The Fifth Battalion

by Michael Priv

  THE FIFTH BATTALION

  Michael Priv

  ISBN-13: 978-1981249718 ISBN-10: 1981249710 © 2016, 2017 Michael Priv. All Rights Reserved.

  PART ONE

  NOT-BEING

  1

  Pyrenees Mountains, Spain, 1640 The majestic tranquility of the Pyrenees felt obscene that morning, incongruous with what was about to happen here. How many of them were going to die today? Each hoped it would not be him.

  The young officer finished braiding his hair and threw the braid behind his back with a well-practiced move, watching a red hawk gliding overhead in harmony with the universe.

  Adjusting the worn lather webbing on his narrow chest, the officer surveyed the vicinities. The artillery encampments were arranged along a low grassy ridge, studded with rock protrusions and sage brush. The individual gun emplacements stood out like spots of mange on a very dirty dog. The artillery regiment, flying the standards of the praying mantis, the old Confederate Wait and

  Pouncesymbol, was facing a valley with a fortress dug into a hill, the objective of their mission. The young officer studied the target through his spy glass. The embattlement looked formidable. Cut into a sandstone knoll with massive basalt protrusions, the hill stood well over a hundred feet tall. Numerous artillery gun nests and ramparts at different levels suggested that the cliff had been hollowed out inside, and in fact it was. This fortress would not be easily breached. The young officer, however, had no doubt it would fall. As far as he was concerned, there was no such thing as an impenetrable fortress. He knew what kind of damage their thirty-two large guns could inflict in a sustained one-hour-long barrage. He was planning to lounge on one of those ramparts within an hour, long before the place heated up in earnest. It could easily get up to a hundred degrees here in the Pyrenees today, with the humidity numbers to match. He was looking forward to leaving behind what was now in store ahead of him.

  In his mind, the officer went over the mission briefing of the night before. In the flickering torch light, the commanding officer explained the plan of attack, pointing at the mock-up display, roughly modeled after the actual scenery. The artillery played a major part in the upcoming offensive. The hour-long barrage of all eight four-gun batteries, thirty-two guns in total, was supposed to not only soften the enemy defenses but also distract them sufficiently from a group of commandos scaling the east slope, a sheer basalt wall, where they were least expected. The commandos’ mission was to get inside the fortress and destroy the Big Gun on top, making a full frontal attack possible. Was it a good plan? A sophisticated plan with built-in contingencies and safety redundancies? He sighed. None of that made any difference. They wanted what was hidden inside that mound of dirt. It was their duty to get it, as well as their innermost desire bordering on obsession. They searched for it long enough. Too long.

  “1st battery, shell shots ready! Look alive, lads, it’s about to start!” At the 1st Battery 3rd Gun emplacement, the battery commander’s voice set the rag-tag crew of men into frantic action. The 3rd Gun commander, the young officer with the braided pony tail, knew what was coming. Fear gripped his heart—the primal fear of death which he knew so well. For an instant his thoughts went to his fiancé waiting for him in Liverpool. The dear image seared through his mind and was gone.

  “Weapon crew, munition s, get the gun ready!” he yelled to his two crew chiefs. The weapon he referred to was the fifteen-hundredpound gun in his charge and the munitions were the cannonball shots it fired.

  The crew was good. The officer knew them all. “Powder runner , go!” Juan, the old Spaniard, the munitions chief, yelled to the powder runner, a small skinny boy, too small for thirteen, who dashed off like a rabbit, beating the dirt with his bare feet, his cut-up burlap long shirt, tied mid-section with a rope, flapping in the wake.

  “Shot runner, fetch me a shell shot!” Juan ordered. “Yes, Chief!” immensely strong, a very hairy, swarthy Lebanese shot runner was the only man present who could probably run all day with a thirty-pound cannon ball under each arm. Fittingly, his job was to keep the cannon balls coming. His red salvartrousers with a sash and a short poturrobe set him apart from the rest of the crew—and from pretty much everybody else on this side of the Ottoman Empire.

  Both runners dashed to the back of the gun position, where the supplies were stored behind a wide roundish basalt protrusion. The shell shots the battery commander called for were hollow iron balls filled with explosives.

