C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (25 page)

A hand patted
my shoulder gently, and a familiar voice said reassuringly, ‘It’s alright,
Moralee.’

My eyes were
wet. I bit my lip to keep it from trembling.

‘I’m good, Brown,’
I protested, ‘Let me up!’

‘Advance
forward in your pairs!’ The platoon commander was ordering over the intercom,
‘Everyone else should be keeping as low as possible! Smart missile prepare to
engage incendiaries… Fire in the hole, get down!’

I struggled
again, but Brown was too strong and heavy for me to escape from under him, ‘Let
me up, Brown, I’m fine!’

Mitch and his
smart missile launcher were only metres from us when he fired over the heads of
our platoon, sending a missile screaming away at the enemy.

Brown got off
of me, and as soon as he did so I spun around in fury, raising my fist toward
him.

‘You fucking
bastard! Who do you think you are?!’ I raged, and I threw a wild punch that
Brown ducked with ease. Brown was a fighter, one far more dangerous than me,
but he made no effort to retaliate.

‘What are you
gonna do?’ Brown asked, ‘Try and fight me again?’ Gunfire rattled from up the
tunnel.

‘I hate you!’
I screamed, my rifle raised ready to stab at Brown. He saw the gesture and took
a step back, one hand raised defensively, ‘Climo should have lived! You should
have fucking died, you prick!’

Brown’s voice
became angry, ‘Do you think I wanted Climo to die? What kind of sick bastard do
you take me for?’

The anger in
Brown’s voice only enraged me further, ‘You made my life a misery, that’s how
sick you are! Why did you stop me, I’d have died and you could have rid of me…’

‘Because
you’re all I’ve got left!’ Brown shouted, stunning me into silence, ‘And I’m
all you’ve got!’

We both just
stood there stunned. ‘Get out of the way,’ a trooper shoved his way past me and
Brown, followed by the first section of the next platoon making its way into
the battle. We had broken the Chinese, so it was critical that the pressure was
kept on and they remained off balance. If we paused for even a minute they
would re-group, blow out their tunnels and counter-attack.

Brown slumped
himself down against the wall of the tunnel, breathing heavily. I paused for a
second, unsure of what to do, and then sat down beside him.

The intercom
was filled with chatter from the platoon as it advanced into the Chinese
defensive complex. The platoon commander was calling for the OC to task the
next platoon to echelon through him and continue the assault before he became
over extended. The company second in command announced that the OC was a
casualty himself, and that he would send up what the company had right away.

‘Where are
the others?’ My visor had identified every man and not one was from our
section.

‘Dunno,’
Brown answered. We both knew that most of the section would be dead or wounded.
I knew for certain that Ray hadn’t made it, and I was pretty sure Sam had died
or been injured during our charge up the tunnels.

‘Well what do
we do now?’

Brown
shrugged, ‘I dunno.’

#

The battle
for control of Hill Bravo’s warrens continued for two more bloody hours. The
Chinese were unable to match the ferocious momentum of our assault and they
began to fall back, allowing us to punch deep into the bowels of their warren.
Instead of mazes of empty tunnels designed to be fought in, we encountered
store rooms, warehouses and accommodation. Unable to find survivors of our own
section in the noise and confusion, me and Brown attached ourselves to any
section we could in the platoon, or what was left of them. We fought through
the tight two-man-wide tunnels we had become used to, one section assaulting at
a time with grenades, rifles and bayonets whilst the others followed behind,
dragging back casualties and the dead, and sending forward ammo and replacement
troopers. We fought along corridors and through rooms that looked not entirely
unlike the warrens on Uralis but without the lights working and the doors not
operating, and through large cathedral-like hangars filled with Chinese
vehicles and weapons.

Me and Brown
were leading the platoon through a maze of vehicles packed into one such
hangar, the sounds of our footsteps and heavy breathing seeming to echo between
the vast metal walls, when several Chinamen opened fire from only a few tens of
metres away. They missed us, their aim was poor and they were too close for
their rifles to compensate for the inaccuracy. The Chinese were known for being
worse shots at close quarters. We dove for cover behind the nearest vehicle,
some kind of artillery piece mounted on caterpillar tracks.

