Lazarus Rising

CHAPTER 1 The navigator on the Amphibious Landing Ship, Force, CNSS Grandar Bay, was very good at his jobhe jumped the starship out of Beamspace barely more than two days' travel from the world called the Kingdom of Yahweh and His Saints and Their Apostles. Those Marines who knew anything about the mechanics of the jump reasoned that the closer they were to Kingdom when they came out of Beamspace, the sooner they'd get to somewhere they'd rather be. And after the campaign the Marines of the 34th Fleet Initial Strike Team had just fought against the Skinks, the Marines were anxious to get back to Camp Ellis, their homeport on Thorsfinni's Worlddespite the fact that the Marine Corps rated Thorsfinni's World a hardship post. The stop at Kingdom was too brief for Marines or ship's crew to be granted shore liberty. Brigadier Sturgeon, commander of 34th FIST, and a few members of his staff made planetfall to report to Confederation Ambassador Jayben Spears and the leadership of Kingdom's ruling Ecumenical Council. Before lifting off again, Sturgeon took the time to share a glass of wine and a cigar with Spears. "One more thing before I leave, Jay," Brigadier Sturgeon said when the wine and cigars were almost gone. "Anything in my power, Ted." "I need to send a backchannel. Can you handle it for me?" "Of course." "Thank you, Jay. I haven't the words to tell you how important this message is to 34th FIST." He handed over a crystal. "It's for Andy again. He'll get my official report, of course; that was dispatched via Navy drone from the Grandar Bay as soon as we reentered Space-3." He tapped the crystal. "Go ahead and read it." Spears rose, went to his desk, and popped the crystal into his reader. He raised his eyebrows when he began reading. The headers on the message weren't in normal military format, but that of a personal letter. Spears looked up at the Marine commander. "I hadn't realized how close you are to the assistant commandant." "On my leave to Earth we became friends." Sturgeon nodded for Spears to continue reading. The ambassador read: Andy, First off, let me thank you for sending 26th FIST so quickly. Jack Sparen and his Marines really saved the day; we couldn't have done the job by ourselves. That's an understatement. If you hadn't expedited reinforcements, there's an excellent chance the Skinks would have wiped us out. By now I imagine you've seen my draft report on the Kingdom Campaign. Take my word for it, as hairy as that report reads, the reality was worse. This one was more of a meat grinder than the Diamunde Campaign, if you can imagine that. I lost a godawful lot of men. You've seen the details in my report. Andy, I've never had such losses on one campaign, and I doubt that you have either. Now, I know that as soon as my report filters through to Personnel they'll start sending replacements to 34th FIST. But that'll take a lot of time since 34th FIST has been removed from normal personnel rotation. That's time that my Marines will be spending in Barracks with a lot of empty racks. I need bodies in those racks to distract my Marines from their losses. Andy, if it's at all possible, please goose Personnel and get me Marines to put in those racks. My Marines aren't the only ones who need them. I'm going to really hate it when we hold our first FIST formation back at Camp Ellis and see how much smaller we are now than we were at the last. WithSherman, David is the author of 'Lazarus Rising', published 2003 under ISBN 9780345460004 and ISBN 0345460006.