EDEN (The Union Series) (6 page)

Puppy tapped away at
his datapad, engrossed in the screen as he updated his section ammo state. Other
troopers scurried about, laying out fresh rations and collecting water packs to
be refilled.

Myers spotted me, and
holding up a ‘horror box’ of rations, said ‘There’s your rations, Andy.’

I took the box and
placed it at my feet. ‘Cheers.’

Myers blinked. ‘You
want your ammo now?’

‘Yeah. I’ll bring the
old mags down in a bit.’

‘OK,’ the young
trooper nodded, continuing with his task.

I should probably
have brought my kit down to the section room, making it far easier to
administrate myself, but my meeting with the sergeant major had rattled me a
little, and I wasn’t thinking straight.

Puppy looked up from
his data pad screen. ‘All good?’

‘Yeah,’ I lied. ‘Just
had to have a quick chat with the sergeant major.’

‘What about? Our
extraction?’

I paused to study the
section 2ic’s face. Did he also disagree with my decision to break out of the
OP? The troopers in the platoon always appeared particularly edgy around me, as
though they all wanted to say something but didn’t have the guts to say it to
my face. I knew they had all heard the rumours about me on New Earth.

‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘I
presume you know the platoon was pulled out?’

‘We bumped into one
of the other sections when we came in. They must have bugged out of their OPs
within a few minutes of us and extracted straight back here.’

I sighed deeply,
feeling the weight of responsibility upon my shoulders; a heavier weight than
any injured trooper. ‘The sergeant major’s not happy.’

A smirk crept across
Puppy’s face. ‘Is he ever happy?’

‘No,’ I changed the
subject. ‘How’s Wildgoose’s ankle?’

The section sniper
heard his name and looked up from his rifle, holding its oversized battery in
his hand. ‘What’s that?’

‘
Your ankle
…’
Puppy repeated.

‘Oh, right.’ The
trooper flexed his foot. ‘Yeah it’s fine, a bit sore.’

‘Awww,’ Skelton
jutted out his bottom lip mockingly. ‘Is it
sore
?’

The sniper grinned.
‘Shut up, mate.’

Wildgoose was far
from weak. He was as tough as any recce trooper, probably more so. A head
taller than me and built like a tank, he was by far the most imposing man in
the section, and one of the most dangerous weapons at my disposal. In order to
‘badge’ as a qualified sniper he had completed a gruelling course on Uralis,
home of the dropship infantry. Almost every course going was taught on Uralis,
a miserable planet where the weather was our only enemy, but the sniper course
was known for being particularly arduous. The long range and pinpoint accuracy
of our magnetic weapons meant that the sniper rifle itself was virtually
obsolete, but not the sniper himself. Wildgoose was a master of camouflage,
trained to position himself in the perfect location to take his shot, killing
his quarry and then disappearing undetected. Many snipers operated in small
teams across the planet, answering directly to EJOC, and carrying out tasks
that I would never hear about. Unfortunately for Wildgoose, he had been
attached to our platoon, spending much of his time observing rather than what
he was trained for - hunting and killing men. He often moaned about it, and the
lads in the section loved to poke fun.

‘Get it looked at by
a medic anyway,’ I said.

‘Honestly, its fine,’
the big trooper insisted, and patted his rifle. ‘I’m just glad I got to use
this at last.’

‘Yeah, I saw that,’ I
said, remembering the Loyalist whose head was blown clean off his shoulders.
‘I’m pretty sure that was a confirmed kill!’

The Orion rifle
Wildgoose carried was far more powerful than the simple MSG-20. It had the
power to punch through armour like butter, even at vast ranges, and using his
in-depth understanding of modern vehicles, dropships and suits, he could use it
to destroy equipment that even smart missiles might struggle to defeat. A
dropship, for instance, was heavily armoured and moved like lightning, but if
it paused to hover for too long - a single well-aimed shot to one of its
cameras could leave its weapons blind. Similarly, a suit would drop to the
ground with a single high-powered dart to the knee joint. The aim correction
system in our visor displays meant that we were far more accurate than if we
fired our weapons normally, but it couldn’t pull off such an accurate shot,
adjusting our fire only to ensure we struck the target area itself. Wildgoose’s
ability allowed him to hit precise locations on the target, at distances as
great as two kilometres and beyond.

