Bainbridge wasn't leaving anything up to the jumpmaster. He checked our chutes as we filed past him and onto the plane. Compared to the shuttle, it was barren; it took me a moment to realise that we were meant to sit against the bulkheads (not an easy task with our chutes) and wait for takeoff. There were no windows, something I found oddly reassuring, even though others clearly found it claustrophobic. A large hologram of a pretty woman appeared the moment the hatches were banged closed and started to run through a safety lecture, but almost none of us paid attention. We were too busy contemplating what was to come.
The engines started, sending shivers running through the aircraft. I braced myself, unsure of what to expect, as the aircraft started to move, then surged forward so hard I grabbed hold of the handles and held on for dear life. It tilted sharply, then roared into the sky; I felt my ears pop as it wobbled from side to side, climbing rapidly. I couldn't help thinking that God was angry with us for daring to fly, slapping gusts of wind against the aircraft. Later, of course, I learned that Mars had uncomfortably strong turbulence in the upper atmosphere. But it still beat flying through a hurricane.
“You will not be expected to guide your descent,” Bainbridge said. He ignored the sound of someone being sick at the back. “All you have to do is take a step out of the aircraft and drop like a stone.”
I wished he hadn't said that. The butterflies in my stomach were mating and producing little baby butterflies. I told myself that it was fine, that I was wearing a civilian parachute, that civilians would bitch like anything if something went wrong ... and yet, it was hard to even think about standing up and walking to the hatch. The deck was shaking so badly - the aircraft shuddered every three minutes, as if someone was timing the turbulence - that I wasn't sure anyone could stand up without losing his balance moments later.
“There’s no ground-fire,” Nordstrom added. “Nothing reaching up to swat you from the air, just ... a safe and easy descent to the ground. You’ll be back in barracks before you know it.”
“And there's no shame in declining to jump,” Johnston concluded. He seemed to have forgotten that he was meant to be one of the disciplinarians. “You can sit back down and no one will think any less of you.”
The hatch opened with an almighty bang. It was hard to see much, from where I was sitting, but I could hear the sound of the wind rushing past as the aircraft entered the jump zone. The jumpmaster stood, carefully hooked himself onto the plane, then peered out into the atmosphere. He was hanging bare millimetres from a lethal fall, linked only by a line thinner than a piece of string, yet he seemed completely calm. And he wasn’t even wearing a parachute!
“All right,” he called. “Who’s up first?”
Nordstrom stepped up to the hatch and jumped. It was so quick that I barely saw it. He’d just jumped and vanished! The jumpmaster made a thumbs up sign, then nodded to Bainbridge, who jabbed a finger at the first victim. Focus, an older recruit from Squad One, stood, shuffled towards the hatch and perched on the edge of oblivion. I watched, unable to take my eyes off him, as he toppled forwards ...
The jumpmaster caught him. “Jump out, don’t fall,” he ordered. “Try again?”
Focus gave him a nasty look - rather ungratefully, I felt - and leapt into the atmosphere. The jumpmaster watched him, gave another thumbs up, then nodded. Bainbridge chose a second jumper, then a third; he was stabbing at us at random, rather than letting us form lines or jump out by squads. I think he was trying to make it easier on us, but I didn't feel very reassured. It might have been better if we had done it by lines ...
My body didn't want to move when Bainbridge pointed at me. It was all I could do to stand up, to walk forward; I hadn't been this nervous when I walked into the unarmed combat pit for the first time. But then, I hadn't really known what to expect. Here, I knew all too well. I took my place behind Hope and watched as first Totem, then Hope stepped up to the hatch and jumped into the air. Moments later, their parachutes blossomed into life, slowing their falls. I already knew, from the safety briefing, that the men on the ground would find them at once and get them back to the waiting room. They’d also have a chance to change their pants, if necessary.
“You’re up,” the jumpmaster shouted.
I could barely hear him over the wind. It was hard, incredibly hard, to inch up to the hatch and stare down towards the landing zone, far below. I had known, intellectually, that planets were big, yet now I grasped it emotionally for the first time. Mars is only half the size of Earth, but there’s no such thing as a ‘small’ planet. The landscape spread out below me was terrifyingly huge.
“Jump,” the Jumpmaster ordered.
I hesitated, completely frozen. I wanted to dive back into the plane, to hide from the vast landscape below me, to surrender to my fears. My mind was already coming up with excuses; I’d been born in the CityBlocks, I’d been taught to fear open spaces, I had nothing to be ashamed of ... I could go ... go where?
I threw myself forward in an undignified tumble. Gravity asserted itself at once and I plummeted down, straight towards the landing zone. I felt hot liquid in my pants as I lost control of my bladder, convinced - at a very primal level - that I was about to die. And then there was a terrifying jerk and my fall slowed, rapidly. When I glanced upwards, I saw the orange parachute safely deployed above my head.
