RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) (16 page)

‘Priority one.’

Another pause. ‘Blackjack-One-Zero, understand that
there are many civilian casualties across this battlefield. We do not have the
means to send them all back through our medical chain.’

‘Understood. The casualty was injured as a result of
our own actions.’

There was no reply.

I reached the top of the slope, to find Puppy and
his fire team poised to fire, covering out into the trees in anticipation of
the approaching threat. The sound of rustling leaves and snapping twigs
emanated from within the forest, indicating that whoever was approaching us was
coming in fast.

Puppy spotted me as I had my men join the right hand
side of his fire team.

‘They’re making a lot of noise,’ he said warily.

‘That’s the idea,’ Wildgoose interjected.

Suddenly Weatherall pointed. ‘Over there!’

A figure stumbled into view amongst the trees.
Tearing through the foliage like a man running from the devil himself, the
figure was dressed in a civilian jumpsuit and was clearly unarmed. I could hear
his frantic breathing through my headset.

‘Union troopers!’ I shouted threateningly. ‘Stop, or
we shoot!’

It was unlikely that the basic, bubble-like
respirator the man was wearing came with a translation device, but the threat
in my voice and the weapons trained onto him carried the message well enough.
Still, though, the man didn’t stop. More civilians followed after him, tripping
and stumbling in their desperation to escape an unseen menace behind them.
There were at least ten of them, all headed directly toward us.

‘Stop!’ Puppy repeated my warning from his end of
the section line. ‘Last warning!’

The civilians were less than thirty metres away, and
closing fast.

‘Warning shot!’ I shouted, making sure my men didn’t
confuse my actions with a decision to open fire onto the civilians. Then I
lifted my rifle over the civilian’s heads and then pulled the trigger, firing a
single dart over their heads.

The civilians jumped fearfully, some of them
instinctively lifting their hands above their heads. Their advance stalled. One
of them sobbed, then said something pleadingly. My headset’s translation caused
me to raise an eyebrow. ‘Forgive me!’

There was something deeply disturbing about the
group of civilians in front of us. They were still edging toward us, my warning
shot having only slowed them down. It was as if there was something driving
them reluctantly toward us, when all they really wanted to do was run for their
lives.

‘Stay where you are!’ I shouted, squaring my rifle
on the closest man’s chest. I couldn’t bear to shoot more civilians, but their
insistence on closing the gap between them and us was deeply unnerving. ‘Get on
your knees!’

He sobbed again, this time uttering something under
his breath. ‘I’m sorry! They are making me do this!’

My headset had picked up, magnified and translated
the civilian’s voice for me to hear, but he probably didn’t know that. He
wasn’t talking to us, I realised, but somebody else. Somebody who wasn’t there.
Perhaps it was a loved one, or even whoever he called his god, but it wasn’t
that which sent alarm bells ringing in my head.

A chill crept down my spine.
He’s not asking
forgiveness for what he’s doing,
I told myself,
he’s asking forgiveness
for what he’s ABOUT to do.

I looked him over. There was something funny about
the way he tripped and stumbled through the undergrowth, as if he was off balance.
His waistline appeared abnormally wide in contrast to his thin limbs, and his
groin area was wet. He’d pissed himself.

‘Proxy bomb!’ I warned over the section net, my
voice almost turning shrill with alarm.

‘Shit!’ somebody gasped, as the gravity of the
situation became clear.

Proxy bombers were suicide bombers who didn’t want
to die. They were forced to carry out their ghastly act by all means of
coercion, often by the controller holding their family to ransom. I had heard
of them being used before, during my pre-deployment training on my voyage to
Eden, but I had never seen it with my own eyes.

Everything pointed to that scenario. The civilians
were clearly under duress, and several of them appeared to be carrying
something around their waists which altered their gait.

The closest civilian was now less than twenty metres
away.

I fired one last warning shot over his head. ‘STOP!
Fucking stop now, or I swear I’ll shoot!’

The civilian still didn’t heed my warning. Why would
he stop? He knew he was a dead man anyway.

There was nothing left for me to do. With pained
reluctance, I pulled the trigger, shooting the man square in the chest. He
didn’t make a sound as the dart snatched him backward, and he disappeared into
the undergrowth.

‘Bomb burst!’ I hollered.

None of us had practiced the bomb burst drill since
preparing for counter-insurgency operations on New Earth, but we all
instinctively knew what to do. It was probably the simplest and yet the most sensible
thing to do in such a dangerous situation. As one we turned and ran, abandoning
our formation completely as we sprinted back toward the valley, trying to put
as much space between us and the civilians.

It was unlikely that the unfortunate victims had the
means to detonate their own devices, since they wouldn’t do so at the right
time. Instead, their devices were likely to be detonated remotely by a
controller watching from somewhere nearby. The knowledge that the proxy bombers
might explode at any moment drove me to sprint ever faster, reaching the edge
of the valley in seconds.

Just as I began to slide down the rocky slope again,
my back was struck by a mighty force, propelling me forward with my arms
flailing. I cartwheeled downhill, chunks of earth landing around me as I hit
the ground and then rolled once more. My rifle sling wrapped about my neck, and
my rifle smacked me on the visor as I ended up lying flat on my back with the
wind knocked out of me.

For a moment I lay there, stunned and winded. Smoke
poured from the forest where the civilians had been.

I sat up painfully, unwrapped my sling from my neck
and checked that I hadn’t broken my respirator seal. I then switched to the
platoon net. ‘One-Zero, this is One-One. Contact. Proxy bomber. Wait out!’

My visor display was flashing angrily, highlighting
a yellow crosshair just above the bank. I cursed. Our section net was still
live, and it was informing me that we had taken a casualty. My heart leapt.

