by Vance Huxley
“But we should agree just in case.”
“Not a chance.” Bobby certainly wasn’t shooting his mouth off about it, though he’d probably consider doing a runner if the chance came up. “I’m concentrating on staying alive.”
“We’d get all the Divas, Beebi.” Bells grinned. “Big rough heroes like us, they’d be lined up.”
Bobby glared at the eedjit. “They’d stick a knife in you and steal everything down to your shorts. Now quit that shite before I shoot you myself.”
Bells smirked. “No you won’t, Beebi, you’d miss.”
A new voice chipped in. “No point in waiting until then anyway. If you want to go over the wire, do it as soon as we get to Rotterdam.”
“What, and start the revolution there, Preacher? Don’t you ever get fed up of your own voice?” Bells, volatile as ever, didn’t like Preacher so now he abandoned the whole idea of running.
“No, because they’d send Troopers or Squaddies and Copters to blow the shite out of us. But if we nip over the border with all our gear, the Frogs will welcome us. I’ve seen an old vid about it. They chopped their king’s head off.” Preacher spread his arms. “They won’t give us back to the Kingdoms, will they? They’ve got equality.”
“So where do their Timers come from? I swear, much more of this and I’m putting your name up for resident Homer.” Fenton laughed. “Google reckons every Mob should have a Homer Simpson and if you say “Doh” now and then in among that shite, you’ll be dead right.” The discussion broke up in laughter as several others were put up for Homer.
* * *
After yet another live-fire exercise, Bobby gathered his friends together, glanced round and spoke quietly. “I hope you get this message, Bells.”
“What message. Duck during live fire? We’re supposed to do that anyway but those five didn’t.” Bells sneered. “Maybe Preacher really was our Homer.”
“Beebi means it’s sort of a coincidence that Preacher and Sands were careless just after all that shite they spouted, and those other three all looked interested in the idea of going over the wire. Even more of a coincidence they’ve all been shot neatly through the head.” Siflis nodded slowly as Bells stared at him. The ex-poacher glanced round. “Though we can get through the wire if you really do want to check out the Divas in Rotterdam.”
“Really?” Bells had already forgotten the five dead men. “I’m worried mine have shrivelled. I haven’t seen a Diva since the basted Troopers arrested me.”
“You won’t see one yet, not until we’ve had one official weekend pass and have an idea of where to go.” Bobby grinned. “Siflis can nip out and capture a sheep if you’re desperate. That’s if you really can get over the wire, Siflis?”
“Easy. Sort of through and under, you’ll see.”
Fenton frowned. “It’s electrocuted, and there’s alarms.”
“Don’t worry about it, so are the fences around the hunting preserves where the deer are. Worry about going to the bledrin front tomorrow. We’re sixteen men down already after training.” Siflis grimaced. “Now that really worries me.”
“We’ve got reinforcements from the Timers we’ll be replacing. Which is why we are lurking near the gates.” Bobby pointed at a bus passing through the checkpoint into the camp. “According to Google they’re coming this evening, so who do you think is on that bus? Let’s go and welcome them, and get some idea of what happens up at the sharp end.”
* * *
Fifteen minutes later the new men had been installed in their quarters. Bobby looked in the door and shook his head. “Shite, me and my big mouth. Why didn’t I just agree with Bells and go into Rotterdam? Then at least dying would come as a surprise.”
“Their mob didn’t all die.” Fenton didn’t look reassured.
“No, but this lot all look scared of their own shadows, and every single one is wounded.” Bells cracked his knuckles. “We could go under the wire right now?”
“Where to, you eedjit? Fenton, try to talk to the one curled up in the corner. You’re the nearest to sympathetic we’ve got.” Bobby looked at the rest. “Have you got the cards, Siflis? No cheating, Bells, because we’re trying to make friends here.”
“No point in playing if we don’t cheat.” Bells perked up a bit. “Maybe they scored a few Frog weapons I can win off them?”
“If you touch a Frog weapon you’ll be shot. That might not worry you, but if I’m in the firing squad the result will be messy and painful because I’ll miss the mark.” Bobby followed Bells, shaking his head. They were all nervous about going on the front line, but Bells worried most about only having one carbin and bayonet.
