Apollo's Outcasts (27 page)

And that was the beginning of my career as a citizen soldier.

Officially, the Rangers were still a peacetime outfit; Lunar Search and Rescue was supposed to be doing just that, nothing more. Everyone knew better, though. We'd been drafted to fight a war
that none of us wanted but which was being thrust upon us anyway: thirty-six men and women, charged with protecting Apollo from a foe which, only a few weeks ago, we would have considered to be our friend. If I still had any illusions that I was never going to have to go into combat, they evaporated as soon as I was given a gun.

At first glance, the HK-11 lunar carbine looked like an ordinary military assault weapon, save that it had only a rudimentary butt. The resemblance pretty much ended there. In fact, it operated on different principles entirely. A round ammo drum that jutted out from below its stock contained thirty rounds of what were called bullets, but which were actually 9mm hollow-point projectiles that were fired by a miniature electromagnetic catapult contained within the barrel. Sort of like having a little magcat of my own. This meant that the gun had virtually no recoil: no gunpowder, no kick. The butt was there only to brace and balance the weapon.

Although a sight was mounted above the barrel, it wasn't meant to be used visually. No one wearing a moonsuit would be able raise the gun high enough to gaze through a normal sight, let alone get a good fix on the target, because his helmet faceplate would get in the way. So the gun used a virtual gunsight instead. Once the carbine was interfaced with my suit computer, all I had to do was raise it to my chest and point it at the desired target, and a translucent red crosshairs would appear within my faceplate. When I moved the gun, the crosshairs would move as well, until I had a dead bead on whatever it was I wanted to shoot. I could select laser, ultraviolet, or infrared for the targeting medium.

Once I was ready to fire, I'd curl my index finger around the trigger and the gun would kick out a bullet. And if I kept pressure upon the trigger for longer than two seconds, the carbine would shift to full-auto mode and keep firing at a rate of thirty rounds per minute, until I either relaxed my finger or ran out of ammo.

In theory, the bullets could penetrate a moonsuit's polymer shell, although in actual practice that meant getting a direct hit at ten
feet or less. But helmet faceplates were vulnerable, as were the elastic joints at a suit's shoulders, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, knees, and ankles. We were told to aim for those joints; a head or stomach shot would be instantly fatal, while an arm or leg shot would cripple or immobilize an attacker.

Another target was a suit's life support pack. A direct hit at close range could penetrate the oxygen-nitrogen tanks and cause the suit to lose pressure. However, that would mean shooting someone in the back, and I don't think any of us were bloodthirsty enough to do that. As Mr. Garcia said, few of the Rangers had military experience, so it was hard for most of us to even consider killing another human being. Lunar Search and Rescue was supposed to save lives, not end them. It was particularly difficult for Americans like myself to think that we may have to soon go up against US Marines; their space infantry would probably be the ones sent to the Moon, and I didn't like the idea of shooting someone from my own country.

But Apollo had a couple of things in its favor. Earth lies at the bottom of a deep gravity well, while the Moon is the bottom of a shallow one. This means that any ship that leaves Earth has to climb up an imaginary well before it reaches that place where gravity is no longer an issue. Then it has to fire its engines to order to achieve lunar trajectory, and again to brake for lunar orbital insertion or landing. So a sneak attack was all but impossible; we'd be able to see an assault force coming long before it arrived. The telescopes normally used for astronomical research were aimed at Earth instead, and people were assigned to maintaining a constant vigil.

The other advantage we had was that Ammonius was a natural fortress. Its outer crater wall and dome was virtually impregnable to everything except a missile attack, which the
Blitzgewehr
was supposed to repel, and once its windows were shuttered and airlocks sealed, a strike force would have a very hard time gaining control of the city.

So the inhabitants could hole up in the crater almost indefinitely;
it was the job of the Rangers to make sure that the Marines couldn't get through the airlocks. The fact that there were only thirty-six of us, though, didn't make that task any easier. We could only guess how large an attack force would be, although no one doubted that there would be less than three dozen Marines. No one had ever seriously believed that the Pacific Socialist Union would attack Apollo, and the idea that an ISC country would turn on us was ludicrous. So defense had never been a major priority until now.

