Luna Marine (14 page)

He dropped back to his knees. “I think you're right. C'mon. Let's see if we can find better cover over that way.” As they started to crawl, Kaminski looked back and noticed that Alexander was still carrying the statue he'd found. “Drop it, Professor,” he said. “Won't do you no good if you get killed.”

“No way, Ski. You just keep crawling. I'll keep up.”

Kaminski hesitated. Damn it, Alexander was a civilian, and short of knocking him out and dragging him, Kaminski couldn't think of a way to enforce the order. He gave a mental shrug and kept crawling.

“Heads up, Marines and Berets!” the lieutenant's voice called. “We have incoming friendlies, coming in near South Two! Hold your fire to ground targets!”

Friendlies! Kaminski stopped crawling and searched the sky toward the southern direction markers. He couldn't see a thing…and then the bug switched on its landing lights, a quad of dazzling stars casting moving circles of illumi
nation across the crater floor. Dust swirled as the vehicle gentled in for a landing not far from the wreckage of the downed UN hopper. The troops that came spilling out of the open cargo bay all bore green pips on Kaminski's HUD display, and he felt a surge of sheer joy. Someone—the company commanders, or maybe Lieutenant Garroway—had come up with one hell of an idea, sending Alfa Company's Second Platoon off to some nearby hidey hole beyond the crater rim as a strategic reserve. Once the UN forces had committed themselves to the counterattack, the reserves had come in, and now, suddenly the UN deployment was dissolving, their attack teams breaking into small groups of men, most of them now breaking for their remaining two hopper transports.

“Ski!” David called out suddenly. “On your left!”

Kaminski turned and saw a group of five or six red-orange heat images loping toward him. They were running in the general direction of one of the unloaded UN hoppers, and he and Alexander were squarely in their path.

He raised his ATAR, checked for green pips…and when he saw none he squeezed the firing button, sending a stream of 4.5mm rounds slashing into the running troops at a range of less than fifty meters. Two of the space-suited figures went down…then a third, his visor exploding in a spray of plastic shards and pink mist that froze instantly into an icy cloud as it blossomed from the helmet. The two survivors dropped prone, and puffs of dust exploded from the rim of the excavation as they returned fire.

“Hold your fire!” Kaitlin's voice cried over the general combat channel. “Damn it, hold your fire! Kaminski! Hold fire!
Those are friendlies
!”

Oh,
God
….

MONDAY
, 21
APRIL
2042

Parris Island Recruit Training
Center
0725 hours EDT

Jack Ramsey—
Private
Jack Ramsey, US Marine Corps—stood at a rigid, fair approximation of attention on the recruit battalion grinder, gaze focused on the tops of the palmetto palms in the distance. Parris Island, they said, was slowly sinking as the world's sea levels continued to rise. Scuttlebutt had it that the whole island was already beneath sea level, like Holland, and the only thing holding the Atlantic at bay were the rings of seawalls, dikes, and tide barriers erected by the Army Corps of Engineers and a few thousand Marines.

Jack was less interested at the moment in the possibility of a storm's fury sweeping over the low-lying island than he was in the fury of another force of nature. Moments before, Recruit Platoon 4239 had met their drill instructors, and, in an old and venerable tradition of the Corps, they were enduring their first inspection and their welcoming speech, delivered by the platoon's senior DI, Gunnery Sergeant Harold Knox.

“Never,
never
in my entire military career,” Knox was saying as he stalked along the solitary line of recruits, “have I seen such sorry specimens!” The expression on his leathery face gave every appearance of a man appalled by what he had just had the misfortune of witnessing. His
voice, crackling with the authority known throughout the Marine Corps as the
Command Voice
, bore the punch and edge necessary to carry above a howling storm…or a pitched battle. The stress he laid on certain words gave his oration an almost singsong, mesmerizing quality, holding the recruits spellbound. “It makes me
sick
to think that my beloved Corps could someday be in
your
pale, flabby hands!”

The Voice went on, and Jack swayed slightly on his feet. He was exhausted…running about ten hours minus on sleep at the moment. It felt like he'd been here for days already, and yet he'd only arrived at Parris Island that morning. Somehow, confusion and sleep deprivation had conspired to keep him from clicking in with the routine.

Every waking moment for the past month had been geared toward this moment, from his last on-line discussion with the recruiter, Staff Sergeant Henson, to his physical in Pittsburgh, to his swearing in at the recruiter's office. The maglev bringing him down from Pittsburgh had arrived in Charleston late on the previous afternoon, but the bus to take them the final short leg to the Parris Island Marine Recruit Depot—a clattering wreck with a gasoline engine, no less—had been mysteriously delayed. They'd not arrived at the base until 2:00
A.M.
—0200 hours, in Marine parlance—a bit of disorganization that Jack was convinced had been done on purpose. Arriving in the middle of the night, told to “hit the beach” by screaming Marine NCOs and made to line up on yellow-painted footprints on the pavement, bullied, harassed, and screamed at some more, had resulted in the forty-three men and women aboard the bus feeling as cut off from their former lives as they might have been on the farside of the Moon.

