Angles of Attack (12 page)

“Hell, I have no clue.” He shrugs and takes a training carbine out of the gun rack. Then he checks the action with a practiced motion and steps over to the range computer to call up another scenario for the shooting simulator. “Way above my pay grade. But you’re probably right. Be stupid to go back to the way things were. You coming down to Grunt Country for some sparring tonight?”

Grunt Country is the mission-personnel rec area at the back of the modular berthing reserved for attached personnel. It’s a big square room, twelve by twelve meters, and probably the only open space on the ship—other than the mess halls or the hangar—that isn’t packed to the ceiling with supplies or portable water tanks. The Spaceborne Infantry troopers have set up some improvised exercise equipment and a small boxing ring, to let off some steam and stay in shape while we’re in transit.

“Sure, I’ll come,” I say. “As soon as our Alliance friend is in his berth and I’m done chaperoning for this watch.”

“Hell, just bring him with you,” Staff Sergeant Philbrick says. “He can watch and learn how the SI does in the hand-to-hand business. It’ll be a cultural exchange.” He takes a pack of training magazines, loads one into his rifle, and puts the other ones into the pouches on his armor. “’Course, we grunts ain’t got much in the way of culture to exchange.”

I snort a laugh and leave the staff sergeant to his impending battle with imaginary faceless enemies.

Dmitry doesn’t object to joining me down in Grunt Country a little while later. If anything, he seems eager for some variety after days of boredom staring at the bulkhead in a berth the size of a closet.

When I open the hatch to the rec room in the back of the module and step across the threshold, none of the eight or nine grunts in the room take much notice. Some are working out on benches or heavy bags, someone is doing pushups in a corner of the room, and two of the SI troopers are sparring on a square of training mats in the center of the room. When Dmitry walks into the room behind me, however, the moderately busy din in the room dies down gradually as the grunts become aware of the SRA trooper’s presence. He has been around at mealtimes and in the corridors of the ship, so his presence isn’t a novelty anymore, but I’ve never brought him down here into the SI’s only private sanctum on this ship.

“Grayson,” Staff Sergeant Philbrick calls from the back of the room, where he has been doing pushups. He hops to his feet and walks over to us. “Come on in, join the fun.”

“Don’t mind if we do,” I reply. “You’ve met Senior Sergeant Chistyakov.”

“Senior Sergeant.” Philbrick nods at Dmitry, who returns the gesture. The SRA trooper looks a little apprehensive, which is understandable. I sure as hell would be if I were in their boots right now.

“Sergeant Chistyakov dropped with me when we did the Fomalhaut b drop last week,” I say. “He knows his shit.”

“What’s a senior sergeant rank?” Philbrick asks Dmitry. “How does it compare to ours? E-5, E-6, what?”

I’m pretty sure that Staff Sergeant Philbrick has a general idea of the rank structure of the SRA military—we learned stuff like that in our OPFOR-recognition classes—but I appreciate his effort to break the ice.

“Senior sergeant is like your master sergeant,” Dmitry replies. “Is different, though. In company of garrison,
stárshiy serzhánt
is at desk, helps out company officer. Administration,” he says with an expression of strong distaste on his face. “I am battlespace coordinator, not administrator. Drop ship and rifle, not desk and paperwork.”

“We speak the same language after all,” Sergeant Philbrick says with a grin. “We’re just doing some friendly sparring down here. Feel free to hang around.”

The SI troopers go up against each other in quick one-minute rounds of contact sparring in protective gear. Staff Sergeant Philbrick is a good fighter because he is tall and lanky and has a lot of reach with those long arms of his. I watch as he goes up against a stockier but stronger-looking dark-haired corporal. The corporal tries to get in underneath Philbrick’s defense, but the staff sergeant uses his longer reach to keep his opponent at bay and out of grappling range. At the forty-second mark of the round, the corporal gets a little careless, and Philbrick takes him down with a sweeping kick to the lower legs that sends the corporal crashing onto the mat. The other SI troopers clap and hoot their approval.

“You gotta learn, Nez,” Philbrick tells the corporal when he helps him back up onto his feet. “You get too hasty and leave yourself open.”

“Yes, Sarge,” Corporal Nez replies.

The SI troopers swap gel gloves around, and another pair of troopers step onto the mat for a quick bout. I watch Dmitry as he watches the unfolding fight. Dmitry has his arms folded across his chest and a slight smile on his lips. He looks like a teacher watching a group of first graders playing around at recess.

I pick up a pair of nearby gel gloves and put them on. Then I grab another pair and call Dmitry’s name. He looks over to me, and I toss him the gloves. He extends one hand almost lazily and snatches them out of midair.

