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

by Richards, Phillip

  There had been an entire section of Chinese, presumably attempting to sneak through the crops in order to attack Two section from close range. Unfortunately they hadn’t covered their flanks and we had beaten them at their own game quickly and violently.

  ‘Withdraw!’ Corporal Evans bellowed.

  We darted back toward the ditch. More Chinese were firing at us instead of Two section from within the crops, having been alerted to our attack.

  ‘Get down you stupid crow!’ Corporal Evans struck my daysack hard from behind, driving my body down to the ground as the crops danced with enemy fire.

  Without a clear line of sight the Chinese couldn’t target us accurately, but with similar weapons to us they put down some serious firepower, and made an effective demonstration of how suppressing fire could really force troopers to keep their heads down. I’d never crawled so fast in my life, dragging my body through the mud and into the ditch, where the gloved hands of the lads in Delta fire team grasped me and dragged me down into cover.

  ‘You alright, Moralee?’ Rawson asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ I nodded, panting. My respirator filters whirred as they worked to clear mist from my visor.

  ‘Jesus, there’s blood all up him,’ Climo exclaimed. Rounds still cracked overhead as Corporal Evans and Berezynsky were dragged into the ditch.

  ‘There’s two trenches,’ Corporal Evans told Joe, pointing towards where the rounds had come from, ‘Must be a platoon in that direction.’

  ‘Well we can’t stay here mate, we’ll be shot to shit,’ Mac advised, glancing apprehensively up the ditch.

  Corporal Evans nodded his agreement, ‘We need to get out of this ditch,’ then to Rawson, ‘Give me smoke.’ He indicated up the ditch with an outstretched arm.

  Rawson’s respirator barely concealed his grin, ‘Roger that!’ He brought his rifle up into a high aim, activating his under-slung grenade launcher at the same time. It was a simple weapon with a revolving drum that lobbed guided grenades, and it was devastatingly effective in the hands of an experienced trooper like Rawson. He fired a string of three grenades, all of which exploded into clouds of smoke and phosphor. Lethal as the phosphor was, the grenades were designed with one purpose, to create an instant cloud of hot smoke and tiny metallic fragments that could shield us from view from the enemy’s sophisticated targeting systems, including thermal.

  ‘Let’s move,’ Corporal Evans ordered, and we scrabbled up the wall of the ditch and concealed ourselves amongst a field of what I could only guess to be corn, its greenhouse roof shattered and collapsed. Glass cracked beneath my boots as I crouched as low as I could amongst the plants and took aim toward the dispersing cloud of smoke. My eyes suddenly focused on my bayonet; it was dripping with blood.

  ‘Two section’s gonna push through us along the ditch,’ Corporal Evans announced, and I shook off my daze, ‘we’ll give cover from here.’

  Suddenly rounds peppered the earth around us, flicking bits of soil into the air. Chase and Berezynsky were snatched backwards and I blinked, stunned.

  ‘Contact front!’

  The section weapons erupted in the direction of the enemy fire, but for some reason my visor hadn’t identified any targets and I paused, as if in a trance. Someone was screaming.

  ‘Man down, man down!’ a ragged voice called over the intercom. It was Joe Mac, running toward the casualties.

  ‘Well fire, then!’ I realised that Corporal Evans was looking right at me from not even five metres away.

  I needed no further instruction. My visor could not see the enemy themselves but it could pick up the direction their rounds were coming from so I took up aim and fired.

  To the left of the ditch Two section were advancing forward parallel to us, their weapons spitting death as they went. They were moving forward as fire teams, one team moving while the other covered, dashing forward through the crops. The enemy was somewhere ahead of them, but I still couldn’t see where.

  ‘Rawson!’ Corporal Evans hollered, ‘Westy wants frag on the position!’ Two section’s section commander wanted grenades fired toward the enemy in order to force him into cover.

  ‘Roger!’ Rawson wasn’t smiling any more, the section had taken casualties. He fired another burst of three grenades and my visor warned me that they were high explosive. Instinctively, I ducked low to the ground.

  The grenades exploded amongst the crops, and I finally saw what we had been shooting at. A hundred or so metres away and concealed within one of the greenhouses on the other side of the ditch was some kind of trench, surrounded by sandbags, but any enemy that had been there had disappeared, presumably blown to pieces.

