C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (18 page)

We crawled
toward Two section with every ounce of strength our bodies could muster. You
would be surprised how fast two men can crawl if their lives depend on it! I
slid my body into the safety of the ditch. Several sections lined the far bank,
firing rapidly into the enemy, the magnets of so many weapons screaming in a
noise so loud I swear I could feel it vibrating through my body, even if my
headset didn’t allow me to hear it through my ears.

We clambered
up onto the bank to join in the fight. As I did so I switched my intercom to Two
section’s channel.

‘My God!’ I
gasped as I stole my first proper glance at the enemy on the attack. There were
loads of them, and they were advancing.

‘We’ve gotta
hold em, boys!’ Corporal Weston shouted from off to my right, ‘4
^th
Battalion are about to drop in, and they know it! We’ve gotta hold on to this rock!’

‘Who are
you?’ a trooper to the left of me and Brown asked between shots.

‘One
section!’ I answered.

‘Well lads,
welcome to the party…’

‘Ray, shut
up,’ Corporal Weston cut in, ‘Rapid fire, rapid fire! Chammy, get me more ammo
up here!’

‘I can’t, mate!’
Corporal Weston’s section second in command replied on the intercom, ‘Jamo’s
comms went dead, and everybody is pinned. What you got is what you got!’

‘Shit!’

The enemy
were closing fast, using smoke to cover those moving whilst others covered, in
much the same way we would. Their weight of fire was heavy, but it was not
enough to keep us from returning fire. Both sides were receiving massive
casualties.

The Chinese
knew that our battalion had secured a foothold on New Earth soil, but we were
weakened by losses sustained in the drop and the battle that followed. If they
broke us here, the 4
^th
battalion would land with no support. If they
didn’t defeat us here, they were in trouble.

I fired into
the advancing enemy, catching one Chinaman in the leg and sending him crumpling
to the ground. Lumps of mud flicked at me as darts struck the soil to my front,
and an unknown trooper next to Ray was flung from the bank without a sound. I
didn’t need to look, he was probably dead. Even if he wasn’t, I had to leave him
to the medics to deal with. Right at that moment every man was needed up and
firing to repel the onslaught.

Rail gun
rounds sent shockwaves through the air as they struck the enemy dropships.
There were tens of them, all over the hill, unleashing their cargo and then
speeding away as fast as they could, chased by missiles and tracer into the
air. The Chinese were undeterred; they were coming for us now. The nearest
enemy section was not more than twenty metres away. They were moving and they
were exposed, but there were more of them than us.

I looked left
and right at the other troopers firing on the bank. Some were shot but still
fighting, the only people not fighting were either dead or severely and
traumatically disabled. Medics dragged the injured down into cover to be
treated, prioritising those they thought they could save, and leaving those
they couldn’t to die.

Nobody was
going to hide now, because we all knew what would happen if we did. The only
chance at living was up there on the bank of the ditch. I remembered a saying
as I continued to fire into my foe, ‘
Look up and down in desperation, look
left and right for inspiration.
’ Nothing inspired a man to fight more than
his own comrades. Corporal Evans, wherever he was now, had stood against everything
that was thrown at him, almost surely to die, not for the Union, maybe not even
for us, but because he was a trooper and that’s what he did. It was my turn to
do the same.

Voices
screamed across the net.

‘Incoming!’

‘Take cover!’

Then the
saucers strafed down our ditch.

Explosive
rounds detonated on the ground, ripping apart bodies and tossing limbs and
organs into the air like confetti. Nobody had a chance to move or take cover,
it happened in an instant. Then the next saucer passed over. I clutched at the
ground crying out in terror, my fingers clawing at the earth. If I could have
burrowed into the ground with my own fingernails I would have done. Once again
my whole body was gripped with an animal fear that paralysed me, and this time
rightly so.

