by JCH Rigby
The woman and her companion touched helmets, and I got the impression of a brief discussion. For the first time, I noticed the markings on their dark-colored suits were different: the woman had two horizontal red lines, but her partner wore a yellow triangle. He turned back toward me, and that strange, hissing voice came over my headset.
“We’re going in; your company commander is being briefed now by our boss. My name is Mahmoud, and I command this team. What do they call you?”
“I’m Arden.”
Mahmoud turned away from me and faced Andy. “Section Commander, your man Arden’s been a lot of help here. I’ve got to clear the Control Block with my six people, and what I need is a group to act as a cut-off here. I want Arden to lead it; he’s to cover our entry point, and make sure there’s no one able to surprise us. If we’ve been a few off in counting the enemy, there might still be someone who could cause us a little trouble. Any problem?”
Mahmoud spoke forcefully, with an urgent but assured manner simply taking it for granted we’d all fall in with what he wanted. Andy paused for a moment, and I could sense him weighing his prospects in a power struggle; no one likes their people being commandeered. However, although he must have reached the same conclusions I did, he wasn’t about to surrender all responsibility.
“No, that’s okay. Like you say, you’ve only got six: do you want me to back you up in there with my team? And what about cut-offs for anyone who breaks away from the block?”
“No one’s going to be breaking away. I want Arden and his team to watch our backs, while the rest of you re-join your platoon. We’ve got to move fast before they think of taking the hostages out of their suits. It’s going to be busy in there; I want as few people around as possible. We’ll manage. Thanks for your help.”
It felt a bit odd, to say the least. For all I appreciated the implied compliment, I didn’t like seeing Andy brushed aside so casually. Instead of calling in my fire team, I leaned forward until my helmet made contact with Andy’s. “What do you think of this?”
He tugged at the shoulder straps of his kit as if to assert himself, but the gesture seemed nervous. “No, no problem; give them what they want. I’ll pull my team back to the cordon. I told you—Sergeant Superman and his Cyborg Squad. They’ll screw it up. Be careful.” He broke the connection by straightening up, hustling the members of his team away. I watched him go. I was eager to make my mark with the special forces people, but I wondered if losing Andy’s friendship was going to be the price.
I'D NEVER EXPECTED ANYTHING like the assault on the Control Block. I split my fire team in half, McWilliams and I watched in disbelief as four of the troopers moved so fast they simply disappeared. They blew the airlock and were into the building and all over the enemy in seconds. I’d been given one of their radios, and over it I could hear repeated short bursts of fire and clipped instructions from voices accelerated to an almost comical pitch.
Meanwhile another two of the troopers, moving slower but still hard to make out, brought a wagon up and literally flung bewildered civilians into it. When it was loaded the automatic systems zipped them away to the predatory psych-ops de-briefers, while the troopers re-entered the block. We didn’t seem to be needed. It was one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen: overwhelming power and professionalism, but employed with real precision and restraint. I knew there weren’t going to be any prisoners: The Earth First just didn’t have the reactions to see the special forces guys, weigh up the situation, and surrender, and if they couldn’t throw in the towel quickly enough…
“We’re coming out, Arden.” A hissing voice said over the radio. A figure appeared in the doorway to the Control Block, and I lased it reflexively to check the range. 173 meters. Dark body-form suit, blue circle on the chest. Another behind it, yellow triangle, carrying something. Then two more. Friendly. I lowered my rifle and relaxed fractionally. Rooftop; another two. 177 meters. More colored circles. It looked like it was all over.
Mahmoud stepped out into the open, shepherding two civvie stragglers, coming clear of the shadows and carrying a body in his arms. The troopers from the roof bounced down alongside, slung their rifles, and came forward to help. The carried body, a civvy by the look of it, too slow to go with his rescuers or perhaps just unlucky. Was he still breathing? The troopers were being pretty gentle, those odd voices chirping away on their net. One of the unhurt civilians stepped forward, raising his arms to—
“Enemy! Down!” I shouted over the net as my rifle came back up into the aim, trigger finger taking up the initial pressure, left thumb switching to single shot. The friendlies were too close for the spread auto-fire would give at this range. Double tap, realign the sights as the man started to fall, another one into him, aiming lower to keep hitting the center of the body. His gas pistol went spiraling away.
The strange troopers were flat out on the ground, or wedged tight against walls. Two rifles swinging back away from me, satisfied I wasn’t the threat. Mahmoud threw himself over the casualty, protecting him; one of his team pushing the real civilian back into the air-lock and standing guard over him. The others were nowhere to be seen, but I’d have bet they were rechecking the area for enemy. I put my hand down to check McWilliams; sure enough, she had the gun limbering up, ready to fire a burst. “Stop. Good. Stop. That’s it.” My heart pounded in my ears.
A voice on the net. “Thanks, Arden. Nice one,” it hissed. “Best I buy you a beer later.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Serious Physical Stuff
“The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.” –Marcus Tullius Cicero.
February 2261
Some of the bodies had been nailed to the wooden boarding, others lashed onto it with heavy cord. They were vermin, I assumed; a mixture of birds and small mammals, with one or two larger animals among them. The corpses rain soaked and rotting.
