C.R.O.W. (The Union Series) Read online

  I slung the bag over my shoulder. It could be no heavier than 10 kilos, the maximum permissible weight a passenger could bring aboard a military shuttle. It had been weighed to the milligram, and searched thoroughly for bacteria somehow smuggled accidentally from Earth - or worse – contraband goods. Heaven forbid I be in possession of beer or pornography before I go to my death, and how I would have gotten it to Uralis anyway was beyond me!

  I carried very little in my sausage bag, most of the kit and equipment I had used in training had been taken off of me on Uralis before I left. A new set of equipment would be issued to me aboard Challenger, equipment more specific to where we were going. I travelled light, as was the norm in the Union military. To be exact, I carried 8.4529 kilograms. That was the weight of everything I owned, minus the clothes I wore on my back.

  ‘Nervous?’ Peters, a London lad who had been in my section in training, picked up his own sausage bag from where it had sat next to mine.

  ‘Nah,’ I lied, ‘Can’t be any worse than Uralis!’

  Peters raised an eyebrow and chuckled, ‘I sure hope you’re right, man,’ he patted my arm, ‘Hopefully we end up in the same platoon.’

  I nodded, and I hoped beyond hope he was right. Peters was the only lad from my training section who had been sent to Challenger, the others had all been sent elsewhere. There was nobody else on the shuttle I knew or got on with quite like Peters. Even though we were from different cities, him from London and me from Pompey, we had similar personalities, likes and dislikes, and so were mates since the very beginning. Having a good friend nearby to talk to, I knew, would really make a difference on board Challenger.

  ‘You think anyone’s up?’

  I shook my head, ‘I doubt it, reveille’s probably at six I would have thought.’

  ‘Yeah, fair one. I wouldn’t wanna get up early to check out a bunch of new guys anyway. Hopefully we get an hour’s extra head down.’

  Without warning the crew compartment’s airlock door slid open silently, revealing the airlock that led into Challenger. Within the two stood a figure dressed in a suit, its helmet tucked under its arm. For a second I blinked at the figure, who was bathed in blinding white light.

  After couple of seconds it spoke irritably, ‘Come on then, you lizards, let’s go!’

  That was the first greeting I had on board Challenger. Was I ever in for a treat, I thought as one by one we filed through the airlock, past the rather grumpy looking airlock technician. I couldn’t quite figure out what her problem was - it was her job to maintain, check and cycle the airlock after all - but then I wasn’t in a position to say anything.

  Challenger’s lock room wasn’t the enormous cathedral sized room I had entered on board the Fantasque, the enormous troopship that had taken me and hundreds of other recruits from Earth to Uralis, and neither was it tiny or cramped, in fact it wasn’t really much at all. Apart from a few suits hanging from hooks along the walls, the room was completely bare and not very interesting to look at. If I could describe my first impression aboard Challenger with a single expression, it would have to be ‘anti-climax’. Or as most troopers would say – ‘pump’. We formed up into three ranks with hands clasped behind our backs, sausage bags at our feet, which were shoulder width apart in the correct position of ‘at ease’. Rarely had we practiced any form of drill on Uralis, most of that was done on Earth during basic training, but old habits never die, and we were eager to please our new unit.

  The technician emerged from the lock, having checked that nobody had been left behind. Seemingly unimpressed by our smart parade ground formation, she counted us with an outstretched finger. The Navy loved to count things, I had learnt. I presumed she was counting us in case somebody had been left behind, which I would have thought would have been highly unlikely. Either that or she just wanted to appear more important than she really was, which I thought was probably more likely.

  ‘Just waiting for your lot to come get you,’ she finally said, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder, ‘I just work the lock.’

  We said nothing, unsure of the rank of the woman addressing us. We didn’t fight in vacuum, that was what the marines were for, and so we didn’t work closely with navy personnel, they were simply our means of getting to where we were going.