‘Contact
front!’ I yelled and fired, catching one Chinaman on the arm and sending him
tumbling to the ground. He tried to crawl away but somebody finished him off
with a shot to the head.

‘What’s going
on?’ I realised that a section commander had managed to get right up behind me,
it was Corporal Jones.

‘We’ve got
enemy literally on the other side of this vehicle,’ Brown said, firing a burst
with his mammoth.

‘Grenade!’
Someone shouted, and we ducked, but the grenade exploded uselessly on the wrong
side of our cover, sending pieces of shrapnel zinging off of the vehicles.

‘Right, I’ll
go round the left,’ the section commander said, but I had an idea and stopped
him. I flicked my head upwards, and he took less than a second to understand.

Corporal Jones
nodded and looked back to his men, ‘Rapid fire, boys, we’re going over the
top!’

Several
rifles opened fire as the three of us clambered up onto the artillery piece.
Its armour was smooth, but covered with hand holds, presumably for people to
climb up and maintain it. As I reached the top and perched beside the barrel of
the massive weapon I could see at least five pinkies huddled on the other side
of the vehicle. It looked like they were preparing to assault, their commander
was pointing around the left side where Corporal Jones had wanted to go on a
flank attack. No doubt there were more, but I couldn’t see them and there
wasn’t time for us to ponder, we had to take advantage of the surprise.

I charged
down the other side of the vehicle, somehow miraculously not losing my balance
on the smooth, steep armour, and I fired repeatedly into the mass of men. We
were on top of them so fast they had no time to react before the three of us
stabbed and beat at those who hadn’t died outright.

‘Position
clear!’ Corporal Jones shouted, and more troopers poured past us. He patted me
on the arm, ‘Well done, mate,’ and he was off. Brown said nothing, he simply
nodded.

Casualties
came thick and fast, the platoons at the front of the company often bearing the
brunt. Though we sensed the Chinese were broken they still put up a good fight.
Lone pinkies would spray wild bursts of automatic and charge with bayonets as
if they were possessed and without fear, and they often got the better of us. Every
pair of troopers behind the assaulting sections formed part of a human chain,
dragging casualties back five or ten metres to the pair behind them until they
reached the medics. I lost count of how many I helped move. Gunshot wounds and
concussion from explosions were common. Sometimes we helped move casualties
back who appeared almost uninjured, apart from a small trickle of blood from
the nose or twitching like a crushed insect. Others had horrific traumatic
injuries, missing limbs and gaping holes that exposed organs and burnt meat. I
remember dragging one man back with Brown and noticing that he was choking and
wheezing from within his respirator. A quick flash of a torch on IR identified
the problem, a round had struck the visor of his respirator, passing through it
at an angle and out the other side close to his face. Nobody had noticed it,
for whatever reason, perhaps haste, and nobody had checked his vitals. We tried
to patch the hole with our respirator repair kits but too late. He died before
we even patched the first hole.

‘Shit,’ Brown
simply said, flicking off his torch.

He was just
another dead trooper now. We stripped his ammo and passed him rearward.

We were
losing blokes fast, and as we did the structure of the company was beginning to
break down. Blokes were being grabbed by section commanders of all three
platoons regardless of whether they belonged to them or not. Platoon sergeants
stalked the tunnels organising the ammunition and casualty chain of the entire
company, since they would never be able to identify all of their own platoon in
the maze much less work out how much ammo they all needed. They spat orders and
threw troopers about by the collar, enforcing rigid discipline in every
individual they passed.

I was taken
forward by several section commanders on numerous occasions, but I always
managed to keep Brown with me. We no longer moved forward in a frenzy, but in
calculated moves often initiated by the smart missiles or by tossing grenades
around corners. I would crouch low whilst Brown would stand above and to the
side of me covering my back. We would often move forward without firing unless
we knew that there would be enemy, as we were getting through magazines fast
and firing blindly often only served to tell the enemy where we were.

