“Now, what is the standard, multi-purpose round fired? You there, second squad, name and answer.”
“Recruit Abek, sir. The standard anti-personnel round for the M-17 is the M198 plasma round.”
Stubs snorted a laugh.
“Incorrect,” Harvey said. “Who can give me the correct answer?”
“How about the laughing man, gunny?” Birch said. Though crisp and professional in speech, Birch had an odd quality of bonhomie about him, as if he were hosting class in a local bar. “He looks locked on.”
“Why not, his brain looks pretty big, along with the rest of him. What’s the answer?”
“Recruit Stubneski, sir. The standard multi-purpose round is the M193 40-watt cobalt-ion plasma round. The M198 is the discarding-sabot, depleted-tungsten flechette round.”
“Very good, Stubneski. The M-17 can also be chambered to fire a variety of kinetic rounds that utilize a plasma cartridge, which makes it quite versatile, say in ship-clearing operations with hostages, where a plasma round may not be the best choice. Now let’s move on to ranges.”
That Stubs remembered the answer shocked Rizer.
Since there wasn’t any danger here in opening his mouth, Rizer volunteered his name and the ranges: “Sir, the maximum range of the M-17 with the plasma round is 10 kilometers, with a maximum effective range of 5800 meters.”
“Outstanding.”
They drilled on through the remaining M-17 specs: rate of fire, 450 rounds per minute; standard magazine capacity, 100 rounds; 320 kilojoules of impact energy within effective range, enough to penetrate eight centimeters of steel armor. In addition to the standard plasma round and depleted tungsten anti-personnel round, it could fire tracer ammunition, explosive tip proximity rounds, and incendiary white phosphorus.
SSgt Birch activated the display screen, which showed the plasma round in larger detail with schematics. “The round is five centimeters long. It contains a molecularly aligned cobalt core housed in a plastic resin casing. The rim shaped base contains a tiny amount of compressed liquid nitrogen which helps cool the weapon. When discharged, the round produces a compressed, ten-by-four hundred–millimeter concentrated beam of ionized particles that is commonly referred to as a bolt. The bolt generates vast amounts of heat and kinetic energy, which contributes to the round’s destructive striking power. With targets that are water based, like the human body, the high-speed, liquid-to-vapor expansion causes explosive displacement and bursting of soft tissues over a large body area.
“We’ve gone over all the figures.” He raised a finger and stared down his audience, his blue eyes afire with an animation that Rizer considered just a step short of crazed psychopathy. “But they’re only that: figures. Let’s get a feel for what they really mean.”
Birch tapped his tablet. The classroom lights dimmed. A video appeared on the holo screen, taken from a cliff atop a narrow defile in a rocky desert setting. “This is from my last combat deployment to planet Silex-5. My fire team located a squad of guerillas from the Silex Revolutionary Army moving through this gulch. Dumb move on their part, but their only alternative was to cross a few klicks of sand with no cover, so they were pretty much fucked either way. A fire team of four men armed with M-17s took out twelve enemy. We threw a couple of grenades into the mix too, just to shake things up, but most of the casualties fell to our rifles.”
Holy shit. Rizer watched vague outlines of soldiers being mowed down deep in the ravine. The video ended on close-up photos of a dead fighter. The round had struck him low in the abdomen, penetrated his armored suit, and blown him nearly in half. The next photo showed a man who must have been shot in the shoulder, for his left arm was missing. His helmeted head, the neck ragged, lay next to him.
“Get some!” called out some of the recruits.
Birch chuckled. “Next up’s my favorite.”
A Marine appeared, his body visible only as a vague, shifting outline blending into the dun-colored rocks behind him. This advanced camouflage ability, known as predator mode, was a feature available in the power armor suits. The Marine held the severed head from the previous photo aloft. His raised helmet visor revealed his face in detail as he appeared to be having a jolly conversation with the head. The Marine was SSgt Birch, of course.
