C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (15 page)

The captain
returned to her bridge to command the upcoming battle in space, and a naval
officer finished collecting hurriedly written last letters to families and loved
ones and then he too disappeared, leaving only the dropship infantry behind.

‘Gentlemen,’
the OC addressed us all, ‘In the next few hours we will enter New Earth orbit.
We will drop not long afterwards. I won’t keep you any longer. It has been a
pleasure to command this company, and it will be an honour to command you in
battle. You are all the very best that the Union has to offer. Or at least I
hope so…..’ A smile crept across his face, and we all laughed and cheered. The
OC held up a hairy arm and the company fell back to silence, ‘Gentlemen, I wish
you all the very best of luck.’

The CSM received
the nod from the OC, ‘Platoon Sergeants! Get your platoons to your dropships,
confirm when you’re complete.’

I shook hands
with Peters for one last time before I left for my dropship. I had barely seen
him during our voyage, and I knew that there was a chance I wouldn’t see him
again.

‘Take care,
mate,’ I told him.

‘You, too,
man, good luck.’

And he was
gone.

#

We walked in eerie
silence through the corridors of Challenger toward the dropship hangars, a
crowd of red uniforms heading in only one direction. We wouldn’t return to see
our accommodation for weeks or even months, and that was if we made it back at
all. Naval personnel stood back and watched blankly as the procession passed,
they were neither glad nor sorry to see us go. We were going somewhere terrible
where there was a good chance we might die, but they too faced their own perils
over the coming days.

I had hated
my prison on board Challenger, but now I longed to stay inside its protective
superstructure, guarded by banks of lasers, missiles and vulcan cannon. I had
become used to it, for all the suffering it had caused me, but now I was faced
with a whole new horror; an enemy whose numbers I could scarcely imagine who
sat waiting for us, waiting for his prey to come to him.

There were no
more speeches, we had heard enough. Instead we were lined up beside our
dropships and counted in by our section commanders. They gave the nod to the
platoon sergeant, and then he in turn told the CSM that the platoon was
complete and fully prepared to drop.

‘Double check
all equipment,’ I overheard the CSM speaking to Jamo, looking over all of us as
he made his rounds through each of the platoon hangars, ‘Ensure you check all
comms, batteries, etcetera. You know the score, mate.’ Jamo nodded.

Before the
CSM left the hangar he looked over to Corporal Evans and gave a very slight but
respectful nod. Our section commander’s hard face gave nothing away as he
returned the nod, but Jamo appeared to bristle visibly.

‘The CSM was
Ev’s platoon sergeant,’ Climo explained quietly, ‘…On Eden,’ he added.

‘Wow,’ I exclaimed,
‘They must have seen some shit together.’

‘Yeah, the
CSM absolutely loves Ev, and Jamo hates it. He thinks Ev should have had the
platoon.’

‘Shut up, you
two,’ Joe Mac rounded on us, ‘This is still a parade, not a cheers-easy get
together!’

‘Sorry, Joe,’
I said, as Climo glowered.

‘Have you got
a problem with me, Climpson?’ Joe took a step toward Climo, who said nothing,
‘you might think you’re the new wide boy because you can hit people with
chairs, but if you kick off with me I will spread you up the wall.’ Brown was
looking over. He said nothing, but he glared at me and I looked away.

‘Joe,’ Corporal
Evans called for calm, ‘Let’s save it for New Earth, alright?’

‘Sorry, Ev,’
Joe stepped away from Climo, who still stared at him defiantly, ‘He’ll learn
soon enough.’

We double-checked
all of our equipment, trying to keep busy to keep our minds off what was coming
our way. Whilst I checked the contents of my daysack were packed correctly,
Brown crouched beside me. His breath burned the back of my neck and I
shuddered.

‘Woody’s
dropping with us, today, you know that don’t you?’ He said darkly.

‘Yes,’ I
answered bluntly.

‘He wants you
to know that he’ll find you,’ his words were filled with hatred, ‘And have an
accident. With you and your new mate. That’s if I don’t get you first.’

I said
nothing, what could I say? I tried to appear nonchalant and continued to pack
my daysack.

‘Go talk to
one of your friends, Brown,’ Climo said, seeing what was going on, ‘Oh wait,
that’s right, you don’t have any.’

It was
Brown’s turn to say nothing, he walked away.

‘I hate that
bloke.’

