Indomitable (4 page)

*   *   *

Gunnery Sergeant Ramuel rounded
on Atumbi as soon as he heard the lieutenant say “dismissed.” He drew his finger and stabbed Atumbi in the chest. “Not you. Ten-hut! Feet together. Eyes off the deck. Chin up. You're a disgrace to the company and the Corps. You are letting the lieutenant down. You are letting your sisters and brothers down. You are letting your platoon sergeant and your toon down. You are letting
me
down.” Ramuel's neck was a red, splotchy mess. “And what's worse, you are letting
yourself
down. What am I going to do with you, Private?”

The sun peeked through the cloud cover, bathing Ramuel's face in light. His scowl thawed and his lip curled upward with a delicious thought. Ramuel threw a questioning look at Promise. “Ma'am, with your permission.”

Promise waved him on as she took another bite of her chorizo roll. “Do whatever you think is best, Gunny. I'll watch.”

“Son, someday you'll forgive me for this,” Ramuel said. “You might even thank me for it. Now, strip.”

Atumbi looked left and then right, then at the lieutenant, who simply nodded back at him.

“Better listen the first time, Private, or it
will
get worse. That's a guarantee. Here, I won't look.” Promise turned around and took another bite. “This is really good.”

Atumbi looked horrified. “Gunnery Sergeant?”

“Now! Son, down to skin. You have twenty seconds to comply. Trust me, you don't want to find out what happens when I hit zero. Twenty, nineteen, eighteen…”

“Chrono's ticking,” Promise said over her shoulder with a mouth full of egg and spiced sausage. She washed it down with a sip of oh-so-good caf.

They were the quickest twenty seconds of Atumbi's life, followed by the longest hour of PT in the 'verse. For a full sixty mikes, Private Race Atumbi ran around the perimeter of the Saint Sykes training field, his rifle held high and his gun held low, chanting at the top of his lungs:

“This
is my rifle.

This
is my gun.

This
is for offing targets.

This
is for fun.”

After Victor Company dispersed, Promise waved the gunny over and offered him a cup of hot caf.

“Chit for your thoughts, Tomas. Here, it's just the way you like it.”

Ramuel took an angry sip. “Ma'am, I apologize. What you witnessed was disgraceful. We are barely what I would call a company. We will work double-time to shore up our deficiencies. I take personal responsibility for—”

Promise raised her mug of caf to cut him off. “Tomas, I know. Relax and drink yours while it's hot. A lot of our privates and PFCs were rushed through boot camp and the School of Infantry. BUPERS's decision to cut weeks from both schools is coming back to bite us in the tail. What do they expect us to do? Teach them to shoot properly, at distance, after we deploy?”

“They need more time, ma'am,” the gunny said after gingerly sipping his caf. “Even a few weeks could make a huge difference. I've paired each greenhorn with a veteran and ordered extra range sessions. I'm seeing improvement, but they shouldn't have been sent to the fleet in such a poor state of readiness to begin with. They don't all deserve the title of Marine. Not yet.” Ramuel scowled. “This isn't the Corps I came up in.”

“This isn't the Corps of five years ago, Tomas. Did you hear about Vermont?”

“Yeah, I nearly punched a wall,” Ramuel said. “Five hundred Marines, dead and gone. How did a hovtruck laden with micronite get through the gate at Fort Clark?”

Fort Clark was on the northern continent of the planet Vermont, about seventy klicks from the planet's capital. The Fifty-First Regiment called Vermont home; almost five thousand Marines, with supporting LAC wings, and a full task force of battleships and battlecruisers in orbit, and that didn't count Vermont's militia and system defense forces. Vermont had joined the RAW seven years ago and the vote for incorporation hadn't been close. Over two billion souls. Seventy percent of Vermont's population had turned out, and sixty-four percent had checked yes. A sizable minority had said no and some had picked up arms to make their point clear.

“The preliminary report looks pretty damning,” Promise said. “The Marines at the main gate didn't do a thorough inspection of the vehicle. The driver's I-dent was forged. The truck floated up to the south barracks and detonated its payload shortly after midnight when everyone was asleep. It was a massacre.”

