by J E Loddon
As I approached, I saw two bodies on the sand. One that Antonia had hit, and one that had either been taken out by Antonia or Cal. Gunfire continued to explode from within the forest, but I couldn’t see anyone moving. I cautiously approached our initial position. I caught a blur of movement out of the corner of my eye, and pulled my rifle into firing position. My opponent was faster, but luckily, someone else was faster still. The enemy soldier caught a shot full in the face, and fell back. The shock stunned me for a second, then I turned towards where the shot had come from. I could still see no-one, so I crept forward, and literally tripped over Cal. He was still crouched down by the log where he’d been resting his rifle, but was on the opposite side of it now.
“Stay down!” he growled at me, as I tried to pick myself up. I crawled over to his position, laying down on my elbows beside him.
“Where is everyone?” I whispered. He nodded towards the area where the grenade had gone off. I looked at the ground, and saw a grey-clad figure face down on the floor. It was Tasia. I started to get up again.
“No,” Cal hissed at me.
“I have to help her,” I hissed back, pausing.
“You’ll be no help to her dead!” he replied. “Not out into the open,” he continued, and nodded back towards the beach.
I crept back out to the beach, where the enemy soldiers’ bodies lay, and continued on down the beach towards the west. Once I reached a section where the forest was reasonably dense, I went back in. I crept slowly through the trees, scarcely daring to breathe. Gun shots were more intermittent now. I didn’t know who was dead, and who was just playing hide and seek. After about a minute, I heard a gun fire almost right next to me. I rounded a tree, and saw an enemy soldier shooting at a figure behind a tree. I raised my rifle, and shot at him. In my haste, my aim was way off. The soldier turned towards me, and started to fire. He spasmed suddenly, though, and stopped firing for a second. I shot back at him, catching him in the chest, and he fell. Casper appeared from behind the tree.
“Good teamwork,” he told me.
“Tasia’s down,” I said. He nodded grimly.
“I’m trying to circle back around to her,” he said, “but there seem to be people everywhere.”
We made our way back towards the area where Tasia’s body lay together, covering each other. I heard rustling from behind, and dived down behind a tree. I heard gun fire from behind me, and tried to get into a firing position without exposing myself. I could see Casper and an enemy soldier wrestling with each other, Casper trying to push the hostile’s gun away from his body. I got ready to fire, but couldn’t risk hitting Casper. I considered running towards him, but hesitated, not wanting to expose myself. A grey figure suddenly flew down onto the struggling pair from above, and the three of them sprawled onto the floor. The new figure, which I realised was Antonia, got up first, throwing herself down onto the hostile’s fallen gun. He pulled himself up and took a step towards her. His attention was taken by the sounds of a gun shot. Casper had missed the hostile from close range, and was now struggling to lever a second bullet into the chamber of Antonia’s sniper rifle. The enemy soldier started to move towards him, but Antonia shot him several times with his own gun before he could take a step.
Casper threw Antonia's rifle to her, and picked up his own gun. Wordlessly, we all moved again in Tasia’s direction. When we reached her body, Casper fell to her side, whilst Antonia covered him. I, however, could make out the sound of Liberty’s scatter gun from within the forest, and without a moment’s thought, I ran towards the sound. I dodged around trees, stumbling over roots as I moved quickly, deeper into the forest. It took me a full minute of rapid movement until I reached the source of the sounds. Liberty, gun no longer in hand, was involved in a fight with two enemy soldiers. She pulled one into a headlock as he started to get up from the ground, then aimed a powerful kick at the midsection of the other as he stalked towards her. As he bent over, she released the first soldiers head and struck the second one with an elbow, knocking his helmet flying across the forest floor. I could see now that the soldier appeared to be female, her face wrinkled and reddish-purple.
Liberty advanced on her as she tried to crawl away, kicking her in the head. The first soldier was back up though, and threw himself at Liberty, sending them both flying. I arrived as they hit the floor, and raised my rifle up, hitting the first soldier in the head with the butt of my rifle as hard as I could. His helmet must have absorbed most of the blow, as he was only momentarily stunned. He tried to get up towards me, and I hit him again with the rifle butt, full in the face this time. He fell back, visor cracked open now, revealing a face similarly coloured and wrinkled to the female soldier. Something hit me from behind, and I fell forward onto the floored hostile. As I turned to face the source of the blow, I caught a glimpse of the female soldier as she stomped down towards my jaw. I managed to block the blow with an arm, and felt blinding pain shoot through it. She attempted to stomp me gain, but Liberty knocked her flying with a shoulder tackle. Both fell to the floor, and Liberty screamed out in pain. The female hostile was the first to get up, and had found Liberty’s scatter gun. She pulled it up into firing position. I grabbed my rifle in my hands, still hanging from its strap around my body. I pulled the trigger immediately, and traced the fire across the ground as I lifted it towards the hostile. The bullets tore through her before she was able to get a shot off.
