C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (9 page)

‘Greggerson,
Sir,’ a tiny voice replied. I felt instantly relieved to no longer be the focus
of the sergeant major’s attention, but that relief quickly turned to guilt as I
realised poor Greggerson was now on the firing line. I hadn’t known him well on
Uralis, but he seemed a nice, if slightly timid young lad, who had been a
friend to me during the past twenty-four hours.

‘If you don’t
have the discipline to stay still during a parade then how will you have the
discipline to assault the enemy at close quarters upon orders?’

‘I-I don’t
know, Sir.’

‘
You don’t
know
,’ he spat, stalking toward his prey, ‘Well God help the Union if
you’re all that England has left to offer. Sergeant James!’ he snapped, ‘This
man needs to be educated!’

‘Sir!’

We waited in
silence while the sergeant major paced impatiently around the middle of the
galley, tapping a tune only he knew with the golden tip of his pacing stick.
Suddenly he noticed somebody emerge from a nearby bulkhead and snapped smartly
to attention.

‘
Parade!
’
He screamed, and the formation of men appeared to grow several centimetres as
we thrust out our chests and lifted our heads proudly upwards as one, ‘Parade…..SHUN!’

Two hundred
boots stamped against the deck with an almighty crump that echoed about the
ship’s metal walls as we came to attention, feet together and arms tucked firmly
against our sides.

The ship’s
captain, unmistakable in her smart white uniform and peaked cap and glistening
with medals and golden embroidery, strode into the centre of the formation
where the sergeant major waited.

The sergeant
major saluted her as she approached, ‘Ma’am, A Company are formed up and are ready
for your address.’

The Captain
returned the salute with a smile, ‘Thank you, Sergeant Major, please have the
men stand at ease.’

‘As you wish,
Ma’am,’ then, to us, ‘Stand at…… EASE!’

Our boots
crashed against the floor again so that we now stood with our feet shoulder
width apart, hands clasped behind our backs.

The captain’s
smile faded as she looked around her at those under her command. She had
absolute power over all of us, the power of life and death entrusted to her by
the Union and not even the company commander who was a major by army ranks
escaped her authority. She was a distinctly uninteresting looking woman were it
not for her uniform, as white as a brand new set of bed sheets and glistening
with polished campaign medals and golden buttons.

The captain
frowned as she recalled a terrible memory, ‘Two years…,’ she began.

She allowed
those two words to sink in, and instantly I knew exactly what she was talking
about. We all did.

‘
Two years
ago this fine vessel fled in defeat from New Earth with the few survivors of
the third fleet. She fled without having even fired a shot, and her drop
troopers never left their hangars.’

Somehow
Corporal Evans had. He had been down on the surface of New Earth as the
terrible and unstoppable onslaught of the Chinese invasion engulfed the colony.
I imagined him and others like him fighting a futile defence and then making
their desperate withdrawal to the dropships and then into space, and I
shuddered.

‘
Two years
on and still now the Union aches with the shame of its defeat. But nobody on
Earth can possibly understand the shame brought upon Challenger and her crew.
No politician sat in Brussels or Berlin can ever possibly feel the same hunger
for revenge as we have done, patrolling the remaining colonies like starved
dogs left to settle for scraps while the cowardly victors wallow in their ill
found glory.’

The captain
paused for dramatic effect, ‘
Two years
we have yearned for revenge
against our traitorous old allies the Chinese.
Two years
we have bottled
our rage and bitten our tongues and some people said we were trying to forget.
But we never forget. We have planned. We have re-trained, rebuilt and recruited.
Our new enemy thought that they had succeeded in cutting us off at the knees,
ending the fight in us once and for all, but all they have done is fill us with
a ferocious anger that cannot be subdued. We have been waiting, but now my
friends, we are ready, and the waiting is over.’

The captain
paced the room, sweeping her gaze across all of us as she spoke, her movements
becoming more and more animated as she spoke with increasing vehemence.

‘They say
that the soil of New Earth is stained red with the blood of Union soldiers. But
now it shall be
Chinese
blood that will flow freely across those
unforgiving lands like rivers!’

‘Guess we’re
going in, then,’ somebody murmured behind me, clearly unimpressed by the
speech.

A tingling
wave shot across my nerve endings as I realised that the impact of the captain’s
announcement. We all knew what the captain was going to say next. In my mind’s
eye I pictured the dead surface of New Earth, and it was indeed as red as
though it were stained by the blood of the thousands who had died there since
it had been colonized centuries ago.

