Jodi, as usual during the exercises of the past few weeks, had the great misfortune of being Thorella’s pilot.
“Delta One-Two,” Nicole acknowledged.
“Delta One-Two, you are point for first wave. Note that local target defenses are active; no deep-space systems or fighters noted.” That meant that Nicole’s ship probably would not have to worry about being seared out of space by any simulated enemy weapons, but nearer the ground the Marine trainees would have to contend with flak. The Kreelans were never known to use anti-aircraft fire, as they preferred their opponents to get to the ground in one piece. But it never hurt to train for the unexpected.
Thankfully, Thorella had chosen not to throw any enemy fighters into the scenario. Yet, at least.
“Did you copy, Reza?” she asked.
“Affirmative,” he replied through the boat’s intercom. During each exercise, trainees would be chosen at random from within each platoon to fill the leadership positions in the company. Reza had drawn the position of “platoon guide” for this drop; not being qualified NCOs or officers, the designated trainees were ostensibly unfit to be termed “leaders.” Be that as it may, in his distinguished post Reza was tied into the drop group’s command nets and was responsible for the orders and reports that concerned his platoon.
Reza looked at Eustus, his acting platoon sergeant, who nodded vigorously, eager to get on with it.
“We are ready, commander,” Reza reaffirmed.
Nicole could not help but smile at his voice. Despite Thorella’s best efforts, his endless harangues and futile attempts to provoke him, Reza had excelled during his training, and was now ranked at the top of his class.
Behind and to either side of Nicole’s boat, eight other similar vessels now flew, carrying the first company of Reza’s trainee battalion, one of thirty active at any given time on Quantico. In a real drop, the Marines normally deployed in battalion or full regiment strength, and there would be hundreds of ships – assault boats, gunships, fighters – swarming toward the surface.
For the trainees, however, the exercises focused on platoon and below training and tactics. Training for anything more was deemed a waste of time for men and women who likely would either be dead or out of the service before they reached company command or higher, and who needed now only the basics of how to survive in combat. Besides, many a trainee had noted wryly, it would have been too expensive to mount such exercises on a continual basis for a Confederation that had been surviving economically on good-faith War Bonds for nearly half a century.
Reza surveyed his command with a calculating eye. While the Way was one of glory through individual combat, Her Children were not unfamiliar with the tactics and strategies that accompanied mass warfare. Her blood united them, eliminating the need for the complex command, control, and communications – “C3” – systems that the humans relied on for relaying orders and reports between those doing the fighting and those who were directing the battle. Reza had tasted that uniting force for but a fleeting instant in the span of his own lifetime before being severed from that spiritual lifeline; now, among humans, he had only his wits and training such as this to guide him, and he found that it was a poor substitute.
He clicked over to the platoon’s command net, reserved for the platoon guide (or leader) and the platoon “sergeant,” and asked Eustus, “Did Scorelli replace the loose ammunition feed housing on her weapon?”
“She should have,” Eustus said through his suit’s external speaker. Unlike Reza, everyone else already had their helmets on. “I told her to, anyway.” He glanced back at the nervous looking woman who clung tightly to her weapon, one of the platoon’s four auto pulse rifles, very similar to the one a soldier serving under Reza’s father’s had used a lifetime before.
Reza smiled. “I can hear it rattling, my friend,” he said. More than anything else, the other trainees had learned from Reza how valuable the art of stealth was. An enemy that could not be heard, could not be seen, and could not be found, was extremely hard to kill.
“Sorry, Reza,” he said sheepishly. Reza did not have to remind him that, as platoon sergeant, he was responsible for making sure that the platoon leader’s directions were actually carried out. Eustus shook his head, disgusted with himself. Over the muffled roar of the dropship’s engines, he had heard nothing. “I’ll take care of it.”
Eustus clicked over to First Squad’s net and quietly, without making a scene, corrected the deficiency. Scorelli hurried to oblige.
“Suit up, Reza,” Nicole said from the cockpit, looking at the telemetry displays for her passengers, which showed his suit helmet still not attached. She knew how much he hated the armor, but there was no getting around it: they were almost at the drop point.
Grimacing, Reza did as he was told, hefting the helmet from where it sat between his feet and jamming it on his head. He heard and felt the hiss of air as the suit brought its own environmental systems on-line, isolating him from the universe beyond its layers of flexible ceramic and fibersteel. Of all the things he could say he loathed, being confined in this suit was one of the worst. In his Kreelan armor, he was completely free, the leatherite and Kreelan steel conforming perfectly to his body and its motions. His eyes and ears, his nose and tongue, were all free to tell his mind of the physical world around him as his spirit sought out things that lay far beyond. But in the suit, there was only the bitterly dry air and the tasteless water held in the recycling system, which also required pure distilled water, and could not tolerate the waters from the streams from around the base with which Reza had become familiar and now cherished. Worse, although there were packets of dried and salted meat in his external pouches, there was no food within the suit for him to eat; he found the concentrates simply intolerable, inedible. If he were forced to remain in pressurized armor for the entire exercise – a full week – Reza would be very hungry indeed. Simply ducking out of sight for a quick bite to eat was not only unthinkable to Reza as a form of cheating, it was also a technical impossibility. The telemetry data links that tied every set of Marine space armor to anyone able and interested in receiving the information would know if a suit had been opened. And that certainly included the exercise umpires.
