During a pause in the drill, he raised a clumsily gloved hand.
Caswell was also suited up. “Yes, Private Ramsey?” she said over the squad comm channel. At least no one here had started using his embarrassing Flash moniker.
“I was just wondering, Staff Sergeant, when we were going to get to go into the zero-G hangar?”
He’d heard about the hangar from some research into Corps space training that he’d done back home, before he’d joined up. The trainee was fully suited up in Class-One armor, complete with fifty-kilo backpack and power unit. A special harness was attached to the suit, which in turn was attached to a complicated-looking tangle of gimbals, pivots, and suspensor rigging dangling from the overhead, a carefully stressed and balanced arrangement that simulated the effects of zero G.
Traditionally, a student’s first exposure to the rig came when he was hoisted into the air and given an empty M-29 ATAR and a loaded magazine. Other personnel cleared the hangar, and the student was ordered by radio to load his weapon, switch to full auto, and fire at a man-sized target at the other end of the hangar.
That amusing exercise was designed to demonstrate the need to brace a projectile weapon precisely at the suit’s center of gravity, a point marked by a hollow cup positioned at about navel height that exactly fit the rounded butt end of an M-29 modified for zero-G combat. The idea was to keep the weapon centered and aim by controlling the pitch and yaw of the suit itself, aiming with the targeting cursor projected on the helmet’s HUD. Most students ended up in a wild, uncontrollable, and embarrassing spin in the dangling support apparatus. Jack, however, knew about action-reaction and was pretty sure he would be able to impress his instructors by firing on-target, without throwing himself into a spin.
“Not this go-round, Ramsey,” Caswell told him. “Next week we’ll pop you into the hangar rig to give you a feeling of moving in one-sixth G, but we’re cutting zero-G work from the curriculum for you five. Maybe you can pick it up later, after your mission.”
Jack was disappointed, though he tried not to show it. They’d told him at the start that the program he’d be going through with the handful of other special selectees at Quantico was going to be abbreviated. They needed Marines with AI programming experience now, for a big, upcoming mission no one wanted to talk about, and so the space training course was being tailored just for them, cut down to include only what they needed to know to survive and fight on the surface of the moon, not in space.
Well, he was still going to the Moon, and that was quite as challenging an environment as Earth orbit or deep space. He looked down at his ATAR with its attached under-barrel M-440 grenade launcher. In another month, if he was able to tough out this course, he would be in space.
It didn’t seem possible.
Caswell appeared to be listening to something, her head cocked to one side behind the visor of her helmet. He felt a chill, a kind of premonition. There was a horror in the staff sergeant’s eyes that he’d seen before…in the trenches in the Russian Far East.
“Listen up, people,” she said, her voice hard. “I’ve just had a report come down from Battalion. Approximately one hour ago, a fragment of that asteroid diverted by the UN entered Earth’s atmosphere and struck the southern tip of Lake Michigan with an impact equivalent to the explosive force of a small nuclear weapon. Reports, reports are still kind of confused, but it sounds like the city of Chicago has been destroyed.”
There was a roaring sound in Jack’s ears, and he felt the hammering of his heart. He felt dizzy…short of breath, and he reached for his suit’s controls to up his O2 feed a notch. Chicago…gone? He’d been there so many times, visiting Aunt Liana and Uncle Dave.
Hard on the heels of that thought came another. His aunt and uncle…if they were in the city, they must be dead…
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” another voice put in, and Marielle Polanski crossed herself, the gesture oddly cumbersome in Marine armor. Then he remembered that Marielle was from Chicago; she’d mentioned once that her folks lived there.
“Private Polanski?” Caswell said. “Are you all right?”
“Y-yes, Staff Sergeant…”
Suddenly, Marielle began fumbling with the latch for her helmet, clawing at her armor, trying to get out. Jack could hear her retching over the open circuit. Caswell was in front of her in an instant, hitting the emergency release and pulling the bulky helmet off her shoulders. Then Marielle was running from the bay, her boots clacking on the concrete floor as she made for the head.
“That’s all for this evening, Marines,” Caswell said, pulling her own helmet off. “I’ve called Sergeant Honeycutt to come down and check in your gear and weapons. Secure your gear, and you’re dismissed for the day.” She walked away quickly, following after Marielle.