EDEN (The Union Series) (23 page)

In one fluid,
practiced movement, we stormed into the building, fingers poised over our power-up
buttons as our weapons swept the room beyond. The only sound was that of boots
scuffing wooden floor boards and our own breathing.

The walls of the room
were covered in wires and cables, running through holes drilled out of the
floor and the ceiling, but otherwise it was empty. We quickly cleared through
both levels of the building, searching as we did for anything else to reveal
its purpose. The cables ran through two floors, before they finally exited
through a hole cut out of the ceiling so that they could join onto the mast
outside. The furniture had been moved out of the rooms containing the wires, and
stacked together into a single room where there were signs of soldiers having
been there. Thermal sleeping bags were left out on the floor, and kit lay
scattered as if the room had been left in a hurry.

‘What was this, then?
What was this building for?’ Myers wondered, as he rooted through the equipment
that had been left, in search of anything useful.

‘An antennae,’ I
replied knowingly, ‘for something dug under the ground.’

Skelton looked
surprised. ‘There’s a warren under here?’

‘Must be. The wires
come straight out of the ground.’

He looked down at the
scattered equipment. ‘So who was staying here, then?’

‘Guards,’ I said, ‘protecting
the wires.’

‘From who?’

‘The people living
here.’

Skelton shook his
head. ‘I don’t get it. Are you saying the Loyalists took the village, then dug
themselves in underneath it and actually let the people stay here?’

‘It’s the perfect
protection, exactly the same as in Dakar,’ I explained. ‘They know that the
Union can’t drop bombs on Edo civilians, so where better to centre their
assets? The people of this village were a human shield.’

‘Wow!’ he exclaimed.
‘I bet the villagers loved that!’

‘It wouldn’t have
made much of a difference to them,’ I said, remembering my conversation with
Yulia on the far bank of the Ghandi. The people of the Bosque just wanted to
live, they would accept their new masters just as they had accepted being ruled
by Edo.

‘So what happened?’

I looked at the
discarded items left by the Loyalist guard force. Rations, drinking water, even
ammunition were thrown about the floor like rubbish. The soldiers that had
lived there were clearly poorly disciplined, leaving such equipment lying
around when it should be permanently packed in their kit and good to go, but
there was no doubting that they left in quite a rush.

‘The Presidential
Guard were coming,’ I deduced, ‘so they made a run for it.’

‘Check this out,’
Myers said, as he held something up for us to see. ‘A magazine!’

I frowned. ‘Put that
down, you idiot!’ I hissed. ‘You know better than to pick random things up!’

The young trooper
dropped the magazine as if it burnt his fingers. ‘Sorry. I was just trying to
point out that it was an Alliance mag - Loyalists don’t use Alliance magazines,
they don’t fit their weapons.’

I looked down at the
magazine and sighed. ‘Well I suppose if it was going to blow up, it would have
done so by now.’

I crouched down and
picked it up, turning it over in my hands. It was indeed an Alliance magazine.
It was also empty, I could tell by the weight. Like our own magazines, they
came pre-loaded, and once they had been used they could be thrown away. We
never did so ourselves, keeping them so that they could be swapped for fresh
magazines and used again, but the Guard probably wasn’t so disciplined.

Skelton bent over to
see the magazine for himself. ‘What does that mean?’

I tossed the magazine
back to the ground. ‘Not much. Some Loyalist might have picked it up somewhere
and left it here. But it might also be confirmation that the Presidential Guard
did come through here.’

Myers was about to
say something, when suddenly he froze, turning his head to look at something as
though he had seen a ghost. My hair stood on end as Skelton and I instinctively
spun to see what he was looking at, only to see nothing but a blank wall. There
was nothing there, but within milliseconds I knew exactly what Myers could see,
something far more worrying than any ghost. The scanner had spotted something.

He turned to me,
blinking uncontrollably. ‘Someone’s coming into the village.’

The reading was
coming from the opposite side to the maglev airlock. It was little more than a
blip of energy, probably created by a datapad, or perhaps even another scanner
less advanced than our own. It was impossible to tell who it was, or even what
it was. It was entirely possible that the reading had been created by a piece
of electrical equipment switching itself on - perhaps something that operated
on a timer. I knew it wasn’t that, though … it was the same people who had been
following us.

I moved up to the
window, peering through the misted glass to see if I could spot the unwelcome
arrivals. The plastic dome hung in front of me, making it impossible to see
between the buildings.

Had Puppy picked them
up too? I wondered. It was unlikely - his scanner probably wouldn’t have the
range. If he did get a reading, though, he wouldn’t come charging into the
village to get us - an act that might risk compromising us unnecessarily - instead
he would watch and wait anxiously, knowing that if I was in trouble then I
would break net silence in order to warn him if things went wrong.

We couldn’t wait to
see what happened. For all we knew the Guard might be moving back into the
village to set up a patrol base, a scenario that would result either in us
being forced to hide for an indefinite period, or being captured. I had no idea
of how the Presidential Guard would handle a captured Union trooper found
snooping around behind their front line, but I doubted it would be pleasant.

‘We need to go,’ I
said, turning away from the window.

The two troopers
nodded furiously, relieved by my decision, but still pumped full of adrenalin.
I didn’t blame them; a wave of fear swept over my body. Having my men killed or
injured was awful, but seeing them captured was unthinkable.

We moved to the
building entrance as fast as we could without making a racket, stacking beside
the doorway in the same manner as we had when we entered.

I looked out into the
street, seeing nothing. The rain continued to lash against the roof, but
otherwise there wasn’t a sound.

