C.R.O.W. (The Union Series)

by Richards, Phillip

  We stiffened, suddenly interested. We all knew that the company had seen action during the vicious Eden campaign fought against the Indo-Japanese alliance, but we had never been told anything about involvement in the Betrayal, when our Chinese allies had turned upon us without warning and forced us and the Russians off of the planet and then out of the Centauri system.

  Perhaps sensing our intrigue, the lieutenant went on, ‘Unfortunately the fleet was unable to enter safe orbit around New Earth, and instead gave cover as the surviving Union forces withdrew from the planet and left those unable to escape to their fate at the hands of the Chinese.’

  What a terrible day that must have been for them, I thought. For every European at home, the shame of seeing the heart of our growing interstellar empire shattered so brutally by our historical allies tore at the very soul. My stomach churned with bile and my heart pounded at the very thought of the injustice that had been done to us those two long years ago. I could barely imagine how awful it must have felt to watch powerless as the Union forces trapped on the ground fought a helpless battle, enveloped and outgunned by Chinese warships, and then to leave the Centauri system, a system once hailed as the dawn of European influence in space.

  ‘It was a sorry time,’ the lieutenant said with feeling, ‘Since then Challenger has undergone extensive refitting in Earth orbit,’ he continued with renewed cheer, ‘And has been involved in extensive exercises on both Uralis and Eden, showing the world that it was business as usual.’

  Gilbert raised his hand, ‘Sir, couldn’t you attack their ships or something, over the last two years?’

  ‘No,’ the lieutenant answered, slightly irritated at the interruption.

  ‘Can’t we just go bomb China or something?’

  ‘Of course not,’ the lieutenant snapped, ‘I’m afraid that the world is not that simple, Private. If we were to attack China on the home planet the consequences would be too dire to even think about.’

  ‘Sorry, Sir.’

  Mutually assured destruction, or MAD as they called it, was the result of any kind of conflict that spilled over onto Earth soil. It was an Armageddon the likes of which were written about in books centuries ago, and that which would rock the human race to its foundations and threaten the extinction of the species itself. Even the Chinese weren’t that crazy, and so Earth had been largely locked into stalemate for generations. Only the poorer, non-space faring nations continued to war with each other on Earth, to minimal global interest. Technically the Union and China had been at war since the Betrayal, but barely a shot had been fired. Both sides were building their strength to make the next move, but it looked as though it would be the Union who would strike to regain absolute control of New Earth. And if the Union defeated the Chinese, then she would become a true colonial power in the eyes of the world.

  Gilbert settled and the lecture of Challenger’s history continued, but I sensed he didn’t fully understand the lieutenant’s explanation, and probably never would. It was difficult for anybody to fully understand how our world appeared to work these days, it had become more complicated perhaps than the human mind was meant to grasp. I remember something my dad had once said when I was younger, after watching the Betrayal pan out on the news channels: ‘We’re all running into space to escape this lousy planet. But what we don’t realise is that we take everything lousy about it with us.’

  We were then taken around the ship and shown everything we needed to know and understand; the gymnasium, the classrooms, the combat simulation rooms, armouries and kit stores. The bridge was pointed out to us, as well as a secondary command deck midway along the ship that could assume command in the event of the bridge being destroyed. We weren’t allowed in either, and they were protected by coded doors. We decided on board the Fantasque that it must be in the event of a mutiny, but we never asked.

  As we walked around between each place I chatted to Peters, enjoying his company.

  ‘How are you getting on so far?’ I asked as we walked along one of the warship’s many corridors with an officer at the lead.

  Peters shrugged, ‘It’s alright, I guess. What about you?’

  Peters was an outgoing lad, even for a Londoner, and everybody always got on with him. I imagined he had already made a load of mates and would be settled within the week, which was more than could be said for me.

  ‘Yeah, it’s not too bad,’ I lied. My sides still hurt from my beating.

  ‘You do PT this morning?’

