“Outstanding job, Rizer,” Birch said. “Your combined score for the KD course and the Warrior Trail is 455, and you made your call for fire successfully. You’ve earned the rifle expert badge. Congratulations.” Though he did not shake Rizer’s hand or slap him on the back, he wore a small, satisfied grin.
Rizer nodded dumbly. “Sir, request permission to—”
“Just say it.”
“Sir, who lost their leg out there?”
“Recruit Melchor. He survived, but they’ll have to fit him with a prosthetic cause they sure as shit aren’t going to pay for a regen, so it’s up in the air whether he’ll return to training or go to the service corps.” He paused, then smirked. “You were shittin’ eggrolls there for a minute, Rizer.” He tapped his tablet.
Rizer heard himself scream, “Holy shit!”
The two PMIs laughed. “That never gets old,” Harvey said, not looking up from the computer screen.
I wonder what Melchor screamed when he got cut down?
“Clear your rifle into that barrel over there, son,” Birch continued. “That PMI there will wand you for loose rounds. After that you can join your platoon.”
Mack awaited when he arrived. “I see you made it, Rizer. I’m just so relieved! What’s your score, dumbass?”
“Four-fifty-five, ma’am!”
“Ooh, we have an expert in our midst! Big fucking deal. I demand perfection and nothing less. You owe me forty-five pushups, now get busy!”
Rizer supposed it made sense, at least to Mack. He’d fallen forty-five points short of a perfect score.
Pushups completed, Rizer found Stubs and sat next to him in the black dirt. “How’d you do?” Rizer asked in a whisper.
“Four-thirty-eight,” he responded glumly, shaking his head. “Sharpshooter.”
Two points shy of expert, Rizer understood his disappointment. “It’s a good score, bro. At least you’re not wearing a pizza box.” Pizza box meant the square badge of a marksman, the lowest of the three rifle qualification badges.
“Belzer got 471; you believe that shit?”
Rizer shook his head. “We’ll be hearing about that for the rest of our stay.”
“Yeah, can’t wait. You hear about Melchor?”
“Yeah.” A real piece of shit but what a way to go.
Rizer wouldn’t miss him.
***
The platoon marched at a rare and reasonable pace along a country road bordered by thick stands of towering evergreens. Sgt Burrmaster even favored them with a marching cadence, another rarity, his words booming forth in a resonant tenor straight from the diaphragm. The recruits sounded off every time he paused, repeating his lines: “Left my job and left my wife. Just to make a better life. Got a letter in the mail. Go to war or go to jail. Sat me in that barber’s chair. Spun me ’round, I had no hair. And it won’t be lo-o-ong. Till I get back ho-o-ome.”
They marched past the end of a long row of bleachers packed with recruits, DIs seated in the front row—Fox Company’s five other platoons. Burrmaster ordered column left march, then halted them before the bleachers and faced them right, away from the crowd.
They stood before a vast field of tall green grass dotted with volcanic rocks. Judging from the sculpted berm far in the distance, Rizer knew it was a known-distance firing range, though it appeared to have been abandoned for some time. Something about the place made his skin crawl, perhaps that faint, nose-wrinkling stench in the air.
No, there was more to it than that. This whole day—a Saturday, their last at the range—had been off, starting when reveille sounded at the late hour of 0530. They ran seven klicks for morning PT, the pace challenging as opposed to their usual suicidal speed. Nobody dropped out; in fact, the platoon sounded off to the DIs’ cadences with great motivation, a fine effort all around. Mack had barely screamed at all today, and Rizer couldn’t recall Burrmaster thrashing anyone. Alpha and Bravo moved around like mobile pieces of furniture, saying nothing. Since DI performances were always scripted for maximum effect, Rizer remained on uneasy guard, waiting for the axe to drop with sudden and severing force.
Mack stood silently before them at attention as several large multi-wheeled vehicles rounded the bleachers and parked near the platoon. After the driver shut off the engines, she spoke: “At ease! I’ve got a few surprises for you today, Eighty-Four.”
And here it comes…
“I received word yesterday that my platoon had the highest average score per recruit during range training. The company commander himself came out here to congratulate me personally. He thinks you freaks are the shit, in a good way for once.
