Major (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 5) (12 page)

Chapter 19

“Any saved rounds?” LtCol Nidishchii’ asked his staff and commanders.

They were in the company conference room, a somewhat grandiose description of the windowless room with a plastifiber table and folding chairs.  The company headquarters itself rather spartan, a temporary building inside the secured Camp Donahue.  The brand new camp, completely inside the larger Camp Lorenzo, was the home to Marine Corps Special Ops, but only a few of the permanent facilities had been constructed as of yet.

“So what does all of that mean, sir?” Major Stan Lubjinski—“Light” —the Alpha Company commander asked.

“Just as Colonel
Lipper-Mendoza said, this was a monumental Intel fail, but that doesn’t reflect on us.  We’re to keep marching, and they will get us our next mission,” the CO said.

Ryck snorted.  A “monumental intel fail” was an understatement.  With no fewer than eleven separate missions, only one had any degree of success, and that one was minor when six SOG laggards were captured before they had evacuated their position.  Despite security so tight that the actual operators were kept in the dark, the word had leaked, and the SOG had simply moved on, only temporarily inconvenienced.  Blame was thrown around the various governments, but so far, nothing had splattered on the Marines, the SEALs, and Seraphim Special Host of the Brotherhood, the Confed Exploratores, the Purgatory Commando, or the Greater France COS
(Commandement des Opérations Spéciales),
which were all the combat units involved.  This was an Intel fail, not a military fail.

“Are we getting another chance to prove ourselves, sir, or is this it?” Stan continued.

“I didn’t hear anything about our mission changing, Major.  Did you?  So until we hear differently, it’s business as usual,” the CO said, then hesitating before going on.  “But I will say this.  The Federation has spent significant resources on this new look special ops, and we have not had the opportunity to validate a proof of concept.  If I was a betting man, I would bet that we will get that opportunity before anyone even considers closing us down and distributing all of us back into the general T/O.”
 

Ryck thought the CO was right.  Somebody’s, more like several somebodies’, careers were on the line with the new organization, and they would not be throwing in the towel—and committing career suicide—over a screw-up that probably occurred outside the Federation military command. Those “somebodies” certainly started with Lieutenant General Devon Papadakis, the current Director of Marine Corps Personnel and a former recon Marine, who was the prime mover for the new Special Ops command.  The general was reportedly on the short list for Commandant, and he couldn’t afford a black eye with something that was pet project.

What this operation showed was that joint operations with other governments were particularly difficult and that the SOG was far better integrated or had better intelligence than anyone had given them credit for.  What it did not show was if the new concept of offensive special ops was viable or not. 

The last op was a huge disappointment, but because nothing had been proven one way or the other, Ryck was sure another operation was coming down the pike at them.  He planned on being ready, and if the concept failed, it was not going to be because of the actual conduct of his Marines.  No matter what, they would excel.

FRESH BEGINNINGS

Chapter 20

Ryck scratched his full beard.  Grown in under two days with an inducer injection and regen, it itched mercilessly, and probably would for a few more days.  He could take an inhibitor, but this soon after regen, the doctors didn’t recommend it.

Ryck had been in real regen before, months of it on two different occasions.  This was his first time with a two-day intensive regen and a bariatric chamber.  The Ryck that came out of the chamber did not look quite like the one who’d shown up that morning, the Ryck he’d known for all his life.  A subtle change in the nose, a slight alteration in his eye sockets and forehead, and no facial recognition software would hit on him.  A slight change in his tibias, fibulas, and heels altered his gait.  He felt odd, but was assured that after the tour, his face and legs would be returned to his old self.

His kids thought he looked pretty funny, but that mostly settled around his beard.  He’d had one day with them, and he’d had to wrap his face in a balaclava before being allowed to leave the medical facility in order to spend one last night at home before shipping out.

He’d known about the facial reconstruction for some time before it took place, and at first, he’d almost balked, thinking it overkill.  But when Stan Lubjinksi was identified as a Federation Marine via a facial recognition program by a media watchdog group on Polyutopia, the fallout was pretty severe.  The Brotherhood government had to deny knowledge of him even if he was there coordinating with the Special Host at their invitation, and the Federation had to announce that he’d been there on his own during his annual leave.  Stan had been dropped from the battalion and transferred to places unknown.  With Ryck being a more noted figure, he’d be in pretty much every data bank in human space.

Now, Ryck—or Seth Pockery, as his wrist chip and documents identified him—was one of over 2,000 second-wavers aboard the
Grozny Three
, bound for Fresh Beginnings out of Ellison.  Coincidentally, Ellison was the home planet of his parents, who also had been second-wavers, but to Ryck’s home planet of Prophesy.  “Seth” was an agritech, indentured to Natural Plantation, a non-official subsidiary of GKA Nutrition.