  ‘Have that, you bastards,’ Climo shook his fist.

  Two section were up and moving again, and they were upon the trench within seconds. A couple of rounds were fired and somebody shouted something unintelligible. Seconds later there was a loud thump and a pillar of red earth and dust leapt into the air.

  ‘Position is clear, it’s got a tunnel!’

  My heart skipped a beat. Of course they had a tunnel, many of the Chinese positions would do. The hill was networked with kilometres of tunnels designed to protect defenders from orbital bombardment, a legacy left by the Union and then no doubt built upon by the Chinese themselves. The explosion had been a grenade tossed into the tunnel by Two section in an attempt to drive back any enemy that might be planning to counter attack back onto the surface.

  We were all nervous of fighting in tunnels, it was chaotic, claustrophobic, and units fighting underground could expect high casualty rates. I swallowed nervously.

  Corporal Evans lifted his head and looked across the battlefield. The greenhouses and their crops made it hard to see anything past a hundred metres, but even if we couldn’t see all the battle, we could hear it. My visor indicated that another platoon was in contact somewhere off to our right.

  Corporal Evans turned to Joe, who was tending to Chase and Berezynsky, ‘What’s the score with the casualties, mate?’

  ‘Berezynsky’s dead, mate,’ Joe answered gravely and I saw that he was right. Behind me Berezynsky lay with his head missing. The super high velocity of a magnetic dart had the potential to do devastating damage to the unlucky. Chase, on the other hand, had been struck on the leg, and his gel armour had solidified on impact and managed to deflect the dart enough to leave him with no more than a broken bone. Funny how things work out.

  Chase moaned, but somehow managed to give a thumbs up as the section 2ic checked his medical status on his wristpad. ‘Chase will live,’ Joe said.

  The air cracked, and my visor display flashed red at more Chinese firing from fifty metres away, this time on our side of the ditch, ‘Contact!’ I screamed. God knows where they had come from, but they were there, bounding toward us in the same way that Two section had done toward the trench.

  As we hit the deck, Climo fired a burst in response, his mammoth’s high powered magnets shrieking in terrible fury.

  The section returned fire as more pink camouflaged soldiers appeared. They were close; soon we would share the fate of the section we had killed only minutes ago.

  ‘Boss, this is Ev,’ Corporal Evans was straight on the platoon intercom, we were in trouble, ‘Contact, wait out!’

  ‘They’re gonna flank us!’ Joe Mac had abandoned Chase, and was now shouting to Corporal Evans. Rawson fired a string of grenades blindly over the greenhouses. The grenades soared almost lazily into the air, and then darted toward the ground and detonated as they identified targets that my visor couldn’t.

  ‘Come on, then, you bastards!’ Climo was stood now, strafing the crops with his MAM-G. Chinese scattered from the spray of supersonic darts that ricocheted from greenhouse frames and hacked the ground and tossed clods of earth away into the air.

  A Chinaman shot Climo straight in the face. He was dead before he even hit the ground.

  The remaining five of us crouched low in amongst the crops in our desperate last stand, our weapons spitting
death.

  It occurred to me that I was about to die. The Chinese had fixed us in position, and were moving around the greenhouses to our right flank for the kill. The gravtanks and dropships were either destroyed or otherwise engaged, because no help came. Two section were nowhere near and no doubt had their own problems, and Three section, who would have been our reserve, had never even seen the surface. In a world where travel between the stars was the norm, we were on our own, no further than fifty metres from friendly forces. The feeling of helplessness was overwhelming.

  ‘Keep firing!’ Corporal Evans’s voice boomed over the intercom, ‘Keep firing or we all die!’

  Rawson yelped and dropped to the ground in a spray of blood. ‘Man down!’ The section echoed the alert that struck at my heart like a knife.

  ‘My call sign is overwhelmed,’ Corporal Evans called to the boss over the platoon net, ‘Four times casualties, enemy in section plus strength. I am withdrawing!’ He was still in control. Despite suffering two deaths and two casualties his voice never gave the slightest hint of fear or defeat. He threw a phosphorus grenade toward the enemy and at the same time Joe Mac threw another. They exploded in great puffs of smoke and phosphor, momentarily concealing us.

