Major (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 5)

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  “Sure thing,” Ryck said as Bert got up and left the office.

  Ryck sat back, the flashing game forgotten as he tried to think things through. As his feeling of guilt rose, he realized his mind was already made up. He felt guilty because he was leaving his family, but he couldn’t pass up this opportunity. Like the African scorpion, he was how he was, and he couldn’t ignore that.

  He now shifted his thoughts from wondering if he should take the orders to how he would tell Hannah. He still felt guilty, but that was overshadowed by the excitement and unadulterated joy that he was leaving the Puzzle Palace and getting back out to the “real” Corps. He was getting back into the fray.

  Chapter 15

  The display on Ryck’s vacsuit read 12 G’s of linear acceleration with sideways jolts of 18 Gs. It wasn’t comfortable—in fact, Ryck hated it. But the vacsuit was doing its job in keeping Ryck alive while the coffin went through its paces. He had to assist the suit with the grunt, the nickname for the anti-G straining maneuver where he tightened up his legs and abdomen to help resist G-LOC.[9]

  The EVA Vacuum Suit-Long Range 5, or the “Grey Ghost,” was nothing like the vacsuits Ryck had used as a grunt. Some components were the same such as the gel diaper and water and food tubes, but other than that, the standard vacsuit might as well be a medieval suit of armor. From the electronics package to the anti-surveillance to the anti-G capabilities, the Grey Ghost epitomized the high-speed, low-drag description. Ryck was a PICS Marine through and through, but he could get used to the recon vacsuit.

  Grey ghost or not, however, high Gs took a toll on the body, and Ryck breathed a sigh of relief as the deceleration stopped, and with a well-trained maneuver, he and Nose—Corporal Tone Simchek—vaulted out of the coffin and into a forward flight to the waiting Wilma Pritchard some 900 meters in front of them.

  The Wilma Pritchard was the same training ship upon which Ryck had completed his first EVA training mission as a recruit seemingly so many centuries ago. Ryck had never actually boarded the ship on that first mission after Recruit Grant Thomas breached his vacsuit and Ryck had to ferry him back to safety. He’d certainly boarded her enough recently, though. His company had performed no less than 12 training missions with her as a target over the last two months. The Wilma was becoming a second home to him, and he thought he knew every passage on her by now, from the broken captain’s command chair on the bridge to the “Patterson sucks big dick” graffiti above the sink in the port-side aft head.

  No one knew, at least no one in the company, just what was up, but from the training tempo and exercises, the Marines could guess—and they did, constantly. Guesses ranged from a surgical strike on the Trinocular fleet still stationed beyond the Blue Line to a first strike against the Confederation, the Alliance, or some other government, to taking the fight to the SOG or other group. Ryck thought that attacking the Trinoculars was a far-fetched idea. The battalion had a joint exercise with a Brotherhood seraphim unit next week, so that was an indication that whatever it was, it was big. But that same cooperation made an attack of some sort on another government less likely, to Ryck’s mind. That left some sort of action against the outliers of human space, namely the SOG and other like groups.

  Of course, this training could all be proof-of-concept exercises to test the shift of special ops from direct support of the fleet to more independent operations in line with the SEALs. But while the SEALs did their missions in small teams, the entire battalion was getting trained up, and that hinted on larger missions that the SEALs just weren’t set up for. Whatever the reason, the tempo was ball-busting. Even with Ryck technically living at home, he’d barely had three days over the last month where he’d eaten dinner with Hannah and the kids. And, as much as he hated to admit it, he loved it. He felt at home.

  As Ryck and Nose flew forward, no other Marine could be seen with the naked eyes. Ryck could check each Marine’s position on his display. They were converging on the Wilma according to plan, which wasn’t surprising. Ryck’s Marines were the best of the best.

  Because of the new direction of the training, on one hand, Ryck was far less of a leader that he was as a grunt company commander. He had become more of a facilitator. His men were self-motivating hard-chargers who didn’t need a commander looking over their shoulders. On the other hand, he was back to being more a fighter again. While he wouldn’t be out there with the teams or platoons, on a company-sized op like this, he was more involved with the actual fighting than he would ever be in an infantry company.

