C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (21 page)

It was sore
as hell, ‘Not too bad,’ I said, and Sam nodded.

‘Cold, ain’t
it?’

I hadn’t
really been thinking about it. The temperature had dropped significantly whilst
I was in my bag and my visor now read minus two degrees.

‘Yeah,
gibbering.’

Sam rubbed
his gloves together vigorously, ‘I could
do
with a few more hours in my bag, I tell you.’

‘Did you
sleep alright?’ I asked.

Sam laughed,
‘Like a log, mate, I was chinned!’

‘I didn’t
sleep at all, I don’t think,’ I said grimly.

‘Yeah? Don’t
think Brown slept all that well either. Must just be the cold.’

I nodded as
we both stared up the dark tunnel, ‘Yeah, must be.’

Sam looked
over at me, his head cocked inquisitively, ‘Are you scared?’

I looked
back, ‘Aren’t you?’

Sam shrugged,
‘Yeah. Not as scared as I was when we dropped, though.’

I thought
about it, ‘I think I’m about the same, really.’

‘Hmm,’ Sam
seemed to mull it over. 

We said
nothing for a few minutes. I watched the seconds ticking away on my visor
display agonisingly slowly, as if time had slowed down just for my stag.
Scientists had been trying to mess about with dimensions and stuff to fiddle
with time for centuries without success, but we troopers had discovered the
secret eons ago. Stare at your clock on stag to slow time down, get in your
thermal bag to speed it up. I tried to ignore my visor clock thinking that it
might help.

‘What did
Stevo do to annoy you all so much?’ I blurted, instantly regretting asking the
question. What was I thinking? It was obviously a touchy subject in the
section, and Stevo was far too senior for a crow like me to speak ill of him.

Sam grunted,
‘I don’t really want to talk about it mate, to be honest.’

‘Oh,’ I said,
‘Fair one.’

‘Everyone’s
afraid here, mate,’ Sam was looking at me. I wasn’t sure if he was following on
from my question, or from when he asked me if I was scared, ‘There’s nothing
wrong with being afraid. It’s what you do when you’re afraid that counts, know
what I mean?’

For a second
I thought that maybe Sam had been told by Sergeant Evans about me and Brown. I
felt his eyes boring into my skull through our visors.

I nodded, ‘Yeah,
I know what you mean, mate.’

‘You’ve got
to realise that we are all in this shit together, and we,’ he went on, pointing
at me, himself, and then the others where they slept, ‘All of us are in this
together. Who do you think we’re fighting for?’

‘Er…. The
Union? The people of New Earth?’

Sam laughed
bitterly, ‘New Earth? These people don’t care about Europe, mate, or the
Chinese, or any of us. And does the Union give a damn about you? Of course they
don’t. The Union is ruled by a bunch of rich corporate bastards who couldn’t
care less if you lived or died. Want to know who I’m fighting for?’

I said
nothing.

His arm swept
the room, ‘I’m fighting for these guys. My mates. You. Because out here in this
shit hole we are just about all we have. I would die for these lot, because
they’re family.’

‘Did Stevo
hide?’

‘Yeah, but
it’s worse than that,’ the tone in Sam’s voice suggested that was all I would
get from him.

I couldn’t
think of anything worse than me and Brown taking cover behind two comrades in
battle, I was disgusted by myself. We could only hope that nobody in our new
section would find out, lest we both wound up at the other end of their hatred
like Stevo. I wished that there was some way that I could redeem myself,
fighting during the Chinese counter-offensive just wasn’t enough. Maybe nothing
would be.

‘Were you on
Eden?’ I asked, trying to change the subject slightly.

Sam snorted
and placed his hand over his heart with mock hurt, ‘God, how old do I look,
mate?’

I decided not
to say that he did look easily old enough to deploy to Eden. He looked about
thirty, ‘So you weren’t then?’

‘No, you
stroker. Half the senior blokes hadn’t been, let alone me. I’m twenty-two, but
I must have had a hard paper round then, eh?’

‘Sorry,’ I
smiled.

‘Yeah, well……
No I wasn’t. Westy was. So was Jimmy…’ he trailed off, the memory of his mate’s
death was still raw.

I thought of
my mate Climo lying dead in the mud, and my other friends being cut to ribbons
in withering Chinese fire.

‘He was a
good mate of yours?’ I asked.

Sam didn’t
say anything for a few seconds, then nodded slowly, ‘Yeah. Davo was too.’

