First to Fight (7 page)

The young men of second platoon strapped themselves into their racks. The ship’s centripetal gravity kept them secure in their racks, and the straps were provided in case an inflight emergency caused the ship to cease its rotation. During the sleep period, the only light in the compartment came from small emergency lamps near the deck and the overhead to guide men in case of an emergency. Too tired even to talk with McNeal in the next bunk below his, Dean lay and listened to the ship as it groaned and cracked and hummed all about him in the darkness. From far, far away came the dim but incessant boom of the
Purdom’s
many motors, engines, and machinery.

Dean thought for the first time that day of his mother and wondered what she was doing. He thought about what he’d learned that day. The last thing he thought that first night was that he was just too excited to sleep.

The
Purdom
reached jump point in the middle of the next afternoon, and the D.I.’s herded their charges back into their compartments.

“Everybody, in your racks. Right now, right now. No dilly-dallying here. Believe me, you don’t want to be standing when we make the jump. Move it now.”

Pretty and Singh swam through the compartment, hustling the recruits with staccato commands of “Move, move, move,” and using their hands to rush them into the racks.

“Everybody, lie supine.” Singh saw someone on his stomach and shouted, “I said supine, dummy, not prone. Prone is a position for shooting and fucking. You aren’t doing either right now. On your back. Everybody, on your backs and strap in.”

The three drill instructors made another pass through the compartment, making sure each man was properly strapped in.

Once everyone was secured in his rack, the three D.I.’s went to the compartment hatch. “Stay where you are, as you are,” Neeley said, “until we come back to let you out.” He opened a small panel next to the hatch and pulled a lever concealed behind it, then hit the light control as he followed the other two D.I.’s out of the compartment, plunging the compartment into darkness broken only by the emergency lights.

“Hey, what’s this?” Dean shouted as a webbing suddenly dropped from the bottom of the rack above him and secured itself to the frame of his own rack.

He wasn’t the only one asking that question, but nobody could answer it. They found out a moment later when the artificial gravity shut off and the ship jumped into hyperspace.

With an abruptness so complete it seemed that it had always been this way, the universe went gray. Or was it black? Weight vanished; it wasn’t a floating sensation like null-g had been, but a total absence of weight, as though mass had disappeared altogether. All the weight that ever was, was now, and ever would be, settled onto him. There was no sound. There was such a volume of sound, he thought the universe must be ending in the collapse of everything into a primordial speck that instantly exploded in the big bang.

It ended as abruptly as it began, so suddenly that it was a few stunned seconds before anybody screamed. And only a few more seconds before everybody was yelling and struggling against the restraints that held them in their racks.

The pandemonium lasted only until the three drill instructors entered the compartment and reactivated the lights. The three Marines went through the bay just as they had moments earlier, this time calming everyone down. They weren’t totally successful; some of the recruits were upset by the unexpected experience, and would remain so for some time to come. When relative calm was restored, Neeley stood by the compartment hatch and spoke to the platoon.

“I know that some of you think it was unfair of us to let you experience a jump into hyperspace without warning of what was about to happen. But this is an important lesson for you to learn. Marines are warriors. We fight battles. Sometimes we know a fight is coming; we set the time, the place, and the circumstances for it and are fully prepared. But sometimes we have only a few moments of warning—or no warning whatsoever. There’s a big universe out there, with a lot of surprises. Most of those surprises are nasty, and can kill you if you aren’t prepared to act immediately and decisively when they happen. What you just experienced was an unpleasant surprise, but nobody got hurt.” He looked at them with mild disgust. “And every one of you panicked. Try to do better next time. The next time you get surprised, your lives may well depend on your reaction. The next surprise that jumps out at you just might kill you.” Finished with his speech, Neeley turned and left the compartment.

Pretty snorted and followed the senior D.I.

Singh shook his head. He said one word, softly, but loud enough for all to hear: “Boots!” He pushed the lever that released the restraining webbing before he left, and dogged the hatch behind him, so the men of second platoon were left on their own to ponder what Neeley had said about surprises.

Only then did they notice that gravity had returned. It took several more minutes for anyone to notice that what had been the compartment’s overhead was now its deck. “Down” was now toward, rather than away from, the ship’s core. The racks had rotated during the jump. Now they understood why there was as much space below the bottom rack as there was above the top one.

CHAPTER

FIVE

Each day started with the shrill blare of a bugle over the public address system and the drill instructors’ banging their batons against the bulkheads shouting an ancient chant: “Reveille! Reveille! Drop your cocks and grab your socks! Reveille!” Then, even before most of the recruits were fully awake, an hour of calisthenics, followed by showers, morning chow, and finally a thorough cleaning of the living compartments. After that, one hour of close-order drill.

“Close-order drill hasn’t changed much since the time of the Romans,” Staff Sergeant Neeley announced, “and it hasn’t gotten to be any more fun since then either, but we require all Marines to be able to march in matchless formations. After we land at Arsenault, you’ll probably never use this skill, and it is a skill. So why do we teach it? This, recruits, is your introduction to following orders and working as a group, so pay attention! And don’t ever anticipate a command!”

