EDEN (The Union Series) (8 page)

We were released from
the containment facility early in the morning, handed back our equipment, and
allowed to check ourselves into the local barracks. The section rapidly spilled
out into the city, disappearing in the time it took me to change out of my
combats and into my fatigues.

I spent much of the
day wandering the streets of the various city domes, marvelling at the
magnificent display of wealth and power. It hurt my neck to look up at the tips
of some of the buildings, standing several kilometres high, each one home to
countless interplanetary corporations.

There was no doubt in
my mind that Paraiso had profited from the decades of fighting to the west.
While Edo and Europa bickered over scraps in the Bosque, the rich Union
province traded freely with the neighbouring continents and Earth, protected by
its colonial masters. It sat atop vast mineral deposits, since its borders had
been altered at Edo’s expense after the Alliance was forced off the planet.

It was stupid,
really. In stripping Edo of its mineral wealth, Paraiso had made its hostile
neighbour weak, making it an easy target for the Loyalists in the north. The
Loyalists, having been allied to the Union during the war years ago, believed
that Edo had been let off too easily, staking a claim on the Bosque. Now the
two provinces were at war, and eventually Paraiso would be sucked in as well.
Perhaps their greed would be their undoing, I thought.

Eventually, after
several hours of wandering, I found a quiet park on the edge of the giant
crater, and a solitary bench that overlooked the entire city.

Birds chirped from
within the tree branches, singing sweet songs that reminded me of home. Paraiso
had imported them from Earth, of course, since no creature could survive
outside the atmospheric domes. Only the plants could thrive in the harsh toxic
atmosphere, and even they had been genetically altered centuries ago. The birds
were just another display of the provincial wealth.

It was peaceful there
in the park, sat overlooking the awesome metropolis that sprang out of the
crater, but there was something sinister about it that turned my stomach. How
could these people live like this, when others were dying less than a hundred
kilometres away?

I don’t belong here,
I thought, I belong in the Bosque. Wherever there was fighting, that was where
I was meant to be.

I suddenly felt a
presence beside me, and spun around to see a young girl standing next to the
bench. She took a step back in surprise at my sudden movement.

Recovering her
composure quickly, she smiled at me sweetly. ‘Hi.’

I frowned at the
disturbance to my solitude. ‘Can I help you?’

She held her smile,
despite my brusque response, one hand fiddling with the golden hair that flowed
over her shoulders. She was pretty - I would have to have been blind not to
notice - and probably in her early twenties, not that it was relevant. I wanted
a rare moment of peace and quiet, and she was ruining it.

‘I saw you walking
around the city,’ she continued in a strong Paraiso accent, ‘and just wondered
if you’d like for someone to show you around?’

There was no way the
girl had followed me all over the city on her own, I thought, her friends were
probably nearby. Where were we? At school?

‘No, thanks,’ I
replied, ‘I’d rather be left alone.’

The smile faded. ‘Are
you sure? I know …’

‘I’m pretty sure,’ I
cut in, shocking her into silence. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have said it.’

With that I stood,
walking across the grass to make a quick exit. I had been with women before, it
wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do, but I just wanted to be left alone.

‘Andy, you unsociable
bastard!’

I cringed, coming to
a halt just outside the gate to the barracks. I recognised the voice shouting
out from behind me - it was Myers, his confidence fuelled by alcohol. I could
almost touch the gate, I was so close, and I could see the whites in the conscript
guard’s eyes. I was tempted to simply keep walking, but I knew that I had to
respond, I couldn’t be seen to run away from my own section.

I turned, seeing both
Myers and Skelton clutching takeaway food they had found somewhere nearby.

I forced a smile. ‘How’s
it going?’

‘Not bad,’ Skelton
replied, taking a massive bite from some kind of greasy mess wrapped in foil.
‘You coming out?’

‘I might do later …’
I lied.

‘Come on,’ Myers beckoned
insistently. ‘You can’t have the whole section out on the drink while you stay
in camp being boring!’

I desperately sought
an excuse to make my escape, but couldn’t think of anything that would get the
pair of them to let me go. My men already thought that I was losing the plot,
and hiding away from them wouldn’t help.

‘Don’t be a bell end …’
Skelton said, as though his words added weight to their argument.

I sighed. ‘Fine. But
only a couple.’

Bars in Paraiso were
no different from anywhere else I had been, although the alcohol brands were
different. I sipped at my drink, trying to make conversation with the drunken
members of my section. They were in good spirits, having been told that Gritt
had stabilised and would make a full recovery.

‘Here’s to Gritt,’
Puppy held up a glass of oily green liquid, swaying precariously on his
barstool. ‘May he forever shit out the hole on the side of his arse for leaving
Eden early!’

The lads cheered,
clinking glasses together in their unsympathetic toast. As they did so somebody
caught my eye further along the bar, and I growled as I realised who it was.

I rolled my eyes up
to the ceiling. ‘Really?’

‘What?’ Myers asked
from where he sat beside me.

I nodded toward the
girl staring at me from the far side of the bar. ‘Her. She’s been following
me.’

The young trooper
followed my eyes and a grin spread across his face. ‘Well that’s not bad going,
is it? Alliance spy, is she?’

I glanced at him
irritably. He was suggesting that she was interested only in using me as a
source of intelligence, and that a girl like that could never be genuinely
attracted to me.

‘Are you gonna go and
speak to her?’

‘I’ve already spoken
to her,’ I said gruffly. ‘I told her to leave me alone.’

Myers gasped as he
leant back from his stool. ‘You never …’

‘Never what?’ Skelton
asked, and Myers pointed at the girl.

‘He told that girl
there to leave him alone!’

Skelton’s eyes
widened. ‘You told her to go away? Are you insane?’