“You want to go a round? Show the SI how the Russian marines do it?”

Dmitry chuckles. Then he puts the gloves on his fists and pounds one into the other with a muffled thump. They look a lot tighter on him than mine do on me.

“Andrew, my friend,” he says, “that may not be best idea you have today.”

One minute doesn’t seem like a long time when you’re doing fun stuff, but on a fighting mat, it’s damn near an eternity, especially when you are getting your clock cleaned comprehensively. Dmitry is roughly in my weight class, and he doesn’t look much more muscled than I am, but he punches much harder than a guy his size ought to be able to hit. I probe his block with a few left jabs, then follow up with a right cross, which he deflects with both gloves. Then his response combination comes. I block his straights in return, but his cross plows right through my defenses and makes me hit myself hard in the mouth with the side of my own glove. For a moment, I see stars. I throw out a low shin kick to the side of his legs, but it’s like kicking a bulkhead. He lands another left-right combination. I lash out blindly with a straight that clips him on the jaw. Twenty seconds into the fight, my skull is ringing, and I feel like I’ve run a half marathon. At the end of the minute, he has landed three hits for every one of mine, and he’s never even tried to use his legs. When the timer sounds its little electronic trill to signal the end of the round, I am thoroughly worn-out, and my mouth tastes like fresh blood. Dmitry looks a little sweaty, but otherwise not half as rumpled as I feel.

“You were right,” I tell him when I’ve caught my breath and we’re taking off our gloves again by the side of the mat square. “That wasn’t the best idea I’ve had today. That SRA hand-to-hand training must be something else.”

“Is not Alliance training,” he says. “I spend six months in military prison once. Other man in cell, he was boxer. Before military, he fight in underworld ring, for money. He teach me how to punch the color out of a man’s hair. I go easy on you because I am guest here.” He smiles and hands me back his gel gloves. “You are not bad for soft little imperialist tool. We fight for six months every day, you learn to punch better,
da
?”

“
Da
,” I agree. “If we’re still alive in a week or two.”

Overhead, the ascending two-tone whistle of a 1MC announcement sounds, and we all interrupt what we’re doing to listen.

“Attention all hands. This is the CO. We are minus two hours and ten minutes from the Alliance transition point. I want everybody suited up and ready to man combat stations. That means everyone, not just the grunts. All hands, prepare for vacsuit ops. Staff Sergeant Grayson, report to CIC with our guest at 0830 Zulu.”

The announcement ends with a descending whistle. Staff Sergeant Philbrick looks over at me and purses his lips.

“Vacsuit ops? We’re all gonna go EVA and push this thing through the node by hand?”

“Beats me,” I reply. “You heard the man. Best we hit the showers and put on hardshell.”

“Copy that. Let’s go, squad,” he addresses his men, and they all gather their kit with the controlled urgency of combat troops switching to battle-alert mode.

I turn toward Dmitry. “Back to the berth, and into your armor. And Dmitry . . . don’t turn on the comms and data in your suit until we’re in CIC and the colonel gives the order.”

“No trust at all,” Dmitry says. “Maybe there is hope for you still.”

CHAPTER 6

“Combat stations, combat stations. All hands, prepare for battle. Alcubierre transition in two minutes.”

I know that we aren’t really going faster than light speed—in an Alcubierre bubble, the ship moves at subluminal speed while the drive shifts the space around it—but it still feels like we’ve been racing through space for the last few hours. A ship keeps the forward momentum it had when it entered the bubble, and Colonel Campbell hit the node at four gravities of acceleration with the fusion engines going at flank speed. When we pop out of the bubble on the solar system side in a few minutes, we’ll be shooting out of the node like a ship-to-ship missile.

“The second we get out of Alcubierre, we go cold on the engines,” Colonel Campbell reminds the helmsmen. “Shut it down and coast ballistic. EMCON check, please.”

“Everything’s cold,” the weapons officer says. “All active radiation sources are full EMCON. Once those engines shut down, we’ll be a black hole.”

“I want this ship to do its best impression of an asteroid. Just a rock, coasting through space. No spaceship at all.”

We’re all in battle armor (the grunts) or EVA vacsuits (the fleet personnel). Colonel Campbell stands in the center pit of the CIC, watching the consolidated readouts on the screens of the holotable that serves as the hub of the ship. I’ve never been in a ship’s CIC dressed in full combat hardshell, and the feeling is more than a little unnerving. My brain is primed to expect the imminent chance of sudden death or dismemberment whenever I’m in armor, and I’m not used to that expectation right here in the best-protected part of an armored warship. Behind me, Dmitry is holding on to the railing that surrounds the pit, looking supremely out of place in his angular Alliance armor with its mottled paint scheme.