The Mighty First, Episode 1: The Mighty First series, #1

By Mark Bordner

Our world plunged into chaos.

They came from the galactic center, attacking us unprovoked, laying our infrastructure to waste in the process of occupying Earth.

Young Minerva Carreno felt compelled to answer the call to service, leaving high school to enlist in the Global Marines.  Basic training would try her soul, but assignment to the battalions still lay ahead.  Follow Minerva and her cadre of the 1st Combat Division in the desperate fight to liberate our world one city at a time in this futuristic drama told with a WWII vibe that is sure to please all ages.

Told in 1st-person narrative, Minerva describes her transition from timid small-town girl to the hardened veteran that the Corps transformed her into, followed by the harrowing engagements her unit encounters in what is essentially a futuristic version of World War 2 on a galactic scale.   Thrust into a leadership position she does not feel ready to accept, Minerva struggles with her own confidence, and the heart-breaking consequences of sending her closest friends into battle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark Bordner
• Release date: Mar 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386840572

Book preview

Preface

At the tender age of 17, there is basically little that a kid my age can own.  Oh, there are the generalities, such as clothing or books, and all the trivial little shit that a teenager seeks out.  I’m not referring to those kinds of things.  No, not even close.  I’m talking about specific items that even many adults don’t have in their possession, or perhaps if they do, fail to fully comprehend the depth of what they stand for; of what they ultimately cost.

Duty. Honor. Commitment.

The privileges of the free world, once coveted, have become mundane to the modern populace.  Our freedoms came with sacrifice in wars fought long ago, and sporadically over the ages.  People came to forget that.  As science and economic growth exploded in the latter part of the recent century, their outlook on such things entered the realm of falsely expected entitlement.

Perhaps it is in our nature, as human beings, to be lulled by periods of peace and prosperity.  It is also perhaps in the greater scheme of things that for those very reasons war comes and goes in cycles, often for reasons that remain obscure, but mostly to remind us.

War, in its own concept, is a very personal thing.  It reshapes how a person thinks and acts, demands that you adapt and evolve with it, lest you become yet another victim of its terrible nature.  If you end up a soldier, war will turn you inside out to expose your every weakness.  It takes from you everything you hold dear; individuality, love, compassion, and in return gives you despair.  It is very much a living organism. A thing.  Can it therefor be owned?

Very much so.  There is not a single combat veteran alive who will deny that fact.  After seeing your friends torn asunder, maimed, and killed, a member of any armed force realizes that like it or not, they have purchased their very own acreage in hell.  Yet, as terrible as it is, a soldier, sailor, and pilot will without hesitation lay down their life for the greater good.  Sacrifice themselves for their buddies, believing that their deaths will be remembered when freedom once again reigns.

My name was Minerva Carreno back then, when I was but a teenager with my head in the clouds.  Like most everyone around me, I had no understanding about what a war was, of its meaning, of its cost.  But whether by fate or the intention of the God that I believe in, I was soon to pay for my own membership in hell.  The 1st Galactic War is what the history books named it, but myself and the servicemen and women that were there and survived to tell our tales knew better.  The 1st Galactic War is what the masses call it, but for each of us, it’s far more personal. More intimate.  It belonged to each of us; every Marine, every Army soldier, Navy sailor, and Air Force pilot.  It was ours.  It was mine.  That’s why this journal is thus named.

It was my war.

Minerva’s War.

Contents

Episode 1

One  Storm Clouds

Two  Star Harbor

Three  Camp Madison

Four  Master Sergeant Ford

Five  Unity at Full Price

Six  To Take a Life

Seven  Fort Dixon

Eight  Mobilization

Nine  Combat

Ten  The Mighty First

One

Storm Clouds

September in the high northern desert of Arizona may mark autumn on the calendar, but in real life, it’s just another hot month.  I know I shouldn’t complain, because Winslow doesn’t get nearly as hot as it does down in Phoenix.  We lived down there before, when I was little.  I remember going to school wondering if everything was going to catch on fire; there were many days when it would hit a hundred and twenty degrees, and please don’t feed me that shit about it not being so bad because it’s a dry heat.  When it’s that hot, the sun literally hurts.  Your skin stings, it’s hard to breath, and your eyes water.  I hated it down there, and the day my mom and dad decided to move was probably the happiest of my life at the time.

My father landed a job with the City of Winslow in the landscaping department, and we’ve lived here since.  Winslow’s not a bad place to live, I suppose, it’s definitely a heck of a lot cooler than the valley.  I think the thermometer climbed up to a hundred only once, and that was back in July about three years ago.  That was the talk of the town for nearly a week.  If you haven’t guessed it yet, Winslow is a classic example of ‘Small Town America.’  If more than six or seven thousand people can be counted on the census, I’ll give you my lunch money.

