Day four proved a welcome switch and might have even been called fun if such a thing were allowed during the Crucible. Rizer started the day in the sweetest manner possible—by knocking Coltin unconscious during a full-contact sparring match. From there the day progressed to vibro-blade. Then the platoon ran a course through the same village they’d assaulted, two squads at a time, facing instructors stationed at key strategic points. All instructors were humans this time, and the recruits had to take them down, singly or as a team. First squad began on one side of town, second on the other.
The squads met in the village square and were instructed to trade their rifles for pugil sticks. SSgt Mack stood between them. “Well done, first and second squad. But only one squad can claim victory!” She pointed fingers at the opposing squads, then brought her hands together. “Attack!”
“Kill!” shouted the squads before they charged to battle in the square.
Yes! Rizer had taken pleasure in his revenge on Coltin and Belzer, yet one target remained. And luck was with him—golden boy Abek charged straight for him. He saw Belzer running next to him from the corner of his eye. Without a thought for his squad, Rizer jabbed his pugil stick into Belzer’s sparring helmet, causing her to fall just before the squads collided.
Laughing, his blood a fifty-fifty mix of adrenaline and bile, Rizer laid into the slightly taller figure of Abek, who fought reasonably well. Yet he lacked the edgy, explosive anger that had stewed in Rizer since Garwood’s fall. Rizer defeated him in short order, but second squad won the battle. He didn’t care. Abek nursed a fat lip and a bitten tongue, bled copiously from his mouth. Maddox had pounced on Belzer while she reeled from Rizer’s blow; beaten quickly, she’d never factored in the fight. Mack thrashed first squad for their losing effort.
“You just fucking wait, chump!” Belzer said to him after the thrashing.
Rizer grinned at her. “You know where I sleep. Stop by for a grudge-fuck anytime!”
She ground her teeth and growled at him. “I fucking hate you!”
Mack heard her. They spent the next thirty minutes staring at one another, noses centimeters apart, as Mack thrashed them to no avail. No amount of pushups or number of burpees could ever reconcile their differences.
***
“You see that mountain over there, Eighty-Four?” Mack pointed to the monumental peak backlit by the first light of a white dawn. “That is the final obstacle for you to conquer before earning the title of United Systems Marine. We call it the Reaper—even a flock of dumbass sheep like you are smart enough to guess why. Looks close, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
She laughed. “It’s thirty klicks away, you fucking idiots, and another twenty klicks to the top. But that shouldn’t matter to a recruit who’s made it this far. You wanna be a Marine, you make it to the top. It’s really that fucking simple. Now get ready; we march in five!”
Rizer shouted, “Aye, ma’am!” as loudly as the rest of them. God himself can’t keep me off that mountain!
He tried to figure the Reaper’s height as they humped toward it, each recruit straining beneath forty-five kilos of combat gear and ammunition. Two thousand meters? It didn’t pay to think about it. He would summit, simple as that.
For perhaps the third time in forty weeks, the white sun of Forge shone down in unclouded brilliance, raising the temperature. Rizer guessed it to be at least 22 degrees when they began ascending the track up the Reaper, and it was only late morning.
During the march to the mountain, Sgt Burrmaster and several the recruits took turns singing cadence. That frivolity ended while ascending the Reaper’s initial grade, which was steep enough to stall a mountain goat. The recruits needed to conserve every breath to power their next footfall, as opposed to wasting it on songs. The DIs, of course, showed little sign of fatigue, while the platoon sweated buckets and barely kept their feet after nights of little sleep. Rizer figured he’d gotten roughly six hours’ worth during the Crucible, allowed only catnaps between evolutions or while waiting for another squad to finish an exercise.
Amazingly, and despite Mack’s usual psychotic pace, no one dropped until late afternoon, when the summit loomed four hundred meters above. A groan of exhausted submission was followed by weapons and gear clattering on the rocky trail. The platoon parted down the middle to bypass the downed recruit: Phillipe from third squad. His squad leader, Carelli, had stopped to aid him. Phillipe breathed in ragged gasps; his eyelids fluttered and his eyeballs twitched. His face was red and dry; he’d sweated out all his fluids during the climb.
