Recruit

by Jonathan P. Brazee

  “Hey, spaceboy! Where you at, there? You gonna eat?” Troy’s voice cut through his reverie.

  He looked down at the salad that had appeared in front of him. The servers were busy getting everyone fed.

  “Yeah, sure. I’m starving,” he replied.

  And he was pretty hungry. The Mövenpick had done a pretty good job with the meal. It was all pretty delicious. He joked with the others at the table, realizing that all of them were in the same boat. All were temporarily out of action, but they would all return to it. That gave them a bond of shared experience. They were not alone in that, though. Looking up at the colonel on the head table, with his four purple hearts, that was proof that people could get through it and on with their lives.

  After the main courses, the birthday cake was wheeled out. It was immense. The colonel, with his sword, cut two pieces. The first was given to the guest of honor as the oldest member of the mess. The second was given to Pvt Narx as the youngest. The Mövenpick servers then descended on the cake, and in a surprisingly short amount of time, the cake was cut up and all 2,000 + Marines served a piece. With the meal itself, all the plates were cleared, leaving only the port decanters and the glasses.

  “Mr. President, the port is placed,” intoned the sergeant major.

  This was the cue for the pouring of the port. On each table, the decanter was poured, then passed to the left, sliding the decanter along the table, never lifting it off. Three of the Marines at their table, alongside the table, to be precise, could not move their arms, and their corpsmen attendants, in their Navy full dress, were prepared to pour for them, but before the port made it around, the colonel and the guest of honor walked up, and without a word, the colonel took the decanter and poured for the three Marines. The old Marine whispered something into the ear of Chase Hannrahan, one of the immobile men. Whatever he said brought tears to Chase’s eyes.

  The two men walked back to the head table and waited for the sergeant major.

  “Mr. President, the port is passed.”

  With the port passed, the toasts started. The Corps, the Marines in the corps, the sister service of the Navy, the president, the Federation, the guest of honor, the good wives of Marines . . . pretty much everyone received a toast.

  The conclusion of the toasts marked the end of the formalities of the mess. The colors were marched off, and the officers and staff NCOs made their rounds, shaking hands, before leaving. For smaller unit messes, everyone might stay together for drinking and mess games, but the common understanding was that it was a little difficult for a private to let loose and have fun when there was a colonel standing there at his shoulder. The senior Marines slowly filtered out, off to drink and do whatever officers or SNCOs did in another room, leaving the main ballroom to the NCOs and non-rates.

  “Gentlemen, the bar is open for an hour, courtesy of the officers,” the battalion sergeant major said, pausing at the door. “Enjoy, brothers, and audaces fortuna iuvat.”

  The cheer was deafening. Some Marines rushed the bar, ready to maximize the hour. One of the servers came over to take orders for the gen hens, which made it easier. Ryck was tempted to order a glass of wine, but after the heavy port, a beer sounded better.

  He was sipping on the beer, chatting with Jonas, when a voice interrupted him with. “Is this a private party, or can anyone join?”

  Ryck looked up to see Sams standing there, beer in hand. He looked good in his dress blues. The BC1 he had, along with his Combat Mission Medal and BC3, especially made him stand out. It wasn’t heard to see why the guy was so popular with the ladies.

  “No, take a seat,” Ryck said eagerly.

  “Well, actually, some of the guys sent me here to see if you wanted to join us. We don’t want to take you away from your new buddies,” he said, indicating Jonas, “but we kinda miss your sorry ass and want to catch up.”

  Ryck looked to Jonas who said, “Nah, you go. I’m about ready to call it in. The busses are going to start the runs back, and I think I’ll get on one.”

  Ryck wished Jonas a happy birthday, then followed Sams back to the Fox Company area.

  “ ’Bout time you showed up, you limp dick!” Smitty shouted, already well on his way to a horrendous hangover in the morning. “Let me get you another beer!”

  The others shouted their welcome as well. Hu kicked out a seat which Ryck took. There were several new Marines that Ryck barely knew or didn’t know at all.

  “You hanging in there?” Sparta asked.

  “Yeah, no problem. All’s good.”

