Tombstone (7 page)

I nodded, though it wasn’t all that obvious of a gesture in
armor.  “We made it this far; we’ll make it a year if we have to.”  I said it,
but I wasn’t sure I believed it.  A lot of us hadn’t made it this far, and it
was anyone’s guess how many would get through another seven months on this
hellhole.

I expected him to say something - he always had something to
say - but not this time.  What was there to say?  We were here, and we had a
job to do.  That was all there was to it.  Whether we liked it or not wasn’t
part of the equation.

“I’m getting the shakes.”  He’d switched to direct laser
com.  “The last month, maybe more.”  His voice was serious, more so than I’d
ever heard it.

I let out a short breath, thinking about what to say,
wishing he’d gone to one of the real veterans who might have something wise to
tell him.  But he’d come to me, and we were Marines…we were there for each
other.  Always.  “It can’t be too bad, Sam.  I lost count of how many you
dropped this morning.  It’s not affecting your shooting any.”

“I’ve managed to control it when we’re fighting.  I guess
it’s the adrenalin or something.  Focuses me.”  He paused.  “But it’s bad
before, and it’s starting to get that way after too.  It took me the whole walk
back here to settle down.”  His voice was edgy; he was really worried.

Sam Harden was a decorated Marine who’d been in half a dozen
engagements.  He was sure to be bumped to corporal and given his own team after
this posting.  But none of us was immune to the nerves, the fear.  It gnawed at
you, even as you pushed it aside, and it could come out at any time.  We all
controlled it in our own ways.  Over the years I’ve known guys who had lucky
charms, some who prayed before battle, still others who played different mind
games with themselves.  Some of them focused anger and rage; others relied on a
sense of discipline.

When you started to lose your control, even a little, it
became harder to get it back.  Doubts preyed on your confidence, and eventually
the fear that you wouldn’t be able to regain control added its own pressure. 
Marines, especially veterans like Harden, didn’t like to talk about this kind
of thing, so if he was coming to me it was probably bad.

“Sam, you’re one of the guys who pulled me through when I
got here.  You’ve done it for other guys too…I’ve seen it.”  I was trying to
sound upbeat and supportive, but I really had no idea what to say.  I was so
green I barely knew how I kept myself together.  “This place gets to everybody
sooner or later.  Don’t let it eat away at you.  When it’s important, you’ll be
ready.  There’s no one here I’d rather have backing me up.”

He sat quietly for a minute then he turned and looked at
me.  “Four partners.  Four partners I’ve lost here.”  He looked down at his
feet.

“Sam, that has nothing to do with you.  We’re in a dangerous
business.”  I frowned, though of course he couldn’t see that in armor.  The
next time I heard that jinx bullshit being joked about I was going to have a
talk with whoever started it.  “Not one of them got hit because of anything you
did.”

“I know you’re right.”  His voice was really unsteady. “But
still, I should have been able to do something, kept them safer somehow.”

He really sounded like shit.  I was in way over my head.  My
first thought was, he shouldn’t be in battle right now.  But what should I do? 
I wanted to run to the lieutenant and tell him about this, or at least the
squad leader.  It was the hardest situation I’d run into since I’d been in the
Corps.  Harden had come to me in confidence.  He’d be furious if I ratted him
out.  It felt wrong.  But letting him go back to the line in his current
condition didn’t seem any better.  I talked to him a while longer, trying to
make him feel better, all the while trying to decide what to do.

In the end, I got up and walked away and kept my mouth
shut.  It was a mistake I have regretted the rest of my life.  We were about to
get called back to the lines, and Harden would be dead in two hours, him and
Quincy both.  I was never sure exactly what happened; I think he got rattled
and decided to move the SAW, and they ended up exposed and were chopped up by
enemy fire.  By the time I got over there they were both dead, riddled by half
a dozen rounds each.  They’d had a good position; if they’d stayed put they
probably would have been fine.

Things were hot on the line when they got hit, so I didn’t
have time for grief or guilt.  But a few hours later the situation calmed down
for a while and I just sat on the ground in shock.  My stomach clenched, and I
wretched, though there wasn’t much in my stomach to come up but a little foam. 
My suit’s systems tried to clean up inside my helmet, doing a fairly reasonable
job.

