Unbeknownst to Rev, however, the regular Marines had kept three battalions on active Null G status throughout the course of the war, never engaging them in combat ops against the Centaurs. The war had been the services’ main effort, but as the assistant vice-counsel had said, there were some among humanity who took the situation and exploited it. Greed had overcome common decency, and piracy had actually increased during the course of the war. So, those three battalions had come through the war with relatively few casualties and lots more experience fighting in space.
Rev could tell Cathcart resented not having been in the main fight, but he thought that from here on out, those three battalions would be vital in training the Marines back up into what had been one of their main missions before the Centaurs came a’calling.
And now, after yesterday’s training and the extra instruction with the corporal, Rev felt far more comfortable and was confident in what he had to do. He might not be as good as most of the more experienced troopers, but he was light-years above where he was two days ago, and he thought he wouldn’t bring shame upon the Marines during the ship takedown exercise.
In fact, he was more than a little excited to start the mission. Flying from the Alacrity to the asteroid had merely been a means to get from Point A to Point B, and he’d spent part of that wondering if the duct tape sealing his EVA suit closed would hold. This time, it would be a tactical movement to contact. But as there wasn’t much cover in the emptiness of space, the advance would be done with maneuver formations. Rev didn’t understand how it could work, but it sounded fun—at least in a training evolution. No one was going to be shooting at them, so there wasn’t any danger of getting killed.
Their “ship,” nicknamed the SS Good Guy, was part of an old hull mounted on four pylons driven into the Enceladus rock. The target ship was a bigger hull five kilometers away. For the purpose of the mission, it was a passenger ship, taken over by twenty pirates. This wasn’t a live-fire exercise. The opfor—pirates in this case—were other instructors, and their mission was to avoid the platoon’s troopers. The platoon would advance on the ship, conduct a simulated breach, and then chase them down.
Yeah. Pretty fun if you ask me.
“Any questions?” First Lieutenant Veang asked the platoon.
There were none.
“Then let’s get ready. I know this is the first exercise for all the new joins, but no one is a cherry here. We’ve all seen combat, so this is nothing. Just concentrate on putting all that we learned yesterday into practice. Oh, and don’t beat up the opfor. I don’t want to have to answer to the colonel.”
Jokes told over a circuit were hard to pull off. The mics in everyone’s helmets filtered out laughter, so Rev didn’t know if the lieutenant’s last comment bombed or not.
The lieutenant was a short, stocky man from Angkor, a planet within the Association of Independent Worlds. Rev hadn’t even heard of the place and had to ask Punch where it was. The lieutenant was young, not yet twenty years old if what Rev was told was correct. But he had two Golden Lions, his planet’s highest award for valor. Rev had Punch pull up the public citations. The man had personally taken out three paladins during one fight, then he had held off a group of five Centaurs from crossing a bridge letting a hundred Ramhold citizens escape to safety during another mission.
In other words, he was a badass.
Which would be good, except for the fact that the guy didn’t seem to like Rev at all. In fact, he seemed to have an active dislike for him.
Rev didn’t know if that was politics—the AIW tended to be on opposite sides of the Union on many issues—or if it had to do with his IBHU. But there was something going on there.
There wasn’t much Rev could do about that, so it was just ignore any slights and do what he was told. The lieutenant was half way through his tour, so all Rev had to do was last a year and a half, and then he’d have a new platoon commander.
“You heard the lieutenant,” Master Sergeant Tina Barber, the platoon sergeant, said. “Everyone activate your suspension harnesses and then take your positions in the Good Guy.”
There was a general movement to the training hulk, with several troopers showing off with somersaults or pinwheels as they went. Rev was feeling confident, but not that confident. He held a steady course, avoiding anyone else as he crossed over. Let the show-offs do their thing. They were probably frustrated with the Weightless Movement 101-nature of yesterday’s lessons.
Still, they didn’t have to rub it in to the rest of the platoon who were not as experienced.
