RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) (24 page)

Once we reached the bottom of the crater one of the
two figures stepped forward and extended a hand in greeting, and Yulia and her companions
exchanged welcoming handshakes. He was a middle-aged man, perhaps in his
fifties. The top of his head was completely bald, and he kept what remained of
his hair short.

My attention was drawn by the other figure, though.
He was younger, around his mid- thirties, but there was something in his gait
that raised my suspicion. He stood tall and proud, with his shoulders back and
chest pushed outward like a trooper on parade. Exuding an air of physical and
mental confidence, as well as an athletic build rarely seen amongst the war
weary people living across the Bosque, he stood out against his older partner.
It took me a moment to figure out what it was that drew my attention - he was
military.

After having shaken hands with the older man, Yulia
gestured toward me. ‘This is my friend, Andy Moralee.’

Acutely aware of our vulnerable position, I decided
not to offend the older man by ignoring the introduction. I extended my hand,
flashing the best smile I could manage as I tried to hide my interest in the
younger of the two.

The older man took my hand with a firm grip and we
shook. ‘My name is Marcus.’ He introduced himself in English. ‘I am a
councillor of Copehill.’

‘You’re in charge here?’ I asked Marcus, having to
use all of my willpower not to look at the military man. I felt his eyes
scanning over my kit and equipment intently, as if he were a sergeant major
inspecting me on parade.

Though I couldn’t see his mouth beneath his
facemask, I could see that Marcus was smiling. His eyes twinkled humorously. ‘I
am too foolish to be in charge here. I am a
councillor.
But I think that
a fool is just what you need . . .’ He looked to his partner.

The military man smiled warmly as my attention
shifted to him. ‘First battalion?’

I nodded, answering his question without thinking: ‘Recce
platoon.’

For a moment I questioned why I had relinquished
information about my parent unit without a thought, until I realised what it
was that made me trust him. He
was
military, and I was pretty sure he
was Union military. Something about him, the way he stood, the way he spoke,
told me that he was one of us.

The man held out a hand. ‘I’m Aleksi. We’ve been
waiting all night to bump into you guys.’

Aleksi seemed to be Scandinavian. Though I had never
worked with anyone from the Baltic Union state before, I recognised the accent
from holograms back on Earth. No Eden accent sounded like it.

‘Who are you with?’ I asked as we shook hands.
‘Special Forces?’

Aleksi gave me a slight nod. ‘We’re Einsatzgruppe-19.
I doubt you’ll have ever heard of us.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘We?’

‘There are more of us here, right now,’ Aleksi said,
then immediately held up a hand for calm. ‘Don’t worry, there are no weapons
pointed at you or anything crazy like that. My men are resting. We are all
perfectly safe here, thanks to Marcus and his men.’

Marcus beamed magnanimously. ‘It is an honour to
provide you refuge here. We will do whatever we can for those that fight the
evil in the north.’

I gave the councillor a respectful nod, deciding to
avoid questioning his security measures straight away. Puppy and his fire team
were already positioning themselves so that they could watch over us as well as
out into the forest.

My mind spun as I tried to formulate my next
question.
How could I fully trust Aleksi when I had never heard of the
organisation he claimed to be a part of
? We knew that Special Forces were
operating in Europa, but we knew nothing else. The whole purpose of our ops box
was to allow us the freedom to act on our own initiative, without accidentally
bumping into our shady counterparts.

In the end, one of my men broke the spell by doing
what troopers did best - speaking their minds. ‘Who the fuck is “ein-zat-group
nineteen”?’ Myers blurted behind me, causing me to flinch.

‘We’re a Bosque specific task force,’ Aleksi
explained, seemingly unoffended. ‘We train, organise and equip Boskers to fight.’

‘Boskers?’ I asked.

Aleksi held out his arms, encompassing Marcus, Yulia
and her companions. ‘These people.’

‘So, you’ve been waiting for us?’

