War's Edge- Dead Heroes

by Ryan W. Aslesen

  “Understood. But I’m ordering a raincheck, Commander Mako, so be advised.”

  Still so much like the boy she had once known, Kyle nearly smiled at her before saying with full deference, “I won’t stand you up again, ma’am; you have my word.”

  “That’s all I need. You are dismissed, Commander Mako.”

  The young man stood and came to attention.

  “Carry on.”

  As Mako turned for the door, Erskin reluctantly remembered the bomb she had to drop. “Commander?”

  He turned to face her.

  “Third Corps will be deploying as the ground force on Verdant.”

  A sharp breath through his nose, he tensed slightly before resuming his calm façade. “Thank you for informing me, ma’am.”

  “You’re free of his shadow, Kyle. I know, should the need arise, you’ll work with him to the best of your ability.”

  “I will. But I’m looking forward to working with you, ma’am.”

  Fathers and sons, she thought after his departure. Is there any story older than that? She focused on reviewing a report on Sixth Fleet’s readiness, to be submitted to Grand Admiral Deely and the Joint Defense Council.

  CHAPTER 12

  Recruit Garwood, still the guide, gathered 2084’s nineteen other recruits in a school circle at the center of their camp, located just outside the training depot. Bravo, their lone DI supervisor, stood at a distance, ever watchful.

  “I know Mack told us this thing is supposed to start tomorrow morning, but I think we know better by now.”

  Recruits nodded and muttered agreement. They hadn’t gotten this far by failing to anticipate the worst.

  “She’s not about to catch us in our underwear. Five men will be on watch at all times, one man to each fighting hole. I will serve as Corporal of the Guard; notify me of any issues. Everyone not on watch sleeps in skins, rifles ready. I won’t order you to sleep in your helmets, but it couldn’t hurt. If shit happens tonight it’ll go down fast, so be ready. We’ve almost made it, boys, let’s not fuck this up from the get-go.”

  Despite the hell they’d been through, the last thirty-eight weeks of bootcamp seemed to have evaporated in a blink, at least to Rizer. He couldn’t believe this was it—the Crucible. Bootcamp was almost over.

  He hadn’t come this far to fail.

  As with all of their training, the recruits were given only vague details regarding the Crucible: a recap of nearly all they had learned; a marathon test of endurance and skills that would last for roughly five days, allegedly beginning tomorrow at 0400. But like Garwood, Rizer expected it might kick off suddenly in the middle of the night, for SSgt Mack often adjusted the training schedule to suit her needs and keep them forever guessing. That only Bravo remained in camp seemed to telegraph a night attack that she would probably lead.

  Those who failed the Crucible—there were bound to be at least a couple—would face the daunting trial of being recycled, dropped to another platoon to retrain. Depending on the disciplines he had failed to master, a recruit could be rolled back all the way to week one.

  Rizer waited for Garwood to call his name on the watch roster. “Third watch, midnight to zero-two will be myself, Stubs, Smythe, Hagel, Rizer.” Though he hated pulling midnight watch, since he found it difficult to resume sleeping, he took consolation in standing guard with a squared-away team. “Time on deck is now nineteen-forty-five. Get ready, first shift, you go on duty in fifteen minutes. The rest of you try to get some sleep while you can. I doubt we’ll see much of it over the next few days.”

  After about an hour of bullshitting with Stubs, his companion in the two-man shelter, Rizer finally got to sleep as a deluge of rain pounded the tent. At 2345 Vanhoven awakened them for watch.

  Rizer reached his assigned fighting hole on the camp’s perimeter.

  “All you, big balls.” Abek pulled himself from the hole and the half meter of water which had collected in the bottom. Ever considerate of the guy behind him, several ration wrappers floated on the muddy surface.

  Let’s get this over with. Rizer splashed down in the hole and tried to ignore the water chilling his bones. Their skins and boots were waterproof, but the DIs had disabled the suits’ heating systems to better simulate the miseries of serving in a combat theater. Rizer sucked it up as he watched the tree line beyond through infrared optics.

  The minutes ticked by in a creeping parade of red numerals on his HUD. One hour, and then well into the second. By 0130, Rizer began to think he’d stayed up half the night for nothing.

