Authors: Michael E. Marks
Now he was a Marine, and that was a whole new game. No cheering crowd, no stadium, and for the most part, no rules. Every match-up was single-round elimination and nobody was kidding about the term "sudden-death overtime." The only trophy was coming home in one piece.
Ridgeway ran his fingers through a ruff of short-cropped hair. The severe, sand colored flat-top bristled into place. For an uncharacteristic moment, Ridgeway took stock of his reflection.
Not that different, he thought with a trace of sobriety, comparing the image before him to the wild young man who ruled the cube. Maybe a few more scars, he confessed, noting the variety of curves and slashes embossed into his flesh. Grenade fragment. Couple bullet holes. Chunk of a mortar casing.
He paused, suddenly losing interest in the catalog of his injuries. He had a lot of scars, more than he cared to remember. Half a dozen other mementos of battle lay spread across his frame, wounds inflicted in dark, miserable corners of the galaxy where many of his friends had died.
Where a whole lot of people died.
Ridgeway's gaze tracked back up the mirror and fixed on the hard blue-grey eyes that stared back, eyes that at times had been unable to distinguish pieces of friends from enemies as they lay tangled in charred heaps on the battlefield. Staring silently from the mirror, Ridgeway thought the eyes looked very old.
A muted shout echoed from the next room. With earnest relief Ridgeway turned his back on old memories. The door slid open and Merlin's voice snapped into clarity.
"Oh yeah, that's what I'm talking about!" The young marine leaned over a small holographic gamepad and moved his fingers rapidly in the air. Thin mesh gloves translated his rapid-fire gestures into chorded commands that fed the video game console. In response, an amazingly lifelike projected creature lunged across the battlepad and threw a brutal crescent kick.
Ridgeway glanced across the table. While Corporal Jim "Merlin" Prentice clearly enjoyed the contest, his opponent was anything but jovial. Corporal Andrew "Stitch" Remuzzi glowered as his fighter, a furry biped with lupine jaws, reeled from the assault. The medic's brow furrowed above the dark rim of his datashades as he motioned his gladiator back into the fray.
"Doesn't this get old?" Ridgeway's question was genuine, if not a bit rhetorical. Being cooped up in a storage bay was a study in boredom, but Ridgeway couldn't fathom what drew his two youngest marines time and again to such a mindless diversion.
He shrugged. If that's what helps them unwind, who am I to be the killjoy? The team's operational gear was stored until final approach, and given the absence of liquor, multivision, or anyone to pick a fight with, the alternatives were pathetically slim.
Ridgeway allowed his gaze to fall back to the game where Merlin controlled a reptilian humanoid with brilliant green scales. The lizard circled to the left and edged in for what promised to be the kill.
Just inches away, Remuzzi's holographic werewolf stood flat-footed, almost stooped beneath it's simulated weight. Ridgeway had seen that posture in a thousand real-life fights. The body language had ‘casualty' written all over it.
"I've got five on Merlin." Ridgeway suddenly offered aloud, wondering if anyone would care.
"Your on." The deep, bass voice could only have come from Monster, and Ridgeway grinned as the giant rolled off of a metal-frame cot that squealed in relief.
Gunnery Sergeant Darius "Monster" Braxton was the only person in the drab grey room who could make Ridgeway look small by comparison. At six-five and three-fifteen, Monster was a walking mountain of muscle.
To Ridgeway's left, Lieutenant Darcy Lonigan looked up as she flexed through what looked like the pantomime of a one-armed curl. Although she held no dumb-bell, Ridgeway could see the swell of her straining bicep. A single point of red glowed on the back of the fingerless metal gauntlet that encircled her hand as she huffed in a steady pace "forty nine... fifty."
The sniper's fist unclenched and the tiny gravitic coil in the gauntlet powered off; fifty-five pounds of artificial weight evaporated in a disintegrating cloud of magnetic fields.
"I'll take a piece of that." Darcy said as she rose and tossed the glove into the open footlocker at her feet. Her skin shone with perspiration and a V of sweat darkened her T-shirt. As she circled around Monster, she thumped one of the big man's melon-sized biceps with her fist. "Easy money."
