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

by Richards, Phillip

  ‘Please, Westy, please!’ Stevo begged.

  Westy stood up, and Sam released his grip. Stevo rocked where he sat and began to sob like a child.

  ‘I just don’t wanna die here, man! For God’s sake!’

  ‘Shut up and sit up!’ Westy crouched back down amongst us to continue his brief. He paused for what felt like almost a minute while he collected himself.

  ‘For the minute our orders remain the same. We are to stay put in this defensive position until ordered to move or until we’re relieved. C company is tasked to maintain arcs to the north and east, B to the south and west, and we have the good deal with having to provide air defence. That’s good news for us, gets us some chance to rest and just maintain a watch on the air. The companies will rotate their tasks every six hours, so make the most of it.

  ‘Platoon sausage, if you didn’t know, is now Ev, which I’m sure he’s chuffed with.’

  Westy was clearly being sarcastic, I somehow doubted that any section commander would want to jump up to platoon sergeant, dealing with casualties, ammunition resupply and the company hierarchy itself. Sergeant Evans’ battlefield promotion wasn’t particularly unexpected, he was the platoon senior corporal and so next in line to step up whether he wanted to or not.

  ‘The company is a bit of a mix up at the moment,’ Westy continued, ‘At the minute we have most of three platoon attached to us, so we’re back to three sections. Each section in the platoon will maintain an air watch with the smart launchers and stick to hard routine. That means no heating your horror bags, no external heat sources of any kind. Movement outside the burrows is to be kept to a minimum. The company are trying to get us some additional thermal blankets, but with little or no supply chain I don’t see how we’re gonna get them. Basically, all we need to do is keep the stag going, and just wait to see what happens next. I suggest you all get your thermal bags out and rest. Anybody got any burning questions?’

  ‘What’s going on up there, mate?’ Sam thumbed up toward the sky.

  Westy shrugged, ‘I don’t know much to be honest. Challenger has apparently been destroyed during the day, along with several other ships.’

  ‘Shit, man!’ Ray gasped in dismay, and my jaw dropped. Challenger had been my home for several months, and now it too was gone! It seemed like everything I had known was systematically being taken away from me, one bit at a time.

  ‘Our ships managed to maintain control of orbit most of the day, as you probably saw. During the Chinese counter offensive we lost more ships. That’s why the saucers and the pinkies managed to get all over us so easily. They’re still trying to re-take orbit above us to regain the initiative. Apparently it’s like this over most of the planet, the Chinese are in disarray and either extracted from the surface or dug into their warren network. If I were to guess, I would say they will skirmish with our ships in orbit, and where they can seize even temporary top cover they’ll then attack using hit and run tactics on the ground.’

  ‘When are we gonna take Jersey City?’ Sam asked.

  Westy shrugged, ‘Dunno mate. We won’t do anything until the warrens are clear, I reckon. We’re probably hoping for the city to surrender, but I don’t think the Chinese will let us have Jersey City that easy.’

  ‘Cheese heads,’ Ray cursed toward the tunnel entrance, as if the enemy could hear him.

  Westy chuckled, ‘Yeah, right, but there you go. That’s about all I know, boys. All we need do now is just sit tight here, get a stag going and get some rest.’

  ‘No worries,’ Sam said, ‘I’ve got a stag list ready,’ he looked to Ray, ‘You and Stevo are on first, mate. Wake me up in thirty minutes.’

  Ray sighed morosely, he clearly didn’t want wanted to go on stag with Stevo, ‘No worries, mate. Come on Stevo.’

  The two troopers went and sat by the smart launcher while we took our thermal bags out from our daysacks. They were small, thin sleeping bags that would fit almost into your pocket, but they could be surprisingly warm. I slid myself into the bag, my boots left on just in case I was woken in a hurry. I propped my daysack behind my head as a pillow, its contents were not particularly soft and comfortable, but the padding that normally sat against my back was.

  I closed my eyes and tried to sleep.

  It wasn’t easy sleeping with a respirator on. They weren’t particularly restrictive, built of the lightest materials with motorised filters that enabled the wearer to breathe clean fresh air as if they were in a park somewhere on Earth. But it was still there on my face, and it felt un-natural.