I stepped
over bodies like any other man on Earth would step over a curb. Someone behind
could search the body. One time we were clearing forward as the lead pair again
and we came across a Chinaman who lay on his back with his feet toward us. His
weapon was too far from him to reach, but he was still reaching for it anyway.
My visor was relying upon thermal imaging and I couldn’t really distinguish
what injuries he had sustained, but I guessed he had been hit by shrapnel from
a grenade we had thrown from around a corner.

He lifted his
head to look up at us, ‘Ma…..ma..….’ I didn’t have a clue what he was trying to
say, even if he was trying to say anything at all. His voice sounded weak.

We stepped
over the injured Chinaman as if he weren’t even there, only taking the time to
take his weapon away from him so that he couldn’t shoot us in the back. Behind
us the next pair quickly stripped him of his equipment so that he couldn’t find
any more weapons, or worse a grenade.

I knew that
the Union preferred to treat the enemy injured when the situation permitted, so
long as the resources were available. If the enemy knew he would die anyway, he
would fight to the death, which in the end turned him into a tougher opponent.

But I felt no
pity for the Chinaman, only the same hatred I now had for all of them. The last
shreds of humanity had left me down there in those caves. Nobody in the company
said anything as one by one we left the man behind to die.

On several
occasions I came to within centimetres of death. One such time I rounded a
doorway into a room fitted with bunk beds just like the ones in training,
failing to notice a pinkie in hiding to my right. Brown snatched me out of the
way milliseconds before the Chinaman opened fire, before we both managed to get
our own weapons round and fill him with more holes than a Swiss cheese. Upon
checking me over we found no wounds, only several holes through my combats,
including one that ran through the edge of my helmet just missing my
respirator. To be fair, those holes could have been from as long ago as the
landings, but we still had a good laugh about it.

Our biggest
fear by far, though, was explosives. The Chinese had rigged them up everywhere,
from high-tech devices to slabs of plastic explosives dug into a wall with a
pick and spade. We relied upon our visor to hopefully detect anything before we
got too close. Anything recently made could be picked up as a lighter patch on
thermal, and anything that didn’t match the shape of the tunnel would be
flagged up by our visor display with a flashing red warning triangle. But
eighty-percent of making sure you didn’t get blown to bits was instinct. If we
didn’t feel good about something we pushed back and threw a grenade, just to be
sure.

The Chinese
defence was becoming less and less like that of a determined foe and more like
the final desperate stand of a broken enemy. Reports from the surface told of
total orbital top cover, denying the enemy an escape route to the surface, and
one by one the hangars that held precious vehicles and equipment were being cut
off and captured.

Toward the
end of the battle we heard from the platoon commander that Westy had been
concussed and evacuated out of the area to the regimental aid post closer to
the surface. He didn’t know anything about the others. So once again me and
Brown were the survivors of a section that had been near enough destroyed, but
this time we didn’t even have a commander, or have a clue what to do with
ourselves but make ourselves useful to anyone who needed us.

Combat below
ground ended when the Chinese battalion we had been fighting surrendered. It
would have been lunacy for them to have carried on, since we had captured or
destroyed much of their critical supplies and life support equipment. Besides
that, the vast majority of the vehicles and equipment that the warrens were
meant to protect were already in our hands, giving them little purpose but to die
for the sake of it, if not by us then by thirst or lack of air fit for their
respirators. There was no cheer when the surrender was announced to the
platoon, though, just a deathly silence from a sea of weary faces. There was so
little to cheer about.

17: Return to the Surface

Me and Brown
sat with the survivors of the company in an underground warehouse stacked
several storeys high with ammunition crates. We had placed out as many light
sticks as we could so that we could see without help from our visors. Figures
squatted in small groups, talking quietly and resting for whatever would come
next.

