‘I have spoken with brigade on the matter, who have in turn raised it with EJOC. Eden Joint Command has strong reason to believe that all of the Guard are deployed. How they have that information we will never know, but they are adamant that the Guard is somewhere out here with us in its entirety. This puzzle has obviously raised some eyebrows, as monitoring FEA and Guard movements are as important to us as that of the Loyalists if we are to steer this war to a favourable and peaceful solution. In response, our eyes in orbit have turned to search the region for the missing units, discovering clues to suggest vehicle and troop movements within the highlands. The Eden weather and the cover provided by the forest make it difficult to confirm this, but we now believe that the Presidential Guard are conducting some kind of operation in the west.
‘The thing that makes this so alarming is that the FEA clearly don’t want us to be aware about this, and have gone through great lengths to conceal their actions. Brigade has asked us to investigate the situation off to the west, in order to confirm the Guard’s presence there, as well as ascertain what they are up to. This is an additional task we have been given, our main effort lying with the close target recce, and potentially the attack of Dakar itself.’ He turned directly to me. ‘Lance Corporal Moralee, you will take your section to recce the west.’
I looked up at him. ‘Yes, Sir.’
‘I will give you some grid locations for you to look around in a moment. Your liaison officer will come with me, clearly I don’t want her to know where you’re going.’
I nodded. ‘OK. What do you want me to tell her?’
‘Just tell her you’ve been sent to patrol the river to search for Loyalist units left behind during the withdrawal. She is to come with us to provide assistance in our recce of Dakar. I’m sure she’ll be far more interested in that anyway.’
‘No worries.’
The platoon commander addressed the rest of the platoon. ‘The remainder of us will move north toward the town. There we will conduct separate recces onto the area in preparation of the FEA attack. Taking Dakar will be a complicated operation, requiring a great deal of co-ordination and planning, an area in which our new allies are lacking. The effectiveness of our recce and the recommendations we give to their commanders will be pivotal. Any questions on the overall plan?’
There were none. Mr Barkley then went through the plan again, breaking each phase of the operation down with key timings, grids and tasks so that we could record them on our datapads. It was a process that took almost another hour, ensuring that everybody knew exactly what he and everyone else was doing. We would be maintaining total net silence during the operation, so it was critical that everyone understood his orders fully. There was no scope to ask questions once we got going.
After the orders were finished, Mr Barkley sent the commanders away to brief their men, keeping me behind.
‘Are you happy with the plan?’ he asked.
I took a quick look down at my datapad, using a finger to quickly scroll through my notes. ‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Don’t take this task lightly,’ he urged, ‘we need to remember that Edo is still a rogue state, and hardly a friend of the Union. We need to watch them as closely as we do the Loyalists.’
I nodded.
He looked about, as though the trees might be listening. ‘I don’t trust these people, Andy. I’ve been working with their commanders all day, every one of them from the Presidential Guard. They’re hiding something, I can sense it, and it has something to do with the highlands.’
‘What do you think they’re doing?’
The platoon commander paused to think. ‘It looks as though they’re sneaking a large force up the western flank, ready to pounce onto the Loyalists when their attention is turned to us in the south. What doesn’t make sense, though, is their attempts to conceal it from us.’
‘They don’t trust us. Yulia - my liaison officer - thinks we won’t bomb Dakar because we secretly support the Loyalists.’
He waved his hand dismissively. ‘That’s just low-level gossip and rumour within their ranks, I’m not surprised by that, but their headquarters are not so naïve. There’s another reason behind them being so secretive.’
‘I’ll see what I can find out.’
‘Good. Just be careful, and remember, if you get into any trouble then help is only on the other end of the net. Ditch the net silence and get in touch, but only as a last resort.’
‘OK.’
Mr Barkley hesitated, as though he was reluctant to let me go. ‘Take it easy, Andy.’
I slung my rifle and stood. ‘I will.’
With that, I left the clearing, collecting Myers before making my way back to brief the section.
The platoon moved out just before midnight, taking advantage of the thick fog that had descended upon the forest. As the four sections prepared themselves to move, the commanders came together for one final time. Yulia was there too, along with Makito and the other Presidential Guard liaison officers that had been split across the platoon. We all eyed them warily, our trust in them damaged, and I was genuinely glad not to be in the company of Yulia and her bodyguard for my patrol.
Fortunately the two Guardsmen had returned just after I delivered my brief to the section, and Yulia didn’t even raise an eyebrow when I told her the cover story.
‘The situation hasn’t changed significantly since we last came together,’ Mr Barkley explained. ‘The FEA are still struggling to move forward, being harassed by artillery fired from Dakar. A strong line of air defence has all but grounded any dropships over the river.’
‘That is a problem that can easily be solved,’ Yulia said provokingly, and several of the liaison officers nodded their heads in agreement.
The small group of commanders bristled in anger, but Mr Barkley didn’t rise to it. ‘Perhaps, but we work with what we have.’ He turned to us. ‘Remember, recce the locations you have been assigned, and then aim to return to the platoon rendezvous before midnight tomorrow. Avoid contact at all costs - remember that this is a recce patrol now, and nobody gets points for kills.’
