First to Fight (6 page)

The company first sergeant didn’t appear to make any movements to direct himself, but still drifted sharply to the front of the platform. “When I give your name and platoon assignment, move sharply.” He barely glanced at the clipboard in his hands when he began calling the names off: “Abercrombie, one . . .”

The Marines had an ancient expression they used to describe what happened when the first sergeant started giving platoon assignments to the recruits: Chinese fire drill. None of the recruits had much experience with movement in null-g, and most had none at all. There was chaos in the compartment for several moments until, at a soft command from Captain Tomasio, the drill instructors took over and started physically moving the recruits from their handholds to their designated platoon areas.

Dean found himself assigned to the second platoon. Fred McNeal joined him there and the two shook hands happily.

The following hours passed in a whirlwind of hurry-up-and-wait, punctuated by moments of frenzied activity and confusion. Before they were through, all the recruits streamed perspiration from every pore. First, all personal possessions, clothing, watches, rings, even toothpaste, were confiscated and locked away, to be returned when the recruits joined the Fleet; everything they would need over the next six months would be issued to them.

CHAPTER

FOUR

Second platoon’s chief drill instructor was a barrel-chested staff sergeant of about forty named Neeley. The first assistant D.I. was an older man, very slim and immaculate in his Class A uniform, named Staff Sergeant Pretty. No one dared laugh when he said his name, though. His embroidered red chevrons consisted of three bars with points up and a rocker underneath with a flaming-sun device in the center. These chevrons were much smaller and utilitarian than those worn on the dress uniform Dean had seen on Riley-Kwami at the recruiting office. Corporal Singh was the junior drill instructor. The three instructors quickly put them through their paces. At the double—which was quite a trick in null-g.

“Line ’em up, line ’em up, line ’em up,” Staff Sergeant Neeley cried out for what felt like the five hundredth time since Captain Tomasio turned the recruits over to the D.I.’s. “In alpha order.” This time—in reality the sixth—it took only a fraction of the time it had the first; by now they knew whose names came before and after theirs.

“Name,” demanded the lance corporal seated at yet another battleship-gray desk.

“Anderhalt, Shaqlim X,” said the first recruit in line.

The lance corporal typed the name into his computer, then glanced over the personnel display that popped up on his screen. “Date of birth?”

“April eighth, 2427.”

The date of birth matched. “Mother’s birth name.”

“Lahani Schwartz.”

That also matched. One last check for verification—or maybe it was just for the annoyance factor. “Blood type.”

“AB negative, N, Duffy,” also matched.

“Put your left wrist in there.” The lance corporal pointed at a buff-colored ring on top of a box on the comer of his desk nearest where his subject gripped a handhold.

Anderhalt put his wrist in the ring. The lance corporal pressed a large red button on the side of his keyboard. The ring contracted until it was in full contact with his skin. There was a muted click, then the ring expanded back to its original size.

“Next.”

Anderhalt, not having been told to move, stayed where he was. The lance corporal looked at him for the first time. “You can go now. And take your wrist with you, I don’t want it.”

Anderhalt flushed and hastily did what he was told.

“Name,” the lance corporal said to the next recruit in line.

Everyone strained to see what the shrinking ring had done to Anderhalt, but Pretty and Singh were hustling him down the passageway, and they each had to wait their turn to find out what was happening.

After his turn, Dean was still examining the featureless bracelet the ring had clamped onto his wrist when the chief D.I. called the platoon to attention.

“You have just been issued your personnel record,” Neeley said when all of his recruits were looking at him. “Right now it’s just about blank, because you’re blank. All it contains is your personal data, your medical history, and the results of the tests you took when you enlisted. Every company office and every personnel department from battalion or squadron on up in the Marine Corps has a reader for it. Every company, battery, and squadron first sergeant in the Corps controls a writer that will update your record as things happen that need to go into your record. Every time your company updates your record, the update will also relay to the next-higher command, which will relay it to the next-higher command, and so forth, until your record is completely updated in Central Data in Saint Louie.

“You can’t muck about with it. There is no way you can read the data it contains, and no way you can alter it. There are only two ways that bracelet will ever come off you. One is if you are released from active duty at the end of an enlistment, through retirement, or as the result of a court-martial that kicks your worthless hindquarters out of this man’s Marine Corps. The other is if some felonious aggressor out there on some godforsaken planet you’d never set foot on if Mother Corps didn’t say you had to blows your hand off.

