In order to have any validity, Christopher realized that the normal training maintenance was a must. He posted his Phase I schedule and told his DIs, "This is it!” But the truth be known, neither he nor his men really believed it. They hadn't figured out where the hell a pool was going to be put or which one of them was qualified to run the swimming qualifications. There was no obstacle course, circuit course, or confidence course. But then again, in Forming Week they had figured out what to look for with urinalysis and blood testing. If you looked at it objectively, they had reduced the amount of information needed to "Do they piss? Yes! Do they bleed? Yes. Are they on drugs? No." It worked. But there was something about the idea of bayonet training which sent cold chills through all five of them.
There were other problems to overcome. They were improperly supplied for foodstuffs. These people needed to be feed, and not box lunches that were more than a hundred years old. They had issued the Johnson rifles as the weapon of choice and Stone, with a little help from several recruits who had been machinists or minor metal engineers, began cannibalizing a lot of what they had been bequeathed as weaponry into working machines of war. The rifle range was nearing completion and, on paper at least, it would do for now. The need for gym clothing had been apparent from the onset. A rather large supply of boxer shorts was hastily dyed green to match some tee shirts, but as yet nothing on the order of sneakers was available in Griffen's stash. Christopher had noted a particular type of thick-soled slipper worn by the maintenance crews to give them traction on the highly polished metal floors of the engine areas—two hardly-used pint containers of Ronsol lighter fuel were traded to the Ship's Captain in exchange for two hundred pairs of slippers from ship's stores. coHLI accused Maysfield of gouging, and Maysfield suggested coHLI find his lighter fluid elsewhere. They shook on it and the deal was done.
Christopher thought it best to let the first day of actual training go solely to the individual DIs and their platoons. The greatest problem he faced was procuring a swimming pool. While the Corps had split off from the Department of the Navy, aquatic training was still very much a part of the Marine tradition. Ships still played a large part of service at home, and moving through water up to your hips with a full back of gear was not totally unique in the universe.
Despite the arrival of four others of his species, Christopher felt very much alone most of the time. His people knew their jobs. Let them do it! They would solve the problems of training. The remaining responsibilities—the logistics, the peripherals, perhaps even the politics were ultimately his responsibilities. The problem factors had surpassed the '10' mark. The return factor was around '0'. All he could do was hope that Griffen knew what he was doing all this for.
It was 0700 hours. Christopher lay quietly on his cot, sipping away at his second pot of coffee so far in the day, listening to blues and musing over a storage area chart of the phEY‑QUAD. Miles of empty storage bays of all sizes and purposes… and nothing that even remotely resembled a pool. Judging by the numbers of bangs and shouts and crashes that crept through all the acoustical proofing he had insulated his cubicled universe with, the first day of Phase One was a roaring success. Everybody seemed to have lots of energy to commit to the project. Perhaps he was going about this the wrong way. It was time to rise and get physical; the paper wasn't going to give him his answer.
He rose and showered. As usual, the water was, at best, tepid. Water! That was another problem he had never even thought about. Where was he going to get water to fill a pool if he found one? The ship manufactured relatively little water; enough to drink and wash, but that was it. There was no great need to produce more than that, so the machinery at hand was inadequate to produce the vast amount he would need.
He began to wander through the ship. The enormity of the project was really starting to sink in. What worried him most was an uncontrollable calculated factor. The idea of boot camp was to draw your personnel into the program by presenting a unique standard of discipline. You could hammer it, spoon it, shout it, and even scream it at them. The only thing you couldn't do was accept it for them. Most did tumble to it. The discipline appealed to basic human needs—self-confidence, pride, determination, and a sense of competitiveness. It worked off of emotions and maybe even ego to some extent. Okay. To a great extent, ego. He still wasn’t certain if any of those traits were important to this species he had been handed.
He had begun to piece things together on paper. His recruits were strong and healthy, fairly intelligent, willing workers (like they'd been pressed out of a machine), and fairly quick learners. But they lacked something that he couldn't put a finger on. Aggressiveness? That unique streak of violence that drives most humans? He was concerned over what the reactions would be when the courses on Leadership began. They had singled out platoon leaders and squad leaders. But they were arbitrary choices, and the recruit squad leaders led everything like it was a work detail.
Christopher had begun wandering through the remote outer portions of the ship. According to the manifest, the outer bays on the immediate inside of the hull were vast storage bays equipped with detachable carriers meant to haul entire forests of trees. Lo and behold! A carrier nearly the length of an Olympic size pool. It even sloped to create a shallow and a deep side. It wasn't watertight, but with a few hundred yards of twelve-millimeter plastic from ship's manufacturing and a little elbow grease, it would pass. A few quick cuts into the ship's air ducts, and a filter and aerating system could be devised.
Now, where to find sixty or seventy thousand gallons of water?
