Star Corps (5 page)

In the end, with the disintegration of the old UN and the rise of the U.S./UFR-Russian-Japanese–led Confederation of World States, Aztlan independence had been all but forgotten…save by a handful of Hispanic malcontents and disaffected political dreamers scattered from Mazatlan to Los Angeles.

The dream remained alive for many. John's father, his family long an important clan with connections throughout Sonora and Sinaloa, had been more and more outspoken against the gringo invaders who'd migrated south since the Mexican War.
“Carpetbaggers,”
he called them, a historical allusion to a much earlier time.

But he'd not been able to convince John, and for the past four years their relationship, already shaky with Carlos's drinking and his notoriously quick temper, had grown steadily worse.

“Have you ever thought,” Lynnley said quietly, “that you and your dad could end up on opposite sides, if fighting breaks out?”

“Uh-uh. Won't happen. The government can't use troops on federal soil.”

“A war starts down here, and all it would take is a presidential order. The Marines would be the first ones to go in.”

“It won't come to that,” he said, stubborn. “Besides, I want space duty.”

She laughed. “And what makes you think they'll take what you want into consideration?”

“Hey, they gave me a dream sheet to fill out.”

“So? I got one too, but once we sign aboard, our asses are theirs, right? We go where they tell us to go.”

“Yeah…” The idea of coming back to Sonora to put down a rebellion left him feeling a bit queasy. He thought he remembered reading, though, that the government never used troops to put down rebellions in the regions those troops called home. That just didn't make sense.

It wasn't going to come to that. It
couldn't
.

“You need to get out of the house for a while?” Lynnley asked him. “I thought we might fly out to Pacifica. Maybe do some shopping?”

John glanced back at the front door. He could hear the faint and muffled echoes of his father, still shouting.
“You stupid bitch! This is all your fault!…”

“I…don't think I'd better,” he told her. “I don't want to leave my mom.”

“She's a big girl,” Lynnley said. “She can take care of herself.”

But she doesn't
, he thought, bitter.
She can't
. He felt trapped.

After talking with the Marine recruiter over an implant link three days ago, he and Lynnley had gone to the Marine Corps recruiter in Tiburón the next day and thumbed their papers. In less than three weeks they were supposed to report to the training center at Parris Island, South Carolina. Somehow he had to tell his parents…his mother, at least. How?

More than once in the past few years, Ellen Garroway Esteban had left the man who was, more and more, a stranger. Two years ago John had tried to get between his parents when his father had been hitting his mother and he'd received a dislocated shoulder in the subsequent collision with a bookcase. And there'd been the time when his father chased her out of the house with a steak knife…and the time she ended up in the hospital, claiming to have fallen down the stairs. John had begged her to pack up and leave, to get out while she still could. Others had done the same—her sister Carol in San Diego, the social worker who'd counseled her after her stay in the hospital, Mother Beatrice, their priest. Each time, she'd agreed the marriage was unsavable and nearly left for good…but each time, she found a reason to stay or to come back home.

One day, John was terribly afraid, she was going to come back home and Carlos was going to kill her. It would be an
accident, of course. Injuries he inflicted on others always were.

John hated the thought of leaving his mother, of just walking out and abandoning her. He felt like a coward for running away like this. At the same time, he knew there was nothing else he could do to help her. Goddess knew, he'd tried, but, damn it, she kept coming back, she refused to press charges, she covered up for her husband when the police showed up in response to his panicked calls, made excuses for his behavior: “Carlos is just under a lot of stress right now. He can't help it, really…”

His mother would have to decide to help herself.
He
would be gone.

But not just yet. “No,” he told Lynnley. “You go ahead. I'd better hang around and see how this plays out.”

“Suit yourself,” she told him. “Just remember, you won't be able to protect her when you're with the Corps off on Mars or someplace.”

“I know.”
Am I doing the right thing?

He wished there was an answer to that.

