Ian Douglas - The Complete Heritage Trilogy - Semper Mars, Luna Marine, Europa Strike

Warhurst closed his stinging eyes. You bring a son into the world, raise him, educate him, love him, grieve with him, rejoice with him. You watch him choose your own branch of the service, graduate from Annapolis, go on to his first command, be chosen for the honor of embassy duty. You see him get married, see him begin a family of his own.

And at the end, there was nothing to show for it all but a folded flag.

And the memories.

Warhurst drew a ragged breath. For a moment, he could have hated the tradition, the parade-ground finery, the solemn grandeur and the emotion-wringing symbolism. Ted had died in a fucking incident in a country that Warhurst didn’t give a damn for, an incident, not even a real war. According to the latest netnews downloads, Mexico was charging that American Marines had fired on civilians, precipitating the regrettable attack by Army forces on the American embassy. Pundits, politicians, and bureaucrats would be arguing over the blame for months to come, but nothing had been settled.

What was it all for? What was the use? Damn it, his son was dead….

The Marine Corps. The term “marine,” of course, had its roots in seafaring tradition…a soldier who fought at sea. Since the founding of the Corps in November of 1775, though, the term had become synonymous with a very special elite, a force-in-readiness, a unit ready and able to fight anywhere at short notice.

Everywhere. On distant coral atolls. In disease-festering swamps. Now, possibly, thanks to him, even the surface of another world.

Or the roof of an embattled embassy in Mexico City, in an incident….

He drew another breath…and another, willing the tears to recede. He would not give in to self-pity. There was too much at stake.

Ritual. Tradition. His son had died in the best traditions of the service.

The Marine Corps would continue.

He would continue.

Somehow….

Mars Prime/Cydonia Prime: The two principal human settlements on Mars during the first, exploratory phase of the colonization effort. Mars Prime was established July 20, 2024, at Candor Chasma (5° S, 75° W), near the Martian equator, its location dictated by the interesting local geology and ease of access from orbit. Cydonia Prime was established November 1, 2028, at Cydonia (40.9° N, 9.5° W), in order to study in place the alien artifacts and monuments discovered there.

By 2038, each base complex could support eighty to one hundred personnel. Dedicated structures included subsurface living, recreation, and storage buildings, labs, C 3facilities, wells for tapping permafrost for water, and automated cracking and storage plants for the manufacture of methane fuel from water and atmospheric CO 2.

—Download from Networld Encyclopedia

vrtp://earthnet.public.dataccess

SATURDAY, 26 MAY: 0357 HOURS GMT

Pad One

Cydonia Base, Mars

Sol 5634: 1610 hours MMT

“I never thought I’d see the day,” Garroway said, “when a couple of enlisted men would actually volunteer. Especially Slidell.”

Gunnery Sergeant Knox shook his head, the motion just visible inside his helmet. “Man, if I’ve learned anything in twenty years in the Corps, it’s never trust a Marine who volunteers for shit details.”

“Slider isn’t exactly the kind of Marine who volunteers for anything,” Colonel Lloyd said. “I’ve been wondering about that guy. He’s been looking for ways to get to Candor ever since we switched landing sites.”

“So why’ve he and Fulbert been so damned anxious to get down there?” Knox wanted to know. “I heard scuttlebutt that they managed to smuggle some drugs out from Earth.”

“That doesn’t seem likely, does it?” Garroway said. “Not with the weekly medcheck.” Once a week every person on Mars donated a drop of blood and a specimen of urine to the med-lab analyzers. The general medical monitoring of the expedition members’ health was not aimed specifically at spotting drug use, but it would certainly detect it if it happened.

“Ah, who knows what goes through their minds?” Lloyd growled. “I’ve already e-mailed Barnes at Candor to let him know to keep an eye on those two.”

They were standing outside the main hab at Cydonia, watching the preparations for a lobber launch. The two enlisted Marines in question, Corporals Jack Slidell and Ben Fulbert, had just climbed the ladder and boarded the ship, and in a few more minutes they would be on their way to Mars Prime, the big base at Candor Chasma on the Martian equator five thousand kilometers southwest of Cydonia.

It had been two weeks since they’d landed at Cydonia, two busy weeks as the MMEF Marines had worked to get settled in and check out the gear they’d brought with them. Most of their stuff had gone on to Mars Prime at Candor Chasma, and they’d had to manage with a lot of make-do.

The political situation was tense and growing worse. Colonel Bergerac, the new UN force commander, had vigorously protested the unannounced and unscheduled redeployment of the Marines to Cydonia. Only this morning had the last of the 2nd Demibrigade Foreign Legion troops assigned to the UN observers’ force finally shuttled north again to Cydonia Prime, after their redeployment to Candor. It had made things uncomfortably crowded at Cydonia. With nearly thirty Marines, over fifty Foreign Legion troops, and over fifty civilians, the base’s life-support systems were being severely strained.

For that reason, lobber shuttle flights between the main supply dump at Mars Prime down at Candor Chasma and Cydonia Prime had been increased.

Garroway looked up at the lobber resting on the charred strip of regocrete that served as launchpad and landing pad and wreathed in slow-curling clouds of steam. It was Harper’s Bizarre, the dinged and battered-looking shuttle that had aerobraked them in from cycler orbit, but the crews at Candor had replaced her fuel stack and taken her down to her lobber configuration.

For trips to orbit and back, the shuttle rode atop a twenty-meter, double-ring stack of fuel tanks holding the methane reaction mass needed for high delta-v maneuvers, plus the broad, lopsided blister of the heat shield used in aerobraking. Now, however, the blunt-nosed biconic nose section housing cockpit, passenger compartment, and main cargo bay had been remounted on a suborbital boost platform. This was a single ring of smaller methane tanks nestled inside a wirework basket, swaddled in thermal blankets, and resting on four widely splayed legs. In this configuration, the shuttle was called a lobber and was used for point-to-point transport of personnel and cargo on the Martian surface.

“All personnel,” a voice sounded over their helmet headsets. “Lobber Three is now ready for launch. Please clear the launch area.”

“That’s us, gents,” Lloyd said. “Let’s get inside.”

“Roger that,” Garroway said. There was little radiation hazard from the NIMF—the NTR engine was well shielded—but the plasma that seared out of the aft venturi was hot, nearly five thousand degrees, and deadly at close quarters.

“How’re you settling in, Major?” Lloyd asked as they walked back toward the main hab.

Garroway grimaced, his gaze shifting to the bleak, brick red horizon with its oddly shaped mesas and black, pyramid-mountains. “Look at it, sir. The biggest beach in the solar system,” he said. “But no ocean. No palm trees. No nude, sun-worshiper tourists.”

“Hell,” Knox said. “No air.”

“I really do hate this place,” Garroway said. “Sand with no ocean in front of it sucks.”

“Vacuum sucks, sir,” Knox pointed out reasonably as he opened the outer airlock door. “A physical fact.”

“Shit, what’re you two griping about?” Lloyd asked. “There’s no vacuum here.” He waved an armored hand. “Lots of air! You just can’t breathe it!”