Edward Grant - Rebellion

And, if they built radiation-protected homes above ground, they’d be easy to see. But beneath a dead village… no-one would notice them there. Even if someone saw the insurgents as they came and went, they’d just see a few people enter the buildings and leave.

More gunfire outside.

“I’m hit,” a voice yelled.

A suit in Alpha team showed damage on the HUD. Another building they’d marked as cleared turned red.

“Sir,” Bairamov said, “we’ve found a tunnel in the building where the girl was. They must be using them to move around behind us.”

“Drop grenades down the tunnels,” Volkov said, “then fall back to the rally point. We’ll call in the drones and and destroy this place.”

“No,” Poulin yelled. “We need to capture this village.”

“Mademoiselle, if you’d like to go crawling through those tunnels, feel free. But I’m tired of you getting my men shot. The rest of us are leaving.”

“Disobey me again, and I’ll have you demoted and shipped back to France. Don’t think I can’t do so.”

Volkov was silent for a few seconds as gunfire and grenade explosions continued around the village.

Logan lowered his rifle barrel into the tunnel mouth, and looked through the sights on his visor as he tried to see around the curve at the bottom.

But that only showed him another metre of dirt, and the roughly-cut planks that supported the dirt roof and walls of the tunnel proper.

Finally Volkov spoke again.

“Bravo, send a man down into the tunnels to scout them out. Alpha, Charlie, destroy any tunnels you see, and keep the bastards’ heads down until the mademoiselle is happy.”

Logan’s now-empty suit stood in the straw, facing the dirt pile beside the wall of the barn. The back of the suit was wide open after he’d climbed out. The HUD and instruments still glowed faintly inside the suit, giving him just enough light to see by when he leaned in through the open back.

The heat of the reactor warmed his skin as he leaned past it. He pulled open the survival kit attached to the inner wall of the suit, and grabbed the pistol, light-intensifying goggles and flashlight from the kit.

He strapped the goggles onto his face, and could see the barn again, in the glow from the suit’s IR illuminators. The rubber of the goggles smelled new, and the straps pressed them hard against his face. This was probably the first time they’d been removed from the survival kit since it was installed when the suit was built.

A Legionnaire whose suit was too badly damaged to stay in the fight rarely lived long enough to need them.

He closed the back of the suit and sealed it, then grabbed a few grenades from the suit’s belt. They were large enough for the suit’s oversized hands to easily hold them, but small enough for a human to use if he had to. He clipped them to his belt.

Bairamov and Desoto watched from where they were crouched on the far side of the barn.

Logan pulled hard on the straps on his body armour to check they were tight, then slid his helmet back onto his head, and tightened it in place.

“Can you squeak, McCoy?” Bairamov’s voice said from the helmet’s speakers.

“What do you mean?”

“If they see you, just squeak loudly, and pretend to be a rat. It might work.”

“I’ll bear that advice in mind, sir.”

Logan sat back and took a deep breath. Then another. And one more for luck. The world grew brighter and seemed more solid as the oxygen filled his lungs. Maybe he should wait a bit longer, let his heart slow down, and wait for his skin to cool, and the sweat to stop.

Or maybe he was just delaying things, and should get down there and do his job. Even though he might never come back out of the damn tunnel.

He took one more deep breath. “Going in. Don’t shoot me when I come back out.”

He’d have no way to communicate with the others once he was inside the tunnel. His helmet comms wouldn’t get through the metres of dirt above him. And it would really suck to get shot by his own comrades when he crawled out.

“Good luck,” Bairamov said. “And kill a few of the bastards for me.”

Logan took another grenade from the suit, pulled the pin, leaned over the edge of the hole until he could reach down to the tunnel entrance, and tossed the grenade inside.

It bounced along the dirt floor into the tunnel for a metre or two as Logan rolled aside. Then it exploded with a crack that left his unprotected ears ringing, and threw a cloud of dirt into the air from the tunnel entrance.

If anyone was waiting down there, he’d either just killed them, or just woken them up. He’d soon find out which.

He leaned over the edge of the hole, turned on the goggles’ IR illuminators, and peered into the tunnel. It was empty for the few metres the goggles could see in the IR glow.

Chunks of wood lay scattered across the dirt where the grenade had blown them down from the roof and walls. The walls bulged in where the explosion had weakened them, and the weight of the dirt pushed them inward. How long had those rotting planks been standing there, supporting the weight of the dirt?

They’d better not pick today to collapse.

He could still hear firing and explosions around the village. He had to get this done, to help his fellow Legionnaires who were being attacked out there.

He pulled his head out of the hole, lowered his legs into it, then crouched low enough to get his head and shoulders into the tunnel.

He clung tightly to the pistol as he went prone on the dirt floor, and began to crawl along the tunnel. His rifle was too big and heavy to take with him, and the recoil too powerful. If he ran into anything down there, it would have been a liability, even if he could carry it with his unassisted arms.

He crawled slowly, gasping for breath as he moved. He’d grown used to the oxygen in the suit, and his body complained now it had to deal with the thin air of the natural atmosphere again. Every few metres he stopped and peered further along the tunnel for any sign of movement. But no-one was heading his way.

There was a junction up ahead, where another tunnel crossed his. He crawled toward it, then kept his head low as he peered around the corner. Just more planks along the walls and ceiling, the faint smell of mould and rotting wood, and no sign of life. He breathed slowly to make as little noise as possible while he lay there, and listened for a few seconds.

The sound of gunfire came from the right. The left side was silent, as was the rest of the tunnel he was following, on the far side of the junction.

He twisted into the right-hand tunnel and crawled on. His body seemed to press harder and harder against the ground with every metre he crawled, as though it was trying to find a hole in the dirt to hide in.

When he first entered the tunnels, he could be sure no-one was behind him, and the only threat was ahead. Now they could be coming from two tunnels behind, and the one in front. And, if they were behind, he couldn’t even turn around to fight them.

Something scraped up ahead.

Logan stopped instantly, held his breath, and listened. The noise of the earlier grenade explosion still buzzed in his ears in the silence of the tunnel. Something moved in the dark, hazy shadows at the limit of the goggles’ range.

A second later, the screens in the goggles went white as a bright light glowed ahead.

He pulled the goggles up with his free hand.

A flashlight was swinging around the tunnel up ahead.

The light reflected back from the wooden walls near the flashlight, and faintly illuminated the side of a face and an arm that protruded through the floor. The arm held a rifle, which pointed toward the roof of the tunnel.