We loaded
onto the dropship and began to put on our armour and daysacks ready to go. This
is it, I thought, this was the end of my journey, the final climax of almost
two years of training and preparation. My heart began to pump hard against my
ribcage and my palms began to sweat. I was so scared, but I tried to hide it.
Besides the enemy I had Woody after my blood, and a man in my own section would
love to see me dead.

Climo patted
my shoulder gently, ‘It’ll be alright, mate,’ he said as we took our places in
the tiny dropship crew compartment, ‘Trust me.’ He slipped something into the
inside of his helmet.

‘What’s
that?’ I asked.

‘Picture of
my family.’

‘Oh.’

He showed me
the inside of his helmet, which he had lined with simple printed pictures of
friends and family, ‘If I die, I want to be surrounded by the people I love.’

‘Wow. That’s
heavy, mate,’ I secretly regretted not doing the same, all of my family
pictures were kept on my
tablet still locked
away in my room. I suppose I didn’t want my family with me when I did what I
was about to do. I longed for them so badly and the pictures only made it
worse.

‘Stuff like
that won’t help where we’re going,’ Chase said, strapping himself into his
seat.

‘Let’s get a
move on, lads,’ Corporal Evans ordered from outside the dropship, ‘We’re
approaching New Earth now.’

The waiting
was over.

12: The Ditches

Rain pelted
my visor, and my boots crunched on the gravelled surface of New Earth as I ran.
I was driven not by rage or purpose, but through sheer terror. I ran after
Berezynsky, who was barely visible in the thick hot smoke belching from the
dischargers mounted on the dropship’s stubby wings. It fired salvos of missiles
into multiple targets, its twin vulcan cannons roaring as they spat death
toward the enemy. The dischargers too billowed hot smoke from its sides to help
mask us from the enemies sight and infra-red, and scores of flares shot into
the sky to deter missiles. The dropship had become a deadly firework show so
loud my earphones could barely filter it. It was necessary to protect us, as
well as the dropship itself, from the enemy because they were close, very close
indeed.

I ran in a
crouch through the smoke, the fear of death in me as I followed Berezynsky
toward the ditch that the dropship pilot had told us to use as cover.

We were the
first ones out. There was an order to debussing that we were taught on Uralis
and had practiced again and again using Challenger’s simulators during our
voyage. The section commander never went first, and neither would the second in
command. This wasn’t a cowardly thing by any means, the section commander was
so busy commanding the section, listening to the company radio network and
planning his next action he often wasn’t paying much attention to his own
safety. Corporal Evans was right behind me, though.

‘Move!’ He
yelled, with an urgency I had rarely heard from him.

The air
cracked and hissed around my head as steel darts punched through the air. We
were being fired upon, and we were only being missed because of the sheer
firepower being unleashed by the dropship. It wouldn’t last forever, though.
Adrenaline spurred my body ever faster.

‘Get down!’

I threw
myself into the ditch, rolling down the steep bank and into a pool of cold
water. I felt it soak under my armour and seep into my boots.

It was a
drainage ditch, designed to keep the crops from being drowned in the heavy New
Earth rainfall. It ran for several hundred metres in both directions, and through
the smoke my visor identified another section debussing from their dropship
into the ditch a hundred metres or so off to my right.

Black smoke
from the orbital bombardment drifted overhead from Jersey City a few kilometres
away, mixing in with the white smoke created by the dropships and smoke bombs
fired by our battalion’s own artillery.

Rounds
ricocheted off the lip of the ditch, chucking great chunks of dirt down at me
where I cowered in the blood-red mud.

Yeah, you
heard right, I cowered. Overwhelmed by the sights and noise around me I had
curled almost into a ball in the bottom of the ditch like a frightened child.
In my defence, I hadn’t done it consciously, rather my body’s natural instinct
had kicked in and told me to stay low and hide. It hadn’t even reached my
comprehension that what I was doing was against everything I had been taught to
do since becoming a drop trooper.

Berezynsky
was five metres to the right of me, lying up against the lip of the ditch and
firing in the direction of the enemy. He stole a quick glance down to me, his
eyes a mixture of terror and anger.

‘Moralee,
what the hell are you doing?’ He asked over the intercom. I think it’s the most
I ever heard him say.

To be honest
I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. The whole section had formed a line
along the ditch and everyone was firing apart from me, but still I remained
frozen to the spot.

The dropship
began to close its doors and shot backwards, its guns still roaring. Along with
its battle brothers, it would give fire support and air defence from the rear
whilst it waited to be used again. I wished that I could have gone with it, for
then it was just us, and the Chinese.

