RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) (28 page)

Ordering myself to take the rest I needed, I dragged
my thermal bag out from the bottom of my daysack and laid it out on the ground.
Then I removed my gel armour and slid into the bag, using my folded armour as a
headrest. Though it turned hard as steel when struck by a dart, the gel inside
the armour made a comfortable pillow.

Falling asleep was the easy part, but sleep itself was
exactly what I expected it to be - a nightmare. I can’t even remember what I
saw, but I woke with a start, coated in sweat and panting heavily as if I’d
been running from something. Perhaps in my mind I had been.

I lifted my arm and checked my datapad. I’d been
asleep for less than two hours. Presumably I’d managed to stay under for that
length of time due to physical exhaustion. Once I’d managed to calm my
breathing, I laid my head back down and repeated the process.

This time I remembered the nightmare after it woke
me. It was the same nightmare I had been suffering ever since the war on New
Earth, a grim, never ending slide show of past visions, from my old friend
Climo with his face caved in, to Ev’s fatally injured wife who I had killed
with a painkiller overdose, to the recent image of the dead child who I had shot.
Then, in a new and horrifying twist, I suddenly found myself floating in the
water of the pipeline, surrounded by bodies, their cold, wet and lifeless flesh
pressing against mine as the current sucked us all into oblivion. It was awful,
so awful I’m pretty sure I cried out before I woke less than half an hour later.

I persisted in my effort to sleep, but each time I
tried my sleeps grew shorter, until eventually the line between nightmare and reality
became blurred, threatening my sanity. Less than four hours had passed when I
gave up, pulled my boots back on and returned to the storeroom.

I found Puppy sat on a crate close to the airlock,
facing the inner door with his rifle close by. He was wearing his armour, but
not his helmet or respirator, which were placed on the ground beside him. The
rifle would still work without his targeting system, and he was close enough to
the door to remain relatively accurate if he needed to use it. He was looking
down at his datapad, totally engrossed in it.

My 2ic looked up as I approached. ‘Alright, mate? I wasn’t
expecting you up so soon.’

‘I didn’t sleep so well,’ I said gruffly.

‘Myers is having a bit of trouble as well,’ Puppy
said. ‘You wanna talk about it?’

‘No.’ My reply was sharp, causing him to lean back
slightly. Sensing that my reply had been overly hostile, I nodded down at
Puppy’s datapad. ‘Are you hooked up to their network?’

My 2ic seemed happy to change the subject. ‘Yeah.
Pass me your datapad and I’ll sync you.’

Once Puppy had connected my datapad to the
laboratory security network, I took the time to study it, tapping and swiping
at the screen as I navigated through countless maps, displays and images.

Butch hadn’t been wrong about the people at
Copehill, there was very little they didn’t know. I could see now that their
extended community, a cluster of farms and villages tens of kilometres across,
was interwoven with an intricate network of sensors that gave them near total
coverage of their local area. Though it had plenty of holes in it, it was still
better established than the defensive perimeters we expected to come up against
when taking on the Loyalists, and it was almost entirely passive, making it
near impossible to detect.

‘It’s no wonder they found Butch,’ Puppy said whilst
I stared at the maps and diagrams. ‘He wandered into the best security net on
the planet.’

I frowned at my datapad, scarcely believing what I was
seeing. ‘How the hell do these people have this kind of coverage? I mean, this
is genuinely amazing . . . Aleksi?’

‘I chatted with Marcus for a bit,’ Puppy said. ‘The
people here already had an optical line comms network dug in here anyway, and
the sensor network was already established. Aleksi and his team simply helped them
fix it up a bit.’

‘That’s an understatement,’ I said. ‘I think Aleksi
and his organisation are far more powerful than any of us can imagine.’

‘Well, they’ve effectively got these guys doing our
job for us, so yeah . . . pretty powerful.’ Puppy jerked a thumb toward the
airlock, and the laboratory complex beyond it. ‘Did you notice those visors
they’re all wearing? Aleksi gave them those. They can connect wirelessly to
almost any weapon, so these guys have a targeting system almost as good as
ours. Apparently they’ve given out over a thousand of them. They’re been raising
an army in secret, ready to overthrow the Loyalists all across the region.’

