C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (24 page)

Eventually, a
solitary trooper made his way toward us from the way we had come. A runner, no
doubt, tasked to pass messages in absence of the intercom. Nobody dared use the
company communication network unless the warren got noisy, it would only allow
the enemy to work out where we were and what we were doing.

The runner
crouched close to Westy and whispered his message.

‘Pinkies blew
out their tunnel,’ he said quietly, confirming what I had suspected, ‘Engineers
are checking it out. Five platoon assaulted into the same tunnel further back,
that got blown out too. We’re possibly gonna dig down into a transit tunnel
beneath us, but we won’t be moving for at least the next ten minutes.’

‘Okay,’ Westy
acknowledged, ‘That it?’

‘That’s it,
anyone else further up there?’ he flicked his head toward the Chinese tunnel.

‘Yeah, mate.
One section I think.’

‘Cool, I’m
off, then.’

The runner
continued on up the tunnel to pass on his message and we waited.

I brushed a
layer of dust away from my gloves gently, sending puffs of it into the air. I
watched the mini dust cloud slowly disperse and settle on the ground. We were
coated in it from head to toe, just like all of our guides had been when they
had escorted us down into the warrens.

Too afraid to
even make the slightest sound, we waited, listening out for the sound of
Chinese tunnelling. We waited for what felt like an age, staring blankly at the
walls across from us, alone to our thoughts, and our own inner demons. Inside
my head the memory of my actions with my original ill-fated section assaulted
my mind and soul, and I found myself longing for home, for daylight, for peace
from all of the misery. There could be nowhere worse to be than there in the
bowels of New Earth, man’s self-made hell.

Beating off
the urge to cry or vomit, I was unsure which; I closed my eyes and imagined I
was back on Earth in the warmth and comfort of my home.

#

My body
jerked when a hand violently shook at my shoulder. I looked up in alarm at the
figure standing over me.

‘Moralee, wake
up you lizard,’ it was Sam. He shook me again to emphasise the point.

‘I’m - I
wasn’t sleeping,’ I blurted reflexively. Out of the corner of my eye, Brown
shook his head in disgust.

‘Shhhhh,’ Sam
placed an upward pointing finger across his visor where his mouth would be, ‘’Course
you weren’t, sweetheart,’ he said sarcastically.

My visor read
it to be ten-twenty-two, just past the New Earth mid-day. It had been at least
an hour since we had gone firm and waited for the next move, and I could only
remember five minutes of that time. Quite clearly I had indeed been asleep, my
exhausted body must have just switched itself off.

‘Sorry, Sam,’
I whispered.

‘Don’t
apologise, it’s weak. We’re moving back.’

‘Why? Are we
retreating?’ I was almost hopeful.

‘And miss all
the fun?’ I sensed that Sam was smiling as Ray passed us back the way we had
come and away from the Chinese tunnel, ‘Where did you learn that word anyway? ‘Retreating’
is a dirty word,’ he waved a disapproving finger at me.

I sighed, ‘Fair
one.’

Westy was
next to pass us, then Stevo.

‘So what’s
going on?’ I whispered.

Sam shrugged,
‘Don’t know yet, we just got the order to move. Probably gonna try somewhere
else.’

‘Oh.’

Brown patted
my shoulder, announcing he was about to move off.

‘Had a nice
snooze, cheese head?’

I said
nothing, embarrassed. Sam shook me again reassuringly.

‘Don’t worry
about him, mate. He’s just got sour grapes because no one likes him. But don’t
let it happen again.’

‘Him and
Woody have got it in for me,’ I said, but Sam just laughed.

‘I think
those two are the least of your worries, mate. And you’re the least of theirs.
Come on, let’s go.’

I moved off.

#

For several
hours we followed a laser drill as it burrowed a twisting and winding tunnel
through the rock, trailing hundreds of metres of piping that brought the
excavated rock back past us and to the engineers somewhere behind.

Twice in a
single hour the Chinese blew out the tunnel being dug ahead of us as we tried
to connect it with theirs for a fight, once right on top of a laser drill as it
worked, then a second time further up the tunnel toward us in an attempt to hit
troops instead of just a robot. They didn’t want a force-on-force fight,
instead they merely wanted to buy time, hoping their ships might return to save
them from their prison underground. The explosions came with such force they
took our feet from under us, each time leaving us dazed and confused on the
ground.

