by Autumn Birt
She put it in her pocket next to the picture of Michael. Then she closed the door on the remnants of her life, wondering if she would return to them.
Dawn was on the horizon as she rushed from the manor. Along the road outside the compound gates, military trucks hummed, waiting to head toward the airstrip. Jared would be there directing operations. To her surprise, Kehm waited at the lead truck.
“I was beginning to wonder if you’d make it,” he told her as he held open the passenger door.
“There were a few things I needed to do.”
“I see that,” he said nodding toward her shortened locks. Arinna ran a hand through the short spikes, surprised again to feel the soft nap. “I’ll keep things quiet here as long as I can. MOTHER will get wind of this at some point today no matter what.”
“I know. Let me take the heat. Not you. My orders. Tell Eldridge I never said I was acting without their approval.” Kehm frowned, which made her like him more. It was good to know he didn’t want to throw her to the wolves to save himself. “And do me one other favor. Find Senator Vasquez and give this to him. Directly to him, no one else,” she said, fishing out the note.
“I will. Good luck.”
Arinna snorted. “We’ll make our own luck or die trying.”
First Foray
February 2062
“Does MOTHER know you are here?”
The grime on Arinna’s face hid the scratches from shrapnel. She looked tired, young, and scared. Jared’s gut clenched.
Her sky blue eyes, innocent and wide, turned towards him. Jared looked away. He saw her features harden from the corner of his eye.
“No,” Arinna spat.
“You shouldn’t be here, Minister. I don’t have the soldiers to babysit you,” Jared told her, his voice harsher than intended. Too many had died, leaving broken morale in the scattered fragment of the Guard that was left.
“I don’t need babysitting. I practiced with Michael.” Her voice was raw on the name. She needed to swallow before continuing, the words coming quieter through a tightened throat. “I know what to do.”
“Practice does not make combat ready.”
“I was a soldier once too,” she snapped back.
“Over eight years ago and before taking the job with MOTHER,” Jared pushed. He said the last word with the implication of it being where she should be. Not here in Sofia being shot at. He’d already lost most of his close friends. He wanted to keep the few he had left. “I’ll see you out of this and back to the safe zone on Vitosha.” He shifted to signal a Sergeant.
“That won’t be necessary, Captain.”
The title hit him like a bullet, knocking breath from his chest as it burned through him. The Command was too new and the cost of attaining it paid in the lives of friends. She knew it too. It had been Michael who had worn it last. Jared looked into her unflinching eyes.
“I’m staying.”
To prove it, she picked up her gun and darted forward, making it to the shadow of the next building as a mortar sliced the roadway between them. The lull in the fighting was over, closing the slim opportunity for Arinna to leave.
“Fuck.”
It was a panicked ten minutes before Jared caught up with her. They were past Borisova park now, deep into Slatina. Shells struck a concrete building a breath after Arinna’s form disappeared through its door. Jared made the opening in a haze of white dust. The only thing keeping him from yelling at her was the faces of fifteen others of the Guard, his Guard. He swallowed the slip in his control. His first battle as captain was no time to become unhinged. Gods, he needed to save what was left. He just wasn’t sure if he meant Europe or his troops.
Gabriella Faronelli saluted into his dry mouthed silence. “The mortars are coming from the Central Railway, Captain. Should we change mission to take them out?”
“No,” Arinna answered, her voice firm. “That isn’t why we are here.”
Gabriella’s gaze jumped between them. Jared fought back his anger, unlocking clenched fists. His neck muscle pulled so tight it ached. But Arinna took no notice as she moved to an easterly window.
One finger, he motioned Gabriella and nine others around the room to guard the perimeter. Then he went to deal with Arinna.
“Exactly what is the mission, if I may ask?”
“The railroad tracks,” Arinna replied without elaborating.
“Then shouldn’t we be heading to the Central Station?” Jared hissed.
“It is too heavily defended. This is the main line the FLF has been using to bring fuel and weapons from the middle-eastern depots. We need to take it out.”