5
JUNE
2138

IP Packet
Osiris
En route, Mars to Earth
1337 hours Zulu

Colonel Ramsey lay snug within the embrace of a linking couch, only marginally aware of the steady, far-off vibration that was the packet's antimatter drive. It converted a steady stream of water into plasma and hard radiation, blasting it astern to accelerate the blunt, bullet-shaped vessel with its outsized heat radiators at a steady one gravity. Twenty hours after boosting clear from Mars orbit, the
Osiris
was already traveling at over 700 kilometers per second and had covered well over 25 million kilometers.

Within his thoughts, stroked by the virtual reality AI of the
Osiris
communications suite, he was in a huge auditorium, the Pentagon Briefing Center, located some kilometers beneath the Potomac River. The faint, steady thrum of the packet's main drive, starcore furies rattling just above the level of detectability in deck and titanium-ceramic bulkheads, was all but submerged by the incoming sensations of the padded auditorium seat, the murmured conversations and rustling movements of people around him, the glare off the big screen behind the podium, magnifying the features of the speaker.

“Gentlemen, ladies, AIs,” General Lawrence Haslett said, addressing both those gathered physically in the briefing
center and the much larger audience present electronically as well, “as of zero-nine-thirty this morning, Operation Spirit of Humankind is go. President LaSalle signed the executive order authorizing the Llalande Relief Expedition, and both House and Senate approval are expected by tomorrow. Admiral Ballantry has cleared the use of our newest IST, the
Derna
, for the op, and given the orders to begin rigging her for the voyage.”

Haslett, Army Chief of Staff for the UFR/U.S. Central Military Command, gripped the sides of the podium as he spoke, his words as clear as if he were physically standing in the cramped comm suite on board the
Osiris
. It was hard for Ramsey to remember that the images he was seeing were already ten minutes and some seconds old. That was how long it took the comm lasers bearing the sensory data to reach
Osiris
from Earth.

“I needn't tell all of you,” Haslett went on, “that this is a singularly important deployment, demanding diplomacy, tact, and a clear set of mission objectives and priorities.” He paused. “I also needn't remind you that time is very much against us. While the FTL communicator on Ishtar provides an instantaneous link with the comm array on Mars, it will take ten years, objective, for the
Derna
to reach the Llalande system. By that time, of course, anything can have happened. New Sumer may have fallen, almost certainly
will
have fallen, if the situation continues as it has for the past few weeks. We need to proceed on the assumption that our colony will have been overrun by the rebels by that time, and craft the expeditionary force's orders with that in mind.”

A chirp sounded over Ramsey's implant, a question signaled from someone in the audience.

“Yes,” Haslett said.

“Yes, sir,” one of the men seated in the auditorium, an Aerospace Force colonel, said, his image thrown up on the big screen at Haslett's back. Biographical data scrolled down the right corner of Ramsey's vision, identifying him as Colonel Joshua Miller. “If the Llalande contact mission is
already doomed, what's the point of sending another ship out there? Is this a punitive expedition?”

“Not punitive, Colonel Miller. Not
solely
punitive, at any rate. You must know what the polls are saying about the situation on Ishtar.”

“I didn't realize we were running our wars according to the poll numbers,” another officer put in, and a number of people in the auditorium chuckled.

Haslett scowled and cleared his throat. “The mission commander will have full discretionary powers to deal with the situation as he sees fit, once he arrives at Ishtar. We will be sending along firepower enough that a full range of possible military options will be available.”

“They'd damned well better,” the woman on the recliner to Ramsey's left muttered, sotto voce, as if the people within the virtual reality transmission playing itself out within their heads might hear. “It's a hell of a long way to call for reinforcements if the Marines get into trouble!”

“You noticed that, did you?” Ramsey said, and smiled. Major Ricia Anderson was his executive officer within their constellation. “This op is going to be a logistical nightmare.”

“Nothing new there, Colonel. The Corps always gets the short end.”

“Seal it, Rish. I want to hear.”

