LANCEJACK (The Union Series) Read online

  I looked at my tired face in the mirror. I was no longer the young boy I had been two years ago; the horrors of war had seen to that. My eyes had begun to sink, and stubble grew where once there had been none. I couldn’t get away with not shaving any more. I looked old beyond my years.

  Patterson entered the ablutions and joined me at the sinks.

  ‘Morning, Corporal,’ he chirped cheerfully, and I grunted in response.

  I finished shaving and began to dry my face, becoming increasingly aware that Patterson was staring at me. I didn’t know what he wanted, but the unwelcome interest became increasingly irritating.

  ‘What?’ I snapped.

  Patterson stammered, ‘Er… How did you get that, Corporal?’

  I realised that Patterson had noticed the vicious scar that ran along my upper arm. I had been shot by a Chinaman during the invasion, though the dart had only skimmed the flesh. That was the day that most of my platoon had died in an enemy counter attack, including one of my best friends. It was also the day that I had cowered in a ditch waiting to die, whilst my section commander fought the battle alone.

  The scar was a reminder to me of the pain I had felt in my mind afterwards, and how I should never shy away from battle again.

  I frowned, ‘None of your damned business!’

  I left the ablutions, ignoring Patterson’s hurried apology. I didn’t want to be reminded of that day; the nightmares were enough.

  #

  Finding my way to the cookhouse was easy, it was at the very centre of the warren, with all of the platoon lines built away from it like the spokes of a gigantic wheel. I waited in line with a queue of troopers from the other platoons, as loud and boisterous as ever. I listened to them exchanging standard issue insults, but kept to myself.

  Occasionally a trooper would glance at me, sizing up the fresh meat, until his eyes would fall upon my rank and then they would widen in surprise before he looked away.

  I was young for a lancejack, normally a trooper would wait four years or more for the chance to promote - but my battalion had insisted that I be sent to Junior Leaders after only six months service out of training - something that was almost unheard of. It was the medal again, of course. Whether or not my rapid promotion was a blessing or a curse, I supposed I would soon find out.

  ‘Well I thought I had seen everything,’ a voice mocked me from behind, ‘But is this the best the Union has to offer now?’

  I spun around and almost fell over backwards. Westy, my old section commander, was stood there grinning from ear-to-ear! The stocky Welshman laughed as he shook my hand with a vice-like grip.

  I was still in shock, ‘What are you doing here!?’

  ‘I should probably be asking you the same question! Funny old world, ain't it? I saw your name on the warren net and had to see for myself,’ he tapped his wristpad.

  I shook my head in bewilderment. I had never expected to see anybody from my old platoon again on New Earth, not since passing Junior Leaders and volunteering to return with a different battalion. It really was a ‘funny old world.’

  ‘You volunteered for this?’ Westy asked as we collected our breakfast; cereals and bread rolls. My mouth watered, I hadn’t seen fresh food since leaving Uralis.

  I nodded, ‘Yeah,’ I had, and I was still struggling to come to terms with what had driven me to do so, ‘And you?’

  ‘Yeah. Nothing else to do back over there,’ he said with a laugh. But I noticed sadness in his voice. I knew what he meant, because I felt the same. I had nothing back on Earth - my family had no idea what I had been through and couldn’t understand. And my old friends who had escaped conscription were long gone. I belonged on New Earth now, I believed, and I would die there, just as I should have done in the first place.

  I decided to change the subject whilst we found a table to sit and eat, ‘So what’s the battalion like?’

  Westy considered the question, ‘They’re alright, though they haven’t seen action for decades. They missed out on the invasion, so their hierarchy are pretty keen to prove themselves. The blokes get hammered on patrols and ops. If they’re not on rest, they’re on standby.’

  ‘Is there much going on out there?’

  Westy looked down at his food and shrugged, ‘Hard to say. But if Nelly fighters are moving into the area then they’re doing a good job at not being noticed.’

  ‘So they’ve had no contacts, nothing?’