‘I have
received orders today for a move to a rendezvous outside of the Hope system
with the third and first fleet,’ the captain continued, reading now from a
tablet she had retrieved and unfolded from her
pocket, ‘It contains the preliminary orders for a voyage into the Centauri
system. Our mission is outlined within those orders and it reads as follows; “The
third fleet is to capture New Earth in orbit and on the surface in concert with
elements of the first fleet, in order to bring about the enemies defeat in the
Centauri system.”’  

The Captain
returned her tablet and looked around us once more, ‘More details with regards
to those orders will be passed down to you through your relevant chains of
command, and much more detailed orders will be received and disseminated in due
course. What you need to know for now is that we will shortly be departing from
Hope for our rendezvous which will take approximately two days. From there we
will depart for the Centauri system.’

My nerves
tingled again.
This is really it
, I thought, the reason why I had joined
the dropship infantry: We were going to war. A strange mixture of emotions
passed through my body; excitement at the thought of doing my duty and being
part of something historians might speak of for hundreds of years but also a
terrible sense of foreboding. Everybody knew the statistics of making a ‘hard
drop’ onto a hostile surface.
One in three dropships didn’t make it.

‘The Chinese
have had two years to prepare for us. They have dug deep into the rock, so deep
that only infantry will prize them out. They are highly trained, equipped and
motivated. We must break their will. We will strike hard and we will strike
fast to shatter their resolve, and we
will
win. People will die, I won’t
lie,’ she shook her head gravely, ‘Some of you won’t return with us to Earth,
some of you will lose friends, most of you will kill, and all of you will lose
what is left of the innocence of your youth,’ she was looking over to us, the
drop troopers who would land on the surface and do the dirty work with
dropships, gravtanks, rifles and, if necessary, bayonets.

‘Get on with it,’
another voice hissed in frustration. The vast majority of Challenger’s troopers
had never carried out a combat drop for real, but we were all volunteers and we
had known what we were in for when we enlisted.

‘Too long has
the Union felt the shame of its defeat. Now it is time for us to show the world
that we are not a fleeting nation on the brink of losing its grip on the
cosmos, but a superpower who bows to no man. We
will
defeat the Chinese,
and the Union will go on to rule the known galaxy for a millennia. Gentlemen, I
wish you good luck. All of you. Sergeant Major, carry on, please.’

The sergeant
major snapped again to attention, ‘Parade…….SHUN!’

We stood
silently at attention as the captain strode away. Satisfied that she was gone
and out of earshot the sergeant major relaxed and strode back into the centre
of the parade.

‘Ship’s crew,
continue under your own arrangements,’ he ushered the crew away, leaving only
the troopers and the jacks behind.

‘Stand the
men at ease, please, Sergeant Major,’ a dropship major walked into view, as
elegantly dressed as the sergeant major, but with a glistening ceremonial sword
sheaved at his side. He was the OC, the highest ranking drop trooper on board
challenger. It was he who would lead the company on its drop to the surface and
hopefully would lead us back again. He was stocky in appearance, with an almost
apish gait that I wouldn’t normally expect of an officer. When he spoke he was
clearly well educated, which sounded strange coming from a man who wouldn’t
look out of place on the streets of Portsmouth. His name was Major McColl, and
he was known for being a no-nonsense commander and a shrewd tactician.

‘You’ve heard
enough from the captain,’ the OC said, smiling knowingly at us all, ‘I will
speak with all of you in due course. I should like to speak with all three
platoon commanders after this parade. The remainder are to prepare for jump.
Let’s get this done,’ I wasn’t sure if the last sentence was referring to us
preparing to jump to the rendezvous or the invasion of New Earth itself.

We were
brought to attention one last time whilst the officers left the hall, and then
finally the company sergeant major ordered us back to our accommodation.
Breakfast would have to wait, I guessed.

#

I could never
hope to fully understand how Challenger worked. Strange ghostly noises echoed
about the ship as we sat in our rooms, with the bulkheads sealed against decompression,
locking us into our tiny room like a tomb. She was preparing to ‘jump’, her
previously dormant space drive, powering up with immense surges of power
generated by the fusion reactor deep within her core. Incomprehensible
calculations were being created by the ship’s array of navigational computers
before being checked laboriously by a dedicated team of navigators. System
checks would be methodically carried out by the crew and all unoccupied
sections would have their atmosphere pumped out to reduce the risk of a ‘blow
out’ - a sudden and catastrophic decompression which could cause a chain
reaction that would destroy the entire ship.

I sat
nervously on the end of my bed, ignoring Woody’s legs which swung obtrusively
over the edge of the top bunk, most likely with the intent to wind me up. Brown
and Climo looked equally on edge, and sat waiting anxiously for something to
happen.

