Ten uneventful days and then in the middle of the platoon’s “night”…
Berg’s eyes flew open as the light automatically came on, but he waited a heartbeat for the next order.
“SECOND PLATOON, WYVERNS. FIRST AND THIRD, GROUND MOUNT.”
Both voices were prerecorded female voices, but the second order was important. It detailed who had to clear the compartment first. Since everyone couldn’t move in the corridor at the same time, the personnel with Wyvern duty had to move first. Since they only had to slip into skinsuits, they could be dressed fastest, anyway.
He pulled out his skins and then dropped to the deck. Right on top of Lance Corporal Revells from Third Platoon.
“Get the grapp off my back, Two-Gun!” Revells said, trying to struggle through the mass to the forward hatch.
“Get in your grapping rack, Revells,” Jaen snarled. “You’re not supposed to be moving, yet!”
“Get your elbow out of my face!”
“Get your dick out of my ass!”
The compartment was a madhouse of struggling Marines as everyone tried to get to different hatches at once, all order dissolved.
“FREEZE!” the first sergeant bellowed from the forward hatch.
Berg froze in place, arms over his head, most of the top of the skinsuit over his face.
“Two-Gun, you may lower your arms,” Top said into the silence. “Carefully.”
Berg shrugged all the way into the skinsuit and lowered his arms, carefully. He had to; the Marines were packed in the companionway like sardines.
“The term here is FUBAR,” the first sergeant said, quietly. “Y’all can’t struggle out of this compartment in two minutes, which is the time it’s supposed to take you to settle on your equipment. So we are going to do this again. And again. And again. Until you can, in fact, exit this compartment in an orderly fashion. At that point, and at that point only, will we then move on to donning said equipment and drawing ammo in an orderly fashion. And don’t think you can cut time by keeping your uniforms on. We’re going to randomly pick which platoon has which duty. Back in your racks.”
Berg waited at the position of attention, sucked into the bulkhead of the locker room, until Gunny Hedger from Third Platoon shouted “Third, Clear!” then grabbed the stanchion on the gear locker and drove it, hard, towards the starboard bulkhead. Staff Sergeant Summerlin was on the far side of the locker and, if anything, was driving harder.
Falling in on the armor was a drill that had to be done as precisely as a parade. As tight as the ship was, getting everyone onto their armor, fast, was nearly impossible. But it could be done if everyone did their jobs precisely on the beat.
With the containers spaced, the Marines darted in lockstep to their positions and almost simultaneously opened their compartments. As the seats fell they turned and, nearly in unison, sat down, reaching up and pulling their armor over their heads. The combat harnesses were attached to the armor so they came down at the same time. Two moves and the armor was latched. Reaching up, they pulled down their helmets, then snatched out their weapons and stood up.
Gunny Hocieniec was already there, in armor, and nodded at the first sergeant.
“One minute and forty-three seconds,” Top said. “Seventeen seconds under standard. I think we can better that, but it’s good enough for now. Fall into the missile bay.”
“I’d say that I’m only going to say this once,” the first sergeant said, striding down the ranks of Marines standing at attention. “But I’m not. I’m going to say it over and over and over again. We do not know what we are going to encounter out here. We know the Dreen are out here, somewhere. And some of you have fought them before and know how nasty that is. But we could, God help us, run into nastier things. Or better. Or nothing, as on Dean’s World. That’s the point. We just don’t know. So each and every one of you had better be ready for anything at any time. Somebody who is ready for anything at any time is a Space Marine. I will not accept anything less in my company. Is that clear, Marines!”
“Clear, First Sergeant!” the Marines shouted.
“You’ve all passed Common Tasks, but to be a Space Marine means practicing uncommon tasks. We’re going to make you the sharpest, hardest group of Marines in the Corps, because that is being a Space Marine. We’re going to make you the smartest group of Marines in the Corps, because that is being a Space Marine. And if you’ve been tired of dickbeating, then you’re going to get really tired of what I’m going to throw at you. By the numbers, replace your gear and hit your racks. Tomorrow, we’re going to start adding some polish.”
“So, mesons are a type of boson,” Drago said, furrowing his brow. “They’re two quarks…”
“A quark and an anti-quark,” Berg said, trying not to sigh. “That’s actually pretty important.”
As the first sergeant had said, it was time to put the polish on the apple. The Marines had been looking at their sensor systems and learned to recognize basic information but they’d never really understood what they were looking at. Berg had been drafted as an ad hoc instructor for his platoon and was trying to get the basics of particle physics through some skulls dense enough to stop neutrinos.
“Okay, they’re a quark and an anti-quark,” Drago said. “Any particular type of quark? I mean, strange, charmed?”
“What in the hell is a charmed?” Lovelace asked. “What’s a quark?! I mean, there’s all these particles and it’s all about quarks but nobody ever said what a quark is!”
“Oh, maulk,” Berg muttered. “It’s in the manual but… quarks, muons, and electrons are elementary particles. That means they can’t be broken into smaller pieces. And quarks are the only fundamental particle that interact through all four of the known forces. They come in six flavors: up, down, top, bottom, sometimes called beauty for some damned reason, charmed and strange. And, no, I’m not making this maulk up, Drago.”
“This is some crazy maulk.”
“Oh, I forgot something else. They’re also waves, the whole ‘both a particle and a wave’ thing.”
“How can it be both?” Lovelace asked, grabbing his head. “That doesn’t make grapping sense!”
“Welcome to quantum mechanics,” Berg said, grinning. “Whenever you really get something in quantum mechanics, you’re required to roll a sanity check. But that’s the point; they’re both and since they’re down to the point where they can be both, there’s nothing smaller. Quarks and electrons are what make up ‘solid’ matter. Put enough quarks together and you get the basic protons and neutrons of an atom. Electrons are just… electrons and they spin around the outside of the protons and neutrons in atoms. Oh, and until the Adar came along we thought that you could only have quarks in twos or threes or some other multiples but never a single quark by itself—”
“Why?”
“Well, the gluons that hold them together—”
“Gluons? Grapping gluons?”
“…get stronger the farther apart you try to pull them until they eventually pop back together. But somehow the Adar know how to pull the quarks apart and keep them that way. And as far as I know there are probably only two humans alive who really understand how that is possible and both of them are here on this boat—”