Welcome to the Marines (Corporate Marines Book 2) (20 page)

“Yet we have been told by other races and even by their representatives that they are a very warlike aggressive race. The ‘experts,’” Smith’s face freezes as he says the word, “think that they may have come to some sort of philosophical or religious balance and have now curbed their aggression. I think that’s a load of crap. But we go with the expert opinion for now as they do not appear hostile toward us.”

The screen clears and starts loading again.

Smith finishes his drink and then looks at us. “This is the last race that we have met, and we know the least about them, even though we have had contact with them. The Crill, or Krill with a K.”

The image forming looks kind of like a lobster but it is noticeably smaller than a human. It has four manipulating arms and eight eye stalks. The image moves, and it moves sideways like a crab would. It has a band around the middle that holds several tools and the one claw is holding something while evaluating it with four of the eye stalks.

“Space travel is difficult for them, as they prefer to be wet and submersed. We know where their system is, but nothing else about it except for the fact that their terraforming turns planets into oceans and will take longer than our terraforming projects would. We have seen one large ship of theirs that is a scout ship. We do not understand their motivations or really anything about them. They may view us as talking food. We just do not know. Their views of everything are so different from ours that we have a great deal of difficulty communicating with them. More so than with the others. We do not even know if they have different sexes or classes. We have had interaction with one when we can get them on a video link. Most communications are verbal only.”

The screen fades and then turns off, as do the projectors. Smith picks up his data cube and puts it into his carrier.

“You will now head back for more sizing and armour testing, then dinner. On your systems are files that contain everything that we officially know about the different alien races we have encountered, and a few things that we do not officially know. You need to review and make sure you are up to speed on this. There are other alien races out there that are outside of our range. Those… we know less than nothing about.”

He turns and walks out the door at the front of the room while the rest of us stand and troop out the door, down the hallway and into the armour room.

This time, we spend over an hour stretching, bending and moving in every way possible for the technicians.

I notice that guy in the suit walk in. The suit is different, but it is the same guy from the gym when Armour hammered me into the ground and I vented everything out.

He clears his throat to get our attention and then starts talking. “When you are done your fitting here, I would like you to meet me in the briefing room that you have been using for your updates. I’ll see you there.” He turns to Armour and says, “Seven, do you want to be there?”

Armour is eyeing one of the candidates that the techs were having sensor problems with. “No, sir. I have nothing to do there and I do not want to hear stupid questions. I get enough of those.”

He nods at her. “Very well.” Then he turns and walked out of the room

We finish shortly after and head down the hall to the briefing lecture room. The man in the suit is standing at the front of the room by the podium, fiddling with some paperwork on top of it.

He looks up as we all sit down and considers us for a moment. Then he starts talking. “My name is Timothy Labaron. I work as a manager for the Corporation. I am here to answer your questions, and by now you have some. The training you undergo discourages questions and is geared to getting you to stand on your own with no attachments. The overall desire is to get you to think and react faster. All good things that a Marine should do.”

What answers can a manager have for us here and now?

He continues. “In fact, at this point, you need to take the next step. You need to be encouraged to ask questions and make decisions. After all, we do not want robots. We want Marines that are trained to work together unquestioningly as a team, yet will not go off and do whatever they are ordered no matter what. The ability to question what seems wrong or perhaps just incorrect is important. So this is one of the rare chances that you will have had in the last few months to ask questions with no penalty.”

This was not making a lot of sense to me at this point. What sort of trap was this?

“This is not a trap. This is part of a highly coordinated training program. This change was made relatively recently and we have gone from one to three successful candidates per course, to what you see now. There are more than ten of you here. We need to increase that number even higher.”

Mouth put her hand up. I expected nothing less than her asking most of the questions.

“Why do those numbers need to go so much higher? There are over a hundred Marines in service now. We aren’t at war or anything like that.” Everyone chuckles at that. War is not possible. Everyone knows that.

This Timothy guy nods and I can see he is trying not to smile. “There are several answers. First, until relatively recently, the algorithms that were used to scan the data were not optimized. Before you ask, there are thousands of factors being looked at in possible candidates. This is constantly being tweaked, and recently one of those little ‘tweaks’ had a large impact. The next point: the Corporation has made many advances, but we still had a lot of problems that needed ironing out. Some of those problems are resolved. Technology had to catch up.” He pauses and takes a drink from the bottle at the podium

“Finally, there
is
conflict coming. Previously you were not aware, but raids and pirate activity have gone up for all known species in the last five years. Something is stirring the pot, and our analysis indicates that there is a very good chance that the alien race that sent in the invasion is coming back.”

