Sergeant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 2) (23 page)

The
rocket that had blown the hole in the legionnaire’s chest did not cause as much damage as the missile that had hit Prifit, but it had done enough. His time as an armorer while still in regen gave him some expertise in combat suits, so he kneeled to examine what the damage revealed. The R-3 armor was thinner than PICS armor, which was to be expected, but Ryck couldn’t see any of the circuits that powered it.

“Ryck, are you there?” SSgt Hecs voice came over the net.

“Yeah, I’m here.”

“What the hell’s going on
? We’ve got Justice in a panic saying he’s heard fighting, and I can’t raise the lieutenant. My display’s got LCpl Prifit down,” the platoon sergeant said.

“We were hit by two legionnaires.
Prifit’s KIA, but the lieutenant’s fine. He friggin’ charged one of the legionnaires while taking full fire, but his rockets took the guy out first. His PICS is pretty fried, and I think it’s going to need a reset.”

There was a moment of silence, then “
Prifit’s KIA? No chance of bringing him back?”

“Staff Sergeant, no way.
His entire chest is gone.”

The lieutenant was making a circle in the air with
his gauntlet. Back at boot, Ryck had wondered why they spent so much time on hand and arm signals. He never would have thought he would be in the field with a platoon commander who couldn’t communicate, though.

“Staff Sergeant, the lieutenant wants me. I’ll keep you informed,” he told SSgt Hecs as he went up to his platoon commander.

It wasn’t textbook hand and arm signals, but the lieutenant made his intentions clear. He wanted Prifit taken out of his PICS, anything salvaged, then for the Gazelle launcher and the PICS to be destroyed. Ryck grabbed the launcher while Rey and Hartono pulled the pieces of what was left of Tipper Prifit out of his PICS. Ryck tried to avoid looking at what was left inside the PICS, but he managed to take the shoulder launcher and helmet off. He was sure the coldpack was destroyed, and he didn’t want to feel around in the bloody mess that was left to confirm that. When he was done, he put the launcher on top of Prifit’s destroyed PICS.

Hartono had a buttpack, and
what was left of Prifit fit inside of it. Cpl Evans took two of his bullfrogs, the EOD version of the toads
[23]
each Marine carried, and put one on top of the Gazelle launcher, one on the PICS’ codpiece. He lit them off, and the Marines stepped back. All of them stood watching in silence as bullfrogs ignited and burned their way through the armor. Packing two or three times the punch of a normal toad, it didn’t take long.

It wasn’t until the bullfrogs flickered out, leaving a smoking pile of junk, that they turned and left to rejoin the rest of the platoon.

Ryck sighed with contentment. He felt naked, his visibility was low in the darkness, and something was digging into his back, but it felt good to be out of his PICS. With power levels down for all the Marines, particularly for the seven who had made the two recons, the lieutenant had ordered a rotating watch, with those off watch out of their PICS.

More vital than the power leve
ls, though, were the coldpacks. With the two per Marine, they had about 50-60 hours of operating time before the PICS became unusable. The lieutenant hoped that the
Intrepid
would be back by then, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

Getting out of the PICS was a calculated risk. If they were hit, it would take up to 30 seconds or possibly longer for the Marines to get back in, sealed, and ready to fight. If the PICS were completely powered down instead of on standby, it would take even longer, but while that would save more power, it increased the risk dramatically.

The lieutenant had sent out three OPs
[24]
, Marines without their PICS and under tarnkappes.
[25]
Simple vibration sensors were placed to fill in the gaps between the OPs. Even under a full charge by R-3 legionnaires, the platoon should have the time needed to be ready to meet the threat.

Four Marines were in their PICS and on full alert around them—the rest of the
empty PICS stood like sentinel statues, ready to come to life.

“Thanks for getting my PICS back up to speed, Ryck,” the lieutenant said as he took a seat beside his sergeant.

Ryck?
That’s a first,
Ryck thought.

