Tombstone (9 page)

A unit is an odd thing; it has a life of its own.  The
traditions, history, and achievements create a culture that survives, even as
the soldiers themselves come and go.  The men and women die or get reassigned,
but the unit goes on, remaining much the same as it was as long as it doesn’t
lose too many people too quickly.  With about half of the personnel still
standing or likely to return soon, I was confident the platoon would remain the
place I’d come to think of as home.  Especially with the lieutenant.  I knew
he’d make sure it stayed the same place.

He was about ten meters from me when it happened.  He was
facing in my direction, walking right toward me.  He was very hands on, and he
wanted to see firsthand that each of us was OK.  He was just passing a section
of the rocky wall that dipped low, forcing him to crouch further down to stay
in cover.  I saw it all, and to this day I remember it as it were in slow
motion. 

He turned suddenly.  I don’t know if someone from behind
commed him and he instinctively turned or he saw something on his scanner, but
he spun around, and when he did he came up out of his crouch.  It was careless,
a small slip made by the most careful and consistent man I’d ever met.  That
one time he lost his focus, let his guard slip.  One small mistake that 99 times
out of 100 would have been harmless.  But that day it was tragic. 

I saw his head snap back hard.  His body seemed suspended in
the air, though I know that is just my memory of it.  He crumpled and fell,
sliding down the slight embankment and landing on his back.

I rushed over, screaming into the com for a medic as I did. 
I can’t remember if I kept my own head down in my panic, but if I was careless,
my fortune was stronger that day than the lieutenant’s.  He was lying with his
head on the low side of the slope.  I reached over and cradled his upper body,
lifting his head as I did. 

The sniper’s shot had struck him in the neck, tearing a huge
gash in his armor.  The suit’s repair circuits had managed to patch the breach
with self-expanding polymer, and while it didn’t look too secure, it was
keeping out Tombstone’s heat and toxins for the moment.

But the wound itself was mortal.  In a hospital he could
have been easily saved.  If I could have opened his armor, a medic could
probably have kept him alive until he was evac’d…even I might have managed it. 
But opening the suit would kill him on the spot, and the wound was just too
much for the suit’s trauma control system, which was damaged by the shot and
only partially functional.

He turned his head slightly to look up at me.  “Darius…” 
His voice was throaty, labored.  His lungs were filling with his own blood.

“Yes, sir?  I’m here.”  My heart was pounding and I was in
shock, but I was determined to be strong for him, as I knew we would be for
me.  “What can I do for you, sir?”

“Tell the men and women.”  He was rasping, coughing up
blood, trying to get the words out.  “Tell them I am proud…”  He coughed again,
trying to continue speaking through the gurgling sounds.  “…proud of them. 
Tell them I was honored to lead them, and…”  More coughing.  “…and, tell them I
know they will always make me proud.”

“Yes, sir.”  I was fighting back a sea of tears, but there
was nothing more important to me than to be there for this man in that place.

“Darius?”  He turned his head.  “Darius?”  He was slipping
away, not sure where he was.

“I’m here, sir.  It’s Darius.”

His voice was weak, almost inaudible.  My AI automatically
cranked up the volume so I could hear.  “Tell them I’m proud to die here with
so many of our brothers and sisters.”  He went into another coughing spasm and
he started speaking incomprehensibly, hallucinating about something, though
what I couldn’t tell.  I had lots of chatter on my com, from others in the
platoon, from the medic I could see trotting over…but I shut it all down except
for the lieutenant’s line.

Finally, he stopped the random talking and his coughing
subsided.  He turned his head slightly, further in my direction, and he said,
“The Corps forever.”  He was silent after that, and I knew he was gone.  The
medic knelt down, but I told him it was too late.  A great Marine was dead.

