I then outstretched my arm, pointing with a closed palm toward the crag. Up there.
Skelton nodded, continuing to follow behind me. He would repeat the message, whether the man behind had seen me or not, but he wouldn’t do so until he reached the same spot as me. Certain messages needed to be passed instantly, but others, like snap ambushes, needed the trooper behind to pass it from the same location. If this didn’t happen then the rest of the section wouldn’t fully understand what was happening - in this case not seeing the crag.
I turned away, happy that the message would be properly passed, and then I led the section for another fifty metres, before finally selecting a point from which we would break from our route to hook back around toward the crag. The idea was to continue our trail past the crag, so that the Guard patrol would follow it. Before they reached the point where we had changed direction they would have already passed through our ambush.
I stopped again, waiting for Skelton to close up to me before whispering, ‘pincushion.’
I pointed back along the section, and Skelton nodded in acknowledgement, waiting where he was to tell the next man as I patrolled off again.
One of the most devastating anti-personnel weapons in our arsenal, the APM-18, or ‘pincushion’ as it was known, was a small device that could be operated remotely by optical cable or by the section net. It was essentially a powerful magnet set behind thousands of tiny steel darts similar to those fired by our rifles. When activated, the magnet repelled all of the darts at once, ripping its unfortunate victims to pieces with a single volley. It was an ideal weapon to use in an ambush, because it was quick to deploy and simple to operate, whilst still packing a punch.
The section continued to follow on behind me as I quickly swung around, climbing up onto the crag. Keeping back from the rocky edge of the crag, I crept along its length, careful not to expose myself to the ground below, where I hoped that the patrol would pass. It was a good ambush location, raised high enough to have a dominating view into the undergrowth, but not so much that the tree canopy blocked our view. Once the ambush was sprung, it would be near impossible for any surviving soldiers to climb up and attack us, but if things went wrong, then we could easily disappear back into the forest to make our escape long before they reached us.
At the rear of the section, Puppy, having received my message to deploy the pincushion, would have quickly placed it down amongst the foliage, angling it in the direction I had given before activating it and following us up the crag. The Guard patrol would never see it, and even if their scanners - if they even had any - picked it up it would be far too late.
Once I was happy that we had reached the ambush location I had selected, I dropped to the ground and crawled to the edge of the crag. The section followed suit, quickly forming-up either side of me. They hugged the cover, moving into a position where every man could quickly spring up and fire, but staying out of view. I lifted my rifle, holding it up just far enough for my camera to see over the edge of the crag. There was nothing there - not yet anyway. I guessed that the patrol was still a hundred metres behind, and wouldn’t come into view for another couple of minutes.
A hand tapped my boot. I turned to see that Puppy was lying behind me.
‘Pincushion’s out,’ he whispered. ‘You want cut-offs out?’
I considered his proposal. Cut offs were ideally composed of two troopers, placed away from the ambush to catch anybody attempting to make a run for it.
‘No, mate,’ I replied, ‘we don’t have enough time.’
The section 2ic nodded.
‘I will initiate the ambush,’ I continued. ‘Fire the pincushion as soon as it goes noisy. Just make sure you keep an eye out to the flanks, just in case they suss us out.’
Another nod. ‘OK.’ He crawled away, taking up his own position in the middle of his fire team.
I thought through my plan whilst we waited for our victims. Ambushes were about surprising the enemy with an overwhelming rate of fire, ideally killing as many of them as possible before they even knew what was happening. The remainder, in total disarray, could then be picked off as they ran or tried to fight back. I had been caught out in an ambush before, walking through the streets of a New Earth city, but it had failed because the enemy hadn’t co-ordinated their weapons to achieve that sudden, brutal strike. Unlike the ambush laid out by the New Earth rebels, ours was simple and well-rehearsed. Our firepower was massive, multiplied by the devastating wall of darts fired by the pincushion. I would spring the ambush with my own rifle, and as one the section would open fire with all of its weapons, just as the pincushion was activated. Few soldiers would survive such a terrible onslaught, if any at all.