I can feel the shock in the room. The bogeyman that has haunted humanity for almost a hundred years is coming back. They have to have learned their lesson from the last time. It only stands to reason that the attack would be stronger.

“To win this, we are estimating we will need almost a thousand Marines operating in sections across the space that we control.”

That statement kills me right off. I have seen the numbers. They’re highly restricted, but I have seen the numbers. To have a thousand Marines at current recruitment levels and pass rates would take hundreds of years.

He continues. “That’s the reality of what you have come into. We do not have the luxury of putting it nicely to you. You are both the spear and the shield that will protect humanity.”

Mouth doesn’t even put her hand up. “So why are you telling us this? It sounds like this wasn’t passed on before to other groups.”

“You are correct. I did say we had made changes in the assessment criteria, which has introduced more candidates to our training, and with modifications, the number of successful candidates will increase as well over time. One of the recommendations was that I let new candidates know up front what they faced.”

There are more questions and then Timothy Labaron, a manager in the Glentol Corporation, begins explaining and giving us information that no one outside the Corporation had any idea about.

By the time he is done, I am wrung out.

Armour is there and I don’t know if she had been there for the full briefing or not. She snaps her fingers and we are dismissed and off at a run for dinner.

The rest of the day passes in a blur and the sim training is nothing hard.

Now I know that I have to try harder. I could see the Projects. The feral eyes of the younger guys in the gangs; the tough girls. The older parents working so hard and usually failing to get their kids something better.

For me, it isn’t about the successful people. It is for those that I know need help and can’t or won’t ask because they want to make it on their own.

What would happen to all of them if Earth was invaded again? Kinetic weapons coming down by the dozen?

I think I really stop mattering at that point and I suddenly feel like a Corporate Marine for the first time.

We have to win.

T
he next morning we run through a quick sim in full armour. Then in the afternoon we run two system checks, and as I am standing there with five others in our separate room, a door opens and a trolley is pushed in. There are several cases on it that we are directed over to pick up and move.

We pop them open and inside are weapons. Rifles with integrated grenade launchers and assorted side arms. There are also several heavier weapons that we can use, including a rocket launcher, a sniper variant of our rifle for rounds, and a laser variant. There is also a large drum-fed version. Our magazines hold twenty of the fifteen-millimetre rounds. The drum holds 125 rounds.

There are also multiple magazines and several boxes of inert training rounds for loading mags and conducting weapon drills, including stoppages, inside where there is no threat of an accidental discharge.

We close them up after looking the weapons over and make sure that the cases are secured.

We pick the cases up and move down to another large elevator that is big enough to take six of us at a time. The descent was fast and when we stop, the door opens and we walk out into a large cave. We exit the elevator and Armour is standing there to the side. She is in full armour and has a rifle in her arms and two side arms mag-locked to her legs.

She points to the side. “Put the boxes down there and open all the cases up.”

We comply. While we are setting up, the elevator doors open again and the rest of the candidates exit the elevators, joining us.

Armour points to the side and the group moves over and watches us.

Our suit comms click on and Armour’s voice comes over the line. “Open up the cases and you six will arm up with standard rifles and side arms. Grab six reloads for each. There are no grenades for the launcher as this is a rifle range. Make sure everything fits comfortably and do
not
load any weapon. Clear?”

I click my line open through my implants and say, “Clear,” along with other five.

We had all opened the comms at roughly the same time and all our voices were clear and distinct.

It’s amazing. In the armour with my implant setup and running, everything is clearer and I feel like I am moving faster than everyone else that is not in a suit up top.

I open a case of rifles and start passing them out, making sure no magazines are on. Mouth has another case open and is handing out laser pistols. I am walking toward her and press the rifle carefully to my chest and think about it sticking there. It is mag-locked to my chest now.

I take the laser pistol and attach it low on my right thigh and then I pick up another type of side arm that fires a ten-millimeter shell and mag-lock it to my left thigh.

I am walking toward the stacked ammunition when I realize that the magazine carriers we are going to get look weird. It holds six magazines but it looks like it has to go on a larger portion of armour, like my chest piece.

I detach my rifle and both my pistols fall to the ground as I deactivate the mag lock to the entire suit.

I am cursing under my breath. I look like an idiot to everyone here.

