by Dan Davis
“Hey, check this out,” Ram said to Milena, grinning. She was not amused. “I’m sorry, am I not responding appropriately to the gravity of the situation?”
She shook her head, looking closely at him. Searching his face with concern. “Jesus, Ram. You’re hyper excited. Try to relax.”
His heart was indeed racing and he took as slow a breath as he could manage. It did not help much. “You’re right. What’s wrong with me?”
“We can talk about it later.”
“Milena.”
“Dr. Fo and his team made a few tweaks to your brain chemistry so that you would find the prospect of combat, and combat itself…” She gestured while searching for the word. “Exhilarating.”
“Those motherfu—”
A woman’s voice sounded in Rama’s embedded comms. The shuttle pilot spoke.
“This is Lieutenant Xenakis. We are now clear of the Victory and ready to initiate our first engine burn. Just a nice, gentle kick but please keep your hands and arms crossed over your chest for three, two, one, ignition.”
It was as if normal gravity was switched back on for half a minute, then it eased off back to weightlessness again over a few seconds.
“Alright, fellas,” Lieutenant Xenakis said in his ear, “sit back, relax and enjoy the view. We will enter the upper atmosphere in approximately two hours, fifteen minutes.”
Rama turned to Milena. “So what happened when—”
“Mr. Seti,” Captain Cassidy called as he floated past, heading forward. “Come with me to the cargo hold.”
Unbuckling from his chair, Ram pushed himself up, floating in the air over his seat. It felt great.
“You not coming?” he asked Milena, holding the seat back and twisting himself around.
Her lips pressed together for a moment. “I’m not going to be babysitting you anymore, Ram. You’re a military man now.”
“Oh.” Ram paused, holding himself to his chair while his legs floated up and out behind him. “Alright. I’m glad you’re here, obviously but why are you coming down into a war zone, then?”
She shrugged. “All non-essential personnel were shipped down to the surface to help establish the outpost. Now you’re delivered back to the Marines, I can move on with my other duties.”
“Non-essential?” Ram said. “You got to be kidding me.”
She pursed her lips. “It’s alright, I still have value, supporting the new mission. I have many skills.”
“You sure do,” he said, grinning.
She shook her head, fighting a faint smile on her face. “You’d better go. Captain Cassidy is not as indulgent as I was.”
“I sure hope not.”
Ram pulled himself forward, propelling his huge body with the lightest touch. Stopping required catching himself on the forward bulkhead. A sign said the cargo hold was down a square hatch in the floor and he pushed himself down it, feet first and squeezed his shoulders in.
He’d never been in the cargo compartment, that he recalled. From the bottom of the ladder, looking toward the rear, the long space was packed with crates and stacked carry cases. Down by the rear cargo ramp, it looked like there were wide, squat dune buggies or something.
Closer to the front end near to the hatch was an open area surrounded by stacked crates where Captain Cassidy held himself in place beside another soldier, a sergeant called Wu, in front of a row of open weapon and armor cases. The officer and NCO were arguing about something.
Captain Cassidy looked over his shoulder. His rugged, bony face was deeply lined, with a weathered ruddiness undiminished by years in space. The man exuded confidence that bordered on hostility, especially, for some reason, when speaking to Ram. “Jesus Christ, Seti. You want to play at being a Marine then you got to work on that hustle.”
Who said I want to be a Marine?
“Alright,” Ram said, attempting to ignore the deep irritation he felt at being spoken to like he was an underling.
Cassidy scowled while the sergeant next to him turned away to hide a smile. “You say, yes sir, Seti.”
“I do?” Ram said, looking between the captain and the sergeant. “For real? Zhukov told me I was here as a military adviser. You know, a consultant.”
In the low light, Cassidy’s face seemed to glow red and his eyes bulged. “Are you fucking kidding me? The day I need military advice from you, Seti, will be a sad day indeed. Military adviser. You’re a goddamned liability, that’s what you are. I had to wait for them to finish working you over while the rest of my reinforcements sat waiting in that shuttle bay for hours. As if it matters if they bring you round gently. Yeah, you’re a liability. I don’t need your advice but I have my orders and that’s why Gunny Wu is going to get you in your armor while I go and deliver the final briefing to my people. You good, Wu?”
