John Ringo: Vorpal Blade

“Yes, First Sergeant,” Berg said, instantly. “I wish to volunteer for this unit.”

“Shiny,” the first sergeant said with a sigh, “you’re in. But if we get the time, I’m going to put you in the tank and see how you really handle pressure. Welcome to the Space Marines, PFC Bergstresser. Semper Fi Ad Astra, if you will.”

“Holy maulk ,” Berg whispered when his new platoon sergeant led him into the platoon office. “He wasn’t kidding.”

On the wall was a large poster, placed in much the same way that a corporate motivational poster might be hung. But this poster was a picture taken in space of a portion of what could only be a spaceship, the top of which was lined with suits of Wyvern armor. Over each suit was a name and he quickly picked out First Sergeant Powell as well as his platoon sergeant, Gunnery Sergeant Josh Hocieniec.

And there was no question it was a picture. Even with all the advances in computer generated images, it was still possible to spot CGI. This was, unquestionably, a picture. They might have been digitized in, but it didn’t look like it.

“No, Top wasn’t kidding,” the senior NCO said. Hocieniec was shaved bald, short, barely over regulation height unless Berg was much wrong, and skinny. He looked as if he could barely carry himself around much less battle rattle. “You just joined the Space Marines. The maulky part, for you, is that the rest of us have been training for this for a year or more. And we’re leaving day after tomorrow.”

“Oh, maulk ,” Berg said, his eyes wide.

“You’re replacing Harson,” Hocieniec continued, sitting down at his desk, “because the dick-for-brains broke his grapping femur on a fast-rope climb two days ago.”

“Welcome to Hell, Nugget,” a staff sergeant said, looking up from some paperwork. “Staff Sergeant Summerlin. You’re going to be with Jaen, Charlie Team.” The staff sergeant was medium height and slim with dark brown hair.

“Summerlin’s Alpha Team Leader and assistant platoon sergeant,” the gunny said. “Jaen and Hatt are over on the ship doing maintenance on their Wyverns. So while Summer here does my paperwork for me, I’m going to get you into the barracks and through in-processing.”

“And this is the gaming room,” Sergeant Jaenisch said, opening the door.

The barracks and training area for the Space Marines was about a quarter mile from the headquarters. The barracks were pretty decent, “starbase” apartment barracks left over from the Navy when they’d pulled most of their people out of Newport News. There was enough room that the Marines were rattling around in them like peas. They even got individual rooms since there were enough barracks for a regular battalion much less a Space Marine company, which was about the size of a regular platoon.

A “company” is a variable term. Originally the term simply meant a body of companions. Latterly, it came to mean a group of about one hundred infantry personnel under the leadership of an officer who was not quite a junior, not quite a senior, usually a captain.

However, companies varied in size. Force Recon companies had ranged as high as two hundred when all the supports were added over the years. With the shift to Space Marines, the Marine Corps commandant had taken a step back. Since the Recon companies were going to be ship based, the Navy could damned well handle support. And given their firepower, training and individual lethality, the size of the actual unit could be dropped. However, retaining the leadership as a captain made sense. Young enough to carry the fight, old enough to do so wisely and without the mandated lobotomies of majors. Delta would call it a Troop, SEALs would call it a Team. The Marines called it a company of Space Marines. If the Navy ever got bigger ships, they’d reevaluate. In the meantime, the Marines got all the hot water they could ask for.

The training building was part of the base gym. There wasn’t a regular shoot house or a range short of Quantico, but part of the funds had provided a pretty decent alternative.

The “game room” was a new building, solid concrete including the roof, attached to the gym and about as large. It also was nearly empty. There was a small entry room with some lockers and computer terminals and beyond, viewable through a sheet of plexiglass that was liberally splashed with blue splatters, was a cavernous, empty, room. On the far side were huge roll-back doors large enough to slide a business jet into the room. It looked more like a hangar than a training area.

“Virtual reality?” Berg asked.

“Got it in one,” Jaenisch said, walking over to a computer terminal. “We’ve got just about every game on the market available on this thing but we generally use the one designed for the mission, a hack of Dreen War.” Jaenisch opened up some windows on-screen and started a game up, then opened up one of the lockers, pulling out two sets of VR gear.

The gear consisted of a light harness, gloves and a pair of glasses. The VR glasses, thanks mostly to Adar tech, had reduced to the size of wraparound sunglasses. The newest military combat “goggles” were similar in size and structure. Berg had even heard that DARPA was working on combat “lenses” that could be worn as contacts. That would be interesting.

Jaenisch also handed him an M-10 and combat harness, preloaded with “simulated rounds.” Simulation rounds used actual gunpowder to fire low velocity “paint” rounds that mimicked real bullets fairly well at short ranges. They required a special barrel and breech but the M-10 had already been modified for them and had the standard blue training barrel.

The glasses stayed clear until they walked in the room, then darkened momentarily and came back showing a jungle scene. It wasn’t anywhere on Earth — both the trees and sounds were wrong — and it took Berg a moment to adjust.

“Where are we supposed to be?” he subvocalized. When they passed Basic, every Marine was fitted with combat implants that consisted of a small microphone implanted next to the vocal cords and a receiver in the mastoid bone. Learning to subvocalize was a requirement of Marine basic training. The system was virtually identical to the one the Adar used when they first reached Earth. For a short time, it had been thought that the Adar were telepaths since using the system looked much the same to an ignorant observer. There was virtually no sound involved and only short bursts of radio.

“This is based on Chen’s World,” Jaenisch replied subvocally, his lips moving only slightly. “But it’s got different monsters. All we have to do is make it to the far wall.” He hefted a virtual M-10 and was now, in the goggles, wearing full battle rattle, a set of boron carbide body armor with fitted pouches for ammunition. “You’ve got left, I’ll take right.”

Berg jacked a round into his own M-10, flicked the weapon off safe and nodded.

“Let’s do it.”

Jaenisch led off, following a narrow game trail. Berg kept his attention to the left, sweeping forward, up and to the rear. There were some light heat forms in his glasses, but nothing that looked like a threat.

A thunderous roar from the right almost made him spin around but he kept on his sector and it was a good thing. Just as the roar faded, a form came charging through the jungle. It was bipedal and looked something like a more insectile Dreen thorn-thrower. Whatever it was it had a big mouth and Berg wasn’t going to take any chances.

He fired two rounds into center of mass and was unsurprised that the 7.62 mm rounds bounced off. But the thing had big multiple eye systems and he retargeted, hitting it in the eyes and blinding it. The thing continued its rush but missed the two Marines and Berg pounded it with single fire shots as it crashed past. He found a weak point under one of its arms and pumped five rounds into the spot until the thing dropped, thrashing.