Monster flashed a crescent of gleaming white teeth and nodded wordlessly.
The response was not at all what Ridgeway expected. Given all that he knew about his team, he paid little attention to their videogame prowess. It now appeared that he might be alone in this particular indifference.
Darcy leaned down to Stitch, close enough that her shoulder-length blonde hair brushed against the medic's ear. The sniper's eyes flickered up to Ridgeway and a devilish smile crossed her face as she whispered softly. "Cannonball."
While Stitch gave no outward sign of acknowledgement, Darcy stood back with a lingering grin. Monster leaned forward, nodding again. Even Merlin's cocky banter dwindled to silence.
That's not a good sign, Ridgeway thought ruefully.
Stitch moved his hands vertically, one rising as the other fell, then reversed the direction. In response, the lupine form began to bounce up and down on its haunches.
"Oh shit." Merlin's mutter did nothing to bolster Ridgeway's confidence.
The reptile lunged in a windmill of aggression but the wolf dodged with equal speed, using the bouncing momentum to carry it out of range. Twice again Merlin pressed the attack and still Stitch evaded, his bounds growing higher with every leap.
Without warning Stitch snatched his hands into a sudden joined fist and brought them slamming down to the table. The wolf leaped, knees drawn to furry chest like a kid on a high dive. It crashed down in a blur of descending claws and fangs, crushing the lizard into the floor. The wafer-thin speakers did remarkable justice to the sound of a snapping neck. A flashing orange beacon confirmed the game's obvious outcome.
Merlin cursed as he shoved back from the table as the lycanthrope spun through a victory dance in a puddle of red blood and green scales. "How the hell do you do that?"
The medic's face remained expressionless as he stood up from the table and peeled away the sensor-studded gloves. Angular datashades slid down the equally straight bridge of his nose. Stitch turned and peered over the lenses at Ridgeway with dark, piercing eyes. Only then did a smile creep across the medic's face. "Sorry Major, you may be CO, but cash is king."
The comment drew an explosion of laughter from Monster and Darcy. Feeling all-too-much like a well-played mark, Ridgeway fished the military dog tag from beneath his shirt and slid a gumstick-sized plastic strip from it's sleeve on the back. Tapping the end of the wafer with his thumb, he cycled past his identifile and medical history to financial management. He keyed up a pair of transactions and brushed his strip against identical ones held out by Darcy and Monster. Five credits soundlessly transferred with each contact.
Winnings in hand, Darcy turned and strutted off with an exaggerated swagger and a lilt in her voice. "Like candy from a baby."
Stitch and Merlin had already fallen into post-game analysis and they too wandered away from the table. "You watch, you smug SOB," Merlin blustered, "I'll figure out that damn cannonball trick yet. And then it'll be your ass." Stitch only laughed as his lanky frame ambled across the room.
Ridgeway felt a presence loom on his right and turned with theatrical deliberation to acknowledge Monster's barely restrained gloat. An unrelenting smile gleamed beneath the ebony dome of Monster's cleanly-shaven head.
"Looks like I haven't been keeping up on the scoreboard." Ridgeway muttered.
The right side of Monster's brow arched up as he dipped his head in a slow nod. "Oh yeah, Stitch has that damn cannonball maneuver down."
"Nice of you to share that bit of analysis."
"Sorry Major. It's my job to know everything these marines think, see and do," Monster placed his hand over his heart as he recited the sergeant's role with feigned earnesty, "but that was ‘need to know' information and since you were putting up the money--"
"Yeah, yeah," Ridgeway cut in, an accusing smirk spread across his face, "I didn't need to know."
Monster's grin broadened through another several degrees of arc and a deep laugh resonated within his chest.
Ridgeway shook his head in chagrin, caring little of either the game or the loss of ten credits. All that mattered was that his marines were healthy and, at least for the moment, enjoying a well-deserved bit of relaxation. With less than 36 hours before the rapidly decelerating transport reached it's rendezvous point, the window for meaningless diversion would evaporate all too quickly.
