Empire of the Fallen, page 14
When all the theory was out the way, they took to the field. They were taught realities that Gia already knew: that Mantix, with its nanofibre weave and shock dissipater gel, was the only thing that could definitely stop rail rounds. ‘Don’t bother sitting there and trying to hide,’ Lambda growled, ‘your focus is always on movement, speed, evasion and engagement.’ Energy weapons were different. A quad-powered laser or assault plasma rifle could cut through Mantix like it was paper, so the focus was the opposite: take cover, call in LOAS, or mortar the enemy. It seemed that every weapon and every alien race demanded a different strategy.
They started on basic fireteam manoeuvres against rail-armed enemy, and advanced all the way up to Fleet-level exercises with drone cover, force shielding, LOAS support, a full mix of ranged and close-quarters weaponry, PRISM bunkers and city-level clearance. Like real life, every exercise was conducted on full pain mode, so every shot, every burn, every fall from a crashing Manticore was as visceral as the real thing. They exercised in the dead of night, in the full light of day, in the snow, in the desert, in a hundred different alien environments. The surprises were constant and disastrous: EMP blasts, nukes, enemy LOAS, MIDs or “Mass IHD Defaults”, unreliable intelligence… By the end, it felt as though they had undertaken every possible combination of operational factors in the galaxy.
Gia took to the training with a savage relish. Whatever the exercises could throw at them, it always paled in comparison to the real thing. Whenever she found she was exhausted, or in agony, or simply worn out, she remembered Reya Vasar, Operation Talisman, and putting a bullet through Executor yen’Ghadri’s head. Utilising those thoughts, and the Marines’ psychological training and her own reserve of grit from the Ascendancy War, she found she was able to steel herself against the harshest and most dangerous conditions and endure—even excel.
And finally came Purgatory.
‘Operation Venatak is the final exercise you will complete,’ the holographic representation of Drill Sergeant Lambda told them. He no longer shouted. After nine months and three weeks of training, those who remained—just under fifty—had earned his respect. ‘You’re not in the sync any more. This is the real deal.’
They were on board UNS Venatak, a decommissioned Fleet warship used exclusively for marine training on Peresvet. After a few days of getting used to their new muscular bodies, and firing real railguns on full IHD target-finding and exoskeletal auto-compensation on a range ten klicks north of the barracks, they had taken Manticores to orbit to board the Venatak and complete the final exercise: Purgatory.
‘Purgatory is hell,’ Lambda said, relishing in what was obviously a well-worn joke. ‘Here, you earn those stripes. Those of you who complete the training, who we don’t have to scrape off the hull or the rocks planetside, will become UN Marines. Those who bottle it, will not. This is the final test.
‘Space travel is a special kind of motherfuckery. Just think: travelling at point-one lights without force shielding, a particle the size of a grain of sand could obliterate an entire warship. Never mind your railguns and your Star Witch. Hell, I’ve seen a denser-than-usual gas cloud strip three centimetres of diamond armour plating from a cruiser with an FS malfunction. You know how long that shield was down for? Less than a third of a second. Space flight is not safe. Anyone who tells you it is is a liar and a fantasist—and an asshole.
‘Here on Purg, you will witness how unpleasant space flight can be, and why every other branch of UNAF thinks the Fleet, and the marines, are goddamn maniacs. There is no environment more hostile to life than space. Here, you will learn to survive on board a warship that is travelling at fractions of the speed of light. You will learn zero-G combat. And you will drop. ROI, that’s what we do. That’s what we are. Rapid. Orbital. Insertion. The drop. I guarantee every one of you will be carrying a full load of shit in your pants at the end of it.’ He paused, the holograph eyeing each of them. ‘You’ve all been briefed. You know what’s expected of you. Let’s begin.’
They spent three days manoeuvring through the tight corridors of the Venatak, learning the ins and outs of a warship, garrison duty, how to properly stow their equipment, how to eat, sleep and shit in space, what proximity alarms sounded like, and what to do and where to go when they heard one. The part Gia hated the most was open space work, leaving the ship itself to experience the unique sensation of being in hard vacuum, two kilometres from the Venatak’s hull, floating, spinning, screaming, with oxygen running out, in the unfiltered starlight of Peresvet’s sun. After that horrible initiation, zero-gravity CQC was nothing.
