18
“That’s our cue. Mount up,” Lieutenant Omestori said.
The stick—Navy terminology for a flight load—got up off the side of the tarmac where they’d been sitting for the last four hours. The spaceport was a madhouse, sticks lined up ready to embark, mechanical mules rushing equipment and supplies to the shuttles.
Rev had imagined they’d arrive at the spaceport and just embark, all their supplies onboard and ready to go. That’s what the general support Marines were supposed to be doing all this time. But as Gunny Thapa had said after the first two hours of sitting on their asses, it takes a lot to send a regiment off to war, even a regiment on a war footing.
Navy yellowshirts ran around in choreographed madness, using their laser-wands to direct shuttles in a ballet of confusion. Somehow, the shuttles took off and landed without collision—even if a few deployment packs and a mule were sent flying by the engine exhaust.
Following the yellowshirt who’d told him his stick was up, the lieutenant led the stick—which was made up of Third and Fourth Teams—down a line of flashing pink lights embedded in the tarmac surface, to a waiting Ibis shuttle, the back open. The yellowshirt waved the lieutenant into the shuttle. Rev followed the line aboard, taking one of the last web seats along the starboard side, and sat down. There was barely enough room for him to get his feet down between the seat and the 155 artillery piece tied down in the middle of the shuttle. One of the Ibis crew walked along the top of the cargo in the middle, yelling at the Marines on each side to buckle up.
“Our luck to get a Navy shuttle,” Tanu said. “Why couldn’t we have scored a commercial job? The Osis Line shuttles, they’ve got refreshments and everything. Not these damned web seats.”
Rev didn’t have an answer to that. He’d never been off the surface of the planet, much less gone into space, and his heart was beating hard in excitement.
The sailor started walking back up the line of cargo, checking each Marine to make sure they were strapped in. He gave a thumbs up to someone in the front—the bow, Rev reminded himself—and the back ramp started to close. Rev watched his sliver of sight get narrower and narrower until it disappeared. He twisted around to look, but there were no windows, to his disappointment.
Maybe a civilian shuttle would have been better. He’d be able to see when they took off.
There was a sudden lurch, and Rev automatically flailed his arms, forgetting for a moment that he was strapped in.
“Just taxiing. Can’t take off here on the tarmac unless we want to fry a few people,” Tanu said.
This was only Tanu’s second deployment, but he still knew a hell of a lot more than Rev did. Rev had decided he’d stick on Tanu’s ass like a burr until they were situated aboard their ride.
He looked over the cannon to where Tomiko was sitting across from him. He caught her eye, and she gave a thumbs up, a huge grin plastered on her face. She’d taken atmospheric planes twice before, but this was going to be her first time in space, too.
They taxied for about five minutes before they stopped moving. The shuttle hummed with power, but they hadn’t taken off yet—at least, Rev didn’t think they had. He would have given his left nut to be able to see what they were doing.
“Crew, prepare for takeoff,” came over a loudspeaker, and several lights started pulsing amber. The sailor who’d checked them sat on a pallet of expeditionary meals with the ease of someone who’d done this a thousand times and looked down at the Marines.
The flashing light turned to a steady green, and with a lurch that sent Rev’s heart into his throat, the shuttle leaped into the air. Within moments, the angle of the attack increased, and Rev grabbed hold of his harness with each hand to keep himself steady.
The shuttle rocked and vibrated, and Rev’s excitement began to fade. He started feeling queasy, and for a moment, he was afraid he’d throw up.
“Wake up,” he ordered.
<Online.>
“Give me something so I don’t puke.”
<Initiating antiemetic. You should feel the effects in approximately twenty seconds.>
Rev didn’t know if he was going to make it. Far from the smooth flight he’d expected, the shuttle was lurching, vibrating, and shaking as it clawed its way up through the atmosphere. He could taste the bile in the back of his throat and the tension in his jaw under his chin. The saliva started to flow.
“It won’t be long,” Tanu said. “Just take it easy.”
And then, like getting washed out in a wave, his nausea was gone.
“Thanks. That’s much better,” he subvocalized automatically.
<There is no need to thank me.>
Duh! Of course, I don’t have to thank it. Nothing wrong with manners, though, I guess.
“Sleep,” he ordered the AI.