“Then where?”
“Further east. The primary tracks run from a bridge over the Iskar River back to the Slatina Industrial Park. We take out that section, we’ll slow the FLF down a bit.”
“They’ll rebuild,” he warned.
“Depends on how well we take it out,” she replied with a grin. It was one he could see Michael wearing.
“We need to keep moving,” Arinna said, turning to survey the room and dispersed troops. He cut her off as she opened her mouth again.
“You are not Field Commander. They are my troops.”
She paused, long enough to study him. “No, they would listen to me only by your grace.” She waved Jared forward. “Tell them we head to the Industrial Park.”
Fury gripped him. The target was too tempting or he would have told his troops to head back to Vitosha. Kris glared out into the street like he wanted a fight. All of them looked like they wanted payback for what had happened in Kiev. Blowing something up would feel awfully good.
“Gabriella, radio the second wave. Tell them to meet us at the Industrial Park in Slatina and avoid the Central Railway as much as possible.”
Jared met Arinna at the eastern doorway.
“How much firepower does the FLF have in Sofia?” he asked, ready to cover her exit.
“Not much compared to the front lines, but more than we do,” she said before slipping out.
Great, it made him wonder why he’d brought his bloody sword. He doubted he’d get close enough to use it.
The second wave took the brunt of the artillery fire as they advanced. Their path into Slatina created a distant rumble, which overwhelmed the sharp retort of close impacts. With the distraction of the second wave, Jared’s small forward force could have marched down the car and impact riddled old interstate rather than weave through the back alleys. But instinct was hard to overcome. Jared preferred an indirect and more discrete path.
He’d also grown used to the chaos of the front lines where fighting ran through cities, civilians scattering as the push and pull of fighting surged across the countryside. Here, Sofia was empty. The streets echoed impacts, but not screams. Gutted vehicles and occasionally collapsed buildings littered the streets, but bodies were scarce. It was a scene of a war departed and the FLF winners. It knotted Jared’s intestines. Every empty window was a remembrance of the lives that were lived before, as well as a future he hoped to prevent. All of Europe could not crumble too.
The dark blocks of warehouses solidified out of the dusty haze. Jared took lead entry. He’d always been point for Michael, a desire not to lose his commander as much as wanting him to make it home to Arinna. But he hadn’t been point or wingman on the last mission. Orders had kept him grounded as leader of a backup wave; a force that hadn’t been necessary. The target had been annihilated along with most of the Guard. In one move, the FLF had erased the commander and the combined armed force that had stood between them and Europe. Jared was still reeling with new Command and loss when Arinna came to him, eyes dry but with dusty tracks on her cheeks. He’d grabbed onto her desire for action and revenge without asking enough questions.
Jared pushed down the flashback, the images of too many fights by Michael’s side leaving him trembling. Arinna skirted around him, muscle memory reawakened in her frame as she swept to the left, eyes searching for a threat in the dark interior
. He didn’t want to see the motion that was more than training in her confident moves. She shouldn’t be there. That was the focus he needed. She wasn’t former EU army, navy, or air force and so she didn’t qualify for the Guard, the military unit created out of the remains of the rest. A former soldier before the war from a country that no longer existed, she belonged with the politicians and as a liaison with military intelligence.
Ahead of him, the Guard cleared the building with no need of direction from him. Empty but too big to defend, the warehouse offered only a brief respite until the second wave joined them. Gabriella approached, manner brisk as she saluted. An explosion overwhelmed the words on her lips. The force of the blast trembled the warehouse. Dust filtered down, obscuring the dark interior farther.
“That wasn’t from the FLF,” Jared stated.
Gabriella was pale when she replied, “It sounded west of us.” The roughness of her voice spoke of her fear. It was their remaining troops that lay west.
“Find out,” Jared snapped, not needing to elaborate. He walked briskly to the door, but kept himself from running. Fear, liquefying terror, was not the message he would relay to his troops, no matter his thoughts.