Every morning, the Rangers suited up and went outside for combat training. It took several days for most of us to learn how to handle our weapons well enough to even be able to hit the targets set up on our make-shift rifle range. We didn't have a lot of reserve ammunition, though, so our practice sessions were kept short. The rest of the time, we were taught battlefield tactics: how to work as squads, how to mount an assault, how to retreat, how to keep from hitting each other in a firefight. All of which is hard enough to learn in any situation, but even more difficult when you're wearing a moonsuit.

Military training would end around noon, and then we'd return to the crater to replenish our life support packs and tend to the scrapes, cuts, and bruises we'd suffered the past few hours. A quick bite to eat, then it was back in the suits and out the airlock again. Most of the Rangers had been tasked to building temporary fortifications around Apollo--regolith berms, big mounds of moondust plowed into position around the crater and its environs--but Logan and I had our own job: learning everything we needed to know in order to become Second Class as soon as possible.

Here's just a few things I had to master. Celestial navigation, using visible stars and the current positions of Earth and the Sun to figure out where I was. Emergency medical procedures, both in and out of a suit. Repair techniques for all types of pressure suits. How to drive different kinds of rovers in all sorts of lunar terrain. Communication protocols. The proper use of emergency equipment ranging from portable solar cell arrays to life-support tents. How to
recharge a life support pack's air tanks while in the field, and how to slow one's breathing in order to preserve air if extra tanks weren't available. What to do if your suit lost power. How to avoid hypothermia, hyperthermia, dehydration, radiation overexposure, blindness, and panic.

In short, how to stay alive on the Moon, as well as preventing someone else from dying. "Failure Is Not An Option" was the Ranger motto, but along with it was an unwritten corollary: the other guy's life is more important than your own. Given a choice between saving your skin and saving someone else's...well, there was no choice. If you had to die gasping for air so that another person could continue breathing for one minute longer, then that's what you'd have to do. If you don't like it, then don't become a Ranger.

I was beginning to wonder if I should have stuck to pushing a broom.

Billy was my instructor, just as Nicole was teaching Logan. The four of us went out together, but then we'd go our separate ways, each pair keeping within sight of the other but otherwise not having much contact. By then, I'd given up on Nicole; we were still friends, but it was obvious that she and Logan were steady. Probably just as well. I didn't have time for a girl, not with the pressure I was under to be ready for my walkabout in just a couple of weeks.

Logan and I had never had that little chat we'd promised each other. Perhaps we should have. Our rivalry over Nicole was over, but there was still some lingering resentment. We still got along well enough to work together, but we'd let things fester for too long. We'd pretty much stopped talking to one another, and it could no longer be said that we were best friends.

It may have been just as well that things worked out that way. After awhile, I noticed that Nicole wasn't pushing Logan very hard. When he screwed up during training, she often let him get away with it, showing him a shortcut that would allow him to get through that particular exercise with a minimum of effort. They didn't seem to be
very serious about training; they would return to the airlock while Billy and I were still at work. It was clear that Nicole didn't want to knuckle down on her new boyfriend, and while she might be turning in satisfactory progress reports, I wondered how much he was actually learning.

On the other hand, Billy was relentless. No breaks or easy-way-outs, and any second chances he cared to give me were not to be wasted. If I did well, he'd say, "Not bad...let's see you do that again." But if I made a mistake, he'd snarl, "Stop messing around! Get it right or I'm bagging you!" It was an insulting and demeaning way to get through training, but I knew that if I wanted to keep Billy's respect, I'd have to earn it.

