EDEN (The Union Series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

to. To my right the ground sloped away into the
valley, and between the trees I could clearly make out the village - an unruly
cluster of buildings beneath an atmospheric dome, built beside a river. Flames
and billowing smoke told of the attack that was already underway, and I
wondered if the Loyalist platoon commander even knew that his fire support
group had been attacked, so focused he would be on his quarry.
    Suddenly
the air cracked and hissed as enemy darts passed just over my head, causing me
to duck instinctively behind the hard cover provided by the suit. Sparks flew
as a round struck its armour, missing me by millimetres.
    ‘Contact
front!’ Skelton screamed, and the fire team unleashed fury onto my assailants.
Skelton’s mammoth gun roared as it spat death into the forest and the earth
shook as grenades detonated in clouds of smoke and dust. Every rifleman in my
section carried an under-slung grenade launcher, providing us with overwhelming
firepower. We needed it, because the nearest friendly call-sign was far too
distant to be any help.
    I looked
up to catch a fleeting glance of enemy soldiers moving through the trees no
more than a hundred metres away. Darts whizzed past us as they tried to return
fire and regain the initiative.
    They were
either attempting to manoeuvre or counterattack, I guessed, but either way the
surprise had been lost. There was no more time to weigh up options, I had to make
a quick decision and commit myself to it. Better to do something wrong than do
nothing at all.
    ‘Charlie
fire team will peel left!’ I ordered over the intercom, ignoring the enemy
darts that passed close over my head.
    The fire
team automatically repeated the message to each other so that nobody failed to
hear it: ‘Charlie will peel left!’
    I pointed
to my front. ‘Myers, Gritt, give me smoke!’
    The two
troopers responded instantly, selecting smoke and firing their launchers toward
the enemy. An instant later the grenades exploded in a shower of smoking
phosphor, creating an instant wall of hot smoke that obscured the enemy from us,
and burned anyone unfortunate enough to be too close.
    I
screamed, ‘Peel left!’
    The men
needed no encouragement. Gritt was first to move, darting from his cover on my
far right and running behind me, kicking the foot of the next man as he went.
Once he had finally taken up a position to the far left of the fire team and
had started firing, then the next man moved and repeated the process.
    We moved
rapidly, continuing to fire into the smoke as we went, each man running from
the far right of the fire team to the far left. Wet plants quickly soaked my
combats as I tore through the undergrowth, keeping my head as low as I could
every time it was my turn to move. With every peel the fire team drew further
up the slope and further away from the village, and more importantly, out of
the way so that delta could fire.
    After no
more than a hundred metres of peeling, and as the smoke began to clear, I gave
my orders to my second in command - ‘One-one-delta, rapid fire on my mark,
enemy dismounted infantry in the open!’
    With an
outstretched finger I ‘marked’ the enemy with a red crosshair, visible only to
the visor displays of my section.
    His response
was instant - ‘Roger, mate!’
    A series
of thumps sounded from behind me, and seconds later a salvo of grenades detonated
around my mark. The plants in the undergrowth danced as delta fire-team’s
weapons opened fire from out of sight, firing blindly, but safe in the
knowledge that there would be no friendly troops between them and their target.
    That was
all I needed. I couldn’t see if the enemy were correctly suppressed or not, all
I knew was that we were no longer taking fire from them and they would be
distracted by the sudden hail of darts.
    ‘Break
contact!’ I stopped firing, picked myself up and ran.
    Understanding
the order and seeing me bolt through the trees, my fire team followed,
abandoning the fire fight