We nodded.
‘Andy,’ he then addressed me. ‘Make sure you conduct a good sweep, and stay out of harm’s way.’
The platoon commander couldn’t speak to me properly in front of Yulia - she couldn’t know that I was moving out to conduct a recce on the highlands, and not sweeping for Loyalist stragglers.
‘I will, Sir,’ I replied, eager to get moving. I had a large amount of ground to cover, and not much time to do it in.
‘Good,’ he regarded all of us in turn. ‘Good luck, all of you. Let’s go.’
As the commanders dispersed to their sections, the sergeant major grabbed me by the shoulder, his black eyes glaring intensely. ‘Take it easy,’ he hissed, mindful not to be heard by Yulia as she left with the other liaison officers, ‘and don’t take any unnecessary risks. I don’t trust these fuckers.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Keep your eyes peeled. Understand?’
‘I will.’
Seemingly assured, he gave my shoulder a pat, and then he was gone. Without a moment to spare, I returned to my section and took my position at its front.
‘Prepare to move,’ I ordered softly, and waited for the message to pass before I slipped into the undergrowth.
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Recce
None of the FEA noticed my section snaking between their positions in the dark, marching toward the highlands on the western fringes of the Bosque. They were too pre-occupied by the reorganisation of their battered companies, as well as the constant bombardment from the Loyalists.
The sound of the endless shelling grew quieter as we drew away from the river, until it was barely audible.
We didn’t stop for rest, trekking for tens of kilometres until we reached the highlands, before following valleys and re-entrants that led us up into the hills with maximum cover from view and fire.
Using the map on my
datapad, I picked out a hill that appeared to afford an unobstructed view into the surrounding countryside, altering my course toward it. Hopefully I could reach the summit of the hill before dawn, using the vantage point to spot any sign of the Presidential Guard.
As I drove my section up the slope, I wondered what the Guard were up to, and why they might want to hide their activity in the highlands from us. Were they planning to attack us? They certainly didn’t need such a large force to do that. Yulia and her bodyguard, Makito, could have shot us in the back hours ago if they’d wanted to. Why was it so important that we didn’t find their forces?
We were patrolling along a narrow re-entrant carpeted by ferns, when I heard Skelton hiss at me from behind. Myers and I froze instantly. I turned to see Skelton kneeling in the ferns, gesturing downward with his hand to tell us both to get down. We quickly dropped onto one knee, and my heart thumped as I raised my rifle to scan my arcs. The forest either side of the re-entrant was silent, the only faint noise being that of artillery shells detonating far behind us.
I looked to Skelton, holding up both hands - what?
The trooper shrugged, then jerked a thumb rearward. For some reason Puppy’s fire team had called for us to halt.
Somebody caught Skelton’s attention from further back in the undergrowth, and he gestured for me to close in by tapping his helmet.
I stood carefully, then crept back the way I had come to find out what had happened. We could have spotted enemy, or one of our troopers might have tripped on a rock and hurt his ankle. Neither scenario was a good one, and I dreaded finding out the reason for our sudden halt.
Puppy was crouched beside Wildgoose at the rear of the patrol, gazing into the darkness behind us with a concerned look upon his face.
‘What’s going on?’ I whispered.
‘Goose picked something up on his scanner,’ the section 2ic replied.
I frowned. ‘Where?’
Wildgoose pointed back down the hill and into the darkened forest. ‘Down there. It was just a blip, barely even a second.’
‘Any idea what it was?’
‘No. It was pretty distant, maybe three, four hundred metres away. You get false readings sometimes, it just gave me a start when the scanner went off.’
I squinted into the darkness. It was a pointless exercise, if my visor couldn’t see anything, then it was doubtful my eyes would do much better in the dark. ‘And you’ve had nothing since?’
‘No.’
I held my breath to listen. The forest was eerily silent. Even the wind had momentarily ceased, as though Mother Nature had also stopped to see what had created the blip on Wildgoose’s scanner. My respirator motors whirred quietly in the background, threatening to drive me mad.
The three of us stared for a few moments, waiting for something to happen, but there was nothing.
‘It was probably just a false reading,’ Wildgoose said again.
Puppy nodded his agreement. ‘The scanners are good, but they’re not perfect.’
To be fair, the other section scanner, carried by Myers, hadn’t picked up anything. Myers was young, jumpy and energetic - if he had spotted even the slightest blip on his scanner then I knew he would have said so.
‘We won’t take any chances,’ I decided finally. ‘We’ll wait here for five minutes, keep our eyes out, then if nothing happens then we’ll carry on. We’ll put a dog-leg in to throw anyone off if they’re following.’
‘Fair enough,’ Puppy agreed.
We waited anxiously, but there were no sounds or further readings on the scanner. After five minutes I moved back to Myers, instructing him to change our course.
‘Do you think we’re being followed?’ he asked before he set off.
I cast a glance back into the dark. ‘I hope not.’
