LANCEJACK (The Union Series) (26 page)

I
decided enough was enough. I confessed, ‘I saw him. He was the man who told me
to shoot out the glass during our ambush. He knew that our dropships were
nearby. He saved us.’

The
OC looked up to the roof in exasperation, ‘
Two
of my commanders,
protecting a fugitive!’

‘He
may be a fugitive, Sir,’ I replied angrily, ‘But he isn’t a rebel! Listen to
what me and Westy are saying: He doesn’t want to fight any more, that’s why he
ran away in the first place!’

Mr
Moore threw up his arms, ‘Well why the hell is he working with the rebels then?’

‘He
isn’t!’ I shouted, ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! The rebels called
him a traitor. They didn’t mean he was a traitor to the Union, they meant that
he was a traitor to the rebellion. To NELA! His hands were bound, for God’s
sake!’

The
OC was silent for a few seconds, stunned by my outburst. I could see him thinking
over what I had said, ‘Alright, then, Corporal Moralee. If your friend is
not
working with the rebels, why is it that he was with them in the Citadel,
and why was he even present during your ambush?’

‘I
don’t know,’ I said, ‘But I think he has access to something that they want.’

‘And
what is that?’

‘I
don’t know that either, Sir. But whatever it is, it’s down there.’

The
OCs eyes followed my outstretched arm into the tunnel.

‘You
can’t be serious,’ he said, ‘Are you suggesting that I send my men down there,
on your recommendation? The pair of you have demonstrated an almost complete
lack of integrity!’

Westy’s
eyes lowered at the OCs scathing remark. Integrity was the benchmark of a good
NCO. It was the worth of our word, and without it we were nothing.

‘Perhaps,’
I conceded, ‘But only because we are loyal to our own.’

The
OCs eyes burned, ‘Loyalty? To a man who deserted the Union army? How is he
one
of your own
?’

‘Because
we fought together,’ Westy said, ‘We fought and we died together. We were
brothers.’

‘With
whatever little respect is due,’ the OC replied haughtily, ‘We all have some
idea of what you and your platoon went through when you fought against the
Chinese, and it doesn’t exonerate Evans.’

‘With
all due respect,
Sir
,’ I said the last word through gritted teeth, ‘None
of you have
any
idea what we went through.’

The
OC said nothing. He studied me carefully for almost a minute, and I waited for
him to order for me to be disarmed.

‘What
do you think, Mr Moore?’

The
platoon commander looked the OC directly in the eye when he spoke, ‘Corporal
Moralee is a good NCO. I would trust him with my life. I believe him.’

I
turned to stare at him in surprise.

‘
You
believe him
?’ The OC repeated.

‘Of
course, Sir,’ he affirmed, ‘He’s a trooper.’

The
OC nodded slowly, ‘Okay. If you trust him, then I shall trust him. I need a
minute to think.’

He
paced away from us, resting his hand upon his helmet as though he were deep in
thought.

‘Thanks,
Boss,’ I said. I was sincere.

Mr
Moore fixed me with an angry glare, ‘Shut up, Moralee! I just said that I
trusted you. It’s not a chat up line!’

‘You
said that I was a good NCO too,’ I reminded him, ‘Thanks.’

The
boss grumbled, ‘You’re welcome.’

#

The
OC took several minutes to think, and had a conversation with the battalion
commanding officer via his signaller before he returned with his plan. It was
dangerous, and as he laid it out to us I realised why it had taken so long for
him to decide.

‘I
can’t commit my entire company to the tunnels,’ he said, ‘We’re stretched thin
as it is and there is a danger that it could be another trap. The colonel has
given me the go ahead, however, to release you to conduct a fighting patrol.
Your mission is to conduct said fighting patrol, and to locate and fix the
enemy so that the remainder of the company may assault.’

Mr
Moore nodded, ‘Understood. I’m happy with that.’

