by John Ringo
At four-thirty they’d been awakened by their platoon sergeants. Clean the barracks again. Finally they were out doing PT. Forty minutes of calisthenics to get warmed up. A four mile run. Wind-sprints. And now combination training.
“When I give you the command to fall out, fall out and fall in to your platoon areas,” Wacleva bellowed. “Each platoon has fifteen minutes for breakfast. First training session is at 0830. Figure you are going to snap and pop every minute of every day for the next five weeks. We do not have time for fuck-around. Fall out and fall in!”
* * *
Sergeant First Class Frederick Moreland had been the Third Brigade Sergeant Major, 78th Mechanized Division during the war. Prior to the war he’d been a mech mortar NCO for damned near twenty years.
What he’d never been was a drill sergeant. He knew the theory, but with this group ‘breaking them down and building them back as soldiers’ didn’t really count. So when the platoon fell into the platoon area, he didn’t play drill sergeant. He was their platoon sergeant. He didn’t have to.
“Fall in and shit, shower and shave,” Moreland said, mildly. “We’re last on the roster for chow. Do not fuck up the barracks. Ten minutes prior to chow I’ll give the word. Clear up anything that’s out of place. You all know the drill. Most of you know why the drill exists. You need to get back in the zero defect mentality. You’re all good, everything is going to be perfect. Or I will start playing drill sergeant and you won’t like it.”
* * *
“I’ll shower last,” Keren said. He’d been temporarily appointed the squad leader for Two Gun of the four gun section. Two Gun was the premium spot in a mortar platoon, being the gun that all other guns adjusted to. To keep the gun, though, he was going to have to prove that he was the best squad leader of the four available. Best should mean his gun was the quickest and the most accurate. But since they weren’t going to start training on guns immediately, for the time being ‘best’ meant the cleanest, neatest and most prompt. “Oppenheimer is up first, then Griffis, Adams and Cristman. While everyone else is showering, we’re going to be taking care of our areas of responsibility. Every single day. Understood?”
“Done this before, Keren,” Cristman said. As the senior specialist, he was up for the gunner position. There were arguments that Assistant Gunner was a better slot — the AG got to actually drop rounds — but gunner was the doorway to squad leader. Cristman was a former mortar platoon sergeant in 36Div and had actually held out for a while before retiring. Phlegmatic and much larger than his squad leader, he seemed to move slow but was the most efficient guy Keren had ever seen. “Let’s get started. Opie, don’t dawdle.”
The squad worked in teams fixing the bunks and wall-lockers. By keeping in their socks they didn’t mess up the waxed floor. Uniforms were laid out, ready to don and as each of the soldiers rotated through the shower they returned to carefully hang their PT gear to dry and got it on.
The new uniforms were made of a material similar to the Fleet Strike grays, but were digital camouflage. With an attached, form-fitting, hood they also had cloaking capability. That hadn’t been explained yet and everyone kept their hands away from the pull-tab low on the left bicep.
The boots were designed around civilian hiking boots, comfortable and well made but being very odd to the soldiers in that they were bright, reflective, silver.
“I can’t believe they gave us, like, chrome fucking boots,” Specialist Elden Adams said. The Assistant Gunner was medium height hazel eyes and, until last night, had light brown hair. He held the boots up and considered his reflection in their mirror shine. “What the fuck?”
“And we’re not supposed to polish them,” Keren noted, picking a bit of paint off a window that someone had missed last night. The squad had completed all their personal tasks and were working on the remaining platoon tasks while waiting for chow-call. Keren still hadn’t gotten to the shower; Cristman was, apparently, less efficient at showering. “Just wipe them down with a light rag.”
“What’s the fucking point?” Adams asked as Cristman emerged from the shower-point. “They’re fucking mirrors.”
“Hopefully that will get explained in training,” Keren said, grabbing his towel and trotting to the shower.