  “Shit, I’m hit!” Hagel yelled over the radio.

  Alarms sounded in Rizer’s helmet as adrenaline pumped into his bloodstream. He dropped further into the hole, just his rifle and eyes peering over the parapet, and scanned the woods.

  Chaos assumed control of the radio. Garwood sounded the alarm, ordered the platoon to the defense.

  Something splashed down in a puddle just short of Rizer’s hole; he ducked just before the stun grenade would have exploded in his face. More stun grenades popped around the perimeter, forcing the men in the holes to keep their heads down.

  A couple of recruits hacked uncontrollably over the radio. Rizer recognized Smythe’s gagging voice, his words incoherent.

  Stubs shouted the warning, “Gas, gas!”

  Rizer remained relatively calm as the nuclear-biological-chemical breathing system in his helmet activated, which would cleanse his air of tear gas fumes. Other recruits had made the mistake of having their face-shields up while resting. Rifles crackled and grenades rained down while he waited for a target to appear in his sector.

  He glimpsed a tiny flash of red body heat that disappeared in an instant, then reappeared at his two o’clock. He fired on the aggressor in his sight. The flashing red lights of a killing shot did not illuminate the enemy’s gear, obviously topped with a sensor-scattering poncho; but the red message FATAL HIT appeared on his visor.

  Vague, translucent outlines of three running men approached; the downpouring rain and shifting layers of tear gas defeated their camo and gave away their positions. “Three on your right, Garwood!” Rizer shouted, opening fire.

  And so the Crucible began.

  ***

  Since beginning training, Rizer had felt agony and exhaustion so often that they failed to register beyond their inconvenience factors, like the shitty weather or the DI’s whip-cracking tongues. Every day he faced the toughest challenge yet, every evolution a competition where nothing was ever good enough. SSgt Mack constantly harassed him, constantly singled him out to drop for extra push-ups, and then always asked for another one for the Corps. His body and mind had adapted, accepted, become immune.

  Or so he’d thought.

  But the non-stop training evolutions during the Crucible debunked his notion of invincibility. Day one consisted mostly of PT: several hours on the Grinder in the wake of the night assault, followed by the battery of trials comprising the final physical fitness test. Rizer nearly aced it, performing the maximum number of pullups, sit-ups, and pushups. Only his time of 23:05 for the 6-k run fell short of perfection, by a mere 35 seconds.

  After that final PFT, the recruits had to beat the clock on the obstacle course twice, back to back. Rizer nearly failed his second run, finishing with ten seconds to spare, fatigue finally catching up with him.

  It seemed they would catch a break after evening chow when they tested disassembly and familiarity with their weapons, yet the marathon of blindfolded, timed breakdowns and rapid-fire knowledge drills kept them up well past midnight.

  Day two began two hours later.

  They all felt drained, tried to hide it, but none could dispel their fatigue by simple force of will. Sleep and rest were required. They would receive little of either. Rizer had finished less than half his morning ration when Mack ordered them to don a full combat load. They were off on a hump within five minutes.

  Five klicks later they arrived at the
combat endurance course, which stood in the jagged shadows of several limestone crags that rose to lofty spires. They’d run the 5-k course, mostly towers to be scaled and then rappelled down, a couple of months ago. No sweat. Though tired, his motivation never wavered.

  “I’m sure you morons remember this fun run from a while back,” Mack said as they stood formed before the first rappel tower. “But it’ll be a little different this time.” She wore a knowing expression tinted with amusement yet didn’t elaborate. They hadn’t run it with a combat load last time, and Rizer guessed they would be taking simulated fire as well, for this seemed a possibility during every phase of the Crucible. Being hit too many times could get a recruit rolled back.

  We’ll probably be timed too.

  “Ma’am, Recruit Coltin—”

  “No questions, Coltin, just run the fucking course. First squad, prepare to move out!”

  Burrmaster put first squad in order beneath the first tower: Belzer, Rizer, Garwood, Stubs, and Coltin. Squad strengths had become unbalanced due to all the drops, so Hagel would run with second squad. The course proceeded as it had the first time. Some towers they scaled with ropes, others with handholds; they either rappelled or fast roped down.

