‘Something like that . . .’ he said, and smiled mischievously.
‘You should have listened to me!’ Myers said, raising his voice as his doped-up mind realised he was being ignored.
‘About what, mate?’ I asked, trying to contain my impatience. Even when severely injured and pumped full of painkillers, Myers could still waste my time with his endless complaining.
‘The pipeline . . . I told you . . . they could use it!’
Myers was talking about the prelude to our attack on Cellini several days ago, I realised. ‘Alright, mate, you were right. I was wrong.’
Van-Zyl suddenly cut the conversation short, gesturing for us to leave. ‘Come on, jump off! I need to go!’
We stepped off the ramp, and it began to rise instantly, obscuring the occupants from view. The vehicle then rolled away, heading back toward the sangar where Two Section waited with the other casualties.
‘And then there were three . . .’ Wildgoose said gloomily.
For a moment, we all stood and watched the robotic truck as it took our comrades back to the sangar, suddenly feeling utterly detached from the battle being fought in the building behind us.
‘Now what?’ Griffiths asked.
I sighed, sweeping my gaze across the ruined barracks as if searching for an answer. ‘I don’t know. I guess we carry on searching the dead.’
We fell silent for what felt like ages, trying to come to terms with the chaotic battle we had somehow survived.
A voice spoke in French over the net, and was promptly translated by my headset. ‘Poltergeist-One, this is Poltergeist-Three, the clearance of the second building is now one hundred percent complete. We have a small number of prisoners, and a large number of dead to search.’
‘Poltergeist-One, good. The Boskers have sent a small force to capture the north-west sangar. I’m happy to let them proceed, since there doesn’t appear to be any Militia occupying the compound.’
Aleksi was talking about Yulia and her team of Boskers, I assumed. They were the final piece of our offensive, and once they had captured the sangar then the entire barracks would be under Bosker control.
‘We will assume that Trondheim is now secure,’ Aleksi continued, ‘so I will speak with the Bosker commander about what they should do next. In the meantime, make sure you influence the troops to conduct a thorough search of the barracks for any pockets of resistance or hiding Militiamen. Helstrom ought to be here somewhere, so let’s try to find him as well. Blackjack- One-Zero, I think it is safe for you to extract back to the south-eastern sangar when ready. I will let you know when you are released from our control.’
‘Blackjack-One-Zero, roger. One-One, extract back to me. We will then withdraw to the sangar together.’
‘One-One,’ I acknowledged.
I was about to tell my men to withdraw, when something caught my eye, something between the north-east sangar compound and the barrack buildings. I squinted, then zoomed in my visor display, barely able to believe what I was seeing. There, piled up in the middle of a grassy field, was a large pile of scrap . . . but it was what was amongst the scrap which surprised me.
‘Can you see what I see?’ I asked.
Wildgoose and Griffiths both stared in the same direction as me, adjusting their visor magnification to study the pile of scrap metal.
‘STORM missiles!’ Wildgoose said as he recognised the shapes. ‘Maybe twenty of them . . .’
‘They’re just thrown on the floor like rubbish,’ I said.
‘They must have given up on them when they realised there was no point in using them,’ Griffiths concluded.
‘Yeah . . .’ I said thoughtfully.
The Welsh trooper looked at me. ‘What? It doesn’t matter now, does it? Helstrom obviously doesn’t think they’re worth anything, so why should we care? Enough people have died for those fucking things.’
‘All that effort the Militia went through,’ I said, shaking my head at the discarded anti-orbital weapons, ‘all the fighting in Cellini, just to throw a bunch of missiles in a pile of scrap? They could at least do something with them.’
‘Like what?’
I held up my arms. ‘I don’t know, anything! Use them as decoys, fire them . . . anything other than just toss them in a pile.’
‘Here’s one for you,’ Wildgoose added. ‘Do these people even have a launcher to fire them with? Those are Alliance missiles, whereas most Loyalist kit is either Union or Russian-made. I know Russian and Alliance launchers are similar, but are they compatible?’