The answer came in an old article he found in the computerized library in his room. Before the landing of the Malacans, the prospect of earth shuttles reaching far enough out into the galaxy was dawning on Terrans as some real possibilities. Water for extended trips was manufactured by fuel cells interacting cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen together to create electricity and by-producing water. A rather clever engineer, Vic Petillo, of the now-defunct Lockheed group, working for the even more defunct NASA, concocted an ingenious oversized fuel cell that could ride on the outside of a deep space vessel and produce almost limitless amounts of electricity and water when removed and installed as the hub of a transplanting community. His idea was to permanently install this cell as a small hydroelectric plant around which a settlement could be established. Fully electrifying a village and producing water quickly enough to irrigate an entire valley meant that settlements on the fringes of known space was a reality. The Petillo Cell was sound, and had helped turn vast tracks of semi‑arid desserts in Arizona green. With the advent of the Malacans, however, the project was deemed unneeded for space and dropped for further development.
Christopher copied out the schematic of the Petillo Cell and instructed ship's Engineers to build two on the edges of the lumber carrier. They looked at him as if he were crazy. 3033, who was volunteered to build the plastic into the walls of the carrier, was certain he was crazy. As they began laying out the plastic to seal the huge vat, they could no more imagine why Sergeant Christopher would want to build something like this (whatever this was) in a space ship than why he would instruct the F Deck cargo crew to construct one of their thirty-foot-tall platform cranes above it.
|
DS - 78922 - A2 To: OFFICE OF NTA BEAUFORT AIR STATION S.C., U.S.A., EARTH COLONEL A.L. GRIFFEN |
55 - 07 - 03 From: MARINE DETACHMENT MCS phEY-QUAD In Transit SERGEANT R.S. CHRISTOPHER |
INTO FIRST WEEK OF PHASE ONE. NOW HAVE RIFLE RANGE, POOL, OBSTACLE, CONFIDENCE, AND CIRCUIT COURSE. WILL NEED TO ADJUST STANDARDS TO ACCOMMODATE NON‑HUMAN PHYSIQUES. AVERAGE RECRUIT STANDS 62.6 INCHES HIGH AND IS 30 INCHES WIDE, SHOULDER TO SHOULDER. AVERAGE WEIGHT IS 208.6 POUNDS. AVERAGE INITIAL STRENGTH TEST RESULTS ARE INTERESTING:
AVERAGE PULL‑UPS : 72.3 PER 2-MINUTE TIME
" SIT‑UPS : 03.2 " " " "
" PUSH‑UPS : 104 " " " "
" LEG‑LIFTS : 8 INCHES OFF GROUND (1 INCH DECLINE PER 15 SECOND SPINS)
" RUN TIME : 8 MINUTES PER MILE
" RUN TIME (FULL FIELD PACK W/ 50MM MACHINE GUN): 7.3 MINUTES PER MILE!
REQUEST SIT‑REP, GREEN CARDS.
REQUEST SIT‑REP, COMMISSARY STUFFS.
REQUEST SIT‑REP, ADDITIONAL FACILITIES AVAILABLE.
INDIVIDUAL STATISTICS INCLUDED IN PACKAGE.
| SERGEANT R.S. CHRISTOPHER |
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Griff,
We're up and running. The little bastards have heart, that's for sure. But we're just going through the motions. Basic concepts such as military, aggression, leadership, and tradition goes over their head, but every technical thing we throw at them gets consumed instantly—like locusts in a wheat field. They jump at command, but it’s more like having a well-trained pet than a Marine Recruit.
On a more serious note—who do I have to shoot to get proper chow?! Griff, we're working these little bastards to death and feeding them food that was packed a hundred years ago! And it ain't right!
We're doing the best with what we've got. There's a salvage team of Malacans under Stone and Abner Willie cannibalizing the weaponry. Mechanical skills are high; we've elected to go with the Johnson Semi‑Autos over the M16s. It's going to be interesting to see how the range works. If you've got anything newer—SEND IT!
Celebrating the Fourth of July with fireworks—then we're all going for a dip in the pool!
| Bob |
Christopher warned coHLI to keep his head down—or more correctly, keep his audio ducts closed to maximum. It was going to be loud—and it was!
The only time all four platoons could count on being together was chow call. Only today there weren't 185 more-than-slightly stale ration boxes waiting for them. As they entered the mess bay, Christopher snapped them to attention and ordered them on their first ten mile run, "dressed and ready for war" as he put it. The words were barely out of his mouth when all four DIs had jumped up and started screaming, "GO! GO! GO!"
