C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (8 page)

The lancejacks
appeared to be much friendlier with the regular troopers than most screws I had
met. They worked alongside everybody and chatted with them freely, only
stopping to check that everybody was doing what needed to be done. I supposed
that they had probably not long ago been promoted from troopers, and so the
line between NCO and private was still slightly blurred.

The younger
looking skinny lancejack who had got me in trouble during PT was Lance Corporal
Reece, who the lads referred to as ‘Reecy’. He appeared to be fresh out of the
Junior Leaders course, a ten-week thrashing conducted on the surface of either
Earth or Uralis by instructors pooled from across drops. He was loud and
boisterous with an angry face that was trapped in an almost permanent scowl.
Even when he smiled he still managed to look angry. He caught me looking his
way that afternoon and stopped his work to return the stare.

‘Oi, don’t
stare like you fancy me! Fancy me do ya? Get on with your work or you’ll end up
with another one of those black eyes, mate,’ I blanched, and the platoon
laughed mercilessly.

I didn’t look
his way again, and thankfully that was the last I heard of it.

Lance
Corporal Cham or ‘Chammy’ as he was known was as young and skinny as Reece. He
was a total comedian, and spent much of his time telling jokes and funny
stories of his past antics that had the lads roaring with laughter.

The third of
the three lance corporals was Lance Corporal Joe Mac. He was the tattooed man
who had checked on my room that morning and had told me off for calling him
‘mate’ in the ablutions. He was large for a drop trooper, with a beak like nose
and dark, thick black eyebrows and he looked like he could handle himself in a
fight. He appeared friendly with Woody and Brown, and I suspected that he was
my section second in command.

Our work kept
us busy until close to seventeen-hundred hours, our evening meal being an hour
later in the ship’s artificial Earth-like day. By the time we finished my
stomach had begun to rumble, and depressed or not, I understood the need to
eat.

Thankfully
Peters was there in the queue for food and spotted me straight away, and it
didn’t take long for him to notice my eye.

His friendly
smile turned into a concerned frown, ‘You okay, mate? What happened, man?’

I could feel
the eyes of troopers eating at the tables upon me, amused at the sight of a new
trooper already learning the hard way about how his new world worked.

‘I’d rather
not talk about it, mate,’ I said quietly.

Peters looked
left and right at the other lads in the queue, understanding that we weren’t in
a safe place to talk about it.

As soon as we
were sat down I spilt the beans, ‘There’s this lad in my room, Woody,’ I said
softly, not wanting anyone to hear from the other tables.

‘What? And
he
did that?’ Peters blurted loudly, and I flinched.

‘Alright,
keep it down, mate,’ I hissed.

Nobody
appeared to have heard anything from any of the other tables around us, and in
retrospect they probably weren’t interested anyway.

‘Yeah, a
couple of hours ago,’ I continued as Greggerson took a seat with us, followed
by Gilbert. They had probably been waiting to find out what had happened to me
all day.

‘Why’d he do
it?’

I shook my
head, ‘I think it was just the way I spoke to him before, I don’t know. One
minute I’m in my room waiting for lunch, then he just attacks me out of the
blue.’

‘Was it
Woody?’ Greggerson asked as he opened his horror box.

‘Yeah, who
told you that?’

‘He’s a bully,’
Greggerson said, ‘Everybody says it in my room. He likes to pick on new blokes
and he’s the platoon senior bod so he gets away with it.’

‘Proper
bastard,’ Gilbert agreed in his thick country accent, ‘One of the lads told me
earlier, he abuses any new bloke until more recruits come in. Gives him a kick.
Proper nasty piece of work, he is.’

‘You don’t
say,’ I pointed at my swollen eye, ‘I reckon this morning was all his idea too.
That’s great, so when do we pick up the next intake, a couple of years?’

‘Mate, it
won’t be that bad,’ Peters said, attempting to reassure me and failing
miserably.

‘My sides are
still killing me from this morning,’ Gilbert said, and Greggerson nodded furiously,
‘Took a right kicking, us lot, and Kane and Berezynsky too.’

‘Really? What
happened?’

We told
Peters about how we were savagely beaten that morning by a gang of troopers
masked in respirators, and the look of shock on his face told me all I needed
to know - I was in the wrong platoon.

‘Some sort of
initiation, the lads in the room were telling me,’ Gilbert said in between
mouthfuls of brown mush, ‘‘New bloke’ here is a dirty word.’

