C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (26 page)

The enormous
sergeant major took a break from his rant to lift his respirator and spit, ‘Also,
respirator
canisters will all be exchanged,
including your spare. They have all been exposed to a shit load of dust, which
can clog the filters. If you don’t exchange your canister and you go man-down,
I’ll kick the sense out of you before you die. Happy on that?’

We nodded.

‘Lads
remember these tunnels aren’t completely safe, and we will be moving fast.
Stick close together as we patrol to the surface and don’t lose eyes on the man
in front. If you find yourself separated go firm and activate your distress
beacon. Any questions? No? Good. Ev?’

‘Sir,’ our
platoon sergeant responded.

‘Mate, let’s
have a chat. We have found something that belongs to you.’

The three
platoon sergeants exchanged puzzled glances and then Sergeant Evans followed
the CSM away into the gloom beyond the light sticks scattered about the warehouse.

The OC
summarized his orders and asked for the platoon commanders to close in to him
for a brief. The boss turned to the remainder of our NCOs, ‘Commanders, let’s
get the blokes squared away, I’ll be back with you in five. Be ready to move
five minutes after that.’

The platoon
busied itself packing away kit and preparing for the replenishment, blokes
chugged at their water packs and force fed themselves their horror bags under
the watchful eye of the remaining NCOs.

When Sergeant
Evans returned to us, his face gave no indication of what he had been told.

‘What’s the
score, Ev?’ Westy asked.

‘Stevo,’ the platoon
sergeant said flatly, ‘They’ve found him on the surface.’

‘Christ,’ I exclaimed,
forgetting myself, ‘how did he get up there?’

Sergeant Evans
looked irritated at the interruption and I blushed beneath my respirator, ‘I
don’t know. But I want to find out.’

The company
marched out of the tunnels at a rapid pace. There was no longer the need to
keep quiet or minimise chatter, and no need not to bunch up as we moved. We
kept close together so not to lose each other in the maze of smaller tunnels
and made our way back to the surface.

We were
replenished along a main access tunnel that had been used to evacuate
casualties. I could tell it had been used for the injured because it was
scattered with medical waste, blood soaked bandages and packaging. Clearly a
lot of casualties had been through there, I assumed an aid post was probably
close to the surface.

Our daysacks
were opened for us by a line of conscripts and water poured straight into our
water reservoirs using stacks of plastic bottles. Ration packs were
unceremoniously chucked into our hands and our respirator canisters ripped out
and replaced with new ones. Cool air breezing down from the surface kissed at
our necks as we marched onward, up the tunnel toward the surface and away from
the wretched warrens that had cost so many of our comrade’s lives.

Me and Brown
didn’t see it coming, let alone Stevo, but Westy saw him where he stood, waiting
at the entrance to the warren with the company sergeant major beside him. It
was dark outside and I wouldn’t have known it was him if it wasn’t for my visor
display identifying him for me.

‘You!’ Westy
jabbed a finger at him.

Stevo
started, ‘Westy I…,’

The Welshman
launched at him, throwing a powerful punch that connected with his respirator
mouth piece and sent him sprawling to the ground. Everyone, even the sergeant
major stepped back in surprise as Stevo desperately tried to correct the broken
seal to his respirator.

‘You fucking
coward!’ Westy gripped Stevo by the collar and lifted him, his biceps bulging
through the remaining material of his sleeves as he brought the stunned trooper
close to his face.

‘You fucking
ran, don’t you dare fucking lie to me! You fucking ran and you left us to die!’

‘That’s
enough, Corporal,’ the sergeant major warned, but Westy ignored him, shaking
Stevo furiously like a child would shake a toy.

‘Jimmy died
because of you! You left him to die, you bastard!’ His voice was breaking.

Gingerly I
stepped closer and placed a hand on my section commander’s shoulder, ‘Westy,
come on mate, it’s not worth it.’

As if
suddenly broken from a spell, Westy seemed to become conscious of us all
watching him, as well as the disapproving gaze of the sergeant major. He let go
of Stevo like his hands had been burnt, allowing the trooper to collapse to the
ground in a crumpled heap clutching at his throat.

‘They’re all
dead. All of them,’ Westy dropped to his knees and sobbed.

