Wild Space Pt. 02

"Line up for charge!" Petty Officer Linch said. Sedrik was next to her, wheeling a bulky cart with a standard Navy small arms charging station on it.

"We're going to charge our suits," Jules said with a bit of wonderment in his voice. He helped Magdalena out of her foxhole as the division automatically formed a line to trundle towards the cart.

"I think so," She said as the first sailor in line turned and Petty Officer Sedrik plugged a cord into the rucksack. "Have we been trained for this?"

"We've studied the tech readouts and could operate this get up in our sleep," Jules told her as they walked slowly forward. "I guess we're getting our shot."

He thought he heard Petty Officer Linch snicker when she observed him with Magdalena, but he couldn't be sure. He received his charge. Jules booted up his suit as he walked away. Immediately, a heads up display shot over his eyes, projected blearily onto the suit's helmet visor, blinking rapidly before crystallizing before his eyes: an amber compass down by his chin, his weapon readout by his right eye, suit schematics on top, and an aiming reticle on the left.

"Handedness?" The suit asked in a harsh robotic voice.

"Right," Jules said, as he had been trained.

"Charge weapon?"

"Charge." The weapon readout on the right filled up with tiny bars and indicated how much firing time he had left, and the suit schematics on top indicted the power redistribution.

"X1 Carbine charged. Suit layout is defaulted to standard and neuter." The grating and clanky voice said.

"Switch to standard and male."

"Reconfigured." A bland but comforting man's voice said. "Link suit?"

"Link."

The aiming reticle on the left immediately linked up with the point of his weapon. Experimentally, Jules shifted his rifle. The aiming reticle shifted, too.

"Orders?"

He didn't have an answer for that. It seemed that all 90 of them were going through the same motions to bring their suits and weapons online, but no one else had any idea about what to do. He looked towards Linch and Sedrik.

Another recruit had the same idea. Hesitantly, a suit approached the pair.

"Orders, petty officers?" The recruit asked, going to parade rest. It took Jules a moment to realize his comms were online, too. He heard the voice over the division channel in his helmet only.

Linch and Sedrik were suited up as well, but helmets free. They gave the recruit a nonplussed look. Jules thought that perhaps they had not heard, but then Linch made an unmistakable motion with her gloved hand: holding it flat, palm down, and brushing her fingers out. Shoo, the gesture said. There was no other recourse. The brave recruit fell back and no one else asked. The two petty officers wheeled the cart away, and they were alone again.

For a few minutes, there was silence and only breathing. Finally, someone asked, "What do we do?"

The words brought a dozen different replies, then dozens, and finally almost the entire division was yelling in his ear. Cringing, Jules cleared his comms and blissful silence reigned in his head.

When things seemed to quiet down, he tuned back in, and instead of all 90 of them only a few were speaking:

"We don't have orders. We can do whatever we want."

"He's right," A feminine voice said, lilting and soft and sexual in his ear. "We weren't briefed."

"They're not going to let us do nothing," Came Magdalena's deeper but still womanly voice. "We ought to get in our foxholes, at least."

"No one is listening to you, rich girl," Jules said scornfully.

"What do you propose we do, then?" The woman replied in an even tone.

"Right..." He said. "That I don't know."

A shot rang out, the unmistakable noise of an energy blast. A bluish bolt zipped between two recruits who had been standing around doing nothing. Immediately, the 90 of them dropped.

"What do we do?!" Came the cry from so many mouths in so many different words that Jules almost cleared the channel again.

"Return fire!" A strong female voice said in a noble accent. Magdalena. She was on the dirt like all of them, but was the first to take up a firing position and shoot back.

It sounded like a good idea to Jules. He stretched out prone, on his elbows, his weight on the ground to take pressure off of his hands and arms, cheek as close to the stock of his rifle as he could get it, and fired back rapidly. The barrel of his carbine was utterly still, as was the aiming reticle in his helmet. His trigger pull seamless and automatic. As the steady bolts erupted from the rifle, Jules vividly recalled practicing to pull the trigger smoothly, not to jerk it, with a coin on the tip of the barrel, and getting dropped for push ups if that coin fell.

"Cease fire!" Someone was shouting, and slowly, they all did so. Many minutes had passed and the air was thick from fog and carried the smell of energy discharge, a burnt and tangy ozone smell that reminded Jules of the air back home.

