Authors: David Weber,John Ringo
“With all due respect, Sergeant Major,” Despreaux interjected, “I don’t think you can say any of us are lacking in ‘steel.’ I think our credentials on that are fairly clear.”
“Maybe,” Kosutic returned. “And maybe not. One thing about being in battle as long and as often as we have is that for just about everybody, after a while, the edge goes away. You can’t be on Condition Red forever, and we’ve been on it for a helluva lot longer than is recommended. So I think that that steel, Sergeant, is starting to melt. And it couldn’t come at a worse time. You do realize that after we take the port, we’re going to have to take a
ship,
right?”
“Yes.” Despreaux nodded, her eyes dark. “I do realize that.”
“Obviously, we’re not going to hit the port when we know there’s a ship in orbit to watch us do it,” Kosutic said. “But that means that whenever a ship
does
turn up, we’re going to have to grab any shuttles it sends down the instant they hit dirt.” She leaned forward and stabbed a rock-hard finger into the wooden table. “
And
prevent communication between them and their ship when we do it. Then, we’ll have to send our own shuttles up, blow the hatches, and do a forced boarding. We’ll have to blast our way through the whole ship without smashing
anything
that can’t be fixed. And it’s probably going to be a ship used to bad ports—to the idea of pirates trying to grab it. So its crew won’t be sitting there with their guard down. Now how easy do you think that’s going to be?”
“Sergeant Major,” Roger said in mild reproof. “We’re all aware that it’s not going to be a walk in the park. But we’ll get it done.”
“Will we?” Kosutic asked. “It won’t be Voitan or Sindi, Your Highness. We won’t be in a fixed position waiting for the scummies to throw themselves onto our swords. It won’t even be just a smash and grab, like Q’Nkok and Marshad. We’ll have to move like lightning, in the boarding and taking the port. And we’ll have to be precise, as well. And we’re
not
moving like that right now.”
“Can you take this ship without our help?” Rastar asked suddenly. “Isn’t this what you brought us for? To fight by your side, your foes as ours?”
All the human heads in the cabin swiveled like turrets as their owners turned to look at him. Roger’s mouth flapped for a moment before he could spit out a sentence. Then—
“It’s . . . not that easy.”
“This environment isn’t one you want to fight in, Rastar,” Eleanora said quietly. “You’ll undoubtedly be involved in the taking of the port. But the ship will be another issue.”
Roger nodded then leaned forward in the lamplight and placed his hand atop the Mardukan’s.
“Rastar, there are very few people I would rather have by my side in a firefight. But you
don’t
want to fight on shipboard. Onboard, if you press the wrong button, you can find yourself without any air to breathe, your breath stolen and your skin freezing until you die, quickly.”
“There are . . . hazards, Rastar,” Pahner agreed. “Hazards we would prefer not to subject your forces to. They aren’t trained for that sort of environment. And despite the difficulty, a short platoon of Marines will be able to take most freighters. For that matter, since there will probably be functional armor at the spaceport, we can probably take a pirate down, as well. If, as the sergeant major has noted, we’re trained to a fine edge.”
He rubbed his cheek for a moment in thought.
“Who are the best at this sort of thing?” Roger asked. “I mean, of the troops we have.”
“Probably myself and Despreaux, Your Highness,” Julian answered.
“Don’t count
me
out, boy,” Kosutic said with a wink. “I was door-kicking when you were in swaddling clothes.”
“Why don’t we have a demonstration?” Roger asked, ignoring the byplay. “Set up a visible ‘shoot-house’ on the deck, made out of—I dunno, sails and stuff—and let the teams watch Despreaux and Julian do their thing. And the sergeant major, of course, if she’s not too old and decrepit. Show them how it’s done.”
“Decrepit, huh?” The senior NCO snorted. “I’ll show you
decrepit,
sonny!”
“That’s ‘Your Highness Sonny,’” Roger retorted with his nose in the air.
The comment elicited a general chuckle. Even Pahner smiled. Then he nodded more seriously.
“Good call, Roger. It will also give our allies a look at what we’re doing. Since we’re not going to be using live rounds, we can give them detectors and let them be the opposition. Let them see if they can stop the sergeant major’s team.”
