Heirs at War (The Marmoros Trilogy Book 2)

by Peter Kenson

  Of more immediate concern was the activity directly below them. The advance party had stopped as soon as they detected the unshielded thoughts. The three sniffers had each walked about ten paces off the track in different directions and were now attempting to triangulate the source of the thoughts. All three were pointing towards the centre of the valley floor where a group of senior officers were holding an animated conversation.

  Being careful not to allow their heads to break the skyline, Anise and Chaqi slid back down the slope to the waiting group of fighters.

  “Okay they’ve taken the bait,” Chaqi announced. “Rhamani, go and get Osman out of there now and make sure he puts his helmet on before he moves. And on your way back, double check that the charges are set at the end of the tunnel.”

  The trap had been set using a disused tunnel that had been abandoned years before. It led nowhere and was only connected at one end to a series of mining passages of no strategic importance to the Resistance. Osman was the bait in the trap, having removed his helmet so that his thoughts could be detected by the sniffers.

  “If they follow the same pattern as before,” Chaqi went on, “they’ll set up a perimeter at about a hundred paces with static sentry points and a roving patrol around the outside. Then they’ll start to erect the drill but it’s too late in the day for them to finish that before dark. They may decide to wait until morning to finish the assembly but I think it’s more likely that they’ll set up floodlights and work through the night. So we pull back for now, out of sight of their roving patrol and wait for them to start drilling.”

  “Why don’t we attack while they’re busy setting up the drill?” one of the younger fighters asked.

  “Two reasons,” Anise replied. “First the sentries will be relatively fresh and, therefore, more alert. We need to allow them to get bored. Second and more importantly, when they break through into the tunnel, they’ll send down a search squad. They’ll move cautiously because they’ll expect the tunnel to be mined but they will have to put men down there. That’s when we attack; when their forces are split above and below ground.”

  Chaqi smiled at his wife and nodded in agreement. “So let’s pull back and get some rest. There’s still a couple of hours of daylight and, I estimate, another two to three hours beyond that, if they keep working.”

  ***

  The glare of the floodlights was visible above the top of slope where they waited. The noise of the drill had stopped suddenly about twenty minutes earlier and they could hear the shouted commands as the equipment was cleared out of the way to allow the search team to enter the breach.

  They had already taken down the sentry closest to them and waited now for the approach of the roving patrol. Most of Chaqi’s team had precious night vision goggles, looted from dead Belsi marines, but they did not have enough for everybody. The other resistance leaders had given him every man they could spare and, with his own small team, he had twenty five men hidden in the rocks. The ones without the night goggles, he positioned away from the approaching patrol to watch the floodlit area around the drill and guard against reinforcements coming from that direction.

  Timing was crucial now. He could not risk attacking the main camp while the patrol was loose somewhere on the darkened hillside with them, but equally he did not want to be forced into attacking the patrol before the search team had entered the tunnel. Ideally they would take out the patrol without raising the alarm in the camp below but there was always an element of risk.

  He turned his head at the sound of a soft tap of rock against rock behind him. Through the goggles he could see one of the team who were watching the camp, standing with both hands held out in front, fingers extended. Ten! Ten men had gone down through the hole created by the drill, sliding down a rope into the tunnel. He waved an acknowledgment and turned back to wait for the patrol.

  The six man patrol had been past twice already; its path closely watched by Chaqi. He knew where it should be appearing on the hillside but his heart sank as it finally came into view. This patrol was double the size of the previous ones and there was an officer in command. It looked as though he was relieving the static sentries as they were going round.

  The one bit of good news was that they were following exactly the same path as before. Chaqi had been down that path himself a few minutes earlier and looked back at the ambush site to make sure that none of his men could be seen. He had enough men hidden above the path to take out even the enlarged patrol in the first strike, providing each man chose a separate target, but it was too late to do any more about that now. He could only wait and hope.

  The patrol was well disciplined and approached silently. The only sound that could be heard was an occasional loose rock, dislodged by a boot to roll down the slope. It was also well organised with one man on point, twenty paces ahead of the main group, and another lagging behind to bring up the rear. He felt Anise shift slightly as she knelt beside him, rifle raised but facing in the opposite direction. He would have to let the point man go past him before he signalled the main attack and her job was to cover his back. The other members of their own team, Rhamani and Osman were at the other end of the ambush, ready to take out the rear marker and ensure that none of the patrol escaped back down the track.

  Time stretched out as he waited for the helmet of the point man to emerge from behind an outcrop of rock, some ten paces below him. He forced himself to breath normally as the man continued down the track, apparently unconcerned. Suddenly there was a muffled snort in the darkness ahead as someone tried to suppress a sneeze. The man immediately stopped and raised a clenched fist to signal the patrol, swinging his head left and right to try to locate the source of the sound. Silently cursing to himself, Chaqi learned out from his hiding place and sighted his rifle down the track. The patrol was a little further away than he would have liked but he spotted the officer and signalled the attack by pressing the firing stud.