All four platoons blasted out of the squad bays in seconds, all headed in different directions. They were running under full combat gear and not prepared for what was going to be involved with this run. As 3030 broke out of the military bays, the corridor they entered into suddenly dropped power, went black, then lit with a series shattering bangs and phosphorous flashes disorienting them. One of the flashes triggered the fire equipment, and the platoon slogged their way out covered in the chemical fire suppressant spray.
3032 swung into a short bay to find all four .30 caliber Browning machine guns, both .50's, and a small mountain of ammunition waiting for them. Across the floor was more debris than they could imagine having been brought on board ship. “Get those guns up! Get that ammo! Move it! Move it!" cried Rojas.
The other platoons were not faring any better. 3033 found itself crawling through the waste disposal air venting ducts. The slime on the inner walls made climbing as the ducts began to curl up almost impossible. The stench became almost intolerable, even for Malacans. At one point they had to chisel the openings free of some bizarre organic growth to have enough room to move through.
3031 found itself sliding headlong into a freezer bay. The entire floor was covered in ice, the heavy boots they wore offered no traction, and the temperature was dropping fast. But their troubles had just begun. The room dropped power and went black. A deadly quiet filled the room and, in no more than a whisper, Sabott's voice could be heard at the farthest opposite point in the bay. And then it started. That shrill noise from the small metal pieces the DIs wore about their necks echoed around the bay, and the Boots began holding their ears to block it.
It was Lewis who figured it out—they had to follow Sabott's voice to get out. "Open your ears! Listen for the voice!" he began shouting. One by one, small pocket lights were lit and began flashing in all directions. "Take your boots off! Push with your feet. We’ll slide out!" Lewis dropped to his butt and began ripping laces open. He tied his boots together by the laces and threw them around his neck. When he looked up, nobody was moving.
"Fuck the cold! Fuck the noise! If we don't move soon, we'll freeze here to the floor! And you know these assholes will leave us here!" Lewis began crawling through the darkness, smacking at boots and shouting as panic began to spread through the ranks. Slowly he got a line moving towards Sabott's voice. It took almost a quarter of an hour to crawl across the bay, a space that at even a slow walk wouldn't have taken two minutes under normal conditions.
They had barely made it out when Sergeant Sabott reappeared, shouting, "GET those ga'damned boots back on, we got ground to cover. Now! Today! Move!" And off they went again, headed towards the nose of the ship.
3031 was the last platoon to arrive at what was now the pool bay. The other three platoons were huddled along one side of the pool, leaving barley enough space for 3031 to push themselves in and sit cross‑legged on the floor. As they waited to see what the Drill Instructors from Hell had waiting for them next, they began to notice that the temperature and the humidity were rising. To 3031, which had just spent twenty minutes in a food freezer, it was particularly annoying. It was particularly annoying for everybody else when 3033, which had just spent thirty minutes crawling through a sewer, began to ripen with the heat. From the angle at which they sat, they saw only a huge lumber hauler taking up eighty percent of the deck space. It wasn't until the change in atmospheric conditions caused an odd fog to rise that they began to realize there was an immense vat of water in front of them. It was more water in one place at one time than most of them had seen in their entire lifetimes.
It wasn't that water was uncommon. Quite the contrary. Water was all over the place at home. It was one of the few resources that was in great abundance. But! Their home planet was very little more than a dense rock, and while water from the atmosphere was common, great lakes and rivers were not—and a stream sixteen inches deep and three feet across qualifies as a river. Lakes were mere indentations in the rock, and were only two, maybe three feet deep. Oceans were unknown. A reservoir for a large population was an artesian well, sank through the planet's crust to where the water table was only 500 or 600 feet below the surface—but the water was two miles deep. Most vegetation came in the form of plankton that formed on the surface of the innumerable ponds that formed and disappeared as the internal pressure of the planet caused the underground seas to push upwards through the crust. During the wet season, vast fields of water would trickle through the upper skin and settle as they had for centuries, raising maybe a foot or two above the ground. Asian rices had been a big hit with the Malacans.
But here in front of them now was an ominous vat of water that staggered their imaginations. Because of the denser atmosphere of their home planet, the Malacans were fairly densely formed themselves, and their bodies were not very buoyant. While drowning was rare on their planet, they knew of it and had heard of more than one Malacan to go under on a water world in some remote part of the galaxy.
Maysfield, the only DI facing them, called them to attention and they rose, struggling for foot space on the floor. He stepped forward and ordered Stone front and center. Stone moved two paces forward, and Rojas and Sabott fell in behind him, forming almost a triangle. They stood facing Maysfield when they stopped.
"Sergeant Stone! Execute… Fireworks!"
"Aye, aye, Master Sergeant." Stone walked to the far end of the bay. He lifted one of the old M16s and let go a canister from the grenade launcher atop it. It spiraled slowly upward about forty feet and exploded with a low thud and a flash that reflected off the pool and lit the room.
"Firework displays concluded, Sir!" he called out. Maysfield called at ease to his troops and began.
