C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (4 page)

The back end
of the ship contained stores, engine rooms, life support and everything that
kept us alive and our ship functioning. To the bow was the bridge,
headquarters, gunnery rooms and, of course, the dropship hangars. She carried a
total of four gravtanks and sixteen dropships, four for each platoon and then a
remaining four for headquarters.

The
accommodation section was located amidships around two circumference corridors.
Stokes explained that the stern section contained the three platoons and that
we needn’t ever stray into the forward sections.

‘The fore
accommodation section is for the ship’s crew, jacks and officers,’ he warned, ‘Stay
well clear or you’ll end up in a world of pain. Each platoon bulkhead is
clearly marked, so you have no excuses for getting lost.’

We stopped
outside one such platoon bulkhead half way around the circumference corridor.
Its sign read ‘One Platoon’ in large black stencilling.

Stokes
harrumphed, the corner of his mouth turning up into a smirk, ‘Good luck, if
you’re in one platoon. The platoon sergeant is, shall we say… excitable?’

The huddle of
troopers said nothing, staring back with blank expressions.

‘Right,’
Stokes drew out his
tablet and examined it,
‘Berezynsky. Gilbert. Greggerson. Moralee. Kane. You’re one platoon.’

My heart
sank. I was to be separated from Peters.

‘Walk into
the accommodation, you will find a long corridor with rooms either side. Your
names are marked on the doors and you will clearly see which bunk is yours,
because nobody will be sleeping in it. Comprende? Any questions that can’t wait
for the morning?’

‘Um,
Corporal?’ Greggerson asked meekly. He was a timid lad from Kent, but with a
slight build and a voice as quiet as a mouse. I never fully understood how he
managed to get through training, but then sometimes I wonder how I made it.

Stokes was
clearly tired, and he shot Greggerson an angry look, ‘What?’

‘Where’s the
ablutions?’

Stokes
frowned at Greggerson for a second, before shaking his head, ‘Right, we’re off.
Reveille zero-six.’

The huddle of
recruits disappeared over the horizon, leaving us stood outside the door to our
new accommodation, and our new platoon. Like it or lump it, we would serve -
and possibly die - with the men through that door.

‘Well I’m not
standing out here like a mug,’ Gilbert, a country lad and the largest of all of
us stepped toward the bulkhead and it opened. We followed cautiously.

Initially the
platoon lines were pitch black before a movement sensor spotted us and the neon
lights that lined the ceiling flickered on, revealing our new home. Dark red
camouflage netting hung from the walls and ceiling in huge sheets, as a form of
decoration to break up the boring grey of the metallic walls. We were in a
corridor that stretched for twenty metres until it came to a T-Junction, lined
with bulkhead doors.

I studied
images that adorned the walls as I walked up the corridor, at the same time looking
for my own room. Some were just of young lads out drinking in bars and
nightclubs on Earth, but others were taken of alien worlds visited by Challenger.
I recognised a few shots of Uralis, presumably taken during some form of
exercise in preparation for New Earth. Since Uralis was a dead planet, and similar
to New Earth, it was ideal for use in preparing the Union forces for the
invasion that nobody spoke of too loudly, but everybody knew was coming.

I also recognised
images of a green world;  Eden.  Its jagged, rocky surface was covered in the
dark green lichen that typified the planet, a world more like Earth, rather
oddly, than New Earth, in that it was able to support basic plant life without
artificial assistance. It was believed that, after several hundred years of
terraforming,  unlike all of the other dead rocks,  Eden was fully capable of
supporting an Earth-like ecosystem. It was to be a Utopia. Our instructors in
Fort Abu Naji had all been there but not one would talk about what it had been
like for them. In a war between three separate Colonial powers, Eden belonged
now solely to the Union, but at what cost I couldn’t say.

I realised that
whilst I had been staring at the walls the other lads had all disappeared into
their rooms. I rounded the corner of the T-junction, eventually finding my room
at the far end of the left hand corridor. The names of the occupants were stencilled
onto the bulkhead with black spray paint: Woody, Climpson, Brown and me. The
paint for my name was still wet.