The platoon
began to move off again into the night, as we stared at our section commander in
disbelief.

I had never
had a chance to get to know Westy properly before I was thrust into his section
by the sudden and brutal destruction of my own. The men he had commanded and
worked with loved him because he loved them back in equal measure. That was his
greatest strength, and it seemed, his greatest weakness. I always saw our
section commanders to be invincible, gods amongst men. But finally I saw Westy
for what he really was, a scared young man who had lost all of his friends.

‘Westy,
what’s going on, mate?’ Sergeant Evans emerged from the dark. He was following
up the rear of the platoon, in case anybody became separated.

Westy caught
his sobs and sniffed, ‘Nothing.’

Sergeant Evans
knew that Westy was lying, ‘Well get up, then, mate. We haven’t got the time.’

Westy picked
himself up, ‘Prepare to move, boys.’

We were still
in shock, and murmured the command back to nobody in particular as a natural
reflex. Brown helped Stevo up from the ground as we prepared to patrol off again,
picking up the rear of the platoon.

‘I’ll speak
to you later, Stevo,’ Sergeant Evans said darkly, then, to the sergeant major,
‘Last man, one platoon.’

‘Good, thank
you Sergeant,’ the sergeant major replied, then turned to Westy. He spoke three
words that carried with them the experience of a man who had seen it all
before, ‘Carry on, Corporal.’

Westy
straightened, ‘Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir.’

‘You don’t
need to be sorry, son, get your men moving.’

‘You’ve got
two new blokes,’ Sergeant Evans said, pointing toward two troopers who waited
amongst the company rendezvous. My visor identified them as Brooks and Daniels,
two troopers whose sections hadn’t taken casualties and so had men to spare.
The company was forming into lines so that it could be re-organised for battle.
Troopers chatted quietly in the dark while they waited, and others stared
blankly into space, perhaps reliving some moment within the depths of the
warrens. Somewhere on the horizon something big was burning and the glow
flickered against the clouds.

Westy tapped
the details of the two new attachments into his wristpad,
‘That puts me up to six,’ he said flatly.

Sergeant
Evans nodded, ‘I also need you to nominate a new 2ic, mate, the ammo’s here and
I’ll need help to sort it.’

Brown was the
only obvious choice for Westy to take. He certainly couldn’t chose Stevo to be
his 2ic, who had run from the Chinese in the tunnels, not stopping until he was
collared trying to escape through one of the warrens many openings to the
surface. He couldn’t choose Brooks or Daniels, who he didn’t even know and who
I suspected weren’t senior to Brown anyway.

‘Moralee,’
Westy pointed to me, and my jaw dropped. Instantly I looked across to Brown,
expecting him to explode, but the darkness hid his expression beneath his
visor, and he said nothing.

I made to
protest, but was abruptly cut short by Sergeant Evans, ‘Come on, then, Moralee.
Let’s get your ammo.’

I followed
him gloomily into the centre of the rendezvous, where the CSM and his work
party were unloading ammunition from a buggy and placing it into three
distinctive piles, one for each platoon. Troopers scurried about the piles
taking ammo away and returning the empty crates under the supervision of their
platoon sergeants.

‘Westy will
keep a close eye on you,’ Sergeant Evans said, counting out the crates and
separating the different ammunition types, ‘Any dramas or questions, you ask
him, or me.’

‘Yes, Sergeant,’
I said, withering under his gaze. He hated me, and probably wondered why on
earth Westy had chosen me to be his 2ic. I was wondering the same thing.

The tall
platoon sergeant held up two fingers, ‘Two things I want you to be all over,
ammunition and casualties,’ he stressed each word, ‘Make sure you’re constantly
checking and updating your ammo state so I have a constant feed. Ensure that
casualties are reported up the chain instantly, the more information you get up
the better. Don’t rely on the casualty information passed up automatically by
their wristpads, physically check.’

‘Yes, Sergeant,’
I said grimly.

He dropped
several crates at my feet, ‘That’s your lot. There’s a salvaged mammoth on the
buggy too, so you’ll have two guns again.’ He paused, remembering something,
and took a commander’s wristpad out from his daysack, ‘I almost forgot, you’ll
need this.’

