First to Fight Read Online Free Page A

the string-of-pearls. The others communicate through it. Once you got a ridgeline between the company headquarters and your Bravo unit, you lost satcomm. It became just a line-of-sight radio. It’s in the manual, right there for anyone to see: Appendix F, Annex Four, Section Q, Subnote Seventeen. All there. It’s all right there,” he shrilled. “What’s wrong with you people? Didn’t you read the manual? You would have known that was going to happen when you split groups if you’d read the manual.” George emphasized each word, pumping his fist up and down in time to the words. His normally sallow complexion reddened.
    Sergeant Major Tanglefoot saw red but still put out a hand to restrain Bass. There was something more he wanted to know. “How did it give coordinates if it was ‘just’ a radio?”
    “Through its inertial tracking system,” George answered quickly. “I don’t understand why it gave the reading it did—it’s a very reliable inertial system. Maybe your comm man wasn’t maintaining a regular pace. Maybe—”
    Daryl George barely got out his second “Maybe.” Bass knew every man in his platoon by name, knew their personal histories. They were more than just faces to him, they were his men. Bass remembered the ashy deposit on the ground that had been LeFarge, who had wanted only one thing out of life: a commission in the Marines. And Bass knew he would have made a good officer. And Lieutenant Procescu. Bass had known him for fourteen years, since the young Procescu had first joined Bass’s squad as a PFC. The lieutenant hadn’t gotten his head down quickly enough and his brain had been cooked instantly, the skull cracked open like an overboiled egg, brain matter swollen several times its normal size protruding obscenely through cracks in the glaring skull.
    “I told you you’d personally pay if one man was lost because this Mark One didn’t work as advertised,” Bass cut in, his voice like a blaster bolt. “It didn’t work and we lost a good many more than one man because of it.”
    It took Sergeant Major Tanglefoot, three first sergeants, and two gunnery sergeants to pull Bass off George. But they’d given him a few seconds to work off his steam on the manufacturer’s rep before they’d intervened.
     
    It ultimately took three operations to fully restore vision in George’s left eye, but the doctors declared him fit to be released from the hospital after only a week. Almost a year of intense physical therapy passed before he regained a reasonable degree of use of his right arm, though. His limp didn’t last quite that long. And nobody ever notices his oral prosthesis. When the Marine Judge Advocate explained the civil charges that could be brought against him for failing to ensure that the Marines were properly informed of the deficiency inherent in the UPUD Mark I, George decided to drop criminal charges against Bass.
    So Gunnery Sergeant Charlie Bass wasn’t charged with attempted murder, which was precisely what he’d attempted; he was court-martialed for something many in the Confederation Marine Corps considered a much more serious offense: Article 32A(1) (b) of the Confederation Armed Forces Uniform Code of Military Justice, Conduct Unbecoming a Noncommissioned Officer. The court took extenuating circumstances into consideration before delivering its verdict. Gunnery Sergeant Charlie Bass was reduced one grade in rank. Staff Sergeant Charlie Bass was then assigned to duty with the 34th FIST on Thorsfinni’s World, a hardship post somewhere out in the nether reaches of Human Space.

CHAPTER
----
    ONE
    “What does your middle initial stand for?” the recruiting sergeant asked. “I’ve got to have your full name.”
    From the age of eight, Joseph F. Dean despised the middle name his parents had saddled him with—Finucane, after his maternal grandfather. It was in that ill-starred eighth year of his life, on the first day of his enrollment at the New Rochester School