In total I
could only count fourteen of us in my platoon, of which only three appeared to
be NCOs. Corporal Jones, or Jonesy as his men called him, was the only full corporal
to have survived along with two lancejacks from the sections that had been
attached to us after the landings. Such a heavy loss of manpower had caused the
organisation of the sections to dissolve so that it was hard to work out who
belonged to which. Of the original platoon there were barely a handful of us
left, including the platoon signaller and Mitch in headquarters. Our spirits
were lifted by news that most of our casualties had not died, and even Sam had
somehow been saved by the medics. Apparently he had been riddled with holes and
had got through litres of blood in the Regimental Aid Post, but he had
survived. Unfortunately Ray had not been so lucky, and Stevo’s body was nowhere
to be found.

Sergeant Evans
ordered us all to eat at least one horror bag through our feeding straws after
it became apparent that many of us were still carrying almost all of our
rations from the drop. Fighting the Chinese had caused us to forget to look
after ourselves, but it was Sergeant Evans’ job to make sure that we did.

I always had
to suck so hard to get anything out of a horror bag that eventually the muscles
in my cheeks became sore from the effort. The effort became annoying, and I
wasn’t hungry anyway, but nevertheless I forced myself to eat. I didn’t know
when I would next get a chance.

‘Apparently
the pinkies have a tube that sticks food right in them, so they never have to
eat,’ Brown said. He had barely got halfway through his bag.

I tossed my
rubbish over my shoulder, ‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Should have
checked to see,’ I said, remembering the dead Chinaman whose respirator we
removed. His childlike face still haunted me, along with the faces of my dead
friends.

Brown said
nothing for a few minutes, ‘We shouldn’t have left that bloke.’

I looked
across at him. He had stopped eating, and was staring at the half empty packet.

‘Which one?’
I asked finally.

‘The one we
fragged with the grenade. The one on the floor.’

I cast my
mind back, vaguely remembering the company leaving a man who had survived the
blast of a grenade.

‘He was
trying to call for his mum,’ Brown said, ‘I heard him. We all just left him,
though.’

I hesitated,
and then awkwardly patted the back of my enemy, ‘He’s Chinese. How do you know
what mum sounds like in Chinese? He was reaching for a weapon, end of story.
Somebody at the back would have dealt with him.’

Brown shook
his head, and took a slow drag on the straw that connected to his horror bag, ‘It
sounded like he was calling for his mum. We just left that bloke to die calling
for his mum, like it was the most normal thing in the world,’ he sighed, ‘I
dunno. All I know is that this place is really hurting me.’

My respirator
hid my surprise. I think that was probably the first time Brown had ever
mentioned anything of his own feelings.

‘I’m sorry
about Climo,’ Brown said, and I saw that he was sincere.

I paused, and
finally nodded, ‘That’s okay.’

‘How’s your
arm?’

I patted the
fresh bandage I had applied to my wound, the other had been soaked with blood
and pus, ‘It’s sore, and a bit nasty looking, but it’s okay.’

Brown nodded.

‘I can’t stop
seeing Chase’s eyes,’ I said suddenly.

Another
pause, ‘Me neither. But now it’s not just him I see when I close my eyes. It’s
everyone else, too.’

We sat in
silence.

#

I couldn’t
believe it when we were re-united with Westy. Both me and Brown jumped to our
feet as the burley Welshman appeared.

‘God am I
glad to see someone I recognise,’ he said, grinning from ear to ear in the dim
light of the hangar.

I thought
about going in for a hug but thought it too much, instead shaking his hand
furiously. 

‘So what
happened?’ I asked, gesturing toward Westy’s sleeveless, bandaged arm, ‘I
thought you were at the Aid Post?’

Westy
shrugged, ‘I don’t remember much after the engineer walked up the tunnel with
his charge. The medic reckoned I was knocked out by the blast, then I must have
been hit by a ricochet when I was lying on the deck. I was just lucky.’

‘You heard about
the other lads, right?’ Jonesy asked, and our smiles faded.

Westy nodded sombrely,
‘Yeah. The company second-in-command told me when I managed to get back.’

I thought to
change the subject, ‘So, what, did you wake up at the Regimental Aid Post?’

