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

by Richards, Phillip

  I lifted my head to look at the smoking remains of the wall. My body was still intact, the wall had somehow saved me from the third missile.

  ‘Moralee!’ It was Sergeant Evans who called me. Somehow he too remained unscathed amongst the rubble, with Jonesy’s de-capitated body at his side, ‘They’re coming!’

  My lips curled. Those fucking bastards. I looked over the wall at the charging line of Chinese soldiers, screaming their war cries, an unrelenting enemy that never knew when to give up. Whether the Union won or not, we were never going to survive New Earth, I realised, but instead of filling me with fear, that one thought filled me with a powerful resolve to do what had to be done.

  ‘Prepare to move,’ I growled, and Sergeant Evans smiled, his teeth visible through his visor. There was no time for Westy or Pat to get to us, we had to do something to stop the Chinese advance or B Company would be caught with its pants down.

  ‘Boss, Ev,’ Sergeant Evans spoke on the intercom and drew a grenade and adjusted the dial, ‘Contact south, twenty enemy or more, One section has been destroyed, task a saucer now or you will be over-run. I am engaging.’ He threw the grenade.

  The Chinese must have been no more than twenty metres away when the grenade burst. Loose rubble and shards of glass enhanced its effect, slicing through flesh and severing limbs.

  I moved first, then Sergeant Evans, bounding over collapsed walls and mangled metal. I fired into the enemy as rapidly as recoil would allow, two shots for each, aimed directly at the centre of body mass as I had been taught on Uralis. Blood sprayed when I shot one pinkie directly through the head.

  ‘Bastards!’ I yelled.

  A pinkie emerged out of the rubble, his rifle broken, and he charged with his bayonet raised to stab me.

  ‘Come on, then!’ I beckoned him as he approached, my body fuelled with sheer rage. He tried to stab at me, but clearly he hadn’t spent as much time as me practicing using his bayonet, because I parried his bayonet away with ease and lunged at him, my own blade glistening in the light from the burning city. It caught him by the cloth of his armour, but didn’t penetrate, so the Chinaman let out some kind of piercing war cry as if he was going to bring his weapon back to lunge again. I brought up my foot and kicked him square in the stomach, sending him tumbling to the ground.

  ‘Die, you bastard!’ Why wouldn’t he just die? I stabbed at him again while he sprawled on the floor, and again my bayonet was deflected by his armour. There was no hope for the Chinaman, though, and I think maybe then he knew it, because I had gone completely berserk. I kicked his rifle away from him and dropped on top of him, and he uselessly hit at my thighs and torso, before I beat at him with my stock. First he took it, his helmet saving him from the first blow, but his visor cracked, then it smashed, and I beat at his head until it was little more than a pulp. The Chinaman was dead, and only I remained. A foreign voice screamed in agony somewhere in the dark.

  A series of massive explosions rocked the Chinese house, and I realised that Sergeant Evans had marked the enemy position and smart missiles were being fired by the platoon from the roof. The flashes cast long shadows across the rubble. I remember thinking that it looked like a graveyard in a thunderstorm.

  I looked down at my mutilated enemy, the rage slowly leaving my body. What had I become?

  And then I remembered Browner.

  ‘Man down!’ Somebody called before I could get back to the house. Westy had brought out his section to re-enforce the wall where One section had been, now no more than a pile of bricks and dust and gore.

  ‘Medic!’ The message would rapidly relay to one of the company battlefield medics.

  Browner wasn’t dead, but in some ways I wished that he was.

  Only my visor could identify Browner to me, because there was no way that I would have ever recognised him. My eyes widened as I ran up to him, just as Daniels ripped the first tourniquet out of his pocket.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ I exclaimed, and fell to my knees. Browner was a bloodied mess. The first two detonations had merely stunned him when it destroyed his cover, but the final smart missile had exploded directly below him, resulting in the traumatic amputation of both of his legs and half of his arm. None of his automatic tourniquets had activated.