“This operation was originally conceived as a task force comprising a single Marine expeditionary unit,” Haslett was saying in response to another question. “The Ishtar garrison is a Marine unit, and Spirit of Humankind is being presented to the public as a relief operation.”

Ramsey brought up a text readout and scrolled down through the last few moments. Yeah, there it was. A Confederation liaison officer had asked about the possibility of a multinational task force. There'd been a lot of speculation about that in the netfeeds over the past few months.

“Even so,” Haslett went on, “New Sumer Base is a multinational expedition. Euro-Union, Japan, Russia, the Brazilian Empire, Kingdom of Allah, the People's Hegemony,
they all have science teams and contact specialists on Ishtar or in orbit. And every other nation with interests in the Llalande system wants a piece of the action. Whether we make this a multinational task force or not, we can expect at least four other nations to launch expeditions of their own within the next year or so.

“The latest word from the National Security Council is that there will be
two
expeditionary forces sent. The idea will be to get the American relief force to Ishtar as quickly as possible, which means assembling, training, and launching it within the next few months. Meanwhile, a second contingent, probably Army Special Forces, will be assembled to accompany any multinational force sent to Llalande, both as backup for the MEU and to safeguard American interests with the multinationals.

“This dual-force strategy has a number of advantages. Perhaps most important, the second force will be able to take direction from the first during its approach and alter its strategy to conform with the situation on the ground. And, of course, we'll also have the advantage of already being in control of key targets and bases when the multinationals arrive.”

Ramsey sighed. Politics and politicians, they never changed. Was Washington more afraid of the rebellion spreading among the Ahannu or of the possibility of Chinese or Brazilians gaining control of Ishtar's ancient, jungle-smothered secrets?

Well, it didn't matter much, really. As usual, the Marines would be going in first.

Burning curiosity—and some fear—gnawed at him, though. As yet, no one had told him or the other members of his constellation
why
they were being summarily redeployed to Earth, but his private suspicions were validated when a laser comm message to
Osiris
had directed him and the other members of his constellation to link in for Haslett's Pentagon briefing.

Ever since he'd been called into General Cassidy's office at Prime three days ago, Ramsey assumed that the mysteri
ous new orders would involve the Llalande crisis. Nothing else he could think of could possibly justify the expense of loading an entire Marine administrative constellation on board an antimatter-drive packet and shipping them back to Earth on an expensive, high-speed trajectory. Marines—even Marine colonels and their staffs—rarely rated such first-class service. Interplanetary packets, with their antimatter drives capable of maintaining a one-g acceleration for their entire transit, cut the flight time between Earth and Mars from months to five days, but even now, a century after their first deployment, they were hellishly expensive to operate.

What else could it be? As always, there were a few dozen hot spots and minor wars scattered across the face of the Earth. The recent Confederation intervention in Egypt had been much in the news of late; Marines had landed in Giza a couple of days ago to seize vital archeological sites from the hands of Mahdi religious fanatics. There was still the threat of a major political break with the Kingdom of Allah, even the possibility of war, but they wouldn't ship twelve Marines back from Mars just for
that
.

Same for the unrest in the American Southwest. There'd been rumblings in the states of Sonora and Chihuahua for years now, the possibility of civil unrest, even civil war. But again, there were plenty of Marines and other UFR forces on hand to deal with that.

Besides, there was the Famsit Two requirement, which suggested a long deployment off-Earth, the sort of deployment that would destroy marriage contracts and long-term relationships. The Corps had begun classifying men and women with family-situation ratings shortly after the UN War, when they'd begun assigning personnel to out-Solar duty in the thin, cold reaches beyond the orbit of Mars.