With the lieutenant, it was always rank and last name.
Ryck wondered if sitting there in the dark in their longjohns affected the degree of formality between the two Marines.

“No problem, sir. It wasn’t hard.”

Ryck didn’t mention that it hadn’t been difficult from a technical standpoint, but he had cannibalized the controls from Tipper Prifit’s helmet, which had been a bit rough emotionally.

“I
guess your time in the armory paid off, huh?” he asked, then continuing before Ryck could respond. “My time as a genhen was in admin, so I can help unscrew a pay problem, but that’s about it.”

From what he’d heard, the lieutenant had spent almost as much time as Ryck had in regen. He wondered if his platoon commander had hated it as much as he did. Not the discomfort and pain
--everyone hated that--but being away from his unit, away from his fellow Marines, and most of all, the feeling of uselessness. At least Ryck had been with weapons while he was a genhen. With all respect and gratitude to the admin types who kept things running smoothly, Ryck thought he would have died had he been locked up in an office somewhere, shuffling papers.

“This might seem odd, given the circumstances, but I’ve been watching you pretty closely,” the lieutenant continued.

What now
? Ryck thought.

“What I mean is that you are a good Marine, a good NCO. You think on your feet. That’s why I wanted you with me today on the recons. I knew I could count on you.”

“Uh, well, thanks, sir,” Ryck answered, unsure of where the conversation was going.

“You finished your degree, right?”

“Yes, sir. I received my diploma two months ago.”

“Yes, I saw the message. Well, I just wanted to tell you that it
’s not just me, but Captain Davis had taken note of you, too.”

Captain Davis? He’
s hardly said ten words to me since I’ve been in the company, and now he’s gone.

“My point is, and I just want you to think of it, if you ever want to apply to be an officer, I would endorse you, and Captain Davis told me he would have endorsed you. I can write that endorsement from him as well.”

“I . . . I don’t know what to say, sir. I mean, it’s an honor to hear you tell me that, but I’ve never even thought of applying for a commission.”

That was a lie. He had thought about it, but
he kept denying it to the rest of the Marines. For some warped reason that Ryck didn’t understand, Marine culture ruled that enlisted Marines who wanted to be officers were suspect, not full members of the “brotherhood.”

“Just consider it, OK? The Marines need leaders like you in the officer corps. Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say. You make sure to catch some sleep. We don’t know what tomorrow will bring, right?”

“Right, sir,” Ryck said as the lieutenant stood up and excused himself before walking over to where SSgt Hecs had bedded down.

“You should be an officer,” Sams said quietly beside him, his voice several octaves higher than normal.
“Oh really, sir? You mean that? Of course I want that,” he went on, answering himself.

“Fuck you,” Ryck said. “I can’t help what the lieutenant thinks.”

“Sure. You are such a fucking brown-noser, Ryck. I didn’t hear you tell him no.”

“Eat me,” Ryck grumbled.

Despite himself, the lieutenant’s words had piqued his interest. In order to become an officer, a Marine had to get recommended by his unit, even if he met all other qualifications. To know he had one, or two, if what the lieutenant had said about Capt Davis was true, opened the door.

He wasn’t sure he wanted
to become one, though. Sure it was an advancement in responsibility, not to mention pay, and it would take care of one of Ryck’s constant frustrations, that of not knowing what was happening all the time, of being kept in the dark. On the other hand, it would take him farther from his Marines, and there was all the other BS that officers had to deal with that had nothing to do with leading Marines.

Ryck generally liked it as a sergeant, and becoming a platoon sergeant would be pretty awesome. Why take the BS of being an officer when you could get all the good parts as a SNCO?

“Eh, what does Lieutenant Personality know, anyway.”

“You know, Sams, you keep calling him that, but the guy is good. Look at us now. He’s put in for every contingency. That’s pretty copacetic, if you ask me.”

Sams was one of his closest Marines in the platoon, and with Popo dead, there were only two sergeants. Ryck loved Sams like a brother, but his cynical attitude sometimes pissed Ryck off.