Myers hissed at me. ‘Another reading,’ he pointed off to our right. ‘Twenty metres.’
The Guard patrol had almost all of their electronic equipment switched off, otherwise we would have found it much easier to track them, but one of them was using something occasionally, perhaps communicating on their net. A regular scanner might not pick it up, but to our advanced equipment it was the equivalent of shouting out – ‘Here I am! Come and get me!’
Sure enough, the first soldier came into view. I held my rifle steady above my head, zooming in to take a better look at him. Sure enough, he wore a black eagle badge on his shoulder; the insignia of the Presidential Guard.
Why hadn’t the Guard simply cut us off, I wondered, didn’t they have the man power? They could have called in soldiers from the FEA to catch us, but so far nothing had happened. It seemed to be just us and them.
The soldier was walking at a high pace with his head lowered, turning left and right as he scanned the forest floor. He was their tracker - the man who had so far managed to follow us every step of the way using the clues that we inadvertently left behind.
Behind the tracker more Guardsmen emerged from amongst the trees, wading through the undergrowth with their weapons raised ready to fire. They were well-armed, with an assortment of rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers that matched our own. They had no smart launcher, though, which was a bonus. I noted that their patrol discipline was good, with wide spaces between each soldier so that they couldn’t be killed by a single burst of darts from our mammoth. They scanned their arcs warily, no doubt expecting to catch up with us soon. Little did they know that we were already waiting for them.
The patrol was headed so that it would pass directly in front of us, walking straight into the jaws of our trap.
I looked along the crag at the section, all of whom lay flat to the ground, watching me intently. I gave them a thumbs-down, and pointed in the direction of the patrol. Enemy. That way.
Sensing that the ambush was imminent, hands tightened around pistol grips and bodies tensed, but nobody moved. Like predators waiting to spring on their prey, they waited, their eyes burning with anticipation. Those bastards were part of an army that had killed innocent civilians. Their own people.
When no more soldiers entered my view, I presumed that we had the entire patrol. I counted seven of them, which made sense, for one of their number had died horribly outside the village.
I waited for the patrol to pass directly in front of us, not wanting to initiate the ambush until I knew that we could inflict maximum damage.
The second man in the patrol stopped, turning to look up at the crag.
Shit! Had he seen us?
He wasn’t looking directly at me, so he hadn’t managed to spot my rifle sight poking up over the rocks. He was probably the patrol commander, and he had noticed the crag and the vantage point it had over his patrol. Like an animal catching the scent of danger, he scanned the edge of the crag warily.
I could almost read his mind. That’s a good place for an ambush, if I was them, that’s where I would go.
The commander turned to face his men, lifting an arm as if he was about to give an instruction.
That was all I needed. I sprang up from the rocks, my finger tapping the power up button on my rifle, be
fore pulling back on the trigger in a single blur of movement.
The commander didn’t have a chance. The magnets in my rifle screamed, propelling the steel dart toward him. Within a millisecond of me pulling the trigger a wave of electrons passed through the network of tiny wires woven into my combats, passing information on the target identified by my visor display to the barrel of my rifle. Tiny adjustments were made to the dart’s trajectory as it passed through the series of magnets, correcting human error and eliminating any hope of his survival. Struck by the dart, he collapsed to the ground, and I fired several more of them into him for good measure.
The crag erupted with noise as the section let rip, churning the undergrowth as they spat death into the patrol. Puppy fired the pincushion simultaneously, unleashing the lethal wall of steel needles that cut through the forest in a cloud of vegetation, sawdust and blood.
Somehow one of the Guardsmen had escaped our initial barrage, bolting through the ferns in his desperate bid for freedom.
‘Get that bell end!’ I hollered over the noise, and seconds later he was cut down by Myers’s mammoth.
