Claire Takes On The Galaxy

Claire - Chapter Three

The ranks of the trainees thinned at the end of the cooling-off period, with both voluntary departures and the Steller Marine Corps quietly jettisoning those who weren’t going to make it. In Claire’s barracks room one girl departed abruptly. The trainees returned to the room one day to find that girl’s bed stripped, and her locker cleaned out. That left Claire, Lou and Taylor, a stoutly built girl who favoured pigtails and kept romantic novels in her locker. Claire thought that romantic novels did not sit well with the basic job of a marine, to kill people, but then she did not mind a romance herself.

For the survivors of this shake-out, who were now going to be marines for good or ill, training was stepped up. This was not the break ’em or make ’em training of special forces. The Stellar Marines wanted to elevate the remaining trainees to the required standard without losing any more than could be helped. That meant the training was intensive without pushing any limits, which was quite intensive enough for Claire. The recruit marine found out more than she really wanted to know about company, platoon and squad level organisation, and about Pop-ups, Beasts and Trolls. A Roman legionnaire might have recognised the squad as a distant descendent of his eight-man tent group, and the platoon/company units as echo of Roman centuries and cohorts, but would have run howling from the equipment used.

The Stellar Marine Corps was a light infantry force equipped and trained to fight in the broken terrain that was a major feature of the terra-formed valleys in off-world colonies. Pop-ups were like mini-helicopter drones, using lift crystals rather than rotors to take off, and were employed in a manner similar to the attack helicopters of old. They would “pop-up” from behind cover, controlled by a marine on the ground, fire missiles and machine guns at whatever targets they could see, then drop down again, hopefully before the other side could react. Trolls were heavily armoured humanoid figures carrying machine guns and missiles, filling the role of the now obsolete tanks. Beasts were long, squat platforms on four articulated legs that could go anywhere a human could, carrying spare ammunition, Pop-ups, first aid stations that were almost the equivalent of field hospitals of previous eras, the electronic equipment needed for e-warfare, and much else. One variant had been adapted to carry small artillery pieces that filled the role of mortars – up close infantry support - another fired missiles.

All these were supported and controlled by the marine grunts, which included Claire and Lou, either as operators or as weapon specialists (grunts with guns) who mostly stayed behind the Trolls but in front of the Beasts, as they tried to kill stuff while staying alive themselves. Pop-ups were the mortal enemies of Trolls and Beasts, Claire discovered, while Trolls and artillery Beasts were the mortal enemies of grunts. Sniper-spotter teams, often moving a little ahead and to one side of the battle line, countered Pop-ups and generally made lethal nuisances of themselves to Grunts and Beasts.

The squat, low Beasts and Trolls were worlds away from the towering figures that movie producers often imagined were of use on a battle field, nor did they use rockets to move around as depicted in graphic computer games. The problem, as Claire’s instructors repeatedly emphasised, was that anything that could be seen directly on a battle field, rocket powered or not, was easily destroyed. The big weapon systems of past eras, the main battle tanks and sophisticated jet aircraft, were not only too much trouble to cart out to remote colonies, they were too hard to hide and too easy for a grunt with a missile and control panel to target. Instead the Trolls, Pop-ups, Beasts and Grunts combined to form one big weapon system run according to the age-old combined weapons mantra – the Grunts, Beasts and Pop-ups killed anything that might kill the Trolls, while Trolls killed anything that might kill the Grunts, Beasts and Pop-ups.

“It’s about three things,” one of Claire’s instructors repeatedly declared, “teamwork, teamwork and teamwork.”

Claire learnt about being part of these combined arms teams; the basics of controlling Beasts, Pop-ups and Trolls; and about taking cover. Above all, it was about taking cover. She was rapped hard on the helmet by one instructor for the sin of trying to raise her head above a rock.

“Don’t stick your head above cover, Williams,” snapped the sergeant. “If you must use your head, look around the rock, not above it. Better yet, put your 150 out there and look through the sight display on your helmet screen, like we showed you.”

That sergeant later remarked, wistfully, to a male colleague that he would have liked to meet Private Williams socially rather than rap her on the head.

“I hear you,” the colleague replied. “But the trainees still need to take cover.”