It was medieval, dark, superstitious. I’d never seen anything like it before. Someone around here killed these creatures before nailing them up on the fence to—to what? To boast about his shooting? To scare off any other vermin? To please the gods? It felt like a throwback. I bet I could have come along here at any time in the past 1,000 years and seen pretty much the same sight. I still didn’t like planet people.
The sky like steel on stone, cold and silver-grey clouds shading to the color of smoke. Rain finally found its way down the back of my neck. It didn’t seem to matter what I wore, I was always piss-wet through and shivering, and my kit seemed to weigh an extra ton. On Luna, I could have lifted it without noticing. But I was here, standing under black, dripping trees in some godforsaken training area the size of bloody Clavius, listening to this Earthie sergeant rattling off yet another tactics scenario at us. The guy standing next to me looked African, his skin grey with the cold.
Half an hour earlier, we’d been slogging up the hillside under full packs in the never-ending driving rain. As we’d clustered around to check our bearings, I’d noticed most of us were hunched up against the rain and cold. Everyone wanted to keep what little warmth they still had, and stop the wet trickling in everywhere. The African guy caught my eye and smiled sadly. “I hate this miserable place, Arden. We don’t have weather like this back home.”
I chuckled. “Listen, pal, consider yourself lucky. We don’t have any bloody weather back home. I hate this whole sodding planet.” He laughed a loud, raucous laugh. I wondered where he was from, and if it was somewhere warmer, or just drier. I was hazy about what the weather was like in parts of the Earth I’d never seen—which was most of it, really. Somalia, maybe? Making him a refugee from the Caliphate, so perhaps not. Weren’t there a lot of African refugees somewhere in the Caribbean? I was guessing, so I gave up worrying about it. It was his problem anyhow, not mine. We all had to hack it whatever way we could.
This place was called North Humberland, and it consisted entirely of wet hills, boggy moors and sodden woods. The few local people I’d met didn’t s
eem to speak English, or at any rate not a version of it I was familiar with. It was way out at the top end of England, or maybe part of Scotland—the border was a bit vague. The two countries didn’t like each other much, but neither of them seemed to give a crap about this place, so perhaps nobody minded the U.N. using it for military training.
Once I applied for the Enhanced Human Program, the battalion put me through three weeks of seriously unpleasant fitness training on Luna, and at the L2 heavy zone. When I still thought I wanted to do it, they shipped me back Earthside.
I went someplace in Europe first, judging by the angle of the sun and the little I knew about climate. There were a couple hundred of us there, and we did ten weeks busting our asses in some bleak camp on a north-facing coast. No one even told us what country we were in. I never bothered to get to know anyone, because people vanished every day.
I couldn’t get over how many people dropped out early on. Perhaps a lot of them were fooling themselves, and came along to say they’d given it a try, but once we got into the serious physical stuff they started to thin out. I don’t know what happened to the ‘1,000 to one’ odds that Staff Sergeant Harris had talked about; I never saw more than a few hundred candidates. Maybe there was more than one selection center. Anyhow, I’d gotten this far, and that was a hell of a lot further than I’d expected.
This phase of selection started with personal soldiering skills, the sort of stuff you’d need to be good at if you wanted to be taken even a bit seriously. Weapons all day and at any time. What’s the caliber of this? What’s the muzzle velocity of that? What does this do? Pick it up, strip it, and tell me how it works. Today’s personal weapon is the grenade launcher. Double down to the armory, draw one, collect six ammo belts, and report to the range. Carry it always, and if it’s ever more than ten centimeters away from your hand you’re on the transport out. Done. Finished.
The instructors came from everywhere. There were Belters, Luniks, Five Siders, and God knows what else. I thought I saw Dave Harris once, but he disappeared before I could be sure. Then there were the any number of Earthies, of course: Legion Etrangere, Gurkhas, Russian Imperial Guards, ARTOK company Spetsnaz, SAS, NipponDeutsch corporate samurai, even some U.S. Rangers.
The staff never stopped talking small unit tactics: close target reconnaissance, demolitions, fighting patrols, assaults, deep reconnaissance, stay-behind parties, forward air and artillery fire control, beach reconnaissance, infiltration, high-value targets, anti-armor ambush, low-grav maneuvers, orbital boarding, vacuum suit combat, the lot. The instructors never told you anything twice; if you didn’t get it the first time you’d better guess, and guess right. There was only one punishment: the transport out.
The physical side was a bitch, too. It wasn’t any one thing being particularly difficult, but they kept us at it endlessly. A call out at four thirty in the morning for a ten-kilometer run through the woods in sweats and sneakers. Simple? Not when you’re already exhausted from only getting your head down at one am. When we got back, we’d be expected to be on parade at six thirty, latest, so no chance of more sleep. We never walked anywhere; we’d jog around the training center with a thirty-kilo pack on, sores weeping where the skin rubbed away. I always seemed to be patching myself up with skinfix. We probably ran another fifteen kilometers a day like that. I felt like I lived in permanent sweat.
