by J E Loddon
“OK,” Liberty said, “up the hill. Carefully.”
We made our way up the hill. It wasn’t too steep, and only about six meters high, so we were up within seconds. When we got there, we found a shallow valley, with another long hill on the other side of it. We crossed to the next hill, and saw green grass in front of us, then a variety of shrubbery and trees. It all looked so beautiful. Some birds flew overhead. I had seen birds before, but they’d been black and grey. These were bright blue and yellow, and they soared around in circles over the greenery before us.
“It should be just around another hundred meters,” Casper said, looking at his handheld scanner now. We ran towards the first clump of bushes, and carefully made our way around them. On the other side was a huge, thorny bush, which spanned across at least twenty meters. It wasn’t brown and dirty looking, like the ones on the previous planet. It was dark green, and vibrant.
“We need a pl-” Tasia began, but was interrupted by an almighty explosion which shook the ground beneath our feet, almost deafening me in the process.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The explosion stunned us all. It was so close, and the sound so loud. Earth and other debris flew at us from the other side of the huge bush, which shook violently. My ears were ringing, and for a frightening moment I thought I might have gone death.
“Everyone OK?” Liberty shouted.
“Mwarrh,” I shouted, my attempt at an affirmative.
“We’re too late,” Tasia screamed in horror.
“Pull yourself together,” Liberty shouted at her. “Come on.”
For the second time that day, I found myself running towards an explosion. We raced around the hedge at full sprint, Liberty leading. I had my rifle firmly gripped, not knowing what it was that we’d be running face first into. Liberty was pulling ahead, and disappeared around the curve of the bush for a moment, then we heard a loud clatter, and saw Liberty tumbling over to the side. I caught sight of another figure, and pulled my rifle up, trying to get a good sight on them. They were also tumbling over, having evidently collided with Liberty. I stopped my run, and planted a knee on the floor, holding the rifle’s stock to my shoulder. Pushing back any misgivings I might have about opening fire on a living being, I got ready to shoot. Just in time, I noticed the colouring of the figures armour. I looked closer, and saw a familiar symbol on its shoulder. The armour was different to any that I’d seen on board the Anastasia, but it had clear similarities. The symbol was the logo of the Galactic Division.
Thankfully, everyone else noticed too, and nobody opened fire. The figure pulled itself back up, and grabbed two fairly large pieces of machinery that it had dropped in the collision. I saw now that it was a man. He had short, greying hair, no helmet, and was built like an athlete.
“Pick her up,” he growled over at us, deep, authoritative bass in his voice. I was surprised that Liberty was even still down. She usually took a hit quite well. I took a step towards her, but she had one foot on the floor, and started to push herself up before I could get near.
“Move,” the man ordered, and began to run back the way we’d come. I looked over at Liberty questioningly, not knowing whether I should be listening to his orders, but she still looked dazed. She started a lolloping run in his direction, though, so I followed suit. Casper and Tasia had already taken off after him, apparently not keen to come face to face with whatever had spooked the old man. Antonia was advancing in that direction too, but was facing us, or rather, past us, covering our retreat.
The man was running quickly, and it was a struggle to keep up. He ran over the first hill, and was at the next one before we had topped the first. He kept looking back towards and past us, shouting at us to hurry up. His rifle was slung over his shoulder, with both hands occupied by carrying the machinery, which looked to be weighing him down considerably. If he ran into hostiles, we weren’t close enough to be able to help him quickly enough, and he’d have no way of shooting back at them in time. I glanced across at Liberty, who still looked winded, but she seemed to be running well enough. I tried to quicken my pace, to make up some ground to enable me to offer support to the old guy, but he just seemed to be constantly accelerating. He made it to the tree line, so I stopped worrying about him temporarily, and made sure the rest of us were covered. Antonia had this well in hand, though, and there was no sign of anyone following us. We’d moved pretty quickly.
The cover of the forest hadn’t slowed the man down, though, and he continued to sprint deeper into it. The rest of us started to slow once we’d reached the trees. As we jogged through, we realised the guy was nowhere to be seen. We continued on straight, not knowing if he’d changed direction, or if he’d continued sprinting on in an attempt to circumnavigate the planet. Once it became clear we had completely lost him, we slowed to a walk. Liberty was rubbing her shoulder, and looked like she was in need of a rest. I was about to suggest we stop, when someone jumped out of the trees to our side, rifle in hand. It was so fast, that we didn’t even have time to raise our guns before we realised it was the man.
“Any sign?” he growled at us.
“No-one’s following us,” Antonia informed him. He eyed her doubtfully.
“You sure?” he asked, squinting into the trees we’d just come through.
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Antonia said, frowning at him.
“Well. We’d better keep moving,” he said. “They’ll be looking soon enough.”