  I listened to the new sounds of the ship, the rush of air being circulated through her network of ventilation ducts and the faint hum of powerful and exotic machinery deep within her bowels, echoing through the metal superstructure that surrounded us. Even though I had never seen how awesome a ship like Challenger was from the outside with my own eyes, I could imagine from images I had seen that she was an incredible thing to behold, a glorious machine half a kilometre long, her harsh angular lines and bristling weaponry revealing her true purpose as a machine of war with the ability to project the Union’s power across the cosmos.

  We waited for five minutes, fidgeting awkwardly while the technician busied herself resealing the lock, until finally somebody came to collect us.

  The grey haired Lance Corporal held up a tablet and read our names aloud, ‘Jones!’

  ‘Here, Corporal.’

  ‘Rai!’

  ‘Here, Corporal.’ He continued down the list of fifteen names. Satisfied, the Lance Corporal lowered the tablet and returned it to his pocket. I assumed he must be a store man or something; he was too old to be fighting within the sections. The aging process could be slowed or almost stopped in our day and age, but we certainly weren’t rich enough or worth enough in the eyes of the Union to receive treatments worth more than our own equipment. If troopers didn’t promote fast enough in the dropship infantry, they were either honourably discharged (which is basically the same as being dishonourably discharged!) or found themselves in a simple job that nobody else wanted - if they even lived that long of course.

  I read the Lance Corporal’s name badge sewn onto his fatigues shirt, it read ‘Stokes’.

  Lance Corporal Stokes sighed deeply and rubbed one eye, ‘Right then, fellas. It’s four in the morning, I’m tired and you’re tired, so we’ll get this done quick. You will be split equally into the three platoons. When I take you to your rooms get your heads down, reveille is at 0600 hours. Happy?’

  We nodded, and chorused, ‘Corporal.’

  ‘Good, coz I want to get back to bed. Follow me.’

  We followed Stokes through a bulkhead door and into the ship. It slid open and closed behind us with a deceptively quiet hiss. We were told that in the event of catastrophic decompression the doors were designed to close so fast and with so much power that they could crush a man’s body beneath them and still achieve a perfect seal. I wouldn’t want to find out if that was true.

  We walked along a wide corridor, lined with even more closed bulkhead doors. Every ten or so metres another door would slide open, and behind us another would close automatically. Decompression could cause the entire ship to ‘blow out’ in less than a few seconds, I had been told. To prevent this from happening, the ship was divided by hundreds of bulkhead doors. The philosophy was - better to lose a section of the ship and a few good men - than have the entire ship blow out.

  ‘This is the main access corridor,’ Stokes explained as we walked, his voice echoing against the metal, ‘It runs the full length of the ship from the bridge to the lock room, where we just came from. You can pretty much find whatever you need along here, and it keeps you away from headquarters, they tend to use their own access corridor. Stay clear of headquarters unless you’re specifically told otherwise.’

  Somewhere below us a line of gravity generators created an Earth-like gravitational field along the length of the ship, and we lived in a cylindrical world that surrounded them. There were several access corridors like the one we walked along, each running from aft to stern. What I found really weird were the circumference corridors. There were ten in total, each equally spaced along the ship like the ribcage of a gigantic monster. Each one was a good three hundred metres long, and curved around
the ship to end where it began. The first time I walked around one I almost wanted to vomit, the sense of vertigo it gave me was overwhelming what with the horizon only a few tens of metres away. I found the best way to overcome it was to imagine as I walked or ran that I was rotating the massive cylindrical world with my feet, rather than going around it upside down or whatever. It was much easier to imagine that you were always up, and everything else was below you, rather than the other way round.

  The back end of the ship contained stores, engine rooms, life support and everything that kept us alive and our ship functioning. To the bow was the bridge, headquarters, gunnery rooms and, of course, the dropship hangars. She carried a total of four gravtanks and sixteen dropships, four for each platoon and then a remaining four for headquarters.

  The accommodation section was located amidships around two circumference corridors. Stokes explained that the stern section contained the three platoons and that we needn’t ever stray into the forward sections.

  ‘The fore accommodation section is for the ship’s crew, jacks and officers,’ he warned, ‘Stay well clear or you’ll end up in a world of pain. Each platoon bulkhead is clearly marked, so you have no excuses for getting lost.’