  ‘Yeah, it was good to blow off some cobwebs,’ I didn’t want Peters to know I had a rough time, I guess I just didn’t want him to think less of me.

  ‘We went up the gym, got smashed on the old CV machines. Proper smashed, mate. PTIs a raging nutter.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, man. Shame you didn’t get to come along, you’d have loved it, mate,’ he was clearly being sarcastic.

  ‘Sounds great,’ I replied with equal sarcasm, ‘But rather you than me, mate.’

  What am I on about? I asked myself. I would have killed at that precise moment to come across to Peter’s platoon, just to be near to my mate. Once the tour was over, I knew I would have to return to my platoon who were currently working in the ship’s stores and endure whatever they had lined up for me next.

  We were taken to the dropship hangars then. Vast, packed with girders, wires and equipment, they were one of the few places onboard the ship where her true purpose was on brilliant display. There were four such hangars, each home to four dropships which hung from the girders and wires, just low enough so that their rear ramp doors could be lowered to the ground. Four great hangar doors along the ceiling were closed against the vacuum outside.

  ‘You won’t come in here very often,’ our officer guide pointed out as we took in the spectacle with awe.

  I had never seen a dropship hangar before, I had been in one, but I had never been outside of the dropship. It was like some kind of massive metal temple of war, and the dropships with their deep red camouflage were suspended and then cradled by wires and equipment like they were sat in a shrine.

  Noticing our gaping mouths and craning necks, the officer smirked. ‘Pretty smart, right?’

  There’s something about a dropship that always sends a tingle through my body. They were much bigger than you would think they were - when you’re stuffed into their tiny crew compartments like sardines - with fat, stubby wings that hid their arsenals inside them during entry to the atmosphere. There were no windows to speak of, only cameras that you had to get right up close to see. They were smooth yet squat in their appearance, their underbellies black and tiled with heat absorbent panels that prevented them from burning up in the atmosphere as they dropped from the sky.

  I think the thing that made dropships so stunning to see was the fact that every part of them was designed for a purpose, and not a single panel, line or drop of paint had occurred through chance or want of beauty. They were the evolution of hundreds, no, thousands of years of war, like the wolf who had evolved from millions of years on the hunt, and in their own terrible way they had become beautiful.

  Nobody spoke as we looked at the craft that would take us to war, potentially, in a few months’ time.

  Becoming aware of the time, the officer harrumphed, ‘Right, then. Again, you shouldn’t be entering this room without permission, normally the access bulkheads will be locked and coded. Obviously I’m sure you all appreciate the consequences of somebody playing around with one of these things. Whenever you do come in here, however, I simply cannot stress enough that you are not to touch anything.’

  He didn’t have to tell me twice, somewhere in that room was probably the button that sucked the air out, I guessed.

  The final part of our brief was back in the galley, which covered the ‘Actions On’ whilst on board the ship. The action on hearing the ship’s call to quarters alarm was to return to the accommodation to await further instructions. Or if it was twenty-two-hundred hours, go to bed for the arti
ficial ‘night’. Similarly in the event of hearing the ‘Action Stations’ alarm we were to return to our accommodation again and don suits in case of decompression. We then did bugger all else and let the ship’s crew deal with whatever the alarm was called for, be it a fire, structural damage, or worse, an attack. We would be strapped into place so we couldn’t be sucked out of a hole if our compartment decompressed, but failing that we were told to adopt the ‘decompression brace position’, which was literally curling into as much of a ball as our suits allowed. I found the idea laughable, as even if such an position did protect me from bouncing around in the blast of escaping air, it would probably be the least of my worries!

  It was nothing I hadn’t already heard before, really, but never-the-less I enjoyed the final few minutes of freedom before I had to return to my platoon.

  After the brief me and Peters promised to meet for evening meal – it would give us the chance for a chat and to catch up. We then made our way back to the accommodation. Woody’s sickly smile haunted my mind, his words repeating in my head. You won’t last five minutes here. I hoped he was wrong.