I will not be beaten by this, I told myself. I might have pissed my pants, but I’d done it. I’d survived the urge to just give up, to put my tail between my legs and go home. But then, I had no home to go back to. Would it have been easier to quit if I’d had somewhere to go? I didn't want to know. Instead, I made myself a silent promise. I will not be beaten at all.
The descent became almost relaxing as I slowly grew used to the wide open landscape. It was almost a shock when the ground came up and I landed, the parachute falling around me as I touched down. I untangled myself from the backpack, crawled out from under the canopy and looked around. The jump zone was in the middle of a grassy plain, covered with the red weed that gave Mars its breathable atmosphere. I started to fold up the parachute, as per instructions, as I saw the aircar racing towards me. The ground crews had been waiting for us.
“You made it,” Hope called. We might have been in different squads - and bitter enemies on the training grounds - but we were united today. “That was fun, wasn't it?”
I scowled. “I need to change my pants,” I grumbled. There was no point in trying to hide it, not when there was a visible stain running down my legs. “Where do we go to do that?”
“There’s spare uniforms in the base,” the driver assured me. “You’ll be fine.”
Only three of us, it seemed, refused to make the jump. They were taken back down in the plane, then hurried off by the Drill Instructors and - by the time we returned to barracks - their bunks had already been stripped bare. We never saw them again, although I later learned that one of them had gone on to be a military policeman and another had become a surprisingly successful Civil Guardsman. Boot Camp was so intensive that the other military branches were quite happy to take our rejects, provided they quit rather than broke one of the rules and were kicked out. It was one of the ways the marines quietly gained influence over the other services.
“Congratulations,” Bainbridge said, as we gathered after a quick change of clothes. I wasn't the only one who’d had an unfortunate accident on the way down. “You have just endured the most terrifying experience in Boot Camp until we start practicing in zero-gee. Now ... all you have to do is get up there and do it again.”
He wasn't kidding. We jumped four more times, each time using a different model of parachute. I rapidly learned the difference between army-issue and marine-issue, although it wasn't until Nordstrom explained it to us after our landing that I understood just what I was seeing. An army parachutist using an automatic parachute would often have it deploy too soon, slowing his fall and exposing him to enemy fire from the ground; a marine would fall like a rock until the last po
ssible moment, whereupon he would pull the cord and deploy his parachute. It was safer, in the sense the enemy would have less time to take aim, but dangerous, if the cord wasn't pulled in time. A parachutist might slam into the ground before slowing his fall and die ...
That was how we lost Ace.
I hadn't known him well, not really. He was one of the shining stars of Squad One; a recruit from a background that actually prepared him rather well for the marines. I certainly don’t think he showed any hesitation when jumping out for the first time; even Viper, our snake in the grass, had managed to leap from the plane. And I have no idea just why he failed to deploy his parachute in time. All I know is that he hit the ground at terrifying speed and died.
We saw his body, afterwards. It looked surprisingly intact - most of us had seen plenty of violence, physical or sexual, on the flicks - but it was dead. Ace had been handsome, I supposed; now, he was just a broken sack of bones. It took time for us to realise that this could have happened to any of us, that our training wasn’t completely safe, that we could die before we graduated and saw the enemy. Like so much else, we knew it and yet we didn't quite believe. We were a sombre group of recruits that night, completely subdued. Even Viper looked pale and wan before Lights Out.
There was a small ceremony for him the following evening, after we had completed our daily exercises and training schedule. All of the training platoons gathered in the great hall and listened, silently, as Bainbridge spoke about Ace. I hadn't known he’d been born to a family on Shaddock, or that life there was so hard that the planet’s major export was people, or that Ace had had four parents and seven siblings. It sounded like a happy group marriage to me, one designed to provide a safety net for children who could lose their biological parents at any moment. He had had something I’d lacked until I joined the marines ...
... And yet, when he’d started to look for a career, he’d chosen to join too.
“We do our best to eliminate accidents, but there is always a certain level of risk,” Bainbridge said, after he had finished the brief eulogy. Ace had asked that his body be shipped home, if he died during training, and the corps would honour his request. “You should all understand, now at least, just how dangerous this can be. Training will go on, of course, if you wish to continue. If not, speak to one of us and we will see to your separation from the corps.”
I understood what we were being told, even if Bainbridge didn't say it outright. If we thought it was suddenly too dangerous to proceed, we could quit. The corps didn't want to keep anyone against their will, not when it needed men who would never quit. I could have left ...
... But I didn't.
Life was cheap in the Undercity, before the end; I’d known children who had died before reaching their teens and adults who had been casually murdered by the gangs. My own family had been killed in a spasm of gang violence. And yet, Ace’s death affected me more than any of those. Perhaps it was because he had been trying, unlike so many others, to become part of something greater than himself, or perhaps it was because he’d had true promise, promise that had been smashed along with his life. I mourned him as well as I could, then carried on. It was all I could do.