Outside, the air smelled like burnt concrete. Smoke was rising in a growing cloud to the west.
“A building along the interstate,” Arinna said. He hadn’t even noticed she’d stepped outside behind him. Her handgun was at ready but held low.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he rasped.
“Someone needed to make sure you weren’t going to be target practice, Captain,” she replied before walking back inside. He heard the garbled reply from the second wave as the door opened. Relief pushed him against the door jamb before he followed on Arinna’s heels.
“Hold for orders,” Gabriella said before snapping off the mike. “They ran into an outpost of FLF that had fortified a pre-war hospital. Sergeant Assad said they were armoring up, most likely to come after us, so they took them out.”
“Our explosives or theirs?” Jared asked.
“Ours, they had to use all they brought along.”
“Dammit,” Arinna hissed. “We needed those to take out the rail line.”
“No back up ammunition on this little outing you planned?” Jared snapped at her.
Arinna’s reply was grudging despite her miscalculation, “No.”
“Well then, I guess we are done here. I’ll take a failed mission over more losses.”
Arinna said nothing as she turned away, arms crossed tightly over her chest. Jared turned back to a stone faced Gabriella.
Gunfire snapped in the distance followed by the heavy explosions of RPGs.
“Are they requesting assistance?” Jared asked. He paced as Gabriella relayed the question, mind turning over potential routes. It would be difficult not to get squeezed between the FLF outpost and the Central Station.
“Negative. Route to advance rally point is unclear. Will have to disperse south to join,” Sergeant Farrak Assad replied over the line.
“No, tell them to fall back to Borisova. Hold at remnants of zoo. We will join them there. If no word from us in one hour, go to rally point Alpha,” Jared instructed.
Relief settled upon him the moment he gave the order. It was war. Soldiers would die. But he wasn’t ready to offer the remnants of the Guard to FLF. The poorly planned attack on Sofia was folly, especially so soon after Kiev.
Arinna stood in the dark, barely seen where she leaned against a support column of the stripped warehouse. Whatever the building had held before the war was long gone. There was only dusty emptiness.
“We’ll give them a five-minute head start and then pull back as well,” Jared told Arinna as he joined her.
“We could use the FLF artillery to take out the tracks.”
“What?” he snapped, caught off guard.
Arinna pushed herself from the metal beam to face him. “The RPGs and whatever else they have hoarded up in the Central Station, it should be enough to destroy the tracks.”
“What is the point? There are other routes into Europe. You want us to attack an armed FLF facility, costing us God knows what in losses, to blow up one train track out of dozens?” The words burst from him on thoughts kept in check since Arinna had come to him with this plan. He should have asked them sooner.
There was the ghost of a smile on Arinna’s lips. The dim light caught on moisture in her eye as she turned away. The sight dried his throat.
“Michael and I used to argue the same thing. Yes, they will be able to reroute supplies, but it will take them time. The route through Sofia is primary and its loss will slow them down. Jared, Captain, you know that is what we need. Now more than before Kiev. We need to rebuild the Guard. We are too scattered, too broken. The FLF will cut through us and take the rest of Europe in a month if we don’t win a reprieve. This is our chance.”
Her words cut through the grief, clearing away the secret doubts he harbored. She was right, and she had seen what he could not.
“The second wave is already on the way back to Borisova,” he told her. His voice must have given away his agreement. She took a deep breath, a spark igniting in the blue of her eyes.
“We could use that. The zoo is securable. They can draw the fire and attention of the FLF at the rail yard while we come in from the north.”
“Seventeen of us take on a fortified FLF position?”
“It isn’t numbers that wins wars. It’s skill. I thought you’d been the one who told me that, Captain?”
A lifetime ago, he thought, but didn’t argue. Suicide mission or not, it needed to be done.
Jared pulled the team together and told them where they were headed. It was met with the silence carrying the weight of a tomb.