In truth, Purgatory seemed like one of the easiest parts of the training to Gia, precisely because she had already done it. She had already experienced the real, animal dread of being on a warship under attack. The Ramesses had been nearly obliterated by Ascendancy guns before she’d been forced to perform an emergency eject and ROI into a hot warzone. The marines-to-be around her performed the exercises with professionalism, but often looked genuinely alarmed—even frightened—when the hull rattled with simulated ordnance or the acceleration alarms went off. But for Gia, this was a re-enactment, a second-grade rehash of the real thing. As a consequence, she quickly developed a reputation for being a slick operator, a consummate pro.
‘Goddamn it, Raman, you know this shit like the back of your hand, don’t you?’ Lambda said to her after she exited the capsule following another acceleration alarm.
‘Yes, Drill Sergeant,’ she said, her voice emotionless, her chest swelling with pride.
‘Shit, I like your guts, girl. If Liz Aker hadn’t claimed you, I’d take you into combat myself.’
That earned her some jealous looks from the other marines. She ignored them.
‘Thank you, Drill Sergeant.’
‘Don’t thank me. Best in the unit is usually the first to die,’ Lambda cackled and ducked out of the sync room.
The ROI was the last exercise they had to undertake, a one hundred and sixty kilometre drop from the Venatak’s ventral side on to Peresvet’s northern uplands. They were fired from mass drivers one by one in bullet-shaped capsules, covering the distance in under two minutes. Gia knew she should have been scared, suspended in the womb of nanogel travelling at thousands of metres a second, but she wasn’t. As the cyclopean orb of Peresvet yawned ahead of her, she actually felt something approaching a state of serene calm overcoming her. In the absence of any appreciable movement, it was too breathtaking, too beautiful to be frightening.
The feeling was obliterated within seconds of hitting the atmosphere. She recalled now the horrifying, stomach-dropping feeling of vertigo as the pull of gravity took hold and the lander was battered by high-altitude winds.
Her HUD began to yammer with alarms. She was way off course. She thrashed in the nanogel as turbulence threw the capsule through the air. The airframe protested as a jet stream knocked her entire kilometres west of the landing zone.
She took manual control of the attitudinal jets, just like they’d been taught. The controls could not have been less intuitive. She eased it back east, trying to ignore the rattling of half-frozen slush against the hull and the ground rushing up to meet her at frightening speed.
The LZ was indicated by a pulsing green IHD marker. The capsule chimed with approval every time her vector lined up. She couldn’t keep the damn thing straight for more than a few seconds at a time—and accuracy was a big factor.
‘Come on!’ she screamed. Her pressure suit was a hot reservoir of sweat. Alarms assaulted her ears. She was still being thrown around by Peresvet’s hostile and unwelcoming atmosphere. Just a few more seconds…
The retro thrusters kicked in, as hard and powerful as a straight-up collision with the ground. The G-forces were astonishing. Her feet actually hit the bottom of the capsule, through the gel. There was nothing to do but brace now; any chance of realigning her insertion vector was gone the second those powerful Royce-Khan jets blasted on.
She peered through half-closed eyes at the target marker. She’d hit it within five metres—a near-perfect landing. Anything within fifty was considered well within acceptable parameters. Even a kilometre off could be fine, depending on the weather.
But five metres…
With trembling hands, Gia thumped the quick release and stepped out on to the firm, hard ground of Peresvet.
She was a marine.
STATE OF MIND
‘It’s easy to see an alien as just that: alien. But if you speak to them, learn about their culture, their ways, their worldviews, you’ll see that the vast majority of Tier Three civilians are just like us. They work, relax, play, socialise with friends, and worry about their lives and relationships and children all in exactly the same way we do. Their representatives may be disagreeable and obstreperous, but the people are not. They want peace and stability. It is up to us to give it to them.’