“Surprise is the essence of an assault,” Despreaux said quietly. “If they watch us prepare, they’re not going to be too surprised.”
“We’ll train in the hold,” Kosutic said, tugging at the skull earring dangling from her right ear. “Then duplicate the conditions on deck.”
“That sounds good,” Julian said, but his tone was a bit dubious. She cocked her head at him, and he shrugged. “You know how much of this is about muscle memory,” he said. “Even with the helmet VR and our toots, we’re still going to need at least some room to move in, if we’re going to do it right. And, frankly, I don’t think there’s enough room in
Hooker
’s hold.”
“He’s got a point, Smaj,” Roger said. The prince frowned for a moment, then shrugged. “On the other hand, there’s a lot more room below decks on
Snarleyow
. I bet the
civan
have eaten enough of the forage to give us a lot more room in
Snarleyow
’s forward hold than we could find in any of the other ships.”
“That’s an excellent idea, Roger,” Pahner approved. “Her between-deck spaces are even deeper than ours are, and she’s got a lot more beam, as well.”
“Still not as much room as I’d really like, but a lot better,” Kosutic agreed.
“And we’ll be the ‘opposition’?” Rastar asked.
“Yes,” Pahner said with a nod. “We’ll set up a facility above decks on one of the other schooners. It may still be a little cramped for troopers the size of yours, but it should work out. As far as the demonstration itself goes, you’ll know they’re coming, but not quite when. And you’ll be armed with your standard weapons, but no ammunition. The computer will be able to tell which shots hit and which miss, and the system will tell you with a buzzer if you’re hit or killed.”
“Can I participate also?” Fain asked.
“Certainly,” Pahner said, then chuckled. “A sergeant major and two sergeants going after a prince and his officers. It should be interesting.”
“Could I participate, too, instead of being the objective?” Roger asked. “I’d like to see how I’d do on this tac team.”
Julian started to open his mouth in automatic protest, then thought about it. Every single time he had doubted the prince’s abilities in a firefight, he’d been wrong. And so, after a moment more of thought, he shut his mouth, instead.
Kosutic frowned contemplatively. Then she nodded.
“We’ll . . . introduce you to it, at least. It’s more than just being able to shoot straight. Some people who aren’t much good at other fighting are very good at close-quarters work, and vice versa. If you do well in the preliminary training, you’ll participate in the final demonstration. If not, not.”
“Fine,” Roger said with a nod. “How long to set this up?”
“Start in the morning,” Pahner said. “Captain T’Sool and I will get with
Snarleyow
’s skipper and have
Hooker
’s main deck set up to duplicate the conditions in
Snarleyow
’s hold. You do your prep down there, then do the assault on the deck. That way we can all watch.”
“And make rude comments, I’m sure,” Kosutic snorted.
“So are we going to play shirts and skins?” Julian ogled Despreaux luridly. “If so, I say
we
take skins.”
The sergeant major’s palm-strike would have been a disabling or even killing blow if it had landed a few inches farther forward on the side of his head, or if she’d used the base of her palm instead of the side. As it was, it just hurt like hell.
“You’re toast, buddy,” she said, chuckling as he rubbed the side of his head.
“Man,” he protested. “Nobody around here can take a joke!”
“And don’t let this interfere with your discussions with the Mardukans,” Pahner reminded the sergeant major, ignoring the byplay. “I’m not sure that either takes precedence over the other.”
The captain was still unsure and unhappy about the relationship between his senior NCO and his intel sergeant. They were discreet, and there wasn’t a hint of favoritism, but small unit command was about managing personalities, and sex was one of the biggest destabilizers around. There were strict rules against the type and degree of fraternization the two of them were engaged in, and they knew it just as well as he did. But, he reminded himself yet again, none of the rules had contemplated a unit being cut off from all outside contact for over six months.
“Got it,” the sergeant major nodded, noting his dark expression.
“Should we load anything else onto the list?” Roger asked, deliberately trying to reclaim a less serious mood. “I don’t think Sergeant Major Kosutic has enough on her plate, yet.”