‘I hate this
bit,’ Brown said to break the silence. It was rare for him to speak, I had
noticed, he barely ever said much more than a single sentence, especially not
to me.

‘Why?’ Woody
asked from above me, ‘Nothing happens.’

‘I just don’t
like it.’

Nobody likes
making a jump, but Woody was right, nothing ever did happen. Challenger’s space
drive didn’t work within the confines of the rules that governed us and not
even the slightest of G-forces would be felt, mainly because she wasn’t
accelerating or decelerating as you or I might imagine. The only way I ever
knew about a jump having been made was the announcement system telling me that
it had. But it wasn’t what
did
happen that freaked us out, it was what
could
happen. Power overloads, incorrect calculations or faults within the
space drive itself could all lead to the terror of decompression or God only
knew what else.

Alone in our
thoughts and our fears, we waited in silence for the ship to jump;  A Company
was going to war.

8: The Jump

It was gone
ten ship’s time when we finally made the jump to the rendezvous. We would
arrive in deep space after a relatively ‘short’ two-day jump, we were told by
the platoon commander, after our bulkheads were unsealed, and there we would
marry up with the remainder of the fleet.

‘I know no
more than you do at this stage,’ the boss said, as the platoon crowded
anxiously outside their rooms to listen, ‘Anything I could say right now would
be pure speculation and nothing more.’

‘Well, what
are your speculations, Boss?’ Corporal Weston, one of the section commanders -
who was a young, stocky looking Welshman - appeared irritated at the lack of
information. The three corporals were huddled together in their own little
group at the far end of the corridor with Corporal Evans in the middle. The
‘screw club’ as it was known amongst the lower ranks, was completely exclusive,
and even the most senior lancejack was an outsider, however well he might be
regarded.

The platoon
commander sighed resignedly, ‘At a guess, the OC believes that we will enter
Alpha Centauri in a month’s time. For those of you who don’t know, the system
is composed of three stars, two of which harbour nothing more than a few small
rocky planetoids and a single gas giant. The first fleet is likely to be used
to secure those outlying worlds with support from the marines, leaving the
third fleet - us - to deal with Alpha Centauri Alpha and the capital planet. We
are the senior unit in the fleet and likely to be one of the first to drop.’

‘You mean the
least upgraded, and so the most expendable,’ the third Corporal, Corporal David
retorted sourly. Jamo shot him an angry glance but said nothing.

The platoon
commander pursed his lips, ‘Right. Any other questions?’

One of the
more senior privates raised a hand, ‘Is it true, Sir, that the Chinese have a
laser battery built on the surface that can shoot a ship out of the sky?’ A few
troopers murmured their agreement to the story.

‘Shut up,
Rawson, you moron!’ Jamo finally snapped, silencing the platoon.

The boss, who
appeared amused at the question, raised a hand calmly, ‘I can assure you that
if lasers made an effective alternative to guided shells and missiles from
atmosphere to orbit or vice versa, then Challenger would be equipped with them
by now. Any other questions?’

‘That aren’t
stupid,’ Jamo added angrily.

‘No? Good. I
will pass on any further information as it comes. In the meantime we will begin
training in preparation. We have the range booked after lunch. Sergeant James,
carry on, please.’

‘Sir,’ the
platoon sergeant stared blankly at the boss.

‘Right. I’ll
be going, then,’ the boss took the hint and exited the accommodation toward his
own quarters.

‘Here we go,’
Climo whispered under his breath.

‘Listen in,
you bunch of cretins,’ the platoon sergeant’s face contorted with rage as he
stalked amongst us, ‘First the Chinese will have giant lasers; next they’ll
have nanites that eat you from the inside out and genetically enhanced bodies
that heal gunshot wounds in seconds - rumours - just stupid rumours. If I catch
you making up stupid rumours I will punch a hole through you, do you
understand?’

‘Yes, Sergeant,’
we answered.

He glanced
across at Corporal David, ‘That goes for all of you,’ he said, and the corporal
looked down. Corporal Evans said nothing, but looked back to the platoon
sergeant as if he weren’t bothered by his withering glare. ‘Where is Greggerson?’

Woody pointed
toward the small trooper with a grin, ‘There, Sergeant.’

Jamo walked
toward Greggerson, his fists clenched, ‘Face or gut?’ He demanded.

Greggerson
blanched, ‘Sorry, Sergeant?’

‘Face or
fucking gut?’

Fear spread
across Greggerson’s face as he realised what was meant, and he mustered courage
to speak, ‘Gut, Serg…, oof!’ Jamo’s punch threw Greggerson to the wall with a
thump. The hapless trooper crumpled as the platoon sergeant walked away.