  ‘Medic!’ Sergeant Evans shouted over the company net, ‘I have casualties at my location! Don’t just stare at him, Moralee!’ He hit me about the helmet, snapping me back into life. I stuffed my hand into my pocket and pulled out my own tourniquet, quickly preparing to put it onto Browner’s leg. Blood flowed from the stump onto the ground. Still conscious, Browner made a whimpering noise from inside his cracked respirator that pierced my soul and still haunts me even today.

  ‘Get pressure on his groin, Moralee,’ Sergeant Evans spat. I thrust my hand into Browner’s groin area, trying to apply pressure onto the major artery that supplied blood to his leg, but now was only allowing blood to flow freely onto the ground. I ran my hands down his leg, searching for where the bone ended beneath the flaps of quivering loose flesh just above where his knee should have been, and then awkwardly slipped the tourniquet over his thigh and pulled it tight with my free hand.

  Sergeant Evans pushed his hand into Browner’s armpit to staunch the blood loss from his arm, rocking the tiny body with his weight. He began putting his own tourniquet over Browner's arm and pulled it tight with all his might, ‘Listen to me, Brown, can you hear me?’

  Browner whimpered again quietly.

  ‘Brown, you’ll be fine, mate, do you hear me? You’ll be fine, we’ve got you,’ he tugged the tourniquet one more time, and me and Daniels did the same, ‘Mark the time of application on those tourniquets for the medics, Daniels. Moralee, get up here.’

  I came up beside Sergeant Evans just as he removed Browner’s respirator. He quickly inspected Browner’s face and checked inside his mouth, promptly closing it again and replacing the respirator.

  ‘Check his torso, I need to check the others.’ I hadn’t realised that there were other casualties. In fact Jonesy was the only man in his section who had died outright.

  I ripped open Browner’s bloodied armour, only to find that his stomach was riddled with holes, and I gasped, ‘Shit!’

  Daniels ripped out a packet of quick-clot foam, a substance designed to be packed into wounds to stop bleeding internally. Just as he began to stuff it into a hole in Browner’s stomach, the first medic slid to the ground beside us, panting heavily.

  ‘What’s going on?’ He asked, and I realised that it was the same medic who had treated my arm. I told the medic while he worked, frantically pulling out his specialist equipment.

  A stretcher had been assembled behind me ready to receive Browner. One of the other casualties was already being carried away, while B Company finally began an assault onto the house occupied by the Chinese. A Union saucer pounded a nearby building with its cannon.

  ‘Have you checked his back?’ The medic asked me in alarm, looking up from Browner’s wristpad. Daniels continued to stuff quick clot into a hole with a bloodied finger.

  I shook my head, ‘No.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ the medic said scornfully, and he unceremoniously lifted Browner onto his side. ‘Pull his armour away,’ he ordered, and I obeyed, unclipping the armour to expose his back. His combat shirt was soaked in blood.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I exclaimed again. A piece of shrapnel had punched through Browner’s stomach and come out the other side of his torso, toward the top of his back. He had a sucking chest wound.

  ‘He’s not gonna die…,’ the medic promised, maybe to himself, as he ripped away Browner’s armour. The wound was large and gruesome, pulsing with frothy blood, ‘Not gonna die.’ A grenade exploded within the enemy house and gunfire erupted, but I didn’t turn to look.

  The medic wiped away the excess blood and placed a chest seal over the wound, checking to make sure that it was fitted securely.

  ‘Get him on the stretcher,’ he ordered, ‘With me on three.’

&
nbsp; I braced myself to lift Browner’s body onto the stretcher, ‘you’ll be alright, mate,’ I told him, but he was now unconscious. It was almost a sob.

  ‘Make sure he stays on his side or you’ll cut the chest valve off. One, two, three,’ we lifted Browner onto the stretcher, almost throwing him into the air, it was so easy. He was so small; I’ll never forget how small he was.

  ‘I’ll go with him,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t need you to, I have a stretcher party,’ the medic said abruptly, ‘Let’s go, lads,’ the stretcher party stooped around the stretcher.

  ‘I’ll go with him,’ I repeated. Me and Browner had been through everything together, ‘He’s my friend.’