Ridgeway's gaze swept mechanically across the storage bay. As he did, his mind ticked through a silent checklist of people and equipment.
Amid the numerous containers made of high-impact thermoform, one olive drab footlocker caught his attention. The name ‘Caslin' was stenciled carefully along the container's long side. In their rushed departure, there had been no time to remove the designation.
"We doing all right?" Ridgeway asked the question in a flat, detached voice.
"Everyone above room temperature is just fine."
Ridgeway blinked twice, momentarily caught off-guard by Monster's irreverent response. Caslin had been with the squad for twenty-three months of Waking Time and his death on Euripides had taken a toll on everybody. But Ridgeway just as quickly recognized the cold reality in Monster's comment.
Killing and dying were all part of marine business and dealing with loss was a necessary skill. Caslin's frozen remains had been shipped home with his personal effects, leaving only his name on an mottled green container that had served as his mobile workplace. Ridgeway knew that the oversized footlocker would get cycled back to carry another name. They always did.
"Armor good?"
"Five by five," Monster reported crisply. "Weapons too."
It came as no surprise that the sergeant had already checked on the status of their battle gear, and Ridgeway nodded in silent affirmation. The next item proved to be the surprise.
"The Ordinance Fairy came by while we were on ice." The big man shrugged toward a flat, green container covered with orange warning labels that bore the innocuous legend "Danger:HEDM".
Ridgeway walked to the reinforced box and opened the lid. Nestled in dense foam lay two rows of saucer-sized disks, each a little more than three inches thick. An uneasy feeling coiled in his gut as he read the designation M54 stenciled in bold black letters across each dull grey device.
"Not much to look at." Monster snorted dismissively.
Ridgeway shook his head and exhaled as he folded arms across his chest. "Head-em," he said with slow emphasis, "high energy-density material. You're looking at Detonex, thirty-five, maybe forty times the punch of conventional MIL-spec plastic explosive. Shaped charge like that'll punch a fist-sized hole through five meters of steel. Maybe more."
A muttered "damn" slipped from Monster's lips.
The discovery chafed at Ridgeway's mind as he shifted his weight and drew another deep breath. While the possible implications numbered too many to count, the first course of action was clear.
"Accelerate the prep cycle. I want the armor in pre-fight as soon as we transfer. Head-to-toe diagnostics." Ridgeway's voice became increasingly businesslike as he snapped from one point to the next.
"Full weaps check, double-down on the commo. Max all loadouts for firepower, that goes for Stitch as well."
"I'm on it." Monster said sharply, but his gaze seemed to linger on the Detonex. The baritone softened as he added, "Where the hell are they sending us?"
"I don't know," Ridgeway admitted softly, suppressing his own concern as he closed the lid. "But if this is the package, you can bet it won't be pretty."
Monster shrugged as he turned toward Ridgeway, an unexpected wink only highlighting the gleam in his eyes. "If it was pretty, they wouldn't be sending us."
"Damn straight." Ridgeway broke into a grin, easily drawn into Monster's esprit de corps. The Major raised fist to chest and banged knuckles with the ham-sized fist that mirrored the gesture. Beneath the stretched fabric of Monster's sleeve, Ridgeway could make out the lower half of the familiar initials. DTO.
With a final grunt that doubled for hello and goodbye, Monster turned and strode purposefully toward the rows of armor.
The Detonex weighed heavy on Ridgeway's mind as he cut between two stacks of strapped-down containers and paused at the improvised mess area. The kitchen-in-a-box consisted of little more than a power supply, a microwave oven, and a coffee pot. The lower compartment was crammed full of vacu-sealed plastic packets of every shape and description.
Not exactly the Ritz, Ridgeway conceded, but with a bit of water they could produce a decent facsimile of coffee or scrambled eggs, topped off with strips of compressed protein that tasted vaguely of bacon. After six or seven trips in remote storage with nothing but MREs, the RATs had taken it upon themselves to improvise a minor concession to creature comfort.