Punishment for minor infractions of the rules on board the
Purdom
was to practice close-order drill between 22 and 06 hours and on the free half days. For those really recalcitrant offenders, kitchen duty—known for some unfathomable reason as kitchen police—was available.

On the second day, Dean had a medical exam by a real doctor, the one he’d been promised back at the recruiting station. He sat in the womblike chair of the examination table in sick bay, fully clothed, waiting for the physician’s instructions.

The doctor sat at a desk, reading Dean’s medical history, compiled back at New Rochester, on the monitor of his computer. After a moment he nodded and said, “You’ve been a pretty healthy lad.” Dean didn’t know if he was supposed to say something, so he didn’t say anything. The doctor made some keystrokes and examined the screen again. Evidently satisfied with what he saw, he cleared the screen, then said, “Private Dean, did you know you have an ingrown toenail in your left big toe?”

“No, sir.”

The doctor nodded and added a few keystrokes to his computer file. “Okay, Private, keep your eye on it. If it gets worse, report to sick bay and a corpsman will cut it out for you. Dismissed.”

Dean just sat there, unbelieving. He hadn’t been examined yet. The doctor hadn’t even looked at him other than a quick glance when he told him where to sit.

“Did you hear me, Dean?”

“Yes, sir. But aren’t you going to examine me?”

The doctor looked him in the eye. “What do you think I was doing with you in the examination table? You’re in perfect health, anybody can see that. Report back to your platoon.”

As the days flowed into weeks, the recruits became used to the routine and to the minutiae of military training. They were issued weapons with which to practice the manual of arms, and which they were expected to field-strip and clean. And clean them they did—endlessly.

“Always handle every weapon as if it were a loaded weapon, even when you personally know it’s not,” Corporal Singh told them the day they were issued the weapons. “This will be drilled into you once you’re on the ranges and patrolling on Arsenault. Weapon safety will become second nature to you. ‘Unloaded’ weapons have killed more people than I care to think about. We really want to avoid having them kill Marines. Start learning that now.”

They learned both the fire capability and nomenclature of their weapons. The basic infantry weapon in the Confederation Marine Corps, they were told, was a miniaturized oxy-hydrogen plasma shooter, commonly called a “blaster,” but in the manuals a “weapon.”

“These weapons are semiautomatic,” Corporal Singh told them, “that is, they fire one bolt each time the trigger mechanism is activated. The ‘basic load’ for a Marine rifleman in combat,” he went on, “is four hundred ‘rounds,’ or four power packs or ‘magazines’ capable of shooting up to a hundred bolts each.

“There are also handheld versions of these weapons which are carried by officers, NCOs above squad leader, and the gunners on crew-served weapons,” Singh continued. “An automatic weapon is also authorized for each assault team. This is what’s called a ‘crew-served’ weapon, because it requires three men to operate it. It can fire up to a hundred bolts per trigger pull. The crew carries a bipod, a tripod, two extra barrels, and each man carries two extra power packs that contain six hundred bolts each. You gotta change the barrel on one of those babies every six hundred bolts or it’ll crystallize on you.” Corporal Singh always became very animated when he talked about weapons, moving his hands as if firing at an unseen enemy.

During a break, several recruits pretended to shoot one another with the unloaded weapons. Singh was upon them instantly. The men had never seen him so angry.

“You fools!” he shouted. “These weapons are not toys! They are the most deadly killing machines known to mankind!” The veins on Singh’s neck stood out clearly as he shouted at the hapless recruits. Staff Sergeant Pretty came over, took Corporal Singh aside, and they talked quietly for a few moments. When Singh came back he was calmer, but very firm, and there was no more horsing around with weapons.

After the third day they carried their weapons everywhere, and at night they fixed them into slots beside their racks. “You’ll get plenty of practice firing real ammunition when you get to Arsenault,” Pretty announced, “and for the rest of the time you’re in this Corps, your issue weapon will stay with you always, except when you go on liberty or if you wind up in the brig. I mean your weapon will
always
be with you, when you eat, when you sleep, when you shit, and if you’re lucky enough to draw duty on an inhabited world where the people don’t stink worse than
kwangduks
and the women aren’t uglier, you’ll keep your weapon handy when you fuck!”

“Once, I pulled a month’s duty on a place called Euskadi,” Corporal Singh offered, apropos of the universal monosyllable just uttered by the normally strait-laced Staff Sergeant Pretty, “and all I had between me and the ground at night was one of their thin native girls.” The men of second platoon had come to like Corporal Singh. He proved to be a very professional Marine, but easygoing in his manner and with a lively sense of humor that tended toward the bizarre and earthy.

“Yes,” Pretty replied, “and your weapon.” And that was the only joke Pretty attempted to make during all the months he was second platoon’s drill instructor.

