Contact Front (Drop Trooper Book 1)

by Rick Partlow

  “We joined the Marines,” someone murmured behind me, too low and quiet for me to figure out who’d said it, probably too low for Charles to hear, though I thought I saw his eyes narrow.

  Finally, someone raised their hand. It was the platoon leader for the exercise, Private Marcus. He was quiet and unassuming, dark enough he nearly blended into the night.

  “They knew we were coming,” he suggested. “They were ready for us.”

  “They were,” Charles agreed, “and some of you may think that’s not fair, that the Op-For cheated. But that’s going to happen out there, too.” He gestured up at the night sky to demonstrate where “out there” was. “The enemy is going to know you’re coming and you’re going to have to change your plans on the fly. Still, this was your first live mission and it wasn’t designed to be unwinnable. Your problem was your plan. It required too much coordination with limited communication.” He pointed at me. “Your First squad was sent on a pincer movement ten kilometers away from the rest of your platoon in a situation where you didn’t have secure comms and couldn’t coordinate if something went wrong.”

  His grin was broad and unfriendly.

  “And there’s the lesson, boys and girls, the reason for this exercise. Something always goes wrong. You all heard of Murphy’s Law? Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. I think Murphy must have been a Second Lieutenant or a Corporal, because they’re the best ones for finding out what can go wrong with a plan.”

  A few chuckles at that.

  “So, given that things will go wrong and we can’t always anticipate them, we have to be ready to improvise, adapt and overcome. But we can’t do that if we’ve split our forces and can’t even talk to each other because we’re out of line-of-sight. That’s what you did wrong, Private Marcus.” His eyes settled on me. “As for you, Private Alvarez, you fucked up in a totally different way.” The smile again, a canine smile that was more a baring of teeth than any good humor. “Don’t get me wrong, you gave the Op-For boys a black eye.”

  “Literally, in one case.” That was Bullough, commenting from his position off to the side, and I glanced over at him in surprise.

  “Yes, sir,” Charles agreed, chuckling. “But the problem is, their job was to stop you linking up with your platoon and, losses aside, they accomplished that mission and you failed in yours.”

  “What could I have done differently?” I blurted. Then added, “Sir.” Not that I thought things had gone well, but…

  “Just one thing, Alvarez, but it’s a damn important thing. You could’ve carried out the mission. There’s no way you could have known the enemy battlesuits were there, and there’s no way you could have beaten them all, but once the ambush was tripped, your priority should have been to get your ass out of that canyon and alert Marcus here that you were blown.”

  “I should have just left them there, sir?”

  “The mission, the men, and you.” Charles shrugged. “It’s an old saying, older than spaceflight, and my apologies to the females here, from a time when women were not allowed in combat. It still applies, though. The mission always comes first, before your people, before yourself. Notifying your command that they were heading into an ambush should have been your priority over blasting bad guys.”

  I said nothing more, sinking back onto the ground in a sullen funk.

  If the idiots in my squad would have listened to what I said, it wouldn’t have been a problem.

  “Which is not to say there wasn’t plenty of blame to go around,” Charles added, as though he’d read my thoughts. “None of you really know how to lead yet, which is expected, but too damned many of you don’t know how to follow, either. Following orders isn’t just something you do when a trainer yells at you, it’s what you do when the guns are firing and lives are on the line. That’s when it’s the most important. Tonight, I heard your squad leaders, your platoon leader, and a platoon sergeant yelling orders, and no one was listening.”

  He shrugged, hopping down off the rock platform and pacing through the sand.

  “Maybe they weren’t the best orders, maybe they were stupid orders, but part of the oath you swore when you signed up was to carry out the lawful orders of your superiors. Not just the convenient ones, not just the ones you think you’ll get in trouble if you ignore, but all the lawful orders. So, before any of you start blaming the leaders we appointed for this mission, think about what you did and whether you did everything you could to support them.”

  Captain Charles checked the datalink on his wrist.

