Battlespace
“Well, I damn well guess you do. But is cutting yourself off from every soul you’ve known on Earth, cutting yourself off from the ties you were born to, is that all really worth it? You can’t run away from yourself, you know.”
“I’m not running away from myself. If anything, I’m running away from them.”
“Son, I’ve heard this story before, you know. Maybe about a thousand times. You’re not the first poor schmuck to get shit-canned by a dearly beloved siggo or kicked in the teeth by people he believed in and trusted. And it hurts, I know. Gods of Battle, I know. And I also know you’re carrying the pain here.” He pointed at Lee’s chest. “That’s what you really want to get away from, and that’s what you’re going to carry with you. You can run all the way to Andromeda, son, and the pain will still be there. Question is, is the attempt worth losing everything else you know on Earth as well?”
“Gunny,” Lee said, “I’d still have the Corps. Even in Andromeda. Semper fi.”
“Ooh-rah,” Eckhart said, but with a flat inflection utterly devoid of enthusiasm. “Son, it’s my job to talk you out of this, if I can.”
“Huh? Why?”
“To stop you from screwing up your life.”
“Well, you’ve got my request, Gunny. All you need to do is add your request denied to the form, and it’s as good as shit-canned.”
“I may still do that, Lee, if you don’t convince me pretty quick. Trouble is, I have to tell you that we need volunteers for SMF. And we need them bad. We have a big one coming up soon, a big deployment. And your class, frankly, is all we have to work with. It’s worse than that, actually. Three of you have a Famsit rating of one, out of a class of thirty-eight, and seven have a rating of two. Everybody else has close family.”
“So, let me get this straight. You need Corpsmen for SMF, but you have to try to get us to back out after we volunteer? That doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense.”
Eckhart sighed. “This is the Marine Corps, son. It doesn’t always make sense. I’ll approve your request—if you can convince me that you are not making the big mistake of your sorry young life.”
“I … see. …”
And he did. His heart leaped. Eckhart was just giving him a chance to back out of this.
Yes! He was going to the stars! …
“I’m not sure what you want to hear, Gunny. I want to go. I have nobody I’m attached to on Earth. You said the culture here would be different, that I might have trouble fitting in when I got back. Well, you know what? I’ve never fit in, not really. Not until I joined the Navy. Hell, maybe I’ll like what I find here better in twenty years, fit in better than I do now, y’know?”
Eckhart nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I do know. Tell me something. Why did you become a corpsman?”
“Huh? Well, when I first enlisted, I had this idea of going on someday and becoming a doctor. I figured what I learned in Corps School would give me a leg up, know what I mean? And then there was the fact that my dad was a Marine. He used to tell me stories about the company’s ‘Doc,’ that special relationship between the Marines and their corpsmen. I’d always been interested in biology, physiology, stuff like that, and I was good at them in school. It just seemed like the right choice.”
Damn it, he wanted to go Space Marine Force. As a Navy Hospital Corpsman, the equivalent of an Army medic for Navy and Marine personnel, he’d enjoyed working with the Marines already. Going SFM simply took things a step or ten farther.
A century or two back, the equivalent of today’s SMF had been assignment with the Navy’s FMF—the Fleet Marine Force. The force included Navy doctors and corpsmen who shipped out with the Marines, sailed with them on their transports, and went ashore with them in combat. It was a long and venerable tradition, one that went back at least as far as the Navy pharmacy mates who hit the beaches in the Pacific with the Marines during World War II, and arguably went even further back to the surgeon’s mate’s loblolly boys of the sailing ships of a century before that.
He’d volunteered for SMF almost two months ago, just after the completion of his six-month deployment to LEO.
Just after the divorce became final.
Damn it, the hell with Earth. He wanted to go to the stars.
“Gunny, the Navy … and, well, now the Marines, if I go SMF, they’re my family now. I’ve been taking overseas and off-world deployments for the last four years, since I joined up. It’s time for me to re-up. I want to re-up. I’ve always wanted the Navy to be my career.”
Eckhart grinned. “A lifer, huh?”
“Yeah, a lifer. And it’s my life.”