  “Ryck’s been fingerfuckin’ all the PICS,” Smitty yelled out. “He’s gonna jump ship and go back to fuckin’ Golf, no offense,” he said over his shoulder in the general direction of the Golf Company tables, “when his arm grows back.”

  “Hey, Smitty . . .” Sparta began, putting his hand on the other corporal’s shoulder.

  “You think I’m going to Golf? No, they only take the most stellar Marines, so I guess I’m stuck here with all you asshole rejects,” Ryck said.

  Smitty was a good guy, but a drunk was a drunk, and it was hard to know how he would take some trash talk when seven sheets to the wind.

  “Hah! Yeah, motherfuckers! Fox asshole rejects! We rejected that fuckin’ dumbass king, though. Let me tell you, Ryck, you are always welcome back here to Fuckin’ Fox Rejects! Here, let me get you another beer.”

  Ryck hadn’t even opened the last one Smitty had given him only a few moments before, but he took the next one, too. Sams came back with yet another beer, saw Ryck had two unopened, shrugged, and opened the one he brought and took a swig.

  “You should have been with us on Barrow. I mean, it was just for a celebration. You wouldn’t need your arm for that. They treated us like kings!”

  “Fuck, yeah,” Smitty added.

  “And there was this . . .”

  “No, wait,” Ryck interrupted Sams. “There was this redhead, 20 years old, about 1.6 meters, big tits, who just wanted to show you around town.”

  “Uh, well, she was a brunette, and she was 25,” he protested as the others hooted in laughter.

  “He’s got you pegged, Sams,” Hu shouted.

  “He got her the first day, but don’t forget that heavy-worlder, the teacher, just before we flew out,” Mabala, one of the new Marines added.

  “A heavy-worlder?” Ryck asked Sams.

  “And what’s wrong with a heavy-worlder?” T-Rex asked.

  “Nothing if he’s a Marine beside you? But what, she had to outweigh him by 30, 40 kilos?”

  “Ah, just remember, my mother’s a heavy-worlder. Sister, too,” T-Rex said without rancor.

  “Well, yeah, she was heavier than me, but only by maybe 10 kilos. Real good in the sack, though,” Sams said.

  That started a conversation on the relative merits of women from various worlds. Ryck sat back, just happy to take it all in. It was like he’d never been gone.

  In the middle of the ballroom, some Marines were playing VSTOL. They had looped a rope around one of the ballroom’s rafters (a Mövenpick staff had tried to stop that, then wisely retreated leaving the Marines to the field of battle) so Marines could grab the running end while another end, the one coming down from the rafter, was tied onto a very drunk sergeant. A table was set up under the sergeant. The goal was to lower the sergeant so he landed on the table, not touching the floor. This was the VSTOL part of it, the Vertical and Short Takeoff and Landing. Not too hard. Except that other Marines were the “crosswinds.” They pummeled the sergeant, grabbed and swung him, threw drinks and chairs at him, anything to get him swinging and missing the table. The landing crew had to time the swinging in order to drop him on target. Ryck watched as the landing team almost made it, only to watch the hapless sergeant bounce off the edge of the table to land hard on the floor.

  Mess games had been going on for hundreds of years, although in the days of ocean navies, VSTOL was most likely not one of them. But the mess night, the celebration of who they were and o
f their brotherhood, that hadn’t changed over the centuries.

  “Hey Ryck, you had some of those conservative religious groups on your home planet, right? Didn’t you tell me that? Mabala here, he says the religious girls are conservative on the outside but tigers in bed. Is that true?” Sams asked.

  Ryck laughed and turned back to his friends, his brothers. He’d been down and out, a little lost at sea over the last several months. His fellow Marines had dragged him back, and he was good to go.

  “Well, it’s like this. Those religious girls, in their long clothes, that gets them hot in more ways than one,” he started on a sea story, one probably only 10% based on truth, which for a sea story, made it practically gospel.

  Luminosity

  Chapter 23

  “Biofeedback, 100%. Tamberhall, let’s get the weapons pack on and run it through. Time’s getting pretty short,” CWO3 William Weston, the Golf Company ordinance officer told Corporal Jasper Tamberhall, one of his enlisted armorers.

