Part 33 (1/2)
s.h.i.+p design has changed little since the development of the bacterium bomb about six thousand years ago. The ease with which this bomb - small enough to be carried by a Marine - could penetrate outer hulls made capital s.h.i.+ps more vulnerable. This led to an emphasis on smaller vessels and on much greater numbers of Marines skirmis.h.i.+ng in an attempt to disable enemy s.h.i.+ps and to s.h.i.+eld friendly vessels from the enemy's Marines. Indeed it is probable that the very existence of the Human Marine Corps, and consequently the Human Legion, owes its existence to the bacterium bomb.
Battles between wars.h.i.+ps typically occur when an invading fleet contests a defending force for control of a star system. s.h.i.+ps will tow warboats to strike range in the outer system, and then leave the boats to take the fight to the enemy who will defend with a mix of boats, orbital defense platforms and many hidden defenses. Some s.h.i.+ps have high maneuver and offensive capabilities and may accompany the warboats in an attack.
Although to a Marine the distinction between s.h.i.+p and boat may seem arbitrary and of little interest, this is not true of navy personnel. It is vital that you learn and employ the correct terminology for any vessel to which you have been a.s.signed. Entire Marine complements have been executed for insulting their warboat captain by suggesting she or he commanded a s.h.i.+p. To warboat crew, s.h.i.+ps are flown by plodders and cowards who wait in safety while the boats do the real fighting. To s.h.i.+p crew, boats are minor craft, mere pa.s.sengers whose crew spend most their lives in cryogenic sleep while the s.h.i.+p navigates the deep void between the stars.
By whatever name they are known, the vessels to which human Marines are a.s.signed tend to be less powerful models and toward the end of their active life, many craft already having seen millennia of service.
The s.h.i.+p type a Marine will be a.s.signed to depends to some degree on the regimental specialism, although Marines train for all potential roles.
a.s.sault Marine regiments are trained for a.s.sault against a defended planet. a.s.sault regiments can be a.s.signed to almost any s.h.i.+p type. In fact, the s.h.i.+p or boat is unimportant, being merely to tow self-contained Marine pods, which contain habitation, cryogenic, supplies, and dropboats for an approximately company-sized unit of marines to deploy in orbit and launch an a.s.sault. The Marine pods have limited maneuver and defensive capability and will detach from the parent vessel before attack.
Void Marine regiments are specialists in vacuum and zero-g warfare. A s.h.i.+p's Marine complement will form a defensive screen and add offensive options against enemy s.h.i.+ps.
Tactical Marine regiments are also trained in void combat, but are allied to a small tactical warboat to make a single combined operations unit. The most common warboat type is called a Tactical Unit (often shorted to 'TU'), a roughly spherical craft that is agile and well-armed. A TU will typically have a Marine complement of two squads and be ferried into combat by a sleeve s.h.i.+p. The sleeve consists of a command and propulsion sections attached to a hollow tube. The TU boats - and other modules such as engineering and supply pods - are stacked within the tube during interstellar travel.
Another distinction between void and tactical Marines is that the former will egress their s.h.i.+p through an airlock, or through a hanger opening inside a small boat. A tactical Marine will typically egress through an EVA chute which uses amniotic gel to s.h.i.+eld the marine from physical trauma while the TU jinks at high gees to avoid enemy fire.
- Some information on this topic has been excluded as you have insufficient access privileges -
* Chapter 47 *
Nestled within the pattern of brilliant jewels embedded in absolute black, the precious gleam from Earth's star pulled at Arun across nearly 50 light years.
Sol was not far away, easily reached by transport s.h.i.+p, but no s.h.i.+p would ever take Arun there. Not even to one of Sol's neighbors.
Throughout novice school, the instructors had rammed home that the Human Marine Corps was a joke in the eyes of other species: plasma fodder equipped with third-rate cast-offs and so stupid that they were sent off to die actually believing they were genuine warriors.
”Look up Earth history,” Instructor Rekka had once told them, ”for the contempt felt by Earth peoples for Roma, Jews, lepers and dalits. That's how the others see us: unwashed, untouchable, unwanted. The word 'human' has been absorbed by alien languages, a byword throughout this region of the galaxy for the lowest of the low.”
Arun wasn't so convinced. Maybe all this humans-are-useless drent was a psych trick to produce Marines who were hungry to prove their worth.
What made Sol so impossibly distant was the White Knight policy of keeping human Marine units well away from Earth. But why would they bother if humans were such a joke?
Arun would go there if he could, but he suspected that was a dream that would sour if it ever came true. He'd heard tales of Earth soldiers marching through captured cities and welcomed as liberators by beautiful girls throwing flowers at their feet. As an armed representative of Earth's oppressors, Arun guessed a more likely welcome would be a knife in the back in some dark alley.
Sol hazed and then vanished behind Tranquility's bulk as the planet swung across his field of view, but Sol was only one of myriad stars, and the circling heavens held endless fascination for those who really took the time to look.
As an underground dweller, Arun equated the starscape with clouds: both provided spectacular sights, made all the more precious because he rarely had the chance to relax and enjoy them.
”Listen up, squads. We head out in two minutes.”
With a sigh, Arun reeled in the focus of his attention. Blue and Gold Squads were floating in the vacuum, like a snapshot of swarming insects. Close by was their target, a hulk of functional metal officially labeled a.s.sault Training Vessel 2. The Spirit cla.s.s wars.h.i.+p was once a proudly gleaming wedge of metal, just under a klick long from bow to stern, and 300 meters from the viewing blister sprouting from the upper deck down to the main railgun slung under its belly. Now its off-white hull was scorched by beam weapon attacks and its skin riddled with holes drilled through for boarding exercises. As with most things in Detroit, the s.h.i.+p had been unofficially re-designated using an Earth name, Fort Douaumont, because - in reference to some obscure battle on Earth - the s.h.i.+p had been fought over countless times but never truly won.