‘He fucking deserved
it,’ Myers commented, and the mood turned sombre. We all knew that one of our
comrades was in a critical condition in hospital, shot by a Loyalist dart.

I looked over the
section, wondering how they all felt about our extraction, but was too afraid
to ask. Gritt wouldn’t die, of that I was near certain. The medical care in
Paraiso was better than anywhere else on the planet, and probably better than
any hospital on Earth, but it still wasn’t nice to see a member of our section
so badly injured. I wondered if they blamed me.

‘We’re going back to
Paraiso tomorrow,’ I announced, and several faces lit up.

Myers blinked, ‘Will
we be able to see Gritt?’

‘Probably. I don’t
know if he’ll be awake yet, though.’

Holland - or ‘Dutch’ as
the lads knew him - Puppy’s mammoth gunner, looked up from the pile of rations
at his feet. ‘Well at least he gets a trip home,’ he said gloomily.

Skelton raised an
eyebrow. ‘Really? He’ll go home?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, an
injury like that will get him out of here.’

Thapa, a rifleman in
Puppy’s fire team, gasped in surprise. ‘Why didn’t anybody say it was that
easy?’

‘Jammy bastard!’
Skelton exclaimed. ‘Somebody shoot me, quick!’

The section laughed,
and I shook my head. It never failed to surprise me how troopers could overcome
the most traumatic experiences by simply laughing and telling sick jokes. A
civilian might think that we were cruel, mad, or both, but it was simply how we
got by.

Most of the men in my
section, apart from Myers and Gritt, had been present for the invasion of New
Earth, witnessing first-hand the horrors of war. They had then arrived on Eden,
after a period of recuperation back on Earth, spending the entire first half of
their two year tour in the Bosque. Up until recently much of their time had
involved fighting small bands of guerrilla fighters, sent by Edo to terrorise
the Paraiso border. They were battle-hardened, but they were also tired. I
knew, because I was tired too. I hadn’t been there to fight the guerrilla war,
but I had seen more than my fair share of death and misery. I felt as though I
was soaked in it.

‘You alright, Andy?’
Puppy asked, snapping me back to reality.

I realised that I had
been staring into space, and a few of the section were looking at me as though
they expected me to do something crazy.

‘Yeah,’ I replied
quickly, turning to make my escape, ‘just thinking I need to grab my kit. It’s
easier if I bring it here.’

‘OK,’ the section 2ic
nodded. ‘I’ve got it pretty much squared away here. We’ve taken the scanners
down to EW, by the way.’

‘That’s good, cheers.
I’ll be back in a few minutes.’

‘No dramas.’

I felt the section
watch me as I left their chamber, waiting for me to be out of earshot so they
could talk behind my back.

He’s mad, did you
see his face? Did you hear about what he did on New Earth? People say he sided
with a traitor, and then killed him to clear his name! He nearly got Gritt
killed just because he wanted to start a fight - who’s he gonna get killed
next?

Was I mad? I wondered
as I made my way to my own chamber to grab my kit. Perhaps I was, but I had no
lust for blood, or at least I didn’t think that I did. My only fear was failing
in my mission, that and losing one of my own men. I couldn’t bear to have
another man haunting me in my nightmares, and I was genuinely relieved to know
that Gritt was in safe hands.

There was only one
thing that I wanted; I wanted to escape. I wanted an end to my suffering.
Perhaps even die. I just didn’t have the guts to do it myself.

Processing back into
the Paraiso province was always laborious. I had done so several times during
my six months in theatre, and every time I found the experience more
frustrating than the last.