“The government might point out that your life belongs to it.”
“Okay, but in so far as I do have a free choice, this is what I want to do with my life. ‘Join the Navy and see other worlds,’ right? So why can’t I re-up with a shot at really seeing some new territory?”
“How does Sirius sound to you, son?”
“Sirius? I thought there were no planets there?”
Eckhart grinned. “There aren’t. But there’s … something. An artifact. A space habitat. They didn’t tell me much in the report I saw, but there’s something. And the word is, a full MIEU is being sent out there. And they need Corpsmen. A bunch of ’em.”
An artifact. Another remnant of one of the ancient civilizations that had been kicking around this part of the galaxy thousands of years ago. Maybe the An. Or maybe it was something really special … something left by the Builders at about the same time that Homo erectus was in the process of making the transition to Homo sapiens.
“Sirius sounds just fine, Gunny.”
Okay, there wouldn’t be a planetfall. But a chance to see a high-tech artifact left by a vanished, starfaring civilization? And whatever the thing was, it would have to be damned huge if they were sending a whole Marine Interstellar Expeditionary Unit—a force that would number over a thousand men and women, all told. What the hell had they found out there?
“Does that mean I’m in?”
Eckhart grinned. “You’re in, Doc.”
I’m going to Sirius! I’m going to another star! …
He almost didn’t hear what Eckhart said next.
“You’ll continue your training here for the rest of the month,” Eckhart was saying. “After that, you and the other Corpsmen from this class who make the grade, the ones who’ve volunteered for extrasolar deployment, will ship for L-4 for your XS training and final assignment. And just let me say, Doc … welcome aboard!”
“Thanks, Gunny! Uh, does that mean you’re coming too?”
“Yes, it does. The brass is doing some scrambling right now, looking for famsit ones and twos.” He grinned. “I figured you damned squids’d need me to keep an eye on you!”
“That sounds decent, Gunny.”
“Now get your sorry ass down to debrief. We’re gonna want to hear, in exacting detail, just what you did wrong on that last field exercise!”
Vacation over. “Aye aye, Gunnery Sergeant!”
“For one thing, you could’ve used a thermalslick.” He grinned. “Chief Hart is gonna tell you all about that!”
Lee blinked. He hadn’t even thought of that. Thermal-slicks were part of each corpsman’s field kit—a tough, polymylar sheet like aluminum foil on one side, jet black on the other. It could reflect sunlight or absorb it and the black side had the added trick of a layer of carbon buckyball spheres that made it almost frictionless—great for dragging the dead weight of an injured man.
But then, he hadn’t even thought about the problem of sunlight melting the wound’s clot until it was too late.
At the moment, none of that mattered.
I’m going to Sirius. …
Alpha Company Headquarters Office Star Marine Force Center Twentynine Palms, California 1535 hours, PST
“Comp’ny … atten … hut!”
Sharply dressed in newly issued green utilities, Garroway and his five fellow Marines came to attention. They were standing in Captain Warhurst’s office at Twentynine Palms, a fairly Spartan compartment made warm by the desert sunlight streaming through the transparent overhead. Staff Sergeant Dunne had marched them in; Warhurst himself was behind his low, kidney-shaped desktop, hand on a palm reader as he downloaded a report in his noumenal space.
After a moment, his glazed expression cleared, and he looked up. “Staff Sergeant?” he said.
“Sir!” Dunne rasped. “Corporals Garcia, Lobowski, Vinton, Lance Corporals Womicki, Garroway, and Eagleton, reporting for captain’s nonjudicial punishment, sir!”
“Very well, Staff Sergeant.” Warhurst folded his hands and looked at the six, studying each of them in turn. “Will all of you accept nonjudicial punishment? You all have the option of requesting formal courts-martial, at which time you would be entitled to legal representation.”
“Sir,” Garroway said. They’d agreed earlier on that he would be their spokesperson. They’d been invited to the party by his friend, after all. “We accept the NJP.”
“Very well. We’ll keep this short and simple then.” He leaned back in his swivel chair. “What the hell were you young idiots thinking, getting into a brawl ashore? Were you, each of you, aware of the delicate nature of the relationship between Marines and civilians here just now?”
