by Rick Partlow
The words might have been wasted. These men and women were all experienced and well-trained. But it helped me to say it and I thought it helped them to hear it, helped us all to organize our thoughts in the face of chaos.
I’d been here before, but the familiarity did nothing to ease the fear and tension. Even the knowledge it was a simulation was offset by the nervousness of leading my platoon in combat for the first time, of knowing they’d be watching me as closely as they watched the enemy.
Things were different this time and not just because I knew what was coming. The first time I’d gone through this battle, I’d let my conscious mind drift, let my instincts and training take charge and tried not to think, not to absorb the bigger picture at all. It had been a comfort of sorts, not letting myself realize what was happening. This time, I had to keep the formation at the front of my brain, watch every meter of the Tahni advance, looking for weaknesses, for gaps, in our lines and theirs. I had to figure out where to throw troops to block them from getting behind us or cutting us off from the next platoon over, which was just as much a product of logic gates and computer simulation as the enemy.
“Fourth squad,” I transmitted, firing my plasma gun and not remembering I’d aimed or even conscious of whether I’d hit anything, “hit the jets, hop over First and lay down suppressive fire! First, move up to support them and fill the gaps! Second and Third, close in on the flanks! The company is advancing at the tip of our formation so move!”
Shuttles were exploding, proton beams crashing, missiles were arcing back and forth between our lines and theirs. Mortar rounds were launching automatically from my backpack to lay down countermeasures for the incoming fire but it was all just a buzz of background noise. It slid past my mind, past the only thing that mattered, where my platoon was and what we had to do in order to accomplish the mission.
“First platoon,” a female voice said in my ear, what could have been a human but was actually the computer masquerading as one, “pull back and prepare for incoming air support.”
And things went from there just like they had the first time, with our shuttles coming in and cutting down the enemy ranks, then the company command group taking down the deflector dishes with the Boomer fire support suits. And then, quite unlike last time, there were no Tahni civilian females swarming us and being slaughtered in a fit of rage. It was just a voice.
“Index, index, index.”
The projections around me went dark and I unplugged from the deck and pushed my pod open. Lt. Manzer was waiting there for me, arms crossed over his chest, eyes downcast, staring at the floor without seeing it.
“And that was an actual place?” he asked me.
I climbed out of the simulator, laughs and curses and muttering coming from the rest of the platoon. The simulation had been a kick in the teeth after the milk runs we’d been sent on so far, and I thought it had produced the effect I’d been looking for. Some of them hadn’t wanted to give up their free time to come back to the pods, but I’d promised them something different, something that wouldn’t bore them.
“Confluence,” I told him. “I was there. I nearly died. My point man, the best Vigilante operator in the platoon besides me, was killed by a civilian female with an IED.”
“I can’t believe anyone survived that,” Manzer said, shaking his head. “How could they?”
“This wasn’t even the worst. People died, a lot of people, but it wasn’t the worst.”
“Goddamn,” he hissed the word like a prayer. “Other cadets have to get a chance at this. This needs to be SOP, not just something our platoon does on its free time.”
“What the fuck is going on in here?” The voice was as familiar as it was unwelcome.
Gunny Reznick stormed through the door from the training bay’s outer hallway, hair on fire and ready to tear someone a new asshole until she spotted Manzer and stopped in her tracks.
“Lieutenant?” Disbelief and confusion had replaced her anger. “Sir, might I have a word in private?”
Manzer blew out a breath and eyed me sidelong.
“Alvarez, police up the platoon and get back to the barracks.”
“Do you want me to yank the program module, sir?” I asked him, motioning toward the control station at the front of the room.
“No. I’ll take care of it. I want to show it to Major Brena.”
“Yes, sir,” I said and started to turn before I stopped and added, “Good luck, sir.”
I got the feeling he was going to need it.
“Out of your racks, maggots! Move your asses, now!”
