RECCE II (The Union Series Book 5) (9 page)

‘Blackjack-One-Zero, you’re OK to me,’ the sergeant
major replied. He then went on to describe our situation, keeping the
information short and to the point. His eyes fixed onto mine as he explained
the possibility that the platoon commander was being extracted from beneath the
warren, and that we had a guide who was willing to help us give chase. He
stopped short of asking for permission to do so, instead waiting for the OC to
give his own update.

‘Good to hear from you!’ the OC said with feeling.
‘It sounds as though you have been busy - well done. The current situation on
the surface remains dangerous, yet manageable in the short term. The Loyalist
Militia appear to be attempting to consolidate their position within the
village, since their rapid advance has left behind numerous pockets of FEA
defenders. Those separated FEA units are now a major thorn in the Militia’s
side, and as a result the fighting within Cellini remains intense. No further
attacks have been directed onto Hill Kilo, therefore we have remained firm on
the plateau and moved our dropships away into positions of over-watch a few
kilometres away. I have attempted to provide assistance to the fragmented FEA
units on the surface where possible, in the hope that they might manage to
reform into a functional unit, but otherwise I have kept our forces out of
contact so as not to draw unwanted attention to ourselves.

‘I am more than well aware that I don’t have the
same “fingertip feel” that you have belowground,’ he went on. ‘With this in
mind, I will leave your next course of action to your own judgement. The
capture or destruction of the anti-orbital missiles remains a high priority,
and I am tasked by brigade to facilitate your mission, so there is no question
as to whether I will support you where possible, however, you must consider the
risks involved and decide if you are happy to take them.’

Once the OC had finished, the sergeant major
regarded us all gravely. ‘The risks we take going deeper into the warren are
massive. Severe enough for me to do something rare . . . I put it to you . . . what
do you want to do? I already know Corporal Moralee’s thoughts.’

We all stared back in silence, unsure how to
respond.

He held out his hands, beckoning for an answer.
‘Well?’

‘Screw the missiles,’ Corporal Abdi said. ‘Let’s do
it for our lads. I say we go down.’

‘We can’t leave them behind,’ Corporal Kamara said
in agreement. ‘We’ve come this far for them. Let’s finish the job or die
trying.’

I could swear I saw Rigden gulp at the last comment.

The sergeant major turned to Corporal Stanton, who
had remained silent up to this point. ‘Well?’ he repeated.

Stan’s head hung low, as if he were deep in thought.
He had suffered far more than any of us during the past few hours, mentally
rather than physically. He had lost many of his men, so many that his section
were now almost entirely formed of replacement troopers from the rest of the
platoon, and even B Company. One of his men had been captured and executed by Helstrom
over a live network feed, whilst another had disappeared, swallowed by the
endless expanse of the Bosque. Stan was racked with guilt, as any commander
would be, questioning whether their deaths could have been prevented if he made
different decisions on the ground.

He said nothing for a moment, then nodded. ‘I don’t
want to leave anyone else behind. Let’s do it.’

‘Fair enough,’ the sergeant major said. He flicked
back onto the warren network, transmitting our decision to the OC. ‘This is
Blackjack-One-Zero. We’re going to proceed on task.’

‘Hammersmith-Zero-Alpha, roger . . . Confirm you’re
giving chase?’

‘That’s correct.’

The sergeant major made a large circular motion with
his finger, silently ordering us to prepare to move. As one, we flicked to our
section nets and called for our men to close in. Whilst the platoon rapidly
closed into the centre of the command chamber, we all listened in to the OC as
he gave his final thoughts. ‘Well done, Blackjack-One-Zero, you’re doing us all
proud. Make haste, but tread carefully. We will remain here in support. Call on
us if and when you need us, but I will leave you with one instruction - if you
meet heavy resistance then you are to extract back to the surface.
Do not
fight to get deeper underground. We’re in danger of allowing ourselves to get
bogged into this mess, and once we are it will be near impossible to free
ourselves. Brigade will not provide another company to come to our aid. This is
it. Maintain constant communication from this moment onwards.’