I entered the
room and thankfully the lights didn’t come on automatically. Waking up my new
roommates at four in the morning by turning all the lights on wasn’t the best
way to introduce myself. I stepped into the room, allowing the bulkhead to
close automatically behind me and shut out the light from the corridor. From
within the room somebody snorted and stirred, but then settled and appeared to
drift back into a deep sleep. I used the backlight of my wristpad to find my
bunk and was relieved to see the free bed was at the bottom - less chance of
disturbing the bloke on top. I slipped quietly out of my fatigues and into the
ready-made bed.

I must have
laid there for a good couple  of minutes; taking in the sounds of heavy
breathing from the room’s three other occupants.  We were tightly packed into a
room probably better suited for two men rather than four.  I listened to the
sound of an air vent gently blowing fresh air into the room and felt the cool
breeze against my face. If I closed my eyes I could imagine it was the wind
through an open window, and that I wasn’t on a warship in another solar system potentially
going to war, but lying in bed at home without a care in the world. I slept.

3: Reveille

I woke with a
start to a screaming alarm, wrenched from sweet dreams of life back in
Portsmouth with my family and dropped back into reality with a crash. It was
the alarm calling the ship to reveille. I checked my wristpad - six on the dot.
I was exhausted as I had barely slept in twenty-four hours.

Above me my
bunkmate groaned loudly and swore, the bedsprings protesting under his weight
as he rolled himself over in response to the noise.

I fought against
my body’s urge to do the same, I couldn’t allow myself to appear lazy to my new
roommates. I twisted out of the bed and rubbed my eyes with the backs of my
hands, my bare feet cold against the metal floor. I felt around in the dark for
my sausage bag, slid it over and began digging out my wash kit.  

As I slipped
on my sandals the bulkhead door slid open, revealing a muscular figure wrapped
in a towel and covered in tattoos. He slapped a button on the wall beside the
door, switching on the room lights. I half-closed my eyes against the blinding
neon light.

‘Get up,
lads, let’s go!’ He ordered with authority.

‘Yeah, we’re
moving,’ whoever slept above me answered unconvincingly. There was movement
beneath the covers of the other two bunks.

The tattooed
man caught my eye briefly but said nothing. He disappeared from the open
bulkhead and it promptly closed behind him.

I wrapped my
towel around my waist and made my way toward the door.

‘Ah, hello,’
a voice called from behind, causing me to pause. I looked back to the top of my
bunk, where a round face was peering from beneath the covers.

‘It’s rude
not to say hello when you meet people for the first time,’ he said when I
didn’t respond.

‘Sorry, I
didn’t want to disturb you.’

The face
smiled, ‘That’s okay then. I’m John Wood. People here call me Woody. What’s
your name?’

‘Andy
Moralee.’

‘Pleased to
meet you, Andy Moralee,’ Woody extended an open hand from beneath his bed
covers and gestured for me to shake it. I noticed his arms were even more
muscular than those of the man who had come to the door to wake us, ‘I won’t
bite, mate!’

There was
something I didn’t like in Woody’s over-friendly nature, it sounded fake, even patronizing
perhaps. I couldn’t not shake his hand, though, for all I knew it was a genuine
welcome. I stepped over gingerly and took his hand, and he squeezed mine so
tight I thought my fingers might break.

‘There you
go. We’re mates now.’

The lads in
the opposite bunk were climbing out of their beds. One was young, about my build,
with light blonde hair. The other appeared a bit older, with a lean athletic
build and colourful tattoos up his arms. I knew from the sign on the door that
one must be Climpson and one was Brown. They paid me little interest as I shook
hands with Woody, instead busying themselves with their own towels and wash
kits.

I withdrew my
hand, ‘I’m gonna go grab a wash.’

‘Ok, Andy,’
his voice was deliberately patronizing, I was sure of it, ‘You go grab a wash.’

I left to
find the ablutions myself without asking for directions. I didn’t want to talk
to Woody for longer than I had to, his friendliness was purposefully
exaggerated to the point of being unpleasant, and I doubted I had found a new
best friend. It was easy enough to find the ablutions anyway, I just had to
follow the line of men wrapped in towels making their way in through a nearby
bulkhead.

There were
about ten sinks in the ablutions, but there were thirty men in a dropship
platoon and so I ended up in a queue. I was tiny compared to many of the troopers
in the platoon, most of whom clearly spent a lot of their time in the gym
training. I was ignored, people spoke around me but nobody chose to acknowledge
my presence. I had expected as much, I supposed. It was my introduction to that
Woody character that played on my mind, there was something about it that had
made me feel uneasy.