Claire and the others had to crawl over an obstacle course, while machine guns with live ammunition were fired over them. They would be alright, they were told, provided they did not raise themselves above a certain level. That meant hugging the ground, “as close as a lover”.

“Would’ve preferred a real lover,” grumbled Lou.

In one exercise, they had to crawl under this live firing, with the occasional noise grenade thrown around for realism through mud, in pouring rain, cut barbed wire and disarm a mock mine with their knives. Neither mines nor barbed wire were used much on modern battlefields, but the main point of the exercise was to complete it. As one instructor explained it was the journey not the arrival which mattered. Claire thought that could she could do with less philosophy. As it happened, Lou was by her side in this muddy crawl.

“Now are you going to tell me what happened at the wedding?” Lou shouted over the rain.

Claire just shook her head.

They got on and off troop lifters. These were another version of the transporter which had taken Claire to the training camp, but adapted to take one platoon, and functioned much like armoured personnel carriers or troop helicopters of old. They would land, the rear ramp would open and the senior sergeant would yell.

“Platoon break right, tac formation. Double.”

The first time they did it, they got into an awful mess and the Senior Sergeant yelled a lot.

“Doesn’t that man’s throat ever wear out?” Claire thought.

After the fifth time they almost got it right, and the Senior Sergeant merely spluttered. After a week, Claire thought she would never look at a transporter the same way again. They bivouacked in mountains, hills and forests, practised manoeuvres against other squads, platoons and companies, and had adventures with field rations. Claire was given a full squad helmet. This was a helmet with a transparent safety shield over the top half of the face. Once pulled down, displays were projected onto the left and right of this shield, all carefully designed so that the glow did not give away the wearer’s position at night, or distract the wearer from what was in front of her. The most useful of these decision assistance displays was squadtac, which told her which way she was supposed to be looking and where her squad mates were so that she did not shoot them – all good things to know. She was given her own LW-150 with a serial number checked off in her name, which she had to maintain.

“I think it’s love this time,” Claire told Lou. “The other rifles were just flings.”

“You have serious issues, Private Williams,” said Lou.

Although a marine formation was not expected to march anywhere, as opposed to being taken in a transporter, they still went on lots of route marches. Marines did not sing on these marches, Claire discovered, they chanted. The traditional chant, given right at the end of a march, owed something to a New Zealand hakka.

A senior sergeant would bellow “Stellar Marines will march to order”. They would unsling their rifles, carry them properly by their sides and swing their other arm as if in a formal parade.

“Stand tall,” yelled the sergeant. “Puff out your chests. Who are you?”

“We’re the Stellar Marines,” they would roar in unison.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.

“What is coming?”

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.

“A storm is coming,” they would roar.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.

“What kind of storm?”

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp.

“A Stellar Marine storm.”

Okay it was dumb, Claire admitted to herself, but it was better than being married to Brad.

The political situation, which seemed increasingly dire, was occasionally discussed in bars where a lot of male marines vied for Claire and Lou’s attention, and by fellow female marines, with roommate Taylor taking her own odd view of any likely encounter.

“Maybe we would be taken prisoner by The Mercs then fall in love with one,” she exclaimed over dinner in the mess hall.

The Mercantilists hired mercenaries, often ex-marines, to do their fighting and added anyone they could recruit from their own territories. Either way the enemy, should they meet them, would be Mercs.

“You’ve been reading too many of those romance novels,” said Lou. “They may want to get to know you in ways you don’t like. Skip all the talking, buying dinner, asking permission ’n stuff, and get right down to it.”

“Not if we take them prisoner. Then fall in love with a handsome one.”

“Like Romeo and Juliet but without dying at the end?” said Claire.

“Well, yes,” said Taylor, smiling. “Real romance.”

“You have to get past the shooting at one another part,” Claire pointed out. “You may die before you get to meet Romeo.”

“And don’t forget the blowing up one another part,” said Lou. “Not a lot of romance in Pop-ups when they’re up in the air looking for you, that’s for sure.”

