C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (6 page)

Despite what
you may have heard, at least two thirds of the platoon have never seen combat
operations, neither have they seen New Earth or Eden. That includes me and
several NCOs. Everybody is a little scared, if they say they aren’t then
they’re probably lying. The platoon have been on voyage for four months and
although I know you have spent just over a year away from Earth training, they
too are homesick.

What I’m
getting at is that we are all in the same boat together, metaphorically as well
as literally. Talk to the lads in your sections, from the junior privates to
the senior troopers. Share your burden with them and you will find you become
part of the family very quickly, and you will forge a bond that will give you
the courage and the strength to see the job through to the end.

You’re going
to be busy settling in, I urge you to use the next few days to do so before,
potentially, we go to war. I will try to find the time to chat to you each in
turn very soon. Until then, though, I will leave you in the very capable hands
of Sergeant James.’

The boss glanced
to Sergeant James, who stood off to a flank like a ferocious monster held back
on a leash, waiting impatiently to be released, ‘Sergeant.’

Sergeant
James made an attempt to smile sweetly at the platoon commander, but instead it
looked more like a grimace. He wasn’t accustomed to smiling, as I would learn
over the time I knew him, ‘Permission to carry on, Boss.’

The boss
nodded, almost surprised by Sergeant James’s politeness, ‘Of course, Sergeant.’

The stocky
platoon sergeant stared expectantly at the boss, but it took a couple of
awkward seconds for the message to sink in, ‘Oh. Of course, well I’ll be seeing
you all around then.’

We waited as
the platoon commander’s footsteps slowly receded around the corridor and our
new platoon sergeant paced in front of us, looking down to the floor as if he
were examining his shoes.

I had been
the ward of three separate platoon sergeants, one on Earth, one on the
Fantasque, and then one on Uralis, and they had all been quite something in
their own way. Sergeant Cooper on Earth had been a bully who could barely keep
up with us on runs, a fat man who it was safe to say we all despised. Sergeant
Talon on Fantasque was quiet as platoon sergeants go, but had a temper that
could suddenly and without warning explode in our faces. Sergeant Jacob on
Uralis was an amazing man, fit as any of us, and appeared to genuinely care for
us, at least so long as we didn’t wind him up too much. Sergeant James was by
far the meanest looking platoon sergeant that I had ever come across, and that
really was saying something.

The platoon
sergeant was many things. He was first and foremost the platoon second in
command, ready to step up to assume the role of the platoon commander if he was
injured or killed. He managed the sections not being used by the platoon
commander during the battle, using them to protect the platoon’s flanks and
assist in the movement of spare ammunition and casualties. He co-ordinated the
smart launchers - rocket launchers that fired robotic missiles at threats in
the air and on the ground with pinpoint accuracy. He managed the triage and
extraction of casualties and managed the platoon’s supply of ammunition, water
and food, calling for more if required. He also dealt with discipline within
the platoon, enforcing it either by sheer force of character, or sheer force,
whatever came best to him. The platoon sergeant was more than just a high-ranking
NCO, he was the heart and soul of the platoon, the platoon commander was its
brain. You never,
absolutely never
, got on the wrong side of him,
because if you did - you mark my words - you would regret it.

The sound of
a bulkhead sliding open somewhere around the circumference corridor told us the
platoon commander was gone. Sergeant James finished his pacing and eyeballed
each of us in turn, as if sizing us up for a fight. I doubted any of us could
take him, for he was a monster of a man. His eyes lingered on me and I felt my
cheeks burning under his hateful glare.

‘I ain’t scared,
and if any of you lot are, I seriously suggest you snap out of it,’ he resumed
his pacing, slower now as he continued to watch us. I didn’t move a millimetre.

‘I am Sergeant
James,’ he said, ‘And whoever you thought was the big man in your world, then
you can forget him. I am your daddy now, and your mummy. I am the ruler of your
little world.’

That wasn’t
the first platoon sergeant ‘Don’t mess with me’ brief that I had ever had, but
in our vacuum surrounded prison his words still carried great menace.

‘You will
respect your junior NCOs in my platoon. Lance Corporals are still Corporals
here, and you will address them as such,’ his eyes returned to me, ‘You will
obey their orders as if they came from me. They are my enforcers, and don’t
think for a second they won’t resort to a swift back hand if you mess about.
Complain if you want, but remember this, what goes on ship, stays on ship. Your
complaints won’t go far. Screw the nut, do what you’re told, that’s all I’m
after. Go against me and I’ll ruin you, and if you wanna go home tell me, so I
can drag your disgusting body to the airlock and chuck you in the right
direction. Understand?’

