First To Fight (The Empire's Corps Book 11)

by Christopher Nuttall

  “The only objective here is to eliminate your opponents,” Bainbridge said. “Any hits will be considered lethal; your webbing will start to flash red as soon as it records a hit and your training packs will be disarmed. The victors will be the squad that has even a single remaining member, as long as the other two squads have been eliminated. Do you understand me?”

  “YES, SIR,” we bellowed.

  “Good,” Bainbridge said. “As soon as you are hit, walk out of the training ground and cross the border. Do not do anything to assist your comrades, as you are counted as dead; make your way around to the entrance and wait there. Failure to follow these orders will result in intensive punishment. You will not get the opportunity to cheat on a real battlefield.”

  And I thought that if we weren't cheating, we weren't trying, I thought, a little resentfully. I wasn't fool enough to ask that out loud. He had a point; in a real battle, a wounded or dead marine wouldn't be able to point to the enemy positions or anything else that might be helpful. Stretching the rules was one thing, breaking them outright was quite another.

  “Squad One will deploy from the north,” Bainbridge said. “Squad Two will deploy from the west. Squad Three will deploy from the east. Remember, the objective is not to take and hold territory, but to eliminate one’s enemies. Staying where you are in the hopes the enemy will come to you is just plain stupid.”

  And might cost us the chance to win, I thought. We’d been taught, time and time again, to take the offensive. But if we stayed where we started, we might see One and Three eliminate each other before we intervened and wiped out the victor.

  I kept those thoughts to myself as Bainbridge smirked. “If the exercise is declared terminated, which is signalled through a red flare, return to the entrance at once,” he added, darkly. “There isn't a time limit, I’m afraid, but you really don’t want to bore us.”

  I winced, inwardly, as Johnston marched us around to the western flag, marking our start point. We’d have to crawl through the forest to reach the village, like Squad Three, while Squad One would have to cross the river. The Drill Instructor said nothing as we had a brief discussion about tactics; Three might make it to the village at the same time as us, while One would have very real problems. They’d have to cross on the sole bridge, or swim, or find a place to ford the river.

  “We could always ford the river ourselves and take One up the butt,” Posh offered. “Everyone is going to try to go to the village, aren't they?”

  “There’s too little cover,” I countered. The trees wouldn't stop real bullets - I’d seen machine guns at work - but the lasers we used for training would be stopped. We could get away with using very flimsy cover. “We’d be caught out in the open.”

  “So will One, if they try to get across the river,” Joker said. “They practically have to get to the village faster than everyone else.”

  I recalled what I’d seen of the village’s layout. “If we try to secure the bridge, Three will take us in the back,” I pointed out. “What if we sneak up to the edge of the treeline and wait there?”

  “They might be able to take the village and turn it into a strongpoint,” Professor said.

  “If the village is clear,” Posh said, “we advance forward and secure it for ourselves. If not, we can pick around the edges and weaken them, piece by piece.”

  I groaned inwardly as the last minutes ticked away. If we’d had real weapons - rifles, machine guns, grenades - the village might become a liability, rather than an asset. But with training lasers, whoever got to the village first would have a very definite advantage. One might need to get across the river before anyone else could set up a defence line, but us - and Three - needed to get to the village. Anything else risked certain defeat.

  We hammered out a basic plan - Viper said nothing, of course - just before a flare burst over the foliage. It was time to move. I dropped low, as I had been trained, and took point, advancing towards and through the forest. It didn't seem likely that someone had jumped the gun and started before the flare gave the signal, but it was possible. Would Johnston have stopped us sneaking through the forest or would he have applauded us for showing cunning in the face of the enemy? I pushed that thought to the back of my mind as I kept moving forward, peering through the trees. Was that something moving ahead of me ...?

  I almost pulled the trigger as a shape moved, right in front of me. The small grey creature - I learned later it was called a squirrel - ran up the side of a tree and vanished, while I nearly had a heart attack. I had never seen anything quite like it ... I somehow managed to calm my beating heart and continue the advance. Suddenly, sooner than I’d expected, the first houses came into view. They looked ... nice, and empty. I'd honestly never seen anything like them on Earth.

  Bracing myself, I dropped to the ground and peered towards the river. There was no sign of movement, but that meant nothing. One and Three had the same training we had, after all, and they’d know to keep low as they advanced. It was much - much - easier to spot someone running forward, standing up. I almost gave the go-ahead signal, then froze as I saw four shapes advancing towards the river. Moments later, I heard the sound of shooting.

  Joker crawled up next to me. “One must have run into Three,” he said.

  I nodded in agreement, then signalled the squad forward. One, trapped on the wrong side of the river, had decided to gamble. They’d surrendered stealth in favour of speed, running towards the bridge as if the devil himself was after them. I suspected, from what I was seeing, that Three had intended to secure the village and run right into One. It was a stroke of luck for us, I decided, as I passed orders using hand signals. If we were lucky, One and Three would weaken themselves significantly before we took a hand.