They were subject to full combat launches. This was a take-off in a troop lifter but with a rocket launcher attached which was like being shot out of cannon, Claire thought. They learnt how to operate standard spacecraft airlocks, and what to do if caught out in a vacuum without a proper suit. This came down to getting back inside the airlock very quickly or having their bodies returned to earth, assuming they could be recovered, for a closed-casket funeral. After several months of training, which combined the basic and battle school training phases of other military forces, they had to choose or be directed to, a specialty. Taylor opted to become a Beast operator. Lou thought she might also operate Beasts, or simply be a weapons specialist. Claire, who had already been offered a spot in sniper school, had other ideas.

“Come to sniper school with me and be a spotter to my sniper,” she said.

“You mean crawl around the battlefield trying not to be killed, while killing other stuff?”

“I do the killing, you tell me what to kill and where it is, and keep an eye on stuff. Keep away guys who want to kill me and you, while I kill others at long range.”

“I feel I do that already in bars,” said Lou.

“You always know what’s going on, and you read tac screens much better than I do. We’d make a good team.”

“Dunno – sniper teams are always away from the main force, hiding.”

“We target Pop-ups.”

Claire knew that Lou had a particular dislike of Pop-ups.

“Hmmm!”

“Lots of guys in sniper school. We’ll be one of the few girl teams.”

“Now that’s interesting,” said Lou.

On past battlefields, spotters were often just an add on to the sniper, there to confirm kills and call correction on shots. In the Stellar Marine Corps a sniper team was always two people and the spotter was treated equally, as sometimes boss sometimes assistant of the sniper. The spotter kept an eye on the overall situation and the various tac screens, while the sniper killed stuff, which included Pop-ups and Beasts, if they saw one, as well as grunts. The sniper weapon’s software took care of matters like shot correction. In the Stellars, which had no separate special forces units, sniper teams were also used for reconnaissance and infiltration. All that meant that sniper-spotter teams operated ahead of the main force before contact and then hung around in the edges of the battle, in a distant echo of the skirmishers of Napoleonic times.

The Stellar Marine Corp wanted all sniper teams to train in pairs from the start. All the men who signed up wanted to be snipers not spotters, but not Claire and Lou, as the sniper school commandant noted on the first morning when they were gathered in the school lecture theatre. He was addressing sixteen men and two women.

“Gentleman and ladies, and it is ladies,” said this dour individual, a Colonel Jeffries, “We will now go around and everyone will be called on to introduce themselves; to say a few words about themselves. We will start with the two Annies. Privates Williams and Crean, stand up.”

The girls stood and the other marines, who liked what they saw, cheered loudly.

“Enough of that!” snapped the colonel. “Silence!” The cheering stopped abruptly. Colonel Jeffries was reputed to be a fierce disciplinarian, known to never smile. “The point I wanted to make is that these two marines have joined as a sniper-spotter team. Private Williams on the right is the sniper, and Private Crean is the spotter. A lone sniper can take out an individual, a sniper-spotter team can tear whole units apart. Teamwork is just as important as individual marksmanship, gentlemen and ladies.”

“Excuse me sir?”

“What Private Williams?”

“You said Annies? Why are we Annies?”

The other marines laughed, one corner of the Colonel’s mouth twitched.

“In marine slang, female sniper-spotters are Annies, as in Annie Oakley. The original Annie Oakley gave demonstrations of shooting in a wild west show of the 19th century. She had competitions in markspersonship with her husband to please the crowds and always won, and won genuinely as I understand it. The term has been judged to be inoffensive so it is generally used.”

Claire and Lou had become Annies.

The men were inclined to laugh at the Annies but stopped laughing when Claire and Lou quickly proved contenders for the sniper’s cup, the award given to the best sniper team of each intake. Claire was issued with a longer version of the LW-150 with a second barrel in place of the grenade launcher. That second barrel shot the armour piercing, heavy anti-equipment rounds, so that it was two rifles in one. In past eras, the more stable and accurate bolt action rifles were used for sniper work over the semi-automatics (just pull the trigger and it shoots) of the infantry. By the time Claire got hold of her LW-150S, semi-automatics were standard, with the rifle AI also keeping track of arcane factors such as ammunition and barrel temperature, wind drift and any one of a number of factors that affected accuracy at long ranges. Claire thought that was all cool.

