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

by Richards, Phillip

  It was a drainage ditch, designed to keep the crops from being drowned in the heavy New Earth rainfall. It ran for several hundred metres in both directions, and through the smoke my visor identified another section debussing from their dropship into the ditch a hundred metres or so off to my right.

  Black smoke from the orbital bombardment drifted overhead from Jersey City a few kilometres away, mixing in with the white smoke created by the dropships and smoke bombs fired by our battalion’s own artillery.

  Rounds ricocheted off the lip of the ditch, chucking great chunks of dirt down at me where I cowered in the blood-red mud.

  Yeah, you heard right, I cowered. Overwhelmed by the sights and noise around me I had curled almost into a ball in the bottom of the ditch like a frightened child. In my defence, I hadn’t done it consciously, rather my body’s natural instinct had kicked in and told me to stay low and hide. It hadn’t even reached my comprehension that what I was doing was against everything I had been taught to do since becoming a drop trooper.

  Berezynsky was five metres to the right of me, lying up against the lip of the ditch and firing in the direction of the enemy. He stole a quick glance down to me, his eyes a mixture of terror and anger.

  ‘Moralee, what the hell are you doing?’ He asked over the intercom. I think it’s the most I ever heard him say.

  To be honest I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. The whole section had formed a line along the ditch and everyone was firing apart from me, but still I remained frozen to the spot.

  The dropship began to close its doors and shot backwards, its guns still roaring. Along with its battle brothers, it would give fire support and air defence from the rear whilst it waited to be used again. I wished that I could have gone with it, for then it was just us, and the Chinese.

  ‘Moralee, get up and fire you little weasel!’ Somebody shouted, I think it was Chase.

  ‘Get some rounds down!’

  I was paralysed with fear. The voluntary nature of Dropship Infantry and the intensity of its training often led people to believe that we were superhuman, incapable of fear. People can talk themselves up as much as they like, but until they’re in a contact with the enemy for real they can never really know how they might react. My first reaction was a bad one, I was almost unable to even move, I was so scared.

  Boots slapped against the water at the bottom of the ditch behind me, and Joe Mac grasped me by the throat and threw me against the bank, his teeth bared, rifle held up as if he meant to smack me round the head with it.

  ‘What are you doing? What the FUCK are you doing?’ He screamed, his face so close to mine our respirators almost touched. Spittle sprayed over his visor. He was beside himself, he must have ran half way along the ditch under fire just to get to me.

  ‘I don’t know!’ I cried out, wild with terror.

  ‘Get up there and put some darts down the range now!’

  I guess that was what I needed, a good kick up the arse. Whatever the pinkies could do to me, Joe could probably do far worse. Training kicking back in, I crawled up the bank of the ditch and took aim.

  The crimson red New Earth surface was as dazzling as it was terrifying. Angry dark pink clouds broiled high above, flickering with lightning, or perhaps the flashes of a battle between atmospheric fighters. Balls of flame would regularly break through the clouds and strike the ground far away, causing shockwaves so powerful that I could feel them through my respirator. It was as though some great deity had decided to wreak terrible revenge on the land, but it was in fact our ships, high above, dropping kinetic weapons onto the enemy. New Earth was already a war zone, and it looked like hell.

  We were in a corn field half way up the slope of a large hill kilometres across that towered above a deep valley. I guessed that it was Hill Bravo, as we had been briefed prior to our drop and that another large hill on the opposite side of the valley must have been Alpha. The corn was enclosed in greenhouses in every direction as far as the eye could see, turning the land into a patchwork of different shades of green and gold mixed with the red of the New Earth soil. Most of their glass roofs had been either riddled with holes or shattered leaving nothing but the supports, like the exposed rib cages of decaying animals. Others burned fiercely. Without the artificial atmosphere the greenhouses maintained, the plants would all die. In the far distance Jersey City burned, from where I lay up on the bank of the ditch I thought that nobody could be alive down there.