‘Discipline!
Discipline is what will keep us alive on New Earth! It’s gonna be ugly down
there, and people are gonna die. Some of you lot…,’ He pointed around at us
each in turn, ‘…Will die! It’s a fact of life. You need to have the discipline
to respect rank and orders, to carry out drills correctly as you’re taught and
not be idle! You need to stand in the face of the enemy and not run, because
it’s the only way that we as a platoon stand a chance to survive. Stand still
on parade, don’t spread rumours, respect your superiors or I swear I will make
this journey even more miserable than it has to be. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes Sergeant.’

‘DO YOU
UNDERSTAND ME???!!’ We all jumped.

‘YES,
SERGEANT!’

‘Do one to
your breakfast before I lose my temper, Ev - ensure they make it to the
simulators straight after.’

Corporal
Evans nodded without a word and the platoon bundled out into the circumference
corridor to grab their missed meal.  

I hesitated
and went back to crouch beside Greggerson who still lay gasping on the floor
whilst the accommodation emptied, ‘You okay, mate?’

He wiped
tears from his eyes, ‘Yeah.’

‘Not the
luckiest two, you and me, eh?’ I chuckled sombrely.

‘No,’
Greggerson replied, finally sitting up with my help.

‘You
alright?’ a familiar voice asked with concern. It was Climo.

Greggerson stood
up, ‘I’ll survive,’ he replied gravely.

‘Making some
new friends, Climo?’ Woody sneered as he passed us. He laughed, and behind him
Brown laughed too.

‘Get on after
your boyfriend, Browner,’ Climo replied, loud enough only for Brown to hear.

‘I’ll be
alright, Climo,’ Greggerson insisted, but Climo was already gone, the bulkhead
to the circumference corridor closing behind him. I wondered if he was afraid
to hang around us for too long.

‘This crow
shit is really starting to wind me up,’ I said, and Greggerson nodded.

‘Do you ever
feel like you’ve made a terrible mistake?’ he asked as he regained his
composure, ‘Ever wished you stayed with the conscripts?’

‘Yeah,’ I
said with feeling, ‘All the time.’

#

The usually
loud and boisterous queue for scoff was subdued into concerned murmuring that
morning as the hundred or so members of the company began to openly discuss the
impending operation, and New Earth was the hot topic around the tables, spiced
up by the inevitable and sometimes downright outrageous rumours. 

‘I heard it’s
true about that laser battery,’ Climo said as he stabbed at his food with a
plastic spoon. He had offered me and Greggerson a chair at his table, to the
barely concealed surprise of the troopers already sat with him. What had
prompted his decision to include us I didn’t know, perhaps it was guilt or
empathy from seeing how we were being treated or perhaps he was simply making
an effort to befriend a new addition to his section. Although battle loomed on
the not too distant horizon, at least for that moment it felt good to be a
little closer to being accepted.

One of the
troopers sat with us was a Southampton lad called Sam Wakefield, who rarely
chose to acknowledge our presence, instead speaking only with Climo and the
others. Now he blew a raspberry and rolled his eyes in mock disbelief, ‘And who
did you hear that one from, mate? Stevo?’

Climo’s
hesitation to answer gave Sam the confirmation he needed.

‘Mate, don’t
listen to that stroker, he’s the platoon gossip monger. Plus the bloke has less
spine than a jellyfish,’ the comparison brokered a laugh about the table and I
joined in, even though I didn’t really know Stevo.

‘Stuff like
that ain’t gonna come from nowhere, is it?’ Climo said defensively.

‘Mate, that’s
exactly where it’s come from;
nowhere.
’

Rumours were
rife in the dropship infantry, as I’m sure they were in any other front line
unit. Rumours, religion and superstition were an everyday aspect to many trooper’s
lives, perhaps because we lived so close to death, and whatever waited beyond.

‘Who’s
Stevo?’ I asked.

Climo jabbed
a thumb towards the senior bods table, where the top boys talked loudly and
laughed with the lancejacks, ‘See the bloke with the air brake ears?’ Stevo, I
saw, was the lad who had asked me what I knew about our deployment when I had
first visited the ablutions on Challenger, which kind of fitted his description
as a gossiper. He did have rather large ears, with a chubby rounded face like
Woody’s but he lacked the build of the larger senior trooper. Stevo was sat beside
Woody, with Brown sat across from him.

‘Near enough
all of the rumours on this ship come from Stevo,’ Climo said, ‘But nobody says
a word, because he’s the platoon senior bod and Woody’s lapdog.’

‘He loves a
bit of gossip, Stevo does,’ Sam agreed, ‘That’s why his ears are so big!’

‘He’s a tube,’ Climo said.