Armours voice comes over the comms. “While you fix yourself, I recommend that you turn off your comms. You’re transmitting to everyone right now. Don’t say anything; just use your plants to turn off the transmit function.”

I concentrate and then there is a click and my comms are off. I can hear other voices mumbling so I hadn’t turned the comms completely off, just my transmissions. Finally I’ve gotten something sort of right!

I pick up my rifle and mag-lock it to my arm on a forearm plate. Then I carefully pick up both pistols and lock them to the back of my legs. I can still move; I just can’t do a full squat with the pistols there.

I pick up the six-pack magazine holder and attach that to my chest where it looks like it should go. I go over to the last two bins and pull out the ammunition holders for the two different pistols.

Laser weapons use smaller round batteries. The description on the batteries makes no sense as I have no clue what a D-cell is. But I can work with these batteries. I only have three full-power shots per battery, but I can cut someone in half with that shot. The range is good to almost forty metres. After that, the beam starts to lose energy quickly and there is no guarantee on kills or even penetrating armour. If power is turned down for unarmoured targets, then you can get up to a dozen shots.

The other pistol takes a ten-round magazine of ten-millimetre caseless rounds. The standard loadout is either armour-piercing high explosive, or armour piercing or a pre-fragmented ‘shredder’ round. It’s accurate out to a hundred metres, and a normal human-sized target can be hit out to two hundred with luck. The problem with this weapon is collateral damage. If using it on a spaceship, expect to blow holes in equipment and bulkheads.

The rifle truly is the best piece of equipment around. Fifteen-millimetre rounds that come in multiple variants for mission use. A twenty-round magazine with normal rounds that can take out medium armour with good hits. It is even possible to take out heavy individual armour with enough rounds and luck. The range is out to six hundred metres from a Marine on the move. If we take the time for a stationary shot using specialized ammunition, it’s possible to hit the target at distances of almost eighteen hundred metres.

I finally have my gear stowed on myself and look around. I am the last of the six to finish.

Armour is just standing there with a rifle held in one hand. The comms click again and her voice comes out. “All right, this is your first range practice. You have already handled the weapon in assorted sims more than some combat vets. But this is the real deal. Rarely, someone will panic at holding a real weapon. Yet you are all going to have to handle this weapon in combat. That is the purpose of a range: to get rid of the real-world hesitancy. You will, at all times, follow direction as I give it. Failure to follow direction will result in lower scores. Just because you have been sized for the armour does not mean you are in yet. So don’t screw up.”

She points down the long tunnel. “This tunnel is just over a kilometre long. We will advance to five hundred metres from the end and begin our range demonstration and practice there. You other six will bring the trolleys down to the seven-hundred-metre point. Let’s go.”

She is gone at a run and the six of us take off after her immediately.

The gear I have mag-locked to myself has no impact on my movement. I go from stationary to full-out run in a second and everything changes.

My perceptions become clearer and I feel like my brain is really working for the first time ever. I can track everyone on the heads-up display, which, when I concentrate, expands out from simple icons to all sorts of information on the other candidates. Heart rates are only slightly elevated and we are all smoothly running together in a line.

The composition of the rock surrounding us comes back and I realize that this tunnel had started shorter but other candidates had used this as a range and blasted it out further over the years. Farther down are grooves in the tunnel that could lead off to very small side tunnels, but I can’t figure out what they are used for.

We run three hundred metres. In that time I have evaluated our formation running and notice that of the full twelve of us, the six behind appear to be noticeably slower. I also notice that Mouth is showing the greatest variation on her readings. Her heart rate and respiration are too high. She is incredibly nervous.

Then we stop and I have no more time to think about it. Armour starts speaking while never looking back at us. “You will be run through every drill possible here, from normal shooting to combat runs and further into shooting without the use of the sensors that your suit has.”

She starts moving and is a blur. The rifle comes up and a magazine materializes in her hand. She rams it into the magazine well and smacks the side of the weapon using the auto-loading option. She has a round in the chamber and her weapon is pointed down-range but it is only halfway up her chest. She doesn’t even have it to her shoulder.

“Being able to fire your weapons from any one of dozens of different positions is what you will be able to do before you leave here. On the run. Stationary. Whatever it takes.”

In the distance are barely illuminated targets and they appear to be moving around. She opens fire. Every time she fires two rounds, she changes position. From her first mid-chest position with both hands on the rifle, she brings it to her shoulder, then the hip, down to the prone position. She pushes herself up with one arm and when she lifts her legs and puts them on the wall, spikes ram out, securing her to the wall and she fires out the remainder of her magazine. She is standing sideways on the wall.