"In the Terran year 1776, the thirteen original colonies of the United States of America declared their independence from a great power of the European continent. Tonight, as we stand here on the shores of Lake Washington, we commemorate that event."
The collective sighs of relief that poured from the four platoons caused a wind so strong the water rose four inches on the far side of the pool.
Maysfield paused and smiled knowingly.
* * *
"YOU LIMP‑DICKED, SLACK-JAWED LITTLE BUG-EYED MOUSE BANGER! GET THE HELL OFF MY GA'DANNED TOWER!"
Roach stared out into the abyss of the deep end of the pool. He had finally found something that terrified him more than Maysfield, standing at the other end of the rope in the shallows. He hadn't minded jumping into the water and walking around in the shallow end in full battle gear. He had sucked it in when they told him, "Hold your breath so air stays in your lungs, and push the water past you with your hands!" It was actually sort of fun, that swimming thing. He let it go by when they made him take his pants off in the water, tie the legs closed, fill it with air and float across the pool. But this was bat shit crazy!
They had made it through the swim qualifications to the confidence course. Confidence? What the fuck did the slide‑for‑life have to do with confidence? For every new step, Maysfield had volunteered the 3030 to go first. And Roach, being the shortest guy in the Platoon, was always the first guy on the line. And here he was again, thirty feet in the air and waiting to jump. The idea of jumping off into space on a thin rope stretched across the length of the pool did absolutely nothing for him. Stone, floating on a rubber raft around the median to get to him if his slide didn't go all the way down, didn't do much to help either.
"YOU MISERABLE PUD-PULLING PISS ANT! THAT'S MY TOWER AND I WANT YOU OFF IT! NOW! GET OFF MY TOWER, BOOT!"
Christopher and Sabott were standing behind Roach. He could feel their impatience growing. He held the slide handle tightly and felt his knees rocking as he tried to talk himself into propelling forward.
"Sir!" he shouted to the two Marines standing behind him, but to neither in particular. "The recruit feels this isn't going to happen!" Before he could develop his line of reasoning, a pair of strong hands clasped him by the collar and the belt and lifted him off the platform.
"Recruit. The Master Sergeant wants you off his tower, NOW. So you know it’s going to happen!" He could feel the hands driving him forward and he heard a voice behind him say "SHOUT MARINE CORPS!" as he was being hurled off into the void.
For a few seconds it was like flying—then the momentum of the push ended, and he found himself dangling twenty feet in the air with an angry Maysfield screaming, "GET OFF MY DAMNED ROPE, FOOL!" So Roach dropped twenty feet straight down—and then it was like swimming. The hurl had pushed him almost half way, but he had lost concentration and stopped and twisted on the handle. He corkscrewed right off the line and went feet first into the water.
Atop the tower, Christopher leaned over the edge watching his former partner smack into the water. "I knew that little prick could do it." He grinned. "He just needed a little push."
"The last time I said that," Sabott chuckled, "they Court Martialed me. YO! MEAT! GET UP HERE! YOU'RE NEXT!"
|
DS - 78929 ‑ A2 To: MARINE DETACHMENT MCS phEY-QUAD In Transit SERGEANT R.S. CHRISTOPHER |
55 ‑ 07 ‑ 04 From: OFFICE OF NTA BEAUFORT AIR STATION S.C., U.S.A., EARTH COLONEL A.L. GRIFFEN |
RENDEZVOUS SCHEDULED FOR 55 ‑ 7 ‑ 12 WITH FREIGHTER DALMUDGE EN ROUTE TO FORNAX REGIONS. WILL STOCK COMMISSARY. CIRCULAR EXCHANGE PLANNED.
HAVE RECEIVED PERSONNEL STATISTICS AND ACCEPTED. DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL EMIGRATION HAS ACCEPTED PREVIOUS PAPERWORK, FINAL PERMANENT GREEN CARDS TO FOLLOW. PRESS NOT INFORMED.
CONTINUE AS PLANNED. NO FURTHER ASSISTANCE AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME.
| COLONEL A.L. GRIFFEN |
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Fireworks? Dip in the pool? What the hell are you guys doing out there?
You've got a small supermarket headed towards you. coHLI will see that the transfer of goods is done between ships using your people only! They'll be assembling the training battalion on the tarmac here at the Island tonight to celebrate the Fourth. I wish you could be here with us.
|
Semper Fi Griff |
"THIS IS MY RIFLE. THERE ARE MANY LIKE IT, BUT THIS ONE," Stone swung the Johnson he was holding up in his right hand for all to see across his body quickly. He broke its fall with the palm of his left hand. It popped when the barrel guard struck his palm. "…IS MINE! MY RIFLE IS MY BEST FRIEND. IT IS MY LIFE. I MUST MASTER IT, AS I MUST MASTER MY LIFE." Stone paused. His eyes scanned the bay for dull eyes or fidgeting shoulders.