  Sgt Burrmaster awaited the squad at the base of the final tower. “Keep movin’, first squad, follow the path!” He pointed to an opening in the evergreens at the base of one of the crags.

  I guess this is the surprise.

  The path wound upward into the crags, but when Belzer slowed to rest atop the first steep incline, a bot instructor exploded from the underbrush. “Keep fucking moving!”

  Surprised, she slipped and rolled several meters down a descending trail before righting herself. Rizer picked up his pace and charged past the shouting bot. Pushing ever upward on a trail of broken rock and scree that conspired to trip them at every step, the squad neared the summit of the first spire. Rizer kept his eyes on the trail before him, avoiding the empty air on his right. A light rain fell, making their footing even more treacherous. A bot stood by the rappel ropes rigged atop the spire, offering caustic words yet no assistance as Belzer clipped onto the ropes. She pushed off the cliff in a hurry to escape his verbal assault.

  Rizer clipped on, made the mistake of looking down—forty meters of fissured rock lay between him and the bot instructor at the bottom. Belzer had moved on, and the instructor made no move to serve as belay man. If Rizer fell, he fell—no one would be able to prevent it.

  The bot got in his face. “What the fuck are you—?”

  Rizer flexed his legs, pushed off, and left the tirade behind. He slid down the ropes, pushing off from the cliff every time he contacted it. Friction with the ropes heated the glove on his brake hand to the point where he thought he might lose his grip. Then he stood on solid ground again. He quickly unclipped and moved on, the instructor’s shouts bouncing off ears immune to threats after hearing them for so long.

  The trail narrowed as he ran the crags’ sawtooth profile. A single drone hovered over the squad. Rizer thought briefly of Mack and Burrmaster watching from someplace safe, sheltered, dry. Often he utilized climbing ropes already spiked into the cliffs to ascend. He’d heard no radio chatter about falling recruits yet had an ominous feeling that not all would make it as the rain fell harder now.

  First squad worked their way up the fourth crag on a trail barely wide enough to accommodate a goat. Though his legs burned from exertion, Rizer must have felt better than Belzer, who had started to slow. He had to pause to wait on her so often that it started to get annoying. Come on, squad leader, move the fuck along—

  He shuffled his feet while stuck running behind her and put too much weight on a slick rock. Sliding, falling, he scrambled with hands and arms to find the ledge he’d stood upon. His right hand found solid rock; his body swung and slammed back into the cliff, knocking the breath from him. Radio pandemonium erupted, though he could decipher none of it. The pack on his back and the rifle over his shoulder insisted that he fall, an order he couldn’t refuse. Just as his fingers lost grip on the rock, he spied a sapling growing from a fissure to his left and grabbed. He swung over empty space with two hands and no idea how far he might fall.

  “Shit! Help!” he called, staring upward at the trail just out of reach. His eyes fell on Belzer, not three meters away, who gazed at him anonymously from behind her face shield. “Belzer!”

  She turned and moved on.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Hold on, Rizer, I got you!” Garwood said.

  Rizer panted, tried not to panic as he regained his breath. Garwood’s helmet appeared above him moments later. Rizer didn’t know if he could trust his quivering muscles any longer, yet he had no choice. Clutching the sapling with his left hand, he lunged for Garwood’s outstretched arm with his right. The guide’s fingers wrapped around his forearm with a vice-like grip. Rizer scrabbled at the cliff with his boots, located a foothold, and pushed up. His left hand found a hold on the trail, and his muscles retained the strength to propel him upward. He relaxed for only a moment upon reaching the trail, began to stand.

  Garwood said, “Are you all—?” He then dropped from sight when an entire section of the trail gave way beneath his feet. The guide grunted when his ass hit the trail and bounced.

  “Shit!” Rizer shot out a hand to grab him.

  Garwood whirled, snatched for a hold on the rocks, missed. He looked up at Rizer, his face shield covered with raindrops. It seemed to happen slowly. Garwood glanced at Rizer’s offered hand near his own flailing appendage. Rizer almost had him; only a couple of centimeters separated their fingers.

