Free First to Fight by Dan Cragg, David Sherman Page B

your racks. Right now, right now. No dilly-dallying here. Believe me, you don’t want to be standing when we make the jump. Move it now.”
    Pretty and Singh swam through the compartment, hustling the recruits with staccato commands of “Move, move, move,” and using their hands to rush them into the racks.
    “Everybody, lie supine.” Singh saw someone on his stomach and shouted, “I said supine, dummy, not prone. Prone is a position for shooting and fucking. You aren’t doing either right now. On your back. Everybody, on your backs and strap in.”
    The three drill instructors made another pass through the compartment, making sure each man was properly strapped in.
    Once everyone was secured in his rack, the three D.I.’s went to the compartment hatch. “Stay where you are, as you are,” Neeley said, “until we come back to let you out.” He opened a small panel next to the hatch and pulled a lever concealed behind it, then hit the light control as he followed the other two D.I.’s out of the compartment, plunging the compartment into darkness broken only by the emergency lights.
    “Hey, what’s this?” Dean shouted as a webbing suddenly dropped from the bottom of the rack above him and secured itself to the frame of his own rack.
    He wasn’t the only one asking that question, but nobody could answer it. They found out a moment later when the artificial gravity shut off and the ship jumped into hyperspace.
    With an abruptness so complete it seemed that it had always been this way, the universe went gray. Or was it black? Weight vanished; it wasn’t a floating sensation like null-g had been, but a total absence of weight, as though mass had disappeared altogether. All the weight that ever was, was now, and ever would be, settled onto him. There was no sound. There was such a volume of sound, he thought the universe must be ending in the collapse of everything into a primordial speck that instantly exploded in the big bang.
    It ended as abruptly as it began, so suddenly that it was a few stunned seconds before anybody screamed. And only a few more seconds before everybody was yelling and struggling against the restraints that held them in their racks.
    The pandemonium lasted only until the three drill instructors entered the compartment and reactivated the lights. The three Marines went through the bay just as they had moments earlier, this time calming everyone down. They weren’t totally successful; some of the recruits were upset by the unexpected experience, and would remain so for some time to come. When relative calm was restored, Neeley stood by the compartment hatch and spoke to the platoon.
    “I know that some of you think it was unfair of us to let you experience a jump into hyperspace without warning of what was about to happen. But this is an important lesson for you to learn. Marines are warriors. We fight battles. Sometimes we know a fight is coming; we set the time, the place, and the circumstances for it and are fully prepared. But sometimes we have only a few moments of warning—or no warning whatsoever. There’s a big universe out there, with a lot of surprises. Most of those surprises are nasty, and can kill you if you aren’t prepared to act immediately and decisively when they happen. What you just experienced was an unpleasant surprise, but nobody got hurt.” He looked at them with mild disgust. “And every one of you panicked. Try to do better next time. The next time you get surprised, your lives may well depend on your reaction. The next surprise that jumps out at you just might kill you.” Finished with his speech, Neeley turned and left the compartment.
    Pretty snorted and followed the senior D.I.
    Singh shook his head. He said one word, softly, but loud enough for all to hear: “Boots!” He pushed the lever that released the restraining webbing before he left, and dogged the hatch behind him, so the men of second platoon were left on their own to ponder what Neeley had