A few of the recruits laughed; Rizer just stared in horrified awe. Alas, poor Yorick! He had seen dead insurgents and terrorists on the news holo-vids many times, but seeing death from a Marine’s perspective, how nonchalant Birch looked, gave him an ominous warning. If he hadn’t understood what he’d signed up for, he certainly did now.
“You have a question?” Birch asked, pointing to Garwood.
“Yes, sir. How long have we been fighting in the Silex System?”
Birch rubbed his chin as he looked to the ceiling, pondering. “I’m not really sure, son. Ten years…? A dozen? Does it matter? We’ll be fighting there as long as there’s diamonds to mine.”
“You didn’t hear about it on the news?” Harvey asked.
“No, sir,” Garwood replied.
Both PMIs had a short laugh. “You’ll learn soon enough just how little you know,” Harvey said. “But I’m a PMI, not a galactic political scientist. After chow we’ll start going over the basics of marksmanship, utilizing both your sights and visor prompts. Tomorrow you’ll start snapping in, getting your bodies used to assuming and maintaining the four shooting positions with the greatest stability. You’ll practice in the snap-in circle for two days, then two days of prequalification before you qualify on the known distance course, firing at stationary and moving targets. That’s the first portion of your rifle qualification. But the real fun begins next week, when you start training to assault the Warrior Trail, the second round of qualification. And that, recruits, is when you start earning your money.”
CHAPTER 6
Rizer had felt many emotions since beginning bootcamp: fear, anger, frustration, embarrassment. Never had he felt invincible… until hitting the Warrior Trail. He jogged down the path, little more than a goat track winding between huge boulders and piles of black lava rocks. Hundreds of shell craters disrupted the scattered stands of evergreens not yet blasted to splinters.
The upper-right corner of the heads-up display shimmered faintly on his helmet’s visor, his elapsed time counting ever upward: 18:57, 18:58… Recruits had thirty minutes to navigate the two-kilometer network of trails, using the GPS map on the HUD. The footpaths didn’t register in the GPS as roads, so he saw only his location on a contour map of the area. At every junction he had to choose his route by terrain and direction alone.
An alarm keened in his ear as he started up a steep slope with little cover. Shit! He dove for cover behind a charred tree stump and assumed the prone shooting position. A red dot appeared at the right edge of his display; all other prompts minimized to tiny icons at the top to keep his vision clear. He tracked the dot’s advance until he spotted a hologram of an enemy soldier.
Rizer poked his rifle and head around the base of the stump. The enemy’s head and one shoulder protruded past the edge of a boulder. He had three seconds to take him out; otherwise he would take a second hit. He would continue the course, but every hit subtracted points from his final score. He’d shot well on the KD course the previous week, despite it being the first time handling a real weapon rather than a virtual sim. He had actually shot better than some frontier world recruits who had grown up handling weapons, and with a solid performance on the Warrior Trail he would receive the rifle expert badge.
The reflex sight atop his rifle turned from clear to red when he acquired the target. Normally, his weapon would be synced to his helmet HUD, and a pipper would show up wherever he pointed the weapon, regardless if it was shouldered or not. This feature was disabled for the qualification. Rizer squeezed off a single round, and a white-hot bolt of crimson energy shot from the barrel. The sharp smell of ozone and the slight kick of recoil enhanced his feeling of invincibility. The M-17 had
a built-in suppressor, its report akin to a sharp crack as the cobalt ions displaced the atmosphere.
His shot took the hologram soldier in the neck; the enemy’s head dissolved in a spray of shimmering, simulated blood. Real-life dirt and rocks blasted from the hillside when the round impacted the earth.
The enemy personnel alarm sounded again as the heads and rifles of two more foes popped up from a hole atop the ridge, a lengthy shot of 310 meters according to the range finder on his HUD. He found cover in a shallow crater, sighted on the left guy and took him out, again with one shot.
That made thirty-five kills.
The second image sprinted to another covered position. Rizer waited until he reappeared seconds later, about ten meters to the right of his original position. That suggested the holograms had a trench up there.