It was my fault; I knew it was my fault.  I didn’t want to
betray Harden’s confidence…I wanted to be a good friend.  So I didn’t tell
anybody he was too unnerved to go back into the line.  I didn’t do anything.

Harden died thinking of me as a friend, but I failed him
when he needed me.  We were more than friends; we were comrades in arms.  I
owed him more than he got from me.  He was my brother, and I didn’t have his
back.  He thought I did, and I thought so too, but that was superficial.  I
could have saved his life, but I didn’t.  A live Harden who hated me the rest
of his life would have been a thousand times better than a dead friend.

I never forgot the lesson I learned that day.

We were in the middle of the third day of the biggest battle
ever fought on Tombstone.  Our estimates of enemy strength on the planet turned
out to be wildly inaccurate.  My distrust of intelligence services, which would
continue to increase at an exponential rate over the years, started that day. 
It wasn’t the last time I’d see bad intel, but it was the last time I’d believe
it.

Not only were we facing more enemy troops than should have
been possible, but we were also up against a tac-force of Janissaries.  We’d
been outnumbered all along on Tombstone - we knew that - but we’d had the
qualitative edge.  My battalion was an elite assault unit, one of the best in the
Corps.  Most of the enemy troops were colonial troops, well-equipped, but
definitely second line.  One on one they had never been a match for us.

But the Janissaries were front line troops, every bit as
elite as we were.  They were the only fighting force with even more training
than we had, since they were essentially bred as soldiers and raised from
childhood in the barracks.  Worse, they were fresh, and we’d been fighting for
two and a half days, beating back every conscript and colonial regular they could
throw at us.  We had half our total strength on the whole planet deployed, but
I still wasn’t sure we’d be able to stop them.

But stopping them wasn’t an option; it was a necessity.  If
we’d fallen back before the battle we could have fortified the surrounding
hills and maintained a strong defensive line.  But if we pulled out now, broken
and beaten, we’d compromise our control over the entire sector…and lose the
most productive mines on the planet.  A defeat here could be enough to shatter
the stalemate on Tombstone.  I wasn’t up in the chain of command, but I didn’t
have to be to know our orders.  Hold at all costs.

I was back almost exactly where I’d been for most of the
last three days…nearly dead center in our line.  The fighting here had been fierce
on the first day, and it looked like it had been just as intense while we were
in reserve.  The dead and wounded had been pulled back, but from the shattered
pieces of armor and equipment I had a pretty good idea the fighting had been
brutal. 

We weren’t back long before we were attacked, but we beat it
back without too much trouble.  That’s when we lost Harden and Quincy.  When
they went down I shifted over, covering a larger frontage.  Corporal Vincennes
and I were the only ones left in the fire team.  We tried to get Harden’s
auto-cannon set up, but it had also been hit.  It might have been repairable,
but not in the field, so it was useless to us.  The corporal set me up just
left of where the cannon had been, and he headed 200 meters to the right.  

We were a laughable defense.  Any serious attack would have
cut right through us, but fortunately the enemy didn’t hit us before we were
reinforced.  The corporal and I had held that forlorn hope for about ninety
minutes before the lieutenant came jogging over with reinforcements.  The
captain had sent up the last of the company reserve, and he cut the frontage
our platoon had to cover.  The lieutenant took advantage to pull some strength
from other sectors to strengthen our weakened center.

He brought the platoon weapons team with him, though only
one of the original crew of three remained.  Langon, the platoon’s technician,
was backing up Private Glenn, and they were handling the thing a man short. 
The medium auto-cannon was a double-barreled hyper-velocity weapon that put out
three times the firepower of Harden’s lighter version.  They set it up right
where we’d had the SAW, though they had to clear some of the rock out to make
enough room.  Fortunately, Langon had the plasma torch, so it only took a few
minutes to dig in.  When they were done, it was in a great spot, in good cover
and able to direct fire on either side of the rocky spur.