"In the middle of the last century, this was the creed of the Marine Rifleman. They believed then, as I believe now, that in combat every time a Marine's finger must pull the trigger of his weapon, someone dies. One Shot—One Kill. These ARE NOT riot control devices. They are weapons of death!
"The Johnson .30 caliber automatic rifle—the M1941—is the only recoil-operated military shoulder rifle produced in mass quantity of any type for more than half a century. A Marine designed it. The Marines used it in limited quantity. It was taken away from the Marine Corps and replaced by the M1 Garand for ground combat. It was said the M1 was superior. Watch!"
Stone lifted an M1 from the table in front of him. "This is an M1 with an empty clip. We will pretend I am firing the last round of the clip!" Stone pulled at the trigger and both an inert bullet casing and the clip itself flew out of the weapon with a loud ping. Stone continued. "You cannot top off this clip with a free round, and when the rounds in the clip are spent that is what happens. Can any of you imagine why this may not be to your advantage in a combat situation?"
The question was greeted with a heavy silence.
"All right people. Get with the program. Think like the natural born by‑God hunters that you are!" In the middle of the pack a hand went up. "Okay, Lewis. Stand up! You tell us! Why is this not to our advantage?"
"Sir! This recruit feels…"
"Open the mouth, Lewis!"
"SIR! YES, SIR! THIS RECRUIT FEELS THAT AN ENEMY CLOSE BY COULD HEAR THAT SOUND AND LOCATE YOU BEFORE THE WEAPON CAN BE RECYCLED! SIR!"
"Mr. Lewis, the term is RELOADED! Reloaded again! As hard as it might be to accept, Mr. Lewis is actually correct! To an enemy infiltrating your perimeter, that sound is a real crowd pleaser! LEWIS! SIT THE HELL DOWN!"
Stone's eyes followed Lewis as he dropped back to the sitting position.
"The Johnsons you have been issued will be fed by a Springfield-type stripper clip, but you can also feed it with free rounds! But there is a disadvantage to this weapon. Like so many other auto or semi-auto weapons of the 20th century, if they get dirty enough—they will refuse to function! I give you my word! Before this course is done, before one of you gets to the rifle range to load and fire one round… ALL OF YOU… will know how to remove, clean, and replace every singe working part of this weapon in your sleep, blindfolded, or dead drunk. And you'll do it faster and more accurately than you can pull your little pecker through your zipper and put it back again! WHAT IS IT, LEWIS?"
"SIR! THEM, SIR!"
"THEM WHAT, LEWIS?!"
"PECKERS, SIR. WE HAVE MORE THAN…"
"LEWIS!"
"SIR!"
"...Shut the hell up and sit the hell… DOWN!"
* * *
They crossed the flats stacked neatly across the loading bay wall. To the casual observer, in silhouette they might have looked like three old duffers on their way to a duck blind with rifles shouldered or pointed to the ground. They entered the locke—and the laws of physics, of bodies in motion and apples falling to the earth, were altered. To achieve acceptable distance they had required the alteration of the physics of the rifle bay. Overheads and decks were now walls and the distances were now correct.
Christopher, Stone, and Maysfield entered onto the locke ramp and pushed inside. It was wide enough for two of them to walk side by side and about five feet long. After about two paces, they could feel their stomachs waiver and turn. It passed as soon as they were through.
They could easily tell by where the ventilation ducts were that they were indeed standing on what had previously been a wall. They stood behind a bank with four firing stations that would serve as a firing line. There were two target stands at the one hundred yard band and three at the two hundred. But the targets on the left were smaller than the targets on the right. Christopher looked questioningly at Maysfield.
"The ones on the left are two hundred yards flat. I scaled the targets on the right to what you'd see at 300 yards. The back row is set for the five and eight hundred yard optical perceptions."
Christopher nodded. "So who gets the first shot?"
Stone smiled. "Is there any question?"
"No," agreed Maysfield somberly. "You're the Primary Marksmanship Instructor! It should be you!"
Stone just looked at Christopher with an expression on his face that said "that wasn't exactly what I meant’ and began to lock and load one of the Browning Automatic Rifles.
"Whoa, Stoney!" cried Christopher. "You're gonna start with that thing?"
The expression on Stone's face was one of sheer surprise. "Damn right I am! Bobby, do you realize this is a genuine B.A.R.? I've never seen one of these, and this fire tube that John Browning tinkered together in his shop altered the entire history of ground combat. Damn straight I'm gonna fire this thing first. I may never get a chance like this again!"
Stone had selected a BAR 1918A1. Unlike the other BARs in the stores, this unit had two short spikes with skid feet semi‑permanently attached that would serve as a bipod, but like the others, it too fired twenty rounds of .30-06.
