First Deployment (Corporate Marines Book 3) Read online

  Sam is now call sign Eight with a well-decorated Marine section on the edges of human space. He is having a hard time fitting in with the new section, where he’s resented for replacing the other Marines’ lost friend.

  A few months in, the section discovers that a human space outpost has been destroyed.

  The information needs to get back to Earth, and the Marines need to find those who did it.

  Then they come across the group that they believe is responsible. This time there are lives on the line. Will they be able to assault in and take back the outpost without casualties on their side? What else is waiting for them when they land?

  Written and Published by Tom Germann

  Copyright 2016

  Licence Notes

  Thank you for reading this book. A great deal of effort went into the creation of this book. So if you would like to share this with a friend please have them visit one of the stores carrying this book. This work is not to be reproduced, copied or distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

  If you enjoyed this book please visit www.tgermann-sf-guy.com to discover other works by this author.

  If you would like to stay informed of coming announcements click http://eepurl.com/bYnxvD

  Thank you for your support.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s twisted imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. It would also be very worrying.

  Edited by: Robin Schroffel

  Cover by: www.10dollarcovers.com

  The Corporate Marine Series:

  Video Game Recruiting 2016

  Welcome To The Marines 2016

  First Deployment 2016

  Stories From The CM Universe

  Virtual Reality Start 2017

  Virtual Reality Nightmare 2017

  A thank you as always to those who have provided assistance and a sympathetic ear when I start talking about the Corporate Marine Universe. You help make this story a success. If you enjoyed the book in any format reviews are always helpful for an author to get feedback on how they are doing.

  For those questions on how certain technological discrepancies can exist in this universe the answer is easy. The researchers and scientists have not yet successfully developed all those techs. Or they may be finalizing elements. From research to mass produced functional model can take years and there are LOTS of glitches in that time. Ask any soldier who has a few years in and has ‘tested’ ‘brilliant new item X!’

  First Combat

  We’re running across the open field heading toward the domes ahead. I’m on point while my partner Seven is just behind me to my right. Coming in behind us are Two and Ten.

  The sky is reddish and everywhere around us, the ground looks black.

  Surrounding us is the wreckage of all sorts of defensive gear. Smashed automated defensive weapons on crushed tripods. In the distance is a bunker that formerly housed the command computer for the defensive line and several backup projectile weapons. It’s mostly just a molten crater now.

  There are also a dozen bodies of the enemy’s security forces and two of their smaller “tanks” that they use for local security.

  I don’t look at the bodies closely as I pass them. There isn’t much to see, really. The missile barrage that came in had shredded everything outside. The few living things that survived that initial hit were quickly blown apart by our fifteen-millimetre rifle rounds. Puddles of shredded alien are all that is left.

  There are dozens more bodies out here, and aside from noting that they lie near what looks a lot like a jungle gym, I haven’t looked too closely. I don’t want to think about dead children from any race if I don’t have to.

  Behind us, the other team is splitting off. They’re heading for the smaller dome to the right. The scans on the way in have both targeted domes giving off the unique energy signature that this new device should be giving off.

  We shouldn’t be splitting off into separate groups like this. It goes against the training. Stay together, maximize firepower, win the firefight and assault. Too much firepower is always better than not enough.

  But the mission is working out this way. The rest of the section are providing over-watch and keeping security forces tied up while two assault teams go in hard and fast. We’ll smash through the light defenses and take the device and any info on it that we can find.

  This site isn’t that well defended. At least not so far. There’s only light security. That worries me, as the heavy security is somewhere, and likely rolling out toward us.

  The sprint across the field is almost over; just up ahead is our target dome. I can see a mid-size door that would be used for vehicles to exit or bulk stores to be moved inside.

  I don’t bother trying to run up and kick the door open. This outpost is new enough on a recently terraformed world that any doors are reinforced pressure doors. The best I could hope for would be to hit the door at high speed and get thrown back.

  This is why we have breacher shells for the grenade launchers.

  My weapon comes up and it’s like those three grenades just fire themselves. I’m not worried about where they are going to hit. They’re on target. I am completely in the zone for this. There are no distractions and things are going right.

  The other team is sprinting off toward the dome and their breacher shells detonate right before mine do. The door is punched inward and bent around so that we have an opening big enough for two of us to go through shoulder-to-shoulder. Not that we’re going to, as that would make us a nice, big, fat, slow target.

  My comrade Seven sprints ahead and will dive in first, with me a second behind.

  First Marine in will be moving too fast for anyone waiting to get a bead on; second Marine will be in while they are tracking the first. Maximize the confusion with the poorly organized defenders.

