by Michael Rose
Ahead lay another station. A shadow moved against the light at the end of the tunnel, and Sullivan gestured for his men to stay back against the wall. Using the skills he had developed in Edaline’s special forces, Sullivan moved noiselessly to the end of the tunnel and peered in. A squad of Edalinian soldiers sat scattered throughout the station, obviously tired and at rest.
Three of the men were casually standing guard, their rifles at the ready. The others had their weapons on the ground or slung over their shoulders. Sullivan couldn’t risk bringing any of his men forward; they wouldn’t be able to move as quietly as he had. He checked his weapon. It would fire true as long as he took the time to set up each shot with the laser sight.
Sullivan brought his gun up to his shoulder, took aim at the nearest guard and began his deadly work. It was all over within half a minute. Some of them had managed to return fire, but their aim had been off, their hands shaky and their shots panicked. After his grim work was over, Sullivan cleared the rest of the station and bent down to study the bodies. They were kids; not a one of them was older than twenty. Young and inexperienced. Sullivan called the rest of his men forward and began taking grenades and ammunition off the bodies.
The men approached and were in awe at what they found.
“You killed them all just now?” asked one of them.
Sullivan nodded. “I had the best training Edaline’s military has to offer. I know how they operate. But this was too easy. I don’t understand why these men were so poorly trained.” He searched one of the bodies for a military ID. “Jesus,” he said, reading it. “This kid’s been in just a little over three months. They’re sending these boys to be slaughtered.”
“Could it be going that badly for them?” asked another man. “Where are their more-experienced soldiers?”
“I don’t know. We don’t yet know how long the uprising has been going on. Not too long, I’d say, from what we’ve seen so far. I would have expected to see a lot more bodies if this had been going on any length of time. No, something’s not right here. But whatever it is, it seems to be to our advantage.”
COLONEL JAMES MILLER looked up as his communications officer entered the tent. “Another call from General Geary, sir.”
“Same response.”
“You want me to lie again?”
“Yes, soldier.”
The young man cleared his throat. “With all due respect, Colonel, I do not wish to disobey orders, but the men are beginning to wonder what the hell is going on.”
Miller nodded. “You’re right. It’s time.”
He stepped out of the tent and looked around at the encampment. When the fighting broke out, his regiment had been conducting drills in the jungle. As the most elite fighting force in Edaline’s army, they had immediately been recalled to Agrona. But Miller had ignored that order. He knew that his thousand men could sway the course of the battle, could bring an end to the uprising. So he’d simply messaged back that they were busy tracking rebels that had made their way into the jungle. He’d kept his men performing drills so as to create the appearance that his regiment was engaged if any satellites happened to be turned his way. Even so, he knew he couldn’t keep the illusion up for much longer. Geary was growing impatient, and Miller would have to act.
“Gather the company commanders to me,” he said to the communications officer.
“Yes, sir.”
Fifteen minutes later, he was surrounded by his officers, studying each face in turn. “Many of you have been serving with me for a long time. You know me. You trust me. I count several of you amongst my closest friends.”
Nods and words of acknowledgement filled the tent.
“And you know that I have faithfully served my government and my commander. But General Geary has taken actions that are, according to our constitution, illegal. He seized power and declared martial law when the planet was in a state of peace. It was these actions that threw the planet into chaos, not the protests.
“We are one of two regiments assigned to the Agrona precinct. One of those regiments is currently engaged in fighting the rebels in the city. I know many of you are wondering why we’re out here in the jungle.”
Several heads nodded.
“Well, the reason we’re out here is because I have disobeyed a direct order from General Geary. I have lied to him and kept us out of the battle because I do not approve of the actions he’s taken against the people he swore to defend. If you disagree with me, I will not force you to follow my command. If you like, you can return to Fort Hendricks. Feel free to file a report, to tell the general about my treasonous actions. But if, like me, you hold your oath to defend and protect the people of Edaline more dearly than you do your duty to follow the orders of a madman, then stay. Help me find a way to assist the rebellion. Help me find a way to bring an end to the bloodshed as quickly as possible and give the people what they deserve: a government they can trust and a military they do not have to fear.”
The gathered officers stood in silence for a moment. A handful of them stepped out but the majority remained. Miller nodded at the men around him. “Thank you. Now, what can we do to bring this to an end?”
12
GEARY SEETHED. MILLER was still out in the jungle playing games with his regiment, and the situation in Agrona was growing worse. Geary had ordered the fresh recruits taken out of basic training and sent them into the fray, but they had done little to turn the tide. He gazed at his interactive map of the city. Seventy percent of it was red, twenty percent was yellow and only ten percent remained green: the administrative district of the city, directly adjacent to Fort Hendricks.
Geary’s communicator clicked. “Receiving an urgent message from Lieutenant Colonel Anderson, sir.”
“Put it through. This is General Geary.”
“Sir, I have a report about Colonel Miller, sir. He’s intentionally ignoring your orders and intends to either sit the battle out or throw in with the rebels, sir.”