“This time it is love,” she said.

“You said that about your rifle in basic,” retorted Lou.

“True, but I think that was just a phase. This is the real thing.”

“Get professional help, Private Williams.”

Lou was issued with a combined light machine gun and missile launcher designed to keep hostiles at bay which took her fancy.

“It’s not love, like it is with your rifle,” she told Claire, “we’re just good friends.”

They were given sniper helmets with tactical displays different to that of the infantry, semi-transparent tac screens which kept track of friendlies and what was known about hidden threats, and initiated into the arcane art of potting pop-ups. These mini-helicopter-like devices could scud (move sideways) under cover for many metres before popping up, shooting and ducking down, depending on the whims of a ground-based marine controller. Hitting one while it was above cover was a difficult art, even with advanced electronics. A sniper’s bullet moved much faster than a rocket, but a lot depended on the team, particularly the sniper, guessing where the Pop-up would be in the two seconds the bullet took to reach it. Then there were strategies for shooting humans, the softest target of all, and beasts if they could get to them. The armoured Ogres had to be left for the infantry squads.

Claire and Lou were taught to stalk in all terrains, relying on camouflage cloaks that were advanced versions of the ghillie suits used by snipers of past eras to blend in with the terrain. There was no place for the elaborate stalk-and-shoots of high value targets (usually officers) of previous conflicts. Instead, they pulled the cloaks over themselves when hiding. The cloak material, like the light armour suits they habitually wore, would also help keep out shrapnel from air bursts.

They were sent on exercises, initially simulated, then against other sniper teams and occasionally against the instructors. Claire discovered she had the instincts of a hunter, which involved thinking like the prey. This helped in the major achievement of scoring a hit on the school deputy commandant and top instructor, a Major Black, using the simplest of tricks. Claire and Lou dashed forward the moment the exercise started, hid about where Claire thought Major Black would enter the exercise area, then switched off all electronics. The Major duly came in at about the place expected; they switched on and tagged him electronically – an official kill. Major Black’s mouth sagged open and he initially tried to claim he had been outside the exercise area. Then he recovered his sense of fair play enough to send Claire a link to the career of Lyudmila Pavlichenko, the Soviet sniper who scored more than 300 kills during the war with Germany.

“That’s a good start,” said Lou. “Think what she could have done with a decent spotter.”

Staff and students started betting on who would get the sniper’s cup, with Claire and Lou on short odds. That betting had semi-official sanction, provided it did not get out of hand. Another sort of betting, with no official sanction of any kind, concerning the two Annies had started on the first day of the course. This betting was in the form of a pool where each participant put in a certain amount, and collected if they were able to meet specific conditions, the terms of which would have greatly offended both girls if they had ever found out about them. Humans may travel between stars and colonise different worlds, but human nature had not changed. As it was, the betting pool about the Annies was kept strictly secret for the very good reason that those involved risked being thrown out of the SMC altogether if they were discovered. That meant that all Claire and Lou knew about this betting was that sometimes fellow trainees would try to engage them in conversation steering towards one purpose.

“I said there’d be lots of guys,” Claire told Lou, after one encounter.

“You didn’t say they’d be annoying.”

Then Lou met the brother of one of the trainees and started seeing him on weekends. Unlike basic training weekends were free.

The Annies learnt to read terrain, about fieldcraft, the artful application of camouflage paint, and had the basic rules of staying alive drummed into them.

“Once you shoot,” they were told repeatedly, “your position is bound to be marked. You only stay if you are sure it hasn’t been marked. Otherwise you go. If you hit a Pop-up, you will get a missile down your throat, so you throw a decoy and run.”

They had their own comms net – Claire Lou, or Clou – and learnt to co-ordinate. Lou read the tac screens which showed what could be detected about pop-ups and other threats, and called targets to Claire. They also talked about other matters.

“One six three,” Lou would call, meaning that Claire should point her weapon at a bearing of 163. They were hunting pop-ups in an exercise. Claire kept her sights on a wide angle. “Scudding to your left. Suggest it’ll move right and back when it pops. That fleet officer at the admin building seemed nice.”

