The Infinity Brigade #1 Stone Cold

by Andrew Beery

  Gretchen tapped her wrist. A subdermal display lit up showing the current time as 20:35. She tapped her wrist a few more times and set a wakeup alarm for 0330 hours. I had already set mine for 0325.

  “I guess we should let the troops know we are heading out in the morning,” Gretchen said. “I want everybody to have their gear stowed and ready to go before lights out tonight.”

  ***

  The Bowman-class ship we boarded was the GCP Puller, a fitting name for a ship intending to carry Marines. Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell Puller was the most decorated United States Marine ever to live. To my way of thinking he personified what it meant to be a Marine. I must admit to having a man-crush on him ever since I read a quote attributed to him while I was in the second grade. It’s a quote that I feared would set the tone for my military career. I had shared it once with JJ and it took him the better part of an hour to stop laughing. It was something he said while still only a Major General… “Take me to the Brig. I want to see the real Marines!”

  We shared the massive shuttle bay with three other platoons. According to the briefing that we received, the two weeks we were to spend on Mars was to simulate a ground combat mission where two roughly even factions were squaring off against one another. Since the Galactic Coalition was composed of numerous member races it was essential that Marines learn to fight not just as a unit within themselves but also with our allies. We would take turns as the aggressor and as the defender. Sometimes our platoons would operate as homogeneous Marines… sometimes we would operate as a heterogeneous force composed of Marines and something else. In those instances our Stark suits would be tweaked to simulate the differences in mobility and strength that we could expect to encounter in a real engagement.

  The Puller was proceeding towards a rendezvous with Mars using her massive VASMR thrusters. VASMR thrusters were a relatively old technology that used radio waves to ionize hydrogen gas. The resulting charged plasma was expelled via magnetic linear accelerators from the business end of the engine. From lunar orbit the trip to Mars would take about four days. As fast as this might have seemed at the start of the space age, it was painfully slow by modern standards.

  Hyperfield emitters could essentially change the effective mass of the ship and fold space-time in such a way that the same trip could be accomplished in seconds but safety concerns meant that hyperfield dampeners were always in operation in the vicinity of all GCP population centers. Exceptions would be made for emergencies but ‘recruit training’ did not fit under that category. These dampeners meant that an enemy couldn’t drop a massive kinetic weapon on an unsuspecting planet. The Sol system had learned a hard lesson eight years ago with the destruction of Mars.

  That lesson had cost me my family. One of the reasons Senior Drill Sergeant Harris had wanted to brief me personally on our upcoming mission to Mars was to ensure I would be able to emotionally cope with the situation. I had buried those demons when I enlisted in the Marines… or at least I thought I had.

  Watching the red planet grow larger on the monitors that had been setup in the shuttle bay brought a mixed bag of feelings to the forefront of my mind. Mars had been my home… and yet the D’lralu weapons that had slammed into the planet had sent hypersonic shock waves around the planet that effectively removed any trace of humanities presence.

  Oddly, the devastated planet was marginally more habitable as a result of the attack. The heat from the blast had vaporized several million tons of surface material. This included frozen water reserves buried under a thousand feet of bedrock. As a result of the particulate matter in the atmosphere, and well as the addition of a sizable amount of water vapor, the density of the Martian atmosphere now approached 2.8 psi in some locations. This was one to two orders of magnitude greater than when I had been living there. In addition, the thicker atmosphere captured and retained more heat. Near the equator the planet’s temperature had stabilized around a mean value of twenty degrees C.

  This had very odd ramifications for us as soldiers. At nearly three pounds per square inch, the surface pressure in some locations on Mars was still lower than Mount Everest on Earth but it was high enough that it meant our blood wouldn’t boil if we were exposed to it without a pressure suit. It also meant we could survive brief exposures to the temperature. In short, if we were very careful we could walk around with nothing more than an oxygen breathing mask. This made Mars a very different planet from the one I grew up on. On that Mars, even a brief exposure to the surface unprotected was a virtual death sentence.