Mitchell Lowe, UNDM Head of Mission to the Vanahalexis nesting station
‘I’m sorry, explain that to me again? You said words in Terran, and the words were in the correct order, yet somehow you managed to say nothing but the stupidest bullshit I’ve ever heard.’
Yano cleared his throat. ‘You heard me, Seka,’ he said quietly.
‘No-one’s disputing that, are they?’ She was so angry she was quivering. She stood across from him on the other side of the bed, wearing a negligée which he was supposed to be tearing off her. Instead, he’d told her about the mission. Standing there, bathed in the cold evening sunlight filtering through the windows, it was a decision he was beginning to regret.
‘They’re going to put your mind inside a kag body?’
Yano nodded. His Exigency Corps training had abandoned him. There was something about Seka, something oddly specific about her which made him regress to a hapless teenager. I should tell UNDM, he thought idly. They’d have a field day studying this one.
‘Yano… what the fuck are you talking about?’
He told her again: that in a day’s time, they were going to take him, a UNIS agent and Rutai, download his and Staerck’s minds into two Imperial kaygryn currently sitting in tanks of preserving fluid in the Zecad, and send them on a suicidal undercover mission into the Kaygryn Empire to try and find a way to end the war.
Even as he said it, he knew Seka wasn’t listening. She’d heard well enough the first time. She was simply waiting for him to draw breath so she could explode with rage—and she didn’t disappoint.
‘Are you fucking insane?’ she shouted. ‘Can you hear yourself? This is a shitty holo special you’re describing, a goddamn movie. This isn’t real life, Zapper! Wake up!’
‘Seka, for God’s sake,’ Yano said, rolling his eyes. ‘I’ve just spent four hours in back-to-back briefings with the President and two Special Warfare Division operatives. This isn’t a bloody hoax. They’ve ordered me to do it.’
‘They can’t order you to do it. You’re not in the military!’ Seka snapped.
‘Seka, it’s the President. She can order anyone to do whatever she wants.’
He watched Seka start pacing like a caged tiger. She had so much to say, so much to scream at him, that it was getting trapped in her throat, like fifty people trying to escape a burning space plane all at once.
After twenty seconds of intolerable silence, Yano said, ‘Seka, this is the survival of the UN we’re talking about.’
‘Yeah, the same UN which you ran and hid from for six months. The same fucking UN which has already got you killed. I mean, come on Yano, this is mad.’ She shrugged angrily. ‘This is a joke, isn’t it? A wind-up? You’re not a fucking secret agent. And what the fuck are you even talking about, “download your mindstate into a kaygryn”? What does that even mean?’
Yano took a deep, calming breath. ‘There are Imperial kaygryn in the Zecad. They’ve been there for hundreds of years. They know the routes across the Barrier. The same technology the provar use to beam this mindstate to their crusade fleets can be used to download a consciousness. It’s like data sponging.’
Seka’s eyes widened. ‘Yano, data sponging kills like… everyone it’s done to.’
He waved her off irritably. ‘I said it was like data sponging. I didn’t say it was the same.’
Seka made a frustrated noise. ‘Is it even reversible? What if you change your mind, or you somehow succeed on this absurd make-believe mission? Do you get put back into your own body?’
Yano opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He didn’t actually expect to make it back alive. It was fifty-fifty whether they would even make it through the Barrier.
‘I don’t know,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t think… I mean, it’s not looking great that I’ll even—what are you doing?’
Seka snatched the negligée off and pulled her clothes on, ignoring Yano’s entreaties for a full two minutes until she was fully dressed. When she was, she rounded on him.
‘Two things, fuck face. One: I love you. I mean, I hate you more than anything I can describe right now, but somewhere, deep down, I love you, whatever the fuck that even matters any more. Two: I’ve saved your fucking life so many times I make it look easy. Whatever this bullshit is, whatever this mission is, wherever you’re going and whatever you’re doing, I’m coming with you.’
‘Seka—’
‘And if you even try and stop me, I’ll fucking kill you myself,’ she said, her index finger centimetres from his nose.