His last thoughts, dying painfully on a hellish world far
from home, were for us, for the platoon he’d loved and protected and led with
such dedication.  People speak of duty and devotion, but the lieutenant had
lived it to his last breath.  He was a good man sent to an impossible place,
and I can’t even count how many of his soldiers he pulled through that
nightmarish campaign.  We lived, many of us, to leave Tombstone, but we left
him behind, having given his last full measure to the Corps.

I'd like to say I left Tombstone triumphantly, amid victory
parades and celebrations, but that's not how it happened.  I didn't march out
at all; I left as a casualty, unconscious and kept alive by machines.  I'd come
through the battle of McCraw's Ridge, fighting non-stop for three days without
a scratch, but it was a tiny skirmish three weeks later that took me down.  My
squad was on a routine sweep of the perimeter when my luck ran out.  We
encountered an enemy patrol and exchanged a few shots before both sides broke
off.  Nobody had a stomach for a serious fight, not so soon after the Cauldron.

But those few shots were enough.  One of the rounds caught
me in the shoulder, and as far as I know, I was the only one hit.  It wasn't a
bad wound, but it impacted at a strange angle, tearing a large chunk off my
armor.  On a more hospitable world it would have been minor, but we were on
Tombstone.  The repair system in my suit tried to restore atmospheric
integrity, but the hole was just too big.  The corporal managed to get a manual
patch over it, but not before I'd breathed a half a lungful of Tombstone's noxious
atmosphere.  It was as if I'd inhaled fire; the pain was unbearable.  It was
like suffocating and burning to death both.  I could feel the blood pouring out
of my nose and welling up in my throat.  It was only a second or two before the
suit's trauma control kicked in and flooded my system with painkillers and
tranqs, but that instant stretched out like an eternity, and it was nothing but
relief when the darkness finally took me.

As I faded away I was sure I was done, but they got me out
of there and into a med unit back at base.  My lungs were a total loss; the
unit would be doing my breathing until I was evac'd to a facility with
regeneration capability.  My suit’s trauma control had put me out on the field,
and the medical AI kept me in an induced coma, so my last view of Tombstone was
the one I had just after I was shot.  When I finally came to it was weeks later
and in a much more hospitable environment - the Marine hospital on Armstrong,
surrounded by doctors and med techs.  I woke up and took a painless deep
breath, and it was a minute before I'd regained enough presence of mind to be
surprised by that fact. 

My chest was a little sore from the transplantation surgery,
but my brand new lungs, exact copies of the ones I had before, worked perfectly,
and my shoulder and other injuries had long since healed.  I had a few weeks of
observation and physical therapy ahead of me, but then I was on my way to a
month's leave and a new posting. 

The Corps tried to return wounded soldiers to their original
units, but with the time and distances involved it just wasn't always
feasible.  Although I wouldn't miss Tombstone, I was sorry I wasn't going back
to my old platoon.  They were my brothers and sisters; I'd shared the danger
and death of the front lines with them, and they had carried me back when I got
hit, when even I had given myself up as lost.  They'd saved my life; they were
there for me when I needed them.  Just like Captain Jackson had told me more
than six years before.

I hated leaving for another reason.  A unit is like a living
organism; it can wither and die without the support it needs.  When I left, the
platoon was still reeling from the loss of the lieutenant.  The wound was still
raw, the grief palpable.  They'd get a new CO - they probably had one already -
but it would be a long time before anyone filled the void left behind. 

The platoon is a dynamic entity.  It's pride, its battle
history, its traditions - they remain.  But the men and women come and go. 
Soldiers die, they get wounded, they get promoted or transferred.  Slowly but
steadily, the living memory of the lieutenant would fade.  He would become less
the source of raw pain and loss and more the honored entry in the unit's
history. 

For me, though, the memory would always be there, and it
would never fade.  Up to that point, no one had impacted my life as strongly as
the lieutenant had, and I can't begin to list the things he taught me.  I only
knew him for the six months I'd served under him, but he was the first person
who truly won my unreserved respect.  I can't think of anything more meaningful
to say than this - Lieutenant Brett Reynolds was a truly good man in a universe
that had very few of those.  I resolved that my career would be a tribute to
him.  I would live up to his expectations; I would become the type of Marine he
had been, the kind he wanted me to be.