  ‘I don’t care if he’s your dad, mate,’ a trooper pushed me out of the way and took the grips to the stretcher. Another trooper took the other end, and together they lifted Browner from the ground.

  ‘Let’s go,’ the medic said, and they carried Browner away in a trot toward the trenches, where the shadow of a buggy waited for its next batch of casualties.

  I stood and watched helplessly as my friend was carried away, his blood still dripping from my gloves. Finally I leant against the wall of the house and slowly slid down until I sat on the floor, I stared blankly at the B Company assault onto the Chinese. Voices echoed from within the enemy house that it was clear, and then I saw troopers running deeper into the city, but I couldn’t have cared less. This place meant nothing to me. I didn’t care about Jersey Island, or New Earth. I just wanted my friends back, because without them my life was empty and pointless. I felt so numb that I couldn’t even bring myself to cry and so I just sat there and stared.

  I don’t know how long I had sat there until Sergeant Evans found me.

  ‘It’s not over,’ he said simply.

  I said nothing.

  Sergeant Evans sighed, ‘The platoon may be re-tasked to clear out pockets of enemy. The city will fall by daybreak, but we will have to maintain momentum in order to keep the upper hand.’

  I wouldn’t even look at him. The image of Browner’s quivering stumps was permanently etched into my mind.

  ‘Andy.’

  I looked up, surprised. Sergeant Evans crouched beside me.

  ‘The platoon needs you. We have to finish this.’

  I sat in silence, then, after a few seconds, I nodded, ‘Okay, Ev.’

  And so the platoon went back into battle.

  20: The Emerald Sea

  Browner died of his injuries in a field hospital somewhere underground. On top of three amputations and numerous wounds to the abdomen he suffered multiple organ failure and a collapsed lung. The medic later told me that by the time he died he had been given fifty litres of blood, more than his fair share out of a dwindling stock. He was a fighter, but he couldn’t fight forever.

  The Chinese began to withdraw from Jersey City just as the sun began to rise over the hills, riding on dropships concealed within the warrens beneath us on a futile flight across the emerald sea. Without any ships to return to, they would be harried by our saucers until they eventually surrendered to the Spanish on a continent several hundred miles away.

  Our platoon never did see any further combat, if the further two battalions who echeloned through us weren’t enough to finish the enemy themselves, the third battalion to pass through us - our old battalion - certainly was.

  I was crouched alone at the side of one of the city’s empty streets when I saw the first platoon of my old battalion pass me by. The rest of my platoon were within the buildings resting, but I found that I couldn’t sleep.

  I recognised some of the names of the platoon as they went by, but nobody I knew enough to want to chat to. If they recognised me they didn’t show it, patrolling past me at a fast pace. Perhaps their boss was eager to get into battle, I mused, since the carnage of the ditches probably wasn’t enough for him.

  One of the troopers at the back of the platoon, however, slowed down as he passed me, and then stopped in the middle of the road. I knew who it was, I had seen his name on my visor display long before he had noticed me. Woody didn’t move, he just stared at me as his platoon rounded a corner out of sight. His trigger finger slid slightly off the trigger guard of his rifle.

  ‘Go on then,’ I said.

  Woody remained motionless.

  My lips curled, ‘Kill me, then, be my guest. You’ll probably be doing me a favour.’

  Woody remained motionless for several seconds, and then his finger returned to his trigger guard.

  ‘Didn’t think so,’ I sneered, ‘Now, fuck off.’

  Woody hurried on after his platoon. I would see him again, but he would never speak to me, and so at least some little good came of the war on New Earth.

  A few hours after our success in Jersey City, it was announced that the Chinese had suffered similar defeats to the north of the island, and had withdrawn. Not long after that it was announced that all hostilities on New Earth had ended, and that the last Chinese ships were being chased out of the Centauri system.

  It took a day to completely clear the remainder of the city and its surrounding areas. Most of the remaining Chinese knew that their commanders were gone and the city was lost, and so they surrendered in their tens and even hundreds, and the prisoners were led by us into a hastily constructed holding area close to their trench system. Occasionally we met some small resistance, including a lone sniper who had us pinned for almost an hour until a saucer finally spotted him and blew him into chunks with its cannon.