Having landed that
morning within the military sector of the capital’s sprawling spaceport, we
were marched from our dropship into a ‘containment facility’ - a large and uninteresting
building where we would be kept for twenty-four hours. Like a factory, the
containment facility took a constant stream of personnel from bases outside the
province and churned out ‘normalised’ personnel the other end, safe to enter
the affluent city without going insane and attacking the population. Paraiso
was rich, blissfully unaware of the brutal war being fought in the Bosque - the
vast and beautiful expanse of forest that straddled all three provinces. Despite
being a European province, the Union still needed to keep the people of Paraiso
on side for fear of another New Earth scenario. It didn’t need drunken troopers
suffering from violent flashbacks in the local bars.

Our weapons were
handed into an armoury, and all of our equipment was taken from us. Nothing we
owned was to be seen again until after our ‘normalisation’ was complete.

Stripped of my gel
armour and respirator, I felt naked as my section were led through the maze of
corridors and shown to our accommodation; a tiny room lined with bunk beds. We
viewed the bunks with disinterest. It was hardly home, since we had no kit to
put in the room anyway.

‘You have twenty
minutes to grab a shower, fellas,’ our conscript usher explained with far too
much enthusiasm, indicating the towels and shower shoes that had been provided at
the foot of our bunks. ‘Fill your boots.’

‘Roger!’ Myers needed
no encouragement, almost ripping his combat shirt away in his haste.

The others quickly
followed, throwing their clothes onto their bunks as they rushed to get a
shower within the allocated time. We all stank - some of us hadn’t washed
properly in weeks.

 ‘Oh, God!’ Puppy grimaced,
pointing at Myers’s boyish physique. ‘That’s one thing I haven’t missed!’

‘Bore off, mate,’
Myers retorted, ‘you’re just jealous of this!’

‘Mate, you’re built
like you have a week to live! I’ve had shits bigger than you!’

The room echoed with
laughter. Myers, young as he was, had the body of a child. How he ever made it
through training was beyond me, but appearances could be deceptive.

‘Whatever, fat boy,’
Myers replied, and he ran out of the room before Puppy could grab him, whooping
down the corridor with his towel and shower shoes still in his hands.

‘Come on, then,’
Puppy ushered the others. ‘Get your disgusting bodies moving!’

It was all banter, I
knew. I watched the section exit the room, and heard the first sound of running
water from along the corridor. Skelton yelped loudly, presumably as Puppy
finally caught up with him.

I sighed as I sat
heavily upon my bunk and began to undress. Puppy was a good NCO - no, he wasn’t
a good NCO - he was amazing, I admitted almost begrudgingly. He could easily
take over from me, and it would probably be better that way. I wiped the
thought from my mind, knowing that the section shouldn’t see me feeling sorry
for myself, and followed them into the shower.

Shortly after getting
cleaned up, we were taken to the same briefing room we had sat in many times
before, packed in with tens of other troopers and conscripts who had returned
to Paraiso from bases scattered across the Bosque. As we filed in, I noticed
that some of the troopers were also recce, identified by the lightning bolt
insignia sewn onto their uniform. We exchanged respectful nods as we took our
seats, ignoring the curious stares of the conscripts. Even regular troopers
considered conscripts to be below them, so we certainly weren’t likely to pay
them any interest.

I took my seat at the
back of the room, just as the lights dimmed in preparation for our first
hologram. The holographic title of the first presentation appeared in front of
us, and there were several groans across the room as we all recognised it.

‘Put something else
on …’ someone moaned, but the hologram started anyway.

‘Welcome to
Paraiso
,’ the hologram began,
displaying a massive image of the city as though we were flying high above it.
‘A
paradise far away from Earth. Some of you may have been here before, while
others …’

I looked up toward
the ceiling and sighed.

‘You just got called
in from the OP screen?’ an accented voice whispered beside me.

A recce trooper was
leaning over to me from his chair, and a quick glance to his rank insignia told
me that he was a full ‘screw’; a corporal, from the Sixth Battalion Welsh
Dropship Infantry.