“Cut it out, you two,” bellowed Majanita inside his helmet. “You’re both on a charge. Brandt’s seen you. If you two loved-up shunters let yourself be distracted a moment longer, I’ll be on a charge too and you will be reported for dereliction of duty. What’s wrong with you, Springer? I thought you were too smart to get yourself executed.”
Arun and Springer both answered at the same time. “Sorry, corporal.”
Even with his attention back on the corridor approach, Arun couldn’t eject from his mind the fact that Springer was standing next to him. He imagined he could feel the warmth from her body. A body that if freed from their suits would fit perfectly pressed against his own. His arms would wrap around her, gently squashing her warm flesh against his. Arun’s hand would stroke through her mess of auburn curls, moving slowly so as not to pull painfully at her hair, gently untangling. Then his hand would slide down to cup the underswell of her buttock and press his fingertips into her yielding flesh.
He pushed those thoughts far enough away to realize that Majanita was right. His faulty body chemistry was going to get them both shot if he wasn’t careful.
Arun let out a long breath and then ordered Barney to administer combat drugs.
He wasn’t sure what they were doping the cadets with, but he couldn’t shake off memories of the last time he’d been on stims. He’d ended up naked, his image plastered all over Detroit.
What would it do to him this time?
He didn’t feel a thing as the meds went in, but then he felt a crust form over his heart. Fantasies of what might be were replaced with obsessively detailed observation of the here and now. Lusty romance evaporated away to leave indifference, which soured into hatred and finally the need to kill.
“Here we go again,” he mumbled.
Combat drugs were unique to each individual. Really they were a cocktail of psychostimulants and endocrine effectors blended to an individual’s requirements and adjusted and tuned after each use, an exercise made more difficult when administered into a young body still changing through the natural hormones of adolescence.
He tried to hold onto the memory of Springer’s kiss, the lilac glow from her beautiful mutant eyes. He could recall the images of Springer with full fidelity, but although he could remember the fact of her love and concern for him, the emotion behind those facts had now drifted far out of reach.
Human emotion had become alien to him.
He wanted to hate that loss but couldn’t. All his hatred was aimed at the enemy.
Springer had always looked out for him, ever since that time when he’d stood up for her when they were both ten years old. When the leader of the most vicious girl gang of their year had asked Springer to join, her reply had been to fill the gang leader’s bed with steaming porridge, just before bedtime. Springer’s other friends had thought that hilarious when the news reached them, but not Arun. He tracked down his missing friend to a disused corridor where he found her surrounded by jeering gang members. Arun stepped in to protect Springer.
His presence made no difference. Both of them were beaten senseless.
When they’d awoken in neighboring infirmary beds, she smiled as best she could through cut and swollen lips and called Arun her hero. It was the first time he’d seen her violet eyes glow, a warmth that stirred his heart. But then she said something that still chilled him: “You cared. You came because you cared. No one else did. No one else could. Thank you for caring.”
Even back then, loyalty to the Corps was firmly instilled in all novices. But caring for others was a weakness, and good Marines had no weaknesses. Emotions were being eroded from the human genestock of the Corps. As a little boy, his mother had warned him never to reveal that he cared. But Springer knew his secret.
Arun shut out the memories of Springer and locked them away next to times remembered with Cristina and Osman. He had no need for such weakness.
The drugs had released him of that burden
Now all that mattered was killing the enemy.
And killing was good.
Without warning, Arun’s tac-display vanished, leaving him staring out of a dumb visor of transparent polycarbide at the big block of cold metal in front of him. In the near-dark he could barely make out the edges of the equipment block.
He jumped up, carbine ready, but before he cleared the top of the equipment box, his visor display went completely white. Words appeared on top of the white.
++ TRAINING OVERRIDE ++
++ DO NOT SHOOT! INCOMING MARINES ARE FRIENDLY ++
Was this a trick?
If the rebels could subvert the cadets’ suits, then sending messages would be simple. Speaking like a human would be tricky, but any AI could write a simple sentence in any language it knew.
