C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (16 page)

We ran along
the ditch behind our section commander. Cold water splashed up between my legs,
but I ignored it, scanning to my left and right for enemy. Missiles and
aircraft streaked across the grey sky above as the two vast colonial air forces
fought for supremacy in the New Earth atmosphere. Missiles and ordinance of all
descriptions passed over our heads, seemingly with much more important targets
elsewhere. We were infantry, cheap and plentiful, hardly worth wasting expensive
missiles on, or at least that was what I hoped. Rain lashed sideways against
us, hammering against our visors.

The drainage
system for Jersey’s vast farmlands was formed into endless square grids, with
each square being around one hundred metres across and each containing at least
ten greenhouses. We had planned to advance forward by use of the ditches, which
were deep enough to conceal a man keeping his head low.

Ahead of us
was the section I had seen debus, locked into a fierce fire fight with our foe
over the top of the ditch. It was Two section, I could hear their section
commander, Corporal Weston screaming orders into his intercom as we approached.
At the bottom of the ditch a trooper screamed and clutched at his bloodied arm
whilst another lay lifeless in the water, their red camouflage identifying them
to me as friendly.

We passed
behind Two section, and as we did Corporal Weston called out to Corporal Evans,
‘They’re to my eleven o’clock mate, in a trench or something. Got ‘em pinned!’

‘Roger!’
Corporal Evans led us round the back of Two section. The ditch ran into the
distance, unnaturally straight. A few hundred metres away more Union troops
crossed it as a nearby dropship burned. The battle was everywhere, and we were
only a tiny part of it.

The wounded
trooper was Greggerson. My eyes widened at the sight of him crying with pain,
his arm swollen almost comically where his gel armour had turned itself into a
bandage. I didn’t stop for him, and I ran around the body of the dead trooper.
He lay face down, his respirator sunk into the mud. A chunk of his helmet was
missing, and through the hole blood glistened. For the sake of morale our visor
targeting screens wouldn’t identify friendly troopers who had died, but out of
the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of his name printed across the back of
his helmet. It was Davo. He must have died debussing from his dropship. 

We turned
left at a junction in the ditch just past the end man of Two section. The
remains of the greenhouses towered above us, some ablaze, some remarkably intact.
Rounds cracked overhead as Two section continued its fire fight above us. I
guessed the enemy were somewhere close by.

We hadn’t got
far, maybe fifty metres in front of Two section when Corporal Evans signalled
with his free hand for us to get down and as one we took a knee at the bottom
of the ditch. I clutched my rifle tight, waiting for the Chinese to appear out
from the burning greenhouses. Occasionally I thought I could hear their voices,
picked out and amplified by my headset, but I couldn’t be certain.

Nobody dared
to speak as Corporal Evans scanned the crops off to our left. I didn’t know if
he had a sixth sense for danger that he had developed on Eden, but he
definitely wasn’t happy with something. The only sound was that of the tiny
filters in my respirator and the thumping of my heart. Rain hammered against us
as we strained to hear our unseen enemy.

Corporal
Evan’s hand closed into a fist, with his thumb outstretched and pointing
downwards; enemy. Slowly and deliberately he then opened his hand, pointing
into the greenhouses to our left. That way.

Weapons
quietly moved to aim at their new found target. The enemy were moving in the
farmland to our left, directly in front of Two section.

I heard them
this time, there was no mistaking their strange language and accent I had been
taught to recognise against European languages. I couldn’t see anything in
amongst the greenhouses, and neither could my respirator target display.

Corporal
Evans carefully raised his rifle over his head and used it to ‘look’ over the
top of the ditch with its camera.

‘Chinese
section, ten metres away,’ he whispered, ‘We need to be quick, Delta fire team you
will give covering fire, Joe ensure you maintain protection on the right flank,
I’ll leave you Climo.’

Joe Mac
nodded, he would have five men in his fire team now, leaving Corporal Evans with
only three men; him, Berezynsky, and me.

Berezynsky
checked his bayonet was fitted securely. I gulped.

