Recruit, Jonathan Brazee [which ebook reader .txt] 📗

only one platoon was embarked at a time.  The cycle for a platoon was about two-and-a-half hours, so while there was time to get everyone through in the course of the day, the schedule had to be kept.  1043 had already completed its training, and the other two platoons were still down at the spaceport waiting their turn. 

Ryck wanted to get it over with.  First Squad, though, was, as usual, first to go.  At least with them gone, there was more room in the hold.  The series senior took that opportunity to inspect the squad again.  That made six total inspections.

The hold had ½ gravity, which made preparation and inspections easier than null grav.  Even at ½ gravity, though, the suit was somewhat bulky, somewhat heavy, and quite uncomfortable.  It would be better when they left the ship, Ryck knew.  They had already spent one training day outside the Wong, tethered together, but enough to get the feel of weightlessness and maneuvering in it.  But in the ship, the suit pulled down on the shoulders, hips, and knees.  The fabric of the suit itself wasn’t bad, and the helmet was surprisingly light, but the thruster pack and ammunition magazines pulled down and back.  The suits could be worn in gravity, either on a planet or aboard a ship, but they were designed for weightlessness.  On a planet though, at least the thruster pack could be dropped.

Second Squad, with its three fire teams, was next to go, and the hold became roomier still.  He went to each fire team leader and went over the plan once again.  This had to go without a hitch.

“You ready, Lysander?”  King Tong asked as he came up. 

“Yes, Drill Instructor Phantawisangtong, we’re ready to kick some ass,” Ryck replied.

“Don’t worry too much about that.  Just make sure no one does anything stupid,” the DI told him.

The DIs were still DIs, and incentive training was still on the menu.  But either the recruits were getting used to the harassment or the DIs were mellowing a bit.  Even King Tong could act like an actual human being—at least at times.

The light finally changed to amber.  They were up. 

“Lock them up,” the TDI told them. 

Each recruit closed his face shield and pressurized his suit.  Ryck could feel it puff out slightly as the air circulated.  This created one more degree of insulation, but it also allowed sweat to be whisked away. 

Before each recruit was allowed into the lock, one TDI and the safety officer conducted a final check of the integrity of each suit. 

With 15 recruits, a TDI, two DIs, a navy operator, and a safety officer, the airlock was crowded.  The inner lock closing had a degree of finality.  Each recruit and Marine had to report by name to the Navy airlock operator that he was ready before the air was pumped out.  The red airlock light turned to green, and the outer lock opened. 

Outside the lock, four Marines in their bright green suits waited for them.  Ryck recognized SDI Despiri through his face shield, but he couldn’t make out the others.  Thrusters were not to be initiated within the lock; each recruit stepped to the edge and pushed off with their legs.  Still within the ship, gravity pulled them down.  Looking out into to vastness of space, but still feeling a “down,” Ryck had to steel himself to push off.  His mind told him he was about to fall to his death.  It wasn’t until he cleared the lock and was in the weightlessness of open space that the vertigo disappeared. 

“Form it up,” a voice intoned over the comms. 

The jump would be done with four teams in a column with Ryck behind the first one.  Each group of red-suited recruits would be accompanied by a green-suited DI.

Ahead of them, about 300 meters away, was the Wilma Pritchard.  Every recruit for the last 30 years, at least, had been aboard her.  She was an old freighter that the Corps purchased for training.  She stayed in a geosynchronous orbit, too fragile to make repeated landing and takeoffs.  Each time she came in for her annual maintenance, people took bets on whether she would be deemed spaceworthy enough to take off again.  Rumor had it that the Corps wanted to scrap her, but with anti-piracy as one of the Corps’ primary missions, they had to keep her up and running.  Aside from a few fast Gulfstreams for the brass to use to get around, she was the only real spaceship in the Marine’s fleet.  Many of the tactical aircraft could get into space of course, but not to travel across space to other solar systems.

With small jets of the thrusters, the recruits got into position.  In front of Ryck, two recruits collided with each other, one spinning off a good 10 meters before he could stop himself and edge back.  Without a real working display, Ryck couldn’t tell who the two were, but he intended to have words with them when they got back. 

