yeah!" he replied, firing a few rounds back at the other squad of marines. "Let's go get some!"
He signaled his plan. He would sweep left toward a barricade that was oriented left-right, beside the opposing marines' barricade. I would sweep in from up-range, to the marines' left, our right. David and Raj would move forward, taking what cover they could along the tip of the barricade Raj and Kyle had hurried away from moments ago. If our two center guys threw enough rounds at the other squad, they would be forced to stay low and fire at our flankers. Very quickly, our two chargers would be on top of them, and then we would finish things.
I reloaded, putting in a fresh forty-round clip in the rifle. As I pulled back the cocking handle, the round jammed.
"Malfunction, malfunction!" I hissed.
I set about fixing the rifle. As I did, the other three laid down enough withering fire to give me time. I pulled out the magazine, and put it back in my ammo pouch. I cocked the weapon twice, once to free the jammed round, and the other to clear out anything that might have broken off the round itself and caused the jam in the first place. A bent round, cheap piece of crap, fell at my feet. I pulled the trigger, making sure the firing mechanism still worked. It did. Then the magazine went back into place, and I cocked the weapon. The round went in properly this time.
I nodded 'ready' and dashed right. My three squad-mates moved as well. We all fired heavily, and Raj made the first kill. The enemy marine's helmet exploded with a spatter of blue paint, and I heard him yelp from the force of it. He dropped out of sight.
I broke into a run, as did the rest of us. The other three marines fired wildly, undisciplined fire as they held their weapons over the barricade. They might as well have taken a handful of rounds and thrown them at us, for all the good such stupidity did them. They might have been playing us earlier, but obviously they'd run out of clever ideas. Kyle, ever the marksman, knocked the rifle out of one of their hands, covering it in blue paint.
At that point, the other two marines stood up and started firing, obviously trying to cover some sort of retreat, or perhaps to jump down into the below-deck hatch which had brought them there. No such luck. I caught one of the marines in the left shoulder, and she went to one knee to avoid more fire. The last of the four must have taken ten rounds from us, and ended up flat on his back when he tripped over the paint-covered weapon of his buddy.
Just as we reached them, weapons still at the ready, the loud end-of-exercise buzzer sounded. We stopped, and lowered our weapons as Colonel Freeman's voice rang out.
"Weapons on safe," he said in a voice that echoed throughout the arena. "Stand down."
I let my rifle hang, and looked up toward the tower. I could see that none of the instructors were watching us anymore, at least not from the window. I nodded. They were already on their way to the debriefing room, where they could discuss this new squad of theirs.
"Okay guys," I called out. "Let's get out of our gear."
The other marines were picking themselves off the deck, the one wiping the paint off his face. The eye protection only went as far down as the nose, but we had covered him from his stomach to the top of his head. His teeth were blue, but he wasn't exactly smiling.
"Good try, marines," I said with a nod to the other team. No reason to be a poor sport about it. We won, so we could afford to be nice.
The woman among them, who I could see was their captain, nodded her thanks as she pulled off her gloves. She was no more happy about the lose than her squad-mates, but that was understandable. It was never fun to lose these exercises, even if you walked in knowing you didn't have a chance. In a way, I felt bad for her. They should have been working with instructors, not used as fodder on an experienced unit like mine. All we were doing was sharpening our claws on them. Of course, that was life. We won, they lost. We always won. That's how it always ended for us, on exercise or in the field. We always won.
As I watched her wipe the paint off of her shoulder, I caught sight of her unit patch. Taggart saw it as well. She wasn't Marine Recon at all. She was with Psychological Operations. They messed with the heads of the enemy, and kept close watch on ours. I could feel my blood pressure begin to rise.
"She's a skull-fucker," Taggart muttered.
"This whole damned exercise was a test," Raj said with disgust. "We're being watched, even in here."
"Yeah," I said with a sigh and a shake of my head. "Yeah, we are."
***
I sat down on the locker room bench, the warm mist from the showers reaching me from around the corner. Kyle was already inside, first as always. I always took the time to slowly strip off my armor and carefully set it down. My rifle was beside me, alongside my goggles and gloves. As I unbuckled the armor from my uniform, I felt the air rush into the gap between armor and body. It felt good. The armor was like a second skin to me, but still, it got hot under these barracks uniforms. I should have worn my field weave uniform, but that was still in the laundry.
It took a week to get clothing back from station laundry, and I would have had it two weeks ago, if we hadn't spent the first straight week locked away in cells. There was nothing less pleasant than sitting in a holding cell wearing a filthy, sweaty combat uniform, waiting for debriefings that came every few hours, and lasted for several hours each. Part of the plan was to keep us dirty and tired, as if that was going to change things. It wasn't until we'd given them our story a dozen times over, each time exactly as the last, that they finally gave us quarters, a decent meal, and barracks uniforms.
Raj sat down beside me. He was massaging his left wrist, and not looking too happy about it.
"Get hit?" I asked, "Or just getting old?"
Raj shook his head. "Nah, man. I hurt it when I dove for cover. Kyle slipped and stepped on it."
I looked it over. It was already starting to mottle and bruise up through Raj's light brown skin. He winced when I turned his arm over.
"Go see the doc," I ordered. "No arguing, Raj," I finished, cutting off his reflexive 'no doctors' reply.
That was one thing about Corporal Sandhu that I never understood. The guy came from a family of doctors. Mom was a family doctor in Vancouver, and his Dad divided his time between hospitals there and in India. Raj's sister was busy in Atlanta's Center for Disease Control, trying to cure some incurable disease. His cousin was a navy doctor on a carrier somewhere in the Alpha Centauri system, sewing together broken marines, army grunts, and aid workers. Yet Raj was so reluctant to see a doctor, any doctor, you would think he was expecting them to put him back together with extra parts or something. I never really understood that.
"Ah, give us a break!" David's voice, half annoyed and half outright angry, carried over the row of lockers behind me.
I heard him throw his armor onto the tile floor, as he spat out a swear or two in Alphacee, one of a select few he'd picked up from the locals and used when he was especially pissed off.
"Hey!" I called out. "Watch the armor. It's worth more than you are," I reminded him, only halfway serious.
I turned in time to see the petty officer approach me, obviously the reason David had started swearing in tongues. He was just some clerk I had seen buzzing around since we arrived on the station. He was older, probably around fifty-five, with closely cropped gray hair and blue eyes which had long lost that hungry, energetic look you expected from young sailors on their first tour. This guy was just a paperwork monkey on a far-off station in the middle of nowhere. I could only assume his presence meant we were going back into debriefing.
"More?" I asked evenly. "Seriously? Torginson wants another round with us?"
The petty officer looked down his nose at me. "Commodore Torginson," he said, correcting me with her proper rank as though I had forgotten, "did not send me."
I