Europa Strike(23)

Instead of hammering away at One G for the entire trip, the Roosevelt boosted at one G for just twelve hours out of Earth orbit, achieving in that time a velocity of just over 420 kilometers per second. She then coasted for the next twenty-four days, slowing steadily under the gravitational drag from the Sun, but still crossing 900 million kilometers of empty space in twenty-four days rather than years.

But Marines, being Marines, grumbled. They all knew the voyage out could have taken a mere seven days. Instead, they were crowded aboard the transport for over three weeks during the claustrophobic passage to Europa. During her twenty-four-day coast, the Roosey provided a semblance of gravity by rotating the hab modules. Her four boxlike habs spanned sixty meters; by rotating them about the ship’s axis three times per minute, a spin gravity of.3 G was maintained in the lowest decks of each module, with lower gravities on each deck going up toward the axis. The idea was to give the Marines a compromise between acclimating to Europa’s surface gravity of.13 G and letting them maintain muscle tone and general fitness.

In fact, so far as Jeff Warhurst was concerned, three weeks at.3 G was just enough to make the coast phase of the voyage completely miserable. The queasy sensations of Coriolis forces affected everyone’s inner ears, and half of his company was affected by space motion syndrome—“space sickness,” to the layman. The passenger quarters—the “grunt lockers,” as they were called—were jam-packed with humanity sleeping in racks stacked six high and using the common rooms/mess decks, the tiny shower cubicles, and the heads on rotating schedules. A single one of the Roosevelt’s four hab modules could modestly quarter thirty people on three decks; this trip out, the Roosey carried a complete Marine Landing Force—two companies, Bravo and Charlie, plus a recon platoon, headquarters and medical element, and the twelve-man Navy SEAL platoon who’d shipped out with them to run the Manta subs—280 men and women in all, plus the ship’s usual Navy complement of fifteen.

The crowding, the stifling lack of privacy, the stink all seemed unendurable.

Somehow, they endured. It was one of the things Marines did, along with the bitch sessions.

Jeff turned from the screen to study the crowded common room behind him. Laughter barked, mingled with the clatter of weapons being assembled, the hum of overhead ventilators struggling against the mingled smells of sweat, food, and oil. A lot of skin was visible. Six men and four women sat around the mess table cleaning and reassembling their M-580LR rifles, and there weren’t three T-shirts among the lot of them. With so many people crowded into so tiny a vacuum-enclosed space, getting rid of excess heat was a real problem, even as the Sun dwindled astern and the Roosey plunged deeper and deeper into the emptiness of the outer Solar System. The temperature in any of the hab areas was rarely less than thirty-five degrees, and it was steamy with the accumulated sweat and exhaled moisture from so many bodies. The ship’s dehumidifiers simply couldn’t keep up with the load. The stated uniform of the day was tropical shorts and T-shirts, but officers and NCOs alike tacitly ignored the fact that most of the Marines aboard, male and female both, were casually topless, and stripped down to briefs or less when they could. Anything cloth worn anywhere on the body quickly became soaked; Jeff’s shorts, T-shirt, and socks were clinging to his skin now like a wet swimsuit, until he felt like he had a permanent case of diaper rash.

Skin was better. Hell, it wasn’t as though the setting was particularly conducive to sexual interest…or to privacy. The daily shipboard routine was a steady grind of cleaning, study, stripping and cleaning weapons and gear, and exercise. For most of the trip, everyone aboard was too busy, too crowded, and too damned hot to take an interest in any fellow Marine’s attire…or lack of it.

Still, Colonel Richard Norden was a tough and by-the-book officer who insisted on his Marines being “four-oh, high and tight.” He rarely left “A” Hab, however—some of the Marines had begun calling him “Mopey Dick” for that reason—and impending surprise inspections were telegraphed to the other habs by the Marines in his section…plenty of time to make sure everyone in a soon-to-be-visited grunt locker was properly in uniform when he arrived.

Jeff Warhurst was Norden’s Executive Officer, and as such he knew he should generate the same respect for regulations, both as XO and as CO of Bravo Company. But he also knew that a mindless adherence to form and outward show would do little but make sure he was on the alert list in all four habs, and further depress morale as well. As far as Jeff was concerned, the entire MSEF could run around buck naked when it was this hot and humid, so long as discipline was maintained, the work got done, and the men and women under his command weren’t afraid to come to him with their problems.