Reaper took a deep breath and smiled coldly. “Since you asked nicely...class starts tomorrow.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Oh, didn’t I tell you?” Her chest plate changed to display a proper Fleet Marine insignia. “I’m your new company first sergeant. That means you’d better have your shit strac, Eltee, or I’ll crawl up your ass and set up a permanent campsite.”
“Fair enough.”
She tilted her head back and narrowed her eyes. “So how’re you going to do it?”
“Keep my platoon squared away?”
“Yes. You have a plan?”
Bull pursed his lips and flared his nostrils, glancing away. This was a trick question, but belatedly, he remembered the answer from his training. “Yes, a detailed one.”
Reaper’s brow furrowed.
Bull continued, “When we get back, I’m going to tell Gunny Kang to get my platoon squared away and report when he’s done. I’ll tell him I’ll be around if he needs me. Then I’ll go do officer shit. I’ll visit the wounded, check the quality of food in the enlisted mess, find out what equipment needs replacing to fill out our table of equipment, type up my after-action report, start working on letters for the families of the KIAs...”
Reaper smiled and lifted both hands, palms out. “Hallelujah! The baby walks!” Then she crossed her arms, closed her eyes and leaned her head back to catch between two jump seat support straps. “Wake me up when we get there, will you, sir?”
Sir. First time she’s called me sir.
Bull only let himself smile when a faint snore wafted from Reaper’s nostrils.
The End of Steel’s First Temper
A Hotter Forge
by David VanDyke
Chapter 1
Lieutenant Joseph “Bull” ben Tauros knew something was up from the look in Reaper’s eyes as she strode briskly into the battalion gym aboard the assault transport Melita.
He set down the dumbbells he’d been pumping and met her halfway. “What’s happening, Top?”
She spoke quietly. “Please grab your gear and meet me in your platoon locker room, sir. You can shower there before the warning brief.”
“Why –”
Reaper held up hand. “Not here.” She turned and hurried off.
Seemed an odd way to do business. She could have simply paged him to a comm. He shrugged. Reaper was old-school for sure. Preferred the personal touch. Well, to a point.
Retrieving his gym bag, he did as instructed. His knee-jerk internal irritation at having a noncom tell him what to do, even if couched as a request, reared its ugly head and he fought it down. The training models never told you how to handle a nominal subordinate that in reality had ten times – maybe a hundred times – the experience and influence, whatever her putative rank.
But he was learning to handle it, and in his fairer, more reflective moments, he knew it was doing him good. She’d told him leadership was the art of getting people to want to do things for you. Apparently it was working, for he found himself wanting to measure up to her high standards.
And I’m also learning to lead, he mused. Leadership begins with respect, and respect begins with composure, confidence and concern for people, the three Cs. That’s what Reaper had told him, anyway.
When he entered the locker room he saw the rest of his platoon gearing up. His key noncoms – Gunny Kang, Sergeants Acosta, Suarez, Brooks and Chohan – were ready, already inspecting and assisting the troops. He felt as if he were behind the power curve, but shook it off. Composure, confidence and concern.
“All good?” he asked Kang as he stripped and grabbed a towel.
“On track, sir.”
“Gonna shower. Be right back.”
Bull was just pulling on his skinsuit when Reaper walked through the door right behind Captain Vaughn, the company CO. The room snapped to attention automatically.
Bull noticed Reaper shut the door and lock it.
Vaughn said, “At ease. Continue your prep, but listen up. We’re on vidlink with the rest of the company. Alfa Company's been tasked with a short-notice, time-sensitive, critical mission. Reaper?”
Reaper stepped forward, a tablet in her hand. “A Meme survey ship has been spotted ten hours from us among a dense cluster of asteroids. We believe it’s visiting a base. We’re going to go get it.”
“That’s a long trip for an assault. And why Marines? Why not have the flyboys go blast the shit out of it from long range?” asked Gunny Kang.
“Because we’ve never had a chance like this to capture real, non-blended Meme. Those of the Pure Race, as they call themselves.”
