by Marko Kloos
Halley.
We’re in touch through the MilNet, and we message each other almost every day. Her training schedule at Fleet School is packed, but she still manages to send one reply to every three messages I send her way. She hates the cramming sessions for Astrophysics and Mathematics, and loves the weightlessness training, where all the Navy trainees get their first taste of the peculiarities of spaceborne duty. The Navy’s ships all have artificial gravity, of course, but trainees still have to learn how to function in a zero-gravity environment, just like the sailors in the old waterborne navy had to be able to swim. After Fleet School, she’s going on to three months of drop ship pilot school, and then she’ll get a co-pilot slot in one of the Navy’s many Combat Aviation squadrons, where she’ll ride in the left seat of a Wasp-class drop ship for a year before getting command of her own Wasp. I am more than just a little envious of her career path, which is pretty much the top job for a five-year enlistee. Halley will spend most of her first service year in training, but she’ll be a junior officer by the end of that year, and she’ll be dropping Marines and flying attack missions on far-off colony planets in a three-hundred-ton war machine. I’ll be slugging it out with belligerents on good old Terra, and the only things I’ll be commanding after a year will be my own pair of boots and the rifle slung across my chest. At the end of our service time, she’ll be a Lieutenant Junior Grade, the equivalent of a TA First Lieutenant, and I’ll be a Corporal at best, eight pay grades and a whole stack of social layers below her.
Strangely enough, it’s Halley who professes to be jealous of my job. When I send her a long and detailed message with the story of our embassy evac—my first combat mission—she replies just a little while later.
>That’s fucking awesome. I wish I could have been there.
>Are you serious? I reply. Real bullets and shit. There were two dozen guys out there trying to kill us.
>Yeah, I’m serious. I’ve spent all month in a classroom, or in my quarters reading training books. The room is about as big as a broom closet, and I’m sharing it with a girl who snores like a fucking dock worker.
I feel an entirely irrational twinge of relief at the revelation that she’s bunking with a girl, and not a male trainee.
>Well, hang in there. Pretty soon you’ll be dodging ground fire on a drop mission to some barely terraformed ball of mud in the Outer Rim.
>Ah, hell. If you gotta go out, might as well make a pretty comet, right?
I laugh at her reply, but part of me is keenly aware that many drop ship jocks have met their fate in exactly that fashion. The drop ships don’t just deliver Marines, they also serve as close air support, and the SLA marines have drop ships and sophisticated anti-air missiles of their own. No craft in the military arsenal is invincible, not even the huge new attack carriers that carry swarms of fighters and enough nukes to turn a fair-sized planet into a ball of glowing slag. A Wasp is a tough machine, but even a lowly rifle grenade can score a lucky hit on a critical part and bring the whole thing down in a fireball.
>Gotta run-next class is in five. More later.
I turn off my PDP and stare at the blank screen for a moment, trying to imagine Halley up on Luna, attending classes and bouncing around in zero-gravity training. She’s where I wanted to be, and I’m ashamed to be jealous of her, but what stings even more is the knowledge that I’ll probably never see her again.
The military is tribal to the core. Fort Shughart is a massive base, and the 365th Autonomous Infantry Battalion is just one of many units stationed here. We share the base with a composite air wing, a transport wing, a military police battalion, a Special Forces Group, and a half dozen other battalions with various specialties. Nominally, we even have a missile regiment of the Strategic Nuclear Command on the base as well, but the missile silos with their ordnance are a hundred miles away in Indiana, and the only part of the regiment actually present at Fort Shughart is a staff company building.