  Garwood pulled his hand away and dropped from sight.

  “No! Fuck!” Enraged and disconsolate, Rizer couldn’t make himself look over the cliff’s edge to witness Garwood’s fate. Someone remotely cut his radio transmissions to silence his cries. Rizer steeled his nerves, peered over the edge. Garwood lay on a ledge about twelve meters below, his left knee bent thirty degrees the wrong way, two yellowish shards of calf bone tipped with blood protruding through the leg of his skins. He’d rolled into a sapling that had stopped his fall. If not for the skinny tree he would have tumbled over the ledge and fallen dozens of meters to his death.

  “Continue, Rizer!” Mack ordered. “We have a medivac inbound for Garwood.”

  Rizer stood there, numb and dumb.

  Stubs arrived, gulped when he glanced over the cliff. “Fuck…” was all he muttered.

  “Get moving, you two! There’s nothing you can do!”

  Rizer snapped out of his stupor. “You’re gonna fucking pay, Belzer!”

  “I didn’t have shit to do with it, dickhead!” she answered, already fifteen meters up the trail.

  “Exactly, you fucking bitch!”

  “Move it, Rizer!” Mack screamed. “Or I’ll pull you off the mountain and send you back to day one!”

  Rizer didn’t acknowledge, remained standing there.

  “Let’s go,” Stubs said. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “Listen to your butt-pirate pal, Rizer,” said Mack. “Last chance!”

  Rizer moved off, stepping carefully, leaving Garwood’s screams behind.

  A semblance of calm had returned to Rizer by the time he reached the sixty-meter rappel descent from the final summit, the end of the course. Burrmaster and Mack waited at the bottom, both staring at a remote screen for the drones monitoring the platoon.

  Belzer knelt on hands and knees not five meters away, strands of puke dangling from her lips as she recovered from her exhaustion. Rizer wanted to throttle the bitch, stomp her knee until it bent like Garwood’s, yet he knew better. A physical assault before two DIs would put a mop in his hand for the next several years.

  Maybe this will too! If so he didn’t give a shit.

  Belzer glanced up when Rizer’s boots filled her vision.

  Mack had noticed him moving toward her. “Rizer, what the fuck are you—?”
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  Belzer’s blue eyes went wide for an instant, just before he spit right between them. “Buddy-fucking cunt!”

  Something crashed into his ribs, sending him tumbling across the rocky earth. When the world stopped spinning, he saw Sgt Burrmaster staring down at him. “You done now, Rizer?”

  For a moment he mistook the question for a statement and cursed himself for taking a tiny bit of vengeance that cost him forty weeks of work. “You better fuckin’ answer me, shitbag!”

  “Yes, sir… I’m done.”

  “Good. Now get the fuck up; this day’s just beginning.”

  “Sir, Recruit Garwood—”

  “Shit happens. You got more important things to worry about.” He pointed to a nearby stand of evergreens. “Now go over there and walk it off. I expect you back in five minutes ready to train. Move it!”

  Mack stared at him as he walked to the trees. She said nothing to him, simply returned to monitoring the drones.

  ***

  Day three began with a HALO jump followed by an underwater insertion swim of several klicks to a shore Rizer had yet to visit. The brief ride in the dropship allowed him to catch a few minutes of sleep after being awake for over thirty-six hours straight, yet he remained tired, and the swim felt more like a hundred klicks. A massive mountain loomed in the distance, taller than any he’d seen on Forge, its peak shrouded in clouds of swirling steel. The Crucible claimed a second victim long before they reached the shore, however, when Recruit Stanfield was rolled back for landing several klicks from the platoon during the jump.

  Once ashore they assaulted a training replica of a town inhabited by hostile forces played by training bots. Then they humped to a range where they tested and requalified with their weapons. Due to fatigue and sleeplessness, most of the platoon didn’t shoot as well as they had during initial rifle qual, though somehow they all passed. Fortunately their previous scores remained official; nevertheless their lower scores displeased Mack, who took out her frustrations that evening by bringing them to a vast mud bog, where for several hours they crawled around, did somersaults, and took turns trying to carry one another across the mire.