LANCEJACK (The Union Series) (20 page)

Our
bodyweight almost instantly multiplied as the dropship ended its decent and
began to climb rapidly, banking to the left and right as it did so, as if it
were weaving between an unseen set of obstacles. It continued to vibrate, its
vulcan cannon and assortment of missiles firing an endless barrage at the much
more manoeuvrable robotic saucer.

Geany
gripped the straps around his shoulders as the dropship rolled onto its side,
‘Looks like we found the other saucer, then!’

Okonkwo
tapped me on the shoulder and laughed, ‘Enjoy your ride, Andy?’

‘No,’
I replied gruffly, hiding my relief to be strapped into my seat securely, despite
the nauseating ride. I quickly tapped my datapad to switch myself onto the
dropship net, the first time I had been in a position to listen to the crew in
action.

‘…Keep
tracking him!’ The disembodied voice of the dropship commander ordered.

‘Yeah,
I’ve still got him, he’s moving away to the west!’

‘Keep
engaging!’

‘Still
engaging! He’s coming back!’

‘I
see him! Ky, keep him off us!’

The
dropship suddenly pulled a sharp turn to the left, banking so hard that I
thought I might pass out.

‘Section
Commander?’

The
dropship commander was talking to me, I realised, ‘Yeah?’

‘Sorry
about that, mate, you all okay?’

‘Not
really,’ I replied angrily, even though the crew had probably saved our lives, ‘I
wasn’t buckled in!’

My
headset echoed with the unsympathetic laughter of the three dropship crew as
they continued to evade the saucer.

‘Where
the hell did that come from?’ I asked.

‘No
idea, mate,’ the commander replied, ‘But that thing isn’t being guided by an
outside signal. The rebels must have brought it down somewhere and reprogrammed
it. That’s some pretty clever stuff!’

No
shit,
I thought to myself. If they could reprogram something as advanced as a saucer
to attack Union troops without any external communication, then there was very
little that they couldn’t do. I thanked the heavens that they couldn’t do the
same to our warships. Then we really would be in trouble.

‘All
Hades call signs listen in,’ another voice ordered, ‘Maintain fire onto enemy saucer,
reserve ships cover the drop off point. Drop off point is marked. All call
signs, acknowledge.’

There
was a series of sounds and beeps as the other dropships acknowledged the plan.

‘Time
of drop off is in thirty seconds from my mark…,’ a pause… ‘Mark.’

The
crew began to exchange a confusing string of numbers and words that made little
sense to me as the dropship hurtled toward its designated drop off point.
Undeterred by the enemy saucer, we were still going into the assault, because
we were as safe in the Citadel as we were in the air.

I
pulled myself together ready for our exit, which would be a perfectly timed
simultaneous drop off. Both my section and Jimmy’s would be unloaded together
into the Citadel, with the platoon commander and his signaller coming only
seconds later.

Mr
Moore couldn’t be the first man on the ground for obvious reasons. Leading from
the front was important, but it didn’t help if he died straight away, not
matter how much he irritated me.

I
willed us to hurry up, so that I could get back into an environment that I had
control of and also because I wanted to get to Ev before it was too late. If I
had my way I would have suggested coming out below the rebels and cutting them
off before they escaped the building, but I knew that Mr Moore would never go
for a situation where fifty desperate rebels divided us from the rest of the
platoon. After all, we were tasked to clear the building, which meant to
empty
it of enemy, not kill everyone.

‘Take
out the glass,’ the dropship commander ordered, ‘That’s it! Ky, drop your ramp
and bring us in! No enemy in sight!’

‘Stand
by!’ I shouted, and I aimed my rifle toward the rear ramp, along with Okonkwo. My
fire team had now changed from
Delta
to
Charlie
. If there were
any enemy waiting for us, it would be us who faced them first.

The
ramp fell away and once again we dismounted into the Citadel, leaping the last
few steps out of dropship in fear of it being struck out of the sky whilst it
hovered. I ignored the fearsome roar of the vulcan cannon engaging the saucer as
I took in my new surroundings, advancing aggressively into the building.

The
sky was darkening, and my visor switched automatically to image intensifier,
searching the shadows for potential targets for me to engage.

We
were in another office, except this time the hollow section of the Citadel was
at least a hundred metres across. The walkway that I had seen the enemy use was
right in front of us, spanning the gap between the two sides of the building,
and I started toward it.

‘Not
that way, mate,’ Jimmy told me, his own section starting to sweep clockwise
around the outside of the building, ‘Never take the easy route!’

I
swore at the delay. Jimmy was right, if the enemy had seen us arrive they would
no doubt chose to cover the walkway in the hope that an idiot like me would run
straight across it.

I
had my section mirror his, sweeping through the offices counter-clockwise. The
task was made simple because much of the building was glass, and I could see
him and his section even as we reached opposite sides of the building.

Happy
that we had chosen a good course of action during his initial absence, Mr Moore
had chosen to follow me and my section, presumably because he trusted Jimmy
more than he did me. That was fair enough, he was a screw and I was only a
lancejack doing a screw’s job, after all.

Outside,
a cluster of missiles streaked past the Citadel, bathing the offices in red
light as they narrowly avoided the glass panels. The building shook.

Thank
God that the rebels couldn’t hack into any more of our equipment
, I thought.
What would  happen if they managed to hack into the rest of our saucers…or
battleship
Invincible?
I dismissed the thought, it was
impossible
to hack
into our ships.

‘Don’t
worry about what’s going on out there,’ the platoon commander ordered the two
sections as we continued to move around the building toward the stairwell.

His
signaller chattered continuously, keeping Johnno and the rest of the company  informed
of our progress.

