C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (11 page)

I tried the
new respirator on and Corporal Evans checked that I had it fitted correctly by
tugging roughly on the straps and shaking my head by the mouthpiece.

‘Feel okay?’
he asked. He wasn’t interested in how I was feeling mentally, or I would have
said ‘pretty pump’. Corporal Evans wanted to know if the respirator had formed
a correct seal and only I would know that. A simple green icon on my visor told
me that the seal was fine.

It often felt
weird when I first put a respirator on, they were designed to be as comfortable
and unobtrusive as possible, and over time I could forget it was there, but
initially I could feel nothing but the seal squeezing my face.

‘Feels fine,
Corporal,’ I finally said when I realised that Corporal Evans was waiting for
an answer.

‘You’ve got
to put it on, first, Moralee,’ Rawson said, and several lads laughed including
me. Rawson was the sort who could somehow get away with bad jokes and still get
a good laugh.

Clearly
unimpressed by Rawson’s joke about my looks, Corporal Evans checked quickly
beneath my chin and then walked to the next man and repeated the process.

I removed my respirator,
which caused a warning tone to sound in the headset until it finally realised
that it was being purposefully removed, and had not accidentally lost its seal.
I checked the drinking straw, which could be connected to a water pack we
carried inside our daysacks, as well as the feeding straw, which could be
connected to ration packs issued on the ground. Mix up the two straws at your
peril, the resulting curdled mush was quite sickening!

The section
commanders inspected each and every man in turn, including the Lance Corporals
and then they inspected each other. One man had an incorrect fit and was
ordered to run to the ship’s stores to exchange it after a brief telling off
for not realizing sooner.

We checked
our wristpads and made sure that they were picking up our vital signs,
information that would be freely available to the platoon sergeant on the
ground and would tell him automatically if we were injured. We then checked our
gel armour, making sure our tourniquets were attached into the legs and arms.
We also checked that there was no visible damage to the auto-clotting system
that was designed to detect trauma.  This was a vital bit of kit that would
automatically constrict the padded armour around a wound to compress it, before
administering a quick clotting agent into the wound itself. Rather than
absorbing blood, it was meant to stop its escape altogether. Originally the
armour was meant to administer morphine and other life-saving drugs automatically,
but what was found was that sometimes the auto-injectors became damaged or
confused and activated for no reason at all!

Seemingly
satisfied that our clothing would do the job, Corporal Evans addressed us all.
It was the first time I had heard him speak to the entire platoon, and his
booming voice and air of confident capability made every man listen intently,
‘New Earth is a vicious place,’ he began, as if remembering his last few days
there, ‘And its atmosphere is as unforgiving as Eden. But if you respect it and
look after your kit correctly then it’s as safe as any street in London, Earth.’

We laughed
nervously. The streets of London were murderous.

‘It’s
important we practice your drills with the kit so that if anything should
happen to you or your mates then you can deal with the problem
instinctively
,’
he stressed the final word, and then held his own respirator high in the air,
‘The less time you spend worrying about this, the more time you have to worry
about the enemy.’

We practiced
a series of drills from the simple to the more complex. Changing damaged
canisters and patching up cracked visor screens were simple drills which could
be carried out rapidly by the individual concerned, as long as he didn’t
breathe in or lose his cool. If upon removing the respirator or losing the seal,
we were required to hold our breath against the toxic atmosphere, and upon
fixing the problem and achieving a seal again we were required to breathe out
hard, helping the respirator canister motors to force out the bad air from the
mini atmosphere held against our faces.

This was all
stuff I had been taught before. Coming fresh from Uralis I was more used to
working in the respirator than anyone else. We spent almost three quarters of
the year-long course above ground in the harsh environment.
Our instructors taught us to overcome the
claustrophobic fear of wearing nothing more than a piece of rubber filled with
motors, wires and sensors to protect us from the poisonous air by making us
perform tasks with the respirators off, like stacking bricks and negotiating
obstacles. There was nothing more amazing and liberating than feeling that
alien wind, bitterly cold as it was, brushing against my face.

‘Just hold
your breath and don’t panic,’ our training instructor had always told us.