“We’ve got no time,” Sergeant Stacy Miller said. First Squad had the duty of cleaning the latrine when everyone had cycled through. They were waiting impatiently for the last few soldiers to get done showering.
“Two of my guys are ready to go,” Keren said, turning on the water. The shower was open-bay, four shower heads firing into a ten by ten plastic cubicle. Two of them were still in use. The rest of the head was being rapidly cleaned by first squad but they still had to wipe down the shower before they could stand inspection. “Grab them to help if you need it.”
“I think we’ve got it,” Miller replied. He was a massive guy with the look of a former football player. Keren suspected anyone making fun of his first name was going to go through a wall. “If you don’t take too long.”
“Done,” Keren said, turning off the water. He’d gotten his pits, head and face and scraped off what little beard had formed. He’d always been lucky in that regard. He thought there must have been some American Indian in his lineage because he had virtually no beard.
He trotted back to his bunk, wiping his feet before he left the head, and donned his uniform. Some of the clasps and connections were new, so it took him a bit to get it on. He was just tabbing his blouse closed when the door at the far end of the bay burst open.
“AT EASE,” Staff Sergeant Carter Richards bellowed, striding down the center of the squad bay. The sergeant was the FDC section leader and assistant platoon sergeant. Apparently, Moreland was going to be using him as a ramrod. “Keren, why ain’t you dressed, yet?”
“No excuse, sergeant,” Keren said, facing forward.
“Get your shit done up and prepare for inspection,” the staff sergeant said, walking to the latrine. “Miller! You call this clean? This is the most fucked up head I’ve ever seen! There are streaks on my mirrors, Miller!”
The rapid inspection found fault in every area the sergeant looked. Some of it was germane. Much of it was, in Keren’s professional opinion, chickenshit. The flip side was, Fire Direction Control was a very finicky business and the people who were best at it tended towards obsessive compulsive disorder. Having an OCD section leader would be a pain in the ass in garrison but might save their ass in combat. Keren decided to just put up with the chickenshit.
“Fall out for chow,” Sergeant Moreland said from the doorway. “And move like you’re fucking recruits.”
The platoon, released from the scathing inspection, fell out into formation and marched ‘expeditiously’ to chow. Some of them had forgotten how to march as was apparent when the unit tried to do a column right to the messhall. They did a bit better at breaking down into files. Fortunately, it wasn’t far.
Fifteen minutes is less time than it normally takes to get an entre served. It’s about half the time that most people take to eat a casual breakfast. It required eating very fast.
Fortunately, it was one skill Keren had retained. People often commented on how fast he ate. And he was hungry. They’d worked most of the night without supper then done the hardest PT he’d experienced in decades. He wolfed down some under-done eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, toast, orange juice and really bad coffee in well under the requisite time.
He fell out of the messhall and just stood in the light rain. Early morning rain was a constant of being outdoors, such a one that there was a civvie song that had become a famous marching song about it. It was a hell of a first day and it had barely started. He’d forgotten how much he truly hated the chickenshit part of the Army even when he knew most of it had a purpose.
Oppenheimer followed hard on his heels then stopped and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. A flick of a lighter and he was sucking down cancer smoke, the cigarette cupped to keep the light rain off.
; “Socks,” Keren said. Oppenheimer had gotten gigged for not having them rolled to specifications.
“Got it,” the driver said, making a face. He was a lanky guy who had had a mane of mid-back length red hair when he arrived. “Sorry. I’ll make sure they’re strac first chance I get.”
“You got nothing better to do than stand around in the rain, Keren?” Sergeant Richards asked as he exited the messhall. He, too, pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one.
“If I had anything to do, sergeant, I’d be doing it,” Keren responded.
“You was the artillery coordinator for the Ten Thousand, right?” Richards said, a touch of nervousness in his voice.
“I’m not going to tell you how to do your job, sergeant,” Keren replied. “But, yeah, I was.”
