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“Emergency, emergency!” Ryck shouted, not knowing what else to say.
Grant was slowly spinning now, moving away from the others. Ryck was the closest to him, so he turned himself around and blasted forward, colliding with Grant in a classic tackle. He wrapped his arms around Grant’s waist, plastering his chest against the rip in Grant’s suit. He pulled as tightly as he could. He had to get Grant inside a ship. The Wilma was not ready, and looking around Grant’s waist, he could see that the Wong’s forward airlock was not closed as it awaited the arrival of the previous squad on the sleds.
“Recruit Lysander to the captain of the Wong, keep your forward airlock open. I am returning with Recruit Thomas!” he shouted into his mic.
He ignored the blast of comms chatter as he tried to align the two of them on the Wong, then gave his thruster a blast.
He felt the thrust build up before it cut off. Had his thruster failed?
“Lysander, do not engage your thruster. Do you understand? Keep your hold on Thomas, but do not engage your thruster,” King Tong’s voice broke through the voices as his speaker switched to a direct circuit.
It was only then that Ryck became aware of three green-suited figures around him. He felt hands on him as the DIs took in the situation, probably discussing things on another circuit. Ryck had been cut off the open circuit. He just sat there, arms clamped around Grant, who had stopped moving. Ryck hoped he was OK.
Finally, King Tong’s voice came back to him. “Recruit Lysander, listen carefully. We are going to tow you back to the Wong. No matter what happens, you keep squeezing Recruit Thomas just like you are doing. We’ve told him to be completely still. You do not let go until we tell you to. You got that?”
“Yes, drill instructor. I’ve got it.”
With his face pressed up against Grant’s waist, Ryck couldn’t see much, but he felt his suit adjust as hands grabbed him. Within moments, he started to move. He squeezed harder on Grant, not wanting to lose his grip. At one point, Grant started to squirm, but he stopped suddenly. Ryck hoped that was because someone told him to stop and not that he had passed out—or worse.
It seemed like forever to him, but it was probably closer to two minutes before the DIs reversed thrust at the last moment, slamming them headfirst into the Wong’s open airlock. The gravity hit them, and they fell to the deck. Ryck almost lost his grip.
The outer door closed behind them, and the air started rushing in. Sound from something outside his suit once again returned to Ryck.
“OK, Lysander, you can let go,” a voice, a real voice, not over the comms, said as hands reached down to pull apart his arms.
Ryck let go and sat back, looking to where he had seen the breach in Grant’s suit. It was larger than he had thought, a good 30 cms across. The suits were not supposed to fail like that, but these were old, ill-fitting suits. Hitting the side of the Wilma as hard as Grant had done must have started the failure, something beyond the old suit’s nanos’ ability to repair.
It took a few more moments for the air to cycle completely through and the inner door to open. Several Marines and a corpsman rushed in. Grant’s helmet had already been popped, and he sat there, eyes wide in contained panic. He was breathing heavily.
Ryck popped his own helmet. He felt relief that Grant was OK. Up until that moment, adrenalin had been coursing through him. Now, it left his body, and he started trembling.
“So, Recruit Lysander, you were all set to order the captain of the Wong to keep the airlock open, then take your buddy back to the ship all by your lonesome? With me and the other DIs there at the scene?’ King Tong asked, standing over him.
Ryck felt his heart fall. Had he screwed up again? Of course, the DIs were more capable of handling the situation than he was.
“I . . . uh, I guess I wasn’t thinking. I just saw him and reacted,” he stammered out, getting to his feet.
“That you did. Sometimes, though, reaction is the best action. You saw an emergency, then did something about it. Trying to take him back on your lonesome might have been a little much, but you did manage to limit the breach on Thomas’ suit. If it had grown into a catastrophic failure before the rest of us got there, who knows what would have happened?”
“I didn’t screw up?”
King Tong laughed, then said, “No, you didn’t screw up. Hugging another recruit was an odd way of saving his sorry ass, but it worked. Good job, Ryck. Good fucking job.”