“Ah, you just wait, Your Highness,” the NCO told him with an evil smile. “As of tomorrow, you’re just ‘Recruit MacClintock.’ You just keep right on joking.”
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Roger said with a smile. “Going back to Voitan?”
CHAPTER FIVE
“ARE YOU GOING TO KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR OWN SECTOR NEXT TIME, RECRUIT?”
“One hundred and twenty-seven. YES, SERGEANT MAJOR!”
There were several axioms, handed down from generation to generation by the noncommissioned officers who were the true keepers of the tribal wisdom, in which Sergeant Major Eva Kosutic firmly believed. “No plan survives contact with reality.” “In battle, His Wickedness always has a hole card.” “If the enemy is in range, so are you.” All of them were rules the military forgot at its own peril, but the one that was currently paramount in her own mind was “The more you sweat, the less you bleed.”
And at the moment, some people obviously needed to do a little more sweating than others, she thought bitingly.
Roger MacClintock had several things going for him when it came to close combat. He had been gifted, both naturally and through long ago manipulation of the MacClintock genotype, with the reactions of a pit viper. He was a natural-born shot, with the hand-eye coordination of a master marksman, and he had spent many a lonely hour building on that platform to perfect his aim. And he had a good natural combat awareness; in a fight, he always knew “where” he was and had a good feel for where the enemies and friendlies were around him. That was an often underrated ability, but it was crucial in the sort of high-violence and sudden-death environment for which they were training.
But although he’d learned to be a “team player” in soccer, he’d never really had to perfect that in combat. Worse, perhaps, he tended to go his own way, as had been proven repeatedly on the long march from the shuttles’ dry lakebed landing to K’Vaern’s Cove. Roger was never one to integrate himself into a fire plan. Which made it a good thing that he always led from the front, since he also tended to kill anything that got in front of
him
.
“Your job, when we do an entry, is to watch my
back
! Not to watch where I am
going
! If I run into resistance,
I
will deal with it. But if I have to watch
your
sector at the same time, you are OFF THIS TEAM! Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
“CLEAR, SERGEANT MAJOR!” Roger hammered out his final push-up. “One fifty, Sergeant Major!”
“You just stay there in the front leaning rest position, Recruit MacClintock! I’ll get to you when I’m ready.”
“Yes, Sergeant Major!” the prince gasped.
The schooner
Snarleyow
’s forward hold was hotter than the hinges of hell and reeked of decaying filth in the bilges. But it was also the largest concealed open space aboard any vessel of the flotilla, which, from Eva Kosutic’s perspective, made it the best possible place for training. It still didn’t offer as much unobstructed area as she would have liked—not by a long chalk—but the cavalry’s
civan
had already consumed the fodder which had originally been piled into it. And unlike the upper cargo deck, there were no
civan
in the hold itself.
Which was a very good thing.
Civan
, and especially the trained war-
civan
Prince Rastar and his men favored, were much more intelligent than most humans might have thought upon meeting them for the first time. But what they most definitely were
not
was cute or cuddly. In fact, any
civan
tended to have the temper of an Old Earth grizzly bear with a bad tooth. The temperament—and training—of those selected as cavalry mounts only exacerbated that natural tendency. Which was why the
civan
stalled along the sides of
Snarleyow
’s upper cargo deck were “tethered” (if that was the proper verb for it) not with halters or ropes, but with five-point chain tie-downs.
Even so, the Mardukans charged with their care and feeding were extremely careful about how close they got to the beasts’ axlike jaws and razor-sharp, metal-shod fighting claws. For herself, Kosutic was delighted to have a training space, be it ever so hot, dank, and smelly, in which she didn’t have to worry about losing a limb because she strayed too close to a
civan
in a worse mood than usual.
Of course, at the moment,
she
was in a worse mood than usual, and she shook her head, then gestured for the other two NCOs to follow her. She led them to the forwardmost end of the hold, then turned to face them.
“Options,” she said quietly, and Julian wiped away a drop of sweat and shook his head.
“He’s good, Smaj. Very good. But he won’t stay focused on defense.”