  All of the assault rifles they were using for the ambush, had been modified to shift the beams of coherent light into the infrared range, clearly visible through the night goggles but not to the naked eye. They also had a dual setting: one which produced a very tight beam and one which released a pulse of energy. The problem with the beams was that a kill required very precise targeting; the pulses did a lot more damage over a wider target area but drew correspondingly more energy from the rifle’s power cell. To conserve energy for the assault on the main camp, Chaqi had ordered the ambush party to only use the beam setting; a decision he was now starting to regret.

  The team had been waiting for his signal and a pattern of laser beams criss-crossed the hillside towards the patrol. Most of the main group went down in that initial strike but not quietly. Shouts of alarm mingled with howls of anguish and there was even a scattering of return fire as the uninjured dived for cover. Behind him, he heard the point man crash to the ground as Anise drilled a neat hole through the man’s neck.

  Somebody was obviously in radio contact with the camp as shouted commands were starting to be heard coming from that direction. With surprise lost, the urgent objective was to finish off the patrol as quickly as possible. Chaqi switched the setting on his rifle to pulse and indicated that Anise should do the same. With a whispered “Cover me”, he dashed down the slope to the outcrop of rock beside the path.

  Jumping down onto the track, he found a Belsi soldier facing away from him and firing up the slope towards the ambush team. At point blank range, the pulse from Chaqi’s rifle blew a hole the size of a dinner plate in the man’s back. Kneeling beside the dead body, he could see another group of survivors crouched behind a rock further along. One of them spotted him and raised his rifle in Chaqi’s direction, only to be flung backwards in a bloody heap as a pulse from Anise took him full in the face.

  Chaqi fired into the centre of the group and was rewarded by a blast as a power cell on one of their weapons exploded and body parts flew in all directions. Making sure the infrared refle
ctor that identified him, was clearly visible to the ambush team on the slope above him, he crept cautiously along the track. This group were all clearly dead but he could still hear moaning coming from further down the path. Suddenly the sound cut off and the hillside went deathly quiet. He peered round the corner of the rock and was hugely relieved to see the familiar figure of Rhamani standing squarely in the centre of the track with his assault rifle cradled in his arms.

  The team overlooking the camp had opened fire as soon as the alarm was raised, picking off targets quite successfully until one of the Belsi officers had the presence of mind to kill the floodlights. Without any night vision goggles, the team had to break off the attack and duck down under cover until their eyes adjusted. However, the ambush team who did have goggles, could now turn their attention to the main camp while Chaqi called his own small team together.

  “Anise, strip the bodies of any usable weapons and particularly night vision equipment. Issue that to anybody who doesn’t have any and send out a three man team to circle around the perimeter. I want to make sure we eliminate any sentries who haven’t pulled back into the main camp.

  “Osman, blow the charges in the tunnel. We’ll try to trap them in that section where they went in and then seal the hole that the drill made, so that they can’t get out. Rhamani and I will take the explosives and start making our way down into the camp.”

  As they crested the ridge they could see bodies littering the length and breadth of the valley floor. There was still some spirited resistance coming from the rocks on the nearside of the valley and they had to move carefully from cover to cover on their way down. The Belsian soldiers were pinned down behind the rocks that were sheltering them but already some of Chaqi’s team were circling wide to get a better angle of fire.

  The night goggles were also picking up a number of warm bodies, hiding behind the drilling equipment. “Technicians”, Chaqi thought to himself as he pointed them out to Rhamani.

  They had been forced to take an indirect route down the hillside and had been trapped themselves for several minutes as one of the Belsi spotted their movement and laid down a pattern of fire around their particular rock. It was only the approach of one of the resistance fighters from the opposite direction that caused the soldier to reassess his priorities and allowed them to move again.

  They reached the valley floor and sprinted towards the entrance hole, just as one of the search team was hauling himself back up the rope. A blast from Rhamani’s rifle knocked him back down the hole again and had the added benefit of shearing off the rope at ground level. At the same time, there was a rumble of movement beneath the ground and a few seconds later, a plume of dust spewed upwards out of the hole. The tunnel had been sealed at the far end.

  Chaqi knelt down behind a crate ready to provide covering fire as Rhamani dropped a couple of grenades down the hole. The twin blasts drowned out the shouts of alarm from below and another plume of dust was thrown up. By this time, the technicians were all shouting excitedly and heads were turning towards them as Rhamani took a satchel charge from his rucksack and attached it to a length of rope. He flicked the switch on the detonator and flung himself flat to dangle the charge over the edge of the hole. This explosion was much larger and the ground trembled again as the surface around the hole sank into a depression and the opening itself vanished.

  A blast from the rocks hit the front of the crate, knocking both it and Chaqi backwards. Rhamani grabbed him by the collar to haul him to his feet and they scrambled through the dust cloud to reach the more solid shelter of the drilling equipment. A group of five terrified technicians was already hiding there and raised their hands high in the air as the two fighters came round the corner. Impatiently Rhamani waved his assault rifle in their direction and Chaqi shouted at them in fluent Belsi to “run, keep running and don’t look back”. The technicians stared at them as though they could not believe their ears but when Rhamani raised his rifle again, they turned as one and took to their heels.

