***
Despite the efforts of his suit’s wicking membrane, sweat poured down the inside of Rizer’s skins as he ran with his fire team through the cracked asphalt streets of the town they had come to liberate. Smoke swirled in shifting layers and mini tornadoes, only adding to the oppressive heat and humidity on this unknown jungle world.
Orders for Alpha 11—Belzer, Rizer’s squad leader—flashed red on his HUD: PROCEED TO GRID DM 632-272 PROVIDE FIRE SUPPORT FOR ASSAULT SQUAD. Rizer brought up the rear of the fire team, with Belzer leading and Stubs and Hagel in the middle. Stubs carried a M-361 machinegun; his A-gunner Hagel, who was loaded down with several 200-round drums of ammunition along with his normal combat load, was struggling to keep up. Rizer likewise had come prepared for a bloody fight, an M-8 disposable, multi-purpose rocket launcher slung over each shoulder in addition to his rifle.
The distance to objective, 0.2 KM, blinked alongside a red direction arrow on his HUD. Glancing down a side street as he ran, Rizer saw a squad of Marines surrounding a group of bedraggled civilians, their hands held high in the air. Two Marines pulled one of the male civilians from the group, threw him down, and pummeled him with rifle butts, but Rizer moved on before he could see the outcome. He didn’t ponder their actions; intel reported a strong insurgent presence in this town.
Rizer ran across his first enemies, or rather their remains, lying blasted and askew outside a doorway. Three olive-drab stars across the tan breastplate of a somewhat-intact corpse identified the soldier as property of the People’s Galactic Union. Rizer jumped over a severed leg with a charred, cauterized stump and charged on.
Cyan and crimson streaks tore up asphalt as they sprinted across the town square and confronted their objective, a four-story concrete building that was pocked and fissured from the intense gunfire. Armed with plasma throwers, the assault squad was to set it ablaze to root out the enemy inside, and first squad would provide their fire support.
“Take cover!” Belzer yelled as she led them behind the scorched hulk of a downed Union hover tank.
Hagel yelled when a cyan bolt blew his left arm off in a puff of blood that was quickly vaporized by the heat. He lay there motionless, not bleeding from his charred stump, as Rizer jumped over him. A second later another cyan blast blew Hagel’s body into scraps of well-done meat. The message RCT HAGEL KIA appeared in red on Rizer’s HUD.
“Get set up!” Belzer ordered Stubs as he unslung his machinegun. “Rizer! Rocket fourth-floor right!”
Rizer grabbed one of his launchers and tried to ignore the stench of Hagel’s burning pieces as he poked his head up from cover. Between the body of the tank and its bent barrel above, he caught sight of the Union laser cannoneer in the window and fired when the target aperture turned red. The hypervelocity rocket struck the upper-right corner of the building, which disintegrated in flames and chunks of concrete, ending the plasma fire.
Machineguns still chattered from other windows. Coltin, second fire team’s M-8 man, silenced one from his position in a ruined building ten meters away. Stubs unleashed the machinegun to provide suppressing fire, quickly exhausting a drum magazine. Enemy fire decreased markedly. Knowing Stubs would need more ammo, Rizer low crawled to Hagel’s remains and nearly vomited as he rat-fucked the burnt corpse for intact magazines. He found only three before returning to the tank, where Stubs pounded away at the building’s windows.
A med bot request appeared in the upper right corner of his visor, corresponding to second team’s grid coordinates. “Smythe’s down! Keep up the fire, Stubs!” Belzer ordered. Smythe had the machinegun on second fire team.
Several Marines armed with plasma throwers crossed the street toward the building.
“Shit!” Rizer said.
They had ventured forth thinking the suppressing fire adequate. Rounds blasted one of them, igniting his propellant tank and blowing him to cinders in a white-hot flash. Rizer fired his second launcher at a window, where he hoped the machinegunner might be shooting from. Six of the eight assault Marines reached the first floor and spit bursts of plasma through the blown-out windows, easily setting the interior ablaze. Meanwhile the upper stories were already burning from Rizer’s and Coltin’s rocket blasts.