  “All right, that’s it for tonight. We’ll go over the nuts and bolts of the mission later, but for now, get organized into your squads and get back in your suits. The shuttle will be landing right out here….” He pointed behind us at the expanse of flat rock stretching off into the darkness of the cloud-wreathed night. “…in about forty-five minutes to take you back to Tartarus. Dismissed.”

  I was about to call First squad together when a hand touched my arm. I looked around, and then upward. Major Bullough was nearly two meters tall and I wondered if they had to configure his suit to accommodate his height. His eyes were buried under thick brows, nearly invisible in the darkness.

  “Sir?” I asked, stiffening to attention. It wasn’t required in the field, but I wasn’t that long out of Basic Training.

  “Relax, Alvarez.” He jerked his head off toward the flat rock landing zone. “Walk with me a moment.”

  He strode out into the darkness, his long legs eating up the meters with little effort, and I had to fast-walk just to keep up, nearly running into him when he stopped abruptly. His hands were clasped behind his back as he stared out into the darkness as if he could see the sky through the low-hanging clouds. I tried not to focus on the distance, knowing how petrified with fear I would be if it were daylight and I was standing out here on the edge of nothing. It was bad enough at night.

  “I am not overly fond of this planet, Alvarez,” he confessed. He was smiling thinly when he turned back to me. “I don’t know anyone who is, if they’re being honest. But the one thing I like about my job, despite being stationed here, is the opportunity to find men and women with the potential to be great Marines. They don’t come very often.” He shrugged, a motion of shoulders and hands, more fluid and expressive than I would have expected, as if he were an actor on stage. “Oh, most of the recruits who come through here are passable, useful for the war effort, but so few have what it takes to be great.”

  I said nothing, not sure where this was leading…or maybe, having a wild guess and not wanting to indulge it.

  “Private Alvarez, you handle a battlesuit with an incredible instinct. We don’t see it often. Most Drop-troops take months, if not years to really feel at home with the interface, to move the suit as if it’s their own body. I was impressed with the instinctive way you reacted in combat, even with very little experience. So was the Op-For NCO who you beat the shit out of.” There was a hint of amusement in his tone. “He wanted me to tell you no recruit has ever killed three Op-For suits in one mission, particularly not their first.”

  That felt good to hear, and I wanted to revel in it, but I knew better. I kept my mouth shut because when someone like Major Bullough says shit like that, there’s always a “but” coming.

  “But,” he went on, “every Marine, from the lowest recruit to the Chief of Staff of the Marine Corps not only has to be ready to be an infantry troop on demand, they have to be ready to be a leader.”

  I thought about lying, telling him what he wanted to hear, that I was doing my best and I’d get it right any day now. But I had a sense I should be honest with the man, that he knew more about me than he was letting on.

  “I’ve never really wanted to lead anyone,” I admitted. “I’ve pretty much always been on my own.”

  “And that’s fine, for now.” He waved a hand expansively. “We need warm bodies, and as good as you are in a suit, we’d take you if you were a narcoleptic necrophiliac. But if you ever want to be mo
re, Cameron, if you ever want to be great, either as a Marine or as a man, then you’re going to have to be more than just a talented killer. You’re going to have to become a leader. You’re going to have to decide you’re in the Corps for more than just a ticket out of the Underground, or to avoid prosecution for one crime or another.”

  He’d struck pretty close to home and twinges of paranoia crawled up my spine as I wondered just how much he knew about me. Bullough glanced sidelong at me, something canny in his expression, as if he could tell what I was thinking.

  “Don’t worry, no one cares what you were before. Everyone here has a past, even Academy graduates like me. That’s the choice you’re going to have to make. At some point, there’ll come a time when you have to move beyond what you were, or what you think you still are, and become a Marine.”

  “Yes, sir.” I wasn’t agreeing so much as acknowledging I’d heard what he said, but he didn’t push it.

  “Get back to your squad,” he told me. “Tomorrow’s the fun part of a field exercise.”

  “What’s that, sir?” I wondered.