‘Man down!’ I shouted, scrambling to my feet and
rushing back up the slope faster than I had run down it.

My terrifying message rapidly passed across the
platoon, spoken verbally and then passed on every channel so that everyone
knew.

Darts cracked over my head as I reached the edge of
the slope, forcing me to duck. The Militia, having waited somewhere to the rear
of their proxy bombers, had opened fire from deeper within the forest. My visor
didn’t identify any targets for me to engage so I assumed that they were firing
blindly.

The casualty was Thapa. He hadn’t made it into the
valley before the bombs had exploded, and now he lay motionless at the foot of
a tree five metres away from me, pink gore glistening on his stomach. He had an
open abdominal wound, and it looked bad.

Another dart snapped close by, striking a tree with
a puff of sawdust. I snapped up my rifle and fired in retaliation - though I still
couldn’t see the firers through the smoke.

I doubled toward Thapa, not waiting for the rest of
my section. I knew that they were near. I could hear their weapons firing
either side of me, causing the plants of the forest to dance and sway as they
vented their fury onto the unseen enemy.

Thapa twitched when I reached him, his eyes
fluttering as he came in and out of consciousness. His wound looked horrific,
so bad that I had to fight the urge to retch. Something had struck his stomach
in the blast, perhaps a metal fragment, perhaps a piece a wood torn from a tree,
or perhaps even a bone from one of the civilians as their bombs tore them
apart. He must have frozen, through fear or confusion, and so the front of his
body had taken the full brunt of the explosion. Our armour was good, but it
wasn’t that good.

Wildgoose arrived less than a second after I did,
and without a word he reached down to grab the stricken trooper by the boot. He
knew as I did that we weren’t in the best place to treat him, we needed to get
him back into the valley. I grabbed the other boot and the pair of us dragged
our comrade rearward, the fire from the remainder of the section reaching a
crescendo in order to cover us. We slid Thapa down into the valley, continuing
to pull him downhill until we were well clear of the forest above, and not
exposed to anybody moving along the valley itself.

As Wildgoose began to work on Thapa, I remembered
that
Richelieu
had warned of three groups approaching our position,
including one that was using the valley itself. We were so busy dealing with
our flanks, we weren’t covering the main direction of enemy threat.

‘Puppy!’ I shouted up to the bank, where the
remainder of my section were all firing into the forest. There were only four
of them, but two of them were mammoth gunners so they could still make one hell
of a noise.

My 2ic glanced over his shoulder. ‘Yeah!’

I pointed to the east. ‘Keep the valley covered,
mate!’

Puppy followed my arm, then nodded his
understanding. ‘Myers! Drop down from there and cover into the valley!’

‘Roger!’ The young trooper abandoned his position,
skirting along the edge of the valley until he found a suitable position to
look out to the east.

I looked down at Wildgoose, who sat on his haunches
next to Thapa. The section sniper had taken a basic dressing from his medical
kit, and had laid it onto his thighs whilst he removed his daysack from his
shoulders.

‘Hold this, mate,’ he said, and I obeyed, knowing
that the man knew what he was doing.

Whilst I held his daysack, Wildgoose detached the
tube that connected his hydration system to the drinking straw in his
respirator. He then quickly doused the dressing with water, wringing it to make
sure that it was wet, but not soaking.

‘Put that over the wound,’ he said, taking the
daysack back from me.

I took the dressing from Wildgoose’s legs and placed
it onto Thapa’s exposed gut. Again I had to fight the urge to vomit, as I felt
the slick, bloodied organs move slightly beneath my fingers.

Having returned his daysack to his back, Wildgoose
helped me to lift Thapa’s torso slightly clear from the ground, and with our
free hands we both wrapped it about his body, making sure that every part of
his open wound was covered.

You couldn’t push a man’s organs back inside him if
they had spilled out, but rather they needed to be protected from the open air
by a damp dressing. You also couldn’t apply much pressure onto the wound - for
obvious reasons - which created an issue with regards to blood loss. Our quick
clot couldn’t be administered to such a large open wound either, not without
risking further damage, so the need for a speedy evacuation was high. We needed
to get Thapa out - fast.

‘Puppy!’ I shouted. ‘Swap with me!’

‘Roger!’

I quickly swapped positions with my 2ic, returning
to the heat of battle. Now that Wildgoose had some control over Thapa, I needed
to get on with my job and let Puppy do his. As second in command, dealing with
and extracting casualties was his bag, leaving me to concentrate on the battle.

There were more civilians in the forest, I saw,
cowering between us and the enemy. Thankfully, none of them appeared to be
moving, which meant that we could fire between them with relative ease. That
didn’t mean the enemy extended the same protection, though.

‘What are they doing?’ I asked as I took my place
amongst my men. Enemy darts whipped through the trees, and as I watched, one
struck a civilian in the shoulder, sending him tumbling to the ground.

‘The bastards are using them as human shields!’
Griffiths replied, his face locked into a disgusted scowl as he fired another
burst into the forest.

Through the orange crosshairs that marked the
civilians as potential targets, I couldn’t see a single red crosshair, or any other
sign of our adversary. Our opponents had placed the civilians to stop us moving
forward for fear of another proxy bomb, but it seemed that they had no interest
in closing the gap between us.

‘One-Zero, this is One-One,’ I transmitted on the
net whilst my men continued to exchange fire. ‘Contact report. Attack by
multiple proxy bombers, followed up by ongoing small arms shoot. The enemy are
using civilians as a human shield, possibly to deter our advance as well as any
attacks from the air. I am engaging from a static position. We have taken one
times casualty, priority one, vital signs are on the net.’

‘One-Zero, roger,’ the sergeant major responded. ‘One-Zero-Bravo,
acknowledge.’