‘Go and tell
him then,’ Sam challenged and Climo shrugged.

I looked back
to the senior table, where Chammy was working everyone into a frenzy of
laughter with his jokes.

I wondered
aloud, ‘How long until you become senior?’

Climo thought
about it, ‘Dunno, just depends I guess.’

Sam frowned,
and for the first time he spoke directly to me and Greggerson, ‘You don’t want
nothing at all to do with them clowns anyway,’ he said bitterly, ‘Bullies, kiss-arses
and idiots who are just waiting for the Union to let them go. That’s all they
are. Being a senior trooper should be all about ability but instead it’s just
time served. It’s ridiculous that some of them have some sort of God-given
right to tell us what to do. Trust me, that’ll all change in a month’s time…..’
He sounded ominous.

Climo
laughed, ‘Chill out, mate!’

Sam shook his
head, his rant was in full flow, ‘True though isn’t it? See them two there,’ he
pointed discreetly at two uninteresting looking lads at the end of the senior
table, ‘Mitch and Harmes - the platoon smart launcher crew. They make out
they’re the masters at firing smart missiles. You just point and fire, point
and fire - it’s not hard - the missiles themselves are smarter than those two.’

‘To be fair
the missile is probably smarter than all of us,’ Climo pointed out, ‘You’ve got
to be pretty stupid to do all this of your own free will.’

‘Speak for
yourself,’ a tall Kentish lad whose name was Davo snapped irritably, ‘I’m not
here coz I’m stupid, I’m here coz I wanna serve my country.’

Woody and the
senior table had finished their meal and passed us as they made their way to
the waste chute.

‘Don’t forget
to do the block jobs,’ Woody said, scowling at me as he went. He appeared to hate
any sign of me settling in, as if it was too fast for his liking.

‘Yes, Sir,’
Davo hissed under his breath.

‘I hate that
bloke.’ Climo said what everybody was thinking. It was the first time he had
openly admitted his disliking of the senior private and I felt some warmth in
knowing that it wasn’t just me.

Since we were
back on the subject of seniority, I decided to find out more about Woody, ‘Is
he the most senior?’

‘Nah, that’s
Stevo,’ Sam said, ‘But nobody takes Stevo seriously. If he wasn’t sucking up to
Woody all the time he’d be nobody. They’re both on their last year, so they’ll
be off next time we swing by Earth.’

‘
If
we
do,’ Climo said, stressing the ‘
If’
.

‘Woody’s a
meathead and a bully,’ Sam went on, ‘That’s about it. Nobody likes him. He likes
to abuse the new blokes because they can’t defend themselves.’

Without
thinking my hand went to touch my bruised eye. It had been a day since Woody
had assaulted me and still it hurt to touch the bone around the socket.

Sam saw me
and smiled, ‘Nasty piece of work, he is, with a wicked punch.’

‘I heard he
got bullied when he first got to battalion, used to hide in the ablutions and
cry,’ Climo said, ‘That’s why he’s like he is.’

‘I heard he
bottled it on the Eden campaign.’

‘What
happened?’ Greggerson asked. We had heard so little about Eden, it was a
subject that nobody who had been there liked to discuss, but the less we heard
of it the more we wanted to know. Eden, meant to be a great terraforming
project that brought nations together in harmony, was a hell.

‘He tried to
get himself out of dropping, didn’t he?’ Climo asked, closing up his horror
box.

Davo
shrugged, ‘Something like that, I heard.’

‘He’s not as
great as he makes out, is he.’ Sam said.

‘Is that why
sergeant James is a bit funny with him?’ I asked, recalling the way his lips
had curled at the sight of Woody arriving late to our parade in the galley.

Sam laughed,
‘Jamo? Jamo hates everyone.’

‘At least
he’s consistent,’ Davo pointed out with a smile.

‘He
definitely hates me,’ Greggerson made a show of touching his belly where Jamo
had punched him.

‘Yeah he does
hate you,’ Sam said, scrapping the legs of his chair as he stood, ‘Get used to
it!’

#

Not more than
half an hour after breakfast we were paraded back in the galley, which had been
converted into a lecture hall with chairs laid out in neat rows to seat the
entire company, plus the jacks, and with a hologram screen set up against the
wall where the food was normally issued.

We then
received an endless series of lectures on New Earth  from the ship’s
intelligence officer - who was a lanky naval lieutenant with pasty white skin -
the perfect stereotype of what we in the infantry knew as ‘spooks’.

Some of the
information he gave us was new to us, and some of it was old, but nevertheless
we all sat and listened and watched images on the hologram intently, not
wanting to miss a thing lest it cost us our lives.