Human Legion: Marine Cadet Part 53

* Chapter 71 *

Clang... clang... clang...

A metallic beat advanced on Arun, wrenching him out of his sleepy fog.

He'd been dreaming of Springer's walking stick again - as he had done every time he'd slept in the two weeks since she'd returned - but his brain composed itself enough to insist that this noise was real. And could be a threat. He opened his eyes muscles firing up ready for action but the sound was only one of the ship-rats up on the walkway, here to make final sleep checks on her crop of cryo pods.

It was a surreal sight. With the pods recessed into the floor at shoulder height, the chamber did look like a field of decapitated heads, with the ship-rats their farmers.

The cryo-drugs were adding drag to every thought, making the rats walking above Arun's head look even more otherworldly than when he had boarded the Beowulf.

It was difficult to believe the runty ship-rats had come from the same stock of Horden's children as the Marines. With their long, slender necks - and limbs to match - they could be elves of human myth, if not for the spiky hair dyed in bright primary colors. Their childlike stature brought out a protective urge in Arun, but unlike the children on Tranquility, who were bred to be Marines, the ship-rats possessed an ethereal, exotic beauty.

Arun grinned. Ship girls were hot!

He made himself think of Xin, about two light days away on the Themistocles. Did he still feel she was a slender bundle of cuteness? Oh, yes... but compared to the graceful ship girl - who was now close enough for him to smell her perfume of machine lubricants and cryo chemicals - Xin was as bulky as... as an elephant.

He laughed, remembering his first conversation with Pedro, when the big insect had agreed that only an idiot would compare anything to an elephant.

No, this was no good. The girl had distracted him. He should be drifting away by now.

Once again he activated the calming process embedded in his mind, and felt the endorphins surge and mix with the cryo drugs in a cascade of blissful fuzziness.

A positive mental state increased the chance of surviving the revival process. The trick was to concentrate on the good things in life, to go into cryo-sleep with your head filled with all the reasons why you wanted to wake up.

He let his mind touch on memories of his unlikely friendship with Pedro, of other friends: Zug, Springer... and Fraser, who had been promoted to lead the Beowulf's small Marine detachment, and had been so pleasantly surprised to meet his brother on board that his handshake had carried on for ages. Then there was Xin... Umarov too... And Osman... Hortez...

Hortez.

He felt a pang of regret - he would never know how Hortez had met his end.

A new shame scoured him, guilt at how easily he'd shrugged off Cristina's death.

No! These negative thoughts were getting dangerous. If you went into cryo with worries on your mind, you'd come out a paranoid wreck.

He directed his thoughts to once again play over Xin. When he'd gone into those Troggie tunnels, she'd been nothing more than a dream. He wasn't sure what they were to each other now, but whatever it was, it was real.

As his thoughts slowed, merging into an ocean of tranquility, he felt his jaw unclench. Xin and Hortez were the kind of loose end left after every campaign. What mattered was that as a cadet he'd had just one primary objective: to become a Marine.

Arun had done that. His first campaign had ended in victory.

Now he was going to war. Two weeks after an executive order had redesignated Xin's year as Marines, the same had happened to Arun's. Calling him a Marine was an even bigger stretch of the truth than it had been for Xin, but what mattered right now was that somewhere on this ship was a full ACE-2 battlesuit allotted specifically to him - Arun McEwan - and he couldn't wait to try it on. Of course he couldn't: he'd been bred for this.

The ship-rat had reappeared over his head, checking his details on her softscreen. Her face was creamy soft, and when she glanced at him, gifting him a flirtatious smile, her brown eyes lit with character.

His drooping eyelids narrowed on the sight of her moving on to the neighboring cryo pod, fixing an image of her beautiful hair: shades of indigo and violet that ran to bright lilac at its tips.

No! He mustn't sleep. Not yet!

Suddenly Arun was fighting the drugs that were trying to still his heart before freezing him. He was swimming up from the depths of an icy sea, desperate to break the surface before everything went black.

Who are you? he asked the girl, not sure whether he'd actually spoken the words aloud. If he made any sound at all, the girl with the purple hair showed no sign of hearing him.

He closed his eyes. The icy depths claimed him, and he was sinking into darkness Her voice penetrated his dark tomb. "Problem?"

"Your hair," he whispered.

"My what? My hair? What about it?"

He wrenched open one eye. She was crouching down over him, her face shimmering.

He frowned. Trying to force his fading brain processes to explain why her hair was so vital.

Ship-rat fashion was to dye hair, the more vibrant and unnatural the shade the better. This girl's hair was more natural - subtle, blended shades of... Almost like...

"Your hair... it's like Springer's eyes."

She smiled but looked confused.

"I mean," he added, every word now a life-or-death struggle. "I like the way you. Color. It."

She laughed. "Thank you," she said. "Although, actually I don't color it. It's a mutation. Listen-" she paused a moment - "you really need to stop talking, Marine... Arun McEwan. But I will remember you. I promise. Tell me again how you like my hair when you wake. See you in six months, Arun."

