Recon- the Complete Series

by Rick Partlow

  I gritted my teeth angrily at my own juvenile selfishness. Life wasn’t fair; it never had been. Anna had been trying to tell me that…Jesus, was that just hours ago?

  “I can’t spend the rest of my life under her thumb,” I said. “She sent him to kill you. I can’t go back and pretend it didn’t happen.” I wiped at the blood on my hands, wondering if it would ever come off. “Take me to Vegas, Gramps. Get me out of here.”

  Chapter Four

  I was moving. I wasn’t walking, but I was moving. There was something wrapped around me, folded like a cocoon, touching my cheek teasingly with its damp, cold, plastic fingers. Touching my cheek? My helmet was off…hadn’t it been on? What had happened to my rifle? I tried to pry my eyes open but it was too dark and I didn’t have my helmet for night vision, so all I got was the vague impression of trees passing somewhere above me.

  Something scraped across my back, a root or a rock, the feeling just a slight bump through my armor. I was being dragged, I realized dimly. I was in some sort of travois and I was being dragged through the woods.

  Had I been captured? I moved my hands to my tactical vest and felt the comforting outline of the compact pistol holstered on the right side of my chest. The Tahni wouldn’t have left it. I sighed out the breath I’d been holding and closed my eyes, giving into the grogginess that had settled over me.

  ***

  The air dragged at me with a blanket of humidity and the heat of too-close 82 Eridani beat down relentlessly in the hell of a Summer afternoon on Inferno. Tartarus, the planet’s largest (and only) city, was the home to the Commonwealth military headquarters, mostly because no one else wanted it.

  I wiped sweat off my forehead with my free hand, always my right hand to keep it ready to salute an officer, and cinched my duffle bag tighter with my left. When I’d first arrived here, months ago, the bag had felt like it weighed a ton, since the gravity here was just a bit higher than Earth’s. I’d gotten used to it all through twelve weeks of Boot Camp and then another fourteen of Force Reconnaissance Qualification. The humidity though, I didn’t think I’d ever get used to that.

  The command offices for First Force Recon Battalion was tucked away in a remote corner of the Fleet Marine Corps Headquarters, and as I walked through the complex the ground fairly shook with the pounding of battlesuit footpads. The four-meter-tall battlesuit troopers were what most people thought of when they heard “Marine,” and it was what I’d thought of all those years I’d imagined becoming a Marine Corps officer. They towered over me with an imposing bulk of a ton of BiPhase Carbide, man-shaped but with a curved dome of bare metal where a head would be. Their weapons mounts were empty here on base, but they could carry anti-armor missiles, Gatling lasers, plasma guns or rapid-fire Gauss cannons when the need arose.

  They trudged along in squad formations down the fusion-form road, a constant bass drum-beat as the Marines inside practiced meshing with the control systems through the interface jacks they’d had implanted in their heads. I’d been a bit relieved when I was selected for Force Recon, because I honestly wasn’t looking forward to having the ‘face jacks stuck in my temples. And once they were there, they were there forever .

  I guess I had Gramps to thank for that: all that time outdoors, all that tactical training we’d done, had made me a natural for Recon. Qualification was supposed to be hard, to cull the herd, but I’d found it easier than Boot. Boot Camp had been like stepping into someone else’s life, which I suppose it was. Being treated like a nobody with no past that mattered had helped me to make the transition from being Tyler to being Randall. Well, into being Munroe . In the Marines, I may as well have not had a first name.

  Finally, I came to a large, old-fashioned physical sign with letters ten centimeters high made from some gold-colored metal: First Battalion, Fleet Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance. It was at the open end of a horseshoe-shaped building four stories tall and probably three hundred meters from one end to the other, arranged around a grass parade field. At the center of the field, three flags shifted fitfully in the warm wind on poles fifty meters tall. Tallest was the Commonwealth flag, with its spiral galaxy on a field of blue in the left corner, surrounded by alternating red and white stripes. Gramps told me it was based on the old US flag. On either side of it were the flags of the Space Fleet and the Fleet Marine Corps, respectfully lower, each displaying their mottos in Latin beneath their respective symbols. The Fleet had their stylized globe crossed by arrows and the pretentious deinceps ad tenebra , "forward into darkness;" while the Marines had the more traditional eagle clutching a fistful of arrows and the classic semper fidelis , "always faithful."