Finally in place, the DI with First Fire Team signaled them with a simple arm signal to move out.  Ryck followed in trace, careful to keep far enough back not to run into the team.  He felt naked without having the tether that had kept them together and around the Wong the day before.

The thrusters had enough power to push Marines along at a healthy acceleration.  There were rumors of lost Marines corpses traveling between the galaxies at close to the speed of light. Ryck doubted that there was enough fuel to accelerate to those speeds, but he didn’t want to test that.  Of course, being recruit training, the red training EVA suits had their thrusters modified to minimize their thrust.  Any power, though, in weightlessness, had the mathematical capability to reach a high velocity.  It would just take a recruit EVA suit much, much longer to reach such a speed.

Their point of entry on the Wilma was facing them.  A green-suited DI was clearly visible in the bright, harsh light of Tarawa’s sun.  He seemed to grow larger as the recruits got closer.

The DI with First made the cutting motion at what was about half-way to the ship.  They had been moving under low acceleration, but even with only 300 meters, they had to reverse that to slow down again.  Ryck had no sensation, really, of motion, but when he followed suit and began to decelerate, he was “pushed forward” slightly against the front of his suit.  It took a moment or two, but he could sense his approach was slowing.  He gave the tiny jets on his heels a spurt, bringing him around, but he hoped he would stop just at the lock without having to use his legs to halt on the Wilma’s skin.

Ryck had just come to a halt a meter or so from the ship when the open circuit blared with “Recruit Thomas, reverse your thrust.  You are too hot!”

Grant Thomas was with Second Fire Team, one of the recruits originally with Third Squad.  He was from Earth itself.  Grant was one of the guys who was always just there, part of the landscape.  He didn’t make waves for good or bad. 

Ryck looked “up,” or at least away from the Wilma and back toward the Wong.  A recruit in red was coming at him, growing bigger as he approached.  One of the DIs lunged forward, but the distance was too great, and he missed the recruit.  Ryck reached out to stop Grant, who was coming in way too fast.  That wasn’t the smartest thing to do in weightlessness.  Grant hit Ryck, spinning him aside before the wayward recruit hit the side of the Wilma. He bounced off before being slammed back.  A moment later, a DI reached him, manually turning off the thrusters at the feed valve.

In reality, Grant had probably been moving at less than a couple of kilometers an hour, certainly nothing extraordinary had he been down on Tarawa’s surface.  In space, though, that was too fast. 

The comms crackled as the DIs and the safety officer asked for updates.  After a quick check, the Di who had turned off the thrusters gave the OK, and the training was given the go-ahead.  Grant was going to get his ass chewed but good, but open space was not the place for that. 

The breaching chamber, or the “can opener,” had been previously ferried over by 1042.  At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a fat metal tube. What it had, though, was the capability to open up almost any ship that existed.  Usually, it was put over the target ship’s airlock, but it could force entry into the ship anywhere.  Going through the airlock, though, would keep the target ship spaceworthy.  Ship line owners, while they wanted pirated vessels recovered, wanted their ships to be able to still ply their routes without extensive time in the yards.

First Fire Team, led by No Initial, maneuvered the can opener over the airlock.  The DIs drifted over to observe as it was put into position.  Of course, there would be no breach of the Wilma.  Once in final position, the breaching itself would be simulated with a TDI inside simply cycling through the Wilma’s lock.

Ryck glanced back at the rest of the squad.  The two remaining teams hung in space, ready to move forward and enter the ship.  Something caught his eye, though, against the blackness of space.  A small puff of vapor suddenly sprouted out from the waist of the recruit nearest to him.  The puff started turning the recruit around.  It was Grant.  There was a breach in his suit.  Small breaches from microdust were closed by the suit’s internal repair nanos, but as Ryck watched, the breach opened wider, sending out more air. 

The recruits were supposed to stay off the comms during the transit, keeping them clear for emergencies.  Ryck figured this was an emergency.  So did Grant.

“Help!” Grant screamed as he started spinning away. 

His thrusters were far more powerful than the force of the escaping air, but he evidently didn’t think of that.  He was panicking as he was losing his oxygen.  He actually still had air being fed into the suit faster than it was being expelled,