After an initial orientation lecture, the female recruits had been called off and marched away into the night; the Marines alone of the four major services continued to maintain separate training battalions for its male and female recruits. There'd followed a nightmare, sleep-deprived blur of standing in line, of running, of standing in
more
lines, and of listening to bellowed lectures that
extended throughout the rest of the night hours and well into the dawn of the morning. After breakfast, they'd been officially mustered into Recruit Platoon 4239 with a number of men already there in a holding company, bringing their numbers up to an even eighty. After that, they'd been checked into a recruit barracks, issued uniforms, and herded through a thirty-second haircut that left each recruit “high and tight.”

And then there'd been more lectures, where they learned to start and finish every sentence with the word “sir,” where they learned to come to attention at a shouted “attention on deck,” where they learned not to speak in ranks unless spoken to, and where they learned that an order was to be answered by a shouted “aye, aye, sir,” a hoary phrase meaning “I understand, and I
will
obey.” High-running tension, shock, and lack of sleep had them all stumbling by the time they were marched to supper; the midday meal was never referred to as “lunch,” a term strictly for civilians.

They'd mustered here on the grinder this afternoon to meet their company DIs.

Gunnery Sergeant Harold Knox was their senior drill instructor; Jack had felt in awe of the man from the moment he strode into their presence, crisp, immaculate, his traditional “Smoky Bear” hat precisely straight. Most of the other recruits, Jack knew, couldn't read the colorful splash of ribbons that started high on the left breast of the man's creaseless khaki shirt and extended halfway down to the black web belt that marked him as a senior DI. Silver Star. Bronze Star with cluster. Purple Heart. Presidential Unit Citation. Andhra Pradesh Intervention Ribbon. Colombian Civil War Ribbon.

And, for Jack, the most stunning campaign ribbon of them all, the gold-and-ocher rectangle of the Mars Marine Expeditionary Force. Gunny Knox had been
out
there, on the same mission as his uncle!

They stood in their long line, sweating in the steamy, April heat, stiffly at attention as Gunny Knox paced down the line, giving each recruit a look razor-edged enough to
count their individual vertebrae and spot-check the contents of their stomachs.

He stopped, finally, in front of one Marine six down the line from where Jack was standing. “What in the
hell
do you think you are?”

“Sir! I'm a Marine! Sir!”

Knox's control was masterful. “I beg your pardon,” he replied, his voice dropping in volume without losing any of its command, “but you are not. You are a
recruit
, and in future, when you are referring to your sorry-assed selves, you will
not
say ‘I' or ‘me,' but you will speak in the third person, saying ‘this recruit.' There are no ‘I's' here, except for the eyes in your head! Do you understand me?”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

“Furthermore, you do not have the
right
to refer to yourself in the first person! And you do not have the right to call yourself Marines! I have been making Marines out of sorry, slime-bucket maggots like you for twenty years, now, and I promise you that I
do
know what a Marine is! Trust me! You ain't it!”

Knox moved to the next man in line. “Good God in heaven!
What
, may I ask, is that
thing
on your face?”

Jack couldn't see from his current vantage point, staring across the grinder at the distant palmettos, but he knew who the DI must be talking to. Lonnie Costantino had been on the bus with Jack out from Charleston. He had a subdural implant under the skin of his forehead, a glow-tattoo powered by his body heat. It cast an illuminated, inner tattoo of an eight-pointed star centered by an alien-looking symbol, glowing in eerie yellow-and-red light clearly visible right through his skin. Jack had seen that symbol before, he was pretty sure—something from one of the alien scenes discovered in the Cave of Wonders on Mars.

“Uh…I mean, sir, that's my mark, sir. I'm, uh, like, a member of the Alien Astronauts Church, y'know? Freedom of religion! Uh, sir.”

There was a long silence, and Jack wondered if Knox was about to explode. His eyes grew large, and a vein in
his temple popped out, throbbing. Jack had the feeling that it was an act…but if it was, it was masterful, an Academy-Award performance.

Jack's breath caught in his throat. Lonnie had seemed like a nice enough guy, in a Pittsburgh tough-kid kind of way, but he wasn't, well,
Marine
material.

