First To Fight (The Empire's Corps Book 11) (29 page)

“And did I ask you to talk?”  Southard asked.  “Sif.  What went wrong?”

Sif hesitated, noticeably.  “We attacked with insufficient force,” she said, after a moment that was really too long to escape Southard’s attention.  “And we didn't have the power to keep the enemy suppressed before it was too late.”

I felt a glimmer of pity.  Southard had deliberately placed her in a nasty position, giving her the choice between backing me up, which would have made her look like an idiot, or betraying me.  I really wouldn't have complained - I certainly
couldn't
have complained - if she’d blamed everything on me.  It had been my fault, after all.

“So,” Southard said, after a chilling moment.  “Stalker.  Do you agree with her?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.  “I made a set of mistakes that lead to our defeat.”

“And to the loss of an entire platoon of troopers,” Southard said.  “Defeats are one thing Stalker; they do happen, even if the propaganda department tries to convince people they don’t.  But having an entire platoon wiped out takes it from
defeat
to
debacle
.  Where did you go wrong?”

I had a nasty feeling I knew the answer.  “Sir,” I said.  “I should have refused the mission.”

Southard’s eyebrows quirked upwards.  “You would have defied an order from the highest commanding officer on the planet?”

“The order was impossible to carry out,” I said.  I knew that now; hell, even before, I’d known the mission would be very difficult.  “We needed more firepower, more deployable forces and more ... well, more
everything
.  A full company could have attacked from several different directions, forcing the enemy to spread their defences wide; a flight of drones could have called down fire on the bunkers, targeting them for precision missile strikes that would have saved the advancing forces from being surprised.”

I paused.  “Or we could just have flattened the hill from orbit.”

“Yes, we
could
have done,” Southard said.  He stepped back, as if he were addressing us all, but I knew he was speaking to me.  “There are two forms of courage in this world.  It takes a certain kind of courage to advance against enemy fire, true, but it takes another kind to refuse orders that will lead to certain defeat.  You should have refused your orders, Stalker; indeed, you had a
duty
to refuse those orders.

“We’re very capable soldiers, but we are not gods.  Nor are we superhuman.  You could not have won the battle with the forces you had on hand, no matter what you did.  In hundreds of years of operations,
no one
has ever won.  The only winning move, as the saying goes, was not to play.”

I wasn't sure I believed him, at least not at first.  I hated the idea of giving up; there was a part of me that believed, despite everything that had happened, that there
was
a solution.  And yet, I knew I’d blundered badly.  It wasn't until much later, really, that I came to terms with the idea that some battles were unwinnable and the only realistic option was to go to ground and reform for the next round.

“You will, of course, be expected to discuss - fully - the reasons for your failure,” Southard added, after his words had sunk in.  “Why
didn’t
you refuse your orders?”

“Because ... because I thought we could do it,” I said.  It wasn't a complete answer; we’d been told, time and time again, that disobeying a legitimate order was a court martial offense.  And yet, a suicidal order ... was it really legitimate?  Would there come a time when we might have to hold a position against impossible odds to save the rest of the force?  “And I was wrong.”

“Yes, you were,” Southard said.  I
knew
he knew what I’d been thinking.  “You were wrong, Stalker, and your troops paid the price.”

He looked at the rest of the troops.  “You were free with your opinions,” he added.  “But the opinion you
didn't
put forward was a suggestion that the mission was impossible.  You’re not being trained to be dunderheaded guardsmen, but marines.  You should have raised objections if you believed it was an impossible task.”

I winced.  It wouldn't have been easy for anyone to stand up and say so, not in front of the rest of us.  But that too, perhaps, required a special form of courage.

“You’ll all be tested,” Southard said, quietly.  “And I hope you will learn something from this experience.  Because the next time may not be
quite
so obviously unwinnable.”

And, with that, he marched us back to the tents.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Marine Corps was, perhaps, the only military service where refusing orders, no matter how suicidal, was seen as acceptable.  No other service would tolerate open insubordination; a CO who refused to carry out an operation would be rapidly relieved of command and earmarked for an immediate field court martial.  The sentence, of course, would be death.  It would not matter, indeed, if the operation failed spectacularly; the accused would probably take the blame, even though he had tried to stop the operation.

This may not explain
all
the problems facing the Empire in its final decades.  But it certainly explains why the military was so unable to handle them.

-Professor Leo Caesius

No one gave me a hard time over my failure.

Well, no one apart from myself.  I was
mad
.  I’d screwed up; my mistake had led to the death of everyone in my platoon.  Never mind that the deaths were simulated; the exercise had been stunningly realistic and they would have died, for real, if we’d been in actual combat.  I
should
have declined the mission, or requested reinforcements; instead, I’d lacked the courage to admit that the mission was impossible. 

