Human Legion: Marine Cadet Part 41

Frakk, I must be bored!

It had been less than a day since the Cull - since Zug had shot dead an innocent cadet. After drent like that went down, the powers that be liked to split up the cadets and keep them busy.

So they'd shipped Blue and Gold squads up to Gupta's old TU, the Yorktown, where they'd stuck the cadets into EVA gibberb.a.l.l.s.

An orange and red flashing blob marred the serenity of the silent scene of beauty laid out before him: Sergeant Gupta with his battlesuit set for high visibility. The NCO was sitting on a flitter waiting for the exercise to begin. h.e.l.l, he must be just as bored as Arun, wishing he were wherever Gold Squad's Sergeant Searl had ended up.

They might have rushed them up here, but now the cadets were trapped in the amniotic gel bubbles, those in charge were in no hurry to launch them.

Instead of the robot defenders they normally faced, the old hulk would be defended by veteran marines, one of whom was Arun's brother, or so Gupta had said.

The exercise should be a blast. Why didn't they get it started already?

Arun had now spent hours in this gibberball trying and eventually failing to be interested in his brother. h.e.l.l, he didn't even know the guy's name. It wasn't as if he'd ever talked with his family. Instantaneous communication was possible to each Marine ship, but was far too expensive to waste on humans. Why would you care about anyone out-system anyway? You had your family right here on Tranquility.

The Corps is your family. You need no other.

It dawned on Arun why he kept thinking about family. He wasn't just bored; he was lonely too.

But talking wasn't easy when you were stuffed inside a bubble of buffer gel. After his last experience of endless drowning, he wasn't going to open his mouth no matter how much he needed to talk.

But maybe there was another way.

The TU was essentially spherical with the EVA chutes recessed into the hull, but with the outer surface of the amniotic bubbles pushing out from the warboat's hull like festering pustules on a victim of the red pox. But there were also vanes sticking out from the hull. He'd always a.s.sumed they were radiator fins. He should be able to bounce a tight comm beam off them. See if he could raise Springer.

Arun had plenty of experience of talking with aliens who used thought-to-speech to communicate in the human language. In theory you could do the same with a suit if its AI knew you well, and so did the AI of the person you wanted to talk with.

He tried to form the idea in his mind, to explain to Barney what he wanted. He pictured Springer. Cute freckles, a cautious smile and violet eyes.

Then he spoke the words slowly in his head.

Arun had an urge to change the subject. <-ever give="" up-=""> <-on you.=""> Arun choked on a swell of adoration for Springer. Buffer gel pushed down into his mouth. Not again! He froze - not breathing - not even daring to think. When eventually he relaxed again, the gel hadn't pushed in far. He wasn't drowning. But the link to Springer was broken.

Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. They had strayed onto the most dangerous topic, and who knew might be able to listen in? Especially with Arun unreliable due to his oversupply of emotions that ambushed him constantly. What had he meant just then with Springer? Was he in love with her? Was he reaching out for any human contact? Or was he just scared?

Arun pushed against the gel to shake his head. Man, he was such a vulleyed-up wreck, and he had no idea how much he could blame that on the mind-altering drugs he was being given. He'd sidestepped execution somehow but it could only be a question of time before he was kicked out of the Marines... probably through an airlock without a suit.

d.a.m.n these long stretches encased in the gibberball. He'd rather face an enemy battle fleet than the thoughts in his own head.

Something flew past, too quick to see properly.

Was the gibberball finally making him see things?

But when he asked Barney to replay and slow down the image - it was real all right. Something was moving very fast toward Tranquility.

Barney interrupted the playback to show a real-time view of a second object flashing past. The interval between the two: 11.4 seconds.

Arun had only a limited view from inside the gibberball. Whatever had whizzed past had disappeared out of his left field of vision. He couldn't see Tranquility either, except in the planetshine brightening the side of Fort Douaumont that faced his home world.

What he could see on the extreme left of his viewpoint was a dot Barney identified as...o...b..tal Defense Platform 74. Twelve streaks of white curled and twisted away from the platform, gyrating wildly but with only one possible target.

Horden's bones! If the defense platform had launched missiles then this was for real. Tranquility was under bombardment.

And Arun was at war!

* Chapter 57 *

Four objects had been launched against Tranquility, at 11.4 second intervals, followed by... nothing.

Was the attack over?

Arun tried to form another link to Springer. Perhaps she had a better view of what was going on.

Barney wasn't playing ball, though, refusing to make the comm link.

After 41 seconds, he learned that the bombardment hadn't ceased. A streak of light on a new trajectory etched a line across Arun's vision pursued by a spread of missiles from Orbital Defense Platform 74.

This time he saw the explosion as two of the defensive missiles blew up the projectile.

Yes!

His elation froze a moment later. The missiles hadn't contacted the projectile far enough away... some fragments from the explosion must have carried on. Platform 74 flared into a brilliant blue-white bloom that forced Barney to dim Arun's visor. Platform 74 was gone.