  “Weapon in position! Heave-ho!” “Heave -ho!” seconded Wylin, the weapon crew chief, the old Brit, a pirate with a missing eye. Wylin knew his way around a gun. Young officer liked that very much about his weapon chief. Wylin called cadence, directing the crew, and men heaved the gun in position, using rope harnesses.

  The young officer roughly sighted the target about five hundred yards downrange along the barrel of the massive gun. The weapon team positioned the gun just so to achieve the rough aim as per the officer’s orders. The gun was still relatively easy to move on dry ground. They were going to use a lot of water in the next hour or so, turning the position into a swamp that would swallow the gun wheels half way to the axles.

  “Hold!” the officer raised his hand. “Block tight!”

  The wheels were blocked with wooden blocks to hold the gun in position.

  “Weapon crew, stay clear!” Wylin ordered. His men stepped aside.

  “Munitions crew, frontn’center!” yelled Juan. At t he gun the weapon’s squad was replaced by the munitions team, who busied themselves with their barrels of water, wads of old cut-up hemp rope and canvas strips, a stack of neat sheets of parchment and a couple of heavy linen tarps.

  The powder runner returned with a keg of gun powder, the boy’s face ablaze with excitement at the approaching battle. He would serve as a supernumerary ready to lend a hand where needed until the next keg of powder was called for by his superiors.

  The agile, dark-skinned swabber mopped out the interior of the barrel with a wet swab—the action intended to extinguish any embers from a previous firing which might set off the explosion of the next charge right in the barrel. Since the gun had not been fired yet, the action was not, strictly speaking, necessary, but was done nonetheless to keep the inside of the barrel wet as a precaution.

  “Measure six livre,” the munition chief instructed the wrapper. The wrapper packaged the measured portion of the gun powder, folding it just so, creating a cartridge. Into the barrel the cartridge went, jammed in by the rammer. The piercer stubbed the cartridge a few times through the touch hole with a pointed pricker to expose the powder. Next, the wadder stuffed a small wad of old canvas and rope into the barrel, which was also rammed home. Next, the shot was loaded, followed by another wad. Meanwhile, the lighter primed the touch hole with a bit of gunpowder.

  “Excellent job , you black-hearted sons of bitches!” the officer yelled in a voice alight with affection. His guys grinned. He sighted the target down the barrel again, fine-tuning the aim. The weapon crew readjusted the blocks and shims to achieve the aim. The gang, except for the lighter, stepped away from the gun. The 3rd Gun was now ready to fire. The entire procedure took less than a minute. Outstanding.

  The officer stole a glance to his right and left, noting with deep satisfaction that the crews of both 2nd and 4th Guns at his flanks were still getting their guns ready. He really liked his crew.

  The lighter held his linstock, a wooden staff holding a length of a smoldering match, over the touch hole in the rear of the gun, the breech, now primed with gunpowder, ready to ignite.

  The bugle bleated “Attention!” followed a long minute later by the shrill note, signifying the command to fire. All thirty-two guns went off as one, covering the fortress with explosions, dislodgi
ng rock and dust. When the gun discharged, the recoil sent it backwards until it was stopped by the embankment, created for that very purpose.

  The attacking infantry regiments positioned below, closer to the fortress, under the banners of the praying mantis, opened musket fire, at best marginally effective at that range.

  “Reload!” The 3rd Gun crew sprung into the reload action, over a dozen men pulling and shoving, blocking and shimming it back into position. Men knew what to do. The shot runner ran off to fetch the next shot; the wrapper was already busy packaging the next cartridge with the boy helping him and the rammer on the ready.

  The defenders returned fire. Shortly, men took their shirts off, their bare bodies glistering with sweat. The morning was still young but it was getting hot already, particularly next to the gun, which was now too hot to touch.

  “Cool the gun!” the weapon chief yelled. A couple of men of the weapon crew soaked one of their heavy tarps in water and threw it over the barrel to cool down the gun. Steam briefly enveloped the position.

  The ebb and flow of the gunnery action had settled into a hysterical rhythm, punctured by occasional whining of approaching death closely followed by the warning screams, “Incoming!” which would send the crew scattering for cover. Explosions, mostly harmless, were at times followed by screams of the dying and body parts flying in all directions.

