Marine Cadet (The Human Legion Book 1) (29 page)

“Why?” Arun asked. “What do you think we’re carrying?”

“I assumed they were machine parts,” said Springer.

Hortez shrugged. “They might be.”

“And they might not,” Arun finished for him. “Spill!”

“It’s just rumors,” said Hortez reluctantly. “Talk of black market smuggling.”

“Smuggling? Smuggling what?” Arun said. “We get everything we need. Don’t the Hardits?”

“Arun, Arun.” Springer slapped him on the back. She was laughing, the sound a balm for Arun’s bruised spirits. “It’s not that we have everything we need so much as you lack the imagination to want for anything.”

When Arun showed no sign of understanding, she added: “How did you think the corporal’s hair got to be that shade of blonde? There aren’t any hair salons in the hab-disks, you know.”

“There’s always a favor that can be done,” added Madge. “A little surplus to be creamed off, help to be given. A thousand ways to make life a little more bearable. And all of that is tradable.”

“The Hardits are at the heart of it all,” said Hortez. “It’s in their nature. They’re natural traders. You gotta see it from their point of view. They were here for a very long time before the Jotuns and we humans showed up. We’re like unwelcome guests to them.”

“I kinda picked up on the unwelcome part already,” said Arun.

“Right,” said Hortez. “And guests don’t go nosing around in the hidden corners of someone else’s home. Not if they know what’s good for them.”

“All right, we’ll do it your way for now,” said Madge. “Now get off your butts and start moving. If we’re to keep down to Hortez’s pace, we can’t afford to hang around.”

On the far side of Trollstigen Pass, they came to a crossroads. To right and left the road hugged the foothills of the towering mountains. A simple track ran before them as straight as an energy beam, a gravel and dirt causeway leading to Agri-Facility 21, known by most of the humans as the Alabama Depot.

Although they were still in deep shadow, they could see the landscape opening up before them, the sides of the track sloping down into fields of wheat, maize and barley that waved in the gentle breeze like a golden greeting.

Indeed, it did feel as if the land were welcoming their return, even the fresh outdoor smells were inviting. All of them had been here before in happier times, as novices hiking with heavy packs or running in powered suits or unencumbered, running in nothing more than fatigues and peaked caps.

Arun knew the track carried on far beyond Alabama, as far as the timber plantations. The soil was richer there – or at least different, suitable for growing crops for Detroit’s non-human residents. There was Gloigas, long-haired, twisting brown columns crowned with lush purple leaves. And the lurid green, but apparently nutritious, roots of the Tarngrip, which snaked through the undergrowth, trying to ensnare slow-moving limbs, trapping them before slowly crushing the life out of them through hydraulic pressure. The Tarngrips were far too slow to trap a human, at least while you were awake. The carnivorous plants were native to the same homeworld as the Hardits, a planet that had little oxygen in its thin atmosphere, which meant most things moved in slow motion.

Tarngrips were on the Universal Food list. Which meant everyone in the White Knight logistical supply system had their digestions adapted to consume them, human Marines included. The times when he’d seen the contorted faces of other novices forced to eat boiled Tarngrip was all Arun needed to understand why Universal Foods were more usually called
Ugly Foods
.

Arun knew all these crops well because he’d run through them, armored boots trampling great swathes through the crops to the consternation of any Agri-Aux nearby.

Instructor Rekka had once told them: “Get to know every culvert, every bank, ridge and irrigation ditch. One day you might be in them, SA-71 braced on their lip, waiting for the enemy assault to draw nearer before opening fire.”

Emerging from the shadows, the bright sun swiftly warmed their spirits, despite following Hortez’s advice to pull their stretchy woven hats so far over their faces that the fabric covered their eyes. As they counted down the klicks to Alabama, they peered at the world through gaps in the weave.

“In your hab-disks you go through the shower block every day,” Hortez explained. “It’s for decontamination and protection as much as hygiene. The spray you’re given at the end is more than a dumb protective shield. Embedded into the spray oils are scavenger nanites that suck the ionizing radiation out of the air. Neutralizes it so it doesn’t screw with your cells. I had no idea, but the Hardits are eager to explain that to us.”

