The airlock was just barely large enough for one man. He stood inside the tiny compartment, red-lit by the warning light, listening as silence gave way to a thin, fast-swelling hiss of incoming air. The red light was replaced by green, and the inner hatch cracked open.
Inside, the compartment was dark except for the constellation of moving lights on the helmets of the Marines, and the glow of HUDs and chin consoles stage-lighting Marine faces behind their visors. Age-old naval custom held that the senior officer was first onto a small boat, last off, but this was one time, Jeff thought, when custom should have given way to practicality. He had to literally crawl—the compartment’s overhead was to low for him to walk upright in his suit, and a stoop was too clumsy—all the way forward between two seated ranks of five men each, men who were already so close that their knees were practically touching in the passageway. Everyone except the boat’s SEAL pilot, by orders, was still suited up.
At the forward end of the Manta, there was a bit more room. Machinist’s Mate Chief Randolph Carver already had his PLSS, helmet, and gloves off, and was seated in the elevated pilot’s chair, a bright red VR helmet masking his features.
“It seems a long time since the Bahamas, doesn’t it, Carver?” he asked.
“Yessir, it sure does.”
“I’m sorry your first test flight of a Manta under Europan conditions has to be under combat conditions as well.”
“Well, I guess water is water, sir, and water is the SEAL’s friend. We’ll be just fine.”
“Hoo-yah,” the other SEAL said, a quiet SEAL battlecry. Quartermaster First Class Mike Hastings was squeezed into a jump seat to Carver’s left and behind him. Two SEALs were aboard each Manta on this op. The idea was to provide a backup in case anything happened to one. Everyone aboard was expected to fight at the other end, and having two men qualified to pilot the Manta gave a little extra measure of security, a better chance that they would make it back home.
“What’s the matter, Hastings?” Jeff said, grinning. “Getting tired of being cooped up with so many jarheads?”
“Jarheads are okay, sir,” Hastings replied. “They’re not SEALs, but they’re okay.”
“Hey, don’t you worry, Hasty,” BJ Campanelli, who was sitting next to him, said. She slapped his thigh with the back of her glove. “We’ve had a vote and decided to make you guys honorary Marines!”
“God help me!” Hastings’s expression, stage-lit inside his helmet, made Jeff laugh.
“Okay, people!” he called. “Listen up. Amberly!” Sergeant Roger Amberly, a quiet, good-looking kid from Kansas with two husbands waiting for him back home. Steady, dependable, and a good hand with a Wyvern.
“Yo!”
“Campanelli.” Big, blond, bold, and a bit of an attitude. A damned good Marine.
“Hot and tight.”
“Cartwright.” Was she the one Leckie was hot for? It couldn’t be BJ.
“Here.”
“Carver.”
“Go.”
“Garcia.” The man’s record mentioned he’d been arrested for activity in a pro-Aztlan march in San Diego, a long-time advocate of an independent Hispanic homeland carved out of the American Southwest. He was a tough guy with a bad attitude, but an outstanding Marine.
“Aquí!”
“Hastings.”
“Hoo-yah!”
“Kaminski.”
“Ooh-rah!” A Marine battlecry challenging the SEAL’s hoo-yah. He saw Kaminski grin at the SEAL and wink.
“Lang.” Maybe she was Leckie’s love interest, a good-looking black girl from Virginia. She was married, though, with both a husband and a wife at home. Not that that meant anything, necessarily.
“Nodell.” Big, rugged, and a hard drinker, in and out of trouble, but deadly with a SLAW, a 580, or his hands. Three times divorced, a Marine lifer.
“Yeah.”
“O’Day.” A quiet, red-haired corporal and a member of Humanity First, though he never voiced any political opinions that Jeff knew of.
“Yo.”
“Peterson.” A straight-laced black kid from Ohio. Seemed determined to prove himself, no matter what. Another Wyvern ace.
“Present.”
“Wojak.” One of the company clowns, but a good man.
“Right here.”
“And…Doctor Ishiwara.”
“Hai! Yes.”
As he called off each name, a status light winked green on the list scrolling down the side of his HUD. Chesty, still resident in his PAD as well as in the E-DARES computer system, was interrogating each suit as he called off the name, and reporting back that the suit systems were powered up, intact, and go.