It wasn’t. The feeling reminded me of when I was ten and got my ass kicked by a couple of teenage boys who decided I had looked at them wrong. I ached all over and couldn’t understand why. Marines were cursing in one ear and Fleet crews were cursing in another and something was flashing yellow with the warning that there was an atmosphere leak in the Marine quarters. Which was no big deal since none of us were occupying them at the moment. Hell, most of us didn’t even have any personal effects on the ship because we’d lost them all on the Iwo. The Hermes wasn’t a home, it was just a ride.
“We’re clear.” The tactical officer was equanimous, as if it hadn’t mattered to him either way. “The Alphas aborted. Bravo Squadron Three falling in for escort.”
I was breathing hard and I had to bring it under control before I could address the company again. Thrust pushed me into the back of my suit, a steady two gravities, not exactly comfortable but not painful.
“We’re good,” I told them, perhaps trying to reassure myself. “Everyone okay?”
A chorus of “ooh-rah” came from the officers, who probably hadn’t had time to even check their platoons but didn’t want to admit any of them had puked inside their suits.
“Status report, Delta?” Geiger asked almost before the echo from my platoon leaders had died.
“We’re good, ma’am.” No, we have fifty percent casualties and all our suits are down. What did she expect me to say?
“Revised ETA to our separation point is fifteen mikes. Pass it down to your Marines and run final checks.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Fifteen minutes sounded like forever. I passed it on to the platoon leaders, the words tumbling out on automatic, barely registering in my own ears. Except Kovacs. I made sure to get him on the line because he was my XO and would be in charge of the other two platoons until we touched ground.
“Francis,” I told him, “separation in fifteen mikes. You remember the link-up plan, right?”
“Yeah, I got it,” he insisted. “If we drop too far separated for visual identification, I take my section of the company to the open square just to the west of that funky Washington Monument-looking building on the east end of the city and wait for you there until 1700 local time. If enemy activity forces me off that area, the backup rally point is the industrial parking lot behind the fusion reactor complex.”
Well, he mostly had it.
“The Washington Monument-looking building is the Civil Government Central Planning Headquarters,” I told him, “but close enough. And if we don’t link up by 1700, you’re to…” I trailed off, waiting for him to finish it.
“I take First and Second Platoons and go link up with Battalion in the public square outside the Imperial Palace,” he said, sounding exasperated I was making him go over it again.
“Right. Go ahead and start the final checks on your bird.”
I had checks of my own to make, redundant but also required, because if anything did go wrong and I had neglected to make the final checks, only one Marine would pay the price. One of my training NCO’s at Officers’ Candidate School had told me officers were human shit-collectors. In the military, shit rolled downhill and if it wound up hitting the NCO’s who did all the real work, why then, the Marines would fall apart in a day. That’s why they had to have officers like me, to catch the shit before it could hit the NCO’s and take all the blame when things went wrong.
I hadn’t been an officer all that long, but I still hadn’t had a single experience that would have disproven the theory.
I devoted one ear to the preparations of my platoon leaders, spying on their inter-platoon nets, double-checking their double-checks, another to listening to the tactical feed from the ship. I couldn’t keep track of the threats and I wasn’t sure they could either. As we approached Tahn-Skyyiah, they were piled too thick and the cruisers running interference for us were bulling through them, counting on their shields and their weapons to get them through the gauntlet. I winced with every missile that struck, every railgun round that glanced off their deflectors, dreading, waiting, expecting one of them to explode into a supernova. Once, I’d thought of the big ships as invulnerable, wished I could be on one of them instead of the vulnerable troop ships. I’d had that illusion shattered at Point Barber.
“You doing okay, sir?”
The question took me by surprise. Of all the questions, all the demands for status reports, no one had asked me that. It was Top. She wasn’t on my drop-ship, of course. She and the Headquarters platoon had to go down separately because the Boomers couldn’t drop. They’d land in an LZ secured by assault shuttles and get off near the edge of the city, then make their way in and try to link up with us.
“I want to be off this fucking ship, Top,” I told her, thinking it would be useful to be completely honest with someone. “I feel like I’m sitting in a target range while everyone comes up and takes a shot at me.”
“The enemy always has a say, sir,” she reminded me.
“I’m talking about our own side. How are the Marines doing? I hear all the rah-rah bullshit, but how are they really doing?”
“Just like you, ready to get off this ship, ready to shoot at something.”
“Separation in one minute.”
The announcement caught me by surprise. Had it already been fifteen minutes?
“You get that, Alvarez?” Geiger asked and my eyes bugged out from keeping my jaws clenched. I tried to remind myself this was her first time, too.
“Yes, ma’am. Passing it along.”
I said something inane and banal, the sort of thing I’d always found so redundant when I was enlisted, reiterating the announcement that they’d