“If it works so well,” said Springer, “surely it wouldn’t take too much to give you Aux the spray too.”

Hortez took a minute to bring himself to reply. “Sushantat told us once. You’ve yet to meet her. She’s effectively in charge of the Aux on Level 5. She explained that the effects of the radiation take around a decade to take a hold of your body. Tumors, organ failure, deformed children. They don’t want to send you lot off to war, only to have you riddled with cancer by the time you get to fight. So they give you the scavenger nanites. But the Aux? Why bother? The oldest Aux I ever heard of was 29 Terran standard years. Giving us the protective spray would not be difficult or expensive. But our lives have such little value that they’re worth even less than the spray.”

“Sorry, man,” mumbled Arun, his sentiments echoed by Springer and Madge.

Except the girls don’t feel the same as me
, thought Arun.
They aren’t responsible for putting Hortez here.

It was time, he decided, to raise the matter that he dreaded most.

“Look, Hortez. I landed you in the drent because I frakked up in that exercise with the Trogs. I’m so sorry. I never knew it would be so bad here.”

“Stow it, McEwan,” replied Hortez. “You tried apologizing before. Don’t try again.”

“Fair enough. But I’m going to do more than say sorry. I’m going to ask our new company staff sergeant – Bryant – to have me swap places with you. It should be me festering in this hellhole with those sadistic monkeys.”

Hortez glared at Arun who had to look away. Arun could look the Hardits in the eye, but not his friend whom he’d let down so badly.

“Do you really think this Bryant would swap us?”

“Probably not,” admitted Arun. “But I don’t know that for sure. I can always try.”

“Make sure you do,” said Hortez. He froze, as if distracted.

“Get off the road,” shouted Madge. “Now!”

Arun scrambled down the bank but lost his footing, rolling down and crashing into the waist-high wheat stalks. He turned to see what had spooked Madge. In the distance, back up the way they’d come, they saw a dust cloud and heard a rhythmic pounding. They didn’t need image enhancers to know what that was: an approaching squad of Marines, thundering toward them at over 30mph.

He heard a cry of frustration and noticed Springer struggling with her trolley. She’d activated hover mode and was trying to guide the trolley down the bank.

Except the load was too heavy.

Springer was pulling back on the handles, trying to slow its fall, but all she managed was to chase it down the bank.

Arun got to his feet, and rushed into the path of the trolley, hoping to push from the front, but its momentum was too great. The load knocked him flying, forcing Arun to roll away desperately, only inches from being crushed.

The trolley righted itself and came to a stop, hovering cheerfully a meter off the ground as if nothing was the matter. The wooden crate that had been on top snapped its straps and kept going, tumbling over once, twice, three times, screaming as the wood splintered and tore at its fastenings.

“Are you all right?” Arun helped Springer to her feet.

“I’m not hurt, Arun. But my crate…”

The crate had come to rest with one corner buried deeply into the soft soil, and half its sides shattered.

Arun glanced at the onrushing Marines. They looked like a wavefront of a silver sea, about to crash upon them like a tsunami. The pure gold color of their ACE-2 battlesuits was distinctive enough that Arun had no need to see insignia close up. These were veterans of the 420th, led by two Jotun officers. To deviate around the abandoned hover-trolleys would be far beneath their regimental dignity. Any second now the tsunami would break over their abandoned cargo.

The Hardits had given them a simple task, and they had already failed.

——

The Jotun officers – a captain and a major – showed no signs of noticing the trolleys blocking their way. Cantering like centaurs on four of their six legs, massive crested heads held high, they leaped cleanly over the first obstacle without breaking stride. As their trajectory brought them down onto the second trolley, they threw their front limbs in front of them. Their hands morphed, their armored gauntlets matching every change. What had been human-like five fingers and an opposable thumb, thinned, lengthened and bifurcated repeatedly. They now looked more like waving, long-tendriled fronds held out to either side.

The rubbery fronds hit the cargo crate, pressing down against the wood like organic springs. The tension in their hands sprang back, propelling the aliens cleanly over the second trolley and the third too.