The remaining hostile grabbed me around the neck from behind, trying to choke me. I struggled to manoeuvre my rifle into position, but couldn’t bring it around, as he shook me from side to side. My vision started to blur, and I could just make out Liberty picking up her scatter gun. She pointed it towards my direction, and as I started to feel light-headed, I realised I was in the way. With one last, great effort, I planted my feet on the ground, and pushed backwards. The motion took the enemy soldier by surprise, and we both careened backwards to the ground. As his grip loosened, I rolled to the side with all my strength. I continued rolling, trying to get as far out of the way as possible. I heard the scatter gun fire. Then again. As I hit a tree, stopping my roll, I chanced a glance back towards my enemy. He lay still on the forest floor, blood seeping from multiple bullet wounds.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Liberty pulled me up off of the ground. Her pull felt weaker than usual, though she still had the strength to yank me up to a standing position.
“Thanks,” I said hoarsely, rubbing my throat.
“No worries, bud,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “Thank you.”
She looked grey. Somehow, she’d managed to fight off two enemy soldiers by herself, for a while at least, despite carrying an injury. She really was tough. We made our way carefully back through the forest to where I’d left the others. There were no more sounds of gun fire, though we continued to approach with caution. We stepped through the trees, and saw Antonia and Casper knelt on the floor besides Tasia. She was now face up, sitting back against a tree. There were no visible wounds, though she was sitting in an odd position. Forgetting caution, Liberty ran towards them, falling onto her knees besides Tasia.
“Are you OK?” she asked, worry in her voice. Tasia started to nod, then caught herself, wincing.
“I’ll be OK,” she replied.
“What happened?” Liberty asked, looking at Casper.
“The grenade blast,” he replied, “she couldn’t get far enough clear.”
“Where’s Cal?” Liberty said.
“I’m here,” came the gruff reply. Cal was still hunched at his log. “Have we still got active hostiles?” he asked, looking around.
“I don’t know,” Liberty admitted. “We need to stay alert.” I checked my rifle. Two bullets left. I didn’t have much spare ammunition. I loaded my rifle, then offered up my two spare cartridges. Casper took one. Tasia was in no condition to be firing her rifle, and Cal declined. Liberty and Antonia were carrying their own ammo. Liberty had nothing left, though Antonia still had about a dozen sn
iper rounds. We were back where we’d started, hunched in the same cover we’d been in earlier, though with the blast damage, it wasn’t quite so well camouflaged.
“That happens again,” Casper said, “we’re done.” Antonia started to climb back into the tree.
“No,” Liberty said to Antonia. “If the transport comes, we’re gonna need help to get these two onto it. We won’t have any time to lose.”
“Hey!” Cal said, realising he was one of the two. “I’ve only got a bad arm, my legs are fine. You’ll probably pass out from blood loss before I become a liability.” Liberty gave him a puzzled look, then looked down at her wound from earlier. The fight with the two hostiles had clearly caused it to open up, as blood was now trickling from it at a steady stream. She patched it back up as best she could, but it was clear it needed more serious attention now. She sank back down against the same tree that Tasia was using for support.
“Well this is just great,” she said. “The combat is over, but I might just die anyway.”
“No-one’s dying today,” I replied sternly. “We’ve survived this far.” Liberty gave me a wry smile.
“You’ve changed your tune,” she said.
“He thought someone was going to die?” Casper asked accusingly. “Who?” he asked, turning towards me.
“Well..” I stammered. “I didn’t say anyone specific was going to die. I just said, you know… that it was gonna be tough, and I didn’t know if we’d make it.” Casper shook his head at me in mock disappointment. At least, I guessed it was mock. He looked pretty drained. Everyone did. Tasia could barely move. Liberty looked positively grey. Casper hadn’t suffered any wounds, as far as I could tell, but the last couple of days had certainly tested his cool reputation to the limits. He’d actually been positively moody. Antonia looked all right. She’d obviously spent most of the day in trees, saving our butts, but she had jumped out of one to save Casper’s one more time.
“Any sign?” Liberty called over to Cal, though with no real hope in her voice. Cal looked up, then shook his head. I tried to work out how long it had been, but I really had no idea. The time didn’t matter, though. The transport was where the transport was, as with the back-up ship. If it had been called off to extract a squad from a planet at the opposite end of its run, then we could easily be there for another hour or more. “You did good today, team,” Liberty was saying. “Even if we don’t make it out, we took out several enemy installations on only our second mission. That’s not too bad.”
“Yeah. And Milo got his first kill,” Casper pointed out. I winced, feeling no pride in the deaths I’d caused.
“He got the first kill,” Antonia pointed out. “He was the first member of the squad to kill an enemy soldier. That deserves something.”
“Wait,” I said. “No-one killed anyone on the first planet?” Everyone looked at each other, and shook their heads. “How is that possible?” They all shrugged. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t thought about it ‘til then. I’d assumed that in the act of taking out the structure on the first planet, they’d have had to kill someone at some point. Somehow, this made it all so much worse. I’d been the first person on the squad to take a life.