“I heard about that Spanish Inquisition you used to run,” Oppenheimer said, chuckling. “Gawd, I wished you’d run it on our damned division arty. They purely sucked.”
“What was you?” Richards asked.
“Same as you, sergeant,” Oppenheimer said. “FDC section leader. No interest in having the job again; I prefer to be on the guns. Besides, I was talking with Gist on the bus. Motherfucker’s a human calculator. He still remembers all his tables. Got ’em memorized by heart.”
“Yeah, but we’re not using the same mortars,” Richards said. “These are electro-drive systems. Completely different ballistics.”
“Ballistics are ballistics, sergeant,” Sergeant Gist said, walking out of the messhall. Part of the rejuv process was to permanently fix any eye problems but Gist just looked as if he should have coke-bottle glasses. He was slight, pale and had a stoop. For all that, he’d kept up with the massively fucked run this morning. “And for Opie’s information, I didn’t remember the tables; I just calculate them from raw data. Give me the raw for the new mortars and I can do the same. It’s really not hard. And we will, of course, have computers.”
“Won’t have much time to get used to them,” Richards pointed out.
“We can train on the ship,” Keren said. “Keep one system out for gun training. And you guys, well, all you do is run the calculations. Hell, we can even set it up so we train in the troop bay. The main thing that’s got me worried is getting into action fast enough.”
“Everybody’s out,” Sergeant Moreland said from the doorway. “Head straight to the company training office. We’ve got five minutes before training starts.”
Oppenheimer took a drag off his cigarette and, holding the smoke, crumpled out the last of the tobacco, pocketed the butt and started to trot.
“I wanna be an airborne Ranger,” he squeaked, smoke coming out of his nose and mouth.
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Keren said, chuckling as he ran alongside.
* * *
“Welcome to the company and all that.”
Staff Sergeant Edgar McCrady was the company operations officer, the guy responsible for making sure that all the paperwork was complete and that everyone had been trained to Army standard. Given that he was the ultimate paperpusher for the company, he was already looking haggard.
“Since you’re all prior service, training is going to skip anything that it possibly can,” McCrady said. “Therefore, don’t expect classes on VD prevention, personal hygiene, consideration of others or how to balance a checkbook. However, there is some paperwork that simply has to be done prior to training, notably wills and living wills as well as insurance and basic safety orientation. This is normally a day-long affair. We will compress it into this hour.”
There were fourteen terminals arrayed along the wall. Hooked into internet databases, they could search for relevant personal information in seconds. But it still took time. Many of the former soldiers didn’t have a will or hadn’t updated it in some time. Some hadn’t used a computer in a fifty years.
In Keren’s case it was dead easy.
“Name and social,” the machine said in a low contralto.
“Herschel Keren, 416-92-1538.”
“Will registered in Rappahanock County, Virginia. Living Will registered in Rappahanock County, Virginia. Designated respondee, Pamela Keren. Primary beneficiary, Pamela Keren. Is this information correct to the best of your knowledge?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to make… Pamela Keren your insurance beneficiary?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to increase your basic draw for insurance to increase the payment to the beneficiary?”
“No.” Pam was going to be set anyway.
“Method of burial if body is recoverable?”
“In the ground.”
“Religion still Baptist?”
“Yes.”
“You are recorded as an assistant chaplain for the First Baptist Church of Keren Town. Would you like to be recorded as an alternate chaplain?”
“No.”
“Basic immunizations are… not updated. Advanced immunizations are… not updated. Pay records are… updated. Thank you for your time. Goodbye.”
* * *
“File into the armory and draw personal weapons,” Sergeant Richards said. “Don’t get all shocked that they ain’t AIWs.”
Keren, by virtue of being a squad leader, was issued a rifle. He looked at it and snorted, noted the serial number then walked outside with the rest of the platoon.
“It’s a fucking Postie rail-gun!” Adams said, shaking his head.
