The Heart of Valour (12 page)

“But you say di’Taykan like ass kissing.”

“Different kind of ass kissing. Are you trying not to smile, Kichar? You are.” Sakur’s eyes darkened to almost fuchsia as more light receptors opened. “I can see a muscle jumping in your jaw. You know, Marines are allowed to laugh; if we weren’t, they’d have never let Hisht here join up.”

“He is right,” Hisht agreed. “I am here to be the light in your life.”

“You are here to be a Marine,” Kichar snapped as Sakur snickered and bumped Hisht’s shoulder with his elbow.

The Krai stared up at her, eyes narrowed. “Are your underwears in a knot again?”

“Underwear. Singular. And no!” She shifted inside her webbing so that she was pointedly looking away from them—it was as much as she could do under the circumstances. Two tendays with the two of them in her fireteam would definitely test her resolve. From where she was strapped in, she could just see Gunnery Sergeant Kerr’s profile, and she locked her gaze on it, vowing that no matter the provocation, she would be worthy.

* * *

With only one Marine to worry about, and he didn’t need supervision at the moment, Torin turned her mind to the upcoming scenario. They had 340 kilometers to travel in twenty days which meant a minimum of seventeen k a day—a morning stroll under righteous conditions. Taking the terrain, the simulated attacks, and the fact she’d done this once already into account, she knew there’d be days when they traveled a lot farther and days when they went nowhere at all. Seventeen kilometers with a civilian could easily seem like a hundred, although the doctor’s choice of treadmill program was reassuring.

“Now this is like an SAC drop,” Dr. Sloan observed happily. “Smooth but fast.”

“Atmo in five, four…”

The major snorted. “Hold that thought, Doc.”

“…two, one.”

Torin had been through worse atmospheric buffering but not for a while. Either they were diving through one hell of a storm, or the pilot was going for a new dive to dirt record. “It helps if you keep your teeth together, ma’am. That way you don’t bite off chunks of your tongue.”

“Thank you, Gunny.”

“Sergeants!” Staff Sergeant Beyhn managed to make himself heard over the rising ambient noise. “Have your squads sound off by fireteams!”

“What about
their
tongues?” Dr. Sloan demanded through clenched teeth.

“Their tongues belong to the Corps, ma’am.”

The VTA rocked sideways. Hard.

“This is ridiculous!” Dr. Sloan’s eyes were open painfully wide and there was a dark spot of color high on each cheek. “And unnecessary!”

“Could be worse, ma’am.” Torin blocked a yawn. “We could be jumping in.”

The doctor’s head snapped around. “Jumping?”

“Three-minute freefall with a fifty k weight to make sure you fall fast enough to clear the VTA’s AG field before it sucks you up. Not a problem if you’re one of the last out, but all those weights dropping after the three count are a pain in the ass for the jumpers already on the dirt in the DZ.”

Dr. Sloan stared at her like she was studying a new and unexpected life-form. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I don’t think gunnery sergeants come with a sense of humor,” the major pointed out.

“Officers jump first,” Torin told the doctor solemnly.

“Pull the other one,” she snorted but settled back in her webbing with a smile.

Torin accepted the major’s silent
well done
with a nod. The story was essentially true although fifty k of fine particulate released onto the wind was more annoying than dangerous. Some officers jumped first, some anchored the line—it depended on their jump experience.

“Jonin!” Sergeant Jiir’s voice rose above the din. “I said, sound off!”

“Sir!” The anonymous voice sounded impressed. “He’s asleep, sir!”

“Are you sure he’s asleep and not unconscious?”

“Sir, he’s snoring, sir!”

“Well, wake him the hell up!”

What would be nerves of steel on a Human was probably no more than a di’Taykan using time with no sex to rest up for sex later. Regardless, Torin appreciated the recruit’s ability to snooze in the midst of chaos. It was a skill all Marines needed to learn eventually, and it seemed like Jonin had it nailed. Apparently di’Taykan aristocrats developed interesting skill sets.

“Two to dirt. Temperature outside minus three degrees C.”

“You heard the pilot!” Beyhn bellowed, slapping his helmet on. Helmets rose down the line of recruits as his platoon followed suit. “Check your environmental settings. On my release, 71 will retrieve packs and weapons. When that door opens, and I give the word, you will disembark in pattern 42Alpha. Major Svensson!”

