RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) (40 page)

Van-Zyl pointed. ‘Back to the south-east sangar.
We’re setting up an emergency landing site there to take all your casualties
away.’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘You have dropships?’

‘Something like that . . .’ he said, and smiled
mischievously.

‘You should have listened to me!’ Myers said,
raising his voice as his doped-up mind realised he was being ignored.

‘About what, mate?’ I asked, trying to contain my
impatience. Even when severely injured and pumped full of painkillers, Myers
could still waste my time with his endless complaining.

‘The pipeline . . . I told you . . . they could use
it!’

Myers was talking about the prelude to our attack on
Cellini several days ago, I realised. ‘Alright, mate, you were right. I was
wrong.’

Van-Zyl suddenly cut the conversation short,
gesturing for us to leave. ‘Come on, jump off! I need to go!’

We stepped off the ramp, and it began to rise
instantly, obscuring the occupants from view. The vehicle then rolled away,
heading back toward the sangar where Two Section waited with the other
casualties.

‘And then there were three . . .’ Wildgoose said
gloomily.

For a moment, we all stood and watched the robotic
truck as it took our comrades back to the sangar, suddenly feeling utterly detached
from the battle being fought in the building behind us.

‘Now what?’ Griffiths asked.

I sighed, sweeping my gaze across the ruined
barracks as if searching for an answer. ‘I don’t know. I guess we carry on
searching the dead.’

We fell silent for what felt like ages, trying to
come to terms with the chaotic battle we had somehow survived.

A voice spoke in French over the net, and was promptly
translated by my headset. ‘Poltergeist-One, this is Poltergeist-Three, the clearance
of the second building is now one hundred percent complete. We have a small
number of prisoners, and a large number of dead to search.’

‘Poltergeist-One, good. The Boskers have sent a
small force to capture the north-west sangar. I’m happy to let them proceed,
since there doesn’t appear to be any Militia occupying the compound.’

Aleksi was talking about Yulia and her team of
Boskers, I assumed. They were the final piece of our offensive, and once they
had captured the sangar then the entire barracks would be under Bosker control.

‘We will assume that Trondheim is now secure,’
Aleksi continued, ‘so I will speak with the Bosker commander about what they
should do next. In the meantime, make sure you influence the troops to conduct
a thorough search of the barracks for any pockets of resistance or hiding
Militiamen. Helstrom ought to be here somewhere, so let’s try to find him as
well. Blackjack- One-Zero, I think it is safe for you to extract back to the
south-eastern sangar when ready. I will let you know when you are released from
our control.’

‘Blackjack-One-Zero, roger. One-One, extract back to
me. We will then withdraw to the sangar together.’

‘One-One,’ I acknowledged.

I was about to tell my men to withdraw, when something
caught my eye, something between the north-east sangar compound and the barrack
buildings. I squinted, then zoomed in my visor display, barely able to believe
what I was seeing. There, piled up in the middle of a grassy field, was a large
pile of scrap . . . but it was what was amongst the scrap which surprised me.

‘Can you see what I see?’ I asked.

Wildgoose and Griffiths both stared in the same
direction as me, adjusting their visor magnification to study the pile of scrap
metal.

‘STORM missiles!’ Wildgoose said as he recognised
the shapes. ‘Maybe twenty of them . . .’

‘They’re just thrown on the floor like rubbish,’ I
said.

‘They must have given up on them when they realised
there was no point in using them,’ Griffiths concluded.

‘Yeah . . .’ I said thoughtfully.

The Welsh trooper looked at me. ‘What? It doesn’t
matter now, does it? Helstrom obviously doesn’t think they’re worth anything,
so why should we care? Enough people have died for those fucking things.’

‘All that effort the Militia went through,’ I said,
shaking my head at the discarded anti-orbital weapons, ‘all the fighting in
Cellini, just to throw a bunch of missiles in a pile of scrap? They could at
least do
something
with them.’

‘Like what?’

I held up my arms. ‘I don’t know,
anything!
Use
them as decoys, fire them . . . anything other than just toss them in a pile.’

‘Here’s one for you,’ Wildgoose added. ‘Do these
people even
have
a launcher to fire them with? Those are
Alliance
missiles,
whereas most Loyalist kit is either Union or Russian-made. I know Russian and
Alliance launchers are similar, but are they compatible?’

I thought about it for a while, my battle-shocked
mind trying to make sense of it all.

My thoughts were brought to an abrupt end when I
heard the familiar bang of a launching smart missile, and I spun around to see
something explode to the north of Trondheim. Seconds later, another missile
leapt from the north-west sangar, once more striking a target beyond the perimeter
of the barracks.

My heart skipped a beat as I realised where the
missiles were being fired, straight into the commercial shuttle port on the
other side of the perimeter fence.

‘The Boskers are turning on the Russians!’ Wildgoose
said in alarm.

‘Oh
, shit!
’ I exclaimed as the full gravity
of the situation dawned on me. ‘It’s Yulia!’

Yulia had told me that she was using her arsenal of
missiles to take the north-western sangar, but she never mentioned using
whatever she had left to attack the shuttle port itself.
What was she
thinking?

I didn’t wait to send a message over the net,
instead I broke into a sprint, headed straight toward the north-west sangar. ‘Come
on! We’ve got to stop them before it’s too late!’

‘Yulia!’ I shouted up at the sangar, just as I
stormed through the open entrance to the compound. ‘Stop!’

Leaping over two dead Militiamen at the sangar
airlock, I bounded up the steps, barging my way past a surprised Bosker. I
exploded into the room at the top of the sangar, causing several more Boskers
to spin around and stare at me . . . all except Yulia. She was holding a smart
launcher aimed toward the shuttle port, and as I ran toward her she fired.