‘Moralee, get
up and fire you little weasel!’ Somebody shouted, I think it was Chase.

‘Get some
rounds down!’

I was
paralysed with fear. The voluntary nature of Dropship Infantry and the intensity
of its training often led people to believe that we were superhuman, incapable
of fear. People can talk themselves up as much as they like, but until they’re
in a contact with the enemy for real they can never really know how they might
react. My first reaction was a bad one, I was almost unable to even move, I was
so scared.

Boots slapped
against the water at the bottom of the ditch behind me, and Joe Mac grasped me
by the throat and threw me against the bank, his teeth bared, rifle held up as
if he meant to smack me round the head with it.

‘What are you
doing?
What the FUCK are you doing
?’ He screamed, his face so close to
mine our respirators almost touched. Spittle sprayed over his visor. He was beside
himself, he must have ran half way along the ditch under fire just to get to
me.

‘I don’t
know!’ I cried out, wild with terror.

‘Get up there
and put some darts down the range now!’

I guess that
was what I needed, a good kick up the arse. Whatever the pinkies could do to
me, Joe could probably do far worse. Training kicking back in, I crawled up the
bank of the ditch and took aim.

The crimson
red New Earth surface was as dazzling as it was terrifying. Angry dark pink
clouds broiled high above, flickering with lightning, or perhaps the flashes of
a battle between atmospheric fighters. Balls of flame would regularly break
through the clouds and strike the ground far away, causing shockwaves so
powerful that I could feel them through my respirator. It was as though some
great deity had decided to wreak terrible revenge on the land, but it was in
fact our ships, high above, dropping kinetic weapons onto the enemy. New Earth
was already a war zone, and it looked like hell.

We were in a
corn field half way up the slope of a large hill kilometres across that towered
above a deep valley. I guessed that it was Hill Bravo, as we had been briefed
prior to our drop and that another large hill on the opposite side of the
valley must have been Alpha. The corn was enclosed in greenhouses in every
direction as far as the eye could see, turning the land into a patchwork of
different shades of green and gold mixed with the red of the New Earth soil.
Most of their glass roofs had been either riddled with holes or shattered
leaving nothing but the supports, like the exposed rib cages of decaying
animals. Others burned fiercely. Without the artificial atmosphere the
greenhouses maintained, the plants would all die. In the far distance Jersey
City burned, from where I lay up on the bank of the ditch I thought that nobody
could be alive down there.

My respirator
target display flashed red as it indicated targets it had picked up to my
front. Sure enough, through the smouldering greenhouse crops, I caught fleeting
glances of Chinese soldiers running a few hundred metres away. I could recognise
their distinctive off-pink camouflage.

My finger
pulled the trigger. The series of powerful magnets that lined the barrel of my
MSG-20 screamed as they propelled a dart toward my target at sonic speeds,
rocking my body with the recoil. I don’t know if I hit anything, but I was now
in the battle.

‘Section,
prepare to give rapid fire!’ Corporal Evans was back on the intercom, ‘Rapid…FIRE!’

We gave them
hell. The mammoth gunners let rip and a few grenades left their launchers,
disintegrating the remaining greenhouses to our front and churning plant life.

Suppressive
fire is a concept as old as the first guns, and it was unlikely that for long
as infantry soldiers existed on the battlefield it would ever become obsolete.
Suppressive fire forces a soldier to take cover, and as long as it remains
accurate, it will keep the enemy hiding, unable to lift his head to fire for
fear of death.

Sure enough,
the enemy fire had subdued significantly under the withering rate of fire we
had returned. It was hard to see where the Chinese were, but I assumed they
were a hundred metres away, or thereabouts, in some form of cover, probably
another ditch. I guessed there weren’t many of them, since they had been
relatively easy to suppress, or perhaps they were simply withdrawing to
counter-attack us somewhere else using the complex system of tunnels and
trenches supposedly dug into the hill. I fired round after round into likely
enemy positions amongst the crops. My MSG-20 would occasionally alter the
trajectory of the rounds passing through the barrel, angling them toward
fleeting targets moving close to my crosshairs. Whether I hit anybody, I
couldn’t be sure.

Several feet splattered
in the pool at the bottom of the ditch in which I had cowered. I didn’t look
around at the new arrivals in our little part of the ditch, I was too busy
trying to shoot accurately without exposing myself too much.

