LANCEJACK (The Union Series) (10 page)

Johnno
looked me up and down in concern, ‘How many casualties, Andy?’

‘Two
casualties,’ I told him, and I ordered the stretcher to be placed down,
‘Patterson has concussion and has taken a lot of shrapnel. Konny has taken a minor
flesh wound to the arm.’

‘Is
he still able to command?’

I
wanted to tell Johnno that he was a bag of shit, but it wasn’t the time or
place. If I undermined the command structure at my level, where did it stop?
The battlefield was not the place to argue about who was in charge, though if
Konny acted up again I would have no choice but to relieve him.

‘I’m
fine,’ Konny said before I was able to say a word, ‘What’s going on?’

Johnno
regarded us both and shook his head, ‘Who knows? They knocked out the net, then
we came under fire from all directions. They even turned the LSVs on us!’ I
gasped. I had been told that NELA could make our electronic warfare teams look
amateur, but turning our own weapons against us? That was some pretty scary
stuff.

‘See
the boss, mate, he’ll tell you more,’ Johnno flicked his head upwards, ‘He’s
upstairs. Leave your section here with me so I can sort your casualty out.’

Konny
ran up a flight of stairs halfway along the hall as Johnno led us with our
stretcher into an open door. Inside was a pleasantly decorated apartment, once
the home of a New Earth civilian and now turned into a place for the platoon to
centralise casualties. Medical waste, including bandage wrapping and expended
auto injectors lay strewn across the blood stained carpet.

There
were three other casualties arranged into a neat line in the middle of what I
presumed was the lounge, each with injuries of varying degrees of severity. The
worst was a man who had lost his foot, who strangely sat bolt upright on his stretcher
and appeared not too bothered by his injury. He clutched at his rifle as though
to prove that he could still do his duty. I hadn’t seen such a response to a
traumatic amputation before. It must have been the result of either his own
body’s adrenaline, the morphine, or a mixture of both.

‘Lie
down, Mathers,’ Johnno said, and he gently pushed the trooper back down. He
indicated for us to put down the stretcher in line with the others, ‘Place him
down with his head next to theirs. That way they can talk to each other.’

‘I
don’t think Patterson’s talking to anyone,’ Geany said as we placed the
stretcher down, and Johnno shot him the look of thunder.

‘Shut
up, Geany, you tube,’ I scolded.

Geany
caught my eye and initially appeared angry at the rebuke, but he knew that he
had gone too far, ‘Sorry.’

Johnno
sighed, ‘Go strap Mathers properly into his stretcher and check his tourniquet.
He’s doing my head in!’

Whilst
the section rallied around their injured comrades Johnno gave me a quick update
on what had happened whilst we had been away. The enemy had attacked only
moments after our section had been ambushed, and the LSVs were instantly
rendered useless. Fortunately for the platoon, Mr Moore had already ordered
them to occupy the building before the rebels managed to reprogram the LSVs to
actually attack their own side.

‘It
was a good call,’ Johnno said with feeling, ‘Those things have got some serious
firepower. You should see what damage they did to the other end of the
building! We took them out with the smart launchers.’

Thank
God for the smart launchers, then,
I thought. Every platoon often carried
at least two smart launchers, a relatively low-tech launcher that fired a
missile which troopers often joked was more intelligent than they were.

‘What
about the other one?’ I asked cautiously.

The
platoon had started out with four LSVs, and presuming that our own vehicle was
back in Eindhoven and out of the picture, that still left one more. I wondered
how many more of them might be running rogue.

Johnno
shrugged, ‘Gone. It disappeared before we could get it, probably into one of
the other city domes. NELA know we can take it out with a single smart missile,
so they won’t want to waste the vehicle until the situation goes back in their
favour.’

