Sergeant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 2)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  Captain Davis was in command of the operation, and he ordered the recon team to move to active surveillance. This was a moment of truth. The stealth capabilities of the PVS-2 would have kept the team invisible to anyone on the Marie’s Best. As soon as they went active, though, their position would be revealed. There wasn’t much a coffin could do against incoming missiles or energy weapons.

  A few moments later, new data started streaming in. It was too much for Ryck to grasp, so he blinked his AI to make some sense of it. The AI put that results in what it determined to be in order of importance to a combat Marine. Foremost among this was that none of the ship’s weapons systems were operational. Second was that there were 133 living humans aboard. Third, there were working, active personnel weapons on the ship.

  The scans couldn’t determine if the survivors were armed with any of the active weapons. It couldn’t tell the intent of the survivors. But the mere fact that there were people alive on the ship, a ship that had tried to run the interdiction, and that there were functioning small arms on the ship, was something Captain Davis had to take under consideration.

  Captain Davis, the two platoon commanders, the gunny, and the Navy engineer were massaging the plan as the small flotilla approached the Marie’s Best. The engineer had no command authority, but he was the Navy rep, answering directly back to the admiral, and his mission to secure the integrity of the ship was second only to the overall security of the task force. Ryck listened in as the company commander made the adjustments. Several times, the captain’s local command circuit was cut, probably when the battalion CO or even the admiral stuck their noses into things.

  As a young private, Ryck thought captains, if not gods, were at least saints, doing what they pleased. It took him awhile to realize that they had the same pressures and “input” from above. Private or captain, all Marines answered to someone else.

  At five minutes out, the plan had gelled. Of course no plan survived the first few moments of combat, but at least Ryck knew where his squad would be breaching and what their task would be. That was a start.

  Ryck took a minute to relay the word to his squad. Only three Marines in the squad had ever done any actual ship takedown ops. For the rest of the squad, their only experience had been in Phase IV of recruit training. Since embarking on the Ark Royal, the OpsO[17] had scheduled an immediate action drill, but without actually going EVA, that was only moderately useful. It would have to be enough, though.

  The entire platoon was going to breach the Marie’s Best amidships, close to the galley where the bulk of the survivors were gathered. Each squad was going to breach at about a 120-degree angle from each other so that they would be essentially encircling the galley and coming in from different directions. With no artificial gravity working on the ship, there would be no up or down, so the Marines could not think in a two-planed battlespace.

  At two minutes out, the company got a “good luck” from the recon team. The Marines couldn’t pick the team, but the team could pick them up as they approached the Marie’s Best. Ryck wondered about the recon Marines for a moment. When Ryck went into battle, he had his Marines around him. The two recon Marines just had each other as they drifted out there in space somewhere.

  The Marie’s Best registered on their sensors before they could actually see her, but finally, Ryck could pick her out with his zoom panel. Technically, he wasn’t seeing her but rather an image captured by his shoulder cam and displayed on his face shield, but for all intents and purposes, she was in view.

  The Navy cybo released control of the rekis, and LCpl Keiji, the squad coxswain, took over, “diving” below the x-axis to come up on the other side of the ship. They passed under it, “under” only because their orientation within the reki made them crane their heads up to see the ship as they went past. “Under” and “over” had little real meaning in space, so the terms were used within a personal perspective connotation. Marines on the other side of the ship could also be passing “under” the ship as well.

  Ryck half-expected fire to reach out from the ship to rake the reki, but the Marie’s Best remained quiet and unresponsive.

  Something did hit the reki, though, as they moved in. They couldn’t hear it, of course, but all the Marines could feel the vibration. Some of the debris from the monitor strike had not been blown away. With no atmosphere to slow it down, the debris keeping alongside the ship as it continued through space. The reki didn’t seem damaged, but whatever hit the sled might have been able to put a serious hurt on the unprotected Marines.

  “Slow it down, Keiji,” Ryck ordered. “Let them wait up for us, if they have to. No use getting one of us zeroed by pieces of dead ship.”