We were
practiced on dealing with unconscious casualties with damaged respirators, and
then drilled on everything - with the lights off and the lock room plunged into
darkness - with and without the aid of our night vision. We felt for cracks on
visors with our bare fingers before placing the clear plastic sealing patches
over the hole.

Very rarely
was a mistake made, but when they were the section commanders were quick to
point it out, often angrily. ‘These drills need to be
instinctive
!’ Corporal
Evans would repeat, ‘You shouldn’t need to think about it. Every second you fumble
is a second closer to death!’

Thankfully
that evening Woody spent most of his time in the gym or in the recreation
lounge, leaving me and Climo some peace and quiet in our room. He appeared to
be ignoring me and Climo, having said nothing since our encounter after the
lecture and if he had told anybody else they didn’t show it. Brown stayed in
the room with us, but he spoke little if at all and only to Climo. He wasn’t much
more senior than Climo. I heard he had served two years, which meant that he
had been on exercise on Eden and Uralis and that was it, but he had clearly
decided as Stevo had said, ‘Crow should not speak, only be spoken to.’

We busied
ourselves chatting about our lives at home, and Climo excitedly told me of how
his home town of Crawley was the roughest town of all of southern England.

Later that
night Greggerson entered the room, with the look of someone with something big
to get off his chest.

‘Alright
mate?’ I said, half as a greeting and half as a question.

Climo nodded
his own less obvious greeting, and then Brown, clearly deciding that the
addition of Greggerson into the conversation was too much for him rolled his
eyes and walked out. Greggerson jumped out of the way.

Uninterested
in Brown’s silent protest, Climo asked, ‘What’s up?’ 

The skinny
trooper tried to appear nonchalant when he told his news, but he fooled no one,
‘We’re leaving tomorrow morning.’

Climo
frowned, ‘Who told you that, Stevo?’

Stevo was in
Greggerson’s section, with Westy, and so they were always rife with rumours
that spread across the ship like wildfire, stuff about the Chinese having laser
banks and giant robot armies - ‘That’s why you can’t see their faces behind
their visors!’ - and random changes to our mission. Stevo, a bully who hid
behind Woody for protection was also a gossip-monger, filled with pessimistic
thoughts that further contradicted his role as a senior bloke, an example
setter.

Greggerson
waved off the suggestion, ‘Sam told me.’

Climo raised
his eyebrows, ‘Oh.’

There were
false rumours and there were true ones. Sam always told the true ones, and so
wherever he had got the news from it was likely to be reliable. The walls on
Challenger had ears, it was said.

We didn’t say
anything for a while, or at least what felt like a while. If we began our
voyage tomorrow then there would be no way for the ships of the two fleets to
communicate, and so an abortion of the operation would not be possible until we
arrived at the Centauri system itself, right on top of the Chinese. As soon as
we jumped we would be committed. The final inevitability knotted my stomach,
and I instantly thought of home, my mum and dad, and my sister.

Climo sighed
remorsefully, ‘Why didn’t I just stay with the conscripts?’

‘What else
did he say?’ I asked finally.

‘We’re taking
a place called Jersey Island,’ Greggerson answered, ‘Us, the Scots and the
Danes. It’s supposed to be as big as England. We’re the first down.’

Nobody said
anything for a while as the information sunk in.

‘Jesus,’
Climo said under his breath.

#

The ship
locked down without warning just before we ate breakfast the following day, and
we were rudely rushed by the NCOs back into our accommodation without
explanation, although none was needed. Everybody on Challenger had probably
heard the rumour, spilt out by either the Captain or Major’s parties as they
returned by shuttle from their several day-long orders with the Admiral. Surely
somebody would end up locked in the brig for such a terrible slip of the
tongue, though I often wondered the point in all the secrecy. Spies could not
operate in the void of space in an undisclosed location outside of the Hope
system. The main reason for secrecy was believed by the vast majority of us to
be to avoid a mutiny. Others believed it was the officers enjoying keeping
their men in the dark for some kind of sick power trip. Perhaps both of the two
theories were true, but ultimately the root cause was most likely due to the
chain of command forgetting a critical principle of war; the morale of their
own men.