If a brace of missiles couldn't stop those projectiles, they must be moving with a staggering amount of momentum. Was this the nightmare scenario they used to scare each other with as kids? A bombardment by the ma.s.s drivers that should send ore shipments across the stars? But there were failsafes. The system defense fleet could shut down ma.s.s drivers remotely. Had they turned traitor too?

Finally someone spoke. "We're all seeing this. Standby." It was Gupta, still out there somewhere on his flitter. He'd stealthed his suit but was connecting to Wide Battle Net, which enabled Barney to mark the sergeant's position with a blue dot even though he remained unseen.

The next shot slammed into Fort Douaumont.

The projectile pa.s.sed straight through the old hulk. Arun imagined the disappointment of whoever was firing at them when the old ship didn't explode. It had no main armament, fuel or air to blow up, but the old ship was crippled all the same, just not in such a showy way. The hull twisted, sheared, broke asunder. Then another projectile hit the stricken ship, sending fragments of metal weighing thousands of tons shooting in all directions, leaving a glittering halo of shimmering shards.

The power of the projectiles was almost beyond human comprehension, but whoever was launching them didn't have much military sense. Why waste time taking out a useless abandoned hulk? Then a shock hit him when he remembered Fort Douaumont hadn't quite been abandoned. His brother had been on board.

Arun's concern for a brother he'd never met didn't have time to take root, because if the enemy were trying to take out the threat from nearby ships, that meant the next target was the TU!

There were ma.s.s drivers scattered on moons throughout the system, essentially the same as the railgun inside his SA-71 carbine except scaled up to the enormous degree necessary to fling packages of refined ore across the gulf of interstellar s.p.a.ce to be received by resource-hungry star systems. Transit times between star systems were measured in centuries. But if the ma.s.s driver was on one of Tranquility's moons, its projectiles would be only seconds away from the planet.

Arun knew he was ceasing to be a bystander when, even through the buffer gel, he could feel the TU throb with a ma.s.sive power build up.

Sergeant Gupta's voice came into his helmet. "Listen up, cadets. You haven't impressed me so far."

Arun's view blurred. And then settled. The TU had spun around. He was facing the dusty red ball of Antilles, the largest of Tranquility's moons.

"My advice to the Yorktown's captain is to leave you where you are," said Gupta, "that you're a liability. She says that if we've spent all that training budget on you over the past 17 years..."

Then the Yorktown was moving. Man, was she moving! Even stuffed with buffer gel, the breath was being crushed from Arun's body. Lump hammers pounded his skull tirelessly. He closed his eyes. He'd never experienced such acceleration before. It felt like he was being squeezed into a sticky dot on the Yorktown's outer hull.

Then the lump hammers softened into wooden mallets; the vice crushing his chest mellowed into the fists of a Jotun warrior pummeling his ribs, and Gupta continued his words. "After 17 years of training you should d.a.m.ned well be a useful a.s.set. The Yorktown is moving to a.s.sault the traitors who took out Fort Douaumont and are bombarding our homes on the surface. We compromised and decided to offer you a choice. Are you going to take this opportunity to prove to me you're Marines? Or are you going to be spectators? Which is it to be?"

"We're Marines, sergeant."

As far as Arun could tell, every cadet in the Blue and Gold squads had answered in the same way at the same time. Himself included.

Maybe he wasn't so different from the others.

A bubble of pride put a little grin onto his face.

The TU corkscrewed sickeningly as it approached Antilles.

"Very well," Gupta growled after a few seconds. "It makes my guts crawl to call you sorry lot Marines, but here's the plan. Rebels have taken over a ma.s.s driver on Antilles. We think their main target is Detroit. Defense Command estimate a 90% chance that their defense shield can keep out a direct hit for the next hour. After that our shield effectiveness degrades rapidly, and everything that breaches the outer atmosphere is going to hit something. If we're lucky we might have as much as two hours to shut them down before the upper levels of Detroit are turned to slag, or buried under shattered mountain fragments."

The Yorktown lurched sideways so unexpectedly that Arun's heart and lungs were left miles behind. Another bombardment shot past.

"Here's our problem," continued Gupta. "The rebels have thrown a thick cloud of rock fragments - pebbles really - above and around their base. We don't know how they've done it, but it makes for an effective barrier. The Yorktown's weapons can't penetrate that rock cloud, but the enemy can shoot out. They've created a force tunnel through their shield that provides a launch window for their ma.s.s driver, but we can't get a firing solution through it. Friendly system defense boats are hours away. There are no other combat vessels nearby. We need boots on the ground. You!"

"But, sergeant," said Brandt, "our weapons"

"Are training poppers only?" finished Gupta. "Did you really think they'd design and build you separate carbines just to be toy guns in training exercises? They're fully functional except we haven't given you any ammo bulbs. You've got two default modes we never told you about because you're not meant to know this yet. There's a pulse laser capability and an emergency railgun mode. Standby..."