  Quickly now they both dropped their packs to the ground and began to attach the demolition charges. The sounds of battle were diminishing from the area of the rocks and Chaqi risked a quick glance around the edge of the drill. A group of Belsi were kneeling in the dirt with their hands clasped behind their heads and surrounded by jubilant resistance fighters. Suddenly a laser beam flashed through the night and one of Chaqi’s men went down screaming and clutching his shoulder.

  Chaqi whirled around as the other resistance fighters dived for cover. The beam had come from the hillside behind him, probably from one of the original sentries. He scanned the slope looking for a heat signature as some of the fighters began to return fire, targeting any suspicious looking shadows and trying to push the sniper into an incautious move. The night goggles, however, were not picking up anything until a series of three pulses in quick succession came from even further up the slope; Anise’s perimeter patrol. The unfortunate sentry broke from cover, glowing rather more than a human body normally should, and was immediately hit by multiple fire from below. The resultant heap of ruined flesh burned brightly for a few seconds, visible even to the naked eye.

  That proved to be the last of the opposition and the fighters rounded up the prisoners again and herded them towards the centre of the valley floor. Leaving Rhamani to finish off the explosives, Chaqi went to ask about casualties. Anise was in the centre of the group and he put his arm round her and gave her a quick hug.

  “We’ve got one man down with a shattered leg and some nasty looking burns,” she told him. “There are two others with laser injuries but they can both walk. For the rest, it’s minor cuts and bruises, mostly from stone chips where rocks exploded.”

  “See if you can find a stretcher. If not we’ll have to improvise one but we’re not leaving anyone behind.”

  “What about this lot?” one of the other fighters asked, indicating the prisoners.

  There were twelve of them including the technicians who they had just released, but who had obviously not run fast or far enough.

  “Any of them sniffers?”

  “No they’re all accounted for,” Anise replied. “Officers too. This lot’s just grunts and techies.”

  “Strip them to their underwear and tie them up. Make sure you take those thought collars off them.”

  “Why don’t we just kill them?” Rhamani asked casually, as he joined the group. “The charges are all set by the way.”

  “Because if we start executing prisoners, they will retaliate against the nearest villages. They won’t come after us, any more than they already are, but they will take it out on the villagers and…”

  Chaqi broke off as his communicator bleeped twice. He raised it to his ear and listened for a few seconds.

  “Flitters have just taken off from the landing field; four of them, fully loaded. We have less than thirty minutes. Take everything you can carry and destroy the rest. Rhamani, set those charges to blow in twenty. We’ve done everything we can here.”

  ***

  Rachel stood on the tiny balcony overlooking a tiny patch of ‘garden’ and slowly released a long sigh. Beyond the garden wall was another villa similar to this one and then the roofs of smaller houses stretching away into the hazy distance. She knew it was all an illusion, of course. The walls of the dome were made of a substance that gave the impression of a distant horizon but were in reality, less than twenty minutes brisk walk away.

  She missed the view from her apartments in Marmoros where she could look beyond the city walls to the lush valley with the tumultuous river along one side and the mountains all around. She missed seeing the farmers working in the fields and the continuous flow of traffic to and from the massive gates at the entrance to the valley. She missed seeing the sky with the clouds moving briskly in the breeze and the birds swooping and soaring as they called to one another. There were no birds under the dome.

  Most of all, she missed Jeren. She missed the feel of his arms a
round her, his breath warm against her cheek. She missed being around him, being able to talk to him whenever she wanted, not just on matters of state but on a whole host of inane subjects. And she missed the more intimate words of comfort when they were alone together. Yes they could still contact each other via the amulet that he wore constantly, but there were time differences that they did not always get right and more than a few aborted contacts in the middle of important meetings.

  She had refused to stay in the quarters allocated to her in the administrative complex. There had been a furious row about suitability and security which had only ended when she stamped her foot in such a way that all the paintings hanging on the walls of the audience chamber suddenly came loose and crashed to the floor. Another talent she did not know she had.

  So they found her this villa. It was unoccupied they told her. But by this time she was suspicious of all such pronouncements and decided to make her own enquiries. She found the family she had displaced and summoned them to a private audience. Gilka and Hari were a lovely young couple with a bright, curly headed, two year old son. As soon as she saw them, Rachel gave them back their house. At first they refused, saying that they were quite comfortable staying with relatives, but when she insisted, they invited her to stay with them as a house guest.

  It had caused some complications with accommodation being required for her security team and the constant to-ing and fro-ing of the administrative staff but it worked reasonably well. And, Rachel thought, looking down at where little Moas was digging happily in one of the flower beds, it was a million times better than her utilitarian quarters in the administration block.

  Hari had insisted that Rachel take the main suite of rooms and, with a little reorganisation, it had been turned into a functional reception room with a smaller sleeping chamber attached. Hari had also taken on the role of her personal secretary and proved to have a deft touch in dealing with many of the more mundane demands on her time.