacularly.

  I remembered the gunfire further up the valley. In the face of our attack, the hapless civilians had disobeyed their masters and returned, only to be cut down in puni
shment.

  Suddenly I realised that the weapons were still firing. I flicked back to the platoon net. ‘They’re shooting the civvies as they run away! Get Zero-Alpha to engage!’

  The sergeant major responded immediately. ‘Hammersmith-Zero-Alpha, this is Blackjack-One-Zero, engage the targets identified by Richelieu! The people within the valley are civilians!’

  ‘Zero-Alpha, confirm you want me to engage the firers on the valley bank only?’

  ‘That’s correct!’

  ‘Wait out.’

  Only moments later, the heavens exploded with noise as a torrent of Vulcan passed overhead. Though I couldn’t see the dropships from the valley floor, I knew they were firing directly along it, strafing the southern bank with enfilading fire.

  ‘There are more civilians over here!’ Myers shouted over the noise. He pointed across to his left.

  I hurried toward him, ignoring the overhead barrage as I looked toward where he was indicating with his outstretched arm. There in the bushes, no more than ten metres away from him, lay several more bodies strewn amongst the ferns. None of them moved - not that I expected them to. Exposed to the full fury of two mammoth magnetic machine guns, they would have been cut to pieces. It was a massacre, and we were the culprits.

  The guilt I felt was unbearable. It didn’t matter that the Militia had played a trick on me, I should never have fallen for it. My desperation to catch up with Bhasin and my thirst for revenge had caused me to make a critical error. I hadn’t confirmed my target. I never even attempted to get a view of them. In my haste, I had decided that the approaching figures had to be enemy and I had unleashed the full force of my section firepower. Even when my victims failed to return fire, I never thought to question why. The fault was mine, and mine alone.

  ‘We couldn’t have known . . .’ Myers said, staring at the carnage.

  I regarded him for a second, unsure whether he was talking to me, or himself.

  The onslaught from the dropships stopped abruptly, leaving the valley to echo for several seconds afterward.

  ‘Blackjack call signs,’ the OC announced, ‘the target has been engaged and destroyed. I’m having Richelieu take another look in your vicinity. Be aware, she has competing tasks elsewhere now, so her assistance might become limited.’

  I wondered what “competing tasks” might be considered more important than us, but then cast the thought from my mind. How could I be bitter toward the crew of Richelieu, when it was me that had just brutally murdered innocent civilians through my own incompetence?

  The woman was still screaming behind me. I looked back, and saw that Weatherall was trying to tend to her wound below the tourniquet, packing the bloody hole with quick clot. He was right to do so, since there was always a chance that we could save her leg. It was a common misconception that a tourniquet guaranteed amputation.

  ‘What the hell are we gonna do now?’ Myer asked, following my gaze.

  I said nothing for several seconds. ‘I don’t know,’ I eventually replied.

  The platoon advance had come to a standstill, as everyone struggled to decide what to do next. Even the sergeant major, cold-blooded and ruthlessly committed to fulfilling his mission priorities, was now torn between his mission and his morals. We couldn’t just leave the injured civilian, not when it was us that had caused the injury, but we couldn’t simply abandon our chase either.

  My headset cut out the screaming as the OC spoke. ‘All Blackjack call signs, this is Hammersmith-Zero-Alpha. Be aware, Richelieu reports three separate groups rapidly approaching your position. One to the north, one to the south, and one following the valley from the east. She doesn’t have the visibility through the canopy to give accurate numbers, but she estimates each group to be anywhere between section and platoon strength.’

  I swore loudly, turning my head up toward the valley bank where Puppy controlled the remainder of the section. Suddenly the forest had become very still, as if preparing for something awful, and the trees towering either side of the valley took on renewed menace. Only the woman’s cries cut through the silence.

  I licked my lips nervously. ‘Puppy, make sure your men are covering! Don’t engage unless you’ve confirmed your target!’

  ‘I’m on it, mate,’ he replied straight away. I heard a commotion on the bank as my 2ic quickly composed the remainder of the section to repel any incoming attack.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Myers asked with a concerned frown.

  ‘There are more coming,’ I said. ‘From all directions.’

  He gasped. ‘Shit . . . civilians?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘Andy!’ someone shouted from behind me.

  I spun around, to see Abs crouched twenty metres away, close to the no fire line that still hovered above the valley floor.

  He lifted his head to survey the area. ‘How many casualties?’

  ‘One!’ I shouted back. ‘She’s a priority one. Catastrophic bleed to the upper thigh!’

