C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (27 page)

‘And carrying
a commander’s wristpad already?’ He nodded at my forearm, ‘Either you’re
awesome, or things aren’t going so well.’

I bristled,
who was he to talk like it was all some big cosmic joke? Friends of mine had
died.

The medic
noticed my annoyance and patted my good arm, ‘I meant no harm, mate,’ he
smiled.

I let the
medic finish wrapping my arm without a word. When he was finished he patted my
shoulder gently.

‘There you
are, mate, good as new.’

‘Thanks.’

‘You’re
welcome. Hopefully I won’t see you again.’

It took me a
second to understand what he meant, ‘Yeah, hopefully,’ I hesitated, ‘What’s it
like, being a medic?’

‘Like dying a
little bit every hour,’ he said sadly, and then he was gone to his next
patient. I watched as the blood-soaked medic changed his gloves and got back to
his work.  

18: The Trenches

When you have
a digital clock in the corner of your vision it can be hard not to find
yourself just staring at it slowly ticking the seconds away into minutes and
then hours. We were sat in our dropship for a long time, having loaded not long
after my arm was bandaged. We were thrown about as it rapidly and unpredictably
manoeuvred itself across the surface of New Earth.

Westy kept us
briefed on what the dropship crew were doing, moving to the rear of the 2
^nd
Danish Gravtank Battalion as they swept across the rolling hills of
Jersey Island’s coast, probing forward, waiting, probing again. Although we
could have probably covered the length of the island in only a couple of
minutes we were taking hours to cover only a couple of kilometres. Occasionally
the company would stop and dismount into the dark on some lonely hillside only
to scan with our smart launchers and visors for what seemed like hours on end,
watching grey clouds slowly drift across the ink black sky.

‘How long do
you think this will go on for?’ I asked Westy as we loaded back into the
dropship for the umpteenth time.

‘I dunno,’
Westy replied flatly, ‘It’s only a few kilometres between Hill Bravo and the
city, but we’re sort of hooking around to the western flank in a big circle.’

‘It’s doing
my head in,’ I complained to nobody in particular, ‘Let’s just get on with it.’

‘No point in
rushing death, mate,’ Westy said ominously, and Brooks gulped. Apparently
Brooks and Daniels had been very lucky up until then, their sections had -
through nobody’s fault - avoided most of the combat in the tunnels and they
appeared nervous.

Every now and
then the dropship vibrated as it fired a burst of vulcan at something. Westy
would warn us of incoming missiles, but there’s little you can do about it
except pray to your God and hope for the best.

Westy had
become quiet since his outburst, barely speaking unless to tell us what was
going on. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with us if he could help it, and we
respected his need for space. Stevo did his best to pretend not to exist, so as
not to further enrage the Welshman. I wondered what he had done to cause the
death of the section’s old MAM-G gunner Jimmy, and decided that when the time
was right I would ask Westy.

‘Are you
Moralee?’ Brooks asked after a prolonged period during which we sat in the crew
compartment in silence. I nodded, slightly irritated by the question. Surely he
knew my name from his visor display.

‘
The
Moralee?’ Daniels’ eyes widened.

‘Yes,’ I
replied curtly, beginning to become annoyed. Brown grinned.

‘We’ve heard
about you,’ Brooks said, ‘You saved the company.’

‘I wouldn’t
go that far, there were others with me.’

‘Who were
they?’ They were eager for a story. Troopers were obsessed with rumours and
tall tales. They thrived upon it.

‘Sam
Wakefield,’ I said, remembering my old section 2ic. I wished he was in the
dropship with us, so that the responsibility no longer rested on my shoulders.
He could have done the job with his eyes closed, but instead he was somewhere
in the medical chain, along with Greggerson, Peters and many, many others.

‘What
happened to him, then?’

Westy
bristled, ‘Shut up, Brooks.’

Brooks looked
down to the ground like a scolded child and the crew compartment fell back into
silence. I went back to watching the clock on my visor display ticking the
seconds away until battle would resume.

Finally,
after what seemed like an age, the dropship came to a halt and its door lowered
for the last time.

