EDEN (The Union Series) Read online

  BOOK THREE IN THE

  UNION SERIES

  PHILLIP RICHARDS

  www.theelectronicbookcompany.com

  www.facebook.com/quality.ebooks

  Digital edition published in December 2013

  Copyright 2013 by Phillip Richards

  All Rights Reserved

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. This ebook contains detailed research material, combined with the author's own subjective opinions, which are open to debate. Any offence caused to persons either living or dead is purely unintentional. Factual references may include or present the author's own interpretation, based on research and study.

  CONTENTS:

  Title Page

  Author’s Notes

  Author Bio

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  The Op

  Extraction

  Paraiso

  Intervention

  Rendezvous

  The Marsh

  The Relief in Place

  Butchery

  Change in Mission

  Recce

  The Village

  Ambush

  The Hidden Army

  The Burrows

  Dakar

  Evacuation

  The Last Stand

  Endnote

  Books In The Union Series

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  Author’s Notes

  Operations like the one conducted by Andy's platoon have been more frequent than you might think, and some military interventions have occurred very recently. Libya is one example of where foreign governments have provided support assets such as aircraft and naval artillery to assist an otherwise hopelessly ill-equipped army, as well as providing tactical and strategic advice on the ground. The recent conflict in Mali saw French soldiers working hand in hand with the Malian army, multiplying their capability with helicopters and ground attack aircraft in order to regain control of the country. Sadly, sometimes soldiers involved in such operations can work with people they may despise, such as local militia leaders who are known to abuse children, or openly talk of atrocities they have committed. It can have a crushing effect on a soldier’s morale, especially when they know that these people might turn on them at any moment. The world can be a cruel and wicked place, and no one knows that better than a soldier.

  In the book, Andy Moralee's platoon has a far more aggressive, fighting role than many readers might expect for a reconnaissance platoon, where contact with the enemy is meant to be avoided. Clearly that would have made for a far less interesting book, but there are other reasons why Andy and his men spend much of their time in combat. Sergeant Major Davies puts it well himself, when he says '… we are the special forces of the battalion'. This is a true statement, and even on recent operational tours I can recall recce platoons being used in raids onto drugs factories by helicopter, arrest operations of high profile insurgents, and many more tasks that you might expect to be left for Special Forces. Recce platoons are often composed of the best soldiers in a battalion (though not always the best behaved), and when they’re not carrying out their more traditional role of reconnaissance, they can often be used in high risk offensive actions when SF aren't available. The Union army, large as it is, is spread thinly across the colonies, and so battalions would often be required to generate their own SF capability, sourced from their ranks. Such a task would inevitably fall onto recce platoon and snipers, both of whom often work hand in hand.

  The rank structure and unit organization used in my books reflects that used by the British Army, mostly because it enables me to write fluidly about something I know well. There are a couple of things within this that have confused some readers in the past, particularly those of different nationalities to my own. In the US army, as I understand it, sections are led by sergeants, with corporals in charge of the fire teams. In the British Army however, a section is led by a corporal who controls one fire team, with a second in command - who is often a lance corporal or ‘lancejack’ - controlling the other. Lance Corporals can often expect to perform the role of the man above him, and in Andy's case he leads a section. Although lance corporals are often known as 'glorified privates', he is anything but!

  Many thanks,

  Phil

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  Author Bio

  Phillip Richards was born and raised in Chichester, south England. He joined the Infantry at the age of seventeen, and he still serves today. During his service he has taken part in two operational tours in Kosovo, four in Iraq and a further two in Afghanistan. He is now a Platoon Sergeant, and he uses what little spare time he has to pursue his hobby, writing science fiction. This is the third science fiction novel that he has written, which has been influenced by his service within the British Army. The story and all of the characters within it are entirely fictional, however, so if you know him and think that you recognise yourself for good or bad reasons, you are mistaken!

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  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to Steven for his fantastic book cover; it's been a pleasure working with you. To see more of Stevo's work, visit him on here: http://steve-o-o-c.deviantart.com

  Thank you to Colin at The Electronic Book Company for publishing my work so close to Christmas and thank you to my editor, Kimberley, for her assistance in finalising my work.

  Thank you to my family, and of course my wife, for their constant love and support over this very busy year. It's been wild but it worked out alright in the end!

  Thank you to my readers for their support, encouragement and their patience. Without you I would probably never have finished this book.

  Thank you to my platoon for providing me with inspiration and for not getting into too much trouble over the year!

  Finally, as ever, thank you to all the brave men and women who serve in their nations’ armed forces, and who stand in the face of terror when others would turn and run. You are an inspiration to the world.