  “PMCS, Private Alvarez. An acronym you’ll come to hate as much as you hate this planet. Preventative Maintenance Checks and Service.” His grin was as cruel as the one Captain Charles had shown us earlier. “You get to clean every damn bit of sand and dust off your suits…even if it takes all day.”

  9

  Major Bullough was right about two things. I did learn to hate PMCS and I was already getting damned tired of Inferno by the time I got through AOT. And I wouldn’t be getting away from either of them any time soon.

  82 Eridani beat down, as merciless at mid-afternoon than any of the bullies I’d faced in group homes as a child, though more equanimous in its brutality. Poppa used to say “it rains on the just and the unjust” but it hadn’t rained on anyone here in a month and wouldn’t again for the rest of the dry season. The monsoons had hit about a quarter of the way through AOT and turned the dirt to muck across the continent, then ended about three days before our graduation ceremony, as if God Himself had some sort of deal with the Corps to make things as miserable as possible in the field.

  And Goddamn, that mud was hard to get out of the joints of a Vigilante.

  I only hoped that the armorers at Third Platoon, Delta Company, Fourth Battalion of the 187th Marine Expeditionary Force (Armored) were less picky than the ones at AOT.

  I wiped sweat out of my eyes with my free hand, pulled my duffle bag higher on my shoulder and double-checked the sign on the rough, unfinished buildfoam wall of the company headquarters building to make sure I didn’t wander around the wrong offices for half an hour, because once I stepped into the air conditioning, I wasn’t going to want to come back out.

  Sucking in a deep breath and trying to steady myself, I stepped through the doors. The cool, dry air inside hit me in a wave, drying the perspiration coating my scalp, and it felt as if ten kilograms lifted off my shoulders in an instant. There was a desk a few meters inside the front entrance, crewed by an actual, human clerk on the theory that privates are cheaper to maintain than automated systems and needed to be kept busy. The one at the desk looked even younger than me and not nearly as happy to be working inside as I would have been. He squinted at the rank displayed on my chest and collar and decided I didn’t rate any sort of formality.

  “You need anything?” he asked, sounding supremely bored.

  “I’m looking for the Platoon Sergeant for Third,” I told him.

  “That’d be Gunny Guerrero, but he’s at an NCO meeting right now.”

  Shit. An NCO meeting meant no First Sergeant either.

  “Should I wait?” I wondered. “I need to report to the platoon. I’m just arriving from AOT.”

  “Oh, you’re that guy Alvarez?” He scrolled through screens on his scansheet, then nodded. “Okay, yeah, Gunny Guerrero left a note, said you were supposed to go ahead and report to your platoon leader, Lt. Ackley.” He pointed down the hallway to his right. “She’s the second door down on your….” He seemed to a do a mental calculation, trying to figure out my directions from his. “…on your left.” He waved behind his desk. “You can leave your bag here if you want.”

  I took him up on it, throwing the duffle against the inside of the desk, glad to be rid of it after hauling it across the length of Tartarus on three different busses. There was nothing in it I gave a shit about, nothing personal because I had nothing personal. It was my issue uniforms, boots and the one set of civvies I’d had fabricated after Basic. It could have been replaced in an hour if I needed it.

  I looked around for a speaker or a buzzer or a security panel or something at Ackley’s door, but this was a no-frills military base and I knocked on the door with my bare knuckles like I was back in Tijuana.

  “Come.” It was a female voice, firm but young. Young and inexperienced could mean someone insecure enough to expect spit and polish, and I decided I’d better toe the line until I found out different.

  I opened the door and stepped through into an immediate position of attention.

  “Ma’am, Private Alvarez reporting for duty!”

  The words were sharp and parade-ground loud and I followed them with a salute to match, eyes frozen on the wall straight ahead, landing on a still picture hanging there of a smiling couple in civilian clothes. They had the ageless look of surface-dwellers, not just in Trans-Angeles but anywhere in the Commonwealth, people who weren’t necessarily rich but comfortable enough that their parents and probably their parents before them had been able to afford anti-aging treatments. They didn’t look over thirty, but were likely decades older than that.