  The Welshman shook his head, ‘Not a thing. The population can get a bit shitty at times, but that’s about it.’

  The 5th battalion had arrived on New Earth almost six months ago to begin a ‘residential’ operational tour that would eventually last for two years. The fact that they had completed a quarter of their tour - without a single shot in anger - told me that there wasn’t really much going on in the Nieuwe Poort province at all.

  ‘It can get pretty dull for the blokes,’ Westy continued as he spooned cereal into his mouth, ‘I try to keep my platoon busy when they’re back here so they don’t end up fighting each other or topping themselves. They get a chance to get away for some rest in the garrison towns nearby every other month too.’

  I raised my eyebrows, ‘Your platoon?’ My eyes flicked to Westy’s rank, he was still a corporal, not senior enough to be sent back to Uralis to train for sergeant.

  Westy smiled, ‘My platoon sergeant injured himself in the gym a few weeks back, so I was stepped up. Get used to it here, you’ll almost never have a complete platoon. Don’t expect to have it cheers-easy as a section 2ic!’

  All troopers in the Union were trained to perform the job of the rank above, so that the death or injury of a commander on the battlefield didn’t result in a fatal loss of momentum in the attack. It also meant that an absent commander could easily be replaced by somebody a rank below him. I had been taught how to lead a section as well as how to be a good section second in command, with the latter being my primary role. But the idea of leading a section still made me nervous. I remembered how badly Sergeant Evans and Westy had taken the loss of their men. If somebody died, a section commander could blame others, but ultimately the responsibility was on him. The burden must have been overwhelming.

  Sensing my worry, Westy leant across the table and patted my shoulder, ‘Don’t worry, lad. You’ll be alright.’

  I took my first spoonful of cereal, ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Which platoon are you, anyway?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Cool,’ he nodded his approval, ‘They’re mostly alright. The boss is a bit of a belter, though, I hear. He’s a miserable bloke, difficult to get on with.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, he’s the senior of the three platoon commanders and thinks he’s something special. Not a drama really when he has his platoon sergeant to keep the reins on him, but he’s away, same as mine. A guy called Johnno is in his place. He’s a good bloke, but I think he struggles with your boss sometimes. I think Mr Moore winds the screws up on the ground a bit, he’s rude and arrogant. To be fair, though, he knows his job.’

  A full ‘screw’ corporal could give the boss advice, but it normally took the platoon sergeant with his years of experience and often fierce temper to steer an overzealous or misguided officer in the right direction. I could imagine the NCOs having a nightmare trying to reign him in with their platoon sergeant absent. He certainly hadn’t come across as an easy man to work with.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I said sarcastically, and Westy laughed.

  I noticed the crow troopers who had arrived with me yesterday standing sheepishly in amongst the queue for their food, Patterson among them. A group of senior troopers were quite clearly talking about them further along the queue, stealing malicious glances back in their direction. I felt sorry for them, knowing that whether I was around to stop it or not, their introduction to life within a dropship infantry company would be harsh.

  Westy followed my gaze, ‘Those your boys?’

  I sighed, ‘One of them is, yeah. I s
hould probably make sure he’s alright.’

  Westy nodded and tapped his wristpad, ‘Stay in touch mate. We’ll do something later.’

  ‘Roger,’ I agreed. I scraped my chair back and made my way through the tables toward the new troopers. Patterson noticed my approach and his eyes widened as though I was the bearer of terrible news.

  ‘Alright, lads, found the place okay?’ They nodded, ‘Good. Don’t forget, once you’ve eaten, wait in your rooms until we get grabbed. Don’t go anywhere else.’

  Another nod. Were they mute?

  ‘Right, I’ll catch you back at the accommodation.’

  Just as I turned a voice called out from behind, and this time it wasn’t somebody I knew, ‘Hey! Don’t go walking round here like you’re the boy, crowbag!’

