C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (20 page)

‘Do you think
we’re winning?’ Ray was the first to finally break the silence.

‘Westy said
we’re winning,’ Sam said, as if that were enough, but a loud tut came from the
other side of our huddle.

‘Well he’s
probably not gonna tell you if we’re losing is he,’ Stevo said scornfully. I
wasn’t surprised at his defeatist attitude, Stevo had practically decided the
Chinese had won before we even left Uralis. I hated Stevo as much as I hated
Brown, he too was a bully who sided with Woody. But at least Brown wasn’t
afraid to do the dirty work himself. Stevo was a senior bod who liked to hide
behind Woody for protection, but without him he wasn’t nearly as intimidating.

‘So, what you
think we’re losing?’ Ray asked.

‘If them
pinkies get those ships above us, we’re done. They smashed us off this crappy
little rock once, what’s to stop them doing it again?’

‘Yeah,
alright, Stevo, we get it,’ Sam snapped.

‘If them
pinkies get those ships above us, we’re done!’ Ray mockingly exaggerated Stevo's
words into a high pitch.

Everyone
laughed as Ray got up and made an impression of a child having a tantrum,
stamping his feet, ‘I didn’t sign up for this, I want to go home!’ I was
surprised that Ray had the nerve to mock a senior trooper, he had been pretty
quiet on Challenger and I barely knew him. Now it was as if all of the fighting
had caused him to come out of his shell.

‘I never said
that, Ray made it up!’

The joking
wasn’t harmless, it was an attack on Stevo. Everybody had hated him on
Challenger, but Woody was gone and half the platoon were dead or injured and so
his position as senior trooper in the platoon didn’t count for anything. Just
as Sam had said, I realised.

‘I’ll tell
you what lads, we’re battering these bastards,’ Sam jumped in, ending Rays
display, ‘They wanted a go at us, and now they’re gonna be sent home, crying
like Stevo here.’

‘Screw you,
Sam.’

‘Likewise. We
proved it today in the farmlands, lads. It don’t matter how much funky kit
you’ve got, in the end it all comes down to cold hard steel,’ Sam patted the
blade of his bayonet, ‘They haven’t got the fight in them like we have.’ I
wasn’t so sure of that, the Chinese looked like they had a lot of fight in them
to me when they were closing in to kill the remainder of my section.

We sat in
silence for another few minutes, listening to our respirators click and whir as
they worked to scrub the air for us to breathe. They would also extract heat
from our exhaled breath, in order to minimise heat loss, which not only lead to
us getting colder, but made us easier to spot from above. A warship looking in
the right place at the right time could spot even the slightest source of heat.

Westy slid
down into the cave.

‘Alright
boys?’ He asked his section, rubbing his hands together in mock enthusiasm.

‘Alright
Westy, we’re fine,’ Sam replied, ‘Bit cold.’

Corporal
Weston crouched close to us in the dark, looking to check his section were all
okay, ‘There’s nothing I can do about that, boys,’ he said softly in his thick
Welsh accent, ‘We’re all cold, me as well. Soon as they get the all clear from
orbit we can get some heat going and get some hot food down our faces.’ We
never would get the all clear.

‘What’s going
on, then?’ Sam asked what we all needed to know.

‘The pinkies
are putting up a good fight. There’s at least a couple of battalions of them
dug in across this area, hoping to go back onto the offensive if they regain
top cover. Jersey Island is garrisoned with another two battalions, which we
believe are also connected to the warren network. Combat in the warrens is
going to continue through the night, and then into the best part of the day.
There’s a possibility that a company may get grabbed to form battlefield
replacements, but it’s just speculation right now.’

‘Battlefield replacements?’
Stevo snorted, ‘Everybody’s gonna be a battlefield replacement…,’

Sam punched
Stevo full in the gut, and I gasped in surprise, ‘Shut up, you lizard!’

Stevo rolled
onto the floor gasping for breath.

‘Get that
waste of oxygen sat back down,’ Westy growled. Sam hauled Stevo roughly back up
against the wall, holding him by the arm. He wheezed, trying to speak. Sam had
knocked the air out of his lungs despite his body armour.