  He started to report their speed change when he heard Sams pass the same thing. The debris field surrounded a good portion of the ship. Ryck could see some of the larger pieces closer to the bow of the ship, but even around the center, glints of reflected sunlight caught his eyes as pieces and shards tumbled. It was as if space fireflies had gathered around the ship.

  Keiji slowed them down to a crawl. They were a good 200 meters away when they passed a piece of cloth, probably part of a blanket. Ryck had to push it out of the way. At their relative speed, it wouldn’t have done any damage, and Ryck was glad they’d slowed down instead of coming in blazing.

  The reki had a very simple console. An image of the ship was displayed on it, with their breach-location highlighted with a narrowing yellow square. LCpl Keiji was using it to guide the sled to the correct spot. He brought the reki to a stop just 20 meters from the skin of the Marie’s Best.

  That was a relative stop, Ryck reminded himself. It was a little hard to grasp that they were still hurtling through space at a pretty good clip. If the Navy engineer team couldn’t get the ship under its own power, or if task force couldn’t get a tug on the ship, it would probably plunge into the planet’s atmosphere and burn up, at least most of it. Some pieces would undoubtedly make it to the ground.

  At his signal, the squad released their harnesses. Third Fire Team flew to the back of the reki where their breaching chamber had been loaded. In space it didn’t weigh anything, but it still had mass, and once moving, its momentum could make it dangerous. The other Marines and Doc Grbil gave way, leaving the team plenty of maneuver space to get the chamber up against the skin of the ship.

  It took almost five minutes of slow maneuvering to get the chamber in placed and locked. This would be a simple breach. With no atmosphere inside the ship, there was no need to create an airlock. If the damaged area could be sealed off after the ship was under Navy control, the breach could be sealed once again.

  “Golf-three-six, we are in position and waiting to execute,” Ryck passed on the platoon circuit.

  Ryck used the lieutenant’s call sign to indicate he was speaking to the platoon commander. He could have gone on a direct P2P circuit with him, but he wanted everyone else to know their status. Third Squad itself was “Golf-three-three,” but as his identity was indicated as soon as he keyed his mic, passing that merely took up unnecessary time.

  “Roger that. Wait for my command,” the lieutenant passed.

  Ryck checked the feed from the recon team. The blobs that indicated living people were still grouped inside. There was nothing to indicate a marshalling of forces. The recon team was at the wrong angle to give a clear indication of what was right inside Third Squad’s planned breach, but it looked like the area might be empty of life.

  First Platoon would be entering the ship through the damaged nose. Ryck didn’t envy them that task. There was much more debris up there, and inside, maneuvering around wreckage in an EVA suit could be a stressful undertaking. The suits were tough, but not indestructible. However, the Navy engineer needed to check that area first. Only if it was totally destroyed would he take his team to the aft control center.

  It took longer than expected, but First Platoon finally picked their way through the debris. Capt Davis gave the command, and the Third Platoon s
tarted breaching. Sparks flew from the end of the chamber as the LTC blades bit into the ship’s skin.

  Breaches could be made by either blowing their way into a breach or by cutting. Given the age of the Marie’s Best and her hallo aluminum skin, cutting was the least catastrophic method of breaching. Within twenty seconds, the breach was made, and the Marines poured into the ship.

  The ship was dark where they breached. Each EVA’s AI recognized that and turned on the infrared lamps located around the face shield. Ryck didn’t like having to rely on them. He could see with them on, but the EVA’s night vision capability left him with a flat, almost two-dimensional view that left him feeling out of sorts.

  The EVA suit displays, while not as detailed at those in a PICS, did display ID avatars, so when one Marine lost control and slammed into another, sending the second one cart wheeling to the far side of the room, Ryck could see it was Ling who slammed into Beady. Null-G movement had to be controlled. Being too hyped made it difficult to gain that steady control. Ryck wanted to remind Cpl Beady that he had to keep an eye on Ling, but he knew that Beady knew that, too. No use harping on it.

  “First, move it out. Second, cover them,” Ryck passed.

