C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (32 page)

‘Prepare to move,’ I growled, and
Sergeant Evans smiled, his teeth visible through his visor. There was no time
for Westy or Pat to get to us, we had to do something to stop the Chinese
advance or B Company would be caught with its pants down.

‘Boss, Ev,’ Sergeant Evans spoke on
the intercom and drew a grenade and adjusted the dial, ‘Contact south, twenty
enemy or more, One section has been destroyed, task a saucer now or you will be
over-run. I am engaging.’ He threw the grenade.

The Chinese must have been no more than
twenty metres away when the grenade burst. Loose rubble and shards of glass
enhanced its effect, slicing through flesh and severing limbs.

I moved first, then Sergeant Evans,
bounding over collapsed walls and mangled metal. I fired into the enemy as
rapidly as recoil would allow, two shots for each, aimed directly at the centre
of body mass as I had been taught on Uralis. Blood sprayed when I shot one
pinkie directly through the head.

‘Bastards!’ I yelled.

A pinkie emerged out of the rubble,
his rifle broken, and he charged with his bayonet raised to stab me.

‘Come on, then!’ I beckoned him as he
approached, my body fuelled with sheer rage. He tried to stab at me, but
clearly he hadn’t spent as much time as me practicing using his bayonet,
because I parried his bayonet away with ease and lunged at him, my own blade
glistening in the light from the burning city. It caught him by the cloth of
his armour, but didn’t penetrate, so the Chinaman let out some kind of piercing
war cry as if he was going to bring his weapon back to lunge again. I brought
up my foot and kicked him square in the stomach, sending him tumbling to the
ground.

‘Die, you bastard!’ Why wouldn’t he
just die? I stabbed at him again while he sprawled on the floor, and again my
bayonet was deflected by his armour. There was no hope for the Chinaman,
though, and I think maybe then he knew it, because I had gone completely berserk.
I kicked his rifle away from him and dropped on top of him, and he uselessly
hit at my thighs and torso, before I beat at him with my stock. First he took
it, his helmet saving him from the first blow, but his visor cracked, then it
smashed, and I beat at his head until it was little more than a pulp. The
Chinaman was dead, and only I remained. A foreign voice screamed in agony
somewhere in the dark.

A series of massive explosions rocked
the Chinese house, and I realised that Sergeant Evans had marked the enemy
position and smart missiles were being fired by the platoon from the roof. The
flashes cast long shadows across the rubble. I remember thinking that it looked
like a graveyard in a thunderstorm.

I looked down at my mutilated enemy,
the rage slowly leaving my body. What had I become?

And then I remembered Browner.

‘Man down!’ Somebody called before I
could get back to the house. Westy had brought out his section to re-enforce
the wall where One section had been, now no more than a pile of bricks and dust
and gore.

‘Medic!’ The message would rapidly
relay to one of the company battlefield medics.

Browner wasn’t dead, but in some ways
I wished that he was.

Only my visor could identify Browner
to me, because there was no way that I would have ever recognised him. My eyes
widened as I ran up to him, just as Daniels ripped the first tourniquet out of
his pocket.

‘Oh, my God,’ I exclaimed, and fell to
my knees. Browner was a bloodied mess. The first two detonations had merely
stunned him when it destroyed his cover, but the final smart missile had
exploded directly below him, resulting in the traumatic amputation of both of
his legs and half of his arm. None of his automatic tourniquets had activated.

‘
Medic!
’ Sergeant Evans shouted
over the company net, ‘I have casualties at my location! Don’t just stare at
him, Moralee!’ He hit me about the helmet, snapping me back into life. I
stuffed my hand into my pocket and pulled out my own tourniquet, quickly
preparing to put it onto Browner’s leg. Blood flowed from the stump onto the
ground. Still conscious, Browner made a whimpering noise from inside his cracked
respirator that pierced my soul and still haunts me even today.

‘Get pressure on his groin, Moralee,’
Sergeant Evans spat. I thrust my hand into Browner’s groin area, trying to
apply pressure onto the major artery that supplied blood to his leg, but now
was only allowing blood to flow freely onto the ground. I ran my hands down his
leg, searching for where the bone ended beneath the flaps of quivering loose
flesh just above where his knee should have been, and then awkwardly slipped
the tourniquet over his thigh and pulled it tight with my free hand.

Sergeant Evans pushed his hand into
Browner’s armpit to staunch the blood loss from his arm, rocking the tiny body
with his weight. He began putting his own tourniquet over Browner's arm and
pulled it tight with all his might, ‘Listen to me, Brown, can you hear me?’

Browner whimpered again quietly.