“Knock it off, guys,” Liberty ordered, giving me a concerned look. She knew that whilst most of the others had accepted that killing the enemy was an occupational hazard, I was having a much harder time with the concept. I’d been worried earlier that I would just start taking it in my stride sooner rather than later, but the way I was feeling, I knew that wouldn’t be the case.
“How did this happen?” Casper asked. “We’re not even supposed to be killing people, let alone taking out whole enemy installations. We’re Scouts! We’re just supposed to observe and report,” he continued. “So far, we’ve been saboteurs, an attack team. Search and rescue,” he said, gesturing over to Cal. “The only thing we’ve actually scouted is this mystery facility across the sea, and Milo’s the only Scout that’s actually seen it.”
“Believe me, if we do make it back,” Liberty replied, “that little bit of scouting that Milo did could well be the most important thing we’ll ever do in our time with the Division.”
“Yeah, if Cal doesn’t kill us to keep the information ‘classified’,” Casper pointed out. Cal just glared over at him.
“This is serious!” Liberty told him. “Think about it. This planet. This area of space. It’s not far from our home planets at all, by galactic standards. The enemy is building here. Something big, apparently. That means the enemy is moving in to our back yard. That’s terrifying. If we die here, and the information doesn’t get back to the leaders of the Division, they might not be able to do anything to stop it before it’s too late. We have to get back, so they can stop the enemy establishing a foothold.” She looked around at us grimly. “If the enemy establish a base here, on this planet, it could well mean death and destruction for all of our homes. It’s our responsibility to protect our people. That means it’s our responsibility to make it home.” She closed her eyes, the exertion of the speech proving a little too much for her. We all sat, slumped down, deep in thought.
The enemy could still attack us from any side. We were exhausted, low on strength and ammunition. There was no sign of the transport shuttle. Whatever the full details of Cal’s classified mission were, we were in no doubt that it was crucial that he complete it.
“Maybe we should move,” Casper suddenly suggested.
“That’s crazy,” Liberty said. “The shuttle is on its way. If we move now, we might never make it back to the ship.”
“We have another extraction rocket,” Casper pointed out. “The enemy knows we’re around here. There might be boats on their way here, or there might be more hostiles hiding in the trees around us. How many did we kill?” he continued. “Five, six? How many were approaching us? We have no idea.”
“If we fire off an extraction rocket from somewhere else, they’ll still see it,” Liberty pointed out. “We won’t be any better off. Besides, you said there weren’t any other flat areas around here,” she reminded him.
“Well, that wasn’t entirely true,” Casper pointed out sheepishly. Liberty shot him a look.
“What do you mean?” she asked him suspiciously.
“Well, there was a clearing, off to the South West,” he replied. Liberty went wide-eyed.
“Why didn’t you tell us that before we shot off the first rocket?” she asked him. “We could have checked out both places, picked the best one!”
“We were in a hurry!” Casper yelled back at her. “We needed to get off the planet as quickly as possible. The other area was a bit of a way away, and you guys were running. I just thought we needed to get out of here as fast as possible.” Liberty slumped down further, rubbing he temples. “I thought it was a defensible position, with the ocean at our backs. I didn’t know there were boats!” he exclaimed, glaring over at Cal.
“It’s not my fault there are boats,” Cal told him. “I didn’t build them.”
“It’s not like we really had time to discuss it,” I pointed out. “We were all in a hurry. I think it’s fair to say everyone just wanted to get the rocket off quickly so we could go home. We screwed up, all of us. It’s too late to change it now. All we can do is decide what the best thing is to do next.”
“No, no. We stay here,” Liberty asserted. “The shuttle is on its way now, we don’t want to confuse the pilot.”
“But he’s not here yet!” Casper retorted. “We still have time.”
“Like you said, Casper, the other area is a way away,” Antonia pointed out. “If the shuttle arrives whilst we’re in transit, we might just miss it all together. The pilot won’t risk coming back if we’re not at the extraction point. Not straight away, anyway.”
“Yeah, and in the mean time,” Liberty chimed in, “we’d be alerting the enemy to our new position by firing up another rocket. Smart…”
“Hey!” Casper yelled. “This isn’t my fault, you know. We’re on
ly here cos this old guy couldn’t fly his ship very well.” Cal sighed, then started to lift himself to his feet. “Oh yeah, what you gonna do old man?” Casper taunted. “You gonna take a swing at me with your only good arm?” Cal didn’t respond, instead walking slowly towards where Casper was sat. I stood up to intercept him. He glared at me.
“Come on,” I said to him. “We need to stick together. He’s just letting off steam. I don’t think he’s coping well.”
“Casper,” Liberty said sternly. “That’s enough. You’re becoming hysterical. We need to sit tight, and see this out. As a team. It’s been a long enough day already.”
“Longest. Day. Ever.” Casper muttered.
“Yeah, and it’s not over yet,” Tasia said to him softly. “You need to calm down. We’re not gonna make it out of here alive if we don’t all work together.”