“You mean the dark-haired officer in the office to the left?”

“Yeah, him. Uniforms do it for me. Up! One fifty!”

Claire narrowed her sights at a touch of her trigger finger, adjusted for the target’s movement – that required artistry not science – fired and hit.

“But Sam (that was Lou’s boyfriend) doesn’t wear a uniform.”

“Well it’s not the only thing that does it for me. It’s more a set of boxes. A guy doesn’t have to tick all of them. So, what about him.”

“About Sam?”

“No, about the admin fleet officer. New target on grid.”

“Oh, hmm, not really. I’m sure he’s nice.”

“You should get back out there. Scudding to our right. What about that corporal in the armoury?”

“Will you do spotting now and find me a date later.”

After they came off the exercise range Lou said, “I think the colonel likes you”.

“He does? How do you know this?”

“Because he spoke to you after the big exercise.”

“He said I was muddy and I should clean up.”

“That’s right, he spoke to you. He doesn’t speak to trainees.”

“All he said was that I was muddy.”

“Guys have been carried past on stretchers, covered in blood and he hasn’t said a word. Everyone was surprised when he spoke to you.”

“About mud?”

“The topic ain’t important, Private Williams.”

This is what made Lou invaluable, Claire decided. In sniper parlance she had situational awareness. On the field that meant she kept an eye on the tac screen, with its green dots (friendlies), red dots (hostiles – last known positions), numbers and lines, which took skill to read. Off the field she heard things. When Claire went on her first date since the aborted wedding, drinks with a fleet officer in a logistics role on the base, Lou quickly found out that the officer was married and still living with this wife. Mortified, Claire dropped him.

“Why do I always go for handsome slime?” she thought ruefully.

“We need a tac screen for dating,” said Lou. “Total losers would be orange dots. Wolves would be red dots.”

Claire was asked out again, soon after, by Richard who was a friend of a friend of Sam, and that worked after a fashion, with the added advantage that Lou stopped trying to find her dates. Then, before the girls knew it, the sniper’s cup match-off had arrived, and that was a full two-day intensive round of team against team and against veteran instructor teams. In the end, Claire and Lou missed out on the cup by two points out of score of more than three hundred for the winning team. The two men who won were sufficiently bad sportsmen to sneer at the Annies at the presentation.

“You guys may have won,” Lou retorted, “but we came second looking good.”

The other sniper teams, who detested the winners, cheered. The corner of Colonel Jeffries’ mouth twitched, and a miracle happened ˗ he smiled. All the participants in the secret betting pool had their money returned.

Then training was over. Seven months after Claire was supposed to have been at the altar, she was designated as a sniper, given a boost in pay and put on the list for deployment. Much to the concern of both girls they were immediately assigned to a company to be sent to reinforce one already in place at a colony called Devil’s Pit. The SMC’s basic unit was a company, with its own artillery support, medical facilities and transportation, which would normally assemble and train together on Earth for several weeks at least. But rumblings from the Mercs prompted the Marine command to ship the company to Devil’s Pit at once, where it would do the necessary company training in the colony’s valley.

“Six week’s hyper-sleep to get there,” said Lou, “one week for emails by squeezed light link, and so much for a relationship of just two months. I liked Sam. I thought I’d keep him around for a while.”

Claire could think of nothing to say to comfort her friend. “Is there anything at Devil’s Pit?”

“Nope. Place is about mining lift crystals. There are no theatres, clubs or coffee houses. There’s a handful of civilians in the town, and they’re there because the Earth Federation would throw them in jail if they came to Earth. About the only excitement is drugged-out miners keep seeing creatures called Shades in their mining shafts.”

“Maybe we can have netball teams?”

“Catch up on the soaps, and films we didn’t see while training, more likely,” said Lou. “Maybe Taylor can recommend a few romances?”

Claire broke with Richard. A clean break. She did not expect to see him again, but expected and hoped he would find someone soon. Then there was just the graduation parade, for which she would be reunited with the marines from basic training, and one other loose end to tie up.

Claire walked into the shopping mall in her dress uniform as a private. This was a grey, double-breasted coat with belt and trousers cut to fit properly, all topped with a flat policeman-style hat which she wore at a slight angle, in an accepted defiance of regulations. One of a passing group of youths caught sight of her as she went up the escalator.