“Yes, sir,” Garroway replied.
“What about the rest of you? You all downloaded the spiel before you went on liberty? The one about being good ambassadors for the Corps while ashore?”
All of them nodded, with a few mumbled “Yes, sirs” mixed in.
“I didn’t hear that.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Right now, ladies and gentlemen, the Marines can not afford a major firefight with the civilian sector. Brawling in a bar in downtown San Diego is one thing. Smashing up a condecology in the high-rent district of East Side LA is something else entirely.”
As Warhurst spoke, Garroway wondered what was in store for them. Warhurst had told them they were on report when he’d bailed them out of that police holding tank. “Captain’s nonjudicial punishment” was an old tradition within both the Navy and the Marines, a means of noting and punishing minor infractions short of the far more serious proceedings of an actual court-martial. It was more commonly called “captain’s mast,” from the ancient practice of holding these proceedings in front of the mast on board old-time sailing ships at sea.
But when Warhurst had said they were going up “before the man,” they hadn’t realized that “the man” would be Warhurst himself. Captain Warhurst must know what had really happened that night. …
“Liberty, as you all have heard many times since you enlisted, is a privilege, not a right. I know that was the first liberty in some years subjective, but that is no excuse! Do you read me?”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
“What happened?”
“Sir,” Garroway said. “First of all, we didn’t smash up anything. And besides, they started it. …”
“Excuses are like assholes, Marine. Everyone has one, and they all stink.”
“But someone grabbed Anna … I mean, Corporal Garcia. All she did was break the hold. Some guy started to rush her, then, and I took him down … pretty gently, I thought.”
“Pretty gently? Martial arts as adapted for close-quarters battle tactics are not gentle. You dislocated his knee cap and tore some tendons. The medical report says he is not seriously injured. He’ll be walking again after a few days of medinano treatment. But you are very fortunate, Marine, that that man is not pressing charges. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You said they started it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Well, they were on about Garcia being Aztlanista.”
“Start from the beginning. What were you doing at a private party in the first place, Garroway?”
And so he began describing that evening, starting with his calling up Tegan and getting her invitation to the sensethete … or was that the name of the room, rather than the party? He wasn’t sure.
Warhurst heard him out, asking questions from time to time to flesh out the picture. When he was done, Warhurst leaned back again in his chair. “Very well. There are extenuating circumstances—including one hell of a high-voltage bit of culture shock. That, however, is no excuse for attacking civilians … even if you thought it to be in self-defense.
“Lobowski, Womicki, Vinton, and Eagleton. I’m dropping all charges against you. You went to the aid of your fellow Marines, but you did not strike or assault civilian personnel in any way. Downloads from your implant recorders supports this assessment. A record will be sent to the civilian authorities, with my recommendation that no further action be taken against you.
“Garcia, you struck a civilian, but both Garroway’s testimony and implant recordings show that you did so only to break her hold on your uniform. Fourteen days’ restriction to base.
“Garroway. Your testimony and the download record show that you kicked a civilian in the knee, injuring him. It is clear you did so because you felt he was about to attack a fellow Marine. The next time you find yourself in a similar situation, I recommend that you consider tripping him, rather than crippling him with CQB tactics. Thirty days’ restriction to base, and five hundred newdollars’ fine, to be deducted from your pay in equal installments over the next five months. A record of these proceedings will be uploaded to the civilian authority with jurisdiction in this case. Should further civilian complaints be filed, you will be subject to further charges, but I have been given to understand that this disciplinary hearing should end the matter here and now. Understood? Any of you have problems with my decision?”
There were none.
“Very well. You are dismissed.”
Thirty days’ restriction and five hundred newdollars? A bit steep, Garroway reflected … but not a serious hit. There was no way he was going to mingle with civilians ashore any longer … so the restriction and even the fine didn’t hurt him that much.
The principle of the thing still burned. He and his friends had been insulted and attacked. Worse, the damned watchdog nano had then incapacitated them, rendering them helpless.