  The dead and wounded presented a tripping hazard, so they were laid out in the back. Somebody would attend to the wounded later, or at least that was the plan.

  Eventually the enemy fire subsided somewhat, suppressed by the artillery. The respite offered the officer a chance to re-inspect the target through his spy glass. He liked what he saw—destroyed ramparts, blown up gun nests, several holes in the sheer wall, dead bodies visible here and there and the blown up front gate. Most importantly, he saw that the commandoes scaling the east wall had now crested the top. Amazed, he suddenly noticed his old friend, the hawk, gliding high.

  “ Look alive, men! We’re almost done!” the officer shouted to his tired and very dirty troops, ankle deep in mud. He helped the crew wrestle the gun into position.

  Two strong explosions at the top of the fortress spelled success for the commando mission. The explosions also destroyed a large portion of the wall on top, exposing something huge and ugly nestling inside the hollow hill. That something inside the hill seemed as unlikely to be there as anything could possibly ever get. “The spaceship!” somebody yelled.

  The crew cheered, grinning and slapping each other on the bare backs. Artillery fire immediately stopped for the fear of killing the commandos and damaging the ship. After all, that spaceship was the real object of their offensive—the one and only on this primitive planet, their ticket home. The bugle sounded infantry attack which meant the gun crews were supposed to abandon the guns and join the infantry.

  Having collected their pistols and swords, the decimated 3rd Gun crew, dirty, sweaty and exhausted but some still grinning, joined the thin throng of the artillery regiment bringing up the rear of the two infantry regiments, about a thousand strong, already mid-attack on the fortress, the praying mantis banners flying proudly over their ranks.

  With their cover blown, the defenders, no longer bound by the necessity to blend in with the locals, unleashed hell on the attackers in earnest. The Big Gun, the Phaser, was destroyed by the commandoes, but they still had their hand-held energy blasters. From this distance the officer saw at least two dozen of the defenders taking position in front of the gate, wearing the ray guns on their arms, some already firing in their direction. The funnel-shaped deflectors, protecting the shooters from the radiation kickback, were worn over the arm like a long glove. That made ray blasters difficult to stack and nearly impossible to aim but kept the personnel from glowing in the dark. The blasters were close quarters weapons, rarely used long-range.

  The attackers, young officer included, feared this moment of truth, which was certain to come. They knew that under pressure the defenders would drop their primitive cannons and muskets and switch weaponry, but the attackers have been looking for this ship for a very long time—reincarnating and fitting in for five millennia but always searching for their only ticket home. Marooned on this dust ball seemingly forever, when the moment came, they had no weapons better than those of the era. Musket, gunpowder and steel were all they had. Yet it was not muscle and metal that would seize the fortress. Determination and speed were of the essence now. Thus, the mad charge.

  With the energy bolts striking and his comrades falling all around him, the young officer made it unscathed almost to the gaping hole, where the heavy gate used to stand. A make-shift defense line, set up by the defenders, was presently being overrun by the attackers. Amid the dead bodies of the defenders, a big, muscular soldier fought for his life, scorching anything in sight with his ray blaster only about thirty feet in front of the young officer. The officer pointed one of his pistols at the enemy and squeezed the trigger. With a loud shudder, his old Blunderbuss burst into flames. The officer dropped the faulty weapon and reached for his second pistol. Too late. The defender’s blaster was already lined up for the officer’s torso shot. An attacker on the officer’s right let fly a cross-bow bolt. The ray struck the officer the very instant a crossbow bolt embedded itself deeply into the defender’s forehead. The eyes of the two dead men momentarily met.

  Writhing in agony and clutching that heat-fused cavity on his body where his belly used to be, the officer willed death to come and take him right that moment. He could not take the pain even an instant longer. The boy’s face hovering over him came into focus. Tears ran down his very dirty face, leaving glistering tracks. Amazed, the officer noticed his old friend, the hawk, gliding high.

  With a roar the spaceship departed its secret berth. The halfdestroyed top of the hill opened like a lid and was now standing at its end—sage brush and rocks and all, defying the laws of gravity. The officer looked up at the sky. The last thing he saw before death thankfully came for him was the cumbersome bulk of the space transport climbing majestically to the required lift-off altitude and then silently darting up and away. Gone.