  Seven dives through the opening and then there is weapons fire. I see movement along the top of the dome. Enemy combatant coming along a walkway going around the far edge. I twist my body and fire off two rounds. Both miss but strike the dome. Combatant panics and goes over the edge of the walkway, sliding down the side of the dome. A thirty-foot fall in low gravity won’t kill, but it will slow them down.

  I run at the opening and leap through. All weapons fire is coming from the left, so I already have my weapon up as I go through.

  Seven has just finished sliding across the floor and has ended up against the far wall in cover behind some containers.

  The weapons keep firing on Seven when I leap through. They’re just realizing that I am there.

  There are four of them wearing light body armour and they all have projectile weapons. Their focus is Seven, the first and obvious threat. I open fire on them.

  I aim low and start shooting from left to right. The first round slams out of the rifle and takes the short alien at the top of the leg, blowing it clear off and sending the limb spinning around and away. Blood sprays out, painting the walls.

  The next round is to the individual next in line. I catch it low in the stomach; it’s blown straight back and most of the back wall is sprayed with its blood and guts. It has a second to scream, or maybe that’s just the sound of its suit blowing out.

  The third one takes the round in the chest and just explodes. The body armour does nothing to stop the round, which imparts the kinetic energy of a freight train at the impact point.

  The last alien is st
arting to turn slowly but is still firing on Seven in cover. My last round goes higher, as the rifle has been pulling up as I keep firing and spinning while moving forward. The round catches the creature in the head and shatters the helmet, blasting his head to mush. Somehow, the round has enough energy left to punch through the wall behind, and thick atmosphere starts streaming out from the small breach.

  I don’t think that my shooting is too bad, really, given that the aliens are really short and I was moving at speed. Seven is getting up and I see the door off to the side. Even in armour there is a big kick when firing our standard-issue rifle. Having been off-balance, I didn’t put every round into the centre of my target like I had in training. But they were all dead.

  I don’t stop to think. I just react. The grenade I fire hits the door and smashes it out of the frame, warping the frame as well.

  I’m moving toward that door at a run and throw myself through it.

  Mistake. The hall behind is a personnel passage for the locals. The far wall is only three feet away and I slam into it hard. I don’t even have time to turn, so I face-plant into it.

  I can hear Seven shouting and the comm net is buzzing with orders.

  I come under fire from the one side with a hail of small-calibre rounds hitting all around me. I start taking hits on my right side in the leg and arm.

  I pull myself off the wall and pivot to face down the hall.

  Behind me, Seven’s icon is in the bay and heading my way. My sensors are getting some feedback from the local area and the one alien ahead of me is now struggling to reload.

  I bring my rifle down on target and fire once. The alien explodes from the impact of the huge round. Farther down the hall, another alien flies backwards; my round has hit him as well, after it punched through the first enemy combatant.

  I take off at a run. Seven is behind me in the vehicle bay. There is only one way to go, and I am heading there.

  Nothing is behind me and the target is just ahead of me.

  I clang down the hall, my shoulders hitting the side walls with almost every stride.

  On my HUD I can see that Seven is following. The other fire team is in their dome and clearing it fast, and the rest of the section is on over-watch outside.

  Everything is going along smoothly. Then, it turns to shit.

  I’m close enough to follow my grenade through, so I fire a breacher at the door ahead. At the same time, the dome over from ours where Two and Ten are clearing disappears off the HUD in a burst of static. One second their icons were there to the side, and the next they’re gone and there is a rumbling with the ground shaking.

  The door ahead is blasted open and I dive through. There is yelling on the comms channel. All I can make out is “ambush” and then there is static.

  My HUD breaks up with electronic interference. It looks like they must have a backup plan for when they were hit, and that it includes jamming.

  I hit the brakes and stop. I fire off my last breacher at the side of the door to mess up anyone in there, and reload the grenade launcher, then change mags on the rifle as well.

  The room ahead is large and it looks like all the enemy combatants are on the left side.

  I take off at a run and leap through the opening. My weapon is up and I open fire while I’m flying through the air. I let off two grenades and start a slow rate of fire that to anyone else is going to look like I am blazing away.

  The enemy combatants are spread out and behind cover.

  “Crap.” It’s all I can say. There are two aliens crouched down inside a metal sphere that is protecting a multi-barrelled projectile weapon. It’s just fully spun up, and they fire.

  The tongue of flame that comes out the end reaches across the room and is going to be touching me soon.

  Suddenly One’s face is right next to mine and he’s grinning at me. “You are so fucked, newb.”

  I lose control with that and start to lunge at the face to punch it when everything freezes.