  My respirator target display flashed red as it indicated targets it had picked up to my front. Sure enough, through the smouldering greenhouse crops, I caught fleeting glances of Chinese soldiers running a few hundred metres away. I could recognise their distinctive off-pink camouflage.

  My finger pulled the trigger. The series of powerful magnets that lined the barrel of my MSG-20 screamed as they propelled a dart toward my target at sonic speeds, rocking my body with the recoil. I don’t know if I hit anything, but I was now in the battle.

  ‘Section, prepare to give rapid fire!’ Corporal Evans was back on the intercom, ‘Rapid…FIRE!’

  We gave them hell. The mammoth gunners let rip and a few grenades left their launchers, disintegrating the remaining greenhouses to our front and churning plant life.

  Suppressive fire is a concept as old as the first guns, and it was unlikely that for long as infantry soldiers existed on the battlefield it would ever become obsolete. Suppressive fire forces a soldier to take cover, and as long as it remains accurate, it will keep the enemy hiding, unable to lift his head to fire for fear of death.

  Sure enough, the enemy fire had subdued significantly under the withering rate of fire we had returned. It was hard to see where the Chinese were, but I assumed they were a hundred metres away, or thereabouts, in some form of cover, probably another ditch. I guessed there weren’t many of them, since they had been relatively easy to suppress, or perhaps they were simply withdrawing to counter-attack us somewhere else using the complex system of tunnels and trenches supposedly dug into the hill. I fired round after round into likely enemy positions amongst the crops. My MSG-20 would occasionally alter the trajectory of the rounds passing through the barrel, angling them toward fleeting targets moving close to my crosshairs. Whether I hit anybody, I couldn’t be sure.

  Several feet splattered in the pool at the bottom of the ditch in which I had cowered. I didn’t look around at the new arrivals in our little part of the ditch, I was too busy trying to shoot accurately without exposing myself too much.

  ‘Section!’ Corporal Evans called out, ‘Slow down your rate of fire! What’s happening Boss? Shit…,’ he cut off his intercom.

  We slowed our rate of fire as ordered, there was no sense in us firing at a rapid rate for too long against an enemy who had momentarily lost the fight. Corporal Evans had given the ‘rapid fire’ to cover the boss as he ran up to us from wherever his dropship had left him. If the boss got himself shot then the platoon sergeant or the most senior section commander would be able to step up, but better he didn’t die at all! We were still suppressing, but using far less ammunition, and it wasn’t long until the Chinese gained the courage to get up and fire again.

  Rounds cracked overhead, forcing me to duck. I found myself staring straight into the eyes of the platoon commander’s radio operator, Cyclops, who was crouched close to the platoon commander, monitoring the various communication nets for important information. His eyes were darting nervously across the battlefield and he looked like he was absolutely shitting himself, though I supposed I must have looked the same to him.

  The boss was crouched up against the wall of the ditch explaining to Corporal Evans what he wanted him to do. Occasionally he lifted his head over the top to see the ground to our front. He was caked in mud, presumably he had fallen over. A gash on his arm suggested a glancing blow from his dash to get to us. He was lucky, a good strike with a dart could take your arm clean off, and at short range could punch straight through helmets and gel armour, advanced though they w
ere.

  BOOM!

  The ground around me shook with a wave of overpressure as a gravtank somewhere to our rear fired a rail gun round into an unseen target in Jersey City.

  ‘Get some, pinkies! Woohooo!’ Climo screamed triumphantly, punching a fist into the air.

  I looked behind me at the gravtank twenty or so metres back. It was an imposing beast of a machine. A giant Union flag flew from its turret, erected by the crew sometime within the last couple of minutes. The flag flapped in the strong breeze, its blue background and yellow stars striking in contrast against the reds and pinks of New Earth. Its vulcan cannon opened fire, strafing across the ground to our front.

  You don’t mess with gravtanks. They have the same manoeuvrability and speed of a dropship but as much - if not more - firepower than any ground based vehicle. It was the Dropship Infantry’s prize asset, a real battle winner.