"Man, oh man!" Stone muttered under his breath as he lay down behind the weapon, positioning himself.
"Yo! Partner! You know you got that thing on FAST auto fire?" Christopher pointed to the auto select switch on the weapon’s frame.
"Just put your ear guards on and stand back. This is an experience I will never… ever… forget! Say goodbye to the 200-yard target!"
Stone pulled the trigger. The ferocity of exploding rounds, spitting fire with the thunder, startled all of them. But oddly enough, the 200-yard marker stood intact—which was more than could be said for the BAR. It was rumbling and jumping and it looked to Maysfield as if Stone was trying to wrestle a three-foot long alligator. With a final BANG, Stone shot backwards with the weapon still tight against his shoulder, sliding along the floor at about 300 feet per second. Still in the lying position, he slammed feet first into the wall behind him. The continuing momentum of the flying weapon pushed him immediately up into a standing position against the wall, sort of like the steel bit on a mouse trap. Stone slid down the wall into a kneel, then fell forward on his face, out cold.
In the space where he had been originally, Stone had left behind him a perfectly straight line of twenty .30‑06 projectiles. Hanging in midair and spinning furiously (counter to the direction they should have been rotating), they danced a bizarre dance as Christopher and Maysfield stared with wide‑eyed amazement at them for a full thirty seconds.
"Damn!" said Maysfield, still watching the remaining four projectiles hanging in front of him. "Either we'd better go talk to the engineers that designed this room, or that weapon's got one HELL of a recoil!"
* * *
The term "Boot," when applied to a Marine recruit, is a direct reference to most basic form of transportation ever known to a soldier, and more so to a Marine. While the name Marine itself connotes a highly nautical individual, and even with his close affiliation with the Department of the Navy, the historical Marine has seen more unwanted patches of Terra Firma than should be warranted by their overall small size. From where Christopher stood, things hadn't changed all that much.
To a Boot, there is no such thing as a casual walk, except perhaps by the active quicksand pits in the adjoining swamps of Parris Island. You run everywhere else. You run as a platoon, when sent to perform some insignificant task, to the quarterdeck, the DI hut… your life becomes merely the servant of your feet.
The attitude of the DIs, in keeping with the situation, was not to cheat their recruits from the fond memories of that hellish state of being. The absurdity of their situation, hurling through the universe at the speed of light years—bending and infracting time as if it were merely light through a child's magnifying lens—the re‑introduction of the foot mobile to these strange semi-humans was at times as enlightening as it was entertaining. Enlightening for the Malacans, entertaining for the DIs.
Christopher had expostulated to his men, at their first on‑board briefing, his belief that the essential Malacan was on an equal course with the essential Terran. And why not? Mankind was beginning to see universal laws of form following function throughout the galaxy. Nothing on all fours or all sixes produced rational thought. Measurable productivity in a civilized sense required upright, two‑handed, bi‑optical, verbalized communication. And it varied from place to place in intensity. There was also a simple rule of thumb to how intense a species became involved with space travel. The greener the pasture, the less likely a species was to try to leave.
Malacan Chaki, or more properly Mala Xcan Sxha kAI in the native tongue, was a rock. Mineral rich, metallurgy there was a child's hobby. Metalworking in the universe was at its pinnacle there. Farming was the art form. As it had taken Mankind 20,000 years of conscious thought to get off their planet, the Malacans had done it in half that time—first by a fission device that relied on the generation of speed, and then by Time Cessationating Oblique Motion Generators. They had found a way to bend time and space.
Using TCOMG, you traveled inside the physical flow of time as it expanded outward from the center point of the universe. Unlike simple conventional travel, one didn't go from point A to point B, but point A to point C. You navigated towards an equidistant point to and from where you wanted to go and as the time current bent, folded like a piece of paper until the opposite ends touched, you found yourself approaching your destination. Of course, there was a small problem with hang time—you could emerge a century or two before or after where you wanted to be. Then you had to throw it all in reverse and try again. But that only happened once out of every ten or twenty attempts.
The most spectacular occurrence of the TCOMG phenomenon was what was referred to as "going circular." By this process, two ships passing could, without the loss of time momentum, pull aside each other and exchange cargo or crew. They would approach on a collision course and, as the magnetic fields they projected merged inside the time flow, they created the magnetic field of a third object. The ships would appear to be circling each other like a dog chasing its own tail. The rules that governed the effect left Terran physicists in the stardust. It seemed to earth's mathematicians that it was more like having two pitchers throw a baseball at each other at a hundred miles an hour. As the baseballs reached the halfway point to the middle mark they stopped in motion, recalibrated the distance to the middle and continued simultaneously to the next middle point. They would stop again to locate the next mid point to the middle. The closer the balls drew to each other, the more the balls had to stop and create new mid distances until it seemed as if the balls had actually stopped moving.