Enemy fire practically ceased, though another plasma thrower exploded while making his retreat.
“Why don’t they order an artillery strike?” Rizer shouted.
“Civilians reported in the building!” Belzer responded.
Guess they want to give them a chance to escape. Rizer joined her rifle fire, killing a soldier who appeared in a window.
Civilians burst from the double doors fronting the street: first an old man who collapsed coughing into the rubble-strewn thoroughfare. A short figure, clothes aflame, danced about briefly before falling into a burning lump.
“Good fucking lord!” Rizer watched the child burn.
A Union soldier in battle armor came next, holding an energy pistol to the head of a young boy, a human shield. The reflex sight on Rizer’s rifle turned red as the dot found the coward’s helmet. Range: 22 meters.
“He’s mine!” Rizer announced.
“Target lock!” Kwon said simultaneously from second team’s position.
Rizer’s round blasted the soldier’s head off; his body jerked back on impact, so Kwon’s eviscerated the child. Both lay in the street an instant later, covered in the child’s smoking, snaking entrails.
Rizer leaned over to puke his own guts up, yet he couldn’t raise his face shield for some reason. Vomit erupted inside his helmet. His retching might have saved his life, for a sledgehammer struck him in the right shoulder between armor plates while he was doubled over. His scream came out as a gargled gag of puke, agony, and terror. Hit! He felt tremendous pain; strobing white lights flashed brilliantly behind his eyelids. Had he lost his arm? Was he in pieces like Hagel? It sure as fuck felt like it.
Vaguely Rizer recognized Stubs’ call for med bots on his HUD, along with the message RCT COLTIN KIA. Beyond Stubs, Belzer knelt with her rifle trained on the windows of another building, waiting for the sniper to reappear.
“Sniper bearing zero-eight-niner!” Belzer announced. “Watch those windows!”
Stubs appeared over him. “Hang in there, Rizer!”
“My fucking arm!”
“Still there!” Stubs said. “Fucking insurgent up there shot you with a slug rifle! You’ll be okay!”
Rizer felt damned far from okay. Fuck, can’t shoot! Even his M-17’s mild recoil would jar his shoulder, making his pain level even more unbearable. “Take the fucker out! Don’t worry about me!”
Stubs propped him up against the tank, then turned his machinegun on the sniper’s building. The 12mm rounds blasted chunks from around the windows in ionized flashes.
Rizer heard screaming, peered around the tank for a look. Civilians in flames poured from the front doors. Union soldiers bailed from upper-story windows, the building now a hellish inferno. Burning or not, the remaining Marines quickly wasted the enemy.
Rizer’s radio crackled: “Alpha 11, be advised: Enemy artillery strike inbound. Take cover immediately!”
“Take cover first squad!” Belzer repeated, a waste of air.
As Rizer was about to pull his head back behind the tank, a small boy, gagging and coughing, stumbled into the street, where he promptly fell on his face. The kid started dragging himself toward the tank. He’ll never make it!
“I’m going out!” Rizer lurched into the street to fetch the child before the rounds came down.
“Get back!” Stubs shouted.
Rizer ignored him. The world seemed to shake and pulse in time to his raging heartbeat as he ran forward in a crouch, his locomotion hampered by his worthless right arm, pain jabbing him with every step. He dropped to his knees, scooped up the boy with his working arm, and got a nose full of smoke from the smoldering coat the boy must have donned to protect himself from the flames.
“Rizer, get the fuck back here!” Stubs yelled.
“Aaaargh!” came someone’s final howl over the radio, the yell quickly silenced. RCT KWON KIA.
Rizer slung the boy over his left shoulder and stood. All the blood must have drained from his brain down to his feet; his head swam dizzily as sounds came to him muted and slowed, as if he were underwater. He turned and started scrambling back to the tank.
“Incoming!” someone shouted.