“Now we all know that isn’t true. You’re as nasty and weak as you’ve ever been; hell, maybe even worse after getting spoiled out here for two weeks. But he doesn’t believe that, and if you don’t look good, I don’t look good. And since you dumbasses have finally done something right for a change, I’ve decided to reward you accordingly. So you did real well shooting up a bunch of targets and holograms? Well whoopity-fucking-do! It takes a warrior’s heart to kill. So it’s time to hone those killer instincts, my little gift to you.”
She pointed to the truck. “Anybody know what kind of truck that is?”
“A cattle truck, ma’am!” Recruit Pelkin shouted. A big square-jawed kid, he came from some backward-ass world in the coreward frontier where people still dirt-farmed the old-fashioned way.
“That is correct. Now who wants to demonstrate to the company what the M-17 can do by shooting up some livestock? I need volunteers. Belzer, you’re automatically in as platoon high-shooter. Step out now! I need some more bodies, who’s feelin’ motivated today?”
Rizer knew nothing of farm animals, other than how they tasted; still, he had no desire to blast one to oblivion.
Abek, Carelli, and Pelkin volunteered.
“That’s four. I want a couple more,” Mack said. When no one else volunteered, she nodded. “Okay, I’ll take our pizza box recruits; you idiots need the practice. Perez, Ward, get your asses out here!”
Mack issued each shooter a full magazine and ordered them to the firing line. “Make ready!” She then turned to the two armed Marines, a sergeant and a lance corporal, standing by the truck’s loading doors. “Let’s get ’em out!”
As they threw open the doors, Rizer wondered how the animals would climb down without an unloading ramp… until he realized these were a different sort of animal.
“Let’s go; get the fuck out!” the sergeant shouted. He reached into the truck.
Out came a woman dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit with an explosive restraint collar around her neck. Blond and bedraggled, face bruised all over, she toppled to the ground. The lance corporal pulled her up, pointed her toward the range, and sent her on her way with a kick in the ass. Six more people followed, all men dressed in similar prison attire but for one grossly obese older man wearing only a pair of white underwear, the soiled briefs barely visible beneath the fat roll ringing his waist.
Rizer stared in stunned disbelief at these pathetic, beaten human beings about to be executed by his fellow recruits. He wasn’t the only one. Belzer’s face maintained bearing, but her eyes went wide, the whites the size of saucers. Even Abek looked shocked as he stood there dumbfounded, his lower lip hanging ajar. Rizer could hear Pelkin breathing heavily with dread from several meters away.
“You thought you’d be shooting a bunch of livestock?” Mack asked the volunteers. She shook her head. “No way, that’s for the other five platoons. The winning platoon gets to practice on humans.
“Now before any of you bleeding-heart types get your panties in a bunch, realize that these prisoners are the scum of the galaxy: child rapists, murderers, seditious traitors to the Alliance. All sentenced to death. You six will carry out that sentence. This is the true test of the killer instincts necessary to become a Marine. If you don’t have them yet—and most of you don’t—you’d better grow some in a hurry,
because the training from here on is more intense than you can fucking imagine. Now, on my—”
“No!” Pelkin cried between hyperventilating breaths. He stepped back from the firing line. Rizer heard recruits mumbling in the bleachers, their DIs ordering them to shut up.
“Bullshit, Pelkin!” Mack roared, stepping toward him. “You volunteered!”
“I didn’t know!”
“Too goddamn bad! What the fuck is wrong with you? That fat piece of shit out there raped his own daughter till she bled to death out her asshole! You should be begging for a chance to kill him! Now do your Alliance a favor and shoot the motherfucker!”
“No!” With a wail of confused fear, he waived his rifle in Mack’s direction.
Two quick steps and she was right in his face. Three shots burst from his rifle over her shoulder, as she seized the weapon in both hands and wrenched it from him. Her butt-stroke across the side of his helmet sent him reeling.
He fell to his knees, goggled around like a cornered animal prepared to run. The instant he stood, Sgt Burrmaster drove his boot into the side of Pelkin’s knee. The gruesome crunch of the joint breaking made Rizer and several others flinch. Pelkin folded, fell supine in the dirt. Mack then silenced his screaming agony by driving his rifle butt squarely into his face from on high, knocking him cold.
