LANCEJACK (The Union Series) (27 page)

‘I
don’t know,’ I replied, studying the object using the zoom on my scope.
Advanced though our night vision was, we were operating in the pitch black in a
warm underground environment. Coupled together, those two factors made it
difficult to make out any detail on the object.

I
turned to Westy, ‘What do you think?’

Westy
leant forward as though the extra few centimetres might give him a better view,
‘No idea. We’re too far away.’

‘Boss?’

‘Go
forward another few hundred metres,’ Mr Moore decided, ‘Take it easy.’

We
patrolled forward for another couple of minutes, before I raised my rifle to
check it again.

‘It’s
a body,’ I said as the boss approached me again.

‘Are
you sure?’

I
frowned, ‘Of course I’m sure. I know what a body looks like!’

‘Fair
enough. Let’s take a look.’

I
slowed my advance for the last hundred metres, keeping my rifle trained upon
the body as I approached. It was still giving off a fair amount of heat,
according to my thermal imaging, and so if it
was
dead, it hadn’t been
for long.

As
I came within he last ten metres I could see that the body was lying face down
on the ground. It was dressed in civilian clothing, with a small rucksack on
its back. It looked as though the body had been shot in the back several times.
The rucksack had been opened, and its contents scattered across the ground.

Pointing
my rifle directly at the figure, I squatted beside it and inspected the discarded
items. There were several relatively normal items of equipment, including a
warm coat and a waterproof jacket liner, as well as a spare respirator canister
and some cooking equipment.

‘Seems
that this guy was the outdoor type,’ Westy pointed out, ‘I didn’t think the New
Earthers were much into that.’

I
found something else on the ground, something that looked like a miniature
tablet. I reached down and picked it up, turning it over curiously in my hands.
It looked like somebody had cracked the glass, maybe by stepping on it.

‘What’s
that?’

‘A
tablet, I think…’

Suddenly
the tablet sprang to life, illuminating the tunnel. To our visors it was as
though somebody had turned on a spotlight.

‘Jesus!’
I exclaimed. It was a picture, but I only caught a quick glimpse of it as I
shook it, frantically trying to turn the civilian tablet off. Unlike our own
datapads they weren’t designed to be tactical.

‘Turn
it off!’ Westy hissed angrily.

‘How?’

‘I
don’t know! Smash it!’

I
chucked the tablet on the floor and stamped on it, extinguishing the light at
last.

The
boss arrived behind us, barely containing his anger, ‘What the hell are you
doing? Are you two out of your fucking minds?’

‘It
was an accident,’ I replied.

‘Be
bloody, careful, how do you know…’

Westy
held out a hand to stop us both, ‘It’s moving.’

We
looked down. Sure enough, the body had moved its leg slightly. I gripped it by
the shoulder and turned it over…

It
was a woman. Although it was difficult to make out all of her features in the
dark, I could see that she was relatively young and pretty. Her eyes fluttered,
and I could tell that she was slowly slipping away.

Westy
quickly tore open her shirt, exposing three exit wounds. She had been shot in
the back with a high powered rifle at close range, and the darts had punched
straight through her.

‘You
got any quick-clot?’ He asked me urgently, ‘I don’t have any kit!’

‘I’ve
got some,’ Mr Moore replied instantly, digging his hand into his medical pouch.
He gave it to Westy, who quickly set about stuffing it into the woman’s wounds.

We
all knew deep inside that it was a token effort. The woman must have been there
for several hours, judging by her condition. If she had been equipped like us
then she would have been diagnosed and treated automatically by the very
clothes on her back, but instead she had simply bled out onto the cold tunnel
floor, God knows how she was even still alive. We could never get her back to
the warehouse in time for her to see a medic, even if we did simply decide to
ditch our patrol. We lived in a harsh world, and civilian casualties were
considered a necessary evil.

The
woman whimpered, and I realised that she couldn’t see us in the dark. She must
have been carrying a torch before she was shot. I imagined how terrifying it
must be for her to have somebody stuffing foam into her wounds without her
being able to see them. She must have thought that we were torturing her.

‘Shhh,’
I soothed quietly, ‘It’s okay. We’re Union troops. We’re trying to help you. I
know it’s dark, but please don’t be afraid. We won’t hurt you.’

‘My
husband…’ the woman said weakly – but her voice was deafeningly loud in the
silent tunnel, and I flinched.

‘Yes?’
I asked, trying to get more information out of her. I already knew who she was
talking about.

‘My
husband…’ she repeated. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to speak to me or if
she was delirious.

‘She’s
lost a lot of blood,’ Westy whispered to the boss. He wasn’t being quiet for
our own safety, he was doing it because he didn’t want her to hear, ‘She has a
very weak pulse. I don’t think I can do much more. I could get an IV in, but…’

‘No,’
Mr Moore replied, ‘We would just be prolonging the agony. We can’t bring her
with us, and we can’t just go back. There’s a lot riding on this patrol.’

Westy
nodded sadly, ‘Okay. I’d like to give her some pain relief, then.’

We
all knew what he meant. We would give her an overdose, so that she could die
comfortably. We couldn’t just leave her there like this in the darkness.

‘My
husband…’ the woman breathed as Westy pressed one of the boss’s auto-injectors
against her thigh and activated it.

‘He’ll
be okay,’ I told her quietly as I watched her eyes flutter once more. I passed one
of my own auto-injectors to Westy so that he could finish the job.

I
leant close to the woman’s ear as Westy injected her a second time, and I spoke
as quietly as I possibly could, hoping that she might hear me.

‘I
know your husband,’ I said, ‘I’m his friend, and I am going to help him.’