  ‘Joe, Brown, move!’

  ‘Moving!’ Joe and Brown grabbed Chase and Rawson. Rawson was screaming, creating a sound that I had never heard before, and hoped never to hear again. I couldn’t describe it to you, only to say that it curdled the blood and sent shivers up my spine. His agony was absolute; his arm had been severed clean off at the elbow. His gel armour had automatically tightened an inbuilt tourniquet above the stump, stemming the flow of blood. They ran toward the ditch and Two section beyond, while me and Corporal Evans fired through the smoke to give cover for them as they moved. The hot smoke interrupted my visor’s thermal display, making it almost impossible for me to pick up targets, but that meant the same for the Chinese which was what we needed in order for us to escape. It was impossible to guess how many of them there were out there, but I imagined that they were close, moving through the crops and battered greenhouses. The air was thick with their fire, but thankfully it was inaccurate.

  Joe Mac and Brown dragged their casualties into the ditch and then took up positions on the bank to give us covering fire.

  ‘Moralee, prepare to move!’ Corporal Evans called.

  Safety catch, pouch…. The drills that had been forced into my head on Uralis took over. I looked at the bodies of Climo and Berezynsky. Climo’s face was in pieces. Exposed cartilage and bone glistened in the New Earth rain. Climo had been a true friend, one of the few troopers in the platoon who had accepted me into its ranks. Now he was gone.

  ‘Move!’

  Rounds whizzed past my head as I ran back with Corporal Evans toward the relative safety of the ditch and Two section beyond. Corporal Weston’s section appeared to be stuck in their own battle with an enemy to their front, but I saw that one of them was firing grenades over our heads to cover our retreat. Detonations thumped behind me but I didn’t turn to look.

  I struck something hard with my upper arm, enough to send me stumbling. I glanced around me, but nothing was there. I zigzagged toward the ditch, adrenalin spurring my body forward.

  ‘Down!’

  We dropped into the ditch beside the others. I fired a volley of shots into a pink soldier emerging from the smoke fifty metres away. He disappeared behind a greenhouse and I never saw him again.

  ‘Joe, keep eyes on up that ditch!’ Corporal Evans pointed in the direction we had been originally travelling. I saw that the ditch was empty, but we were horribly exposed in that direction with all four of us focusing toward the enemy advancing through the greenhouses to our right flank.

  ‘I’ve got it, Ev!’ It was Chase. He had managed to prop himself up against the bank and was pointing his rifle up the ditch. Beside him Rawson wailed, but it looked like his tourniquet had stopped most of the bleeding. He would have to wait. Chase’s armour had swollen around his injured leg to immobilize the break.

  Corporal Evans was back on the platoon net, ‘Boss, this is Ev, we can’t hold this flank! I need re-enforcing!’

  I heard the hiss of rounds passing close to my head, and my visor told me it had come to my left. My eyes widened, the enemy were in the ditch with us.

  ‘Contact left!’ Chase screamed, just before he died.

  We fired up the ditch with everything we had, filling it with smoke, sparks and lumps of earth.

  ‘Boss,’ Corporal Evans screamed into the platoon net, enraged, ‘I cannot hold! Where the FUCK are you?!’ He swore a string of curses as we fired in all directions. We were finished. Despite the initial surprise the Chinese had gained the upper hand, we were under attack from along the ditch and from the greenhouses and the situation was desperate.

  There was only one option left to save the section, ‘Joe, prepare to withdraw!’

  ‘Joe’s down!’ Brown replied over the din. There were only three of us left.

  ‘Shit!’

  My arm was aching from where I had struck it, so I reached to rub it and my hand came away wet with blood. I had been shot.

  ‘I’ve been shot!’ I cried.

  ‘We’re gonna die, we’re gonna die!’ Brown cowered behind the bodies of Chase and Rawson, both of whom were no longer moving. Chase’s eyes stared lifelessly toward the heavens, unaware that his body was being used for cover.