“You are fucking done, Pelkin,” she hissed. “Bravo, Alpha, get him outta here!”
The rest of the recruits gaped in shock as the bots slapped binders on Pelkin and hastily dragged him to the same van the convicts had arrived on. The lance corporal slammed the doors, sealing him in.
Mack, seeming unphased by the incident, turned to the remaining volunteers. “Any other objections? Very well, wait for my command to fire! And you better aim true, or I’ll know.”
“Get moving, you maggots!” the sergeant jailer ordered his charges. He fired a rifle burst at their feet for motivation.
They took off running toward the berm far in the distance—scrambling, tripping, sprinting.
Mack let them run fifty meters, then seventy-five, though the fat man lagged far behind. What happens if they make it over the berm?
Mack invalidated his thought at a hundred meters, when she gave the order to fire. Rifles hiss-cracked at an ultra-rapid, uneven tempo. Many of the rounds only struck dirt as the convicts attempted to stave off death by sprinting erratically. The lone woman hobbled now, having sprained her ankle from the look of things. Rizer watched, horrified, as a bolt took her square in her butt and exited through her abdomen, eviscerating most of her guts in a cloud of red mist. The fat rapist appeared to be the priority target, however, and several rounds struck his pallid, jiggling flanks in rapid succession, scattering limbs and blubber for meters across the barren plain.
The platoons in the bleachers raucously shouted encouragement to the shooters. When one observing recruit averted her eyes, Burrmaster backhanded her across the face. “Watch, motherfucker!”
Rizer had considered looking away too but kept his eyes focused on the slaughter. A maelstrom of bloody chunks flew in all directions. The smell of burnt flesh and discharged ozone permeated the air. The last runner, a skinny man with long legs, had evaded all rounds by running in a zig-zag pattern. At four hundred meters, a bolt struck him between the shoulders and blew a hole clean through him, literally vaporizing his insides.
The barbaric display continued at Mack’s order until all the downed convicts stopped twitching. A vapor of blood and dust hung over the field in the aftermath.
Rizer again thought of SSgt Birch’s pictures and how he’d thought when viewing them that he understood what he’d signed up for. No, I had no fucking idea.
Mack roared her displeasure at the five volunteers. “Pathetic! If only the company commander could see his darlings now! Look at all the ammo you wasted! Whatever happened to one shot, one kill?”
***
“So what was it like, Ward?” asked Stubs. He shoveled another forkful of food—fucking tuna mac, yet again—into his mouth, spoke through it, “Which one did you waste?” Rizer, Stubs, and Ward sat alone for the moment, most of the platoon still in the chow line.
Ward, a watery-eyed ginger from a long line of merchant space mariners, leaned in and whispered, “I carved a piece off the fat guy—he deserved it—but I’m not really sure if I hit any others.”
“But you definitely shot one guy,” Rizer said. “How did it feel?” He genuinely wanted to know.
Ward shrugged. “I dunno…” He turned his attention back to the food.
No need to ask whom Abek had wasted. He sat further down the table bragging to Coltin, who fawned over him with envious admiration even though he hadn’t volunteered. “Yeah, I shot that bitch in the ass! Put it right up the old shit pipe.”
His words bore a faint waiver. Abek had been running his suck for weeks, and Rizer had become quite familiar with his tones and inflections, all of which sounded rather hollow at the moment. The shooting rattled him a bit.
Good. Maybe he’ll quiet down some.
“Hey, it’s Mr. Killer Instincts,” said Garwood as he sat next to Ward.
“Fuck off, guide,” Ward responded, jabbing an elbow into his ribs.
“Heard some scuttlebutt that we’re riding back to mainside tomorrow instead of humping,” Garwood continued. “Company CO’s orders for being the high-scoring platoon. Mack sounded pissed about it.”
Stubs chortled. “She’d make us bear crawl back if she could.”
“I heard somethin’ too,” Ward said. The kid was a bottomless pit of rumors, bits and pieces of which were sometimes true. “Pelkin’s going before the next firing squad at the range.”
