by Tom Germann
As soon as the co-pilot had started talking I quickly double-checked my work, tying everything down, and then, when I was satisfied that nothing was going to break free on the way up, I moved to one of the few padded seats that I saw and strapped myself in. A five-point safety harness was snug against my body, and then when I rested my arms where they would naturally rest, I felt three buttons under my left hand. I pushed the first button and the seat quickly shifted position, turning into a reclined seat. I pushed the next button and the head rest that I was pressed against started shifting around until it was suddenly comfortable and I could feel it adjusting to a better fit of the back of my head and neck. The third button changed the headrest, and then there were speakers passing on different communications from the shuttle to the ship we were heading to. After a few seconds I pushed the button again and the noise shut off.
There was a change in the sounds from the shuttle itself and I could feel a rumble building throughout the ship. Then it all seemed to release at once and we were hurtling along and then up. There was tremendous pressure on me for a few seconds and then it eased off, and shortly after, the gravity seemed to decrease as well.
I likely had hours in transit, so I began studying the shuttle. It was pretty much what I had used in sim training and was heavy duty. There were padded seats for passengers that could be rotated around so that more cargo could be fit in as necessary. There were a lot of tie-down locations. Otherwise, the shuttle was pretty standard. Small first aid station; emergency ship suit locker that would have extra suit supplies; racks for weapons and tools. It almost felt like being in a small workshop. I could stand up in my boots and my head wasn’t touching the ceiling. In armour I would have to be careful.
Even the front of the shuttle was open. If necessary, special armoured bulkheads could be quickly installed, either with a door, in the event of just carrying cargo, or if going into combat, a one-piece unit that locked the flight crew in. It turned the crew compartment into an armoured egg to have the best chance of surviving combat.
After all, if the crew didn’t survive on an assault landing, then the rest of the section might as well stay at home. Then again, if the crew didn’t survive, then the section likely wouldn’t either as anything wiping out the crew compartment would probably scrap the entire shuttle.
To The Ship, Finally
The crew didn’t seem interested in talking to me at all so I sat back and hated the ride up to the ship. I’d never liked roller coasters or anything that spun me around, and here I was in a shuttle under pretty constant pressure heading up to a ship. I was real glad that the crew didn’t know about my weak stomach. I’ve heard stories of pilots deliberately doing barrel rolls to help their passengers “adjust” to the experience.
I sat back and tried to relax. I pulled out my pad and started reviewing what little information was included on the section and the ship that I was heading out to.
Both had excellent assessments going back the last few years. They had been involved in several actions, and the section had been attached to the same ship for twenty-two years. Casualties were low within the section and the last incident had been a little over three years ago. She had lost both arms and suffered internal injuries from exposure to vacuum. There were no details on the operation itself.
I finished reviewing the small amount of data I had in a few minutes.
I already knew all that.
I could game, but was too nervous and I couldn’t concentrate.
Instead, I started thinking about what was to come.
I was going to be living on the same starship for at least a year in deep space. Likely longer. At some point we would be rotated back to the Sol System for ship overhaul and other updates.
I was going to be breathing the same atmosphere that everyone else had inhaled and exhaled thousands of times. Stuck on a small metal bucket with nothing on the far side except a fast and painful death. I. . . .
There was the slight bump and shudder as we nestled up to the ship.
I came back to the here and now.
The shudder of the ship let me know when the docking clamps had secured us, and shortly after, the same crewman that had secured us initially came back and verified that the connection was good. He gave me a thumbs-up and I released myself from the seat.
The gravity here was less than on Earth but enough to keep me right-side up. The new gravity systems on the starships were a blessing. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a Marine or crewmember thirty years ago, when you were simply at whatever gravity the spin of the ship could give you.
The hatch opened. I unsecured my armour case and started pushing it toward the exit.
The crewmember stopped me. “All gear is offloaded immediately and secured in the passage outside. The shuttles are fully locked down as soon as we are done. We’ll give you a hand.”
I just nodded and pushed my armour case through the hatch, the very short passage, and then the ship hatch. There was a woman waiting for me. I guessed she was Two, the section leader. She had dark fuzz on her head and was shorter than I thought she would have been.
“If you’re done checking me out, get your kit to the side and secured. The ship crew like having the shuttles locked down as fast as possible. Something about a big hole to space being open if anything goes wrong.” She mashed a finger against a map that was on the wall at shoulder height. “We are here. You need to go here when your kit is off the ship.” Her finger had mashed another spot on the map farther away.
Then she turned and walked away.
I unloaded the rest of my gear and the crewmembers made sure I had locked it down in the passage so it wouldn’t bounce around in turbulence, then they secured the hatch and left.
I grabbed my small travel case with all my docs, and after checking the map, headed for where I was supposed to go.
The smell of the ship really hit me then. I had blocked it out before. It wasn’t as stale and metallic as the last outpost had been, or like the small courier ship that I had been on, either.
The air here almost smelt fresh.
I made it to the room Two had pointed out; it ended up being the mess. It was a small room, but I think it was only meant for the Marines. I noticed that there seemed to be a difference in the sections of the ship. Some were crew only and some were Marines only.