  LCpl Ryck Lysander patiently waited while Tamberhall pushed the button that lifted and attached his weapons pack. While each PICS’ longjohns, the tight inner, sensor-laden skinsuit that a Marine wore while in his PICS, was individually fitted to each Marine, the PICS themselves, although specifically assigned to an individual Marine, were still one-size-fits all. That required regular maintenance to ensure the longjohns were communicating with the PICS’ brain. This was not often a problem, but the weapons pack was a little different. Weapons packs were mission-loaded, and a Marine could get any of the normal loads and some custom loads, depending on the mission and his specific task in the mission. As a Marine could get any weapons pack, the connections had to be checked and re-checked before he was sent into harm’s way. In an emergency, a Marine could just suit up and go, but when there was time, a partial, or preferably, a full check was made.

  Ryck, as a semi-trained armorer, had helped CWO3 Weston as the testing commenced, but now it was his turn. He had to get back to his squad and get ready for the landing.

  “Pack 2, attached. Commencing analytics,” Tamberhall said as the chief warrant officer walked down the line to the next testing station.

  Cpl Tamberhall had all the information in front of him, but the armorers always vocalized. Mix-ups could happen, and an assaultman who showed up to blow a door with a Pack 1 instead of the EOD Pack 5 would be useless, and the mission could fail. It was up to the Marine himself to listen to the armorer and to check the readout on his visor, to make sure he had the correct pack.

  Ryck was the fire team’s heavy gunner for the mission, so Pack 2 was correct.

  “Weapons pack check, 100%,” Tamberhall said about 20 seconds later. “You are cleared for combat. Next!” he shouted out.

  Ryck stepped off the platform, went to the walk-in, and popped the PICS, wiggling out the back and leaving the empty suit standing in its assigned spot. As always, Ryck pictured the empty combat suit as the shell of a cicada as the adult insect, Ryck, in this case, wormed free of it. Ryck was in the longjohns for the duration, but the PICS would sit there, an armed Navy bosun in the walk-in for security, until it was time to launch.

  He checked his watch. There was just enough time to get some chow before he had to be at the final brief. He was actually a little too excited to eat, but a good Marine ate when he could, not knowing when the next opportunity would arise. He could be inside his PICs for quite some time, and the nutritional base fed to them while in the PICS, the “ghost shit,” did little to assuage hunger even if it kept the body going.

  He thought back to Smitty back on the Dirtball, who had accused him of wanting to go to Golf when he returned to full-duty. Ryck had been serious at the time that he wanted to come back to Fox, where his friends were. He was surprised, then, when his orders were to Golf. His time in the armory probably had something to do with it. Golf was the battalion’s heavy company, with two platoons being heavy with only one being light instead of the other way around. Even then, the “light platoon” spent more time training in PICS than the lights in the other companies and could suit up if the need arose. Ryck wasn’t assigned as an armorer, even if CWO4 Heng had hinted that Ryck could make the switch if he so desired. But Ryck wanted back into a fire-team. So he was with the Second Fire Team, First Squad, First Platoon. Cpl Nimoto was his fire team leader, Sgt Phantawisangtong his squad leader. At first, Ryck thought it just the worst coincidence he could imagine. But it wasn’t a coincidence. King Tong had specifically asked for him. And it really hadn’t turned out to be that bad. Squad Leader King Tong was not the same man as Drill Instructor King Tong. “Hecs,” he was called by the other NCOs, but to Ryck, he was still King Tong.

  Ryck hustled to Enlisted Galley D. This was not the little Adelaide. This was the FS Praecipua, a Prion Class battlecruiser, named for the battle during the War of the First Reaches. It was a modern dreadnaught, a huge ship, and the entire battalion was embarked. The ship itself was probably overkill. It wasn’t like it could unleash its planet busters in this case. But the brass probably hoped that just the appearance of the big ship would quell the situation. If that happened, then the Marines would just have been passengers. Ryck knew he should wish for that. But after a year-and-a-half of inactivity, he hoped for some action. He knew he should feel ashamed about that, but the fact was that he didn’t.

