Corpsman

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  “Yes, he does. But that’s in large part due to you, from what I saw. You kept him focused.”

  There was more than a little truth in his words. Moose was not dumb—no one in recon could be called that. But he could be a little scatterbrained, and Liege had taken it upon herself to keep him on track. She and Moose went back quite a ways. They’d gone through RTC together, and Moose had been there for her, helping her through some of the rough spots. He was big, powerful, and had a huge heart—and he was her friend.

  Friend or not, if he was a weak link, she couldn’t carry him. The teams were too small and relied on each other for that. But he was a huge benefit to the team, and if Liege had to ride him a little, so be it. She wasn’t going to admit that to the gunny, though.

  “So, your sister is a Marine now, huh?” he asked, changing the subject.

  “Yeah. I was back there for her graduation.”

  “You must be proud.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Liege wondered why the 20 questions. They hadn’t had a chance to talk much since he joined the team, so was this one of those show-the-troops-that-I-care evolutions?

  “And I saw you have a dependent? Leandro Estacio?”

  “My grandfather. On my mother’s side.”

  Liege was feeling a bit uncomfortable. He could just be being sociable, but while Avó was much, much better, she didn’t like to talk about his condition.

  “Ah, OK. That explains it. It didn’t make much sense from your records. I also saw that you were married?”

  Liege put her stein down and turned to stare at the gunny.

  “It was a mistake. Annulled,” she said, offering nothing else.

  Technically, Rex Klein Omarr had never been her husband. Oh, they’d been married in a moment of lust and complete brain shut-down, and they’d had a two-day honeymoon at the Golden Mountain Casino and Resort, where they’d met at the casino’s Hundred Meter Bar, but when she awoke two mornings later, the alcohol that had fueled the marriage finally metabolized, she realized what a mistake it had been. Her husband was on his back, naked except for one shoe, snoring loudly. She couldn’t even remember where he was from.

  She’d shaken him awake, and to her great relief, he’d expressed similar regrets. An hour later, the marriage was annulled, and it had never officially happened. The marriage had already been registered, however, and the Navy had duly noted it. She was now listed as divorced despite two years of trying to get the marriage stricken from the records.

  Gunny must have seen something in her eyes, and he quickly retreated from the personal lines of questioning. He almost seemed happy when Gunny Van Meter from First Platoon sat down to join them. Before long, the entire company was in the bar, ready to kick back and relax after the exercise.

  Liege made her excuses from the gunny and went to join Teri and Fidor as they came in. She knew that a good leader is supposed to know his or her subordinates, but she’d felt uncomfortable with him asking personal questions.

  Chapter 27

  Sergeant Major Carruthers back at The Bar had been right. Less than an hour after landing back at Portillo, Major Stann informed the company that they were deploying to New Manitoba in support of Third MEB.[16]

  New Manitoba was an industrial hub in the Second Sector, with only eight years as a member of the Federation. The results of the referendum to join the Federation had been close, with the “Feddies” gathering 53.7% of the vote. There had been protests and demands for a new vote, but nothing had come of that.

  Until three days ago.

  A large military force had attacked two of the industrial centers on the main continent and was now moving towards the capital. Initial intel was that the force had been drawn from much of the Army, supplemented by the security forces of several of the old business conglomerates. These conglomerates had supported joining the Federation, but now seemed to be having second thoughts as they proved unable to compete with the larger corporations that came in as the planet merged with the Federation.

  Facing these forces were scattered elements of the Army that had stayed loyal to the government, two regiments that were consolidating their position around the capital, and several corporate security forces. They wouldn’t be enough.

  Enter the Marines. Two of the battalions that would make up the MEB were already deployed on routine cruises and had been diverted to the planet. The Immediate Reaction Battalion was in the process of embarking. Bravo Company, First Recon, and several other support units were to conduct a crisis action deployment; in 14 hours, they would be embarking for the transit over.

  It was go time.

  FS VICTOR BILLINGHAM

  Chapter 28

  “As you can see, sir, the PIP has significant armor assets,” the Navy lieutenant said, using his pointer to highlight the order of battle. “They could easily punch through the defending forces, and they might have done that already had the Sunlight City not reached orbit.”

  That made sense to Liege. The Sunlight City might be an older cruiser, but with her on-ship weapons systems, she could easily wipe out a fleet of armor.

  “As far as friendly armor, the loyalist forces have 25 PTY-3 Armored Combat Vehicles, of which 16 are combat effective, and 14 TYNs, 9 being effective. The MEB has 15 M1 Davises and 12 Pangolins. Of course, as I’ve already noted, there are 28 PICS platoons and the five Wasps that will help even up the playing field.”

  The People’s Independence Party’s 127 TYN, “Tonya” tanks, were not nearly as advanced as the Marines’ M1s, but at 127 to 15, and with a full 240 PTY-3 “Patties,” they could overrun the Marines by sheer numbers. With the Wasps, PICS Marines, and most of all, the Sunlight City in orbit, the PIP armor should be taken out of the equation before it came to that, though, so if it came to full-on combat, it should boil down to the infantry.