Rizer rounded the tank and threw himself atop the boy. Rockets shrieked before detonating all over the square. The earth bucked underfoot. Deafening explosions raised a banshee wail. A rocket exploded on the other side of the tank, pushing the hulk a couple of meters. Rizer rolled with the boy, both knocked into motion by the sliding tank.
The rocket barrage ended. Rizer could see nothing but the messages and icons on his HUD; past that lay only dense clouds of smoke and dust. A faint rumbling grew in intensity as the building crumbled from the top down. Rizer and the boy lay helpless as they choked on the dust.
Moments or perhaps minutes passed; Rizer couldn’t say. The keening in his ears gradually subsided, along with his coughing fits.
“You fucker!” Belzer shouted. She fired at something airborne, perhaps an enemy drone. Text and radio calls for med bots lit up his visor and filled his ears.
Rizer rolled off the boy, knelt above his gasping body. “It’s gonna be all right, pal.”
“Those fucking bastards,” said Stubs as he knelt beside them.
“Second fire team report!” Belzer ordered.
As Recruit Shelburn, second team’s sole survivor, reported in, Rizer said, “I’ll get his coat off and check him for injuries.”
But the zipper was stuck. He yanked harder and it slid down. Only then did he notice the plastic lanyard cord attached to the inside of the zipper. “Fuck!”
The boy smiled as the detonator for the plastic explosives secreted beneath his coat blinked red with a corresponding electronic beep. Rizer started to roll away after the second beep.
The third beep was the final sound he heard.
***
Rizer opened his eyes. He lay on his back, staring up at a bright light muted by smoky gray glass. His nose burned from the sharp tang of vomit.
“Damn, that kid with the explosives was pretty fucked up,” said a voice he recognized as SSgt Mack’s.
“Yeah,” said an electronically amplified voice he’d likewise heard before, though it belonged to a Marine he didn’t know personally. “Heh heh, somebody falls for it every time.” The man’s curt chuckle annoyed the piss out of Rizer.
Booted footsteps sounded. Rizer raised his gray visor, looked around, and saw his squad mates, the visors on their VR helmets still down. The living—Belzer and Shelburn—knelt in shooting positions on their 360-degree treadmills as the casualties began to stir where they’d lain.
“Get up, lunkheads!” Mack ordered. “You’re not dead anymore!”
Then Rizer remembered what Mack had told them before they had entered the state-of-the-art VR combat simulator: “Unlike your real brains, that microchip we installed in you has all sorts of uses. Those walkthrough combat simulators you’ve assaulted will seem like the senior prom compared to this. You just fucking wait!”
“Aw, fuck me!” Stubs said as he rose, shaking his head. “That fucking kid…”
And everything else. All of it remained fresh in Rizer’s memory, not just the last simulated mission. They had run three others before that: cleared a network of bunkers and tunnels; secured a tridinium refinery; infiltrated a POW camp to rescue fellow Marines. Rizer had died in all but the second mission.
“Yeah, Rizer blew it,” Mack said. “He knew there were insurgents palling around with the Union, but he just had to save that poor little boy. Still the halfwit knight in shining armor.” She shook her head.
“Heh heh, rookie mistake,” said the operator, a gunnery sergeant, from behind the glass a few meters away. He sat at a vast control board of switches and monitors.
As Rizer stood, some of the puke that hadn’t run down into his skins splattered on the 360-degree treadmill.
“Who the fuck shot me in the back at the POW camp?” Coltin demanded to know.
Stubs shrugged. “That might have been me.”
“It was,” Hagel confirmed.
“Asshole!” Coltin and Stubs both muttered.
“Leave all that VR shit at the treadmill stations and get the fuck outside,” Mack said. “All but you, Rizer. You get to stay behind and mop up your mess.” She assumed the voice of a mincing homosexual. “Eww, there’s kid guts all over the street! Hah! You should have seen your pathetic self barfing in your helmet!”
“Hilarious!” said the gunny.
“Hurry the fuck up, Rizer! The mop’s in that gear locker over there.”