‘I tell you
what, Stevo,’ Westy stooped up close to Stevo, as Sam tilted the trooper’s head
back by his helmet. Their visors touched. ‘You need to get a grip of yourself.
I am sick of your constant whining. Frankly, I’m sick of you and your weak
attitude. You’re not a senior trooper, I barely even class you as a human
being. You gob off one more time, you cower in the face of the enemy, you do
one more thing…,’ His silence said everything.

‘I’m sorry
Westy, I’m sorry,’ Stevo squirmed in Sam’s grip. Tension amongst us all was
high, but I hadn’t realised it had been that high.

‘You’re a
waste of a respirator, Stevo and this is a war zone. It would be very
unfortunate for you to lose it. But things happen out here, don’t they Stevo,’
Westy’s words filled with menace. I wondered what Stevo had done to make Westy
hate him so much, clearly the original lads from Two section were hiding
something. I remembered cowering at the bottom of the ditch when we first
landed, then hiding behind my fallen comrades and the thought filled me with
shame. Perhaps what Stevo had done was worse, but I doubted I would ever be
told. I hoped Brown would never tell anyone about what we had done - or
Sergeant Evans. Although my night vision couldn’t show it, I could imagine
Westy’s face contorted into hateful rage.

‘Please,
Westy, please!’ Stevo begged.

Westy stood
up, and Sam released his grip. Stevo rocked where he sat and began to sob like
a child.

‘I just don’t
wanna die here, man! For God’s sake!’

‘Shut up and
sit up!’ Westy crouched back down amongst us to continue his brief. He paused
for what felt like almost a minute while he collected himself.

‘For the
minute our orders remain the same. We are to stay put in this defensive
position until ordered to move or until we’re relieved. C company is tasked to
maintain arcs to the north and east, B to the south and west, and we have the
good deal with having to provide air defence. That’s good news for us, gets us
some chance to rest and just maintain a watch on the air. The companies will
rotate their tasks every six hours, so make the most of it.

‘Platoon
sausage, if you didn’t know, is now Ev, which I’m sure he’s chuffed with.’

Westy was
clearly being sarcastic, I somehow doubted that any section commander would
want to jump up to platoon sergeant, dealing with casualties, ammunition
resupply and the company hierarchy itself. Sergeant Evans’ battlefield
promotion wasn’t particularly unexpected, he was the platoon senior corporal
and so next in line to step up whether he wanted to or not.

‘The company
is a bit of a mix up at the moment,’ Westy continued, ‘At the minute we have
most of three platoon attached to us, so we’re back to three sections. Each
section in the platoon will maintain an air watch with the smart launchers and
stick to hard routine. That means no heating your horror bags, no external heat
sources of any kind. Movement outside the burrows is to be kept to a minimum.
The company are trying to get us some additional thermal blankets, but with
little or no supply chain I don’t see how we’re gonna get them. Basically, all
we need to do is keep the stag going, and just wait to see what happens next. I
suggest you all get your thermal bags out and rest. Anybody got any burning
questions?’

‘What’s going
on up there, mate?’ Sam thumbed up toward the sky.

Westy
shrugged, ‘I don’t know much to be honest. Challenger has apparently been
destroyed during the day, along with several other ships.’

‘
Shit,
man!’
Ray gasped in dismay, and my jaw dropped. Challenger had been my home
for several months, and now it too was gone! It seemed like everything I had
known was systematically being taken away from me, one bit at a time.

‘Our ships
managed to maintain control of orbit most of the day, as you probably saw.
During the Chinese counter offensive we lost more ships. That’s why the saucers
and the pinkies managed to get all over us so easily. They’re still trying to
re-take orbit above us to regain the initiative. Apparently it’s like this over
most of the planet, the Chinese are in disarray and either extracted from the
surface or dug into their warren network. If I were to guess, I would say they
will skirmish with our ships in orbit, and where they can seize even temporary
top cover they’ll then attack using hit and run tactics on the ground.’

‘When are we
gonna take Jersey City?’ Sam asked.

Westy
shrugged, ‘Dunno mate. We won’t do anything until the warrens are clear, I
reckon. We’re probably hoping for the city to surrender, but I don’t think the
Chinese will let us have Jersey City that easy.’

‘Cheese
heads,’ Ray cursed toward the tunnel entrance, as if the enemy could hear him.