The room fell silent with shock. Though they’d been fighting the Meme Empire for decades, the only real glimpse of the amoebic enemy overlords had been from the video record of the defector, Raphael, before it blended with a human woman and became Raphaela.
Reaper continued the brief. “A survey ship is the smallest enemy craft that routinely carries a trium of actual Meme. This type of craft is often heavily stealthed, and survey crews seldom take any risks. They gather intelligence and data, but they don’t normally perform forward military scouting. And, like all Meme ships, they can run like a bat out of hell if they want to.”
“But not this time,” Vaughn said. “They’re hurt.”
“And we’re hoping we can catch them with their pants down.”
“Could it be a trap? They know we’re out here on patrol,” Kang said.
“The possibility exists. We’ll have a squadron of Warthogs backing us up, but they can’t get too close until we begin the assault. At that time, Aerospace will come in hot and the task force will follow them at best speed. If it is a trap, hopefully they can pull our nuts out of the fire.”
“Hope ain’t a plan,” someone muttered.
Reaper’s voice rose. “But it’s worth the risk. We’ve never captured a pure Meme. The spooks say if we can get one alive, we can extract one hell of a lot of intel from it, intel that will save lives and win battles.”
“No offense, Top, but this sounds more like a job for black ops,” Sergeant Acosta said. “Marines kill things better’n anybody, but capturing? That’s tricky. Restrictive ROE gets people dead.”
Reaper swiveled her head around the room. “You see any black ops people around here? The closest Direct Action unit is four days away. By that time, the survey ship will have repaired and gone. We’re it, ladies.”
Sergeant Chohan lifted a hand. “Is there a reason we’re getting this briefing in our locker room? Other than saving a few minutes tramping to and from the auditorium?”
“OPSEC, Sergeant. From now until we launch in less than one hour, nobody talks about this outside of secure spaces.”
“But we’re on a ship in deep space!”
Reaper took a step toward Chohan. “And our enemy has the ability to place spies among us. Blends, clones, or even suborned normals. I’m pretty sure about all of us Marines, but do you want to bet your life that every swabbie and squid on this ship is exactly who he says he is? Not to mention we have civilian contractors and even one embedded newsie aboard. That’s why you’re being briefed behind closed doors, and the rest of the company over secure vidlinks. And the commander and I are telling you in person because First Platoon is taking point and performing the capture. Second, Third and Fourth Platoon will support and secure.”
“Okay, Top, I got it.” Chohan still seemed deeply skeptical.
Bull didn’t blame him. Nobody wanted to be the guy that blew such a big opportunity, and this mission seemed like a setup for failure.
The rest of the hour fled quickly with the detailed operations order and final gear checks.
When Bull boarded his assault sled, the first thing he noticed was Reaper there ahead of him. “You coming along with First Platoon, Top?”
“You have the capture element, Bull. I’ll be your senior advisor and cover your six, both tactically and politically.”
“Politically?”
> “Yeah. I vouched for you and First Platoon as the best. If we fail, I’ll take as much of the heat as I can.”
Bull nodded. “Politics. Hate that shit.”
“Get used to it. It’s a fact of life wherever people exercise power. People want to get credit for success and avoid the stink of failure.”
“Success has many fathers, but failure’s an orphan,” he quoted.
“Or mothers.”
Bull grunted in acknowledgement and looked around. The next thing he noticed was a large bundle strapped to the deck. Looking more closely, he thought it resembled a collapsed inflatable survival pod, but bigger. “What’s that?”
“Modified emergency life-support pod. That’s what the Meme goes into if we catch it. There’s one on each sled. Pull the opener and its internal frame will expand. You’ll see a twenty-centimeter-diameter flexible tube. Slap it on the Meme and hit the button. It’ll suck that bastard right in. Close the valve, seal it up, and we got ourselves a blobbo.”
“We just happened to have this aboard?”
“Spooky thought about it long ago and had several added to the complement of every ship in the fleet.”