Rev shook his head and looked around the cabin. There were a few green faces, but several Marines had their heads back, eyes closed as they caught a few Z’s. Gunny had told Tomiko and him that a good Marine always sleeps, eats, and shits every time they have the opportunity because no one knows when they might be able to again.
Maybe old hands could do that, but with the nausea a fading memory, Rev was too excited to sleep. The flight up was on a tactical approach, not the normal civilian approach, which would climb in a spiraling orbit to reach space. In the Navy boat it was pretty much straight up.
Rev shifted in the seat. The extra G as the shuttle accelerated, coupled with the high angle of attack, was making him slide, despite the harness. He lifted his feet and braced them against the cannon in front of him.
Suddenly wondering if he was breaking some sort of regulation, he looked up to the sailor who was sitting casually like a king on top of the rations, overlooking his kingdom. He caught Rev’s eyes, then gave him a half-smile and nod. With that assurance, Rev shifted his feet a bit, then braced harder, shoving his ass back into the seat and keeping himself secure.
“Hey, what happens—” he started to ask Tanu, turning his head.
But the other Marine was fast asleep. Rev shook his head, wondering if sleeping at will was some augment he hadn’t employed yet.
A few minutes later, the vibrations smoothed out, and the weight left him. He had a twinge of queasiness, and he was glad he’d taken the antiemetic. And then he realized what had happened. He was in space!
He looked across the cargo bay, and Tomiko gave him another thumbs-up. She took a stylus from her shoulder sleeve and held it in front of her before letting go. It didn’t fall. She flicked the top with her finger, spinning it in place. At least he wasn’t the only one who was excited.
It was another ten minutes or so before the shuttle started matching orbits with their ship, tiny adjustments that gave Rev slight intervals of weight, of what was up and what was down.
“Crew, prepare for docking,” came over the intercom.
The green light turned amber again, and the sailor did a sort of flying flip off the pallet of rations, shooting himself down the length of the cargo bay to the back ramp. He twisted in mid-air to hit the ramp feet-first.
“I’m going to need you off my boat ASAP. We’ve got the cargo to offload,” he yelled.
Marines around Rev opened their eyes and stretched.
“Normal weight in ten,” the sailor said.
Ten seconds later, it came on instantly as the shuttle breached the ship’s artificial gravity field. One moment, they were weightless, the next, they were at Earth Normal, which was slightly less than Safe Harbor’s gravity.
Rev felt a momentary pain in his chest, and for a second he thought something was wrong, but a huge burp burst through him, and the pain was gone. Around him, some of the others were burping, too. And not just burping. There were some farts as well, and Rev was sure Tomiko had let one loose.
There was a final jolt as the shuttle docked with the ship.
“Unstrap!” the sailor ordered.
The intercom came to life. “We want to thank you for flying with the Union Navy today. Please remember us in the future for all your travel needs.”
“They say that every time, and it’s never funny,” Tanu said as they all stood up.
The ramp slowly opened, revealing their first look at the ship that was going to take them into battle. From the shuttle, all Rev could see was a generic space. Equipment and supplies were being shifted around by automated mules.
“OK, it’s been real, but time to get your asses off my boat,” the sailor said.
As the last one on at the starboard side, Rev would be the first one off from that side as well. He started to look around for the gunny or the lieutenant, but Tanu gave him a shove.
“You heard the man. Let’s go!”
Rev stepped down the now flat ramp and into the ship. A major in a blue jumpsuit—no, lieutenant commander, Rev reminded himself—was waiting just inside, a chief beside him.
“Welcome to the PUNS Amethyst,” the commander said as they filed on.
The bulkheads were bare gray steel and more than a bit foreboding. This sure wasn’t one of those the passenger liners that was advertised for the wealthy.
But then again, this wasn’t a vacation cruise. The Amethyst was there to take them into harm’s way.
It was time to go to war.
* * *
For all the chaos in getting the regiment deployed, things quickly settled down to boredom. Coupled with the fact that the team still didn’t have a mission, much less even know where they were heading, and the rumor mill started running rampant.
“It’s Earth,” Sergeant Prestor Nix said with certainty.
“Bullshit,” PFC Hussein “Hus-man” Černý said. “No way the damned tin-asses got that far in. And for what? No industry and only eight hundred thousand people? Why would they want a nature reserve, especially when Titan’s in the home system, too?”
Like all people, Rev had an almost religious attachment to The Mother, and the sergeant’s pronouncement gave him a jolt.