Not a single man was left standing. The ferns continued to dance under the relentless hail of darts, but there was no sign of anybody fighting back. How could they? Nobody could survive such an onslaught.
I lowered my rifle. ‘Stop!’
A few weapons stopped firing.
‘Stop!’ I yelled. ‘Don’t waste your ammo! Watch and shoot!’
Silence. We waited for any sign of life, ready to open fire if the bloodied bodies so much as stirred.
When nothing happened I looked around at Puppy. ‘I’m gonna take my boys around and search! You cover from here!’
‘Roger!’
I picked myself up and sprinted back along the crag, passing behind Puppy and his fire team. I had the perfect opportunity to gain some intelligence on our shadowy new foe, but I needed to be rapid. If any more guardsmen were nearby then they would have heard the gunfire and be rushing to the aid of their fallen comrades.
I reactivated the net as I ran. There was no need to run silent now, not until I moved off. Our location was hardly a secret anymore.
‘Blackjack-One-Zero-Alpha, this is Blackjack-One-One-Charlie, contact! My call-sign has conducted an ambush onto a hostile patrol at my present location!’ I looked down at my datapad to ensure that our grid had been sent. At least now the platoon commander would know exactly where we were and what was going on.
There was a pause before the boss finally responded, ‘One-Zero-Alpha, confirm you have conducted an ambush?’
There was a hint of frustration in the platoon commander’s voice. I knew what he was thinking - even though he was tens of kilometres away and speaking to me on the net - what the hell is Corporal Moralee doing?
‘That is correct,’ I panted. ‘We were being followed by the patrol. I have good reason to believe that they intended to kill or capture us.’
There was another long pause over the net as I reached the foot of the crag where the patrol had been. I scanned the shredded ferns for bodies, identifying several of them nearby. Two were particularly close - the tracker who had been at the front of the patrol, and the man I had identified to be the commander.
‘Search him!’ I pointed at the tracker, whose lifeless body was slick with blood like the plants around him.
The two troopers obeyed, approaching the body cautiously. Skelton covered whilst Myers crept up to the dead Guardsman.
‘Jesus,’ Myers exclaimed as he looked down at the body, ‘no chance of him being alive!’
Myers jumped onto the body, throwing all of his weight onto it. The idea was to check if the man was alive by forcing an involuntary reaction. He then rolled the body away from us, giving Skelton a chance to check underneath. It was possible for dying soldiers to hide a weapon or a primed grenade as one final act of defiance, so the drills for searching enemy dead had to be thorough.
Skelton peered at the ground under the body. ‘Clear!’
I fidgeted impatiently. ‘Hurry up and search him!’
Skelton and I crouched amongst the undergrowth whilst Myers rifled through the dead Guardsman’s kit, searching for any equipment or possessions of interest to us - maps, datapads, even traditional paper notebooks were worth taking back with us to be examined. We needed to know as much as we could about the Presidential Guard operating in the west. What were their present positions, what were their numbers, and more importantly - what was their intent?
I quickly scanned the forest, still seeing no sign of follow-up to our attack. It had only been a couple of minutes since I initiated the ambush, but any nearby patrol would already be wondering what had happened and would be moving to investigate.
Mr Barkley finally spoke on the net again. ‘I can’t extract you from your present location,’ he warned sternly. ‘I have tasked two saucers to your location. ETA will be approximately five minutes. The saucers will conduct a show of force at your present location, and will then move into a holding pattern under you command. Only use them as a last resort. Understand that Union saucers attacking the Presidential Guard will almost certainly start a war.’
I growled angrily, ‘Understood.’
‘Get your men back safe, One-One-Charlie.’
I looked across at Myers, who was still busy checking the Guardsman, his gloves wet with blood. ‘Finished?’
He looked up. ‘Yeah.’
‘Right! Skelton! Cover the commander! I want to search him!’
‘Roger!’ Skelton swivelled around, pointing his mammoth at the downed patrol commander.