“I think we could do with a minute to rest,” I suggested. He narrowed his eyes, and took a step towards me.
“Really?” he asked me. “Thinking clearly hasn’t done you any favours so far.” He looked me over, furrowing his brow. “Where’d you get hit?” he asked me finally.
“What?” I asked in confusion.
“It’s the blood,” Liberty said with a grunt. “You’ve still got that guy’s blood all over you.”
“Hamley’s,” Antonia interjected.
I looked at my hand, seeing the dried blood still caked on my glove. I looked down at my shoulder and arm, the browning stains a reminder of the horror we’d already witnessed that day. The whole time on the ship, talking to the members of the other squad, I’d been covered in the blood of their teammate, not even realising. I felt terrible.
“One minute,” the guy said. “Then we need to move. We need to find somewhere to hole up.”
“Hole up?” Casper repeated. “Screw that, we need to find a clear area so we can call for extraction.”
“Extraction?” the guy said, balking at Casper. “No-one’s getting extracted from here anytime soon.”
“Why the Hell not?” Casper asked him.
“Any ship even comes within sight of this area will get blown out of the sky within seconds,” he told us. “SAMs, two of them. Took down my ship before I could get away.”
“We were lucky we even made it down here, then,” I said.
“Nah, they’re not so good with drop pods,” he replied. “By the time they’ve managed to pick them up, you’ve already smacked head first into the dirt. Damned flying boxes. You’re brave, dropping down in those things, I’ll give you that.”
“We don’t really get a choice,” Casper said dryly. “Well that’s just great. What do we do now?”
“We hole up, like I said,” the man replied.
“What’s the point of ‘holing up’?” Casper asked him. “Sounds like we’re stuck here. Might as well go down shootin’.”
“What’s with this guy?” the man said, looking at me. He turned back to Casper before I responded. “We need to draw up a plan. We’re gonna have to wait ‘til nightfall to take them out. They’ll see us coming from a mile off in this damned sunshine.”
“Take who out?” Casper asked him irritably.
“The SAM sites!” the man replied, throwing his arms up in exasperation. “What unit are you people even with?” he asked us.
“We’re not with a unit yet,” Tasia replied.
“What do you mean,
yet?” he asked her.
“We’re cadets,” Casper told him. The man’s eyes widened.
“Cadets?” he spat out with disdain. “How the Hell am I gonna take out two SAM sites with cadets?!”
“We’re not cadets,” Antonia said firmly. “We’re Scouts. We’ve earned that right at least two times over by now.”
“No,” Liberty said. “We’re cadets, to all intents and purposes.” She pulled herself back up from a sitting position on the ground. “But it doesn’t matter. We’ll take out your targets, old man.”
“Old man?!” the guy shouted incredulously. “You better have some respect, girlie. I may have flown over 100 missions, but I’m still only thirty.”
“You’re thirty?” Tasia cried out in disbelief. “You can’t possibly be thirty.”
“So you’re gonna just take out my targets, are you little girl? Just like that?” he asked, clicking his fingers, ignoring Tasia.
“Sure, why not,” Liberty replied. “We’ve already taken out one enemy facility today, might as well add a couple more.” I could hear the pride in her voice, but she wasn’t grandstanding, she said it matter-of-factly.
The old man narrowed his eyes, and stared at Liberty for a moment, sizing her up. Then he raised his eyebrows slightly, looking slightly impressed.
“OK then,” he said. “Maybe we do have a shot at this.”
“How are we going to take out two missile silos?” Tasia asked. “We have, what?” she looked at me. I held up one finger. “We have one grenade.”
“That’s what these are for,” the man replied, gesturing to the two items of machinery sitting in the bushes.
“They’re explosives?” Casper asked him doubtfully.
“No,” the man said with a snort. “One’s a power regulator, the other’s a dynamic compressor.”
“What the Hell,” Casper asked, “are we gonna do with those?” The man smiled.
“If you know what you’re doing, these things can take out a small village.” Casper baulked at this.
“Right!” Casper said mockingly. “And do you know what you’re doing?”
“Oh yeah,” the man replied. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
The man insisted we get moving, and that we’d been stopped there for far too long already. Liberty seemed to be doing better, with no obvious injuries. The guy wanted to run, but we settled on a fast march. We pointed out several times that we’d been in the forest earlier, and it was impossible to tell where you were going, but the man insisted that he knew where we needed to go. When questioned on this, he pointed out that he’d seen the entire area from the air. This, despite the fact he was shot down pretty quickly, I thought. I wasn’t convinced by his confidence, and I questioned him about what happened when he was shot down. He wasn’t keen on talking at first, saying that it wasn’t too smart to let the enemy know you were coming. Finally, though, he relented. He said he’d actually been flying over the area for a couple of minutes before he was finally shot down. For over a minute, he’d surveyed the area. Then, he’d spotted the telltale signs of smoke coming from two areas on the ground, and the missiles had headed towards him. He’d flown low, trying to avoid the warheads. Unfortunately, though there were lots of hills around the area, none of them were particularly high, so couldn’t provide him with sufficient cover. Further out from there, the area was surrounded by water on both sides. With nowhere to go, and no chance of outrunning the missiles, he’d double backed towards the forest, near the site of his mission. That way, he’d reasoned, he could get one last look at the area, and potentially take out one of the silos in the crash. He hadn’t been able to reach either of them, though, before he’d been hit.