Could he be right?
“What do you think, Staff Sergeant?” Tomiko asked. “Could it be Earth?”
Staff Sergeant Montez looked up from her pad. Raiders could read novels or watch holos by direct input, but the SNCO preferred old-fashioned text pads.
“It could be, but I doubt it. There are more divisions than we can count between us and Earth, not to mention the Frisian Host and the Manifest Destiny Sphere. And don’t forget the blue-hats. No, I think we’re going farther out on the arm.”
Rev didn’t give much weight to the blue-hats—the Home Guard—which were the armed forces of the Congress of Humanity. It wasn’t that the elite force, based out of Titan, was incapable. Far from it. They took only the elite among the military forces of humankind. But with a single division, they just didn’t have the manpower to do much against a concerted Centaur attack.
The Frisians, with their hundred billion citizens and strong army, and the Manifest Destiny Sphere, which was almost as big, were altogether different. Maybe the staff sergeant was right.
But that didn’t answer the question as to where they were going. All they knew was that this was the real deal and not a drill. For the first time in more than two years, the regiment was heading out as a command and not piecemealing units for smaller missions.
The boredom was running concurrently with the stress of the unknown, and two fights had already broken out between Marines and crew—and that was with only twenty-three Marines and fifteen crew aboard the small skiff.
There were five ships in the Union Navy that could embark an entire regiment. There used to be eight, but the Centaurs destroyed three of them, all with full regiments embarked. Subsequent to that, Marines were spread-loaded on as many vessels as possible—which put a huge strain on the Navy, and there was always some resentment on the ships-of-war now that they had to carry Marines.
Not that the Amethyst had started out as a combatant. From the looks of it, she had been a small freighter before the war. Now she was officially designated a skiff and had been retrofitted to insert Navy or Marine special forces. Small and cramped, she had none of the facilities of the larger ships, including combat trainers and a gym. All the Marines—the Raider team and a squad of combat engineers—could not eat at one time in the tiny galley, much less sit with the sailors.
After the second fight between one of the engineers and a squid, the captain—the guy was a lieutenant commander, but the Navy called him a captain, which was the same as a Marine colonel, and something Rev thought was pretty screwed up—banished the Marines to their two berthing compartments, allowing them to come out only to eat, use the head, or to run the checks on their equipment.
So, with nothing to do for most of the time, the Marines jacked into entertainment or sat around, shooting the shit. Rev had watched a couple of holos, but for the most part, he sat around with the others.
Once they had a mission, things would get busier. They didn’t have a combat trainer on board, but the team had a portable trainer, and they’d do their rehearsals hooked up to it. It wasn’t the same as getting to do them physically, but it was the best they could do.
“Do you think Montez is right?” Rev whispered into Tomiko’s ear. “The tin-asses aren’t attacking The Mother, right?”
Tomiko shrugged, but from the look in her eyes, she wished that Nix hadn’t brought up the possibility. Rev felt the same way.
Earth had no strategic value, at least compared to the planets the Centaurs usually hit. But it was the beating heart of the human psyche.
Centuries ago, the planet, poisoned and sick, had been evacuated, leaving behind a cadre of healers and caretakers. Ironically, it was the very science of terraforming that had allowed for the human diaspora to settle this corner of the galaxy that healed The Mother. Animals, many long extinct, were cloned from the DNA zoos, and within a short century, Earth was a natural reserve, The Mother.
The idea of the Centaurs invading . . . Rev shuddered. He couldn’t even bear the thought. He knew he would never even get within pissing range of The Mother, much less the Home System, but that didn’t change his feelings.
“Could be Titan,” Sergeant Nix said. “The Centaurs might be wanting to cut off our head. Good strategic move.”
Which made sense from a military standpoint. But humanity was too numerous, too spread out. Taking or destroying Titan would wipe out the Congress of Humanity, but it would hardly bring the human race to its knees. Humans were like cockroaches in that. Stomp on the king cockroach, and the rest just scatter into the cracks and crevices, ready to come out again as soon as the lights went out.
No, more like bees. Take out the queen, and the rest will still swarm, stinging their enemy, even if a hundred die in killing the invader.
The hatch opened, and the lieutenant stuck his head in. “Stand by. We’ve got a mission.”
The boredom disappeared in a flash. It was go-time.