‘Brown, you’ll be fine, mate, do you
hear me? You’ll be fine, we’ve got you,’ he tugged the tourniquet one more
time, and me and Daniels did the same, ‘Mark the time of application on those
tourniquets for the medics, Daniels. Moralee, get up here.’

I came up beside Sergeant Evans just
as he removed Browner’s respirator. He quickly inspected Browner’s face and
checked inside his mouth, promptly closing it again and replacing the
respirator.

‘Check his torso, I need to check the
others.’ I hadn’t realised that there were other casualties. In fact Jonesy was
the only man in his section who had died outright.

I ripped open Browner’s bloodied armour,
only to find that his stomach was riddled with holes, and I gasped, ‘Shit!’

Daniels ripped out a packet of quick-clot
foam, a substance designed to be packed into wounds to stop bleeding
internally. Just as he began to stuff it into a hole in Browner’s stomach, the
first medic slid to the ground beside us, panting heavily.

‘What’s going on?’ He asked, and I realised
that it was the same medic who had treated my arm. I told the medic while he
worked, frantically pulling out his specialist equipment.

A stretcher had been assembled behind
me ready to receive Browner. One of the other casualties was already being
carried away, while B Company finally began an assault onto the house occupied
by the Chinese. A Union saucer pounded a nearby building with its cannon.

‘Have you checked his back?’ The medic
asked me in alarm, looking up from Browner’s wristpad. Daniels continued to
stuff quick clot into a hole with a bloodied finger.

I shook my head, ‘No.’

‘Brilliant,’ the medic said scornfully,
and he unceremoniously lifted Browner onto his side. ‘Pull his armour away,’ he
ordered, and I obeyed, unclipping the armour to expose his back. His combat
shirt was soaked in blood.

‘Oh my God,’ I exclaimed again. A
piece of shrapnel had punched through Browner’s stomach and come out the other
side of his torso, toward the top of his back. He had a sucking chest wound.

‘He’s not gonna die…,’ the medic
promised, maybe to himself, as he ripped away Browner’s armour. The wound was
large and gruesome, pulsing with frothy blood, ‘Not gonna die.’ A grenade
exploded within the enemy house and gunfire erupted, but I didn’t turn to look.

The medic wiped away the excess blood
and placed a chest seal over the wound, checking to make sure that it was
fitted securely.

‘Get him on the stretcher,’ he
ordered, ‘With me on three.’

I braced myself to lift Browner’s body
onto the stretcher, ‘you’ll be alright, mate,’ I told him, but he was now unconscious.
It was almost a sob.

‘Make sure he stays on his side or
you’ll cut the chest valve off. One, two, three,’ we lifted Browner onto the
stretcher, almost throwing him into the air, it was so easy. He was so small;
I’ll never forget how small he was.

‘I’ll go with him,’ I said.

‘Don’t need you to, I have a stretcher
party,’ the medic said abruptly, ‘Let’s go, lads,’ the stretcher party stooped
around the stretcher.

‘I’ll go with him,’ I repeated. Me and
Browner had been through everything together, ‘He’s my friend.’

‘I don’t care if he’s your dad, mate,’
a trooper pushed me out of the way and took the grips to the stretcher. Another
trooper took the other end, and together they lifted Browner from the ground.

‘Let’s go,’ the medic said, and they
carried Browner away in a trot toward the trenches, where the shadow of a buggy
waited for its next batch of casualties.

I stood and watched helplessly as my
friend was carried away, his blood still dripping from my gloves. Finally I
leant against the wall of the house and slowly slid down  until I sat on the
floor, I stared blankly at the B Company assault onto the Chinese. Voices echoed
from within the enemy house that it was clear, and then I saw troopers running
deeper into the city, but I couldn’t have cared less. This place meant nothing
to me. I didn’t care about Jersey Island, or New Earth. I just wanted my
friends back, because without them my life was empty and pointless. I felt so
numb that I couldn’t even bring myself to cry and so I just sat there and
stared.

I don’t know how long I had sat there
until Sergeant Evans found me.

‘It’s not over,’ he said simply.

I said nothing.

Sergeant Evans sighed, ‘The platoon
may be re-tasked to clear out pockets of enemy. The city will fall by daybreak,
but we will have to maintain momentum in order to keep the upper hand.’

I wouldn’t even look at him. The image
of Browner’s quivering stumps was permanently etched into my mind.

‘Andy.’

I looked up, surprised. Sergeant Evans
crouched beside me.

‘The platoon needs you. We have to
finish this.’

I sat in silence, then, after a few
seconds, I nodded, ‘Okay, Ev.’

And so the
platoon went back into battle.