‘You
will take Corporal Weston with you,’ the OC continued, casting a glance toward
the freed Welshman, ‘In the hope that his memory might be jogged a bit more.
You will also take my electronic warfare operator. He will hopefully help you
to detect any form of trap or early warning systems. Anything that has any kind
of computer in it, he can pick it up.’

At
the mention of his name I saw the OCs EW operator glance about nervously.
Though he was a fully trained trooper, I doubted that he was happy to be sent
underground with us; not that he had a choice.

‘You
are to enter the tunnel and attempt to use it to follow up our enemy. If you
pick up any sign that you have been detected then you are to make note of your
position and extract. If you become contacted within the tunnels then you are
to do the same, unless you feel that you can overcome your opponent without
sustaining severe losses. If, however, you should break to the surface, then
you are to send your location instantly, whether or not you are in contact, so
that we may respond. Understood?’

‘Yes,
Sir.’

The
OC looked me square in the eye, ‘I hope for your sake that you are right,
Corporal Moralee.’

‘Me
too, Sir.’

15

The Transit Tunnel

I
dragged my body downward through the dark tunnel. I had to push my daysack
ahead of me, since the tunnel was far too narrow for me to move with it still on
my back. I moved slowly, wary of the noise I made every time I pulled my body
forward.

From
experience I knew that I needed to be quiet. Modern armies were equipped with
listening equipment that could sense even the most tiny vibrations in the rock
and in the air, pinpointing exactly where they were coming from. Tunnels were
often constructed parallel with each other, so that when an enemy was heard a
charge could be placed out and detonated, with devastating effect. I didn’t
know if the rebels could do the same, but I didn’t want to find out.

Okonkwo
followed on just behind me, and I winced every time he made a sound, half
expecting to be blown to pieces.

I
found tunnels terrifying. Hot, claustrophobic and disorientating, they had been
the setting for some of the most bloody fighting that I had seen during our
fight against the Chinese, claiming countless lives. Combat was often restricted
to close quarters by the purposefully built underground mazes that we knew as
warrens, designed to enable a defender to inflict maximum casualties upon his
opponent. Hand-to-hand fighting was commonplace. I remembered the tremendous
roar of gunfire echoing through the tunnels and the showers of sparks as darts
ricocheted against the walls around me. I shuddered at the memory.

I
stopped and listened for a couple of seconds, straining to hear the sound of an
unseen enemy placing out an explosive charge. There was nothing but the sound
of our breathing, and the whirr of our tiny respirator filters.

I
crawled on through the dark for what felt like hours, following the tunnel as
it twisted and turned ever downwards. As I did so I became increasingly aware
that I couldn’t even turn around in the confines of the tunnel with my kit on,
and I felt myself beginning to panic.

Come
on,
I told myself,
you’ve got this far alright
. I took a second to pull
myself together and pulled myself carefully toward the next corner in the
tunnel.

Finally
I reached the corner and I pushed my head past my daysack, slowly poking it out
to see what lay beyond. I couldn’t bring my weapon to bear properly, there was
no room. If somebody was waiting around the corner and they shot me in the
face, at least I would die instantly.

Five
metres beyond the corner the tunnel came to an end. It opened up into some kind
of cavern, though how large or what shape the cavern took, I couldn’t tell. I
daren’t turn on my infra-red torch, because the rebels would see it with their
own night vision systems.

I
looked back at Okonkwo. Normally I would have told him what I could see, but
there was no way that I could do so without giving us away to any rebels
waiting in ambush. Sensors could pick up near enough anything underground, from
sound to net transmissions. It was even possible to pick up the magnetic fields
generated by our rifles, and so even they needed to be powered down.

I
crawled around the corner and slid myself forward to the opening, trying to
keep my rifle in a position ready to fire. I wouldn’t be accurate, but at least
I could do something.

Nothing
happened. Nobody shot me, and nothing blasted me into atoms. I emerged into the
cavern.

‘
Wow
,’
I whispered quietly to myself as I looked out into the cavern.

It
wasn’t a cavern at all. It was another tunnel, a good fifty metres across and
half as high. Two maglev rails followed the length of the tunnel side-by-side,
running away in either direction as far as my visor allowed for me to see.