“If we don’t buy breathing room, the war is over and we lost,” he told them. Arinna exhaled a snort but said nothing.
“How do we take out the soldiers without harming the weapons?” Gabriella asked, picking her words carefully.
“The second wave will keep the FLF occupied while we come in from the north,” Jared replied.
“North? Could work. What route?” Kirkpatrick asked.
“If we take the streets we could run into another outpost,” Tanja said with a frown.
“We can follow the Iskar north, stay in the river bed, and come out at the old airport. That will bring us down on the north-east side of the Central Depot,” Arinna offered.
“It will take some ammo to take out the FLF and we are running low as it is,” Kirkpatrick added.
“Well, we don’t want them to know we are around anyway. Switch to swords until we reach range of the rail,” Jared ordered.
“And if we run into any FLF?” Tanja asked.
“Don’t be seen.”
The unit seemed to take Jared’s remark as a challenge. What had been a stilted offense became fluid defense as they moved through the remainder of Slatina and into Iskar. Arinna merged with the team, which considering that it was the first time most of them had fought together wasn’t so unusual. Together, the heightened senses of each combined into a silent whole.
The river was not a clear path. Debris from collapsed buildings, and fallen retaining walls along with the occasional car impeded the shallow water. At least here though there were few buildings with overlooking windows unlike the alleyways on the streets above. Safety was bought at the slight expense of wet feet.
The sound of gunfire was faint, blocked by buildings and distance. Jared felt the time passing in the sweat beading on his back and the faint ache of tense muscles. But there was no hurrying this mission. They couldn’t afford an error and walk out alive, not that there was a guarantee of survival even if everything clicked together the same way the unit had since leaving Slatina. There was simply too much risk.
Cameron was first over the retaining wall at the airport, Gabriella on his heels. Jared’s first glance was of the cratered runway, destroyed until only the shrapnel of a plane’s wings spoke of the
history held in the debris filled landscape. The terminal and hangers had burned, leaving rusted iron girders exposed like the ribcage of a massive and long dead creature. Relief burned through Jared. There would be no FLF resistance hidden among this wreckage.
The walk across the airfield was more exposed than along the path of the Iskar, but enough debris remained to offer some cover. It was mostly wind that moved through the dirt and broken concrete, eruptions of mortar fire growing louder as they crossed to the west. The hum of a motor was the first warning that they had found the FLF and it was far closer than the Central Rail yard. Arinna’s frown held the same feelings Jared felt: annoyance, worry, and curiosity. What was the FLF doing with what sounded like a crane on the outskirts of the airport?
To stay out of sight, they delved deeper into the tangled ruins of the terminal. The fire gutted remains of hotels blocked their view westward, hiding everything but the hum of equipment.
Kirkpatrick risked glancing out of a window, pulling back with annoyance. “I can’t see a bloody thing from this angle. We could try to head further north to get around them.”
“We are still east of the Central Rail. We need to go north anyway if we want to drop in on them,” Gabriella offered. Silence met her suggestion.
“You want to take a peek?” Jared asked Arinna, the answer clear on her face.
“It could be supplies,” she replied.
“This far from the main depot on an offshoot of the rail line?” Cameron wasn’t buying it.
“You and me, we head over to the closer hotel to get a visual. The rest of you, take a break. It is still a long way to the Central Rail and those fireworks. I’ll be in radio contact if we need anything.”
Jared didn’t want to admit it, or maybe he didn’t want to remember it, but dodging across from shadow to shadow to reach the blackened shell of the hotel held the same essence as the myriads of times he’d run a similar course with Michael. All the way down to he and Arinna swapping the lead. They risked the stairs up to the third floor, making their way along a hallway strewn with charred remnants of prewar life. Even years after the main fighting had ended here, Jared could still smell the soot. Arinna edged to a window, careful of a plummeting hole, which had eaten most of the floor. The western wall of the hotel was a fragile open sore, ready to finish its collapse.
