by Marko Kloos
The other members of the squad size me up just like my roommates did yesterday, and I nod at them.
“Thank God,” one of them says. “That means I’m officially no longer the FNG. Thank you, Grayson.”
“My pleasure,” I say. “Just make sure you pass along the handbook, okay?”
“Oh, there’s not much to it. Just keep the fridge in the room stocked, and make sure everyone’s boots are shiny every morning.”
“Don’t listen to Phillips,” Hansen says. “If the job required being good at anything, he would have been fired on Day Two.”
Hansen introduces the rest of the squad to me one by one. Phillips is a tall, freckle-faced guy with wiry red hair and glasses with little circular lenses. Jackson is an equally tall and thin black girl. She wears interesting tattoos under her eyes, some sort of tribal pattern. Stratton is a steel-jawed recruiting poster model who would look terribly intimidating in his perfection if he wasn’t the shortest member of the squad by half a head. Lastly, there’s Paterson, whose buzz cut doesn’t quite conceal the fact that he’s going bald already. Jackson is a corporal, Stratton and Paterson are Privates First Class, and Phillips is a one-chevron private. I am the only member of the squad without a rank device on the collar.
“This is not a training unit,” I say. “I was sort of expecting some more advanced training. The other recruits in my platoon all went on to schools of some kind.”
“Nope, this is a field battalion,” Jackson replies. “TA infantry doesn’t need to send people off to school. You got the skills in Basic, and infantry business is just some more of that, only with live ammo. You’ll learn on the job with us, in the field.”
“We’re a pretty active battalion,” Stratton says. “We have one or two live calls a month. You’ll probably see combat before you have a chance to wear in those new boots.”
I chuckle at this, but none of the soldiers at the breakfast table seem to think Stratton is joking, and my chuckle just kind of dies in my throat when I realize that he isn’t.
“So you’re the new guy,” Staff Sergeant Fallon says when she enters our squad room. She’s a short woman, with dark hair that she wears in a ponytail, and she looks hard enough to beat up half the squad without much trouble. She wears her ICU sleeves rolled up like the Drill Instructors in Basic did, and the muscles on her arms look like steel cables.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say, and stand at attention, only to be waved off almost instantly.
“At ease,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Jesus, don’t those instructors over at the Depot remove the corn cobs before they send you off into real life?”
“I don’t remember having been issued any sort of vegetables, Staff Sergeant,” I reply, and Sergeant Fallon chuckles.
“A smartass. As if we didn’t have enough of those already. I think you’ll fit in just fine.”
The duty schedule in a field regiment of light infantry is pretty simple, at least for the grunts whose main job is to pull a trigger. When your job is to kill people and blow up stuff, you either learn about how to do your job better, or you practice the skills you’ve already learned. We spend as much time out in the field as we do on manuals and classroom instruction. Fort Shughart has its own Urban Combat training facility, of course, and every platoon gets to spend some time there every week, practicing attack and defense, much like in Basic. There’s a live-fire range, too, and Sergeant Fallon has me qualify on the M-66 rifle in my first week.
My issue rifle feels different from the training version somehow, even though it weighs the same, and operates in exactly the same fashion. Maybe it’s the knowledge that this weapon actually fires live rounds, flechettes that can pierce armor and flesh instead of harmless beams that merely trigger a computer protocol, but somehow I have a lot more respect for this weapon. We don’t practice with live ammo—the issue rifles fire blanks on the Urban Combat course, and training adapters on the muzzle supply the simulated projectiles—but at the firing range, there’s nothing virtual about the flechettes that leave the muzzle of my M-66.
The qualification course of fire for infantry soldiers consists of a hundred pop-up targets at random intervals and distances. I engage them all in turn, centering the reticle of my M-66 on the target and letting the computer determine the rate of fire. The rifle burps short streams of flechettes at each target, and most of the time, they fall down. The moving targets give me a bit of trouble at first, especially the ones that are moving laterally, but after a few missed silhouettes, I figure out the correct amount of lead, and my score improves.