It wasn’t the first time I’d been woken up from a sound sleep well before reveille by a bellowing Gunnery Sergeant, though I held out hope that, after OCS, it might not happen again. I didn’t even bother bitching and moaning because no one wanted to hear me complain and I certainly didn’t want to hear it from them. I just rolled out of my bunk, my bare feet slapping the cold floor, then turned and made my bunk by rote, not even needing the light. It took ten seconds and then I was slipping into my PT shoes and running up to Gunny Reznick, bracing to attention.
“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!” I said, as loud as I could manage on three hours of sleep.
“Alvarez,” she growled, more venom in her tone and her eyes than usual, “get these maggots in their fatigues and into formation in ten minutes or I will haul your ass into the Goddamned yard naked and have you do pushups with your fucking dick!”
“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant!”
I didn’t make the obvious jokes about being able to do pushups with my dick, which would have been very Marine-like of me, but wasn’t really my style. And probably would have had me doing pushups, not with my dick and likely not naked, but pushups just the same.
“Get into your fatigues!” I bellowed, then had to repeat it for the females on the intercom before I ran to grab my own.
“What the hell is going on, anyway?” Freddy asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes with one hand and fastening his blouse with the other. “There wasn’t any training scheduled this morning, was there? Do you think they’re going to drop us in the jungle or something? Make us all find our way back on foot?”
I rolled my eyes. He’d been going on about that since we got here.
“This isn’t Force Recon OCS, Freddy. They’ve barely let us get into a real suit outside the armory, they aren’t going to drop us in the fucking jungle.”
“I hope it’s not just another boring lecture by some colonel about military decorum,” Fuentes murmured, fastening the straps on his boots. “If I have to sit through one more of those useless wastes of time….”
“We ain’t gonna find out sitting in here bitching,” Beth Chang said, bounding down the stairs just past Fuentes’ bunk.
“I’m heading outside,” I told Chang. “I’ll take everyone who’s ready and wait up at the front of the formation and you get everyone out of here, okay?”
“Yeah, I gotcha Cam, get on out there.”
“Fourth platoon!” I yelled, bringing my shout up from my diaphragm instead of my throat, pitching my voice to carry. “Everyone who’s good to go, follow me outside and form up! If you’re not squared away yet, get that way! Acting Platoon Sergeant Chang is going to be shoving you out the door, ready or not, in five minutes! You got me?”
“Ooh-rah!”
It was raining outside because of course it was. It was one of those twice-daily rains Tartarus got that made the northern continent of Inferno just barely habitable in the summer, and if it had been mid-afternoon, I might not have even complained. Anything was better than the too-close 82 Eridani glare beating down on us in the middle of a summer afternoon here. But in the zero-dark-thirty blackness, when you can barely see shit anyway by the streetlights that always seemed too dim and too far away, the driving rain added one more filter of invisibility and all I could hope for was that Reznick wouldn’t be able to tell how ate-up we were.
I found what I thought was the right place to stand to form up th
e platoon and the Marines who’d followed me out began to line up by squad, leaving gaps for the ones still inside to fill. I started counting automatically, knowing by heart just how many men and women were in our platoon. While I did, I noticed peripherally the broad-shouldered form of Gunny Reznick prowling around, draped in a rain jacket, which, of course, she hadn’t cautioned us to wear. She was speaking to someone else, a figure I didn’t recognize even after weeks of practicing trying to tell one NCO and training officer from another at night and from a distance. This one was standing tall and ramrod-straight in defiance of the elements, not bending to the rain, not so much as tilting his head forward to keep the tip of his hood down far enough to keep the water out of his face.
I couldn’t make out much of the face and what I did see wasn’t familiar. What was familiar were the two other Marines striding purposefully down the street, boots kicking up sprays of water as if they resented God for sending the rain. One was the Top, the training First Sergeant, a loose-jowled, dead-eyed fucker named Palermo and you did not want to get that asshole’s attention.
The other was Major Brena.
Shit. What the hell is the Major doing out here this time of the morning?