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  Introduction

  Eden's beauty was testament to a centuries-old dream to turn a barren, rocky world into a paradise where mankind could live in peace. But Eden wasn't paradise. Torn apart by decades of colonial rivalry, the provinces were deeply divided, and as two rogue provinces begin yet another bitter fight, the Union is forced to step in before they go too far, causing the entire planet to descend into war.

  Andy Moralee finds himself quickly sucked into the conflict, and nothing could have prepared him for the depths that humanity had sunk to out in the forest - where loyalty was achieved at the end of a gun. Ordered to ally with one side of Eden’s warring factions, he fears he now has two enemies to watch.

  In a desperate moment, Andy must choose between his mission and the only thing that separates him from the evil that lives in the forest … his soul.

  Please note: This book was written, produced and edited in the UK where some of the spellings and word usage vary slightly from U.S. English. We know from reviews of professionally edited books, that these differences can sometimes be wrongly interpreted as typographical errors.

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  The OP

  I stared at the image displayed on my datapad in disbelief. There was no mistaking the hostile nature of the figures emerging from the mist that hung between the trees and shrouded the v
alley. Civilians didn’t patrol in formation, keeping ten to fifteen metre spaces between each man, and turning purposefully to observe their arcs. Neither did they carry weapons; certainly not like the ones that these figures were carrying. I struggled to identify exactly what equipment they carried through the mist, but I could still see that they were heavily armed.

  ‘Shit …’ I breathed, the curse sounding so much louder in the tight confines of our tiny underground observation post. They were coming straight toward us.

  Lying so close that his body pressed against mine, Myers blinked nervously as he studied the approaching patrol on my datapad I wore on my wrist. ‘Loyalists?’ he asked.

  I glanced up at him in the dark, irritated by the stupidity of the young trooper’s question. Of course they were Loyalists - the Free Edo Army had withdrawn from the area days ago. For a second I considered a harsh response, but then thought better of it. Now wasn’t the time to get the hump with my blokes. We were in trouble.

  I kicked at the legs of the other half of my fire team - Gritt and Skelton - who had slept behind us, blissfully unaware of the approaching menace.

  ‘Stand to!’ I hissed. Although I couldn’t see the two troopers lying behind me, I sensed their bodies brace. There was no room for them to move around or prepare their kit, not that there was much of a need to do so - for the last few days they had slept wearing it.

  Anxiously watching the patrol approach on my datapad, I wondered if the OP had been compromised. Perhaps somebody had spotted ground sign accidentally left after we had dug it out, or maybe we had left a gap in our thermal sheeting, allowing our body heat to warm the soil and plants we had placed on top, just enough for sensitive equipment to pick us up.

  Had we left too much electrical equipment switched on? Often only one of the three cameras we had placed out were ever active, and even then they only communicated by optical cable plugged directly into my datapad. I discarded the idea that our equipment had given us away. Each camera and optical cable were dug in and well camouflaged, as was the OP. It would take a crack electronic warfare team with a state of the art scanner several hours to pick them up, and even then they would have to already know where to look.

  ‘There’s no way they know we’re here,’ Myers whispered, sounding as though he was trying to convince himself as much as he was me.

  I nodded my agreement. It was entirely possible that they did know our whereabouts, but highly unlikely. We had built the OP several days ago - long before the Loyalists had arrived in the area. The only people nearby were the inhabitants of Aasha, a small village that nestled in the valley base below us, and even if they had seen us constructing the OP in the dead of night, they certainly wouldn’t tell anyone. The village was well within the Edo province, so they were hardly on our side, but under the circumstances we were probably the best friends they had. Edo was an old Alliance province, and one of the many rogue states on Eden. The people of Edo hated the Union, but the Loyalists, pouring south from their home province of Europa, were far more dangerous than any Union trooper.

  I began to question the thought process that led to my decision to inadvertently place the OP right in the patrol’s path. I had chosen not to place us right at the top of the valley, deeming it too risky. Although the elevated position would have given us a perfect view into the wide valley base, it was an obvious location that any approaching enemy would watch closely. I also didn’t want to place it too far down, not necessarily because it reduced our field of view, but more because it would be too close to the roads and maglev rails frequently used by the villagers. It was also the route I had expected the enemy to use, sticking to the low ground where the forest was thickest, and where the cold morning mist blinded our thermal imaging.

  I shook my head, angry at myself. How wrong I had been. They weren’t going to walk right along the low ground. Like us, they would avoid obvious routes, expecting the villagers to place out defences, including victim operated devices, in anticipation of their arrival.

  ‘What do you think they’re doing?’ Myers whispered quietly.

  I shook my head, not lifting my gaze from the datapad. ‘I don’t know. They don’t know we’re here.’

  ‘I’m not so sure, now. They’re coming right at us.’