  ‘Vital stats?’

  I hadn’t thought to check. Normally vital stats were displayed on our datapads, and were often sent over the net so long as it was live. Clearly a civilian didn’t have anything like that, so we had to work out the pulse and breathing rate the old-fashioned way.

  ‘Weatherall–’ I started.

  Weatherall looked up from the woman and cut me short. ‘Pulse is one-twenty per minute, breathing is twenty breaths per minute. Tourniquet applied. I’ve given her painkillers.’

  The high pulse and breathing rate weren’t surprising, but they were still a cause for alarm. Having lost a large amount of blood through the hole cut from her leg, her blood pressure might have dropped considerably, meaning that her cardiovascular system needed to work harder to supply her body with oxygen. On the other side of the coin, assuming that Weatherall’s speedy tourniquet application had prevented too much loss of blood, then the high stats might be the result of shock - or something else entirely.

  ‘OK.’ Abs started tapping the information into his datapad. ‘Stand by. Three Section will extract her back! We’ll hold onto her until we can make some sense out of this mess.’

  As if on cue, a four-man stretcher party burst through the undergrowth, having been generated from Three Section’s manpower. The rest of them would still be covering the rear of the platoon.

  The stretcher party sprinted up to the woman, one of them laying his lightweight stretcher onto the ground whilst the other three jostled Weatherall out of the way, taking control of the situation.

  ‘We’ll deal with her, Andy!’ Abs shouted. ‘Get yourself back up there with your section!’

  I nodded, feeling slight relief as the burden of the injured civilian was removed from my shoulders. Nothing could take away my guilt, but at least I didn’t have to carry the woman to whom I had effectively dealt a life-changing injury.

  ‘Let’s go lads!’ I called, shaking the thoughts from my head. Now was not the time to allow myself to be consumed by grief again. My section needed me to remain focused.

  As I led Myers and Weatherall back up the rocky slope toward Puppy and the remainder of my men, I listened to the sergeant major transmitting over the net. ‘Hammersmith-Zero-Alpha, this is Blackjack-One-Zero. Request immediate cas-evac for one times civilian casualty.’ There was a long pause. ‘Confirm priority?’

  ‘Priority one.’

  Another pause. ‘Blackjack-One-Zero, understand that there are many civilian casualties across this battlefield. We do not have the means to send them all back through our medical chain.’

  ‘Understood. The casualty was injured as a result of our own actions.’

  There was no reply.

  I reached the top of the slope, to find Puppy and his fire team poised to fire, covering out into the trees in anticipation of the approaching threat. The sound of rustling leaves and snapping twigs emanated from within the forest, indicating that whoever was approaching us was coming in fast.

  Puppy spotted me as I had my m
en join the right hand side of his fire team.

  ‘They’re making a lot of noise,’ he said warily.

  ‘That’s the idea,’ Wildgoose interjected.

  Suddenly Weatherall pointed. ‘Over there!’

  A figure stumbled into view amongst the trees. Tearing through the foliage like a man running from the devil himself, the figure was dressed in a civilian jumpsuit and was clearly unarmed. I could hear his frantic breathing through my headset.

  ‘Union troopers!’ I shouted threateningly. ‘Stop, or we shoot!’

  It was unlikely that the basic, bubble-like respirator the man was wearing came with a translation device, but the threat in my voice and the weapons trained onto him carried the message well enough. Still, though, the man didn’t stop. More civilians followed after him, tripping and stumbling in their desperation to escape an unseen menace behind them. There were at least ten of them, all headed directly toward us.

  ‘Stop!’ Puppy repeated my warning from his end of the section line. ‘Last warning!’

  The civilians were less than thirty metres away, and closing fast.

  ‘Warning shot!’ I shouted, making sure my men didn’t confuse my actions with a decision to open fire onto the civilians. Then I lifted my rifle over the civilian’s heads and then pulled the trigger, firing a single dart over their heads.

  The civilians jumped fearfully, some of them instinctively lifting their hands above their heads. Their advance stalled. One of them sobbed, then said something pleadingly. My headset’s translation caused me to raise an eyebrow. ‘Forgive me!’

  There was something deeply disturbing about the group of civilians in front of us. They were still edging toward us, my warning shot having only slowed them down. It was as if there was something driving them reluctantly toward us, when all they really wanted to do was run for their lives.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ I shouted, squaring my rifle on the closest man’s chest. I couldn’t bear to shoot more civilians, but their insistence on closing the gap between them and us was deeply unnerving. ‘Get on your knees!’