“Sure, I’ll give you that. But any manual-reading bozo could do that. I don’t think he’s got the fire that, say, Lieutenant
Hargrave’s got, or the skipper,” he said.

That put an immediate damper on things. Both officers had been killed this morning.

“He had fire today,” Ryck muttered.

“What do you mean?” Sams asked.

“You should have seen him. When we both got hit by the legionnaire
with his hadron gun, here I am diving to get out of the line of fire. Does the lieutenant do that? Fuck no. He charged the motherfucker. Charges like some knight with a lance. No fucking hesitation.”

“He charge
d
into
the fire? I thought you were supposed to get further away, ‘cause the beam dissipates,” Sams asked.

“That’s for a plasma gun, like ours. But I said hadron gun, which you know the Legion uses. The beam’s not going to dissipate for a long, long distance.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“So I’m getting out of the way,
Keiji’s shooting like some rabid wolf, and he even hits the other legionnaire’s gun port, knocking it out of action -- ”

“He hits the gun port?”

“Didn’t you listen to the debrief? Yeah, one of his grenades hits the gunport that this asshole is using to fire on us, and that knocks his weapon offline. That’s why he took off. No weapons.”

“
Pisspot froggie. Running away,” Sams said.

“Yeah, well anyway, I’m trying to get a shot
in, and I can see the lieutenant’s shield glow, I mean, I can really see it. He’s going all orange. But he doesn’t stop. Five rockets, no fucking guidance on them. Four hit the legionnaire, and the fourth does it. Bam! He’s smoke-checked. And let me tell you, when I worked on his PICS, if that last rocket hadn’t hit, the lieutenant would be KIA now. One more second, and his PICS would have been fried. It’s because he didn’t hesitate, that he went into the attack, that he lived, and maybe the rest of us, too. So don’t tell me he’s got no fire, OK?”

“Shit, OK, OK. Back off. I meant, with us, at least, he’s like a robot.
Never excited. Just does his job.”

“He’s a good officer. Made his ancestors proud, I bet.”

“Something special about his ancestors?” Ryck asked.

“
Yeah, he’s Navaho,” Ryck told him, wondering why Sams had to ask.

“And . . . ?”

“Saint Harry on a rope, Sams, don’t you keep track of anything? The lieutenant’s from
Dinétah
,”

“Again, and . . .?”

“You know about
Dinétah
, right?”

“It’s a country on Manitoba. Some of them join the Marines. So? Lots of planets send more than their fair share to the Marines.”

“You’ve never heard of the Code-Talkers?” Ryck asked.

“No, I’ve never hear of the Code-Talkers,” Sams responded, his voice inflected to show his lack of interest.

“You really should. They’re part of Marine Corps history. Back in WWII, the Navaho people sent their young men into the U.S. Marines to fight the Japanese, and they were vital in keeping Marine comms secure from being compromised by the Japanese.”

“Ancient history, my friend, ancient history. I’m not the one trying to get a history degree.”

“It may be old, but it is our history, and when the Navajo relocated to
Dinétah
, they re-established their warrior culture. So guess where their best and brightest go?
Yep, to the Marines. Like the old-time Gurkhas, only the very top few were able to join the Marines.”

“
Gurkhas, I know about them. We had a Gurkha gunny before you got here. He had this wicked knife he took everywhere, a cokry or something,” Sams said.

“A
kukri,” Ryck corrected him. “The Gurkhas were big in the old Royal Marines, the Navaho in the U.S. Marines. They both still serve in our Marines. My point is that the lieutenant comes from a long line of warriors, and they only let the best enlist. So he’s made his ancestors proud, today, not just for what he’s done when he was an enlisted slob like us.”

“Ah, whatever.
He may be some kick-butt warrior, but I still think he’s got a stick up his ass. He needs to lighten up a schosh. Now, you heard your hero. We’ve got the get some sleep.”

With that, Sams laid back, turning away from Ryck. Within a minute or so, Ryck’s friend started snoring.