Nice try! Rizer wasted him with a head shot.
He’d had the Marine Corps mantra, One shot, one kill, drilled into him since day one, and he’d certainly applied it here. The PMIs expected the recruits to conserve ammo while running the course. Every round counted toward their final score. According to his display, Rizer had fifty-seven rounds remaining from the hundred he’d been issued. Running out of ammo meant an automatic fail, as did exceeding the thirty-minute limit.
His sensor alarm went silent. Enemies could pop up anywhere at any time, including from behind, which had happened three times. With a mental command, the small GPS map icon expanded to fill his field of vision. The HUD’s translucence still allowed vision through the visor. The AI in his helmet read both his thought commands and eye movements.
Rizer broke cover and returned to the trail, soon reaching a fork. The left path was relatively level and appeared to pass through a narrow defile as it circumnavigated the ridge. A right turn would put him on a steep trail that switched back twice before reaching the summit. He could always go off trail, but jagged boulders and a couple of low cliffs would significantly hinder his speed. Enemy-concealing cover abounded in either direction.
Rizer recalled the grisly photos SSgt Birch had shown them. The ambush happened in a defile similar to the left trail. Zoom to objective. The green flag marking the objective appeared at the northwest corner, over the ridge before him. A brief shudder traveled through him—more than his objective awaited in the next valley.
Dread wouldn’t get him there.
Rizer chose the steeper trail heading over the ridge. At the summit, he found cover between two massive boulders and reconned the valley below. His objective lay four hundred meters to the northwest, but he still didn’t have a visual. Covered with scree, small boulders, and shell craters, the far side of the ridge descended gradually. A ridge of lava rocks about four meters high and ten meters long provided the only decent cover. According to GPS, a cliff about ten meters high barred him from racing directly toward his objective. Meanwhile, his elapsed time continued to count upward: 22:01. You gonna sit here and ponder it all day?
“Here goes nothin’,” he whispered, immediately wishing he hadn’t.
The helmets had sensitive microphones, and someone monitored his every word and grunt. Several drones flew overhead as well, recording his movements so the PMIs could judge his combat reactions: whether he properly utilized the four shooting positions, the effectiveness of his chosen cover, and how quickly he found it. These discretionary points would likewise add to or subtract from his score.
With time running out he took off down a path that ran north-northeast and hoped to hell that it turned toward the objective at some point. As he neared the low ridge of lava rocks, his sensor alarm wailed. A remote-controlled hover drone carrying a plasma machinegun appeared from a tunnel bored into the hill on the other side of the valley.
Unlike the soldiers he’d killed, this was no hologram. “Shit!”
He froze in panic, even though the PMIs had warned him that he would face overwhelming live fire at some point, necessitating a call for fire support. He’d fail the Warrior Trail if he couldn’t make that call.
Move your ass, dammit!
He sprinted for the rocks like a hare fleeing a ravenous dog. Bolts streaked at him from the multi-barreled weapon, tearing up the black earth near his feet and showering him with dirt and debris that obscured his vision. He tripped on something a couple of meters from the rocks. Lurching forward, his upper body landed behind the cover. Legs exposed, he hastily pulled them into cover just before a massive barrage blasted the area.
The intense heat wave from the discharged bolts rippled his uniform.
The firing ceased for a couple of moments and then continued, molten shards flying as the rounds tore into the rock pile. Rizer moved to the edge of the boulders and took another peek at the weapon’s position. A shower of heated fragments exploded from the rock by his head, and he yelped, heart in throat. Only his helmet saved him from being mortally wounded.
He ducked back behind the larger boulders. His HUD displayed the weapon’s position now. The target designation, along with its grid coordinates, flashed red on his display.
Make the call!
Someone’s lower leg, severed at the knee, distracted him. He recognized it as the object he had tripped over. “Holy shit!” he shrieked.
Do it already!