“All right, recruits,” Neeley announced one day during a classroom training session, “I’m gonna give you Neeley’s Thirteen Rules for Staying Alive in Combat. You listening?

“One: Incoming fire always has the right-of-way.

“Two: Keep it simple, stupid.

“Three: Keeping it simple is the hardest thing in the world.

“Four: Never stand next to anyone braver than you are.

“Five: If things are going too well, it’s an ambush.

“Six: The easiest way is mined.

“Seven: The one thing you never run out of is the enemy.

“Eight: Infrared works both ways.

“Nine: Professionals are always predictable.

“Ten: We always wind up fighting amateurs.

“Eleven: When the enemy’s in range, so are you.

“Twelve: When in doubt, shoot until your magazine is empty.”

Neeley placed his hands on his hips and smiled fiercely. “You remember those rules and you’ll be okay.”

“Staff Sergeant, you said there were thirteen of your rules,” McNeal reminded him.

“McNeal! You again! Recruit, you got a big mouth! Down, down, down!” Immediately McNeal assumed the push-up position. “Give me fifty.

“Dean! I saw you standing next to this bigmouth troublemaker .Get up here and get down. Give me seventy-five! I just made up a new rule: Never stand next to anyone dumber than you!”

To the accompaniment of the pair’s steady counting, Neeley, still smiling fiercely, turned back to the recruits.

“Thirteen: Remember the other twelve.”

As the days passed, the relationship between the recruits and their D.I.’s began to solidify. Their company commander and first sergeant were everywhere, observing them in classrooms and in the exercise areas, making on-the-spot corrections, conferring with the drill instructors. Their own drill instructors stuck to them like leeches during every waking hour. It seemed either Neeley or Pretty or Singh would be there whenever someone made a mistake or needed a question answered. At first the recruits were apprehensive under all the scrutiny, but gradually they came to understand that the D.I.’s were there to teach and instruct, not criticize and belittle. Singh in particular used some of the most foul language any of them had ever heard, but he never used it to demean a recruit, it was just his nature to talk that way. When a recruit did something right, which began to happen more often as the days passed, one of the D.I.’s would be quick with a pat on the shoulder or word of praise. For many of the men it was the first time in their lives anybody had ever complimented them on doing something right.

Even close-order drill became fun for the men of the second platoon. Once they got the basic facing movements down pat, Corporal Singh taught them cadence counting and the ancient ditties that went along with it.

One they particularly liked went:

I don’t know, but I’ve been told,

Euskadi pussy mighty cold.

When the entire company was in the parade bay practicing at the same time, the platoon commanders had their men count cadence at the top of their lungs—“One, two, three, four!”—to try to outshout the other platoons maneuvering there. Dean and his mates took to the competition with abandon, shouting until they were red in the face and the veins in their necks stood out. They made the bulkheads ring and finished their drilling flush with the belief that they had won the decibel contest. Best of all was the sense of pride in accomplishment the men derived from marching well together, instantly responding as a group to Singh’s shouted commands, maneuvering as if all of them were one. Each recruit was given the chance to drill the others under the watchful eyes of the D.I.’s.

Occasionally, members of the ship’s crew on work parties in Area Whiskey would come by and watch the Marines drill, and then the two groups exchanged the time-honored insults that pass between Marines and sailors. But generally the crew was not much in evidence, although navy officers would sometimes confer with the Skipper. Once, the colonel commanding the training regiment came to talk to the recruits for a few minutes. He was in his early seventies, and told them that more than fifty years before he had stood right where they were now. He emphasized that regardless of rank, every Marine had started his career doing exactly what they were doing—every Marine, from the most recent graduate from Boot Camp on Arsenault all the way to the commandant himself.

Dean was the first in his platoon to be selected as an acting squad leader. All the recruits were given a chance to practice leadership skills, as fire team leaders for a day or two or drilling the platoon for a session in the parade bay, which was called the “grinder.” The most outstanding were selected to be squad leaders for one week. Dean, with his quick intelligence, even temper, and natural ability to work well with others, would have stood out even without the test scores in his record. At the end of the voyage, Captain Tomasio, in conference with his respective platoon commanders and platoon sergeants, would pick the best of the men to be acting squad leaders during the time they would be training on Arsenault. By the end of the third week they had unanimously selected Dean as one of the recruits upon whom they would confer that honor.

The personal relationships between the recruits began to take shape also. Of course, Dean and McNeal were inseparable buddies after the first day, but platoon and squad friendships soon developed. All the men were from Earth, so they had geography in common, and since English had been the official language of the entire Confederation for more than 250 years, they were able to communicate. But they also had a common culture that stretched far back into Terran history. This was due in part at least to the Borden Act of 2010, introduced by a U.S. Senator, G. F. Borden of Virginia, which provided the legislation and funding for the Library of Congress to digitize all its holdings. Not only did that make all the books in the library’s collections available electronically to future generations, it preserved all the motion pictures ever produced by Hollywood. Joe Dean’s favorites were those starring John Wayne, especially
The Sands of Iwo Jima.