They hadn’t been around much, but I could feel Seven and my family behind me as I walked through the ship. They stopped at the door to the mess and wouldn’t enter when I went in.
Everyone was sitting around eating and talking, and they stopped when I walked into the room.
After that, it was a blur. I met everyone in the section. There were more men than women, but the only one that really stuck out was One. He didn’t seem happy to see me at all.
I spent the day settling in and moving my gear into my cubicle.
I picked up on the feeling of uncertainty from the rest of the Marines, and everyone seemed on edge, but I knew I needed to give it some time. I had just arrived; maybe they were in the middle of something, and of course, they had to get to know me.
I looked at the training schedule and it was full. Literally every day was completely blocked off, leaving seven hours a night for sleep. I reviewed the schedule again and saw that we had everything blocked off, including personal time and self-improvement time.
All of my self-improvement time was booked up with training classes with members of the section or training with one of the ship’s AIs.
We would be training all the time. I would be training all the time for the next twenty years.
I wasn’t sure if I could relate to the section. They were just so . . . different.
We were on the far front lines trying to protect humanity and ensure that we could grow as a species. Every time I realized the significance of our mission, I was terrified.
; I started doing this because it was succeed or die. Now that I was out here, I could see how humanity cannot just pretend to fortify our solar system and wait for the enemy to come to us. Honestly, there are just too many attack vectors, and we need to learn a lot more before we can defend ourselves.
So humanity cannot be isolationists, I concluded. We need to go out and learn while creating early warning systems via bases and outposts that need to be destroyed first. A defense in depth is the only way to do this.
That’s what the Corporation believes, and they have no reason to lie. Not about that, anyway.
My job now was to fit in with my new section and help save humanity.
First deployments are always the worst; at least, that was what I had picked up from my instructor Armour back on Earth. I had undergone training on the trip out, receiving administrative briefs covering everything from pay and health benefits, to stress relief.
I arrived at the transfer point and switched over to the research and carrier vessel Nameless Stranger. I had met my section.
There were only nine of them as they had suffered a casualty just recently on a counter-raid on a research station. I didn’t know the specifics of the mission; no one ever talked to me about it, and I couldn’t find it anywhere on the system. There are supposed to be lots of after-action sims with information, but I didn’t know where they stored it.
I had gone through the training element here and hadn’t done well on that. Everything was just so different from the training that I had gone through on Earth. The entire section operated like a well-oiled machine. Here I was the newbie. I didn’t mesh with them, and it showed.
I finished the work-up training, and then Two had looked at me and said it was time for a section-level sim for us all to shake out. It had gone badly.
That morning I woke up shivering in a cold sweat, and I stank. I had almost an hour before the alarm was supposed to go off. I crawled out of my bed and stood in the little cubicle that was my room. I couldn’t sleep. I started cleaning myself up so that I could meet the rest of the section ready and not looking like a wreck.
Building An Electromagnetic Pulse Bomb
I showed up for my training on time. Every new Marine has to do all the standard training and maintenance and then work overtime trying to fit in with the new section. Every section is a separate organization and is almost organic, like a family, or a better description would be a tree. It grows on its own the way it needs to. Over time, a regular military unit develops a personality. Yet on Earth, each military organization is surrounded by other units. It sees the flag it follows. The people and systems that it supports and that support it are there and highly visible.
The higher command that makes sure that the rules are being followed is always there watching to ensure that the unit, with its strange mottos and its rituals (like the slow march of some infantry units), do not become extreme or deviate from what is acceptable.
The Corporation does that too. No Marine section or organization has ever gone rogue. But everyone is unique and different. These are units of just a few people deployed for years to deep space where they are away from the rest of humanity. There are no attachments with ship crew, even. Every section of Marines could be working together for years, trained to the cutting edge for every type of combat imaginable.
It’s not hard to understand, then, why Marines have some really weird habits that others may view as insane.
I was getting trained and shown things that were never covered in my training on Earth. I was also getting indoctrinated in how the section works so that I could fit in. I’m the new guy. They hadn’t had a replacement in over three years and it would take a while for me to fit in.
When I step through the door into the workshop I can see Tino—I mean Four—working away at a workbench. He was not in armour for the lesson. We’d move to that later when I’d learned the basics. But for now he was just wearing a ship suit like everyone else.
He’s impressive like everyone else in the section because he is so unique. His hair was shaved down to a fuzz that was still growing in until we enter operation mode and we all are buzzed clean of any hair. His is curly and was starting to look like a skull cap already. Four is darker-skinned with a big, beaky nose, a bit shorter and thick in the body. Of course, everyone is thicker in the body given our workout routines and drills that we go through.
I’d seen him shift double his bodyweight in the gym and he does repetition training with those weights. He didn’t seem that fast but I wouldn’t want to mess with him ‘cause he could tie me into knots. As far as I could figure, he was a few years older than me. It was hard to tell, though, and no one goes looking through other people’s files.
