RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) (10 page)

One by one, the platoon quickly filed into the
sewer, each trooper stopping to help his comrade behind him. Ropes fell down at
either side of the drain, attached to something within the room above to
provide us with the means to climb back out if something went wrong.

Attached to either side of the tunnel were more
hazard signs, I noticed as I waited, no doubt highlighting the risk of drowning
to anybody stupid enough to come down into the sewers.

‘I seriously doubt it’s just the cold that puts
people off looking down here,’ I said.

‘It’s putting
me
off,’ Myers uttered from
behind us.

Yulia followed my stare and saw the signs. ‘The
sewers are extremely dangerous if you do not know what you’re doing.’

As if to highlight the point, somebody swore as he
fell into the water with a splash that caused us to jump. In typical trooper
fashion, he was then quickly berated by his mates as they pulled him to his
feet.

‘Belter,’ Myers said quietly. I couldn’t help but
flash a rare smile at the comical disdain in his voice. Whoever had fallen was
probably soaked up to his neck, but he wasn’t getting any sympathy, only
ridicule.

I caught a glimpse of Yulia’s face in the
torchlight, and she didn’t look impressed at all.

‘So . . . you’re working for the FEA?’ I asked,
stealing her attention from the cursing troopers.

She regarded me for a second. ‘Yes. After I turned
against Bhasin in Dakar, I fled into the forest along with the soldiers who had
fought with me. We sought sanctuary in a village far to the south, but we were
not there long. Agents working for the FEA recruited us. They told us about the
Alliance plan to return, and that the Union have made a deal with them to
remove the president from power. There are people within the FEA high command
who do not agree with the president or the way he uses the Guard to control his
people . . .’

‘And then they sent you here, armed with Union
weapons,’ I finished, remembering the bodies of the rebel fighters we had found
when we first captured Cellini. They had suddenly attacked the Loyalist defenders,
catching them by surprise and turning the tide of the battle in our favour
before melting back into the shadows as the village was liberated. Upon
discovering the bodies, we had noted that they were heavily armed - with
European equipment.

‘Countless Union weapons have been sent into Edo to
help us beat back the Loyalists,’ Yulia explained. ‘Almost all of them go to
the FEA because the Guard say they do not need them. The agents provided us
with weapons from one of your convoys.’

I studied Yulia with unease. I didn’t doubt her
story. I knew as well as her that the largest part of the Union’s intervention
into the Edo-Europa conflict came in the form of weapons aid and logistical
support. I had witnessed the enormous convoys of robotic vehicles being loaded
with tonnes of weapons and ammunition, all intended for the FEA. There was
something else that concerned me, however, though I couldn’t quite put my
finger on it.

Myers let out a noise as he shivered involuntarily
in the water. ‘We need to get moving, before my pipe drops off!’

‘All two centimetres of it,’ Puppy added, having
closed up behind us with the rest of his fire team.

Myers snorted. ‘Nice one!’ He made a show of looking
around the tunnel. ‘All this, just because this bell end Bhasin wants to hand a
couple of missiles over to the Militia . . .’

‘They are very powerful missiles,’ Yulia pointed
out. ‘Bhasin cannot be seen giving them to Helstrom. He knew he couldn’t take
them out from the top of the hill, so he must use a different route.’

‘The Loyalists already have thousands of anti-orbital
missiles,’ Myers argued. ‘We let them keep them because we didn’t mind them
shooting at Alliance ships - until now. What difference will
these
missiles make?’

‘
Regular
Loyalist soldiers have anti-orbital
missiles,’ she corrected irritably. ‘They are not stupid enough to fire at
Alliance warships. If they did, the deal between the Union and the Alliance
would be broken, but Europa would still be bombed. Helstrom and his militiamen
are not as sensible. This is why they do not have any missiles. Europa does not
trust them with such things.’

The sergeant major arrived at the rear of my
section, and I could see that most of Two Section were already down inside the
sewer. There was no time to waste.

