by J. N. Chaney
“It’s Earth,” Sergeant Prestor Nix said with certainty.
“Bullshit,” PFC Hussein “Hus-man” Černý said. “No way the damned tin-asses got that far in. And for what? No industry and only eight hundred thousand people? Why would they want a nature reserve, especially when Titan’s in the home system, too?”
Like all people, Rev had an almost religious attachment to The Mother, and the sergeant’s pronouncement gave him a jolt.
Could he be right?
“What do you think, Staff Sergeant?” Tomiko asked. “Could it be Earth?”
Staff Sergeant Montez looked up from her pad. Raiders could read novels or watch holos by direct input, but the SNCO preferred old-fashioned text pads.
“It could be, but I doubt it. There are more divisions than we can count between us and Earth, not to mention the Frisian Host and the Manifest Destiny Sphere. And don’t forget the blue-hats. No, I think we’re going farther out on the arm.”
Rev didn’t give much weight to the blue-hats—the Home Guard—which were the armed forces of the Congress of Humanity. It wasn’t that the elite force, based out of Titan, was incapable. Far from it. They took only the elite among the military forces of humankind. But with a single division, they just didn’t have the manpower to do much against a concerted Centaur attack.
The Frisians, with their hundred billion citizens and strong army, and the Manifest Destiny Sphere, which was almost as big, were altogether different. Maybe the staff sergeant was right.
But that didn’t answer the question as to where they were going. All they knew was that this was the real deal and not a drill. For the first time in more than two years, the regiment was heading out as a command and not piecemealing units for smaller missions.
The boredom was running concurrently with the stress of the unknown, and two fights had already broken out between Marines and crew—and that was with only twenty-three Marines and fifteen crew aboard the small skiff.
There were five ships in the Union Navy that could embark an entire regiment. There used to be eight, but the Centaurs destroyed three of them, all with full regiments embarked. Subsequent to that, Marines were spread-loaded on as many vessels as possible—which put a huge strain on the Navy, and there was always some resentment on the ships-of-war now that they had to carry Marines.
Not that the Amethyst had started out as a combatant. From the looks of it, she had been a small freighter before the war. Now she was officially designated a skiff and had been retrofitted to insert Navy or Marine special forces. Small and cramped, she had none of the facilities of the larger ships, including combat trainers and a gym. All the Marines—the Raider team and a squad of combat engineers—could not eat at one time in the tiny galley, much less sit with the sailors.
After the second fight between one of the engineers and a squid, the captain—the guy was a lieutenant commander, but the Navy called him a captain, which was the same as a Marine colonel, and something Rev thought was pretty screwed up—banished the Marines to their two berthing compartments, allowing them to come out only to eat, use the head, or to run the checks on their equipment.
So, with nothing to do for most of the time, the Marines jacked into entertainment or sat around, shooting the shit. Rev had watched a couple of holos, but for the most part, he sat around with the others.
Once they had a mission, things would get busier. They didn’t have a combat trainer on board, but the team had a portable trainer, and they’d do their rehearsals hooked up to it. It wasn’t the same as getting to do them physically, but it was the best they could do.
“Do you think Montez is right?” Rev whispered into Tomiko’s ear. “The tin-asses aren’t attacking The Mother, right?”
Tomiko shrugged, but from the look in her eyes, she wished that Nix hadn’t brought up the possibility. Rev felt the same way.
Earth had no strategic value, at least compared to the planets the Centaurs usually hit. But it was the beating heart of the human psyche.
Centuries ago, the planet, poisoned and sick, had been evacuated, leaving behind a cadre of healers and caretakers. Ironically, it was the very science of terraforming that had allowed for the human diaspora to settle this corner of the galaxy that healed The Mother. Animals, many long extinct, were cloned from the DNA zoos, and within a short century, Earth was a natural reserve, The Mother.
The idea of the Centaurs invading . . . Rev shuddered. He couldn’t even bear the thought. He knew he would never even get within pissing range of The Mother, much less the Home System, but that didn’t change his feelings.
“Could be Titan,” Sergeant Nix said. “The Centaurs might be wanting to cut off our head. Good strategic move.”
Which made sense from a military standpoint. But humanity was too numerous, too spread out. Taking or destroying Titan would wipe out the Congress of Humanity, but it would hardly bring the human race to its knees. Humans were like cockroaches in that. Stomp on the king cockroach, and the rest just scatter into the cracks and crevices, ready to come out again as soon as the lights went out.
No, more like bees. Take out the queen, and the rest will still swarm, stinging their enemy, even if a hundred die in killing the invader.
The hatch opened, and the lieutenant stuck his head in. “Stand by. We’ve got a mission.”
The boredom disappeared in a flash. It was go-time.
19
Twenty-two hours later, Rev was waiting in the cramped cargo hold of the Amethyst. The skiff had been refitted with a pisser launch system, which took up the bulk of the hold. The bulkheads were lined with the pissers themselves, all the track, ready to be fed into the launcher like linked rounds in a crew-served weapon.