‘We came here to collect Butcher,’ Aleksi answered. He
swept his arm across the crater. ‘We’ve been working with this community for
months, then we were suddenly ordered to move our operation north to make way
for your platoon. Marcus sent word to us that his people found a Union trooper,
but we didn’t expect you to be set up any time soon so we decided to come down
and fetch him ourselves. Then this young lady turns up.’ He nodded toward
Yulia. ‘We decided to wait for you to turn up . . . through curiosity if
anything.’

I considered Aleksi’s story for a second. It made
perfect sense, but that still didn’t mean that he was genuine. Apart from his
gait and the way he spoke, there was no way of telling that he was Union at
all. He had no uniform or equipment I recognised. His visor - identical to the
ones being worn by the Boskers around him - was clearly some form of targeting
system, but it was nothing like anything I had seen before. It was designed to
be discrete, as well as easily removed and concealed.

Even if he was telling the truth, there were still so
many questions I wanted to ask Aleksi. After several years of service to the
Union, this was the first time I had met anyone within its secretive Special
Forces. Even though we had constantly heard Yulia and other members of Edo’s
military referring to Union “spies”, we had no idea of what our true
involvement was.

There was still something even more important on my
mind, though. I looked into the collection of buildings spread across the
crater. ‘So where’s Butch? Is he alright?’

Aleksi smiled. ‘He’s fine. He’s looking forward to
seeing you.’

‘Come.’ Marcus took his cue and ushered us with an
outstretched arm. ‘I will take you all to him.’

We allowed Marcus to lead us along a stone pavement
that meandered between the buildings and gardens. Aleksi walked beside me,
hands tucked into his jumpsuit pockets like a man out on a leisurely stroll.

‘You must be questioning whether or not I am who I
say I am,’ he observed.

I regarded him carefully. ‘The thought had crossed
my mind.’

‘We have a tight beam communicator within our team.
As soon as I can I’ll get a message up to orbit so you can gain
authentication.’

‘No worries,’ I said, satisfied by the offer. I
looked around me at the armed men that had accompanied Yulia, who now flanked
us along the path like prisoner escorts. ‘So . . . you train these guys to
fight for us? Like a resistance?’

The Scandinavian shrugged. ‘Well . . . yeah. Sort
of. These guys are the key to success on the ground. It’s just a shame it’s
taken us so long to realise. The Union doesn’t even have a
word
for
Boskers, my men just made it up, but these people make up seventy percent of
the population across the continent. You’ve got Europa’s Loyalists in the
north, Edo and its president to the south, then Paraiso with all its money in
the east, and the Boskers are just stuck in the middle, going with the flow.
They’re an untapped resource.’

I thought about all my experiences involving the
civilians living within the vast forest region. We had always noticed how
easily they changed sides, with no true allegiance to anyone. All they cared
about was surviving.

‘Our war is all about persuasion,’ Aleksi went on.
‘It’s convincing these guys that it’s better to stand up and fight rather than
allow themselves to be pushed around. Once we’ve got them going, we give them
the training and the advice they need, all the way up to the frontline.’

‘You fight battles with them?’

‘Very small ones so far. Small raids and ambushes.
Now that the bombing has begun, though, we’ll start to flex our muscles.’ He
changed the subject. ‘Do you know much about this area?’

‘We’ve not even had time to properly study our
orders,’ I replied. ‘We only just set up our harbour.’

‘I know. Your platoon commander sent the grid to
EJOC early this morning.’

I decided not to correct him. ‘We probably wouldn’t
have known to come here, if it wasn’t for Yulia.’

Aleksi glanced at the ex-Guard officer, who was
walking beside Marcus, but said nothing.