As suddenly
as it had begun, the attack from above stopped. I looked up at the smoking
devastation, still in shock. I was relatively unscathed, but what I saw filled
me with horror. Bodies lay strewn, some together, others scattered in pieces.
Organs littered the cratered earth, some mixed together so that you could tell
which part belonged to which corpse. Injured troopers cried for help, clutching
at severed limbs and bleeding wounds. One trooper was frantically removing his
dead comrade’s respirator to replace his own, blood gushing from his head where
shrapnel had hit him. Other shell shocked but unharmed troopers staggered, like
me, through the smoke. It was like a terrible nightmare that I couldn’t wake
myself from. I fought my body’s reflex to gag.

As I stared
in dismay, my headphones registered the sound of darts passing over above the
ditch, but otherwise there was a stunned silence. Then a single voice called
across the intercom.

‘Get up! The
pinkies are coming!’

I looked
around me for Brown, smoke had reduced my visibility to ten or so metres.

‘Brown,’ I
called quietly. I hated him, but for that moment I desperately wanted to find
him, he was all I had left of my section and for some reason that made him
terribly important to me. I staggered to where he should have been, but he was
gone.

‘Brown!’ I
called on the intercom. I wondered if he thought to change channel to that of
our new section, and so I shouted his name again so that he might hear me
without the intercom.

‘Here they
come!’ The voice warned again. My battle shocked mind struggled to identify the
voice, it sounded familiar to me but I couldn’t put a finger on who it was.

Something
dragged me back into reality. I looked up over the ditch into the smoke and my
visor flicked to infra-red. They really were coming.

The Chinese
were upon us, a brilliantly timed airstrike by several saucers had devastated our
position, right in time for them to close for the kill. The company line was
broken and soon the battalion would be in disarray. Its brief hold on New Earth
soil would not be enough to secure a safe landing for 4
^th
Battalion
and the Union would potentially be unable to take Jersey.

‘Death before
dishonour, boys! Death before dishonour!’ I recognised the voice. It was the
company commander. The OC was speaking on the platoon nets, to all of us.

I had
survived my section’s last stand, but this time it was the entire company that
stood at the brink of annihilation. A few tens of survivors with their rifles
and bayonets were all that stood in the attacking enemy’s way.

‘For the
Union!’  Somebody called.

I raised my
MSG-20 and crouched low in the ditch, checking that my bayonet was still
correctly fitted. It was stained red with blood.

My headphones
amplified the sound of feet trampling close by in front of me as the enemy bore
down upon us. Wherever Brown was now, he would have to wait. I set my rifle to
automatic.

I crouched
with the survivors of B Company as the shadow of the Chinaman came over the top
of the ditch. He emerged from the swirling smoke, breathing heavily as his
boots pounded in the mud.

He was ready
to fight, his rifle raised to fire, but he was not ready for me to be crouched
at his feet. He didn’t even see me as I struck, thrusting my rifle up at his
torso. The bayonet penetrated his gel armour and into his flesh with almost no
resistance, blood squirting through the blood channels.

The Chinaman
yelped in pain, but his inertia took him into me, sending us tumbling down into
the wet mud at the bottom of the ditch as more of the enemy met the Union line.

My bayonet
was still inside him, and with an animal strength I threw him over me. He was
squealing, almost like a pig.

I was
possessed with a rage that sent my body berserk. As the ditch erupted into
battle, I stabbed at the man repeatedly until he was dead.

Those of us
who hadn’t died in the airstrike fought like demons as the Chinese charged
through the smoke at the top of the ditch. We stabbed and we shot and we threw
grenades over the bank in our desperate fight for survival.

I was knocked
to the ground by the hulking frame of a charging Chinaman as I picked myself up
from my victim.

He screamed a
blood curdling battle cry as he raised his rifle to butt stroke me in the face.
The giant Chinaman’s visor concealed his face, and only reflected back my own
look of terror. But he was never able to bring his rifle close to me, because
Brown emerged as if from nowhere and smashed his mammoth butt onto the
Chinaman’s head with so much force his visor cracked.

The Chinaman
fell on me without a sound, knocking the air out from my lungs. I struggled
from beneath him but his weight had me trapped to the ground. God, he was
heavy, I could hardly breathe!

‘Get this
stroker off me!’ I gasped.