I wish I could say that the years long struggle on Tombstone
ended in glorious victory, but I can't.  When the war became official, the
Caliphate hit the planet with thousands of new troops, backed up with a naval
task force.  Cut off from resupply or reinforcement, our units on the ground
held out the best they could.  One by one the enemy captured our firebases and
mining settlements, pushing our people into an ever-shrinking perimeter.  As
far as I know, none of the troops posted on Tombstone when war was declared
ever made it out.  My old unit had rotated off-planet long before then, so I
didn't know any of the men and women who were sacrificed there.  But they all
hurt.  They were all my brothers and sisters...all Marines.

The soldiers that had been lost there over a decade were
expended wastefully, sent by a government that was too greedy to share the
wealth of the planet and too cowardly to fight hard enough to win.  The
politicians had viewed the monthly loss rates on Tombstone as a cost of doing
business.  That sort of calculus repulsed me, and for the first time I thought
– really thought – about how the Alliance was governed.  The ultimate futility
of if all only made the suffering and waste that much more bitter.

The wardroom of the Guadalcanal was sparse, just a few bare
metal tables and about a dozen chairs.  She was an older ship, a fast assault
vessel of the Peleliu class, and she showed her age.  My last posting had been
on the Gallipoli, one of the first ships of the new Ypres class, slated to
replace the old Pelelius.  The newer ships were no more spacious - real estate
on a spaceship was always at a premium - but the common areas were definitely
nicer.

I'd bounced around to several units over the last few years,
the result of my unfortunate streak of getting wounded in each of my first
three assignments.  After my third wound I got another transfer and my
promotion to corporal.  I made two drops as the junior two-striper in the squad
and then I was transferred here to take over my own fire team.  Just about half
my military career had been spent in the hospital, and each time I got the best
care possible, just as Captain Jackson said I would.

The war that everyone had been anticipating while I was on
Tombstone finally became official.  The Third Frontier War had begun, and we
were fighting both the Caliphate and the Central Asian Combine.  We had our
hands full, outnumbered and facing more threats that we could effectively
counter. 

I was waiting in the wardroom to meet the platoon's senior
corporal, who was going to help me get acclimated and introduce me to the four
other members of my fire team.  I needed to get them comfortable with me
quickly, because we were on the way to an assault, and it was a big one.  Tau
Ceti III was the Caliphate's largest and most important colony world, and a
major strategic hub.  We’d been pushed back in the first two years of
widespread fighting, but now we were taking the offensive; we were taking the
war to the enemy.  Operation Achilles would be the biggest assault in the
history of warfare in space, and every reserve, every logistical asset that
could be scraped up had been committed.  I was anxious and hopeful, determined
that my fire team would be among the best in the entire operation.

My thoughts were interrupted when the hatch slid open and a
man in a slightly rumpled set of duty fatigues walked in.  He was around my
age, maybe a year or two younger.  His brown hair was closely cut but still
somehow just slightly messy.  I'd become very "by the book" military,
and I was always meticulous with my uniform and my appearance, a trait I obviously
didn't share with my new acquaintance.

"Corporal Jax?"  I got up as he walked over. 
"I'm Erik Cain."  He extended his hand.  "I'd like to welcome
you to the platoon."

I clasped his hand and we shook.  He was fairly tall, but
when I stood up I towered over him.  "The pleasure is mine Corporal
Cain."

"Please, sit."  He motioned toward the chair where
I'd been seated, and he dropped into the one next to it.  "You are taking
over a good team, one of the best.  I know, because they were mine."  He
was friendly, but I could also tell he was taking his measure of me.  As I was
doing with him.

"I can promise you I will do my best to look after
them, Corporal Cain."

He smiled and leaned back in his chair.  "I appreciate
that.  And it's Erik, please."