As I stood
and waited in line, a finger prodded me in the back. An older looking trooper
in his mid-twenties was stood behind me in the queue with his arms folded. His
ears stuck out like the handles of a jug, which made his attempt at looking
intimidating slightly amusing. I chose not to point that out.

‘Just got
here?’

I nodded, ‘Yeah.’

‘You know
where we’re going?’ He asked, as if he presumed that I didn’t know and would be
surprised if he told me.

‘Yeah,’ I
replied. Everybody knew, our training staff had dropped enough hints, and our
training had been geared toward it. It was inevitable that the Union would
return to New Earth to seek revenge. New Earth, a symbol of mankind’s future in
the stars, and the first settled world outside of the solar system was once
again to be ripped apart by war.

Interested
now, he leaned closer and others in the queue turned to listen to what I had to
say, ‘What have you heard?’

I blushed
under the sudden attention, ‘Nothing, really,’ I answered, ‘Just rumours.’

‘About what?’

I shrugged, ‘We’re
here for a few days to pick up fresh recruits and supplies, we’re then forming
up just outside the system before heading for New Earth.’

‘That’s it?’
He sounded disappointed.

‘That’s it.’

The trooper
sighed, deciding that I had nothing else useful to tell him and then everybody
went back to ignoring me again. A sink had freed up anyway, and it was my turn.

I shaved the
tiny bits of stubble away from my boyish face, rinsing the razor blade in the
puddle at the bottom of the sink. I wasn’t capable of growing a beard yet, I
reckoned I could probably get away with not shaving for a day or so before
anybody noticed. I never tried of course, it was drummed into me that shaving
was an essential part of my daily routine wherever
I was. Facial hair could affect the seal between a trooper’s face and
his respirator, a mistake that on most Earth-like worlds would result in death.

‘Do you know
what you’re doing this morning?’ a gruff voice asked from next to me. I looked
at the man shaving beside me, it was the heavily tattooed man who had switched
the lights on in my room.

‘No,’ I said.

‘We’ve got
morning PT at zero-eight. Breakfast is at zero-six thirty. After that you have
a ship’s brief while we work with the stores.’

‘What PT is
it?’ I hoped my PT kit hadn’t creased up in my bag. We didn’t press our kit on
ship, but we were still expected to look presentable.

‘Just
shuttles, I think, shorts and trainers.’

‘Okay, thanks,
mate.’

The man
bristled, ‘I’m not your mate.’

‘S- sorry,’ I
blurted awkwardly, but he was finished and walking away. Another trooper took
his place at the sink.

‘Work out who
people are before you start calling them mate,’ the trooper said coldly, ‘He’s
an NCO, and you’re a crow.’

‘Oh,’ I said,
my face reddening.

‘Get a move
on, crow!’ somebody shouted from behind. I realised that it was me being
shouted at and I was taking too long at the sink. I drained the sink and dried
my face quickly before making my way out of the ablutions. As I passed the
queue I saw Greggerson waiting, towel wrapped around his tiny child-like frame.
He looked especially sheepish as he caught my eye, but said nothing. None of us
wanted to attract attention to ourselves.

I knew what ‘crow’
meant, it was a word our instructors had often used to address us on Uralis. It
was used as an offensive word that stood for Combat Replacement Of War: the new
guys, replacing much better troopers who had promoted, left having served their
time, or worse, died.

Thankfully
nobody was in the room when I returned, so I quickly changed into my PT kit and
made my way out onto the circumference corridor.  I decided to find my way to
the galley by following the crowds of troopers spilling out of the
accommodation.

The galley
was around the opposite side of the wheel that was the circumference corridor,
and as I had suspected it was almost identical to the galley on board the
Fantasque. It was a square hall a good fifty metres across with long neat rows
of plastic tables and chairs. The interesting thing about the galley was that
unlike the smaller rooms on the ship it had quite an obvious curve, much like
the circumference corridor, and could appear quite odd when it was full of
troopers, some apparently standing at unnatural angles against my own
perspective.

On one side
of the galley food was being issued to a growing queue from a window in the
wall. Nothing on board the ship was cooked like you might expect, instead it
was heated by a kind of microwave inside a white ration box, not entirely
unlike the sort that we would be issued to eat on the ground. The box was often
referred to as a ‘horror box’, which simply came from the expression upon the
faces of people when they first looked inside one, or took their first bite.
Nobody could ever claim that space nutrition was pleasant.