In the next bunk,
Çağlar—or “Joachim Banks”—lay on his back, softly snoring.  He’d spent most of his time in the rack since boarding, and Ryck wondered if it was taking longer for the big man to recover from his inducer and regen.  Below him was Sandy—“Oscar Templeton.”  The three were an ad hoc team.  Ryck had always planned on bringing Çağlar into headquarters.  He’d gotten used to having the Marine around him, and he gave Ryck a feeling of security, and with this mission, this seemed like the right time to do that instead of waiting until he got more operational experience.  And with Sandy still an assistant team leader, he was somewhat out of place, so it made sense to pull him as well.

This was not a normal mission, one in which there was a chain of command, orders were given, and operations conducted.  The company had been broken into independently operating teams, all with the same mission.  This was a takedown.  Intel had uncovered that the second highest ranking member of the SOG was holed up on the planet, and the Universal Joint Task Force wanted him gone. As the teams were operating independently, Ryck was no longer a commander in the normal sense but just another operator.

Bravo and Charlie Companies were being inserted into Morning and Ellerville, respectively.  No one knew the exact location of “Ferret,” the codename for the SOG #2, but initial indications were that he frequented the less-populated areas between the two main cities, something that Ryck thought might bring Ferret in contact with his team, given that they were going to be in the farmlands.

Ryck fingered his beard again.  Historically, special ops soldiers often had relaxed grooming standards, but this was the first time since he’d enlisted that he wasn’t clean shaven and with a high-and-tight.  It felt weird.  At first, it had given him a feeling of freedom, but it actually made him feel slightly uncomfortable.  Hannah had thought it was funny and had incorporated it into their traditional bon voyage love-making, but Ryck had felt self-conscious then and still felt that way.  He knew, though, that it gave him an added degree of anonymity, and it was in keeping with current Ellison fashions.

“Hey, Joachim, time to get some chow.  We don’t want to be late,” he said, kicking Çağlar on the bottom of his feet.

Sandy hopped out of his rack, but Çağlar took a few more seconds to wake and register what Ryck had said.  With a grunt, he rolled out of the rack and stood up, stretching his frame in the confined space.  A couple of the others in the berthing took notice and stood up as well.  With a cattle car transit like this, the galley was their one interruption to their day.  The ship did have a common space where a screen ran flicks and a lucky few could play cards, but it could barely hold 30 people, and it was always packed.

On the way to the galley, Ryck passed two of his teams.  No one acknowledged the others though.  The three Marines got in line fifteen minutes before chow opened, but there were at least another 50 people in front of them.  Sandy got in a conversation with the next man behind them in line, but both Ryck and Çağlar stood silently.  At last, the line started moving, and a few minutes later, they were holding their trays under the dispensers, their meals plopping down.  Ryck grabbed a drink and sat down.  Several other people sat down around him before Çağlar came up, and Ryck could see the slight look of concern on his watchdog’s eyes as he took a seat several places away.  Ryck was going to have to talk to him about that when he had a chance.  Çağlar was not his private protector.  They were a team, and the mission came first, not covering Ryck’s ass.

At least the food was good—surprisingly good—on the
Grozny Three. 
Dinner was rabbit vesuvio, rice pilaf, and a mixed fruit cup.  After he’d thought about it, though, it made sense.  The bases for the fabricators cost the same, whether for good food or bad.  So while a better fabricator might cost more, over the long haul, that incremental cost was tiny, and keeping 2,000 men and women, people perhaps uncertain and possibly nervous about their future, happy, was important to a ship’s security.  The tiny increased incremental cost for a quality fabricator was probably just good insurance for a quiet voyage.

Ryck finished his meal.  Sandy was only half-finished, deep in conversation with yet another fellow passenger. 
Çağlar saw that Ryck was finished and started to wolf down what was left of his food, but Ryck gave his head a slight shake, and the Marine slowed back down.  Ryck didn’t think he needed any protection in the corridors of the ship, and any unusual behavior could only make them stand out.

He got up, dumped his tray, and slowly wandered back to berthing.  One of his berthing mates was racked out hard.  Everyone else was gone, still at chow.  With nowhere to sit, Ryck eased back into his rack and turned on his PA.  The ship had a pretty decent selection of flicks and holos, and Ryck settled in to watch “While You Waited,” a horror flick he hadn’t seen in at least ten years.  They had another 41 hours until arriving at Fresh Beginnings, and anything to pass the time was appreciated.

