“Stand by for launch,” Nicole told the trainees in Boat 12’s cargo section. Then she reported in to hangar deck launch control. “Pri-Fly, this is Delta One-Two, standing by.”
“Roger, Delta One-Two,” the controller replied. “You’re first up. Launch on green.” Outside Nicole’s viewport, a series of lights that a race car driver might have found familiar cycled from red to amber. “Launch,” she heard the controller say as the light went green.
Even with the little ship’s gravity and acceleration controls, the catapult launched the boat with enough force that Nicole could sense it. Ahead of her, the catapult tube seemed to peel away to reveal the stars. As the boat was released from the launch field, she took control and smoothly maneuvered it toward their target, one of Quantico’s continents that had been established as a massive training range.
“Delta One-Two, this is Eagle One,” came Thorella’s voice through the comm link. He was flying ahead of them in a fighter that had been modified to carry the assault group coordinator and an assistant, in addition to the pilot. Today, Thorella was serving as assault group coordinator, with Sergeant Major Aquino observing. This jump, the last before graduation, was going to be their toughest – in training, at least – and Aquino wanted to be there to see it.
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.
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
