C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (12 page)

‘We will have
thirty-one days to prepare ourselves for the operation to come,’ the platoon
commander said, ‘And we will use that time to train. We will train hard,
because if we train hard then we fight easy and I can assure you thirty-two
days from now we will all be fighting. Myself and the other platoon commanders
will spend much of the following few days piecing together our plan for this
operation and you can expect a detailed set of preliminary orders to be
delivered after that. A final set of orders will then be given at D-minus-one
so that the plan is fresh in your minds. Are there any questions?’

The platoon
commander looked across the platoon, but nobody said anything. We knew what we
needed to know for now; we were going. We would be the first down, bearing the
brunt of all that the Chinese could throw at us. It was a brutal task however
you explained it and there was no doubt that many within the battalion would
die before they even reached the ground. ‘One in three dropships didn’t make it…’

‘Mission
specific training will begin almost straight away,’ the boss continued after
pausing to allow the new information to sink in, ‘Starting with a detailed
planetary briefing at eighteen-hundred-hours. Gents,’ the boss relaxed his gait
with a sigh as he levelled with us, ‘I know this has been a turbulent few days,
and I know that it isn’t going to get any better for a long time. Some of you
may be afraid, and that’s fine. But remember that there are European citizens
trapped on that planet.
Europeans
,’ he repeated the word to stress the
point, ‘We owe it to them. We will free them from the
Chinese
,’ Jamo
spat at the floor as if the word caused him great displeasure.

‘We have the
simulators booked for the rest of the morning, Sergeant?’

Jamo nodded,
‘Sir.’

‘Then let’s
not waste any more time.’

The platoon
sergeant nodded again and then looked to us, ‘Get to the simulators.’ So much
for breakfast.

10: Happy Birthday

We hurtled
towards New Earth, and we trained hard, my God we trained hard. Since receiving
confirmation of the invasion Jamo was like a dog unleashed, terrorizing us day
in and day out, from six in the morning until twelve at night. We ran around
the ship until we were giddy, did strength exercises until we puked and used
the simulators until we struggled to work out which was a dream and which was
reality. Sometimes I would wake up in my bed and think I was still in the
simulator room.

Sometimes we
drew weapons and bayonets from the ships armoury and practiced on stuffed bags
dressed in pink painted ships fatigues. Pink was the colour of the Chinese
uniforms, supposedly, and Jamo had given them the nickname ‘Pinkies’.

‘What’s the
bayonet made of?!’ Jamo would scream at us as we stamped our feet on the spot
in the galley, clutching our rifles close to our chests and panting hard.

‘COLD, HARD
STEEL!’ We would scream back, enraged after the typical thrashing that always
preceded bayonet training. The ship echoed with our chants - once the ship’s
captain complained about the noise from the bridge!

‘What’s the
bayonet made for?!’ Jamo would walk amongst us spraying spittle at our faces as
he screamed, his face contorted into a hatred of all things living.

‘KILL, KILL,
KILL!’ Was the reply. Bayonet training hadn’t changed for hundreds of years,
and neither had the bayonet. It was hard to think that with the modern weapons
deployed by the colonial powers that such a barbaric weapon was still employed. 

‘On guard!’

We would advance
forward onto our left feet, lowering our rifles until they were level with the
ground, the vicious, sharpened blades of our bayonets reflecting the galley
lights, ‘ON GUARD!’

The dummies
would be suspended to the ceiling, or placed on the floor to simulate the different
types of enemy we might face, wounded soldiers on the ground or soldiers
stunned by grenades or shell shock. Others might be armed with fake ‘weapons’
for us to parry away before we made our final thrust for the chest cavity.

‘One thrust
at the lying enemy, front rank, advance!’

We would
scream, and we would charge at our dummies with a rage we were taught to summon
from deep within our souls, stabbing at our foes like wild animals possessed by
hate. But to me that dummy wasn’t a Chinaman, it was Woody, smiling at me with
that awful smile, mocking my family and my youth! The galley floor would be
scarred by a hundred blades a hundred times before we would arrive at New Earth
to use them for real.

‘When your rifle
stops,’ Jamo roared once, ‘Stab with your bayonet! When the bayonet breaks,
strike with the stock! When the stock breaks punch with your fists! When your
fists hurt bite with your teeth!’

‘YES
SERGEANT!’ We cried, and our bayonet training would continue.

Tensions rose
among the lads in the company as the days passed and our fate drew ever nearer.
Tempers were lost easily and there were even fights in the galley over minor
arguments.

