The afternoons were spent in classroom instruction. For four separate periods after lunch, we were instructed in math and science, logistics, small-unit strategy and tactics, weapons systems, logic, game theory, military history, and rudimentary computer programming. I was told that the course we were put through gave us the same knowledge level as a bachelor’s degree, lacking only art, philosophy, and language.
We were expected to plough through nearly two hundred pages of material per night. Not for us was the easy way out of most college students, where we could study Cliff’s notes or the notes we took in class. We were responsible for every piece of information whenever an instructor would demand it of us.
I remember holding O’Leary against my chest as she cried after our Advanced Weapons Systems class. The instructor had asked her how to fix an obscure problem that sometimes occurred with miniguns mounted on an exoskeleton. At certain times under high rates of fire, the vibration from the minigun would unseat the coaxial cable that powered the motor which turned the minigun. It was actually a relatively easy fix—another Marine simply had to plug the cable back into the appropriate socket. However, the problem could be a bitch to diagnose in a combat situation, and unfortunately for all of us, it was mentioned at the bottom of a list of nearly one hundred ways in which an exoskeleton could malfunction in combat.
The instructor, a twice retired Lieutenant Colonel of the British SAS and Lockheed-Martin, gave short shrift to potential NCO’s who do not have the answer on the tips of their tongues. I closed my eyes as she sobbed against my chest and remembered the encounter. “So what you’re telling me, O’Leary, is that you have a Marine in your squad in a two million dollar piece of equipment who is not combat ready?” His voice was calm, cool, and quiet. For all that, most of us feared the dressing down we received from him more than the ones we received form Sergeant Abrams.
She gulped. “Yes, sir.”
“The Rak’Lan are advancing down a ship’s corridor, using their particle beams. The only hope you have of repelling the advance is in a malfunctioning piece of equipment. What are you going to do, Corporal?”
“I’m going to ask my Marine to run a diagnostic on his suit, sir.” It was the wrong answer. The exoskeletons had to be powered down and put into what was laudably called “Safe Mode” in order to run diagnostics. The diagnostic program could be completed in less than two minutes, but for those two minutes, the exoskeleton was only sixteen hundred pounds of useless titanium and ceramics.
He turned his back on her, walked to the front of the class, and called up a hologram. The Mark IV Combat Exoskeleton appeared in glorious detail, floating above his lectern. The hologram rotated slowly before starting a tutorial of how to enter and exit the exoskeleton safely. “O’Leary. How long does an exoskeleton diagnostic take?”
O’Leary thought for a moment. “I’m not sure, sir. Less than a minute.”
He cocked his head to the side and held up two fingers. “Try two minutes.” He looked at the hologram for a moment longer, and then tapped at the keyboard in his lectern. The hologram zoomed in to focus on the region on the exoskeleton where the minigun was mounted. It was a broad hint, designed to trip O’Leary’s memory. “And is the suit operable in combat while it is running diagnostics?”
“No, sir.” She shook her head.
“I just told you, O’Leary, that the Rak’Lan are closing on your position. They have particle beams. The only way that your squad is going to survive is if you can get your exoskeleton working. Otherwise, you are only so much cooked meat.” He leaned forward on the lectern. “Do you want to reconsider that answer?”
“I don’t know what I would do, sir.” She bowed her head.
“But Corporal O’Leary…the men and women in your squad are depending on you. A simple ‘I don’t know’ may have worked with your parents when they asked you why you thought you could get away with losing your virginity in a potato field. It won’t work in the Marines.” He gestured at the hologram. “Nothing here trips your memory?”
“No, sir.”
“Have you even read the material for this class, O’Leary?”
“Yes, sir.”
He sighed. “We’re trying to teach you, ladies and gentlemen, the skills that you must have to survive. We’re teaching you the things you need to lead other men and women into the lion’s den and come back alive. This isn’t play time. This isn’t some sleepy college classroom where you get some kind of certificate that allows you to be a participant in the capitalist rat race.” He paced in front of the class. “You pass this class by being an expert on the subject material. There are two grades here: excellent and failing. There is no middle ground. Humankind will not trust you with the cream of the crop of our young men and women unless you prove yourselves worthy. Quite frankly, none of you even begin to meet the standards that I would set for you, and yet…I must pass at least some of you. The need for NCOs in our small Marine Corps is too great. That means that I must send some of you out of here half-trained and ignorant, knowing that most of you will get good men and women killed in the field.”