‘Yeah, I came
to with this medic wrapping my arm up. It’s just a flesh wound, nothing
serious. It looks worse than it is coz my automatic tourniquet activated and
the medic had to cut the sleeve off my armour to save my arm from dropping off!
He tried to get me to stay at the RAP but I refused and done a runner after you
lot. Still got pins and needles even now.’ He shook his arm.

‘You went
running off into the tunnels?’ Jonesy smiled.

‘Yeah, I
thought it was just me left, so I just followed the noise and attached myself
to a random section.’

‘Mate, you
are mental,’ Jonesy said, and we laughed. We shared stories of our exploits,
the good parts and the bad. Westy told of his madness, volunteering himself to
go in the lead pair for everything until one of the platoon commanders realised
he was a corporal from another platoon and ordered him to stop.

I had noticed
instantly from the second he had entered the hangar that something had changed
in the way that Westy spoke to us. He had warmed to me and Brown, as if the
barrier that separated the section commander from his junior privates had
dissolved. At first I thought that he had finally decided that we had earned
his respect in the battle for the tunnels, but then I remembered what Brown had
said to me when we had argued and realised the truth.
We were all he had
left
.

Brown took a
deep breath and asked, ‘So, what now, then?’

‘The warrens
are clear, most of the remaining Chinese have surrendered. Apparently B Company
have found enough kit to start a whole new war down here, fortunately for us
the enemy never had the chance to get it above ground. The pinkies must have
worked out they weren’t going to manage to get it all back to the surface
anyway though, most of it was trashed, controls ripped out and all sorts. No
point giving us their own weapons.’

‘So no more
fighting down here, then?’ I asked. So many troopers had died down in the
tunnels, it had been like fighting in the bowels of hell itself. I felt my
heartbeat slow and muscles relax at the very thought of an end to it all.
Could
I really have survived this brutal stage of my war on New Earth,
I
wondered,
and would I really live to see the end to the whole thing?

Westy shook
his head, ‘Doesn’t look like it. But I wouldn’t get too excited, it’s still
busy up on the surface. Apparently 2
^nd
battalion took a number of
key positions around Jersey City, but the pinkies gave them a hard time. It
looks like the Chinese won’t surrender the city, so we’re going to have to go
in.’

Ears had
pricked up from amongst the platoon and everybody, whether they knew Westy or
not stopped to listen. Our war was far from over. It was generally believed
that the Chinese would surrender or retreat from the city if they lost the
warrens, but we had been overly optimistic. After all, retreat was a dirty
word.

It wasn’t
long before the CSM closed the company into the centre of the warehouse for the
OC, with a freshly bandaged leg, to announce our move back up to the surface.
He told us that reports of success on every continent had circumnavigated the
globe, and that the Chinese navy had all but given up hope of ever regaining
top cover in orbit. We were winning, and I felt a sudden surge of hope wash
across the company, like a static charge that almost stood my hair on end. But
the elation we felt was short-lived, as he told us that we were moving in order
to be reassembled into a fighting force to take Jersey City. Whispered curses
hissed across the weary body of men as the OC described in simple and brutally
honest terms how he saw the next few hours panning out.

‘In the next
fifteen minutes we will move back up to the surface as a company using a
northern transit tunnel,’ the OC told us, ‘The warrens will be concurrently taken
over by the conscripts.’

‘Cheers,
easy,’ somebody uttered.

The company
commander and sergeant major heard the trooper, I think, but chose to ignore
him. I doubted they or anybody else disagreed with the sentiment. We had fought
hard to gain control of hill bravo and the warrens beneath it, and now above us
shuttles were disgorging hundreds of conscripts who would reap the rewards of
our struggle. When we were out of the warren its breathable atmosphere would be
restored, as would power and defence grids. The conscripted soldiers would settle
down and wait until the invasion was over without even firing a shot. Bastards.