”Ninety seconds.”
A grafted-on switch in Arun's head told him that these words came over the command channel. There was no need, because Arun recognized the voice as belonging to Cadet Lance Sergeant Alice Belville, Gold Squad's leader and designated commander for both squads in this exercise.
Alice was okay. Sometimes Arun worried that she was a little too quick to press ahead without consulting with her section leaders.
”Frame-reference on my position,” said Alice. ”North to Douaumont's bow. Center on her dorsal command blister. Green layer through s.h.i.+p axis. Layer height 200 meters.”
Zero-g combat had no natural reference for up and down, left and right, so tactical commanders defined a frame-reference for their Marines, sometimes redefining it over the course of a fast-changing battle. With Fort Douaumont, the framing was often the same: north corresponded to forward, right to starboard, and so on.
Arun glanced over to the two veterans observing the cadets. Their battlesuits were capable of stealthing their wearers against any means Arun had of detecting them. Today sergeants Gupta and Searl had set their suits to high visibility mode, flickering yellow and orange. They looked as if they were on fire.
Alice issued each section their orders, and reminded the cadets that the vets had given them a ten-second start before activating Douaumont's defensive lasers. That's when the fun would begin.
Madge would lead Arun's Blue-5 fire team in an arc over the s.h.i.+p at a distance of around half a klick above the s.h.i.+p's upper hull. Once in place, Blue-5 would watch for counter-attack, covering the backs of Alice and Brandt's teams who would lead the main a.s.sault. Del-Marie and Blue-6 would take a similar position but slightly lower and facing aft.
”All units to fire smoke at two klicks to target,” finished Alice. Frakk! That meant he would be exposed to laser fire for a klick before s.h.i.+elding his advance under cover of smoke. It also meant the smoke would be far denser supposing enough Marines made it that far. ”Stealth at one klick. Any questions?”
Alice had left about one minute for any debate. None of the other 54 cadets had any questions to ask, but Arun wondered whether the vets in their fiery suits were questioning why she was leaving her teams exposed for so long.
Arun concentrated his thoughts on an area of s.p.a.ce about one half klick closer to Fort Douaumont until Barney acknowledged, adding a cream waypoint marker to Arun's tac-display.
”On my mark... 3... 2... 1... Mark!”
A blur of frantic motion erupted into the void from all directions, every cadet performing a crazy dance of perfect unpredictability. Arun whooped with delight in the privacy of his own suit as he corkscrewed, reversed, accelerated and stopped in a complete jinkout maneuver. All he had to do was set the waypoint and enjoy the ride as Barney plotted a constantly changing evasive course.
After about ten seconds, Fort Douaumont's point defense systems were activated, immediately acquiring targeting solutions. Lasers opened up, fingers of instant death reaching out to pluck the cadets from their dance.
Arun was under heavy fire, but it felt oddly unreal. It always did in s.p.a.ce. With a ground a.s.sault you felt the crump of sh.e.l.lfire through your feet, and heard the whiplash crack of field railguns. Atmospheric dust would bloom beam weapons into brilliant light-shows, leaving a tang of ozone in the singed air, and an afterimage on survivors' retinas.
Not so in the serene vacuum of s.p.a.ce. Here there were no shockwaves, the only sounds that of Arun's own breathing and the commands coming through his internal helmet speaker. With no atmosphere to scatter their light, lasers were invisible unless you looked directly down the beam.
Death was something that happened to someone else, until it happened to you. And even then, any weapon capable of slicing through battlesuit armor would kill the person inside before they knew they'd been hit.
There were no wounded in void combat.
Barney gave him a jolt whenever one of the cadets was. .h.i.t. In the disorientating rush of the a.s.sault, that was the only way he could tell the lasers were finding targets. Arun hadn't time to worry about them. He set Barney a second waypoint, closer to the s.h.i.+p.
After another two seconds of exposing himself to point defense, Barney told him he was now two klicks from Fort Douaumont.
Arun fired smoke. Yeah! He'd made it through the most nerve-shredding part of the mission.
The defensive munitions canister flew from the launcher beneath the barrel of his SA-71. Moments later, the canister split in two, each section blasting off on different vectors. Those children split again, and then again into a total of 64 final capsules. The a.s.sault force launched around three thousand capsules, which exploded over the course of the next twenty seconds, lighting up the vacuum. Marines talked of firing smoke, but what really emerged was a mixed shower of decoys and material strips that unwound into streamers. The strips had a range of properties: highly reflective, thermally hot, radioactive, energy absorbent. All were designed to confuse enemy targeting systems and degrade beam strength.
It worked: Arun sensed the rate of casualties slow to a near stop.
s.p.a.ce seemed to have acquired a thousand new stars, a sequined shroud added to by the enemy lasers, which flashed in green or red bursts from myriad reflections.
Arun told Barney to filter out these distractions from his visor, leaving him with the target s.h.i.+p and his waypoints. He was about to add a third waypoint when a gut-wrenchingly abrupt change of velocity grayed and narrowed Arun's vision, robbing him of breath.
It took a few seconds for Barney to ease his acceleration enough for the blood to start flowing properly in Arun's head. As his vision returned, Barney explained that he'd made an emergency course correction to avoid colliding with another cadet. The AI was now bringing him directly to the target.
The constant jinking grew even more frantic for a few moments before slamming to a halt. Barney had matched velocity with the target s.h.i.+p, positioning Arun at the far left of his fire team's patrol arc. The suit was now stealthed too.