The sergeant nodded, eyes on the officer, and spoke a soft acknowledgement. “Sir.”
Ram half raised his hand. “Shouldn’t I be there for the briefing, too?”
Cassidy stared, open mouthed. “You need to understand something and you’re not getting it. You beat that wheelhunter in the arena all those months ago and that was just great. You sacrificed your life for all of us and it was goddamned heroic. But since then, what good have you been? I don’t care how much you trained to fight, unarmed and one to one with those things, and I don’t care how much virtual military experience you had playing your little games over the years and I don’t care what they pumped into your brain since they resurrected you. You’re dangerously unpredictable, unable to control your emotions. You are not a Marine. You’re gigantic, slow, you’re not properly integrated and I have no use for you. All you accomplish by being here is getting in my way. We’re going to be landing directly in the shit, most likely, and I’ve already lost people in the previous attacks. I have had to assign resources to look after you, people that I would rather have doing something useful, like unpacking boxes. As far as I’m concerned, you’re nothing more than a newborn baby on his first day in boot camp. You’re the lowest ranking creature this side of Neptune. All I want from you is to put on your armor and do as you’re told. If you can avoid getting any of my people killed when we land, or killing them yourself, I’ll consider it a miracle. Understand?”
“I think you’ve made your point pretty thoroughly.”
Cassidy nodded once at Ram, then addressed Sergeant Wu. “Get him stitched up tight, Jim.”
“Sir.”
Cassidy, still scowling, bounded away and pulled himself up through the hatch into the crew compartment without another word.
“Shit, sergeant,” Ram said. “I always thought that guy liked me.”
“You’re a hero, sir,” Sergeant Wu said. “The Captain just has other priorities.”
Yeah, am I not supposed to be the savior of humanity? Why the hell is he treating me like that?
“It’s fine, I get it,” Ram said. “So, you’re our Gunnery Sergeant, right?”
The man looked confused. “How did you know that?”
“I don’t know,” Ram said but he pointed at the shoulder of the man’s armor. “That’s a Gunnery Sergeant insignia.”
Sergeant Wu looked surprised. “That’s right, I didn’t know that you would know that, sir.”
Ram thought about it. “Upstairs, there’s a First Sergeant named Gruger. He works with Captain Cassidy, right?”
Sergeant Wu seemed uncomfortable but Ram had no idea why. “That’s right, he’s Command and I’m a guy who works for a living. Now, sir, we have to hurry. The Sergeant opened a huge crate behind him. “We don’t have much time and getting this suit on in zero-g is a nightmare if you’re not used to it.” He called for assistance and two Marines bounced down to help him unpack the gear. “You have to brace yourself while we pull the armor round you, sir. Do you know our standard Mark XX armor? Well, this is based on that, just made to measure. We’re going to go boots first, legs up to the ass and then gloves, arms and shrug the back plates on, swing round the chest pla
tes and seal it up. The hardened sections fix in place but it’s essentially one single piece joined together with flexible armor up to the neck with an unbroken seam. The life support backpack is a sealed unit with armor on the outside. Onboard batteries here around your lower back and waist but you have accessible battery slots on the outside so you can swap new ones in to stay fully charged without needing to plug in. Don’t worry, though, the mission is a static defense and we will all be regularly topped up with power, air, coolant. Trickiest bit to get on, obviously, is the waste system but we’ll help you fit that if you don’t, you know, if you can’t do that. Then the helmet, which I’ll give you after, is mostly an armored faceplate with a close fitting cranial section which seals at the neck. Alright, sir?”
“Sure,” Ram said, heart racing a little at the thrill of it. “Kind of like pulling on overalls.”
Gunnery Sergeant Wu shrugged. “Kind of like the most effective combat armor ever designed that also works as a vacuum capable space suit and hermetically sealed hazmat suit. Kind of like billion dollar overalls, sure, sir. Come on, let’s do this quickly but let’s do it right.”