“Not bad at all for a guy fresh out of Basic,” Sergeant Fallon says when I have finished the course and unloaded my weapon for safety inspection. “That’s a seventy-nine. Marksman score. One more hit, and you would have scored Sharpshooter. You can let it stand, or try for Sharpshooter or Expert.”
“I’ll try again,” I say, and Sergeant Fallon nods with approval.
“Marksman’s a good score for cooks and filing clerks, but the Expert badge looks better on an Infantry Class A. Not that it matters in the end, mind you. What really counts is how well you can shoot when your targets are shooting back.”
Chapter 8
Two weeks after my arrival, we have a combat deployment. My boots aren’t even close to worn in yet.
“Don’t bother packing spare socks,” Sergeant Fallon says as we get geared up in our squad rooms. “We’re going light. Basic load only. We’ll probably be home for dinner.”
“Where are we headed, Sarge?” Stratton asks.
“Some milk run to the Balkans. Someone’s declared independence again, and they’ve aligned with the Sino-Russians. We’re just dashing over there in the drop ships to do an embassy evac.”
“Back for dinner,” Stratton says. “I don’t mind a milk run for a change.”
“We go skids up in forty-five minutes,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Put on your party clothes, grab your guns from the armory, and hop on the bus. You know the drill, so let’s get busy.”
We help each other into our battle armor, and check our latches and seals. Then we go downstairs to the company armory, where the sergeant-at-arms and his helpers are standing by to hand us our weapons. There are other squads lined up in front of the armory already, but the armory staff is efficient, and nobody spends more than ten seconds trading rack tags for issue weapons. When we’re all armed, we file out of the building to the waiting bus that will take us to the drop ships.
Our autonomous regiment has a squadron of Hornet attack drop ships. They’re not the space-going version the Marines use, only atmosphere craft, but they carry more armor plating and weapons than the Marine version, because they don’t need to dedicate any space or weight allowance to all the junk needed for space flight. Each drop ship can carry an entire platoon of troops, or a single battle tank. On this mission, we go light—command has determined that we won’t need heavy armor, so we’ll only use four out of twelve ships, and load them up with one of the battalion’s light infantry companies—Bravo Company.
Four platoons of TA soldiers carry a lot of firepower, even without the tanks and artillery. The Hornet drop ships don’t just ferry us into battle, they serve as close air support and command & control units as well. When we pull up to the airfield, the four ships are already lined up, engines running, navigation lights flashing, and rear cargo ramps extended. They’re squat and mean-looking craft, all angles and edges, with stubby wings that hold lots of fuel tanks and ordnance.
“Let’s go for a ride,” Sergeant Fallon says as she gets out of her seat, and everybody on the bus whoops and hollers like we’re about to ride out to the stadium for a Commonwealth League football game.
The ride is a bit bumpy. Military drop ships skimp on the creature comforts. There are two rows of seats along the sides of the hull in the cargo bay, and they’re merely fabric nets with lap belts that look like they were installed as an afterthought.
Somewhere over the eastern Mediterranean, the platoon serge
ant gets out of his seat and starts handing out ammunition containers to the squad leaders. Sergeant Fallon grabs two of the containers and brings them back to us. She pops the airtight seal on the crates, and the lid comes open to reveal neatly stacked rows of M-66 magazines and grenades.
“Five rifle mags per head,” she says to us, undoubtedly for my benefit. “Four in the mag pouches, one in the rifle. Don’t work that charging handle until we’re on the ground, and I give the go-ahead.”
Two of my squad mates also receive a pair of launcher tubes. I recognize them from Basic—they’re Sarissa anti-armor missiles. Everybody takes turns reaching into the ammo crate and filling up the magazine pouches and grenade loops attached to their battle armor, and I follow suit.
“Put on your helmets, and we’ll check the TacLink. Mission briefing in five.”