20: The Emerald Sea

Browner died of his injuries in a
field hospital somewhere underground. On top of three amputations and numerous
wounds to the abdomen he suffered multiple organ failure and a collapsed lung.
The medic later told me that by the time he died he had been given fifty litres
of blood, more than his fair share out of a dwindling stock. He was a fighter,
but he couldn’t fight forever.

The Chinese began to withdraw from
Jersey City just as the sun began to rise over the hills, riding on dropships
concealed within the warrens beneath us on a futile flight across the emerald
sea. Without any ships to return to, they would be harried by our saucers until
they eventually surrendered to the Spanish on a continent several hundred miles
away.

Our platoon never did see any further
combat, if the further two battalions who echeloned through us weren’t enough
to finish the enemy themselves, the third battalion to pass through us - our old
battalion - certainly was.

I was crouched alone at the side of
one of the city’s empty streets when I saw the first platoon of my old
battalion pass me by. The rest of my platoon were within the buildings resting,
but I found that I couldn’t sleep.

I recognised some of the names of the
platoon as they went by, but nobody I knew enough to want to chat to. If they
recognised me they didn’t show it, patrolling past me at a fast pace. Perhaps
their boss was eager to get into battle, I mused, since the carnage of the
ditches probably wasn’t enough for him.

One of the troopers at the back of the
platoon, however, slowed down as he passed me, and then stopped in the middle
of the road. I knew who it was, I had seen his name on my visor display long
before he had noticed me. Woody didn’t move, he just stared at me as his
platoon rounded a corner out of sight. His trigger finger slid slightly off the
trigger guard of his rifle.

‘Go on then,’ I said.

Woody remained motionless.

My lips curled, ‘Kill me, then, be my
guest. You’ll probably be doing me a favour.’

Woody remained motionless for several
seconds, and then his finger returned to his trigger guard.

‘Didn’t think so,’ I sneered, ‘Now,
fuck off.’

Woody hurried on after his platoon. I
would see him again, but he would never speak to me, and so at least some little
good came of the war on New Earth.

A few hours after our success in
Jersey City, it was announced that the Chinese had suffered similar defeats to
the north of the island, and had withdrawn. Not long after that it was
announced that all hostilities on New Earth had ended, and that the last
Chinese ships were being chased out of the Centauri system.

It took a day to completely clear the
remainder of the city and its surrounding areas. Most of the remaining Chinese
knew that their commanders were gone and the city was lost, and so they
surrendered in their tens and even hundreds, and the prisoners were led by us
into a hastily constructed holding area close to their trench system.
Occasionally we met some small resistance, including a lone sniper who had us
pinned for almost an hour until a saucer finally spotted him and blew him into
chunks with its cannon.

The civilian population had been
living underground in parts of the warrens that the Chinese had left for them,
and even a small town of atmospheric tents just outside the city, beside the
beach of the emerald sea. We thought that they would have been jubilant to
finally be freed from their Chinese oppressors, but not a single person
cheered, clapped or thanked us when our platoon entered the multi-coloured
tented town and told them that it was safe to go back into the city to rebuild
their lives.

‘What’s their problem?’ Brooks threw
up his arms as the civilians slowly made their way across the barren red
surface toward their city on the horizon. I swear one of them even lifted his
respirator to spit in the direction of our dropships.

Ev smiled grimly, ‘What were you
expecting? A brass band? These people don’t want us here.’

I watched the civilians pass us. It
was the first time I had seen old people and children in a very long time, but
their hostile glares were obvious through their clear, bubble-shaped
respirators.

Stevo frowned, ‘So they prefer the
Chinese? Traitors.’

Westy looked like he was about to say
something, but thought better of it.

‘They don’t want the Chinese either,’
Ev laughed, ‘Isn’t it obvious? They just want to be free.’

‘You mean we just did all that shit,
and these bastards don’t even want us here anyway?’ Stevo kicked at the ground,
‘Then what was the point?’

‘I’m not sure that there is one, I’m
afraid. Is there really a point to any war? Behind all of it it’s just a bunch
of businessmen cutting up a map, and people like us who fight and die.’ 

‘Well, then, why are we here?’ Brooks
asked.

‘Because if you’re not here some other
poor lad comes here in your place.’

The platoon watched for a while as the
procession of civilians slowly receded into the horizon. Brooks furrowed his
brow, ‘That doesn’t seem like a very good reason.’

Ev sighed, ‘Well, I’m afraid it’s all
you’ve got.’