Johnno’s
unwavering optimism was admirable. I would have said that the situation was
completely in favour of the rebels already, but he didn’t see it that way. We
had no comms but we were together and in good order. The enemy had far greater
numbers, but we were fully trained and equipped dropship infantry. They might
have our LSVs, but a rifle platoon equipped with a couple of smart missiles
could be murder to a vehicle in a close quarter environment like Nieuwe Poort.

‘Well
what’s the sketch now, then?’ I asked, ‘Are we just gonna sit here?’

Another
shrug, ‘I dunno, mate. I doubt it. I wouldn’t…’ he added the last part with a
slight smile.

‘Where
are all the civvies?’

‘We
ordered them down to the cellar,’ Johnno chuckled as if he were remembering the
incident, ‘They weren’t gonna argue with all the shooting going on! I doubt
they’ll be happy when they see the mess we made!’

It
was a miracle that no civilians had died, but then I wondered if the rebels had
thought to clear out the buildings for their ambush earlier. If they hadn’t,
there was a strong chance that we might have killed somebody who was innocent.
I reminded myself that if that was the case, it was the rebels fault for not
clearing them out and not ours, because we were merely defending ourselves. They
would have a job convincing the well-educated city population otherwise.

The
shooting had stopped, I suddenly realised. We both looked up toward the ceiling
instinctively, though I couldn’t tell you why because we couldn’t see anything.

‘Looks
like they’ve given up,’ Jackson suggested.

‘Maybe,’
Johnno said, ‘Andy keep your boys here as a platoon reserve, mate, I’m gonna go
up and chat with the boss.’

‘No
worries.’

‘All
the casualties are stable, just have your boys watch over them. I’ve got
sentries out on the entrances to the lower floor, so don’t worry about that.
I’ll want to know your ammo state when I get back.’

‘Okay.’

Johnno
left, and I looked about me for somewhere to sit. My legs were exhausted from
carrying a casualty for hundreds of metres and now that I had the opportunity
to calm down they had begun to ache. I found a chair that had been tucked under
some kind of expensive looking hologram desk, pulled it out and took a seat.

I
sighed deeply, ‘That’s better.’

I
saw Okonkwo’s massive shoulders shaking and realised that he was laughing at
me, ‘I wish we could take pictures of stuff, coz you look quality on that
chair!’

That
was the first time that I had seen Okonkwo smile. I looked down and realised
how ridiculous I looked. Dressed in full combat gear and camouflaged blood red
from helmet to boot, I couldn’t have looked more out of place sat on the
ornate, expensive looking chair. The people of Nieuwe Poort knew how to live
like kings.

‘I
do look pretty stupid,’ I agreed.

I
looked down at my datapad. I needed to record my new ammo state manually, since
it was no longer being updated by the section net. I should have done so
earlier, but getting out of the ambush and back to the platoon had been my
topmost priority.

‘Was
it like that before?’ Jackson asked, sat cross-legged beside Patterson, throwing
me off my train of thought, ‘When you were up against the Chinese?’

I
realised that he was asking me to compare the ambush to the invasion. I thought
back to the carnage of the ditches I had fought through during the landings,
and the vicious hand-to-hand fighting through claustrophobic warrens that cut
deep into the rock. The faces of my old friends came back to haunt me, and so I
shook the memories away.

‘No.’
The ambush had turned into quite a fire fight, and it could have been a
slaughter, but it had not been. I looked back down to my datapad.

‘Oh,’
he opened his mouth again as though he wanted to ask me another question, but a
stern look from Okonkwo told him not to. He shut his mouth firmly.

‘Thank
you, Corporal,’ Okonkwo said suddenly, and I raised an eyebrow.

‘For
what?’

‘For
saving our lives.’

I
frowned, ‘What do you mean?’

‘We
all saw what you did back there,’ Okonkwo said, looking around at the other
members of the section for support, ‘You got us out,’ there were a few nods, ‘We’d
be dead if it wasn’t for you.’

