“You write, you hear?” Aunt Vera said, tearing up. She and Herman had never been able to have children and Mimi had been, in a way, a gift from God. Now, it seemed, the time was come to lose the gift. She’d thought they’d have more years. She hugged the girl to her and sniffled. “I got the hang of that e-mail thing. You be sending me e-mails, you hear, girl? And come home when you got a chance. This is always home.”
“I will,” Mimi said, sniffling herself. “But where I’m going, well, I don’t think there’s e-mail.”
2
Welcome to the Space Marines, Please Keep Your Hands and Feet Away From the MonstersPrivate First Class Eric Bergstresser parked his Jeep outside headquarters and got out, stretching his back.
Berg’s first intimation he was being transferred had been the previous day when his team NCOIC, a staff sergeant, had dragged him out of morning PT and told him to “get his ass up to battalion.” Upon reaching the battalion headquarters he had been put through “the one fastest post-clearance in history” according to the gunnery sergeant from S-3 who had walked the private through, then handed him orders to proceed, via personal automobile, to Bravo Company, Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance, which was based, oddly enough, at Newport News Naval Base.
Berg hadn’t even known there were any Marines at Newport News which, as far as he knew, was still in the process of closure. He was more than surprised to find out there was a Force Recon company there.
Berg was a “Nugget,” a NUG, the “new guy” in the battalion. He had volunteered immediately upon reaching the 1st Marine Division, his initial duty station after Basic. After taking the initial entry tests, mental and physical, he’d gone through the short hell of Recon In Process and the much longer hell of Force Recon Operator Training. After the Dreen War, Force Recon qualification had been revamped to concentrate more and more on off-planet operations. It also had gotten harder to qualify; of the sixty volunteers in the class with Berg, he had been one of only four to pass the full course. While not quite as hard as Delta qualification and training, it was equivalent to or surpassed SEAL BUD/S. At least in sheer brutality.