“Hold your fire!” The command came from Brandt, or at least that’s what Barney was telling him. Brandt added: “But keep your weapons trained in case this is a deception.”
That’s all very well for you to say, thought Arun, but how am I to train my weapon when I can’t see out? Barney anticipated his next thought and informed him that the air was mildly poisonous and would not be easy to breathe, but if Arun wished, the helmet lock could be released so he could take it off and see who was approaching with his naked eyes.
As he was considering whether that was wise, Brandt announced: “I have visual. It’s the Yorktown Marines. It’s Force Alpha.”
Arun’s faceplate lost its whiteness and his pulse calmed down. On tac-display he saw four new marines had joined LBNet. The double-halo of command had switched from Brandt to Ensign Thunderclaws, a Jotun name if ever he’d heard one. Thunderclaws was bounding toward them from the north like a swift six-legged dog, a creature Arun had seen many times in Earth recordings, though he’d never seen a dog in combat armor.
“I repeat, this is no trick,” said Brandt. Frankly, thought Arun, if the rebels could fake a Jotun in a suit then they deserved to win.
“Sir, why did we lose Wide Battle Net?” asked Brandt
The officer replied: “Our WBNet transmissions had to be bounced off the Yorktown and boosted in tight beams to punch through Hardit jamming.”
Oh, shit, thought Arun. That meant…
Brandt asked the question in Arun’s head. “Is she lost, sir?”
“Negative,” replied the Jotun. “Yorktown is evacuating key personnel from orbital platforms. She is merely out of range.” The Jotun was speaking through a voicebox machine, sounding identical to Pedro. Arun wondered whether his friendly Trog was going to survive this rebellion, whether he would debate Arun’s part in the operation with his usual alien weirdness. He was surprised to find that he looked forward to that talk.
Of course, there was the little matter of Arun surviving the day too.
Arun stood up and took a good look at the Marines coming his way.
There were three of them, in gray battlesuits, though their coloration could change in an instant. Unit insignia marked them as 9th field battalion, 412th Marines — Arun’s regiment.
Two of them carried SA-71s, the third an HG-11c machine gun, which was essentially a heavy version of the SA-71 in railgun mode. Kinetic darts fired from the HG-11c reached greater muzzle velocity due to a greater electrical charge and a much longer barrel braced by a small flip-out bipod rest.
Arun counted four ammo belts slung over the machine gunner’s shoulder, each holding scores of magazines, which were blocks of charged metal, pre-stressed to split along ballistic shapes a little like perforated paper. The ammo alone must weigh well over a hundred pounds. Sometimes Marine armor was used to turn humans into beasts of burden. Unglamorous yet effective.
The machine gunner was coming directly toward Arun. Or, more likely, to take over his position.
Arun stepped back a few paces to allow the machine gunner to select his or her position but the gunner immediately switched direction to come straight for him.
Arun froze.
“Are you Arun McEwan?” asked the Marine —
a corporal according to suit markings - when they were standing toe-to-toe.
“Yes, corporal.”
“Blank your visor and let me see your face.”
Arun complied, standing at attention while this guy just stared at him.
Arun desperately wanted to query Barney’s tac-display to ping this Marine’s ID, but he couldn’t do that with a blank display.
Then the Marine blanked his own faceplate. That was even worse. The Marine peered at him through bulging eyes tinted an artificial blue. The Marine’s face was young — thirty perhaps? — and might have been considered handsome if not for the scar tissue that covered one cheek and cut across his nose and brow. Here was a marine who had taken a plasma blast to the face and survived.
You didn’t get to be a G-2 Marine cadet without knowing how to deal with older kids throwing their weight around. The first rule was to avoid being seen as weak. Then, if you get picked upon anyway, you took it on the chin and waited for payback until you’re older.
This guy had probably picked on Arun at random. Singling him out to make an example to the other cadets to remind them who was in charge. But then, why bother? The Marine’s eyes stared into space for a moment, as if recalling a precious memory. His face crumpled a little and his lips moved, preparing to say something laden with emotion.