I
remained silent, knowing that Okonkwo was perilously close to openly admitting
that Konny had failed in his duty to the section. Geany watched me closely,
perhaps waiting for me to follow down that route so that he could tell the
section commander.

I
ended the silence by tapping my datapad, ‘I need an ammo state, lads. What have
you got?’

7

Bloodbath

‘Stand
to!’ Somebody called out from the floor above, and I stopped tapping ammunition
quantities into my datapad. The message echoed about the building as every man
in the platoon repeated it.

There
hadn’t been a shot fired for several minutes, not since Johnno had gone
upstairs to have a face-to-face brief with the boss.

‘Police!’
Somebody shouted from our floor, ‘The police are here!’

Geany
laughed, ‘Well, that’s that, then, lads. We’re nicked!’

I
shook my head in disbelief as I stood from my chair, ‘I’m going to have a
look.’

‘Tell
them I ain’t saying nothing!’ The section roared as I left the apartment and
made my way to the building entrance. A trooper crouched in the shadow cast by
the door, and he regarded me warily before returning his attention to the
street outside.

‘Did
you say the police are out there?’ I asked.

The
trooper nodded, ‘There’s four police wagons, just across the road.’

‘Let’s
have a look, mate.’

‘Go
ahead,’ the trooper leant out of the way so that I could stick my head around
the door, careful not to expose any more of my face than was absolutely necessary.

Sure
enough there were four vehicles parked across the street, not as brutish
looking as our LSVs, but equally large. They certainly looked like genuine
police vehicles, they were painted blue and white as they were on Earth, with a
massive Union flag along their sides with the German word
Polizei
written in massive letters over the top of it. Blue and red lights flashed
brightly upon their roofs, reflecting off the glass dome above us so that there
was no hiding their presence.

‘Are
they mad?’ I whispered to myself, forgetting that the other trooper’s headset
would magnify my words for him to hear anyway.

‘Must
be.’

A
man stepped out of what appeared to be the cab of one of the vehicles and
looked across at our building. There was no mistaking his police uniform; a
blue outfit not entirely unlike the combats we wore but with less armour. He
didn’t wear a respirator, instead he wore a clear visor almost like a pair of
sunglasses and a small headset. He had a pistol holstered at his side, but
otherwise he was unarmed. On his own, at least, he wasn’t much of a threat.

‘Who
are you?’ A voice challenged from the floor above. I recognised it instantly as
the boss.

The
policeman looked up to the source of the voice briefly, as though he had never
heard such a stupid question.
To be fair
, I thought,
if he really was
a policeman he probably would think the question to be pretty stupid.

The
officer then looked directly at me and the open entrance way, and suddenly
strode toward us purposefully.

‘Stop!’
The boss shouted, ‘Or we will open fire!’

Undeterred
by the threat, the policeman strode on, as though no weapon could possibly stop
him.

‘Fucking
hell,’ the trooper beside me hissed, adjusting his rifle butt into his shoulder
nervously as the man approached, ‘What do we do?’

I
stood up to make myself obvious in the doorway and levelled my rifle with the
man’s chest.

Can
I really shoot a policeman,
I asked myself,
and could I live with
myself afterwards?
Surely he was the real deal, and not an elaborate ploy to
make us drop our guard? Our foe certainly had some tricks up his sleeve, but
could he stoop to the low of pretending to be civilian police in order to get
his kill?

The
policeman was only metres from the entrance, ignoring the continued threats
from above.

‘For
God’s sake stop,’ I shouted, though it was more of a plea, ‘I don’t want to
shoot a copper!’

Finally
he stopped, no more than a metre or two away from me. He was old, I saw, in his
fifties at least, with a full head of grey hair and a thick beard. His hands
remained at his side, and my finger twitched over my rifle trigger as I watched
them, waiting for them to dart to his holster.

‘At
least somebody here can see sense,’ my headset translated as he spoke, and my
visor told me he was speaking Dutch, ‘Do you mind telling me why you’re running
around shooting in my city?’

