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

finally had Element B in position, and on order, the element opened fire.  Element A immediately pushed over the lip and into the mine.  Ryck had a glimpse of a miner off to his front left turning to flee, only to be cut down from the Marines’ fire.  Ryck hadn’t even tried to fire himself.  That was Element B’s job, and he was having enough trouble following Staff Sergeant England as they raced pell-mell down the slope.  It wasn’t really pell-mell, though.  Their jerky movements were reasoned.  From an assaulted position’s perspective, the rush was intended to make it difficult to bring the Marines under fire with any degree of effectiveness, and the Marines practiced this kind of movement until it was second nature to them.  Ryck hadn’t had any actual experience doing it yet, though, so he just focused on keeping up with the staff sergeant.

Trying to watch his element leader, look for the enemy, and observe his step, proved too much for him.  He stumbled and fell, rolling over several times before he could get back to his feet.  His bones protected him from too much damage to anything other than his pride.  He focused a little more on his footing, relying on Element B behind him to take out any threat.

Ryck felt extremely exposed as they rushed to the bottom of the pit and the openings into the mine itself.  He felt that he would be hit at any moment.  The sight of a downed Marine, his PICS torn open, did not help.  They rushed forward to their objective.  There were two other doors, both larger to accommodate trucks, but the lieutenant had chosen the smaller of the three entrances, one only about two meters wide.

Just before reaching bottom, a blast erupted in front of Ryck.  Smoke billowed up, and a body was thrown in the air.  It came back down to land in a heap.  Without hesitation, two other Marines closed in on the body, grabbed it, and pulled it forward.

Within moments, all the Marines reached the mined rock wall at the bottom into which the openings were cut.  The Marines spread out on either side of their target door.  Ryck slammed his back up against the rock, looking over to his right where the injured Marine was on his ass, leaning up against the rock wall as well.  It was Corporal Singh.  The bones provided excellent ballistic protection, but they did little to provide structural support.  Singh’s left leg was gruesomely twisted, the front of the foot facing back, the knee twisted at a 90-degree angle to the side.  The mine blast had also damaged his skin’s nanos.  The small sensors and syntho-chromatophores in the fabric of his utilities, his skins, had obviously been knocked out of whack.  His blouse had already shifted the color and pattern to match the rock against which he leaned, but the trou had turned to black.  His non-stop stream of cursing actually calmed Ryck.  If the corporal could keep that up, then he would be OK once the Navy docs got a hold of him. 

Ryck subconsciously felt his own skins for the armor in them.  It was hard to believe that what looked like stiff, heavy paper, the “bones,” could give any support when slid into the pockets of his skins.  They were pliable and permitted movement when they were in the skins, but when hit by a projectile, the molecular structure instantly crystallized to provide a casing that was proof against most small arms projectiles.  Like all recruits, Ryck had watched a DI back at Camp Charles get shot right in the chest at close range with no injury, but seeing a demonstration of that and trusting his own armor to work as well was a huge jump in confidence.

He tore his eyes off the injured corporal to look back to where Lance Corporal Smith was placing the small breaching charge against the solid metal door of the entrance.  Although weighing less than a kilo, it nonetheless packed a huge punch.  If anyone was waiting on the other side of the door for the Marines, the blast would either take them out or render them incapable of offering any resistance. 

“Fire in the hole!” Smitty yelled out before jumping back to hug the wall. 

The breaching charge was very directional and could be dialed to various degrees of dispersion, but even with 10 meters between him and the door, Ryck moved away another step, pushing back up against the rock.

The resultant explosion was huge, much larger than the breaching charge alone would have made.  Not only was the door breached, but also some of the rock jamb was blown off, sending rubble out into the mine pit.

“Those fracheads booby-trapped the son-of-a-bitch,” Smitty shouted out.  “They about got my ass.”

By booby-trapping the door, the miners had ensured no one could have survived the resultant explosion on the inside. Staff Sergeant England realized that and was already in motion, rushing the blown entrance.  Ryck hurried to catch up as they ducked inside the dust-filled room.  Ryck cautiously crept forward about five meters and knelt across from the staff sergeant, M99 pointing down the passage leading deeper inside the mine.  He couldn’t see much, but he had practiced the action enough times in training even if he hadn’t practiced it with these specific Marines.

