by Isaac Stone
“They’ll do the training in space?” Harlo asked him. “Why do that when they could start here?”
“The trip to Mars takes a month in the orbital transport,” he explained, scratching his beard. “The middle section rotates to simulate Martian gravity and you’ll train there. It’s better to learn soldering in the environment of Mars. Besides, it saves taxpayer money to train you in transit.”
He didn’t tell Harlo that, in space, new recruits couldn’t go AWOL.
The Force sergeant and Harlo spent the next half-hour with the benefits package. The government had made the offer very sweet for a young man to deduct three months out of his life. He could choose to pick up his old profession when he returned or reenlist. There was no telling how long this conflict might last and Olympia needed all the help it could muster.
The sergeant had him stand next to a the flag of Olympia, a Daoist circle on a field of red, white, blue, while he took the oath of allegiance to the Force Syndicate. The oath was only in effect until his term of duty ended. The Force Volunteers were to be put in a completely new category and would be mixed in with the other professions. He would have a patch on his uniform to designate the trade he plied back on Earth in case they had need of his skills while in combat.
The Force sergeant took some measurements and gave him a disc to wear around his neck at all times. Harlo fingered the small circle with curiosity.
“What is this for?” he asked the sergeant. It felt cool but solid in his hand.
“Identification,” he was told. “Should you be injured in combat we can quickly identify you and make sure you get the proper treatment.”
And know where to send the body, the sergeant said to himself in silence.
He could smell the anxiety and fear in the air as forty young men, all between the ages of eighteen and twenty were herded onto the shuttle and locked down in to acceleration couches. Harlo looked around him and saw the scared faces of other Volunteers. They all wore the same clothes they wore when they entered the induction center. The shuttle attendants, all seasoned Force handlers, made certain everyone was ready for the big leap out of the Earth’s gravity. As he suspected, few of the recruits had ever left Earth before.
“Jack,” someone introduced himself to Harlo in the next seat, “Jack Stevenson. You sign up today?” The man had reddish hair and a beard.
“A few hours ago,” Harlo explained after he introduced himself. “I wanted to get away from the place I worked. I’m an algae farmer with Neptune Syndicate.” He tried not to think about what was about to happen.
“I’ve been a medical technician for the past year,” Jack explained. “I thought this would be a good change of pace. Always heard about those big wars in the past. And the stipend was pretty good.” He became quiet as a corporal locked the roll bar in front of him.
“We leave in six minutes,” an officer announced in front of them all. “You’ll feel a vibration and some chest compression. Everyone has a clean record, so now is the time to tell me if you don’t feel you signed up for the right thing. I won’t hesitate to let you leave and go back to where you came.”
No one left.
The shuttle roared into orbit. They’d only been inside ten minutes.
Chapter 5
An hour later, Harlo was part of the inductees on board the shuttle as it climbed to the transport in orbit.
Harlo’s senses came back to him after the shuttle began its final approach to the orbital transporter that would take them to the Martian War. He breathed easy and shook his head as the sensation of pull and pressure left his head. Harlo turned to his companion who smiled.
“I don’t want to do that again if I can avoid it,” he laughed.
The officer let them out of the acceleration chairs after the shuttle successfully docked with the orbiter. They were, floating, into it in a long tunnel where a lower-ranked Force member made sure each inductee was to be sent on to the right spot. He tried to focus on what lay ahead and followed the instructions thrown at him.
Tired, with his hair buzzed off by a Force barber, and wearing a tan uniform with a fish emblem on his shoulder to indicate his original syndicate, Harlo found himself part of a group of a hundred young men in the center of the orbital. This was the portion that rotated slowly to simulate Martian gravity. None of them had the slightest idea what would come next, but everyone expected it had something to do with guns.
From behind a curtain, strode Master Sargent Mustafa Bey.
He was a thin man with pale eyes that pierced through every new recruit. The sergeant walked down the line and inspected each man. No one really knew how to carry themselves at this stage and he didn’t expect they would. What he wanted to see was who had the drive to make a difference, where they were headed, and who might give him some trouble.
“Congratulations,” he greeted them. “You have been given the opportunity to be dropped into hell. I’m sure all of you have seen the videos and expect this to be some kind of glory parade. I’m here to inform you that if you listen to what I tell you, you just might live out your term of duty. Even if you do listen, there is no guarantee you’ll come back home in one piece.”
He let it sink in. There were a few faces that flinched, which Bey expected. He’d run enough of these classes for Volunteers to know what to expect. He grew up in the Force Syndicate, as did every other rank on this orbital transport. Deep down inside, it disgusted him the government had to recruit men from other syndicates to fill the exalted ranks of the Force. At least they were keeping them separate from the real Force members.
He appeared to be forty years old and had iron-grey hair. The sergeant had a slight mustache, which he kept trimmed neatly. He wore the green uniform of a long time Force member and made it clear the tan uniforms were to snap to attention when he demanded it. After five minutes of ego smashing, he allowed one of the new recruits to ask a question.
“When do we get to shoot?” Jack asked him. Sargent Bey glared at him.
“When do we learn to handle a rifle, sir,” Jack corrected himself.