  I stared at the ceiling of the burrow, listening to the sound of rain pattering on the surface up above and rain water slowly trickling down the entrance.

  Somebody to the right of me snored, who I couldn’t tell. I toned down the amplification on my headphones to near zero, transforming them into a set of ear muffs. The silence was peaceful, but it didn’t help me sleep. I always eventually slept with my respirator on, and I was used to people snoring, but something else kept me awake, and it wasn’t the throbbing in my arm.

  Like a movie on fast forward, my mind flicked through all the things that had happened since our landing.

  I thought of Climo, and dragging his lifeless body into the bottom of the ditch like unwanted rubbish. I remembered the Chinaman I charged in our surprise attack and driving my bayonet into his body. I remembered Chase’s cold empty eyes staring up into the heavens, and the carnage during our last stand against the seemingly unstoppable Chinese advance. I also remembered Peters battling for air while the two medics fought to save his life. I wondered if he was still alive.

  I had already seen things that would haunt my mind until the day I died, however long that would be. Images were captured in my mind so clearly, that if I closed my eyes I could see them as if I was there.

  I tossed and turned in my bag, desperately trying to sleep, until I eventually gave up and just continued to stare up at the ceiling of our miserable home.

  A hand patted me hard on the helmet.

  ‘Moralee, you’re on stag,’ it was Brown.

  ‘Okay, mate,’ I answered instinctively, forgetting my hatred for him. Brown seemed not to notice and was already sliding back into his thermal bag.

  I dragged myself out of my own bag and quickly packed it back into my daysack. Normally in training on Uralis I would have struggled to wake myself for stag duty, much to the annoyance of my comrades, but I hadn’t slept a wink anyway, so what was the difference?

  ‘Could you sleep?’ Brown asked as I closed my daysack and, surprised that he had chosen to speak to me, I stopped.

  ‘Not really,’ I replied.

  ‘Me neither,’ Brown rolled over, signalling that the conversation was over. I silently cursed his rudeness, and then switched my visor back to night vision and moved into the centre of the burrow where Sam squatted with the launcher.

  ‘Alright, Moralee?’ he whispered. The chamber was tiny, and he would have heard me and Brown talking about not sleeping.

  ‘Yeah, mate,’ I lied, and Sam nodded knowingly.

  I placed my daysack down beside Sam and sat on it cross legged. We were both sat behind the launcher facing up the dark angled tunnel that lead out of our burrow. Its entrance was obscured by the thermal sheet.

  The launcher sat idle, set to air defence mode, with arrays of sensors laid outside our burrow that gave it the ability to scan the skies above. If anything approached that it couldn’t identify as friendly, the launcher would make its own decision and fire without us having to do anything but reload it. A single red light blinked to reassure us that it was switched on and actively scanning.

  There was very little to look at, I quickly realised. Air sentries were only really present to make sure the launcher didn’t do anything mental, and protect the burrow in case somehow the enemy managed to infiltrate and sneak in.

  ‘How’s your arm?’ Sam said finally.

  It was sore as hell, ‘Not too bad,’ I said, and Sam nodded.

&
nbsp; ‘Cold, ain’t it?’

  I hadn’t really been thinking about it. The temperature had dropped significantly whilst I was in my bag and my visor now read minus two degrees.

  ‘Yeah, gibbering.’

  Sam rubbed his gloves together vigorously, ‘I could do with a few more hours in my bag, I tell you.’

  ‘Did you sleep alright?’ I asked.

  Sam laughed, ‘Like a log, mate, I was chinned!’

  ‘I didn’t sleep at all, I don’t think,’ I said grimly.

  ‘Yeah? Don’t think Brown slept all that well either. Must just be the cold.’

  I nodded as we both stared up the dark tunnel, ‘Yeah, must be.’

  Sam looked over at me, his head cocked inquisitively, ‘Are you scared?’

  I looked back, ‘Aren’t you?’

  Sam shrugged, ‘Yeah. Not as scared as I was when we dropped, though.’

  I thought about it, ‘I think I’m about the same, really.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Sam seemed to mull it over.

