C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) (28 page)

‘That’s One
section moving off now, Two section follow on!’

We picked
ourselves up and ran after our lead section in single file, passing more
waiting troopers and cresting the top of the slope.

On that dark
night Jersey City appeared menacing. As it came into view I saw great black
pillars of smoke that drifted slowly off into the wind. From amongst black
silhouetted buildings small fires burned and sparks showered from the impact of
rail gun shells.

The dark
shadows of troopers dropped away from me in a straight line into the low ground
that separated us from the city. In my image intensified view I could identify
the craters created by Hamburg
.
There were loads of them, and we were
dropping down into them for cover.

The warship’s
bombardment had finished, I noticed. She had completed her task over the city,
but there were many other tasks for her elsewhere, as the remaining brigades of
the division pushed north to force the enemy off of Jersey Island completely.
We just weren’t high enough a priority for her to stay. The thought left a
bitter taste, so I pushed it to the back of my mind as I ran.

‘Stay close,
lads,’ the platoon commander was panting from up front with the lead section,
‘Make sure your boys don’t drop back, I can’t afford a split platoon!’

I wondered
when to expect the first round of incoming; surely the pinkies had noticed the
company coming over the slope? I sped up as I approached the first crater,
eager to get myself out of line of sight from the city. It was a good twenty or
so metres across and five deep, I estimated, smouldering and glowing in places.
I leapt down into the crater, skidding on loose rocks when I landed. I was very
conscious that if I was to fall on my arse it wouldn’t kill me, but the glowing
hot rocks would really hurt, and probably damage my armour.

‘Close up!’
Westy ordered from the far side of the crater. My visor indicated him for me
and I headed straight for him, my boots crunching the churned earth.

I moved right
up behind Brown and then counted Daniels and Brooks as they came in, ‘All here,
Westy.’

‘Okay,
cheers,’ he replied, ‘Boss, this is Westy, that’s my lads in.’

‘Roger,’ the
boss was right up on the edge of the crater, presumably watching two platoon
bound forward into their next piece of cover as quickly as they could. The
ground was flat as a pancake on the approach to the city and Hamburg
didn’t
have enough shells to make us a trench out of craters that ran all the way into
the city. 

‘Close right
up, lads, stay low,’ Westy ordered, ‘Better down here than up there.’

I wasn’t so
sure I agreed, on the one side we were exposed and easy targets in the open
ground, but on the other we were bunched together like sardines in the crater.
One smart missile would have us all going home in boxes.

‘I can’t
believe the pinkies haven’t worked out what we’re doing,’ Brown said to nobody
in particular.

‘Fire support
must have them distracted,’ I said. The Chinese should easily have been able to
spot us, but they had been hacked at by rail guns and vulcan, and then battered
by an orbital barrage. All of their attention was diverted away from us, or at
least that was what we were hoping.

‘We will
bound forward through two platoon to the next bit of cover, One, Two, Three section
acknowledge,’ the boss looked down into the crater and waited for the
commanders to answer up over the intercom.

‘One, roger.’

‘Two.’

‘Three.’

‘Let’s go.’

We scrabbled
up the side of the crater using our rifles like walking sticks so as not to put
our hands on the scorched earth. On Uralis some of our instructors would
probably have had a fit over such a terrible misuse of our rifles, but if one
of us had a negligent discharge and shot himself, he would probably have done
himself a favour anyway.

‘This is pump,’
I heard somebody say as we ran across the open ground toward two platoon’s
crater a hundred metres ahead, and I smiled grimly. The universal phrase of the
English speaking armies was never so much of an understatement as it was on New
Earth!

As if to show
us all that things could always get worse, it began to rain. Droplets of water
bounced off my visor as I ran behind Brown and the rest of the platoon.

‘You’ve got
to be kidding me,’ I cursed at the rain as we went firm in another crater. The
boss put One section up on the forward edge to observe, as our sister platoon
leap-frogged past us.

‘
Wouldn’t
have it any other way
,’ Brown replied sarcastically, quoting a phrase loved
by drop trooper instructors, ‘If it ain’t raining it ain’t training.’