‘That’s two
words, Gilly,’ Peters corrected.

‘Whatever.’

And then our
conversation descended into the usual idle chatter and banter that perhaps without
our knowing had got us through our lives in space, and the army, with our
humanity intact. I sat back in my chair having eaten my meal, and for a few
minutes at least  forgot where I was and enjoyed the sweet moment of company
with friends.

#

I returned to
my room with caution, not sure what to do if I was to be attacked again by
Woody for some other random infringement, but he wasn’t there to greet me with
his sick smile. Glad for the time alone, I changed quickly into my track suit,
as was the dress for after the evening meal on ship or in barracks, unless told
otherwise. I couldn’t shower as I had not been to the gym, as were ships rules,
and besides I wanted to get the rest of my bag unpacked and locked away into my
locker where it would be safe from ransacking.

I placed my tablet
inside my locker and selected a picture of my family for it to display, gently
brushing the image with my finger. I took no comfort from the touch. Instead
the loving faces of my family, trapped by Earth’s poverty, wrenched at my heart
and caused a sting in my eyes. For a second I wished that I could have had no
love for my family, like many of my mates from broken homes, to be free of the
terrible longing to be home. I desperately missed them, but I knew as we all
did that I had no choice anymore, I had chosen to be here and that was that.

The dropship
infantry was voluntary, even though military service wasn’t. Conscripts often
sat in garrisons across the Union and her far flung colonies with little else
to do other than hold ground that was probably never going to be taken, and
those that would come with us to war would follow only in our wake, only
landing when we had secured a landing zone the size of a nation. We in the
dropship infantry often referred to them as ‘sandbag fillers’ for their
defensive role, and we resented them for their easy ride.

The day my
conscription papers had come through had been not a week after my sixteenth
birthday. Theoretically I had the qualifications to go to college and become
something more, but my family would never have been able to afford it and I
certainly wasn’t smart enough to get an education grant from the Union, so like
the rest of the impoverished masses of Europe I had been ‘selected’ to serve.
My mum had cried that day, but my dad had taken it well.

‘Don’t worry,
son,’ he had said, ‘You’ll probably end up on a nice garrison somewhere warm on
the Med or something.’

Why had I
then chosen to enlist with the dropship infantry, whilst my unknowing family
waited anxiously outside the recruitment office one cold day in Portsmouth city
centre?

‘To kill
people,’ was Peters’ answer to that question. And to many of those who served
within the Union’s voluntary ranks that was the only answer that made sense,
but I think there was more to it than that.

I think I
wanted to do something, see something, and be part of the new world that man
had made for himself up in the stars - even if it wasn’t all that pleasant. I
wanted to be more than another disadvantaged child who saw out his four years
of national service on some lonely garrison, only to return to the slums with
nothing to say for himself. I wanted to see more even than the galaxy; I wanted
to fear, I wanted to see the whites of my enemies eyes and I wanted to share in
the glory of the Union’s eternal war across the heavens. Unfortunately I was
beginning to realize that life wasn’t always quite so poetic, and that service
in the dropship infantry brought with it pain, loneliness and sometimes,
misery.

My mum was
devastated when she found out what I had done and that I had been selected for
training for the dropship infantry, she cried well into the night. Even my dad
shed a tear, but he chose not to scold me.

‘You’ve made
your decision, son,’ he had said woodenly.

I
had
made my decision, and there was no going back. My dad’s smiling face, wrinkled
around his squinting eyes stared through me from the tablet. I wished he was
there for me, but he wasn’t.

‘You
alright?’

Startled, I
spun around from my open locker, it was Climo. I would have to be mindful of
those bulkhead doors in future, I told myself, because I hadn’t even noticed
him enter the room.

‘Yeah,’ I
answered curtly. I busied myself again with my locker while Climo changed into
his tracksuit.

‘How’s your
eye?’

‘It’ll heal,
nothing broken.’

‘Maybe you
should see the doc, get it checked out?’

Climo
appeared to be genuinely concerned for me, but I couldn’t forget how he had
watched as Woody pounded me while I lay helpless on the ground.

Climo must
have read my mind, because he threw up his arms defensively, ‘Look, mate, I’m
sorry about what happened. What could I do? Woody’s a senior bod, I’ve only
been on ship just over a year.’

Climo’s
explanation only made me angrier, but I knew not to kick off with him, he was
senior to me, and I had quickly learnt that on Challenger seniority was
everything, ‘It’s fine, don’t worry about it.’