I
noticed the woman’s hand creeping across the ground toward me, and I wrapped
her fingers in mine. ‘I
swear
that I will help him.’

The
woman’s final few breaths produced an eerie, almost rattling sound. I knew that
her dying body was no longer in control of the secretions in her lungs, and
that they were quickly filling with fluid. Finally she breathed out a loud
sigh, as though her soul was escaping out of her mouth, and she died.

We
stared down at the dead woman for a few seconds, as though we were all paying
our last respects.

‘Who
the hell do you think she was?’ Mr Moore asked finally.

‘No
idea,’ I lied.

Westy
shook his head sorrowfully, ‘Poor woman. What a way to die.’

I
watched the boss as sorrow quickly turned to anger, ‘Who shoots a civvy woman
in the back, anyway? This lot are a bunch of bloody cowards.’

‘Well,’
I said, changing the subject, ‘There is something else that strikes me about
that woman.’

‘And
what’s that?’

‘She’s
well prepared for the great outdoors,’ I gestured to the kit that had been
pulled out of her daysack and strewn across the floor.

Mr
Moore crouched down, picking up the water proof jacket to study it.

‘So
you think the rebel base is on the surface?’ He asked. He tossed the jacket
aside.

Westy
sniffed, ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out.’

I
spared one last glance at the woman before we set off once again. I didn’t even
know her name, but I knew who she was. I had seen the image displayed upon her
tablet before I managed to smash out the light, it was a smiling picture of her
with her husband. I had no intention of ever telling Westy about the picture,
or what I had said to her before she died. I couldn’t bear to tell him that he
had just killed Ev’s wife.

#

Our
march lasted five hours before the tunnel opened into another cavern, but this
one was massive. Huge arches of concrete and metal girders supported the rocky
ceiling high above us, like the roof of some arcane cathedral built deep
underground. As I slowly crept out of the tunnel, I couldn’t help but be awed
by the immensity of the structure.

The
maglev rails cut between two raised platforms that ran the length of the cavern
until they came to another tunnel. I used the platform to my right as cover,
with my rifle aimed across to the opposite side. Okonkwo mirrored me on the
other side of the maglev rails, covering above my head.

Our
fingers hovered over our rifle power buttons, ready to activate the powerful
magnets the second we saw something move. I hated having my rifle powered down,
it added that critical fraction of a second that could make the difference
between life and death, but we had no choice. The magnetic fields could be
picked up easily underground, potentially giving our position away to any
rebels nearby.

We
were in an underground station, much like those that we had on Earth but on a
much grander scale. Huge cranes hung from the roof of the station, their hooks
and cables hanging down toward us.

I
stopped once my entire section were out of the tunnel, taking the time to
listen out for anything that might suggest that we weren’t alone. The station
remained deathly silent, like a tomb.

I
held my rifle just high enough to see over the edge of the platform with my
visor and scanned the station slowly. It appeared to be deserted. Large metal
crates were stacked along the platforms, their lids opened and their packaging
discarded on the floor as though somebody had stripped their contents with
total disregard for order or cleanliness.

‘Jackson,’
I looked behind me, ‘Give me a boost!’

Jackson
moved up to me obediently and braced himself against the platform, cupping his
hands over his knee. I stepped onto his hands, and with a little hop I placed
all of my weight onto them and drove upwards. He let out a grunt as he
propelled me up and over the edge.

I
crouched on the platform and scanned again, whilst Okonkwo crossed to my side
of the maglev rails to be boosted up by O’Leary.

My
visor display remained passive. In the silent cavern, where everything had
almost the same temperature my targeting system, it wouldn’t have easily picked
out targets even if there were any. Even full-blown cloaking devices, uncommon
as they were, would have been entirely useless. If there was nobody in the
station, I concluded, at least nobody was about to fire.

Okonkwo
leant over the edge of the platform and helped Jackson up, and we quickly
spread out, taking up positions behind the scattered crates. Konny’s fire team
emerged on the platform behind us, trying to be as quiet as they could.

‘What
is
this place?’ Jackson whispered.

‘It’s
just a supply station,’ I explained, ‘The trains would drop off kit here, then
it would go up into the warrens,’ I jabbed a finger upwards, ‘There’s probably
kilometres of tunnels above us. The Chinese could fight through them for days -
from the surface all the way down to here - then they could just jump on the
trains and move somewhere else to do it all over again.’

‘Why
don’t we just follow them?’

‘We
would, but they rig the tunnels with explosives and blow them out. It takes
ages.’
It also took countless lives,
I thought, remembering the carnage.

‘Looks
like the rebels have been in these,’ Okonkwo whispered, looking around at the
mess left by the hastily opened crates, ‘I can’t imagine the Chinese leaving
their station like this!’

‘That
depends on how desperate they were,’ I replied.

The
other sections clambered onto the platforms and the platoon quickly swept
across the station. Troopers weaved between the crates in their search for any
sign of the rebels, but there was nothing, only a series of wide access tunnels
that sloped upward toward the Chinese warrens. The EW operator confirmed that
not a single piece of electronic equipment was working within the station. The
power was off, as it had been since the war had ended.

‘What
do you think, Boss?’ Johnno asked once we had finished our sweep.

Mr
Moore shrugged irritably, ‘I don’t know, do I?’ He turned to glare at Westy, ‘Come
on, then, where did your
mate
say to go next?’

Westy
looked annoyed, though not at the boss for his rudeness. He put his helmet in
his hands, as if it might help him to think. He wanted to find Ev as much as I
did, and I could see that he was racking his brains, trying to remember his
drunken conversation.