‘Well it ain’t
training is it?’ I retorted, but Brown’s sarcasm cheered me.

We continued
to move across the open ground taking turns to move as platoons, with the third
platoon that made up the company bringing up the rear a bound behind us.
Sometimes we would find natural cover to occupy, like a small hill or river
bank, sometimes we would use the craters, and other times we would be forced to
spread ourselves out in the open and just hope for the best.

As we drew
closer the buildings at the western edge of the city became distinguishable. It
was still half a kilometre away, but nevertheless I thanked God for every ten
metres we covered without drawing enemy fire, the closer we were, the less
ground we would have to cover when it all went noisy.

We were a
good three hundred metres away from the city when it went noisy - and God did
it do just that.

Two platoon
came under contact from only a hundred metres to their front. I heard the crack
of gunfire, and my visor marked the passage of enemy darts with red lines that
streaked between the advancing troopers and through the bodies of others, their
shadowy figures crumpling to the ground. It was hard to tell though who had
been hit and who was simply taking cover.

We were
exposed and in the open, and two platoon, who were to our forward left, were
directly between us and the contact point. Even with our modern targeting
systems the risk of blue-on-blue was too great to risk. We hugged the ground as
Westy cursed over the roar of the rain and gunfire. Little rocks dug into my
ribs and belly where I lay, but I ignored them, my eyes fixed on the
unfortunate platoon as they reacted to the contact.

However
unfortunate they were, they had obviously anticipated and prepared for contact
on the route in as we had, and they reacted fast. As soon as the troopers were
down the wind carried the sound of a section commander giving his fire control
order, his bellowing voice focusing his trooper’s fire where he wanted it and
taking control of the fire fight.

The
battlefield erupted with gunfire as two platoon’s lead section began to
suppress their enemy, but we still could not assist them. Unable to give fire
support we could only watch and listen whilst Westy swore. He shouted at nobody
in particular, not in fear but dismay at the situation we had found ourselves
in, ‘Boss, it’s Westy, I can’t engage from here, we need to move!’

The Welshman’s
voice was urgent and almost an order, but the boss was having none of it. His
response was abrupt and left no room for argument, ‘No, wait.’

To the right
of where me and the rest of the section lay in cover, the boss was watching the
contact unfold intently. He would be listening to the contact report sent by
two platoon’s commander on the company net, a communication channel even higher
than the one I was now able to listen to, and planning how best to assault if
needed. I was beginning to trust our platoon commander, and I was beginning to
realise that he was making decisions that many of us would be too afraid to
make. I sometimes wonder what might have happened had he sent Two section to
Corporal Evans’ aid before his section was wiped out, would the entire platoon
have been destroyed before the gravtank reached us? I think Westy trusted the
boss too, because he stopped cursing after that.

‘There is a
trench and burrow system a hundred metres to our front,’ the boss announced across
the section intercoms, ‘Two platoon are going to affect the…,’ an almighty
explosion cut him short. Sparks flew from the direction of the enemy trenches,
and I could swear I heard the scream of a Chinese soldier. Vulcan raked the
ground in front of us.

‘Two platoon
are going to affect the break in with fire support from the gravtanks,’ he
continued as we were showered in tiny stones blown into the air by the blast,
‘We will then echelon through them and assault onto depth positions.’

I could
already make out two platoon fire and manoeuvring forward toward the trenches,
each trooper zigzagging as he ran before taking cover again and firing.
Grenades and smart missiles were fired into the trenches as the platoon bounded
forward, steeling whatever initiative the enemy had.

The pinkies
had been caught off guard, upon being bombarded from orbit they had retreated
into their burrows for safety and had only just returned to their positions by
the time we were upon them. Instead of giving them a position to fight us from,
they had instead given us some cover to occupy, so long as we could get into
the trench system and clear it.

The break in
was announced by a string of grenades detonating from within the trenches. I
could tell they were hand thrown grenades by the sound they made, much louder
than their rifle launched counterpart. They were shortly followed by rapid
gunfire, as the troopers who had thrown the grenades stormed into the trench
and laid waste to any stunned or wounded enemy they came across.