I thought about it for a while, my battle-shocked mind trying to make sense of it all.
My thoughts were brought to an abrupt end when I heard the familiar bang of a launching smart missile, and I spun around to see something explode to the north of Trondheim. Seconds later, another missile leapt from the north-west sangar, once more striking a target beyond the perimeter of the barracks.
My heart skipped a beat as I realised where the missiles were being fired, straight into the commercial shuttle port on the other side of the perimeter fence.
‘The Boskers are turning on the Russians!’ Wildgoose said in alarm.
‘Oh, shit!’ I exclaimed as the full gravity of the situation dawned on me. ‘It’s Yulia!’
Yulia had told me that she was using her arsenal of missiles to take the north-western sangar, but she never mentioned using whatever she had left to attack the shuttle port itself. What was she thinking?
I didn’t wait to send a message over the net, instead I broke into a sprint, headed straight toward the north-west sangar. ‘Come on! We’ve got to stop them before it’s too late!’
‘Yulia!’ I shouted up at the sangar, just as I stormed through the open entrance to the compound. ‘Stop!’
Leaping over two dead Militiamen at the sangar airlock, I bounded up the steps, barging my way past a surprised Bosker. I exploded into the room at the top of the sangar, causing several more Boskers to spin around and stare at me . . . all except Yulia. She was holding a smart launcher aimed toward the shuttle port, and as I ran toward her she fired.
The back blast sent me reeling, my hands coming up to protect my face and visor in a delayed, instinctive reaction.
Yulia regarded me indifferently as I stumbled the final few metres to the fire port, only to watch in dismay as the missile detonated against its target, a Russian sub-orbital freighter.
The cumbersome freighter had almost cleared the top of the shuttle port perimeter fence when Yulia’s missile struck it somewhere on its underbelly. It belched smoke, starting to list like a ship sinking at sea. A high-pitched screaming sound emitted from its engines, and then moments later it fell from the sky, dropping like a stone. The massive craft almost broke in two as it landed with an almighty thump, rocking the entire sangar building like an earthquake.
I rounded on Yulia, arms held out in exasperation. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Saving my people!’ she replied, allowing one of her comrades to take her place with another launcher. There were several other freighters, I realised, surrounded by figures who scurried around them like ants, desperately trying to get the enormous aircraft off the ground before they met the same fate. The protection they had expected was gone, and they knew that being caught by a Bosker was as good as a death sentence.
I slapped the Bosker’s launcher downward, preventing him from firing. ‘Those are Russian ships!’ I shouted at Yulia. ‘If you start attacking them they could pull out of this whole thing! You might not like them, but they’re the only thing holding all of this together!’
Yulia’s face contorted with anger, and she pressed her visor up against mine. ‘The Russians are planning to take the Bosker slaves in their ships, to hide what they have done here! If we don’t destroy their ships now, we will never see our brothers and sisters again!’
‘You’ve taken the compound!’ I argued. ‘How are they gonna take the slaves away now?’
‘We can’t trust anyone,
Andy,’ she hissed through bared teeth. ‘Not even the people who helped to capture this base! We must destroy all the Russian ships in Europa if we are to protect our people!’
Suddenly Aleksi burst into the sangar, panting from his sprint across the barracks. He glanced between us, then looked out into the smoking shuttle port. ‘Shit,’ he simply said.
‘This is bad, isn’t it?’ I said, still holding on to the Bosker’s launcher. The Bosker made no effort to fight me, seemingly waiting for Yulia’s command.
‘Very bad,’ Aleksi agreed gravely.
My eyes flicked to Yulia as I asked the next question. ‘What will happen now?’
Ignoring the awkward standoff between me and the Boskers, the Scandinavian walked across the sangar, then leant out of the fire port to watch the Russian evacuation resignedly. ‘The main problem is that the ships aren’t Russian military, they’re owned by private corporations, so we have virtually no control over them whatsoever. Now that some of their ships have been attacked, there will be panic all across the province. We can expect every commercial spacecraft and aircraft to be in the air within the next twenty minutes.’