  A pair of Marines in field utilities were walking up the path towards me as I approached, and I peered carefully at them to make sure who I should be saluting. They were enlisted, though, Lance Corporals and not much older than me.

  “You know I heard the Tahni took Demeter,” the female was saying and my ears perked up at that. Demeter was one of the oldest colonies. If the enemy had actually taken it…

  “Bullshit!” The other, a male, commented instinctively. “That’s just rumors.”

  “No shit, man. This isn’t a rumor, it’s straight from my buddy over in Fleet Intell. They took it even before the Battle for Mars, but...”

  She stopped as they noticed me and halted in their tracks.

  “Well, what we got here?” The one to my right squinted as he peered at me from under the brim of his utility cap. “New meat for the grinder?” He was taller than me, but skinnier as well, with a pinched face that reminded me of a weasel.

  “Lance Corporal,” I said with a nod, “could you point me to Captain Kapoor’s office? I need to report to him.”

  “You’re one of Kapoor’s Cannibals, huh?” The other one asked, chuckling. She was much shorter than her companion, skin as dark as his was pale, with a smile that seemed to come easily to her. “Well, good luck.” She jerked a thumb back over her shoulder and to my left. “Delta Company’s offices are that-a-way, ground floor.”

  “Thanks,” I told her, smiling back, then moving on past them.

  “Kapoor’s Cannibals?” What the hell was that all about? And the Tahni had taken Demeter?

  Shit. That is not good .

  The officers started coming thick and fast as I hit the main walkway around the parade ground, and my arm was getting tired of saluting by the time I reached the small, machine-lettered sign on the wall that told me the next identical, cookie-cutter office belonged to Delta Company. I passed through the door and sighed with relief as air conditioning hit me, drying off the sweat I’d accumulated ever since I boarded the bus to the other end of the city two hours before.

  Another Lance Corporal was at the front desk, propped up on his elbows, watching a movie on his 2-D flat-screen, looking immensely bored. His eyes barely moved as I approached, probably just enough to determine I wasn’t an officer or higher-ranking NCO.

  “Yeah?” He grunted, eyes still glued to the screen.

  “I’m Private Munroe,” I told him, wondering if all Lance Corporals were dicks or if I’d just gotten lucky. “I’m supposed to report to Captain Kapoor.”

  Now the Lance did look at me, eyes narrowing as a frown passed across his face.

  “Since when does Captain Kapoor have PFC’s report to him instead of their Platoon Sergeant?”

  “Man, I’m new here,” I said, raising a hand palm-up in surrender. “I got no idea, I just go where they tell me.”

  He made a face, then paused his movie and brought up a schedule, sniffing in disbelief when he found the note.

  “Okay,” he said with a shrug. He glanced over at me. “You can leave your bag behind my desk.” He reached over and touched a control on the desktop. “Sir, there’s a Private Munroe here to see you.”

  “Send him in.” The voice was a clear baritone, a voice that could carry in a crowd.

  I shifted my duffle off of my shoulder and set it down by the wall behind the Corporal’
s chair, then moved over to the plain, white door marked with a subdued nameplate and knocked twice.

  “Come.”

  I took a deep breath and pushed through, taking a very brief mental snapshot before I braced to attention. The office was small and sparsely adorned, the only personal touch a small photo frame cycling short holographic videos of people who I assumed were the Captain’s family. The Captain was a short man but broad-shouldered, his skin a medium brown, his eyes an unfathomable dark and his head totally depilated, without even eyebrows. His utility fatigues were so crisp you could have cut yourself on them.

  “Private Munroe reports,” I said just as crisply, saluting with the precision I’d been taught not that long ago in Boot Camp.

  He took a moment to return my salute, regarding me with an appraising glance. When he dropped his hand, I dropped mine as well, but stayed at attention. I felt his eyes boring into me and the sweat started trickling down my back again as I wondered if I were somehow in trouble.