  Somewhere around him, Ryck knew that Bert—no, LtCol Nidischii’, he had to remind himself. No more Bert until one of them left the battalion—Col Lipper-Mendoza, and a posse of headquarters pukes were out there observing how the company did. That didn’t bother Ryck in the least. This was cake.

  It might not be so easy in an actual mission, he realized, when the enemy fought back and didn’t act as predicted. But that is why they practiced, to become as proficient as possible for when the rounds flew for real. Sweat in peacetime or bleed in war. And Ryck didn’t mind the sweat.

  Chapter 16

  “How’re they doing?’ Ryck asked Sams.

  Master Sergeant Bobbi Samuelson took a seat in front of the desk, took off his cover, and wiped his sweating, balding head.

  “I talked with Buttercup,” Sams began.

  Buttercup was Gunnery Sergeant Homer Gilroy, unfortunately nicknamed for a popular love song at the time. SSgt Gilroy had been a member of Ryck’s first recon team.

  “Ling’s doing fine, as is the captain. But Çağlar’s having problems,” Sams said.

  “Çağlar? But he’s a grubbing stud,” Ryck protested.

  “A stud, maybe, but he’s a brick, too. Can’t swim worth shit, you know.”

  Ryck hadn’t considered that when he’d gotten Sergeant Ling, Lance Corporal Çağlar, and Captain Sandy Peltier-Aswad into RTC.[10] If anyone would have problems, he thought it might be the slight Sandy, but so far, Sandy was sailing through, from what Ryck had heard. He shouldn’t be surprised. The unassuming newly-promoted captain had always managed to surprise Ryck.

  “Do you think I should make a visit?” Ryck asked.

  “Nah, skipper. I mean, everyone knows what you’re doing, and that’s OK, iffen you’re not in their faces. Iffen you show up there, you know, it’s like command influence, especially with you being who you are.”

  “What he was doing” was something he’d done since getting his Federation Nova. He’d done what he could to get Marines he knew and respected assigned to him. At the higher ranks, particularly from the battalion commanders and up through the flag ranks, this was common. Ryck had just used his notoriety to start gathering his posse at a more junior rank. This was how he’d gotten Sams, Shart, and Crutch assigned to the company, and then Sandy, Ling, and Çağlar into RTC. He’d wanted Hecs, too, but the First Sergeant had a plum billet at Camp Charles, and he wasn’t sure he’d make it through RTC at his age.

  Ryck had gotten a reputation of being a prima donna, something he’d vowed to change. Gathering his favorites around him might have contributed to that, but Ryck thought this was more accepted by other Marines. Showing up at RTC, however, might be a little much.

  “OK, Top, just keep me posted. If you get wind that Çağlar’s going to get dropped or he wants to quit, I want to talk to him first.”

  “Iffen he wants to quit, then that’s his call, not yours,” Sams reminded him. “And recon don’t want no one who can’t make it through RTC.”

  And that was one reason Ryck kept people like Sams around him. Sams was an honest broker. He’d been with him when Ryck earned his Nova, and he wasn’t in awe of him. He told Ryck what he thought, and that kept Ryck grounded.

  And he was right. If Çağlar couldn’t make it through RTC, then he didn’t belong in recon, and no maneuvering by the commandant himself would get a Marine his recon designation unless he earned it on his own.

  He’d find out soon enough about Çağlar
. Graduation was scheduled in another two more weeks. Normally, all three would go to a line recon battalion, but with the Raiders being beefed up, Ryck hadn’t had too much of a problem convincing the CO to allow the three to come to Bravo Company upon graduation. Sandy had been the main problem as the other two were junior for recon and could be easily absorbed by a team to learn the ropes, but his Silver Star (down-graded from a Navy Cross) and Ryck’s enthusiastic recommendation—and the fact that he would start off as an assistant team leader, had convinced Bert to give it his OK.

  “Well, I hope he makes it though,” Ryck said. “How about the new M73s? They linked up with the skins yet?” he asked, changing the subject.