Arun held his breath for 8.5 seconds until Gupta spoke again. "Your deployment starts in 72 seconds. Your suit AIs know how to unlock your carbines and have updated maps of the moon surface. Cadet Lance Sergeant Belville, you have command. Brandt is your deputy. Form up in the depression 4 klicks northwest of the mining base. I've marked it on your maps. We'll land a second scratch team of veterans, Force Alpha. Wait for them to attack. Then move in and-"

A familiar jolt hit Arun like a hundred Marines in full armor jumping on his spine. Then he was tossed into s.p.a.ce with the familiar sensation of gasping for air.

By the time he was alert and had stabilized his spin, Sergeant Gupta had finished his talk and the surface of Antilles, dusty gray rocks streaked with rust, was fast rising up to claim him.

He asked Barney to fill him in on his carbine's capability. Quick as you like.

Arun had thought he knew all about the SA-71 carbine. Turned out he didn't. The weapon was designed to be the ultimate in robustness and flexibility with a power pack that was so long lasting that it might as well be magical. What had been hidden from them was that there were two default modes for when the standard-fit ammo carousels were exhausted. He'd always dismissed the rumors that there was secret information they only trusted Marines with once they were already on a troop ship headed out-system.

Said a lot about how humans were viewed by their betters.

One of these hidden options was a pulsed laser beam that would rapidly eat away at even the SA-71's battery charge. The strength of the laser pulses quickly degraded in an atmosphere, but in vacuum this was a credible weapon.

The second option was referred to as shardshot. The Marine grabbed whatever material was to hand, and packed it into a tube concealed within the weapon's stock. A combination of grinders and laser drills would chop the toughest materials into dust, which would then be compressed into ballistic pellets and shot out of the barrel in railgun mode. Barney warned him that neither the gun nor the suit could counter the recoil from shardshot rounds.

The recoil would kick like an angry Hardit.

And selecting the right material was critical to achieve a decent muzzle velocity. Something with metal content would be good.

Arun grinned when Barney told him this. The mining bases were situated on Antilles because the moon's rocky surface was rich in zinc, copper, iron, and manganese.

That should do it!

* Chapter 58 *

As he plummeted feet-first toward the moon, Arun could see other white smears falling like hail against the black of s.p.a.ce. And if he could see them...

Gold and Blue squads looked like gunnery training targets as they descended in their gleaming white suits.

Arun couldn't help but imagine bright lines extend from the surface of Antilles, connecting a laser battery to each white blur in an obscene diagram of death.

Then Barney braked - hard enough to take Arun's breath away and make his vision blur. When his senses returned he was ten meters above the moon's cratered surface. Barney had braked early enough that he came down with only as much force as if he were stepping off a bottom stair back home.

Barney used a virtual arrow to indicate the rendezvous point and Arun was running there from his very first step on the moon.

Turned out running wasn't easy. He kept jumping high above the ground and had to tell Barney to push him back down to the surface. It was frustratingly slow.

He was at home in zero-g where Barney could zip him around effortlessly. But in the moon's low gravity, the suit's motive power was much reduced. Barney could lob him over an obstacle, but couldn't run for him.

Arun briefly considered scampering on all fours before finding a steady loping gait that would look ridiculous if anyone were there to see it. But Arun was on his own. Alice Belville had told them to stick to Local Battle Net, which meant tight line-of-sight comms only.

A few hundred meters from the rendezvous, Arun finally encountered another cadet: Tanweer Aburto from Gold squad. Seconds later, Barney added more dots to Arun's tac-display as the suit AIs began to ping signals off each other.

Ahead Arun saw that what the sergeant had called a depression looked like a shallow quarry pit covered by a few centuries of dust.

He couldn't see more than a few hundred meters into the depression due to the swirl of pebbles thrown up by the rebels as a defensive shield. From a distance the shield fragments looked like static. Barney speculated the pebbles were actually tailings from the ore crushers. Arun didn't care. He could already see what he wanted to know: the pebble shield didn't extend as far as the ground. There was a narrow gap underneath.

Up close, the pebble shield looked more like a miniature asteroid belt bent to the rebels' will and sped up to lethal velocities.

Arun halted. If he kept to even this low gait, he would bounce high enough to be pulped.

Aburto had the solution. The Gold Squad cadet hit the deck and rolled. Laughing, Arun copied him. It was like being a four-year-old again. Arun clung to those memories as he rolled under the rock-storm, the silent blur of death.

The ground underneath was littered with rock fragments that had fallen out of the shield. Would his training armor stand up to any rocks falling out onto him? The rocks gave him an idea. As he spun forward, Arun grabbed some of the fallen rocks in his free hand, keeping his carbine low to the ground in the other. He'd only collected a few small rocks before he was spinning too fast. He brought his arms beneath him as he accelerated. He was inside the depression now; rolling down the edge and picking up speed.

Then he hit the bottom and bounced - tumbling and dazed out of control and heading for the blur of swirling rocks.

Barney stabilized Arun's suit. Just at the moment that the sense of up and down began to rea.s.sert itself, the first rock hit Arun, spinning him helplessly. Then another strike.

But Barney had control now, enough to push Arun down out of the rock cloud. And once he'd touched down, Arun could run to safety because the depression was deep enough to give him plenty more headroom.