Welcome to the Marines (Corporate Marines Book 2) (13 page)

W
e arrive back at the complex and are granted the rest of the day off. But we have to stay within our perimeter. Most head off to catch up on the latest shows in the cafeteria. A few hit the gym. I see Mouth comes out of her room in a swimsuit and heads off for the pool that we’ve all seen but never used. I can’t help but check her out as she leaves. She catches me looking as she turns the corner. I wave. She flips me the finger.

I go back into my room and read a little before heading off to sleep early.

I am exhausted but I sleep horribly.

I toss and turn most of the night and when I wake up, I don’t feel rested at all. I feel like I am starting to fall apart. The nightmares that I experienced were not formed at all. It just felt like they were watching me from the side while I waved the machete around. That, and screaming.

I crawl out of bed early and get cleaned up. I have to change my bedding because I had been sweating all night and the acrid smell was disgusting.

Everyone heads off to breakfast and we are served a special meal. The cafeteria sign says, “Congratulations for surviving this far! Here’s hoping you make it the rest of the way!”

After I have a few bites, I leap up and rush to the closest garbage can and puke everything up. It has a horrible aftertaste and I keep spitting to get it out but it isn’t working.

Mouth walks up to me with a dopey-looking grin on her normally questioning face. “Hey, guy? How you doing there? Maybe you shouldn’t eat so much or so fast? Wanna go lie down?”

Then she sits down with a thump on the floor and starts giggling before lying on her side and starts to snore.

I take a step toward her to try to help and more nausea hits me. I puke again and am desperately hoping it will end soon when I realize that no one else has come over to help or say anything.

I start looking around and it’s hard to see, like everything is blurry. Everyone is sitting back in their chairs or has their face planted onto their tables. They are all asleep.

I see a few people have passed out on the floor like Mouth has. At the far end there are blurry people in white coming in with tables and it is so hard to concentrate. I know I have to get out of there.

I turn to stumble back to my room where I can lock myself in and I see Armour. She is standing there with her hands on her hips watching me. Next to her is a guy in a suit. He says something like, “Tougher than you thought, huh, seven?”

Armour doesn’t say anything to him so I could have been mistaken. It’s so hard to think, but I need to run away. The blood is coming back.

She stops in front of me. “You are supposed to be asleep.”

I nod, as she is so right. Then I try walking past her but my legs won’t work and I say, “I have to go before they come. You should run away.”

She shakes her head no and stops me from falling flat on my face. The last thing that I hear from her is, “There is no need to run. You’ll face those monsters later and win.”

She’s partially right. I face them every night. The only thing is, I never win.

Then there is only blackness and I feel like I am floating.

I
was in blackness forever. Then I wake up slowly. I have a bunch of dry old newspapers in my mouth and generally feel achy.

On the positive side, I am really well rested. When I fully wake up, I realize that I feel just great!

Then I realize that I am lying in a strange bed with an antiseptic smell and I am hooked up to all sorts of machines and hoses or tubes.

Before I can start panicking, I realize that I am not alone. As I realize this, someone steps forward. I don’t recognize him except that he is wearing a lab coat. Then the words start making sense to me. “Do you understand me? If you do, please blink twice at a time.”

I start blinking. “Good. Now, can you twitch your toes? Any of them?”

I try twitching my toes and can feel them move a bit.

He leans in and smiles. “That’s just excellent. I’ll have you disconnected in a second.”

He starts fiddling around and then I can hear a door open and someone else comes in. It is another guy that starts playing with my hoses and stuff. In a minute I am disconnected and start to feel normal.

Then I try to move and everything hurts. They both tell me to lie back and then one starts to push my bed while the other picks up a phone and starts talking. I am wheeled into another room where there are a bunch of beds together. I am pushed into the last open space and can see Mouth across the way watching me with a grimace.

As soon as I am wheeled into place, more people come in. One of them is the guy who had come in and then talked on the phone. They all move around the room, carefully picking up these weird helmets and then carefully placing the things on our heads, one after another. They kind of look like a football helmet.

When they come to me and put it on, it feels a lot more restrictive and I have to slow my breathing before I panic.

I can hear a woman’s voice. “Please relax. You are the last group to have finished the upgrade and are likely still a little disoriented. The sim will begin in a second.”

Everything fades away and I am in a large auditorium. Everyone else is there and we are all wearing our body suits. I feel really good, with no aches and still feel rested.

The lights at the front come on, illuminating a stage, and standing there is Armour. She is wearing full Corporate Marine armour with a mag-locked rifle at her side. I can tell it is her because her helmet is off.

She looks out at us and when she talks, her voice booms out like a god’s.

“SIT! Briefing starts now. Keep your mouths shut and listen. We only have a few minutes and this is taking a lot of the facility’s AI. Questions at the end.”