  He was right. The point man of the patrol, now no more than twenty metres away, was coming right toward our position. It was as though he knew exactly where we were.

  ‘No,’ I said after a seconds thought, ‘would you want to patrol up to an enemy position in that formation?’

  Myers blinked as he considered the question. He was only a private, and a young one at that, known affectionately as ‘Blinky’ within the section because he would often blink when nervous or when he was asked a question. Despite his excessive blinking, he had been chosen for recce because he was one of the best privates in his battalion, and had been sent to Eden because he was one of the best privates on his recce course on Uralis. He understood how to command a section almost as well as some section commanders.

  If the patrol knew that we were ahead of them, they wouldn’t be patrolling in single file, only able to bring a single weapon to bear effectively. A more aggressive formation would be used to clear the ground in front, such as an extended line. Some would cover whilst others moved, and weapons would be raised ready to fire. They wouldn’t just bowl up to us like they barely had a care in the world.

  ‘So what are they up to?’ Myers asked finally.

  ‘I don’t know …’

  My brow furrowed as I tried to understand what was leading our unwanted guests directly onto our position. Was it simply coincidence?

  As they drew nearer I studied the patrol more closely. There were at least eight of them, though more might be hidden in the mist. They wore the distinctive green and brown camouflage of the Loyalists and a standard set of protective equipment not dissimilar from our own: body armour, helmets, visors and respirators. By all accounts they looked like professional soldiers, and not like the ragtag band of rebels they were made out to be back in the Union-held Paraiso province. It was their weapons that concerned me - I counted four magnetic machine guns, and every other soldier carried a smart launcher, capable of firing a missile that was arguably far smarter than the man who fired it. There was nothing odd about the weapons themselves, it was simply the amount of them. This patrol had some serious firepower.

  Something caught Myers’s eye, and he tapped a finger lightly against my datapad screen. ‘What’s that?’

  I zoomed in on the shape in the mist, just at the rear of the patrol. One of the figures was far larger than his comrades, and was moving in an almost unnatural manner.

  ‘Shit the bed …’ I cursed, realising what I was looking at with a wince.

  ‘What is it?’ Gritt, one of the two troopers behind me asked loudly, but was quickly silenced by a kick from Myers. Though there was nothing wrong with them wanting to know what was going on, too much noise risked our position being compromised.

  ‘It’s a suit,’ I whispered in reply.

  ‘You’re jesting.’

  ‘Afraid not.’

  There was no doubt in my mind. I had seen ‘suits’ during my training as a young recruit, and had again been shown them upon my arrival to Eden. A suit was a weapon favoured by the Alliance and the Russians, also known as ‘power armour’. It was an ape-like machine designed to respond to the movements of the human operator inside it. The idea was simple enough - the suit was essentially a highly mobile heavy weapons platform with a sophisticated targeting system, controlled by the ultimate combat computer – a human being.

  The suit was carrying a railgun and Vulcan cannon attached to both of its arms, as well as a series of smart launchers attached to its shoulders. It was an impressive assortment of weapons - far more than dismounted infantry could bring to the table - but it was still small and agile enough to move through the trees with little difficulty.

  ‘They’re getting close now,’ Myers warne
d, his voice barely a whisper. Our headsets could magnify sounds many times over, but so could those worn by the Loyalists. The layer of earth above us might prevent us from being heard, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

  I deactivated the camera, cutting the feed to my datapad and plunging us into darkness. My respirator visor instantly changed viewing modes, favouring thermal imaging due to the lack of any form of light. It made little difference - in our tiny hole there was nothing to look at.

  I considered contacting my second OP, an identical underground position located several hundred metres behind us and commanded by my section 2ic, but thought better of it. As soon as I did so we would almost certainly be detected. Once that happened there would be no turning back - we would have to emerge from our hide and fight our way out. Hopefully they would have already picked up the Loyalist patrol with their own OP cameras and electronic scanner, and so they would know what was happening anyway.

  We lay there in silence, straining our ears to listen for approaching footsteps vibrating through the soil. I suddenly felt as though the walls were closing in around us, for there was nowhere for us to go, not without breaking onto the surface. Suddenly the OP felt more like a grave.

  ‘Fuck this shit …’ Myers uttered under his breath, just before I jabbed him with my elbow.

  We waited anxiously. Every piece of non-essential electronic equipment had been deactivated. The powerful magnets in our rifles were powered down and our communications equipment was set to passive mode, capable of receiving messages only, and even that had to be critical. We didn’t know what electronic warfare equipment the patrol carried, but if they had a scanner even remotely similar to ours, then they would spot any nearby electronic activity with relative ease. I wasn’t taking any chances.