‘Section!’
Corporal Evans called out, ‘Slow down your rate of fire! What’s happening Boss?
Shit…,’ he cut off his intercom.

We slowed our
rate of fire as ordered, there was no sense in us firing at a rapid rate for
too long against an enemy who had momentarily lost the fight. Corporal Evans
had given the ‘rapid fire’ to cover the boss as he ran up to us from wherever
his dropship had left him. If the boss got himself shot then the platoon sergeant
or the most senior section commander would be able to step up, but better he
didn’t die at all! We were still suppressing, but using far less ammunition,
and it wasn’t long until the Chinese gained the courage to get up and fire
again.

Rounds
cracked overhead, forcing me to duck. I found myself staring straight into the
eyes of the platoon commander’s radio operator, Cyclops, who was crouched close
to the platoon commander, monitoring the various communication nets for
important information. His eyes were darting nervously across the battlefield
and he looked like he was absolutely shitting himself, though I supposed I must
have looked the same to him.

The boss was
crouched up against the wall of the ditch explaining to Corporal Evans what he
wanted him to do. Occasionally he lifted his head over the top to see the
ground to our front. He was caked in mud, presumably he had fallen over. A gash
on his arm suggested a glancing blow from his dash to get to us. He was lucky,
a good strike with a dart could take your arm clean off, and at short range
could punch straight through helmets and gel armour, advanced though they were.

BOOM!

The ground
around me shook with a wave of overpressure as a gravtank somewhere to our rear
fired a rail gun round into an unseen target in Jersey City.

‘Get some,
pinkies! Woohooo!’ Climo screamed triumphantly, punching a fist into the air.

I looked
behind me at the gravtank twenty or so metres back. It was an imposing beast of
a machine. A giant Union flag flew from its turret, erected by the crew
sometime within the last couple of minutes. The flag flapped in the strong
breeze, its blue background and yellow stars striking in contrast against the
reds and pinks of New Earth. Its vulcan cannon opened fire, strafing across the
ground to our front.

You don’t
mess with gravtanks. They have the same manoeuvrability and speed of a dropship
but as much - if not more - firepower than any ground based vehicle. It was the
Dropship Infantry’s prize asset, a real battle winner.

‘Right,
listen in lads,’ Corporal Evans was back on the intercom. We stopped and
listened as he gave us the plan, there was no need for us to continue to fire,
the gravtank was keeping the Chinese quite busy!

‘One section
didn’t make the drop, so it’s just us and Westy’s boys!’

I gulped. ‘
Didn’t
make the drop’
. A whole section of our platoon had perished on their way
down, along with their dropship and crew. Gilbert and Kane had been with them.

‘Two section
has got eyes on an enemy section one hundred metres to our front,’ Corporal
Evans continued with a confidence in his voice that lifted my spirits, ‘They’re
in a good position to keep them suppressed.’

He was
talking of the enemy soldiers I had been firing at. There were many more of
them all over the valley, but in our little part of the battlefield the ones
directly to our front were our main threat. The Chinese were heavily dug into
the hill, an entire battalion of them, and it was our job to clear them out, or
die trying. To our left and right flanks, as well as to our rear tens of
platoons would be engaged in their own battles. We were surrounded, but we were
troopers - we were meant to be surrounded.

‘Two section
will continue to suppress,’ Corporal Evans continued, ‘We will attempt to use
the ditches to attack them from the right flank, but we need to be quick!’

‘Have it!’
Climo shouted, randomly.

The platoon
was normally composed of three sections in order, to allow it to manoeuvre over
the battle field with one giving covering for the others, although this could
theoretically work with two. The concept of one covering, one moving, was known
as tactical balance, or ‘one foot on the ground’. The problem we faced was that
we no longer possessed a third ‘reserve’ section, which would normally give us
the flexibility to deal with changes on the battlefield. Assaulting with only
two sections was a risky business, but we had no choice.

‘Prepare to
move!’

I carried out
the drill for preparing to move as I had done on Uralis and the simulators on
Challenger - check safety catch, check ammo pouches, crawl down into cover. I
slid down into the bottom of the ditch once more. Corporal Evans was already running
past me along the base of the ditch.

‘Move! Follow
me!’ His voice was urgent again, and I understood why. The Chinese were on the
back foot, they had no idea where exactly we might have dropped, that was the
problem with defending against dropships, but now we were on the ground they
might regain the initiative if we didn’t keep up the momentum.