Chapter 21

The offload from the
Grozny Three
was surprisingly painless.  Each new indentured had been given a company jacket that easily identified them.  The Natural Plantation jacket was bright green and yellow and very hard to miss.  Immediately after debarking the shuttles, they’d been herded into a large hangar-like building, and all along the walls were tables with company signs lofted above them.  Ryck spotted the sign with the same green-and-yellow as the jackets and made his way to it, followed by his two teammates. 

They were checked in by a company rep who scanned their wrists.   Ryck knew that their small identity implants were quite a bit more sophisticated than those given to real indentureds, and he couldn’t help but tense as his was scanned, but the woman never even blinked. He should have relaxed, he knew.  The Federation would not have given them a different implant if it could set off any alarms on the primitive scanners used in the corporate world.

Ryck stood around as more new indentureds gathered.  Twelve of the new men were Marines from his company.  Ryck followed the instructions given them in their pre-ops brief.  He tried to look at his Marines just as he took in the other 50 or so Natural Plantation indentureds.  Completely ignoring them could also trigger alarms in any scanning programs.

When everyone had checked in, their company rep told the gathered men and women to follow her, and they left the hangar right onto a waiting bus.  No immigration, no formalities. 

Fresh Beginnings was an independent world with two separate pseudo-governments that were more like handling companies vice true governments.  This was one of the reasons the planet was becoming popular with corporations:  companies could do pretty much as they pleased.  Citizens who worked there were still subject to their home government laws, so most of the indentureds were from the Federation—indentured servitude contracts were illegal in the Brotherhood, the Alliance, the Confederation, and most other governments.

The entire shipload of new workers was from the Federation, and their new company simply registered their arrival, having previously taken care of any immigration formalities.  Less than an hour after setting foot on the planet, Ryck and his team were on their way out of the city and to their new . . .

New what?
Ryck wondered. 
“Assignment?  Job?  Posting?

Ryck settled back, looking out the window at Morning.  Given the relative short amount of time the city had been in existence, it didn’t look much different than any other mid-sized city.  Even without a formal government, it seemed to function as well as any other.   The combination of a degree of normalcy and the lack of a formal government were probably why the SOG had a presence here.  Living out on some barren piece of space rock, in addition to the lack of creature comforts, would be like a beacon to searching navies.  Signs of life where there should be none caught the attention of the searchers.  It was much easier to hide in plain sight, but maybe where there were no extradition treaties or other such controls that existed in most of human space.

Within 20 minutes, they were out of the city proper and into the country.  Ryck’s farm boy background had him evaluating what he saw of the land.  With plenty of water, the land looked fertile, much more than on his homeworld of Prosperity where farmers had to scrape and toil to coax out even the barest of crops.  It had taken a consortium of companies to terraform Fresh Beginnings, but it was easy to see that they would quickly make up their investments.

The first fields he saw were full of flax grass, that hardy source of raw organics for the fabricators.  Flax grass, algae, and soy were the three prime organics, making up the bulk of the bases fed into fabricators, making everything from food to plastics to medicines.  Other bases were used, but in lesser amounts.

Further out, though, farm-to-table products were being grown.  Ryck saw sweet corn, wheat, tomatoes, green beans, and strawberries in abundance.  Fresh Beginnings was pretty far out in the space lanes, far from the major population centers, but these were high-end products that brought in excellent prices.  Real wheat was undergoing a renaissance as fresh bake shops were sprouting up like mushrooms after a rain, and there had always been a market for fresh produce among the wealthy and moderately wealthy, not to mention the several religious groups who would not eat fabricated food.  A strawberry picked on Fresh Beginnings and put immediately into stasis would taste just as fresh when it came out a week, month, or even year later.  It all boiled down to cost, nothing more.

It took another hour before the bus pulled into the Natural Plantation campus.  The new indentureds clambered out of the bus and waited in a loose formation for instructions.  It was somewhat confusing for a few moments until names were called out, telling them where to go.

Ryck’s three-man team, along with his other Marines and a few real indentureds were told to go to Station 3, where a very young man gave them their assignments.

“Pockery, Banks, Templeton, you’re at Pump Station 55.  Grab your bags and get on number six,” he said, pointing at a purple bus waiting at the back of the lot.

Each of the waiting men was given his assignment, all on pump stations.  Ryck’s three other teams and the two civilian teams made it six separate pump stations.  Ryck casually wondered how they were assigned.  Ryck could muddle along with a pump station, at least the small ones used on Prosperity, but these were much larger and much more powerful.  He had to assume that the two civilian teams really were assigned based on their skills and the needs of the company, but for the stations manned by his four teams, not much real work was going to get done.