Each time we
picked ourselves up and waited whilst the engineers reassessed their route, and
then carried forward a new drill complete with its snaking pipes, before
continuing the process again down a brand new tunnel.

The way I
imagined tunnel warfare was kind of like worms fighting some kind of duel in
the mud, probing forward, moving, and probing again. Eventually though, the
stalemate was going to end. We couldn’t go on like this forever, either we would
run out of drills or the Chinese would run out of explosives. That or the whole
of New Earth would cave in on top of us.

As we slowly
followed the drills down their tunnels we laid out our vibration-proof mats as
they were passed down from behind, along with water for our packs which were
almost depleted. It was hot work down at this depth, what with the heat created
by the drill. Somewhere to our rear engineers would be having to work hard to
maintain a supply of cool air into the tunnels, shame it wasn’t air that we
could breathe without the damned respirators.

I sat with my
section in the pitch-black, whilst ahead our drill burrowed away somewhere out
of sight ahead of us. I could hear the distinctive hissing-popping sound it
created as its powerful lasers melted their way through solid rock, its spindly
little metal legs pulling it forward toward the enemy like some ugly insect.

‘Why can’t
they just give one of them things a rifle?’ I asked.

‘God knows,’
Brown replied curtly.

I took a
thoughtful sip on my drinking straw as I listened to the sound of the drill. If
I listened to it for long enough my mind began to play tricks, sometimes I
could swear I could hear people talking up there, and other sounds I knew to be
in my imagination.

Sam patted my
shoulder, ‘We’re ten metres short of a pinkie tunnel. It opens into their
defensive complex.’

I leaned
close to Brown and passed the message. Despite the proximity of potential enemy
we knew now to remain sat down, any explosion would merely have us flat on our
faces again anyway. I resisted the urge to power up my rifle, but my finger
hovered close over the button.

A familiar
figure stepped over our legs in the gloom, cradling another payload of explosives
in his arms. His infra-red torch flicked over us as he moved, temporarily
dazzling my visor until it quickly adjusted. He was smiling, alright. Last time
I wasn’t sure but he was definitely smiling.

‘That nutter’s
actually enjoying himself,’ I told Sam in disbelief.

‘Yeah?’

‘Mate, he’s
smiling!
’

Brown shook
his head, ‘Then he needs to get a grip of himself.’

I watched the
IR torch move up the tunnel, becoming a single ring of light around the lone
figure. He was about a hundred metres up our tunnel, with the drill fifty metres
on from him and the Chinese ten metres through the rock past that.

He didn’t get
any further.

Whump!

The explosion
this time was so powerful it still managed to toss us from where we sat into a
crumpled heap on the ground. The overpressure created by the enemy device,
whatever it was, would surely have ruptured my ear drums and caused my eye
balls to bleed had I not been wearing all of my protective equipment. I rolled
onto my back, in shock from the impact. Dust settled on my visor so thick I
couldn’t see.

‘On your
feet! On your feet! Rapid fire, now!’ I recognised our platoon commander's
voice. Where before he had sounded urgent but in control, now his voice was
shrill. With a terrible chill that shot up my spine, I realised it was the
Chinese who had detonated a device, but this time the overpressure had been far
greater than before. The Chinese had used one of their own plasma charges to
explosively dig into our tunnel. Much the same as we had done to them hours
earlier.

‘Shit!’ I
yelled as I realised what was about to happen.

I struggled
to pick myself up off my back, wiping the dust from my visor. As I did so there
was a sudden flash of light that blinded my visor, accompanied by a rush of hot
air that seared the exposed skin around my neck and blew me back down to the
ground.

There was a
massive explosion from behind as the Chinese missile struck home somewhere in
the centre of the company. Somebody screamed.

I knew what
was coming next. I leapt to my knees and powered up my rifle, thumbing the
selector switch to automatic.