I scanned the crater, marvelling in my surroundings.
Glass-walled buildings gleamed in the starlight, whilst other structures had
been painted brilliant white, reminding me of the reverently preserved air
factory that somehow stood untouched within the centre of Cellini. The crater
was as quiet as the forest around it, but I felt no menace in the silence.
Copehill felt relaxed, almost peaceful, as if the war hadn’t touched it at all
. . . it was as though we had stepped into the eye of the storm.

‘What is this place?’ I asked in admiration.

Marcus looked over his shoulder. ‘This is a biological
engineering laboratory,’ he said proudly. ‘Where the Bosque was born. It is
where our ancestors dreamed of paradise . . . and where we still do. All of the
plants you see across the continent were created in places like this.’

I suddenly remembered a similar place to what Marcus
was describing, a beautiful garden that somehow stood against the lifeless,
blood-red backdrop of New Earth. That place had been new, a fleeting glimpse of
what could be done to make the dead planet into a paradise. In contrast,
Copehill was ancient, and part of a grand venture of a scale I could barely comprehend.
It hadn’t finished its task, though it had got close. Now, like the rest of the
old terraforming infrastructure scattered across the planet surface, it had
been preserved, as if everyone was waiting for the day that the project could
continue.

‘And the Loyalists just left you alone like this?’

‘The Loyalists don’t like to destroy or damage places
like Copehill,’ Yulia explained. ‘Just like they didn’t damage the air factory
in Cellini. It is a place of hope. Even the Militia cannot bring themselves to
attack here.’

‘Even though it stopped generations ago,
terraforming is part of Eden culture,’ Aleksi added. ‘More so here than
anywhere else. Understand the original terraforming project, and you’re halfway
to understanding the Bosker way of thinking.’

As I thought about what Aleksi had said, Marcus
stopped at the airlock to a single-storey warehouse. Far less grand than any of
its neighbours, it was tucked toward the northern wall of the crater, furthest
away from the slope entrance.

‘We needed to keep your friend hidden,’ the
councillor said as he opened the outer airlock door, bathing us in light from
inside the building. He gestured for us to enter. ‘If the Militia found him
here, then we would all hang for treason.’

‘Do the Militia come here?’ I hesitated at the door,
suddenly alarmed.

Marcus shrugged. ‘Yes. They come here to take our
fish.’

I raised an eyebrow dubiously, glancing between him
and Aleksi. ‘Fish?’

‘We have fisheries,’ Marcus replied, as if it was
perfectly normal. ‘Copehill runs many farms. There are few plants and animals
we do not keep. The Militia enjoy the food we can provide them, especially the
fish.’

The unusual trade agreement between Copehill and the
Militia was hardly reassuring.

Aleksi must have sensed my unease. ‘Don’t
underestimate these guys,’ he said. ‘They have an early warning system that
will let you know the Militia are coming hours in advance. They could hide a
dropship here and somehow no one would notice.’

I remained still for a moment, weighing up my
options before I stepped into the open airlock and potentially sealed my fate.
I was pretty confident that I wasn’t being led into a trap, and if Aleksi was
genuinely Special Forces then I could certainly trust his assessment of Copehill’s
security.

I looked back at my men, who waited anxiously for my
decision. ‘Griffiths, you come with me.’

The men of my fire team nodded. My carefully chosen
instruction was meant to avoid offending anyone, whilst still conveying a
hidden meaning - Griffiths would come with me, but more importantly, Myers and
Weatherall would stay outside, providing a link to the other half of the
section as well as a quick reaction force that could come to our aid if
something went wrong inside the building.

Aleksi caught my eye and shot me a wink. He knew
exactly what I was thinking.

‘Shall we?’ he asked with a disarming smile.

I nodded. ‘Yeah.’

Leaving Myers and Weatherall where they were, we
squeezed into the tiny airlock. Marcus swung the outer door closed, then tapped
a button fixed onto the wall beside the inner door. There was a loud whirr and
a rush of air as the toxins were filtered out through a metal grille above our
heads.

I regarded Marcus warily. ‘So the Militia trade with
you?’