He looked up and over at me. He was wearing a helmet with magnification gear on it. He put down whatever he was working on and gestured for me to come over. “Come on, Eight. You’re a new guy and you gotta learn all this cool stuff.”
I walked over to the workbench and looked at what Four had been working on. There were several laser pistol batteries and a lot of spare parts that I didn’t recognize.
Four nodded at me. “Recognize this stuff, newbie?”
I looked at the parts again, but I just didn’t recognize anything other than a micro power cell that was used in our suits as a deep backup power supply for our system settings. I shook my head no. “I only recognize the laser batteries and the one suit battery there, for the emergency system settings. The rest of it I just don’t know.”
He nodded and then looked like he was considering something. “What do you think about laser weaponry generally? Or specifically, if you want.”
Another test. Great. I didn’t have to think about it at all. “Lasers should be the best weapon system available except we don’t have answers for power or the heat buildup. I mean, in a fixed position where you can tap a reactor, they should be awesome. But until way better batteries are developed that hold more charge, they are a bit limited.”
I watched him as he nodded his head slowly in agreement. “Okay, Eight. You seem like a nice guy, sorta, and you’re trying to fit in as fast as you can. I’m gonna go easy on you as long as you keep paying attention. Do you understand?”
I nodded that I understood even though I didn’t.
Four touched the wall screen and started flipping through menus. He pulled up photos of multiple different laser weapons that we used and pointed to them.
“You don’t know this, but I’ve been reading up on lasers for years now. I’m a bit of an expert on their systems and how they work. I’m also a good shot with the heavy rifle we have.” He tapped the heavy sniper rifle that was pictured on the side of the screen before continuing. “In my opinion, lasers overall are shit. I can go into a lot of detail on why they are, but I’m gonna keep it simple here.”
He took his work gloves off and leaned against the bench while watching me. “Lasers are delicate systems and are finicky. I know you’ve used them in training, and they look tough, right?” He didn’t even wait for me to answer. “That’s in a training environment. The focusing and targeting systems are touchy. If you use one extensively and are moving around, you slowly lose power and focus. If you fired off hundreds of shots, by the end you would be giving your target a mild sunburn. Maybe, if that. The other problem is, you really need a big, over-powered model for anything long-range because of the loss of power in any sort of atmosphere. So either the system moves out of alignment and you have less destructive power, or the atmosphere diffuses the beam, weakening it drastically.”
He stopped and I thought about what he had said.
I looked at him and he nodded for me to go ahead. I spoke. “Then why do we use them? They’re one of the premier weapon systems in the first world. All sniper rifles are lasers. I’ve seen the training videos. Lasers are supposed to be better for defenses and just better overall.”
Fou
r smiled. “That’s what they tell you. Every laser weapon needs hours of maintenance. Even changing the barrel of the weapon is an assembly that is carefully manufactured and then rebuilt at a second-line facility with special workshops and technicians. The infantry will never carry laser rifles. Sniper weapons? Yes, as they are taking special shots and need guaranteed kills or to destroy their target, which will happen with a laser hitting an unarmed vehicle or even a lightly armoured vehicle. It’ll punch right through it.”
He turned back to the screen and pulled up a schematic of a sniper rifle and then added some photos of it firing, and the targets after being hit. There were light vehicles with holes burned through them, vehicles and equipment on fire from the secondary effects, and there were even photos of different types of personal armour with burn marks through torsos and heads. He stopped at a crystal-clear image of a heavily armoured vehicle, what I would call a tank with treads. It was a combat shot and the front armour had run from a spot, but the armour had held for that.
Then Four pulled up another file that contained a bunch of sentry guns and emplacements. There were photos of crews manning weapons, and then even more pics of what were clearly technicians and gun crews replacing the barrel system. He pointed at a heavy defence emplacement that had several people working on it. “Here they have access to spare parts and can rotate taking the weapon down for its mandatory four-hour maintenance cycle. If you hit the target, you can take out a heavy armoured vehicle with something that size. Heck, if there is an assault lander coming in and you can get a full-on hit, you’re going to punch them out of the sky. It’s even better if the defence point is in space or on an atmosphere-less asteroid. But heavy defensive sites tend to be slow for both aiming and firing; they’re usually the first target that assaulters aim for.”
Four flipped through more photos of our weapon systems. There were combat shots, and he stopped at an image of a laser pistol that was all bent. “Lasers are excellent defence systems because you can power them and maintain that system relatively easy with a large dedicated support structure. We can use them effectively because we do not just go running around constantly firing rounds all over. When we assault, every shot counts, and that is how we train. After every mission we test every laser, and never use a barrel assembly past twenty shots. So if you fire ten rounds from your laser pistol on an operation, we will end up switching out the barrel and rebuilding the old one with new parts. That gets expensive. My suggestion is to take the laser as we are supposed to, and also take a projectile firearm with a few magazines. Jams do occasionally happen but if you are ever out on an operation and you are stuck in combat for an extended period, you will notice the laser gets less effective while your projectile sidearm will blow holes in the bad guys with every hit. Do you understand?”