  Galley D was the unofficial Marine galley. Technically, a sailor, Marine, or members of the FCDC advance party could eat at any enlisted galley, but in practice, the enlisted men and women tended to segregate themselves. The Marines took over Galley D as it was close to their main berthing. Ryck and a few others had eaten breakfast that morning at Galley B, just to see if there was a difference between “Navy food” and “Marine food.” There wasn’t.

  There were at least 150 Marines with the same idea as Ryck in the galley, grabbing hot chow while they could. Over half were in skins. These would be the light infantry Marines, both from Golf and the other companies. The rest were in their longjohns. The longjohns were extremely tight and left absolutely nothing to the imagination. The Marines in their skins kept a running commentary about the various attributes, or lack thereof, of the PICS Marines. Fox was embarked on the ship as well, but a quick glance showed that none of Ryck’s friends were there at chow. The company must have been in the middle of something. With only four hours before launch, Ryck thought that would have been a good guess.

  “Hey, Ryck, you think we’re going to launch?” LCpl Naranbaatar Bayarsaikhan, asked as Ryck sat down.

  “Ghengis” was from Larudi, the extremely homogenous world settled by Mongolians, and take away his longjohns, fit him out with furs and sit him on a horse with a “larudi” on his arm, and he could pass for his ancient forebearer and nic-namesake, Ghengis Khan himself.

  “Don’t know,” Ryck said. “Would you want to fight if you looked up and saw the Prake over you?”

  “Well, they know we’re about there, and they know what we’ve got. They haven’t surrendered yet,” Ghengis said.

  “Wait until we launch,” Private Courtland Prifit said. “Iffen they don’t we’ll kick their perking asses.”

  Ghengis just looked at Ryck and raised his eyebrows. Ryck shrugged. Courtland was a boot, and this was his first operation. Boots were better seen and not heard.

  Their mission was to restore the government of Luminosity. Luminosity was not a corporate world, but one founded by a freespeaker society at the height of the movement some 200 years ago. Over the years, it had grown economically, but with keeping in line with their founding philosophy, had minimal government and no armed forces. Even the police were only part-time deputies.

  During the planet’s third immigration wave, according to the brief the Marines and sailors had received, a number of refugees from Kyber had arrived, settling in the main mountain range. When they started their own militia, the planetary authorities had objected, but as this was a “free” world, having a private militia was considered technically a matter of p
ersonal choice, and therefore legal.

  That may have been a mistake, because over a month ago, that “militia” took over the government, declaring themselves in charge and the “protectors” of the citizens from both crime and outside influences. When people objected, they were arrested and thrown into hastily-constructed jails.

  That created a call for assistance from the Federation. Two weeks later, the Federation voted to intervene, skirting the law by declaring that this was merely a “police action.” The fact that the rare earth mines, especially the scandium and gadolinium mines, were closed by the new rulers, couldn’t have had anything to do with the extremely quick response by the resource-hungry central planets of the Federation.

  With somewhere close to 3,000 in the militia, the powers that be determined that one reinforced Marine battalion, with 2,000+ Marines, would be enough to defeat the militia and get things back to normal. The reports that the militia might have both armor and combat suits were largely discounted.

  The battalion was assigned the mission and given two days to embark. The Prake was pure Navy and didn’t often carry embarked Marines. But as modern bubble warships generally differed primarily in size alone, it wasn’t that difficult for the ship to accommodate the Marines.

  It actually took three days before they could get underway, and then another three days of bubble-space time to reach Luminosity. The ship had come out of bubble space an hour before. In another three hours, it would be in orbit around the planet.

  The ship had an immense capability with more firepower than the entire Marine Corps and a good portion of the Civil Development Corps. (Not many people realized it, due to planned disinformation, but even the Civil Development Corps, which was actually an occupation army, had much more firepower than the Marines.) Using the ship’s firepower on Luminosity, though, would be difficult if not impossible. Not only was the bulk of the population on the side of the Federation, but also the mines themselves could not be damaged if shipments were to commence immediately.