“Fucking excuses, Turtle. Just man up and admit you puked all over that sergeant from Alpha.”
“It was pretty fucking funny,” the female Marine said, lifting a glass to clink with Turtle. “And who’d you drag with you?” she asked Tad.
“This here boot’s Noah. Just reported aboard today. I thought I’d show him the ropes.”
“And buy the beer?” she asked with a short laugh.
“Ah, you know me so well. We should be married, me and you.”
“In your dreams. You ain’t man enough for the likes of Princess Mayhem.”
“Noah, that’s Dora Hwang. ‘Princess Mayhem.’ As much as I hate to admit it, she’s a passably decent PICS jockey.”
“Passably? My ass I’m passably. Best cap scores in the battalion and tons better than you!”
“And very modest,” the Marine Tad called Turtle told Noah as he held out a hand over the table. “I’m Gregori de Matta, ‘Turtle’ to my friends.”
“Where’re the rest?” Tad asked.
“Rory’s got the duty, but I guess anyone’s who’s coming will be coming,” Dora said. “But why’s your new boot just standing there? I thought you said he’s buying the beer, and my glass is about empty.”
“Shit, I wouldn’t keep the princess’ glass empty if I were you, Noah,” Turtle said. “You don’t want to see her when’s she’s in a mood.”
“Is that some sort of ‘woman’s time’ comment?” she asked as she leveled a wicked punch on Turtle’s shoulder. Noah didn’t need to see Turtle’s expression to know she’d hit hard; the sound alone made Noah wince.
“Never ma’am, never!” Turtle protested as Tad laughed. “It’s just that you can be a mean-ass drunk.”
“And don’t you forget it!” she said, giving him another, lighter punch.
“So what’re you doing standing there gawking? Hup to it, Boot,” she said.
Noah turned to do his duty. He wasn’t used to this kind of recreation. He was a gamer, and even at the few local game conventions he’d attended, the vibe was totally different. This was almost a Hollybolly trope, and frankly, it fascinated him. He was out of his element, but he wanted to try and fit in.
“And none of the Presidential shit, either!” Dora shouted out as his retreating back.
Noah waved an acknowledgment over his shoulder. He seemed to be being accepted by the others, which was not always the case with him. Esther was the social one. Hell, she’d probably end up making Princess Mayhem buy the first pitcher. But now, he was getting a head start on his sister by being introduced to the station’s bar district while she was sitting on her butt with the alert platoon, probably bored out of her mind. For once, he was getting the adventure while she did nothing.
FS GALLIPOLI
Chapter 18
Esther
“Just concentrate on your training, Esther. You’ll be fine,” Corporal Kinder said over the EVA suit’s P2P.
“I know. Don’t worry about me, Corporal,” Esther said with a tone of conviction she didn’t quite feel in her heart.
Esther had trained in EVA missions, of course, both at boot camp and IUT. She’d been on four exercises, but she was discovering that there was a huge difference between training and a hot mission. She was nervous, no getting around it.
She didn’t think she was afraid in the conventional sense. Yes, she was going into harm’s way for the first time, but they only faced half-a-dozen or so pirates with an entire Marine rifle platoon and a Federation Navy schooner. This was not a high-risk mission.
What she feared was making a mistake, making a fool of herself. She had to excel at combat, and all she could think of was screwing up.
Esther was not a person given to self-doubt. Whatever task she undertook, she excelled at it. That was just the way it was. To feel the unease that permeated her thoughts was a new experience.
She nervously shook her shoulders to seat the clavicular strapping. Unlike a PICS, the EVAs came in four basic sizes; individual fitting was done by the smart lining and adjustable harness. Her EVA was fairly new, unlike the ones she’d worn during training, EVAs that hundreds of other recruits had worn and filled with their sweat and who knows what else. But unlike the school EVAs, this was a full combat suit, complete with MR armor. Magnetorheological armor was heavier than the STF[8] armor of the Marine’s “bones,” the inserts used in their “skins,” or field uniform, and it was slightly bulkier. In an already bulky EVA, used mostly in Null G, that didn’t make much difference, but this was Esther’s first time in a combat EVA, and she felt as if she’d been wrapped up in bubble wrap. In the Gallipoli’s artificial gravity, even at .75 G, the EVA felt heavy to her.
