Postal Marine 1: Bellicose (3 page)

“No, Gunny. I—”

“What you just said is you can't believe something I just said. That means you're calling me a liar. This is a training session, Bophendze. I don't lie in training.”

How did he know who I was?
Then he noticed that Gunny Chrachen's visor was down. Bophendze scarcely had time to respond, let alone figure out how the gunny's voice carried through the gunny's visor. “I don't mean to call you a liar. I just—.”

“Stow it.” The command of the gunny's voice froze him in place. He paused long enough for the echo to finish bouncing around the compartment. “Marines, this is what we like to call a teachable moment. You might have said it, but I'm pretty certain your eleven peers are thinking it. I'm going to put this to bed right now. What I want you to do is stand over there.”
Chrachen
pointed toward the hangar's main exterior hatch.

Bophendze felt like a complete idiot, but he knew any protest would only serve to upset
Chrachen
more. He slowly walked in the direction he was told to, looking at a few of his peers. Most of them had were pretending the altercation was not happening. Once he got in the general area of where he was told to stand, Bophendze turned to face
Chrachen
.

Bophendze scanned the hangar. Most of the hangar crew was gone, or standing in the passage leading to the rest of the ship.
Why are they smiling? Is that guy taking bets?

Chrachen
unslung his rifle. “I told you what this is, right? The
FACR-29
. The PAC would help resist the standard civilian bullet, but we carry the sabot here.”
Chrachen
turned to face Bophendze.

What is he about to do?
Reflexively, Bophendze pulled down his visor with the hope that the visor might offer some protection.

Chrachen
shouldered the weapon, aiming the rifle at Bophendze. The fluidity of his motion spoke of the years of combat experience.

Having a weapon pointed at him terrified Bophendze.
Chrachen
's cool professionalism only enhanced the panic.
Aren't we allowed so many unexamined fatalities?
Hundreds of thoughts flooded his brain, each signaling that he would not outlive the encounter. He tried to fight the thoughts off, hoping that he could not be murdered in front of the other recruits. His survival instincts beat down his rational thoughts. While his mind raced, only a couple seconds had elapsed since
Chrachen
aimed at him.

Bophendze threw his hands up to shield him. He yelled, “No!”

Chrachen
fired a long burst, each bullet striking Bophendze in the chest.

Bophendze watched the HUD's “99” decrease. Instinct took over and his bowels released. He fell to the floor and curled into a ball to shield himself. When the display got down to 24,
Chrachen
stopped.

The rifle's report reverberated off the hangar walls. Bophendze realized
Chrachen
had stopped. He started uncurling himself, feeling that he was unscathed. He did not even experience the pain of being hit. He looked at
Chrachen
in horror.

Chrachen
dropped the magazine from the rifle and loaded a second magazine. He then recharged the rifle, the bullet in the chamber ejecting out. He slung the rifle on his shoulder. He then lifted his visor.

“Men, if you pull your visors down you'll see that Marine Bophendze here has suffered no breach in his armor. Armor integrity is at 24 percent, down to eight percent in the chest. I hit him 29 times, almost fully expending my magazine. They helmet is actually harder than the suit itself. I've never seen a helmet breach in all my years of service. Had he been wearing the PAC, Bophendze here would be dead.”

Chrachen
walked over to him and put his hand on Bophendze's shoulder. He then curled his nose. “What the PAM does not do is shield odors. Bophendze here managed to crap his pants.”

Someone in the hangar crew let out a whoop. Most of them looked upset, but a few started pushing through to a crewman who had all the money.
They bet on whether I would crap myself?

“Go get yourself cleaned up. Take the rest of the day off. And don't you ever doubt me again. I tell you the PAM is good armor, you storm into the breach to prove it. You got it?”

Bophendze nodded. Inside, he despised
Chrachen
.

Bophendze walked out of the hangar and down the passage. He was slightly lost, but he did not care. “What have I gotten myself into?” he muttered.
I'm barely 18, orphaned and got myself recruited into the marines. Just because the Navy wouldn't take me because I was too young. I could have found something on the planet. Instead, I chose to try to get as far away as I could. Only one system away and I'm already a failure. How am I going to recover from this?