  As we entered Mars orbit I felt my demons stir. Somewhere down of the surface of that planet were three sets of bones. Bones that belonged to my mother, my father and my sister. Somewhere down there were the bones of almost everybody I had ever known growing up. Less than one tenth of one percent of us had made it off the planet.

  The shrinks had worried that I would develop what they called ‘survivor’s remorse’… In actually what I had developed was a burning anger… not against the people who had done this but that there was evil in the universe that would visit such wanton destruction against the innocent. I felt that anger burning now. I knew that if I did not control it… it would control me. This was the reason I had ultimately decided to join the Marines. I needed a place and a purpose to focus my anger on.

  The D’lralu would have been an easy choice to focus my anger on but they were victims too. The race that had ultimately been responsible for the death of Mars and my family was, in all likelihood, extinct. Only the evil machinations they had created remained. In orbit around Mars I felt my resolve solidify. I would spend everything, up to and including my last breath to ensure no one else ever had to endure a loss like I endured. I was not so foolish as to think I would always succeed… but I could make a difference… I would make a difference!

  These were the thoughts running through my mind as I joined Ensign Highmark and the others in the assault shuttles that we would use to travel back to the world of my birth.

  Chapter 9: Boot Camp – On the Surface of Mars

  “All right guys,” I yelled as our assault shuttle made its way down to Camp Beta. “When this bucket hits the dirt the Drills have given us a generous fifteen minutes to offload all our supplies for the next two weeks. If it doesn’t make it off the shuttle, we don’t get to use it.”

  I looked around the cramped ship. Assault shuttles were designed to comfortably carry twenty soldiers and their gear. We had slightly over thirty in this boat. The Drills had spent hours working directly with Ensign Highmark, Corporal Johnston and myself over the last four days on our way to Mars. We knew their expectations and the major challenges we would face. We were competing with three other platoons… even the one we were partnered with. Our Drills expected us to make them look good. As Senior Drill Sergeant Harris said in our final briefing… Failure was not an option.

  As we moved further along in our boot camp training the Drills turned more and more of the day to day stuff over to us. They assumed more of a mentoring role. I have to admit this was different from the standard Vancouver or Hollywood movie model of boot camp that I had been expecting. In that model, Drill Sergeants chewed you out until the day you died and then they typically followed you down to hell to continue chewing.

  What Senior Drill Sergeant Harris was attempting to do was to place more of the burden of training on the recruits. His argument was that the very best Marines wanted it enough to make it happen. In reality, I suspected it was ‘training by fire.’ We would come through it refined or we would come through it burned up.

  This particular set of exercises was unique in that we would get to test what we had been learning in the class room for the last month and a half. Lest we get too cocky, the Drills assured us that later in the training cycle, we would be facing a real test of our skills. Rather than pairing off against other, relatively inexperienced recruits… we would be taking on seasoned Drill Sergeants. We were not to worry about that though, we were told, as there was zero c
hance of our winning those engagements.

  I looked back out over the men and women in the shuttle. The next few weeks would change some of them forever. I hoped it would be a change they could live with.

  “First squad, grab your gear and exit to the port side. Second squad, same deal but exit to the starboard. Drop your crap exactly fifty meters away from the shuttle and then double time it back to the cargo bay. Ensign Highmark has prioritized what we are offloading. Red tags go first, yellow tags second and no tags dead last… But guys I know that most if not all of you are color blind so I’m going to make this simple. Get it all. When this shuttle takes off again in fifteen minutes the only thing I want left in it is the seat the pilot is sitting in… and frankly if you can get that I want it too!”

  “YES SERGEANT!”

  The surface of Mars was dustier than I remember. Camp Beta (we were Beta Platoon) was located near the northern edge of Valles Marineris near a place called Candor Chasma on the maps. It was wide and deep and filled with loose stone and rubble.