“How long ago was that?” I asked him. He looked at a strap on his forearm. “About eighty minutes,” he said.
“We must have gotten the message as soon as you sent it up,” Tasia said.
“I was amazed someone came so quickly,” the guy said. “I wasn’t sure anyone would be able to pick up the message at all. That’s why I blew up the ship. I held on for as long as I could, once they found me, but there was no way I’d be able to defend the position for more than a few hours. So I set it off to explode, to cover my escape.”
“What was your mission?” Tasia asked him.
“Classified,” he replied.
“Well, what was the target?” Casper asked him.
“Classified,” the man repeated.
“What unit are you with?” Liberty asked him.
“Ditto,” the guy said.
“Can you even tell us what your name is?” Antonia asked dryly.
“Call me Cal,” he replied.
“Is that actually your name?” Casper asked him.
“Classified,” Cal said.
“So, wait, it is your name? Or it’s short for classified? I can’t tell,” Casper said, and started chuckling. Cal just glared at him.
We carried on walking for what seemed like hours, through dense forest. Every time I was about to suggest we stop, I caught myself, and pressed on regardless. I offered to take one of the pieces of machinery Cal was carrying, but he declined. I offered to take Liberty’s gun so that she didn’t have to carry the weight, but she just glared at me, horrified at the thought of not having her weapon. Casper offered to let me carry his scanner, but this time it was me declining. Eventually, we came to a clearing in the forest. There were some fallen trees in there, but no sign of whatever it was that had knocked them down. It was good to sit down on the logs, taking the weight off of my legs and feet. I tried to take my boots off, but my feet were too swollen, and they wouldn’t budge. We rested for about half an hour, then Cal started to get antsy again.
“We need to go over this plan,” he said to us.
“Well, what is the plan?” Tasia asked him.
“We need to take out the SAM sites with these components,” he said. “They know I’m here. We don’t know if they know that you guys are here. They’ll be looking for me, though, which means they may well have come across your pod. I don’t suppose you hid it?” he asked. We all shook our heads. “No, of course you didn’t,” he said.
“How are we gonna blow up the SAM sites with those things?” Casper asked him.
“I’ll show you how,” Cal said. “We remove the safety cut-offs, so that they overload. I can get them prepared before we set off, but I can’t fully arm them. Otherwise, if they get hit during a firefight, they’ll be able to extract our remains with a vacuum nozzle.”
“Nice,” Liberty said dryly, wrinkling her nose.
“So, we escort you to the SAM site, cover you whilst you blow it up, then do the same at the next one,” Tasia said.
“No, that’s not gonna work,” he said. “The sites will be guarded, but they’ll also have people out looking for me. If we take out one of the sites, they’ll shift everyone over to the other one. Then, we’ll never get near it,” he continued.
“How are we going to find these sites?” Casper said. “Will the scanner even pick them up?”
“Only if we get close enough,” Cal admitted. “They’ll be underground. But I know where the sites are, so that shouldn’t be a problem.”
“How exactly do you know where they are?” Casper asked him.
“Because,” replied Cal, “I saw them from the air.” Cal looked at Casper as though he were stupid. Casper looked across at me with a doubtful look on his face. It also seemed to me a bit much to believe that Cal could have disseminated all this information during a two-minute flyby, but we didn’t have a choice but to trust his judgement.
“How are we going to destroy the second site?” Tasia asked Cal.
“We’ll have to take both out at the same time,” he said. Tasia’s eyes widened.
“Wait. You mean we have to blow one of them up?” she said.
“Of course,” Cal replied. “I’ll show you how to set off the components to explode. It’s pretty easy to do, really. It just takes a few minutes.”
> “It doesn’t sound like something that would be easy,” Tasia said doubtfully.
“Nah, it’ll be fine. I just have to carefully show someone the steps. We can do it now. Who’s your tech person?” he asked.
“That’d be Casper,” Liberty said with a wry smile, nodding towards Casper. Cal looked at Liberty, then across at Casper, and his shoulders slumped.
“That’s just dandy,” he said. He shook his head in exasperation. “Is there no-one else?” he asked desperately. Liberty started chuckling.
“I’ll watch too,” I said. “I worked with machinery back home, and we’ll need a back-up.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