Geary bit down hard on his lip to keep from yelling. “Thank you, Anderson. Get back to Fort Hendricks as quickly as you can. I’ll deal with Miller soon enough.”
He pressed another button on his communicator. “I need a squadron up in the air. Sending coordinates now.”
MILLER’S ARMORED VEHICLE sped through the brush, following one of the old trails that meandered through the jungle. Behind him, following in troop transports, was his regiment. Of the one thousand men, around two hundred had opted to stay behind. This was significantly fewer than Miller had expected. But many of the men under his command had been children at the time of the first uprising. They had seen the devastation, the atrocities that had occurred. Few people on Edaline, even those in the military, wanted to see that happen again.
It would take an hour to reach the edge of the city. Those of his men who’d had civilian clothes had changed into them. The rest had done their best to make themselves appear like non-standard military by tying bandannas around their heads and stripping down to their undershirts. If they were going to go rolling into Agrona to aid the rebellion, they didn’t want to come under fire from the people they hoped to assist.
A squadron of fighters flew by overhead. Miller urged the driver to move faster and turned to the man at the gun on the back of the vehicle. “Watch those planes,” he said.
A moment later, a fireball rose from the jungle behind them. Miller’s eyes widened. They’d left the camp quickly, and all the tents were still in place. The pilots must have been ordered to fire upon the camp, but the only men left back there were those who were loyal to Geary.
Miller closed his eyes for a moment. They’d realize their mistake soon enough and pick up the convoy. He got on his radio and warned the men in the other vehicles. “Most likely going to have bogies after us. Ready your missile launchers.”
As he predicted, the squadron returned. A missile tore up the trail a hundred meters in front of the convoy, forcing it to halt. As each vehicle rolled to a stop, men hopped o
ut from the transports and prepared their missile launchers. Three missiles were fired off as the planes flew overhead, bringing two of them down.
The other three fighters swept around in a wide arc and fired their missiles blindly into the think canopy of the jungle. A tree crashed down next to Miller’s vehicle as one of the missiles struck the ground. Another found one of the transports and sent an explosion of fire and metal flying in Miller’s direction.
The large-caliber gun on the back of his vehicle began firing as the jets made another sweep. It clipped one of them, and Miller watched as it spun out of control. It impacted the ground some distance away and exploded, out of sight, but near enough to shake the ground. One other transport was destroyed before the final two fighters were brought down by the missiles.
They had been fortunate that they were in such dense jungle. Even aided by sophisticated targeting systems, the jets had been unable to get a lock on them through the canopy of trees, forcing them to come in low to visually sight their targets.
“Let’s keep moving,” said Miller to the driver. The vehicles behind him carefully maneuvered around the wrecked transports as the convoy rolled back into motion.
THE FIGHTING HAD grown intense. Sullivan’s group had gone up to street level, and they were fighting their way toward Fort Hendricks, block by block. They had gathered a few rebels and were systematically clearing the streets of enemy patrols, occasionally aided by civilian snipers firing from windows.
Sullivan came to a corner and peeked around it. He raised a pair of binoculars and could see that the road had been fortified nine or ten blocks down. Two tanks blocked the road, with barricades set up beside them. It had been the same on every street they had come to. The military was forming a defensive line just in front of the greenbelt that separated the city’s administrative district from the commercial and residential areas. There was no way Sullivan’s small band of rebels was getting through to Fort Hendricks, not with the weaponry currently at their disposal.
Sullivan gestured for the men to fall back. He spotted a stairway leading to the subway and led his men down. The station was empty.
He turned to the men. “The subway tunnel will lead right into the administrative district near Fort Hendricks, but I doubt it’ll be unguarded. We need a distraction to either move those tanks off the street or move the soldiers guarding the tunnels.”
“It’s easier to move men than machines,” said one of the men.
“Right.” He looked at the faces around him. The missile launchers had all been used to take out the tanks and other armored vehicles they had encountered. “Any grenades left?” he asked.
A few men held up their hands.
“How many? Four?” Sullivan rubbed his chin. “All right, here’s the plan. I want those grenades guarded. Do not use them unless absolutely necessary. I’m going to reconnoiter down the tunnel and see exactly where the soldiers are set up. If I can, I’ll try to find a spot that we can breach.” He pointed to a group of men. “I want the six of you to head east into the tunnels; try to find any rebel forces that might be holed up down here. We’ll need all the men we can get to breach the enemy’s line.”
After seeing them off, Sullivan stalked into the subway tunnel heading west. He pulled his night vision goggles over his eyes and operated a toggle on the side to increase the magnification to maximum. He knew this type of gear wasn’t standard-issue for Edaline’s soldiers, but there was a chance they’d been specially equipped for guarding the tunnels. If so, he wanted to see them before they saw him.
Sullivan made his way toward the administrative district of Agrona and the base. He got to a point where the subway tunnel angled to the left at forty-five degrees and hugged the wall as he peeked around. Ahead of him, he could see a station. A barricade had been erected, and several men sat behind it, looking wearily into the darkness.
