Duty, Honor or Death the Corps Sticks

Read Duty, Honor or Death the Corps Sticks Storyline:

Lan Carter hated these windowless Troop Transports more than he hated anything else in life. It was true that he hated war in general, with every gram of his being, but yet he hated these windowless Troop Transports even more. A soldier couldn't see what he was being dropped into, was the whole issue! The Brass didn't want the Infantry Soldier to see what he, or she, was being dropped into, of course, because it only gave them time to become terrified. Terror was nonproductive.That was fine for the fresh green newjacks, but he would have liked to be able to see in advance what he was being dumped into, so as to be able to formulate some kind of plan of action.This was old business for Lan Carter, nor had he been unduly worried the first time the Space Corps had dropped him into hostile alien territory. This was like a slow Sunday afternoon back home on Calafga, a newly Reunified Prison Planet Colony World, and the place of his birth and youth.Any Prison Colony World could petition for Reunification when they proved to the Federation that they had gained and could maintain a free, Democratic and, nearly, crime free society. It had taken Calafga seven hundred and fifty six years, Standards, to gain that stability, and now, Reunified, she was becoming nearly as modern and civilized as some of her oldest brethren.It had been a rocky road for Calafga, with near constant warfare and barbarian warlords the main form of government for most of that time. Communications with the Federation, when communications technology was finally reinvented, brought hope and purpose and the mobilization of the people.The Army of Liberation, as they had called themselves in their early years, and of whom Lan Carter had become a member, had slowly marched across the planet, annihilating all who stood before them in their grand purpose of Democracy and Reunification. It was the bloodiest and worst time in all of Calafga's bloody years of existence, but it had ended in Reunification and the restoration of civilization for the beleaguered world.So warfare was all Lan Carter knew. Calafga had no need of him once the last of the resistance was crushed. It often happened that way, that those who had been so necessary so recently were now a liability and a danger to the new, evolved society. Service in the Space Corps, who certainly did need men and women with Lan's particular qualities, was his ticket off Calafga.A man of Carter's characteristics would have only found troubles in the new society. Under Calafga's new laws, trouble meant a one way ride to a new Prison Planet, one that had not yet been Reunified! That was the last thing Carter wanted, after having fought so hard already on Calafga.So Carter signed for a 10 year hitch in the Space Corps Infantry Division. He was just beginning his fifth year.The war here on Barcene would be no more than a minor skirmish. The indigenous race which called this place home were a spacefaring race, or had been before the Navy Division of the Space Corps had annihilated their small armada, but their technology was thousands of years behind man's. The fight would be very one-sided!One-sided did not mean there would be few or no casualties. It did not mean that at all. The planet would be pacified one alien at a time, until there were no aliens, and then it would become another home for mankind. The Corps did not destroy perfectly viable planets. There would be a lot of casualties! There always were. Always.The concussion of antiaircraft batteries, though they were firing at vessels which weren't specifically aircraft, rocked the Troop Transport as they flew in. We were traveling at many times the speed of sound. The AGP, Anti-Gravity Propulsion, of these small ships were capable of propelling them at extraordinary speeds, near Light Speed given the room to accelerate, but they were not equipped with Worm Whole Jump capacity, so you did not want to get stranded in one a long way from home, if for instance all the Jump capable ships were destroyed! The Speed of Light is abysmally slow when real Galactic distances are considered, much less Universal distances, as from one Galaxy to another, but for the purposes at hand, in use against a race who had just barely gotten off the surface of their own planet, it was more than sufficient.The Troop Transport was full of fresh green newjacks, Lan's term for new recruits on their way into their first battles. They would maintain their freshness for many battles, however many of them survived, that is. This particular Troop Transport held forty, but there were various other sized ships. Smaller was better as far as Lan Carter was concerned; it created more confusion for the enemy and kept the losses of each individual Transport to a manageable minimum.Despite the speed at which the Transports were flown, or how well they were flown, there were usually the occasional loss, depending...