“What if we get into a mess and need more ammo?” I ask. Sergeant Fallon merely points to the front of the cargo bay.
“Drop ship has extra ammo storage. We get stranded somewhere, we have enough ordnance with us to keep us shooting for days.”
We don our helmets, and lower the eye pieces. The tactical uplink activates, and I see the familiar diamond-shaped symbols marking individual squad and platoon members in my field of vision.
“Commo check,” Sergeant Fallon says on the squad channel. We all check in by squad. Today, I’m Alpha-4, fourth member of fire team Alpha. Each squad is split into two fire teams of four soldiers each. Our squad leader is tied into the platoon channel, and the platoon leaders in turn are tied into the company channel. That way, the higher level channels aren’t cluttered with the battle chatter of every soldier in the company.
“Here’s the scoop,” our platoon leader says as our computers bring up little overhead maps of the target area.
“We’re doing an embassy evacuation of NAC personnel. They got their eviction notice via rocket-propelled grenades this morning. Local defense crew is holding out, but they could really use some hardcore grunts on the ground.”
One of the maps resolves into a three-dimensional representation of the embassy complex, and our platoon leader overlays deployment vectors as he continues.
“Once the ships are on the ground, First and Second Platoons will establish a perimeter defense to augment the embassy security team. First Platoon gets the front gate and the East Wall. The guys from Second Platoon will cover the West Wall and the back. They have two hundred personnel and civilian refugees to be flown out, so we’ll have to ferry them in two trips with the drop ships. Third and Fourth Platoons are riding herd on the civvies. The drop ships come back, we load up the second batch of civilians, we do an orderly exfil, and then meet up with the other half of Bravo Company at the destination. We hang around until the transports come to pick up the civvies, and then we’ll hop back into the drop ships and head home. Should be a cakewalk.”
“Ain’t it always,” my seat neighbor murmurs.
“You heard the man,” Sergeant Fallon takes over. “We’re covering the front gate, together with Second Squad. Third and Fourth Squads cover the East Wall. If the natives get restless, the shit will probably hit the fan at the gate, so we’re the trip wire for the rest of the platoon.”
“Rules of engagement?” Corporal Jackson asks. She looks sinister in her gray battle armor, her helmet covering everything but the tattooed area around her eyes.
“Anyone who points a weapon at us or tries to enter the embassy grounds is fair game. Lethal force is authorized. Use your judgment, as always.”
“Copy that,” Jackson says.
“Remember, the embassy is sovereign NAC territory by international law. Anyone shoots at us from the outside, light ‘em up. Now let’s go over the map for a second and straighten out the fire team deployment.”
“Buckle in, folks,” we hear over the ship com channel a half hour later. “Descending into target area, ETA ten minutes. We’re doing a combat landing, so hold on to your lunches, boys and girls.”
My platoon mates groan at this, and I raise a questioning eyebrow at Stratton, who sits to my right.
“Combat landing. Corkscrew descent at high speed, to throw off targeting solutions. They go in at full throttle and hit the brakes, like, five seconds before the skids touch down.”
He buckles in and tightens his seat belt firmly before placing his rifle into the holding clamps by the side of his seat. I quickly follow suit.
The engines of the drop ship increase power, and then the ship banks to the left and starts sinking at a rather alarming rate. My seat is on the left side, so the tight left-hand turn has me pressed back against the armor liner of the hull. Across the cargo bay, the members of Third and Fourth Squad are hanging in their seats, only restrained by their lap belts. I briefly wonder what will happen if the lap belt of the soldier directly across the bay from me breaks, and two hundred and fifty pounds of armored trooper come hurtling across the bay toward me.
The descent is harrowing, but mercifully brief. When the ship straightens itself out for the final descent into the target area, I’m only moderately nauseated. The drop ship has no windows in the side of the hull, so we can’t see what we’re getting into until the skids touch down and the cargo ramp lowers. The drop ship settles on the ground almost gently, and the squad leaders are out of their seats before the ramp is even a quarter of the way down.