Any branch of the TA sees itself as superior to all the other branches, of course, so there is much competition between the units, both sanctioned and unofficial. There are base-wide sporting events, annual shooting competitions, and weekly brawls in the enlisted and NCO clubs. Infantry soldiers consider combat engineers dumb dirt chuckers, and combat engineers think infantry grunts are overly eager to get killed. The tribalism continues within the battalions, where companies compete against each other, and the companies, where platoons form their own little clans. Within the platoons, the good-natured rivalries extend all the way down to the squad level, and to the teams that make up each squad. Your battalion or regiment is your clan, your company is your extended family, your platoon is your immediate family, and your squad is your household. Like every family, we have our internal quarrels, but when some outsider picks a fight with one of us, we close rank.
“Will you look at that?”
We’re gathered around a table in the chow hall, picking at our dinners, when Jackson nods toward the door.
“Looks like we have dinner guests on base.”
I turn around to face the door. There’s a group of soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms walking through the door, and it takes me a moment to recognize the patterns.
“Holy shit, those are Marines. What the hell are they doing here?”
The Marines don’t look like super-soldiers. In fact, they look like any other grunt in the TA’s infantry battalions: high-and-tight haircuts, no body fat, well-defined arms sticking out of the rolled-up sleeves of their ICUs. The pattern isn’t the only thing different about Marine uniforms—they fold their sleeves so that the lighter inner liner of the ICU jacket shows, whereas TA troopers roll up the sleeves and then fold the last four inches of outer camouflage pattern over the rolled-up part.
The Marines walk into the chow hall with a bit of a swagger, fully aware of the stir their appearance is causing among the TA soldiers. We hardly ever see members of other military branches. Sometimes, a flight of Navy drop ships or shuttles will stop by on the way to a manufacturer refit, but space-going craft are flown by officers, and those don’t mingle with the enlisted grunts in the mess hall.
We watch as the Marines walk over to the food counter. They each pull a tray from the stack to the left of the counter, and insert themselves into the line, cutting in front of the TA troopers lined up for chow. There’s some grumbling in the ranks, but there are only ten or twelve TA troopers in the line, and the Marines are at least two squads strong.
“I don’t know about you guys,” Jackson says, “but all of a sudden, I really feel like having some dessert.”
We grin at each other.
“Right there with you,” Stratton says. “Let’s go grab some pie or something.”
We all push back our chairs and get up.
All around us, fellow TA troopers catch on, and get out of their seats as well. Jackson strides to the head of the line, her meal tray in both hands. As she passes the line of Marines, some of them size her up. Jackson is tall and wiry, and she looks more like a soccer coach than a combat grunt. She cuts in front of the lead Marine just as he’s about to put a dessert plate onto his tray, and then snatches the plate out of his hands. The Marine stares at her, dumbfounded, as she puts the plate onto her own tray.
“TA ain’t done eating yet,” she informs the Marine. “The lesser services don’t eat ’til the real soldiers are finished.”
The Marine snorts in disbelief, and turns around to share an incredulous look with the others. Jackson picks up a fork, and takes a bite of the dessert, seemingly unconcerned that she’s blocking the chow line in front of twenty Marines.
With dozens of combat grunts from two different service branches watching, the Marine doesn’t have a choice but to accept the challenge. He turns back to Jackson and smirks. She’s a tall girl, but he’s almost a head taller, and probably half again as heavy. He reaches out and puts a palm on her collarbone to shove her away from the chow counter.
Jackson drops her fork, grabs th
e Marine’s wrist with her right hand, and drives her left elbow into his ribs. He recoils in pain, and she sweeps her foot and takes him down at the ankles. The Marine crashes to the floor of the chow hall with an embarrassing lack of grace.
Just like that, the chow hall is transformed into a hand-to-hand combat training pitch. We rush to Jackson’s side, where the Marines closest to her are trying to make a better showing than their comrade, and soon every member of our squad is tangling with a Marine or two. They outnumber us by more than two to one, but TA troopers from other platoons are jumping into the fray. I grab a Marine by the front of his ICUs and shove him into the chow counter, where he bounces off the sneeze guard over the mashed potatoes. One of his buddies throws a punch that hits me on the side of the face, but then Stratton is by my side, and he clocks the second Marine with a textbook jab right to the tip of the chin. To my left, two Marines try to tackle Hansen, whose ponytail bounces as she sidesteps one of them gracefully before kneeing the second Marine in the groin. As I watch, another Marine tackles me from behind, and we both go down.
