Recruit by Jonathan Brazee (best historical fiction books of all time .txt) 📖

Chapter 13

“Squad leaders, perform your EVA[17] checks” King Tong shouted out.

Ryck locked his weapon in the leg holster, a simple magnetic lock that kept the M99 out of the way while EVA, but readily available.  The weapon could actually fire in the vacuum of open space, but there wouldn’t be any soft targets at which to fire. 

This was Ryck’s third time as recruit squad leader.  At T288, there were only seven days left until graduation, and Ryck was determined to keep the billet until the end.  Of course, two of the remaining days were The Crucible, the final test of a recruit’s mettle and worthiness to become a Marine.  Ryck could easily lose the billet during that non-stop hell.

He snapped back to the job at hand.  This was the final practical app for Phase Four, space training.  The first part of the training phase had been conducted back at Camp Charles, in classrooms and mock-ups.  For such a modern setting, the mock-ups had been surprisingly basic.  There was a hulk of a section of a cargo ship on its side in the dirt, then a simple model of an airlock.  The recruits “cycled” through the airlock, then “flew” through the space to the hulk to perform forced entry procedures.  It had been a bit surreal, seemingly floating through “space” in the bright sunlight, then “floating weightlessly” through the hulk’s corridors to rescue the ship’s crew (four hopelessly degraded dummies).  All of that has been done in the skins and bones as the EVA suits were too valuable to use on the ground at Camp Charles.  Each recruit had practiced getting in and out of an EVA, of course, and operating the suits’ systems, but that was with one of the three suits at the space training classroom.

This final exercise was with the real thing, though.  Marines would not be issued their own EVA suit unless they were assigned to a ship, so this was once more a bit of trying to make do with what was available.  Recruit Dharma, a heavy-worlder in 1043, couldn’t even get a suit within the safety parameters, so he wasn’t going to participate.  The suits would not be perfect fits, of course, but unlike the training events back on Tarawa’s surface, a poorly fitting suit had more severe ramifications, and Dharma’s shoulders were just too broad, and he was too short for any of the standard suits.

Ryck called up his four fire team leaders.  When he’d first been a recruit squad leader, he’d had four fire teams then, too, but now, 1044’s Fourth Squad had been merged with Third due to drops.  Hodges and Wagons, from the old Fourth, were both fire team leaders, but the other two were No Initial and Raj from the old Third.  Ryck was rather surprised that both Hodges and No Initial were still in the program, but he had to grudgingly give them their just due.  Both had come along quite well, and if Ryck was to get fired again, he thought Hodges might actually get the nod as the new recruit squad leader.

“Have you completed the suit checks?’ he asked them.  All nodded back, so he continued, “Check each other, then I’ll be doing my check in three.”

Ryck knew that there would be no sabotage by the DIs on this evolution.  The inherent danger was too great.  But that made it all the more reason to have a thorough check before they went out.  He was nervous, even if one of the DIs did re-inspect each recruit after he did his inspection.

There wasn’t much room in the prep hold aboard the Castor Wong, the navy corvette assigned to the training.  Ryck was forced too close to each recruit as he inspected them, but he just repeated the inspection checklist as a mantra, checking each and every step.  The recruits had no live ammo, but he checked the dummies and blanks as if they were live.  Each recruit looked good, although he had Carl Kingsman reseat his M99. 

Usually, for this type of training evolution, it was only the TDIs who ran the show.  This time, though, the platoon DIs, the series senior, and the series commander were there to assist as well.  Even Captain Petrov, the company commander, was there to observe.  After Ryck conducted his inspection, no less than three others re-inspected the squad.  King Tong was one of the inspectors, then one of the TDIs conducted another.  Captain Terzey, the series commander, inspected them one final time.

The hold light went from red to amber.  It was almost time.  TDI Flores went over the procedure yet once more.  Each squad would cycle out the lock, make the jump to the target ship, go through the forced entry (simulated, of course:  the Wilma Pritchard was too valuable to actually blow holes in her), then conduct the movement to the bridge and rescue the hostages.  There would be a safety officer at the Wong’s airlock and another at the airlock on the Pritchard.  A TDI would handle the debarkation of the Wong, another would run the jump, and yet one more would lead each squad during the assault phase.

Once the bridge was secured, the tactical phase would be over, and the squad would move to the forward airlock where they would cycle out, then take one of the EVA sleds back to the Wong.  There were three types of sleds, and it would be basically first-come, first-served.  Ryck wanted one of the single-man sleds, but with the graded part of the exercise completed, any sled should be a blast.

The Castor Wong, as a corvette, was not a huge vessel, so