I felt him
staring at me as I turned my back, probably thinking of something else to say,
but eventually he set about sorting out his kit in his own locker.

‘Laundry drop
off’s at half-six in the morning,’ Climo said, presumably trying to change the
subject. Annoyed as I was, I took note of the time, my PT kit was soaked in
sweat and I only had three sets of it.

‘Where is
it?’ I asked.

‘I’ll show
you in the morning, if you like.’

‘Thanks,’ I
finished what I was doing and locked my locker. I stuffed my dirty kit into a
laundry bag and slid it under my bed ready for the morning, then began
undressing for bed.

‘You going to
sleep now?’ Climo asked, surprised.

‘Yeah.’ Damn
right, I had barely had a few hours of sleep in over a day, and the time lag
between leaving Fort Abu Naji, and having almost had my head knocked off my
shoulders hadn’t helped.

Climo
shrugged, ‘Fair enough.’

As soon as my
head hit the pillow I fell asleep.

7: The Call to Arms

The soft kiss
from the lips of a girl I had once fancied at school was interrupted by a
familiar screaming alarm. Startled, her lithe arms withdrew from around my body
and her breasts no longer pressed seductively against my chest. Instead it was
only my blanket that I felt against my skin, and her sweet voice was replaced
by the groaning of troopers and the constant whine of the air ducts in our tiny
four man room.

It was zero-six-hundred
aboard Challenger, and the beginning of a whole new day. But my soul plummeted
into despair, and I had to force myself to sit up and put my feet down once
more onto the cold metal floor of reality.

‘Why do they
have to make that alarm so loud?’ Brown complained, thrashing in his bed.

My face felt
wet, so I instinctively went to wipe it and my hand came away covered in
shaving foam. How original, I thought. I quickly wiped it away with my towel
before I stood up, so Woody and the others might think it had come off whilst I
slept and their prank had been in vain.

‘Morning,
Moralee,’ Woody’s voice caused my heart to skip a beat as I stood.

‘Morning,’ I
answered flatly.

‘How’s the
eye?’ he slid out from under the covers so that his legs dangled over my bunk.
I knew he was big, but I hadn’t realised quite how big he really was until
then. Woody clearly worked out in the ship’s gym a lot, his biceps were
enormous and his stomach rippled with muscle. He had an awful tattoo of a man’s
face on his thigh, I couldn’t work out what it was meant to be, and I never
chose to ask.

‘Not too
bad,’ I lied, it was agony, ‘Hurts a bit.’

‘Well, that’s
what you get for gobbing off isn’t it? Got to learn your place, haven’t you,
Moralee?’

I nodded
feebly, ‘Yeah.’

‘Yes,
what
?’

I hesitated, ‘Yes,
Staff.’

Woody giggled
to himself, like a disturbed child might laugh whilst tormenting a small
animal, ‘Much better.’

What a
freak
, I thought as I wrapped my towel around my waist and made my exit for
the shower. My locker was locked, so I knew there wasn’t much he could do with
it. If he broke the lock or damaged my bedding he would be charged, and I
doubted even the most senior of troopers would escape the platoon sergeant’s
wrath if he messed around with his accommodation.

I joined the
queue for the ablutions, ignoring the stares and the hushed chatter about my
eye from other members of the platoon.

‘You happy
with what’s going on today?’ Joe, who I now knew was my section second in
command, was on his way out of the ablutions. He seemed unhappy that he had to
talk to me, and his tone was meant to convey that it was not a friendly
conversation.

‘No,
Corporal,’ I replied. Lancejacks were still corporals, and were meant to be
addressed the same even though they were not on an equal standing with the ‘full’
corporals.

‘Right, you
need to make sure you check to find out what’s going on every evening. Surely
you know that?’

‘Yes,
Corporal,’ I agreed.

He looked me
up and down as if sizing me up, and then sighed in the same way my dad would sigh
if I did something stupid, ‘Gym circuit training this morning, then more work
up the stores. More ammo came in last night.’

‘Yes,
Corporal,’ how much ammo could this ship hold? The ammo store was already
stacked almost to the ceiling!

Joe flicked
his hand for me to go away, ‘Go on, then.’

Later that
morning  Climo took me to the laundry drop off point, not far from the galley.
Woody and Brown had looked across disapprovingly at Climo when we left, but
said nothing, and Climo didn’t appear to notice.

