Starfist: First to Fight by David Sherman; Dan Cragg

Author:David Sherman; Dan Cragg
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Military science fiction
ISBN: 9780345406224
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 1997-08-29T12:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

On the second day out, Captain Conorado held an all-hands briefing for the 173 men of 34th FIST's advance party, Company L, and half the transportation company. He held the briefing in the crew's mess, the largest open space on the Gordon.

The space was never meant to hold so many people at one time. The men crammed into the room, and those fortunate enough to get seats at the tables were hip-to-haunch so tight they were almost in each other's laps. Some sat on the tables and tried not to obstruct the view of too many of the others. The rest squeezed tightly into the aisles. The senior NCOs bunched together at the hatch. When all were assembled, Captain Conorado entered from the galley, followed by the other officers and Staff Sergeant Bass. The men of third platoon noticed that Ensign Baccacio didn't look happy. The company commander took his place in a small open space next to a large vidscreen that was set into the wall, the other officers grouped together around the hatch to the galley.

"Company, atten—"

"Don't anybody get up," Conorado said, interrupting Top Myer's call to attention. "There isn't enough room for you to move in here."

The Skipper slowly looked about the crew's mess before beginning his remarks. If it seemed to his men as though he looked each of them in the eye, it was because he very nearly did. There was no waiting for their attention; each man had fixed his eyes, ears, and thoughts on the company commander as soon as he entered the room. Neither did Conorado have to gather his thoughts; he knew what he was going to say. It was much the same as his own commander had said a dozen years earlier when the company in which he'd been a platoon sergeant was in transit to Haguri, where he was given a direct commission on the battlefield. Conorado paused before speaking now because he wasn't sure that what he had to say was any more accurate than what his company commander had said then. Haguri was supposed to be an easy, low-key mission with no fighting. It turned out to be one of the bloodiest campaigns he'd ever been involved in. Well, he was a Marine; when in doubt, act decisively. "We are on a humanitarian relief mission to Elneal," he began without preamble. "Elneal is both a backward world and a backwater. It has little trade with the other worlds of Human Space other than in molycarbondum, and there has been almost no immigration into it for several generations. Its molycarbondum deposits are the only thing Elneal has of value. That's mined by Consolidated Enterprises under contract to the planetary government—and giving legitimacy and providing laborers to the mining operation seems to be the only thing the central government does. The government appears to have control only in New Obbia, the capital city. The rest of Elneal is populated by nomads and isolated pockets of back-to-earthers—at least 'back-to-earthers' is

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