Whereas the STF of a Marine’s “bones” hardened instantly with the shock wave of an impact, the MR armor used magnetic fields to align the ferrous particles in the suspension fluid. The advantage of that was that it could be hit in the same spot repeatedly without compromise. With the STF armor, repeated hits at the same spot could defeat the it.
The MR armor for EVAs was a fairly new development. In her father’s day, the EVAs were pretty much naked to projectile weapons. Esther might not like the way her EVA felt on her, but she welcomed the extra protection. As the lieutenant had pointed out, not one battalion Marine had been killed in an EVA op in the almost year-and-a-half she’d been with them.
Esther still thought that any risk in this case was stupid. Their mission was to retake the ore carrier. Up to half-a-dozen pirates had taken her, jettisoning the four-man crew in separate lifeboats. To her surprise, the ship’s captain had ignored the crew, saying they could be picked up after the Rio Tinto Excavator King was recovered. Esther didn’t really care for closed-in spaces, and the thought of floating around in the Black for a dozen hours, not knowing for sure that rescue was imminent, was rather disturbing.
Still, if they had to recover the ore carrier, why not just stand off with the Gallipoli and fire on the bridge? Most of the carrier was a huge, 500-meter expanse of framing that used force grapples to hold the ore in place. The brain of the carrier was the relatively small bridge and crew quarters linked to the power train. One round from any of the Gallipoli’s weapons systems, and all they’d have to do was eject the pirates’ remains into the Black and wash out the mess.
“You are such a naive boot,” Sergeant Orinda had said with a wry smile when Esther had asked why the Navy just didn’t shoot up the pirates. “Rio Tinto doesn’t want their carrier damaged, and they want their ore at the processing station now. If they have to replace the bridge unit, that could take weeks, and then their processing station goes idle.”
So we put Marines in danger so Rio Tinto can save a few credits, she thought sourly.
Her father had been wary of the power the huge corporations wielded and how the Marines were seemingly often at their bidding. Esther had never really considered the issue, but now, when it was her platoon’s ass on the line simply to save Rio Tinto a miniscule fraction of its yearly revenues, she was beginning to see his point.
“Three minutes,” Staff Sergeant Ski passed on the platoon net.
Esther shrugged again, trying to seat the clavicular strapping. It didn’t feel like it was smooth against her shoulders, and that was annoying more than anything else.
Forget it! Get your mind back on the mission!
She turned over her M99 and checked the M333 attached to it. The launcher looked pretty fierce, she had to acknowledge, and she felt powerful with it in her hands. While she still resented being shifted from rifleman, being the grenadier did have its benefits. She was locked and loaded with the “shotgun” grenade—75 pellets encased in a polyglycolide smart-jacket. Firing it was pretty foolproof. All she had to do was aim her weapon in the general direction of a pirate, and the tiny sensor would do the rest, releasing the pellets at the proper distance and pattern to turn a human body into just so much hamburger. And if a breach was needed, a simple press of the selector lever rotated the chamber so that she could fire the Airy rock
et.
She really should have personally zeroed-in her M99 itself before going hot on a mission, but at close-range, both the standard set and the automatic zeroing done by the weapon reading her eye placement was probably good enough. For the dunker, zeroing wasn’t necessary.
“Two minutes,” the platoon sergeant passed. “Second Squad, get ready.”
That last command was probably unneeded. The entire platoon had been ready for the last ten minutes, waiting in the cramped hangar bay for the ship’s bosun to release them. The Excavator King was unarmed, and the Gallipoli’s scanners could not detect any weapons capable of doing her harm, so it was matching speed 300 meters off the carrier. At that distance, the rekkis wouldn’t be used. The Marines would fly themselves across the intervening distance—the carrier was too ungainly to change direction before the Marines reached her.