  We said nothing for a few minutes. I watched the seconds ticking away on my visor display agonisingly slowly, as if time had slowed down just for my stag. Scientists had been trying to mess about with dimensions and stuff to fiddle with time for centuries without success, but we troopers had discovered the secret eons ago. Stare at your clock on stag to slow time down, get in your thermal bag to speed it up. I tried to ignore my visor clock thinking that it might help.

  ‘What did Stevo do to annoy you all so much?’ I blurted, instantly regretting asking the question. What was I thinking? It was obviously a touchy subject in the section, and Stevo was far too senior for a crow like me to speak ill of him.

  Sam grunted, ‘I don’t really want to talk about it mate, to be honest.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘Fair one.’

  ‘Everyone’s afraid here, mate,’ Sam was looking at me. I wasn’t sure if he was following on from my question, or from when he asked me if I was scared, ‘There’s nothing wrong with being afraid. It’s what you do when you’re afraid that counts, know what I mean?’

  For a second I thought that maybe Sam had been told by Sergeant Evans about me and Brown. I felt his eyes boring into my skull through our visors.

  I nodded, ‘Yeah, I know what you mean, mate.’

  ‘You’ve got to realise that we are all in this shit together, and we,’ he went on, pointing at me, himself, and then the others where they slept, ‘All of us are in this together. Who do you think we’re fighting for?’

  ‘Er…. The Union? The people of New Earth?’

  Sam laughed bitterly, ‘New Earth? These people don’t care about Europe, mate, or the Chinese, or any of us. And does the Union give a damn about you? Of course they don’t. The Union is ruled by a bunch of rich corporate bastards who couldn’t care less if you lived or died. Want to know who I’m fighting for?’

  I said nothing.

  His arm swept the room, ‘I’m fighting for these guys. My mates. You. Because out here in this shit hole we are just about all we have. I would die for these lot, because they’re family.’

  ‘Did Stevo hide?’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s worse than that,’ the tone in Sam’s voice suggested that was all I would get from him.

  I couldn’t think of anything worse than me and Brown taking cover behind two comrades in battle, I was disgusted by myself. We could only hope that nobody in our new section would find out, lest we both wound up at the other end of their hatred like Stevo. I wished that there was some way that I could redeem myself, fighting during the Chinese counter-offensive just wasn’t enough. Maybe nothing would be.

  ‘Were you on Eden?’ I asked, trying to change the subject slightly.

  Sam snorted and placed his hand over his heart with mock hurt, ‘God, how old do I look, mate?’

  I decided not to say that he did look easily old enough to deploy to Eden. He looked about thirty, ‘So you weren’t then?’

  ‘No, you stroker. Half the senior blokes hadn’t been, let alone me. I’m twenty-two, but I must have had a hard paper round then, eh?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I smiled.

  ‘Yeah, well…… No I wasn’t. Westy was. So was Jimmy…’ he trailed off, the memory of his mate’s death was still raw.

  I thought of my mate Climo lying dead in the mud, and my other friends being cut to ribbons in withering Chinese fire.

  ‘He was a good mate of yours?’ I asked.

  Sam didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then nodded slowly, ‘Yeah. Davo was too.’

  ‘Climo was a good friend of mine.’

  ‘Really?’ Sam said sarcastically and laughed, ‘You two were thick as thieves. The bloke should have been banged up for what he did, even if it was Woody he did it to. You too.’

  I didn’t know what to say, but Sam simply patted my back, ‘I’m sorry about Climo.’

  ‘That’s okay. I’m sorry about Jimmy.’

  We sat in silence again for a minute. I realised that I hadn’t thought about Woody since we had dropped, and found myself wondering whether he had survived, and whether he was still out for my blood. My visor would have identified him to me had I come across him, but then the battle and its aftermath had been so hectic that I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I walked right past him.

  ‘A lot of people died today,’ Sam sighed, then paused thoughtfully, ‘But there will be more.’

  I knew he was right, but I felt no wave of fear like I did when we dropped down from Challenger. Instead the fear had become constant and over time I could feel my body numbing to it, and my mind accepting it as the norm.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied.