“As soon as I can get your assess into the firing chamber,” he responded. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to give green recruits a gun this early, but Command has another idea. It seems they think you’ll be more effective if you have range practice before we reach Mars. There is only one place in this orbital transport where I trust you not to blow a hole in the side and kill everyone. You start tomorrow morning at six hundred hours, so get to your bunk. The days and nights on the ship are regulated to Martian time, so you can get used to it. Dismissed!”
Chapter 6
“At least we get to fire a gun,” Harlo said to the other men in his barracks. “Never had the chance to use one of those things. This will be great!” He was seated on his bunk.
“I have,” a man to his right. “Just keep it in mind those things are designed to kill. They can get you as easily as they can your target.” He leaned back in his bunk.
“What syndicate do you come from?” Jack asked him. He’d been assigned to the same barrack as Harlo.
“Remington,” the guy told him. “We build and repair rail guns.”
Sargent Bey, he later discovered, was a grisly bastard who had undergone several tours of duty in the Martian Wars. He was one of the first ones on the surface when the Force mobilized and marched into ZR territory. He was part of the initial wave that kept the front line assault troops of the ZR from reaching the capital of the Olympian Martian colony. He’d seen most of his original unit vaporized in a direct hit from a plasma bolt. Bey survived because he was outside the blockhouse in the latrine when the first round struck.
As one of the few direct survivors, he was sent up in front of a review board. Not only did they clear him of any dereliction charges, but Bey was awarded a citation for bravery in the face of combat. The sting of being one of the few men to survive the attack hurt and he quickly volunteered for more duty on the front lines.
“Blew
me right off the shitter,” he would latter tell the review board. “I thought someone had smoked a cigar. We told everyone not to smoke near the ammo dump or the human one, but they never listen. When the second round struck, I had my pants up and organized the rest of the squad into a defensive area. We hit back at the Z-boys with the mortars we had on hand. It was terrible. Everyone in that bunker that they hit first died. We never did find enough body parts to make a single one of our men. Even the identity discs were fried by the direct hit.”
By the time he returned to Mars, the battle lines were firm and the advances between each side stagnant. This didn’t mean the war was near to completion, it simply entered a new phase. Each side dug in and began to fortify their positions. In some areas, trenches were dug and the troops spent their time lobbing grenades at each other. When the weather changed, rain would fill the craters that remained after artillery attacks. They were flooded. When the rain stopped, the troopers who hadn’t drowned would pump out the water and get back to killing each other.
There was very little aerial combat. Each side had tacitly decided to limit air campaigns or orbital bombardment. Nuclear weapons were off the table, as no one wanted to be the first party to use them in hundreds of years and suffer the retaliatory wrath. Each side had atomics stored away and knew what would happen should they be deployed. The long, cold peace between each power block made people forget how deadly war could be.
Bey lost count of how many times he’d led troops down to the surface. He was involved with the training of the syndicate recruits since he seemed to be a man who produced results. It was rumored he got such good results because the new recruits were more scared of him than the enemy.
Bey's corporal was a man named Gary Tulpa. Corporal Tulpa was a strange man from the Coates Industrial Maintenance Syndicate who seemed to enjoy how risky it was to be in the war. If ever there was a war lover, it was Tulpa.
Some of the new Volunteers would whisper about Tulpa and claimed he was never promoted higher in the ranks due to his sadistic attitude when it came to attacks on the enemy. He refused any offer of surrender from an opponent, nor had he offered it up himself. Although he was a fierce fighter, it made him a liability as no one wanted a soldier who refused to even negotiate a surrender. Harlo found Tulpa distant and didn’t talk much with him, as opposed to Bey who wouldn’t shut up in front of the troops.
Another story about Tulpa involved him finding an officer’s cap and wearing it into a general staff, briefing until someone spotted who he really was. He was supposedly offered a court martial or to lead a suicide charge the next day. He accepted the latter and was one of three men out of twelve who returned alive, in spite of his front position in the battle line.
By this time, the volunteer experiment was six months old and the Force decided to allow the Volunteers their own chain of command, so long as the regular Force kept it under control at the first lieutenant level. No one was expected to sign up for additional tours of duty after the initial hell of the first battles. The Volunteers where always put on the front lines.
There was even a rumor that Tulpa’s family wanted him to volunteer to get him out of their syndicate branch. It was claimed he was destructive and caused havoc in his own family. Prior to the Gernsback Revolution, such men would have found a home in the old armed forces, as it was made up from recruits and draftees. A hereditary military made for a cheaper one, but it was much more difficult to mobilize a large enough standing army to be effective on Mars.
Tulpa was thin and constantly in motion. Harlo couldn’t recall one moment he remained still. His family was originally from Spain and he claimed to be an ancient blood royal. Other than that, Tulpa didn’t say a lot. He preferred to show his action through deeds. The corporal was short and stocky, built for low power and a small target. Some of the other Volunteers claimed he no longer came forward for suicide missions when Command refused to let him go in alone.
