Luna Marine(64)
“Sir! One joule is one watt of power applied for one second, sir!” It was one of the thousands of isolated facts and bits of information that had been hammered into them all during the past three weeks, like the serial numbers of their ATARs or the names of the ten people in the chain of command above them, from Gunnery Sergeant Harold Knox all the way up to President Roger Markham.
“Correct. Since it’s damned hard to get an uncooperative target to stand still for one whole second, we use a ten-million-watt laser to release a pulse that lasts one-tenth of a second. One million watts for one second equals ten million watts for one-tenth second. The result is the same. One million joules, delivered on-target. That is enough to punch through the best personal armor we know. It’s enough to chew though your guts, charbroil them, and spit them out your backsides. Flash!”
Jack gritted his teeth. “Flash” had become his nickname, his handle in the platoon, a jeering reference to Flash Gordon and his desire to be a space Marine.
“What is the effective range of the Sunbeam M228 Squad Laser Weapon?”
“Sir!” Jack shouted as hard and as loud as he could, reciting the relevant textbook paragraph. “The effective range of the Sunbeam M228 Squad Laser Weapon is approximately eighteen hundred to twenty-two hundred meters, but that range may be sharply restricted by attenuation or by adverse atmospheric conditions, sir!”
“Correct! And what is the maximum range in hard vacuum?”
“Sir! In vacuum, the maximum range of the Sunbeam M228 Squad Laser Weapon is theoretically infinite, sir!”
“Theoretically? You gonna trust your life, or the life of your buddy in the hole with you, to theory?”
That sounded like one of Knox’s frequent rhetorical questions, so Jack remained silent. It turned out to be the right response.
“The important thing to remember about the slaw,” Knox went on, “is that if you can see your target, you can hit it.
“And the important thing to remember about energy, is that energy is energy, whether it comes from a lump of plastic explosives, or the muzzle of M228 Squad Laser Weapon, or your fist. All any weapon is is a means of delivering energy on target. And delivering a hell of a lot of energy on-target, accurately and lethally, is what being a Marine is all about. With an M228 ten-megawatt Squad Laser Weapon. With an ATAR standard personal weapon. With an entrenching tool. With a rock. With your fist. With your teeth. You are the weapon! You, the men of the United States Marine Corps! Do you read me?”
“Sir! Yes, sir!” the recruits chorused.
“A US Marine is far more deadly than a ten-megawatt M-228 Squad Laser Weapon! And that is because a ten-megawatt M-228 Squad Laser Weapon cannot think. It cannot plan. And most of all, it does not possess the courage, fortitude, adaptability, willpower, or sheer, mean grit of a US Marine! Do you read me?”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
“I can’t hear you!”
“SIR, YES, SIR!”
“What does a US Marine do?”
“Kill! Kill! Marine Corps!”
Jack shouted with the others, yelling past the harsh rasp in his throat, overriding the chill, the discomfort, the bone-tired ache, the chattering of his teeth.
Still, it was impossible not to look down at those two, drilled-through dummies and not imagine himself lying there. My God, he thought, and not for the first time since he’d come aboard at Parris Island. What have I gotten myself into?
Assault Shuttle 06, Army Space
Force Assault Group
Approaching Lunar South Pole
2035 hours GMT
The K-440 Space Transport Cargo pod was the size and roughly the shape of a boxcar, a no-frills pressurized module capable of transporting up to fifteen tons with a Zeus II HLV to provide the initial kick. With Aerospace Force modifications allowing for air and temperature control, it could carry fifty men to orbit, or thirty as far as the Moon.
Colonel Thomas R. Whitworth floated in the two-man cockpit between the commander’s and pilot’s seats, peering through the narrow slit windows at the rugged terrain ahead. Sunlight, reflected from silver-white mountains, flooded the cockpit and warmed his face; he preferred spending the travel time aft with his men—a good leader never separated himself from his men or their discomfort—but he’d asked Major Jones, the Aerospace Force mission commander, to call him forward for the final approach. It always helped to be able to actually see the terrain you were supposed to assault, using your God-given Mark I eyeballs instead of watching a computer simulation. He’d not had a good feel for the terrain the last time he’d led his men into this desolate waste, and he thought that that was why they’d made a relatively poor showing when the enemy counterattacked.