"Okay," Magdalena said. "First squad, assemble on me. Everyone else, fortify this position."

"Who elected you leader of this outfit?!" Jules asked her, cutting off about a half dozen people asking various questions.

"You did, when your dumbass shit nearly got us all killed in an ambush. Haven't you been paying attention? This is an exercise. We've been attacked. We have to send out a recon element and dig in to fight." Magdalena said, firing his earlier scorn right back at him. "You're in first squad, Pretty Boy. That means assemble on me."

Someone softly laughed.

He got up, face burning, glad no one could see him blush. Once again, she had outsmarted him.

First squad, nine of them, fell in around Magdalena. With his suit powered, Jules saw her name and rank above her head displayed on his visor: MAGDALENA, SEAMAN. If he walked closer to her, he got a quick readout of her biosigns: PLSE GOOD TEMP GOOD. When he was finally near to her, Jules felt a tiny, warm prickle on his chest. The suit had a built in haptics and sensors system that periodically notified him when a friendly unit was nearby, with a barely discernable but completely recognizable sensation of touching. Friendly units felt a certain way, warm and prickly, and anything else that was of a size to be dangerous, moved quickly and didn't read as another friendly suit felt sharp and stabbing. The warm and prickly feeling resonated as Jules stepped up with the squad until they ceased entirely, only to repeat every few minutes.

"We're going on patrol. Maps." Magdalena ordered.

Jules held out his left arm and shook it: a sheet of a thin electronic material unrolled. Sailors called them "scrolls" unofficially. On it was a readout of the local terrain, with blue blips for friendly units but no red that any of them could see for enemies.

"I think the fire came from the southwest. I'm going to set a waypoint." Magdalena did so and they could also see the arrow on their scrolls and on their helmet compasses. "Who is the best shot here?"

A brief discussion over the squad channel ensued, a recruit called Flamina stepped forward.

"You're on point. Garl, Olliver, Mikella, Devon, then you. I'm the anchor in the middle. Then Valk, Leara, and Pretty Boy walk drag and bring up the rear. Keep your eyes peeled."

They set off. Once they left the relative safety of the rest of the division, Jules felt his apprehension rise. What had he gotten himself into? He could have been killed when that blast went off. Not for the first time, every inch of him and fiber of his being yearned for home. He'd make it work: he'd steal like everyone else did, rob, even go and work the land for a lord or a lady or a general or admiral. He'd...

"Do you think it's them that fired at us?" Leara asked him, breaking his reverie.

"Them who?" Jules asked her, startled.

"Brill and the others. It has to be, right?" Her accent was thickening up due to stress. Absurdly, Jules felt a pang of sadness that he'd never asked her where she was from. It didn't seem like the time.

"It has to be," He said with a certainty he didn't feel.

"I shouldn't be here," Leara said suddenly. "I'm just a fucking botanist. I want to be a plant doctor, why am I holding a rifle and—"

"Cut the chatter back there! Focus." Magdalena said sharply.

"Squad leader is supposed to call our time, pace, things like that," One of them said.

"You're right. Here we go," The big girl said with a bit of nerves. "12 minutes and 37 seconds in, 1.2 km covered. Keep an eye on the crossfire and mind the terrain. Attacks usually come from above. Watch the incline up ahead."

On and on it went. The patrol was both thrilling and boring. Mags's voice came over their channel with numbing regularity, as did the haptics, indicating only friendly units. With moment and each step of his boots Jules had to remind himself: he was searching for an enemy combatant who meant to kill him. It was unbelievable.

"We're there. Let's take fifteen." Magdalena said.

Gratefully, the squad rested, each one taking a kneeling firing position. At least they had stopped moving, Jules thought.

"Mikella, get on the horn with the rest of the division. Ask for any reports." Magdalena said.

"What's the plan?" Jules wanted to know.

"I'm thinking we hoof it back to the rest. Set up a watch rotation. And wait it out. If we don't hear anything in a while we'll march back."

"Nothing from the rest of the division," Mikella said. "All is quiet."

"Okay. Let's stretch it out another few minutes and we'll head back."

***

Mikella had similarly informed the remainder of the division that they had not encountered any resistance or anything else worth of note. Still, first squad was afforded a bit of celebrity and envy upon their return. Jules gathered that very little to nothing had happened since the patrol had left.