She ejects the magazine and clears her weapon and then jumps down. She made it look easy, releasing the spikes just as she applied pressure and then jumping off the wall, flipping so that she landed on her feet. I can’t believe it.

The distant targets are getting bigger and the dim lighting brightens right up. The targets fly up to us. They are some sort of drones with a decent-size motor and below them hangs a large square target on a series of posts. The drones line up. There are ten of them. Every one has two holes in its target with an eight-centimetre spacing.

All that in bad light while the targets were moving and she had been leaping around and they had been at least three hundred metres away. It wasn’t possible. But she had done it.

Thankfully, our armour blocked out the noise or we would have gone deaf. A fifteen-millimetre round is loud in an enclosed space.

There is a buzzing and the drones clear their digital screens so that the targets are clean.

The drones slowly start heading down the tunnel again.

Armour turns to us as she mag-locks her cleared weapon to her chest plate. “You will each fire a single magazine at the targets, which will be held by the drones. They will be between two and three hundred metres and will move around. Only one drone for each of you; the others will put themselves away. You can fire from the standing, kneeling or sitting positions, but you will fire in the position that I have loaded to your suit’s nav system. Do not leave that spot. Do not turn while the weapon is loaded. Clear your jams and carry on. Begin after I tell you to and not before. Think, and try to do this right, candidates.”

She steps between us and I see a spot on the floor ahead of me glowing in my visor. I step to the position and hear a chime when I move into location. Everyone else moves up and then we are ready.

My comm line clicks and I hear Armour’s voice, “On your own time, go on.” The comm line clicks off. I pull a magazine out and load it into my rifle, keeping it pointed down-range at all times. I don’t want to goof up and shoot another candidate or have an accident. It’s stupid. I had fired thousands of rounds in sim training in almost every type of weapon system out there, but I am nervous.

I have never actually fired a weapon before, and this really counts.

I take a deep breath and then the others are firing. I can see my target bouncing around in the distance and I take a shot. The damn drone is moving in all three dimensions constantly and I can’t get a good shot on it. I am pretty sure that I missed with my first round.

I have to relax. I try again and am pretty sure that I missed. It’s moving too fast and is too small.

I think about it for a second and then have an answer. My comms are off and I set my visor to zoom mode. Suddenly the drone is right in front of me. It doesn’t really have that much space to move in, as the other drones are right there with it. For me the drone is highlighted a gentle blue and I can see a robotic shape in the target area. I try tracking it for a second and then, leaning forward into it, I take the shot and barely miss. I can see a pattern emerging now, though. So I wait and then take another shot and then another. Hits!

I have five rounds on target and am concentrating so hard that I can feel sweat trickling down my body. Nothing else matters except me and the target. I can do this.

The impact to my side is so sudden that I don’t do anything to protect myself. I am in shock, but before I hit the ground I’ve dropped my rifle and am ready to attack.

Armour is standing to the side of where I had been and is flexing her leg. Everyone else has stepped back and has their weapons on the ground. The other group is just behind them and watching us, or rather, me.

Armour never turns away but I can hear the click as the comms line opens again. “The candidate’s mistake was activating the zoom function in the visor. It brings the target right close up and means that you can get more accurate rounds on-target much faster. If you are fully into the shot, though, it also means that you have a very unique tunnel vision and can’t see what is only a few feet away. Say, like another enemy combatant targeting you because you forgot to take cover or move after taking a sniping shot. Losing your focus and getting rounds on target the easy way is
not
what you are here to learn. You are here to get used to the weapons and learn how to get rounds on target at over three hundred metres. Two things: First, you are down here so no one ever sees you flub what are easy shots for experienced Marines. We all have a reputation to live up to. Second, most militaries of the world have a saying. ‘If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.’ You will learn to cheat later. Get the basics down now.”

We move back into firing line and fire out all six magazines that are in the chest rig we had been given. Then we have to manually reload those magazines while in armour so the next group can use them.

The purpose is to gain natural dexterity. It’s hard as hell and takes longer to load them than to fire them empty.

We never even touch the side arm during this training. They are there so we get used to having other weapons mounted to us.

During a changeover, Armour tells us that we will do this training with support weapons mag-locked to our bodies so that we become accustomed to the different feel of the armour under restrictions.