“Oh man, I want to join the marines,” he yelled.

Claire smiled.

She found the designated restaurant and walked in. A few of those already seated for lunch looked up. Claire waved away a waitress who wanted to ask if she had a reservation and walked up to her hostess, who was examining the menu.

“Hello mother.”

Mrs Williams looked up, and her mouth fell open. It was the first time she had seen her daughter since the aborted wedding.

“Claire,” she said, recovering, “how well you look, and how different.”

Claire sat down, took off her hat and placed it top-up on the table as marine etiquette demanded, not top-down with the flat crown on the bottom, and parallel with the edge of the table. Her mother noticed this, but said nothing.

“I suppose it’s just as well that wedding didn’t happen,” said Mrs Williams.

“The marriage would have been a nightmare, mother. A horror. I suspected something about Brad’s character, but I didn’t question enough. Then I opened that door.”

“Not even his parents seemed to know what he was really like. They took some convincing, afterwards.”

“I heard, mother.”

“I’ve heard Brad’s name a few times since,” said Mrs Williams, “and I know you don’t want to be told anything about the man, but none of it has been good.”

“If he dies, mother, you may tell me that. Otherwise I don’t want to know.”

They ordered and then Mrs Williams asked the inevitable question. “Seeing anybody?”

“There was someone for a while, but he’s gone, now. I’m about to go to the other side of the galactic arm for a whole year and there might be another deployment after that.”

“In this twenty one company.”

“It’s two-one mother. You say the Two-One.”

The explanation given to Claire was this. “Marines, the 21st is a birthday party, 21 is the number of a position in the Karma Sutra. The Two-One is a military unit in the Steller Marine Corps.”

“The Two-One. Yes, dear,” Mrs Williams said. Then she noticed the sniper’s badge of crossed rifles on Claire’s coat. Lou’s badge was crossed rifles with an eye underneath. “You finished sniper school?”

“Graduated second, mother – me and Lou.”

“You turned into a rifle shooter, just like your father.”

“Dad was a marksman? You never told me this.”

“I meant to tell you when you went to that school, but I forgot. He was never in the marines or anything like that, but he shot in competitions.”

“Over what ranges? What weapons?” Suddenly a lot of what had happened in her life made much more sense to Claire.

Mrs Williams shrugged. “I don’t really know any of that, dear. It was a part of him I never connected with as he stopped competing after he met me. I remember him saying he was past his best. But I believe he was quite good. He won awards.”

“Do you still have these awards?”

“I boxed up your father’s things when he passed but I didn’t throw them out. I have them somewhere. Do you want me to send them to you?”

“I would like it very much, but when I come back.”

They had lunch and walked through the mall. At Claire’s suggestion they went into an auto-photographer studio and had their picture taken together. Another was taken at the graduation ceremony where Claire and Lou met each other’s families, but it was the one taken at the auto-booth that Mrs Williams had framed and displayed on a table in her living room to be commented on by her friends. Claire eventually heard of this and knew that her mother had gone some way towards coming to terms with her daughter’s choices in life.

That was in the future. One week after the graduation ceremony, the Two-One Company, The Stellar Marine Corps, was loaded into space transporters and its personnel put into hyper-sleep pods for the long journey to Devil’s Pit.

Far from Earth, another party took an interest in the movement of the Two-One, an interest which extended to examining their personnel files.

“They’ll have a second company on the ground plus battalion support and acclimatised to local conditions before we’re ready to go,” he commented to an aide.

“Yes sir, but quite a few are recent trainees.”

“The marines have good training program.” The other party, old but still very much in command of his faculties and body, flicked through the personnel files of the Two-One, stopping at the files of Claire and Lou. “Annies?”

“Annies, sir?”

“Female snipers, Mr Such. Know thine enemies – even the slang they use. These two are good.” The man examined Claire’s shooting record briefly then flicked through the remaining files. “Very well, have these sent onto Colonel Macmillan.”

“And to our people at Devil’s Pit?”

“Where do you think they came from, Mr Such?”