RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) (21 page)

The sergeant major arrived beside me, along with his
signaller and Yulia. They crouched in the undergrowth, joining me in watching
the last of our platoon descend to the ground.

Overhead, our small flotilla of dropships hovered,
many of them still containing their cargo of regular troopers. Once we had
fully dismounted, B Company would then withdraw back to Helsinki Forward
Operating Base, though after that their future would be uncertain.

‘Do you not wish you could go back with them?’ Yulia
asked suddenly.

I realised that she had knelt close to my side and
was studying me carefully. I frowned. ‘And do what?’

She shrugged slightly. ‘Leave this place.’

I said nothing, instead turning my head up to take
one last look at the dropships above our heads.

‘No,’ I replied sadly, after several seconds. ‘I
belong here now.’

Yulia searched into my eyes, or at least she
attempted to in the rapidly fading light. I doubted she could see past my
visor.

The sergeant major harrumphed. ‘Let’s go, Corporal
Moralee. We’ll slot in behind your fire team.’

As the sergeant major repeated his call to move off
over the net, I tapped my datapad screen, bringing up the waypoints on my visor
display. The first crosshair hung in the air deceptively close, though the
figure beneath it told me that it marked a location almost fifteen kilometres
away. It was going to be a long night.

‘Myers,’ I said over the section net. ‘Can you see
the route?’

‘Yeah.’ His reply was curt.

‘Good. Move off.’

The platoon melted away into the forest, each of the
three sections taking its own route toward the border with Europa. Sandwiching
the sergeant major and his two-man entourage between our two fire teams, we
snaked through the undergrowth in single file, heading in the same direction as
the orange fireballs that flew through the darkening sky.

As the light slowly failed, my visor imaging
switched to a mixture of thermal and image intensifier, using all available
forms of light in order to maintain my visibility. Stepping over rocks and
exposed roots with relative ease, I wondered how well Yulia would be handling
the move without any form of night vision.

I was mad with Yulia, I realised as I marched
through the shadows of the forest, even though I had no real reason to be.
Perhaps she
had
told the OC about what had happened in the valley, but
it was just as likely that she hadn’t. The sergeant major might have told him,
or perhaps he had simply worked it all out himself. After all, the OC was
probably wise enough to learn our individual section call signs.

The true reason for my anger had nothing to do with
my suspicion that she had spoken with the OC about me, though. It was the way
she had looked at me ever since my ill-fated attack. Behind her usually cold,
uncompromising stare was something new. Concern, perhaps pity . . . either way,
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like for her to see me in such a state of weakness.
I didn’t want anyone to see me at all.

Our move toward the border was event free. Apart
from the distant thumping that told of the orbital bombardment, and the orange
glow of bombs falling through the night sky, the forest was utterly still and
deathly silent.

Less than a kilometre south of the first marker,
Griffiths tapped his mammoth gun barrel gently to catch my attention from
behind, then signalled for me to stop. I passed the message up to Myers, and we
both dropped to one knee, scanning outward into the dark with our rifles.

I glanced back over my shoulder, trying to see why I
had been ordered to stop. Yulia and the sergeant major were crouched together
just behind my fire team, looking as though they were discussing something.
After a few minutes, Yulia stood and left the section, marching purposefully
into the trees.

Whilst I watched the ex-Guard captain walk away, the
sergeant major approached me and took a knee at my side. He then leant close to
me, his visor gently tapping against mine.

‘There’s an old research laboratory a few kilometres
to our west,’ he explained in a whisper, ‘this side of the border. It’s on our
maps, but it’s only marked as an area of historical interest. Apparently that’s
where Captain Kristov’s friends are.’

‘Who are they?’ I asked.

‘A farming community with connections on both sides
of the border. Supposedly they know the ground well, as well as the location of
every major installation within our ops box. They’re sympathetic to our cause .
. . or so she says.’

‘You don’t believe her, though.’ It was statement
rather than a question.

He shook his head. ‘It’s not that I don’t believe
her. Like I said before, she’s proven her worth. It’s the people she works with
that we can’t trust. You’ve seen how fickle the people of the Bosque are . . .
they side with whoever they’re most afraid of at the time.’

‘So what’s the plan?’

‘She’s going to go in on her own whilst we continue
to the harbour. Sending in a section of Union troopers probably isn’t wise. If
anything it’s likely to freak them out. We’ll give her some time to butter them
up and make sure they have something to offer. It’ll add some kilometres on to
our boots, but I want to make sure we’re properly established in our ops box
before we start seeking targets.’

I nodded. The plan made sense. If the farmers were
hostile toward us, Yulia would hopefully detect their animosity long before we
arrived. Without even having had the time to properly digest our orders, we
were in no rush to start visiting nearby population centres.

‘Right.’ The sergeant major stood. ‘Let’s get
moving. I want to be in location by midnight.’

Passing through the border between Edo and Europa
was far easier than I had expected. I had imagined our scanners going wild as
they detected a seemingly impenetrable wall of sensors and powered-up weapons,
but there were very few signs to indicate that we had crossed between the two
provinces at all.

A few times we picked up electronic signals emitted
from what appeared to be small encampments. There were also a couple of
automated guns, minor defences and sensory equipment, but nothing we couldn’t
avoid using the scanners. Large gaps were left in their defences - large gaps
which I assumed were once filled by patrolling Loyalist soldiers and
Militiamen.