Promise saw Atumbi rounding the far side of the running track. “We're trying to mass-produce Marines, be too many places at once, garrison planets when we're designed to fight small wars. Don't blame yourself, Tomas. Do what you can. Keep them training. Keep the pressure on and look for reasons to reward them. They need us covering their six even as we kick theirs.”

“Yeah, I know you're right, ma'am. But I don't have to like it.”

“Nope. But you have to love the suck.” Promise punched him lightly in the shoulder. “I'm visiting
Kearsarge
at the end of the week, and then reporting to the colonel. I'll take the matter to him personally and see if I can buy us some time, okay?”

 

Four

APRIL 19
TH
, 92 A.E., STANDARD CALENDAR, 1003 HOURS

REPUBLIC OF ALIGNED WORLDS PLANETARY CAPITAL—HOLD

RNS
NITRO,
PARKING ORBIT WHISKEY-ECHO 6

Lieutenant Colonel Price Halvorsen,
commanding officer of Charlie Battalion, Fifth Brigade, Twelfth Regiment, stood at ease in his cabin, aboard the Republican Naval Ship
Nitro,
and surveyed the warships of Battlecruiser Squadron Six through the screen on the bulkhead. Halvorsen's deep blue eyes focused on the nearest battlecruiser moored in space, the RNS
Phoenix.
At two-times magnification, it easily fit into the space between his massive thumb and forefinger. The
Phoenix
's twin, the
Chou-Roon,
was out twice that distance, and looked more to the colonel like a faint star than an Osiris-class heavy BC—the pride of the fleet and, as it happened, that of BATRON-6 too. Massing 152,000 tons, and with a beam length of 553 meters, Osiris-class battlecruisers were nearly twenty percent larger than their older Mandrake-class cousins, with almost half again the throw weight in missile tubes. And BATRON-6 was fortunate enough to have two of them among its six total elements.

Halvorsen's gaze drifted upward, past Hold's partially eclipsed and heavily cratered moon, to a patch of space occupied by two aging Mandrake BCs:
Kearsarge
and
Rio Grande. Kearsarge
was the closer of the two warships. He placed his palm against the simulated viewport, which winked to life and confirmed his identity. He drew a perimeter around the small warship and spread his hands until the
Kearsarge
nearly filled his screen. To an untrained eye,
Kearsarge
looked like just another warship. In the colonel's estimation, the vessel had outserved its usefulness, particularly when measured against an Osiris. Fewer docking lights roughed out the vessel's hull. Only three bays meant fewer LACs to ferry his Marines around, and fewer lifeboats to evacuate the hundreds of souls aboard her should the worst happen. Halvorsen shuddered at the thought.

RNS
Izumo
was the sixth and final element of BATRON-6. The newly retrofitted Mandrake BC was on its shakedown cruise out beyond the Kuiper belt and not due to report in for another week.

At that particular moment, Halvorsen's astrophobia decided to make itself known. The colonel began to pick at the seam of his regular-dress navy-blue trousers. He forced himself to stare into the void several minutes more, though every fiber in his body longed to turn the screen off and turn on every light in his cabin. Being aboard ship, out in the drink, confused his internal compass, and on occasion made him nauseous. He'd settled on a small admission of weakness by leaving his desk light on when he slept. That and he'd seen the ship's doctor, who'd prescribed astrophobia patches, or “A-patches,” to help him get his deck feet while in space. To his knowledge, none of his officers knew about it, not even the first sergeant, and Halvorsen planned to keep it that way. He made a mental note to slap on a fresh A-patch before he left his cabin. Seeing the aging Mandrake battlecruiser out there reminded him that man had tamed space with metal, that a warship's many fail-safes made interstellar travel nearly as safe as landlocked living.

Too bad our elected officials didn't give us the hulls we needed.

The Senate Uniformed Services Committee had approved the Osiris-class battlecruiser to replace the Mandrake. The appropriations bill had gone to the Senate floor only to be amended and sent down to the House of Planets, and then cut in half by a hastily formed coalition of Socialist Reformers and Neo-Isolationists. The end result was typical. The Navy got left with one-third of its requested warships, and a half-kept promise to modernize and extend the life expectancy of the aging Mandrake BCs.