‘That’s us at
the drop-off point,’ Westy told us all as we dismounted into the dark, our
visors instantly flicking to night vision as we did so. We weren’t to dismount
straight into the battle this time. Jersey City was just shy of five kilometres
away to our East and we would make the rest of the journey on foot. In the
darkness I could see the three platoons that formed the company all exiting
their dropships and preparing to move off.

‘Happy,
Moralee?’ I realised Westy had taken a knee beside me in the gloom.

‘Yeah,’ I
lied.
Why couldn’t Brown be 2ic?

‘I need you
to bring up the rear of the section, just to make sure nobody wanders off,’ he
said. It was often standard procedure at night for 2ics to be at or near the
rear of their sections just in case the unthinkable happened and somebody
somehow disappeared, but I was pretty sure he was talking about Stevo.

‘No worries,’
I replied.

Westy nodded
toward the first platoon of the company to move off into the night, ‘That’s us
off, then.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What’s your
first name, Moralee?’

Nobody had
wanted to know my first name since Climo, and I was honoured that a section
commander would want to know it, ‘Andy.’

‘You’ve had a
shit time here, Andy,’ Westy said, and waited for my reply, but I said nothing,
‘You did well in the tunnels. It was noticed.’

So many had
died or been wounded, it felt criminal to accept any form of praise. I said
nothing and finally Westy nodded, accepting that silence was my reply. He clapped
a hand on my shoulder.

‘Let’s get
this done, then, Andy.’

We patrolled
into the night, toward Jersey City.

#

We patrolled
for over an hour in pitch darkness until we reached a forward slope that
covered us from the last kilometre of open ground to Jersey City. In the green
image created by my visor’s night vision I could see the other platoons forming
up on the slope.

I could hear
the sound of our fire support from somewhere off to our northern flank, and a
quick glance over to my left allowed my visor to mark the fire support location
with a hollow blue square and a number to indicate the range, two kilometres.
The fire support was too far away for me to make it out, or for my target
computer to bother marking the passage of any ammunition, but I knew which
weapons were being used by their sound. Vulcan from a distance could be
mistaken for the sound of a power drill cutting through a wall, as it fired so
rapidly. Rail guns would make a thumping sound from far away, caused by overpressure
created by the magnetised round as it exited the barrel, and would then be
followed not long after by a
whump
noise that announced its impact upon
its intended target.

We were part
of a great deception plan cooked up by the brigade commander, we had been told.
Several battalions of dropships and squadrons of gravtanks had encircled the
city and had begun pounding it with everything they had, softening the enemy
ready for the dropships to charge in with their troopers to finish the job. The
Chinese, who would have monitored our movements, would be ready for us. But the
dropship charge was never going to come, because the 4
^th
battalion -
us - were coming in on foot. We had been dropped off by the dropships as they
moved to surround the city. The enemy had no reason to suspect that the
dropships would unload their troops several kilometres away, instead they would
have seen a unit taking a tactical pause to consider its next move for no more
than a few minutes.

Westy took a
knee twenty metres from the top of the slope and we formed up behind him in a
straight line. Brown and Stevo were with the section commander in Charlie, and I
took my place with my Delta fire team behind them. I motioned with my palm for
Daniels and Brooks to spread out, they seemed to be drawn close to me and each
other like they were magnetised. Bunching together just made you a tasty target
for smart missiles and risked the destruction of an entire section, instead of
one or two individuals, but those two just didn’t seem to get it. To be honest
I didn’t care much for their love affair with each other, they were just two
more troopers I expected to die very soon, but I had to try to keep them alive
for as long as I could. The burden of responsibility for their safety hung
heavily upon my shoulders.

I adjusted my
knee position away from a rock that was digging into the bone through my armour,
having to put my hand down to the hard, stony ground to stop me from toppling
over. My kit was light as it ever was, but my tired, aching muscles protested
with every movement I made, even something as simple as balancing in the
kneeling position had become an effort. My arm, slowly healing under a fresh
dressing, throbbed more than ever. I was tired, as we all were, perhaps because
we sensed that it was almost all over, one way or another.

A cold, fresh
wind breezed against my neck; it was minus one that night, an improvement on the
previous night but still enough to cut into my skin through my damaged armour.
I shivered.