Westy
chuckled, ‘Yeah, right, but there you go. That’s about all I know, boys. All we
need do now is just sit tight here, get a stag going and get some rest.’

‘No worries,’
Sam said, ‘I’ve got a stag list ready,’ he looked to Ray, ‘You and Stevo are on
first, mate. Wake me up in thirty minutes.’

Ray sighed
morosely, he clearly didn’t want wanted to go on stag with Stevo, ‘No worries,
mate. Come on Stevo.’

The two troopers
went and sat by the smart launcher while we took our thermal bags out from our
daysacks. They were small, thin sleeping bags that would fit almost into your
pocket, but they could be surprisingly warm. I slid myself into the bag, my
boots left on just in case I was woken in a hurry. I propped my daysack behind
my head as a pillow, its contents were not particularly soft and comfortable,
but the padding that normally sat against my back was.

I closed my
eyes and tried to sleep.

It wasn’t
easy sleeping with a respirator on. They weren’t particularly restrictive,
built of the lightest materials with motorised filters that enabled the wearer
to breathe clean fresh air as if they were in a park somewhere on Earth. But it
was still there on my face, and it felt un-natural.

I stared at
the ceiling of the burrow, listening to the sound of rain pattering on the
surface up above and rain water slowly trickling down the entrance. 

Somebody to
the right of me snored, who I couldn’t tell. I toned down the amplification on
my headphones to near zero, transforming them into a set of ear muffs. The
silence was peaceful, but it didn’t help me sleep. I always eventually slept
with my respirator on, and I was used to people snoring, but something else kept
me awake, and it wasn’t the throbbing in my arm.

Like a movie
on fast forward, my mind flicked through all the things that had happened since
our landing.

I thought of
Climo, and dragging his lifeless body into the bottom of the ditch like
unwanted rubbish. I remembered the Chinaman I charged in our surprise attack
and driving my bayonet into his body. I remembered Chase’s cold empty eyes
staring up into the heavens, and the carnage during our last stand against the
seemingly unstoppable Chinese advance. I also remembered Peters battling for
air while the two medics fought to save his life. I wondered if he was still
alive.

I had already
seen things that would haunt my mind until the day I died, however long that
would be. Images were captured in my mind so clearly, that if I closed my eyes
I could see them as if I was there.

I tossed and
turned in my bag, desperately trying to sleep, until I eventually gave up and
just continued to stare up at the ceiling of our miserable home.

A hand patted
me hard on the helmet.

‘Moralee,
you’re on stag,’ it was Brown.

‘Okay, mate,’
I answered instinctively, forgetting my hatred for him. Brown seemed not to
notice and was already sliding back into his thermal bag.

I dragged
myself out of my own bag and quickly packed it back into my daysack. Normally
in training on Uralis I would have struggled to wake myself for stag duty, much
to the annoyance of my comrades, but I hadn’t slept a wink anyway, so what was
the difference?

‘Could you
sleep?’ Brown asked as I closed my daysack and, surprised that he had chosen to
speak to me, I stopped.

‘Not really,’
I replied.

‘Me neither,’
Brown rolled over, signalling that the conversation was over. I silently cursed
his rudeness, and then switched my visor back to night vision and moved into
the centre of the burrow where Sam squatted with the launcher.

‘Alright,
Moralee?’ he whispered. The chamber was tiny, and he would have heard me and
Brown talking about not sleeping.

‘Yeah, mate,’
I lied, and Sam nodded knowingly.

I placed my
daysack down beside Sam and sat on it cross legged. We were both sat behind the
launcher facing up the dark angled tunnel that lead out of our burrow. Its
entrance was obscured by the thermal sheet.

The launcher
sat idle, set to air defence mode, with arrays of sensors laid outside our
burrow that gave it the ability to scan the skies above. If anything approached
that it couldn’t identify as friendly, the launcher would make its own decision
and fire without us having to do anything but reload it. A single red light
blinked to reassure us that it was switched on and actively scanning.

There was
very little to look at, I quickly realised. Air sentries were only really
present to make sure the launcher didn’t do anything mental, and protect the
burrow in case somehow the enemy managed to infiltrate and sneak in.

‘How’s your
arm?’ Sam said finally.