Only in this case, Rev and the other Raiders were the rounds. Three recon platoons, the Raider platoon, and two sapper squads were out in the black like them, ready to be inserted in advance of the assault. A couple of Rev’s Direct Combat company mates, Jonah Wisteria, Rafer d’Agonstino, and Giselle Norris-Alein, would be out there somewhere, ready to cocoon in as well: Rafer and Giselle with recon, and Jonah with a sapper squad.
Other than Krissy—respect for the fallen—the five of them would be the first of their DC class to actually go into combat. The rest of the class would land with the regiment in another twenty-nine hours.
Their target was Preacher Rolls, a once bustling planet of three billion, and now there were possibly a hundred thousand to a million humans hiding out in the hills and forests. The planet had been one of the first taken by the Centaurs, and the death toll had been horrendous. Well over two billion humans had been killed. The planet was then one of the first that humanity had retaken, and the COH had ordered it evacuated against the will of most of the survivors.
Another couple hundred were evacuated before the Centaurs retook the planet, scorching about thirty percent of the land masses. It was assumed that there were no survivors from those sections.
When Intel reported that two-thirds of the Centaurs left, leaving somewhere between six and eight hundred on the planet, the regiment, along with the Fifth and Seventh Marines, was embarked to retake it. Over nine-thousand Marines to take on possibly eight hundred Centaurs. It should have been two divisions, according to the lieutenant, given the mortality rate of about two hundred human soldiers for every dead Centaur. The Perseus Marines liked to think of themselves as more elite than most of the rest of humanity’s armed forces, but still—humanity was stretched thin, and the Gryphons, Lancers, and Bucks got the call.
“You’re next,” the Navy launch master, a grizzled senior chief, told Rev.
Rev hesitantly lowered himself into the pisser—the Personal Insertion Sphere-31. He’d never been in a real pisser in training, only virtual ones. The training had only been for a ten-hour simulation, and that was bad enough. This time, their insert would take more than sixty hours. Luckily, he’d be out for most of that. Still, the thought of hurtling through space in what was essentially a three-meter-long cocoon was mor
e than a little disconcerting.
The launch master hooked up the pisser to Rev’s jack, then checked the readings. “I’ve got you all green.”
Rev gave him a thumbs-up. He tried not to think about the millions of calculations necessary to not only get him to Preacher Rolls over the vast amount of space, but also of having to hit the planet’s atmosphere at just the right angle. Too shallow, and he’d bounce back up into space. Too steep and he’d burn up in entry.
“See you on the ground,” Tomiko said from behind him.
Rev twisted to see her standing by her pisser just as his cover shut, closing him off from everything and cloaking him in darkness.
“How are we doing? Are the readings good?”
“Time to launch?”
Damn, that long?
Rev took a couple of deep breaths, wishing he could just be put out now. But regulations were regulations, and he couldn’t go under until launched. Not that he understood why. If something went wrong with the
launch, there was nothing he could do about it but pray the Amethyst could rescue him.
Hell, getting shot through space in an unpowered coffin. What could possibly go wrong?
Rev couldn’t even talk to anyone else. The pisser was shielded and inert. The tiniest trickle of nanowatts connected him to the pisser, and even that would be cut after he was launched. It wasn’t until he hit the stratosphere that he’d break apart a chemical battery, allowing electricity to generate. Only then would he have any capabilities.
So, for now, he was left alone with his thoughts.
“How much time?” he asked again after waiting at least twenty minutes.
Hell.
He shifted his body, then reached around to smooth his flight suit where it met the seat. Most of the pisser’s velocity would be coming from the Amethyst itself, like the old Twentieth Century aircraft carriers launching planes. However, the launcher would give them an added boost, one that an unaugmented Marine would find tough to survive. The older hands had warned Tomiko and him that the slightest wrinkle would dig into their body, and they’d feel it upon waking up at their destination.
He tried counting down, and when he reached two hundred, he asked his AI for the time again.
I counted to two hundred. Shouldn’t that be at least three minutes?
Rev shook his head. This sucked, and he felt alone. If he could only call up Tomiko. That wasn’t going to happen, however.
But—
Rev considered his AI. It wasn’t a real person, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to give it a little personality?
Feeling stupid, Rev said, “AI, I want you to up your PQ to ten . . . no, fifteen percent.”
There wasn’t much of a difference, Rev thought. Maybe the voice wasn’t quite so flat.
Stupid. It’s not like it’s going to become a person.
Rev thought about telling it to revert, but he guessed it wouldn’t make any difference. He lay on his back, stewing in his thoughts before he asked for the time again.
Rev sighed, and unexpectedly his AI said,
“What, you can do that?”
“Well, hell, why didn’t you tell me that before?” Rev started. Then he said, “That’s not a question,” before his AI could answer.
He had probably been told that during his initial briefing, or he would have found out as he got accustomed to using his AI, but he’d put it to sleep whenever he wasn’t officially required to use it.