Just as I had hoped, we reached the summit of the hill before the sun rose, finding a position on a ridge that overlooked the valleys around us. We couldn’t pick up any thermal signatures from the forest far below, though that didn’t necessarily mean anything. If the Presidential Guard really were trying to move up along the western flank without being detected by us and our ships, then they would be smart enough to at least camouflage all of their equipment with thermal sheeting. I decided to wait until the sunrise, hoping that they might have left visual clues to their movements.
‘Any more readings?’ I asked Wildgoose, and the sniper shook his head.
Good, I thought, if anyone had been following behind us, then we had thrown them off our scent. It was true that our scanners could be temperamental, sometimes collecting false reading from plants and abnormalities in the weather. We just had to hope that was the case.
We watched in silence as the sun slowly rose over the highlands, casting long, dark shadows across the valleys. It was an incredible view. The morning mist rose from the trees, hugging the folds in the land as it slowly poured from the highlands and down toward the Ghandi below. Like a shimmering silver snake, the great river meandered through the Bosque, joining with other rivers across the forest as it made its way toward the glittering spires of Paraiso in the distance. I could just make out other cities, including the single spire of Dakar. It was easy to forget that at the foot of that magnificent spire was an assortment of Loyalist artillery, and the staging point of their assault into the Bosque. Amongst the stunning green expanse of forest a brutal war was being fought, where only the dead could find peace. I longed for peace, but I knew I would never find it on Eden; the beautiful landscape contained nothing but horror and misery.
‘I can’t see anything,’ Puppy said, snapping me out of my trance.
‘Me neither,’ I agreed, ‘though I suppose we shouldn’t have expected to see much. They’re not idiots.’
‘No,’ he sighed deeply. ‘What are you thinking?’
I supped on my drinking straw, gazing out across the highlands. There were several maglev rails visible running through the valleys, as well as the odd wind turbine or building, but other than that there was nothing to see. We could wait on the ridge for days and see nothing.
‘Aasha village isn’t far from here,’ I said.
Puppy considered the suggestion. ‘You want to go down there?’
‘The Loyalists will have pulled out from there by now,’ I pointed out, ‘especially if there really is a Guard army nearby. Maybe the villagers might know something.’
He looked at me as though I was mad. ‘You want to go and ask them?’
‘Not necessarily,’ I replied irritably, ‘but do you have a better idea?’
Puppy paused for a moment. ‘No.’
‘Well there you go, then. Shall we get moving?’
We hadn’t moved further than a few hundred metres from the ridge when Skelton called for me to stop again; Wildgoose had picked up another signal.
‘It’s the same thing,’ the trooper said as I joined him and Puppy once more, this time bringing Myers with me. ‘A small blip, just for a second,’ Wildgoose explained, pointing back along our trail. ‘Seven hundred metres behind us.’
I turned to Myers, who waved his arms in front of him as he navigated through his scanner menu. ‘I’m not getting anything,’ he said finally.
I stared into the trees thoughtfully. Was there really someone behind us? None of us spoke.
Wildgoose was first to break the silence. ‘Maybe my scanner’s on the blink?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘Then why isn’t Myers getting anything?’
‘Some scanners are slightly more sensitive than others,’ Puppy explained for me, ‘and the reading is right on the extremity of our range. I’m surprised we’re picking it up at all.’
‘So why is it just a tiny blip?’
I shrugged. ‘Could be a lot of things: a faulty rifle battery; somebody with their patrol net left on by mistake … or it could be nothing at all.’
Puppy glanced at me. ‘Can we afford to take that risk?’
I considered the question. If it reall
y was nothing, then we could waste hours trying to throw a phantom pursuer off our scent. If it wasn’t, though, and we really were being followed through the forest, then the consequences of ignoring it could be catastrophic. It was all about risk and impact. The risk was great, but the impact was greater.
‘No,’ I answered, ‘we can’t. We need to assume that somebody is following us, and make best efforts to lose them.’
‘And if we can’t?’
I regarded my section 2ic coldly. ‘We kill them and extract.’
Skelton gulped.
‘Right, let’s get moving before our new friends catch up with us.’
We set off again, changing course toward the north. I altered our direction every few hundred metres, trying to be as random and unpredictable as I could. If Wildgoose had detected someone, then there was no doubt in my mind that we were being tracked. Somebody, be it a lone individual, or a platoon of FEA soldiers, was following the trail that we left behind. Supposedly the FEA had some excellent trackers, trained to follow the trail of clues we left as we cut our way through the forest, from boot prints in the soil, to snapped twigs and bent plant stalks. It was a skill they had developed during the guerrilla war, to hunt down and avoid Union patrols on the Paraiso border.
After several hours of hard marching through the forest, there was no repeat of the strange reading picked up by Wildgoose. I wasn’t taking any chances, though. To ensure that nobody was following, I led the section toward a disused maglev rail that ran toward Aasha village. The lines hadn’t been in use since before the Loyalists attacked, and the ground beneath the single rail was covered by concrete - which meant that we would leave no tracks. We could move parallel to the rail for a few kilometres, before breaking back into the forest, taking effort to make sure we left no ground sign for any would be tracker to follow.
EDEN (The Union Series) Page 18