  Not that recon would be taking on armor. Their mission, which was still being tweaked, was to get out in front of the defensive lines and make sure the general had the full picture.

  Liege looked down to where Brigadier General Lamonica sat in the front row. She wondered if he minded riding out to the battle with mere support units. With two battalions in the process of planet-fall and the Immediate Reaction Battalion preceding them, he wasn’t going to be able to affect full command of the combat units until he got on scene. She didn’t even know his reputation. He’d been plucked from some staff billet to command the ad hoc brigade, and none of the units had trained together. It would take some amazing managerial skills, she knew, to mesh all the units into a smoothly running force.

  Her stomach rumbled, breaking her train of thought. The “Vic” was an old troop transport, built on the plans of a cruise liner. It wasn’t a feasible option for an opposed landing, but in this case, it could transport lots of Marines, and more importantly to Liege at the moment, in comfort. Her kitchens were top-notch, and in fewer than nine hours, Liege and her team would be out in the badlands, eating field rats. She was bound and determined to get in two more good meals under her belt before that.

  But the general wanted briefs, and with the Vic’s large auditorium (a theater for the civilian liners built on the same hull) and the relatively low number of PAX, he wanted everyone to sit in on them with him.

  Most of what the Intel officer was presenting had already been downloaded onto each Marine’s PA, and Liege wasn’t learning much of anything new. She almost wished that something would happen of which the general had to be informed, something above the security clearance of a mere recon corpsman.

  But, no such luck. The lieutenant pulled up yet another image, this one detailing the personal weapons and equipment of each PIP soldier.

  Liege sighed, put her hands on her belly, and settled into her seat.

  NEW MANITOBA

  Chapter 29

  Liege was suspended in a sea of darkness. The wind brushed her face as she descended to the planet’s surface. Out there somewhere, her seven teammates floated as well. She couldn’t se
e them, and she wouldn’t go active to try and spot them, because even if she had known exactly where they were, it really made no difference.

  She’d been in free fall for only a few moments—the insert was using HAHO, or

  “High Altitude, High Opening.” After the shock of her foil deploying, it was almost unnaturally calm as she floated down. Above her, the stars painted a panoply of bright points, but below her, the darkness was only broken by a few lonely lights in the far distance.

  Liege was at the mercy of her AI. She could take over control of the foil, of course, but that would result in the slightest bit of power leak, enough so that anyone actively searching could spot them. Her AI had been programmed, and using passive measures to determine her position, should get her down to the DZ,[17] along with the rest of her team.

  She glanced up at her stealthy canopy. The foil was designed to absorb waves, be they light, radar, or sound. With a 1.0 wing loading, the glide ration was excellent, reaching 18 to 20. Exiting the glider at 9,000 meters, their insertion range was outstanding, up to 30 klicks or so.

  With a duck egg, of course, the teams would have had far more control as to their DZs. But the Vic didn’t have launching capabilities, so as soon as they landed at Williamson City, the three teams being inserted loaded the gliders for the lift by the Vic’s shuttles returning to the ship. The shuttles could be tracked by even primitive gear, but the cohesion-board gliders would be practically invisible as they piggybacked up to altitude. And now, somewhere above her, the glider, having discharged the team, would already have disintegrated into tiny dust particles.

  After descending to about the 4,000-meter altitude, Liege popped the supplemental O2 tubes out of her nose. New Manitoba’s atmosphere was only 16% O2, slightly less than Earth-normal, but she’d be fine, and she didn’t like the cannulas. All the cannula prongs were shaped exactly the same, and they were not flexible. For her, they were pretty uncomfortable hooked inside her nose.

  The DZ almost surprised her as she reached it. She had to lift her feet as she cleared a line of trees, but her AI brought her in for a stand-up landing. Her chute immediately detached and fell to the ground. It started to collapse around itself, and within 30 seconds, what had been a 15-meter wide foil was a small hunk of solid polyestroline.

  She jammed it into her cargo pocket, then looked around for the rest of the team. A ghost passed over her head, resolving into another Marine landing ten meters away. Liege waited for his foil to fall away, then pushed through the knee-high grass to him. Within two steps, she knew it was Moose. Even in the dead of night, his outline was immediately recognizable.

  She flipped down her monocle, and Moose’s features sprang into visibility. New Manitoba might not have had a moon, but the stars gave more than enough light for the monocle’s night vision capability to work in passive mode. He pocketed the remains of his foil, turned and saw Liege, and raised a hand in greeting. Together, they moved to the south side of the DZ, and within a couple of minutes, the team was gathered. Warden gave the move-out signal, and Gidge took point, starting the 30-klick-long march ahead of them to their objective.

  Every member of the team had multiple skills, both through formal training as well as simple genetics. Gidge, Staff Sergeant Dek Wisteria, was the team’s school-trained EOD Marine. But, he had also been a well-regarded gymnast in his school days, and the small man could move like a wraith. Because of this, he was the point man whenever they moved. In line units, the point man was rotated to spread around the risk, but in the teams, operators simply took the jobs for which they were best suited. Gidge had gone through regen twice during his career, the result of being hit while walking point, but Liege knew he’d never considered someone else taking point. It was his job, and that’s the way it was.