  And then Viper opened fire. I saw two recruits - both from Three, I thought - flash red as his lasers struck them, but the remainder dropped to the ground and returned fire in our direction. The laser beams were invisible - bullets are invisible in flight too, no matter what you see in the flicks - yet we knew they were there. I returned fire myself, trying to take out as many of the enemy as possible, but it was stalemate. We were unable to advance.

  “You fucking idiot,” Joker swore at Viper. “You ...”

  “Take Professor and Thug and move to the right,” I said. Maybe I wasn't formally in charge - Johnston hadn't designated anyone to serve as commander - but someone had to do it. “Posh, Bandit and I will move to the left. Everyone else stays here and lays down covering fire.”

  “Gotcha,” Joker said.

  Another round of shooting broke out as one of the enemy took possession of a house and turned it into a makeshift strongpoint. Smartass’s webbing flashed red as he copped a hit; he swore loudly, rose to his feet and stamped off towards the exit. I half-hoped he’d find a way to signal to us, yet I knew not to expect it. Greater love hath no man for his friends who lays down his life in their defence, but asking someone to endure a chewing out from the Drill Instructors and umpteen thousand push-ups is a bit much. Besides, trying to cheat so openly would only get him a black mark on his record.

  “Go,” I said.

  The stay-behind group, including Viper, laid down covering fire with enthusiasm as the two flanking parties set off, hoping to get better firing positions. It was probably more intimidating to have real bullets cracking through the air, smashing into branches and trees, but for the moment we weren't allowed to use live ammunition in exercises. I kept my head low as I crawled forward, somehow no longer concerned about the mud staining my uniform; I wondered, vaguely, if it blocked the webbing, then decided it wasn't worth the risk of trying to test it. Maybe I could send Viper forward instead ...

  I smirked as I saw a group of wet recruits sneaking forward - One must have had a back-up plan, either swimming or fording the river - then nodded to Posh and Bandit. We opened fire as one, catching them in a deadly crossfire. I heard a number of swearwords I’d never heard before as their webbing flashed red, forcing them to stan
d up and head towards the entrance; I smirked nastily, then turned to crawl into the nearest house. Bandit followed me, but made the mistake of allowing himself to be seen inside the house; someone saw him through the window and took a shot at him before he could get down. His webbing flashed red and he had to leave.

  Stalemate, I thought, as we took up firing positions. The house provided protection, but we couldn't hope to cover every angle of approach. I’d made the mistake of losing track of the rest of the squad. For all I knew, Posh and I were the last ones still active. Now what?

  “We can't stay here,” Posh muttered. “They can get in from any angle ...”

  He was rapidly proved correct. One of the enemy recruits had a far more tactical brain than myself. His comrades forced us to keep our heads down while he scaled the side of the house and sneaked in through one of the upper windows. We didn’t hear a thing over the noise of the rifles before he opened fire from the rear and hit Posh in the back. I rolled over, half-convinced that he’d been shot through the window, too late. My webbing flashed red a moment later, taking me out of the game.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  I exchanged irked looks with Posh, then walked out of the house and back towards the entrance. A couple of recruits shot at me, which was pointless, but then they had to be sure I was genuinely out of the match. (Or maybe they were just rubbing it in.) I tried to see Joker and the others, yet I saw nothing until I reached the entrance. Viper was standing there, slightly apart from the others, while Smartass was doing push-ups under Bainbridge’s watchful eye. I guessed he hadn't waited until we were back in the barracks before trying to tell Viper precisely what he thought of him.

  It was nearly half an hour before Bainbridge finally declared us the victors - Joker and his team, it seemed, had managed to eliminate everyone left after the knife-edge battle. I cheered them as loudly as anyone else as they emerged from the woods, swinging their hips in a manner that would probably have invited a kick anywhere else. Bainbridge glanced down at a terminal in his hand, then coolly started to outline all of our mistakes. Three had run forward too fast, One had tried to be clever and Two - us - had made the mistake of splitting up into three separate forces, none of which could assist the others. In the end, Joker and his two comrades had won only by sheer luck.

  “If there had been only two squads, it might have made things more interesting,” Bainbridge said. “Did any of you consider a prospective alliance?”

  I shook my head. I’d assumed we weren't allowed to make alliances ... although, now I thought about it, I recalled it had never been specifically forbidden. Gangs on Earth had made alliances all the time, even though none of them had lasted very long. Why couldn't we have tried to make an agreement with One? Or Three?

  They would have stabbed us in the back as soon as we beat the other squad, I thought. Or we would have stabbed them in the back.

  “There are times when you will have to make short-term alliances with factions already on the ground,” Bainbridge said, shortly. “Of course, this time we deliberately made it harder for you to talk before it was time to start shooting. Next time ... well, let’s see what happens, shall we?”

  We went through the whole exercise several times more before we were marched back to the Chow Hall for dinner. It was a fun experience, although it was also some pretty serious training; we learned the advantages of taking cover, of maintaining a distance, of everything else we’d need to know by the time the bullets started flying. By the time we entered the Chow Hall, we were tired and yet happy ...