  I remembered the words of my JL instructor as I turned to face the gang of senior troopers who had been eyeing up the fresh meat. ‘Upon your arrival to your relevant companies, you will almost certainly at some stage receive a challenge to your position as a leader of men. Stamp it out. Hard.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said darkly, ‘Do I fucking know you?’

  The troopers’ eyes widened as they realised that the young ‘crow’ was in fact a lance corporal, ‘Sorry, Corporal,’ they chorused instantly afterwards.

  ‘That’s better,’ I said, calming down, ‘Think before you speak next time, lads.’

  I was glad that they had backed down, though I didn’t want to show it. It wouldn’t have looked good if I had started throwing punches with random troopers on my first day in the battalion.

  I made my exit, smiling to myself as I left the cookhouse. Andy Moralee, the little boy who had been afraid of his own shadow, was no more. I was Lance Corporal Moralee, and I wasn’t taking shit from anyone.

  2

  Situation Enemy Forces

  A great deal had changed on New Earth. When I left the planet two years ago it had been ravaged by war and plagued by pockets of Chinese resistance. The infrastructure had been in ruins and the economy non-existent. The people were unfriendly and blamed us as much as the Chinese for their suffering, but they had relied upon the Union to keep them alive with rations, water and shelter.

  The people of New Earth were tough. They had lived for centuries on a planet where the atmosphere could kill a man breathing unaided in under a minute. They were well-educated, with a strong work ethic. Indeed New Earth was a leader in the manufacture of high-tech electronic equipment and nanotechnology, which was why the Union, Russia and China valued it so highly.

  It hadn’t taken them long to get back onto their feet. Within those two years the planet infrastructure had been rebuilt, maglev railways reconnected, shuttle ports resurfaced, farmland re-cultivated and power restored. Cities like Jersey Island, which had been bombarded by battleships in orbit and fought for house-by-house, had been returned to their former glory.

  I gaped in awe as I soared across the virtual New Earth landscape from the comfort of the warren simulators. I flew past cities built entirely of marble-plated concrete and others that glittered with a million panels of glass. Endless rows of wind turbines turned lazily upon horizons chequered green by farmland; a colour that dazzled the eye as it contrasted against the red surface, as did the brilliant turquoise sky.

  New Earth was dead. Nothing could survive the poisonous atmosphere outside the domes, and even crops were contained within rows upon rows of airtight greenhouses. Some people had said that New Earth could be terraformed and turned into a green world like Earth or Eden, but the idea had long been discarded as an impossible dream. The planet was said to be completely hostile to all forms of life. Yet still it was beautiful.

  ‘Wow,’ one of the new troopers exclaimed, though I couldn’t see him. To me it was as though I were flying on my own in the sky, with the voices of the others in my head.

  ‘Mad, right?’ Another disembodied voice agreed. I recognised it as that of the conscripted intelligence sergeant who had taken us into the simulators that morning for our guided tour, ‘There are a total of 79 provinces on the surface of New Earth, and each one is different to look at. For instance Jersey Island favours traditional European buildings built out of local stone beneath glass domes, whereas the Nieuwe Poort province - where you will mostly be operating - has a real thing for marble plated concrete.’

  As we soared into the city of Nieuwe Poort I saw straight away that it was nothing like Jersey Island. It looked as though it had been designed and built by a single architect, an architect with a love for classical Roman buildings. Vast marble plated pillars and massive white arches held glass domes and ceilings high above our heads, to protect the inhabitants from the toxic New Earth atmosphere. The buildings themselves were grand, with tens of steps running up to entranceways large enough to fit a dropship. We sped along streets paved in an assortment of patterns and colours, often with maglev rails running through their middle. Sculptures and flower arrangements decorated the streets in an explosion of colour that I had never seen on the red planet before. At the city’s centre immense skyscrapers towered high into the sky, one of which dwarfed the others and tapered to a needle sharp tip, looking down upon the city like the turret of some massive castle.