“Actually, it’s not,” Keren said, looking at the device carefully. “I’ve used a converted rail gun and this is different. I’d say it’s way better designed for humans to use.”
The weapon was almost a sketch of a gun. The shoulder-stock was collapsible and looked flimsy. Keren suspected it was stronger than steel. The pistol-grip and trigger housing were comfortable but lightly built. The barrel was shorter than a Posleen railgun but had the same odd wideness on the horizontal access, a function of the magnetic accelerators. Sights were elevated and included optics that gave at least four power magnification. He suspected there was a way to dial that up. There was a dot reticle for fast firing. The really intimidating part was the magazine well, which looked about the size of a Barrett’s. The gun, by itself, weighed not much more than an M-16 and was a touch shorter. With the magazine he wasn’t going to guess the weight.
“I ain’t gonna march you back,” Sergeant Richards said, walking out of the armory with a railgun in his hand. “Double time back to the barracks, doff your boots and head upstairs. Then we’re going to learn about these things.”
* * *
They’d moved the furniture for the training room in the previous night. Simple folding chairs and folding tables were going to be the order of the day. For the next six weeks.
“M264 grav rifle,” Sergeant Richards said, holding one of the rifles up. “The M264 uses linear magnetic acceleration to fire a three millimeter tungsten or steel flechette to a velocity of forty-three hundred meters per second. This is five times the velocity of an M-16 round and nearly six times that of the AIW. The maximum effective range is eight hundred meters while the maximum range is eight thousand two hundred and forty-six meters and it comes complete with a four position firing selector, safe, semi, burst and full rocking auto. The base design we took from the Posties but it has been significantly improved for ergonomics and so that it can, yes, be aimed using the M482 one to twelve power opto-digital firing scope… ”
There was the M238 1mm grav pistol for the gunner and AG. A long barreled weapon with more maximum range and damage than an M-16, it was a nasty thing to fire by hand with a truly brutal recoil. The non-driver ammo bearer got the M825 combination 20mm plasma grenade launcher and railgun.
Paper manuals were distributed and with Sergeant Richards often less than helpful assistance everyone learned to field strip and reassemble their individual weapons. Particular note was taken of red comments about potential ‘issues’. The M264 wasn’t something to be fired if the barrel was blocked but that could be said of most weapons. J
ust more so in the case of a weapon with its power. The note about ‘potential capacitor accidental discharge’ in ‘over-fire’ conditions — like when you were firing as fast as you possibly could or get overrun — was not a good sign.
But the weapon could fire a round that ripped through a tank if you hit it just right and could fire four thousand rounds per minute. Both were good things. So was the five hundred round magazine with integrated battery compartment. And, yes, it was a heavy motherfucker. But adding it to the weapon actually improved balance and reduced recoil. By the end of the one hour class the experienced soldiers were field stripping their individual weapons to standard already.
It was followed by classes on the new mortar system, the M748 120mm electro-drive mortar system, which they still hadn’t set eyes upon, the M635 mortar sight, the M186 Mortar Carrier for M748, preventative maintenance, track replacement methods and repair of same and on and on and on.
By the end of the first day, which didn’t stop until 2200, Keren’s eyes were bleeding and his head felt stuffed with straw.
“No grab ass tonight,” Sergeant Moreland said as the weary platoon filed into the barracks. “0430 is first call and we do it all over again. Fire guard roster is on the wall. For General Information, the cadre’s already been doing all this shit on their own for a week and I’m going to be hitting the books for another couple of hours. Up to the rest of you if you want to keep going. There’s lights on your bunks. But I want everyone racked out by 2400. See you tomorrow.”
* * *
“Oh, I want to get my hands on that thing,” Oppenheimer said as the mortar track ground to a halt.
The cadre had moved the mortar carriers over from the motor pool, possibly the last time they would get a chance to crank track.
“You’ll hate it before you know it,” Adams opined. “Especially the first time you have to stay late to pull PMCS.”