I took a big gulp
from my drink, knowing that I would never hear the end of it now. Once the
blokes latched onto something they never let it go.

‘Go over there and
talk to her, mate,’ Myers urged.

Skelton joined in as
well, shoving me gently on the shoulder. ‘Yeah, go on! How many times do you
get to pull a fit posh girl from Paraiso? She might buy you out of the army!’

‘No.’ I shook my
head. ‘I’ll be fine.’

The two of them
weren’t having any of it, though.

‘Come on!’

‘Do it for me, Andy!
Look at her!’

‘Do it for Gritt!’

I snapped, slamming
my fist against the bar. ‘I said NO!’

The two troopers fell
silent, and several other members of the section turned to look at me
curiously. I knew I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be dragged out to drink,
now I was spoiling their evening for them. Didn’t anybody understand that I
just needed a few moments of peace?

‘Rare for you to be
kicking off, Andy,’ somebody called out from behind. The voice sounded hostile,
and I spun around to see who it was.

I recognised the
trooper stood behind me almost instantly, having served in the same platoon as
him during the New Earth invasion.

My lip curled at the
sight of him. ‘Stevo, I thought you got out?’

Stevo had been best
friends with Woody, my old torturer from my days as a fresh recruit. The two of
them had taken great pleasure in treating me as a lower form of life, right
before my platoon dropped into battle, pushing me to the limits of what a young
mind could endure. During the short, but brutal campaign that raged across the
planet, Stevo showed his true colours, running away when the battle grew
fierce. My old friend and section commander Westy blamed him for the death of
another trooper, though he never did tell me what Stevo had done to cause it.

The trooper shrugged,
his eyes fixed onto mine and burning with hatred. I could tell that he was
drunk - the old bully coming out of him. He would never have dared to confront
me sober, not after the war anyway. He knew that I could fight, he had seen it
first hand, and he knew that I was particularly vicious when I was angry.

‘I decided to stay,’
he said. ‘I needed the money, and not much goes on here anymore.’

My eyes flicked down
to his rank insignia, noting that he was still a private.

‘Not here, it
doesn’t,’ I corrected.

Whilst we fought a
covert war in the Bosque, most of the dropship battalions, including my own,
remained in bases dotted around Paraiso, held back as a reserve in the event of
an Alliance invasion. The Union didn’t want to appear militarily active on the
continent as they tried to cool relations with their old foe.

No wonder Stevo had
stayed in the dropship infantry. With enhanced pay far above that of a lowly conscript,
and the promise of an easy residential tour in Paraiso, it was right up his
alley. I could imagine him enjoying his cushy life as a senior private,
bullying the younger lads in his platoon, and telling tales of his bravery on
New Earth. Stevo loved to spread lies and rumours, especially when there were so
few people to catch him out. Most of our old platoon was either dead, wounded,
or living at the bottom of a bottle somewhere on Earth.

Stevo looked around
the bar, then back at me. ‘You know this is a Third Battalion bar, right?’

‘And what of it?’

‘I’m just surprised
you would show your face here after what happened on New Earth … Everybody’s
heard, you know that, right?’

I bristled. ‘Heard
what? Your spin of events? I wouldn’t believe you if you told me the grass was
green!’

‘Everybody knows,’ he
repeated with a drunken sneer. ‘We all know that you got Westy thrown in jail,
even though it was you who tried to ally
with a
traitor. Everyone knows the truth, even if the battalion won’t say it. You’re
protected by that star you wear on your chest, and without it you’d be in jail
where you belong.’

I growled. Stevo had
managed to hit me where it hurt. ‘Fuck you.’

The drunken antics of
my section had subsided into quiet whispers. They could see that their section
commander was being confronted, and listened cautiously, eyeing up the newcomer
and those around him. Stevo wasn’t alone, I noticed several other troopers
standing nearby, watching to see what happened next.

‘Fuck me?’ Stevo
laughed. ‘How many people have you fucked over in your career, Andy, to get
where you are now? Lance Corporal Moralee, Union Star, hero of the warrens, now
a recce commander in his old battalion with less than a few years under his
belt … How many blokes did you have to fuck over to get there? Westy we know
about. He was one of our top full screws, everyone loved him …’

‘He didn’t like you
though, did he, Stevo?’

Stevo threw up his
arms. ‘Who are you to say? I wonder who else got trodden on by Andy Moralee’s
march up the ranks? I heard you hid in a trench while your whole section got
killed - so there’s a few lads straight away - all dying while you look out for
number one. Then there was Sam in the tunnels, when you won your star. Funny it
was you who got the medal, when it was Sam who got shot!’

My jaw tightened as
the blood in my veins boiled. ‘Leave it, Stevo …’

‘Why?’ he grinned
maliciously. ‘Does the truth hurt? I’ll make sure the battalion knows the truth
about you, Andy. I’ll make sure they know how you look after your mates, your
section … Climo … Sam … Ray … Browner…’

Each name sent a
shockwave down my spine. I remembered Climo’s face, or what was left of it,
after a dart had punched through his visor, and I remembered Browner,
whimpering as we tried to staunch the bleeding from his bloody stumps.

I leapt out of my chair,
my fists clenched in rage. ‘I hope you’re hungry, because you’ll be eating your
fucking teeth in a minute!’

Several troopers
formed-up around Stevo, and I realised that this wasn’t going to be a fair
fight. The bar went silent as everybody stopped to watch.

‘I’d like to see you
try, mate,’ one of the troopers said, taking a few steps in front of Stevo. He
was clearly from Stevo’s platoon, although I didn’t know him. He was big, his
fatigue shirt barely fit around his muscles, the result of a year spent with
nothing to do but pump iron in the gym.