Chapter 5: Training and Conditioning

At D-Day minus six months Jerry and I had, by satellite imagery, located a site on the continent of Plutus that roughly matched the terrain that Navy Intelligence had designated as our target on Metek’at IV.

Jerry and I set up a sand table (really a holograph projector built into a table) and invited in the CO, XO, and NCOs that we would be working with on our chunk of the mission. If we were going to write a plan for the mission, we certainly wanted input from the troops who were going to be carrying it out.

We were assigned to Bravo Company, 2nd Brigade, Force Recon Regiment, 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force. The

“Bully Boys of Bravo” were tough, sharp, and trained relentlessly. Their CO, Captain Steve Estevez, and their XO Janet Collins, were confident professionals. The Platoon leaders all had at least two combat drops under their belts.

When Captain Estevez, Lieutenant Collins, and their Top, Sgt Gutierrez came in, they were all grinning.

Sparky was instantly suspicious. He checked his chair before he sat down, then made a quick check under the conference table. He sat back warily.

“So, what’s with the happy faces, lady and gentlemen? I do hope that we aren’t going to start this working group off with one of Lieutenant Collins’s practical jokes.”

The three traded glances, then Sergeant Gutierrez spoke up.

“Sir, we had just heard some scuttlebutt on Lieutenant Stewart from an unimpeachable source.”

I sighed.

“And who was this source, Sergeant?”

He smirked.

“One of Alpha Company’s squad leaders, Sir.”

“And what’s the name of this squad leader, Guiterrez?”

“Sir, the squad leader is Sergeant Cindy Johnson.”

I was poleaxed. I had forgot that Cindy was Force Recon. I needed to look her up. I corrected myself, I needed to look up the regs on fraternization. Were we too close in the chain-of-command? I cleared my throat.

“She must have been exaggerating. Sergeant Johnson is an outstanding Marine, but she sees Krav Maga as foreplay.”

“Now, Lady and Gentlemen,” I directed their attention to the holographic terrain display on the table between us,

“Let’s look at what our tasks will be on this mission.”

We walked through the mission parameters and tasks, then, using holographic markers, showed our first cut of how we thought the mission should proceed. Of course, the CO and XO saw holes in our implementation, so we went to work revising the plan.

I started early morning runs with Bravo company, just to let them get used to my face and voice. Guiterrez surprised my one morning by asking me to call cadence on the run. I had to quickly cast back decades earlier to remember a call that might tweak the Marines:

Dress it right and cover down,

(Dress it right and cover down, )
Forty inches all around.

(Forty inches all around.)
You got the Ft. Campbell Boogie,

(You got the Ft. Campbell Boogie, )
What a crazy song!

(What a crazy song!)

G.I. beans and G.I. gravy,

(G.I. beans and G.I. gravy, )
G.I. wished I’d joined the Navy.

(Groans and catcalls from the ranks.)
You got the Celeus Boogie,

(You got the Celeus Boogie,
What a crazy song.

(What a crazy song.)

At D-Day minus four months, the company made the first training drop at site designated ‘Dickhead 2’ on Plutus continent. We started in low planetary orbit in the Tawara carrier

“Chosin Reservoir”, transferred to a Leopard transport and rode it down to the target.

On the forward bulkhead of the Leopard drop deck was some Marine artwork. It showed a Confederacy Marine blowing a huge hole in a stylized hybrid between an H.R. Giger ‘Alien’ and a Sa’arm. The Marine was saying,

“It’s game over when I fuckin’ SAY it’s game over!” It turns out that the entire battalion were big fans of the second movie in the franchise.

One twist on the training exercise that I hadn’t anticipated (and nobody choose to tell me) was the presence of Sa’arm. Their virtual presence, that is. The Leopard linked our implants to the Chosin’s AI and the AI provided images of Sa’arm in our visual fields. These images were computer re-creations modeled on images and video from both the last hours of several Confederacy species and newer footage from Marine encounters.

I had dealt with Sa’arm ships in space and had gotten past my unease of them to fight them and win, but when I first saw a holographic Dickhead crawl up out of the ground twenty yards in front of my position, I very nearly lost my shit. I nearly got ‘killed’ until I remembered to take off the RLA-10’s safety. As it was, I was only marginally effective for the rest of the exercise as I tried to grow eyes in the back of my head and watch the squad at the same time.

When it comes to humans, I’m a pretty cold and crafty son-of-a-bitch. I have crept through enemy guard posts, carried out missions, and slipped away without anyone knowing I was there. I have sat motionless in a jungle blind, listening to the poor son-of-a-bitch that was trying to sneak up on me, surprising him with hand clamped over his mouth, silencing him, while jamming a knife into his heart.

But there is something about the Sa’arm. They generally appear to be reptile, but their motions are somewhere between insectoid and mechanical. They are wholly other and alien, and their very presence radiates (to humans) menace. And all I was seeing was an AI-generated image in three dimension that appeared to interact with the environment. I knew it was a visual artifact, and still it freaked me out.

The first exercise drop went pretty well for a complete clusterfarg. Nobody tripped and broke their legs. Nobody accidentally shot a squad mate. We transported back up to the Tawara and held an all-hands debrief about what went wrong and what went right. My baptism into the dirty diaper club was celebrated. (Yes, I did soil myself. No, I am not ashamed to admit it.)

The next day, we did it again. And again. And again. It worked to desensitize me to the sight of Dickheads. Kind of. We started getting through the exercise in a timely and military manner.

After several weeks of training, as the company started getting the operation down pretty well, the CO and XO started throwing in surprises, like Second Squad (including the XO) all die at a particularly inconvenient part of the exercise. The remaining squad leaders had to improvise to complete the mission and make the pick-up. The next time it was the heavy-weapons squad that was deadlined. The company started to learn each other’s roles, so that if a comrade went down, his buddies could complete his tasks.

My role in the ground operation evolved over time to guard and second sniper. Without Marine enhancements I couldn’t hump the ammo loads and weapons that these guys could, and it turned out my new body was pretty good with the Barret; so, my job was to station myself on a low rise overlooking the area of operation and guard the transport disk and provide secondary sniper ops for the company. The CO would be on another rise, a few hundred meters to my right, watching over the operation. The company’s primary (real) sniper (with his spotter) was on a taller rise about fifty meters beyond the CO.

Sparky was attaching himself to the CO’s platoon, which I told him made his job description

“auxiliary butt-boy.” Yeah, he thought that was hilarious. He wound up acting as spotter to the real sniper.

During the first week of training at the drop site, after we had done the after-action brief and I was leaving one of the conference rooms aboard the ‘Chosin’, heading for my bunk, I was grabbed from behind.

Without thinking, my body relaxed, and I shifted my weight underside. I started the bowing motion that should cause the attacker to fly over my head. Instead of throwing my attacker, I felt myself being picked up, as though I were a child.