‘Roger,’ the sergeant major acknowledged. He then
bellowed out across the chamber, causing even the FEA to stop what they were
doing. ‘Let’s move, men! I want to be moving off from here in the next minute!
Corporal Moralee, you will lead along with our new guide!’

‘Order of march - One Section, then Two and Three!’
Corporal Abdi added as the platoon formed into single file.

I moved up to the front of my section, where Myers
waited along with Yulia.

‘Yulia will stay alongside me,’ I told Myers. ‘You
will remain as point man.’

The young trooper nodded. There was nothing cowardly
in keeping him ahead of me and Yulia, our minds were kept busy navigating the
tunnels, which meant that we weren’t necessarily paying enough attention to our
own security.

I took a knee behind Myers, and Yulia followed suit,
crouching beside me. The remainder of the platoon closed up behind us, keeping
tightly together as Abs counted us all to make sure nobody else was left
behind.

Yulia regarded me with a cocked eyebrow. ‘We are
going after Bhasin?’

‘Yeah.’ I looked over my shoulder, checking that the
remainder of my section were behind me. ‘Puppy, good to go?’

‘Good to go, mate.’

‘Bhasin has left here several hours ago,’ Yulia
warned. ‘He may be a long way from here . . .’

I turned back to her. ‘We’ll just have to move fast
then, won’t we?’

‘Yes. We will.’

Evidently growing impatient, the sergeant major
lifted his head to check that the entire platoon was assembled. ‘All in,
Corporal Abdi?’

Abs finished counting the last few troopers of three
section. ‘All in, sir!’

‘Let’s go, then, Corporal Moralee!’

‘Roger.’ I turned to Yulia. ‘Ready when you are.’

‘OK. Head back out of the command chamber,’ Yulia said
to Myers.

Myers picked himself up and headed off instantly,
heading back the way we had come.

‘Corporal Moralee!’ the sergeant major’s voice called
out from behind, stopping my section in its tracks.

I looked back over my shoulder. ‘Yes, sir?’

He pointed a finger at me. ‘I hope you’re right
about this . . . for all our sakes’.’

I returned a grim nod. ‘Me too, sir.’

5

The Sewers

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Yulia directed us deep into the bowels of the
warren, using a mixture of memory and my datapad map to weave our platoon through
the maze of tunnels and chambers. No more gunshots or screams echoed through the
darkened labyrinth anymore, and the warren fell utterly silent, like a tomb.

Myers and I used our rifle torches to help Yulia
navigate through the pitch-black tunnels, judging that our enemy was far too
far ahead of us to pose a threat.

‘Shame the FEA can’t get the lights working,’ Myers
said, flicking his torch beam to illuminate a strip light above his head.

‘I’d imagine they have more important things on
their minds than making this place more welcoming,’ I replied in a whisper.
There was no longer any need to be so quiet, not yet anyway, but there was no
point in breaking good habits.

Yulia’s knowledge of the underground fortress was
clearly intimate. Every time she looked down at my map she pointed out
something new, like a tunnel that was no longer passable or a new section that
had recently been added. I double-checked my datapad constantly as we went, trying
to keep a sense of where we were, but it was hard not to become disorientated. So
many of the tunnels she took us down weren’t on the map, confusing even the
computer within my datapad that was tracking our movements.

It was fascinating moving through such an old warren
that had changed hands so many times. Some of the tunnels had been hastily cut
out of the rock, with ribbed, perfectly cylindrical walls typically left behind
by a laser drill, whilst others took the form of neat square corridors that
could easily be found inside a regular building. Occasionally we passed through
accommodation similar to that which I was used to inside the more established
Union warrens, with solid bulkhead doors, panelled walls and abandoned pieces
of furniture. Other times we entered large cavernous chambers stacked with
supplies, ammunition and equipment - the gold which had drawn Edo into taking
the warren in the first place. I wondered which of these chambers had held the
anti-orbital missiles that Bhasin and Helstrom so desperately wanted, missiles
that had somehow turned enemies into friends, and friends into enemies.