Europa wasn’t frightened of FEA or Guard incursions
into their territory, especially now that the Union threatened to invade. Our
ability to land entire battalions of dropship infantry from orbit meant that
border defences were irrelevant, and instead Loyalist soldiers would be
deployed around potential landing sites, warrens and urban areas deeper within
the province. The Militia would have been used as a border force in their
place, maintaining a buffer between the two provinces. With their unrivalled
brutality and unquenchable thirst for blood, they were more than enough to
deter even the most determined army that Edo could assemble. Most of those
Militiamen had been sucked into the battle for Cellini, though, effectively
leaving the border undefended.

The platoon rendezvoused a few kilometres north of
the border, with each of the three sections arriving within thirty minutes of
each other. None of us encountered any problems during our insertion, though
Stan’s section reported a mobile patrol moving out to the west. Satisfied that
the platoon had survived the crossing in good order, the sergeant major ordered
us to continue toward the first of his proposed harbour locations.

It took us several hours to site our patrol harbour.
The process for selecting and occupying a suitable base from which to conduct
operations was laborious, especially since ours was behind enemy lines and not
far from the border. Each time we would go firm, forming up into a compact
triangular snap ambush, where we would watch, wait and listen for several
minutes just in case somebody was following close behind. Then the sergeant major
would take me, the other two section commanders, his signaller and a mammoth
gunner from each section in order to conduct a recce of the chosen harbour
location, leaving the remainder of the platoon under Corporal Abdi’s control.

There were so many things that we needed to look for
when selecting a decent harbour. The first and most obvious was that it needed
to be easily concealed. On New Earth, Uralis, or any other barren planet that
became a tricky requirement to satisfy, but fortunately for us the dense forest
of the Bosque made it much easier. A harbour also needed to be easy to defend,
so sticking it at the foot of a hill was unwise, but at the same time it should
be inconspicuous, so putting it at the top of a big hill or close to an
objective was equally foolish. It needed good, covered patrol routes in and
out, and commanders needed to consider emergency rally points in the event of
the harbour being attacked as well as dropship landing sites should we require
immediate extraction or casualty evacuation.

All of these requirements needed to be met during
our recce, otherwise we would return to the platoon, wait for another few
minutes, and then move off again. We had to move twice. The first time because
the canopy was too sparse, meaning that the harbour was visible by air, and the
second time because we detected a small trace of electronic activity right at
the end of our recce. It was probably nothing, perhaps just a glitch in our
scanners, but we weren’t willing to take the chance.

Our third potential harbour was a few kilometres
further east, and was situated on a slightly raised plateau in an otherwise
uninteresting location. The rise in the ground was too small to be recorded on
any map, and barely visible thanks to thick vegetation, but it offered us a
distinct advantage over any attacking force. Our only concern was that the
thickness of the undergrowth would reduce our visibility to less than ten metres
in all directions, and would make our new home far from comfortable.

‘What do you think?’ the sergeant major asked us
after we finished patrolling around the outside of the plateau.

‘It’ll do the job,’ I replied.

Stan and Corporal Kamara nodded. It wasn’t perfect,
but then no harbour was ever perfect. If it was, then it would be as attractive
to the enemy as it was to us.

Happy with the location itself, our final task was
to work out the layout of the harbour, making sure we were happy where everyone
would be going to avoid confusion when we brought the platoon in. The sergeant
major sited the three mammoth gunners around the edges of the plateau, giving
it security as well as marking out the apexes of the triangular formation the
platoon would form as part of the harbour. Each section would take one side of
the triangle, giving us the all-around defence we needed whilst making it easy
for us to rest and administer ourselves in between patrols. Platoon
headquarters was situated in the centre of the harbour, allowing the sergeant major
to control it easily.

Avoiding the unnecessary use of net transmissions,
Corporal Stanton was sent along with one of the sergeant major’s men to collect
the platoon, whilst we all congregated at the centre of the harbour.

The sergeant major lifted his head to check that the
three mammoth gunners had all our arcs covered, and then crouched down with his
back against a tree.

‘We’ll set up here as quickly as possible,’ he
instructed as we knelt around him. ‘Then I’ll set a period of forced rest -
four hours minimum.’

Forced rest simply meant that nobody was allowed to
do anything apart from perform sentry duties or sleep, and it was well called
for. Everyone was exhausted, having not slept properly for days, and without
sleep even the most professional troopers would slowly deteriorate into
irritable, forgetful morons.

I checked my visor clock. It was already well past
midnight, meaning that our first patrol would set off in the early hours of the
morning, not long before the sun rose.

‘You know the drill,’ the sergeant major reminded
us. ‘Once the lads are in position we’ll have a soak period for five minutes,
then I want you to send out clearance patrols for a final confirmation of the
surrounding area. The things I want them to look for are signs of enemy, local
activity or potential emergency rally points and extraction routes.’

We nodded, remembering. The platoon hadn’t occupied
a regular patrol harbour during the entire time I had been with them, but we
had all practiced the procedure many times during our training.

He continued. ‘Once the patrols are complete, I want
sentries posted and all sensors placed out. Then connect a comms line to me in
the centre. Questions?’

‘Who’s going to meet with Yulia?’ I asked.

The sergeant major addressed me. ‘I want your section
to rendezvous with Kristov later tonight. Clearly you have a better rapport
with her than any of us, so we’ll take advantage of that fact. We’ll discuss in
greater detail once everyone is in the harbour.’

‘Understood.’

He looked up, then gestured over my shoulder. ‘Here
they come.’

Stan and Abs brought the platoon into the harbour in
single file, leading them in through the southern apex of the triangle. I met
my section, then led them around to their side of the formation and sited their
individual positions, facing outward.