  Sam stood up, slinging his daysack over his shoulder, ‘I’m gonna wake Ray, mate.’

  I checked my clock, a whole half hour had passed, ‘Okay.’

  #

  The remainder of my stag was uneventful, spent listening to Ray’s endless jokes. He was a nice bloke from what I could make of him, but if I hadn’t been wearing all the protective equipment around my head I reckon he would have actually chewed my ear off. That bloke could talk forever.

  I woke Stevo before getting back into my thermal bag. He was sound asleep, and awoke with a start when I nudged him with my boot. His eyes were wide open, and his hand moved toward his rifle instinctively.

  ‘Alright, mate, it’s only me,’ I gently placed my foot on top of the weapon where it lay beside him so that he couldn’t do anything stupid. I had heard stories of half-asleep troopers stabbing and shooting each other in the dark, which wasn’t a way I wanted to go.

  Stevo tugged lamely at his weapon, until realisation dawned upon his face and his muscles relaxed.

  ‘You scared the crap out of me,’ he whispered angrily.

  I stood upright, returning my daysack to where it had sat against the wall of the burrow as my pillow, ‘Sorry. You’re on stag.’

  ‘Again?’ Stevo groaned, sitting upright in his bag, ‘I’ve just come off ten minutes ago.’

  Quite clearly Stevo’s display clock would tell him otherwise, but I wasn’t interested. He might be a senior trooper, but it was his turn on stag.

  ‘Ray’s already over there, mate. You up, yeah?’

  For a long five seconds Stevo sat still, as if his mind had not fully awoken yet and was struggling to compute what was going on around him. Some people could be a pain to wake up because they were deep sleepers, but he was just plain being difficult, I could tell.

  ‘Are you up?’ I repeated irritably.

  ‘Yeah. I’m up.’

  I began to unpack my thermal bag again as Stevo re-packed his own. You kept everything you weren’t using packed away in your daysack, lest you came under attack and had to leave it behind. I couldn’t imagine losing my thermal bag. It was as important to me as my helmet or respirator, as it should be to any half decent trooper.

  As I slid my body back into the warmth of my bag I watched Stevo take his seat beside Ray once more. The two sat by the launcher for at
least ten minutes in absolute silence. Watching them, thankfully, I fell asleep.

  #

  Only bad things happen when you fall asleep in a remote burrow in a war zone billions of miles from home. Any dream, good or bad might as well be a nightmare. Bad dreams mixed alien monsters and demons with experiences I had endured during the landings, with horrific scenes of mutilation and a never ending sense of horror and foreboding. Several times over a two-hour period I woke with a start, convinced something terrible had happened before realising that it already had.

  Or you can have no dreams at all - now that is shit. Troopers will sometimes refer to the thermal bag as the ‘red time machine’. You’re tired enough and jump into your thermal bag, you close your eyes just for a second and bam! You wake up to the joyous words of ‘You’re on stag, mate,’ or ‘Prepare to move’ or something equally morale sapping as if you never even got in the bag in the first place.

  But the worst dream of all for me was a nice dream. Dreams of pretty girls I had met during my life, dreams of passionate reunions and romantic encounters that came with a sense of sadness that hung like a cloud over the horizon. I could try to ignore that cloud, but it would always be there, slowly closing in around me.

  Then I would get woken up, and the reality of where I was and the fact that I was just having a nice dream would dawn on me with an impact more devastating than a shell dropped from orbit.

  After two hours I was awoken from one of those dreams. Whilst chatting up a naval lieutenant I had always fancied on Challenger, I could swear that Brown actually entered my dream and shook my shoulder, ‘Moralee, we need to get up.’

  ‘Give it a rest!’ I complained, but the girl faded and I opened my eyes. With my visor de-activated I could just make out his outline in the darkness.

  ‘Get up you wand, we’re moving in an hour, Westy’s gone to get a brief off the OC.’

  My mind began to wake up and I was back in the burrow. Instead of the girl’s sweet sounding voice there was only the ruffling sound of all the blokes packing away their thermal bags, and her sweet perfumed smell was replaced by the clean, bland air produced by my respirator filters. I groaned.