‘Prepare to move,’ I whispered back to Myers, ending
his conversation with Yulia. I gave the message a few moments to pass back.

No protest returned from the sergeant major, so I
presumed that he was happy to move off before all of Three Section had closed
up.

‘Want me to lead off?’ Myers asked.

‘Yeah,’ I replied. ‘No more torchlight, though. We
don’t know how fast Bhasin’s moving, or if he’s left anyone behind. I think
Yulia should be right on your shoulder, rather than next to me. She knows the
ground.’

Yulia nodded. She knew it was far too dangerous for
Myers to lead on his own, especially when he had no idea what was beneath his
feet. It would be easy for him, or any one of us, to accidentally fall into a
hidden drain, dragged downward by the weight of his equipment. If it weren’t
for her lack of night vision, I would have made her lead at the front.

We deactivated our torches, plunging the platoon
into total darkness. My visor quickly adjusted to thermal imaging, taking
advantage of the difference in temperature between the water and the tunnel
walls. It was impossible to distinguish any detail, but we could navigate the
tunnel easily enough.

‘I’m gonna grab your hand, Yulia,’ Myers warned,
stepping close to her.

Without need for further explanation, she held her
hand outward for the young trooper and he took it, placing it onto his daysack.

‘There’s a handle on the top,’ he said.

Yulia felt the top of Myers’ daysack, finding the
handle and wrapping her fingers around it. ‘I have it in my hand.’

‘Cool. Hang on. Tell me if I’m going too fast, and
I’ll tell you if I see any junctions or changes in direction.’

‘That is fine,’ she said. ‘I know the route well. This
tunnel runs for almost a kilometre, but the current is with us, so it will be
easy.’

‘I’ll be just behind you both,’ I added. ‘Crack on
when you’re ready.’

‘Roger. Moving.’

Myers stepped off with Yulia hanging on to his
daysack. It was mildly amusing to watch them move as a pair, one knowing where
to go but unable to see, the other able to see but with no idea of where to go.
Between the two of them they made a functioning guide.

I turned around and tapped Weatherall. ‘Moving off.
Stay close.’

He gave an exaggerated nod. ‘Roger.’

I followed after Myers and Yulia, leaving no more
than a couple of metres between me and the unlikely pair. The need to stay
close together was never greater as not only was I worried about the platoon
getting split if the tunnel forked, I was just as worried about the potential dangers
lurking beneath our feet. Yulia might claim to know the underground sewer system
well, but I doubted that she had spent long enough down there to know every square
metre.

As we cautiously patrolled down into the depths of
the sewers, I found myself thinking about Yulia’s story again. Clearly there
was far more to her tale - the time pressure had forced her to omit much of the
detail - but part of what she had said made me feel uneasy. She’d mentioned agents
that had found her and her group of disaffected soldiers after the Dakar
massacre . . . so did that mean she never met the people relaying her
instructions?

The agent’s resources were obviously substantial. In
less than a couple of days, hundreds of FEA and Guard deserters were armed with
Union weapons and turned around to perform an elaborate and highly dangerous
task, using tens of kilometres of ancient pipeline to infiltrate into the
sewers and attack the Loyalists from below. Such an operation couldn’t have
been planned and prepared in such a short space of time, not if it was to be
timed so perfectly with our own operation on the surface. It was all too
elaborate.

The actions of Yulia’s band of rebels had
undoubtedly made our capture of Cellini village far easier. Without their help,
the FEA battalions tasked with clearing the warren and the village itself would
have sustained far more casualties. The question was, who was it that had
pulled the strings to create this tiny, secret army? Was it some disgruntled
FEA commanders, or was it someone else? The political situation across Eden had
become so complex, so fractured, that it was almost impossible to understand
who worked for who. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that everything Yulia
wanted was in line with our own objectives, but she had been a useful ally up
until now. Hopefully she would remain so.