The long lunar night stretched on, and I seldom had a chance to do anything except train, eat, and sleep. But when the light of the rising sun touched the mountain peaks on the east side of Ptolemaeus, I received a brief message from Mr. Garcia: S
OLO
EVA
EXCURSION SCHEDULED FOR
11.16.97. R
EPORT TO
A
IRLOCK
7
AT
0800
FOR SUIT-UP AND CHECK-OUT
.

In other words, I'd completed my Third Class training. Tomorrow morning, I would take my walkabout.

That was a total surprise. Only yesterday, Billy had busted my chops over my failure at sealing a crack in a suit's lithium hydroxide canister. If you'd heard the way he scolded me, you would've thought that I was the most useless individual to ever set foot on the Moon. Figuring that there must have been a mistake, I went down to the ready-room, expecting another twelve hours of fun and games with Billy.

But he wasn't there. Logan was climbing into his moonsuit while Nicole patiently waited for him. He scowled at me when I walked in, but it was Nicole who spoke first. "Hey, Jamey, congratulations!" she said, raising the faceplate so that she could talk to me. "I hear you're going walkabout tomorrow."

"Yeah, sure, I guess so." I shook my head in confusion. "I got a memo from the Chief telling me that's what I'm supposed to do, but..."

"No one told you that you're through training, right?" She grinned. "No one ever does. That's the way we do it in the Rangers. Everyone passes, because..."

"'Failure is not a option.' Right." I looked over at Logan. "Hear that? I'm going walkabout tomorrow."

"Yeah...good for you." He didn't look at me, but instead concentrated on adjusting his wrist controls. "Have fun."

"When are you...?" I began, then stopped myself. If he'd also received notification from Mr. Garcia that he was going walkabout, he would have told me. But he wasn't ready for that yet, and no one was going to send him out on his own until they were confident in his chances of success.

"Soon enough," Logan murmured. "Good luck."

"Thanks." I didn't know quite what to say. "I'm sure you'll..."

"What are you doing here?" Billy demanded.

I turned around to see him leaning against the ready-room door, holding a half-eaten sandwich he'd brought with him from the commissary. "Didn't you get the Chief's memo?" he asked, regarding me as if I was an unwelcome visitor. "You're doing your walkabout tomorrow. Get out of here."

"Huh?" I blinked, not quite understanding what he'd said. "You mean...?"

"There's nothing more that I can show you." A wry smile. "Well, at least not for now. You're still a provo so far as I'm concerned. But--" an indifferent shrug "--if the Chief says you're ready, who am I to argue? Go home and get some rest. You'll need it."

There didn't seem to be anything else for me to say or do. I would have liked to talk to Logan, but not while Nicole and Billy were around. Besides, he didn't seem to be inclined to speak with me just then.

I'd jumped ahead of him. And he wasn't happy with me about that.

I left the airlock and headed back upstairs. For the first time in months, I was free to do whatever I wanted. No school, no Ranger training; I had a day all to myself. But by the time I got off the elevator, I was already bored.

I hadn't seen much of Melissa in the last couple of weeks, so I decided to head over to Ag Dome 2 and pay her a visit. Over dinner the other night, she'd told me about an experimental crop that was being cultivated in the aeroponics farm: chettuce, a hybrid form of lettuce that tasted a little like cheddar cheese. Meatless hamburgers and tacos were a favorite among loonies, but until now they'd had to do without cheese. There were no cows on the Moon to provide fresh milk, and who puts goat cheese on a taco? Chettuce was a bioengineered solution to this culinary problem.

Perhaps Melissa could let me try some; I was curious to see if it was as disgusting as it sounded. To kill time, I decided to hike across the crater floor instead of taking a bicycle or cutting through the sublevels to the tunnels leading to the ag domes. It had been quite a while since I'd walked through the solarium; although it was late autumn back on Earth, in Apollo it was always summer. Warm sunlight streamed in through the circular window at the top of the dome. Wrens and robins chirped amid the branches of stunted shade trees, while bees and hummingbirds flitted around the cultivated flowerbeds. The solarium was a comfortable oasis, a miniature Earth surrounded by the harsh and airless desolation outside.