formation as it lanced the squat building from which the plasma bolt had been fired. The explosion further lit the night, as the first of the shape-shifting landing craft began touching down.
In his mind, Garroway turned, watching as other craft passed overhead. There was a city behind the beach … and what looked like a large and sprawling spaceport. Beams of light continued to spear out of the angry heavens, vaporizing enemy hardpoints.
And now, individual Marines were appearing in their cumbersome combat armor, bounding through flame and smoldering wreckage and sand dunes to close with the enemy.
“This,” Warhurst’s voice said in Garroway’s head, “is taking place on a world called Alighan, about four hundred light-years from where you’re standing right now. There’s a slight delay in the feed, but, within the uncertainties imposed by the physics of FTL simultaneity and the time lag down from the Arean Ring, it is happening more or less as you see it. The image is being relayed from our battlefleet straight back to HQ USMC. Colonel Peters thought you should see this.”
More Marines surged across the beach, sweeping toward the outer Alighan beach defenses. Other landing craft had passed over those bunkers and gun emplacements and were settling to ground on the spaceport itself. Fire continued to lance out of the sky, pinpoint bombardments called down by Marine spotters. Garroway found he could hear some of the chatter in the background, a babble of call signs, orders, and acknowledgments.
“The Islamic Theocracy,” Warhurst went on, “has blocked several key trade routes into their territory. Worse, they have supported terrorist incursions into Commonwealth Space, seized Commonwealth vessels, and are suspected of holding Commonwealth citizens as slaves.
“As you should know by now, the sole purpose of the U.S. Marine Corps is to protect Commonwealth worlds and Commonwealth citizens. To that end, a naval battlefleet and a Marine Expeditionary Force have been dispatched to effect a change in the Theocrat government. Their first step is to capture the spaceport you see in the distance, so that Army troops can land and occupy the planet.
“The politics of the situation are unimportant, however. Marines go where they’re sent. They do what they’re told to do. They do so at the behest of the United Star Commonwealth, and the Commonwealth Command Authority. All very nice, neat, and clean. …
“But this, children, is what modern combat really is.”
The scene around Garroway was rapidly becoming a burning nightmare out of some primitive religion’s hell. With a mental command, his point of view drifted up from the beach toward the spaceport, where the heaviest fighting was now taking place. The landing craft all were down now—those that had survived the approach. Upon touching down, their fuselages had broken into sections, becoming automated mobile gun platforms; the wing, cockpit, and spine assemblies then each had lifted off once more, becoming airborne gunships that darted across the scene like immense, spindly insects, spewing plasma bolts and blazing streams of autocannon fire. And individual Marines, forty-eight to each LV, fanned out across the flame-tortured landscape, hunting down the enemy one gun position or hardpoint at a time. Overhead, Marine A-90 Cutlass sky-support attack craft darted and swooped like hideously visaged black hornets, locking in on ground targets and blasting them with devastating fire.
Clouds of gray fog swept over the landscape from different directions—combat nano and countemano, waging their submicroscopic battles in the air and on the ground. Disassemblers released by the Muzzies were seeking out Marines and vehicles, while the counter-clouds roiling off Marine armor and vehicles sought to neutralize them. The result was a deadly balance; in places, the ground was melting, the rain hissing into steam.
Almost in front of him, a Marine bounded in for a landing, his combat suit making him seem bulky and awkward, but the impression was belied by the grace of movement on the suit’s agrav packs. The Marine touched down lightly, aimed at an unseen target with the massive field-pulse rifle mounted beneath his right arm, then bounded again.
The armor itself, Garroway saw, was mostly black, but the surface had a shimmering, illusive effect that rendered it nearly invisible, an illusion due to the nanoflage coating which continually adapted to incoming light. In places, he saw blue sparks and flashes where enemy nano-D was trying to eat into the suit’s defenses, but was—so far—being successfully blocked by the suit’s counters.
Neither near-invisibility nor nanotechnic defenses could help this Marine, however. As he grounded again, something flashed nearby, and the man’s midsection vanished in a flare of blue-white light. Legs collapsed to one side, head and torso to the others, the arms still, horribly, moving. Garroway thought he heard a spine-chilling shriek over the link, mercifully cut off as the armored suit died. Rain continued to drench the hot ruin of the combat suit, steaming in the flare-lit night, and the armor itself, exposed to the relentless embrace of airborne nanodisassemblers, began to soften, curdle, and dissolve.
The arms had stopped moving. There was a great deal of blood on the ground, however, and slowly dissolving wet chunks of what might be …
Gods. …
Garroway struggled not to be sick. He would not be sick. He wrenched his mental gaze away from the feed, and stood once more in the Martian night.
“Being a Marine is one of the greatest honors, one of the greatest responsibilities available to the Commonwealth citizenry,” Warhurst said, his voice still speaking in his mind over the implant link. “But it is not for everyone. It requires the ultimate commitment. Fortitude. Courage. Character. Commitment to duty and to fellow Marines. Sometimes, it requires the ultimate sacrifice … for the Commonwealth. For your brother and sister Marines, For the Corps.
“You’ve all just seen what modern combat is like … what it’s really like, not what the entertainment feeds would have you believe. Do any of you want to see this thing through?”
Garroway heard others leaving the line; he didn’t know how many. He also heard someone retching off to his left.
After a long pause, Warhurst nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Get ‘em out of here.”
With a whine, the agrav shuttle at Garroway’s back lifted into the Martian night. He felt the flutter of wind as it passed overhead, and he watched its drive field grow brighter as it accelerated back to orbit, back to the Arean Rings that stretched now across the zenith like a slender, taut-pulled thread of pure silver.
“You maggots,” Warhurst growled, his former tough-DI persona slowly re-emerging, “you mudworms are even more stupid than I was led to believe. All right. Show’s over. Like I said earlier, from this point on, you are mine. I personally am going to eat you alive, chew you up, and spit your worthless carcasses out on these sands.
“But maybe, maybe, a few of you will have what it takes to be Marines.” Turning, he addressed one of the assistants—the evil-grinning one. “Sergeant Corrolly!”
“Yes, Drill Instructor Warhurst!”
“We need to find out what these worms are really made of. Let’s take them on a little run before breakfast!”
The evil grin grew wider. “Yes, Drill Instructor!”
“Move out!”
“Aye, aye, Drill Instructor!” The assistant DI turned to face the waiting survivors of the morning’s muster. “You heard the Drill Instructor! Recruit platoon … lef’ face! For’ard, harch!