The ship-rat closed the lid, sealing him inside. With his last flickers of consciousness he finally remembered what was important about her hair. This had to be the purple girl Little Scar had spoken of. The transparent lid was frosting over, but he could still see her walking to the neighboring pod, where Umarov awaited his turn. Arun wanted to shout out but the power of speech had left him.

A yearning for the purple girl was the thought that froze in his mind as his body locked solid in stasis.

Elsewhere on the ship, Arun's slide into unconsciousness had not gone unnoticed.

"Is he under?"

"Sleeping like a baby, ready for freezing."

"And you're set up to give him our little present before he's frozen?"

"No need. I've already delivered my package."

"Good. I don't know what makes you so special, Arun McEwan. But I will find out. And once I have, I'll kill you myself."

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* INFOPEDIA *

Category: Equipment - personal weapons Text copied from predecessor Organizations - Human Marine Corps:- Detroit Base - Category: equipment - personal weapons - SA-71(h) carbine - Firing options The SA-71(h) a.s.sault carbine is designed to be the main a.s.sault weapon for s.p.a.ce-borne humanoid troops. The (h) sub-variant has been adapted slightly to suit human physiology and responsibility level, but the ammunition and control systems are compatible with other weapons throughout the SA-70 range.

Humanoid planetary defense forces are generally equipped with the SA-72 rifle, which has a longer barrel, higher muzzle velocity, larger caliber rounds without sabots, and no energy beam or stealth capability.

The requirement to be suitable for use by s.p.a.ce Marines gave the weapon designers a priority for robustness, endurance, and to reduce recoil, because in zero-g combat an uncanceled recoil kick will send a firer into an uncontrollable spin.

On any given day, an SA-71(h) might be shooting back at ambushers high in the jungle canopy of a hothouse world. The very next day, the same weapon might be in the vacuum of deep s.p.a.ce, bathed in cosmic radiation and wielded by a marine encased in a battlesuit that would be his or her sole source of air, power, and ammunition for several days. The carbine has been designed to be reliable enough to cope with any environment without question.

As a result, the SA-71(h) has enormous power endurance, ammunition flexibility, and recoil absorption.

There are three main firing modes:

1. Railgun.

An electrical charge is applied to superconductor rails running along the gun barrel. The rails are arranged in a helical pattern to impart spin to the round as it leaves the muzzle, thus improving accuracy. The ammunition management system supplies a round of the type selected by the firer and fits it to a sabot created on the fly from the sabot resin reservoir. The sabot ensures optimum superconductance and mechanical fit to the rails. Sabots also permit the standard kinetic round to be much smaller than the railgun caliber thus allowing ammunition cartridges to hold many more rounds.

On full power, the railgun generates enormous heat and imparts a heavy recoil force at the breech of the weapon. Providing the recoil dampening system is not overcome by sustained fully automatic fire, this energy is automatically absorbed at up to 80% efficiency, being used both to heat the reservoir of sabot resin and to recharge the weapon's power pack. In limited-gravity environments the motors in an ACE-series battlesuit can cancel most of the remaining recoil automatically. [See 'Effect of combat environment on SA-71(h) carbine performance'.]

2. Beam weapon.

A phased array in the gun stock can emit lasered energy beams in the x-ray and visible bands.

The x-Ray beam drains such a huge amount of energy that the maximum firing rate possible is approximately one shot per hour. The advantage and disadvantage of the x-ray beam is that it has limited interaction with physical matter. It is best employed in ma.s.sed volleys against very large targets such as capital ships, s.p.a.ce stations, and city-sized ground targets - although the usefulness is reduced for ground-based targets protected by planetary atmosphere. An x-ray beam volley can have a devastating impact, or none at all. It is the most unpredictable of all weapons available to the Human Marine Corps.

The visible laser beam is the most common firing option for use in vacuum. Beam diffraction limits effective range to around 20 klicks, though unhardened sensors can be dazzled at much greater ranges. To maximize power effectiveness, the laser beam will operate in low-power targeting mode until the battlesuit AI detects a hit, at which point it will automatically up the power rate to maximum. In the timeframe of the human operator's worldview, this shift from targeting to lethal power is instantaneous and requires no human intervention.

3. Grenade launcher.

Specialist munitions may be slotted into the launch tube situated underneath the main barrel. Grenades are low accuracy and limited range specialist munitions powered by chemical explosive. Many Marine units are now discontinuing the grenade launcher, replacing the capability by an improved supply of specialist munitions fired through the railgun.

4. a.s.sault cutters.

For close combat situations monofilament teeth can be extended from the end of the gun barrel. They can be rotated at 1000 rpm for maximum penetration. Care should be taken if the cutters are employed in a lateral, raking motion as the blades may snap off. As well as a melee weapon, the cutters have some limited capability to act as a general purpose drill or cutting tool, although the blades will blunt rapidly. a.s.sault cutters are optimized for cutting through flesh; they are not suitable as an entrenching tool.

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