‘There’s a board
up outside Corporal Evans’ bulkhead where everything you need to know about the
next day is written up, so just check that in the mornings,’ Climo explained as
we walked with our bags slung over our shoulders around the circumference
corridor. There was an awkward silence between us, and I sensed that Climo was
torn between guilt for not helping me the day before and fear of reprisals from
a trooper senior to him. Apart from the time he had spent on ship, and
presumably an exercise or two, Climo wasn’t much more experienced as a trooper than
I was, and not much more senior either. Perhaps he knew what I was going
through, I thought, it couldn’t have been long since it had been him who had
been at the bottom of the food chain, and possibly at the end of somebody’s
fist.

‘What’s
Corporal Evans like?’ I asked. He was the only one of the three section
commanders I had noticed so far, and he was clearly revered and loved in equal
measure by the platoon. Without him needing to say a word, people stepped out
of his way in queues, and stiffened when he entered a room almost as if he were
the OC himself.

‘He’s a
living legend,’ Climo said simply, ‘Probably the best section commander in the
company. He’s been in ten years or so, and he’s served on New Earth, Eden, Rendezvous…’

‘New Earth?’
I interrupted.

Climo smiled,
‘Yeah, that’s right. He was with one of the last companies to manage to escape
from the southern continent before the Chinese drove our ships out of orbit.’

I drew in my
breath. Wow, now that was,
‘hard-core
,’ I said the word aloud.

Climo
laughed, ‘He never talks about it, so don’t even think of asking him about it.
He’s qualified to promote to sergeant, but apparently there’s no place for
him.’

We slung our
bags into the open laundry hatch and signed them in on a tablet attached to the
wall beside it.

‘Him and Jamo
don’t get on, but they try to pretend they do,’ Climo continued. ‘Jamo’ was
Sergeant James’ nickname, but you daren’t call him that to his face if you
value your life.

‘Why not?’

Climo
shrugged, ‘Jamo's a bully, and completely mental. They’re just two
very
different troopers and their personalities clash.’

People
like Woody probably thrived in platoons run by people like Jamo,
I thought.

‘What’s the
boss like?’

‘Seems okay,
we don’t see him all that much really. He pretty much lets Jamo run the platoon
on ship, too new to have any sway over him.’

I nodded my
understanding. In theory a platoon commander outranked his platoon sergeant and
made all of the big decisions, but in practice a strong platoon sergeant would
often run the platoon behind the scenes, pointing the young officer in the
right direction until he was experienced enough to be trusted. Even then the
platoon sergeant would watch him closely and sometimes, rarely of course, the
two could come to blows.

As we made
our way back toward the galley the ship’s announcement system crackled into
life, echoing around the circumference corridor, ‘Attention, attention, all
personnel are to report to the galley immediately, end of message.’

Climo smiled
grimly, ‘Guess you’ll get to find out what the boss is like on the ground soon
enough.’

He would be
right.

‘Come on, you
lot, let’s get a move on, eh?’ A corporal waved the building crowds into the
galley and me and Climo followed.

The galley
was rapidly filling with troopers, sailors and dropship crew alike, easily over
a hundred people. The air ducts blasted cool air into the hall in an effort to
keep the room from overheating and its air turning stale. Like a herd of
animals, we jostled with each other as we attempted to find our platoons and
the right place to form-up. It was a rare occasion to see so many people in the
same place at once on a Union warship, which meant something was afoot and
people murmured and chattered to each other about the meaning of this sudden
change to normal ship’s routine, and almost every conversation I heard
contained a familiar name that sent a cold chill down my spine; New Earth.

‘One platoon!
Close in over here!’ A hand waved above the crowd to identify where we should
form-up and me and Climo pushed our way through the throng.

The three
rifle platoons of the company were forming-up into ranks along one side of the
galley, whilst company headquarters, the ship’s crew and the dropship crews
were forming-up opposite. I didn’t often see the naval personnel on ship; we
lived separately, ate at different times and worked in entirely different
sections of the ship. Their white uniforms clearly identified them against our
grey drop trooper fatigues. The dropship crews, dressed in a similar fashion to
the naval lads could be told apart by their shaven heads, a throwback to days
when they had to be connected to their dropships by an implant at the back of
their skulls known as a ‘jack’, which earned them their nickname. Biotech had
become taboo of recent years and the jacks had settled for small implants
beneath the skull that connected wirelessly to the ship instead, but they still
shaved their heads, perhaps as a fashion.