The watch schedule was posted. Jules had drawn the last, a lucky spot. He'd wake up an hour earlier than the rest of the division, but his sleep wouldn't be interrupted. There were some muttering from those that thought his alleged friendship with Magdalena, their new and defacto leader, got him the last spell. He scoffed at the idea, to himself and to anyone who brought it up.

Dinner was more from the rationpaks. He wasn't particularly hungry but saw the sense in eating again. They had plenty of food and didn't know when or if relief was coming.

"Shouldn't we be contacting the base? Trying to get in touch with Brill and the others?" Leara asked him as they ate side by side, legs dancing over her foxhole.

"You want to call Brill down on us?" Jules asked her, only half teasing.

"We've been attacked." The botanist said.

"We don't know that. All we know is that someone fired on us. It could have been an ND." An ND was an accidental firing of a weapon, though the military called it a negligent discharge, not an accident.

"Surely someone would have owned up to that by now."

"Not so sure. They'd be embarrassed." Jules didn't tell her so, but he thought it was an attack, just as she had said. But he didn't want to scare the poor woman more than she already was.

"Still, we should contact him."

"No, this is a test," He replied. "I'm sure if it."

Later, as he prepared to bed down for the night, he wasn't so sure. The only mystery was the disappearance of the training cadre. If this wasn't a test, where had they gone?

Unless they'd been attacked, too, came the unbidden thought. Jules shut his eyes, willing the notion away. For now, he had to worry about getting enough sleep before his standing watch.

"Ambient mode," He yawned to his suit.

"Ambient, aye." The suit said. Immediately, the suit shifted color to a fair approximation of the surrounding terrain. His comms were dampened but an all hands alert would awake him, and he was allegedly harder to detect on an enemy scroll. For now, Jules was safe as he could be.

So why did he feel so afraid?

****

Someone shook him awake from above. Reacting, not thinking, Jules whirled and clapped the wrist with his hand, tightening hard.

"Woah!" Magdalena said, shaking him off and failing. "Calm down there, stud."

He didn't know where he was, but her voice was jogging his memory. Jules let her pull him up. She was very strong.

"Sorry. Have had bad experiences with people waking me up."

"What experiences?"

He didn't answer. He took a restorative sip of flat water from the suit's internal bladder. It freshened him up considerably. Jules shook his head and wished he could splash water on his face. But he hadn't removed his helmet in what felt like years. He drank more warm water.

"What's the word?" He asked instead.

"All night...nothing." She sounded tired.

"Have you slept?"

"Not relevant."

"It is. You elected yourself leader in all this. We need you rested." Jules cleared his throat and did his best impression of Brill's deceptively soft and deep voice. "God dammit, Recruit Magdalena! You want to lead your sailors to certain death?!"

She laughed at his joke, but it was a weary sound. "You made your point. I'll sleep this next hour. Wake me up if anything happens and that's an order."

Jules mockingly fired a finger gun in her direction, and began to walk.

Moving around woke him up considerably. The fog had descended on them all, along with a chill. If his suit hadn't been internally heated his visor would have frosted over. He checked his suit and weapon's readings. All good.

He had nothing to do for the next hour but wear out his boots. His haptics tingled whenever a friendly foxhole was close enough to fall into, for which he was duly grateful.

Occasionally, Jules would call into the channel for the handful of sailors on watch, but nothing ever happened. An "all clear", and a few rude jokes, the caliber of which was about what one would expect at 0500 from a group of horny and bored teenagers. Still, he appreciated them.

"Anyone got a funny story?" He asked once.

"Yeah, the story of my life which ended me up here," Said a soft voice to a few scoffs or laughs.

"I'm serious."

"I was too."

"I got one," A rangy voice said, and Jules recognizes Garl. "We have these aggie-culture festivals on my planet."

"What?"

"Agricultural," The country boy enunciated. "Blue ribbon award winning flowers, spiciest sausage, fattest animal. That sort of thing."

"So your sister always won, in other words?"

"I don't have a sister," Garl said, not offended or uncaring. "And if I did she could pull your pansy ass arm off."

"Get to the story."

"Well, my preacher's daughter was a shoe in to be elected the queen of the festival. She had the best grades, she came from money 'cause her preacher daddy had been appointed by Centralia. But the day of the picking they found her in the dressing tent for the competition, on her knees and surrounded by six of the local lads. The weight lifting team. She'd been blowing them regular as a tourist destination geyser for years."