  Valles Marineris was like the Grand Canyon on Earth but on steroids. It stretched some five thousand kilometers across the Martian surface. At some points it was all of five hundred kilometers wide and six kilometers deep. The section we were setting up in was one of the roughest. Just the way I like it.

  Our guys managed to get everything off the shuttle in quick order. At first it was taking them too long to unfasten the tie-down straps. I realized that the Drills really wouldn’t care a rat’s ass about why we failed to get the supplies off… they would just care that we screwed up. I decided to speed up the process by ordering our people to cut the straps. The pilot nearly blew a gasket when he saw what we were doing. As he was a chief warrant officer, when he ordered us to cease and desist, I told my guys to just hurry up and loosen the straps as best they could.

  I then walked up to the chief and asked if he could show me on his flight console where exactly we landed and where the other platoons were situated. As soon as our pilot was distracted I suggested on a closed platoon channel that pissing off a warrant office was preferable to pissing off a Drill Sergeant and that they were to act on that knowledge as their sense of expediency dictated. Needless to say, there were a lot of ‘accidently’ cut tie-down straps in the cargo bay when the platoon finished offloading the supplies.

  Senior Drill Sergeant Harris met with Ensign Highmark as soon as the Assault shuttle was airborne. I worked with our Corporal and got the camp set up in quick order. The first thing to go up was our inflatable B-TOC. The B-TOC would house our Tactical Operations Center. It consisted of three Bigelow 660 modules connected with three B110 flexible airtight joints. The entire assembly formed an equilateral triangle with one of the three sides fitted with an airlock bump-out.

  The B-TOC was moored in place with woven steel cables that were anchored with meter-long self-drilling stakes. The B-TOC was then covered with an active optical and radar cloaking field net held up by camo poles.

  A pair of lightweight LFTR generators fed juice into the B-TOC. One fed its internal systems including life support and computers. A group of technical specialists were deployed with us to hook this equipment up. I’m guessing it was expensive and the Drill Sergeants didn’t want a group of wet behind the ears recruits mucking it up.

  The specialists, led by a warrant officer named Chief Roberts, all wore the Mark Three Stark suits rather than the Mark Two’s we had been issued. The biggest difference between the suits, other than a vastly superior embedded AI was the size of the power packs. The Mark Threes didn’t have one in front. They got away with this because the single power pack they carried on their back was actually a small LFTR generator good for several years’ worth of service. The front of the Mark Three contained additional armor and ammo storage. The Mark Two could replace the front battery with the same loadout but no one ever did it. Any soldier caught with that configuration was in serious trouble once the one and only battery they had ran down. They would be frozen in place… unable to move.... and on Mars or the moon… being trapped inside their suit could be a death sentence.

  The second LFTR generator we set up fed a bank of umbilical’s that were designed to plug into our Stark suits. They could charge out battery packs as well as refresh our consumables… things like water, reserve air and Marine toothpaste. This last was the name given to the protein and carbohydrate paste that every Stark suit carried as an emergency food supply.

  Marine toothpaste was like beef stew run through a blender and then warmed and extruded through a tube the Marine could suck on while wearing his suit in its fully enclosed and sealed mode. It didn’t actually taste too bad but no one besides JJ would volunteer to live on the stuff for extended periods of time.

  Gretchen was just walking over to me when our guys finished with the B-TOC and had laid out the framework for the Mess. The mess was constructed like the B-TOC but with five B660s arranged like a pentagon with a sealed and pressurized dome in the center. Two of the B660s had airlock nubs. One of the three remaining sections served as our medical bay where minor injuries beyond what our medical nanites could handle could be dealt with until an evac shuttle could arrive. The two remaining B660s contained our bunks. None of us expected them to get much use while we were deployed.

  The GCP had gone to great lengths to make sure our Stark suits had everything we needed in them to live and sleep for days at a time.