‘On the
surface the company will be re-organized and bolstered with battlefield
replacements provided by the other battalions. I will then issue orders for an
attack onto Jersey City. They will more than likely be a very quick set of
orders, as we are pressed for time. The rest of the division is pushing north
to clear remaining enemy off of Jersey Island in a few hours, and we are a
crucial element of that move. We could be on our way back into battle in a
matter of hours, and you need to be prepared for that now because it’s not over
yet. Any questions?’          

‘What about
us, Sir, are we staying with you now?’ the boss asked.

My heart
skipped a beat. It had not crossed my mind that we might in fact be sent back
to our own battalion and not used in the attack on Jersey City at all. The last
thing I heard of my battalion was that they were holding the peak of Hill Bravo,
having been rendered almost combat ineffective by the high casualties sustained
on the landing. We were only within the 4
^th
battalion’s ranks to
give them a quick booster of manpower for the tunnels, and what with
battlefield replacements coming in were we not better off in our own unit? I
would much rather take my chances with Woody on the summit of Hill Bravo than
with the Chinese in Jersey City. I felt shame in my cowardly thoughts, and
shook them off.

It didn’t
matter anyway.

‘Almost
certainly, yes, Larry,’ the OC answered, using Mr Barkley’s first name, ‘From
what I gather now your battalion are firm on Hill bravo and will probably
remain so. To be frank, I need you and your platoon here. You’re battle-hardened
and experienced and I’m not letting you go if I can help it. I’m sorry,’ his
apology was genuine.

‘Not at all,
Sir,’ the platoon commander waved the apology away, ‘We’re good to crack on.’ I
wasn’t sure everybody else would agree.

The OC nodded
respectfully toward our platoon commander. He had served the OC well, and so
had the platoon. We had to respect the boss for the battle in the tunnels; he
had led the platoon throughout the assault into the warrens and had never
faltered, unlike some of his peers. I had heard tales of officers being
relieved by their platoon sergeants and even section commanders as the fighting
turned fierce. Perhaps he had made a mistake on the fateful day of our landing,
but who was I to judge? Even Sergeant Evans seemed happy enough to stand next
to the boss, and I earlier spotted them sat together in the warehouse deep in
conversation. Maybe, I wondered, if he had it in him to forgive the boss, he
could forgive me and Brown too. But then how could he if I couldn’t even
forgive myself?

‘Any other
questions?’ The OC asked, and the warehouse fell silent, ‘You’ll get a much
more detailed brief on the surface. Sergeant Major?’

The company
sergeant major stepped forward, dwarfing the OC. He made Westy look like a
midget. He was massive, and with his kit all on he looked bigger still, his
shoulders were so wide and he stood so tall I wondered how he had even fitted
down the smaller warren tunnels. I remembered seeing him stalking the platoons
as we advanced, barking orders at the work parties as they carried out the
injured and passed up the ammo, and working the waiting assault pairs into a
frenzy in his deep northern accent.

‘You kill
them!’ I had heard him scream, ‘You kill ‘em all! No mercy, lads!’

That was
probably the most intelligent sentence ever to come out of CSM Robson’s mouth,
known as ‘the bull’ by the company because he was big, not too bright, but
horrifically violent and foul tempered. Some people would say that those were
the principle requirements of a sergeant major, as long as nobody was about to
hear it.

‘Right then,
lads,’ the huge man began, ‘Every man here had some food, yeah?’

Some from the
other platoons didn’t nod in response, and he shot an angry glance to the
platoon sergeants who stood off to a flank. They would get a severe de-briefing
for not administrating their men, I suspected, apart from Sergeant Evans who
had thought to make us eat.

‘If you
haven’t, I suggest you do, because you may not get a chance for a while. Okay,
fellas, on the way up there will be a rolling replenishment of water, rations
and respirator canisters. Make sure you all replenish your water! If your pack
is full - and I doubt it is - then drink half of it and then fill it back up.
Every man jack will take a further twenty-four hours-worth of space food. I
don’t care if it tastes like shit and you’ve been eating the flesh off a Chinaman’s
arse, you take the rations. That means if you’ve got rations in your daysacks
left over from today I suggest you eat them or you’ll end up carrying double.
Platoon sergeants ensure this happens.’