It
was a Chinese transit tunnel, a legacy of the war. Designed to transport
troops, vehicles and equipment at high speed without being detected, and
destroyed by ships in orbit, it could run for tens or even hundreds of
kilometres, connecting the city and its factories with numerous Chinese
warrens, some of which we probably hadn’t even discovered.

‘Where
the hell are we?’ Okonkwo whispered in awe as he stood up beside me, trying to
take in the sheer size of the tunnel, ‘Did the rebels build this?’

‘No,
the Chinese did,’ I corrected him, then pointed to where Jackson was emerging
from the far less impressive access tunnel, ‘The rebels built that.’

‘So
they really were using the tunnels to get in and out, then?’

‘We
always knew that,’ I said, ‘The real question is… what’s on the other end of it?’

I
sent the two of them twenty metres up the exit tunnel to give the platoon some
cover, and then sent Konny and his own fire team in the opposite direction.

The
boss was next to emerge, wriggling himself forward until he was clear to stand.
He brushed dust away from himself irritably.
He’ll have to get used to it,
I thought to myself, for if we ended up fighting underground we would end up
caked in dust.

‘I
know tunnels can get squashed, but that was something else,’ he muttered. He
studied our surroundings, nodding as he did so, ‘Now this is more like it. Now
it’s all starting to make a bit more sense. You could shift a lot of kit along
here.’

He
looked along the length of the tunnel and into the gloom.

‘Spooky,
right?’

I
glanced at the platoon commander, not sure if he had been talking to me, ‘Yeah.’

Westy
stood up beside us, giving me a friendly pat on the back. The remainder of the
platoon followed behind, their commanders quickly spreading them out along the
tunnel.

‘Alright,
mate?’ I whispered to Westy. He looked a little strange without any equipment,
but we didn’t have the time to find him anything. Instead he had been armed
with a rifle taken from one of the dead rebels in the warehouse.

He
smiled grimly, ‘I’ve had better days.’

‘Hey,’
the boss hissed, ‘Less chat, you two. You make me uneasy. How do I know you’re
not planning to blow us up or something?’

I
realised that he was trying to be funny.

‘Well,
Boss,’ Johnno joked, ‘That would be your fault, wouldn’t it? You trusted them!’

‘Well,
more fool me,’ Mr Moore grumbled. He looked down at his datapad, working out
which way was likely to take us toward the mountains. Without a view of the sky
our maps couldn’t give us a fully accurate location but they could predict
where we were and where we were going by sensing our movements, vital when we
were underground and none of our equipment could transmit.

He
extended an arm and pointed into the darkness, ‘That way.’

‘How
far?’

He
looked back down at his datapad, ‘Thirty kilometres.’

‘That’s
quite a walk.’

‘Four
to five hours hard march,’ the boss confirmed, still looking out into the
tunnel, ‘Nothing we’re not trained for.’

‘Which
means that Ruckheim has probably already reached the other end,’ Johnno
concluded.

‘Probably.
Are there any wires, sensors?’

The
EW operator, who had been attached from the OCs command group, looked up from
his own datapad. He wasn’t as well equipped as an engineer might be, but his
datapad could passively scan for enemy equipment or transmissions, if they were
stupid enough to leave them on. ‘I can’t detect anything. There’s no line of
communication along this tunnel, not from here, anyway.’

That’s
good
,
I thought. That meant that there was no early warning system to tell them that
we had entered their tunnel, and no means for the rebels in the warehouse to
pass on news of our assault other than via the net, which we had shut down. The
rebels were relying upon secrecy to protect their access route to the city, and
they had left it wide open. Their string of successes had blinded them with
confidence.

‘Will
you pick up something before we set it off?’ The boss asked the operator.

‘Don’t
count on it.’

‘Well,
we’ll just have to take that chance,’ he decided, ‘If we don’t follow this
tunnel, then we may never know where the rebels went. Get the platoon ready to
go, gents. Order of march will be Three section, Two and then One.’