  ‘Right, listen in lads,’ Corporal Evans was back on the intercom. We stopped and listened as he gave us the plan, there was no need for us to continue to fire, the gravtank was keeping the Chinese quite busy!

  ‘One section didn’t make the drop, so it’s just us and Westy’s boys!’

  I gulped. ‘Didn’t make the drop’. A whole section of our platoon had perished on their way down, along with their dropship and crew. Gilbert and Kane had been with them.

  ‘Two section has got eyes on an enemy section one hundred metres to our front,’ Corporal Evans continued with a confidence in his voice that lifted my spirits, ‘They’re in a good position to keep them suppressed.’

  He was talking of the enemy soldiers I had been firing at. There were many more of them all over the valley, but in our little part of the battlefield the ones directly to our front were our main threat. The Chinese were heavily dug into the hill, an entire battalion of them, and it was our job to clear them out, or die trying. To our left and right flanks, as well as to our rear tens of platoons would be engaged in their own battles. We were surrounded, but we were troopers - we were meant to be surrounded.

  ‘Two section will continue to suppress,’ Corporal Evans continued, ‘We will attempt to use the ditches to attack them from the right flank, but we need to be quick!’

  ‘Have it!’ Climo shouted, randomly.

  The platoon was normally composed of three sections in order, to allow it to manoeuvre over the battle field with one giving covering for the others, although this could theoretically work with two. The concept of one covering, one moving, was known as tactical balance, or ‘one foot on the ground’. The problem we faced was that we no longer possessed a third ‘reserve’ section, which would normally give us the flexibility to deal with changes on the battlefield. Assaulting with only two sections was a risky business, but we had no choice.

  ‘Prepare to move!’

  I carried out the drill for preparing to move as I had done on Uralis and the simulators on Challenger - check safety catch, check ammo pouches, crawl down into cover. I slid down into the bottom of the ditch once more. Corporal Evans was already running past me along the base of the ditch.

  ‘Move! Follow me!’ His voice was urgent again, and I understood why. The Chinese were on the back foot, they had no idea where exactly we might have dropped, that was the problem with defending against dropships, but now we were on the ground they might regain the initiative if we didn’t keep up the momentum.

  We ran along the ditch behind our section commander. Cold water splashed up between my legs, but I ignored it, scanning to my left and right for enemy. Missiles and aircraft streaked across the grey sky above as the two vast colonial air forces fought for supremacy in the New Earth atmosphere. Missiles and ordinance of all descriptions passed over our heads, seemingly with much more important targets elsewhere. We were infantry, cheap and plentiful, hardly worth wasting expensive missiles on, or at least that was what I hoped. Rain lashed sideways against us, hammering against our visors.

  The drainage system for Jersey’s vast farmlands was formed into endless square grids, with each square being around one hundred metres across and each containing at least ten greenhouses. We had planned to advance forward by use of the ditches, which were deep enough to conceal a man keeping his head low.

  Ahead of us was the section I had seen debus, locked into a fierce fire fight with our foe over the top of the ditch. It was Two section, I could hear their section commander, Corporal Weston screaming orders into his intercom as we approached. At the bottom of the ditch a trooper screamed and clutched at his bloodied arm whilst another lay lifeless in the water, their red camouflage identifying them to me as friendly.

  We passed behind Two section, and as we did Corporal Weston called out to Corporal Evans, ‘They’re to my eleven o’clock mate, in a trench or something. Got ‘em pinned!’

  ‘Roger!’ Corporal Evans led us round the back of Two section. The ditch ran into the distance, unnaturally straight. A few hundred metres away more Union troops crossed it as a nearby dropship burned. The battle was everywhere, and we were only a tiny part of it.

  The wounded trooper was Greggerson. My eyes widened at the sight of him crying with pain, his arm swollen almost comically where his gel armour had turned itself into a bandage. I didn’t stop for him, and I ran around the body of the dead trooper. He lay face down, his respirator sunk into the mud. A chunk of his helmet was missing, and through the hole blood glistened. For the sake of morale our visor targeting screens wouldn’t identify friendly troopers who had died, but out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of his name printed across the back of his helmet. It was Davo. He must have died debussing from his dropship.