He buried his head in his hands, a rare display of emotion. “That’s why I lose sleep at night, ladies and gentlemen. People like O’Leary are going to make bad calls in a combat situation because they valued their sack time too much in NCO school. A little extra effort now might save someone’s life in the future, but most of you are barely keeping your heads afloat as it is.” He cleared the hologram angrily and swept the room with his gaze. “So we’ll continue—“
O’Leary’s sobs had finally subsided against my chest, and I snapped out of my reverie. I stroked her hair until she finally stopped sniffling. “Oh, Michael,” she said. “Why did I agree to do this?” Her voice was muffled.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “It sounds like we need to be perfect all the time.”
“That doesn’t really daunt you, does it?” She laughed manically. “You’re just going to take a swing at it, because that’s what you do best.”
I shrugged against her. “I guess so. What other choice do I have?”
She pulled away and looked up into my eyes. “What happened to that ‘tip of the spear’ bullshit you said in front of the company the other day? Do you really think that way?”
I held her gaze. “I do. We’re here for a reason, Shannon.”
“I can’t do this, Michael.” She looked down at her feet. “I thought I could, but it’s simply too much. I don’t want to be responsible for all those lives. I can’t bear the thought of screwing anything up.”
“All of us screw up, Shannon. It’s how we handle it that makes a difference.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” She exclaimed. “Stop acting like a general for a second.” She turned away from me and paced the tiny confines of my quarters. “You’re good at this, Michael. You belong here. You’re exactly what they want. I just want to go home.” She sat on the edge of my bunk. “I want Earth again. I want to see green hills of the countryside. I want to hear brogue on everyone’s tongue. I want to feel the biting wind out of the north under a blue sky so clear and so perfect that it has to be a dream. I’m tired of artificial gravity, processed air, and all of this military drill.”
I didn’t know what to say. The woman that I loved was having a breakdown in front of me, and what was worse, I didn’t understand it. Oh, I could understand the homesickness. What I couldn’t understand was that she wasn’t willing to shoulder the burden that we were training for. How could you witness what the Rak’Lan had already done to humanity and not feel a burning need for retribution? If not retribution (if revenge was beyond the sensibilities of an “enlightened human”), then how could you not at least feel a need for pre-emptive strikes to prevent further disasters like the ones that had befallen San Francisco and Shanghai?
It was a moment of total disconnection. Where we so different?
“What can I do, Shannon?” I could tell by the hurt in her eyes that it must have been the wrong thing to say.
“What can you do? What can you do? You can leave me the fuck alone. I don’t need your false sympathy. I don’t need you to try and play the senior sergeant of the platoon commander with me.” She stood and gripped me by the upper arms. “Do you see me as someone under your command, Michael? Or do you see me as a fellow soldier? Do you even give a damn about me, or am I just convenient to you right now?” She pounded her fists against my chest. “God damn you, Michael. Don’t just stand there like a robot.” Sobs wracked her again. “You don’t even understand.”
She was right. I didn’t understand. “I love you, Shannon.” I said it quietly. I was afraid that she wouldn’t hear it over her raw emotion. “I won’t pretend to understand what you’re going through, but I’d like to help you if I could.”
Looking up at me with a tear-glinting stare, she looked genuinely surprised. “What did you say, Michael?”
I could have played dumb, but I knew exactly what she was talking about. “I love you, Shannon. I can’t bear to see you like this.”
She smiled through her tears. “Do you mean that?”
I nodded. “I do.” I pulled her into a tight embrace. “You’re going to be okay, Shannon, I promise. We’ll get through this.”
“Michael…can I stay here tonight?” Her voice was plaintive.
I looked over her head at the pile of books sitting on my desk. I had intended to study most of the night, but what the hell. Part of me rebelled at the thought of leaving tasks undone, but the other part of me realized that Shannon was all that I had.
If I was fighting for humanity, I could afford to be human once in a while.
gripping.