Time went by, of course; we had hundreds of other training sessions, some designed - as we had been warned - to be impossible with what we had on hand.  Learning to recognise those was difficult; we ended up appointing a trooper to serve as a devil’s advocate and enumerate all the reasons we shouldn't attempt the mission.  It didn't always work, but at least it prepared us for the tasks facing us.  By the time we geared up for the Crucible, we thought we were as close to ready as possible.

“This is the final obstacle before you earn your Rifleman’s Tab,” Southard said, as we gathered outside the gate.  It was dark - they’d woken us at 2am - and the gate was lit up, the only source of light in sight.  Some wag had written ‘abandon all hope, all ye who enter here’ above the gate, warning us that we could expect nothing but hell inside.  “It defeats half of the platoons who step inside, forcing them to either break up and reform or recycle the individual platoon members to newer units.  Some of you may die inside.  Is there any of you who wants to back out at the final hurdle?”

We shook our heads.  We'd spent nearly a year on the Slaughterhouse and any quitters had been lost long ago.  None of us wanted to back out now, even though we were guaranteed careers in the auxiliaries.  It would have wasted a year of suffering, bleeding and experiences that most civilians would unhesitatingly have termed cruel and unusual punishment.  I still had nightmares - when I wasn't too tired to dream - about the last set of Conduct After Capture drills.  They’d been truly unpleasant.

“Good,” Southard said.  “You have had ample opportunity to read about the Crucible, so you know what to expect - apart, of course, from the tests that aren't written down.”  He smirked as our faces dropped.  “I won’t bother to go into details.  If you’re too stupid to read the briefing notes, that’s your problem not mine.  All that matters is that you will emerge as marines, or quitters, or in a body bag.  We’ll graduate any dead troopers as marines and grant them burial on the Slaughterhouse.”

There was a long pause.  “You each have your emergency beacons,” he added, darkly.  “As always, there are no accidents.  You trigger them; you get hauled out.  Any of you can leave at any moment, but bear in mind that every one of you who leaves weakens the overall team and may make completing the assault course impossible.  Your weakness may doom everyone.”

I scowled, inwardly.  We’d talked, more than once, about refusing to carry the emergency beacons, but the one time we’d asked if we could leave the beacons behind we’d been told that carrying them was yet another test.  The corps had no room for quitters; if we had the grit and determination to complete the course, we’d resist the temptation and complete it even while carrying the beacon.  And he was right.  If I quit - if any of us quit - we’d weaken everyone else’s chances of graduating.  We might break, if we were the only ones on the course, but it was harder to quit knowing that everyone else would be brought down, too.

We don’t fight for the Empire
, I recalled Bainbridge saying, months ago. 
We fight for the jarheads on either side of us
.

“Good luck,” Southard finished.  He pointed to the gate.  “When you’re ready, you may enter.”

I met Joker’s eyes, just for a second.  None of us had been designated as leader; as far as we knew, we were all equals.  Who should go first?  I hesitated, just for a second, then hefted my pack and strode forward through the gate.  Everyone else fell into line behind me.  Nothing happened as we passed the line, but I couldn't help feeling a tingle of excitement.  We'd complete the course or die trying.

I’d like to give you a blow-by-blow account of the Crucible, but the memories just blur together.  I know what I did - I know what I must have done - yet everything is a hazy blur in my mind.  We marched for hours, following a path laid down for us, then assaulted an ‘enemy’ position without even a second to catch our breath.  As soon as we captured it, we were split up and told to make our own way to the RV point before the enemy caught up with us.  We made it there, somehow, only to be told that we had to carry on; the helicopter that was meant to pick us up had been cancelled by someone in high command.  I thought about quitting there and then, but I couldn't let the others down.  We marched onwards, the enemy snapping at our heels ...

We reached the next testing station, which seemed a normal shooting range right up until we stepped inside.  Holographic enemies, all incredibly hard to see even with night-vision gear, appeared all around us; we shot our way through them, trying hard not to hit the civilians they were using as human shields.  There
was
a casualty allowance, an unspoken understanding that there
would
be civilian deaths in a point-blank gunfight, but we knew we would be marked down for every non-combatant we hit.  We completed the shooting range, only to discover that three of us had been ‘injured.’  And so we carried them umpteen miles to the
next
waypoint, whereupon they ‘recovered’ in time to help us storm another building, rescue several hostages and kill a dozen terrorists. 

There were roughly four hours of sleep - if that - and then we were on the move again, this time advancing towards an enemy target.  We climbed a mountain, crossed a fast-flowing river using a makeshift rope bridge, then crawled through a disgusting swamp, holding our weapons above our heads, before reaching the target.  None of us were in any state for a prolonged offensive, so we just charged forward the moment it came into view.  The enemy must have been surprised, because they wilted almost at once and never recovered before we took the complex and wiped them out.  It turned out to be a trap; the moment we thought we’d won, several large enemy formations counterattacked.  We were forced to use enemy weapons and ammunition to hold the line long enough for our relief to arrive.