“He’s too used to having us do that for him,” Despreaux pointed out. “He’s used to barreling through the opposition while we cover his back. Now
you’re
barreling through the course, and he’s supposed to cover
your
back.” She shrugged ever so slightly. “He can’t get used to it.”
“Yeah, but a big part of it is that he’s one aggressive son-of-a-bitch,” Julian said with a quiet chuckle. “No offense intended to Her Majesty.”
“There’s that,” Kosutic agreed, tugging at an earlobe. “I don’t really want to switch him out for somebody else, either. He’s got the moves to be better than just about anybody else in the company, if we can ever get them harnessed and coordinated, and only Macek might be able to equal him as it is. But I’m not going to get whacked because he’s not covering his sector.”
And that was exactly what had happened, three times so far.
When the helmet systems came on and their connection to the team’s toots kicked in, the hold became a virtual shoot-house, and Kosutic had set the difficulty level very high. That meant that enemies weren’t just in plain sight, on the route that the team took. Which, in turn, meant there had to be eyes turned in every direction . . . and Roger insisted on facing forward, along the line of assault. Not only did that permit the “enemies” he would otherwise have neutralized a clear shot at the team, but in one case he’d managed to “shoot” the sergeant major in the back.
Something had to be done, and Despreaux furrowed her brow as all three of them considered the problem.
“We could . . .” she said, then stopped.
“What?” the sergeant major asked.
“You won’t like it,” Despreaux replied.
“I’ve done a lot of stuff I don’t like,” Kosutic sighed. “What’s one more thing, by His Evilness?”
“All right,” Despreaux said with a shrug. “We could put Roger on point.”
“Uh,” Kosutic said.
“Hmmm.” Julian rubbed his jaw. “She’s got a point. I think he might do pretty well.”
“But . . .” the sergeant major said. “But—”
“‘But that’s
my
spot!’” Julian finished for her with a faint, humorous whine.
Kosutic looked daggers at him for a moment, then shook her head sharply.
“It’s more than that, Adib. Do you really think the captain isn’t going to use us? He put us together for more than just to show how it’s done. My guess is that he’s thinking of using us for something, as a team.”
“What? His company’s sergeant major, two of his squad leaders, and
the prince
?” Julian laughed. “You’re joking, right?”
“No, I’m not,” the sergeant major said seriously. “Just take it as a given that that might happen. Then think about putting Roger on point.”
“Oh,” Julian said.
“I can see your objection, Sergeant Major,” Despreaux said carefully. “But I’m not sure it matters. Perhaps we should get Macek or Stickles instead of the prince. But if we
are
going to use him, I still think he should be on point. Frankly, I think, with all due respect, that he might be . . . a touch better even than you.”
Despreaux gazed calmly at the sergeant major, waiting for the explosion, and Kosutic opened her mouth again. Then she closed it with a clop, fingered her earlobe for a moment, and shrugged.
“You might be right.”
“I think she is, Smaj,” Julian said with equal care. “The pocker is fast.”
“Is that any way to talk about the Heir Tertiary to the Throne of Man?” Kosutic demanded with a grin. “But you’re right. The pocker
is
fast. And he can shoot, too. But I hate to seem to . . . reward him for screwing up.”
“You think point is a
reward
?” Julian shook his head.
Roger stood with his right elbow just touching the wood of the bulkhead, his head and body hunched and turned to his left. The wood was real, but just to his right was a large doorway that had been cut into it only recently. In his helmet systems, the doorway was visible only as an outline sketched on the wall with explosives. And the wall wasn’t wood; it was plascrete. And in just a moment, the “explosives” were going to go off and blow a new door through it. And they would be going off less than a half-meter from his arm.
It was going to be an unpleasant experience. Roger rather doubted that even the sergeant major appreciated the full capabilities of his own toot. All the Marines were accustomed to using their implanted computers as both combat enhancers and training devices, and their toots’ abilities in those regards far exceeded those of the hardware available to most citizens of the Empire. But Roger’s toot was at least as much more capable than theirs as theirs were than the average civilian model. Which meant that the training simulation was even more “real” for him than for anyone else in the team. He’d considered kicking in the filters in an effort to spare himself some of the sergeant major’s simulation’s . . . energetic programming tricks, but he’d decided against it. He’d come to embrace the wisdom of another of Kosutic’s beloved axioms: “Train like you’re going to fight.”