  “Sergeant,” Ensign Highmark said as she walked up.

  I nodded back. Technically we were deployed so saluting was a no-no. “Ma’am, what’s the good word?”

  “The good word is that our enemy is expected to make a major push tomorrow to take control of Central City. Our orders are to defend the city and push back or neutralize their forces.”

  Central City was a series of small buildings located about midway between the Alpha/Beta platoons and Delta/Echo. For the purposes of this exercise Delta/Echo was the enemy. A fifth group, designated Charlie was actually the training staff from New Parris Island. They would be monitoring our activities and declaring winners and losers for each engagement.

  “How creative can we be in following these orders?” I asked.

  Gretchen sighed. I knew she would. She had a good head on her shoulders but she tended to be very by-the-book. Now don’t get me wrong. By-the-book has its time and place in the world… just some other time… some other place.

  “I think we need to play this one clean AG. The Drills from every platoon as well as the OICs are going to be watching everything we do very closely.”

  I nodded. It’s not how I would have played it, but she was the one in charge. My job was to do everything I could to make sure she was successful.

  “OK Ma’am how do you want to do this?”

  “Let’s finish setting up camp and see what we can do about securing the City.”

  “Ma’am are you open to a suggestion?”

  “The TOC is already operational,” continued AG. “We can sleep in our Starks if we need to. I would suggest heading out to Central City ASAP. I would hate for us to be late to our own party and I am having a hard time believing an enemy would telegraph their intent ahead of time.”

  “So you think they will try to take the city sooner than my briefing indicated?”

  “If I were the enemy commander and I knew that the defenders were not yet entrenched I’d be making a beeline for the objective before I even stopped to take a piss.”

  Gretchen paused to think about it. Finally she shook her head.

  “The Drills were insistent that the exercises would begin tomorrow. I think we have to operate under the assumption that they told us so we would spend today getting everything else squared away. We’ll do that and then make a very early start for Central City tomorrow.”

  I didn’t buy that reasoning for a minute. Drill Sergeants were, by nature, a very special breed of critter that thrived on deviousness and misdirection. That said, I was not in charge and so I nodded.

/>   “Ma’am, can I offer a compromise? Let me take JJ and we’ll scout the terrain around the city. Corporal Johnston can oversee the rest of the camp setup. That way when JJ and I get back tonight we can share what we found so you have more information to work with to best prepare our defensive positions.”

  Gretchen looked about the camp. It was nearly complete. In less than an hour they would be inflating the last of the Bigelow modules.

  “OK, AG… we’ll play that piece your way. But be careful. Mars isn’t like Kansas.”

  “That’s true Ensign, the corn doesn’t grow near as high here.”

  ***

  Twenty minutes later JJ and I were making our way quickly towards Central City. I had a stone cold feeling in my heart that Gretchen was wrong about what the Drills were planning. I couldn’t shake the thought that the enemy was going to be playing by a different set of rules from the ones we were.

  Because of my unease, JJ and I did everything we could to make sure we took every opportunity for cover that we could. Our Starks were fast and powerful but they were not as stealthy as I would have liked.

  Our suits did not come with active camouflage although the rumor mill had it that a future upgrade would include this enhancement. Instead I borrowed a trick I had seen in a movie. JJ and I grabbed a couple of camo tarps like the ones used to cover our B-TOC. They scattered radar and LIDAR even when they were not powered. My hope was we could wear them like ponchos. They would break up our shape and if the enemy was already entrenched and actively scanning then we would have at least a little bit of a chance to go undetected.

  I have to say, the ground you could cover in Tactical Combat Armor was impressive. The collection of small buildings we were calling Central City for this exercise was about twenty kilometers away. That is, they would have been twenty kilometers away if we had headed in a straight line towards them. My paranoia wouldn’t allow for such a direct approach. Instead we headed in the opposite direction for about ten klicks and then started climbing the canyon walls.