  The hope was gone.

  2 San Francisco, 2016

  “Hi!”

  With some difficulty I focused on the beautiful, mature face leaning over me. The woman was smiling. Nice face. Intelligent, smiling eyes. Right, Dr. Rosenthal, Jane, the psychiatrist. The regression therapy.

  Wow. What the hell was that? Did it actually happen? A war in Spain in 1640 with ray blasters and a spaceship, no less. How would I even know it was 1640 Spain? Nonsense. Doesn’t get any crazier. Could not have possibly been true. Not in a million years. Bu-u-u-uu-u-l-shit! But the long-gone carnage that I just relived in my therapy session was so real, so intense. I touched my midsection gingerly just to make sure it was still there and breathed out a sigh of relief. Should probably remember from now on to refrain from getting my vital internal organs incinerated by ray blaster fire. Ha-ha. Bravado fell short of being truly reassuring at the moment. I felt like crap.

  “Welcome back, Norm,” Dr. Rosenthal greeted me. “Very happy to see you.” “How am I doing?” I asked weakly. Physically I felt terrible, but not as bad as I felt emotionally, truth be known. That entire ordeal in Spain—what the hell was that? As if I wasn’t confused out of my mind already. Was I going mad or was I that young officer for real? How could that be? That was in 1640. I was born in 1990.

  “You tell me how you’re doing,” Jane replied. “Here, take a look.” She handed me a mirror.

  I stared at the dead man. The dead man stared back at me. Dejectedly. Gray, hollow eyes. Only about twenty-six, yet already oozing melancholy, the sign of old age. Sullen lips, pale complexion, unkempt stubble, disheveled sandy hair. The faded, horrifying Dead Poetic T-shirt featuring their latest hit “Self-destruct and Die” did nothing to cheer things up.

  I squinted and bared my teeth. The face in front of me morphed into a grotesque mask. The splitti
ng headache and horrible taste in my mouth, the remnants of my drinking the night before, did not help matters either. Good that Jane didn’t know I came hung over for my therapy session.

  It isn’t the alcohol that gives you hangover,it’sallthe other crap they put in therefortasteand color,I reminded myself and felt a little better. Bastards.

  “Sick and tired” didn’t even begin to describe how I felt about myself and life in general. And now this Pyrenees nonsense. The oblivion beaconed. Oh, how much I wanted to end the pain. Death, the beautiful seductress, was reaching for me, calling me— the tantalizing nothingness, that painless gateway to heavenly oblivion. I resisted the temptation as usual. Why did I resist?

  I knew I was not well. Deep down I knew. That was the good news. I was not fully crazy. I heard crazy people never perceived their insanity. So there was still hope for me. But that was not the main reason. Linda was the main reason. Linda—my lover, my friend, my life. We have been together for two years, three months and eight days now. I would never let her down.

  “Guess I’m not doing all that well.” I rubbed my eyes. Weary and exhausted, I felt I needed reassurance. “That is why you’re here. We are working toward making you better,” Jane sounded earnest, smiling at me and adjusting the papers on her desk. Then she peered straight into my eyes, “You did great, Norman, I mean it.”

  Her complement hit the spot. “What day is it?” I slurred a little, still working on getting my mouth and tongue to work right. “Saturday,” Jane replied with her usual ease.

  Saturday morning. Right. That’s when Jane saw her special patient.

  “Here, have a Perrier.” Jane handed me a cold bottle. I gulped thirstily. “Probably should wrap it up for now. I’m visiting Bill later today,” I said.

  “You may have to change your plans, Norm. We have some more work to do here. Bill will understand. Tell me about him.” That’s right. She knew Bill. Bill was the one who recommended Jane. Did I step smack in the middle of a conspiracy? I squinted at the beautiful woman in front of me. Can a woman this beautiful be the harbinger of evil tidings? Of course, she can. Dah. Probably written in their spy manuals on the first page. In spy movies beauty is practically a prerequisite. But then sex is always the bait. That’s how they reel you in. This one was friendly and professional. Hm-m.