And so it was when the freighter bound for Fornax region passed the phEY‑QUAD. Through the porthole in C Bay, Christopher could see the freighter hanging in space at what seemed to be a distance of about a thousand yards. But the reference points of circular space could fool the eye. Things seemed to be stopped, but the reality was that things were in motion at speeds beyond the comprehension of most minds.
Sabott and 3031 were suiting up to run the transfer lines. Maysfield, as usual, had volunteered, but Christopher knew that the most experienced out‑of‑ship workmen were in 3031. There was serious consideration as to whether or not recruits could be used in this capacity, but as Christopher saw things, there were no other options. But Sabott shouldn't be the one going out there. Rojas had the experience. He had done this before. But Sabott had refused to hand over his platoon. Adamantly! Christopher had rescinded his request.
Rojas was more than happy to draw a pass on the job. Circular docking was like trying to read a book in a strobe light, and it always made him nauseous. Of course, he didn't tell Sabott that. As best he could, he instructed Sabott in moving in zero gravity. He had loaded Sabott in one of the EMUs, tethered him to a cargo strap on B deck, opened the locke hatch, and let him drift off into the void until he ran out of cable. Sabott was refusing to take direction well at first, and started doing carrier landings by blowing blasts of his coolant out through the vent ports on his helmet. So Rojas let him slam into the hull three or four times until he figured out that the vent ports weren't designed for controllable motion, just propulsion. But he got the idea of it at last—at least, enough to hang there issuing orders to his platoon. But it still concerned Christopher.
"You don't have to do this, you know. I can still send Rojas."
Sabott looked up from his final strapping. "What? And let the Boots know they're in charge of this operation? Not on a bet! Besides, Rojas has already promised me my own Wings—if I survive." He feigned a look of frightened concern. It cracked Christopher up.
"Okay, Marine. It's your ass."
"Yes, sir."
Christopher walked away from the group preparing to launch. He was still nervous about this operation. Unlike conventional space travel, you couldn't launch a cargo hauler for fear of disrupting the fields of the Circular paths. They would launch a squad of twelve on a series of three lifelines and connect a cable to another cable the crew from the freighter would lead out. Once connected, cargo would be dragged the old-fashioned way from one ship to another.
The Bay detail backed off the deck into the shielded compositors that would protect them from the depressurization and temperature shift that opening the outer doors would cause. They were opening in the direction of a nearby sun. As the gates widened and the vacuum of space slowly crept onto the bay, the temperature would rise as much as 200 to 300 degrees. Only the fluid circulating through their suits would evenly disperse the intense heat and cold on either side of their bodies. The Terrans would remain at 98.6, the Malacans at 105.7.
Sabott found the growing darkness intensely eerie and a bit unnerving. Rojas had literally popped him through a porthole tied by a rope to the ship. He had been too busy learning the suit to really notice his environment. But now an enemy he chose to embrace was invading his personal perimeter. He wondered if he was really ready to solo.
"Yo! Butt‑boy!" A high frequency thinned voice crackled through intercom one, the frequency set aside for the instructors during this exercise. It was Rojas. "You got them green apples dancin' in your gut yet? Clear."
There was a pause. Sabott hadn't figured out how to isolate the channel he needed for privacy from inside his suit yet. Whatever he said was public domain—and Rojas knew it.
"That's affirmative. Clear."
"I just thought you'd like to know. From back here you look like Snow White and the Seven Dwarves Go to Mars. Clear."
"I copy that. Clear." Sabott could hear Christopher and Rojas laughing. He was about to laugh himself when he felt a sudden rush of heat, and his body became light in a frighteningly sudden way. "Oh, God!" he blurted out.
"Ease up, Recon Ric. You just crossed the equator!" came a voice that no longer seemed to be in his ears, but inside and moving through his suit, which was ballooning about him. "You're the first man in this unit to be a bone fide spaceman!"
He had indeed crossed the boundary between light and darkness. One by one the Boots drifted off of the deck and passively motivated forward into the great void. In four men clusters they slowly drove forward. Periodically a small puff would appear behind or on the side of a helmet as forward momentum or lateral correction was needed. Sabott was being carried along the rear of the last line. It became very obvious to him that he wasn't fooling anybody. He couldn't react fast enough to keep up, so they dragged him like baggage. He fished around the inside of his glove for the pressure pod to activate the private frequency until he found it.
"Hey Rojas, you ugly sonofabitch! You still there? Clear."
"Right here, Danny‑boy. Clear"
"I've been made. They know I'm a cherry! Clear."
"They knew that by the way you suited up for the game, cowboy!" It was Christopher's voice. "They don't know much about the Marine Corps, but they've done this for years. Sit back and enjoy the ride. This'll look good in your book. Clear."