  I’m a third of the way across the room about two feet off the floor. The two grenades I fired are almost at the end of their flight. I can see that they are both going to hit on the far wall and spray shrapnel out. I don’t doubt that they are going to at least injure all of the enemy, except for the two in the metal sphere. I doubt that my grenades will be able to punch through that armour, unless I am really lucky. But given that I can see the rounds frozen in the air just below me and they are bringing the weapon up to track on me, I don’t think I’ll have the time to find out.

  I am about to be cut in half. The interesting thing is that I can’t move at all, except to rotate my head.

  Then I rotate and am standing on my feet. Everything is transparent, including the blocky images of the enemy. My weapons are gone and I look around. Everyone else is visible in the distance. Over Two and Ten are skull icons, and I can see the fire support has two of the skulls floating over them as well. There are damage icons over everyone else, too.

  I can see Seven standing in the bay with arms crossed. I think the way the foot is tapping on the ground indicates that someone is pissed. Then I realize that there are six sets of heavy combat armour (personal) in the bay as well.

  This had been a trap, all right. I feel my face flushing. I already know most of the mistakes I am going to be berated over. I should have known better. In fact, I did know better. I had just been … excited.

  I can hear Two’s voice clearly. “Jane, end program. Please prepare for a full tactical analysis after I do a quick debrief.”

  Jane’s voice comes back immediately. “Affirmative, Two.”

  Bad Debrief

  “Jane” is a dedicated AI that runs combat sim training for us on the ship. I had been briefed on her when I first arrived, and this had been my first sim with the section. Because Jane interacts with us as a projected sim, “she” appears to everyone differently.

  The manual I had read talked about the best avatar that the AIs could come up with for an individual. Someone must have set me up because the first time I saw Jane, she was dressed casually in workout clothes and looked like she was a smoking hot twenty-year-old fitness instructor.

  I don’t think that anyone else sees her like that, and I haven’t asked what everyone else sees and hears.

  The last of the images faded away and I found myself sitting on an uncomfortable chair in the small ready room we have for our armour. One was standing just next to me smirking at me; he was being an asshole, as always. He seemed to hate me, while everyone else just didn’t really like me.

  Two was standing at the front already with the interface unit off and hanging on a rack.

  She didn’t wait for us to get out of the gear; she just started in on us immediately.

  “Congratulations, scout troop. You were about as effective as a bunch of seven-year-olds playing ‘stop the alien invasion.’ So you’re all dead.” Her calm composure cracked. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING?”

  Two stopped and took a deep breath and started over. “That was shit. There was no teamwork. Ten and myself hit our objective and carried forward as a team. We tripped some sort of booby trap and the whole dome went up, taking us out. Even though I think during the After-Action Review we’ll find that the second, poorly defended dome was a dummy meant to pull attackers in and it was booby trapped to go when we blew the inner door.”

  She turned and looked at the six others who were taking their gear off and hanging it on the waiting racks. “You lot wasted shots and bunched up. One, did I hear you having a conversation with Five about some new weapon systems going to trial? How does that relate to a mission where we took six casualties?”

  One’s smirk was gone and he was flushing a bit. He caught me watching him and threw a glare at me. Five spoke up. “Sorry, Two. It wasn’t that realistic a sim and it was hard for us to get into….”

 
Two’s look stopped the conversation. “Fire support dropped the ball and was not a team.”

  She turned to me. “Your fire team partner was left behind to face eight different heavy-armoured troops with enough gear to take out a full team. In fact, they could have given a full section a problem. Seven faced that on his own while you went off to be the hero.”

  I could feel my face flush and I went cold at the next words. “Congrats. You got your partner dead. Then you advanced firing rounds all over and were able to get yourself cut in half by a heavy support weapon. If this were a video game, your score would be shit. As it is, you’re just another dead newb.”

  One was smirking again with his arms crossed.

  Two rounded on him. “OK, One. Why are we doing sims at this level where it is not realistic?” Her voice became whiny. “And ‘hard to get into’?”

  One stiffened up and his face looked expressionless. Without looking around, he answered. “When we go into a deep or fully immersive sim, we run the risk through increased exposure to becoming sim addicted. This is against the best interests of the Corporation and ourselves as we need to be fighting fit all the time.” He stopped and looked at Two.

  Two shook her head no. “If fully immersive sim training is the best tool, I’ll use it, and we’ll use the other nasty ways to break any addiction that starts forming. We were all in a low-level sim that wasn’t ‘realistic’ because our overall scores are shit. We had a casualty and everyone has been shaken up by that loss. Now we have the newb here.” She hadn’t even pointed or looked at me, but everyone knew who I was. “We need to get back to full efficiency as a section. There were mistakes made. We will get better, and fast. We have no clue when something may come up out here on the edge. There is lots of action starting to happen, according to Intel, so everyone get your game together.”

  One grunted with a sour look on an always-angry face. “Intel? They always seem to make stuff up as they go along.”