He
sounded like a sergeant major, preparing to deliver his ultimate telling off to
a hapless young recruit.

I
kept my rifle aimed squarely at his chest, ‘Who are you?’

‘I
am the Nieuwe Poort chief of police, David Wolfe,’ he said, and pointed behind
him, ‘And this is my city. Why are you running around arresting people and
shooting people, when I am unaware?’

‘It
was NELA who started shooting first,’ I pointed out, hearing the sound of boots
hammering down the stairs somewhere behind me.

‘I
don’t care what the rebels did, trooper,’ he snapped, ‘I want to know why you
are here in the first place!? Why do I not know about this? I am woken up to
find half of the city communication network shut down, tens of people arrested
without any legal warrant and two residential areas turned into warzones! Why
has nobody spoken to me?’

I
realised that the two warzones he mentioned were the two targets on opposite
sides of the city, which presumably meant that we weren’t the only ones who had
been attacked. The other half of our operation had met resistance as well.

‘Who
the hell is this idiot?’ The platoon commander had finally arrived behind me.
The chief of police frowned at the insult.

Presuming
that the question was for me, I shrugged without looking back to the platoon
commander, ‘It’s the chief of police, David Wolfe?’

‘Well
I don’t recognise him,’ he answered back haughtily.

The
chief of police shouted, ‘Perhaps you might recognise me, if you had bothered
to speak to me first! Where is Ruckheim, and what the hell is he up to? I want
to speak to him. Who is in charge here?’

‘Major
Ruckheim is at the building where the arrests took place,’ the boss admitted,
‘We have no comms with him.’

‘Yes,’
the chief agreed, almost smugly, ‘The rebels have turned the local network
against your own, which is a very dangerous situation for you. You have been
very stupid. We can conduct arrests ourselves, we do not need you to do it for
us! In all of my time here, this has never happened! If you have intelligence
to be exploited, then you should share it. We are, after all, on the same side!
You have given the rebels a massive piece of propaganda; Earthling troops
shooting up a city in the southern continent. Not good.’

Mr
Moore was silent. Whether the chief of police was right or not, there wasn’t
much point in arguing with him.

The
chief paused thoughtfully, ‘We must get you out of the city,’ he said, ‘Before
the people decide to riot.’

‘What
about the rebels?’

‘The
rebels are gone,’ he said knowingly, ‘They know when they are outgunned, and
they have done what they set out to do.’

‘Which
is…?’

He
pointed toward the burning LSVs, ‘They have created mayhem, and made you look
like the bad guys.’

The
platoon commander said nothing, as I began to realise that the chief was right.
Why hadn’t we simply given the police the intelligence they needed to act,
rather than going in ourselves? Surely the police weren’t corrupted by NELA?

‘You
will all be escorted back to Eindhoven by my men,’ the chief said: It was an
order, not a suggestion. ‘I will have more trucks pick up your major and his
men and we will go back together. There is enough room on the vehicles for all
of you. You need to be out of sight, so that tempers do not flare.’

Mr
Moore spluttered at the idea, ‘We’re not being escorted out of the city like
criminals!’

‘You
have a better idea?’

‘We
will patrol back to Eindhoven.’

‘No.
If you patrol back, you will risk a riot. Then you will need to explain to your
CO why you shot and stabbed more civilians trying to get out.’

‘How
the hell do I know you’re not just a trick to get us outside?’

‘You
don’t.’

‘Sir,’
I said, ‘If they’re a hoax, then it’s the most elaborate hoax I’ve…’

‘Thank
you, Moralee,’ Mr Moore almost spat my name, and I flinched, ‘If I want your
opinion then I’ll bloody well ask for it. I’ve already heard about you risking
the lives of your section with your messing around!’

My
teeth clenched and my eyes burned with rage. What
was
he on about?

Sensing
my anger, and seeing my rifle still aimed at his chest, the chief of police
looked slightly nervous for the first time.