“Can you play . . . uh . . . ‘Descent Into Madness?’”
Almost immediately, the heavy bass riff began, almost as if he were right there in the front row of a Blazing Ants concert. It was hard to believe there wasn’t really any sound being made. The music was being inputted directly into his auditory cortex. It was like having the best sound system ever.
The song increased in volume. With its driving beat and screaming lyrics, it probably wasn’t the best choice to calm him down, but Rev didn’t care. It took his mind off his claustrophobic pisser and the upcoming voyage.
From “Descent Into Madness,” Rev went to “Lost,” then “Red Horizons.”
“How didn’t I know I could do this?” he asked himself as he bobbed his head to the beat.
Before he knew it, his AI cut “Nice Guys Don’t Finish” to say,
“Uh, no. I’m fine. Let’s do it.”
Within seconds, his combat suit started to cool, and cardiovascular constrictors flooded his body. Between the lower temperature and the drugs, his blood pressure was going to climb to 450 over 300, which would be deadly for an unaugmented Marine, but he’d handled it during testing. It hadn’t been comfortable, but neither had it been as bad as he’d thought it would be.
After two minutes, his combat suit, which was on under his flight suit, began to constrict around his arms, legs, and pelvis, forcing blood into his thorax and head. This was worse than the drugs.
The pisser lurched, and Rev grabbed the two handles by his side and jammed his feet into the footplates. He could feel the pisser make its way to the launcher, and once again, dark thoughts of being lost in the deep black of space began to creep into the nethers of his consciousness. The thought of facing Centaurs was not as daunting as what he was about to experience. At least in facing a Centaur, he’d have some degree of control. Now, he was only a package to be delivered.
The pisser stopped, probably inside the launch arm. All Rev could do was to hope the crystal brain inside of it was making the right calculations. Even a slight miscalculation, something as minor as having the wrong combined weight of the pisser with Rev aboard, could end up in a bad way.
Rev held his breath, momentarily afraid that if he exhaled, it would change his mass, and then he laughed at his foolishness. He was in an enclosed environment.
Rev grasped the two handles alongside him and tensed his arms.
< . . . eight seconds . . . seven seconds . . . six seconds . . . >
Rev extended his thighs, muscles capable of lifting nine hundred kilos straining. It wasn’t just to fight G-Loc. If he failed, he would fail catastrophically. The amount of G’s he’d face could be deadly.
< . . . five seconds . . . four seconds . . . three seconds . . . >
Rev took a deep breath.
< . . . initiate AGMS . . . >
Rev exhaled, tensing his belly and limbs.
< . . . one second . . . launch.>
And God’s own hammer came crashing down on Rev. This wasn’t a simulation, as real as that had been. This was far worse.
Rev kept his isometric pressure, trying to keep as much blood in his brain as possible as he accelerated off the Amethyst. Five seconds, ten seconds, twenty seconds, and he didn’t know if he could keep it up.
Suddenly, the pressure was gone. Rev took a deep breath of air, almost afraid to relax his death grip.
Not that he could see it, or even check it somehow, the acceleration harness would have dropped off. His pisser was now an unpowered, unguided coffin. The die was cast.
His nanos cleaned up the cardiovascular constrictors, and Rev felt lightheaded as his blood pressure dropped.
Then he broached the question he was almost afraid to ask. “Are we on course?”
< I have
no way to know for sure, but from the internal gyros, it appears the PIS-31 followed the planned acceleration and timing.>
“Couldn’t you just have told me everything was fine?”
His AI didn’t respond. Maybe it could tell a rhetorical question from a real one.
It took a good ten minutes until his body was scrubbed of the drugs and he began to feel normal. Not for long, however, he knew. He’d be put under soon.
It wasn’t just to keep him from going stir-crazy in the dark, though. There was limited O2 in the pisser, and this would keep him from consuming too much of it. Theoretically, if he missed the planet, he’d be kept under, almost in hibernation, as it were, in hopes that a Navy ship could track down and recover him.
No use delaying.
“Yes, go ahead.”
Another wave, far gentler this time, started to flow through him.
“Can you give me some music on the way out?” he mumbled.
The soft strains of “Wild Roses” followed him as he faded away.
Rev slowly emerged from the cottony cocoon. He was shaking and wasn’t quite sure why.
“Already?”
He stretched and yawned, and as the wake-ups took hold, everything came into focus. He felt vibrations as his pisser broke through the planet’s exosphere. At least he’d hit the target. Now, the questions were if he was at the angle to actually make it to the surface and then if he’d land near the rest of the team.
That is, if he wasn’t shot down first. But the Centaurs, for all the technological advantages, didn’t knock down many insertions. That meant they were either lax or that the humans had developed some stealth tech in the pissers that worked.
“How do we look?”
Of course, we’re inert.
The only electrical impulses going on now were those of his nervous system, and if the Centaurs could pick that up, he would be in for a world of shit.