The Outwatch had been created as a joint UFR/U.S./Confederation military force with the awesome responsibility of patrolling the asteroid belt and the Jovian system. The destruction of Chicago in 2042 during a French warship's un
successful attempt to drop a small asteroid on the central United States had alerted the entire world to the threat of small powers being able to nudge large rocks into Earth-intercepting orbits that would wreak incalculable havoc when they struck. No fewer than twelve large vessels were kept in solar orbit within the belt or beyond, tracking and intercepting all spacecraft that might rendezvous with a planetoid in order to alter its course…and they'd been given the responsibility for watching over Confederation interests on Europa, with the Singer excavations, as well.

With the beginning of large scale mining operations within the Belt, the Outwatch's personnel needs had skyrocketed. There were plans to increase the Navy-Marine presence in the Belt to twenty ships within the next five years, and there would be a desperate need for Famsit One and Two personnel to man them.

But even that wouldn't justify bringing constellation Delta Sierra 219 to Earth. Outwatch assignment needs were ongoing and long-term, typically lasting a couple of years. Any emergency need to fill an out-Solar billet could be taken care of by screening new Marines coming out of Camp Lejeune.

Which left the Ishtar crisis.

Everyone in the constellation felt the same sharp curiosity, sharing scuttlebutt and speculation with urgent fervor. Ricia and Chris DeHavilland had both already told him that they thought 219 was being tapped for command of the Ishtar relief force.

It was a pretty good bet. Delta Sierra 219 had a lot of experience under its communal belt, including command of a regiment in the Philippine Pirate War six years ago. That was before Ramsey had come aboard, but he'd downloaded all of the sims and data stores, all but experiencing directly that savage guerrilla conflict at sea and in the jungles of Luzon. They'd also done plenty of air inserts and during the past eight months on Mars had trained with the new combat suits in an extraterrestrial environment.

It was only beginning to sink in for Ramsey now. He was going to be offered a chance to go to the stars. The
stars
…

And with a regimental command, no less.
He
would be in charge of the Marine air-ground components of the MEU, probably under a general's overall mission command. That was the sort of plum assignment that came along once in a Marine's career, and it could well open the door to a general's stars in his future.

“Final selections for the expeditionary command staffs are being made now,” Haslett was saying. “We should have the command teams by the end of next week. The selection boards are still reviewing the records of several general officers for Mission Command. In the meantime, all Earthside Marine Corps evolutions for Operation Spirit of Humankind will fall under the command of Major General Gabriowski.” Haslett looked off to the side. “General? Would you care to add anything?”

General Dwight Gabriowski walked across the stage to the podium, a stout, muscular man with a bullet-smooth head and a Marine DI's scowl. Gabriowski. That clinched it, then. He was the man who'd ordered DS 219 back to Earth.

“Thank you, General Haslett,” Gabriowski said. “I don't have much to say…except that I consider it an honor that the Marine Corps has again been called upon to lead the way. We've been hearing a lot lately about the Corp's redundancy…again…and it's a pleasure to be able to prove that we have as important a role in safeguarding our national interests,
wherever
they might lie, in the twenty-second century as in the twenty-first, or the twentieth, or the nineteenth. I want to add that…”

“Oh, Goddess, give me strength,” Ricia said from the couch next to Ramsey's.

“Politics as usual,” Ramsey said. These days, it seemed that the Corps spent as much money and attention on public relations—on the delicate job of persuading each President and each session of Congress that the Marine Corps was not
the anachronism its enemies claimed. “You'd think that after Garroway's March—”

Gabriowski was still talking. “By the end of the month, we will be able to begin building the MEU from volunteer candidates Corpswide. This is an extraordinary mission, of extraordinary importance. It demands the best of our people, the very best of us, all of us together. Marines. Army. Navy. Aerospace.
Ad astra!
”

“Too bad he doesn't have a full marching band playing behind him,” Ricia observed. “‘Stars and Stripes Forever'…or maybe the ‘Luna Marine March.'”

“Ooh-rah!” But he couldn't completely share her sarcasm. It was a moving moment for him. “The Corps is going to the stars, Ricia,” Ramsey said. “It'll sure as hell count for something come time for the next military appropriations, right? Semper fi!”