Tombstone (5 page)

By the time I got to Tombstone, I was a different person. 
Marine training is long, longer than anything I’ve ever heard of for any
military organization.  Part of that is because our wars are complex.  No
uneducated conscript can survive on a 23rd century battlefield.  The suite of
weapons and equipment we utilize is extensive, and it takes considerable effort
to master.  But the Marine program is as much about evolving the individual as
teaching him to shoot and walk around in armor, and that is what really takes
time.

I adapted well and really excelled at training.  I’d never
felt a part of anything meaningful, and when I had the opportunity to join a
team that truly worked together, I jumped at it.  Some of the others in my
trainee class took longer.  Many of them had even worse backgrounds, and they’d
sunk deeper into depravity than I had.  Bitterness and hatred hadn’t entirely
consumed me as it had with some of them.  I was an outlaw, yes, but never a
bloodthirsty one.  I stole to survive, and later to live comfortably, but my
crew didn’t murder the people we robbed.  I'd killed the supervisor, but he had
abused me for some time, and I was sure he had been responsible for my father's
death.  Some of the others in my class at Camp Puller were real hardcases,
broken people who had been driven to do some truly horrible things to survive
and to lash back at the world.  It took time to repair that kind of psychic
damage, and that’s part of the reason Marine training is six years.

Now I'd made my first drop, and I'd fought my first action. 
I'd fought several, in fact - I was a full-fledged Marine.  My crimes were
gone, pardoned away in exchange for my service.  I could go back to Earth when
I mustered out if I wanted to, and I would be free from any consequences of my
past.  But even then, Earth was already starting to seem like something far
away and long ago.  I didn't realize it at the time, but the concept of home
was changing for me.

We'd been on one mission that particularly made an
impression on me.  Three of our troopers were out on patrol, and they ended up
cut off by superior enemy forces.  The lieutenant didn't hesitate - he mustered
the whole platoon and we scrambled out to try to link up and get them back
home.  The Captain was in on it too, sending a group of snipers and a heavy
weapons team from base Delta-3 to assist us.  We fought for four hours, the
lieutenant pushing us relentlessly the entire time.  In the end we broke
through, but too late to save them.  They were all lost.

The mood was somber when we got back to base.  We were in a
profession where people got killed - there was no way around that.  Yet we
mourned every one of them, and every trooper in the platoon wondered how he'd
failed, what he could have done differently.  I felt the loss too, and the
futility of our fruitless, costly fight to save them.  But then I realized it
wasn't fruitless.  Mathematically it was, of course.  Had we abandoned them we
would have had three casualties instead of the eight we ended up with.  But
combat isn't decided solely by numbers or equations; it is a test of morale, of
the willingness of men and women to fight, sometimes under impossible
conditions.  Those three Marines died on that plateau, but they were never
abandoned by their comrades.  They knew to the last that their brothers and
sisters were fighting to reach them...and the troops struggling to break through
saw how the Corps treats its own.  If it was them next time, trapped and cut
off, they knew at least that they would not be cut loose, that no officer was
going to make a cold blooded decision that they were expendable.  The Corps
stood by its own...wherever, whenever, whatever the cost.

I'd been on-planet for five months, and I wasn't one of the
new guys anymore.  Combat on Tombstone wasn't cheap, and we'd lost eighteen of
our fifty since we'd landed.  Half of them were wounded, all thanks to the
armor's impressive repair and trauma control mechanisms.  Our suits were a hell
of a lot better than the Caliphate's in that regard – their nanotech was way
behind ours.  In a place like this, a wound was pretty much a death sentence
for one of them. 

We evac'd the wounded on the transport that brought us
replacements.  We had eighteen fresh new faces wandering around the base, and I
was in the unfamiliar territory of mentoring the new people.  Somewhere in five
months of serving in hell I'd become not quite a veteran, but at least
seasoned.  I knew my way around this miserable planet and how to survive its
many hazards, and I was determined that none of these 18 newbs would go out and
get themselves killed doing something stupid.  Others had done that for me, and
some of those people were now dead or shipping out to the hospital on
Armstrong.  It was my turn, my debt to start repaying.

