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

Colonel Lloyd was floating at the far end of the crowded compartment, while the enlisted Marines were gathered into two lines running the chamber’s length. Their torso armor had almost perfectly blended with the white bulkheads, with random, dark olive streaks where the active camouflage was picking up arms and legs from nearby Marines. Each Marine had his or her assault rifle hanging in the air in front of him, together with a small cloud of metallic pieces, rods, springs, and oil-glistening parts.

Reiner turned up the gain on the volume. “…faster, people,” Lloyd was saying, his voice a drill-field growl. “Faster! The enemy is not gonna wait for you. Pick it up, pick it up!”

Hands flew as the Marines snatched pieces out of the air, each movement precise, smooth, and almost machinelike in its control. They appeared to be reassembling their rifles, and the number of floating stray parts steadily dwindled.

One Marine, Staff Sergeant Ostrowsky, completed the drill and brought her assembled rifle to port arms with a sharp slap as her hand smacked the plastic stock. Two more finished up—slap-slap!—an instant later, and then all of the Marines were bringing their rifles up to signal completion in a ragged chorus of skin on plastic. It was a remarkable demonstration, Garroway thought. In microgravity, even the slightest movement tended to give you a push in the opposite direction, and many rapid movements could accumulate a lot of drift or spin if you weren’t careful. The Marines of the MMEF appeared to have mastered the art of balancing move with move to keep their bodies more or less motionless.

Lloyd waited until the last Marine snapped home the bolt and brought the weapon to port arms, then touched a button on his wrist-top. “Not good enough, people,” he growled. “Not good enough by thirty seconds!”

“Damned robots,” Reiner said. When Garroway looked at him, he shrugged. “Sorry, Major, but it seems like such a waste. Like close-order drill, you know? Great back when armies lined up in nice neat rows and had to go through loading and firing by the numbers, like two or three hundred years ago, but pretty useless in a modern war.”

“I’d say it’s a pretty good exercise of self-control and discipline, wouldn’t you?”

Reiner chuckled. “Well, the next time I need a rifle stripped down and put back together in zero G, I’ll sure as hell know who to go to. Shit, why’s he making them wear armor in there? O1’ Poly’s been around her circuit two and a half times, now, and she hasn’t been attacked by space pirates once!”

On the screen, Lloyd was grinning at the Marines with what could only be described as sadistic anticipation. “All right, people. Since you keep falling asleep at this evolution, we’ll try to make it a little bit more challenging. We’ll do it again!” Suddenly, the screen went black. “In the dark! Ready…begin!”

The sound of clicking and snapping clattered from the speaker, until Reiner dialed down the gain once more.

Garroway thought about replying to the astronaut’s jibe, something about discipline under pressure, or even about needing to learn how to work in the cumbersome armor without letting it turn you clumsy…but decided at last that it wasn’t worth it. Reiner was Navy, and there were some things a squid just couldn’t understand.

The fact was that Reiner had hit pretty close to the mark, talking about drills evolved from combat necessities centuries old. There’d been a lot of talk lately about the US Marines becoming obsolete, and scuttlebutt aplenty about the reason for this deployment. Garroway was pretty sure the MMEF was a political chip in some unseen, high-stakes game, a means, possibly, of keeping the Corps alive when a number of very powerful people and organizations wanted to kill it. And it was true that President Markham was beating the drum pretty loudly during his reelection campaign this year—“our brave young men and women, serving America’s interests far from this blue Earth….” The United States was increasingly isolated in a hostile world, and her citizens were clinging tightly to symbols of American might, tradition, and security.

None of which addressed the real question. Was the Corps obsolete? Didn’t the Marines simply duplicate functions now handled by the Army?

Well, maybe they did. What of it? Garroway was mildly surprised to find that he didn’t really care, one way or the other, what became of the Corps.

It wasn’t that he disliked the Marines. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Marines had introduced him to advanced electronics, paid for an outstanding college education, and let him work on some absolutely fascinating projects, from communications software to advanced AI. The trouble was that he’d pretty much reached the end of the opportunities that the Corps could provide. How, he often joked with his daughter, could the Corps possibly top a trip to Mars? In fact, he’d been passed over for promotion twice now, a sure sign that he was never gonna make it to light colonel. He was at the top of his field inside the Corps, but there was no place else to go. To realize his true potential, he’d have to reenter the world of civilians. His background would land him a position at Pittsburgh’s Moravec Institute easily—he’d worked there for a time on a government-sponsored AI project, five years ago, and he knew some people who could pull some strings—but right now he was less interested in continuing with AI communications software than he was in the Bahamas…specifically in opening a charter hydrofoil and submarine tour boat service for rich vacationers. That was the extent of his ambition at the moment, a dream that had very little to do with the Corps.

More than one of the people he’d worked with over the past few years, people including Colonel Lloyd, had accused him of going ROAD—Retired On Active Duty—marking time, in other words, until he was a civilian once more.

Well, maybe that was true, in a way. It was a bit ironic, actually, that he should find himself a member of the MMEF, occupying a billet that a few thousand other Marines would have given their teeth for, and he didn’t really want to be here. Two more years—a planned fifteen-month deployment on Mars, followed by a seven-month transit home aboard the cycler Columbus—and he’d be out of the Corps. With all the military cutbacks lately, he shouldn’t have any trouble resigning his commission, and a month or two after that he’d be on the beach at Nassau, alternately soaking up the sun and soaking the rich tourists.

“Well,” he said at last, after a long silence had passed, “all the routine traffic is up-to-date. I guess I’ll head back to the hab.” He stretched. “I still have five minutes’ shower credit left over from last month, and I think I’m gonna luxuriate.”

“Enjoy,” Reiner replied. “And thanks for your help. I don’t know what we’ll do if the cameras go out in the shelter again on the Earth-bound leg.”

“Oh, you’ll manage, I’m sure.” He jerked a thumb at the monitor. “You won’t have so many passengers on board. Maybe the romantic ones can use their cubicles, like normal folks.”

“Nah,” Reiner said, shaking his head. “Zero G is too much fun.”

“Oh? How would you know?”

“Classified information, Major. I’ll never tell.”

Garroway caught a transport pod and took it down to the hab-mod level, where the spin gravity now measured .38 Gs, the same as on the surface of Mars. There were two hab modules attached to the outermost rack of the cycler’s A-arm. His quarters were in Hab One, which was reserved for officers, female Marines, and civilian passengers. The twenty-two enlisted male Marines were quartered together in Hab Two’s tiny open dorm. Crowding was bad in both habs—worse in Two than in One. At least the Marine officers were quartered two to a compartment. He shared his semiprivate, closet-sized quarters with the MMEF’s supply officer, Captain Gregory Barnes.