Marines by Jay Allan Page A

our weapons, and in year six we trained with the "specials."  Unleashing nuclear warheads was dangerous business, and you certainly didn't want to undershoot with one.
    We didn't have any washouts after we left Earth - they'd weeded out all the losers long before.  But we did have casualties.  Those last two years cost us 102 dead, and my class ultimately graduated 382 out of 1,011 who started. 
    We got a trip back to Earth for graduation.  When we got there they gave us two weeks of leave and transport anywhere in the Alliance.  I didn't have anyone to visit or any real desire to see New York again, so I just went to New Houston.  That's what most of the class did.  The marines seemed to seek recruits with no real ties or family. 
    Graduation was held on the parade ground at Camp Puller.  General Strummer had been true to his word.  We not only saw lots of blue full dress uniforms - we got our own.  Strummer wasn't there, though.  There had been a lot of skirmishes along the frontier, and the general had been transferred to a sector command.
    There was a lot of satisfaction in having finished six years of hard training.  My life before joining up felt  like some bizarre dream, and I could hardly form clear memories of that time.  This was my life now.
    My class had been together for a long time, and I think we would have liked to serve with some familiar faces, but new recruits were generally assigned in small numbers to existing commands.  We got parceled out to units all over Alliance space, and I was the only one sent to my new company.
    A week after graduation I boarded a transport, and two months later I got bolted into a lander and blasted out into the upper atmosphere of Carson's World.  It was the beginning of a long journey.
     
     

Chapter Four
     

Tau Ceti III
    During Operation Achilles
     
    “Cain, pull your troops back to the refinery.  Fast.  The whole company’s falling back.”  Sergeant Barrick’s voice.  Great.  That meant that all the officers were down.
    I snapped out a series of orders to my acting fire team leaders, telling them to retreat in hundred yard intervals, one team covering the other while they fell back.  Between the smoke and the confusion I couldn’t be certain, but my best guess was the company had already lost about half its strength.
    We were in the middle of Operation Achilles, the invasion of Tau Ceti III.  That may have been its official name, but to us it was a fucked up mess, colloquially known as the Slaughter Pen.
    It was my seventh mission since the Carson’s World assault and I’d made the last three as assistant squad leader.  A few days earlier an enemy frag grenade had made me acting squad leader.  Sergeant Thompson wasn’t dead, but with both legs blown off he wouldn’t be leading the squad anymore either.
    By this time the undeclared war we’d been fighting for fifteen months had become official.  The Third Frontier War had begun in earnest, and we’d been pretty roughly handled so far.  We’d lost two major land battles and a half-dozen mining colonies, and the navy had suffered a pretty serious defeat at the Algol warp gate.  With the fleet on the run there were several dozen colonies cut off without support or resupply.
    The war had been tough on my squad too.  Wilson killed in the raid on Altair V.  Kleiner dead on some miserable asteroid in the 61 Cygnus system – she was only hit in the leg, but decompression and cold killed her before we could do anything.  Gessler, Andrews, Worton, and Stanson wounded and in the hospital.  Will Thompson and I were the only ones remaining in the squad from the Carson’s World mission to hit the dirt of Tau Ceti III, and now there was only me.
    The Tau Ceti III mission was supposed to be a big start toward regaining our momentum and turning the tide.  Instead, it almost lost us the war. 
    The planet was the Caliphate's largest and most important colony.  Operation Achilles was the