“If anyone tries to muck about with the data in that bracelet, the bracelet will erase. If you are the one who did it, stand by for a court-martial. More likely, though, anyone mucking about with it will be a scum-sucking aggressor who had the rare good luck to take you prisoner, something that doesn’t happen very often, let me tell you. If that’s the case, well now, that’s why the data is programmed to erase in case of unauthorized entry. We don’t want any rat-snorfing aggressors getting their sklit-licking fingers on that data.

“By the way, if you should ever be taken POW, stand by for rescue. In the entire two and a quarter centuries of the Confederation Marine Corps, only one Marine has remained a live POW for more than ninety-six hours standard. In that instance, the Marine in question was on leave and it was seventy-three standard hours before anyone knew he’d been taken. A rescue mission was planned, mounted, and executed in under twenty-four hours. The only thing that went wrong with the mission was the Marine being rescued was in aggressor hands for nearly ninety-seven hours.

“Enough grab-assing for now. You’ve got more processing-in to undergo. Corporal Singh, move them to the next station.” McNeal wondered if he was the only one who thought it was ominous that Staff Sergeant Neeley had said only one Marine had ever remained a live POW for more than ninety-six hours.

“Let’s sidestep briskly through that line, people,” Staff Sergeant Pretty said to the line of recruits clad only in whatever underwear they’d worn when they left home that morning. “The sooner you get through, the sooner you get to stop for chow. The longer you take to do everything, the longer it will be before you get to stop to sleep. I don’t need much sleep, so it doesn’t matter to me if you don’t get any. And I don’t have anywhere to go for the next month, so it doesn’t matter to me if you want to spend all that time milling around when you could be moving briskly and getting your processing-in done with.”

That looks too much like a coffin, Dean thought as he approached the first position on the line. They didn’t really sidestep; they pulled themselves along a chain of handholds standing out from the bulkhead. The contraption at the first position resembled a coffin only in general dimensions: a box seven feet by two feet by three feet. But it wasn’t laid out flat, it stood up.

“Remember to keep your eyes closed when you’re inside,” Corporal Singh said to each man as he moved into the box.

Dean moved up to the box, glided into it, and flinched as the door closed behind him. He closed his eyes as instructed and didn’t see the sensors as they measured him. Ground to crown. Toe to heel to ankle, height of arch and instep. Ground to crotch, ground to waist. Hip to armpit to shoulder. Neck. Shoulders, delt to delt. Chest width and depth. Waist width and depth. Hips width and depth. Chin to crown to nape. Temple to temple. Occipital bulge. Height and width of brow. Spacing of eyes. Length of nose, breadth of nostrils. Width of mouth. And more.

It was over in less than a second.

The door popped open. Dean pushed himself out of the box, handholded himself to the next station, held out his basket, and accepted the two pair of brilliant red sweat-pants that were dropped onto it by the robot server. Handhold again and be issued two equally bright sweatshirts. Another handhold and receive three sets of underwear. Again, and get four pair of socks. Once more for cloth shoes, two pair. At the last position, robot hands fitted a Marine chameleon utility hat onto his head.

Back in line with the others who’d received their clothing issue, waiting for the rest of the platoon to go through the line, Dean examined his cache. The sweatshirts bore a large gold emblem on their fronts: an eagle rampant on a river of stars, the emblem of the Confederation Marine Corps—the same insignia worn on the collars of the dress uniform. The word
MARINES
ran down the outside of each sleeve. A gold stripe ran down the outside of each pant leg, with the word
MARINES
in red running its length. The underwear was utilitarian, the socks were thick, with cushioned soles. The white shoes were soft and flexible, and had rubber soles. Only the hat was different.

It was drab, almost colorless. Dean snaked an arm through the basket’s handle and used that hand to grip the handhold. With his free hand he took the hat off his head and examined it. It seemed to be sort of green, sort of gray, sort of—Dean blinked, sort of red. He moved his hand and held the hat against the side of his basket. It turned almost the same tan as the basket.

“Hey, look at this,” Anderhalt exclaimed.

Dean looked at the other recruit, who held his hat against the bulkhead. The hat was distinctly gray. Anderhalt started looking around for a different color to hold his hat against.