The next few minutes are a blur of punching, kicking, and shoving, Marine and TA camouflage patterns all blending in a flurry of skirmishes. The Marines hold their own, and they’re very good fighters, but we have the numbers on them, and our hand-to-hand combat training is just as good as theirs.
Then the doors of the chow hall fly open, and a whole bunch of Military Police in full riot gear come flooding in. They all carry electric crowd control sticks.
“Break it up! Break it up!” someone yells over a helmet mike. The MPs don’t waste much time waiting for compliance. They start applying their buzz sticks to the nearest brawlers. I hear shouts of pain, and Marines and TA troopers alike fall to the ground, immobilized by fifty-thousand volt shocks. All around me, the fighting ebbs.
The Marine who had me pinned to the ground releases his hold on my collar. Then he stands up, and extends a hand.
“Party poopers,” he says as he pulls me up, and we exchange grins. My jaw hurts on both sides, my nose is bleeding profusely, and I know I’ll have a bitch of a headache later tonight, but this has been one of the most entertaining dinners in months.
When we step out of the building for Orders the next morning, we have a surprise waiting: Command Sergeant Major Graciano, the battalion’s senior non-commissioned officer, is standing next to our company sergeant. I have a good idea why the CSM is present, and from the looks on the faces of many of my platoon mates, so do they.
“Sergeants, step out and tend to your shops,” CSM Graciano begins. “This one is for junior enlisted ears only.”
The squad leaders and platoon sergeants step out of the back of the formation and head back to the building. They have their own chow hall, and none of them were present last night when we redecorated ours with Marines.
“Funny thing happened yesterday,” the Sergeant Major says after the last of the sergeants disappears in the company building.
“The Sergeant of the Guard called me up last night to tell me some fairy tale about a bunch of my troopers hassling some Marines in the enlisted chow hall at dinner.”
He walks along the front rank, hands clasped behind his back, pausing to look at those of us who bear particularly obvious marks of last night’s dinner hall fracas.
“I told him that he must have been mistaken, because I know that none of you knuckleheads would start a fight with members of our esteemed sister services.”
He walks back to the center of the formation. The CSM is a short man, built like a bar brawler, and even though his military high-and-tight hair is snow white, he looks like he could take most of us in a fight. The CSM wears a lot of stripes, and there are a lot of colorful ribbons on his Class A shirt. When he says “jump”, the entire battalion is usually in mid-air before asking for an altitude parameter.
“Now,” he says. “I want to see everyone’s hands. Master Sergeant Rogers and I are going to check and see who here has recent unexplained injuries.”
We all hold out our hands in front of us, like a bunch of kindergartners being checked for cleanliness before lunch. CSM Graciano and Master Sergeant Rogers walk the line, and everyone with bruised knuckles or scrapes on the face receives a stern glance, and a growled “You.”
When the sergeants have finished checking the company, CSM Graciano parks himself front and center once more.
“Everyone we’ve pointed out—fall out and make a new line over there.” He points to the curb behind him.
My entire squad walks over to line up behind the Command Sergeant Major. We’re joined by most of Second Squad, and a fair chunk of Third and Fourth Squads.
“Now, everyone who wasn’t in the chow hall at the time, step out and go to your duty stations. You’re dismissed.”
About half of the remaining troops of Bravo Company file back into the building, relief on their faces.
“That means the rest of you were present, and did not participate in the alleged fight,” the CSM says. Then he turns to us.
“And you misfits decided to take on half a platoon of Marines, huh?”
We don’t say anything. Speaking without permission is a grave offense during Orders. We just stand and await our fate.
