I hadn't had time to think about anything while they were beating us into the ground in basic, but about halfway through the classroom training it started occurring to me that my life and attitudes had begun to change. I wasn't a gung ho marine yet by any stretch of the imagination. But up until that point I had been living day-to-day, and to the extent I thought about it, I figured I was there because I had no real choice.
Now I started to look ahead, to think about what it would be like to get to graduation and beyond. I knew I would be leaving Earth and everything familiar to me, possibly forever. That I would fight on strange worlds and quite possibly die on one of them. Yet I started to look to the future in a way I never had before.
My performance improved as time went by. I barely made it through the first year of course work without getting washed out, but by the end of the second I finished tenth in the class.
Then it was on to combat training. We learned hand-to-hand fighting and military history. But most of all we learned unit tactics. We started with lectures and demonstrations, but soon we were doing non-stop war games, tramping all over the hot, flat terrain killing each other in various simulated ways.
We took turns acting as squad leaders, but the higher positions were played by actual sergeants and officers. We were learning to be troopers, not commanders, and part of that meant experiencing what it would be like to fight under experienced leaders.
Once we'd mastered small unit tactics we started learning how to fight in armor. Our fighting suits are the most sophisticated and complex weapons ever constructed, and using one well - and not killing yourself with it - took extensive training. The armor is powered by a miniaturized nuclear reactor, which is built onto the back of the suit and looks a little bit like a large backpack. This is what really makes the armor such a powerful weapon. The energy created by the mobile plant is sufficient not only to operate the very heavy armor itself but also to power some very potent weapon systems. The Mark V powered infantry suit, the one in current usage, can accept four modular weapons systems, so a marine's arsenal can be tailored to the specific mission.
The primary infantry weapon for normal fighting is the GD-211 electromagnetic rifle, which fires a tiny projectile at extremely high velocity. Because of the high speed of the dart, the energy transference to the target is extreme, making it a very hard-hitting weapon with a very long effective range.
For fighting in vacuum or near-vacuum we have a variety of lasers and other energy weapons that are extremely effective in such conditions but subject to diffusion in higher atmospheric densities.
We also have grenade launchers, flame throwers, and a wide variety of highly specialized systems. Then, of course, we have the big boys - the nukes. Our armor can support several nuclear weapon delivery systems, delivering warheads of up to 20 kt.
Of course you can kill almost anyone just by punching them. The fighting suit vastly increases the strength of the user, allowing us to literally run through walls and jump 20 meters straight up. A skilled marine can deliver fire from mid-jump, reaching target locations that are blocked from the ground.
We were all anxious to start blasting the countryside with our new weapons, but the first month of training was spent learning how to walk. We'd had a few casualties during our war games and maneuvers, but these were mostly the results of scattered accidents. It was during suit training that the general's prediction that many of us wouldn't survive really came back to haunt us.
We lost 5 on the first day we actually wore the suits, mostly because they didn't listen to the instructors and tried to do too much, too fast. I started suit training with a healthy respect for the danger, and this only increased when I saw the bloody results of recruits who tried to run or jump without the right training.
Jumping wasn't difficult, but landing was another matter, at least landing safely. The suits provided a lot of protection, but you could still mess yourself up falling hard from 15 meters. It took a lot of practice to learn to land safely and even more to do it without losing a beat. After all, when we were in the show we'd be doing this under enemy fire. If you managed not to hurt yourself jumping, but you stumbled and faltered on the battlefield you could end up very dead, very quickly.
Once we were proficient with our suits we redid all the war games, fully armored this time. The final event was a full scale simulated assault against an entrenched defender. Half of us were attackers and half defenders. When we finished, we switched sides and did it all again. Projected casualties for the attacking forces were over 50%. I hoped we'd do better than that when we hit dirt somewhere for real. I knew from my studies that the average assault force in the Second Frontier War lost 18.2% killed and wounded, which was bad enough, but it was a hell of a lot better than 50%+.
At the end of our fourth year we left Camp Puller and boarded a transport for the orbital transfer facility. There we were loaded onto a ship called the Olympia and we headed out toward Sol Warp Gate #2, bound for Van Maanen's Star and the base located on the second planet of the system.
We were ready to start assault landing exercises and begin training for fighting in space. The Sol system was demilitarized by the Treaty of Paris, so all of our bases conducting anything but maintenance and refueling had to be located in other systems.
The trip was hard on a lot of our class. None of us had ever been in space, and the zero gravity and acceleration periods were rough on the digestive system. Cleaning up partially digested rations in a zero gravity environment might have been my least favorite part of training. We did have a number of methods though, and we got quite good at it.
I'd read an account of a sailor from the old wet navy who said that recruits got used to the waves and that their seasickness passed in a couple weeks. Well, I can tell you that it takes longer than two weeks in space, but the principal still holds. By the time we made our third jump and entered the Van Maanen's Star system, most of us had adapted to normal space travel. We'd get another chance to acclimate to the wild maneuvers preceding an orbital insertion, but that pleasure was still a few months away.
The next two years were filled with training similar to what we'd had already, but in increasing difficult and dangerous circumstances. We practiced on Van Maanan's 2, but we also did maneuvers on the sun-baked first planet and on a moon of the seventh planet where the temperature hovered a balmy 40 degrees above absolute zero.
We let loose with all of our weapons, and in year six we trained with the "specials." Unleashing nuclear warheads was dangerous business, and you certainly didn't want to undershoot with one.
We didn't have any washouts after we left Earth - they'd weeded out all the losers long before. But we did have casualties. Those last two years cost us 102 dead, and my class ultimately graduated 382 out of 1,011 who started.
We got a trip back to Earth for graduation. When we got there they gave us two weeks of leave and transport anywhere in the Alliance. I didn't have anyone to visit or any real desire to see New York again, so I just went to New Houston. That's what most of the class did. The marines seemed to seek recruits with no real ties or family.
Graduation was held on the parade ground at Camp Puller. General Strummer had been true to his word. We not only saw lots of blue full dress uniforms - we got our own. Strummer wasn't there, though. There had been a lot of skirmishes along the frontier, and the general had been transferred to a sector command.
There was a lot of satisfaction in having finished six years of hard training. My life before joining up felt like some bizarre dream, and I could hardly form clear memories of that time. This was my life now.