‘Thirty-two
days it will take,’ Woody said from above me on his bunk, directed to nobody in
particular. Brown grunted his agreement, even though he had arrived on
Challenger after she had returned from her shame in Alpha Centauri, and so had
no idea how long it might take. ‘Thirty-one days until we hit Alpha Centauri
Bravo, then another day until we hit New Earth and we drop.’

Me and Climo
said nothing, for Woody was merely taunting us.

‘Of course we
might not make it to New Earth,’ Woody warned, ‘We’ve got the whole Chinese
navy between us and orbit,
thousands
of Chinese warships,’ he
exaggerated, ‘Loaded with guns and lasers. Then there’s the gun boats, and the
surface missile batteries. Not to mention Stevo’s laser battery,’ he laughed at
the absurdity of the final claim.

‘There’s no
laser battery,’ Climo said curtly. He was sat on the edge of his bunk, watching
the seconds tick past on his wristpad.

‘One in three
don’t make it down,’ Woody quoted the statistic that filled every trooper’s
soul with fear; ‘We could be shot out of the sky.’

‘Well then we
all die,’ Climo replied irritably, implying that Woody would be in the same
dropship as us. I thought Woody might use Climo’s defiant tone as an excuse to
attack him again, but he didn’t.

‘I don’t care
if I die,’ Woody said after a pause, ‘I ain’t afraid. Are you?’

Climo looked
up at where Woody lay on the top of my bunk, ‘No.’

The
bedsprings squealed under Woody’s weight and his fat head peered down at me, ‘Are
you afraid, Moralee?’

‘No.’

Woody smiled,
‘You’re lying. You’re dumping in your little crow pants coz mummy and daddy
aren’t around to help you on New Earth.’

I swallowed,
awkward under the bully’s gaze.

‘You miss
your mummy and daddy, don’t you?’

‘Stop it,’ I
said, my cheeks burning red.

Woody made a
mockingly high pitched voice, ‘I miss my mummy!’

‘Shut up!’ I
shouted, and Woody laughed, disappearing back onto his bunk. He began to hum
some random melody loudly, whilst I closed my eyes and imagined that none of
this was happening.

#

When the ship’s
lockdown was finally lifted, we were once again called into the corridor
outside our rooms to be briefed by the platoon commander on what we already
knew was going on. We looked on sullenly while the young officer explained to
us the information he had received from the OC: that we were indeed on our way
to the Centauri system and that our objective would indeed be Jersey Island,
securing landing zones so that other battalions could
echelon
through and continue the attack. Nobody raised an eyebrow as he covered the
overall plan, and we looked like men who had been charged to be put to death; perhaps
we were.

As the boss
had predicted, the first fleet would secure two of the system’s three stars, Centauri
Bravo and Proxima Centauri, whilst leaving the much larger 3
^rd
fleet,
which included us, to secure Centauri Alpha and New Earth itself. A total of
thirty squadrons would battle to seize orbital power from the Chinese as we -
the dropship battalions - would make the drop to seize the surface. We would be
one of the very first battalions to drop.

‘There are a
total of three DZs on the Island allocated to the English dropship battalions,’
the boss explained, ‘Each Drop Zone one is a hundred kilometres across. Ours is
located ten kilometres to the north of Jersey City, and we have been tasked
with securing it and thus allowing other dropship battalions to echelon
through. The intent is to create a ring of steel around the garrison there, and
provide an interlocking air defence matrix that will deny enemy artillery from
engaging the second echelon as it drops.’ The platoon commander’s military
terminology made the whole thing sound like something clean and clinical, but I
doubted that it would be. We would deny enemy artillery the ability to fire
missiles up against the second wave of dropships sent to move through us, but
nobody would do that for us if we were first to drop. ‘The forlorn hope’, I had
once heard first drops being called - a name taken from days of old used to
describe first assaults - where the risk of casualties was outrageously high.
If you survived the drop you had a chance, but entire platoons could be wiped
out by a single volley of missiles if the crews weren’t on their game. The
jacks had trained long through the days and into the nights since I had arrived
on Challenger, no doubt for that very reason.