At least they hadn’t also been fined for the loss of their uniforms. Those were cheap enough—they were grown right on the spot from raw synthewool to spec—but they’d expected to be gigged for the thefts as well.
Mostly, he kept remembering his conversations at that party … his difficulty even understanding what was being discussed. Oh, sure, there were translation programs that could be run in his implant, but the attitudes he’d seen seemed as alien as the language, or more so.
It was a bit disconcerting to know that he’d come home … and not to feel at home after all. …
5
10 NOVEMBER 2159
Alpha Company Barracks Star Marine Force Center Twentynine Palms, California 1420 hours, PST
“All right, Marines. Listen up!”
Garroway looked up from his LR-2120, partially disassembled on the table before him, to hear what Staff Sergeant Dunne had to say. Around him, the steady buzz of conversation among other Marines in the company died away.
“Gentlemen, ladies,” Dunne went on, “first off … happy fucking birthday!”
The announcement was met with cheers and shouts of Ooh-rah! and fists pounding on tables. The tenth of November was the anniversary of the creation of the U.S. Marines—originally the Continental Marines—by an act of Congress in 1775, a date celebrated by Marines around the world and far, far beyond.
“Festivities begin at 1900 hours tonight at the mess hall. Cake, ice cream, and pogey bait will be the order of the day.”
He waited for a fresh round of cheers to die down. “Okay, okay, simmer down. Next order of business. The waiting is over. The Nergs are going to war.”
That raised a low-voiced murmur of excitement. Nergs was a new battlename for the Marines, another in the long list of nom d’guerres bestowed by enemies and friends alike—devil dogs, leathernecks, jarheads, gyrines. Nerg, or Nergal may-I, was from the phrase, identical in both An and in ancient Sumerian, nir-gál-mè-a, which meant something like “respected in battle.” The Fighting Forty-fourth had won that accolade from the Ahannu warriors on Ishtar immediately after the desperately fought action that had ended in Ramsey’s Peace.
“Now,” Dunne went on, “the really good news. Authorization has come through for promotions for all personnel who were on the Ishtar op. You have all received an automatic advancement by one pay grade. Personnel advancing to sergeant or higher will still be expected to take the test for your new rank, but the time-in-grade requirement has been satisfied.”
There was some more cheering and a rattle of applause at that. Garroway grinned. He’d just made corporal. Decent!
“A new download is available,” Dunne went on, “coded White Star-one-one. Please open it up and take a look.”
Garroway brought up the code phrase and thought-clicked it. Immediately, he was in a noumenal space. …
Visual: Star-strewn night, gas clouds, a pair of intensely brilliant pinpoint-stars, and the vast and enigmatic loom of a ring-shaped structure, obviously huge. …
“The ring is our objective,” Dunne went on, his voice sounding in their thoughts as they studied the alien construct. “It is located in the Sirius star system, 8.6 light-years from Earth. We believe it to be a stargate, a device floating in deep space that allows instantaneous travel between stars. Those patterns of light along the rim suggest that it is inhabited. We do not know by who.”
Sirius. Garroway felt the word strike hard, like a blow to the stomach. Lynnley!
The Marine company watched in silence as the golden needle-shape emerged from the ring, accelerated, and the image was suddenly and disconcertingly lost.
“These images were transmitted ten years ago by the explorer ship Wings of Isis,” Dunne’s voice went on as the blast of static was replaced by another view of the ring. “We do not know what happened to the Isis, but we must assume she was destroyed. There’s been no word from her since these images were received.
“The Wings of Isis had a crew of 245, 30 of them Marines, as well as several AIs. We have no real hope that any of them are still alive out there—or, if they are, that they will still be alive ten years from now when we arrive in-system. However, the Marines do not abandon their own. Accordingly, MIEU-1 is being prepared to deploy to the Sirius system. Once there, we will recon the area and assess the situation. We will attempt to make contact with whoever or whatever is operating that stargate. If necessary, we will organize a boarding party, enter the artifact, rescue human survivors if any, and maintain a beachhead, providing security for a science team which will perform a threat evaluation of the structure.”