The back of the hulk was gone, exposing the interior, and Rev used it to get into position.
“You ready for this?” Ting-a-ling asked a moment later as he settled in next to Rev.
“Yep. You?”
“I think I’ve got this thing licked. Not much chance to practice this stuff during the war, you know. But at least we’re in the Oscars. Pretty stippy-do sweet, huh?”
“Yeah, sweet.” Rev didn’t tell him what Daryll had said about the Oscars being Heg rejects.
“First Platoon, your exercise starts now. You have ninety minutes to complete it,” the range officer passed.
“That’s us,” SFC Gamay passed. “Into the airlock, now.”
Rev gave Ting-a-ling a light high-five—a heavy one could send them both tumbling—and they joined the rest of the squad and entered the airlock. There was no air to void, of course, but they had to go through the motions. After a minute, the outer door opened, then the squad debarked and moved into a squad V, one team forward and two back, and with each four-person team in a 3D diamond. Master Sergeant Barber was moving with the squad, between the two flanking teams.
Taking Pashu into consideration, the squad leader put Rev’s First Fire Team on the left side of the formation, and Rev took the far-left position in the team’s diamond. This was the first time since Rev had joined the squad that the squad leader had to take his IBHU into account.
The squad flew slowly over the surface of the moon, heading initially at the oblique that would allow them to cut back to arrive at the target along with the other two squads.
Without a real fight pending, Rev’s warrior remained buried, so Rev could simply enjoy the flight. His stomach remained quiet, and he didn’t need to ask Punch for antiemetics. The ground was relatively featureless, the sunlight harsh, but Enceladus had its own kind of beauty. As he thought about it, he was amazed that he, a provincial from New Hope, was flying around a moon in the home system. And this was his second time in the home system in less than a year.
After two klicks, however, much of the newness of what he was doing had worn off. So, he tried a few of the maneuvers Corporal Cathcart had taught him. He cut his thrusters, then using the lasso, he turned his body to face outboard, as he might in a diamond formation on land. His angular momentum remained the same, so he kept his place in the formation, but he was now flying sideways, so to speak, oriented outward.
Eventually, Rev’s angular momentum would slow. Enceladus had an atmosphere of sorts, water vapor that escaped from the surface. It was so sparse, however, that Rev could make it all the way to the target without any significant loss of momentum.
Except for the fact that the squad wasn’t flying directly to the target. When the squad leader gave them their new heading, Rev had to quickly rotate back and use his thrusters again. The delay put him out of position for a moment, and he had to adjust his course to slip back into position.
“Keep it tight, Pelletier,” the squad leader passed.
Good way to start off my first exercise. Head in the game, Reverent.
The target appeared over the horizon as they closed. Like the Good Guy, the SS Meatgrinder was suspended on pylons, but while the former barely qualified as a hulk, the Meatgrinder was a whole ship, replete with passages, berthing, a bridge, an engine room, and everything else needed to ply the space lanes.
The breaching team within Second Squad wouldn’t actually knock a hole in the hu
ll. They’d set up their tube over an existing breach. And once inside, there would be no live fire. To register a kill, they had to physically touch the opfor. True, that part was far from realistic, but the intent of the exercise was to practice maneuvering in a null G environment.
As Rev had thought before, it sounded like fun. And as they approached the ship, Rev’s warrior surprised him by trying to emerge. No real combat or not, evidently, the competition was enough to excite him.
First and Third Squads, coming in from different directions, were the security element. The troopers would land on the hull and cover Second while that squad made the breach. Once Second was inside the Meatgrinder, the other two squads would follow and join what was almost an adult game of tag.
Rev started getting a little nervous as they got closer. This was his second actual approach in Null G, the first being on Asteroid 6-067-442. He’d managed that, but this time, he was with troopers from across human space. He had to do it right if he wanted to make the Union proud. Not just the Union, but the IBHU program. He was kind of difficult to miss, and if he screwed up, everyone, not just his squad, would know who it was.