‘If only we could get them to pull some strings for
us,’ I said wistfully.

Puppy frowned. ‘Why?’

I told him about Helstrom’s base just outside our
ops box. The second I mentioned it being within Aleksi’s area of operations,
Puppy shook his head vigorously. ‘Forget about it, mate,’ he said, a hint of
warning in his voice.

‘How can we forget about it?’

The squat trooper sighed sadly. ‘You know we did
everything we could to get to the boss. Look where it got us . . .’

His final words hit me like a hammer, causing me to
turn my head down to the ground. It was me who pushed the sergeant major to
take us below ground in pursuit of the boss. All the resulting bloodshed was on
my hands.

Suddenly I heard a door swing open behind me, and
turned my head to the sound. It was Yulia, emerging from the washroom wrapped
up in a large towel. She walked briskly across the storeroom to another one of
the many rooms, disappearing inside.

‘What’s she doing here?’ I asked as the door shut
behind her. I had expected Yulia to leave after realising she had nothing more
to gain from us.

Puppy shrugged. ‘She came back with Marcus and picked
a room to sleep in. She asked for us to tell her before we leave so that she
can come too.’

‘Oh.’

‘Do you think we still need her?’ he asked.

‘Probably not,’ I replied gloomily.

‘Why’s she still hanging around?’

I shrugged. ‘I guess she believes we’re still going
for Helstrom.’

Puppy seemed to accept the answer. ‘What did Aleksi
make of her?’

There was no sense in hiding anything from my 2ic. I
told Puppy all about my conversation with the Scandinavian, and the
reservations he held for Yulia.

Once I had finished, Puppy looked back to Yulia’s
room. ‘It’s funny,’ he observed, ‘a few days ago I would have agreed with him.
I would have said we were mad to trust her.’

‘Do you trust her now?’

My 2ic considered the question. ‘It’s hard not to
have faith in her after what she’s done for us. I seriously doubt she’ll do us
any harm anyway . . . not as long as you’re around.’

It was my turn to frown. ‘What’s that supposed to
mean?’

‘I’m just saying you’ve got a good rapport with her
. . .’ he said with a mischievous grin. ‘Don’t you?’

‘I guess so.’

Puppy laughed. ‘Of course you do! She’s kind of hot
. . . in a hard-nosed “I’ll snap your neck if you piss me off” kind of way!’

‘If you’re into that sort of thing.’

Puppy remembered his datapad and switched it off,
before changing the subject. ‘So, when are you thinking about pushing off? You
never said.’

‘Straight after last light,’ I replied. ‘There’s no
rush, but I’m sure the sergeant major will want a face-to-face sooner rather
than later.’

‘Fair one.’

We both fell silent for several seconds.

‘Everyone’s hurting, mate,’ Puppy started. ‘Maybe
you–’

‘Why don’t you get some sleep, mate?’ I interrupted.
‘I’ll finish your stag. I need to go through the data Marcus gave me, anyway.’

Puppy looked as though he wanted to say something,
then surrendered with a big sigh. ‘OK, Andy. I’ll make sure Wildgoose comes out
to relieve you.’

I went back to my room and fetched my kit, laying it
out on the ground before sitting on the crate next to Puppy with my rifle
across my lap.

‘I’m sorted,’ I told him. ‘Go get some sleep.’

My section 2ic stood, then scooped up his helmet and
respirator. ‘Don’t beat yourself up, mate. You made an honest mistake.’

I glanced up at him. ‘That doesn’t make it any
easier.’

‘I know.’ Puppy hesitated for a moment, then walked
away.

