by Marko Kloos
Back in my cabin, I change out of my Class A uniform and hang it up neatly. Then I choose my most comfortable and worn-in set of Fleet cammies. The regular Fleet personnel are wearing the blueberries, but SOCOM personnel are allowed their camouflage field uniforms to set them apart from the rank and file, emphasize their special operations status, and foster esprit de corps. Technically speaking, it’s against regulations, but not even the most uptight and by-the-book Fleet commanders will dare to countermand the tradition. It’s a small privilege, hard earned through grueling training and sky-high casualty rates in combat, but it’s an important morale booster, and taking it away would provoke unreasonable levels of discontent among the podheads. Special operations soldiers are the most resilient and mentally flexible combat troops in the Fleet, but they get their cammies in a bunch about the strangest things if they feel their sense of tradition is violated. When the Corps switched to army-style ranks across the board in the course of unifying the branches ten years ago, it took the SEALS a while to stop using their navy ranks among each other in defiance of the sacrilegious new conventions. People who readily launched onto Lanky-occupied worlds in fragile bio-pods and spent weeks on hostile planets in extremely stressful conditions found it almost intolerable to be called “sergeant” instead of “petty officer.”
When I am dressed, I check myself in the mirror. The cammies I am wearing are clean and without a wrinkle or loose thread. They have the perfect grade of saltiness, that hard-won quality of a set of utility cammies when they are worn and faded enough to mark a seasoned grunt, but not so much that they run afoul of regulations. But something still doesn’t look right about my appearance.
I take off my camouflage blouse and spread it out on my bunk. Then I spend an extra ten minutes rolling up the sleeves into crisp and smooth bands of pale blouse liner, good enough to pass muster of the most uptight drill instructor. Whatever else my new troops will think of me, it won’t be that I am too old or lazy to sport a perfect sleeve roll.
The four officers waiting for me in the briefing room get out of their chairs when I step through the door, and I immediately wave them off.
“As you were,” I say.
They sink back into their seats. There are several empty chairs around the big table that takes up most of the room, and I sit down next to my new section leaders. The Force Recon captain is immediately obvious in his SI camouflage. The other three are wearing the same Fleet pattern I do, and I can only place them when they turn toward me and make the main qualification badges on their uniforms visible.
“Good afternoon, sir,” the SEAL captain says. His name tape says “HARPER,” and he’s a squat and muscular man with a jawline that makes him look like a heavyweight prizefighter. The other officers in the room add their own version of the greeting.
“Good afternoon,” I say. “If it’s that late already. It’ll take me a week to get used to shipboard watch cycles again, I’m afraid.”
“I’m not even adjusted yet, and we’ve been on this boat for a week and a half,” Captain Harper says.
I pull my PDP out of the leg pocket of my cammies and place it on the table in front of me.
“I won’t take up much of your afternoon,” I say. “I’m Major Andrew Grayson, the new CO of STT 500. General Masoud asked me to fill in for Major Mackenzie. I know it’s a pain in the ass when you have to get used to a new boss in the middle of a deployment, so I’ll try to grease the process as much as I can.”
“We’re still in pre-deployment prep,” the Force Recon captain says. “It’s all just stowing kit and getting used to the new digs.”
“Anyone get wind of where we’re going yet?”
All four captains shake their heads.
“No, sir. Command’s holding their cards close to their chests on this one,” Captain Harper replies. “Not so much as a whiff. If you discount the speculations they trade on the hangar deck, that is. You know how it goes.”
“The Enlisted Underground,” I say. “The only faster-than-light comms network in the Corps. Spreads bullshit at blinding speed.”
The other officers chuckle.
“So we have no idea yet where we are going. Or what we are doing once we get there,” I say.
“That’s about the long and short of it, sir,” the combat controller lead, Captain Burns, says with a smile. I know his face from somewhere, probably a combat deployment over Mars a few years back, but I’ve never had him as a teammate or subordinate, and I have no idea whether he remembers running into me. All four of these officers are a little younger than I am, and slightly less experienced. The time in service for a captain is ten years, and promotion to major is all but certain at that point for seasoned podhead officers because of the constant scarcity of highly qualified personnel. The men sitting at the table with me were young lieutenants when I was a captain, and now they command platoon-sized special operations teams, just like I did when Masoud made the Fleet pin officer stars onto my epaulettes seven years ago.
“Let’s hope for a training milk run. But let’s prepare for combat. Let me ask you this, gentlemen. If we had a surprise pod drop on the menu next week, how would you feel about the readiness of your sections? And no need to blow smoke up my ass. I don’t care about starched uniforms or spit-shined boots. I care about skills and attitudes. We’ve had a long stretch of peace, if you don’t count garrison duty bullshit on Mars. You know, where the company-grade officers stand in line for twelve weeks of platoon command so they can claim combat awards. No hard surfaces left for us podheads to hone our edge.”