"Roger that, clear."
Most Terrans picture themselves drifting through the universe and watching galaxy after galaxy fly by the great window in the bow of their ship, through which they can comfortably view their mastery of the unknown. The truth is, one would have to be crazy to design a ship with a window for that purpose. All external viewing was done on monitors, and as Rojas and Christopher monitored the advance of 3031, Malacan engineers monitored every other factor about them.
A point of light appeared in the distance and seemed to speed at the external squad in a herky-jerky motion. A great borealis seemed to radiate from it.
"That's the circular effect," explained Rojas. "That's the hook up moving towards Alpha squad. It's actually moving on a straight, smooth line. My God, that's beautiful."
"Copy that," Christopher agreed.
Soon Alpha squad itself became a point of light that kissed with another point of light on a great purple velvet field. Through the comm hook ups, they could hear Sabott issuing the commands to start hauling the cargo forward.
"Kid's got some set, Boss. He thinks he's in charge out there!" Rojas said.
"You hear that chattering sound in the background?"
"Yeah, what is that?"
"That's the sound of eleven Malacans laughin' their asses off."
They could see canister after canister affixed to the pull cable drift slowly towards phEY‑QUAD, a distance of nearly 2000 yards. Alpha squad floated on either side of the cargo, carefully rotating it 184 degrees periodically, as the canisters were only physically insulated, not temperature controlled like their suits were. Alpha squad had been off ship almost three hours, and a line of cargo canisters stretched three quarters of the way across the cable. Even clusters of canisters floated in, black in the darkness but oddly symmetrical. It reminded Rojas of his mother's Rosary Beads. He had not thought of his mother in a long while. Or home, for that mater. In the voided area of infinity he was passing through, Rojas became suddenly filled with a strange sense of aloneness. He shook it off and opened his frequency to Sabott.
"Yo! Recon Ric. You still inside that suit? Clear."
"Yeah, I'm here, Rojas, and so's your sister. Clear!"
"Hey, you're tougher than you look! Put her down and check your O2. You should be reading four pounds. Clear."
"Affirmative. What happens next? In ten minutes the first cargo will float onto the deck. Am I ahead of it, or behind it? Clear."
"Copy this, cowboy!" It was Christopher. He had assumed his I'm‑in‑charge‑of‑this‑unit voice. Both Sabott and Rojas snapped to a mental position of attention. “You’re behind it! Way behind it! When those canisters cross into positive gravity, they'll drop like two-ton rocks. Just lay back, go dormant, and watch what these guys can do. Alpha squad is going to pitch each canister through the bay locke, Beta squad'll catch each piece on a sled, and the deck squad will pull it and store it. I've seen them do this, and it’s unbelievable. The last thing I need is for you to drift in front of one of those cargo canisters and get flattened. Griffen wouldn't replace you, and I'm short handed as it is. Clear!"
As each canister drew within ten yards of the locke, an Alpha squader would climb up his lifeline behind it and snap it free of the cable. He would drive it forward and shove it as if he were playing shuffleboard. Inside the loche, Sabott could see the three and four man teams of Beta squad jockeying sleds into position. He noticed that Beta squad was wearing ear protection and couldn't understand why—until the first piece of cargo drifted across the boundary between positive and zero gravity. Christopher was right. They did drop like two-ton stones. And they hit the sleds with an explosion that was percussive.
It took nearly five hours to complete the task from start to finish. But as the last piece of cargo was being dragged off the landing bay into storage and the deck was cleared of all but the Marines, Rojas finally retrieved Sabott. When he popped through onto the deck, his lack of experience in boarding caused him to drop to the floor every bit as hard as his cargo had. Sabott pushed himself up onto all fours as Rojas and Christopher ran towards him.
"I'm fine. I’m fine!" they could hear him shouting through the sealed helmet. Rojas grabbed him by the shoulder latches and lifted him to a standing position. He looked over at Christopher as he began to unscrew Sabott's helmet. "Now watch this!" he said to his boss over Sabott's muffled yells. The helmet popped off with a hiss similar to someone opening a can of coffee. Sabott blinked a few times as his eyes adjusted to the light and smiled broadly. Then he went limp and collapsed to the deck and began spasmodically convulsing.
Rojas looked at Christopher and grinned. "That's what happens to an earthman who's been in circular space for more than an hour or two without going dormant at proper intervals. You're better off not knowing about it the first time out. You don't get as tense. It'll be about thirty minutes before he stops spasming and becomes his normal smiling self again. Come on," Rojas said, "he's fine. Let's get a cup of coffee!"
They left him twitching on the deck and came back ten minutes later with cups of coffee and a large thermos of the stuff for Sabott when he stopped flopping around.