Rama followed the precise instructions he was given and they got him suited up incredibly quickly. It was a highly intuitive process.
“Fits perfectly,” Rama said, while they were closing up his seals. “Like a second skin. Did you fit it to my body when I was dead?”
The Marines looked awkwardly at their sergeant.
“No,” Sergeant Wu said. “Well, it was designed from scans of the artificial person body, months ago. The backup clone, before your mind was… you know.”
A chill ran through Ram. “Right. Of course. Guess I’m wearing this body as much as I’m wearing the armor.”
Ram turned as Milena propelled herself down to the cargo hold and called out as she moved over to the open area between the stacked crates. “Good,” she said. “You’re suited up.”
“Almost,” Ram said. “Just need my helmet and my weapons.”
Milena and the sergeant exchanged a look and she cleared her throat. “Where’s my EVA suit?”
Sergeant Wu got her a civilian version of a space suit and she unselfconsciously stripped off her outer clothes before donning the gear. The Marines busied themselves but Ram watched her twisting her beautiful body like a gymnast in the zero-g to slide into the close-fitting suit. Watched until he realized she was about to fit the waste extraction sections and he turned away until she was all done. The suit was not like the UNOP Marine Corp Mark XX armor. There were no plate sections.
“How come she doesn’t get armor?” Ram asked, irritated. “What the hell? What if she gets shot or whatever?”
“It’s okay, Ram,” Milena said. “All the civilians wear these. It’s the Marines’ job to protect us so that we don’t need armor. I plan to stay well away from the fighting. Anyway, these are extremely tough, the material is essentially bulletproof. Just flexible and without all the extras in the combat version.”
“Right,” Ram said. “Well, I’ll protect you, anyway. Where are my weapons? Zhukov told me you made me a sword?”
Sergeant Wu exchanged more knowing looks with his men and they nodded and went back to work further down the hold.
“What’s going on?” Ram said but not even Milena answered him. She pursed her lips and looked away. The woman was subdued and Ram realized why. She had not seen him for a year, he had been dead, ripped apart and now he was in a clone’s body. For Ram, it had been just a day or two since they had been intimate with one another but for her, it was a completely different situation. His easy familiarity with her was misplaced, it was making her uncomfortable. He had watched her undress like she was his girlfriend but she had never even been that, really. For her, they were colleagues whose closeness had become friendship and that friendship had been briefly physical. He knew he had to give her some space. I’ll protect you, he’d said. Tone it down, Ram, you idiot.
“This is your helmet,” the sergeant said. “It fits close, it’s as small and streamlined and light as possible, providing almost complete peripheral vision but open enough inside for you to be able to speak and breathe without restriction. It works with and enhances your biological augments to provide higher powered comms and battlefield data. And if you turn your head all the way to your left or right, up or down and need to see further than it will allow, the AugHud integration will keep scrolling the image, overlaying your real-world vision.”
“Just like in Avar. What about my weapons, Sergeant?”
Wu flipped open a crate and took out an enormous rifle. It was almost as big as the Marine but when Ram took it, the weapon felt perfect in his hands. “This was custom made for you, sir. It uses the mechanism from a light machine gun, firing large caliber rounds, but we reduced the rate of fire and converted it into a weapon that you can use like a battle rifle. The grip and trigger guard and stock and everything is the same as a standard issue rifle, which I know you used in Avar, only everything is scaled for a man that’s eight feet tall. As much as possible we’ve kept the handling and rate of fire similar. It’s called the XRS-101.”
“RS for Rama Seti?” He was half joking.
“Yes, sir. And X for experimental so that no one can blame me if it blows up in your face. I’m just kidding, it works just fine.”
“But the designer, Ian, wants it to be called the Handspear.”
“The… oh, because of how I killed the wheeler?” Ram had cut off his hand and used the chisel-pointed bone ends to stab the alien champion to death in the arena.