‘Climo was a
good friend of mine.’

‘Really?’ Sam
said sarcastically and laughed, ‘You two were thick as thieves. The bloke
should have been banged up for what he did, even if it was Woody he did it to.
You too.’

I didn’t know
what to say, but Sam simply patted my back, ‘I’m sorry about Climo.’

‘That’s okay.
I’m sorry about Jimmy.’

We sat in
silence again for a minute. I realised that I hadn’t thought about Woody since
we had dropped, and found myself wondering whether he had survived, and whether
he was still out for my blood. My visor would have identified him to me had I
come across him, but then the battle and its aftermath had been so hectic that
I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I walked right past him.

‘A lot of
people died today,’ Sam sighed, then paused thoughtfully, ‘But there will be
more.’

I knew he was
right, but I felt no wave of fear like I did when we dropped down from
Challenger. Instead the fear had become constant and over time I could feel my
body numbing to it, and my mind accepting it as the norm.

‘Yeah,’ I
replied.

Sam stood up,
slinging his daysack over his shoulder, ‘I’m gonna wake Ray, mate.’

I checked my
clock, a whole half hour had passed, ‘Okay.’

#

The remainder
of my stag was uneventful, spent listening to Ray’s endless jokes. He was a
nice bloke from what I could make of him, but if I hadn’t been wearing all the
protective equipment around my head I reckon he would have actually chewed my
ear off. That bloke could talk forever.  

I woke Stevo
before getting back into my thermal bag. He was sound asleep, and awoke with a
start when I nudged him with my boot. His eyes were wide open, and his hand
moved toward his rifle instinctively.

‘Alright,
mate, it’s only me,’ I gently placed my foot on top of the weapon where it lay
beside him so that he couldn’t do anything stupid. I had heard stories of
half-asleep troopers stabbing and shooting each other in the dark, which wasn’t
a way I wanted to go.

Stevo tugged
lamely at his weapon, until realisation dawned upon his face and his muscles
relaxed.

‘You scared
the crap out of me,’ he whispered angrily.

I stood
upright, returning my daysack to where it had sat against the wall of the
burrow as my pillow, ‘Sorry. You’re on stag.’

‘Again?’
Stevo groaned, sitting upright in his bag, ‘I’ve just come off ten minutes
ago.’

Quite clearly
Stevo’s display clock would tell him otherwise, but I wasn’t interested. He
might be a senior trooper, but it was his turn on stag.

‘Ray’s
already over there, mate. You up, yeah?’

For a long
five seconds Stevo sat still, as if his mind had not fully awoken yet and was
struggling to compute what was going on around him. Some people could be a pain
to wake up because they were deep sleepers, but he was just plain being
difficult, I could tell.

‘Are you up?’
I repeated irritably.

‘Yeah. I’m
up.’

I began to
unpack my thermal bag again as Stevo re-packed his own. You kept everything you
weren’t using packed away in your daysack, lest you came under attack and had
to leave it behind. I couldn’t imagine losing my thermal bag. It was as
important to me as my helmet or respirator, as it should be to any half decent
trooper.

As I slid my
body back into the warmth of my bag I watched Stevo take his seat beside Ray
once more. The two sat by the launcher for at least ten minutes in absolute
silence. Watching them, thankfully, I fell asleep.

#

Only bad
things happen when you fall asleep in a remote burrow in a war zone billions of
miles from home. Any dream, good or bad might as well be a nightmare. Bad
dreams mixed alien monsters and demons with experiences I had endured during
the landings, with horrific scenes of mutilation and a never ending sense of
horror and foreboding. Several times over a two-hour period I woke with a
start, convinced something terrible had happened before realising that it
already had.

Or you can
have no dreams at all - now that is shit. Troopers will sometimes refer to the
thermal bag as the ‘red time machine’. You’re tired enough and jump into your
thermal bag, you close your eyes just for a second and
bam
! You wake up
to the joyous words of ‘You’re on stag, mate,’ or ‘Prepare to move’ or something
equally morale sapping as if you never even got in the bag in the first place.

But the worst
dream of all for me was a nice dream. Dreams of pretty girls I had met during
my life, dreams of passionate reunions and romantic encounters that came with a
sense of sadness that hung like a cloud over the horizon. I could try to ignore
that cloud, but it would always be there, slowly closing in around me.

Then I would
get woken up, and the reality of where I was and the fact that I was just
having a nice dream would dawn on me with an impact more devastating than a
shell dropped from orbit.