As Bophendze wandered aimlessly through the ship, he kept his eyes on the deck. Eventually, he arrived at his berthing area. He ran his fingers through his hair, which had grown slightly from the bald head he had in boot. He started to cry.

“I'm pretty sure Marines aren't authorized to cry.”

Bophendze jerked his head up.
Angel
was sitting in the berthing area.

“Don't let that little scene get the better of you. There's always somebody that gets singled out. Short of combat, It's the only way we have of demonstrating confidence in the armor,”
Angel
said. “It's nothing personal. I didn't expect my little trouble maker to be the one that got lit up, though.”

Angel's apology did little to soothe Bophendze's wounded ego. “Why single anybody out? It's not fair. Why not shoot an empty uniform?”

Angel
chuckled. “Bophendze, empty uniforms don't feel. Marines feel, though act like we're ordered not to. What you might not realize is subjecting you to a little ridicule confirmed to the other eleven that that armor will extend their combat survival rate. It's low enough with the armor. Without it we wouldn't even survive the first hatch breach. Besides, combat is just like life—not fair. The sooner you accept that the longer you'll live.”

“You're telling me that I should be thankful?”

“Yes. Actually, you should. You aren't now, which would not be a first. Despite how you feel now, eventually you will thank
Chrachen
. At least you got the rest of the day off.”
Angel
stood and walked past him. He started fanning his nose. “It might take you the rest of the day to clean out that suit, though. Just hose it down and return it to supply for replacement.”

Setting an example or not, I don't care. That wasn't right.
Bophendze did not see the rest of his team for the next two cycles.

Bophendze settle into the ship's routine of cleaning and training. After a month on the
Spaka
, Corporal
Makaan
was assigned the team leader, a position normally reserved for a sergeant. They did a few training exercises where Bophendze found himself dead more often than not. Not long after, Bophendze's cleaning duties increased. The weeks passed Bophendze unnoticed as his days blurred together in tedium.

One morning,
Angel
walked passed the hatch, then came back. “Bophendze, Why are you on your hands and knees?”

Bophendze looked up. “Corporal
Makaan
wants ours to be the cleanest berthing area on the ship, and he said the best way was with scrub brush and elbow grease.”

Angel
shook his head. “You'll never have the cleanest area. Team Four hired a civilian to clean their berthing area. I think she used to work for one of the system's wealthier citizens before she ‘aged out.’” He paused briefly. “She looks like she might be one of the team's mother, now that I think of it.”

“How does that work? Civilians on a combat vessel?”

“Haven't you noticed? The Marines always manage to have a few civilian contractors on board. She probably uses a spare rack in the contractor's area. If they're not complaining, then she's probably trading their silence for her cleaning skills as well. Command hasn't complained about the arrangement.”

“If she's working for a couple teams, then she's probably getting paid more than I am, and this is not my day job.”
Why hasn't
Makaan
not heard of her? She can't be overworked.

Angel
chuckled. “Boph, this is your day job. You do all the odd assignments that need to be done to keep you from getting bored. But, this is the life of a marine. Months of boredom followed by moments of panic. Somebody did a good job lying to you if you signed up for the money.”

Bophendze stopped scrubbing. He sat straightened up, sitting on his ankles, and dropped the scrub brush into the bucket. “I do this all day, every day.”

“Then you're the team chogi. If I were you I'd talk to Makaan about getting back into a training rotation. You're not much of a marine if you spend all your time on your knees.”

Angel's concern continued to amaze him.
I can't believe he's a marine.
“Why are you in the Marines?” Bophendze said.

“Because the Navy kicked me out.”
Angel
fixed his gaze on Bophendze.
Angel
's usual jovial demeanor ebbed.

The gaze and the pause started to unnerve Bophendze. He's like a predator. How could he be an angel?

Angel
kept his gaze. “I was a fighter pilot, but they did not like my style so they mustered me out. I felt I still had a few years of service to give the Emperor so I went looking for the next military employer.”