“Well, I told the MP and the battalion commander that I’d investigate the whole thing, and dish out punishment as required. Therefore, your weekend leave is cancelled. You will have an extra training session on Saturday, and one on Sunday.”
He waits for a moment to let the news sink in, and gives us a grim smile.
“We’ll be doing some supplemental close combat training in the gym. That was a disgraceful performance. You should have been able to mop up that herd of space apes before the MP even got to the mess hall.”
Then he turns around to face the remaining section of the company.
“And you people can kiss your weekend leave good-bye as well. The vehicle park needs a scrub-down, and I’m going to volunteer all of you to Master Sergeant Blauser for the job.”
The expressions on the faces of the remaining troopers change from smugness and relief to distress.
“The next time your comrades get into a fight, you jump in and help out, you understand? If they can’t count on you when they’re getting pushed around by a bunch of jarheads, they won’t be able to count on you when they’re under fire.”
CSM Graciano turns on his heel, clasps his hands behind his back once more, and shakes his head.
“Dismissed, all of you. Don’t make me come back out here real soon, you understand?”
“That was fucking awesome,” Stratton says as we file back in. “The best ass-chewing I’ve ever gotten. The old grunt has his head on straight, that’s for sure.”
“Yeah, he does,” I say. “I thought for sure our goose was cooked.”
“Don’t be too chipper,” Hansen throws in as she comes up behind us. “You know the CSM. He’ll invite those same Marines over for the extra close combat sessions, and have them gang up on us two to one.”
“We have the best fucking job in the world,” Stratton says with a grin. “Playing with guns, blowing up stuff, picking fights, and getting paid for it. They can keep the space services. I can’t even believe I ever wanted to be in the fucking Navy.”
At this point, my mind has fused the words Navy and Halley. Last night, while I was nursing a fat lip in the squad room, my data pad chirped to let me know I had an incoming message, and it was from Halley—a picture of herself in a brand new zero-g combat flight suit, ready for drop ship pilot training. There was no comment with the picture, and none was needed. She looked proud enough to burst, and just looking at the picture on my screen made my heart ache much worse than that bloody lip. If someone walked up to me right now and offered a slot in Fleet School, I’d take it without a second thought.
Nobody is going to do that, however, and I know that I’ll be a TA grunt for the duration of my enlistment. I like my buddies here, and I’ll try to be the kind of squad mate
everyone wants at their side in a crunch. I’ll even pick fights to defend the honor of my new family.
Still, I’d go Navy in a flash.
Chapter 10
“The shit has hit the fan, friends and neighbors.”
Sergeant Fallon is already clad in full battle armor when she strides into the squad room, where we’re all scrambling to get ready. The alarm is still trilling in the hallway outside, and the red light from the overhead LEDs is backlighting our squad leader ominously.
“What’s the deal, Sarge?” Hansen asks, and we all cease our noisy activities briefly to hear Sergeant Fallon’s answer.
“Welfare riot,” she says. “One of the PRCs up in Detroit.”
The mood in the room instantly goes from excitement to anxiety. It feels like a polar breeze has just entered through the open door with Sergeant Fallon.
“Fuck me,” Hansen mutters. My other squad mates murmur their assent.
I’ve seen a welfare riot before—not the riot itself, but the aftermath. When I was ten or eleven, we had one in our PRC, when an unholy alliance of street rats, hoodlums, fringe lunatics, and wannabe revolutionaries tried to torch every government installation in sight. The government did what it always does when the local police force can’t keep a lid on things. They sent in the military—two full battalions of TA, complete with armor and air support. Even with the overwhelming technological advantage of the TA soldiers, the fighting lasted for two days. My mother kept me home from school for a week, which was fantastic, and kept me from going outside for that whole week, which was less so. When I finally emerged from our apartment three days after the fighting had stopped, there were TA troopers on every street corner, and the streets had not been cleared of all the rubble and the burned vehicles yet.