  Sams had not been selected for first sergeant, the leadership-track for enlisted Marines. He hadn’t been passed over for the next rank—instead, he’d made master sergeant, which slotted him for support and technical billets for the rest of his career. But he’d agreed to come to Bravo with Ryck to be a glorified company gunny, a billet that called for someone a rank junior to him. It would do his career no good, and it had to grate on him that First Sergeant Dykstra Pollack, someone who had been junior to Sams at one time, and with whom he wasn’t on best terms, was now the Bravo Company first sergeant. But he came when Ryck asked. That was the type of loyalty that Ryck valued, and he’d do everything in his power to return that same loyalty back.

  “That grubbing Pounder Industries tech keeps saying that the interfaces are bad. I told him that we’ve got a deadline . . .”

  Ryck smiled at Sams’s use of “grubbing.” After so many years together, the Prosperity general swear word had finally rubbed off on the top. He turned to focus on what Sams said was the issue, that of the new meson beam handgun not communicating with the skins’ interior system. He didn’t enjoy this aspect of command, but these were the types of things that were probably more important to the company than him flying around space on tactical exercises.

  Chapter 17

  Ryck leaned back as far as he could go in the small berthing area, which wasn’t far. He shared the space with the XO, the first sergeant, Sams, and Liplock, their jack-of-all-trades gopher.[11] With the entire company aboard the ML Starward Conveyor, there was not much room for any of them, much less Ryck getting his own stateroom.

  It wasn’t that the Conveyor was small; it was actually a midsize freighter. But as with all the Starward vessels made for the now-defunct Andromeda Transport, they were made on the cheap without much concern for the crew. Ryck had a full T/O of 76 Marines and sailors, and that strained the Conveyor’s life-support systems—which made it a very good platform for their mission. First, there had to be almost 120 of the Starward ships out plying the spacelanes, bought at auction by the bottom-feeders in the transport field, so one of them wandering around in the fringes of the more-travelled routes shouldn’t raise any concerns. Second, everyone knew the layout of the ships, and it was common knowledge that they could only hold a dozen or so crew.

  With the Conveyor’s actual crew of eight, that meant that there were 84 souls onboard, something Ryck would have thought impossible. But with the four of them in what once was a storage closet of some sort, and with the platoons and teams shoehorned into any nook and cranny, they had somehow embarked. That was helped by a quick alteration that added another space in what was the ship’s single cargo hold, a space that decidedly did not meet the Federation regulations for occupied compartments. Those regulations obviously did not apply to Marines—the needs of the Federation and all of that.

  “So, any takers? “ Ryck asked the others. Their game of spades had petered out due to a lack of will, and with the other three in their racks, Ryck had taken the lone chair.

  “I still think it’s the capys,” the first sergeant said from his rack, using the original term for the Triconulars that many of the Marines who had fought them still used.

  “Then bet with me,” Ryck said. “It’s a case of your choice if you win.”

  “Put up or shut up, Deer,” Sams told the first sergeant.

  “Come on, Deer,” Aceman, the XO said. “I’m tired of hearing you going on and on when you won’t bet the skipper.”

  “You got anything to say?” the first sergeant asked Liplock, his glare at the junior Marine enough to melt a PICS’ armor.

  “Not me,” the sergeant said, turning to face the bulkhead.

  “OK, Skipper, you’re on. If it’s SOG, I owe you a case. If it’s the capys, then you owe me. And if Aceman is right, that this is a drill, then the bet’s null and void.”

  “You’ve got it, First Sergeant,” Ryck said.

  As will all recon units, first names, or rather nicknames, were the standard means of address. However, with Ryck, his old name of Toad was never used. He was “Skipper,” or “the skipper.” Even within recon, a commander had a special position within a unit, and he was treated differently. It wasn’t a rule, just as there were no rules within the community on using the nicknames in the first place. It was just done, almost by instinct. Even Sams, or “Bobbi,” as he was called by the rest, called Ryck “Skipper.”

  As there were no real rules, Ryck wasn’t sure how he should address his Marines. He ended up with a hybrid system, with the first sergeant and the XO being called by their positions, Sams being called Sams, and only Liplock being called by his nickname. With his platoon commanders, he started to call them “One,” “Two,” and “Three.” With the rest of the Marines, even Sandy, Ling, and Çağlar, it was always a spur-of-the-moment decision.