Relief swept over him. He was glad that Grant was OK, of course, but he felt a twinge of guilt that he was happier that he was still a recruit squad leader. He hadn’t been fired.
Chapter 14
Ten more steps. That’s all. Just ten more steps.
Ryck had been reciting that mantra for the last hour, trying to fool his tired body that the Crucible was almost over. It wasn’t true, and he knew it wasn’t true, but it was the only way he knew to keep going.
He’d been pretty excited when DIs had rushed into the squadbay, throwing gas grenades almost 40 hours before. This was the start of the Crucible, where each recruit would finally be forged into a Marine. This was the culmination of over 290 days on Tarawa. Ryck was confident that he could not only survive, but excel. Nothing could stop him.
The first six hours had been brutal, but not one recruit had dropped. They had the pass/fail 25 km ruck run, the obstacle course, and over an hour of “motivational” PT. They had done all of this before during training. The only difference was that this was with the entire company. It had actually felt invigorating being out there on the grinder, doing flutter kicks, push-ups, good morning darlings, and squat thrusts with close to 500 other recruits. The run was not as fun. Being toward the rear of the company for the first half of the run, they had mercilessly accordioned, slowing down almost to stop at times only to have to then sprint to catch up. At least after the half-way point, they had switched the order of march, and the lead series was in the rear. For something that had loomed over their heads, though, since T1, it was a relief to have it over, with not one 1044 recruit dropping out.
Immediately after the run came the “Road to Heaven.” During the last week of training, the recruits were run through events taken from all the 46 extant corps that had been combined to form the Federation Marine Corps. The Road to Heaven came courtesy of the Republic of China Marine Corps. The recruits stripped down to their skivvies, then belly-crawled, rolled, and performed maneuvers to get down 50 meters of jumbled lava rock, all the time screaming “I fear no pain!” No one dropped, but the cuts on their bodies stung with sweat, something that would only get worse as the Crucible continued.
After that welcome-to-the-Crucible, they had broken back into platoons to go tactical. Storks had lifted them to the mountain training area on the other side of the valley where they were given a patrol mission. The patrol went up and down the almost impassible terrain. That was bad enough, but the cold was unrelenting. It was here that 1044 had their first drop. Garret Shin had sat down in the snow during a five-minute break and simply didn’t get back up. He was whisked away by two of the DIs. No one knew if he DOR’d or was suffering from a cold-related injury. So close to the end, no one wanted to pry into it, the old superstition about knowing too much kicking in. The recruits studiously ignored what had taken place.
By morning, they had reached their objective. But no Storks would be taking them to their final destination. It was a 65 km march down the mountains and across the valley to Camp Prettyjohn and Mount Motherfucker. Camp Prettyjohn, named for a British Royal Marine hero, was a restricted base for special operations training. The recruits had never been taken there, but Mount Motherfucker was in full view of Camp Charles, hanging over them like their own version of hell. It wasn’t so much its appearance, but rather its reputation. Rising up almost a thousand meters above the valley floor, it actually seemed innocuous, almost serene. But each recruit knew that he had to make it to the summit with his weapon and full kit. Ryck had often gazed at the mountain while at Charles, thinking he could run up it. But that was without being up for two days during the Crucible and after a 65 km hump to the base.
The hump itself had been a bitch. They had to move tactically, making two river crossings during the route. Several times, they had been ambushed by other DIs, getting gassed in the process. After the last ambush, three of the recruits had been “killed,” forcing the rest to carry not only them, but their gear as well.
Ryck barely noticed as they entered Prettyjohn. He had often wondered what the snake-eaters did there, but as they passed through the gate, he was too tired to care. He knew he should be urging the recruits in the squad on, but with half of Duc’s gear in his pack, Duc being one of the “dead” recruits, he had turned inward just to keep going.
At the base of Mount Motherfucker, he might as well have been looking up Mount Ascent back on Prophesy. The treeless mountain would have offered a stunning vista of the valley and Camp Charles 10 kilometers or so to the
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