I slowly
inched forward with the queue as the galley slowly filled with drop troopers,  the
room resonated with the sound of their chatter, angry exchanges and laughter. I
kept myself to myself, being careful not to make eye contact with anybody lest
I attract unwanted attention.

It didn’t
work.

‘Oi mate,
does your mum know you’re here?’

I cursed in
silence, turning to confront the voice from behind. A tall trooper looked down
at me, his friends behind him grinning maliciously.

‘Yes,’ I
replied flatly.

He chuckled,
‘Well aren’t you all grown up now, then, eh? You ready for New Earth, are you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Fair
enough,’ he smiled, though more out of amusement than friendship, ‘What platoon
are you?’

‘One
platoon,’ I answered.

‘One
platoon?’ He shook his head in mock dismay, ‘Enjoy that, mate.’

‘Why do you
say that?’

‘You’ll find
out.’

A ‘horror box’
was thrust into my hands. Startled, I realised I had reached the window. A
trooper stared back at me through the opening, the next ration pack in his
hands ready to be handed out. He looked fed up, and probably was since you only
got microwave duty if you were being punished for something. His scabbed
knuckles suggested his crime was probably fighting.

The trooper
frowned at me, ‘Well go on, then!’

‘Sorry,’ I
made my escape whilst the queue behind me laughed.

I ate by
myself on a table out of the way from everyone else, occasionally scanning for
my mate, Peters. I saw a couple of lads I had known from training, but none
chose to acknowledge me. I presumed jealously that they were probably getting
on with their platoons far better than I was, and in the end I gave up and
concentrated on my food.

I was quite
used to eating space food after over a year spent outside of the solar system.
Each horror box was divided into six sections, each containing a different colour
slush that could be eaten using the spoon attached to the lid. The green one
was the worst and I always ate it first, it tasted like peas and perhaps it
once was - but I hated peas anyway - which didn’t help. The brown and the red
sections were probably my favourite, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what they
were, only that they tasted like some kind of meat. We were taught to eat all
of the sections, supposedly they made up a perfectly balanced diet and not
eating a section resulted in poor nutrition. I would never know the truth of
that, but the horror boxes were surrounded in rumours and conspiracy theories.
Some people said they contained drugs to make us more obedient, or chemicals
that could be combined with a gas released by the ship’s life support system to
render us unconscious in the event of mutiny. In reality, they were probably
just really cheap food mass-produced to be fed to the millions of men that made
up the Union military.

‘Mind if I
sit down?’ a tiny voice asked, causing me to look up. It was Greggerson.

‘Yeah, have a
seat, mate,’ I gestured to a chair, trying to sound nonchalant. Secretly I was
grateful to have some friendly company, no matter who it was.

‘What are the
lads in your room like?’ Greggerson asked, sitting awkwardly with his hands on
his lap.

I shrugged,
‘Alright I suppose.’

‘My room’s
alright, I think.’

Greggerson
watched while I ate, then finally began to eat his own food.

‘Kind of
weird isn’t it, being here.’

‘I guess so,’
I replied between mouthfuls, ‘But then what have we done for the past year that
you haven’t found weird?’

Greggerson
nodded with a childish grin, ‘Yeah, you’re right. We’ve done some pretty mental
stuff.’

I could feel
him thinking about what to say next as I ate. But I didn’t mind the poor
conversation, it was still company.

‘You think
they’ll tell us about New Earth soon?’

‘I dunno,
mate. To be honest I don’t think anybody knows anything, it’s all just rumours.
A bloke was asking me for gossip from Uralis earlier on.’

‘In the
ablutions?’

‘Yeah that’s
right, the bloke with the ears.’

‘His name’s
Stevo, he’s in my room. Apparently he should have been dropped off on Earth a
few months ago when Challenger stopped to re-supply. It’s the end of his five
years, but they refused to let him sign off, though.’

I raised an
eyebrow, ‘Really? What, for New Earth?’

‘That’s what
he thinks. Sounds like it, coz apparently there were loads of blokes who
couldn’t go. But he was saying it puts all the platoons above normal manning.’

‘Extra
blokes?’

‘Yeah, now
we’re here one platoon is three men over strength.’

I knew where
Greggerson was going with this, ‘Spares.’ I said.