“Initiate approach,” the squad leader passed at two hundred meters out.
Rev pulled up the landing lattice overlay and placed it over the image of the target ship. His landing position was now a red spot near the breach. As they got closer, the overlay expanded to keep in position on the ship.
“Let me know when we’re at forty meters,” he told Punch. His helmet display was counting down the distance, but there were too many moving parts to what he was doing, and anything he could pass off was one less thing he had to monitor.
He gave his forward thrusters a tiny jolt to slow him down.
“Too soon, Pelletier,” the squad leader immediately passed.
Shit. She’s watching me like a hawk.
“Roger that.” But he didn’t want to speed up again, so he left it at that. He might land a few seconds late, but it was what it was.
He’d slowed down more than he’d thought, however, and he was going to be more than a little late. To his right and now ahead of him, Corporal Akkeke, who had far more experience in Null G ops, performed a move they hadn’t been taught the day before, a sort of half twist with three somersaults, coming out perfectly aligned for a feet-first landing on the ship. He was showboating, the extra somersaults needless, and that pissed Rev off, but he had to admit that the trooper had performed it flawlessly.
Rev slowly brought Pashu across his chest and bent at the waist.
Rev kicked back hard, trying to keep perfectly aligned. He bent his legs and brought them in, then extended them before kicking them back again. It took three times, but he was generally now feet first and only slightly off-kilter.
He gave his forward-facing thrusters three small bursts, and his feet hit the Meatgrinder’s hull with barely any momentum. He didn’t even have to flex his legs to absorb the shock. Immediately, he activated his geckos, securing him to the ship.
Rev hadn’t been maneuvering in a tactical manner. He’d completely ignored that he wouldn’t have been able to deploy Pashu had it been necessary, but he’d accomplished this exercise’s objective. He wanted to shout out in victory, but that would be about the most newbie thing he could do. He looked to his right to Ting-a-ling’s position, ready to send him a P2P, but the Frisian had misjudged, and he’d stopped a good three meters from the hull. Now, he was flailing a bit with his legs as he tried to orient himself to be able to close that distance.
Sorry about that, Ting, but better you than me.
Not that he’d give his friend shit about his landing later. Of course not. No, never.
He smiled as he tried to come up with a real zinger.
The Frisian should have just stopped and taken his time, but instead, he struggled, forgetting his lessons. Finally, he was face down, and he pulsed his thrusters, bringing him the rest of the way. He managed to get his feet under him and made contact.
“Don’t even say it, Rev,” he said the moment Rev opened up the P2P. “Gamay already gave me a ration of shit.”
Rev bit back what he was going to say. He’d save it for later.
“Now that we’re all finally on the ship, I want all of you to just forget the tactical play for a moment and watch Second Squad come in, particularly the breach team. We’ll critique it later, but note what you think they do well and where they could have done better,” SFC Gamay passed.
Rev looked up—relative up, that is. He was essentially standing horizontal to the moon’s surface, and while the suspension harness was keeping him in place, his inner ears told him that “down” wasn’t toward his feet but rather to the moon’s down. It was a tiny pull, but it was still disorienting, especially now that his mind wasn’t taken up with maneuvering.
He swallowed hard and tried to ignore the ground as Second Squad made its approach. Four troopers made up the breaching team, and they looked like four pallbearers carrying a tubular coffin between them. These were four of the most experienced troopers in the squad, all with extensive Null G experience. As the team had to deal with the extra mass of the breaching tube, that was probably a pretty good call.
Rev’s position on the hull was right next to the ready-made breach, so he had a head-on view as the team approached. It seemed to him that they were coming in too fast, but that might be because he was being overly cautious. The four had proven themselves to be skilled in Null G.
“OK, right about now,” he told himself when he thought they should reverse and start slowing down.