  It was dark under the cover of the trees, the leaves blocking out the starlight. But, like most terraformed worlds, there wasn’t much undergrowth. Both the genmodded oaks and maples which formed the top canopy and the tree-aloes at the second canopy level were planted to produce O2. As this area was mostly unpopulated, there was no reason yet to sow the ground-hugging plants that had commercial uses.

  Liege followed Moose, his broad back easy to see through her monocle. She tried to keep alert, watching for any sign of danger, but unless she went into active night vision, her view was limited to eight or nine meters. The Sunlight City, though, had blasted the area with active scanning the day before, along with half of the landmass so as not to alert the PIP forces as to where actual areas of interest were, and this route of advance was deserted.

  By the time daylight started to filter through the trees, they’d only covered ten klicks. Warden decided to push on. They had to get eyes on the objective, and he felt the chance of being spotted was small. They covered another five klicks before the team leader called them to a halt near a small stream. Without underbrush, it was hard to keep concealed, but the stream had undercut the soil just enough to offer a tiny bit of cover. Liege and the Marines settled in for the rest of the daylight to eat and sleep the best they could. Liege was assigned one of the middle watches, so her restless sleep was broken into two sections.

  They could have taken their stimtabs and kept straight on to the objective, but without knowing what they faced, or how long they would face it, the gunny didn’t want to waste that silver bullet just yet.

  At nightfall, the team was roused, and after another 20 minutes to eat and shit, they moved off again. Their movement was routine, and, well before dawn, the growth started to thin out as the terrain rose. Their objective was a 40-klick long finger of low hills that rose out of the surrounding plains. The main PIP force was spread out starting another 50 klicks beyond the hills to the north, but they would have to cross or go around them if they wanted to advance on Williamson City. This high ground was the strategic center of the AO, and if the Marines couldn’t control it yet, they at least had to have eyes on it.

  The problem with that was that the PIP Army knew that, too. There were PIP forces scattered throughout the line of hills, and they controlled a small waystation located at the northern end where the main highway passed through them. Warden brought the team to a hasty halt while he tried to confirm where they were.

  A recon Marine’s main advantage on the battlefield was to remain unseen. A good part of that was not to emit nor receive emissions. Their monocles functioned as mini combat displays, but all the information in them was uploaded before a mission. They could be switched to full net capability, but that was done only if the situation required it, and the monocle screen was small and couldn’t display very much. This, of course, meant that navigation was not as simple as having an active AI guiding them, so all recon Marines underwent modification, both to have their hippocampus stimulated to over-develop and to have two Neulife bridges inserted, one connecting each hemisphere of the brain and one connecting the hippocampus to the cortex, which enabled the Marine to make use of that input in a more cognitive fashion.

  The Neulife bridge was essentially a bundle of KD crystal connectors, bundled together much like dried spaghetti in a hand before putting it into the boiling water. But KD crystals cannot connect into brain cells themselves. There has to be some sort of interface. So, on each end of the KD bundle, Neulife “caps” were attached which could take the input from the hippocampus, transmit it to the crystals, then interface back into the entorhinal cortex, bypassing the fornix, in a usable format.

  The result was that recon Marines pretty much knew where they were at any time, and like waterfowl migrating to a specific pond to lay their eggs, they knew where they were going. Still, it was dark and without visual cues, and the gunny wanted to make sure they were on the right path, so he conferred with Dannyboy and Teri.

  Liege was in recon, so she’d had the modification as well. Once, she’d tried to describe to Leticia how it worked, but she couldn’t put it into words. She knew the science of it, but it was like describing hearing to someone who’d always been deaf. Sh
e could describe how sound waves vibrated the hairs in the inner ear, but to someone who’d never heard before, the context would not resonate. It was the same with navigation. She simply knew where she was and where she was going. Of course, just as someone might mishear something, so could the inner navigation be off.

  But evidently, all three of them agreed, and the team moved off again. They were going to the steep side of a hill that didn’t offer a direct view over the entire highway as it crossed the hills, but it did provide observation of both the north and south side of the highway at either end. Being on the side of the hill, it was unlikely that a casual patrol would just happen to come across them, and without a direct view of the entire waystation, the hope was that the PIP forces would not flag the position as a possible observation point.

  It was still dark, but the orange fingers of dawn were visible over the horizon as the team eased into position. The team was broken into two-man groups, positioned 20 or 30 meters apart, and as the night turned into day, they settled in for what could be a long mission.

  Chapter 30

  “There’s another one,” Warden said, pointing to his right. “Just downhill from the Seagull.”

  Liege turned to look. The “Seagull” was the name they’d given a white outcropping of rock 800 meters to the northwest. It looked nothing like a seagull, but just having a quick reference point was what was important, not that the descriptions were accurate.

  Her Zeis binos were top-of-the-line for mechanical binoculars, almost as good as electronic binos, and they brought the four PIP soldiers into stark relief. The soldiers were making their way along a narrow trail, and they looked much more interested in their footing than in the possible presence of Federation Marines.