‘So that’s it?’ I asked. ‘The Russians will pull out and the whole thing is over - just like that?’
He shook his head. ‘No. It’ll create a political shitstorm, but it’s not the end of the world. There was bound to be some form of collateral damage at some point. Our job was just to minimise it. We have a plan in place for an event like this . . .’
I raised an eyebrow. ‘Which is?’
Aleksi eyed me cautiously as he decided whether it was worth sharing the information. Eventually he relented, deciding that it didn’t matter anymore. ‘We’ve prepared a safe corridor for the Russian freighters to make their getaway. We can’t allow them to escape over Paraiso because that’ll reveal the full extent of Russia’s involvement here to the masses. At the same time, though, we can’t risk them travelling deeper into Europa with all the ordinance being exchanged across their airspace. So they will travel south-west.’
‘Over Edo?’
Aleksi shrugged. ‘The northern tip of Edo, yes, before they continue on across the sea. There aren’t any air defences there, and the aircraft will virtually be outside the atmosphere by the time they reach that point anyway.’
Just then a man emerged from within the stricken freighter’s fractured hull, shrieking in agony as flames burned on his back. He ran for at least a hundred metres before two other figures stopped him, knocking him to the ground before beating out the flames. His tormented screaming echoed across the shuttle port, cutting through my soul like a knife. Yet another victim of a war that made little sense, controlled by people none of us would ever meet.
The sight of human suffering triggered the recurring nightmare that had spoilt my sleep in Copehill, bringing the vision right to the forefront of my mind. For a second I was back inside the pipeline again, packed in with countless naked corpses, being dragged by the current into the darkness. This time, though, it didn’t cause me to call out in fright or despair. Instead it caused my jaw to fall open, as something dawned upon me, something so glaringly obvious that I could scarcely believe it.
Aleksi frowned. ‘What is it, Andy?’
I recalled the flowing water within the pipeline, just before Myers and I had emerged to take on the Militia outside. It wasn’t just flowing out of the pipe, it was continuing to flow along it . . . out to sea.
The young trooper’s last words echoed through my mind. The pipeline . . . I told you . . . they could use it…
‘Yulia.’ I turned to her. ‘The pumping station you used to enter the pipeline, does it work?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The people make sure that it can be used again, in case it is needed by the air factory. Everything connected to the great terraforming project is preserved.’
‘Does it work both ways?’
She shook her head. ‘I do not understand.’
‘Does it pump water out from under Cellini as well as pump it in?’
‘What are you suggesting?’
‘What if the people you left in the pumping station reversed the pumps? They could turn the pipeline into a white water ride all the way out to the coast.’
Yulia bristled. ‘My comrades would never work for Bhasin!’
‘You’ve been working for Bhasin!’ I shouted. ‘You’ve been tricked! Whoever told you to come to Cellini, and whoever told you to attack those ships . . . it’s all just a big plan to get the Russians to pull out!’
‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, guys!’ Aleksi stepped forward, holding both hands up for silence. ‘Do you two mind telling me what the hell you’re both talking about?’
‘The missiles that came up here were just a distraction!’ I said. ‘The rest are waiting at the pumping station on the west coast of Edo, waiting for the Russian ships to fly straight over them. We’re all being played! Not just Yulia . . . you, us, the Boskers, even Helstrom and Bhasin. All of us!’
17
Strike Op
To contents page
It all made perfect sense now. As I stared out toward the fallen freighter all of the pieces fell into place inside my mind, and I shook my head as I realised how foolish we had all been. Everyone was being played like pieces on a chessboard, fed exactly the right information so that we all unwittingly worked toward a plan that was now taking shape before my eyes.