The lieutenant also brought Graves, the sniper, and he
placed him in a big rock outcropping just behind our line.  He had the
marksman’s weapon of choice, the M-00, AI-assisted sniper’s rifle.  It was
longer than our infantry weapons and fired a single shot at even higher
velocity and greater accuracy.  The AI interface helped compensate for weather,
visual irregularities, even projected movement of the target.  An expert sniper
could score a hit as far away as ten klicks.

I’d trained on the weapon at Camp Puller, and I’d been
fast-tracked for sniper school based on my performance.  Snipers were all
veterans though, so I couldn’t go right into the training program from Puller,
and I’d been stuck on Tombstone since then.  I expected to go after this
campaign, though things would turn out differently, and I’d never end up being
a sniper.  But I always respected the effectiveness of well-utilized
sharpshooters.

After he’d deployed everyone, picking out their exact
positions himself, the lieutenant settled in directly on my left.  He gave us a
few short instructions and a little pep talk, but mostly he left us alone.  We
knew what we were doing, and we knew what was coming.  The Janissaries would be
here soon, and we’d be waiting for them.

This was the first time I’d faced veteran, elite troops, and
it was a lot different that the colonial regulars we’d been fighting.  They
started out with a heavy bombardment, blasting our entire ridge with rockets
and frag shells.  We had good cover, and I doubt they expected to inflict a lot
of casualties.  But they knew we were tired, and they wanted to rattle us as
much as possible.  They also directed some of the bombardment behind our line,
creating a complication for any troops redeploying or reinforcements moving up.

We returned fire, but we had a lot less ordnance then they
did, and I doubt we accomplished anything but a superficial show of defiance. 
Still, I cheered like everyone else when the captain ordered the company’s
mortars to open fire.  I was still enraged about Harden and Quincy…the guilt
would come, and when it did it would be severe, but right there on that battle
line I wanted blood, I wanted vengeance.

They didn’t fire for long, and about half an hour after
they’d opened up they stopped.  Their lines were silent for a few minutes and
then shells started impacting the plain in front of our position.  The
Janissary mortars were firing smoke shells.  It wasn’t real smoke of course,
though that’s the name we gave it, but a dense radioactive steam used to shield
an attack.  Opaque, it blocked visibility, and the radiation and chemical
makeup interfered with scanners.  The heat of the steam clouds made infrared
and temperature-based scanning useless as well, so the stuff was very effective
at screening an advance.  It was a powerful tool, and I never understood why we
didn’t use it.

This was it.  We knew they’d be coming up behind those
clouds, and that this would be the climactic attack.  Either we’d hold or they
would win.

“OK, Third Company.”  Captain Riklis was addressing the
entire unit.  His voice was steady, and in it I could detect barely controlled
anger.  His blood was up.  This was the first time I’d faced Janissaries, and I
wasn’t aware yet just how much of a rivalry we had with them.  When Marines
faced Caliphate Janissaries there was no quarter even thought of…it was a fight
to the death.  “I know you’re all tired, and we’ve suffered heavy losses
already.  And these bastards are fresh.  This is going to be one hell of a
brawl.”  I really liked that he was being straight with us, not sugar coating
things.  He was rallying us, but with respect.  We were professionals; we knew
the obstacles to victory, and we were ready to face the challenges and win in
spite of them.  “But there is no unit – none! – in the whole damned Corps I’d
rather have under me today.  I know…know with every fiber of my being that
whatever comes through that smoke, Third Company is going to be ready…and we’re
going to wreck it!”

Before I joined the Corps, before I ended up on a battle
line waiting for an enemy to come and try to kill me, I never thought about how
words could affect me.  They were just words, after all.  But when he was done
I was so worked up I’d have faced the entire enemy force alone if I had to. 
I’ve never figured out whether it’s real confidence a leader like that inspires
or just mind games that provoke a response, but I never forgot how it made me
feel, just when I needed that extra bit of courage.  I would be giving a
version of that speech many times myself in the years to come, and I would
fight with other officers whose ability to rally troops would astonish me.  But
that day I was on the line with the captain and the lieutenant, and as far as I
was concerned, no Caliphate force ever made was going to make me let them down.