Even if he didn't quite get the joke, the other man's delivery made Jules smile. A few laughs broke out over the night watch channel.

"How's that funny?"

"Well, I guess it's not. The local preacher is a powerful man, on my world. He was embarrassed. He forgave her, but because they were from the home world and noble he had to notify them. Squad came out on the next flight and shipped them both back to Centralia. Bastards. No offense, Pretty Boy."

None taken. Though people in Jules's old neighborhood often scorned the rich that lorded over them, in practice they were largely free of the oppression and crackdowns that was a regular part of noble life. He counted himself lucky, and was about to say so to the rest of them.

He was passing by another patrolling sailor when the fire came in. The biosigns in the other recruit's suit went dead, and whoever it was tumbled over into an empty foxhole. Whoever was asleep in it awoke with a curse.

"Contact, southwest!" Someone shouted.

Not all of them hit the dirt as they should have. Another recruit took fire as he dove and around a dozen panicked and tried to escape their holes. They were systematically mowed down by blue energy fire, their vital signs extinguishing in an instant.

"Goddamnit!" A voice rang out over the division channel. "Get some return fire on 'em!"

Jules had been near enough to a hole to drop into it once the firing began. Whoever was in there with him felt the friendly warmth of haptics on their chest and didn't turn, but moved to the side so he could fire his weapon. The division was singing out the situation report as it unfolded:

"Movement on haptics, southwest. They've withdrawn for now. Anyone got them on scrolls?"

"Negative," Came back a handful of calls.

"They're running cloaked, just as we are."

The sailor Jules was with was pouring over their map and spoke loud enough for him to hear through his helmet and his own ears.

"We're in a tight spot. We've got the rock face behind us to the north. We've got to assume their fanning out to surround every other direction."

Belatedly, he realized he had jumped into Magdalena's foxhole. Jules stopped watching her and scanned over the brim of their hole.

"What do we do?" A fearful voice wanted to know.

"We wait. Their next move will tell us ours." Magdalena said.

"What?!"

"They're gonna fuck with us a bit to rattle and wear us down and then try to roll over on us. Standard operating procedure for any Capital Systems engagement of this nature."

"She's right. Cat and mouse." Jules said.

"Check your scrolls, I'm gonna explain the plan. We'll break here once their main attack begins. First and third squads will cover the retreat for everyone else and slip out when we can. I need a casualty report. Mark the..." Magdalena couldn't continue.

"You want us to mark the bodies for later retrieval, Mags?" Jules asked her over the division channel.

"Aye. And separate them. And fortify your positions and report any enemy movement."

Some acknowledgement came and then there was silence.

"I think you can attend to your own hole now, Pretty Boy." Magdalena told him.

"It's 'Jules.' Unless you want me to call you Breeding Material?"

"You cannot. Get out of my face, Jules."

He did as she bade and muscled his way out of her foxhole. His own was empty, but had filed up partially with dirt from people stomping around above it. A few quick swipes from his entrenchment tool and he was back in business.

Jules thought back to the times they'd been ordered to dig a foxhole before lights out, just one, for the entire division, in the hard packed dirt outside of their barracks. They'd been given a generous time limit and a lot of training on what it should look like. Once, they'd stayed up until 0200 perfecting it, until Brill was satisfied. That had only happened once, but they all remembered that foxhole vividly.

He rebuilt it now. A perfect defensive fighting position. He made his foxhole wide enough for two people, but no more. Any bigger and it'd be an inviting target. A sharp, small, deeper hole at the bottom to kick a grenade into. Jules scooped four grooves for his elbows and knees, a foot rest so he could lean slightly forward. The extra dirt around the rim of it was patted down into a slope of cover about a foot high. After that he was out of ideas.

"Chow if you haven't eaten," Came the call over the all hands channel.

Mechanically, he ate.

"There are no readings from anyone who was hit," A voice said.

"What do you mean?" Magdalena wanted to know.

"Just that. Suits are completely fried."

"That's odd. Keep them someplace out of the way."

***

No one rested easy that day. Magdalena had them clean their weapons in pairs. Sometimes, shots rang out from the fog, but as she had said, it was only a bait. At first, the recruits fired back, but after a few hours it was clear it was only an attempt to distract them.