We’d gotten pulled out of the barracks early before, but I had never, not once, seen Brena’s worthless, lazy ass out of doors before 0800.
“They’re all out here, Cam,” Chang told me and I blinked, not even realizing she was there between the rain and the revelation that Brena was present. I wiped a hand over my eyes and tossed excess water off my fingers.
“Thanks.” I counted twice myself just to make sure, then braced to attention. “Platoon! Attention!”
I about-faced and waited, knowing it could be a while but also knowing Reznick would have dinged me if I’d waited till the last minute. But Reznick didn’t post up in front of me. Brena did. If the storm hadn’t featured any thunder and lightning before, it surely had some now. Brena’s face was twisted in what could have been anger or perhaps resentment, his eyes narrowed against the rain, and he didn’t even bother have us go to parade rest.
Prick.
“Fourth platoon, you’re out here because your training officer, Lt. Manzer has been relieved and you will have a new trainer. Lt. Steiner! Front and center!”
Oh. Oh, shit.
I was suddenly in free-fall, or at least that was how it felt to my stomach, like the world had dropped away. Manzer was a good officer.
The tall man, whom I now assumed was Lt. Steiner, seemed to be perpetually at attention, so I couldn’t tell much difference when he posted in front of Brena. They exchanged salutes, droplets of water flying as their hands sliced through the air. Once Brena had left the formation, Steiner executed an about-face and favored us with a glare, and I knew immediately that Brena had found his spirit animal.
“Cadets!” His voice was a whipcrack. “Up until now, you’ve had it easy. That ends this morning. From this point on, you will work harder than you ever have in your life. You will run twice as far, do twice as much PT, and you will do it without complaint and without fail, or you will be dropped from this course. Standards have slacked off, which is why my predecessor has been replaced. You will no longer be able to cruise along, marking time until you graduate.”
What a load of shit.
It was all I could do not to say it aloud. Who the fuck was this asshole to say shit like that about a fellow officer? What kind of unprofessional bullshit was this? My head felt hot enough that I was surprised the rain didn’t turn to steam where it touched me.
“I have also heard,” Steiner went on, his eyes on me this time, boring into me like drilling lasers, “that your former trainer was unwise enough to allow nonstandard scenarios to be loaded into the training simulators. This practice will cease immediately, as will any use of the simulator pods outside established, scheduled training sessions. Your training will come straight from the book and only from the book. Do I make myself clear, cadets?”
“Yes, sir.” The reply was lukewarm and anger flared behind that mask of iron.
“I know it’s raining, but I can’t believe you didn’t hear me!” he bellowed. “I said, do I make myself clear, cadets?”
“Sir, yes, sir!” Louder this time, if no more enthusiastic. It seemed to be enough to satisfy the shitstain though.
“Gunnery Sgt. Reznick, front and center!”
The Gunny took over while Steiner stalked off to speak with Brena.
“All right, you maggots,” Reznick said, shoulders hunched up against the rain, “when I dismiss you, I want you to change into your PT uniforms and clean up the fucking floor because I know you sloppy morons are going to get water and mud all over it. But before you do that, you’re going to need to get your heads together, gather those few working brain cells you have left and pick a new set of cadet leaders. Alvarez has had his chance to fuck things up and he’s done it so well, we’re sending him back into the ranks to figure out just where he went wrong.”
I didn’t look at her eyes. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction.
“Dismissed!”
I clamped down on an urge to yell for the platoon to get inside. Instead, I simply walked inside, not saying a word.
“Cam!” Freddy was running to catch up with me and he grabbed my arm just as I was passing through the door. “Hey Cam! What are we going to do now?”
I stared at him like I would have if he’d asked me what color Thursday was or any other nonsensical question.
“What the hell do you mean?” I demanded. “Do about what?”
“About them getting rid of Manzer,” Fuentes said. I hadn’t even noticed him walking up behind Freddy. “This ain’t right, man.”
“What do you guys want me to say? There’s nothing we can do now except try to graduate from this shit show.” I stripped off my shirt, ignoring the puddle of muddy water on the floor.