  Finally we soared high into the sky to look back down upon the province from just below the clouds. From our vantage point we could see how thinly spread the Union forces were. Regimental headquarters were located in a town called Archer’s Post, which was thirty kilometres from the provincial capital. The nearest company base to Lash was well over a hundred kilometres away, and even the conscript forces were few and far between. A planet like New Earth was far too massive for one army to hold onto securely, no matter how large it was.

  ‘Nieuwe Poort looks pretty,’ the sergeant said, ‘But don’t let it fool you. The provincial capital is a major manufacturer of military equipment. The prettiest buildings are often factories that extend deep underground. Over a quarter of all the inhabitants are in some way connected to the defence industry, and it is cities like this that are the reason behind the recent conflict between us and China.’

  New Earth had been transformed over the years into an enormous factory, with the sole purpose of producing weapons of war. The training grounds of Uralis produced the troops for the Union, but New Earth built the kit - from the wafer-thin wristpads (or datapads) we wore on our wrists - to the component parts of the warships that looked down upon us from orbit. The red planet was considered vital to any future military campaign against the enemies of the Union, and Europe had many enemies, some of whom had empires that included tens of worlds across the known galaxy. War was never far away in the colonial era.

  ‘NELA sits in the perfect environment to wage an insurgency,’ the sergeant explained, ‘They have access to trillions of euros worth of military hardware - so long as they can steal it - and they live on one of the most technologically advanced planets in the known galaxy. If you thought we were hot on electronic warfare, you need to see these boys at work.’

  ‘They can hack into things?’ I asked.

  ‘Everything and anything. The planetary network is so advanced and dynamic that we simply can’t fully police it. They can do anything from switching off security cameras and cutting communications, right through to knocking our unmanned aircraft out of the sky. Apparently the Russians even had an attempt made at hacking into one of their orbital weapons platforms.’

  One of the new troopers gasped quietly, ‘Shit the bed!’

  I agreed with the sentiment, that was quite a dangerous situation. An orbital weapons platform was a satellite with enough firepower to flatten several grid squares with a single salvo of depleted uranium. If NELA had succeeded, they would have given the Russians a terrible headache.

  ‘Obviously they failed,’ he reassured us, ‘The Union Navy is impossible to hack, even with the most advanced supercomputers. Simply trying is impressive though.’

  After our tour, we were led into another briefing room where a
drops intelligence officer gave us an insight into the history of the escalating insurgency situation on New Earth.

  ‘It would seem that the increasing hostility between China, the Union and its Russian allies has caused the civilian population to become increasingly unfriendly toward ‘Earthlings’.’ the officer explained.

  One of the recruits must have smiled at the word, because the officer smiled back grimly, ‘You may find the term amusing, but on New Earth, that is what we are. The dangerous situation we find ourselves in is that the people of New Earth no longer think in terms of Chinese or European or Russian. To them it is simply Earthling, or New Earther. Us and them.

  Upon our recapture of the planet we had discovered evidence of an insurgency that had been fought against the Chinese by a group known as the New Earth Liberation Army. But what alarmed us was that this group had been fighting in both the Union and Chinese provinces, which meant that Chinese nationals were fighting against their own country. NELA has not stopped its campaign, if anything it has intensified its efforts, using the fallout of the war to generate support from the population.

  NELA is not a Chinese terrorist organisation, nor is it European. It is a terrorist organisation determined to bring about independence to New Earth using any means necessary. The organisation has no global command structure, instead it is composed of smaller regional groups that co-operate and co-ordinate their actions toward a common goal. Rather than an army like the Chinese, NELA has no head that we can simply cut off. It is about an idea, rather than a fixed global strategy, and you must remember that these people believe in their cause so passionately that many are prepared to throw their lives away for it. The rebels are surprisingly well-equipped, with an impressive electronic warfare capability, but their greatest strength and their greatest weakness is public support. With the locals supporting their cause, NELA fighters can move undetected and have unlimited resources. Without that support, however, they are forced into hiding. This is a new war, gentlemen. It is a war for the hearts and minds of the people of New Earth.’