I took the
wristpad and carefully turned it over in my hands as if I had never seen one
before. It was the same as the one that I wore, but had many other functions
tailored specifically to commanders. It was Sam’s, and Chammy’s before that.

‘Upload me
your ammo state when you know it,’ he said, and he was gone, in search of the
other two section 2ics.

I realised
that Brown was behind me, watching me blankly. I wasn’t sure if I should expect
to fight, and when Brown made no move I threw up my arms, ‘Why me?’

Brown
shrugged, ‘Why not you?’

‘I’m a
crow
!’
I hissed, ‘Nobody’s been in as short a time as me!’ I pointed a finger at
Stevo, who was sat on his daysack staring at the ground, ‘Stevo’s senior to me
by four years!’

‘He’s also a
coward,’ Brown retorted, ‘God only knows what he did to get Jimmy killed.’

‘You’re
senior to me.’

Brown sighed,
‘By what, a few months?’

‘But you’re
still senior,’ I insisted, ‘Who’s gonna do what I tell them? I’m no good.’

‘What about
what happened in the tunnels?’

‘What?’

‘When we got
hit and you charged the pinkies? Then when you lead that attack in the hanger?
Have you not seen how the lads look at you now?’

I shook my
head, not sure where Brown was going with it.

‘They’re in
awe of you. They’re saying that the darts parted around you like you were being
protected by God or something. They say you charged the pinkies with so much
rage that they broke and run.’

I sneered, ‘That’s
a load of shit and you know it. What about what happened on Challenger, doesn’t
that bother you? What about Woody?’

Brown laughed
harshly, ‘Who cares about Woody, anymore? What happened on Challenger is
history. We’re in a war zone, Moralee.’

‘I thought
you wanted to climb up the ranks. Wasn’t that what being mates with Woody was
all about?’ I almost flinched, expecting for Brown to lash out.

Brown simply
sighed, ‘Maybe. Look, I’m a follower, not a leader,’ Brown said, ‘And God knows
my moral compass leads me off course. Maybe you aren’t the best choice for 2ic,
but if it’s out of the five of us it has to be you.’

Defeated, I
sighed, ‘Fuck.’

Brown
grinned, his teeth just visible in the dark, ‘Yeah.’

‘Well,’ I
paused, thinking, ‘Give me a hand with the ammo?’ I half expected him to walk
off.

‘No problem,’
he said, and he began to strip open the crates that lay at our feet, ‘You know
I heard the boss was talking about writing you and Sam up? You may get medals
for that charge you did.’

This time it
was me who laughed harshly, ‘Who cares about medals? We’ll be lucky if we get
off this rock, and I certainly don’t deserve any medals.’

‘Does anybody
deserve a medal for this war? Better you than someone else.’

We worked for
at least an hour, re-distributing ammunition and equipment. The replacement
mammoth gun was given to Brooks, with Brown still carrying the other, but there
was no grenade launcher other than the one carried by Westy. Sam had the other,
but through the chaos he had been evacuated with it and there was little chance
or time for us to get it back.

I had a
chance to see a medic for my arm, which was just as well as he told me I was
risking blood poisoning from not cleaning it properly.

‘You’ve got to
clean the clotting agent out or it won’t heal,’ the medic told me sternly. I
winced as he cleaned out the wound with a white gloved hand, ‘We’ve got enough
to deal with without you lot not looking after yourselves.’

‘I was kind
of busy,’ I replied curtly, but the medic only laughed.

‘Haven’t we
all, mate, haven’t we all.’

I was about
to tell him where to go, until I noticed the blood that coated his combats.

‘What’s it
like in the aid post?’ I asked, wondering what conditions my wounded comrades
had to endure. I hoped that Peters had survived, along with Greggerson and Sam.
Supposedly the aid post, once fully established, was as good as any medical
facility on our ships, since it remained too dangerous to attempt to leave the
atmosphere with casualties. If troopers knew they would be cared for if they
were injured, they would fight better, and so medical treatment was a high
priority.

The medic
shook his head as he finished packing the gouge in my arm and began to wrap it
with a bandage, ‘I don’t know, mate. I’m a combat medic, I hand the casualties
over before I get anywhere near that far back.’

‘Oh.’

The medic
smiled, ‘You’re new, right?’

‘Yeah,’
was
it that obvious?