More rounds, slamming into his cover, fragmenting the boulders overhead, cemented his resolve. Normally a Marine only thought the command, Send target data, to call for fire. The helmet computer would then relay target location and info, along with the recommended number and type of rounds to destroy it, to the nearest artillery battery or supporting aircraft.
Instead training meant learning to do things the hard way. “You might lose data transmission capabilities in your helmet,” Gunny Harvey had told them. “I’ve seen it happen under fire. Then you’ll have to make the call via radio, so you’d better learn to do it right. Otherwise your ass’ll be shaked and baked.”
Rizer gulped. Hampered by adrenaline, he groped through his panicked mind for his call sign and that of the supporting artillery. Once he found the info, he shouted over the pops and cracks of incoming bolts, “Romeo Tango 362 calling Bravo Alpha 1! Fire mission!” Good. That’s right. Now from the HUD. “Grid Alpha Juliet 444… 356! Enemy hover gun in open!” he read and then scrambled to remember what came next. “Four rounds HE! Fire for effect! Over!”
“Roger, Romeo Tango 362. Stand by. Over,” a calm and resonant voice responded.
Easy for you to say!
Rizer continued to bathe in grit and falling rocks. His radio crackled to life as he was brushing a hot chunk of lava rock from his lap. “Shot Alpha Juliet 444-356, over.”
“Shot out!”
The hover gun ceased firing. Seconds later the rockets came down. Four explosions in rapid succession rocked the valley.
Rizer sighed his relief as he low crawled to the end of the lava ridge to have a look. Ignore the smoldering leg. Gray smoke drifted lazily away from the craters where the hover gun had been; clouds of black dust swirled and started to settle. The hover gun had retracted into the hillside to await the next recruit unfortunate enough to come this way. The Marine Corps might cut the legs from under worthless recruits, but it would never sacrifice a perfectly good war machine.
“Romeo Tango 362 calling Bravo Alpha 1. Target destroyed. End mission. Out.” Now the words came by rote.
With less than five minutes to finish the course, Rizer sprinted back to the trail and ran on. He decided against shooting at holograms with so little time remaining. Jumpy now, he expected to take more live fire at any moment. The PMIs said it would only happen once, but if all the lies he’d experienced in bootcamp were any indicator, he’d soon be missing an appendage himself.
A red-and-gold guidon belonging to the PMI company hung on a pole ahead. Beneath it, a corporal in armored skins—visor up, tablet in hand—stood before the concrete entrance to an underground bunker. “Let’s go! Move your ass, recruit!” he shouted at Rizer, his accent from a
deep outer-rim world. “Twenty-seven-fifty-six,” he called as Rizer ran past the flagpole, “you made it. Good time too.”
Rizer promptly collapsed to his knees. He had the presence of mind to raise his visor before vomiting all over the deck.
“Your platoon’s waitin’ for ya down this road. Git up, son; git runnin’!”
Rizer squinted up at the corporal. “Who—” He paused to spit out some bile. “Whose leg’s out there?”
The corporal shrugged. “I dunno, some dumbass who went through ’fore you, heavy world type.”
“Did he die?”
Again, the corporal shrugged. He spat a stream of stim juice. “Dunno. Alive when the med bots took him away. Not kickin’ though.”
“They left his leg out there!”
“Well, hell, why wouldn’t they? He don’t need it no more. Any more questions, recruit? Jesus, you should have your own fuckin’ holo show! Now git runnin’ up that road; your platoon’s waitin’!”
Rizer got running. After half a klick he realized he hadn’t addressed the corporal as sir, not that the guy seemed to have given a shit.
Around a hill Rizer spotted about half of his platoon, those who had completed the course, waiting in the distance. Recruits yet to run the trail waited in a separate area. The PMIs didn’t want to give away any of the surprises awaiting them, so their start times were staggered.
Gunny Harvey and SSgt Birch stood nearby. Harvey manned a computer terminal, watching a live feed from a drone as it monitored another recruit’s progress. Birch consulted his tablet.
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