I
held up a hand, and the section stopped. Something was moving in the shadows of
the floor below us, indicated orange by my visor.

I
tried to peer through the struts that supported the walkway to get a better
view of whatever it was, and as they saw me do so the section turned as one to
face the new threat.

The
orange cursor remained, but I couldn’t confirm that it was enemy and neither
could the computer contained within my visor. I crept closer toward the edge of
the office, stopping a few metres short of the glass wall that separated us
from the immense hollow space that ran for countless floors both above and
below us.

There
was somebody there, alright, of that I was near enough positive. The rebels
were hiding, waiting for us to fall into some kind of trap perhaps, on the
walkway itself. I couldn’t be sure if we had been seen moving around the
outside of the building, since the enemy probably didn’t have the same
targeting system as us, but it was safe to assume that they had seen us
dismount from our dropships. I wondered what they were doing.

‘Cheeky
bastards,’ Mr Moore hissed as he came to crouch beside me.

‘What
do you think they’re doing?’ I whispered, so quietly he had to lean close to
hear me, even with his headset amplifying the sound.

‘Probably
waiting for us to run over that,’ he replied gruffly, nodding toward the bridge.

‘Maybe,’
I said thoughtfully. Fortunately for me and my section, Jimmy had been there
when we dismounted to pass on his wisdom: ‘
Never take the easy route.’
Still,
that was a pretty obvious ambush, not very well hidden.

I
paused, allowing for Jimmy’s words of wisdom to echo about my head. The orange
crosshair waited, in a perfect spot to ambush the walkway. We could easily fire
upon it from where we were and launch Jimmy and his men into the assault, using
grenades to get down the stairwell. His section had seen us go firm and had
crouched directly above the crosshair ready to be sent around for the kill.

But
something wasn’t right; it was too easy.

‘It’s
a
come-on,’
I whispered finally.

The
platoon commander glanced at me, ‘A
what
?’

‘A
come-on
,’ I repeated, ‘A ruse by the enemy to get us to do what he wants
us to do.’

The
building rumbled as the rebel saucer shot past us, chased by streaks of tracer.

‘What
are you on about, Corporal Moralee?’

‘How
likely are we to run across that bridge?’ I asked.
Very likely if it hadn’t
been for Jimmy
, I thought - but then Mr Moore hadn’t debussed from his
dropship soon enough to know that - and I wasn’t about to tell him!

‘Not
very likely,’ he agreed cautiously.

I
continued, ‘We’re more likely to do what we’re doing now.’

‘And
see that…’ he flicked his head toward the orange crosshair, and I nodded.

I
watched him as he considered the enemies thought process. He didn’t have long,
for whether the poorly laid ambush was only bait or not, the enemy would soon
grow impatient.

‘He
expects us to come down the stairs,’ he decided, ‘So we will come through the
ceiling. Right here.’

I
whispered over the section net for Konny to prepare a mouse-hole charge, and he
quickly removed the small conical device from his daysack and placed it at his
feet. With a wave of my arm and keeping to the shadows, we crept back the way
we had come, taking cover ten metres away from the device. The mouse-hole was
meant to direct all of its explosive force in one direction, but it still had a
blast effect if you stood too close behind it.

I
saw that Mr Moore had ordered Jimmy to place a mouse-hole as well, almost above
the orange crosshair. Somebody was about to get a nasty headache.

The
platoon commander patted my shoulder from behind me, ‘When you make entry, be mindful
of the other section. Don’t shoot anything in the direction of Corporal Myers
unless you have to. I’ll be right behind you.’

‘Roger.’

‘Do
it.’

I
looked at my section who were spread out across the office, silhouetted against
the dark blue sky. They had heard the conversation between me and the platoon
commander, and now they watched me in anticipation.

I
gave Konny the nod, and almost instantly I heard the prominent beep in my
headset that announced the activation of the charge and its imminent detonation.

There
was a sudden blinding flash of light. We were hurled to the ground as the
mouse-hole detonated, shattering every section of glass on the entire floor.

‘Jesus
Christ!’ Mr Moore exclaimed as I picked myself up from the ground in a daze.

I
knew that despite the mouse-hole directing all its force in one direction, it
had a danger area all around it, but that had been a ridiculously powerful
explosion. The building still echoed and shook from the blast, even as I
managed to get back onto my feet.

‘What
on earth was that?’ Okonkwo asked.

‘Go!’
Mr Moore pushed at my daysack and I snapped back to my senses, ‘GO!’

‘Okonkwo,
GO!’ I repeated, and we charged toward the smouldering hole left by the charge.
It was massive, easily large enough to lower an entire dropship through, let
alone us.

Okonkwo
skidded to a halt by the hole, ‘Whoa!’

I
was only seconds behind him. I stopped at the hole and peered through,
instantly seeing why Okonkwo hadn’t gone for it. The mouse-hole had somehow
made a gaping hole through both our floor
and
the one below.

‘Go,
then!’ Mr Moore shouted again.

‘I
can’t, Boss, it’s taken out the floor below us as well!’

He
swore, ‘Corporal Myers, go!’

The
other mouse-hole detonated almost instantly, although with nowhere near as much
force as our own. I watched as Jimmy’s section poured into the hole it had created,
then looked back down into my own.

There
was nobody there. It took a couple of seconds for me to work out what had
happened.

‘It
was a trap,’ I said, ‘they wanted us to see that crosshair and open fire from
here.’

There
had been an explosive device under our feet, placed where the rebels thought we
might place our fire support. The ambush was the device, I realised, not the
crosshair that my visor had spotted. So what was the crosshair?