Disgraced
Copyright© 2025 by Ogreface
Chapter 12: Rank Issues
Three days later the Electra undocked and drifted away. Three weeks later they jumped to the Cornell system. While all three the imperial cruisers were officially based in the Pleiades Prime system, the Seventh Marine Training Battalion on Cornell was one of two major marine feeding bases in the cluster. Each time the Electra or the Taygete returned to Cornell, after visiting a number of systems, which usually included a stop at the navy space station orbiting Secundus, at least one of the platoons were exchanged. The Merope normally exchanged marine platoons from the Sixth Marine Training Battalion on Secundus.
“We stay onboard but at least we get shore leave,” the sergeant who was in charge of the squad in which Dane and Nick found themselves told them after the Electra had docked. The Electra would only stay for five days before departing with four fresh and fully trained platoons onboard. Dane’s platoon was one of the first to get shore leave. As they were headed to where the marine shuttle was docked, the XO sent them a message.
“Galan, Belton, you men were involved in actual combat,” The XO said with a contemplative frown. Dane suspected it had something to do with the BC sitting nearby and was watching them. “I want all the marines from the Windvane to report to the medical section for an inspection, I want to make sure all of you, especially the walking wounded, are healthy to continue with the Electra.”
“Good thinking, Major,” the BC said. Dane was expecting the XO to appreciate the praise he got from the BC, but the EX looked away and pulled a face instead.
The barracks they were pointed to after landing in the base, was near the main gate and was in a mess. Dane could understand that since the barracks were for PFCs only, the corporals and sergeants stayed elsewhere, so nobody was going to bother to make sure the barracks got cleaned regularly. Dane was especially proud of the Windvane crew when they took to cleaning the sections of the head they used before he could say anything.
The next morning, Dane’s crew rolled out of bed as the sun rose and went for a run. Dane’s scar was still a bit tender but didn’t stop him from running, doing push-ups, and sit-ups. After showering, they all set off to the medical building to find out what they needed to do. Dane was expecting to be told to come back at a later date or time.
“Name?” the female medical officer asked as Dane told her why they were there.
“Galan, Dane, PFC,” Dane gave the standard marine designation. The officer, a captain according to her rank, frowned at him and asked the names of the others. “Okay, two walking wounded and six with possible traumatic combat experience. Galan, Dane, PFC, you are first. Get in that room and strip down to your underpants only.” As Dane walked off she ordered the others to other examination rooms.
It took a while before somebody entered the room. It turned out to be the same female captain with a medical doctor’s badge on her chest. Dane obviously got to attention, and felt rather embarrassed being in front of her in only his underpants. She initially looked everywhere except at him, but then she got him to lay on the bed on his back as she started examining his wound. She was fairly thorough and also checked his blood pressure and reflexes. Just when Dane started getting the suspicion that she was dragging out the examination, the base XO walked in.
“It was not quite six months yet, Sergeant Galan,” he said.
“My apologies, major, but its Private First Class,” Dane corrected the major.
“Your record does not mention any demotions,” the major said as he examined his tablet. “As a matter of fact, you left as a corporal, and got a battlefield promotion to sergeant, during which you distinguished yourself to the point where your commander suggested that your rank be made permanent. According to this, your promotion to sergeant became permanent before you boarded the Electra. Why are you out of uniform?” he asked as he waved his tablet in front of Dane.
“I told him to strip, major,” the doctor said with a cute giggle.
“I’m referring to his rank insignia,” the XO said as he pointed at Dane’s shirt hanging from a hook on the wall.
“I was ordered to hand over my rank insignia, major,” Dane said.
“By the battalion commander on the Electra?” the major asked. “Is the same true for the three corporals with you?”
“Yes, major,” Dane said. Then the major looked at the captain.
“This one is healthy in spite of that nice scar,” she said. “I can find something wrong if you want.”
“No, I will take it up with the colonel,” the major said. “Galan, take those corporals and go get the correct rank insignia at the stores.”
They were supposed to return to the ship after forty-eight hours. Just as they were ready to head for the shuttle bay, Dane and the three corporals were summoned to the XO’s office. His office was across a small courtyard from the BC’s office. As they arrived, the XO came out and marched them across the courtyard where he made them stand at ease a few meters from the BC’s office.
“ ... are my marines!!” a loud voice shouted from inside the BC’s office. “I get to decide what rank they should have!”
“You are the battalion commander, not the commandant of the marine corps,” a slightly milder voice said. “Their ranks have been confirmed by the commandant. Check the signature on that query.”
“What gave you the right to query their ranks in the first place!?” the first voice asked.
“You sent them to medical,” the second voice said. “What did you expect the medical people to do when the marines arrived with the wrong ranks? They asked for explanations. I had to make sure somebody didn’t put them on charge and demoted them.”
“Well, there is no way I am going to have that snot-nose kid walk around with sergeant strips on my ship,” the first voice said.
“Not your ship, only your battalion, and I already decided to keep all four of them for other assignments,” The second voice said.
“Good, I don’t want them anyway,” the first voice said.
“I will release four replacements,” the second voice said as the BC from the Electra came charging out. He gave Dane and the three corporals a dirty look before storming off.
“I’m impressed, sergeant,” the Battalion Commander for the Seventh Battalion said when Dane and the three corporals stood in front of him. There was another major in the office who just stood near the window watching everybody. Dane noticed he had a ranger badge on his fatigues. “You were gone for three months and became a sergeant. You really should have gone to officers’ training school. In the meantime, I read a report about you and Belton using asteroid mining sleds to attack a pirate base with.”
“We just took them from the pirates, Colonel,” Dane said.
“This is Major Tom Gallagher,” the BC said as he introduced the ranger major. “He is in charge of Ranger Command. You four now fall under his command.”