We'd just celebrated the new year...the new Earth year, of
course.  A year on Tombstone was only 61 Terran days, and just over 20 of the
73 hour local days.  I'd never celebrated the new year before I'd become a
Marine, but we had a nice little party in base Delta-4 and welcomed the new
additions to the platoon.  Six of them were experienced and were transferring
from other units or the hospital.  The rest were fresh from Camp Puller, the
class that was half a year behind mine.

There was a lull in the action as the new Earth year began. 
Both sides were building up and replacing losses, and while we did frequent
patrols there was little action.   There was one interesting thing, though.  We
managed to intercept and decode a Caliphate message that gave the exact arrival
date of their next convoy.  I'd been with the patrol that caught the
transmission, and we were pretty excited for a while.  Taking out a couple
hundred of their troops while they were still in the launch bays would save us
a lot of trouble down here.  But in the end nothing came of it.  Alliance Gov
considered engaging enemy forces in space to be an unacceptable escalation. 
Neither side had attacked the other's naval forces, and they weren't looking to
start now.  Everyone knew that full-scale war was coming, but nobody was ready
for it yet.  It was frustrating fighting a war that you weren’t allowed to win,
but there was nothing we could do about that.

I ended up going out on patrols with most of the new
people.  The lieutenant was insistent that the fresh arrivals pair up with a
more senior private any time they went outside.  It was something that stuck
with me years later when I was in command of various units.  You want to keep
your new people under the command of the most experienced non-coms available,
of course.  But it really helps to have them paired off with an experienced
private, regardless of how good a team or squad leader they have.  Human
psychology is complex thing, and there are considerable differences in how a
person interacts with a command figure and how they function with a peer at
their own level. 

This was shaping up to be a significant battle.  It started
small, just two patrols running into each other.  They exchanged some fire, and
that would have been the end of it, but neither side backed down.  The
Caliphate sent in reinforcements and pushed back our forces, taking the main
ridge. 

It looked like worthless ground to us, but the captain
wasn’t going to give it up without a fight, and we got the orders to suit up. 
We were the farthest away, and when we got there the entire company was formed
up, covering a front stretching over five kilometers.  They had already
counter-attacked and retaken the ridge when we arrived, and we fed into the
line, allowing the units that had taken losses to condense their frontages.

The ridge was named after the megacorp that claimed the
mining rights in the area.  McCraw Resources was a huge mining concern that had
a number of places named after it, including an entire planet on the Rim.  It
was one of several Alliance companies mining on Tombstone, though the only
difference between them was which Corporate Magnate managers got the richest. 
A McCraw may have started the company centuries ago, but now it was basically
owned by the government, just like all the megacorps.  The Magnates who ran it
stole what they could, but in the end they answered to Alliance Gov.

We dug into our new positions, and the lieutenant directed
the placement of our SAWs and SHWs.  He was very careful about arranging them
to maximize their fields of fire and also to provide mutual support.  Any enemy
attack against one of our heavy weapons would come under fire from at least two
others.  It made an impression on me how he obsessed over the placements
himself rather than just ordering the teams to deploy.  That stuck with me
years later when I was in his position.  I’ve always believed that low-level
heavy weapons are a huge key to victory, and that belief started that day.

The enemy had fallen back but not withdrawn entirely. 
They’d fortified another ridge about five klicks north, and it didn’t look like
they were planning to leave.  Their position didn’t look quite as good as ours,
but it was strong enough to discourage an attack, at least until we were
heavily reinforced.  We exchanged sporadic long-ranged fire, but it was mostly quiet
for about six hours, with occasional excitement when someone got careless and
was picked off by long-ranged fire. 