  He hooked a strut with his M99 and pulled himself forward. Outside or inside a ship, the EVA suit’s thrusters would work. But in the confines of a ship, the exhaust of the thruster could impact other nearby Marines. So movement became a series of jumps with tiny adjustments from the microjets to keep steady. Controlling the foot pads to grip when needed, but to let go when jumping was an exercise in timing that did not come easily. The six centimeter hooks that some Marine had designed to slip over the muzzle of their M99s was a godsend. With them, a Marine could reach out and pull himself along without having to ground his feet.

  Greg Prifit had his usual assignment as the fire team’s heavy gunner. Instead of a 20mm grenade launcher, though, he was armed with a M51 plasma gun. Set on full dispersion, he could fill a ship’s passage with blue death, sending it out over 20 meters before its effectiveness started to diminish. He cautiously pushed out of the compartment, peering down the passage. The retrans from the recon team indicated there were no life forms in the passage, but there were a number of ways to counteract or spoof sensors. He paused only a moment before pulling himself through the hatch and down the passage, the rest of his team on his ass. Ryck followed, and behind him were the other two teams.

  First Team was hugging the sides of the passage, one Marine on the deck, the overhead, and each bulkhead. All were oriented with their feet towards the outside of the passage, their heads toward the middle. This allowed for better fields of fire, and would allow for easier support from the rest of the squad. Realistically, if they hit the shit, only two or three of the other Marines would be able to support with fire without too great of a risk of friendly fire casualties.

  The squad moved like a disjointed snake down the passage, making their way to the galley. There were compartments along the way, but there was no time to clear each one, so Hartono used the weldmaster, a small gun that “flowed” a small area of the metal hatches, bridging the seam between the door and the jamb and sealing them shut until an engineer could come by and opened them.

  First Fire Team had only moved about 30 meters through the curved corridor when they saw their first person. Ex-person, that is. The young man was in the grey overalls popular with many fabrication factories. He was floating a few centimeters off of the outer bulkhead. His eyes were glassy and bulging, his mouth open. Around his nose and from his mouth were bubbles. Ryck knew they would be red under normal lighting. He’d obviously been without access to an EVA suit, and when the ship was breached, he would have had only 20 or 30 seconds until the air was expelled, leaving the ship in a vacuum. Clearly, he had tried to hold his breath while he struggled to reach safety.

  Back at boot, one of the things drilled into recruits was that holding the breath in a vacuum was tantamount to a death sentence. The air in their lungs would quickly expand, causing embolisms that would kill within seconds. This could be avoided by immediately expelling all the air from the lungs and keeping the mouth open. A human could remain conscious for up to 15 seconds in a vacuum and could remain alive for up to a minute or more. People could be revived even after longer than that. A Brotherhood sailor had supposedly been brought back after six minutes in a vacuum with no signs of permanent damage.

  This young man undoubtedly never had that type of training, though. He was probably the factory worker he seemed to be. What he was doing in a ship trying to run a Federation blockade was a mystery to Ryck. Whatever the reason, it ended up killing him.

  The man was drifting in front of Keiji, and the lance corporal tried to avoid the body. He just nudged it, though, as he passed, sending the body slowly tumbling. Ryck tried to scoot past the body, but the body’s tumbling took up a lot of space, and it rotated into him. This could slow down the squad it every Marine was trying to avoid the corpse. Ryck took a hold of it and planted his feet on the corridor’s overhead. Slowly turning, he steadied himself, and with a sure push, sent the body down the very center of the passage. With the Marines around the corridor’s periphery, the body floated past them, making it beyond the last Marine before hitting the far overhead as the corridor curved.

  “The passage to the next deck isn’t here,” Cpl Rey passed. “It’s supposed to be here.”

  Ryck turned back and moved forward, switching to the ship’s plan on his readout. Every ship moving through Federated space was required to have complete ship’s blueprints registered. Rey was correct. He was right at the spot where the passage to the inner decks was supposed to be, and the galley was two decks in. There was a fine seam in the bulkhead where the entrance to the ladder should have been. The ship had been modified, and the new plans had never been submitted.