  We stopped outside one such platoon bulkhead half way around the circumference corridor. Its sign read ‘One Platoon’ in large black stencilling.

  Stokes harrumphed, the corner of his mouth turning up into a smirk, ‘Good luck, if you’re in one platoon. The platoon sergeant is, shall we say… excitable?’

  The huddle of troopers said nothing, staring back with blank expressions.

  ‘Right,’ Stokes drew out his tablet and examined it, ‘Berezynsky. Gilbert. Greggerson. Moralee. Kane. You’re one platoon.’

  My heart sank. I was to be separated from Peters.

  ‘Walk into the accommodation, you will find a long corridor with rooms either side. Your names are marked on the doors and you will clearly see which bunk is yours, because nobody will be sleeping in it. Comprende? Any questions that can’t wait for the morning?’

  ‘Um, Corporal?’ Greggerson asked meekly. He was a timid lad from Kent, but with a slight build and a voice as quiet as a mouse. I never fully understood how he managed to get through training, but then sometimes I wonder how I made it.

  Stokes was clearly tired, and he shot Greggerson an angry look, ‘What?’

  ‘Where’s the ablutions?’

  Stokes frowned at Greggerson for a second, before shaking his head, ‘Right, we’re off. Reveille zero-six.’

  The huddle of recruits disappeared over the horizon, leaving us stood outside the door to our new accommodation, and our new platoon. Like it or lump it, we would serve - and possibly die - with the men through that door.

  ‘Well I’m not standing out here like a mug,’ Gilbert, a country lad and the largest of all of us stepped toward the bulkhead and it opened. We followed cautiously.

  Initially the platoon lines were pitch black before a movement sensor spotted us and the neon lights that lined the ceiling flickered on, revealing our new home. Dark red camouflage netting hung from the walls and ceiling in huge sheets, as a form of decoration to break up the boring grey of the metallic walls. We were in a corridor that stretched for twenty metres until it came to a T-Junction, lined with bulkhead doors.

  I studied images that adorned the walls as I walked up the corridor, at the same time looking for my own room. Some were just of young lads out drinking in bars and nightclubs on Earth, but others were taken of alien worlds visited by Challenger. I recognised a few shots of Uralis, presumably taken during some form of exercise in preparation for New Earth. Since Uralis was a dead planet, and similar to New Earth, it was ideal for use in preparing the Union forces for the invasion that nobody spoke of too loudly, but everybody knew was coming.

  I also recognised images of a green world; Eden. Its jagged, rocky surface was covered in the dark green lichen that typified the planet, a world more like Earth, rather oddly, than New Earth, in that it was able to support basic plant life without artificial assistance. It was believed that, after several hundred years of terraforming, unlike all of the other dead rocks, Eden was fully capable of supporting an Earth-like ecosystem. It was to be a Utopia. Our instructors in Fort Abu Naji had all been there but not one would talk about what it had been like for them. In a war between three separate Colonial powers, Eden belonged now solely to the Union, but at what cost I couldn’t say.

  I realised that whilst I had been staring at the walls the other lads had all disappeared into their rooms. I rounded the corner of the T-junction, eventually finding my room at the far end of the left hand corridor. The names of the occupants were stencilled onto the bulkhead with black spray paint: Woody, Climpson, Brown and me. The paint for my name was still wet.

  I entered the room and thankfully the lights didn’t come on automatically. Waking up my new roommates at four in the morning by turning all the lights on wasn’t the best way to introduce myself. I stepped into the room, allowing the bulkhead to close automatically behind me and shut out the light from the corridor. From within the room somebody snorted and stirred, but then settled and appeared to drift back into a deep sleep. I used the backlight of my wristpad to find my bunk and was relieved to see the free bed was at the bottom - less chance of disturbing the bloke on top. I slipped quietly out of my fatigues and into the ready-made bed.