After two
hours I was awoken from one of those dreams. Whilst chatting up a naval lieutenant
I had always fancied on Challenger, I could swear that Brown actually entered
my dream and shook my shoulder, ‘Moralee, we need to get up.’

‘Give it a
rest!’ I complained, but the girl faded and I opened my eyes. With my visor
de-activated I could just make out his outline in the darkness.

‘Get up you
wand, we’re moving in an hour, Westy’s gone to get a brief off the OC.’

My mind began
to wake up and I was back in the burrow. Instead of the girl’s sweet sounding
voice there was only the ruffling sound of all the blokes packing away their
thermal bags, and her sweet perfumed smell was replaced by the clean, bland air
produced by my respirator filters. I groaned.

‘Come on,
mate, get up,’ Sam said, and his voice carried with it a sense of urgency. I
activated my night vision, slid out of my bag and began to pack it away ready
to go. 

‘What’s going
on, Brown?’

‘We’re going
into the warrens. Just our platoon. Casualty replacements.’

Now that was
a wake-up call if ever I had one.

15: Descent into the Warrens

The sun rose
slowly over the horizon as we patrolled down the northern slope of hill Bravo
toward the grid we had been given for the entrance to the warrens. Small strips
of cloud broke up the sky, glowing deep red and orange as the low angled
sunlight struck them and began to turn the dark blue sky back into a brilliant
turquoise. The air was a cool five degrees and slowly rising, feeling crisp
against the exposed parts of my neck. On Earth it would have been a beautiful
spring morning, with birds singing and people rising for another day at work.
But on hill Bravo the silence was only broken by the crunching of the gravel
and sand beneath our boots.

We stuck to
the ditches as much as possible in order to keep out of line of sight from any
unfriendly observers. As long as the enemy held on to the tunnel systems
beneath the hill it was still possible for him to find a way back to the
surface without us knowing. Behind us the summit upon which the battalion
maintained over watch dominated the horizon. I felt myself wishing I was back
with them. Perhaps Woody was there somewhere, waiting for his moment to strike,
but I felt safer on that hill with Woody than down in the depths of the
warrens.

Occasional
aircraft passing overhead and the wind turbines that towered in the distance
were the only sign of life on the barren, rocky world other than us. The three
platoon sections were widely spread, we daren’t take the risk of bunching
together, lest a saucer break through into our airspace, or worse the Chinese
attack from orbit.

Sometime
overnight, Westy had told us on our brief, enemy warships had made another raid
on the Union blockade over the northern hemisphere, succeeding in taking
control of top cover over much of the northern continent for almost half an
hour. Half an hour may not sound much, but it was enough to lay waste to entire
battalions and see divisions run in retreat. We had been lucky; much of Jersey
Island was just outside of their optimum bombardment trajectory. It could have
just as easily been us had the Chinese warships entered orbit elsewhere.
Fortunately the Union had regained orbital top cover, and its ships guarded us
like unseen angels that watched us from the sky.

I could have
taken some small comfort knowing that there were ships high above us watching
us and our surrounding area for the enemy, but the reality was that New Earth
was a big place, and a ship would probably not notice an enemy platoon dug in
and well hidden amongst the hills.

Our section
patrolled slowly and deliberately, scanning around ourselves for any
approaching menace, in a single line of men spaced at least ten metres apart
from each other. If one bloke set off a mine or took a burst of enemy fire, at
least we all wouldn’t get some. Such thinking might shock somebody who had
never served within the infantry, but to us it was simply good patrol
discipline. A dead man is useless, and if half the section were to die in a
single burst of fire because they were bunched together, that would be the section
rendered combat ineffective in the blink of an eye. When I was in training I
maintained patrol discipline because I was told to, but on New Earth I finally
understood it. There if I got the simplest thing wrong, it could cost me my
life.

My visor marked
the locations of the other two sections and platoon headquarters through the
wilted crops and scorched greenhouses, and occasionally I would catch a glimpse
of them. The platoon was very different to what it had been when it dropped to
the surface, two of its sections were formed of troopers from elsewhere in the
company, none of whom I really knew. The boss was patrolling just behind our
newly formed One section who were somewhere ahead of us, along with his
signaller. Our new platoon sergeant, Sergeant Evans, was off to our rear with
his work party, which consisted of Mitch and one other, since Harmes had died
along with Jamo. Sergeant Evans hadn’t spoken much since his promotion, except
to hurry us out of our burrows that morning and assemble us ready to move. Once
we were good to go the boss had asked him if he was happy for us to move off,
but he had to repeat himself when the platoon sergeant didn’t respond.

