The Complete Legacy Trilogy: Star Corps, Battlespace, Star Marines. Ian Douglas

exceptional personal secretaries. Both priority calls had been less than truly urgent, but both needed handling by means both courteous and expeditious.

      “Very well,” he told Cassius. “Let’s see the urgents.”

      “You may wish to greet Captain Warhurst first, sir.”

      “Eh?” Warhurst’s dress khakis were a bit more up-to-date than his icon garb, Ramsey noted. “Oh. Of course.”

      Warhurst was uncovered so he did not salute, but he came to a crisp attention. “Captain Martin Warhurst reporting on board, sir.”

      “Ah, Captain Warhurst, yes,” Ramsey replied. “Welcome aboard.”

      “Thank you, sir.”

      “Check with my exec, here, Major Anderson, for your berthing assignments. Are your people getting settled in?”

      “Yes, sir. But my company is only at half strength … eighty-two troops out of 150 on my TO and E.”

      “Affirmative, Captain. But I’m afraid the rest of your team will be newbies.” He saw Warhurst’s face fall at that news. “Don’t worry, son. You’ll have time to whip them into shape before deployment.”

      “Yes, sir. Uh … fresh meat out of Lejeune, sir?”

      “Yup. Volunteers from recruit companies 1097, 1098, and 1099. They’ll be arriving over the next three weeks or so.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Major Anderson has the specs and stats. You can review their recruit records online, of course, and you can interview them, if you wish, before they embark. Problem, Captain?”

      Warhurst made a face. “No, sir. It’s just …”

      “Yes?”

      “My mission brief has my company hitting Objective Krakatoa. I would have thought you’d want an experienced Mobile Assault Team on that one, sir.”

      “Ideally, yes. I’m afraid we don’t have that luxury, however. Groundside HQ is holding back the best MATs against the situation in Mejico and the Southwest territories. We get what’s left, I’m afraid.”

      “I see, Colonel.”

      “Don’t worry, son,” Ramsey said with an easy grin. “If your people aren’t experienced now, they sure as hell will be by the time they’ve taken Krakatoa!”

      “The ones who survive will be experienced, yes, sir,” Warhurst told him. “The rest will be dead.”

      “That’s the way it always is, Marine. You have your orders. Carry on!”

      “Aye aye, sir!”

      Warhurst was not happy, but that couldn’t be helped. Weeks ago, Ramsey had downloaded the captain’s combat record and guessed that Warhurst was at least as worried about his own qualifications for the assignment as he was about the experience of his men. He’d only taken part in one combat mission so far—the brief, bitter assault on Giza last June—and he must be wondering about why he’d been recruited for a berth with the MIEU, much less why he was supposed to lead the first assault onto Ishtar.

      No matter. He was a good man and would come through when he had to.

      Or he would be dead. But he would do his honest-to-Chesty-Puller best.

       Semper fi. …

       U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Training Center

       Parris Island, South Carolina

       0730 hours ET

      Time, which had crawled forward at a seemingly imperceptible pace, with each day very much like the one past, at last began to accelerate. Garroway’s training entered phase three as his nanochelates began to kick in, then phase four, when all of the pain and sweat at last began coming together. He might be, in Makowiecz’s cordially bellowed invective, a scum-of-the-Earth lowlife-maggot recruit, but by the Goddess, he was a Marine scum-of-the-Earth lowlife-maggot recruit.

      “Fire teams advance, by the numbers!” Philby called over the squad comm channel. “Fire Team One … go!”

      Recruits Myers, Kilgore, and Garvey rose from cover, their combat suits mottled with the same ocher and gray tones of the rock and sand of the desert. They were still a bit clumsy with the new suits; Kilgore slipped in a soft patch of sand and fell heavily, dropping his laser rifle as he hit.

      “Any time you’re ready, Kill-girl!” Makowiecz’s voice cut in, harsh and sarcastic. “I’m sure the enemy will happily sit down and wait until you’re freaking ready!”

      “Sorry, sir!”

      “Yes, you are! Now move! Move! Move!”

      Garroway heard the exchange spoken inside his head, a kind of technological telepathy generated by the chelated nanoconnections growing in key areas of his brain.

      The full range of vision and hearing available to him was breathtaking, and he was still getting used to a sensory input that could be overwhelming at times. With a thought-click, his helmet’s AI could adjust his visual input to anything from monochrome to full HSD, a hyperspectral display combining every wavelength from deep infrared to X ray. By clicking through a mental menu, he could see in the dark, filter out harsh light, and easily tell the difference between natural vegetation and camouflage.

      “Fire Team Two!” Philby called. “Go!”

      Mendelez, Jaffrey, and Kaminski rose from the sand, rushing forward in short, zigzagging bursts of speed, their goal a low, rock-strewn ridge crest a hundred meters ahead. Simulated laser fire—hell, it was real laser fire, Garroway thought, but stepped down in wattage until only suit sensors could register it—flashed and strobed from a pair of automated gun emplacements concealed among the boulders ahead and to the left. Explosions detonated somewhere behind him. The word was that the AIs triggering each burst knew how close they could get without actually hurting any of the recruits, but scuttlebutt also said there’d been plenty of injuries in other recruit companies during this part of the training already, and even a few accidental deaths. Dead was still dead, whether you were fighting frog-faced aliens eight light-years away or taking part in a routine training exercise right in your own backyard.

      The excitement of the moment pounded in Garroway’s skull. This might be just an exercise, but it was being played in deadly earnest against both AIs and flesh-and-blood opponents. His company—what was left of it now, eleven weeks into training—had been TAV-lifted to the Marine Corps training facility at Guardian Angels, in the Baja Territory, to play war games with SpecOps commandos and other Marines. They’d been told off in threes, grouped according to the Corps’ current three-four-two doctrine: three men to a fire team, four fire teams to a squad, two squads to a platoon section. Owen Philby, a short, wiry agro from Niobrara, Nebraska, was the ARNCO—the acting recruit noncommissioned officer in command of Third Platoon’s 1st Squad. They’d been given their orders—to take and hold that ridge up ahead—and except for Makowiecz’s acid commentary over the comm channels from time to time, they were largely on their own.

      Shit. Mendelez was down, the servos in his suit killed by his own AI. He would lie on the ground, a simulated casualty of a simulated fight, until the exercise was over. Garroway thought-clicked to his squad status display and saw that Kilgore and Garvey were down as well. Those guns up there were chopping the squad to bits.

      “Fire Team Three! Go!”

      Three more suited figures rose from cover, zigzagging across the open ground. One of them stumbled and fell … Fox. Then Lopez. And Hollingwood. Three up, three down. The enemy guns had the range.

      “Fire Team Four! Go!”

      That was Garroway’s cue. Scrambling to his feet, he began dashing toward the ridge crest, dodging and weaving across the rocky ground. Philby and Yates rose with him, clumsy in their Mark