Nobody noticed me when I wandered away
from the platoon, they were too busy watching the civilians go, perhaps hoping
that they might leave behind something worth stealing in their tents. I walked
over toward a steep rocky bank where the land dropped away several metres onto
a beach of blood-red sand. The emerald sea glittered and sparkled magnificently
in the sunlight, and I took a second to marvel at its beauty before sliding
down onto the coarse sand below.

My boots crunched in the sand as I walked
toward the sea, my headphones magnifying the sound of the waves lazily lapping
onto the sand. I bent over and took off my boots and socks, and placed my rifle
and daysack down beside them. The wet sand felt rough between my toes as I
walked slowly into the water. It was cold, but after several days in boots the
sense of liberation was overwhelming. With every wave the water rushed around
my ankles.

Well, Browner
, I thought,
I
did it. I’m taking a paddle in the sea for you.
But I wished that all of my
friends were there to enjoy it with me.

I don’t know how long I cried, my
respirator motors whirring in their battle to keep my visor clear, before I
heard feet crunch behind me.

‘You okay, Andy?’ It was Ev. I didn’t
turn lest he see I had been crying, though he had probably heard me anyway.

‘Yeah.’

The platoon sergeant waded into the
water beside me, ‘He turned out to be a pretty good trooper. You all did.’

I said nothing for a while, just
listening to the sounds of the sea, ‘I thought you hated us.’

‘Why?’

‘The ditches,’ I remembered my friend
Climo, and Chase’s cold, accusing eyes and I grimaced at the memory, ‘We hid
behind a man’s body like cowards.’

‘You were scared,’ Ev corrected, and
sighed, ‘The deaths of those lads was my responsibility.’

I frowned, puzzled, ‘Why?’

‘I was the section commander. Whether
they were right or wrong, my decisions led to their deaths. You had absolutely
nothing to do with it, and neither did the boss. He did the right thing.’

‘But we still hid.’

Ev laughed, ‘Any sane man would. Can
anyone blame a man for wanting to live?’ Another sigh, ‘For what it’s worth,
you did yourselves proud. I couldn’t ask for better troopers.’

It didn’t bring my friends back
though.

It was my turn to sigh ‘So, what now,
then?’

‘We spend a few months here cleaning
up - the planet’s infrastructure is in ruins. The Chinese soldiers will need
rounding up and shipping back to Earth to be exchanged for some trade deals, no
doubt, and no doubt there’ll be a few die-hards out there to keep us busy. Then
we’ll have a relief in place by fresh troops, and you’ll be shipped back to
Earth never to see this place ever again.’

‘What about you?’ I asked, noticing
that he hadn’t said ‘we’ when he’d mentioned us returning to Earth.

Ev smiled and looked out into the sea,
‘Beautiful isn’t it?’

‘Yeah.’

He looked at me, ‘On this planet, ‘freedom’
isn’t just a word. It isn’t called New Earth because of similarities with the
home-world, it’s because people believe that this is where we can start again,
and do things right.’

I laughed bitterly, ‘Well that hasn’t
worked out very well, has it?’

‘And whose fault is that? The people
who live here?’ He shook his head, ‘I’ve been all over this planet. There are
no Chinese, or Europeans or Russians. They are
one people
, all yearning
to be free to govern themselves in peace.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘
It’s not over
, Andy.’

Boots slapped and crashed in the water
as the platoon charged us, whooping and cheering. They splashed and swore at
each other, and one or two fell into the water and had to lift their
respirators to let the water out.

‘I hope these canisters are
waterproof!’ Somebody shouted, and we all laughed and joked until the boss
ordered us back to the dropships.

#

Sergeant Evans’s prediction was right,
we did indeed spend the next three months rebuilding the mess that the war had
left behind - alongside a hostile civilian population. Several battalions of
Chinese fought on in vast warren’s throughout the northern continent, but they
eventually succumbed to starvation and surrendered.

Our ship had been destroyed, along
with many others, and so the battalions were crammed into troopships to be
transported victorious back to Earth - so that we might be paraded through
Brussels. But our more severely injured comrades would be hidden away from the
cameras.

Eventually I would meet Peters, Greggerson
and Sam again, all of whom had survived their injuries, and I would keep in
touch with them and the remainder of my platoon for the rest of my life. We had
endured something that nobody on Earth could ever imagine, and it united us
with a bond that could never be broken. We were more than just friends, we were
brothers-in-arms, we were troopers.

As for Ev, he would disappear several
days before the brigade were due to leave New Earth, and was never seen again.
People outside the platoon would call him a deserter and a traitor for
abandoning the Union at its time of triumph, running to hide in the warrens
beneath Jersey City. But we who knew Sergeant Evans knew that he was no
traitor. Perhaps maybe we would even see him again.

Because the battle for New Earth
wasn’t over…

#    #    #