“The report stated that they were unaltered, bare frames,” the ranger major spoke up. “You had them modified. Well, somebody else also read that report. You four are hereby ordered to go check into the NCO’s barracks to wait for your next assignment, which will arrive in a few days.”
The Electra were gone for two days when Dane, Nick, Carlos, and Bill arrived back from a fast five-kilo run, to find three marines waiting at their end point. The one was a lieutenant. The other two, a sergeant and a corporal, looked kind of familiar to Dane.
“We met when you and Belton did that high-altitude insertion jump, some four months ago,” the sergeant said. “This is Lieutenant Dupre, I am Sergeant Rogers, and this is corporal Wong. We are all rangers, and we need you and Belton to show us how you modified two asteroid mining sleds. You two, Vaca and Cosby, you are now ranger candidates. Go with Wong. Keep in mind, Sergeant Galan will not be happy if either of you wash out of ranger training. Go shower, pack your stuff, and check out of the barracks you are staying now. We have our own barracks.”
After breakfast, Dane and Nick were taken to a separate compound behind the main base. There they were assigned barrack rooms. The rooms were small, but they each had their own private room with a toilet, basin, and shower. There were only four tables in the mess room. Another surprise was the female chef who ran the mess hall. She was a bit older and came out to introduce herself, and to ask about their preferences and dietary needs.
“Don’t let her friendliness fool you,” Rogers said. “She will ask you what you like, and then serve you the standard marine meal anyway.” She blew Rogers a raspberry.
Once they had their stuff stowed, Wong took Vaca and Cosby off to join the other new ranger candidates while Rogers took Dane and Nick to the navy engineering yard a few kilometers up the coast. The navy engineering yard was part of the planetary launch facility. Unlike civilian shuttles, navy shuttles seldom launched from a launch pad. They prefer to drift up and out to sea on antigravity generators to an altitude of between thirty and fifty kilometers before using a single launch boosters to go orbital. If they were in a hurry they would use both boosters and launch from the ground.
The hangar they were headed for was closed up and large enough to hold two shuttles. They were led into the hangar via a small side door. Dane and Nick instantly recognized the two contraptions on the hangar floor. It was two standard asteroid mining sleds identical to the two they captured from the pirates.
The term sled was not quite accurate. Dane had no idea where the term came from. He just knew a sled was a bucket-type device that kids sat on as they slid down an icy or sandy embankment. He assumed it had something to do with not having wheels and being used to transport freight.
These sleds were nearly identical to the two they came across earlier. They were made from metal tubes and welded in a cylindrical shape of about two and a half meters diameter and eight meters long. At the back was a set of cross members closing off the open circular end. A small propulsion engine was mounted on the cross members. They also had grapples, hydraulic grips that could clamp onto a part of an asteroid to steady the sled while drilling into the asteroid. The grapples were also used to grab and tow any large objects around.
The controls for the engine was directly on the front of the engine and consisted of a number of mechanical levers. Two were used to control some movable vanes behind the exhaust. By angling a set of vanes, the exhaust jet could be deflected in four directions to ‘steer’ the sled. There were two fuel tanks mounted on either side of the engine.
The front end of the sled had more cross members, usually where a miner would mount a drilling laser. The drilling or mining laser was totally unlike a laser weapon, in that the light beam was a wide-angle beam that got focused on a single adjustable point. The mining laser was great for melting stuff but not at all good as a weapon. The focal distance was between two and ten meters.
Dane already knew that while the propulsion engine worked, it was cumbersome to control and even with the sled not really weighing much, it was not a nimble vehicle. The heavy laser weapon he used on the pirates was mounted off-center on a flexible contraption which allowed him to swivel it around but only towards the front.
“Let me tell you guys what we are trying to achieve here,” Lieutenant Dupre said as he joined them. “The navy engineers will guide and assist us, meaning we might have to do a fair amount of the work. Let’s go talk in the office.”
The office was a side room attached to the hangar next to the ablution section on one side and a store room on the other side. In the office was a conference table, some comfortable stuffed chairs and couches, and a couple of whiteboards to draw on. There were also a few computer terminals and a holographic projector. The lieutenant dropped into one of the stuffed chairs and pointed at the other chairs, indicating they should join him.
“First, from what I saw of your records, both training and operational, you two are for all practical purposes already rangers,” the lieutenant said. “Second, when it is just us rangers, we are less stuck on formality. We are not going for familiarity, just convenience, so in private, call me Dupre, and the grouch is Rogers. We prefer to stick to last names.”
“I am not a grouch, my face just got stuck like this when I was born,” Rogers grumbled. He actually had a slight smirk on his face as he said that.
“The reason we want you to help modify those sleds are because we have a persistent infestation of pirates in one of the transit systems.” Dupre continued. “The system has two jump gates, a brown dwarf star, and a huge and quite rich asteroid ring stretching from 50 million kilos from the star all the way to a few billion kilos. We have been trying to eradicate the pirate from there for a while with little to no success.”
“The navy is even more eager to have us get rid of them,” Rogers said. “The pirates use a stealth type of attack. If a frigate jump in there and then start luring around, it will suddenly find a number of small but heavy and fast rocks moving in its direction. These rocks are mostly the size of a football but moving at a very high speed. They are too small to see and too fast to avoid once they are detected, and have too much kinetic energy to ignore. They have yet to actually hit anybody, but since the navy is aware of the type of attack, it will be very embarrassing for them when a navy ship actually got damaged.”
“The Imperial Council was even thinking of removing the jump gates from that system,” Dupre said. “The problem is the Exploration Group. While there are only two usable jump gates in the system, there are two more incomplete jump destinations originating in that system. Those are jump gates where the other gates are still in transit, on their way to distant stars onboard unmanned ships.”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.