Only they kept coming, and coming fast. The right front trooper raised his free hand and outboard leg, and the other three followed suit. That wasn’t anything that they’d been introduced to the day before. According to their class this morning, a breaching team wasn’t supposed to maneuver. They would simply slow down, then bring their feet up and through until they hit. With the breaching tube as an anchor, that would steady them though the process.
Rev watched with interest to see what they were going to do. Then with almost one motion, all four snapped their arms and legs down. At this close range, and as they started tumbling, Rev could see their rear thrusters tilt upward, adding their momentum. The four, with the tube in their grasp, started a slow somersault.
Pretty cool, Rev had to admit as they spun. Not tactical in the least, and they’d probably get their asses chewed for showing off, but cool nonetheless.
He watched in open admiration, not realizing exactly when it all started going wrong. Instead of keeping the breaching tube tumbling along the vertical axis, it started drifting to the side. The trooper on the back left side twisted toward it and yanked it back into place, but they lost their grip and tumbled backward, head over heels.
“Drop the breaching tube, now!” a voice came over the platoon net.
But the three still on it ignored the order. They struggled to right the tube but were working at cross purposes, and that sent the tube even more off-kilter.
Rev stared slack-jawed, wondering if he should try to help, but it was too late. Voices were yelling at the three, and Rev realized it could come down and hit him. He shuffled a few steps back, watching as the three troopers struggled to manhandle the 900 kg tube. One of them—Rev had lost track of where the trooper had started—positioned themselves at the end of the tube, trying to time the tumble to slow it down with their suit thrusters. It didn’t work. Maybe given enough space and enough time, it could have. But they were simply too close.
Rev stared in horror as they raced across the final twenty meters. The tube was rotating quicker now, and the end with the trooper clinging to it came around just as it hit, smashing the trooper between it and the hull with a shock that Rev felt through his boots.
The breaching tube bounced off, smashing the helmet of one of the others along the way. Blood fountained from the demolished faceplate, almost instantly cr
ystallizing as the trooper spun backward, the frozen blood spraying in an arc.
The net was alive with voices, but Rev tuned them out. He started forward to the body that had been crushed between the tube and the ship. It had begun to slide down the side of the hull toward the ground but quicker than if it was just the microgravity taking it.
Rev lowered himself, pushed off into a dive, and caught the body just as it cleared the side of the ship. Without trying to figure out which maneuver would work, he instinctively twisted like a cat, putting his body between the trooper and the ground, so when they hit, he took the brunt of the shock.
As they rebounded, Rev caught a look inside the other’s face shield. Rev had met her before, a corporal, but the name escaped him at the moment. Close-cropped red hair, pale white skin, and eyes open in pain and fear. Blood bubbled from out of her mouth.
“You’re going to be OK!” he shouted into his helmet mic, not knowing if she could hear.
They bounced on the ground again, and this time climbed away from the surface. For a moment, he thought he was still under thrust, but it wasn’t him. The trooper’s thrust was still powered, and it was taking them away from the ship.
“Can you shut off your thrusters?”
She didn’t respond. Either she couldn’t hear him, or she was beyond help. He looked down at her front, and his heart sunk. The suit was wide open to what was essentially a vacuum. Bloody crystals merged with the blue suit sealer that was trying to close the rents, but it was never designed for this kind of damage.
They bounced again on the ground, and he almost lost his grip. He had to do something, first and foremost being to seal the front of the Oscar. The helmet’s safety system had closed it off, so she had O2, but not for long. She had to get to the training safety ship.
Rev had nothing to close off that kind of damage, so he did the only thing he could think of. He brought her up, so they were face-to-face, then wrapped Pashu around her and hugged her tight. Her face twisted in agony, not centimeters from his, but Rev didn’t let up. Pashu was stronger than any organic arm, and he cranked her down. Better to crush the trooper than let her bleed out. He wrapped both of his legs around hers, trapping her there.
An Uneasy Alliance: Book 4 of the Sentenced to War Series Page 9