‘Let’s go,
then,’ he had said icily.

Westy
navigated the section using a map on his wristpad, weaving us in and out of the
maze of ditches and greenhouses as if he knew the area like the back of his
hand. Occasionally we would stop whilst he checked what he was doing against a
paper map he kept in his pocket, just in case the wristpad let him down or
became compromised by an electronic attack by the Chinese. We would sit and
wait, straining our ears for the sound of a stalking section of pinkies that
never came.

The ditches
still flowed with small streams of muddy water, making its way down from the
high ground where rain had collected the day before. I looked into the deep red
flowing water, and I remember thinking that it was like a river of blood.

During our
patrol we passed a battlefield where one of our companies must have fought as
we had done the day before. The ground was scarred with blackened craters, some
small, others almost a hundred metres across. Gravtanks with ruptured hulls
still smouldered amongst chunks of earth, and great boulders that had been
thrown into the air by artillery and orbital bombardment.

As we
approached the base of the hill we walked along a re-entrant with sheer rocky
slopes that towered high above us. At its base a tiny river flowed, having cut
its way down through the rock over millions of years. We weren’t the first
humans ever to walk down that narrow re-entrant, though. Several Chinese
soldiers, corpses now, lay around a crater a few metres across. They all lay
facing away from the crater, most likely killed by the blast of a smart missile
or something similar.

Westy stooped
over one of the soldiers, and we all forgot ourselves and gathered around him.
The soldier’s black visor made him appear as menacing as the man who had tried
to kill me, even though he was clearly dead.

‘Scary
looking ain’t they,’ Sam said, ‘Considering they’re wearing pink.’

‘Might as
well see what the bastards look like,’ Westy said and he pulled the soldier’s
respirator away from his face. We gasped.

‘I told you,
they’re Cyborgs,’ Stevo stepped back from the monstrosity before us. It was
clearly a human, but with black devices covering its mouth, nose, eyes and
ears.

‘Shit, man,’
Ray exclaimed, ‘Look at him!’

Undeterred,
Westy grabbed the device that covered the soldier’s mouth and pulled it away.
It detached from the soldiers skin as if it had been stuck on with glue. Westy
pulled more of the devices away and we looked down at what was finally
revealed.

‘He’s just a
boy,’ I said. He wasn’t a Cyborg at all, and he couldn’t have been any older
than nineteen, like most of us.

‘I didn’t
think they’d look like that,’ Ray said.

‘Well what
did you expect them to look like?’ Sam asked.

Ray shrugged,
‘I just didn’t think they’d look like us.’

‘They’re not
aliens, mate.’

‘So what are
all these things that were stuck to him?’ Brown picked up the device that had
covered the Chinese soldier’s eyes and turned it over in his hands.

‘Who knows,’
Westy said, and he patrolled off again. One by one we followed on, and Brown
threw the device over his shoulder.

I spared a
final glance at the face of our enemy.

‘Not so tough
looking now, is he?’ Sam said.

‘He looks
peaceful,’ I replied, not looking away from the boy’s face, ‘It’s almost like
he’s asleep.’

Sam nodded,
‘come on then, you’d better get going.’

I followed on
after Brown.

‘We’re
approaching friendly forces,’ Westy announced over the section intercom after a
few minutes, ‘Don’t shoot anyone unless he wears pink.’

Sure enough,
above us I noticed a Union helmet pop up along the skyline. The trooper gave a
thumbs up, which was returned in kind by Westy and then the helmet was gone
again.

Our patrol
took us along the re-entrant until Westy turned a right and we climbed up a
steep slope. As I crested the top of the slope I could see the extent of 4
^th
battalion’s defensive position around the warren entrance. Amongst the farmland
at the base of hill Bravo I caught glimpses of communication antennae, vehicles
and troops arranged into a formation kilometres across with a flying Union flag
at its centre. The dark blue flag and its golden stars were instantly recognisable
against the red New Earth landscape as it flapped in the wind.

I spotted the
entrance to the warren a few hundred metres away. It was a large hole cut into
the side of the hill surrounded by rubble from where the Chinese had blown it
up to slow us down. Excavation equipment sat idle close by while engineers
scurried about performing unknown tasks.