Halvorsen grunted.
That was some son-of-a-broken-promise. The Mandrake is a good ship, though, tough, a real scrapper.
A thin smile crossed his face, and then worked its way up to his eyes.
She's not pretty—that's for sure—but she's got some pleasant surprises under her skirt. System-jumps hard too, like my alpha unit on my homecoming night after a long dip in the pond. If you treat a Mandrake BC right, and warm her up proper, she'll get you to your next waypoint in one piece, and boot you out the airlock with your seabag and a smile.

A two-tone sounded in the colonel's mastoid implant, at the same time that a tiny vessel emerged from the bowels of the
Kearsarge.

“Yes.”

A pleasant, confident-sounding soprano replied. Halvorsen heard the wry humor in her voice. “Colonel, she's launching now. ETA—seventeen mikes.”

“Perfect timing, First Sergeant. I'm watching Lieutenant Paen's LAC as we speak.”

“Understood, sir. The holotank is queued and the caf is hot.”

“Excellent, Samantha. I'll be up in ten.”

Halvorsen chewed his lip as he mentally reviewed his agenda for today's meeting with Charlie Battalion's company commanders. Charlie BAT hadn't operated at the battalion echelon for the past two standard years, largely because of the manpower shortages being felt across the Republic of Aligned Worlds. Too many member worlds kept demanding stronger system pickets and Marine contingents to defend them. The protectorates and countless allies kept screaming about the ever-present threat of piracy and homegrown terrorists. The RAW's chief rival in this part of the 'verse, the Lusitanian Empire or LE, kept provoking the Republic while carefully avoiding all-out war. The Corps had done its best to cope by spreading its assets across the 'verse.

We need more time,
he thought.
Charlie Battalion isn't ready.

His company commanders sorted neatly into the “knowns” and “unknowns.” He had high confidence in three of them. Captain Lili Chen and Captain Ffyn Spears were veterans and good friends. Spears had commanded Victor Company before getting seriously wounded on Montana. First Lieutenant Nia Massillon was a newly promoted company CO, and she'd reported for duty with glowing letters of recommendation from several officers he'd personally served with, women and men he would gladly entrust his life to. Then there was Victor Company, which was a virgin-green mess. The company's overall lack of experience didn't overly concern him. All boots had to start somewhere. But Victor Company's CO troubled him deeply. She was a highly decorated maverick who'd blazed in-system to her last post, won her battlefield commission with questionable heroics, and nearly gotten her first command obliterated. Scuttlebutt said First Lieutenant Promise T. Paen was an unbalanced, unbridled, good-as-get-you-killed mustang, and he wanted nothing to do with her.

Yeah, but BUMED green-lit her for active duty. That counts for something … even though she deployed with forty wolves and returned with over thirty in body bags. She must have a high-and-mighty rabbi somewhere in the hallowed halls of BUPERS. That or we're desperate for boots.

Lieutenant Paen was the colonel's only “known unknown.” Paen had deployed to the planet Montana as a platoon sergeant in Victor Company. She was field-promoted when her captain was killed and Lieutenant Spears—now Captain Spears—was wounded in a confrontation with a mess of pirates. After that, Paen had squared off with a Lusitanian commodore named Samuelson, a light task force of Imperial cruisers, and a full-strength battalion of Imperial shock troops over Montana's pile of sand. On paper the Lusies should have won and Paen should have surrendered instead of fight it out. Instead, Lieutenant Paen had bled and bluffed her way to a truce at the expense of her command. She'd nearly gotten every one of her Marines killed.

And now I get to meet the infamous Lieutenant Promise Paen. Perfect.

The colonel hit the head and doused icy water on his face. He pushed up the sleeve of his blouse, changed his A-patch, and righted his trousers. His short-waist jacket fit squarely across his broad shoulders. Out of habit he spun the onyx star cluster on his dog collar, which shone brightly against the backdrop of his white blouse and navy-blue regular-dress uniform. He buttoned his jacket and tucked his beret under his arm. Satisfied, he left his cabin, turned toward the bow of the vessel, and walked ten meters to the lift marked LD3-SSC, which promptly welcomed him. “Main deck.”

 

Five

APRIL 19
TH
, 92 A.E., STANDARD CALENDAR, 1016 HOURS

REPUBLIC OF ALIGNED WORLDS PLANETARY CAPITAL—HOLD

RNS
NITRO,
PARKING ORBIT WHISKEY-ECHO 6