Someone should clean that up. But not me. I wasn’t in charge anymore.
Thank God.
5
I should have known that wouldn’t be the end of it.
We were sitting in a class covering how to tell a legal order from an illegal one when Gunny Reznick pushed the rear doors open with a metallic clunk of the locking mechanism and stomped down the aisles between the platoons and stopped right beside me.
“Get up, Alvarez,” she snapped. “You’re coming with me.”
“Yes, Gunnery Sergeant.” The words were quiet, numb. I’d given up on the forced enthusiasm around the same time I’d given up on the genuine version.
I said nothing as I followed her out of the classroom, out of the building and into the searing heat of the streets of the training base. A half a kilometer away, a Force Recon OCS class was getting smoked in a sand pit, dropped for pushups, turned over for flutter kicks, popped to their feet for squats, and then back to pushups. It could go on for an hour, I knew. I’d been there. We’d done plenty of pushups, plenty of marching, plenty of running, and endless classes on every piece of minutiae some officious asshole had considered vital, but I could count the number of times we’d done live fire training on one hand and still have four fingers left.
We stopped at a set of offices I didn’t recognize except that it was in the middle of brass country, where the senior officers squatted in air-conditioned comfort and shuffled data from one system to another. By the time we stopped in front of a door marked with Major Brena’s name, I knew why I was here. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, preparing myself while Reznick knocked.
Brena grunted something through the door and Reznick stuck her head inside.
“He’s here.”
“Send him in.”
Reznick gestured and I might have let my lip curl in a sneer as I passed her. She was a fucking gunnery sergeant and it was beginning to piss me off how important she thought she was. She wasn’t worth the sweat on Gunnery Sgt. Scott Hayes’ boxer shorts.
Brena was sitting at his desk, looking at me expectantly
and I at least afforded him the military courtesy of coming to attention and saluting.
“Cadet Alvarez reports, sir.”
He took forever to return the salute, and I wasn’t a bit surprised. He was that sort of officer. I distracted myself by taking stock of his office. It was thoroughly decorated with what military officers call an “I love me” wall covered with his graduation certificates and commendations. None of them had come in combat, I noted.
“Sit down, Alvarez,” he told me after he’d finally tossed back a sloppy wave of his hand.
I sat and didn’t try to stay stiff and attentive. He didn’t deserve it.
“You think you’re special, don’t you, Alvarez?” His piggish little eyes stared at me with resentment he wasn’t even trying to hide. “You think because you got a few medals that the rules don’t apply to you? That you can do whatever you want?”
I thought about staying silent, reflected that it would probably be the smartest thing to do, then didn’t.
“I didn’t break any rules, sir. I asked for and received permission for everything I did.”
There was no point in pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I wouldn’t have tried even if there had been.
“Lt. Manzer did not have the authority to allow you to change my combat scenarios!” Brena shouted, slamming a palm down on his desk. “That bullshit you programmed into the simulators would never have been approved by me or the curriculum committee! No one would ever face that sort of opposition in a real battle.” His tone was scornful, as if he was speaking to a wayward teenager who’d played too many ViR games. “The briefings we’ve been given by our Intelligence officers say there’s no way we’ve taken that many casualties.”
“Every one of the programs I created,” I said, keeping my voice low and calm by a force of will, “is a battle I fought in. Each one is a scenario I’ve played out over and over again in simulators, live-fire exercises and force-on-force field training missions. And in my nightmares. My team leader was killed in the first of them. We lost half a company at Brigantia. And at the last one, the one where they gave me a silver star, we lost my platoon leader. Her name was Joyce Ackley and she was the finest officer I’ve ever met.” Present company included, you fucking circus clown. “To answer your question, Major, no, I don’t think I’m special, but I do think she was. She saw something in me and took a chance when others wouldn’t have, and I’ve been trying to pay her back ever since. I felt like the best way I could do that was to give the other candidates here a chance to see what real combat is like.”