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

by Richards, Phillip

  ‘Are we gonna pull back?’ I asked Sam, hopefully.

  ‘No,’ he whispered, ‘I don’t think so.’ My heart dropped.

  We crept forward toward where the drill had been working its way through the rock, taking care not to trip on the lines of pipes and tubes that ran along the tunnel floor to feed it power and extract its spoil. We finally came to a halt fifty metres from the end of the tunnel, tucked around the last of the corners purposefully left by the drill to keep us out of direct line of sight, in case the Chinese detonated a device or broke in somehow. Sweat dripped from my forehead despite my respirator attempting to cool my face. My breath was ragged with fear. They knew we were there, how could they not?

  A man crept past us, his lower legs brushing against our shoulders. With my visor’s night vision I could clearly see that he wasn’t wearing anything apart from his armour and his respirator. He crept slowly, placing his feet like he was stepping on broken glass.

  I knew that the man had to be an engineer, for nobody in his right mind would do what this man was doing. In his hands he was cradling a plasma charge, taking it forward to the end of the tunnel where it would be used to best effect. You could use a robot drone to do this, but they were often easily detected, far better to use a human being to deliver the payload. I could only imagine what it must feel like creeping all the way up that dark tunnel, all alone, knowing that if the enemy heard a peep from you they would blast you into the rock like beef patty.

  ‘That…’ Brown whispered, ‘Is tapped.’

  I said nothing; to do something like that a man must have had either nerves of steel - or a few screws loose.

  I watched the figure round a slight bend in the tunnel and out of sight.

  The engineer was gone for at least ten tense minutes. If I could have done I would have bitten my fingernails, but instead settled for chewing on my drinking straw inside my respirator to calm my nerves.

  When the engineer returned he was clearly no longer carrying his charge. He exaggerated his creeping almost comically, and I could have sworn he was smiling. Crazy.

  A minute later a message was being passed up the line again, making its way past several sections before it got to us.

  Sam patted my shoulder, ‘Fire in the hole. We will enter the enemy tunnel and assault left.’

  ‘Fire in the hole, we will assault left’ I repeated to Brown.

  When the message got all the way up to Ray, the section point man and the furthest forward of the platoon, he then sent the message back again.

  Whispering as quietly as our lips allowed, we passed the same message back up the line to its source, confirming that it had reached the whole platoon correctly. We lacked the ability to communicate by intercom without alerting our foe, but we made do with the mark one mouth and mark one ear.

  From behind us a rifle IR torch flashed slowly and deliberately up the tunnel. I knew from my training on Uralis that it was one of the engineers counting down to detonation of the plasma charge, a powerful device designed to punch a man-sized hole through soft or weakened earth and rock. After the third flash the device would be detonated by remote.

  Boom!

  My body was tossed from the ground where I crouched and I landed flat on my face. The impact lifted my respirator seal away from my chin, allowing hot toxic air inside and then a cloud of dust as thick as emulsion enveloped me.

  ‘Down!’ Somebody hollered over the noise of the explosion that echoed up and down the tunnel.

  ‘Get fucking down!’ Another voice screamed, more urgently this time. I recognised it as Sergeant Evans, and I obeyed, keeping as low as I could.

  ‘Firing!’ I couldn’t see, but a smart missile was launched. Over my head it flew, its booster rocket driving it up the tunnel and away from us before the main rocket ignited. It negotiated the corner in the tunnel with surprising ease, knowing exactly where it was going without needing to be told.

  ‘Firing!’ Another missile was fired, then another.

  The racket down the tunnel was unbelievable, sending shockwaves through the earth beneath me where I lay stunned. Blinding flashes of light burst through the clouds of dust as the missiles successfully navigated the hole created by the charge and detonated their payload within the Chinese tunnel.

  I picked myself up as quickly as I could, my respirator display alerting me to the loss of a correct seal to my face. I pulled it back down over my chin and blew out hard.

  ‘My God,’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Let’s go!’ Westy screamed.

  ‘Go! Go! Go!’ Sam pushed at me from behind.