The
platoon quickly organised itself into patrol formation, with mine taking up the
front. I ensured that my section were spread out in staggered file, making full
use of the tunnel width, with me forward left and Okonkwo forward right.

The
boss had sent Westy up to the front of the platoon with me, to act as a guide.

‘I
don’t know exactly what he thinks I’m going to do up here,’ the Welshman said
angrily as he crouched close beside me, ‘I can’t remember anything. I’m not gonna
be much use with this, anyway!’

He
held up the Chinese rifle that he had been given. His visor targeting system
wouldn’t be able to communicate with the weapon through his combats, and so he
would have to use it traditionally by looking through the sight, costing him
valuable seconds. Perhaps that had been the OCs intention, for I wasn’t sure
that he trusted us entirely.

I
smiled mischievously, ‘Don’t worry, mate. I’ll protect you.’

He
snorted, ‘What from? You can’t even protect yourself! Are you sure you even know
how to use that thing?’ He patted the barrel of my rifle.

‘I’ll
have you know I’m a pretty good shot,’ I replied, feigning hurt.

‘I’ll
believe that when I see it, lad!’

We
waited for the platoon commander’s order to advance, staring into the darkness
ahead of us and contemplating our fate.

‘Never
thought I’d ever end up down here again,’ Westy said.

‘Me
neither,’ I agreed.

‘I
hope Ev is okay.’

‘Me
too.’

Another
few seconds passed before Westy spoke again.

‘Thanks.’

‘For
what?’

Westy
shrugged, ‘For being around.’

I
was about to reply when I heard footsteps approaching. I glanced behind me, it
was Mr Moore. He crouched down beside me and whispered in my ear, ‘Good to go?’

‘Yeah,
Boss,’ I replied quietly.

‘When
you move off, keep the pace up. We can’t mince or we’ll be down here for days. But
if you see something you don’t like, go firm.’

‘Understood.’

‘Alright,
then, Moralee. Time to redeem yourself,’ he patted my daysack as he stood up
and walked away to take up his position behind my section.

Westy
watched him go, ‘I think he likes you, mate,’ he whispered with a grin.

I
grumbled, ‘He has a funny way of showing it.’

‘That’s
just the way he is. Shall we go, then?’

I
nodded, ‘Yeah. Let’s do this.’

I
looked across the tunnel to Okonkwo, who was watching me expectantly. With a
wave of my hand we fired ourselves up and advanced.

#

The
march was hard going. I stretched out my legs as far as I could without
breaking into a jog, and the muscles in my shins began to burn from the
exertion.

Forced
marching, or ‘tabbing’ as it was known, enabled a trooper to get to battle
within the minimum time without being completely exhausted on the other end.
Even though we were taken into combat by dropship we were still expected to be
able to do it, for no trooper or soldier was above a bit of mindless tabbing. A
trooper was expected to be able to march between six and seven kilometres per
hour with full kit, and distances of thirty kilometres or more were often
covered during our gruelling training on Uralis.

Despite
our training and the cool conditioned air that our respirators blasted against
our faces, I could still hear the heavy breathing of the troopers behind me,
and beads of sweat formed upon my brow.

I
sucked on my drinking straw as I marched, my eyes darting across the tunnel
walls in search of something that looked out of place. My visor computer was
likely to spot anything before I did, but I knew from experience never to take
that chance.

Occasionally
we stopped, allowing a minute for troopers to catch their breath and suck
rations through their feeding straws. Nobody liked eating rations, but they
contained the necessary nutrients that we needed to keep going for the whole
thirty kilometres. Plus the men were tired, since they had slept for only a few
hours in two days.

We
had been marching for well over an hour before we saw something further up the
tunnel. My visor identified it before I did with an orange crosshair, and I
ordered everyone to stop with a hand signal. I squinted at the distant object,
trying to work out what it was.

My
visor had identified something of a different temperature to the tunnel walls,
a good five hundred metres away from us. Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t
moving.

‘What
is that?’ The boss asked, having moved forward to see why we had stopped.