Each of the
troopers in the platoon dealt with the situation differently, some grew quiet
and attempted to isolate themselves, others became loud and boisterous as if
they were trying to hide that they were afraid - from themselves as well as the
rest of us.

The NCOs
watched us closely, seeking signs that people were cracking, and Corporal Evans
even approached me on one occasion to ask how I was.

‘Fine,
Corporal,’ I told him, but I was lying of course. I was as terrified as any
other trooper, and what made it worse was that Woody was using me as some kind
of emotional punch bag to abuse whenever he felt low, ridiculing me in my room
and in front of others.

‘I’m gonna
make New Earth a hell for you,’ he had threatened me randomly one evening when
he had caught me alone. I doubted that would be difficult.

Corporal
Evans nodded slowly, disbelieving, ‘Right. Any issues with your training, any
dramas in the section I need to know about?’

Yes, one
of your senior blokes is bullying me,
I thought. ‘No, Corporal.’

Another slow
nod, ‘Okay, Moralee,’ he made to leave and I fidgeted, ‘What?’

I stammered,
the man was like a god, exactly what the Union wanted you to believe a drop
trooper looked like, and now he looked down at me with inquisitive eyes, ‘W-w-what
was it like on New Earth? And Eden?’

His face
hardened, ‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ and he was gone.

#

We received
our orders two days into our final voyage toward New Earth. We drew close
around the hologram of Jersey Island as the platoon commander tapped through
pages on his tablet. Jamo stood off to his rear, eyeballing each of us, willing
us to do something stupid that might allow him to issue swift justice.

The hologram
displayed an image of the Drop Zone we had been tasked with securing in order
to play our part within the invasion. We had already received numerous
familiarization briefings on the ground we would be covering using the
simulators; the very next best thing to being there. I knew that Jersey Island
sat in a deep valley than ran from south to north away from the Southern Ocean.
It was dominated by two large hills to its west and east known for the
operation as Hill Alpha and Hill Bravo respectively, both of which stood a good
five hundred metres above sea level. Most of the land was farmland,  producing
huge yields of crops that would feed the island inhabitants and be shipped
across the planet from the city’s small space port. The farmland was contained
within endless rows of greenhouses that sustained atmospheres for the plants to
thrive, irrigated by a network of ditches and pipelines.

Both of the
two hills were originally used as defensive positions by the Union two years
ago, and were each garrisoned by an entire battalion, dug deep into the rock
for protection from orbital barrages. Warrens, as they were called, were a common
feature on the modern battlefield. Weapons dropped from orbit could punch deep
into the ground, taking only minutes from drop to impact, so armies had to move
faster, or dig deeper. There was only one way to prise infantry out of a
warren, and that was with more infantry.

‘Situation
enemy,’ the boss began, pointing his laser pen toward the two hills which lanced
light across the hologram, ‘The enemy positions are not fully known, although
what little information we have suggests that the enemy have occupied the two
warrens, Alpha and Bravo, and repaired damages caused during their own
invasion, which was minimal.’

The Chinese
barely had to fire a shot to take Jersey Island, it had been overlooked during
their invasion, and most of the Union garrison had withdrawn long before they
arrived.

‘The warren
systems run deep into the hills and connect together beneath Jersey Island,
which enables the enemy to move troops and vehicles across the battlefield
rapidly without fear of orbital bombardment. The warren systems have probably
been extended significantly by the enemy, and will most likely form part of a
complex air defence matrix.’

The hologram
moved as though we were flying across the landscape, with the suspected tunnel
locations highlighted blue, deep below the surface.

‘Obviously,’
the boss went on, ‘The warren network is a delaying feature designed to harass
us on landing and then as we try to consolidate on the ground. It will be
connected to trench systems and burrows in order to confuse us or even attack
us from behind. It is believed that the enemy’s intent will be to delay us from
securing the DZ, to give him enough time to counter attack. He will hold onto
the warrens in the hills at all costs in order to achieve this. His morale will
be high, having held the planet for so long, and it is doubtful that he will
surrender, but will instead only withdraw deeper into the warrens with the
intent to draw out the battle until the cavalry come or we lose orbital cover.’

Orbital ‘top
cover’ as we called it was the name of the game in modern interstellar warfare.
If one side held command of orbit then the other side had better start digging
or running. Even relatively small ships like Challenger carried enough payload
to pulverise entire battalions from orbit. As battles raged in space and top
cover was gained and lost, so the battlefield below would be almost directly
affected.