“Staff Sergeant!”

There was a distinct snap in the major’s voice, Torin noted with amusement. It seemed a good DI threw all ranks back to basic.

“Sir, you will disembark when landing site is called secure.”

“Roger, Staff!” He reached into an upper vest pocket and pulled out a gray plastic wafer about a centimeter square. “Doc,” he said, pressing it onto her forehead with the ball of his thumb, “this is for you. Don’t worry about losing it; you’ll need a special solvent to get it off. I want you tight to my left side,” he continued as Dr. Sloan ran her fingers over the observer’s chip. “As long as you can keep up, we’ll leave you to move on your own.”

“As long as I can… And if I can’t?” she demanded.

In answer, he looked over her head. “Gunny?”

Torin tightened her chin strap. “Not a problem, sir.”

“What?” Dr. Sloan’s attention jerked back and forth between them. “She’ll carry me?”

“She’ll carry you.”

“It
won’t
be necessary.”

He nodded. “Good. Gunny, you’re on our six.”

“Yes, sir.”

The lights in the troop compartment flashed.
“Dirtside. No enemy sighted!”

“Release!”

Torin was on her feet and into her pack before Dr. Sloan got clear of her webbing.

“71, go! Go! Go!”

With the sound of thirty-plus pairs of boots slamming against the deck ringing in her ears, Torin hung her KC-7 around her neck, grabbed the doctor’s shoulder, and turned her so that she was facing the major. With her other hand, she hauled her pack off the rack. “Give me your arms!”

Dr. Sloan thrust her arms back, and Torin slid the straps up them into the major’s grip. He settled the pack and, still holding the straps, started moving the doctor toward the door.

“Secure!”

Torin hit the dirt on the doctor’s heels, heard the door close behind her, and raced for the trees where the platoon had gone to ground. She was pleased to see that Dr. Sloan was right at the major’s side as they passed the fireteams holding a defensive position at the edge of the woods. Safely inside the perimeter, the major stopped running and put out one hand to catch the doctor. Torin spun around in time to see the VTA scream out of sight. Her helmet scanner registered only empty landscape; she knew the scenario had no attack planned until the morning of day two but she kept her weapon up and ready until Staff Sergeant Beyhn gave the all clear.

They’d landed in a field, open but for a few scrawny leafless trees, some clumps of thorn bush, and a scattering of small evergreens—half a dozen of them crushed by the weight of the VTA. Golden spears of dead grass stabbed up through the eight centimeters or so of hard snow, and the dark gray clouds over the trees to the south promised more snow to come.

From where she stood, in mixed deciduous forest 19.5 meters from the landing site, Torin’s scanner put a similar forest 2.2 kilometers to the east, 233.7 meters to the south, and 167.2 meters to the west of the clearing.

“The pilot said the landing site was clear.” Dr. Sloan slumped back against a tree, yanked off her toque, and used it to fan her face. “Why the mad dash for cover?”

“If they know we’re incoming,” Torin told her quietly, “the Others occasionally hide snipers under an electronic camouflage the scanners don’t always penetrate.”

“Don’t always penetrate?” The doctor’s brows rose. “But sometimes they do? So these snipers sit out here… there… and risk being spotted and killed from the air. Why would anyone do that?”

“Because sometimes it works.” Confederation forces occasionally did the same thing. For the same reason. “About a third of all Crucible scenarios used to include an immediate attack upon landing, but Command deleted that from the programming about eight years ago. Too many VTAs were taking damage.”

Dr. Sloan pulled off a mitten and touched her observer’s chip. “Couldn’t Crucible be programmed to miss the VTAs?”

“They weren’t taking hits from Crucible, ma’am.”

It didn’t take her long to work it out. “Oh, wonderful,” she sighed. “Here I am in the woods with a group of barely trained Marines who, precedent suggests, would be likely to shoot at their own transport if under attack. Tell me that my little bit of plastic will protect me from them, too.”

“Sorry, ma’am. You’re under the same danger from friendly fire as the rest of us.”

“What’s friendly about it?” she demanded, pulling mitten and toque back on as she cooled down from the run.

“Not much,” Torin admitted as the major rejoined them.