As the major and captain cantered away, a brace of senior human sergeants reached the obstruction. Running at this speed in powered armor was a skill the G-2 cadets of Arun’s year had yet to master. When they had been out here as novices in their training armor, the motion had been more of a lope than a run. Not only were these Marines running, but the sergeants followed their officers’ example and tried to leap over the abandoned trolleys.

Battlesuit AIs interpreted their wearer’s intentions, amplifying human muscle power many-fold. The Marines soared over the first trolley like shells from a howitzer.

Out in the emptiness of space, the battlesuits could speed through a battlefield at crushing velocities. The gravity well of a planet enfeebled the propulsion units in the suits so that their flight capability was reduced to a short hop, such as over a tank.

But the officers hadn’t activated their suits’ flight capability and so neither could the humans who followed. They used augmented muscle power alone.

As the next rank of Marines jumped into the sky, the sergeants began to fall. The air pushed back against their bulky shapes, and the planet’s gravity grabbed at the legs of their heavy armor.

Four hundred pounds of bone, muscle and poly-ceramalloy battlesuit bore down on the middle cargo crate through the armored ball of the sergeant’s foot. Arun heard the crack and whine of splintering wood, but the wooden box was strong. It held.

For now.

Arun’s brain had been trained and engineered to estimate troop numbers. Around five hundred Marines – three companies of veterans – were yet to clear the abandoned carts, and each one would follow their officers’ example and go through rather than around.

They watched as Marines flashed past relentlessly, the smart surfaces of their battlesuits, which could make them invisible when stealthed in space, were now set to shine in regimental gold, with company markings proudly displayed on helmets and squad markings on the knee segments. Streamers tied to knees and elbows flew behind in their slipstream. These were smartfabric ribbons of pulsating color that no cadet or Marine in the 412th would be seen dead in. At least not on a planet’s surface where these streamers were no more than a gaudy affectation.

Wearing ribbons in void combat was a different matter entirely; even the 412th trained for that. Inertia would spool out enormous ribbons of reflective and radar hard material behind Marines maneuvering through the vacuum. The possibility of becoming entangled with your squadmates’ ribbons was a terror balanced, in theory, by the confusion they sowed in enemy targeting systems.

The Marines might only be from the 420th, but they still looked magnificent.

“Does the sight make you proud?” asked Hortez who had been watching Arun.

His companions looked at each other uneasily.

“I used to dream of being one of them,” Hortez continued. “Of earning my own personal device to wear on the thigh of my suit. A bolt of lightning perhaps, or a noble hart. I wanted to belong. I used to think that was my inevitable destiny, an inalienable right. But only the best earn the right to be a Marine. Not everyone makes the grade.”

“Stop it!” said Springer. “Don’t you ever feel sorry for yourself. I know you’re better than that. It’s only bad luck that brought you here. You still deserve to be one of them.” She pointed at the Marines clearing the abandoned carts.

“Sorry,” replied Hortez. “You’re right. But the end result is still the same. I didn’t make it. There’s no way back.”

“I never bought into the whole Marine mythos,” said Arun, wincing when a boot finally stove in the middle crate. “I’m not saying you’re better off as you are, man, but life for a Marine isn’t all shiny armor and the comforting heft of an SA-71. The reality is that you get stuffed into a cryo box and stored in a ship’s hold. If you’re lucky, then you might survive long enough to be awoken just in time to die in battle.”

Arun was not a great liar. No one believed him. Even the steady thumping beat of armored feet pounding the ground sounded like the accelerated heartbeat of a super-being. The sight of the Marines, the hammering thump of their boots and faint whine of the armor muscle-amplification, even the sweaty smell vented from the exhaust outlets: everything about them filled his heart with pride.

“There’s no shame buying into the dream of becoming one of them,” said Hortez gently. “I did. But even if you think pride in your Marine unit is just macho dung, or Jotun brainwashing, it’s still better to die young as one of them than live a lifetime as an Aux. Even if it’s a short lifetime.”

Arun grimaced. What could they say? Fate had dealt Hortez a hand of utter drent and they all knew it. “If I can, man, I’ll get you out,” he said. “I don’t know how but I’ll try.”

Arun looked at Hortez, trying to let the sincerity show in his face, but his friend stared back with flinty disdain.