“Get back in formation, Carelli!” Alpha said. “The med bots will get him.” Carelli left him behind without a second glance, ran back to the head of third squad.
The summit had appeared close when Phillipe dropped, yet they humped another two hours without reaching it, for the trail wound around the mountain instead of traveling straight up the sheer slopes. Wisps of gray and white clouds moved in, moistening the air and dropping the temperature, much to everyone’s relief.
“Look at that, Eighty-Four!” Mack cried, pointing into the clouds. Rizer followed her finger, saw a miracle that made him forget about his aching back and burning legs—a Condor dropship descending to the summit, its gray bulk blending into the clouds. “You got a ride down, now you just gotta get there! Step it out now!”
“Aye, ma’am!”
The trail soon leveled out, and the platoon marched the last few hundred meters across a rocky field to a monument atop the forlorn peak. The monument was a large granite sculpture of a Marine sprinting forward into combat. A black and silver United Systems Alliance flag snapped in the breeze atop a flagpole behind the monument; below it flew the red and gold Marine Corps flag. Across sat the Condor, its cargo bay door open.
SSgt Mack called a halt beneath the flag and ordered them to drop their packs. Then, just as some recruits began to celebrate, she called them to attention. Alpha, Bravo, and the Condor’s crew watched as she moved to Belzer at the head of first squad, Sgt Burrmaster a step behind her.
Rizer couldn’t believe it was happening—couldn’t believe it was over. He stood in eager anticipation despite being at attention.
Mack reached him soon enough. “A lot of guys come here with big balls, Rizer. I send their asses packing, damn near everyone. I don’t know how the fuck you squeezed by.” She showed him a gold object in the palm of her hand: an eagle atop a globe emblazoned with an eight-pointed star, with an ancient ship’s fouled anchor behind it—the ESA, symbol of a United Systems Marine. “You got what you wanted. I hope you know what that really entails, since you still have a lot to learn.” She stared at him a moment longer. “Well, what the fuck, are you gonna take it?”
“We can hump the mountain again if you don’t think you’re ready,” Burrmaster said.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll take it.” Rizer held out his hand; she placed it in his palm. The metal of the ESA bit into his hand as he squeezed it hard.
“Congratulations, Private Rizer.” She shook his hand, her smaller bones crushing his larger ones, before moving on to Stubneski.
“Congratulations, Rizer,” Sgt Burrmaster said, shaking his hand. “You’re a Marine now. Try to act like one.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s sergeant to you now.” He moved on.
Rizer ruminated on their words, the meanings not lost upon him. He wondered how in hell he’d gotten here; how he’d survived forty weeks of torture to earn a simple trinket to be pinned on his chest; how he’d made it when men such as Garwood hadn’t. It all seemed so surreal. Was he really a better man for having earned an ESA when so many others hadn’t?
Does it matter? No, he decided. All that mattered, he held in the palm of his hand.
***
Rizer looked around the quarterdeck, where the thirteen graduates of Platoon 2084 sat in a circle around Sgt Burrmaster. Alpha and Bravo were gone, assigned to a new platoon. SSgt Mack watched
impassively from the doorway to the DI hut. She seemed different since bestowing the ESAs upon the Marines she’d made—brooding and quiet, sulking almost.
Rizer believed he knew why. She lives for this—not to make Marines, but to break those who don’t rate the title.
“All right, listen up, Marines,” Burrmaster began. “Orders have come down for your MOS schools. Listen for your name and the school you’ll be attending. Whether you signed an open contract or picked an MOS, your job has been assigned according to the needs of the Marine Corps.”
He began reading the names. Vanhoven went to the armor corps; and Perez to artillery. Mack snorted when Carelli was ordered to comm school yet made no comment. “Intel,” Burrmaster continued, “which means training at the School of Infantry and a shot at the Marine Raiders after that: Belzer—”
“Yes!” Belzer whispered, pumping a fist. She would graduate as guide and honor recruit with the rank of private first class.