  “At ease, Munroe,” he finally said, and a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding hissed out of me as I allowed myself to meet his dark eyes. “Have a seat.” He motioned at the chair across the desk from him and I sat in it, still not really relaxing.

  “So, Mr. Munroe,” he said, his hands flat on the desk in front of him. “You might be wondering why you’re reporting to me instead of Sgt. Gomez, your Squad Leader, or Lt. Yassa, your Platoon Leader.”

  He paused for just a heartbeat, but it was long enough that I sensed he wanted an answer. “Yes, sir,” I said, still using the voice I’d learned talking to drill sergeants.

  He sighed. “Relax, Munroe,” he told me. “This isn’t Boot. We’re all Marines here, and more importantly, we’re all Recon.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, my voice less strident and more conversational. “Honestly, sir, I’ve never really reported to anyone before, so I wasn’t aware it was unusual until your clerk told me so a couple minutes ago.”

  He nodded. “You’ll have to take my word that it is. I wanted to talk to you myself because it isn’t every day we get a recruit who qualifies for Recon straight out of Boot Camp, nor do those who do qualify usually graduate first in their class.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I just said, “Yes, sir.”

  He sat back in his chair, hands linking in his lap. Ropy muscles flexed under his fatigue sleeves and I reflected that I did not want to try unarmed combat with this man.

  “Most Marine recruits,” he said, “are chawners trying to get off the dole. That’s fine for the most part: they’re highly motivated, they’re used to the living conditions here and on board ship, and they’re content with the knowledge that when they get killed, their family will receive their service benefits. But what’s good for the general military isn’t necessarily good for Recon. Because you know what chawners in the city don’t like, Munroe?”

  “No, sir,” I said, lying. I knew exactly what he was going to say, and I felt my gut twisting in anticipation of where this conversation was going.

  “They don’t like being outside the city,” he said, his dark eyes hooded and skeptical. “Many of them are agoraphobes---true, most of the outright ones don’t make it through Boot Camp, but some do. And no chawner has any woodcraft or any experience trying to walk in the wilderness silently…hell, trying to do anything silently.”

  He was right about that. Watching most of the recruits try to master infiltration techniques had been painful. They sounded like a herd of wild horses…and most had never seen a horse, or any other animal other than a dog or cat, in real life.

  “Your file,” he told me, picking an issue tablet off his desk and turning it around to show me my official personnel packet, an expensive work of fiction, “says you’re from the Kibera neighborhood of Trans-Angeles.”

  “The Ten-Eighty-Seven,” I agreed. That was an affectation of the chawners in Trans-Angeles, to refer to their building number as a neighborhood.

  “Bullshit,” he said flatly, smacking the tablet onto his desk hard enough to make me flinch. “I’ve seen a lot of men and women pass through here, Private Munroe, and every single one who was at home in the woods as you had experience in the wilderness. That’s why most Recon Marines are from the colonies.”

  I felt my throat close up and my chest constrict. I started to look out of the corner of my eyes for the MPs I was sure would be coming into the office to take me into custody. I saw a thin smile pass across Kapoor’s face.

  “Relax, Munroe,” he told me. “I don’t give a damn. I don’t care what arrest warrant or custody case you’re hiding from. I’m not with the Patrol; my job is to kill the enemy. If you can help me kill the enemy, then as far as I’m concerned, you didn’t exist before you joined the Marines.”

  “Yes, sir,” I rasped, my throat still dry but my stomach beginning to settle down. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Glad to hear it, because we need Marines like you in Recon,” he said, all sweetness and light now, night and day from just a moment before. “The armor troopers get all the press, but do you know what each of those battlesuits drags along behind it, Munroe?” He sniffed disdainfully. “A big-ass logistics train is what. You can drop a platoon of Force Recon behind enemy lines with maybe an un-crewed resupply drop somewhere nearby and we can operate for weeks before the enemy even knows we’re there. You drop battlesuits, you’d better be establishing a beachhead where you can bring down a maintenance and service unit for them within twenty-four hours, and be able to defend it.