I waded through the ferns toward the dead soldier, casting a quick glance up at the crag. Puppy’s fire team were up on the rocks, their weapons pointed over our heads and into the forest as they watched for depth targets.
So far, so good, I thought, but we still needed to be quick. I decided I would search the commander, and then we would have to go. Normally on an ambush we would search everyone, but that was when our numbers were greater, and our situation more favourable. At that moment I didn’t know if there were any additional patrols at all, or an entire company out in the forest, closing in to investigate the fate of their comrades.
The commander was lying on his front, having twisted slightly as he fell. He had been spared the full brunt of the pincushion, having fallen just as it was activated.
I didn’t have time to check if he was dead, and I didn’t want him alive to tell of attacks from Union troops. I drove my bayonet into his upper back, using my boot to help me withdraw it again. Satisfied that the commander was dead, I rolled him over, crouching down to inspect him. My jaw dropped.
I had seen many dead bodies, and there was nothing special about the injuries sustained by the Guardsman. It was the face I saw through his visor that shocked me.
‘Shit,’ I exclaimed with surprise, my hands moving away as if burnt. I recognised the man I was looking down at.
‘What?’ Skelton asked in alarm, his mammoth still pointed at the body.
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘It’s Makito!’
Skelton gasped. ‘Jesus …’
What on earth was Makito doing in command of a Guard section? Who had sent him?
I snapped back to my senses, casting all of my questions aside - they would have to wait. I rooted through Makito’s equipment, finding a datapad on his wrist - which I promptly removed - but he didn’t appear to carry anything else of interest. I stuffed the datapad into my daysack and threw it onto my back.
‘Let’s get out of here.’
The two saucers passed overhead as we extracted from our ambush, blasting the trees with a rush of air as they revealed their presence, acting as a deterrent to any other Guard patrols that might be considering a follow-up attack. Although they had been instructed not to fire unless told otherwise, they still scanned for targets, reporting nothing. Of course the thick canopy made it more difficult to spot soldiers hiding in the forest below, but someth
ing told me that there wasn’t anyone out there; Makito’s patrol was working alone.
My mind started working through the reasons behind such a small force being sent to track me down. Between the FEA and the Guard there were easily enough soldiers to send out multiple patrols, cutting us off as we made our break for it. They might not be as well-trained, but they still had eyes, ears and the ability to speak on the net. If the FEA placed them across the highlands, they could easily steer my section into the clutches of the guard.
Why had they not done so? Did the Guard not have the backing of the FEA? Did the FEA even know that Makito was out here?
Then there was the army of Guardsmen who had killed the people in the village, who could also have provided soldiers to help Makito - far better trained ones as well. Why couldn’t they have helped?
The FEA didn’t know what the Guard were doing, I realised. The two armies weren’t talking to each other. There was no supply chain behind the army in the west, and no soldiers left behind to guard the territory they’d captured, suggesting that their support was minimal. Not only did the Presidential Guard want to hide its activities in the west from the Union, but they also didn’t want the FEA themselves to know about it. Many of the young soldiers serving in the regular battalions wouldn’t be too happy to learn that their home towns and villages were being attacked by their own side.
The platoon commander gave us a series of waypoints to follow, directing us from the highlands to the outskirts of Dakar, far north of the FEA front line. Whilst we had been away, the platoon had been busy probing forward, marking routes that the rifle companies could follow and locating areas in which they could form-up prior to their assault. They had then moved right up to the town, mapping out the enemy defences and producing recommendations to be passed to the FEA commanders.
We slipped through the marshland to the north of the Ghandi with relative ease, avoiding the scattered FEA platoons and companies. More interested in preparing themselves for the upcoming battle, they made little effort to conceal their presence, their electronic equipment giving us plenty of warning to change direction before we stumbled upon them. Shouting orders, and even laughing and joking, they certainly didn’t act as though they knew of a Union section operating nearby, or that it had ambushed the Presidential Guard.
EDEN (The Union Series) Page 21