  6: True Colours

  You couldn’t be any more isolated than when you were in the void, there was no more law and order there than that which we brought with us in our tiny ships. The captain of Challenger had the authority of the President of the Union himself - the power of life or death over her crew and her infantry cargo. Beneath her and in charge of our company was the officer commanding, who with the company sergeant major oversaw everything from discipline to the planning of future operations on the ground. They were all busy, with far more important things to deal with than issues within the platoons themselves.

  ‘What goes on ship stays on ship,’ was a saying I had first heard aboard Fantasque and one I would never forget. To me it meant you kept your mouth shut, and you never grassed on your mate. It meant if you had a problem, deal with it, because nobody was going to be able to help you in your tiny prison surrounded by infinite vacuum.

  ‘What goes on ship stays on ship.’ The golden rule of the trooper - it was a lesson I was to learn hard.

  The first punch connected with my cheek bone, taking me by surprise and knocking me off balance, but it was the second punch that took me down, striking me so hard on the eye socket it created a flash of white on my retina. My body collapsed like a sack of potatoes, my limbs limp and useless.

  Woody wasn’t finished with me, though. He never wanted me to forget what a beating from him felt like, and with sharp hisses of exhaled air he drove home a flurry of punches into my unprotected abdomen. I was so dazed I was barely even able to choke, much less breathe.

  ‘Think you can mess with me, eh? Think you can gob off?’ Woody spat through curled lips.

  We were in our room but we weren’t alone. Climo and Brown merely stood by and watched without a word as my helpless body was savagely beaten in front of them. I could swear Brown was smiling.

  My confused mind tried to understand why Woody had turned on me so suddenly and viciously. How had I gobbed off to him?

  When me and the other new lads had returned to the platoon from our tour, they were moving ammunition boxes from the lock room where they had recently been unloaded by shuttle to the ship’s ammunition store. They were under the direction of the screws and lancejacks, and they were almost finished.

  Woody had asked me, ‘Where the fuck have you been?’

  And my only answer had been, ‘I’ve been getting my arrival brief, haven’t I?’ Was that gobbing off? Perhaps I had used the wrong tone of voice and had been misunderstood, but did that warrant me being set upon in my room, just before I was about to go to eat my lunch?

  I tried to slap at Woody with feeble, weakened arms, but he straddled me and held me to the ground. God he was heavy! He grasped my neck in his hand and pressed down against my Adam’s apple.

  ‘I’m the senior bod in this platoon, do you know what that means?’

  I tried to gulp for air but couldn’t, and only managed a gasp, ‘No.’

  ‘It means you don’t mug me off, you don’t gob off and you do what I tell you to do, you little weasel!’

  I couldn’t speak, my cheeks were burning and my eyes were watering as my lungs struggled for air.

  ‘What do you say?’

  I didn’t understand.

  ‘You say sorry.’

  ‘S….sorry,’ I managed.

  ‘Sorry, Staff. From now on you call me staff, get me? Like a PTI.’

  ‘Sorry…..Staff.’

  Woody smiled, with that sickening smile of his that I had come to loathe in less than six hours, ‘Good. Mess with me again and I swear on my mum’s life I’ll have you out the nearest lock!’

  With that, he released me and my lungs sucked precious air back into them, my heart pumping hard as it tried to return oxygen back into my organs. I clutched my throat and my eye which was already beginning to swell.

  ‘I’m off to scoff,’ Woody said to Climo and Brown as they watched me with blank expressions, ‘You coming?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Brown replied instantly, but Climo hesitated.

  ‘You coming?’ Woody repeated harshly.

  Climo looked at Woody, then at me, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that little prick,’ Woody said as the bulkhead slid open for them, ‘He needs to learn. That’s how it works.’

  The door was shut and I was left alone on the floor in my room, my body slowly recovering and my breathing coming back under control. As soon as I was able to, I dragged my bruised body to my bed where I cried for what seemed like forever.