We crawled up
the bank of the ditch as high as we dared without exposing ourselves. Rainwater
ran through the blood channels cut into the blade of my bayonet and dripped
onto the red earth. Around us the battle raged on, the gravtank had moved away
from us and out of sight, presumably with bigger and more important targets to
engage than a few Chinese soldiers - soldiers who could easily destroy it with
a smart missile if it hung around for too long.

Corporal
Evans looked left and right at his section of eight. Then, with a single tap on
Climo’s shoulder his plan was initiated. Climo sprang up and sprayed automatic
over the bank with his MAM-G, closely followed by the rest of Delta fire team.
At that instant Corporal Evans was up and over the top of the ditch, with me
and Berezynsky just behind. 

I remember my
first bayonet charge so vividly even now, like it is permanently etched into my
memory. I remember trampling my way through the crops, screaming in a mixture
of hatred and fear as I bore down on my enemy like a modern day barbarian. Although
their strange black reflective visors revealed none of their faces, the Chinese
were clearly surprised. They were barely even ten metres away and lying on
their bellies from where they had been trying to crawl closer to Two section
without being noticed. Instead they had been caught at point blank range and
they were dead and they knew it.

Those who
tried to kneel up in order to bring their weapons to bear were the first to
die, cut to ribbons by Climo and the rest of Delta fire team. The hail of supersonic
darts punctured through armour and flesh like hot butter, hurling bodies to the
ground like dolls.

I fired round
after round into my enemy as I closed with them, my bayonet gleaming cold hard
and cruel as I did.

One Chinaman
fell onto his back as I shot him in the stomach. Despite his wound, he
attempted to bring his rifle into the aim, but too late.

I stabbed the
man several times. Blood sprayed up my legs and he lay still, without making a
sound. Training had taken over my body completely, and without even thinking of
what I had just done I withdrew my bayonet and checked that it was still fitted
correctly to my rifle, as was the drill, ready for my next foe. There were
none. The rest were dead on the ground, killed either by Delta fire team or by us
with our rifles and bayonets.

There had
been an entire section of Chinese, presumably attempting to sneak through the
crops in order to attack Two section from close range. Unfortunately they
hadn’t covered their flanks and we had beaten them at their own game quickly
and violently.

‘Withdraw!’
Corporal Evans bellowed.

We darted back
toward the ditch. More Chinese were firing at us instead of Two section from
within the crops, having been alerted to our attack.

‘Get down you
stupid crow!’ Corporal Evans struck my daysack hard from behind, driving my body
down to the ground as the crops danced with enemy fire.

Without a
clear line of sight the Chinese couldn’t target us accurately, but with similar
weapons to us they put down some serious firepower, and made an effective
demonstration of how suppressing fire could really force troopers to keep their
heads down. I’d never crawled so fast in my life, dragging my body through the
mud and into the ditch, where the gloved hands of the lads in Delta fire team grasped
me and dragged me down into cover.

‘You alright,
Moralee?’ Rawson asked.

‘Yeah,’ I
nodded, panting. My respirator filters whirred as they worked to clear mist
from my visor.

‘Jesus,
there’s blood all up him,’ Climo exclaimed. Rounds still cracked overhead as
Corporal Evans and Berezynsky were dragged into the ditch.

‘There’s two
trenches,’ Corporal Evans told Joe, pointing towards where the rounds had come
from, ‘Must be a platoon in that direction.’

‘Well we
can’t stay here mate, we’ll be shot to shit,’ Mac advised, glancing
apprehensively up the ditch.

Corporal
Evans nodded his agreement, ‘We need to get out of this ditch,’ then to Rawson,
‘Give me smoke.’ He indicated up the ditch with an outstretched arm.

Rawson’s
respirator barely concealed his grin, ‘Roger that!’ He brought his rifle up
into a high aim, activating his under-slung grenade launcher at the same time.
It was a simple weapon with a revolving drum that lobbed guided grenades, and
it was devastatingly effective in the hands of an experienced trooper like
Rawson. He fired a string of three grenades, all of which exploded into clouds
of smoke and phosphor. Lethal as the phosphor was, the grenades were designed
with one purpose, to create an instant cloud of hot smoke and tiny metallic fragments
that could shield us from view from the enemy’s sophisticated targeting systems,
including thermal.