She moves to the side of the podium and waves her hand. A schematic of a human skeleton appears. Next to it is the same skeleton but with musculature. She waves her hand again and another skeleton appears, but this one has wire all over and little nodes. It looks like someone has wired it up like a puppet.

“These are representations of your skeleton and musculature. This last one that looks like it was dipped in metal is what was put into your body. That is a full set of implants. Welcome to the modern world.”

I don’t know why I don’t throw up, because I sure feel like it. We all just stare and then I can hear people starting to talk.

“QUIET!” The noise dies down. “You all volunteered for this program. This is just the next stage of training. To go to deep space, you need to have implants. One day, everyone on Earth will have them. You have just taken the final step. You are now a very valuable asset to the Corporation. The implant sets will allow you to do more work than you would believe, and in armour, the implants will enable you to interact with it so that it becomes a second skin.”

She pauses and looks from one side of the auditorium to the other. Her gaze seems to settle on each one of us for a moment. Is she judging us, or looking for something that we don’t know we have yet?

“This was, in fact, the first set of implants. After we confirm that there are no complications, the second set, which is an easy upgrade, for the Marine package will be put in within an hour. Before you delicate flowers panic, not everyone can adapt to the implants, so if you are below the standard for ability, then you will not proceed. So far I am not aware of anyone who has died because of complications.

“This is the one time that you will be using your implants for now. This is a controlled environment. Your implants will be dialled down until you are ready for armour training.”

She looks around again. “You are wondering why we are here in a sim for the briefing. There are two reasons. One, now you know the quality of an actual sim when you have a current implant set. Two, I didn’t want to deal with any stupid questions or you people crying. Get over it. Everyone back to work! Wakey, wakey!”

As simple as that, the sim ends and I am wearing a helmet again. I am still as weak as a kitten and then someone is taking the helmet off and hanging it back on the wall.

After a second, someone comes back and I am offered a hand by one of these people who don’t talk. I take it and stand up, carefully balancing on my legs, which feel a little weird. After a second the feeling passes and I am okay to walk.

Mouth and the other female have been removed from the room and we are given back our clothes, which we put on.

We are then escorted back to our rooms. We exit a wing that I had never known exists through a tiny side door.

We walk back to our rooms and it is dinnertime. I am suddenly starving and everyone else is as well. Everyone eats a large quantity of food over dinner and then starts yawning, so everyone heads off to their bedrooms. There is no talking whatsoever.

The one thing I have noticed is that there are less people in the cafeteria than there were during our last meal.

I pass out faster than ever and have no dreams.

W
e are woken up even earlier the next morning and go out for a five-kilometre run. Not a walk or a jog. A run. We move out and are up to a fast run within a hundred meters. Almost all of us are limping when we make it back and most have to help each other.

We head back downstairs and get cleaned up and then see the doctors. We have to work out harder than ever to break everything down. Then we will go through strengthening exercises. Over and over.

We are successfully bonding the implants to ourselves and there are no complications. But by the end of nine days, I hate every staff member there.

I’m not sure when it happened, but we had been given the second set of implants or the Marine package sometime in those nine days. I don’t feel any different or better. There are no scales around so I can’t weigh myself but everyone still looks the same.

A
t the break of dawn we are just coming back from a nine-kilometre run. We will then move into the gym and focus on weights in a stamina regimen.

Our plants are working at full capacity, keeping us fit and constantly balancing our routines so that we are hitting the top of our capabilities. Yet we can’t actually use the implants for anything. Everything is regulated for us.

I have never been in such good shape. My reflexes are better than ever; I can crunch out four hundred push-ups and fifty full-arm-extension pull-ups. I have lost any fat that I thought I had and more that I never knew about.

There are, of course, side effects to this. Everyone on course is young and was okay fit at the beginning but after we started catching up with the fitness training program, we stopped being dead tired after training. When you are young, there is only one thing on your mind if you are a guy. Most of the women only have one thing on their mind as well. I think it has been well over six weeks since we started training and it is amazing how good-looking someone can be when you aren’t passing out in class.

There is no fraternization.

So I focus on cold showers and ignore how the body suits only emphasize the female form. A popular meme that pops up is the classic Internet cat with its paws spread and the caption “Dat ASS.”

It isn’t accurate, of course. Every part of the body looks smoking hot in these circumstances.

The cold showers work for a bit, but seeing those who hook up is starting to break that barrier too.

Then the next round of cuts happens. I recognized everyone that was part of the course now. We were down to under fifty. The number was thirty-six. Then the next morning we are at thirty-two.

But it is a couple that we knew had been friendly a great deal, anywhere they could be.

They explain it to us very simply when we start our training day.

The instructor is, as always, cold and factual.