  Brown was stumbling in front of me. I grabbed him roughly by the arm and charged.

  We sprinted around the corner of the tunnel and then into the glowing, smoking hole that had been blasted out by the plasma charge. As I ran, tripping and stumbling on pieces of rock and debris in the cloud of dust and smoke, I powered up my rifle to be used. I had no idea of what I was running into. The outlines of my comrades faded in and out of the cloud as we went, the heat making thermal imaging as impossible as Infra-red, and thus rendering my visor virtually useless.

  ‘This one’s for you, Jimmy!’ Westy screamed from somewhere in front of me, unleashing a burst of automatic.

  Before I realised it I was in the Chinese tunnel. If there were any of them alive where the charge had punched through and the missiles had followed, it was doubtful that any would have managed to stay in less than a hundred pieces, much less survived.

  Upon entering the enemy tunnel we turned left instantly, the section behind would turn right so that we would be assaulting along it in either direction. Westy and Ray advanced side by side, firing rapidly into the smoke so that sparks showered as darts struck at the tunnel walls and ricocheted. Unable to fire without shooting a mate in front of me, I followed behind with the others, ready to be used.

  We had to be rapid, the minute the Chinese worked out what had happened they were likely to withdraw and blow the tunnel.

  If any Chinese had died in there I didn’t see any. Nobody could have survived the combined effects of a plasma charge, a series of missiles fired in enclosed quarters and then to top it off a good hosing down with steel darts. Westy halted us ten or so metres up the enemy tunnel.

  ‘Withdraw!’

  We didn’t need telling twice. Even if the Chinese in this tunnel - if there had been any - had died, no doubt there would be more further back or in neighbouring tunnels, quickly readying their own response. We ran back toward our entry point as fast as our bodies allowed.

  ‘Two times charges detonating, friendly charge, friendly charge!’ The company commander had broken the intercom silence, his message relaying from one trooper’s headphones to another in the confined space.

  Whump! The earth shook as the first charge somewhere nearby detonated.

  Whump! Another, further away this time.

  ‘Fuck this shit!’ Stevo screamed as we bounded around the corner and back into the hole we had created for our attack.

  Corporal Jones’ One section was withdrawing back into the hole with us, and the boss stood at its opening pushing us toward safety in near panic.

  ‘Go, go! Move! Move!’

  Back inside our own tunnel a figure was stood, pointing for us to go back to where we had originally waited for the engineers to place their charge.

  ‘Get your arses moving,’ Sergeant Evans shouted as we passed him, ‘Stay low! Stay low, move fast!’

  We ran in single file through the darkness, the smoke clearing and our visibility returning.

  ‘Go silent, Westy, go silent!’ The platoon commander ordered over our section intercom.

  ‘Go silent!’ Westy hissed back at us and we slowed to a walk, and then a cautious creep. I resisted the urge to bolt away, knowing full well that I would be heard by the Chinese. Besides, where was I going to go?

  Two almighty explosions rocked the tunnel, throwing us against the walls and sending Brown crashing to the ground at my feet. An
other wave of dust engulfed us, so thick it pressed against my body, almost like I was underwater.

  I steadied myself with one hand against the tunnel wall and with the other picked up Brown from the floor, ‘You okay, mate?’

  ‘I’m not your mate,’ he replied angrily, shrugging my hands away violently, ‘And do I look okay?’

  ‘Shut up, you belters,’ Sam hissed urgently behind us, ‘Get moving!’

  ‘Close up,’ Westy called above the din of another explosion, ‘Stay with me.’

  We closed right together so that we could keep eyes on the man in front of us, continuing to slowly make our way back up the tunnel.

  When he was satisfied we had moved a good hundred metres away from the hole into the Chinese tunnel, Westy held up a hand to bring us to a halt. We crouched together in a tight huddle, like a small herd of terrified animals. Stevo was rocking.

  ‘Snap out of it, Stevo,’ Westy hissed, ‘Get a grip of your body.’