The gunny cracked jokes while Rizer cleaned the helmet and mopped the treadmill. “Tuna mac for lunch? No wonder you barfed in battle! Heh heh!”
Rizer barely heard him over the silence of the smiling boy’s face, forever branded into the crinkly cortex of his brain.
***
Every muscle, bone, and joint in Rizer’s body ached from deep within by the end of the training day, finally at hand. The clock on his HUD read 0014 as the platoon reached mainside after a hump of over twenty klicks through rain showers and dropping temperatures. Nearly a twenty-four-hour day. Reveille had sounded the previous morning at 0100. It seemed like a thousand years ago.
“Ready to rack out, Eighty-Four?” Mack asked over the radio, receiving an enthusiastic response. “Yeah, me too. But we don’t get to set our own hours. There’s one more training evolution to do.” Silence fell over the airwaves but for a couple of muttered curses. “Appears some of you don’t approve. Well, too fucking bad, Vanhoven and Abek. You two idiots just earned some quarterdeck time when this is over. Now step it out! Sooner begun is sooner done!”
The platoon stared longingly at the barracks as they humped past. They marched another klick before halting on a low hill next to a tall control tower. Below them spread a rolling field split by berms, trenches, coils of razor wire, and other obstacles. Lights burned in the tower windows—someone up there was ready to unleash hell on them. Yet again…
“Welcome to the night infiltration course, Eighty-Four, a few hundred meters of hell that’ll make you question why you ever decided to join my beloved Corps.”
As if we don’t question it every minute of every day.
“Each squad will have ten minutes to navigate the obstacles and complete the course. Fail and your entire squad pays tomorrow. Is that understood?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Outstanding! But there’s one thing I forgot to mention—you’ll be taking live fire from laser cannons, so I suggest you keep those grapes down while you navigate my course. I’ll be waiting at the end. We’ll see which squads are motivated and who wants to fuck off!” She turned and took off at a jog, Alpha running beside her.
“Five minutes, first squad!” Burrmaster said. “Unfuck yourselves and get prepared!”
First squad turned to checking their fellows’ gear. Burrmaster and Bravo moved among them at large doing the same, yanking on loose straps and securing undone snaps with open-handed slaps.
“Time you shitbags learned what it really means to move under fire,” Burrmaster said. “First squad, your fire teams will move abreast of one another, first fire team on the left flank. Move down to the starting position and proceed on my order.”
The squad moved downhill to the open gate in the barbed-wire fence surrounding the course. They split into two fire teams of four recruits each, Belzer on point for first team with Coltin leading second. A green light started flashing above the gate.
“Move out, first squad!” Burrmaster ordered.
They took off through the first hundred meters, a godforsaken wasteland of deep, water-filled holes meant to simulate blast crat
ers. An explosion about five meters to Rizer’s left lit the night and shook the ground; he dove away and landed submerged in the bottom of a hole. The explosions continued, forcing them to low crawl the rest of the way across the pocked field.
Past the craters, they stepped carefully through two rolls of razor wire at the bottom of an eight-meter berm, then charged up the slope.
“Low crawl!” Belzer ordered just before clearing the top.
They dropped as the first neon beams of green laser fire began crisscrossing over their heads, the bolts snapping overhead as they displaced the air.
“Shit! No fucking way!” said Recruit Kwon, tail man on second fire team.
“Move your ass, Kwon!” Coltin shouted.
Rizer felt the heat from a laser blast as he crawled over the top before slithering down the other side. Stubs slipped when he tried to stand about halfway down; he skidded on his ass to the bottom and landed in a two-meter trench half filled with water. Rizer stood upon reaching the brink, thinking he might jump across even as his feet sank into the mud. Another explosion nearby sent him jumping into the water.
“This is fucking insanity!” he shouted. A laser blast struck the berm behind them, unleashing a mini mudslide that poured into the trench, partly submerging Stubs.
“Get him out; let’s go!” Belzer ordered.
Rizer and Hagel grabbed him by the arms and pulled.
“It’s like pulling a baby hippo!” Hagel grumbled.
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