I gripped Myers by
the shoulder. ‘Still got that reading?’

‘Yeah,’ he whispered.

‘How far away?’

‘Forty metres, maybe
less. It’s on the edge of the dome.’

They were probably
cutting through the plastic - the same as I had done.

I licked my lips nervously.
There was no point in waiting by the door. We either went for it, or moved back
into the building to hide.

I squeezed Myers’s
shoulder. ‘Let’s go!’

We moved swiftly out
of the doorway, fanning outward to cover the entire street. I quickly scanned
around me, my visor display quickly adapting to a flicker of lightning that lit
the village in blinding white light.

‘Follow me,’ I hissed,
just as the sky rumbled, and I ran back along the street toward the maglev
station, turning my head to make sure my fire team were with me.

I turned into an
alleyway, trying to remember the route I had taken as I ran. Speed was
critical, and the best way to achieve it was to go the way I knew.

We sped through the
maze of buildings, following an alleyway that opened up to the station. I
slowed as I saw the maglev airlock in the open, and my spirits soaring as I
prepared for our final burst for freedom. I crept up to the end of the
alleyway, my rifle firmly into my shoulder.

Suddenly Myers
gripped my arm, holding me in place. My heart skipped a beat. I knew exactly
why he had stopped me.

Someone was out
there.

Two figures were
stood on the other side of a collapsed section of the dome, their feet just
visible behind the water swollen bulge. An orange crosshair flickered over them
as my visor display struggled to decide if they were targets or not, unable to
see properly through the plastic, or the murky water weighting it down. At
least that meant they probably couldn’t see us either, I thought, since I
doubted their targeting systems were as good as ours.

I cursed silently as
we slipped into the shadows, our eyes fixed on the two sets of boots. They were
soldiers, of that I was certain. Myers’s scanner had picked up only one of
them, but the others were clearly moving around with all of their equipment
powered down as we were, making them almost impossible to spot with the
scanner. That meant that there could be tens of them all around us.

One of the figures
spoke. He was whispering, but his voice was magnified and then translated by my
headset. They were speaking the language of Edo, a strange mixture of Indian,
Japanese and Russian, which meant only one thing - Presidential Guard.

‘I don’t like it
here,’ the first soldier said, ‘there has been too much death.’

‘The commander wants
us to stay here tonight,’ the other soldier replied. ‘I think he believes the
Union soldiers are near.’

We didn’t dare move, and
clung to the shadows trying not to breathe as the two figures spoke.

So they were
indeed the same patrol that we suspected had been following us.

‘Do you think they’re
in the village?’

The translation
didn’t convey emotion, but I sensed that one of the soldiers was worried. The
Guard had faced troopers before, and no doubt they knew that we were a
formidable force.

‘Maybe. They cannot
be far from us. That is why we must be careful.’

‘I heard people say
that their commanders can control ships in space with only their hands, and
that they fight like demons.’

‘They fight like
demons because they
are
demons, but they shall die like the traitors who
lived here. They shall die like pigs.’

The conversation
flowed from butchering my men, to the severity of the weather, and all the
while my display clock slowly counted the seconds away. We had almost reached
our cut-off time, and soon Puppy would begin to worry.

I stared at their
feet, willing them to turn around and walk away.

‘Where is Oleg?’

‘I don’t know. He
said he would be back soon.’

Come on, move!
Stop talking shit and fuck off!

‘We should go,’ one
of the two figures decided suddenly. ‘The commander will wonder where we are.
Come on.’

‘He has been pushing
us too hard,’ the other complained, as they turned and walked away. ‘We should
have rested hours ago. How will we fight the Union soldiers if we are
exhausted? I do not trust such a young commander.’

‘He is only following
his orders from the major. The Union soldiers are trying to find our army. They
must be killed before they can report back to their masters.’

‘And if they already
have?’

‘We kill them anyway.
The commander wants them dead.’

The voices slowly
faded, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I reached out and patted Myers, and he
returned the gesture to tell me that we were all ready to go.

I bolted across the
open toward the maglev airlock, stealing a quick glance up the street. There
was another lone figure some twenty or thirty metres away, but thankfully he
had his back turned. I gestured to Skelton to cover the figure with his mammoth
as I quickly scanned along the plastic airlock, searching for the hole I had
cut through it.

I cursed myself for
not having thought to mark the entry point with a crosshair. Such a simple
error would now cost me critical seconds. My heart thumped against my ribs as I
desperately searched for the opening before somebody turned around and saw me.

I finally found the
hole, pulling it apart and bounding through in a single movement. I waved my
hand at the other two, hurrying them after me, before sprinting along the
transparent tunnel toward the edge of the dome.

Quickly negotiating
the first hole that I had cut, I emerged into the pouring rain. The blue
crosshair that marked Puppy’s fire team glowed on my display, beckoning for me
to run for safety. We had made it out of the village.

Something to my left
caught my eye, and I spun around to come face to face with a Guardsman. He was
stood right beside me, his body having been hidden by the metal supports that
held up the airlock entrance. He gaped in surprise.

Instinctively I
punched my rifle forward, driving my bayonet into the man’s chest.

The hapless soldier
looked as though he was about to scream, but like a whirlwind Myers appeared
from nowhere, ripping the respirator away from his face to remove any chance of
him transmitting on his net. He clamped his hand around the soldier’s mouth, circling
around behind him as he did so. Wicked metal glinted as he withdrew his bayonet
and stabbed it into the man’s neck.