EDEN (The Union Series) (7 page)

‘Yeah.’

‘Who’s your
commander?’ he asked, his eyes darting across the room.

‘I am,’ I replied. 

He raised an eyebrow.
‘You’ve done the recce commanders course?’

‘Yeah.’ 

He nodded
respectfully. Although he outranked me as a lowly lancejack, we both did the
same job commanding a recce section. My recce commander’s course qualified me
as a full corporal, even though I was still too junior to promote. The only way
to accelerate the process would be to return to normal soldiering within the
rifle companies, and hope to be sent on the Junior Commanders Course, the
follow-up to the course that qualified me as a Lance Corporal. Even if I didn’t
do that and remained in recce, I was likely to do well - that is if the
sergeant major didn’t decide to throw me out.

‘The whole OP screen
has been withdrawn,’ the corporal said, ‘all the way across the forest. Only a
few of our boys are still out there, just to keep track of the Loyalist
advance.’

‘Yeah,’ I agreed
awkwardly, wanting to avoid the topic. I didn’t want the man to know that it
probably had something to do with me.

‘Our boss is back
here,’ he continued, lowering his voice even more. ‘What about yours?’

‘He’s back here as
well.’

‘All the recce bosses
are back here, apparently,’ he whispered. ‘Something’s going on.’

I frowned. ‘Like
what?’

He pointed between
his legs. ‘Gristle, not crystal, mate! But if I was to place a bet down, I’d
say we’re getting ready to go in.’

‘Go in?’

‘I reckon we’re gonna
punch into Edo, to try to stop the Loyalists before this whole thing boils over.’

‘No, I don’t think so
… Brigade won’t even send a single company of troopers into Edo for fear of
pissing off the Alliance. There’s no way they’ll get involved in this. Besides,
we were fighting Free Edo Army guerrillas only months ago.’

He smiled knowingly.
‘Don’t be so sure, lad. You’re right - we’re worried about pissing off the
Alliance. There’s a whole fleet waiting just on the edge of the system, and a
whole garrison poised to load up on the outer planets. But what do you think
will piss them off more - us getting involved, or us letting the Loyalists
slaughter half the people in the Bosque? It’s a bloodbath in there. You’ve
probably seen it yourself.’

‘Yeah,’ I replied
grimly, ‘I’ve seen.’

‘That’s the problem.
The Alliance can’t see the difference between us and the Loyalists. Europa is a
Union province to them, even if it is a rogue state run by a bunch of
mentalists. We might as well be doing all of the killing ourselves.’

‘So you reckon
they’ll risk an all-out war and send us all in?’

‘I’d put money on it,
mate. Why break the habit of a lifetime?’

Weary eyes glazed
over as we were subjected to endless mandatory presentations, all of which were
repeats. I was pretty sure that I could recite them all word for word. The
theme was mostly the same: dos and don’ts in Paraiso; the importance of safe
sex; the fact that the fighting was in the Bosque and not in the local bars and
nightclubs.

Sat in the dark at
the back of the room, I took little interest in the presentation, or the battle
my men were clearly fighting to stay awake, their heads lolling from side to
side.

Instead I mentally
prepared myself for what I knew was coming after our briefings - trauma
counselling. I dreaded it, because the trauma counsellor wielded a weapon I
feared more than any saucer or powered suit: the ability to send me packing
back to Earth. There was no way anybody was sending me back, not if we were
about to go to war.

I lied to the counsellor,
telling him what I knew he wanted to hear. Over time I had shared my
experiences with others, talking through what had happened during the war and
during my second short tour of New Earth. The nightmares had become less
frequent, as I had been told they would, and I had come to terms with my grief.
War was hell, but I had found my peace with God.

But the nightmares
hadn’t stopped completely, and if anything the ones I did have had got worse.
The mutilated corpses of my friends tormented me through the night, now joined
by my old platoon sergeant, Ev, whose wife I had ordered killed by his own best
friend. Black, accusing eyes stared coldly into my soul, searing my insides.
How
could you, Andy? How could you?

Sometimes I would
wake up with a jolt, my heart pounding and my body soaked in sweat, the images
of my bloody past still burnt into the back of my retinas. For me life was a
misery, but the nights were always the worst. Whoever said that you had to die
to go to hell was wrong, because I was already there, with nothing left to do
but crack on with it in the hope that eventually things might get better, or I would
die in the process. I surrounded myself with my work, obsessing over it,
because the busier I kept my mind, the less my past could haunt me.

My biggest problem
was that fear of the nightmares could prevent me from sleeping at all, and I
needed rest in order to do my job effectively. In order to maintain a reasonable
sleep pattern I knew that I needed to be tired, and by tired, I mean exhausted.
I would go to the gym right before bed, thrashing my body so that I would drop
into deep sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. Some might say that late gym
sessions were unhealthy, others might not, but it worked for me.

Fortunately the
containment centre had its own gym. That night I worked out long into the
evening, my body drenched in sweat as I attacked punch bags and exercised my
muscles, until every last fibre screamed for me to stop.

Utterly focused, I ignored
the interest that my workout drew from around the gym. Every punch and every
kick was a vent for the pain that burned inside of me, like a valve releasing
pressure. It was how I got by.

Finally, completely exhausted,
I collapsed onto the gym mats, my chest heaving as my body fought to return
oxygen into my muscles.

‘Corporal Moralee,’ a
familiar voice greeted me, and I lifted my head. It was Mr Barkley, the recce platoon
commander and my old boss from the invasion of New Earth.

‘Alright, Boss?’

Mr Barkley smirked.
‘Relaxing on the first day back, I see?’

I grunted. ‘This
is
how I relax, Boss.’

He gave a small nod.
‘Fair enough. How are the lads?’