Bull’s jaw dropped. “Spooky Nguyen? You know him?”
“Far better than I’d like to,” she said. “If you ever get a chance to work for him, say ‘hell no’ immediately. He’ll poison your soul and pat you on the back while doing it.”
Bull was about to respond with a joke, but thought better of it when he noticed Reaper’s face, which displayed all the humor of a hissing cat. “If you say so.”
“Do I seem unsure, Lieutenant?”
Bull tilted his head back. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you unsure, Top. That bugs me sometimes.”
“Get over it. Sir.”
Bull shrugged, and then moved out of the way as two ratings carried a portable toilet into the sled and clamped it to the floor. “Ugh. Well, I guess it’s better than suit waste disposal systems. Ten hours would be a long time to go without a dump.”
Reaper nodded. “If we had more stealth sleds, we could have loaded light and in-flight rigged, but we’re lucky to have these eight specials. It’s gonna get real friendly in here, but it’s one hell of a lot less cramped than some missions I’ve been on. Did I ever tell you about the time I spent almost a week in a mini-submarine a quarter this size?”
“I’d like to hear about it.”
“I’ll tell everyone during the trip. I’m sure the troops will find it entertaining.”
Chapter 2
During the first hours of the long insertion, Bull allowed relaxed discipline. With helmets and gauntlets off, restraining straps loose and weapons unloaded and racked, the troops shot the shit. They ate and drank from cases of ration packs, trading favorite items or wagering for them on everything from poker to coin flips.
Once their initial energy wore off, Bull ordered the lights dimmed for three hours and had everyone induce two REM cycles of sleep in order to ensure they were fresh. When he awoke, he set his oversized helmet on his huge cranium and fired up his HUD, tapping into the sled feeds.
Four hours to go. Passive sensors showed the positions of rocky bodies as the sleds passed through this tiny corner of the asteroid belt occupying the band between Mars and Jupiter. So huge was the volume of space that the Meme had no problem infiltrating spy craft and setting up camouflaged, hard-to-detect bases among the millions of rocks.
EarthFleet countered by sending thousands of cheap robotic probes to scout, followed by search-and-destroy sweeps, but given the constant motion within the area and the number of potential hiding places, this was rather like trying to police a large city with a handful of cops. They might find a lot of bad guys, but they could never catch them all.
The Meme also had the advantage of on-site reproduction. As bio-engineered creatures, the vehicles and bases – which were really the same thing, only differently equipped and configured – could bud, spawn and disperse, as could the semi-independent living parts inside. So, like weeds, enemy spies could never quite be stamped out.
“Anything I need to know about?” Bull asked the flight crew over the cockpit channel.
“We’re five by five on a perfect ballistic trajectory,” said Lock, the senior sled pilot. “No burns, no comms, no nothing as we approach. Focused passives show no active sensor emanations from the target area, so they’ll have to get ungodly lucky to spot us until we arrive. The real question is, will the survey craft have a crewmember on standby in whatever passes for a cockpit, or will we catch them all aboard the base?”
“What if it does have a pilot aboard?”
“If it were me, I’d lift and run. Once they get moving, there’s no way we catch them or even hurt them. I doubt the Warthogs can chase them down either.”
“Then I guess we’ll hope there’s a Meme stuck aboard the base,” Bull said. “There are supposed to be three on a survey ship.” He switched channels. “Reap, you about ready for that story?”
“Sure, Bull.”
Bull opened up the general platoon channel, and then included the aerospace crew for good measure. “Listen up, diggers. Our esteemed first sergeant has consented to give us a tale of the old days, before the Meme came.”
The chatter fell silent as those in the sled listened.
“I was part of the Free Communities movement back before Earth became united,” she began, speaking as if the tale were old and familiar. “The New Soviets, China and the United Governments of North America were trying to strangle the Eden Plague by ever-more-brutal repression and military means. Daniel Markis approved Spooky Nguyen to lead a mission to seize an American ballistic missile submarine, with the goal of launching the missiles, wiping out the Big Three’s satellite networks, and leveling the playing field somewhat. But then Murphy showed up...”