Just before the man could speak, Springer beat him to it. She had checked her tac-display on Arun’s behalf.
“Arun, he’s your brother. Corporal Fraser McEwan.”
But… he thought his brother had died on Fort Douaumont. They must have been on the Yorktown all this time, never having set out. If Arun survived long enough for his combat meds to work their way out of his system, he expected he would feel pleased about that later on.
Fraser looked about to speak but he was interrupted by the Jotun officer. “I salute you human Marine children,” said Thunderclaws speaking the human language with his own voice. He switched back to the artificial voice of the translator unit. “You have shut off power to the mass driver. The bombardment has been halted. The force shield protecting it still functions. Half of Force Alpha — three Marines — occupies the attention of the rebel positions near the driver. We have traveled here undetected, entering through the bridgehead you established.”
Arun half-expected cheers to ring out. But the other cadets were, like Arun, so drugged up with the need to kill that victory didn’t interest them.
“However, the engagement is not over. The rebels are sending an assault force to deal with us. Until this point, you have only encountered annoying little monkeys — not an equal foe. Now you will face their elite. They are still hardly a martial race but you should regard them with a little less than utter contempt.”
Had Arun just heard a little light racial abuse directed by one alien species at another in human speech? There was a time, not long ago, when Zug would have been fascinated by that.
Ensign Thunderclaws broke off conversation, gestured at one of the Marines, and turned his attention to some other task. What that task might be, Arun was not privy to.
“I’m Sergeant Rathanjani,” said the Marine the ensign had gestured to. “You’ve done okay for a bunch of kids but you’ve a shitload to learn. For starters, don’t look at me! We’re in a battle for frakk’s sake. Keep watching the approaches to this room. That’s better. Now, here’s the sitrep. We estimate 10 to 20 hostiles heading our way. They will be heavily armed and armored, and their objective will be to kill us if they can, but more importantly to pin us while their engineers boot up the secondary power and control systems and recommence bombardment.”
“Sergeant,” asked Brandt, “what about reinforcements?”
“Don’t interrupt, cadet. Anyone else got a stupid question or maybe want a comfort break before I can carry on? No? Good. System defense boats ETA two hours. Navy ships in about five. Last I heard, both were still on our side but we’ve traitors somewhere in the system. Tranquility orbital defense is not set up to bombard our own moon. Anything else that could help was taken out in the initial salvos. It’s down to us. If these monkeys keep us pinned down here, then by the time the warboats arrive, you won’t have homes to go back to.”
“You’re still kids,” said Arun’s brother. “Still believe the crap they teach you in novice school. So let me educate you. We’re human Marines. We fight two wars. One is the war that the White Knights give us through their Jotun officers. The other is a longer war, a hard fought war of attrition and tiny incremental gains that will last centuries. None of us will survive to see this other war end. This is the war for respectability. Whatever bullshit you might hear in Detroit these days, the White Knights only took on we humans as a client race to piss off the Cienju. They’re lizard aliens who had taken control of the Earth and would have enslaved us all to ship them ore from the Solar System. The White Knights don’t think of us as being fit enough to clean their sewers. We’re only here out in the stars playing Marines as a face-saving measure, to make it look as if the Knights wanted us all along. It’s down to all of us at all times to prove to our alien masters bit by tiny bit that we are worthwhile, that we are a surprisingly valuable asset. Because if we don’t, then one day they will decide that the Earth and the rest of their empire will be simpler if they were no longer infested with humans. If we are to die today, make sure we die well.”
His brother wasn’t great with the old motivational, thought Arun. If he weren’t in the grip of his combat drugs, his brother’s speech would make him want to crawl into a corner, curl up and await his doom.
The Force Alpha Marines suddenly disappeared. They must have stealthed their suits. The SA-71s attached to their invisible suits disappeared too. But Fraser’s machine gun wasn’t stealth-capable, hovering in mid-air as if suspended on wires.