Harlo stood in awe one day and watched Corporal Tulpa hit a target in the gallery chamber five times in a row with his rail gun. Furthermore, he did it at five hundred yards. Each time the gun made a zip, part of the target vanished. This continued until all of it was gone with his final shot. Tulpa didn’t think much of it and swore his aim was bad that day.
Chapter 7
Graduation came quickly after the orbiter made the long voyage between worlds. Most of the trip involved sleep or inside the training center. The only place where the Volunteers were allowed inside the ship was the gravity-simulated center. No one except the crew, all members of the Force Syndicate, where allowed near the pilot compartment or the nuclear engines that sent the orbiter between worlds.
They passed close to transport ships that belonged to both the Zhong Republic and Sultanates, but they never came close enough to be of any concern. Besides, there was an agreement between each power not to attack the ships of the other while in route to Mars. No one wanted a space battle, which would be hard to start in the first place. The zone between Earth and Mars was too vast for any one state to control it. Various powers had bases on the asteroids, which traveled between the planets, but there was no fighting within the zone and the neutrality was respected.
Harlo, Jack and the other members of his squad were assembled in the training quarter on graduation day and received their emblems that showed they’d filled all the requirements of a Force Volunteer. The graduation rate was close to ninety-nine percent as the Force preselected for competency and would not tolerate slackers. It was rumored among the Volunteers that you’d be assigned to land mine removal if you didn’t pass.
“I’ll keep this brief,” Bey announced to the class. “You all managed to do what I wanted, so you have the potential to stay alive and kill the enemy. I’ve told you to forget about stupid glory and make sure the other side makes the supreme sacrifice. Remember, any plan is better than no plan and action is always better than none.” He stepped off the podium and motioned to Tulpa.
The corporal stood where the sergeant had been and looked out at the combined class of a hundred Volunteers. “If the statistics are right,” he said. “Most of you won’t last the first day. I know that is a surprise, but you need to be aware of what can happen when you’re stupid. Don’t be stupid because I’m sick of training Volunteers who have to be shipped back in crates.” He stepped off the platform and handed a noted to Bey.
Bey turned his face up at the note and looked up at the class of recruits. “This is dandy,” he announced. “We dock with the battle station over our territory on Mars in ten minutes. Everybody to your bunks and get your gear packed. Dismissed!”
Harlo scrambled with the other Volunteers to get ready and to transfer to the battle station. It wasn’t as disorganized as it would have been months ago. The training was in effect and the Volunteers were used to working in teams by now. Harlo scrambled to his bunk and rapidly packed his bag. Minutes later, he was in line to get inside the battle station.
“What happens if the connector is hit while we stand in line?” Jack asked him.
“That’s not funny,” Harlo grumbled.
Chapter 8
“Congratulations,” Bey and Tulpa greeted them from the other side. “We’re all part of the Ninth Legion.” The rest of the training class was gathered in a room where the gravity was even lower than on the orbital transport.
“I thought we were supposed to be assigned all over the planet,” Jack mentioned. He didn’t ask anything else when Tulpa gave him The Look.
“Change of plans,” Bey announced. “Anyone object? Because you can be dropped down there alone if you don’t want to go in with the rest of us. However, I think the life expectancy of a lone Volunteer in battle is measured in seconds. But you might be lucky; I know a few who lasted longer down there by themselves.”
Tulpa grinned.
“But not too many,” Bey added.
“I’ll be quick about this because we are going down fast,” the sergeant continued. “Our objective is
to take the Blue Lotus Fortress. It is five miles inside ZR territory. Last week they pushed into our space for the first time in months. It happened after an assault unit blew a hole open in the line. We managed to patch it, but lost plenty of men in the process. Command decided it was time to show these chumps we could push forward and bring this mess to an end.”
“Yesterday, our boys down there launched a little assault of their own and took the territory around the fortress. The Z-boys know what happened and are in the process of bringing up more troops to push us back. They need that fortress to keep us out of their territory. Lose the fortress; they could see the entire front line divided in two. We suspect they’ll try to get their allies to help them, in which case we’ll march into a really big shit storm. We need that fortress or this war could go on forever. I want it to come to a swift end and have the ZR on their knees begging for peace. Tulpa, you can give them some advice as to what to expect on the ground.”
“Expect the worst,” the small, intense corporal told them. “I expect to have the best time of my life. I keep track of how many of those Z-boys I’ve killed. I’m hoping for a new record when we hit the landing zone.” He grinned again and no one felt the humor.
“Any questions?” Bey asked them. “The only stupid question is the one that isn’t asked.”
“When do we get our gear?” one of the Volunteers from a clothing syndicate asked. “We’ve used the loaners until now.”
“You’ll have it issued in five minutes,” Bey explained. “As a matter of fact, I see the quarter master on his way right now.”
They were taken to another room where the supply department on the battle station checked their identity tags and matched them to the right armor size.
The body armor they trained in resembled Harlo’s deep diving suit. It was a complete set of armor that covered as much of the body as practical. The suit even had its own air supply. It came with an enclosed helmet with its own communications and vital signs read-out that appeared on a display inside the helmet. It was possible to measure the condition of the suit itself, since the armor had sensors that ran along it on the inside. This was useful in case you couldn’t tell where you’d been hit.