Reaper went on to tell the tale of how they hijacked the Nebraska and launched its missiles. “Only the warheads didn’t go where they expected. A Psycho infiltrator reset the targeting, and about a hundred nukes fell on each superpower. Millions died.”
Her voice hitched a bit, sounding to Bull as if she’d choked up. He wondered why. Maybe she felt responsible. He wasn’t surprised. He was ready to fight and kill to defend humanity, but hundreds of nukes...that was wholesale slaughter on a scale to weigh on anyone’s soul.
“This devastated the Big Three, broke the back of resistance to the Free Communities and the Eden Plague’s spread. New governments took power and things were looking up, but then the Demon Plagues fell, and the alien Raphael showed up, and the rest you know from history shows.”
Chatter surged, questions from the troops on details, until Bull roared, “One at a time!” He reset the network so Reaper could control who spoke and when.
The questions and discussion passed the time, and Bull listened as Reaper skillfully led the listening Marines, some young and naïve, some old and crusty, toward the conclusions she wanted them to draw – lessons about war and operations, politics and life.
That reminded him again of how young he was at twenty-two, and how old she was at...what? He tried to remember when the alien showed up, and then did some math. At least fifty years old, maybe sixty. Which meant thirty-plus years in the active military. Damn.
Come on, Bull. Confidence, composure, concern. He flexed his hands and stared at them, wondering, like he did every time, if he’d measure up. Then he laughed to himself. That’s exactly how she wants me to feel: always striving to do better, to match the model and the example she sets.
More war stories passed the rest of the dull travel time. It reminded him of a definition of warfare that originated in the First World War: Long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. He felt fortunate he’d never found himself terrified once the shit hit the fan, but the boredom was real, part of life.
In a way, he thought, the boredom made it easier when the moment came. By the time for the approach, he was champing at the bit to get the hell out of the cram
ped confines of the sled.
“One hour,” Lock said in his ear. “No movement at the target.”
“Right. Listen up. Take your last dumps, clean up your cards and dice and get your gear on. Nobody chambers a round until I say so. Buddy checks, then team and squad leaders recheck and report to me when finished.”
Reaper joined in the double- and triple-checking of gear. They were in full exo-armor, the individual ensembles massing more than two hundred kilos of integrated life support, protection, comms and weaponry. Cybernetic strength and low gravity made it manageable, but nobody would call EarthFleet’s Marines agile when they wore it.
Except Reaper, Bull mused. She moved like a dancer even in all her gear. He wondered whether it was customized, or if it was merely perfect economy of motion that allowed her to make it look easy.
“Six minutes,” Lock called. “Still no activity. I’ll hit the retros at one minute fifty. When I do, they’ll know we’re here.”
“Understood.” Suddenly, his bladder felt full. “Dammit,” he muttered, and then let go. The suit could handle some pee. He sipped at his water tube to moisten a mouth suddenly gone dry. A normal reaction to an abnormal situation, he reminded himself. Not fear, just anticipatory stress.
Okay, a little fear.
Reaper said a little fear was a good thing. Got the blood pumping.
Oddly, he felt more and more nervous before each new mission, not less. He refused to call it fear. Not fear of injury or death, anyway. He simply didn’t want to fail, and with each battle, he realized more and more how much could go wrong, how much was out of his control.
How much he had to rely on everyone else.
He didn’t like relying on anyone else.
He didn’t have any choice.
He wondered how long it would be before he’d feel like Reaper did. Then he realized he didn’t actually know how she felt. Maybe she felt the same things as he did. Maybe she was simply better at hiding it, or coping.
The sled shuddered and Bull felt the straps holding him strain with brutal deceleration. He heard a rebel yell and other battle cries as the interior bucked and shook. Debris flew and something rattled off his helmet as the long, narrow space seemed to tip forward to the vertical.
Forge and Steel Page 4