The back blast sent me reeling, my hands coming up
to protect my face and visor in a delayed, instinctive reaction.

Yulia regarded me indifferently as I stumbled the
final few metres to the fire port, only to watch in dismay as the missile
detonated against its target, a Russian sub-orbital freighter.

The cumbersome freighter had almost cleared the top
of the shuttle port perimeter fence when Yulia’s missile struck it somewhere on
its underbelly. It belched smoke, starting to list like a ship sinking at sea.
A high-pitched screaming sound emitted from its engines, and then moments later
it fell from the sky, dropping like a stone. The massive craft almost broke in
two as it landed with an almighty thump, rocking the entire sangar building
like an earthquake.

I rounded on Yulia, arms held out in exasperation.
‘What the
hell
are you doing?’

‘Saving my people!’ she replied, allowing one of her
comrades to take her place with another launcher. There were several other freighters,
I realised, surrounded by figures who scurried around them like ants, desperately
trying to get the enormous aircraft off the ground before they met the same
fate. The protection they had expected was gone, and they knew that being
caught by a Bosker was as good as a death sentence.

I slapped the Bosker’s launcher downward, preventing
him from firing. ‘Those are Russian ships!’ I shouted at Yulia. ‘If you start
attacking them they could pull out of this whole thing! You might not like
them, but they’re the only thing holding all of this together!’

Yulia’s face contorted with anger, and she pressed
her visor up against mine. ‘The Russians are planning to take the Bosker slaves
in their ships, to hide what they have done here! If we don’t destroy their
ships now, we will never see our brothers and sisters again!’

‘You’ve taken the compound!’ I argued. ‘How are they
gonna take the slaves away now?’

‘We can’t trust anyone, Andy,’ she hissed through
bared teeth. ‘Not even the people who helped to capture this base! We must
destroy all the Russian ships in Europa if we are to protect our people!’

Suddenly Aleksi burst into the sangar, panting from
his sprint across the barracks. He glanced between us, then looked out into the
smoking shuttle port. ‘Shit,’ he simply said.

‘This is bad, isn’t it?’ I said, still holding on to
the Bosker’s launcher. The Bosker made no effort to fight me, seemingly waiting
for Yulia’s command.

‘Very bad,’ Aleksi agreed gravely.

My eyes flicked to Yulia as I asked the next question.
‘What will happen now?’

Ignoring the awkward standoff between me and the
Boskers, the Scandinavian walked across the sangar, then leant out of the fire
port to watch the Russian evacuation resignedly. ‘The main problem is that the
ships aren’t Russian military, they’re owned by private corporations, so we
have virtually no control over them whatsoever. Now that some of their ships
have been attacked, there will be panic all across the province. We can expect
every commercial spacecraft and aircraft to be in the air within the next
twenty minutes.’

‘So that’s it?’ I asked. ‘The Russians will pull out
and the whole thing is over - just like that?’

He shook his head. ‘No. It’ll create a political
shitstorm, but it’s not the end of the world. There was bound to be some form
of collateral damage at some point. Our job was just to minimise it. We have a
plan in place for an event like this . . .’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Which is?’

Aleksi eyed me cautiously as he decided whether it
was worth sharing the information. Eventually he relented, deciding that it
didn’t matter anymore. ‘We’ve prepared a safe corridor for the Russian
freighters to make their getaway. We can’t allow them to escape over Paraiso
because that’ll reveal the full extent of Russia’s involvement here to the
masses. At the same time, though, we can’t risk them travelling deeper into
Europa with all the ordinance being exchanged across their airspace. So they
will travel south-west.’

‘Over Edo?’

Aleksi shrugged. ‘The northern tip of Edo, yes, before
they continue on across the sea. There aren’t any air defences there, and the
aircraft will virtually be outside the atmosphere by the time they reach that
point anyway.’

Just then a man emerged from within the stricken
freighter’s fractured hull, shrieking in agony as flames burned on his back. He
ran for at least a hundred metres before two other figures stopped him,
knocking him to the ground before beating out the flames. His tormented
screaming echoed across the shuttle port, cutting through my soul like a knife.
Yet another victim of a war that made little sense, controlled by people none
of us would ever meet.

The sight of human suffering triggered the recurring
nightmare that had spoilt my sleep in Copehill, bringing the vision right to
the forefront of my mind. For a second I was back inside the pipeline again,
packed in with countless naked corpses, being dragged by the current into the
darkness. This time, though, it didn’t cause me to call out in fright or
despair. Instead it caused my jaw to fall open, as something dawned upon me,
something so glaringly obvious that I could scarcely believe it.

Aleksi frowned. ‘What is it, Andy?’

I recalled the flowing water within the pipeline,
just before Myers and I had emerged to take on the Militia outside. It wasn’t
just flowing out of the pipe, it was continuing to flow along it . . . out to
sea.

The young trooper’s last words echoed through my
mind.
The pipeline . . . I told you . . . they could use it…

‘Yulia.’ I turned to her. ‘The pumping station you
used to enter the pipeline, does it work?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The people make sure that it can
be used again, in case it is needed by the air factory. Everything connected to
the great terraforming project is preserved.’

‘Does it work both ways?’

She shook her head. ‘I do not understand.’

‘Does it pump water out from under Cellini as well
as pump it in?’

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘What if the people you left in the pumping station
reversed the pumps? They could turn the pipeline into a white water ride all
the way out to the coast.’

Yulia bristled. ‘My comrades would never work for
Bhasin!’

‘
You’ve
been working for Bhasin!’ I shouted.
‘You’ve been tricked! Whoever told you to come to Cellini, and whoever told you
to attack those ships . . . it’s all just a big plan to get the Russians to
pull out!’