“—and for some reason, Coltin.”
Smarter than he acts, maybe? Rizer pondered for a moment. Nah, he must be connected somehow.
“Koch, cyber operations. And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for: infantry. That’ll be Abek, Hagel, Maddox, Rizer, Smythe, Stubneski, and Ward.”
Rizer gulped and hoped that no one had noticed. He’d known that joining on an open contract would likely mean a posting to the infantry but hearing his fate was ominous confirmation. He’d thought he might be selected for intel but no such luck.
“That’s it, people. If you didn’t get the job promised by your recruiter, too bad. It’s only five years of your life. May seem like a long time but believe me it’s not.”
“Not one of you should feel cheated by your MOS assignment,” Mack said. “That you even earned the title of Marine should be enough. We don’t need any fucking ingrates in my Marine Corps.”
Burrmaster nodded. “Staff sergeant’s right. Every Marine plays an important role. Just suck it up and deal with it.
“Now onto happier shit, at least for some of y’all. As you know, today is family day for those whose families are coming, and base liberty for all of you.”
“Base liberty,” Mack reiterated. “Leave this installation for any reason, and you’ll start your career with office hours. Act like an ass out there, and you’ll be put in your place, trust me. Get caught drinking and your ass will burn. You save that shit till you’re off this base.” She craned her neck toward her platoon, at one Marine in particular. “Koch! Take off that fucking earring before I rip it the fuck out! Don’t you ever wear one of those in uniform!”
“Aye, ma—staff sergeant!” Embarrassed, Koch did as ordered.
Mack shook her head. “Pathetic. If I had my way, you idiots would train for another forty weeks.”
Burrmaster consulted his watch. “We march for the parade deck in forty-five minutes. Square your uniforms away in the meantime so you don’t look like a shitbag for Mommy and Daddy.”
“Sergeant Burrmaster?” Rizer asked, raising a hand. “What will happen to Garwood and the other two who dropped during the Crucible?”
Mack answered the question: “Recruit Phillipe will be recycled from day one—a failure and a gray man who deserves as much. Stanfield is too stupid to be a Marine; he’s going to the service corps. I’ve requested that Garwood resume from week twenty, since he was the only one of you worth half a shit. He’ll likely get a prosthetic leg—you can thank yourself for that, Rizer.”
Fuck off and die! Had Belzer assisted along with Garwood, the old guide would likely be graduating with them. And she makes Belzer the guide… He’d wondered if Mack would reveal a soul, no matter how stunted, once they completed training. A fucking fish has more emotions.
“Any other questions?” Burrmaster asked. None followed. “Good. Now turn to squaring away your uniforms. Dismissed.”
They returned to their racks and footlockers to prepare. “Fucking intel, baby!” Belzer said to no one in particular.
“Fuck yeah!” Coltin responded. “Can’t wait to tell my dad; he was in Navy intel before going into government.”
Yay! Rizer shook his head, dreading having to spend another ten weeks at SOI with Coltin and Belzer.
Stubs couldn’t resist the bait when Abek mentioned that his mother had come for graduation. “It’ll be nice to see her again.”
“Fuck off, Stubs. At least I have a family.”
“Yeah?” Rizer said. “Sounds like you have a mother. What happened, they wouldn’t let your father out of jail to visit?”
Rizer immediately regretted the remark, even directed at a shitbag like Abek. Perhaps his father was in jail, for Abek looked at him, jaw slack with astonishment turning to rage, before he charged across the squad bay at Rizer until he was restrained by Coltin and Ward. As they wrestled him back, he shouted, “At least my family cared enough to come see me, you stupid prick!”
If he hoped to insult Rizer, his words fell far short. I completely agree.
Upon returning from the Crucible, Rizer had sent his family a video transmission informing them he was well and ready to graduate basic training. They sent no congratulatory video in return, only a plain text message that they wouldn’t be attending… with the addendum that his older brother had received his doctorate. Frustration at his family’s indifference weighed on Rizer, his main reason for insulting Abek. At least his mother gives enough of a shit to come all the way from Solaris. A longer haul than his family might have made. As much as their absence annoyed him, he’d nevertheless expected it. The trial he’d endured and the journey he’d only begun belonged to him alone.