‘Yes, Sergeant.’

‘Welcome to
Challenger, enjoy it while it lasts. Now get your awful bodies out of my
sight.’

We ran back
to the accommodation to whatever was in store for us next.

#

When I arrived
back, half of the platoon were already queuing for their only shower for the
day, chatting amongst themselves and thankfully uninterested in me and the
other new lads. Steam escaped from the open ablutions bulkhead and was sucked up
into the many air vents.

I paused as I
entered my room and my jaw dropped. My sausage bag had been opened and tipped
to the floor at the foot of my bed, the contents scattered across the floor
like rubbish. For a moment I stood there, shocked by the complete lack of
respect for my personal possessions.

Calm down
,
I told myself,
they just want to get a rise out of you
. Don’t give that
bastard Woody the satisfaction - it had to be his doing.

I bit my lip,
and then began to gently pick up my things and place them neatly onto my bed. A
picture of my mother smiled at me from my personal tablet, a happy smile from
years gone by. I missed her so much, never before had I felt as far from home
as I did that moment, even after all that I had been through up until then.

‘
Eventually
you will be accepted
,’ Corporal Thomson’s words echoed through my mind. How
long was eventually? And after that I only had New Earth to look forward to.

I hadn’t
noticed the blonde-haired lad who had got me in trouble during PT enter the room,
a towel about his waist.

‘You need to
get all the new blokes and go to the galley for a brief at zero-nine-thirty,’
he said, then made as if to begin getting dressed and hesitated. I was more
interested in scrolling through all of my family pictures, making sure none of
them had been deleted or messed with. I swore to myself I would start swinging
if one was missing and to hell with the consequences, but they were all there.

‘He didn’t do
anything to it,’ the blonde lad said finally.

I didn’t look
up.

‘This crow
thing, it doesn’t last forever. Everyone gets it, believe me,’ he started
getting dressed into ship’s fatigues whilst I finished gathering my things,
‘I’m Climo, by the way.’

‘Moralee.’

‘Nice to meet
you, Moralee.’

That was
probably the only proper welcome I would ever receive aboard Challenger.

I went for my
shower.

5: The Tour

Our
introductory brief took the best part of the day, where all of us fresh
recruits were taught everything we needed to know to get by on board
Challenger. It was delivered by several different officers, each covering a
different subject and using the galley as a makeshift lecture hall. It was long
and at times extremely boring, but I wasn’t bothered.  It was a welcome relief
from the platoon and I was reunited with my comrades from Uralis, including my
friend Peters. We couldn’t talk much, but I found his presence comforting.

You couldn’t
possibly expect to explain to us mere privates exactly how something as
incredible as Challenger actually worked. Supposedly there was once a time when
it was believed that soldiers of our time would have to be the most intelligent
of individuals, hand-picked from the very top of the higher classes. The truth
was that although we were required to be much smarter than regular conscripted
troops, we were pretty below average as far as intelligence went. The average
drop trooper was from a poor background, most likely living within the city
slums which sprawled across much of England, and he probably had a very poor
education, any of the smarter lads were kept for more specialized roles within
the Union war machine, or became officers. We drop troopers didn’t need to
understand why things worked, or how things actually happened, what we needed
to know was what they did and how they affected us. A trooper trying to
comprehend how the magnets in his rifle worked wouldn’t be putting all of his
concentration into the task at hand - using it to kill the enemy. Or as one of
the lads in training had said;
if we were smart we wouldn’t be stupid enough
to ask to join the dropship infantry instead of the regulars in the first
place!

Challenger
was a troopship, or a ‘stellar assault ship’ to use her proper designation. She
was designed to transport a company of troopers between star systems with a
complete complement of sixteen dropships and eight gravtanks and then provide
orbital ‘top cover’ whilst they made their landing. She was completely
incapable of entering a planet’s atmosphere.  That would simply tear her apart.

Challenger
was capable of travelling faster than the speed of light on a technicality, a
loophole that she exploited in the laws of physics, and that was about all I
was really expected to understand. I knew that when she accelerated or slowed
she didn’t experience G-forces as we might expect, which was just as well or we
would all become a red, congealed mush at the back of the ship!