Through the
cloud of dust I could see Brown picking himself up off the ground in
painstakingly slow motion. For a nanosecond my mind flicked to a picture of him
being cut down by enemy fire as they stormed the tunnel, with me unable to fire
for fear of killing Ray, Westy and Stevo who were all obscured by the smoke.
There was only one thing I could do, and in the space of the tiniest fraction
of a second I made a decision that only a day ago I would never have dreamed
of.

Whereas
before I had been driven by fear of reprisal from my mates, or the fear of
death or just blind obedience, I was now acting on something entirely
different; a fear for my comrade’s lives.

Not again,
my mind screamed,
not my section again!

‘Brown, get
down!’ I pushed Brown back to the floor as I barged past him, bounding to the
front of my section. It took me less than two seconds to get next to Ray where
he lay dazed at the front of the section. I took up aim into the dark and
powered up my rifle. Any second the enemy would emerge and hose us down with
darts while we still reeled in shock from their smart missile.

‘Fuck you!’ I
screamed into the gloom and pulled the trigger.

Flashes of
orange light danced up the tunnel as my darts ricocheted off the walls toward
my unseen foe. Chips of rock smacked off my visor, but I was oblivious to the
return fire from the Chinese that had mixed in with mine, bouncing past and
creating carnage in the company behind me. Ray’s body jumped and rocked as it
was struck several times by supersonic steel darts.

I don’t know
why the pinkies didn’t get me. Of course it was just blind luck, pure and
simple. The Chinese, like us, couldn’t see much through all the hot dust and
smoke and would be firing almost blind in our general direction. Besides if
anybody had deserved a miracle, it wouldn’t be me.

Another
trooper joined me in my defiance, it was Sam.

‘We’re about
to get spanked, Moralee!’ He shouted over the din, and at that moment I knew as
Sam did what needed to be done, ‘Charge ‘em!’

We ran toward
the enemy, our weapons roaring and our bayonets lusting for blood.

Now there is
meant to be a method of clearing forward through the tight tunnels of a warren,
advancing forward in pairs with one in a half crouch and one stood high just to
the side and rear so that both troopers could fire. I’m pretty sure that me and
Sam didn’t do that.

We ran almost
side by side toward the enemy, firing our rifles wildly into the smoke. We had
lost all sense and reason and were driven forward by pure rage, with not a
shred of thought for the drills we had been taught on Uralis. All I knew at the
back of my mind was that the company were battered, and that those who had
lived through the blast of the missile and the enemy gunfire were probably
still lying comatose on the floor. We had to take the fight to the Chinese, if
anything to stall them and give the lads a fighting chance.

They were
bunched up in the tunnel when we reached them, a mass of men desperately trying
to drag casualties out of the way and bring their weapons to bear again. Our
rounds hacked at them as we charged, spattering them with each other’s blood.
They were a thronging mass of chaos and confusion, like a herd of animals that
had hurtled straight into the path of some terrible predator. They had not
expected us to respond with such ferocity.

One of the
pinkies managed to force his way around an injured comrade, bringing his rifle
up to aim at the screaming Europeans bearing down upon him. He let off a burst
at the same time as he died by my own rifle.

That was the
last time I saw Sam.

I ran over
the bodies of the dead and into the enemy, with the rest of the company
following.

That was the
beginning of what was to be one of the most violent and bloody underground
battles fought beneath the surface of New Earth. I can’t tell you that I
remember all of what happened. I stabbed and slashed and hacked at my foe as if
possessed. Where the enemy fell, I finished him with a thrust to his upper
torso, or simply stepped over him so that somebody behind me could do it. When
I was out of stabbing range I fired my rifle instead and charged again,
scarcely aware of comrades trying to keep up with me.

Sometimes a
trooper fell, I think, but I didn’t stop to see who it was. I was lost in my
own world of horror and pain and misery, and before me were the very people I
blamed for it all. If I killed enough of them, maybe it would all go away. Or
maybe they would just kill me.

Suddenly a hand
clasped my shoulder and threw me to the ground in a crumpled heap and then a
knee landed on my back with the full weight of a man upon it. Pinned, I
struggled to release myself, desperate to get back into the fight. But I had
already been relieved, another pair of troopers were now ahead of me followed
by a long line of troopers waiting to take their turn, all crouching as low as
their bodies allowed.  The noise of battle gradually receded up the tunnel.