I sat on my own for what felt like ages, no longer
interested in my visor display clock. Normally I would find myself staring at
the seconds, willing for them to accelerate as if I could somehow alter time
itself, but it didn’t matter when Wildgoose came to take over from me anymore,
not when I couldn’t sleep anyway. I didn’t want to be relieved, I just wanted
to be left alone.

Something moved just inside my peripheral vision and
I jumped, my hand instinctively darting toward the pistol grip of my rifle.

It was Yulia. She was wearing her jumpsuit again,
though the upper half was left unzipped, revealing a grey vest beneath it. Her
long dark hair was still wet from her shower, and was left to flow down onto
her shoulders.

‘Alright?’ I greeted her with caution.

‘Yes,’ she said, running a hand through her hair.
‘It is nice to be clean again. Your second in command said you will stay here
until nightfall?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah. The sergeant major ordered us not
to return before dark unless we have urgent information to pass on. Butch’s
survival is a good bit of morale for the platoon, but it’s nothing that can’t
wait. Besides, my men haven’t slept properly for days.’

‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘When did you last
sleep?’

‘Properly?’ I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. In Paraiso
hospital I guess.’

‘When you were injured?’

I nodded.

‘That was a long time ago,’ she said, with a hint of
concern. ‘You should sleep, too.’

‘I will, once I’m relieved.’

Yulia studied me for a moment, then the corner of
her mouth twitched. ‘You are afraid to sleep, I think.’

I bristled. ‘You think that’s funny?’

‘No,’ she replied quickly. Then, without warning,
she turned and sat beside me. ‘I do not think it is funny. Many of the people I
have worked with struggled to sleep. Sometimes I struggle to sleep.’

I glanced at her. ‘Why?’

She turned her head upwards as she sought the right
words. ‘Bad thoughts. Nightmares. Sometimes I dream of my family . . . before
the war. Then I remember them dying . . .’

‘How did they die?’

‘My family were killed by the Union when they bombed
our town,’ she said, her lip curling slightly. ‘A piece of the dome collapsed
onto our home, and it crushed them. I was found a day later. Everyone I knew
was dead.’

‘Sorry,’ I said awkwardly, instantly regretting the
question. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’

‘It’s OK. You did not drop the bombs.’

‘So then you joined the Guard?’ I asked, happy to
find out more of her past, rather than dwelling upon my own.

‘When the president took control, all of the orphans
like me were looked after by the Guard. We were trained from an early age, and
taught to hate you for what you did to us. Many of us were selected to be
officers.’

‘How old were you when you became an officer?’ I
asked.

‘Eighteen.’

My brow raised in surprise. ‘Eighteen?’

She looked at me. ‘This is a young age?’

‘Our officers don’t commission until their early
twenties,’ I explained. ‘If they were any younger, I don’t think anybody would
respect them at all.’

Yulia scowled. ‘My soldiers respected me!’

‘Sorry,’ I responded quickly, holding up a calming
hand. ‘I wasn’t trying to insult you. I meant that you must have been a very
good officer to be given a commission so young.’

The ex-Guard captain eyed me sternly, seeing through
my blatant use of a compliment to diffuse the situation. ‘It is easy for
Europe. It is a vast nation, with many people to choose from. We have less than
eight million citizens, and no army after the Alliance left us. We could not
afford to wait longer.’

‘So, what did you do? After you commissioned?’

Yulia hesitated.

‘You might as well tell me,’ I said. ‘What does it
matter now?’

She pursed her lips for a moment, then surrendered.
'I served in the Liberty Campaign, on the border with Paraiso.’

My mouth opened. ‘Oh.’

The Liberty Campaign was Edo’s name for the
guerrilla war that had raged before my arrival. Small units of Presidential
Guard were being sent across the border to attack Paraiso’s infrastructure and
industry, mostly within lands annexed to the wealthy province after the
Alliance fled the planet. It was a bitter campaign, where everyone and
everything was considered a target, including civilians. The Guard were hated
because of the atrocities they committed during that campaign, but in the end
their vicious attack against Paraiso only served to anger an equally vicious
and bloodthirsty opponent - Europa.