I gulped as
we approached the warren entrance. Down inside that dark gaping tunnel the
battle for Jersey Island still raged beneath tonnes of earth and rock. A little
voice at the back of my head screamed for me to do something to prevent my
descent, shoot my foot, bluff a leg injury or try running away… But still my
legs moved, ignoring that little voice with every step.

The opening
to the warren was as foreboding as the entrance to the lair of some alien
beast. A perfectly round tunnel some ten metres in diameter had been bored into
the ground with great precision, running at an angle downward for a few hundred
metres before turning off to the right. I peered into the tunnel whilst the
rest of the platoon patrolled in and crowded round to receive our brief by
guides sent up by 4
^th
battalion to lead the platoon below ground. It
was bare, with ribbed walls created by the machine that had cut it out of the rock.
A series of red fluorescent bulbs ran along its ceiling, bathing the tunnel in
a red glow similar to that of a drop ship crew compartment which served only to
enhance its menace.

The guides
were coated in red dust from head to toe, and their visors were smeared and
scratched from where they had been constantly wiping it away in order to see.
There were three of them, with a lance corporal in charge. Their eyes were
sunken and weary from hours of fighting in the dark below and occasionally when
they met the gaze of me and the other lads they would glare back with hatred.
Regardless of what we had been through, we hadn’t experienced what they had,
and they hated us for it. We were just replacements to them, filling dead men’s
shoes.

‘The main
tunnels are like this one,’ the lead guide explained to the boss in a thick
northern accent, ‘They’re just large enough for vehicles, but there’s smaller
tunnels down there big enough for two blokes to walk side by side. Most of the
lighting is out too. Night vision all the way.’

‘What’s it
like down there?’ the boss asked, meaning what was the fighting like. We
listened anxiously, most of us had never experienced combat underground.
Sergeant Evans flicked mud from his boots with his bayonet.

The guide
regarded the boss for several seconds, as if deciding whether or not he was
worth sharing his experiences with, ‘Boss, I ain’t gonna lie to you, it’s
pretty bad, like. Everything is booby trapped, the pinkies hear a peep and they
blow out the tunnels. You’s’ll get more info off the OC.’

Sergeant
Evans didn’t seem bothered by the guide’s warning, or at least if he was he hid
it well. Instead he thumbed nonchalantly toward the entrance, ‘Shall we get on
with it, then?’

‘Yeah,’ the
guide signalled toward his comrades to prepare to move. He then looked at each
of us in turn as he gave us the score. ‘Fellas, when you’s follow me, make sure
you keep a ten to fifteen metre space between you’s all. Don’t bunch up, coz if
we get bumped and we’re bunched up like sardines everybody gets a bit. Keep
checking behind for your mate coz if one of you’s takes a wrong turn it’s easy
to get lost. We’ve marked the route down anyway, so you shouldn’t get lost. If
you do, just stop and wait where you are, we’ll come back for you’s. Lastly
fellas, keep the noise down and de-activate all electronic equipment you ain’t
using, the pinkies pick you up through the walls and then we’re mince. Good to
go?’

The boss
nodded, ‘Let’s do it.’

One by one,
with two guides at the front of the platoon and one at the rear we patrolled
down into the gaping mouth of the warren, and as I walked down into the abyss I
remember wondering if I would ever see daylight again.

A few metres
into the tunnel sat two metal signs, left by one of our engineers.

The first
read, ‘Welcome to the Hill Bravo Warrens, courtesy of 4
^th
Battalion
the English Dropship Regiment.’

I read the
second, and shivered, ‘As I walk into the valley of the shadow of death, I will
fear no evil. For God is with me.’

‘
This is
mental
,’ I whispered to myself.

We
deactivated virtually all of our equipment. Rifles were powered down, so that
the magnetic fields they generated could not be detected. The section intercom
would be kept on standby, and would not be used except in emergencies. Chinese
engineers, like ours, would be constantly scanning for their enemy in
neighbouring tunnels. Even though I could be sure that the entrance tunnel had
been secured, it felt as though the very walls around me were now the enemy,
and in some ways they were.

As I
patrolled down a good ten metres behind the man in front, who was Brown, I
turned one last time to look at the light of the surface. Behind me Sam walked,
his face hidden behind his visor. He nodded at me in the dim light, and gave me
a thumbs up. I turned the bend in the descending tunnel, and that was the last
time I saw daylight.