‘Let’s move,’
Corporal Evans ordered, and we scrabbled up the wall of the ditch and concealed
ourselves amongst a field of what I could only guess to be corn, its greenhouse
roof shattered and collapsed. Glass cracked beneath my boots as I crouched as
low as I could amongst the plants and took aim toward the dispersing cloud of
smoke. My eyes suddenly focused on my bayonet; it was dripping with blood.

‘Two
section’s gonna push through us along the ditch,’ Corporal Evans announced, and
I shook off my daze, ‘we’ll give cover from here.’

Suddenly
rounds peppered the earth around us, flicking bits of soil into the air. Chase
and Berezynsky were snatched backwards and I blinked, stunned.

‘Contact
front!’

The section
weapons erupted in the direction of the enemy fire, but for some reason my
visor hadn’t identified any targets and I paused, as if in a trance. Someone
was screaming.

‘Man down,
man down!’ a ragged voice called over the intercom. It was Joe Mac, running
toward the casualties.

‘Well fire,
then!’ I realised that Corporal Evans was looking right at me from not even
five metres away.

I needed no
further instruction. My visor could not see the enemy themselves but it could
pick up the direction their rounds were coming from so I took up aim and
fired. 

To the left
of the ditch Two section were advancing forward parallel to us, their weapons
spitting death as they went. They were moving forward as fire teams, one team
moving while the other covered, dashing forward through the crops. The enemy
was somewhere ahead of them, but I still couldn’t see where.

‘Rawson!’
Corporal Evans hollered, ‘Westy wants frag on the position!’ Two section’s
section commander wanted grenades fired toward the enemy in order to force him
into cover.

‘Roger!’
Rawson wasn’t smiling any more, the section had taken casualties. He fired
another burst of three grenades and my visor warned me that they were high
explosive. Instinctively, I ducked low to the ground.

The grenades
exploded amongst the crops, and I finally saw what we had been shooting at. A
hundred or so metres away and concealed within one of the greenhouses on the
other side of the ditch was some kind of trench, surrounded by sandbags, but
any enemy that had been there had disappeared, presumably blown to pieces.

‘Have that,
you bastards,’ Climo shook his fist.

Two section
were up and moving again, and they were upon the trench within seconds. A
couple of rounds were fired and somebody shouted something unintelligible.
Seconds later there was a loud thump and a pillar of red earth and dust leapt
into the air.

‘Position is
clear, it’s got a tunnel!’

My heart
skipped a beat. Of course they had a tunnel, many of the Chinese positions
would do. The hill was networked with kilometres of tunnels designed to protect
defenders from orbital bombardment, a legacy left by the Union and then no
doubt built upon by the Chinese themselves. The explosion had been a grenade
tossed into the tunnel by Two section in an attempt to drive back any enemy
that might be planning to counter attack back onto the surface.

We were all
nervous of fighting in tunnels, it was chaotic, claustrophobic, and units
fighting underground could expect high casualty rates. I swallowed nervously.

Corporal
Evans lifted his head and looked across the battlefield. The greenhouses and
their crops made it hard to see anything past a hundred metres, but even if we
couldn’t see all the battle, we could hear it. My visor indicated that another
platoon was in contact somewhere off to our right.

Corporal
Evans turned to Joe, who was tending to Chase and Berezynsky, ‘What’s the score
with the casualties, mate?’

‘Berezynsky’s
dead, mate,’ Joe answered gravely and I saw that he was right. Behind me
Berezynsky lay with his head missing. The super high velocity of a magnetic
dart had the potential to do devastating damage to the unlucky. Chase, on the
other hand, had been struck on the leg, and his gel armour had solidified on
impact and managed to deflect the dart enough to leave him with no more than a
broken bone. Funny how things work out.

Chase moaned,
but somehow managed to give a thumbs up as the section 2ic checked his medical status
on his
wristpad. ‘Chase will live,’ Joe said.

The air
cracked, and my visor display flashed red at more Chinese firing from fifty
metres away, this time on our side of the ditch, ‘Contact!’ I screamed. God
knows where they had come from, but they were there, bounding toward us in the
same way that Two section had done toward the trench.