“Belay that, people!” Neeley roared. The drill instructor was suddenly in front of Anderhalt, glowering at him, then glared down the row of recruits who had already received their clothing issues. “Just hang where you are and wait. When everyone has their issue, I’ll explain everything you’ve been issued—including the chameleon effect.” He started to return to the line of recruits who hadn’t yet received their clothing, then briefly turned back. “Don’t just stand there in your skivvies, get dressed.”

Soon enough they all had their clothing issue and were standing in formation, each recruit a brilliant splash of red against the battleship gray of the compartment’s bulkhead. Staff Sergeant Neeley stood front and center to address them.

“You will not be issued proper uniforms until we reach Arsenault,” he told them. “There are two reasons for that. The first is you will undergo a strenuous physical fitness program aboard this ship, and you will be eating a diet carefully calculated to help bring you to peak physical condition. That means you will change shape—for most of you, that means lose fat and replace it with muscle. Some of you will gain weight. Either way, the clothes that fit you today won’t fit a month from now. Before you disembark this ship, you will step into the coffin again to be remeasured. These two measurements, today’s and on your last day, will be one gauge of how your fitness has progressed.

“The second reason is a very practical one. Shortly after you came aboard the
Purdom
, you were told that you would be restricted to this deck for the duration of the voyage.” He paused to sweep his gaze across the faces of everyone in the platoon. “Let me assure you, no one else on board this ship is wearing scarlet sweat suits. Should you attempt to go to any other part of the ship, you will be seen and reported. Let’s not find out what will happen to anyone who leaves Deck Twenty-three.” He paused to consider for a moment, then continued.

“A number of you have examined your headgear and wondered why they don’t seem to have any particular color—or that they don’t seem to stick to one color. Maybe you’ve heard of Marine chameleons. That’s what we call our field uniform, chameleons. Chameleons are only worn on combat operations, except that the headgear is worn with the standard green garrison utility uniform. Within limits, chameleons pick up the color pattern of whatever they are closest to. That makes a fighting Marine very hard for an enemy to see. You may well wonder why you have chameleon headgear now. Again, there are two reasons. The first is so you will get used to the idea. The second is so you will look as empty-headed as you are at this time.”

Neeley looked at Singh. “Move them on to the next station.”

The recruits knew their day was nearing its end when they discovered they could hardly drag themselves any farther through the maze of corridors and compartments that constituted Area Whiskey. At last Staff Sergeant Pretty led them into a large compartment equipped with bunks and personal gear lockers.

The bunks—called “racks,” to the great mystification of the recruits—were fastened to the bulkheads or to vertical pipes running from overhead to deck, three high. There were just enough for the men of second platoon. Their spacing looked odd—there seemed to be exactly as much space below the bottom rack as there was above the top one.

The recruits of second platoon were told for the time being just to stow their gear in the lockers as best they could and secure the lockers with the padlocks that were part of their issue. In the morning, Pretty promised, he would come around with Corporal Singh and show them how to do it properly, to be ready for the continuous round of inspections that would soon form a major part of the routine of their life aboard the starship. “If any of you must jerk off in the night, kindly see none of it gets on the guy on the bottom,” Pretty announced just before he led them to the galley for their first starship meal.

Sometime during all this rushing around, getting issued clothing, personal and hygienic supplies, personnel-record bracelets, and everything else they’d need during the one-month voyage, the starship pulled out of Earth orbit and headed for its first jump point. For this first phase of its movement, the
Purdom
rotated around its long axis. The rotation created centripetal force, which gradually restored an ersatz gravity. The transition was so gradual that the recruits were in the galley, eating solid food off plastic trays, before they realized they weren’t floating anymore.

The galley was enormous, more than big enough to hold the recruits of Company A. The food was plentiful and delicious and the recruits ate ravenously. Even McNeal was so hungry he finished his meal with hardly a word between mouthfuls.

Back in the platoon bay, Pretty announced that the time was 22 hours. “Your day while on board this ship commences at zero six hours and lasts until twenty-two hours. On Arsenault you’ll be lucky when your days don’t last twenty-four hours. The training schedule for this voyage allows for half a day of free time once a week. That isn’t for four more days. Hop into your racks, people, the lights will be doused in exactly five minutes!” And they were.