He pushed that thought away and concentrated on the moment at hand. Other than the initial walk-through of the simulated rooms, this was his first time on point, and he suspected that the sergeant major was going to be making a statement. In fact, it would be just her style to make the course unsurvivable. That would fit her passion for making training harder than real life could possibly be, and he’d already discovered from painful personal experience that she had an undeniable talent for doing her passion justice. On the other hand, this was supposed to be training for
her,
too, so whatever was waiting for him was waiting for her, as well. Of course, to get to her, it probably had to go through him first, and he couldn’t help wondering what the simulator AI was going to throw at them. He hadn’t bothered even to attempt to wheedle any more information out of the sergeant major. She wouldn’t have told him, of course. But even if she might have, she probably couldn’t. The way she’d set things up when she punched the basic scenario parameters into her computer to generate the simulation, not even she should know exactly what was on the other side of the wall.
But it was bound to be bad.
Despreaux quietly laid in the last bit of the simulated breaching charge and stood back. The explosion should fill the room beyond with flying fragments, along with a world’s worth of overpressure, smoke, and noise. The Marines’ helmets and chameleon suits would serve to reduce that same concussion, so it should give them a moment of surprise and shock in which to overcome whoever might be defending the room. Assuming that the defenders weren’t outfitted with equipment similar to that of the Marines.
Despreaux held up a thumb, indicating that she was ready to go, and watched the rest of the team. Julian held up a thumb as well and hunched away from the blast area, followed by Kosutic.
Roger held up his own thumb and gripped his bead rifle tightly. The weapon was the standard issue field rifle for the Marines, but its “bullpup” design made it equally handy at close quarters. He’d become familiar with the weapon in the course of the battle across the continent, and it was now as much an extension of his body as his pistol or his personal rifle. In addition, his toot’s combat pack had come with a slot for bead rifle, and he’d used the training system assiduously, building up his ability and confidence day by day. He’d never had much call for automatic weapons’ training before, but he instinctively tended to be light on the trigger, so his bursts were always short and clean. With most targets, he’d tended to put two or three rounds into the upper chest, neck, or head. But except for the few targets which had presented themselves to “ass end Charlie” in the run-throughs, that had been against stationary targets. Now it was time to see if he really had what it took.
Despreaux took one more look at the team, hunched away herself, and triggered the breaching charge.
The suit systems—and toots—did the best they could to simulate the conditions, and that “best” was very good indeed. The helmets simulated a vast overpressure on their ears as they clamped onto the team’s heads, their toots gave their sense of balance a hard jolt, and their chameleon suits went momentarily rigid and squeezed hard in kinetic reaction to the “pressure wave.” But even before the cloth had started to settle again, Roger was through the door.
The room beyond was fairly small, no more than four or five meters square. A table in the center occupied much of its volume, and there was another door in the far wall. The scenario had called for no reconnaissance on the room, so the numbers or locations of hostiles had been unknown. But, as it turned out, there was plenty for a young prince to work on.
As he plunged through the smoke, he identified a hostile on the far side of the room. But that hostile was only just drawing a bead pistol, and something made Roger look to his right.
There was a human in the corner with a bead rifle trained right on him. The person wore the shoulder patch of a Colonial Garrison Trooper, but otherwise his equipment and uniform were identical to the Marines’. And it was clear that he’d reacted immediately to the detonation and entry. But as fast as the sim was reacting, “he” had never dealt with Prince Roger MacClintock.
Roger flipped the bead rifle sideways and “double-tapped” the defender in the corner off-hand, then flipped back to the left to engage another defender in the other corner. Only then did he engage and neutralize the first threat . . . who was just starting to level her bead pistol. Beads caromed off the floor and past his legs as that threat flew back against the far wall in a splash of red.
But by then, Roger was already gone.