And oddly enough, he preferred it that way.
He and five other recruits with no visitors hung out at the PX for most of the day, feasting on delicacies forbidden for the last forty weeks: pizza, quantum soda, all manner of junk food. They had a pretty good time as it turned out.
The following day, Platoon 2084 stood as a unit for the final time on the parade deck, their dress blue uniforms slowly soaking through beneath a steady drizzle. Families who actually cared about what their children had gone through packed the grandstand to see the six platoons of Fox Company graduate. Rizer thought about many things during the congratulatory speech by the depot commander, a major general: the legs of Melchor and Garwood; Deezeman serving chow or scrubbing shitters on some backwater world; Phillipe starting over from day one. And how he stood there, one of the fortunate nine to graduate, while seventy-seven others did not.
Staff Sergeant Mack received a tremendous round of applause when she was introduced to the crowd. Rizer stood at attention, dead still, though he felt like shaking his head. If you people only knew…
CHAPTER 13
Private Rizer watched the platoon of Marines advance through a course of towering obstacles impossible for normal humans to negotiate. They made fantastic leaps to disks hovering at ten meters, quickly jumping up to the next one before the disk even started to tilt. The lead Marine stepped off a disk hovering at twenty-five meters and activated the rockets in his jump pack, arresting the velocity of his fall. He landed as though stepping off a flight of stairs, then ran to the next obstacle, a long metal platform of varying heights with several breaks over open air, which Rizer guessed was meant to simulate a partially destroyed bridge. Their objective, a concrete building five stories high, lay on the other side.
The lead fire team ran for the ropes hanging from the bridge, leapt, caught them at a height of ten meters, and began climbing—hand over hand, legs dangling—making the thirty-meter ascent in seconds. Immediately they charged on and jumped to the next bridge section, lower and slanted downward. At the end of that slope, they again activated jump packs to reach the next section.
The Marines of Delta Company, Rizer’s unit at the School of Infantry, watched the display of highly mobile firepower in awe from a grandstand overlooking the valley where the course lay. “This is some badass shit!” said Stubs,
sitting next to Rizer. They had been assigned to first platoon along with Hagel, Maddox, Ward, Belzer, and Coltin. Smythe and Abek were in second platoon. Rizer hoped the two platoons wouldn’t be training together often. Bad enough he still had to deal with Belzer and Coltin.
“Fuck yeah!” That’s me in about three months.
He had watched war documentaries and newscasts featuring Marines and Army fighting in power armor, but this live demonstration revealed how little those vicarious mediums captured of the truly awe-inspiring feats of soldiers in full gear. As an infantry Marine he would practically live in his power armor. He looked forward to getting his training underway.
Two crews of laser cannoneers appeared atop the building and opened fire on the Marines as they jumped off the last bridge section and stormed toward the compound. The fire teams ran in zigzag patterns, dropped and rolled to evade the fire. One of the green bolts struck the earth at the feet of an advancing Marine, the explosion blasting him five meters off course. He lay on the ground for a second before getting up and continuing the charge.
“Whoa!” Belzer said, her mouth hanging open.
“No fuckin’ way!” was Hagel’s response. Such a close call would have left a Marine in skins needing a med bot, but it was barely a scratch to a man in power armor.
The attackers took positions behind rusting hulks of old vehicles left before the building as cover and opened simulated fire on the laser cannons. Rifles appeared at the windows and returned fire. One of the assaulting Marines fell, clutching his arm, a simulated hit registered. Allegedly, simulated hits at SOI caused pain equal to wounds received in combat.
“Shit, look at that!” Ward shouted, pointing to about a dozen black dots that had just plummeted from a dark, low-hanging cloud, dropping fast toward the rooftop. Just when it seemed they would slam into the roof and crash through all five floors, their jump packs ignited and slowed their fall. Twelve feathers would have landed harder. The aerial squad fell upon the cannoneers with vibro-blades and rifles, shutting down the laser fire for good.
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