“Fuck…” Stubs breathed, his fork hanging stationary before his maw.
“Stupid,” Garwood said, shaking his head. “But he’s got balls.”
“I dunno,” Stubs said, mouth full. “He was gung-ho to shoot a cow. Is it that big a difference?”
“Not in my case.” Abek chuckled.
Rizer glanced to the next table, where Perez sat alone—solemn, morose, brooding, a stark contrast to his usual jocular nature. “Looks like Perez did his duty for the Alliance.”
“Yeah.” Stubs shrugged. “He’ll be cracking jokes again in no time. What about you, Rizer? Think you could have whacked those convicts?”
“Yeah, I think so.” After much deliberation that afternoon, Rizer meant it, though he wished he didn’t.
“Killing’s our business, boys,” Garwood said, staring at Rizer as he spoke. “Guess we’d best get used to it.”
“Yeah.” Rizer glowered down at his untouched tray of slop. “Sure as shit looks that way.”
CHAPTER 7
The platoon, now numbering thirty-seven men and women, stood at attention on line in the squad bay, their rifles at order arms.
“Whittington, you are dumber than owl shit, boy.” From across the squad bay Sgt Burrmaster threw the piece of gear he’d been inspecting back onto Whittington’s rack in disgust. “Four demerits, Bravo. That’s a fail.”
A step behind Burrmaster, Bravo shook his robotic head and muttered, “Nasty,” as he tapped away on his tablet.
“What’s your Eighth General Order, Garwood?” Mack barked from down the line to Rizer’s left.
“Ma’am, the Eighth General Order is to call the corporal—” He broke off when he realized his mistake.
“Incorrect!” Mack said. “You wanna try again, guide?”
“Ma’am, the Eighth General Order is to give the alarm in case of fire or disorder.”
“You sure about that?”
Garwood hesitated.
Yes, you’re sure! Rizer silently screamed.
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Look at this scratch on your rifle barrel. See that shine? That’s all it takes to give your position away at night! How is my guide so fucked up? Answer me that!”
“Ma’am, I don’t—”
“Yeah, you don’t know much, Garwood; that’s for sure. College kid like you can’t memorize the General Orders? You don’t belong here, and I know why: you’re nothing but a spy sent to infiltrate this platoon!” Though Rizer couldn’t see them, he envisioned Mack jabbing a finger into Garwood’s chest as she shouted the absurd accusation.
“No, ma’am!” He sounded confused by the spy comment.
Rizer was equally stumped. Some of the shit they come up with…
She handed his rifle back; he executed order arms and returned to his original position. “My guide should have zero gigs, but I count three. Fail! That’s three-hundred pushups and an afternoon of bearcrawls on the Hill.”
“Noted!” said Alpha, with the addendum, “Worst guide I’ve ever seen!” They faced left and moved on to the next victim.
Rizer knew that no recruit would emerge unscathed from the gear and uniform rack inspection, known in the Corps as “junk on a bunk” for it was exactly that: their uniforms and all of their gear arranged atop their racks in exacting uniformity, all pieces subject to the DIs’ meticulous scrutiny. All items had to be in a perfectly serviceable state, no scratches or tears permitted. Their inventory of combat gear had increased since their return from the range four weeks before, and now included HALO and scuba gear. Their M-17s received the most thorough inspection, of course. In addition the recruits might also be quizzed on knowledge: the Eleven General Orders for standing guard, the specs of their weapons, their chain of command, or the customs and traditions of the Marine Corps.
“Ma’am, the series commander is Captain Ainsworth, ma’am!” Maddox answered.
Yeah, throw him another softball.
“Excellent, Maddox!” Mack said. “You could teach your fellow freaks a thing or two about knowledge and discipline. One dirty magazine, Alpha. He passes.”
“Nearly stellar,” Alpha commented.
Are you fucking kidding me? Since returning to the platoon after nearly dropping dead, Maddox had excelled only at being a gray man, a roach who scuttled beneath the baseboards whenever a DI came around. Most of first squad had checked their buddies’ gear ahead of the inspection, and Rizer could have pointed out several gigs in Maddox’s junk.
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