“Cadets, keep to Cadet Lance Sergeant Brandt’s deployment,” said Sergeant Rathanjani. Barney used the sergeant’s broadcast to place a fuzzy outline around where he thought the NCO might be. “Force Alpha will operate as mobile reserve,” continued the sergeant. “Keep alert. Attack is imminent. And heed Corporal McEwan’s words. I know some of you might be a little young to hear the truth, but that’s hard shit. Today is the day you grow up. You’re all Marines now. If you do die, then die well. That is an order. Good luck.”
—— Chapter 61 ——
The door to the northern approach was still fused shut, but while the humans waited for the attack, Beta Section had used the drills to widen the opening in the door, and then post a picket guard on the far side.
“Incoming! North corridor defenses, prepare to fire.”
The warning came from Sergeant Rathanjani. He must have a better AI than me, considered Arun because it took another few seconds before Barney picked up the threat on LBNet and threw it up onto Arun’s tac-display.
Four rebels were advancing on the northern corridor, still hidden for now beyond the right turn. It almost felt like a re-run of the attacks along the corridor out of the bridgehead room, though with one difference. The rebels were plodding nearer at an astonishingly leisurely pace. Barney was getting firmer data now and was confident enough to show tight red circles to indicate the estimated position of the leading two rebels. Arun didn’t get the impression they were moving slowly because they were hesitating.
They simply weren’t in any hurry.
Arun decided he was frightened.
It was a weird feeling. He didn’t feel frightened — all he felt was calm anticipation of killing the enemy – but he knew with conviction that he was scared. It was like watching someone else shaking with fear.
He glanced at Fraser’s position. His brother was invisible, but his long-barreled gun was wedged securely in a slot set into an equipment console and aimed through the opening in the north door. When his brother got to open fire on the rebels, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
Then a combat fugue descended on Arun like a cool mist. His universe shrunk to his gun, his tac-display, and the enemy. An enemy
he would kill.
The first rebel edged around the turn. LBNet activity flared as the suit AIs of the Marine cadets in the corridor assessed the attacker and fired packets of updated information and assessment at neighboring suits.
The AIs were MPQX-8 units: built on massive parallel quantum architecture and rated a minimum 8 peta decisions per second. That made them decidedly second rate, but plenty fast enough for Barney to start suggesting firing solutions within a tiny fraction of a second. What he wasn’t offering were killshots, and that wasn’t good enough. Only killing would slake Arun’s bloodlust.
Arun sprung into the air, getting above the cover of the equipment bank so he could see the rebels in realsight.
As soon as Arun crested his cover, Barney zoomed his visor viewpoint onto the leading rebel who had now advanced far enough to face Arun head on.
The rebel wore some seriously heavy armor. He looked like a column of vehicle tires stacked one upon the other and then partially melted so the bottom was wider than the top.
Arun remembered seeing sections of this armor before — in a broken wooden cargo box on the way to Alabama.
There were no feet and no head in this armored cone, but there were two bulges at the shoulders. Two stubby little tubes ending in gauntlets showed where the hands went. One of those gauntlets held the barrel of a plasma blaster. The stock and trigger were held by a black snake that Barney whispered was the rebel’s prehensile tail.
Arun aimed for the tail.
With Barney anticipating his intentions, all Arun needed to do was point his carbine roughly where it was needed and let Barney steady his suit and adjust the position of his hands and arms. As a safety precaution, Arun still had to pull the trigger.
As he did so, he felt a gentle nudge of recoil, and watched Barney register a hit.
The rebel’s blaster jerked and then accelerated a ball of plasma out of its barrel — aimed at Arun. But the shot went wide, melting a section of door instead of Arun’s head. Before he fell back behind cover, Arun saw the rebel’s gun and tail dance under a hail of fire. The blaster was dropping to the ground now, the enemy’s tail whipping back behind its body. A cloud was blooming around the rebel, debris from his disintegrating armor.
Marine Cadet (The Human Legion Book 1) Page 41