  “There has to be a way,” Ryck said, checking his readout.

  “Sams, is your access to Bravo and Charlie decks there?” he asked the First Squad leader.

  There was a pause until Sams came on the circuit and said, “Roger that. We’re just passing Bravo. What’s up?”

  “They’ve modified the ship. Our ladder is sealed off. There’s not another passage on the plans until we reach yours, but there is a compartment, Alpha-One-Six, between us, and it looks like it opens on both decks. If it’s sealed, though, or doesn’t open to Bravo, then we’re going to have to move on and use your route in,” Ryck said.

  “OK, just give me a heads up if you are going to be coming up our butt,” Sams said.

  Ryck reported the issue to the lieutenant, who told Ryck to keep moving and try that compartment as a passage to the inner decks.

  “Rey, do you see Alpha-One-Six on your plans?” he asked.

  “Not really. How far down is it?” Cpl Rey asked.

  With a PICS’ more advanced display capability, Ryck could have highlighted the compartment and activated that highlight on Rey’s display. With the EVA suits’ less-capable displays, that wasn’t possible.

  “Thirty meters ahead, proximal,” Ryck told him.

  “Oh, proximal, I was looking at the regular compartments. Yeah, I see it,” Rey said.

  The Marie’s Best had artificial gravity, and that oriented the ship so that down was proximal, towards the center of the ship. The overhead was distal. For ships that used rotation to simulate gravity, this was reversed. With both methods, the larger compartments tended to be medial, on the horizontal axis, surrounding the corridors. In between decks, though, there was space, valuable space. This was primarily used for conduits, air tubes, and the like, but wherever small compartments could be jigsawed in, they provided extra storage space, control rooms, or even hydroponic farms.

  “Head for that. Let’s see if we can get through to Bravo. According to this ship’s diagram, it should,” Ryck said.

  “Yeah, but it also showed this ladder going though, and this is one of the main ones,” Cpl Rey said.

  Ryck snorted, then re
plied, “Got that right. Well, let’s see if it’s right on this.

  Cpl Rey led his team down the passage, pushing with the grip-tite toes of his EVA for forward momentum and the hook on his weapon to keep him close along the bulkhead.

  Ryck liked to use the hook more than anything else. If someone hit them while the hook was latched onto something, he knew the split second it took to release that and bring his weapon to bear could be the difference between getting shot and shooting the enemy. But First Team was in front of him, so he felt simply using the hook kept his eyes steady and gave him a better picture of what was going on. The grip-tite that was on the toes of the EVA suit did as advertised, gripping most any surface and giving traction, but the push and dolphin motion it took to move forward without drifting out interfered with his line of sight.

  It only took a few minutes before First Team reached the round door on the deck that led to the compartment. Ryck pulled Second Team up, then gave Cpl Rey the signal to open it up.

  Hartono slid the M99 into the magholster on his thigh and grabbed the door’s wheel, bringing his legs under him and flat on the deck. Braced by holding the small, recessed wheel, he could exert as much force on the door as his hands could maintain their grip. He spun the wheel, and the door immediately opened without resistance. With his right hand, he grabbed his weapon; with his left, he pulled himself into a dive down through the door and into the compartment. Keiji and Prifit were on his ass.

  Cpl Rey was about to follow when Keiji told him to stop. Ryck crowded up, ready for anything, but Keiji’s head appeared through the open door.

  “It’s kinda tight here. This is some kinda bunkroom. Harts is ready to open up the door to Bravo Deck, so me and Tip are gonna cover. That’s all the room there is.”

  “Wait one,” Ryck said, pulling himself over to the door so he could see inside.

  Keiji was right. Inside the cramped space were six racks, three on a side. This had to be crew’s quarters. Ryck had heard that some lines were tight-ass stingy, using all bigger compartments for cargo or paying passengers, but this was the first time he’d ever run across this shoehorning in crew wherever they could.