In front of his eyes, his helmet, the power to it now enabled, glowed in a panorama of virtual reality, displaying his environment in a user-selected palette of shades and colors that rendered the differences between dark and light, rain and smoke, completely immaterial. While the virtual reality systems, tied into sophisticated suit sensors and able to receive external inputs from other suits or vehicles – even ships – did not have limitless range in a tactical environment, they gave the human soldier a distinct edge against a Kreelan opponent. When the suits were available.
But even that technology, Reza added silently and with a note of personal pride, was not equal in battle to a Kreelan warrior priestess… or priest.
He examined the projected drop zone again, just to confirm that what he held in his memory was perfect, for when they reached Quantico’s surface they probably would not have the advantages of the space armor indefinitely, and he refused to rely on the computerized battlefield intelligence systems. The general plan was to make the initial landing and assault, and then hold a critique of the operation, while armorers prepared the suits for the next class cycling through. From there on in, the trainees would fight their mock battles with the kind of basic armor that Jodi had used on Rutan, and which was the mainstay of Marine personal armor everywhere.
“This should be a lot easier than the last one,” Eustus commented, tapping into Reza’s view of the terrain. The drop zone was in an area of rolling hills, dotted with tree groves and covered with knee-high scrub, and promised few landing injuries, although it left little in the way of cover for the attackers. “Landing in that rocky stuff last time really stunk.”
Reza nodded grimly. There had been fourteen injuries, two of them serious, in their previous landing in the training area’s desert zone,
a wasteland of sharp, irregular granite rock formations that had been a literal hell to jump into and then fight out of. Reza’s battalion had lost nearly two-thirds of its strength – on paper – by the time the administrative critique was given. It had not been a glowing one.
In only a few more minutes, the appointed time had arrived. “Prepare for drop,” Nicole announced from the flight deck. An illuminated bar that ran the length of the cargo compartment suddenly turned red. “Two minutes.”
Unlike many ships and atmospheric craft, Marine dropships had no designated jump- or loadmaster. That was the responsibility of the senior man in the jump group. There was simply too little room aboard to spare.
“Stand up!” Reza bellowed as he moved aft toward the jump doors that had now cycled open. Beyond the eerie blue sheen of the force fields that kept the air in the compartment from exploding into the vacuum beyond, Reza could see the cloud-shrouded outline of the target continent. A blinking red cursor in his helmet visor informed him of the drop zone’s exact location in the middle of an enormous expanse of green vegetation.
The men and women of his group unharnessed themselves and checked over their equipment and themselves one last time. Once they had stepped through either of the two doors at the rear of the compartment, they would not get another chance before they hit the ground. And mistakes made now could make that one long, hard step.
“Sound off!” Reza barked.
“First squad, ready!”
“Second squad, ready!”
“Third squad, ready!”
“Heavy weapons, ready!”
Eustus nodded inside his helmet, the movement invisible to anyone outside. “That’s it then,” he said.
“Reza,” he heard Nicole’s voice one more time on the platoon command channel, “thirty seconds…” She paused. “And please, mon ami,” she said quietly, “be careful.”
“Roger,” he replied. “And I will.”
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” Eustus’s lighthearted voice broke in. “I’ll keep his butt out of trouble.”
The flight status strip above their heads turned from a mournful red to a brilliant green.
“Go!”
In twos, the Marine trainees shuffled out the doors and fell into the infinite void of space.
* * *
“There they go,” murmured Jodi as she saw dozens of new blips appear on her sensors. Normally, the countermeasures devices on all the ships and the suits themselves would be active, trying to erase their signature from any electronic or thermal detectors. But even here at Quantico, some small compromise was made for safety. Each suit had a beacon built into it to make finding the trainees easy. The only combat jump Jodi had ever made was when she ejected over Rutan, and that had been enough. “Bon voyage, guys.”
“Cut the chatter, pilot,” Thorella snapped from the seat behind her. “Come to course three three two mark eight seven and reduce your throttle to station-keeping. I want to stay close to them during descent.”
“Sure thing, Markus,” she replied casually. While he was the acting group coordinator, he did not outrank her. She was senior to him in time in grade, and it amused her to goad him by addressing him on a first name basis.
Sergeant Major Aquino remained silent.
* * *
Reza maneuvered slightly to his left to get a better view of his platoon’s dispersal. A series of four wedges representing each of the squads under his command was spread over a few kilometers now, with one squad ahead of him and the rest behind. Eustus, the platoon sergeant, was between the third and last – heavy weapons – squads. Behind and above his own silently falling formation, five hundred and twelve other figures in space armor floated and jetted about as they sought to reach their individual falling stations within the battalion’s designated thousand cubic kilometer maneuver zone.