I fell in at
the end of my platoon, finding myself on the front rank. I cursed silently, as
being on the front rank meant I was fully on show to whoever took the parade
and anything wrong with me - from the way I tucked in my shirt to how well I
sewed my name badge and insignia - could be picked up and would earn me yet
another telling off.

Sergeant
James was rounding up the platoon like the other three platoon sergeants,
ushering stragglers into the growing formation with barked orders and scathing
insults.

‘Hurry up you
idle arse wipes! Get there  no – there!  Reesy, get a grip of yourself and fall
in properly like everyone else!’

Woody jogged
across the centre of the galley as the last remnants of the company were
finding their positions.

‘Hurry, up,
Wood,’ Jamo changed the tone of his voice to a lesser degree of disrespect,
though I swear I saw his lips curl.

‘Sorry, Sergeant,’
Woody chirped indifferently.

The last man
to arrive was Corporal Evans, who walked casually over toward the platoon
sergeant. The two NCOs regarded each other like two Union class boxers might
size each other up for a fight, one a brutish tank of a man, the other a
stooping giant almost too tall for dropship service. Corporal Evans tipped his
hat slightly, ‘Alright, mate? What’s happening?’

Jamo returned
the respectful nod and led the section commander into the centre of the galley
and out of earshot. I watched their whispered conversation but they gave
nothing away in their body language and Corporal Evans merely nodded his head
slowly. They were both trained platoon sergeants, I had discovered, but
unfortunately one of them hadn’t a platoon to go to and so had to remain a
section commander. I imagined Corporal Evans must have hated being in such a
position, and he must have resented Jamo.

The platoon
murmured softly as we waited to find out what was going on, exchanging
everything from complaints of the lack of breakfast to elaborate conspiracy
theories.

‘I heard a rumour
we might be returning to Eden for another exercise, like a show of force and
that for the Indians.’

‘I’m telling
you, mate, it’s the captain, she’s gone mental, apparently the other day she
got some of the navy boys to….’

‘FALL IN!’ I
jumped at the almighty bellow. Corporal Evans and Jamo quickly scuttled behind
us to where they were meant to fall in behind the platoon, and the room
suddenly silenced as the company sergeant major walked in amongst the parade
like a lion might stalk into a frozen flock of sheep, sizing up each and every
one of us in turn with hard unforgiving eyes. He gripped his pacing stick in
both hands in such a manner that it looked as though he was about to break it
in half on his knee and use the broken ends as weapons. Gold insignia decorated
his fatigues and his boots were so highly polished that they reflected the room
like blackened glass.

‘Stand still,
you!’ He jabbed his pacing stick toward some unlucky man on the front rank of
one of the other platoons. I gulped as he paced along in front of us all, his
eyes scanning. We weren’t expected to be dressed as impeccably as he was - we
were, after all, on board a ship of war - but if we weren’t up to the standard
he expected there was no telling what he might do. The company sergeant major
was to the company what the platoon sergeant was to the platoon, he was its
beating heart, its very soul and it was he who upheld its discipline.

The sergeant
major stopped at me and looked me up and down with a scowl, ‘And who might you
be, lad?’

He was a
Yorkshire man, the accent was unmistakably thick. Cold eyes stared deep into
mine and I might as well have been looking at the Devil himself because I was
terrified.

I stammered,
‘I…P-Private Moralee, Sir.’

‘Moralee,’ he
repeated the word with a grimace as if he found it distasteful, ‘Haven’t seen
you before. New lad is he, Sergeant James?’

‘He is, Sir,’
Jamo answered from behind, ‘Arrived yesterday, Sir.’

He turned
back to me, ‘How are you finding it, Moralee?’

‘V-very good,
Sir.’

The sergeant
major appeared unsatisfied with the answer,
‘Good?’

Everyone was
listening in silence but thankfully they were all facing rigidly to their
fronts and could not see me blush red, ‘Yes, Sir.’

‘You’re on
one of the great ships of the Union navy, lad, poised to go forth and see the
world, and all you can say is its ‘
good?
’’ He rested the end of his
stick on the ground and leant on it with the palms of his hands. He was bored,
I realised, and was probably playing with me while he waited for something to
happen.

Something did
happen - somebody moved a few places to my left and the monstrous man’s face
contorted into rage so suddenly it made me jump.

‘Who was
that?
Who in God’s creation was that?! Why are you moving, you little
weasel?
Who are you
?’ His stick pointed directly into the ranks - but I
couldn’t see his victim.