  I took cover with Brown, throwing my body into the bottom of the ditch behind the dead. It sounds wrong to hide behind a comrade, even now as I say it, but by then I think my survival instinct had properly kicked in, I was little more than an animal, desperately trying to survive. The super high velocity ammunition of the modern battlefield wouldn’t be stopped by flesh and bone, but behind two sets of gel armour I had a chance.

  ‘Get up you stupid little shits!’ Corporal Evans had not given up. He cursed and picked up Chase’s rifle and grenade launcher, holding it in his left hand with his own rifle in his right. He fired both simultaneously. Empty cases from the grenade launcher scattered to the floor at his feet.

  It was at that moment then that I stared in awe at my section commander’s last stand from where I lay at the bottom of the ditch. Coated in a mixture of blood and mud, he stood tall, proud and undefeated, his teeth bared like an enraged animal. He was the living embodiment of everything that made the Union army the fearsome foe that it was. I realised at that moment that although wars were fought with weapons, they were won by men like him.

  Then it came, the inevitable assault from the Chinese. The battlefield exploded into noise as tens of rifles fired simultaneously and I closed my eyes.

  But it wasn’t the sound of rifles, I realised, and I opened my eyes. Corporal Evans had taken a knee beside me, but he wasn’t dead.

  Above us the mighty gravtank hovered, its vulcan cannon roaring as it cut a swathe across the greenhouses. Any Chinaman above the ditches would have been cut to ribbons by the onslaught.

  A section of troopers whose helmets identified them as three platoon came charging past us, splashing us with red water as they jumped over the bodies of my dead comrades. The platoon was back on the attack with its new found support.

  The boss and his radio op were the next ones to pass, and he stopped to look at Corporal Evans who now knelt amongst the sorry remains of his section.

  ‘Ev… you okay…,’ the boss began. The radio op was tugging at his arm, with some important message to pass on. His eyes were wild, because he held the burden of knowing everything about the battle around him.

  Corporal Evans said nothing. His eyes burned with hatred, and I knew that he blamed the boss for not re-enforcing him soon enough.

  ‘I couldn’t…, sorry,’ he backed away two steps from us and our dead, and then he was gone, up the ditch and into the battle. Something exploded a few hundred metres up the ditch, and gunshots sounded from amongst the greenhouses. Another section passed us, and as if satisfied that things w
ere back in our favour, the gravtank shot away from the hill.

  Corporal Evans looked down and regarded me and Brown like a lion would a pair of mice. I became self-conscious that I was still curled into a foetal position next to Rawson’s body and quickly picked myself up. The ditch was littered with bodies. Chase had been shot again fatally, and Mac lay in a crumpled heap, his head and arm missing. Only his rank insignia could identify him.

  ‘Ev,’ Sergeant James greeted our section commander as he slid into the ditch, with his work party and the smart launchers in tow. The platoon sergeant stooped over our dead and checked their vital signs on their wristpads to ensure that they read the same as his own. They were all dead. Finally satisfied he looked up at Corporal Evans and for the first time his face softened. ‘It’s not your fault, mate.’

  Corporal Evans said nothing.

  ‘Strip their ammo and follow on up. Moralee, patch that gash up on your arm when you get a chance, and stop feeling sorry for yourself. Welcome to the real world.’

  I remembered the wound on my arm. My armour had swollen tightly around it and administered a clotting agent that had already stopped the bleeding. My wristpad told me that the wound was superficial and didn’t require medical treatment, and soon my armour would return to normal to allow me to dress the wound properly. I felt ashamed, ‘Yes, Sergeant.’

  Chase’s cold, empty eyes stared up at me.

  With nothing else to say, Sergeant James was gone, following up the boss and the rest of the platoon to the top end of the ditch, where a new battle was being fought.

  Corporal Evans looked at me and Brown again.

  ‘It’s not over, get their ammo.’

  Our section had taken advantage of a chance encounter and succeeded in destroying a Chinese section, but in doing so we had then been counter- attacked by a numerically superior force. Despite our aggressive defence, there was no reserve section to come to our aid and we had quickly succumbed. We had lost five of our brothers in arms, Chase, Berezynsky, Climo, Rawson, and our section second in command, Joe Mac. I had received a glancing blow from a stray round and was lucky to still have my arm.