Some of the lower tunnels still told of the fighting
that had raged over the past few years, with scattered bodies and scorched
walls that had been peppered with shrapnel. At one point we made our way down a
steep tunnel with crude steps cut out of the rock, only those steps had been
virtually covered in corpses and discarded equipment. The bodies were old, I
could tell by the thick layer of dust that had settled on them. Perhaps they
were the original combatants that had fought when the Loyalists had invaded
months ago, or perhaps they were even older. Things didn’t decompose very quickly
on Eden, and not at all when underground.

It was strange to think that the warren had changed
hands so many times. I wondered what secrets it held, how many men and women
had died within its darkened tunnels, then I wondered how many more were yet to
join them. I shook off the last thought.

We had descended several hundred metres when Yulia eventually
called for us to halt along a wide supply tunnel, and crouched beside an open
bulkhead door framed by hazard markings. Large signs flanked the doorway, and
though I couldn’t read the writing, I could see that the large red letters were
obviously meant to warn people not to enter without good cause.

‘We are in the life support level,’ Yulia told me as
the remainder of the platoon closed up behind us.

I nodded knowingly. The lowest section of any warren
was home to life support, power supply and other critical functions, kept as
deep as physically possible to counter the risk from orbital bombardment.

‘What’s through there, then?’ I asked, gesturing toward
the bulkhead.

‘This is one of the entrances into the sewer that I
told you about,’ she replied.

I raised an eyebrow. ‘So this is how you came up
into the warren?’

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Two hundred of us. The
Loyalists had never expected us to enter from the sewers, so we had taken the
entire lower level before they knew what was happening. Our attack was timed
with the attack on the surface. They had little hope.’

My brow furrowed. ‘How did you time it together with
us on the surface? So you knew when our H-Hour was?’

She looked back at me blankly.

‘I just don’t understand . . .’ I said, shaking my
head. ‘Are you working with the FEA and the Guard, or are you some kind of
splinter group?’

‘I work for the FEA now,’ Yulia replied, ‘but most
of the FEA do not know that I do. The Guard watch them too closely.’

My mouth opened to speak, then Weatherall tapped my
shoulder, cutting me short. He leaned close to pass the message. ‘Last man in.’

I looked back at Yulia, the next question still
hanging on the tip of my tongue, and sighed. It could wait.

Clearing the question from my mind, I leant through
the bulkhead, using my rifle torch to see into the darkness beyond. A long,
narrow metal staircase descended for twenty metres, before opening up into a room.
With a flick of my hand, I beckoned Myers to join me, and the two of us slowly
crept down the staircase, half expecting to bump into a Guardsman left behind
by Bhasin.

Would he leave people behind to cover
his withdrawal?
I wondered. I imagined that he probably saw a
speedy escape as his best defence, but then if he had an entire platoon with
him, then it wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice to leave behind a rear guard of
some form. Even a couple of Guardsmen left behind could force us to move with
caution, slowing us down so much there would be absolutely no hope of us ever
catching him.

At the foot of the staircase we found ourselves in a
long, rectangular room with a high ceiling. Huge pieces of machinery loomed
over us, connected by large pipes that crossed the ceiling, running out from the
walls. My headset magnified the sound of running water, and I realised that it
was flowing through the pipes above my head.

‘These pipes collect water from all over the warren,’
Yulia explained as she followed us into the room. She traced one of the pipes
with an outstretched arm. ‘It runs down here, and then into tunnels beneath our
feet.’

‘So how do we get into those tunnels?’

She walked around the back of one of the larger
pieces of machinery in the centre of the room, then pointed at the floor. ‘In
here.’

Myers and I followed her, to find a large, open
drain . . . large enough to fit several men through at once.

Myers leant out over the drain and shone his torch
into the gloom. ‘There’s a shit-load of water down there, Andy . . .’ he
warned.

‘I said that there would be water,’ Yulia reminded
him sternly.

I joined Myers, and peered down at the
murky water
below. It
appeared to flow gently along a wide tunnel no more than a metre beneath us.

‘How fast does it flow?’ I asked. On the surface it
might look calm, but I knew that even the stillest body of water could hide a
powerful current beneath it.