From their subtly shifting expressions, I know that I’ve picked the right tone and theme for my little pep talk—emphasizing our commonalities and setting us apart from the regular infantry and the support branches.
“Honest assessment,” I continue. “Are we ready for battle? Let’s hear it. SEAL section?”
“We’re in good shape,” Captain Harper says. “I have two second lieutenants that still have the sap coming out of their ears. But they’re eager to get in the game. And all my squad leaders know their business. I’ve assigned the most experienced ones to the squads with the new officers. To keep them between the guard rails.”
“Same here,” Captain Taylor, the spaceborne rescue leader, adds. “We’ve made it common practice in the STT to assign the section SNCOs to the squads with the greenest second lieutenants.”
“I heartily endorse that practice,” I say. “No better backseat driver than a grizzled master sergeant. I can’t count the times my SNCO saved me from myself when I had my first platoon. They should issue one to each new second lieutenant as soon as they get that star.”
“Force recon is a go as well,” the SI captain says. His name is Lawson, and he looks like a recruiting-poster model: handsome, whippet lean, and with hair buzzed to the minimum length the clippers will allow. “Same story. I’ve got a few more new corporals than I’d like, but the squad leaders and the command element are solid. We’ll get it done, whatever it is.”
“You’ve all served on Mars, right?” I ask. Every officer in the room nods.
“Who here was on the ground for Invictus?” I add. Invictus was the name of the operation that culminated in the Second Battle of Mars, when Earth’s combined space-capable forces tried to retake the planet from the Lankies seven years ago. Only Captain Harper, the SEAL, and Captain Burns, the combat controller, raise their hands.
“Then you know what these things are like,” I say to them. “When we don’t have them bottled up underground. When we are in the minority. If we spend the next six months doing practice assaults on Titan, it won’t break my heart. But don’t plan for that. Plan for them to dunk us into a bucket of angry hornets. You know what the fight will be like if we drop onto a colony. One where they’ve had years to prepare the battlefield.”
I pause for emphasis and look at their serious expressions. For the moment, my misgivings about being called “sir” by officers close to my own age are gone. Half of the
captains in this room and all the junior officers in the STT either joined the service after the invasion of Mars, or they were still in officer school when it happened. Whatever experience they have with fighting Lankies, it’s in the atypical environment of post-invasion Mars, where we have suppressed the remaining Lankies and cowed them into retreating deep underground.
None of them have ever had to hold the line with a squad or a platoon that had a dozen Lankies bearing down on them in the open, with no air support forthcoming and no PACS to shore up the flanks and lay down heavy fire. It’s a terror nobody can really convey in a classroom, or in anecdotes told in a bar after hours. Every veteran of Mars I know doesn’t like to talk about the battle with people who weren’t there. The lack of a common reference point upon which to hang the emotional ballast makes it feel like trying to communicate in different languages. There’s a sharp delineation among us between the Before and the After, between those who dropped into battle on Mars and whose who didn’t, and I know it’s not going to go away until the last of the survivors have left active duty.
We spend the next thirty minutes going through the administrative minutiae of a command team meeting—status reports on the individual sections, personnel concerns, coordination of team training, and half a dozen other bullet points. I don’t know the other team leaders yet, so I am relegated to listening and observing the interactions of my section leads. But they know that this isn’t about loading me up with information, that it’s mostly about us getting a feel for each other.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” I say when the captains have concluded their turns. “I’ll drop by each section separately in the next day or two. I’ll want to look at the training schedules and introduce myself to the squad leaders as well. If you have any needs or wants for your sections, bring your concerns to me. Now’s the time to make sure all the gears are turning freely. Once we leave the dock, it’s down to whatever we brought along. I strongly encourage you to take one last look at your section rosters. You know your people. This is your final opportunity to tweak the lineup if you have any reservations. Be sure that you’re happy with what you have when we head out.”
I get out of my chair, and the section leaders follow suit.
“One more thing,” I say. “The STT is directly subordinate to the ship’s CO. The next step up from my office is the commander’s ready cabin. That’s the place you need to go if you ever have any misgivings or complaints about your new company commander. But everything else ends at my desk. I want to keep our internal SOCOM business our own. Command has given the STT a long leash. Let’s not give them a reason to take the slack out of it.”
“Aye, sir,” Captain Harper says, and Taylor and Lawson echo the statement.
“Copy that, sir,” Captain Burns says.
Burns, Taylor, and Lawson file out of the room. From the way he’s lagging behind, I can tell that Captain Harper wants to have a quick word in private.
“Anything else on your mind, Captain?” I ask when the other three have left.
Harper turns toward me and straightens out his camouflage tunic, then brushes some nonexistent lint from the flap of his chest pocket.
“You probably don’t remember my face,” he says. “But I was on the team that went to Leonidas with you. Seven years ago, when you were in charge of the infantry platoon.”
I look at his face again. Something about it triggers a vague recollection in my brain, but I wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint it to a specific time or place if he hadn’t told me.