And then we were launched into space, put through a whole series of nasty decompression exercises, then dropped back into the atmosphere.  Warned that the enemy was on the prowl, we struggled - again - to the waypoint, whereupon we were told to set up camp for the night and prepare ourselves for the following morning.  We were so tired that we almost set up there and then, but when we considered the location it became clear that a half-assed enemy force could wipe us out with ease.  Somehow, drawing on reserves we hadn't known we had, we moved the tents to a safer location, then organised a watch schedule.  Staying awake for even a single hour was very -
very
- difficult.  I found myself dozing off twice before I heard the faint hints that
someone
was poking their way towards us.,  Cursing, I woke the others - what they called me was so thoroughly unprintable it would make a Drill Sergeant blanch - and we stood to, ready to defend our position.  The enemy launched a flare into the air, casting an eerie light over the surroundings, then sniped at us until the sun started to appear over the distant hills.  Their shooting wasn't very good - none of us were hit - but it was quite enough to keep us from getting much sleep.  Who knew when we might have to move again?

It was a tired and utterly shattered platoon that finally made it to Drill Instructor Bridge, on the far side of the Crucible.  The bridge probably looked thoroughly unsafe, at least to the handful of civilians who had set foot on the Slaughterhouse, but to us it looked like the gateway to paradise.  We stumbled forwards, our arms and legs aching in places we hadn't known we had, then stopped dead as Southard appeared on the far side and walked across the bridge.

“There’s a final forced march to undertake,” he said, casually.  Too casually.  At that moment, I think he was the most hated man on the Slaughterhouse.  “Turn to the right and follow the marked path for ten kilometres.”

I stared at him.  There was a part of me, a very large part of me, that wanted to tell him to shove his orders somewhere unmentionable and stalk past him onto the bridge.  I wasn't sure I had the energy to keep going, not when the bridge was in sight.  We could just push him aside; sure, he
was
a Drill Instructor, but there were ten of us ...

... And it would mean failing.

I turned, somehow, and started to walk.  Behind me, everyone else followed.

“Belay that order,” Southard said.  “About face and cross the bridge.”

If I’d thought I’d hated him before ... a test, another damned test.  And one so simple that it had damn near overwhelmed us.  Did we have the guts to keep going even when the end was in sight?  I turned, stumbled across the bridge automatically - and crossed the finish line.  A statue of a dozen marines, holding weapons at parade rest, peered down at me.  My legs buckled, but somehow I kept going until I reached the medical centre.  The medics barked orders, practically cut off our uniforms and went to work.  Many of my aches and pains faded away under their tender ministrations ...

... And the overwhelming sensation that I had succeeded, that I had completed the final requirement to become a marine. 

Naked, we stumbled out of the medical centre and into a lobby.  Southard stood there, waiting for us; ten small piles of clothes rested on the table behind him.  He was wearing his dress uniform, I realised; he must have changed while we were being poked and prodded by the medics.  His gaze flickered over us - I’d been through too much to give a damn about my nakedness - and then he waved to the clothes.

“Find yours, then get dressed,” he said.  He sounded more friendly now - although
that
wasn't hard.  He’d never been as aggressive as Bainbridge and his comrades, but he had always maintained a reserve.  “And congratulations.”

I found my clothes and pulled them on, one by one.  We’d been told that only full marines could wear dress blacks - the black uniform we wore during parades, or whenever protocol demanded we dress formally - and the fact they’d given it to us, now, was a sign we’d made it.  I turned, looked at myself in the mirror, then reached for the cap and placed it firmly on my head.  Perhaps trying to fight in dress blacks would be a pain in the ass - actually, there was no doubt about it - but for the moment I just felt tired delight.  I was a marine.

“Follow me,” Southard ordered, after we were all dressed.  “The chefs have laid on a special buffet.”

There’s a joke about military cooks that dates back to somewhere long lost in the mists of time.  They’re the most lethal part of the military; they’ve killed thousands of men, mostly by poisoning them.  I didn't think it was actually true - I learned later that there were quite a few cooks in the Civil Guards who were responsible for outbreaks of disease, mostly by using substandard meat - and it definitely wasn't true of the marine cooks.  The food was normally bland, but it was edible and filled us up.  This time, however, they’d laid on a dinner of steak and eggs.  If Southard hadn't reminded us to use napkins, we would have ruined our new uniforms within seconds.  As it was, it was a pretty close shave.

Once we were finished, Southard led us into the armoury.  “You’ll find your dress swords in the drawers,” he said, once we were all inside.  “Strap them on, then collect your weapons from the desk outside.  The Commandant wants to see you in the parade ground.”

Swords had struck me as old-fashioned when they’d first started teaching us how to use them in combat, but I had to admit they were snazzy as hell.  (And besides, swords, knives and batons didn't make a sound or emit any betraying radiation.)  I pulled mine from the drawer and examined it, carefully.  They’d written a serial number on the blade, but my name wasn't visible.  It didn’t matter, not really; the serial number was good enough for the marines, while having your name on your weapon is a serious security problem.  Who knew
what
the enemy could pick up from your droppings?