  I looked left and right. In the settling dust I could see another section ten metres behind us in a similar huddle. I assumed it was one of ours. Despite the risk of losing an entire section or more in one go, we couldn’t communicate effectively if we spread out without using the intercom and so it was necessary for platoons to huddle close together. I was glad to be as close as I was to the others, even Brown, their proximity was comforting.

  As suddenly as it had erupted into noise and violence, the warren became deathly silent as again we sat and waited for the next move to be made. Our respirator motors battled to draw air from the smoke. I hoped that the engineers were ventilating the tunnels, because otherwise we would run out of air for our respirators to filter, they weren’t designed to breathe pure carbon dioxide.

  The silence was broken when Stevo sobbed loudly.

  ‘Stevo, shut up!’ Sam whispered angrily.

  It was then that I heard the distinctive click of a bayonet being disengaged from an MSG-20 and then a second, muffled sob escaped Stevo’s mouth as Westy pressed the blade against his throat.

  ‘Make a noise like that again,’ Westy whispered darkly, ‘And I will cut you open from ear-to-ear. Do you understand me?’

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ Stevo’s pathetic words were barely audible, even with my headphones.

  ‘You’re very close to dying,’ Westy threatened, ‘So I suggest you shut up.’

  Sam leant close to me, so that our visors touched, ‘That bloke is a total arsehole.’

  I nodded, although it felt hypocritical; I was hardly a hero myself.

  We waited for five minutes in the dark, without a sound. I wondered what had happened and what had caused the other explosions. It seemed likely that the closer blasts had been caused by the Chinese blowing out their tunnel in an effort to stop us advancing into it. The more distant explosions I couldn’t explain. Warren fighting was a terrifying underground game of chess, and we were the pieces. Engineers of both sides were deciding how best to make their next move and we were just along for the ride.

  Eventually, a solitary trooper made his way toward us from the way we had come. A runner, no doubt, tasked to pass messages in absence of the intercom. Nobody dared use the company communication network unless the warren got noisy, it would only allow the enemy to work out where we were and what we were doing.

  The runner crouched close to Westy and whispered his message.

  ‘Pinkies blew out their tunnel,’ he said quietly, confirming what I had suspected, ‘Engineers are checking it out. Five platoon assaulted into the same tunnel further back, that got blown out too. We’re possibly gonna dig down into a transit tunnel beneath us, but we won’t be moving for at least the next ten minutes.’

  ‘Okay,’ Westy acknowledged, ‘That it?’

  ‘That’s it, anyone else further up there?’ he flicked his head toward the Chinese tunnel.

  ‘Yeah, mate. One section I think.’

  ‘Cool, I’m off, then.’

  The runner continued on up the tunnel to pass on his message and we waited.

  I brushed a layer of dust away from my gloves gently, sending puffs of it into the air. I watched the mini dust cloud slowly disperse and settle on the ground. We were coated in it from head to toe, just like all of our guides had been when they had escorted us down into the warrens.

  Too afraid to even make the slightest sound, we waited, listening out for the sound of Chinese tunnelling. We waited for what felt like an age, staring blankly at the walls across from us, alone to our thoughts, and our own inner demons. Inside my head the memory of my actions with my original ill-fated section assaulted my mind and soul, and I found myself longing for home, for daylight, for peace from all of the misery. There could be nowhere worse to be than there in the bowels of New Earth, man’s self-made hell.

  Beating off the urge to cry or vomit, I was unsure which; I closed my eyes and imagined I was back on Earth in the warmth and comfort of my home.

  #

  My body jerked when a hand violently shook at my shoulder. I looked up in alarm at the figure standing over me.

  ‘Moralee, wake up you lizard,’ it was Sam. He shook me again to emphasise the point.

  ‘I’m - I wasn’t sleeping,’ I blurted reflexively. Out of the corner of my eye, Brown shook his head in disgust.

  ‘Shhhhh,’ Sam placed an upward pointing finger across his visor where his mouth would be, ‘’Course you weren’t, sweetheart,’ he said sarcastically.