“Yes, sir. And because Ian thinks it sounds badass.”
“I guess I do, too.”
“Let me show you the operation of the XRS-Handspear, sir.” He took it back and Rama reluctantly allowed him to do so. “Fire selection is here. Safe, single shot, burst, and full auto. Please avoid the full auto unless you need it. We’ll have to swap out the barrel much sooner if you fire like that and then there’s the ammo situation. The magazine release is here and you’ll see how huge this thing is.” He removed the oblong, bottom section of the rifle and showed Ram. Without the enormous magazine, the rifle looked strange. “The cartridges are very small, the propellant is just a fraction of it, it’s almost entirely the projectile. And considering how big you are and the weapon is, we’ve packed five hundred and twenty rounds in each magazine.”
“Five hundred round mags, okay.”
“Now the first of the bad news, sir. They take a long time to load and we have a limited supply of all ammunition. Anyway, you have just five magazines, including this one.”
“That’s still more than two thousand rounds.”
“Two thousand six hundred. Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it, sir. The fire rate for this weapon is eight hundred rounds a minute. Pretty standard. Full auto and you’re permanently out of ammo in just over three minutes.”
“Yeah but I won’t—”
“Course you won’t, sir. But firing bursts, at maybe sixty a minute? You’ll only have forty-five minutes of shooting.” He nodded at Ram’s expression. “No resupply and we might have to hold out for weeks. Days, certainly.”
“Alright, message understood, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir.” Wu held out his hands and Ram handed the XRS-Handspear back to the Gunnery Sergeant. “But the real bad news is that the Captain won’t let me issue it to you.”
“What?”
“Yes, sir. Captain Cassidy has ordered that we cannot issue your rifle or sidearm to you. Not with ammunition. And not until you’ve practiced and demonstrated that you can use it properly and safely. And we have to hold on to your sword. I’m sorry, sir.”
“Come on, Gunny. How am I supposed to defend myself?”
Gunnery Sergeant Wu looked unhappy. “The Captain’s opinion is that arming you with a weapon would be more risk to the rest of us.”
“Like I’m some kind of incompetent?”
The Sergeant glanced at Milena, a pleading look in his eyes.
>
“Ram,” Milena said. “I know it doesn’t make much sense right now but—”
“No, it’s alright, I get it. Captain Cassidy doesn’t trust me. But I can’t even have the sword?”
“It’s in this case here.” Wu banged the case beneath the one holding the magazines for the Handspear. It had a graphic of a sword printed on it. “I can issue it once you are signed off, sir.”
“We’re heading into a warzone, right?” Ram knew that arguing with a Marine who was following orders was an exercise in futility but he could not help himself. It was idiotic to deny him weapons.
“Come on, Ram,” Milena said, tugging on his arm. “Let’s get back in the reentry chairs before it’s too late. Hear the end of Cassidy’s briefing. You have a lot to catch up on.”
As they floated up the hatch, the shuttle vibrated and shook, rattling around. Rama’s stomach lurched and he bounced back down to the bottom of the floor of the crew compartment.
“Get to your seats,” Cassidy growled at them, breaking off from his briefing. “We’re entering the atmosphere, slowing down.”
Rama helped Milena back into her own chair before he took his own, guiding her as easily as if she was a small child.
“The environment on the surface around the outpost seems at first to be completely benign,” Captain Cassidy continued as Rama and Milena strapped themselves back in. “Surface temperature, both day and night, pressure, and humidity will be familiar to anyone from a temperate climate back home. And I keep hearing you people saying the air is breathable. Yes, there is enough oxygen in the atmosphere but that air isn’t something you want to be breathing. Initial tests suggest the alien bacteria on the planet is probably benign but until the scientists know for sure, you will be following the proper procedures or you will be spending your entire time on the surface locked in the quarantined zone of the outpost. And if you’re in quarantine, then you’re no good to anyone. You have been warned. Any questions?”
Ram raised his hand and waved it.
Captain Cassidy scowled. “What?”
“Is there a presentation to go along with your talk that I can download, or...?”