Challenger
was armed with an array of weapons to aid her in her task, including banks of
lasers for engaging enemy ships in vacuum, four vulcan cannons as a last defence
against missiles, and then an array of missile tubes and orbital artillery
pieces designed to pound the ground beneath her with molten metal. But despite
her impressive arsenal she was not designed to operate independently. A
dropship battalion required a total of five identical troop carriers, three
carrying the fighting companies and the remaining two carrying a fire support
company armed with the more sophisticated, specialised weaponry - and a further
headquarter company charged with the management and co-ordination of the others
on the ground - as well as tasked to fight the unseen electronic battle.
Typically a planetary assault force might consist of as many as fifty ships,
and then at least half that number again would be the frigates and destroyers
that escorted them.

‘Challenger
has been in operation since 2349 when she was commissioned in a New Earth
shipyard,’ a young naval lieutenant with a nasal voice told us all, ‘Since then
she joined the 1
^st
Fleet and has been the home of A Company of the 3
^rd
Battalion ever since. During those fifteen years most notably she has been
involved in the Eden campaign, as well as the New Earth Betrayal three years
ago.’

We stiffened,
suddenly interested. We all knew that the company had seen action during the
vicious Eden campaign fought against the Indo-Japanese alliance, but we had
never been told anything about involvement in the Betrayal, when our Chinese allies
had turned upon us without warning and forced us and the Russians off of the
planet and then out of the Centauri system.

Perhaps
sensing our intrigue, the lieutenant went on, ‘Unfortunately the fleet was
unable to enter safe orbit around New Earth, and instead gave cover as the
surviving Union forces withdrew from the planet and left those unable to escape
to their fate at the hands of the Chinese.’

What a
terrible day that must have been for them
, I thought. For every European at
home, the shame of seeing the heart of our growing interstellar empire
shattered so brutally by our historical allies tore at the very soul. My
stomach churned with bile and my heart pounded at the very thought of the
injustice that had been done to us those two long years ago. I could barely
imagine how awful it must have felt to watch powerless as the Union forces
trapped on the ground fought a helpless battle, enveloped and outgunned by
Chinese warships, and then to leave the Centauri system, a system once hailed
as the dawn of European influence in space.

‘It was a
sorry time,’ the lieutenant said with feeling, ‘Since then Challenger has
undergone extensive refitting in Earth orbit,’ he continued with renewed cheer,
‘And has been involved in extensive exercises on both Uralis and Eden, showing
the world that it was business as usual.’

Gilbert
raised his hand, ‘Sir, couldn’t you attack their ships or something, over the
last two years?’  

‘No,’ the
lieutenant answered, slightly irritated at the interruption.

‘Can’t we
just go bomb China or something?’

‘Of course
not,’ the lieutenant snapped, ‘I’m afraid that the world is not that simple, Private.
If we were to attack China on the home planet the consequences would be too
dire to even think about.’

‘Sorry, Sir.’

Mutually
assured destruction, or MAD
as they called it,
was the result of any kind of conflict that spilled over onto Earth soil. It
was an Armageddon the likes of which were written about in books centuries ago,
and that which would rock the human race to its foundations and threaten the
extinction of the species itself. Even the Chinese weren’t that crazy, and so
Earth had been largely locked into stalemate for generations. Only the poorer,
non-space faring nations continued to war with each other on Earth, to minimal
global interest. Technically the Union and China had been at war since the
Betrayal, but barely a shot had been fired. Both sides were building their
strength to make the next move, but it looked as though it would be the Union
who would strike to regain absolute control of New Earth. And if the Union
defeated the Chinese, then she would become a true colonial power in the eyes
of the world.

Gilbert
settled and the lecture of Challenger’s history continued, but I sensed he
didn’t fully understand the lieutenant’s explanation, and probably never would.
It was difficult for anybody to fully understand how our world appeared to work
these days, it had become more complicated perhaps than the human mind was
meant to grasp. I remember something my dad had once said when I was younger,
after watching the Betrayal pan out on the news channels: ‘
We’re all running
into space to escape this lousy planet. But what we don’t realise is that we
take everything lousy about it with us.’

We were then
taken around the ship and shown everything we needed to know and understand;
the gymnasium, the classrooms, the combat simulation rooms, armouries and kit
stores. The bridge was pointed out to us, as well as a secondary command deck
midway along the ship that could assume command in the event of the bridge
being destroyed. We weren’t allowed in either, and they were protected by coded
doors. We decided on board the Fantasque that it must be in the event of a
mutiny, but we never asked.

As we walked
around between each place I chatted to Peters, enjoying his company.

‘How are you
getting on so far?’ I asked as we walked along one of the warship’s many
corridors with an officer at the lead.