‘Boss,’
I heard Johnno’s voice, trying to soothe the platoon commander’s flaring
temper, ‘He’s genuine. Trust me.’

‘I
don’t care if he is who he says he is,’ he argued, ‘I will not be bundled into
a police wagon like a criminal!’

‘Boss,
we have casualties,’ Johnno insisted, ‘One of them has been missing his foot
for almost an hour. Patterson has internal bleeding and I can’t treat him. We
need to swallow our pride, and get out of here.’

‘And
if this is a trick?’

‘Then
we kill as many as we can before we go.’

Silence.
Our boss was thinking, while my temper still simmered. What was he taking so
long to think about? We had no alternative but to trust the man.

‘Fine.
Let’s do it.’

There
was a shared sigh of relief, before Johnno called out for the platoon to
collapse into him with all of the casualties.

We
loaded onto the police trucks as the sky turned turquoise in the morning sun,
anxious to get out of the area as quickly as possible. The trucks disgorged
their police cargo, each dressed like the chief and armed with MSG-20s like
ours, except that they were painted black and not red.

If
the police shared the chief’s anger at us for descending upon their city then they
didn’t show it, instead they assisted us loading our casualties into their
vehicles and ordered curious civilians back into their homes.

It
felt weird to be hopping onto civilian vehicles in the same spot where the
platoon had fought a drawn out fire fight with the enemy, but then we were not
fighting a war like the one I had known before. Our enemy had disappeared.
Aided by their unrivalled mastery of the electronic battlefield, NELA had the
ability to melt away into the city as suddenly and effortlessly as they had
appeared, but their greatest weakness was their need for the support of the New
Earth population. At the moment, it seemed, the rebels had decided that the
population of Nieuwe Poort were not ready to see their local police come under
attack.

Johnno
oversaw the load plan of the platoon and organised us as we should be for any
vehicle or dropship move. Just because we were hitching a lift in police
vehicles didn’t mean that we were perfectly safe, and so we needed to be able
to fight as soon as we stepped back onto the ground. Johnno ensured that each section
had its own truck and weren’t split up, with the fourth vehicle carrying the
platoon sergeant’s group, a five man grouping that included Johnno himself, two
smart launchers carried by two of the most senior troopers in the platoon and a
two man work party for moving ammo and casualties. He made sure that as many of
the casualties as possible went into his vehicle, though two had to be kept in
the section vehicles because there wasn’t enough room for all of them to go in
one. We took Patterson, who still remained unconscious. The boss and his
signaller - who was utterly useless without the platoon net - went into one
section's vehicle.

‘Let’s
go, lads,’ Konny hurried us into our vehicle once Patterson had been placed
into the middle of the crew compartment. I glared at him as I passed him, but
he looked away.

‘I
don’t like this one bit,’ Jackson said to me as he buckled himself into his
seat, looking around nervously at the unfamiliar compartment.

‘Me
neither,’ I replied as I joined him, still looking over at Konny.

The
section commander was clearly pretending that I wasn’t there. He had been
talking to Mr Moore, I knew it, and he had spun a little story to cover his
arse in case any of the blokes said anything. We were going to be having words,
he and I, I decided, when the time was right.

With
the trucks loaded and the sun slowly rising, we left to meet up with the
conscripts and make our way back to Eindhoven.

#

The
conscripts had suffered terribly at the hands of the enemy, we discovered.
Whether the rebels had executed the perfect ambush or the conscripts had simply
reacted poorly we would never know, but I felt their pain as we unloaded from
our trucks to help them load their own casualties.

There
were at least ten injured, which was over a third of their number. At least one
conscript was dead, he was having his scattered remains picked up off the
street and thrown into a plastic bag by his mates. As I watched the conscripts carry
out their grim task one of them began to retch, and his comrade had to yank the
respirator away from his face before he puked inside it.