  I must have laid there for a good couple of minutes; taking in the sounds of heavy breathing from the room’s three other occupants. We were tightly packed into a room probably better suited for two men rather than four. I listened to the sound of an air vent gently blowing fresh air into the room and felt the cool breeze against my face. If I closed my eyes I could imagine it was the wind through an open window, and that I wasn’t on a warship in another solar system potentially going to war, but lying in bed at home without a care in the world. I slept.

  3: Reveille

  I woke with a start to a screaming alarm, wrenched from sweet dreams of life back in Portsmouth with my family and dropped back into reality with a crash. It was the alarm calling the ship to reveille. I checked my wristpad - six on the dot. I was exhausted as I had barely slept in twenty-four hours.

  Above me my bunkmate groaned loudly and swore, the bedsprings protesting under his weight as he rolled himself over in response to the noise.

  I fought against my body’s urge to do the same, I couldn’t allow myself to appear lazy to my new roommates. I twisted out of the bed and rubbed my eyes with the backs of my hands, my bare feet cold against the metal floor. I felt around in the dark for my sausage bag, slid it over and began digging out my wash kit.

  As I slipped on my sandals the bulkhead door slid open, revealing a muscular figure wrapped in a towel and covered in tattoos. He slapped a button on the wall beside the door, switching on the room lights. I half-closed my eyes against the blinding neon light.

  ‘Get up, lads, let’s go!’ He ordered with authority.

  ‘Yeah, we’re moving,’ whoever slept above me answered unconvincingly. There was movement beneath the covers of the other two bunks.

  The tattooed man caught my eye briefly but said nothing. He disappeared from the open bulkhead and it promptly closed behind him.

  I wrapped my towel around my waist and made my way toward the door.

  ‘Ah, hello,’ a voice called from behind, causing me to pause. I looked back to the top of my bunk, where a round face was peering from beneath the covers.

  ‘It’s rude not to say hello when you meet people for the first time,’ he said when I didn’t respond.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t want to disturb you.’

  The face smiled, ‘That’s okay then. I’m John Wood. People here call me Woody. What’s your name?’

  ‘Andy Moralee.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Andy Moralee,’ Woody extended an open hand from beneath his bed covers and gestured for me to shake it. I noticed his arms were even more muscular than those o
f the man who had come to the door to wake us, ‘I won’t bite, mate!’

  There was something I didn’t like in Woody’s over-friendly nature, it sounded fake, even patronizing perhaps. I couldn’t not shake his hand, though, for all I knew it was a genuine welcome. I stepped over gingerly and took his hand, and he squeezed mine so tight I thought my fingers might break.

  ‘There you go. We’re mates now.’

  The lads in the opposite bunk were climbing out of their beds. One was young, about my build, with light blonde hair. The other appeared a bit older, with a lean athletic build and colourful tattoos up his arms. I knew from the sign on the door that one must be Climpson and one was Brown. They paid me little interest as I shook hands with Woody, instead busying themselves with their own towels and wash kits.

  I withdrew my hand, ‘I’m gonna go grab a wash.’

  ‘Ok, Andy,’ his voice was deliberately patronizing, I was sure of it, ‘You go grab a wash.’

  I left to find the ablutions myself without asking for directions. I didn’t want to talk to Woody for longer than I had to, his friendliness was purposefully exaggerated to the point of being unpleasant, and I doubted I had found a new best friend. It was easy enough to find the ablutions anyway, I just had to follow the line of men wrapped in towels making their way in through a nearby bulkhead.

  There were about ten sinks in the ablutions, but there were thirty men in a dropship platoon and so I ended up in a queue. I was tiny compared to many of the troopers in the platoon, most of whom clearly spent a lot of their time in the gym training. I was ignored, people spoke around me but nobody chose to acknowledge my presence. I had expected as much, I supposed. It was my introduction to that Woody character that played on my mind, there was something about it that had made me feel uneasy.

  As I stood and waited in line, a finger prodded me in the back. An older looking trooper in his mid-twenties was stood behind me in the queue with his arms folded. His ears stuck out like the handles of a jug, which made his attempt at looking intimidating slightly amusing. I chose not to point that out.