She stared at the major’s combats, then at Torin’s, then at the rest of the platoon. On board ship, they’d been mottled gray, urban camouflage; here they were white with pale shadows zigzagging across them. “Chameleon fabric?”

“Within certain very limited parameters, yes.” Major Svensson grinned at her. “You stand out a bit, Doc.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Torin explained hurriedly as the doctor sighed and began unfastening her bright blue coat. “The system only sees the chip, and it’s best to give this lot as few opportunities for mistaken identity as possible.”

“So this isn’t why you mentioned my coat on the VTA?”

“No, ma’am. If I thought you’d be safer without it, I’d have said exactly that.”

She zipped up and shot the major an exasperated look. “Forewarned, Major. I have laxatives with me and I will use them if you keep yanking my chain.”

Squad One, Team One had been assigned the first scout position. When one/one gave the all clear, a kilometer northwest of the landing site, Staff Sergeant Beyhn put the remainder of the platoon into a narrow diamond pattern, tucked his three extra personnel into the center, and gave the order to move out. Torin thought his warnings to be careful went just a little over the top, but on reflection she realized that perhaps she’d gotten too used to Marines who’d been blooded and who, in turn, had done some damage of their own.

The woods were quiet, the sounds of thirty-six Marines and one doctor almost completely muffled by the snow. In the summer, the underbrush would have dragged at feet and equipment, masking poor footing, but most of it had died back and what hadn’t was leafless and easy to get through. The few evergreens were low and avoidable. The walking wasn’t quite as easy as it would have been out in the open, but it was close. With scanners preset to Crucible’s true north and 337 degrees keyed in, it was impossible to go off course; a minor deviation showed as a red line, anything more than five degrees sounded alarms. Late in the scenario, Torin knew the scanners would be taken out by a particularly nasty piece of programming used by the Others on Arim’s Moon and reverse engineered by Corps R&D. The recruits would be dependent on the equipment between their ears instead of on their heads so, given that their heads were still cluttered up with the kind of preconceptions that would kill in a combat situation, Torin had every intention of enjoying the certainty of tech while she had it.

* * *

“Looks like we’re about to run out of woods.”

Kichar signaled for quiet and indicated they should remain in place while she went forward to have a look. Tucked behind the largest of the remaining trees, she peered out across a clearing her scanner marked as 827.3 meters and, also, completely empty. Scanners could be fooled. Carefully moving out into the transitional growth, she swept her gaze left to right, marking a disturbance in the snow at about twenty-two degrees, three meters east, and visually confirming her scanner’s data.

No enemy in sight.

“All right…” Hours of practice alone on her bunk put her voice just over the edge of her PCU’s ability to read. “…come on up.”

The rest of her team approached a lot less quietly, but then, she’d told them it was safe.

“We’re not going to get around that,” Sakur noted, leaning out far enough to see that the clearing was actually an extended east-west break in the trees. “We’ll have to cross.”

“Two by two, double-time; covered from the trees first on this side…” Hisht waved across the open ground. “…then from over there.”

She nodded. “Last one sweeps the trail in case the Others have air support and do a flyover.”

Sakur snorted. “That’s a little paranoid.”

“We’re supposed to be paranoid.”

“We gonna check out the tracks?” Lynne Bonninski, the fourth member of the team and currently carrying the KC-9, shifted her grip on her weapon. “Because I’d just as soon not double any farther than I had to.”

“Hisht and I will detour to check them out on our cross. You and Sakur take the shortest points. Sakur, you…”

“Sweep, yeah, I got it. With what?”

“This.” Nose ridges nearly shut in the cold air, Hisht reached down and snapped a branch off a sprawling evergreen.

“You didn’t scan that, did you?” Kichar sighed. “You have no idea if it’s poisonous.”

“Isn’t.” Proving his point, Hisht shoved the collar of his bodysuit down and bit the end off a branch. “Prickly, though,” he added after chewing a couple of times.

“But you’re handing it to a di’Taykan, not another Krai, and he’s not wearing gloves under mittens.”

“I’ve scanned, I’m good.” Sakur snapped his slate back in place and took the branch. “But you’d better move before you have to ping group and tell Staff Sergeant Beyhn there’s been a delay. You don’t want him crawling up your butt.”

Since she couldn’t argue with that—the staff sergeant had been very clear about no contact unless the body of the platoon had to be warned about the route. “Hisht.”