Brown fired a
burst of darts into the melee, and then rolled the Chinaman away. If he wasn’t
dead, he certainly wasn’t going to be getting up for a while, but I slung his
weapon over the ditch just in case.

‘I know they
said some Chinese soldiers could be big - but he takes the piss!’ I joked
grimly, getting back to my feet.

Two gravtanks
passed over our ditch. The air hummed as they soared past us, their mighty rail
guns firing into the parting smoke.

The ditch was
still ours, although at a terrible cost; the bodies of the dead and
horrifically injured were plain for all to see.

‘What’s going
on now, then?’

Brown
regarded me for a moment, as if deciding whether or not I was worth a response,
then he stole a glance over the top of the ditch, ‘Looks like another company
is attacking from the right, the pinkies are being smashed,’ he said flatly.

Sure enough,
with dropships and gravtanks in close support a company of troopers were
sweeping through the remaining Chinese. The assault on their right flank must
have halted their advance, and now with no sign of their saucers they were
completely outgunned. As if to confirm the return of Union air superiority, two
of our own robotic fighters streaked overhead.

A cheer
passed up and down our ditch as we watched the Chinese attempting to withdraw.
Brown glanced skywards, grinned and pointed, ‘Here they come!’

I turned my
head to the heavens to see a shower of flaming objects breaking through the
clouds and plummeting toward the ground several kilometres up the valley behind
us. Flecks of light sparked around the objects. Surrounded by sprays of vulcan
and escorted by an armada of robot fighters the 4
^th
battalion was
fighting its way through the sky toward the safety of the planet surface, the
tiny sparks were the only indication of the distant battle. It would be less
than five minutes before the fresh battalion would arrive to push through us
and take the battle further up the hill and into the tunnels beneath it. We
watched in awe at the spectacle.

‘Oi, you
two!’ A welsh voice called from further up the ditch, bringing me back to the
reality of the carnage around me. Corporal Weston tapped his helmet, the hand
signal for ‘Come here’, and shouted ‘Hurry up!’

We ran over
to the section commander.

‘Brown and
Moralee, yes?’ The stocky Welshman asked harshly. His visor display would have
told him as much; but I didn’t think it the right time to point that out.
‘You’re Two section, now. Understand?’

‘Yes, corporal,’
I answered automatically.

‘Brown, get
yourself and that gun back up on the bank and observe. Be aware there’s friendlies
moving to our front, now, so don’t shoot unless you’re one hundred percent
happy what you’re shooting at. Go,’ Brown was gone and Westy turned his
attention to me, ‘Moralee, go find the 2ic and help him with the casualties.’

I gulped. In
amongst the smoking, cratered ditch there were many casualties and they weren’t
pretty. The responsibility of having to deal with one and having his life
potentially in my hands was almost as terrifying as facing the enemy himself. I
became ever more aware of the screams and moans of the wounded.

‘You want me
to find Chammy?’ I asked stupidly. I had been in the platoon long enough to
know who the different 2ics were.

‘Yeah, Chammy.
He can’t be far,’ Corporal Weston replied distantly. He was busy scanning the
ditch, trying to take stock of what manpower he had at his disposal and what to
do with it. I could only count thirty able bodied men along the full length of
the bank and fewer moving about amongst the dead and wounded at the bottom of
the ditch. There had been at least two platoons of us there originally, sixty
men in total.

‘Where will I
find him?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,
do I?!’ The section commander snapped, ‘Look around you. It’s a fucking……’ He
trailed off, lost for words.
A fucking gruesome mess
, that’s what it
was.

‘I’ll find
him, Corporal,’ I promised, and I went.

I had
searched for Chammy, but I never found him. His locator wasn’t working, so I
couldn’t find him using my visor. Instead I made my way back toward where I
hoped Brown and Westy would be.

A battle
still thumped and rattled just over the brow of the hill whilst I walked as if
in a dream amongst the dead and the wounded. A pair of medics worked
frantically on a man who fought with them in the mud. He was trying to remove
his respirator, making terrible rasping sounds with every laboured breath.