Crash-outs, like the one we were on today, were another favorite. Any time, day or night—and there wasn’t much difference—it would be asses in gear. Weapons, packs, full battle scales of ammo, and away we’d go. Marching like maniacs in the endless rain before lifting out in a transport to some nameless training area, splitting up to find your own way on foot to a grid reference which you had to reach within a specific time. Then a nice little tactics class up here in the howling wind, when all I wanted was sleep.
We’d eat God knows what, I was always hungry: if you saw food you grabbed it and wolfed it down. Even so, I was getting a lot thinner, not that there had been much to lose in the first place. I reckoned they knew what they’re doing, though, because I never quite reached the absolute limit of my energy.
Each morning dragging myself out of bed felt impossible, my brain making all kinds of excuses why I should stay for another ten seconds. But I did it somehow. Bare feet hitting the floor with a thud, every joint screaming. I always doubted I’d make it through the day, but I found if I aimed at staying on top of things for the next hour, or half hour, or whatever, I could hack it.
CHAPTER SIXTEN
Wound Sensation Level
March
Program psychologist: Good morning, Colonel Simpson. Anstruther here. Oh, I hate recording these bloody things. If you want to know what I think of your people, fine, ask me. However; to Arden, then. Full report. He’s doing surprisingly well, in fact. You’ve got all the objective scores already. Slate. Cross-refer to his combat training records. Thank you. You can see here how he’s coping with weapon skills, marksmanship, target identification, map-craft, fitness, survival skills, unarmed combat, and all the rest. The way he handles himself suggests the mental attributes you’re looking for: aggression, control, determination, inner resources. Strong-minded.
A word of warning though, Colonel; the way the program’s shaping up, we’ll need to impose a lot of artificial memories on your troopers. A man needs his familiar things, his background, his family. Paste a lot of false memories on top, so he doesn’t realize how often you’ve lied to him, and you’ve started something that won’t be easily finished. We can’t give them the required fine details; a little too much introspection on their part, and they’ll know by the blank spaces that we’re lying. Then we’ll have to cover up some more, and each time we do, it will only get worse.
What we’re not telling them is that we aren’t sure how many of the planned enhancements can be sustained, or how long they’ll go without mental or physical breakdown. We’re not telling them you’ll have them on permanent operations, because they’re going to be so bloody expensive you can’t afford not to use them for every mission that looks even halfway possible.
Add that to the fact we’ll be popping them into cold sleep so often they’ll lose all touch with their families and friends and backgrounds, because you’re also going to slowboat them out to the colonies, aren’t you? I know the way your mind works, Colonel; you’ll persuade the Security Council your people are the answer to a politician’s prayer. Well, it’s not for me to comment on the military realities of the scheme; just the psychological implications of what you’re doing to them.
Oh, shit and nonsense. You’re not going to listen to all that. I know you, Simpson. You’ll have switched off as soon as I stopped talking about training scores. Slate: Replay the last five minutes.
Hmm. Slate, delete all after ‘Strong-minded.’ Record.
By now we’re down to a couple of hundred candidates. You’ve got a solid core of good soldiers left. A few will be up to conventional Special Forces standards. Good news for them.
Out of the cream, all that remains, a number won’t cope with the reality of Enhancement, and we’ll identify that in the simulators. But you’re going to obtain some successes out of this program, right enough, and I reckon Arden’s going to be one of them. He believes in himself, in his own abilities. Most of the original twenty were quite a bit like this, you’ll recall.
He’s quite a thinker, Arden. He says he’s been reading De Bello Gallico, and he dismissed Caesar as another general slanting his memoirs so they look like history. He even quoted Sun Tzu at me—without attribution—and it took me a few days to recognize the reference.
So, what have we got? A tough, fit young man with a good mind. Reasonably strong family ties—you might have a little trouble there, Colonel; he’s not going to be too keen to doze the decades away while family members grow old and die—and a healthy quantity of cynicism. Most importantly, he’s been blooded.
It all makes him a sound prospect. T
ake him on, Colonel, take him on. You won’t do much better elsewhere.
Okay. Close entry and access next record, slate.
MASTER-AT-ARMS: WEAPON SKILLS
Arden’s performance with most weapons has been good, dropping to satisfactory only with the heavier on-planet types (long-range anti-armor, off-route mines, drone mortar, etc.), which he might not be expected to have met before the selection center, given his L5 background.
He has a natural eye for marksmanship under all conditions, and a very high standard of fire discipline. He is particularly skilled with combat rifle and pistol, but took to the flechette gun, the assault laser, and the smart grenade very quickly. He handles close quarter battle situations efficiently.
Arden enjoys using the more ‘exotic’ devices (crossbow, tangle-net, flame-ball, etc.) whenever possible. However, his ability with edged weapons needs a lot of work; if he comes up against a left-hander he’ll have problems.
YEOMAN OF SIGNALS: COMMUNICATIONS
A sound result following a lot of challenging work. Arden’s not a natural with comms devices, but he mastered HF, UHF, and VHF radios quickly. He’s adequate on tight-beam though slower with ULF, radar, sonar, satellite, and message laser, but never grades less than competent.