Helstrom was a crook. A monstrous crook in command of a whole army of Militia, but still nothing more than a crook whose part in the plot was little more than an elaborate deception. Taking the missiles Bhasin had given him at the pipeline, he had stolen our attention from the real direction the missiles were headed, straight to the pumping station and then on to the chemical plant on the west coast of Edo.
Aided by the floats Yulia and her men had used to enter the warren beneath Hill Kilo, as well as the current created by the pumping station itself, Bhasin had made the perfect getaway, arriving at exactly the right place to set his trap for the Russian ships. It wasn’t a case of convenience, however. That had always been the plan. Bhasin hadn’t tortured Yulia’s men to find out how to get out of the warren, he merely wanted to know where their floats were hidden so he could use them for himself. As for the pumping station, it must have been taken over by Bhasin’s rogue Guardsmen a short while after Yulia began her journey through the pipeline. Presumably the chemical plant was taken over at the same time. Suddenly I remembered the patrol we had detected in the marsh during our insertion several days ago. They were patrolling at speed, as though hurrying to get somewhere . . . to the chemical plant; they were hurrying to get there so that they could set up their position in anticipation of Bhasin’s success.
Then there was Yulia. I could tell by the confused expression on her face that she had no idea how she had been used as a tool to aid her own nemesis all along. She had a crucial part to play in the scheme, creating and securing Bhasin’s escape route with a large, expendable band of deserters whom nobody in the Guard or the FEA would believe. Then, just as we attempted to gain control of the mining infrastructure, she and the other Boskers had been persuaded to attack the Russian ships, driving them into the air.
The involvement of Aleksi and Einsatsgruppe-19 was probably the most alarming aspect of the entire plot, though. Although the cleared corridor they had created for the Russians was correctly sited from a strategic point of view, it ran the Russian ships straight past Bhasin’s launchers. It was far too convenient to be fluke. Either the location of the corridor had been leaked maliciously, or even worse it had been chosen with the specific intent of placing the Russian ships in range. I suspected it was the latter.
If a Russian ship was destroyed by missiles fired from within Edo, then the political and military consequences would be severe. This wasn’t just an attempt to ruin the fledging pact between EJOC and the Alliance, but an attack on Russian trade with Europa as well. Europa, already battered by Union bombs, would lose all of its finan
cial support with the resulting withdrawal of Russian commerce. The Union and Alliance would lose their vision of a return to peace and order, and the people of the Bosque, both in Edo and Europa, would be left to endure another decade of war. The only beneficiaries to the doomsday scenario were the President of Edo - if the Russians didn’t decide to bomb him into oblivion - and the wealthy corporations of Paraiso, who could continue to enjoy the spoils of war and the comfort of absolute power.
There was no way that Helstrom, Bhasin, Yulia and Aleksi were working together. Even Helstrom and Bhasin - whose co-operation was key to extracting the missiles whilst throwing us off the scent - probably communicated with each other very little, if at all. The thing that connected them all was that they were easily controlled, Helstrom and Bhasin through greed and want of power, and Yulia through her emotional attachment to her people. Aleksi wasn’t so fickle, but he could still be influenced by orders, orders sent by EJOC. Between Paraiso’s corporations and the president himself, there was the means to influence all of those people. There was no doubt in my mind that they were the masterminds behind everything that had happened, though I imagined the corporations were the main players.
My platoon was the only thorn in the side of the plan, which was why so much effort had been made to ensure that we either withdrew or were wiped out entirely. When we somehow survived the battle for Cellini and escaped from the warrens, we were then sent into a benign ops box, restricted to a comparatively small area where we couldn’t be any further nuisance. Butch’s miraculous survival, his discovery at Copehill, and Aleksi’s curiosity were the only reason that we had come together with Einsatsgruppe-19, and the only reason we were stood together now, uncovering the depth of deceit across the Bosque.
‘So, you think there are missiles waiting for the Russian ships on the west coast?’ Aleksi asked, alarm spreading across his features as all of the information began to sink in.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. I know so! I’d put money on it!’
RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) Page 33