Profound silence attended this announcement. Garroway found himself grappling with a dozen questions. How big was that wheel? How were they supposed to get inside, ring a chime at the front door? What kind of defenses did the thing have? How the hell were the Marines supposed to draw up a battle plan when they didn’t even know the nature of their enemy?
But more pressing still were the unanswered—and unanswerable—questions about Lynnley.
In subjective terms, the time he’d actually been awake and not crowding the speed of light, it had been less than a year since he’d seen her last, just before he’d entered cybehibe for the voyage to Ishtar. He missed her. In his mind, she was still very much alive, alive in his recent past. The knowledge that it had been eleven years since whatever had happened out at Sirius had happened seemed completely surreal.
Dead eleven years? No. He couldn’t get his mind wrapped around that one.
The images from Sirius faded out. Garroway sat, once again, at a table in the barracks, his laser rifle partially disassembled in front of him.
“Questions?” Dunne snapped.
“Gunnery Sergeant?” Sergeant Houston said. “What if we don’t want to go?”
“Come again?”
“What if we don’t want to go? I’ve got six years in sub, twenty-six ob. I‘ve done my bit. I want out, man.”
“This is not a volunteers only mission,” Dunne replied slowly. “The brass is treating this like an ordinary deployment, with two exceptions.
“First, if you’re within one year of your scheduled retirement, you can request an exemption. Since your expected OTIS—that’s your objective time-in-service—since your OTIS will be on the order of six months to one year for this mission, you may opt for taking an early out instead.
“Second, there will also be a case review board. Anyone with special needs or hardships arising from this deployment can talk to them. I’m given to understand they will not be unreasonable, and that they will consider each application on a case-by-case basis.
“However, I would ask you to think very carefully before deciding to remain on Earth. Things are different here, now, than we knew them twenty-some years ago. If you elect to stay behind, you will be given psychological assistance, including special programming for your implants to help you … adjust.”
Again, low-voiced murmurs sounded in the room. By now, every man and woman in the room had heard about the watchdog program that had taken out six of their number the other night at the condecology in ELA, and they didn’t like it, not one bit.
“I don’t know about all of you,” Dunne added, “but I’m gonna be damned glad to get back out there!”
“We’re with you, Gunny!” Corporal Bryan called out, using Dunne’s new rank for the first time. It sounded a bit strange … but right.
“I’ve also been told to tell you,” Dunne went on, “that for those of you who stay with the MIEU, there will be an additional rank increase immediately upon returning. They’re also in the process of putting through a special payment incentive. The word is it’ll be fifty percent of your standard paycheck, above and beyond combat pay, hazardous-duty pay, and XS-duty pay.”
And that, Garroway thought, would come to a very nice sum. He took a quick moment to download the appropriate pay scale tables in his mind. Yeah … very sweet. As a corporal with over three years’ subjective in, his base pay would come to n$1724.80 per month. Fifty percent of that was an additional n$862 plus change per month. That, plus the bonus for hazardous duty, extrastellar duty, and combat …
He gave a mental whistle and wondered if that kind of money made the Marines into modern-day, high-tech mercenaries.
“Is that ob or sub, Gunny?” someone asked.
“Yeah,” someone else added with a laugh. “It does make a difference!”
“Strictly subjective time, people, just like your base pay.” There were groans in response. “Can it!” Dunne added. “It’s bad enough the government pays you while you’re sleeping your sorry lives away in cybehibe! They’re not paying you for time that shrinks to no time at all while you’re traveling at near-c!
“Any other questions?” There were none. “Carry on,” Dunne said, leaving the Marines to discuss the news.
A few—Sergeant, now Staff Sergeant, Houston and Corporal, now Sergeant, Matt Cavaco—felt that arbitrarily ordering the Marines to go to Sirius, rather than making it a volunteer-only mission—was just flat wrong. Most, though, were excited by the prospect, both for the extra pay, and because of the distinct alienation many of them were feeling from Earth. Those few who’d gotten passes to go ashore in the past few days had returned with less than happy news about the planet, and about its inhabitants. Damn, but Dunne was right. The background culture of North America had changed and in some unpleasant ways.