  The civilian population had been living underground in parts of the warrens that the Chinese had left for them, and even a small town of atmospheric tents just outside the city, beside the beach of the emerald sea. We thought that they would have been jubilant to finally be freed from their Chinese oppressors, but not a single person cheered, clapped or thanked us when our platoon entered the multi-coloured tented town and told them that it was safe to go back into the city to rebuild their lives.

  ‘What’s their problem?’ Brooks threw up his arms as the civilians slowly made their way across the barren red surface toward their city on the horizon. I swear one of them even lifted his respirator to spit in the direction of our dropships.

  Ev smiled grimly, ‘What were you expecting? A brass band? These people don’t want us here.’

  I watched the civilians pass us. It was the first time I had seen old people and children in a very long time, but their hostile glares were obvious through their clear, bubble-shaped respirators.

  Stevo frowned, ‘So they prefer the Chinese? Traitors.’

  Westy looked like he was about to say something, but thought better of it.

  ‘They don’t want the Chinese either,’ Ev laughed, ‘Isn’t it obvious? They just want to be free.’

  ‘You mean we just did all that shit, and these bastards don’t even want us here anyway?’ Stevo kicked at the ground, ‘Then what was the point?’

  ‘I’m not sure that there is one, I’m afraid. Is there really a point to any war? Behind all of it it’s just a bunch of businessmen cutting up a map, and people like us who fight and die.’

  ‘Well, then, why are we here?’ Brooks asked.

  ‘Because if you’re not here some other poor lad comes here in your place.’

  The platoon watched for a while as the procession of civilians slowly receded into the horizon. Brooks furrowed his brow, ‘That doesn’t seem like a very good reason.’

  Ev sighed, ‘Well, I’m afraid it’s all you’ve got.’

  Nobody noticed me when I wandered away from the platoon, they were too busy watching the civilians go, perhaps hoping that they might leave behind something worth stealing in their tents. I walked over toward a steep rocky bank where the land dropped away several metres onto a beach of blood-red sand. The emerald sea glittered and sparkled magnificently in the sunlight, and I took a second to marvel at its beauty before sliding down onto the coarse sand below.

  My boots crunched in the sand as I walked toward th
e sea, my headphones magnifying the sound of the waves lazily lapping onto the sand. I bent over and took off my boots and socks, and placed my rifle and daysack down beside them. The wet sand felt rough between my toes as I walked slowly into the water. It was cold, but after several days in boots the sense of liberation was overwhelming. With every wave the water rushed around my ankles.

  Well, Browner, I thought, I did it. I’m taking a paddle in the sea for you. But I wished that all of my friends were there to enjoy it with me.

  I don’t know how long I cried, my respirator motors whirring in their battle to keep my visor clear, before I heard feet crunch behind me.

  ‘You okay, Andy?’ It was Ev. I didn’t turn lest he see I had been crying, though he had probably heard me anyway.

  ‘Yeah.’

  The platoon sergeant waded into the water beside me, ‘He turned out to be a pretty good trooper. You all did.’

  I said nothing for a while, just listening to the sounds of the sea, ‘I thought you hated us.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The ditches,’ I remembered my friend Climo, and Chase’s cold, accusing eyes and I grimaced at the memory, ‘We hid behind a man’s body like cowards.’

  ‘You were scared,’ Ev corrected, and sighed, ‘The deaths of those lads was my responsibility.’

  I frowned, puzzled, ‘Why?’

  ‘I was the section commander. Whether they were right or wrong, my decisions led to their deaths. You had absolutely nothing to do with it, and neither did the boss. He did the right thing.’

  ‘But we still hid.’

  Ev laughed, ‘Any sane man would. Can anyone blame a man for wanting to live?’ Another sigh, ‘For what it’s worth, you did yourselves proud. I couldn’t ask for better troopers.’

  It didn’t bring my friends back though.

  It was my turn to sigh ‘So, what now, then?’