My thoughts were interrupted by a sudden metallic
clang. I froze. My fingers tightened on my pistol grip, pulling the butt of my
rifle firmly against my shoulder. My trigger finger hovered over the power up
button, twitching nervously.

‘What was that?’ Weatherall hissed nervously.

Nobody replied for a moment. We all held our breath,
straining to hear any other sounds that might suggest someone was nearby.

‘Expanding metal,’ Yulia decided. ‘It will happen
when the temperature changes.’

‘Does the temperature change that much this far
underground?’

‘I think so. We should keep moving.’

‘Yeah,’ I replied, slightly reluctantly. I turned
back and waved for the platoon to follow on.

‘This is like something out of a bad horror
hologram,’ Myers uttered under his breath.

After ten minutes of slow patrolling through
freezing water, the current through the sewer began to increase.

‘The tunnel opens into the underground reservoir in
a few hundred metres,’ Yulia told us.

As we continued our advance, the flow of water
increased dramatically, and then I noticed an opening ahead of us, presumably
where the tunnel met the reservoir. Something about that sudden opening, and
the increased flow of water caused alarm bells to ring in my head.

‘It’s a waterfall!’ Myers exclaimed with a hiss.

‘Do not worry,’ she replied, pushing him on. ‘There
is a grill there to stop us from falling. Even if it were not there, the fall
would not kill you.’

‘No, but the water below might,’ I said testily,
noticing the sound of roaring water ahead of me.

Yulia’s voice softened suddenly. ‘Trust me, Andy.’

The sudden familiarity in her voice surprised me,
causing me to briefly forget the coldness of the water and the drag of the
current. Perhaps the sergeant major was right. Perhaps Yulia had developed a
bit of a hold over me . . . but I did trust her. So did Myers, evidently,
because he continued onward without so much as slowing the pace, with her
following on directly behind him.

At its end the tunnel opened into an enormous
cavern, though my thermal imaging couldn’t distinguish its exact size or shape.
The cavern was filled with water, the vast underground lake showing up as a
black void on my visor display, ten or twenty metres below. Sure enough, there
was indeed a grill stopping us from falling down along with the water pouring
out of the sewer. Rather than covering the tunnel entrance, though, the grill
was actually part of a corridor formed of wire mesh and metal scaffolding that
had been bolted onto the cavern walls. Through my visor I could see that it
snaked along the wall for about fifty metres, slowly descending to a rocky platform
of some kind.

‘Can you see where you are going?’ Yulia asked Myers
with a rare trace of caution. ‘You can see a walkway?’

‘Yeah,’ he replied, ‘I can see the walkway. Come
on.’

We treaded carefully along the mesh corridor, instinctively
increasing the space between us in a bid to decrease the weight it had to bear.
We were all acutely aware of the danger we faced if it were to detach itself,
we only had to look downward for a reminder. A friend had once wondered if a
respirator worked underwater . . . the answer was
of course it didn’t
.
If the walkway fell, then we would land in a reservoir filled with water . . .
and the metal surrounding us would become a cage in which we would surely drown.

I swept my rifle across the cavern, scanning for
targets, but my visor came up with nothing. Apart from the water cascading down
from the tunnel behind us, the reservoir was utterly still. I wondered how
large it was, since I could barely distinguish the far walls, and then I
wondered how many other tunnels connected to it. There must have been several
that connected to the village, including those that allowed Yulia and her men
to move without being detected.

‘This is a natural reservoir,’ Yulia explained in a
whisper as we crept along the mesh corridor. ‘It was here many thousands of
years before our ancestors came to Eden . . . perhaps longer. It is the reason
why the air factory was built here, because it needs fresh water and there was much
less rain then. Many years later, the Alliance joined the warren to the
reservoir because of the rains that our terraforming created. We turned it into
a drain. After the Alliance retreated from Eden and the Union claimed victory,
this is where we kept the missiles - under the water.’