  We turned left at a junction in the ditch just past the end man of Two section. The remains of the greenhouses towered above us, some ablaze, some remarkably intact. Rounds cracked overhead as Two section continued its fire fight above us. I guessed the enemy were somewhere close by.

  We hadn’t got far, maybe fifty metres in front of Two section when Corporal Evans signalled with his free hand for us to get down and as one we took a knee at the bottom of the ditch. I clutched my rifle tight, waiting for the Chinese to appear out from the burning greenhouses. Occasionally I thought I could hear their voices, picked out and amplified by my headset, but I couldn’t be certain.

  Nobody dared to speak as Corporal Evans scanned the crops off to our left. I didn’t know if he had a sixth sense for danger that he had developed on Eden, but he definitely wasn’t happy with something. The only sound was that of the tiny filters in my respirator and the thumping of my heart. Rain hammered against us as we strained to hear our unseen enemy.

  Corporal Evan’s hand closed into a fist, with his thumb outstretched and pointing downwards; enemy. Slowly and deliberately he then opened his hand, pointing into the greenhouses to our left. That way.

  Weapons quietly moved to aim at their new found target. The enemy were moving in the farmland to our left, directly in front of Two section.

  I heard them this time, there was no mistaking their strange language and accent I had been taught to recognise against European languages. I couldn’t see anything in amongst the greenhouses, and neither could my respirator target display.

  Corporal Evans carefully raised his rifle over his head and used it to ‘look’ over the top of the ditch with its camera.

  ‘Chinese section, ten metres away,’ he whispered, ‘We need to be quick, Delta fire team you will give covering fire, Joe ensure you maintain protection on the right flank, I’ll leave you Climo.’

  Joe Mac nodded, he would have five men in his fire team now, leaving Corporal Evans with only three men; him, Berezynsky, and me.

  Berezynsky checked his bayonet was fitted securely. I gulped.

  We crawled up the bank of the ditch as high as we dared without exposing ourselves. Rainwater ran through the blood channels cut into the blade of my bayonet and dripped onto the red earth. Around us the battle raged on, the gravtank had moved away from us and out of sight, presumably with bigge
r and more important targets to engage than a few Chinese soldiers - soldiers who could easily destroy it with a smart missile if it hung around for too long.

  Corporal Evans looked left and right at his section of eight. Then, with a single tap on Climo’s shoulder his plan was initiated. Climo sprang up and sprayed automatic over the bank with his MAM-G, closely followed by the rest of Delta fire team. At that instant Corporal Evans was up and over the top of the ditch, with me and Berezynsky just behind.

  I remember my first bayonet charge so vividly even now, like it is permanently etched into my memory. I remember trampling my way through the crops, screaming in a mixture of hatred and fear as I bore down on my enemy like a modern day barbarian. Although their strange black reflective visors revealed none of their faces, the Chinese were clearly surprised. They were barely even ten metres away and lying on their bellies from where they had been trying to crawl closer to Two section without being noticed. Instead they had been caught at point blank range and they were dead and they knew it.

  Those who tried to kneel up in order to bring their weapons to bear were the first to die, cut to ribbons by Climo and the rest of Delta fire team. The hail of supersonic darts punctured through armour and flesh like hot butter, hurling bodies to the ground like dolls.

  I fired round after round into my enemy as I closed with them, my bayonet gleaming cold hard and cruel as I did.

  One Chinaman fell onto his back as I shot him in the stomach. Despite his wound, he attempted to bring his rifle into the aim, but too late.

  I stabbed the man several times. Blood sprayed up my legs and he lay still, without making a sound. Training had taken over my body completely, and without even thinking of what I had just done I withdrew my bayonet and checked that it was still fitted correctly to my rifle, as was the drill, ready for my next foe. There were none. The rest were dead on the ground, killed either by Delta fire team or by us with our rifles and bayonets.