  After a while and without warning the door slid open. Startled, I quickly wiped the tears from my eyes.

  A corporal frowned as he looked down at me. He was so tall that he appeared to fill the entire doorway, with sharp chiselled features that made him appear almost god-like, ‘What are you doing down there?’

  My eye was half closed already and I could feel it swelling. There was no way he didn’t know what had happened. My skull throbbed in pain.

  ‘I just…, um…, fell over, Corporal.’

  The Corporal screwed his face up into a quizzical expression, ‘Right. Who did you fall over onto?’

  ‘Nobody, Corporal,’ I insisted.

  He nodded slowly, ‘Right. Tell the lads in the room Corporal Evans says thirteen-thirty hours back up at the stores.’

  ‘I will, Corporal.’

  Corporal Evans continued to stare at me, ‘Do you know what you should do when you fall over, lad?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You get back up.’

  I realised that I was still hunched up against the frame of my bunk bed. I quickly picked myself up off the floor, tucking my shirt back in and brushing down my trousers, ‘Sorry, Corporal.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry.’

  ‘Corporal.’

  ‘It’s Private Moralee, right?’

  I nodded, uncomfortable in Corporal Evans’ steady gaze, ‘Yes, Corporal.’

  The NCO nodded thoughtfully, ‘Okay. Watch your step next time, Moralee, this ship is littered with trip hazards.’

  He knew I had been beaten up, I thought as Corporal Evans disappeared behind the closing bulkhead, but he chose to say nothing. Senior troopers were part of military life, I had been warned, and were responsible for much of the discipline behind closed doors. Unfortunately it was just my luck that I had managed to find the worst of the bunch.

  I didn’t go to eat, instead I washed my face in the sink and nursed my half-closed eye. It was already beginning to change colour, but it was still working and I assessed that no bones appeared to be broken. Under my shirt my body was black and blue with the bruises from two separate beatings received in a single day. I longed for somebody to reach out and help me but there was nobody, not even Peters could help me. I resisted the urge to cry again, clenching my fists until my nails bit at the skin of my palms. Damn you for being so weak, Andy, I said to myself, what if Corpo
ral Evans catches you like that again?

  #

  ‘What the hell happened to you, boy?’ Sergeant James scowled at me as the platoon arrived at the stores, a warehouse almost as large as a dropship hangar stacked with crates of ammunition of all sizes and natures.

  I said simply, ‘I fell, over, Sergeant.’

  He spluttered and then frowned, ‘Onto a fist?’

  ‘The floor, Sergeant.’

  The burley platoon sergeant rubbed his forehead stressfully, as the platoon set about their work amongst the ammunition. Woody eyed me threateningly as he walked past and disappeared into the maze of crates.

  ‘You silly prat,’ he said after a pause.

  ‘Yes, Sergeant,’ I agreed, with little other option. I had enough bruises for one day.

  He drew in a deep breath and sighed resignedly. Behind those blazing blue eyes I think he could sense the predicament I was in. I wasn’t going to tell him that I had just been filled in by a senior bod and earn myself another hiding for grassing him up.

  ‘If you fall over, Moralee, you put your hands out, know what I mean?’ He looked away, ‘Get out of my sight. Go on.’

  I followed the platoon to where we were unpacking crates containing smart missiles. They needed to be checked by an armourer before reloading them onto pallets to be lifted by forklift onto huge shelving systems a good ten metres high. Most of the lads noticed my black eye but chose to say nothing about it, I was sure they would be talking about it when my back was turned.

  Greggerson and the other new lads all noticed and were keen to find out what had happened. ‘I don’t want to say,’ I said to them all in turn, ‘Let’s just leave it, yeah?’

  It was hard to lift things when I could hardly see out of one eye and my body had been used as a punch bag. I pretended I was fine and that I wasn’t struggling with my injuries, I didn’t want anybody to think I was a soft target or I suspected things would only get worse for me, plus I think a little part of me wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened and wanted everyone else to pretend it hadn’t happened as well.