  “And stealth?” He snorted louder this time. “You may as well stick a Brahman bull in an art exhibit. The armor boys look very impressive, but by the time they show up, half the work's already done. Meanwhile, Recon gets a quarter of the funding, a quarter of the personnel and all the dirtiest jobs." He laughed and shot me a glance. "Have I talked you out of wanting to be here yet?"

  "No, sir," I assured him, warming up to his mannerisms a bit. "This is exactly where I belong."

  "Then welcome to the Cannibals, Private Munroe." He stood and I jumped to my feet, ready to salute. He offered me a hand first and I shook it; it felt like an iron claw inside a glove of flesh. "You're dismissed. Go report to your Platoon Leader."

  I came to attention and saluted and he returned it. I did a textbook about-face and closed the door behind me, sighing out a relieved breath once it was between us. That had been nerve-wracking.

  "Cap's something else, isn't he?" The Lance said, grinning at my discomfort.

  "Can you point me to Lt. Yassa, Lance?" I asked him, ignoring the question. I still had to find a barracks and unload my gear before chow.

  ***

  The barracks room to which I'd been assigned seemed small until I realized there were only two cots. Wow, after over six months squeezed into a hall with a couple dozen other Marines, I was going to have just one roommate. I wasn't sure I could handle all the privacy.

  Whoever my roomie was, he wasn't around at the moment, but I could tell which bunk was his by the decorations on the wall around it. They were cheap 3-D stickers, the kind you could find in any street corner kiosk, and the ones that didn't involve improbable sex acts featured soccer players. I'd never gotten into soccer; Mom insisted it was designed to distract the poor, although for some reason she didn't feel that way about baseball.

  I caught myself and paused in unpacking my duffle. I hadn't thought about Mom in months, had done my best to not think about my previous life. My conversation with Captain Kapoor had brought all of it back with a vengeance, and I found myself missing Anna. I wondered what she thought had happened to me, wondered what Mom had told her. I should try to send her a message, if I could figure out a way to do it without being traced.

  "Who the hell are you?"

  I'd started to turn at the sound of the door swinging open, so I wasn't surprised by the question. The man who asked it was short and wiry, with his dark hair in tight curls a centimeter off his scalp. His face was narrow and
angular like the blade of a knife, and there was a dark cynicism in his eyes.

  "Randall Munroe," I told him. I didn't offer a hand because you never knew how people would take it; I'd learned that being friendly to strangers wasn't at all universal. "I guess we'll be sharing this room."

  "Damn," he muttered, brushing past me to flop down on his bunk, hands behind his head. "I'd just got used to having the place to myself."

  "What happened to the last guy?" I asked idly, turning back to my duffle, pulling out the last few items and stacking them neatly in the drawer under the bunk.

  "He blew his brains out on a live fire," the skinny Marine said matter-of-factly.

  I glanced over, and the surprise I felt must have been evident on my face.

  "It happens," he expounded with a philosophical shrug. "Some people take a while to figure out that this is going to be their home for a long time; and when they do, they can't handle it."

  I frowned, confused. "But you can quit any time we're not actually in battle or in transit. Why don't they just go home?"

  He eyed me balefully. "Gringo, if staying home was an option, how many people you think would enlist?"

  "You have a name?" I asked him bluntly, "or should I just get a head start on calling you Asshole?"

  He looked up sharply, anger flashing across his face, but then he slowly smiled. He stood up and offered a forearm and I bumped it. That was a thing in certain parts of the cities; we didn't do it in the circles I ran in.

  "I'm Juan Pacheco," he told me, "but everyone calls me Johnny. You said your name was Randall...is that what you go by?"

  I hesitated. I hadn't thought about it, really. Did I want to be Randy? Fuck it .

  "Just call me Munroe."

  Chapter Five

  "Go!"

  I was stepping off the ramp before I was conscious that I'd heard the word, letting the darkness swallow me up. I couldn't feel the wind through my armor, and I couldn't see a damn thing even with my helmet's infrared and thermal vision. The clouds were too thick to even see the glow of the gas giant this moon orbited, though I’d seen it from the ship on the way in, a grey and white and orange ball of roiling gas. The dead-reckoning mapping program in my HUD knew exactly where I was, though, and told me exactly what I should be doing.