I never learned to love parachute jumps, not even after completing hundreds of them as part of basic training. But I learned to endure, to continue despite my fear ...
... And not, whatever happened, to allow fear to slow me down.
Chapter Fourteen
The downside of ‘realistic’ military training is the prospect of an accidental death - or several, if something goes badly wrong. Marine recruits have suffered a number of ghastly fates, ranging from drowning to depressurisation, but the corps has gone on. Safety is important, it insists, yet realism is also important. The Civil Guard safety record, during basic training, is far more impressive ... a fact that only looks good when seen in isolation. On deployment, marines - quite simply - do far better than anyone else.
-Professor Leo Caesius
They worked us hard for days after the accident.
I think they wanted to keep us from having time to brood and they were probably right. Ace had been a good recruit, one of the best. His death proved that anyone could die in training. We shot off thousands of rounds, marched hundreds of miles, beat the crap out of the younger platoon (and had the crap beaten out of us by the older platoons) and generally did our best to get over any lingering trauma caused by the death. By the time we were marched into the doctor’s office for another round of injections, two more of us had quit and the rest were feeling pushed to their limits.
“You will be pleased to know that higher authority has deemed you worthy of more investment,” Bainbridge said, as we rubbed our arms after the injections. “It will take several weeks for it to bed in, but you are now capable of eating a wide range of foodstuffs without suffering any ill effects. You will be able to eat grass, if necessary, while you are on deployment. It does have its limits, of course, but it makes it easier to support a marine detachment on the far side of the Empire.”
He went on about it in great and tedious detail. As I understood it at the time, there were plants that simply couldn't be eaten without ill effects, even if they did include some of the vital necessities of life. The injections would suppress the bad reactions, allowing us to eat them. They did have the great disadvantage of forcing our bodies to expel anything completely useless faster than normal, something that might be inconvenient in a combat zone, but I've yet to discover anything that didn't have disadvantages, no matter what the eggheads said.
“So basically we’re always going to swallow instead of spit,” Joker muttered.
“Shut up,” I muttered back.
I wasn't quiet enough. Bainbridge, as I may have mentioned, had abnormally sharp ears.
“Are you interrupting me?” He asked, in a polite tone that sent chills down our spines. “Is there something more important than my words exciting you?”
“No, sir,” we said, hastily.
“Drop and give me fifty,” he ordered, then continued as we dropped to the ground. “There will be some adverse effects from these injections, so you will spend the next couple of days on light duty. The time will not be wasted, however. You will attend the first lecture from a guest professor this evening.”
He was right, unfortunately. Most of us, including me, spent the day retching, although none of us actually threw up. Light duties consisted of more training and exercises than we’d done during Hell Week - it says a lot about how far we’d come that we took it in our stride - while they watched us carefully for more serious reactions. Joker had the worst of it, I think; he stumbled to his knees in the middle of a training run, dry-retching until I thought he was going to be genuinely sick. I helped him to his feet and ran with him until we reached the finishing line; oddly, none of the Drill Instructors berated us for coming in last. They must have been more worried than they let on.
That evening, after chow, we were herded into the briefing hall and told to sit down and relax. I couldn't help feeling as if I were going back to school, although I think I would have learned a great deal more if school had been run like Boot Camp. It probably couldn't have been, though. Recruits like us selected ourselves; we were in Boot Camp because we wanted to be in Boot Camp. Historically, conscript armies haven't had the motivation or training of volunteer armies and I saw no reason why it would be different for us. Marine training, as elaborate as it is, can only work when someone willingly places themselves into Boot Camp and submits to the Drill Instructors. I could have quit at any moment ...
... But I couldn't quit school.
Professor Sidney Baldwin struck me, at the time, as an odd duck. It wasn't until much later that I learned he was a typical marine academic. Marines are thinkers - that had been hammered into our heads time and time again - and perhaps it wasn't too surprising that some of us went back to the academic world to earn degrees. It was rare for a marine, serving or retired, to go to one of the big universi
ties, but there was a War College on the Slaughterhouse and several smaller universities where freedom of thought was considered more than lip service to an unattainable ideal. I hadn’t heard anything good about university in the Undercity, yet the War College sounded like fun. But I never had a chance to go.
“This is not a test,” Baldwin said. Unlike the teachers at school, he didn't have to shout - or beg - for silence. None of us would have dared pass notes, throw paper aeroplanes or bully our comrades anywhere near the Drill Instructors. And even if they hadn't been seated in the back, we wouldn't have done it anyway. “You can go to sleep, if you like, and I won’t care.”
Hah, I thought. Baldwin might not have cared, but the Drill Instructors certainly would. And besides, I doubted they’d be wasting our time. What Baldwin told us would probably relate to some aspect of our training, perhaps something just far enough away to give us an opportunity to forget before we needed it. I was starting to learn how they operated by now.
First To Fight (The Empire's Corps Book 11) Page 13