“A fighter pilot who flies a meat wagon for seventeen years?” Bophendze felt a bit of pride in using the marine slang. Most weapons systems in the Postal arsenal were projectiles anywhere from the frigates 220 millimeter to the battleship's 720 millimeter. Though there were few battleships in the the Postal Service. Missiles were merely self-propelled projectiles. Some of them were “brilliant bombs”—piloted remotely from the mother ship by human pilots. To the typical marine, the troop transports were yet-another-weapon-system, delivering a team of pissed-off marines sent to subdue the bellicose. They called their transports ‘meat wagons’ or ‘meat missiles,’ but not around officers.

“Don't knock it. I've seen more combat as a Postal Marine than I ever dreamed of as a Navy pilot. I love it. The Navy's really only good for massive fleet action combat and orbital bombardments. Marines get into a lot of single ship actions, a few small fleet operations in the lower security systems. I don't know if you've noticed, but the Imperium is the only human faction around with a Navy of any sort.”

“My world went from a small city to a small ship, so there's not much I've seen.” Bophendze said.

“If you ask me, the Navy is overpaid because they under perform. Nobody to fight. If it weren't for their ability to supplement their budget with occupation fees in the outlying systems, the Emperor would likely have cut it to a more manageable force. Besides the meddle in the succession from time to time.”
Angel
shrugged. “I could have stayed in the family business, but I wanted to feel like I was a part of something greater. You're laughing, but I get that in the Marines.”

I guess I did laugh at him.
Bophendze stretched.
Is that why I couldn't find the Navy recruiter? I never understood why there was both the Postal Service and a Navy. It just seems too redundant.

“But I'm not here to talk Imperial governance. Or your find domestic qualities.
Chrachen
received a dispatch that you have an urgent delivery being routed to the Orbital. The ship's not scheduled to arrive there for a few months. It's just inside my shuttle's range, and I'm making a parts run. I told him I could haul you there and back, though it would be a tight fit on the return trip.”

Bophendze felt thrilled by the opportunity to break routine. “Just on the edge of your range? How far's that?”

“Realistically? I can make seventy miles before life support starts to fail. We only have to go fifty-six miles, but the return will take longer due to gravity and the ship's patrol flight plan. We'll be dosing to slow our metabolism. It would be a boring trip otherwise.”

Taking longer means tougher on the life support.
Bophendze remembered the briefing on the drugs used frequently to assist operations. The
sloth drug
would effectively put them to sleep, making the shuttle little more a than a marginally-guided projectile.

“How long is the trip?”

“The shuttle makes 1 mile per hour, so we're looking at about six days each way. We'll spend an some time at the orbital to shake off the drug effects. A chance to break routine for two weeks.”

“Which means we'll be back in time for me to pull my next turn in cleaning.”

“There's a positive perspective.”

Bophendze's head pounded as he walked through the orbital.
I wish he'd told me Sloth gave migraines upon awaking.

Bophendze spent most of his time on his home planet. Only after joining the Postal Marines did he see the inside of an orbital. Now he was in his second one. It was another Postal orbital, though the bulkheads were painted a serene green. More drugs to counteract the other drugs.
I'm not surprised they have drugs to make us more aggressive in combat.

At least the orbital had a map. By the time the migraine started to subside he arrived at the pouch office. There he received the standard tiny package, a cube with one-meter sides.

He looked over the outside of the package, noting the burlap layer remained intact. Then he noticed the video stamp indicating that the package included a virtual meeting. Coming from another system, virtual meetings tended to be one-sided.

The entire Imperial Postal Service owed its existence to the clearly understood laws of nature. Man learned to use folds of realspace to travel through hyperspace to accomplish faster-than-light travel, but in the process had to accept that information itself could not make the jump. That effectively prevented faster-than-light communication and the reliance on ship-based data transfer. That and the assorted trade monopolies linked the systems of the Imperium together and kept the Emperor in power. Reliance on physical data transfer meant that there had to be a force to allow the Emperor to reliably communicate across human space. The Service managed to include peacekeeping activities in its mandate, which allowed a little corruption from time to time.