Unable to
help our comrades in their assault we lay motionless, looking into the dark
city skyline for enemy depth positions, or worse an attack from the flanks.

I looked
across at Brown to the right of where I lay. He gave me a thumbs up, which I
returned. A glance back at Daniels and Brooks, who lay in fire positions to my
left, confirmed that they weren’t dead.

We were in a
terrible position as a platoon, completely exposed in open ground with nowhere
to go. I felt very vulnerable, keeping my body as low as I could get it, however
little good it might do me.

‘I don’t like
this,’ Stevo warned, ‘We should withdraw and come in a different way.’

‘Shut up,
Stevo,’ me and Westy chorused almost comically. I understood and shared his
fear, but his constant whining had become irritating.

It didn’t
take long before the boss was back on the intercom, ‘Right lads, listen in. Two
platoon have made their break in and are now clearing through the trench
system. Fire support has eyes onto the trench system now.’

I was shocked
that the fire support group, what with all their optical equipment and vantage
point, hadn’t had eyes on earlier. We already knew of trench systems and warrens
off to the north and east of the city, but how we hadn’t noticed a trench
system on our route of approach, considering we had orbital top cover and
aircraft operating overhead, was a mystery.
Somebody somewhere had clearly
made a mistake,
I thought.

‘There are
more trenches to our front, so we are going to crawl toward them until we’re either
contacted or we are close enough to assault. One, Two, Three acknowledge.’

‘One.’

‘Two.’

‘Three.’

‘The enemy
are either too distracted by two platoon or simply haven’t seen us. Either way
we will take advantage of the situation. Enforce battlefield discipline, not a
peep from the blokes and they stay flat to the deck, Ev acknowledge.’

‘Roger,’  Sergeant
Evans answered from somewhere at the back of the platoon, ‘You take a casualty,
leave them to me and the reserve to pick up. Don’t throw away momentum if a
bloke goes man down, lads, or you’ll get spanked in the open.’

The platoon
commander gave the last of his instructions, ‘One and Two section will bring up
the front, Three stay back with Ev in reserve. Let’s go.’

We crawled
forward on our bellies in a long extended line made up of two sections side by
side, with ours on the left and Corporal Jones’ section on the right,
maintaining a five metre gap between each man. The move forward was painfully
slow and rapidly became exhausting. My respirator motors whirred as they
battled to keep my visor from fogging up due to my heavy breathing.

After what
felt like an age of crawling, I noticed that directly in front of me the sea of
green was dissected by a dark black line that ran off in either direction. I
knew it was the trench and stopped.

‘It’s right
in front of us,’ I whispered to Westy.

‘Yeah, roger
that, I see it. Go firm lads.’

My heart was
racing, and not just from the exertion of the crawl. The opening to the trench
was as silent and menacing as the gaping tunnel that had led us into the
warrens. A few hundred metres to my left the shouting and gunfire continued as
two platoon continued their clearance, and I knew that soon that would be us. To
my left, a kilometre or so away, the fire support continued their onslaught,
while ahead of me the once beautiful Jersey City burned once more. A friendly
saucer swooped over the city, dropping its payload in a string of explosions.

Like my old
section had done in the farmland ditches, we waited in comparative calm, as if
we sat within the eye of a storm, untouched but surrounded by its destruction.
I clutched my rifle tightly, its weight and bulk was reassuring. I often seemed
to clutch and squeeze my rifle when I was scared, I realised. Like a child does
his teddy, I thought, and chuckled quietly to myself. It was a pretty odd time
to start finding things funny, but then if you didn’t laugh you could only cry
I suppose.

I rolled to
my side quietly and then gently unbuckled a grenade from its pouch around my
waist. I brought it up in front of me, removing the safety pin and priming the
dial to two seconds. I didn’t want too much delay on detonation in case
somebody down inside the trench saw it and threw it back. I glanced to my left
and right, checking the others were in line with me.