  My visor read it to be ten-twenty-two, just past the New Earth mid-day. It had been at least an hour since we had gone firm and waited for the next move, and I could only remember five minutes of that time. Quite clearly I had indeed been asleep, my exhausted body must have just switched itself off.

  ‘Sorry, Sam,’ I whispered.

  ‘Don’t apologise, it’s weak. We’re moving back.’

  ‘Why? Are we retreating?’ I was almost hopeful.

  ‘And miss all the fun?’ I sensed that Sam was smiling as Ray passed us back the way we had come and away from the Chinese tunnel, ‘Where did you learn that word anyway? ‘Retreating’ is a dirty word,’ he waved a disapproving finger at me.

  I sighed, ‘Fair one.’

  Westy was next to pass us, then Stevo.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ I whispered.

  Sam shrugged, ‘Don’t know yet, we just got the order to move. Probably gonna try somewhere else.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Brown patted my shoulder, announcing he was about to move off.

  ‘Had a nice snooze, cheese head?’

  I said nothing, embarrassed. Sam shook me again reassuringly.

  ‘Don’t worry about him, mate. He’s just got sour grapes because no one likes him. But don’t let it happen again.’

  ‘Him and Woody have got it in for me,’ I said, but Sam just laughed.

  ‘I think those two are the least of your worries, mate. And you’re the least of theirs. Come on, let’s go.’

  I moved off.

  #

  For several hours we followed a laser drill as it burrowed a twisting and winding tunnel through the rock, trailing hundreds of metres of piping that brought the excavated rock back past us and to the engineers somewhere behind.

  Twice in a single hour the Chinese blew out the tunnel being dug ahead of us as we tried to connect it with theirs for a fight, once right on top of a laser drill as it worked, then a second time further up the tunnel toward us in an attempt to hit troops instead of just a robot. They didn’t want a force-on-force fight, instead they merely wanted to buy time, hoping their ships might return to save them from their prison underground. The explosions came with such force they took our feet from under us, each time leaving us dazed and confused on the ground.

  Each time we picked ourselves up and waited whilst the engineers reassessed their route, and then carried forward a new drill complete with its snaking pipes, before continuing the process again down a brand new tunnel.

  The way I imagined tunnel warf
are was kind of like worms fighting some kind of duel in the mud, probing forward, moving, and probing again. Eventually though, the stalemate was going to end. We couldn’t go on like this forever, either we would run out of drills or the Chinese would run out of explosives. That or the whole of New Earth would cave in on top of us.

  As we slowly followed the drills down their tunnels we laid out our vibration-proof mats as they were passed down from behind, along with water for our packs which were almost depleted. It was hot work down at this depth, what with the heat created by the drill. Somewhere to our rear engineers would be having to work hard to maintain a supply of cool air into the tunnels, shame it wasn’t air that we could breathe without the damned respirators.

  I sat with my section in the pitch-black, whilst ahead our drill burrowed away somewhere out of sight ahead of us. I could hear the distinctive hissing-popping sound it created as its powerful lasers melted their way through solid rock, its spindly little metal legs pulling it forward toward the enemy like some ugly insect.

  ‘Why can’t they just give one of them things a rifle?’ I asked.

  ‘God knows,’ Brown replied curtly.

  I took a thoughtful sip on my drinking straw as I listened to the sound of the drill. If I listened to it for long enough my mind began to play tricks, sometimes I could swear I could hear people talking up there, and other sounds I knew to be in my imagination.

  Sam patted my shoulder, ‘We’re ten metres short of a pinkie tunnel. It opens into their defensive complex.’

  I leaned close to Brown and passed the message. Despite the proximity of potential enemy we knew now to remain sat down, any explosion would merely have us flat on our faces again anyway. I resisted the urge to power up my rifle, but my finger hovered close over the button.

  A familiar figure stepped over our legs in the gloom, cradling another payload of explosives in his arms. His infra-red torch flicked over us as he moved, temporarily dazzling my visor until it quickly adjusted. He was smiling, alright. Last time I wasn’t sure but he was definitely smiling.

  ‘That nutter’s actually enjoying himself,’ I told Sam in disbelief.