Sullivan slowly moved his head back after determining that none of them had spotted him. He closed his eyes and reconstructed the scene in his mind: half a dozen men behind the barricade, at least two of them with missile launchers. A big anti-infantry gun behind a secondary barricade. That would be their fallback point.
Sullivan risked another quick glimpse. There were no doubt more men in the station, out of sight, but he couldn’t see them. The distance was too great to throw the grenades. No, he needed a missile launcher to take out the big gun and disrupt the men at the barricade so his forces could dash up the tunnel and overtake the enemy’s position.
Sullivan turned and made his way back toward his men. He was confident they could take that station if they had a missile. Beyond that position might lay an impenetrable line of defense, but they had to at least try. He’d wait, though. The longer the fighting went on in the city, the more likely it was that the men guarding the administrative district would be sent out into the fray.
Sullivan returned to the station his men were guarding and called out from the darkness. “Rick Sullivan returning. Stand down.”
He stepped into the light of the station, and his eyes widened. Where he’d had forty men before, now there were over sixty. A man stepped up to him and held out his hand. “Joshua Hunter, at your service.”
“A pleasure to meet you. These your men?”
“Yes. This is Kip O’Donnell, my second in command.”
Sullivan shook O’Donnell’s hand. “How long have you and your men been fighting, Hunter?”
“Nearly twenty hours now. It’s been a hard slog, but we’re keeping them busy.”
“And they haven’t leveled the city yet,” added O’Donnell.
Sullivan nodded. “I was wondering about that myself. I don’t know if Edaline could ever recover if its capital was leveled a second time. And I don’t think the military would ever be able to restore order, either. It’s a miracle they were able to after the last uprising.”
Hunter pursed his lips. “Sullivan, we’ve managed to put up a good fight, but I don’t know how much longer we can survive this. Geary seized power and forced our hand. We weren’t ready for it yet.”
“I understand. But we’ll do what we can. And there is something we can do. Do you have any missiles?”
Hunter shook his head. ”We’ve used them up trying to take out the tanks.”
Sullivan nodded. “There’s a barricade up this subway line at the edge of the admin district. If we had a missile, I think we could breach it and get behind the enemy’s lines, maybe cause enough of a distraction for other forces to create breaches of their own.”
“I’ll send some of my men out to try and find one.”
“Good. It’s almost sundown now. I propose we rest for a few hours and get up our strength while your men look for a missile launcher.”
“We can use some rest.”
“So can we. Let’s secure this position and assign guard watches.”
13
DESPITE HAVING A politically powerful military, Edaline’s forces were not numerous. All young men were required to enlist at the age of eighteen for two years, but this was chiefly a way of indoctrinating them into the system rather than for military purposes. Many of them were able to receive a discharge after one year if they were accepted into the university.
Edaline had not fought a war with another planet for two hundred years. The first uprising had been the only military action that anyone alive on the planet had seen. What was required under those circumstances was not a large military but rather one that exerted its power forcefully. Without an organized military force to contend with, there wasn’t much they couldn’t handle.
Each of Edaline’s larger cities had an infantry regiment assigned to it, along with minimal air and armor support. Edaline’s capital, Agrona, was the only city with more than one regiment. But now one of those regiments, the one commanded by Colonel James Miller, was entering the city and was determined to even the odds.
Miller had lost another two transports to air attacks, but as soon as they were in among the buildings, th
ey had left their vehicles and spread out into the streets. Miller’s regiment had been in the jungle south of the city, and he planned to secure the southeastern corner of Agrona before moving into the city center.
The first order of business was for his men to change out of their uniforms. Those that hadn’t had civilian clothes in their gear smashed the windows of clothing shops and quickly made their affiliation clear: they were on the side of the people.
Miller personally led a company of a hundred men into one of the streets. It was unnervingly quiet. They came across an occasional body, but it didn’t seem as though the fighting had been very intense in this area. Block by block, Miller’s forces secured the neighborhood, moving swiftly until they met resistance farther north. Even then, the fighting was sporadic and unimpressive. Many of the men they encountered were young and inexperienced. Miller knew Geary well enough to know that he didn’t mind sacrificing a few pawns, but his knights and rooks and bishops, the best men he had at his disposal, would be protecting their king. They’d be guarding the administrative district and Fort Hendricks beyond.
Miller looked down at his tactical tablet. Each of his squads had locator beacons with them, and he could clearly see the ragged line of his regiment as they made their way north into the city. He radioed to his company commanders. “A, B and C Companies, hold your position. All other companies swing west and hold at 89th Avenue.”
Miller began moving his own group west, watching as the line of his regiment turned to follow his orders. Based on the sounds and the smoke, he knew that there was intense fighting west of the city center, just on the outskirts of the administrative district. His plan was to clear the southern half of the city then swing north to join in the fighting there.
Miller brought his company to a halt. They’d arrived at 89th Avenue. He checked his tablet and saw that the other companies were in position as well. “Move forward slowly,” he radioed to his commanders. The regiment began crawling its way across his map of the city. One block up, gunfire erupted to the north of his position. “F Company, report.”