“On every course, people hook up. Rules to stop it are not effective, so we encourage it. You are asking yourself, why? That couple lost their focus and were more concerned with each other than the training going on here. The slip was small.” For just a second as she stops, I almost see a human expression on her face. Almost. “By the time you complete training and are standing there in front of your first ship in full combat armour, the Corporation is going to have spent a little over two hundred and fifty million dollars on you. Your salary is mid-level management level before bonuses.”

The warning chime indicates we are about to use a sim. Then we are in. We are standing on a hill in a park in what looks like a city. There are tall buildings around us and it seems peaceful, except there are no people and there is smoke in the distance and the sounds of weapons discharging.

That weapons discharge is coming toward us fast and it is getting heavier. Even in sims, being shot can hurt like hell. We are all looking around for some cover when the instructor continues talking.

“This is an informational sim; you are not players. You have to realize that your reflexes will be faster than anything human. When you are in combat, your plants will help you move with your powered armour in a way that a professional athlete cannot move naked. Your strength, dexterity, and senses will all be working in overdrive. You can see a hummingbird and it will be moving at normal speed for you.”

The weapons fire is almost on us. But in an information sim, we can get shot all day and it will have no effect. We are observers.

Coming down the main roadway that we are facing is a section of armoured troopers. They are moving fast and darting about, but I only count nine. Coming down the road after them is a planetary army of some sort. Individuals and armoured vehicles are very slowly chasing them down the road.

One of the tanks explodes, taking out a bunch of the infantry that was surrounding it. The advancing enemy force slows down even more.

As they enter the open area, they split into smaller groups. Two of them move to over watch positions covering the roadway they just came down, and the rest split up and start moving to cover other access points.

“All of that means nothing if you make the wrong moves.” Everything seems to slow down just a bit. A laser beam comes in from behind us and hits one of the armoured troopers in the head.

A heavy laser can punch through heavy armour, and this beam is from a siege tank. The armoured body keeps moving because of its previous speed. It takes out two trees to our right. The partner keeps moving to an over watch position and starts firing.

Another one of the armoured troopers stops moving to position and freezes while looking at the body. Then, instead of covering, it moves forward with its weapon down.

“If you freeze up for any reason in an operation you can end up dead.” As the armoured figure moves, a missile comes from another building and strikes it in the back. The missile is outfitted with a penetrator warhead, which blows the armour to pieces. Big, messy, blood-streaming pieces.

“If you freeze up, you also tend to make someone else dead.” The second dead armour’s partner had also stopped and turned away from the forward arc. It starts turning back when lasers start hitting it. Given that they are only scoring the armour, they have to be light hand-held jobs. Then grenades and light rockets start hitting. It starts methodically firing and moving, but a lucky shot has damaged the leg.

The other teams are in some sort of cover and firing back, but from the hilltop I can see a platoon with vehicles engaging the damaged trooper, almost a company engaging the other lone trooper, and from the opposite direction of their access point is an assault company putting down heavy fire.

“Such small units tend to be close-knit, and any loss is hard to take because everyone works together all the time and the failure of one can badly hurt morale and lead to failure of the mission.” With the section taking heavy fire from three sides and harassing fire from a fourth, they appear to have decided to move out.

Armour is incredibly tough, but direct hits can damage it and slow you down.

Four of the armour suits start falling back and again move with a sense of speed that I cannot believe. There is still fire coming from two of the locations.

“Failure of a mission is not acceptable. Losing valuable Corporation resources is not acceptable. You are assets and have a duty and debt to the Corporation.” The four suits are heading off and the last two are doing serious damage. A fireball takes out most of one of the platoons. The rest of the enemy concentrates their fire and destroys the buildings and the two suits of armour.

The enemy advances and consolidates in the square. In seconds they are moving out after the last suits.

The simulation ends and we are in the auditorium again. The instructor looks at us coldly. “That sim was a similar scenario programmed by computers. One of the couples that was dismissed was put in the scenario with their profiles programmed in. What you saw was an attachment that on a mission caused the partner to drop their guard and led to four more personnel being dead.” Those cold eyes sweep over us, rejecting us. “Sex is great. Fuck whoever you want, but don’t get attached and don’t get the rest of your section dead. More, do not get yourself dead.”

That briefing and the sim kills most of the hooking up. Everyone takes the hint and moves to “no attachments,” or at least they think they do.

The next day we deploy for field training. There are still thirty-two of us in the class, so we are officially deployed into four separate eight-trooper sections.

The first half of the course had been in-class. Now it is all fieldwork with lectures in the field.

We are issued unpowered armour, personal weapons, and support weapons. We then begin small unit tactics. We are all in top shape, or so we think. We are dying with the gear in the field. When we deployed, we were carrying seventy kilograms of equipment. Thankfully, when we go tactical, we are allowed to drop our rucksacks and just use our load-bearing gear.