“You were on Masoud’s team,” I say.
Captain Harper nods.
“I was a young second lieutenant. Second combat deployment. We were the ones who stuck nuclear demolition charges on the terraformers. Spent a week sneaking around in the shadows while you were raising all kinds of hell on Arcadia.”
“We didn’t raise hell. We poked the hornet’s nest with a stick. And then we spent most of the week running away. One platoon, with a whole garrison regiment on our asses.”
“I read the after-action report,” Harper says. “And the award citations.”
“Lots of posthumous awards,” I reply. “That’s not really one of my favorite memories. Any particular reason why you’re bringing that up?”
He shifts his stance a little.
“Look, I know there was some bad blood between you and Masoud after Arcadia.”
“You could say that,” I say.
“It wasn’t right of him to do what he did. We all knew you grunts were coming along to keep the garrison busy. I didn’t find out until later that he didn’t tell you in advance. We all volunteer to stick our heads out every day. Nobody likes getting volunteered.”
“I’m not sure I believe that the whole SEAL team was in the dark about that,” I reply, trying to keep my rapidly increasing irritation out of my voice.
Captain Harper shrugs.
“What you believe is not up to me, sir. I can only tell you what happened.”
“Again—why are you bringing it up now?”
“I wanted to put all the cards on the table before we head out,” he says. “In case you want to ask for another SEAL section lead. I didn’t want you to find out a few days from now when you read through the deployment history in my personnel file.”
I study the captain’s earnest face and try to discern his sincerity. With my own anger tingeing my judgment, I know that I can’t make that call on the spot. But in the absence of other evidence, I decide to give him the benefit of the doubt for now. Arcadia was seven years ago, and he was just a young lieutenant fresh out of training. There’s nothing to be gained in the moment from blaming him for Masoud’s actions.
Still, it’s not an easy absolution.
“There’s still bad blood,” I tell Harper. “But it’s between me and the general. Not between me and the SEALs. Or you in particular. I appreciate your forthrightness.”
“Thank you, sir. I’m glad there are no hard feelings.”
“Of course not,” I say.
But as the SEAL captain walks out of the room and leaves me alone with my thoughts, I find that I’m not so sure about that after all.
CHAPTER 8
KEEPING UP WITH THE KIDS
The top of the platform is two meters above my head, and the wall in front of me is too smooth to climb. I flex my legs and feel the fiber strands of my armor’s power liner contract along with my muscles. A vertical jump like that would have been impossible for me to do even at the peak of my physical fitness back in Combat Controller School. But with the Mark V HEBA suit, I leap off the flight deck’s rough nonslip surface and get high enough for a handhold on the first try. I hook my fingers over the edge of the platform and pull myself up. The HEBA suit weighs over thirty kilos, but the power assist from the armor liner makes the load feel inconsequential. I swing my leg over the edge and haul my bulk on top of the obstacle-course platform, where I allow myself a little pause to catch my breath and take a brief look around.
We are a week out of Daedalus, and I still don’t know where we are going or what our task will be. In the absence of a concrete mission for which to prepare, we spend our days with maintenance and training. Today, we have set up an obstacle course with lightweight, collapsible modules. The course forms a loop on the deck that’s a hundred meters on its long sides, but we’re still only taking up a small portion of Washington’s cavernous flight deck. The periphery is lined with the biggest assembly of military spacecraft I have ever seen in one place. The Avenger-class battlecarriers have a full space wing allotted to them—two attack squadrons, two drop-ship squadrons, and three support squadrons. All in all, there are over a hundred attack birds and drop ships parked all around us, painted in the latest high-visibility pattern, in the bright white-and-orange color scheme of the Avengers. Exercising with all these state-of-the-art war machines beats the hell out of running on the road at a base somewhere. It makes me feel like I’m in the middle of a recruiting vid.
Two hund
red years of camouflage conventions thrown out of the airlock, I think. If we ever go up against the Sino-Russians again, we’re going to be repainting a lot of gear.
The next obstacle is a single steel bar that bridges a ten-meter gap to another platform. There are no form requirements for the course other than “finish it and don’t fall on your face,” and I can tackle the problem any way I choose. The power assist of the suit gives my muscles a lot of extra boost, but I don’t quite trust it to give me the power for a ten-meter jump, and I don’t want to bust my ass on the deck below while half the STT troops are watching. Instead, I run across the gap on top of the bar. The power assist doesn’t just amplify my muscles, it also helps me keep my balance even with thirty kilos of armor wrapped around me. The fiber strands of the armor liner are made of a new flexible wire that contracts when it is electrified, and the tech wizards of the military R&D department have found a way to work it into a material that functions like an external layer of very strong muscles. Turning on the assist drains the power cell of the armor faster, but it provides a ridiculous performance boost that never fails to be intoxicating. The bug suit already gives me a near-omniscient view of my surroundings on the battlefield, and now the new power liner lets me run faster and jump higher than ever before.