Due to the cramped space in the hangar, Esther’s First Squad was standing in the top rekki. All three of the space sleds were stacked one on top of the other. With the lone ship’s shuttle in the hangar as well, that left very little room for the Marines.
“One minute!”
The ship’s hangar doors began to open. The electrostatic gate was still in place, so the ship’s air was intact, but Esther felt a thrill as she looked into open space. As much as she didn’t like cramped spaces, she’d loved her EVA training. Some others had problems staring into the Black, and a few recruits had been dropped due to their inability to function while on an EVA. Esther found the void compelling.
The bosun spun around, whirling one arm to point out past the gate just as Staff Sergeant Ski shouted “Second, go!”
As one, the 12 Marines and one corpsman stepped through the gate, a small flare haloing each one. The lieutenant was right on their tails, and almost immediately, Third Squad followed. Esther’s First Squad was already climbing down off the rekkis, and with Staff Sergeant Ski urging them on, they stepped into the Black.
After the initial flare of the gate against her EVA, suddenly, she could see forever. This section of space was closer to the galactic center, so the “Black” was not as appropriate a term. Thousands of stars spread out around her. Esther’s face shield barely had to magnify the starlight.
“On my ass, Lysander,” Corporal Kinder said, snapping her attention back.
Esther quickly hit her jets to pull within five meters of her team leader as the squad circled around the Gallipoli to face the ore carrier. Even a hand-held weapon could fire through a hangar gate, so the ship had rotated the hangar doors away from the carrier.
The Excavator King was huge! Esther had taken in the dimensions during the brief, but to see the carrier, full of ore, stretch out before her made it hit home. Second Squad was already halfway to the ship, which showed no signs of evasion, not that it would do much good. The pirates had been betting on getting away before the Navy could reach them. They had released the crew and scattered them, obviously hoping that the first ship to respond would spend time rounding the crew members up. Somewhere up ahead would be their compatriots, ready to divvy up the ore for basic pirate operations, or for the more advanced crews, cloaking teams that would make the carrier disappear from detection.
“Keep your dispersion,” Sergeant Orinda passed on the squad circuit.
“Se. . .ight. . .et rea. . .” the lieutenant’s voice sputtered over the platoon circuit. “. . .it!”
“The lieutenant’s got comm problems,” Staff Sergeant Ski passed a few seconds later. “But we know the plan, so nothing’s changed.”
Comms were often ineffective, usually due to enemy jamming. To have it just go out like that wasn’t that rare of an occurrence, but for it to be the platoon commander’s comms was just bad luck.
Right about now, the Gallipoli would be aiming a tight beam to the Excavator King, using the carrier’s skin as a speaker membrane to demand the pirate’s surrender. The beam was supposedly harmless to humans, but Esther kept expecting to feel it pass through her.
If the Gallipoli passed the surrender demand, evidently the pirates refused, because 150 meters away, the entry hatch of the Excavator King opened, overridden by the Navy ship. Second Squad disappeared inside the carrier.
First Squad closed the distance as Third followed Second inside the ship. Esther tried to see something, anything, to let her know what was happening. All was silent, broken only the sound of her breathing.
She reversed her jets, slowing down to enter the ship as all hell suddenly broke loose, first on the net, then as she passed the hatch and entered the ship’s atmosphere, as normal sound. First Squad broke immediately to the right to secure the propulsion train. None of the Marines had ever been aboard this class of carrier, but the ship’s plans had been extremely accurate, and everyone knew just where to go.
The heavy sound of firing reached them, and Esther’s instincts were to rush to help the Marines in contact, but the squad’s mission was not the bridge. It was harder to ignore the rounds that reached them, especially when Woowoo shouted “Shit! The fuckers hit me!”
Esther’s heart raced, but Woowoo’s MR armor did its job. He stumbled a step as the ferrous particles aligned and turned his lower back and legs into a solid piece of armor for a fraction of a second before shifting back to normal.