The boss went
on to describe the friendly forces involved in the operation. Two battalions
would drop first onto the Island to secure the Drop Zone by capturing the two
hills, the 3
^rd
Battalion English Dropship Infantry - us - and the 1
^st
Battalion Scottish Dropship Infantry. We would be supported by two whole
regiments of Danish gravtanks in addition to our own, who would form a ring of
steel around the hills whilst unmanned aircraft would dominate the skies
throughout. Our squadron of ships would remain in top cover, whilst the others
would seek to dominate orbit above the rest of the Southern Continent. A
further two battalions of dropship infantry would be waiting to drop once the
DZ was secure, and even more conscripts would be waiting on troopships to mop up
the mess once we were done.

‘It’s unknown
what the Chinese may have done with the civilian population, and how they might
handle them upon our entry into the Centauri system. It’s likely that they will
take refuge on the outskirts of the city, or possibly be hidden underground.
The Chinese won’t want refugees around their positions getting in the way. Be
sure to identify your targets before you engage them, however. The civvies are
believed to be on-side, but if you start shooting them all up, they’ll soon
switch sides and remember, you will have to live with them for a while
afterwards.

‘One platoons
mission,’ the boss recited, and he repeated it twice for good measure, ‘Destroy.
Destroy all enemy encountered on Hill Bravo, in order to secure the Drop Zone.’

The plan
itself was a simple one. The battalion would drop at a location that would be
decided only a few minutes before we entered orbit, which the boss thought was
likely to be over the sea. We would then carry out what was known as the ‘run
in’, a charge along the planet surface toward the enemy. Staying low on the
approach made us less of a target for the enemy’s anti-aircraft defences, which
would have already caused us great damage.

The tanks
would push forward of us, bypassing smaller enemy positions and cutting the
city off from reinforcement. They were vulnerable to massed infantry, using
warrens and trenches for cover, and so would initially avoid the hills whilst
we cleared them. A Company was the lead company of the battalion, and of that
company we were to be the front left platoon with two platoon to our right. We
would be the knife edge, charging across the battlefield toward Hill Bravo
until either we reached the summit or we made contact with the enemy. If we did
make contact, and we surely would, we would attack the enemy and destroy him
whilst the company would continue its advance, attacking position after position
until it became bogged down by the enemy and would need to be replaced by
another company from the battalion. We would roll over position after position
in a massed orgy of death until we reached the summit of Hill Bravo, and then
once our fight was seemingly over, we would send the next battalion into the
warrens to prize the Chinese out with Union steel.

‘Will we go
into the warrens with them, Sir?’ A trooper asked what we had all been
thinking. We were all trained in tunnel warfare; I had spent months in the
purpose built Uralian tunnel systems fighting imaginary enemies in the
darkness. The real thing could only be bloody, and terrifying.

The boss
shrugged, ‘Hard to say since we know so little about the ground and how it
might affect us on the run in. We might sit pretty on top of the hill and rain
hell on the valley, or we might all be going underground. You need to prepare
yourselves for the worst, and then you can only be pleasantly surprised.’ We
laughed nervously.

‘It’s
important that you all remember the platoon mission, and you play back and
study these orders in great depth until you can recite them back to me.’

#

Halfway into
the voyage we were offered a chance to write our ‘last letters’ which would go
with us to our families if we returned to Earth in a box. I had never hand-written
a letter before, and the grim purpose for doing so was unnerving. We handed
them into the ship’s captain during a special morning service to commemorate
those who had fallen in the vain attempt to save New Earth from the Chinese
invasion. Sergeant James had demanded that all of us write one, even if it we
didn’t have anybody to write to.

‘Address it
to ‘The President’,’ he had said bitterly, ‘Then the bastard can read it at bedtime.’

The letters
were taken during the service whilst we stood on parade with our heads bowed,
and the captain prayed for our safety and victory for the Union. I wasn’t a
religious man, but I listened and prayed with the captain anyway, just in case.

But the captain
wasn’t finished after the service, ‘I have one last thing to announce,’ she
said with a smile, and then looked down at her tablet.

‘Lieutenant
Reed, Seaman Tamba, Corporal Jones…,’ She
read
out a long list of names and ranks from across the entire ship’s crew, from the
naval personnel to the jacks and drop troopers, ‘….Private Moralee, Private
Rix….’

Why had she
called out my name? Fixed to the spot in the position of at ease, my mind raced
for an answer to her needing to mention me in front of the entire crew.

‘You have
been very busy, and I wouldn’t want you to forget…. Happy birthday to you all.’