Read Online Jethro Goes to War (Wandering Engineer Jethro's tale) by Chris Hechtl - Free Book Online

heads,” Jethro said as he rubbed his stubble. They had
just had a mandatory weekly trim the day before. It sucked. Then
again they got to stand in line relaxing and not doing anything for
that time period.
    “ And the
chickenshit we go through with the inspections. We need to break old
habits and make new ones. Ones that will stick with us when the shit
hits the fan. The Hats do it to make us keep a zero excuse zero
tolerance mentality.”
    “ You mentioned
it before,” Hurranna said shaking her head. “What makes
you the expert? Tobias?”
    “ Yup.”
Tobias had been a marine ancestor who'd left a brief journal he had
found in the clan's archive. He'd practically memorized the files he
could access while growing up.
    “ So when do we
get our implants?” Valenko asked. They looked over to the bear.
“They are dragging this out a lot longer than I thought they
would.”
    “ We're not
exactly prime material. They've got to get us up to speed first. And
drop the dead weight. Why put implants in someone who can't go the
distance?”
    “ True.”
    “ Probably
sometime after phase one. The PT crap as Hurranna our resident shrimp
here calls it,” Jethro cocked his head down to the small
female. She stuck out her tongue at him.
    “ Once they are
sure we're going to hang, that we're not going to quit they will
invest in the implants. Each implant package is probably costing
around a million creds a pop, so I can't blame them for waiting.
That's when we'll get the classroom training. Or implant downloads as
it is. Until then we'll have to work with what we've got, learning
muscle memory techniques and mnemonics.”
    “ What's phase
two?” a new recruit he didn't recognize asked. Most likely
someone folded in from Gamma platoon.
    “ Weapons
training normally. Field skills, marksmanship, and more team building
exercises. Probably about six to nine weeks or so, not counting our
time off to recover from the implant surgery,” Jethro said.
    Several groaned at
that. Brenet looked around the group but didn't say anything. It was
interesting hearing the recruit accurately describe the syllabus.
    “ And phase
three?” Valenko asked as the others settled back down.
    “ Polishing,
land navigation, camouflage, suit training, field exercises, and some
other stuff I'm not remembering right off,” Jethro answered.
“Probably ship stuff. Boarding actions, ship duties, protocol,
and the works.”
    “ That's it?”
    “ Oh hell no.
After that is the crucible. That's hell week. Remember the obstacle
course? You think it's hell now you are in for a shock. We'll have to
run it or something like it doing team exercises the entire time.
SAR, traps, snipers, ship action, the works. Full combat sim or as
close as they can get to it. All on practically zero sleep and food.
Sixty hours of nonstop fun and games,” Jethro said with a feral
smile. Most of the platoon groaned at that.
    “ You really do
know how to put a wet blanket on things,” Valenko said shaking
his head as the groans died down.
    “ Oh it gets
better. After that we move on to basic graduation and then specialty
training,” Jethro grimaced. “Which is even more of a
bitch. But once you know you can get through basic you know you can
get through anything.” Some of the crew looked at him in
disbelief but Valenko, Sergei, and a few others nodded at that.
    “ That's enough
people,” Brenet growled. “Move out,” he ordered. He
waved his arm stiffly. The group fell out into a march.
     ...*...*...*...*...
    “ We're down to
three platoons. I heard we've got about three hundred and thirty
three, or so I heard. Not counting the ones in sickbay,” Sergei
said, watching the DI's chew a recruit out. The recruit dropped and
started doing pushups.
    “ I wonder why
we're all lobbed together like this. Seems kind of racial,”
Hurranna said. A Veraxin buzzed at her. A chimp nearby huffed.
    “ It's the
challenge.”
    Instinctively they
went to parade rest as gunny Schultz