“Are you blokes joining our Mob? We’re just out of training so what’s it like?” Siflis stopped in surprise as two men flinched and one burst into tears. This wasn’t going to be good news. Twenty minutes of card playing later they’d found out just how bad it would be.
“I won, and without cheating!” Bells waved the creds, smiling happily as they left.
“Spend them quick, while you’ve got the chance.” Bobby looked up as Fenton approached. “I’ll bet you haven’t any good news either.”
“You’d win. That one had to attack a strongpoint head on with plastic flechettes because the building behind it held a telephone exchange that shouldn’t be damaged. Thirty went in and four survived, thought they did kill the six Frogs defending the place so the Super told them that’s a win.” Fenton shook his head. “None of his Mob could shoot worth a shit but he says neither can the Frogs. They’re as bad as us.”
“Their Super liked that head-on shite, because he did it with these as well. There’s fifteen in hospital, and these are the rest out of a hundred.” Bobby felt a chill up his spine. “Sarge keeps saying he wants us all dead. Maybe that Super felt the same way?”
“Shite, shite, shite. I really do fancy going through that wire. Two of their Mob were shot for just picking up Frog weapons, which means all we’ve got is this shite carbin and the bayonet.” Bells started with the knuckles again.
“That’s enough because if we get into combat, we’ll do it smart. We’ve got Siflis and his wire for anything sneaky, and Fenton’s shooting to keep any Frog eating dirt if we have to attack. Once we’re in among them, your head is a better weapon than a carbin, Bells.” They all smiled because of how Bells laid out the Corporal giving hand to hand combat training, by nutting him. “I’ll just spray flechettes and hope some Frog dives in front of one.” The rest laughed because Bobby really wasn’t accurate with a carbin, though possibly better than Bells.
* * *
Moving into the front line didn’t seem too bad to start with. Unfortunately, three days later, the Frogs opened up at dawn on full auto. “Keep your head down.” Fenton peeked around a window frame, aimed and fired before ducking back.
“I’m keeping my head down. If it went any further down, I’d be breathing worms. What are you doing anyway?” Siflis turned his head to look up at Fenton. “Trying to annoy them because if so it worked?”
“I’ve got a Sarge and a Corp so far. The Super is keeping his head down, and he’s got a faceplate thing anyway.” Fenton grinned. “If he lifts it for a fag break I’m going for it.”
“You can’t kill a Super!” Bells hissed that quietly and glanced around even though their Super would be in his sandbagged strongpoint. “Can we? Is it different with Frogs?”
“They’re the enemy, Bells.” Bobby took a quick look. “Since our Super can’t see what we’re doing, stay in hiding. Don’t stick your head up when they stop or some Frog version of Fenton will shoot you.”
“How will we know if they’re coming?” Bells started cracking his knuckles.
“With this.” The other three looked at the shaving mirror taped to a stick. Siflis put it up above the windowsill and angled the gadget so he could see. “Someone is waving his arms about over there.” A shot cracked out. “Good shot Fenton.”
“Only a Corp, that basted Super is keeping low.”
“If they do come, stick the carbins up over the windowsill and empty them on auto. Keep the barrels down and we’ll not need to look.” Bobby smiled. “I might hit one that way.” He looked round. “Since nobody is coming to help, when they get near run out of that door.”
“The Super will shoot us. Desertion or cowardice or some such shite.” Bells seemed torn between running anyway and diving through the window to attack the Frogs.
“No, because he won’t see, and anyway we’ll stop just through the doorway. Me and Fenton high, you pair low and we’ll shoot them as they come through the window all bunched up.” Bobby nudged Bells with a toe. “Unless you want to stay here in the room while they line up at the window and shoot at us?”
“Here they come.”
* * *
About ninety out of three hundred or so Frogs made it across the open ground in the face of full auto fire from the Britz Timers. The ninety smashed through the windows into the houses Bobby and the rest were defending, and chaos descended. After the fighting died down Sarge came down the corridor to check on everyone, his shotgun still smoking. “Odd pattern of empty clips here, Beebi. All around the doorway like that, they look like an attempt to run away. Cowardice in the face of the enemy?”