It’s hard to stay alert for hour after hour, especially when
nothing much is happening.  The suit can keep you pumped up on stimulants, but
you have to be careful and save that for when you really need it.  Otherwise
you end up strung out, and you lose as much effectiveness as you gain.  But you
still have to stay sharp.  Snipers can pick off a target at five klicks, no
problem, and we’d lost two people already because they let their guard down. 
Newbs were particularly vulnerable, but I’ve seen veterans lose their focus for
a few seconds too, and that’s long enough to get scragged.

Finally, we got intermittent scanning reports on approaching
enemy forces.  Normally, we’d have a complete breakdown of anything so close,
but on Tombstone you generally had less information than you wanted, and even
that was unreliable. 

Fresh troops meant they were planning another attack, and
the lieutenant made his way all along the line, checking and adjusting our
positions.  Physical proximity really wasn’t necessary for communication, but
still, it was a morale boost to have him crouching next to you while he spoke.

“How’s everything, Jax?”  He put his hand on my back, a
seemingly pointless gesture among armored troops, but one that was nevertheless
somehow reassuring.

“I’m good, sir.”  I turned to face him, another bit of
instinctive body language that had dubious utility when suited up.  In non-combat
situations I would have saluted him, but the Corps dispensed with the clunky
salutes among armored troops in battle.  You could barely manage it in a
fighting suit in normal conditions.  No one wanted a casualty because a Marine
was struggling to salute in armor and got his head blown off.  And there was no
point in advertising where the officers were.

“You’ve come along well, Darius.”  His voice was gentle,
sincere.  “You were nervous as a cat when you first got here, but you are calm
and cool now.  You’ve been great with the new guys, too.  You’re a valued
member of this platoon.  And you ended up with quite a first assignment.  My
first was a cakewalk, a quick raid that was over in six hours.”  He paused for
a second.  “You’ve taken all Tombstone could throw at you.  I’m proud of you.”

I got a little choked up.  This was the first time anyone
had really told me I was worth anything.  Except my father, of course, but that
doesn’t count.  I already felt at home in the platoon, but this sealed it.  “Thank
you, sir.”  I hesitated, trying, not terribly successfully, not to show too
much emotion in my voice.  “That means a lot.”  I’d have followed that man
anywhere.  I’d drawn the short straw getting posted to Tombstone, but I swear
there wasn’t a better commanding officer in the Corps than the one I got.

“Carry on.”  He crouched down and started over toward
Private Samms, about 100 meters to my right.  He stopped for a second and
turned back toward me.  “And stay low.”  His head snapped back forward and he
was on his way.  I had a minute or two to think about what he had said and then
all hell broke loose.

My AI warned me about three seconds before the first
explosions…grenade and mortar fire.  I instinctively crouched lower just before
I was pelted with dirt and shattered chunks of rock.  The grenades weren’t too
bad; we had good cover, and they had to drop one right next to you to cause
serious damage.  The mortars were another matter.  The rounds coming in were
heavier than the usual ones; if one of them hit within twenty meters, you’d
better have good cover between you and it.

Fortunately for me, they were concentrating the mortar fire
to my right, and the worst thing I had to deal with was a grenade landing
behind me.  It covered me with debris and caused some minor damage to my
external sensors, but all things considered, I got off light.

We returned fire with grenades, but ours were no more
effective than theirs against troops in heavy cover.  They had the exclusive on
heavier ordnance right now, and it occurred to me that mortars that big were
usually battalion level assets.  The Caliphate called their battalions
tac-forces, and they were about 35% larger than ours.

“Ok, platoon…”  The lieutenant’s voice, calm but urgent. 
“…we’re looking at a major attack incoming at any time.  I just spoke with the
colonel…”  Holy fuck, I thought…the colonel!  He was the planetary theater
commander…the top dog.  Something big must be brewing.  “…and we’ve got support
inbound.  But we might have to hold out for a while against tough odds.”  He
paused.  “I told him he could count on us.  Now you’re not going to make a liar
out of me, are you Second Platoon?”