We are going to be armoured bringers of death and destruction, acting as our own little pantheon of gods of destruction, able to take down planetary armies. We are walking around in jungle, desert, Arctic and temperate forests, learning how to navigate by the stars and dead reckoning, how to push forward section attacks while calling down artillery on obsolete communication systems. We are conducting Built Up Area Operations, which means clearing a building. They have us clear a thirty-storey office building!

None of this seems to make much sense, but we spend three weeks pushing forward and doing this.

I have lost a lot of weight and just feel mean all the time. I shot two surrendering soldiers and another trooper gunned down “prisoners” when we had to move out fast when the enemy forces were counter attacking our positions. We are all mean.

Stand-downs are not trusted and we maintain 50 percent over watch as the enemy is likely going to announce a renewal of hostilities by blowing something up or shooting us.

We never once redeploy to anywhere safe. We are constantly in simulated combat. Even during lectures, if anyone slacks off, a random sniper will reach out and touch them.

Being shot with practice ammunition hurts, but usually does not break any bones that are hit. Usually.

We practice anything to do with living in the field, obviously, from personal hygiene to eating and having an invisible hide. Our knowledge base is big and we still keep going. We rappel out of Verters (vertical take off and landing) from different heights. We even jump out of in-atmosphere craft during the day and night.

Finally we are told to disarm and stand down. While we are moved to an airfield, we clean our weapons and equipment. Within two hours, everything is good to go and we turn it back in.

We are all directed to use the shower facilities and given clean uniforms after. Our old ones are taken and dumped into the incinerators.

We are returned to one of the training facilities. On the flight, we all rack out immediately. That hour of sleep is great.

When we land at the facility, we are sent to the main gym where we are handed nutrition bars and water as we go through the door. That tasteless cardboard crap now tastes great and is just chock full of protein and fat. It ends up sitting like a lump in my stomach, but that doesn’t stop me or most of the others from starting to eat another one.

I look around at the survivors. We are at twenty-six out of the initial ninety that we started the class with. There are five wearing braces and supports because of broken bones, and most of us are covered in bruises.

Interestingly, there are the same percentage of females to males as we started with. So we have eight females that have made it through to this level of the training.

During those first few weeks, they were hot as they got super fit. Now after the field exercises, they look like mangy wolves as they eye the power bars. Of course, we all look like that. Strangely, they look even more smoking hot now. A few weeks of field living and after a shower and a minute to think, even the chairs look sexy.

After the last of us has wolfed down a nutrition bar, three instructors walk out and move to the centre of the stage. The lead calls us in and we gather in a semi-circle looking up at them.

I position myself so that I have a clear view of the instructors and also of Kellye. Her dirty-blonde hair has grown out pretty ragged and it gives her a feral look. Even after no food and too much physical activity, she still has her killer curves and I find myself starting to fantasize while waiting. She looks around and catches me watching her and blows me a kiss. I look away.

I wonder what hell is coming now.

The lead instructor is the same woman from the first phase of the course. She is attractive but scarred up and I had not noticed before that she is missing two fingers from her left hand. She has the look of plant communication for a minute and then she focuses on us.

“Congratulations to you all for surviving the selection process this far. You have been through several different phases of training; in-class lecture and theory, field training, and small-unit tactics, as well as extreme conditions.”

Oh, God, this is like an infomercial. I can already feel myself going to sleep on my feet. I give it five minutes before we all pass out. I wonder who hits the ground first.

“Can any of you tell me why you were put through three weeks of field hell with no armour and in ridiculous scenarios?”

The question comes as a surprise and throws me off. The answer “because there are too many of us and you want to fail some of us” comes to mind, but I am not going to be the one saying that out loud. The same statement is going through everyone else’s minds, I am sure.

“The answer is not that we are assholes, nor that there are too many of you still on course so we needed to fail some of you. Corporate will take everyone who can make it through the training. No, your implants are not allowing us to read your minds. Yes, we know what you are thinking when we ask that as we have run a lot of courses and everyone thinks the same initially.”

She moves off to the side of the stage and the other instructors follow. A series of images start flashing up on the screen. I am awake now.

There is our arrival, our sizing, first day of class, working out, implant training, briefings. “First you need to be briefed and know what you are getting into. Next we need to build your scrawny bodies into shape so that you can one day wear armour effectively.” More pictures are flashing up and, OUCH, that’s two people I barely remember from training earlier on having sex and they are really athletic. “We weeded out the weak links.” The same two members that had been having sex in the last clip are pictured now holding hands and looking at each other with gaga eyes. “Then we introduced you to the real world.”

The pictures are now of us in uniforms and non-powered armour firing on ranges, conducting patrols and attacks, making defensive formations, even clearing buildings.