“The Corps will not interfere with the practice of your religion, son,” Knox said, and he sounded almost fatherly. Then the edge came back, sharp and hard. “
However
, I will not stand by and watch some dink sniper drill you a new puckered asshole smack between your eyes—or between the eyes of one of the young men or women who end up in your squad—because you're wearing that damned glow-in-the-dark tattoo. You, therefore, have two options. I'll write you out a chit and you can go see the regimental chaplain. He'll arrange for your immediate discharge on the grounds of religious conscience.
Or
you can report to sick bay and have them remove your…mark. There is no place in the Corps for a man with his own luminous head-shot target. What'll it be?”

“Uh…I'll stay, sir.”

“Report to sick bay. You know where it is?”

“Uh…”

“Bryce!”

“
Yes
, Gunnery Sergeant!” One of the junior DIs following Knox down the line rasped out.

“Escort our religious friend to sick bay.”

“Aye, aye, Gunnery Sergeant!”

“But
first
, recruit, drop down and give me fifty! That's for being stupid enough to show up here with a headlight!”

“Uh, aye, aye, sir!”

“And then give me twenty-five more after that for not using the third person,
as
you were instructed! You are not an ‘I'! You are not a ‘me'! You are a recruit, and by God you will
act
like one and you will
talk
like one, because you do not have the
faintest
idea of how a Marine should act and talk! Hit it!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

As Lonnie began counting off his push-ups, Knox con
tinued his walk. “You, you
civilians
are disgusting! You are
not
Marines. At this moment I have grave doubts that any of you can ever
become
Marines, and you will
not
sully the name of my beloved Corps by claiming that you are! Right now, each and every one of you is too low to ever even think about becoming a United States Marine. You are
so low
that whale shit looks like shootin' stars to you!
You
! Are you smiling at me?”

The object of Knox's sudden attention, three to Jack's left, paled.

“S-sir! No, sir!”

“Do you find me amusing?”

“Sir! No, sir!”

“Hit the deck! Gimme twenty-five!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“And sing out!”

“One!…Two!…”

“
You
!” Knox said, stopping in front of the recruit to Jack's left, his voice strong above the first recruit's cadence. “Why the
hell
are you here in
my
squad bay pretending you're good enough to join
my
Corps?”

“Sir! This recruit will fight and die for my—uh—his country, sir!” The words came out with a crack and a squeak.

“Then you are no good to me, or to my Corps,” Knox said, with overtones that were almost sorrowful. “General Patton said it best, and he knew what he was talking about, even if he was a doggie. The idea, ladies, is to get some
other
poor dumb bastard to die for his country. When we are done with you, you will be
Marines
, you will be
killers
, you will be America's fighting elite,
fully
capable of making that poor dumb bastard die for his country. To accomplish this, you will use the ATAR, you will use the Wyvern shoulder-fired missile system, you will use your Marine-issue K-Bar knife, you will use rocks, you will use your bare hands, you will use your teeth if you have to, because you
will
be Marines, and you
will
be trained to kill!
Do
you understand me?”

“Sir! Yes, sir!”

“But you are not Marines yet. You do not
look
like
Marines. You do not
sound
like Marines. The battle cry of the US Marine is
ooh-rah
! Let me hear you ladies wrap your throats around that!”

“Ooh-rah!”

Knox surveyed the line of recruits, fists on hips. “Pathetic! Again!”

“
Ooh
-rah!”

“Again!”

“
OOH-RAH
!”

“
You
!” Knox bellowed into Jack's face, as suddenly, as unexpected as an explosion. “Why are
you
here? What do you plan to make of yourself in this man's Marine Corps?”

Jack thought he knew what would impress the man. “Sir! This recruit intends to become a Space Marine, sir!”

Knox stared for a half a heartbeat, then startled Jack with an explosion of laughter. “A
Space
Marine! Well, what do you know about that? We've got Flash Gordon, here, ladies! Or is it Buck Rogers?” He laughed again, with a contortion of muscles about his eyes and mouth that threatened to crack his lean face. “I've got some hot intel for you, Flash. There are, as of this moment, three hundred ninety-five thousand men and women in the US Marine Corps. Of those, approximately twelve hundred are currently serving in the Space Assault Group, on space deployment, or in various support units.

“Now, since I know that you could not count to twenty-one
even
if you were barefoot
and
you removed your pants, I'll make it simple for you. The odds are something like three hundred thirty to one against you, son. Six months from now, you are
far
more likely to be serving in Siberia or some dink country you've never heard of and couldn't spell if you had, than you are to be playing
space
he-ro!”

Jack flushed, suddenly angry. “But my recruiter said—”

“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?”

Cold fear clawed up the back of Jack's neck. “Sir! I'm sorry, I mean, this recruit is sorry, sir!”