With the last
remaining strength I had, I picked myself up from the mats, wiping the sweat
away from my brow.

I considered the
question. ‘They’re fine. I think Gritt was a bit of a shock, but they know he’s
alive. I think they’re just looking forward to getting out of here and seeing
him in hospital.’

‘Yes, they’ll have
plenty of time to do that. Gritt was in a bad way initially, the dart that went
through his shoulder did a lot of damage, especially to his lower intestine.
He’s lucky he’s not shitting out of a bag!’

‘The lads took good
care of him,’ I agreed, glad to hear that he would survive. I had no doubt that
the doctors and medics did a fine job putting my trooper back together, but it
was the lads in the section who had kept him alive long enough to get that far.

The young officer
nodded. ‘Yes, they did, of that I have no doubt.’ He regarded me for a second,
and then his eyes narrowed inquisitively. ‘How are you, Andy?’

It always felt
strange when the platoon commander addressed me by my first name. Mr Barkley
had warmed to me as soon as I arrived in the platoon, I guess because he felt
some connection with me after serving together during the war. He commanded a
platoon that was known to operate in a more relaxed manner than the traditional
rifle platoon, but I still found it awkward, preferring the sergeant major’s no
nonsense attitude.

I shrugged, ‘I’m
alright, Sir.’

‘You made a call on
the ground,’ he said, his voice hardening. ‘You had nobody else to turn to, so
you made a call, right or wrong?’

‘The sergeant major
thinks it was wrong.’

Mr Barkley laughed.
‘The sergeant major hasn’t sat in an OP with a suit firing next to it. You made
a call, and deep down he knows that. Who’s to say what might have happened if
you simply sat there. Would you be here right now? Who knows? What I need to
know, is whether or not you feel that you’re OK to crack on …?’

My stomach twisted.
‘Sir?’

He raised his hands
defensively. ‘Relax, I’m not about to get rid of you! Not if you don’t want me
to. Look, Andy, I don’t care why the fourth battalion sent you away. All I know
is that you were one of the top students on the Recce Course, and subsequently
the Recce Commanders Course as well. You were sent here because you’re the
cream of the crop, and we need only the best because of the nature of the
theatre we’re working in. But I don’t want to push you over the edge …’

‘You won’t, Sir.’ I jabbed
a thumb over my shoulder. ‘I want to be out there, doing my job. I’d rather be
there than here.’

He stared at me for a
moment, as if considering my response, then finally his smile returned. ‘I thought
you’d say that. Just remember, any dramas, any issues you want to talk about, my
door is always open.’

I wondered who the
boss had been speaking to. Had the counsellors told him that I was one to
watch, or was he unhappy with my performance on the ground? I decided not to
ask, in case I didn’t like the answer.

‘I’m alright, Boss,’
I insisted, forcing a smile. ‘Honestly.’

‘Good. Because we
have something big coming our way.’

My body stiffened. ‘Big?’

‘Very big,’ he
replied. ‘Big enough that I want all of my commanders ready to go.’

I realised that he
wasn’t going to give me any more information, not now anyway. The gym was no
place to discuss future recce tasks, and I doubted the boss would want to share
information until after our short break in the city. Alcohol loosened tongues,
and although Paraiso was safe to walk at night, people were always listening.
Alliance spies lurked everywhere, or so we were told, preying upon drunken
troopers in the hope they might let slip valuable information.

‘We’ll talk about it
soon,’ Mr Barkley said. ‘But for now, all I want you to do is rest, and unwind.
Relax for a bit, Andy.’

‘I will, Sir,’ I
replied. I planned to spend the next two days training and preparing my kit for
redeployment.

Appearing
unconvinced, the boss looked me up and down. ‘My God, you’ve turned into a mean
looking bastard.’

‘New Earth makes you
grow up quick,’ I said gloomily.

He gave a sad sigh.
‘Yes. Yes, it does.’

Sometimes I sensed
that Mr Barker suffered as I did as a result of the war, and like me he had
nobody he felt he could talk to. It was a lonely life being a section
commander, but being an officer must have been worse. Recce or not, there was a
line drawn between the two of us that couldn’t be crossed.

I waited while the
boss stared blankly down at my feet. ‘Anything else, Sir?’

He took the hint,
jolting out of his trance. ‘No, no, that’s it, Andy. I will leave you be. Have
a good two days, and I will see you when you report back.’

‘I look forward to
it, Boss.’

With that, the
platoon commander turned and made his way out of the gym. I watched him
negotiating his way around the equipment, thinking about what had been said
between us. Obviously the boss was concerned about my mental well-being, enough
to want to bring it up in conversation, but at least he wasn’t angry about my
decision to abandon my OP.

But what was the ‘
something
big’
? I remembered my conversation with the Welsh recce commander during
the holograms. Maybe he was right, and we really were going in. My patrol had
witnessed the Loyalists carrying out an action against a civilian target. If
the rogue army had turned upon the civilian population of the Bosque, how would
the Alliance respond, watching from the shadows? The Union couldn’t allow
genocide to occur on Eden - the global and even galactic implications could be
catastrophic.

The Loyalists were a
dogmatic military and political machine, so transfixed upon the ‘superiority’
of their Union heritage that they refused to even listen to the Union itself. They
had transformed the northern province of Europa from a peaceful Union province
into a rogue state that fuelled their hate filled crusade into the Bosque. Talk
wasn’t an option. Sanctions didn’t work either, for although tough trade
restrictions were already imposed it was well known that the Russians allowed
materials and goods to freely out of the province, and probably sold Europa produced
goods back on to the Union anyway. The rhetoric was there, but the reality was
very different. Money was money.

The only tool the Union
had left to wield was military might.

That was it, I
thought, we were going in, and this time we were going the whole way. Once
again, the Union was going to war, and I was going with them.