Fighting with low-power training lasers and simulated blast radii was like a picnic by the lake in comparison, and I accumulated a 6-0 record as pretend commander. I also managed to keep simulated casualties minimal, which was gratifying but also poked at my guilt. My non-simulated casualties hadn't been nearly so low, and a lot of the troops I'd commanded for real never came back…except as ghosts tugging at my conscience in the dark.
The games were useful training exercises, I guess, but I couldn't decide how much so. No question, a hit with a training laser would have been a hit with a mag-rifle, and the battle computer could accurately simulate a blast radius for a fake grenade. But there was just no way to simulate the tension, fear, and stress of the battlefield. I was scared to death when I got blasted out of the Guadalcanal for my first assault, and I was only worried about myself. Oddly, I felt that fear focused me, maybe even made me a better soldier.
But when I had troops under my command the stress was a hundred times worse. It's crucial to be decisive and clear minded, but inside I doubted every decision and second-guessed every order. How does an officer handle that when he has 49 other men and women in a platoon, all depending on his judgment? Our troops were all well-trained. If an enemy popped up in front of them they knew what to do. But when things got out of control and the battle plan started to unravel, they looked to the officers and expected them to have all the answers ready to go. I know, because that's what I had done. My officers had been ready with those answers, and they had pulled me through my battles. I wasn't so confident I would be able to fill their shoes when the time came.
I had served under some outstanding officers, and I was always reassured how they seemed so in control no matter what was happening around us. Now I started to wonder if they were as wracked with doubt as I was? Of course they were, I started to realize. I was scared when I made that first drop, but I did my job because I was trained to do it. I'm sure my officers were plagued by their own fears and doubts too, but just as I did when I was a private, they did their jobs. Because it is what they were trained to do. It is what I was being trained to do.
We were also fitted for our new fighting suits, and we started a rigorous training program in how to use them. Yes, we'd all been fighting in armor for years, but officer suits are different. The sheer amount of data streaming into and out of the suit is staggering, and it takes a lot of training and experience to learn to handle it effectively.
We learned how to prioritize the data and interact with the command AIs in the suits, which were vastly more sophisticated than the ones in our non-com armor. We spent hours, days, weeks going through command net protocols and how to organize communication so the orders and data that had to get through did get through. Interaction with ship-based combat computers, procedures for requesting orbital bombardments, evacuation procedures, nuclear battlefield management, disciplinary codes…we studied it all.
And we studied it all on a highly condensed schedule. We were at war, and worse, we were losing that war, or at least we were hard-pressed and suffering heavy casualties. The Corps needed officers, and it needed them now, so we completed the three-year training program in sixteen exhausting months, with the commandant riding us every step of the way.
The commandant when I was at the Academy was General Oliver Carstairs, and he was a veteran of the First Frontier War. Carstairs must have been over 110 when I was at the Academy, and he had forgotten more about battle tactics then any of us ever knew. The Commandant was old, but he was a marine, and between rejuvenation treatments and sheer tough-as-nails stubbornness he could still put in a respectable performance on the obstacle course. He might not have been able to keep up with a group of battle-hardened 20-something cadets, but he'd have run most civilians into the ground. And he'd seen at least 75 years of action in every war man had fought in space.
I spent a lot of time at the Academy pondering how the Corps had so many men and women of such quality. There was stupidity and foolishness in the military; Operation Achilles proved that if it accomplished nothing else. There was laziness, corruption, and cowardice too, no doubt. But not much.
Before I went through the Academy it always amazed me that the Corps could be as confident and capable as it was when the nation itself was jaded and corrupt and withering. Of course we were the military of that dying superpower which had so long outlived its prime. But we were also the military of a dynamic new nation, based among the stars, and one with which most of us came to feel far more affinity.
When I got back from my first assault I realized I had found my home. That was when I learned how to fight for my brothers and sisters in arms. But it was at the Academy that I found my pride…and learned how to fight for myself.
The months I spent in officer training did wonders for me, and I felt more confident and capable than I ever had. It was also a pretty good time for our war effort. Despite the fact that we'd managed to hold Columbia - virtually destroying it in the process - the war had been pretty much a disaster right up until I put on my cadet grays.
We'd been standing alone against the Caliphate and the CAC, except for some fairly minor Russian-Indian support, and we were outnumbered and getting overwhelmed. But a few months after I left the hospital and got to the Academy, the navy won a crushing victory at the Vega-Algol warp gate. Two-thirds of the CAC battleline was destroyed, and the remainder was forced back on the defensive. The victory must have been enough ammo for our ambassadors in Tokyo, because the PRC came in on our side just a few weeks later, and our battered forces joyfully welcomed fresh allies to the fight.
The enemy had obliged us by making the same mistakes we had, and they expended their momentum on costly offensives against worlds like Columbia. Eventually the cumulative attrition caused operations on both sides to slow to a crawl, giving the PRC time to mobilize and reinforce our battered forces.
By the time I put on my dress blues for graduation we were ready to start some limited offensives. The ranks had been replenished, and the officer corps was about to be reinforced by the 180 new lieutenants in my class, with another cadre going through accelerated training six months behind us.
Losses had been heavy in five years of war, and most of us would command units consisting primarily of new recruits. This was a major change from my first assault, when I was the only recruit in my squad, and my fire team leader could spare a veteran private to assign as my babysitter. I'd be lucky if the squads in my platoon had one or two seasoned privates each. The squad leaders, while combat veterans all, would probably be making their first drop as SLs, and they'd need to keep a close eye on all the rookies filling their ranks.
I gave a lot of thought to how I would handle my platoon given these realities. My troops had performed well during Achilles and also on Columbia, but I would have to command raw troops differently. Having veterans like Jax was a huge help to executing any strategy, but I'd be very unlikely to have anyone like that in my new platoon.
Jax himself was otherwise occupied. He'd survived Columbia more or less intact, and started at the Academy while I was still growing new legs. He graduated six months before me, and as I was polishing my gear for commencement he was already off somewhere leading his own platoon.
So through no fault of my own, Jax had leapfrogged me and gotten his commission before I got mine. There are few talents more helpful to a soldier than one for getting missed by the enemy. It was one I'd had for a long time, but it failed me on Columbia.
I didn't realize that I was about to make a jump of my own, and a totally unexpected one at that. I was surprised enough when the commandant invited me to dinner, and I almost spit out my brandy when he gave me the news. I was graduating first in my class and being decorated twice - for Achilles and Columbia.