They loaded #six, and within 15 minutes after arriving, they had left the campus with its dorms and basic creature comforts.  The first team (one of the Marine teams) was dropped off 30 minutes later.  Ryck watched out the window as the four Marines got off the bus, pulled their bags and supplies from the luggage compartment, and started into the squat plasticrete building that was to be their home for the next, well, hopefully not long.  Indentureds might typically stay on a remote station like this for a week or ten days at a time before being rotated back, but if this mission had not been accomplished in that time, Ryck didn’t know what was going to happen.

Ryck’s team was the third to debark the bus.  The three Marines entered Pump Station 55, their new home.  The square building was spartan, to say the least, but not run-down.  Half of the building was taken up by a large Grundfos UP 5000.  The pump was amazingly quiet as it pushed irrigation water along at 5,000 liters per minute.  The silence was welcome as they would be sleeping in the bunks along the near bulkhead, only 10 meters from the pump.

Along the north wall was a control bank, and adjacent to the bunks was a countertop, fridge, and heat bay.  They had no fabricator.  All the meals for a week were brought along with them.  All they had to do was slap them into the heat bay for 15 or 20 seconds, and voila!  Dinner is served.

Ryck ran a quick scan with his PA.  This was not normally something a PA could do, but then Ryck’s PA was not a normal PA.  The room was clean, so he dumped his bag on the bottom left rack while the other two automatically took the lower and upper right rack.  All three walked to the far corner in back of the pump where a grey metal case was waiting.  Ryck carefully entered the code into the lock—entering the wrong code would have spectacular—and not pleasant—results.  The lock sprung open, and they lifted the lid.

Nestled in the formfoam were two rifles.  Both were wicked-looking weapons that brought a smile to any Marine.  The M565 and M569 were both long-range sniper rifles.  The M565 fired a 250 grain semi-smart round with an effective range of 3,000 meters.  The Schmidt & Bender PM90-M scope was one of the best money could buy, refined over the hundreds of years since the company first started making scopes.  The M569 looked almost the same and had the same scope.  The floating barrel had a slightly larger diameter, but that was about it.  The difference was in the ammunition.  The round was thicker, chunkier.  But the visible round was only the transport system.  The payload was a small meson beam.  Atmosphere dissipated any energy weapon, and the M569 took care of that by firing the beam generator as a kinetic round.  As the round neared the target, the casing would slough off and the beam would be generated.  A typical meson beam man-packed weapon might have an effective range of 150 meters or so.  The M569 matched, even slightly exceeded the effective range of its M565 cousin.  There were also three M77s and three Rugers in the box, but their attention was on those two bad boys.

There were none of the new M73s, no surprise.  They still could not reliably synch up with their skins, and not matter how high-tech the handguns were, if they didn’t work right each and every time, they couldn’t be taken into combat.

Each weapon was taken out and given a cert-check.  All came up green.  The weapons were good to go.

Next, Ryck removed the slate-gray barrel-shaped stasis chamber.  The status light shown green.  Ryck nodded to Sandy, and the lieutenant went to the door to the pump house and cracked it open.  He scanned the outside before turning back to Ryck and gave him a thumbs up.

“OK, here it goes,” Ryck said, then began holding his breath while he hit the kill switch and cracked open the small chamber.

What looked to be mist roiled out of the chamber a few seconds later.  As if a flock of birds, the mist circled once or twice before rushing out the door.  Ryck let out his breath and closed the chamber again.  If he’d accidentally inhaled some of the tiny drones, not much would have happened, but that meant there would be less coverage of their sector of the AO.
[12]
 

The tiny drones, barely a micron across, would be in position within two hours.  Along with those released by the rest of the Marines, they would have fairly extensive coverage over the two major cities, most of the minor ones, and some of the scattered open spaces.

The Federation was limited by treaty in its use of drones in time of peace.  They could surveil, but not be weaponized.  Ryck doubted that would stop the Federation from covertly using weaponized drones on a kill mission, but the intel community felt that the SOG had some sophisticated surveillance measure of their own, and if larger drones were identified in the skies of Fresh Beginnings, that would run their target to ground and make him much more difficult to flush out.  With the nano-drones, that wasn’t an issue.  They would show up on any physical scans as nothing more than airborne dust, and individually, their emissions were too weak to pick up even if they hadn’t been shielded.  Together, their linked emissions would show up as background noise, nothing more. 

The problem was that they were too small to be weaponized.  There were rumors that the FCDC had nanos that could kill, but if they did, they were not being deployed on Fresh Beginnings.  The nana-drones were there to find the Ferret.  It would be up to the SpecOps Marines to take him out.

Ryck looked around the pump room before telling
Çağlar
, “Let’s see what the chow is.  You’ve got mess duty.”

He sat down and hit the code for a hidden app on his PA.  A screen popped up showing the progress of the drones as they moved into position.   The three Marines had done all they could to get the mission underway.  Now it was a waiting game.