Peters
shrugged, ‘It’s alright, I guess. What about you?’

Peters was an
outgoing lad, even for a Londoner, and everybody always got on with him. I
imagined he had already made a load of mates and would be settled within the
week, which was more than could be said for me.

‘Yeah, it’s
not too bad,’ I lied. My sides still hurt from my beating.

‘You do PT
this morning?’

‘Yeah, it was
good to blow off some cobwebs,’ I didn’t want Peters to know I had a rough
time, I guess I just didn’t want him to think less of me.

‘We went up
the gym, got smashed on the old CV machines. Proper smashed, mate. PTIs a
raging nutter.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah, man.
Shame you didn’t get to come along, you’d have loved it, mate,’ he was clearly
being sarcastic.

‘Sounds
great,’ I replied with equal sarcasm, ‘But rather you than me, mate.’

What am I
on about
? I asked myself. I would have killed at that precise moment to
come across to Peter’s platoon, just to be near to my mate. Once the tour was
over, I knew I would have to return to my platoon who were currently working in
the ship’s stores and endure whatever they had lined up for me next.

We were taken
to the dropship hangars then. Vast, packed with girders, wires and equipment,
they were one of the few places onboard the ship where her true purpose was on
brilliant display. There were four such hangars, each home to four dropships
which hung from the girders and wires, just low enough so that their rear ramp
doors could be lowered to the ground. Four great hangar doors along the ceiling
were closed against the vacuum outside.

‘You won’t
come in here very often,’ our officer guide pointed out as we took in the
spectacle with awe.

I had never
seen a dropship hangar before, I had been in one, but I had never been outside
of the dropship. It was like some kind of massive metal temple of war, and the
dropships with their deep red camouflage were suspended and then cradled by
wires and equipment like they were sat in a shrine.

Noticing our
gaping mouths and craning necks, the officer smirked. ‘Pretty smart, right?’

There’s
something about a dropship that always sends a tingle through my body. They
were much bigger than you would think they were - when you’re stuffed into
their tiny crew compartments like sardines - with fat, stubby wings that hid
their arsenals inside them during entry to the atmosphere. There were no
windows to speak of, only cameras that you had to get right up close to see.
They were smooth yet squat in their appearance, their underbellies black and
tiled with heat absorbent panels that prevented them from burning up in the
atmosphere as they dropped from the sky.

I think the
thing that made dropships so stunning to see was the fact that every part of
them was designed for a purpose, and not a single panel, line or drop of paint
had occurred through chance or want of beauty. They were the evolution of
hundreds, no, thousands of years of war, like the wolf who had evolved from
millions of years on the hunt, and in their own terrible way they had become
beautiful.

Nobody spoke
as we looked at the craft that would take us to war, potentially, in a few
months’ time.

Becoming
aware of the time, the officer harrumphed, ‘Right, then. Again, you shouldn’t
be entering this room without permission, normally the access bulkheads will be
locked and coded. Obviously I’m sure you all appreciate the consequences of
somebody playing around with one of these things. Whenever you do come in here,
however, I simply cannot stress enough that you are not to touch a
nything
.’

He didn’t
have to tell me twice, somewhere in that room was probably the button that
sucked the air out, I guessed.

The final
part of our brief was back in the galley, which covered the ‘Actions On’ whilst
on board the ship. The action on hearing the ship’s call to quarters alarm was
to return to the accommodation to await further instructions. Or if it was
twenty-two-hundred hours, go to bed for the artificial ‘night’. Similarly in
the event of hearing the ‘Action Stations’ alarm we were to return to our
accommodation again and don suits in case of decompression. We then did bugger
all else and let the ship’s crew deal with whatever the alarm was called for,
be it a fire, structural damage, or worse, an attack. We would be strapped into
place so we couldn’t be sucked out of a hole if our compartment decompressed,
but failing that we were told to adopt the ‘decompression brace position’,
which was literally curling into as much of a ball as our suits allowed. I
found the idea laughable, as even if such an position did protect me from
bouncing around in the blast of escaping air, it would probably be the least of
my worries!

It was nothing
I hadn’t already heard before, really, but never-the-less I enjoyed the final
few minutes of freedom before I had to return to my platoon.

After the
brief me and Peters promised to meet for evening meal – it would give us the
chance for a chat and to catch up.  We then made our way back to the
accommodation. Woody’s sickly smile haunted my mind, his words repeating in my
head.
You won’t last five minutes here
. I hoped he was wrong.