Twenty metres
to our front the slope crested and the ground disappeared beyond it. Above us
the clouded sky occasionally flickered with light as unmanned aircraft duelled
out of sight and well out of range. I knew from our orders that the ground beyond
to the east dropped gently away down toward the city, with a few small hills
and streams that offered very little, if any cover at all. To our north was a
large high feature which had been appropriately named Table-top Hill for its
rectangular plateau. Fire support had been located upon the hill and was
largely composed of gravtanks and a few infantry based artillery platforms
including. To our west rolling hills and deep valleys had allowed us to
approach out of sight in the dead ground, but once we moved over the slope that
cover would be no more and we would be at the mercy of the Chinese.

‘Westy, in
position,’ Westy announced over the platoon net. As the section 2ic now,  I
could listen in to platoon net chatter at the same time as the section
intercom.

The other two
section commanders reported that they too were ready. They crouched in lines
parallel to ours that ran back down the slope.

‘Roger that,’
the boss answered rather un-enthusiastically, ‘H-Hour-plus-five in thirty
seconds.’

I glanced
briefly at the digital clock on my visor display. ‘H’ hour had been when the
fire support had moved into position to engage and we had begun to form up on
the slope. At H-plus-five minutes, the hulking battleship Hamburg
would
begin its barrage from high in orbit down onto the battlefield. It had two
tasks, one of which played its part within the brigadier’s deception plan. Its
primary target would be the Chinese anti-air defences and other key positions
within and around the city, but it would also drop a few bombs short into the
open ground between them and us. The resulting craters would create a route for
us to use to push across to the city without being cut to ribbons. The pinkies,
whose attention would be diverted to the dropships forming up around the city,
would never notice the dismounted troops creeping forward through the
smouldering craters until it was too late - in theory.

We waited in
silence. My heart pumped against my ribcage and tendons tensed across my body
in anticipation. Explosions from within the city thumped like the beating of
drums.

‘Five
seconds,’ the boss said.

I looked back
at Daniels and Brooks; they were both staring toward the sky. The silly
bastards should have been observing outwards for enemy infiltration, and I
thought to give them a shout to pay attention to the task at hand, but instead
I turned my head up to the sky to watch the initiation of our assault onto
Jersey City.

‘Rounds in
the air, rounds in the air!’ The boss warned. We watched on.

The clouds
flashed brightly as the first round broke through into the atmosphere, burning
at temperatures as hot as a sun as it streaked toward the ground like a meteor.
It disappeared behind the top of the slope just as another dropped from the
sky.

The flash
from the impact was not as spectacular as that of the round’s entry to the
atmosphere, but it was the sound of the explosion that followed seconds later
that told of its power.

The blast
knocked several troopers over, and caused me to have to put my hand down again
to steady myself from falling too. A layer of New Earth dust leapt a few
centimetres off the ground and then carried away with the wind.

Whump!
Another
round.
Whump! Whump!

I placed both
hands down and knelt on both of my knees as the barrage continued.

Daniels
cursed from behind me off the section intercom. I guessed he had fallen over,
but didn’t look. Clouds of smoke and ash billowed into the sky.

You have to
see and feel an orbital bombardment at close range to believe how truly awesome
it is. I had seen it before, but never so close. I stared in fascination at the
spectacle, forgetting myself.

The
bombardment went on for several minutes until the order to prepare to move was
given by the platoon commander.

‘Prepare to
move,’ Westy copied onto the section intercom. I pulled myself together; taking
a grip of my rifle again with both hands and looking to check my fire team were
okay. We checked our safety catches and pouches instinctively.

‘We will move
off behind two platoon,’ the boss ordered, ‘Jonesy, acknowledge.’

One section’s
section commander answered, ‘Roger.’

‘Two platoon
are moving off now.’

Sure enough a
line of troopers were running up between the dropships and over the slope a
hundred metres to my right.

For a few
seconds I felt a wave of fear as I realised I was going back into harm’s way
again. I fought it away, reminding myself that I had lost so many of my nine lives
already; I was probably a dead man anyway. After what I had been through it was
probably better that way. How could I go home to Earth, to Portsmouth and my
family having seen and done what I had done? I was a million miles from home,
both physically and in my mind. That horrible world of pain and misery was
where I belonged, and it was where I believed I would die.