“What enemy Sarge?”
The sergeant looked at the jumble of bodies just inside the window, then at the three further into the room. He glanced at Bells, sucking his knuckle. “Since none of you have a black eye, I suppose you must have made contact. Take a drink and keep an eye open. In a while there’ll probably be a truce and then the Corporal will supervise while the Frogs collect the dead and wounded. Don’t let them take weapons and ammo away.”
“Wounded, Sarge?”
“Yes, wounded Bells. Though I suppose nobody actually mentioned prisoners to you.” He looked at the still bodies, then at the bloody bayonet Bells still held in his other hand. “That was careless.” He shook his head and carried on to the next room.
“Let’s help those nice Frogs by heaping the bodies up by the window?”
Bells frowned. “Why Beebi? Sarge said have a drink and take a minute.”
“But if there isn’t a truce and the basteds have another go, helpfully heaping the bodies will block our window. That might persuade them to pick on someone else.” Bobby climbed wearily to his feet and limped to the nearest dead Frog. The other three limped, winced and shuffled to help, favouring wrenches, bruises and flechette grazes from near misses. Training wasn’t much preparation for the strain of actual combat.
“Does this mean we’re Timers now?” Siflis frowned. “I don’t feel different. Well I do, sore, bleeding and knackered, but you know what I mean.”
“Hey, if we’re Timers, we’ll get leave. I’ve even got the creds we won at cards!” Bells carefully wiped the bayonet on a corpse. Bells might be a rough scruffy shite, but he always kept his weapons clean and sharp.
* * *
But when they went into Rotterdam, it didn’t turn out anything like Bobby expected. The bus dropped them off outside a bar and all twenty of them went in. He nudged Bells. “These are Divas? They don’t look much like Divas in the vids.”
“They’re women which is near enough, though three aren’t many to go round. Shite, you’re almost a baby aren’t you, I forget. Have you ever?” Bells laughed as Bobby blushed and raised his voice. “Cherry here!”
Laughter spread around the bar and all three women headed for the new party. “It’s a new Mob. Cherry picking time and I’ve got a cert right here.” A tall skinny woman grabbed Bobby by the arm. “What’s your name, Cherry?”
“Bobby B.” Bobby looked around at the grinning faces; this definitely wasn’t how he’d pictured his first time.
“I hope that B stands for Bigboy. C’mon sweetheart.” She towed him towards the stairs, while the other two looked the rest over and tried to guess which were the virgins.
Bobby came down quite soon afterwards confused, sweatier and poorer than he went up. That might have been memorable, but not a cherished memory and the smell of the room might linger longest. Behind him the woman shouted across the bar. “One down, send up the next.” Bobby drank his beer while a few men patted his back and the rest of his group went up the stairs one at a time. Bells looked pissed when he had to wait for all the cherries because the women were having some sort of competition, but eventually came down with a huge smile.
Though on the way back Fenton put it in perspective. “If I have to choose I might go for combat rather than that, but one thing’s for certain. We’ve graduated now.”
Timer
Bobby ducked as a Frog carbin fired down towards the United Kingdoms’ line, but no scream meant the basted had missed. Unless the basted Frog had managed to kill a Timer outright. Too many Timers had died while they slowly turned from raw untrained troops into fighters. The lack of training, inadequate weaponry and no body armour ensured a high attrition rate. At least the corporations had a hard and fast contract to only use Timers against Timers, because trained troops would have slaughtered them all.
Since he’d lasted eight months, Bobby knew to keep low as he made his way through the row of houses that made up the new front line. He didn’t know why he’d been asked to come to an observation post while off-duty, not that anyone cared how much Bobby knew and the order wasn’t optional. He did know the Frogs wanted the refinery in Rotterdam, and his job was to stop them getting it. Personally he’d have given them the bledrin thing just to get away from here. Nobody below the Supervisor commanding this Mob of Timers really wanted to be here. Even their Sarge swore he had better things to do.
