Free Marines by Jay Allan Page B

limits of our endurance.
    Camp Puller was just outside New Houston, not far from the edge of the quarantined zone around the ruins of the old city.  For the record, southeastern Texas is hot as hell.  And humid.  And the worst of our training was thoughtfully scheduled during the height of summer.
    A lot of people couldn't take it and washed out, even though the consequences of dismissal were grave for most of us.  But the torment was more than just a weeding out process.  The rest of us began developing a confidence we hadn't had before as we survived challenges we couldn't have imagined overcoming.
    I almost lost my new found confidence when we started the classroom portion of training.  Everyone needed some level of remedial work, but I hadn't seen a classroom since I was 8 years old, so I needed a lot.  After the initial adjustment, I took to it pretty well, and by the time we wrapped up course work I had an education roughly equivalent to the one my father had, though mine was a bit more generalized. 
    I hadn't had time to think about anything while they were beating us into the ground in basic, but about halfway through the classroom training it started occurring to me that my life and attitudes had begun to change.  I wasn't a gung ho marine yet by any stretch of the imagination.  But up until that point I had been living day-to-day, and to the extent I thought about it, I figured I was there because I had no real choice. 
    Now I started to look ahead, to think about what it would be like to get to graduation and beyond.  I knew I would be leaving Earth and everything familiar to me, possibly forever.  That I would fight on strange worlds and quite possibly die on one of them.  Yet I started to look to the future in a way I never had before.
    My performance improved as time went by.  I barely made it through the first year of course work without getting washed out, but by the end of the second I finished tenth in the class.
    Then it was on to combat training.  We learned hand-to-hand fighting and military history.  But most of all we learned unit tactics.  We started with lectures and demonstrations, but soon we were doing non-stop war games, tramping all over the hot, flat terrain killing each other in various simulated ways.
    We took turns acting as squad leaders, but the higher positions were played by actual sergeants and officers.  We were learning to be troopers, not commanders, and part of that meant experiencing what it would be like to fight under experienced leaders.
    Once we'd mastered small unit tactics we started learning how to fight in armor.  Our fighting suits are the most sophisticated and complex weapons ever constructed, and using one well - and not killing yourself with it - took extensive training.  The armor is powered by a miniaturized nuclear reactor, which is built onto the back of the suit and looks a little bit like a large backpack.  This is what really makes the armor such a powerful weapon.  The energy created by the mobile plant is sufficient not only to operate the very heavy armor itself but also to power some very potent weapon systems.  The Mark V powered infantry suit, the one in current usage, can accept four modular weapons systems, so a marine's arsenal can be tailored to the specific mission.
    The primary infantry weapon for normal fighting is the GD-211 electromagnetic rifle, which fires a tiny projectile at extremely high velocity.  Because of the high speed of the dart, the energy transference to the target is extreme, making it a very hard-hitting weapon with a very long effective range.
    For fighting in vacuum or near-vacuum we have a variety of lasers and other energy weapons that are extremely effective in such conditions but subject to diffusion in higher atmospheric densities.
    We also have grenade launchers, flame throwers, and a wide variety of highly specialized systems.  Then, of course, we have the big boys - the nukes.  Our armor can