“Lock and load,” Sergeant Fallon shouts.
We get up and charge our weapons. The bolt of my rifle slams home, shoving a live flechette round into the chamber. This is not the first time I’ve loaded real ammunition, but it’s the first time I may be shooting those flechettes at people instead of gel-filled polymer silhouettes.
The ramp hits the ground. Outside, I see a manicured lawn, and a collection of low buildings beyond.
“Let’s go, people!”
We exit the drop ship at a run, weapons at the ready. Our tactical displays show us the deployment vectors for the individual squads, so we don’t need anyone to lead the way. Stratton is ahead of me, and I follow him across the lawn toward the front gate of the complex. Behind me, First and Second Squads follow, sixteen little blue diamond carets on the tactical map overlaid into my field of vision by the helmet display.
“Fire Team Alpha, let’s find some cover by those planters on the left side of that gate,” Corporal Baker says over the team channel.
There are two embassy guards in riot gear hunkered down by the guardhouse on the traffic island in front of the gate. The gate itself is a cast iron latticework, intended more for decoration than for use as a real barrier. I chuckle when I see that the guards have lowered the red and white arms of the traffic barriers as well, as if those ceremonial pieces of striped plastic will offer some additional resistance if someone decides to break through the gate.
We take up position behind the heavy concrete planters fifty yards behind the guardhouse, and the guards come rushing over, running with their heads drawn in like a pair of turtles. They wear impact plates, but those are nothing like our battle armor, just chest and back plates joined by quick-release fasteners. They’re armed with short-barreled PDWs, little automatic submachine guns that are better than a pistol, but nowhere near as useful as a rifle.
“Glad to see you guys,” one of the guardsmen says. “We’re ready to get the hell out of here.”
“Any trouble with the locals?” Corporal Baker asks.
“You could say that. We got some grenade fire into the central building this morning, and ever since then, it’s been small-arms fire here and there. The locals must have raided an armory, or something. We keep getting drive-bys. Thank God they can’t shoot. They just sort of drive up and spray a magazine into our general direction.”
“Well, the next round is on us,” Baker says. “You guys stay in the back a bit.”
“No argument,” the other guardsman says, and both of them rush off to find cover somewhere.
“Bravo One-One, first fire team is in position,” Baker says into hi
s helmet mike.
“I know, nimrod. We’re thirty yards to your right. I can see you,” Sergeant Fallon’s reply comes back over the squad channel, and we all chuckle.
“Listen to that shit,” Hansen says. There’s a steady crackling of gunfire coming from the city beyond the gates of the embassy. I can see empty streets, illuminated by yellow streetlights. The area around the embassy looks like a business zone, shuttered shops and deactivated marquees. “Wonder if they have any good bars around here,” I say.
“Wanna go out and look for one? I got my universal credit card right here.” Stratton hefts his rifle.
I open my mouth for a smart-ass reply, but now we hear engine sounds from the end of the street beyond the embassy gate, and everybody gets back to the business of finding cover. This sounds like an old combustion engine, the kind they used to put on heavy equipment. I can feel the pavement vibrate with the low drumming of the far-off engine.
“This can’t be good,” Hansen says.
“The drop ships are loading up the civilians right now,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Anything comes around that corner that looks more dangerous than a street sweeper, you take it the fuck out.”
There’s activity at the far end of the street. The blunt snout of an armored vehicle appears, and we watch as it turns the corner, taking out a trash container and a shop marquee in the process. It’s a battle tank, one of the old models that run on tracks. It stands much higher than a modern tank, and instead of a modular weapons mount, it has a round armored turret that looks like a frying pan turned upside down, and a cannon that’s almost as long as the tank itself. It’s a rolling antique, but if they have ammo for that big gun, it can still dish out a world of hurt.
“Fuck me,” Baker says. “Get out of line of sight, people.”
We don’t need the encouragement. The planters are good protection against small-arms fire, but not against a tank cannon.