Now Sarge had called Bobby up here, and he knew for sure it would be to make him unhappy. Bobby opened the door and stepped inside, then he stopped and swallowed, or tried to because his mouth had gone very dry. Grenades weren’t allowed except for Supers. Just touching one meant a firing squad or a Gaza Taxi, and Sarge had four of the bledrin things! Bobby glanced around but the other three Timers had the same sick look so this wasn’t some sort of setup. Too late now to even report anyone, just being in the room without immediately shooting the rest meant he’d be found guilty.
“Shut the door Beebi and park it.” Bobby did what he was told. “Listen up. You four like it up close, and can’t shoot worth a shit.” Bobby wouldn’t have said that and Fenton didn’t look happy either. The shooting bit might be true for Bobby but he didn’t like it close up either. “So, to help with the shooting, when it’s close up?” Sarge pulled four more shotguns out of a sack! Bobby looked properly and they weren’t the same as Sarge’s. Sodit, were they Frog shotguns? Bobby could almost see the line of his mates, sick as prats, aiming at the cloth pinned to his chest.
“Sarge.”
“Might know you’d open it, Beebi. Still, you’re already in the shite so go on.”
“Sarge, why have you got Frog shotguns, and those grenades? Only Sergeants and Supervisors have a shotgun, and only Supervisors have grenades, so are we being fitted up for a Gaza Taxi Ride?” Bobby still didn’t know why everyone called a suicide mission that, but he knew if you pooched it badly enough you might get that option instead of the firing squad. “What did we do?”
“Nothing. None of you pooched. Then again if you four did something I might not catch you, which is why it’s you that’s here. It’s your chance to earn some metal.” Sarge tapped his steel knee which wasn’t reassuring. “You are the four sneakiest Timers in this Mob. Now if you peek through there, careful like, you’ll see where you’ll be sneaking.”
Bobby knew already, because the only thing that way would be the flats the Frogs had just captured. The long block of flats that allowed the Frogs to shoot at workers this end of the refinery and disrupt production, the flats where the new Frog sniper lurked. Now Sarge expected him to crawl across the open ground towards the Frogs, bare-assed, with illegal weapons? If Bobby got wounded out there whoever found him would find the grenade, or the shotgun and they weren’t allowed ei
ther. There again Sarge wasn’t allowed to have Frog shotguns, or grenades at all. The four of them looked out, and at each other, and none of the others fancied it either.
Fenton sat staring at Sarge, and Bobby thought that they all probably had that bit of pleading in their eyes. Bobby intended staying right behind Fenton if they had to go since Fenton might be big enough to absorb the flechettes. Siflis, the sneaky, scrawny little shite, would make it if anyone could but he’d already started trembling with nerves. Though if he actually did sneak up on anyone Siflis was a dab hand with that wire.
They’d had a replacement Corp after one was killed, and he liked to prey on the young Timers. Bobby and Bells had thrown the body over the wire fence out of the camp, but without his head. They’d chucked his head in the pit with the other rubbish. Siflis said that it came off easier than a deer’s. Bells stared down at his hands and started doing the knuckle cracking thing. He did that before going viral so maybe the eedjit might have a go at Sarge? Bobby kicked Bells’s boot and grinned.
“I’m hiding behind Fenton, but I don’t reckon you’ll get much cover out of Siflis.”
“You are a bledrin eejit, Beebi. We’ll get killed out there!”
“Yeah, but with a grenade I’m gonna make somebody sit up first. If I get halfway I reckon I can reach the flats and blow the bledrin wall down. I hope the di.. Super has to pay for it himself.” Bobby realised he meant it. If Sarge insisted, well the Frogs would bledrin well know they’d been kissed. The dick would have a heart attack at all the damage to corporate property.
“Good thinking, but then the dick’ll have you shot.” Fenton looked horrified. He must be to have called the Super a dick in front of Sarge, though they all did in private.
“I hope he comes to arrest me because if I’m getting a shotgun I’ll save him a barrel.” Or the grenade if I’ve still got it, Bobby thought.
“That’s mutiny!” For a moment Bobby thought Fenton might pass out.
Bobby grinned. “Not unless I actually shoot the basted.”