Just inside the door was a holding room of some sort.  What once had probably been a desk was now kindling.  Ryck was kneeling in a short passage that led out of the room.  As the dust settled, he could see the passage led to a T.  Ryck knew that miners could be lying in wait right around the corner.

He focused on the edge of the T, barely listening to Staff Sergeant England’s message to the lieutenant that they had breached the entrance.  The element held its position, not moving deeper until the lieutenant could bring Element B down the slope.  Ryck’s team would have to move then as it would be too crowded for both elements in the room.  The lieutenant came into the room, discussed it with the staff sergeant, then decided that Element A would clear the passage to the left, where the mine plans indicated the main spaces lay, while Element B would secure the entrance and clear the passage to the right.  

Staff Sergeant England relayed the plan to the element.  With Singh down, Pallas took over that fire team.  The element was down to nine Marines in total, which didn’t seem like much, but in a narrow corridor, though, it was crowded.  They performed a bounding overwatch, one team rushing forward before kneeling and covering the front, then the other team getting up, moving past the covering team before it, too, kneeled and provided cover.  The staff sergeant and Ryck kept attaching themselves to the back of whichever team was moving forward. Several times they had to stop and clear rooms that had been cut into the rock, but there was no sign of any of the miners.

The electricity was still running, so the corridor was well-lit.  If the power went out, they would have to rely on their NVDs.[8]  Deep inside a mine, though, there would be no ambient light for the NVDs to magnify, though, so they would have to turn on their infrared torches as well, and that never provided as good a field of vision as ambient light provided.

Ryck had been both excited and nervous as they entered the mine.  Now, as odd as it seemed to him, he was getting almost bored as they got up, rushed, and got down again.  There was no opposition, and Ryck wondered if the miners had fled.  The mine was hot, and while his skins were wicking away his sweat, a little air conditioning would have been welcomed.

When the roof of the corridor collapsed ahead of him, it took him a moment to realize what had happened.  One moment, he was following Staff Sergeant England and Pallas’ team, the next, the roof fell in front of him, the team, the squad leader, and the staff sergeant disappearing as rocks fell at his feet.  He started to turn around to Corporal Büyük and his team when something impacted on his side above his waist. He looked where he felt the impact.  The STF bone insert there had crystallized and was only now beginning to soften.  Then it hit him.  He’d been shot!

In the corridor, there were only two directions in which he could go:  forward or back.  With the rubble on the floor, he could crouch and hope it offered some cover.  But that would only delay the inevitable choice of what to do next.  So that left attack or retreat. 

Ryck didn’t know how many miners were in front of him.  He also forgot that just behind him, Corporal Büyük and three other Marines were only a few meters away.  He just reverted to the mindset of over a year of training.  He didn’t think of danger, he didn’t think of much.  With a mindless yell, he rushed forward, bounding over the rubble on the deck and the four Marines trapped there.

He was vaguely aware of Büyük’s team following him, but he had zeroed in on what was in front of him.  About 15 meters ahead, another corridor branched off, and at that intersection, part of a person was barely visible, holding an old chemical rifle pointed back at him.  The lights had been turned off at the intersection, but the flashes from the muzzle told Ryck he was being taken under fire.  Just below his left collarbone, he felt the impact again of another round, the stiffening of the bone insert absorbing the impact.  Another four centimeters higher, and the round would have hit his unprotected neck.  Primitive weapon or not, a lead slug would really ruin his day. 

Ryck sent a burst of fire back, aiming at the weapon itself.  The darts moved at extremely high speeds, and when they hit, they generally created dust as the small needles pulverized metal, wood, or flesh.  Ryck could see that he hit the old rifle, at least, and it fell to the deck.  He couldn’t tell if he had hit the person wielding it.

Ryck never stopped.  He rushed forward, reaching the intersection in seconds.  Without pausing, he turned into the other corridor.  In front of him, he could make out two men.  One was on the ground, his left arm bleeding.  The second was kneeling, one arm around the other’s back, as if to help him up.  Ryck’s undivided attention was caught by what was in the other miner’s hand.  From countless flicks, he recognized the Peacemaker in the man’s hand.  The old handgun looked enormous as he swung it