For once, Reza was thankful for the computers that calculated where everyone should be on the way down. Exo-atmospheric drops were always a challenge in geometry: extra distance between individuals and units was better when they were still high up, to keep losses to a minimum in case the enemy brought any heavy weapons to bear on them. But later, as they entered the atmosphere – if there was one – and neared the ground, their formation needed to tighten up considerably if they were to maintain vital unit integrity. A combat unit that landed together and intact could fight. One that did not was nothing more than meat waiting for the Kreelans’ swords.
That, Reza told himself, we are not. This would be their best jump, he thought, and his blood began to sing at the devastation – simulated though it might be – they would inflict on their enemies waiting below. His comrades, while lacking many of the benefits of a martial upbringing such as his own, nonetheless would prove worthy opponents for Her Children when the time came. For a species intellectually dedicated to the pursuit of peace, humans were finely adapted for the art of making war.
The altitude display on his visor continued to unwind toward zero as they approached their target, the miniature field generators of the suits deflecting the friction heat of the upper atmosphere as they plummeted downward. With a little more than eighty kilometers of altitude to cover, and a slant range to the drop zone of about one hundred and fifty, they only had a few minutes of flight remaining.
High above, the drop ships were returning to the carrier to bring down the next battalion that was scheduled to jump. Only the group coordinator’s fighter remained with them, its rakish hull barely visible to Reza’s naked eye.
He clicked down to the platoon’s common net, listening for any idle chatter. There was none. There were only a few clipped words as people maneuvered to keep position, informing their neighbors they were moving, and where to, with their actions echoed in their helmet data displays.
Reza smiled. It was going very well. Their training was paying–
The thought was torn from his mind, as he suddenly felt crushed within his suit and a shrieking roar filled his skull. The planet rushing up at him suddenly began whirling, faster and faster, until it was nothing more than a kaleidoscope of color that alternated with the black of space and the shining stars. He heard voices calling to him on the comm link, but he could not make out the words over the roar of what he realized must be his suit’s maneuvering jets. Worse, he himself was unable to speak, the air crushed out of his lungs by the induced g-forces as he spun out of control. His arms and legs felt like they were about to rip out of their sockets as he spun around and around, faster and faster, and his vision began to narrow to a tiny tunnel, then vanished into a gray mist.
In only a few seconds, Reza blacked out.
* * *
“Reza!” Eustus cried as he watched his friend’s suit spin crazily out of control, one of its thrusters firing like a roman candle. He desperately clicked over to the emergency frequency, biting on the control so savagely he caught his tongue. A sudden taste of salty copper filled his mouth. “Mayday! Mayday!” he shouted. “This is First Platoon. Reza’s suit looks like it’s had a malfunction. He’s heading down and out of control!”
“I’ve got a lock on him, First Platoon,” Jodi’s controlled voice came back. “Moving to intercept.”
“Negative,” Thorella’s voice interjected coldly. “I’ve got over five hundred other people out here to watch over, and this ship isn’t capable of making a pickup. We don’t have suits on.”
“Then what the hell–”
Another voice, accented by his native Tagalog, broke into the conversation. “Camden, designate someone to take over your platoon and break formation forward of your group,” Sergeant Major Aquino ordered tersely. “Pilot, rendezvous with Camden as quickly as possible.”
“Roger,” she said thankfully. Fuck you, Thorella, she thought.
In about fifteen seconds she had Eustus in sight. “Now what?” she asked.
“Camden,” the sergeant major said, ignoring her, “what I have in mind is going to take some guts. Can you handle it?”
“We’
re wasting time, sar-major,” Eustus replied quickly. “Let’s have it.”
Aquino nodded to himself. The boy had dedication. And a set of brass balls. “Behind the cockpit is a recess that you should be able to squeeze yourself into. It is outside the fighter’s gravity control system, so you will have to hold up to the gee’s we pull. Understood?”
“On my way.” Eustus was already jetting toward them. In a few seconds, Jodi heard him clambering over the hull behind them. “I’m here, sar-major. Let’s go.”
“Find Gard, Lieutenant Mackenzie,” Aquino ordered before he told Eustus the rest of what he planned. He did not tell either of them that his interest in Reza was far more than academic. He was an old friend and confidant of one Admiral Zhukovski, who had provided Aquino with information that someone within the cadre was going to try and kill Reza. Where he had gotten such information, he would never say. However, Aquino was almost sure it was Thorella, although there was certainly no shortage of other likely candidates. But he had no evidence. Yet.
Jodi rammed the throttles forward, momentarily forgetting that Eustus had no protection. “Shit,” she hissed to herself as Eustus yelped, and she dropped the thrust back to something she thought he might be able to handle. “Sorry, Eustus,” she said. “You still with us?”
“Barely,” he breathed, his fists clenching even harder to the recessed handholds. Had it not been for the augmented strength the suit gave to his own body, he would have been left behind the leaping fighter. That was close, he sighed to himself.
Scanning her instruments, Jodi picked out Reza’s tumbling form. “Reza,” she said over the comm link, “do you read me? We’re coming to get you. Hang on.”
In Her Name Page 53