‘Seka—’
‘What’s the name of the EFFECT asshole running this show?’
‘Seka—’
‘Yano, so help me Christ I will kick you in the balls and torture you for it.’
Yano sighed, screwing his eyes closed and pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘William Pitt. He’s at Carrington Manor.’
‘I’ll be back,’ she snapped and stormed out the door.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Yano groaned to the empty bedroom, and eyeing the negligée ruefully, he ordered the apartment to make him a whisky.
*
She reached Carrington Manor after twenty minutes of angry storming, while the light drained from the sky like blood from a corpse. Naturally they didn’t let just anyone in, or even near it, and she was detained a good two hundred metres from the entrance by an irritated man dressed head to toe in Mantix. An Alsatian in an olfactory enhancer sat by his feet, eyeing her and wagging its tail while they saturated her with so much LRIS they were close to giving her cancer.
‘Seka Abigaile Leith,’ the man said, ‘says you’ve got some kind of diplomatic immunity. The fuck’s that all about?’
Seka had to stop her hands from balling into fists. In a Freeport, she would have pulled a gun on this jackass by now, but she wasn’t armed, and a rapid intervention drone would blow her head off before she could even get the thing from its holster anyway.
‘I’m on a secret mission,’ she snapped sarcastically, ‘I need to see William Pitt.’
The man’s helmet cocked, but his mirror visor hid what presumably was a withering sneer from view. ‘What makes you think he’s here?’
‘Because my boyfriend is Zavian Yano and he’s told me all about your little mission to—’
They were immediately enveloped in an audio damper field. A small red light winked on on the guard’s helmet, and a different voice emanated from the speaker.
‘Shut up!’ it snapped, ‘or I’ll have you bloody shot. Peterson, get her inside for God’s sake.’
‘Hi, Bill!’ Seka said, waving at the guard’s helmet cam, and he made to smack her round the jaw. To her immense irritation, she flinched.
‘Cunt,’ she spat.
‘I was about to say the same thing,’ the guard said, grabbing her roughly by the arm.
He frogmarched her through the gates and into the house itself, and took her on a winding path through the building until they reached some kind of ad hoc operations centre filled with intelligence and military personnel and, much to her surprise and displeasure, provar. The guard pulled her to a locked door at one end of the room and knocked on it, and it slid open a few seconds later. Inside were two men, both dressed in temperate camouflage fatigues. Both had their sleeves rolled up, both were holding a mug of tea, and both were examining a holo in front of them.
‘Thank you, Peterson, you can leave,’ a man who she presumed was Pitt said.
‘Sir,’ Peterson replied, and he gave her arm a squeeze with his exo-powered gauntlet so hard it made her eyes water, before turning and leaving. The door closed behind him.
‘Seka Leith,’ Pitt said, manipulating then cancelling the holo. He and the man next to him both looked up at her.
‘Hi,’ she said, suddenly embarrassed. It was not an emotion that came naturally to her. The way both of them looked at her, eyes slightly squinted, made her feel like a naughty schoolgirl who’d barged her way into her parents’ dinner party. Her cheeks flushed with colour. Already it felt like a big mistake.
‘Whatever DHM Yano has told you, it is not something you are allowed to know. If you breathe a word of it to anyone, I will find you and I will have you executed. There will be no accusation, no trial, no judge or court. You will be put down like an old dog and buried in an unmarked grave, and I will then go about my business like you were nothing more than the nine o’clock briefing. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yeah, I get it,’ Seka said, though the cockiness was gone. The other man simply looked at her, unmoving.
‘I am very busy. You are wasting my time. What are you doing here?’
‘I want to go with him,’ she said, trying to assert herself. There was something about this Pitt character that made her oddly respectful. Assholes like Vladimir Henrikson were easy to be rude to, but this guy was Old Colonies. He wasn’t aggressive or offensive: he was like a stern father who she’d irritated. And besides, this was the real deal. She hadn’t really considered how secret this information was. The red mist had descended and she’d stormed over here. Over to the President’s official residence. Jesus Christ, what was I thinking?!