  “So, if you all be right, then when?” Liplock asked, turning back around to stare at Ryck.

  “There’s the question,” Ryck said. “And I don’t know the answer. I hope soon, because every day we’re cooped up in here whittles away from our edge.”

  “What’s the matter, Liplock?” Sams asked. “Don’t you like it here with all of us?” Iffen you’re bored, I can always show you what you can lock your lips on.”

  “No, can’t say I be liking it, Bobbi. And I haven’t been onboard long enough for you to be looking good, no, not jumping heavy, no.”

  “Ah, give it time, and you’ll forget all about that little honeywa back at the Grinder,” Sams continued.

  “Have you seen her?” the XO asked Sams. “I’ve got to give it to Liplock there. She’s Prime Cut in the flesh. Our young sergeant outdid himself there.”

  “Clearly she must be blind,” Sams said, “iffen she really is that hot. But let me tell you the about how I got busted to private the first time. Now that was some Prime Cut. I was a lance coolie then, back in . . . “

  Sams went on while Ryck let his mind drift. He’d heard most of Sams’ sea stories before. The thing is, most of them were true, which was sort of against the rules in the art of sea stories. The guy was an unparalleled sparrow magnet. Even his ex-wife couldn’t seem to keep a grudge and kept hanging around as if they were still dating.

  They’d been onboard for only five days, and without the ability to get out and exercise, he knew they’d be going stir crazy soon. He’d asked permission to get everyone in their Grey Ghosts and run some drills in the cargo bay and was waiting to hear back, but even then, the cargo hold was pretty full of goods, so it wouldn’t do that much good and would put some wear and tear on the vacsuits.

  Because they had no mission, he was pretty sure their target, if this wasn’t some big drill as the XO thought, was either the SOG or another pirate group. They could just be bait, plying the lanes, looking like a fat juicy target. But being bait did not fit in with their new training. He was sure there would be some sort of offensive action soon. It could be already in place, several missions, actually, which one to be acted upon dependent on several factors, not the least being what the target was doing.

  What Ryck had told Liplock was right, though. They had been finely tuned when they’d embarked. But the longer they stayed on board without doing anything, the more they would lose their edge. And whatever mission the Corps threw at them, Ryck knew they
would be challenged to their utmost to complete it. This—whatever “this” was—was not going to be a cakewalk. The Corps was not going to all this trouble for a mission that any infantry unit could accomplish.

  Now, Ryck had to figure out a way to keep his men fresh and ready to go. There was a mission coming, all his instincts screamed, and the company had to be ready.

  Chapter 18

  The target was the SOG.

  Ryck sat in the tiny wardroom on the Starward Conveyor, nervously chewing his fingernails. His First Platoon, under Captain Giles Hester, “Slug,” had just launched in their coffins and were underway.

  “Launched” was somewhat of a subjective term, in this case. The platoon did not lift off of the deck of a hangar bay and head out as in a Navy ship. Each two-man reki was manhandled to the cargo doors, then manually pushed into open space. His Marines then stepped out the doors and flew into their coffin. Once all 13 coffins were loaded, Slug headed off.

  Until the mission ops order arrived less than five hours before, no one onboard had any inkling yet of what was going on. They’d been going through the isometrics Ryck had imposed when the ship’s captain, who Ryck only knew as Harris, stuck his head through the hatch and told Ryck to turn on his meson communicator right then instead of waiting for his scheduled link-up.

  As soon as he linked up, the operations order downloaded. Along with other Navy and Marine units—read Raiders and SEALs—and “other forces”—so this was not a Federation-only mission, but at least one other government was participating—coordinated assaults on SOG positions were going to be simultaneously conducted to “destroy the SOG’s ability to operate as a single organization.”

  Bravo Company’s mission was to take out an SOG communications center located on a moon in the outer orbit of the PF-33 system. This was to be an outright assault, not the normal poop-and-snoop missions of recon. But the battalion had been rehearsing this type of mission for the last year, and Ryck’s Marines were ready.