  Lt. Joyce Ackley looked a lot like her father, I saw when she stood up to return my salute. She was tall for a woman, assuming she was from Earth and not somewhere with lighter gravity, as tall as I was, though probably fifteen or twenty kilos lighter. Her face was long, her nose straight and her jaw strong, with a set of determination to it.

  “At ease, Alvarez,” she said. “Close the door and grab a seat.”

  Not quite as stiff and by-the-book as I’d feared, then. The chair wasn’t particularly comfortable, just folding plastic, and it threatened to collapse under my weight, so I sat up straight and tried not to move around much.

  “Gunny Guerrero will meet up with you tomorrow,” she told me, leaning back in her office chair. “He’s trying to hash out the details of our new training schedule with the rest of the battalion senior NCOs. We’re going to be deploying soon on the Iwo Jima and we have a limited time to get some final requirements down before we ship out.”

  “How long do we have, ma’am?” I wondered. Something tingled in my gut and it might have been eagerness to get into the fight, but I had to admit it might also have been fear.

  “Three weeks.” Her voice was quiet and I wasn’t sure if I was imagining the slight break in her voice. “Then another two weeks on the ship to reach our target.”

  Less than two months till I saw combat. Maybe less than two months to live.

  “You’re replacing a casualty,” she informed me. “Training accident, not combat. None of us have been in combat yet except Top.” Top would be the Company First Sergeant, though we’d all been cautioned in AOT that not all First Sergeants liked the term. “And Captain Covington,” she added, as if that part was obvious. “The Company Commander. He’s prior service, fought in the Pirate Wars. Re-upped after the Battle for Mars.”

  My eyes went wide. The Pirate Wars had been twenty-five years ago. That would make the CO at least in his forties, maybe fifties. Not that someone who’d had anti-aging treatments would be physically unsuited for combat, but you didn’t usually see people that old joining up.

  “Giannelli jumped too early on a practice drop,” she went on. “The drop order hadn’t been given. He just lost his cool. You know what happens when you drop in a Vigilante at too far over four hundred meters, Alvarez?”

  “They told us in Armor school,” I said, remembering the lec
ture very well, and the video and pictures that had gone with it, “if you drop from over four hundred meters, that usually means the shuttle hasn’t decelerated enough for it to be survivable.”

  “For a normal drop. It varies for atmospheric density and local gravity,” she allowed, “but at anything near standard one gee, you’ll be looking at multiple broken bones between four to six hundred meters. Giannelli dropped at a thousand meters.”

  I gulped, trying not to imagine how high that was.

  “Did he…?”

  “He’s alive.” Ackley shrugged. “They’re growing him a new spine at the Tartarus Medical Center but it’ll be three months before he walks again.”

  She was trying to be nonchalant about it, but I’d learned to read people a long time ago, in the group homes and on the streets. It bothered the lieutenant, and I guessed it would bother me, too.

  “I don’t need to see something like that happen twice, Alvarez,” she said, a gruff hoarseness in her voice. She cleared her throat and went on with a firmer tone. “I’ve seen from your training records that you’re a natural in a suit. Don’t let it go to your head. If you get sloppy once, ignore one safety protocol because you think you’re just that good, you’ll wind up dead before the Tahni get a chance to take a shot at you.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” I acknowledged. I hadn’t honestly considered it a possibility. If there was anything more important than me not getting killed, I hadn’t discovered it yet.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Come,” Ackley said, not bothering to rise.

  “You called, El-Tee?”

  The man was the type I’d come to think of as a generic Marine drop-troop. Medium height, medium build, hair buzzed on the sides to bare the jacks and regulation short on top, pale even in this sun-drenched hell-hole because he spent all his time outdoors in a battlesuit. There was something different about this man, though, just a hint of irreverence in the set of his eyes, in the shadow of a grin that wouldn’t quite leave his face.