‘Not very fast,’ Yulia answered. She nodded at the
hardware around us. ‘It is normally pumped out by these machines during bad
weather, but the machines are not working. Gravity is doing all of the work
now.’

‘Is it deep?’

‘Waist-deep.’

Myers snorted. ‘Brilliant.’

‘What’s going on, Moralee?’ the sergeant major
demanded as he arrived at the edge of the drain. He followed our gaze and swore
at the sight of the flowing water. ‘I presume we’re going down there?’

‘Looks that way, sir.’

Without waiting for the sergeant major’s reply, Yulia
sat on the edge of the drain and lowered herself into the sewer below. She gave
a small gasp, presumably as the cold water soaked into her clothes. Sure enough,
the water went up to her waist.

She turned her head up to us. ‘We must keep moving
if we wish to catch up with Bhasin.’

The sergeant major merely grunted in response, then sent
a comms check up to B Company instead. They promptly confirmed that they could
hear us loud and clear. The optical cables running through the tunnels had
delivered the message as if we were transmitting in the open.

I knew what he was thinking when he sent the message.
Fortunately, for us, the warren network extended all the way into its lowest
levels, but it was unlikely to extend into the sewer system.

‘We could leave link men as we go, sir,’ I urged.
‘That way we’ll keep comms going.’

Although our individual comms couldn’t transmit
through rock, our range was clearly far greater than the length of any tunnel,
so the distance we could cover whilst maintaining comms to the surface depended
entirely on how many corners and junctions the sewer system presented us with. It
was worth a try.

The sergeant major looked over his shoulder. ‘Three
Section, let’s get some ropes set up, just in case we need to get out.’ He
turned back to me. ‘Go on, then, Corporal Moralee.’

I perched on the edge of the drain, then braced my
arms either side of me as I slowly eased myself down into the icy water. The
cold instantly took my breath away, and I struggled to retain my composure.

Yulia grabbed me by the waist, helping to lower me
without making a splash. I was carrying a lot more equipment than she was,
after all.

‘Shit . . .’ I breathed once my feet found solid
ground. ‘That’s cold.’

For a moment I thought I saw a smile flash across
Yulia’s face - though it might have just been a reflection in her respirator.
‘It is very cold,’ she agreed. ‘This is why nobody would want to come down
here.’

Realisation suddenly spread across my face, the cold
forgotten. ‘This is where you hid the missiles, isn’t it?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. After the Alliance retreated and
our old politicians surrendered, we moved the missiles into the sewerage system
because we knew the Union weapons inspectors wouldn’t find them here. I was
still a child when this happened.’

‘Edo stopped letting the inspectors in, though,
didn’t they?’ I asked, already knowing the answer. Edo had stopped allowing us
to inspect their warrens for weapons not long after the president took control
and the Presidential Guard were formed.

‘That is correct,’ Yulia agreed, ‘but your spies and
special forces could still find them . . .’

 ‘A little help here?’ Myers interrupted from above.

I looked up to see him dangling awkwardly from the
drain. It looked as though his daysack had become caught on something.

I reached up and grabbed him around the waist,
gently helping him down into the water just as Yulia had for me.

‘Shit the bed!’ the young trooper exclaimed as the
icy water lapped around him. ‘Why has it got to be so cold?’

I ignored his complaint, and instead gestured
upward. ‘Help the next man down, mate. I’ll push up the tunnel a bit.’ I looked
to Yulia. ‘Which way?’

She pointed in the same direction as the flow of
water. ‘This way.’

She led off, and I waded through the water after
her, carefully testing the ground beneath each foot to make sure that I had a
firm footing. Thoughts of me or one of my men falling into an open drain and
disappearing into the murky water filled me with dread, and I made sure that
all of my weight was removed from my lead foot until I was certain that the
ground was solid. The water lapped around my waist, soaking through my armour
and my combats and sending a chill through my body. I shivered involuntarily.

Once we had left enough space for the platoon to
form up behind us, I whispered for Yulia to stop. It was annoying having to
stop again, but I couldn’t really move off until a sizeable portion of our
manpower were in the water, otherwise I would risk leaving people behind. Yulia
seemed to accept this without question - which was to be expected given her
past military experience.