At the rear of the squad, and the closest to the firing reaching out from the bridge, Esther instinctively turned, her M99 and attached dunker at the ready. Second Squad was in heavy contact, the Marines hugging the corridor bulkheads and the deck as they bounded forward, one team moving while two teams provided cover. She could just make out a barricade inside the bridge itself, extending from the deck to the overhead, from where the pirate fire was coming. She was tempted to try and get a clear shot when one of the Second Squad Marines fired his dunker. Esther couldn’t see if he had effect on target, but she knew he had a much better line of sight to the bad guys than she had.
The propulsion train was located down a circular deck hatch. It was big enough for only one Marine at a time, and the squad was bunching up at the hatch.
“Kinder, cover our six,” Sergeant Orinda ordered as she started down. “There’s not enough room down here for all of us, and it looks clear.”
“You heard her,” the corporal said as the four turned back towards the passage to the bridge.
“Crew quarters clear,” Sergeant Quiero passed on the platoon net from Third Squad’s objective.
It looked like all the pirates were on the bridge, and from the sound of it, they were putting up a fierce resistance. Esther wished she could listen in to Second Squad to know what was happening, but she was not on their net.
“Propulsion clear!” Sergeant Orinda passed.
“Should we, you know, move forward?” Eason asked Kinder though his external speaker.
The corporal looked back at the hatch leading down to propulsion for a moment before saying, “We can still keep security from up ahead. Move up to the main passage.”
At the bridge, the sheer number of weapons being discharged was amazing, and Esther was astounded that anyone could still be alive, pirate or Marine. The bridge was less than 20 meters across and maybe 10 meters deep, and while it was the largest space in the manned area of the ship, it seemed way too small for a firefight of this magnitude.
Corporal Kinder waved Woowoo and Eason across the passage where they hugged the bulkhead. Three Marines were prone where the passage entered the bridge. The rest of the squad was inside the bridge, taking cover the best they could while still firing on the barricade, which looked to be welded plates between the captain’s chair and the control pillar. Whoever had constructed it had a sound tactical mind, Esther realized.
“. . . ere now . . .” the lieutenant tried to pass.
Up ahead, one of the prone Marines turned around, and to Esther’s surprised, popped his face shield. Only it wasn’t a “him”—it was the lieutenant.
“Get Third Squad and Ski up here now!” she shouted back down the passage.
“Woowoo, go!” Corporal Kinder ordered as the PFC immediately took off towards the crew quarters.
The lieutenant started to turn back, hand reaching to close her face shield when her head snapped back and she went limp. One of the Marines darted to her side and rolled her over.
“The lieutenant’s down!” someone shouted over the platoon net. “Staff Sergeant Ski, the lieutenant’s down.”
“I’m on my way,” the platoon sergeant passed, his voice calm and steady.
Esther was shocked. This was supposed to be a cakewalk! And now they got the lieutenant!
“Kinder, what’s going on?” Sergeant Orinda asked over the squad circuit.
“The lieutenant’s down hard, Sergeant. Second’s in the shit.”
A string of darts impacted along the bulkhead beside Esther, making her jump.
“I’m coming up,” the sergeant said.
Esther fingered her M99, trying not to stare at what was now two Marines dragging the inert body of the lieutenant out of the way. The EVAs had only limited med capabilities. They would be injecting nano activators into her body, trying to keep her functions working until she could be put in stasis.
One of the Marines with the lieutenant went down, and Esther’s heart jumped, but a moment later, he was back up. The shock at seeing the lieutenant hit was being replaced by a growing anger, anger that they hadn’t let the Navy take care of the situation, anger that pirates had thought they could just steal the ship, anger that the lieutenant—her lieutenant—had been hit. She wanted to hit them back. She barely noticed Staff Sergeant Ski arriving, accompanied by two teams from Third Squad.
“What’s the situation?” he asked Corporal Kinder.
“I don’t know everything, Staff Sergeant, but Second Squad’s pinned down, and the lieutenant’s been hit.”
“With what? What weapons do they have?”
“She opened her face shield to tell us to get you, you know, ‘cause her comms are out. It was still open when she took a round in the face.”
The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5 Page 11