  Joker poked me as a new set of recruits entered the hall. “Look at them, Stalker,” he said. “Did you ever see such a line of boobs?”

  I stared. They wore the same uniforms ... but they were utterly out of shape. They stumbled along instead of marching, they looked fearful and ill-prepared ... they looked like we must have done, only a month or so ago. I felt a flicker of disgust at their dishevelled appearance, wondering how their Drill Instructors refrained from tearing off their heads and pissing down their necks ...

  “We probably looked worse than that,” I said. One of the recruits even had his belt on the wrong way round. Another had forgotten to apply shaving cream the previous night. I dreaded to think what I would have been called, at inspection, if I’d looked so scruffy. “They’ve only just started.”

  “Bainbridge would have booted us out if we looked like them,” Joker said. It was an article of faith among each of the training platoons that they had the roughest, the toughest, the all-around nastiest Drill Instructor. “And Nordstrom would have kicked our asses.”

  “Probably,” I agreed. “And if we’re not careful, we’ll probably be recycled back to join them.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  There’s a very old saying that basically boils down to ‘hard training, easy mission; easy training, hard mission.’ The Marine Corps works hard to make training as realistic as possible, deliberately slanting the deck against the new recruits. In theory, this assists the recruits to handle the (presumably) easier missions they will undertake as qualified marines. However, it is impossible to prepare for all contingencies ...

  -Professor Leo Caesius

  My first sight of the aircraft did not inspire confidence.

  Indeed, I hadn't really seen a proper aircraft, outside flicks, for my entire life. The airbus that had flown me to the spaceport on Earth was an antigravity craft; the shuttle that had taken me to Mars was a spacecraft. I believed, from what I’d been taught at school, that aircraft had been banned on Earth years ago for polluting the atmosphere, something I learned later was a minor attempt to come to grips with the ecological collapse that had rendered large parts of the planet uninhabitable. The craft in front of me looked as though it was on its last legs, within bare minutes of falling apart. I really didn't want to climb inside.

  I had no choice, of course.

  “Before you graduate,” Bainbridge informed us, “you will have to qualify for a jumper badge from both atmosphere and orbit. This, your very first jump, will be made from this aircraft and you will be expected to do nothing, beyond jumping out of the plane. The parachutes are completely automatic, crammed with” - he spat - “civilian-grade safety features. If something happens to the main parachute, the secondary parachute will unfurl instead; if something happens to the secondary parachute, an automated antigravity system will come online and save your worthless hides. There are civilians who do this for fun, every day, so you lot should have no trouble at all.”

  I swallowed. “There are people who do this for fun?”

  “I used to jump from low orbit,” Posh said. He didn't sound as though he was boasting, although it was pretty obvious that it was a rich man’s sport. “It’s great fun provided you handle it properly.”

  Viper threw me a nasty sneer. “What’s the matter, Stalker? Having doubts?”

  I was, of course, but I was damned if I would admit it to him. Viper was growing worse and it was all I could do to convince Joker and the others not to arrange a nasty accident. It didn't help that someone had given him a push in the shower, which had given Viper a black eye and the rest of us an extra hour of punishment exercises. I honestly felt like giving up on him; perhaps, if we all complained to the Drill Instructors, we could have him removed from the squad. He was nothing more than a load.

  “Silence,” Bainbridge bellowed. He glared us into submission, then continued. “The jumpmaster will check your parachutes before you step up to the hatch, but you will not be pushed out into the air. If you are unable to take that step, recruits, there’s no shame in admitting it. Parachute diving has defeated bigger and stronger men than yourselves in the past. Just step back from the edge, sit down on the bench and wait for the plane to return to the ground.”

  It wasn't a pleasant thought. On one hand, the whole concept of falling from an aircraft towards the ground was utterly fucking terrifying. But on the other hand, I didn't want to fail, not like this. No one would make fun of me for
being unable to take the jump; they wouldn't have to, not when I would be recycled back to phase one if I didn't quit. I’d torment myself more than anyone else possibly could.

  “Pick up and don your chutes,” Bainbridge ordered. “Once you have checked them, check your partner’s chute and then proceed to the plane.”

  “Don’t worry,” Posh said, very quietly. “I pissed my pants the first time I took a dive too.”

  I glowered at him, then checked his parachute. It looked good, as far as I could tell; I later learned the parachutes genuinely were civilian models, slightly modified. Later, we’d start training on standard military-grade parachutes, designed to open at low attitude. A mistake with one of those could send us slamming into the ground before we had a hope of recovery.

  They even told us to leave our rifles behind, I thought. We still carried our pistols, but we’d been told to leave the rifles in our storage lockers. It was unusual - and worrying. Normally, not carrying one’s rifle was a serious offense, punished with dozens of push-ups. For us to be told to leave them behind ... They must be worried about losing them.