It’s listed on the List of Places to See in the tour guide pamphlets at the Chamber of Commerce.  Did you know that Winslow was founded over two hundred years ago, back in the early nineteen hundreds?  Our downtown still has a row of the original business buildings on Second Street, the main drag through the historic district.  They’ve been renovated a few times over the years, I’m sure, but all of the 1940’s style facades and décor have been painstakingly preserved.  It’s a big draw during our autumn tourist season, and a pretty decent place to hang out for the locals at any time of the year.

I know my friends and I like to gather at the Root Beer Stand after school, on the corner next to the theater.  The owner, who everyone knows as Darrel, keeps his prices in the range that a teenager can afford, and doesn’t mind that we tend to get rowdy in there, so long as we clean up after ourselves.  You can make all the jokes about it that you want, me being a hick or a small-town girl, that’s all fine and good by me.  Winslow’s a quiet, close-knit place where a kid can feel safe.  You won’t hear about gang violence or the myriad of crimes that go on down in the Phoenix-Tucson metroplex, population ten million strong and dangerous to the core.  I think it’s the heat that drives people to violence down there.

As I sit here, writing all of this down in what I call my ‘Journal of Shit to Remember’, it’s hard to deny the smile that wants to come.  Those were my golden times back then.  I might have known it in some part deep down inside, because I remember enjoying every day to its fullest.  My senior year in Winslow High marked a spectacular run in my seventeenth year of life.  I was somewhat popular among my group of friends, and had no issues with anyone.  My grades were at an all-time high, and my parents seemed to be enjoying a status of semi-retirement.  We weren’t rich, not in any sense of the financial meaning of the word, but we were okay. 

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My dad still worked part-time with the city, a luxury that he’d allowed himself when they managed to pay off the mortgage on the house, and my mom petered around most of the year with her garden.  In the winter months, they would both make excursions up to the forests that surrounded Flagstaff to cut firewood both for ourselves and to sell.  Yes, it could get cold back home; down to zero or below, and the weather channel stated more than once that the snows were becoming increasingly heavy in the fore of the new century.  There were times when the white stuff was piled two or three feet deep, and would stay on the ground from November until March.

I’m closing my eyes right now, recalling our house, remembering the lane that it sat on.  Oak and Williamson was a tree-lined street beneath a canopy of intertwined branches from the huge mulberry and birch that towered over the houses.  Ours was the last one at the end of the cul-de-sac, on its own quarter-acre that stretched out behind, merging into an open field running parallel to Interstate 40.  It’s a Craftsman-style place, complete with an old-fashioned front porch and all the ornate carvings around the wooden window and door frames.  A brick chimney struts up one side, laced with ivy that turns a fiery red in the fall.

I miss home.  Even though by now I’m a grown woman with a husband and a house of my own, the Carreno place will always hold a special place in my heart.  All of the fondest memories from my youth were borne of that house, that street, that town.

My mom named me Minerva, after the Greek goddess of war.  It’s rather fitting now that I think about it, and ironic, considering what I’ve been through these past four years.  If I’d foreseen the horror and heartbreak waiting for me just around the corner that fateful autumn, I might have done things a hell of a lot differently.  I wouldn’t have enlisted, that’s for damned sure.  Well, in retrospect, I suppose it’s just as well that I did, or I wouldn’t have met my current husband and love of my life.  Still, good God.  How could I not have seen what was coming?

There were telltale signs, subtle at first.  I remember Daddy being avid about watching the evening news on GNN, the Global News Network.  The Empire of Storia—-a trade world that Earth had been loosely associated with in the economic alliance between them, ourselves, and galactic neighbor Attaya Prime—-was going through the throes of revolution.  One of Storia’s industrial colonies had rejected the absolution of the empire’s senate, and the subsequent declaration of dictatorship by Emperor Grozet.  Grozet had wasted no time in sending military forces to accent his message that, yes indeed, he would be in charge no matter the qualms of the Pala Colony.

The TV, the radio broadcasts, and the papers all blared the headlines of the invasion of Pala for days.  It was little more than background noise to me and my friends, a gaggle of seventeen-year-olds enjoying the height of scholastic achievement, being seniors.  Of what import was a tiny planet in a star system outside the freaking galaxy to us?  We had things to do, and people to see.  School dances, hanging out, after-school clubs, and part-time jobs for pocket money.  The concept of war was as alien to us as the Storians and Attayans actually were.  Even though Earth had been introduced to these two alien races over a hundred years before, only a select few had ever been privy to seeing either in real life.  Off-world travel was prohibitively expensive, it still is as a matter of fact, leaving meeting them in-person the privilege of the rich, or the politically powerful.

5

Mark Bordner

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About two weeks after first noticing the tensions growing on the television, my friends and I were hanging out in a small dog park near the railroad tracks.  It was towards the end of September, during the annual fall festival that runs every year through the entire final weekend of the month.  Food and trinket vendors line the park all the way to where the amphitheater stands, and a string of live bands take turns entertaining passerby with their renditions from a popular singer that lived way back in the twentieth century, some fellow by the name of Glenn Fry.  One of his songs gave Winslow a mention, forever cementing the Eagles in hometown fame.

We had gotten handfuls of grub and sweet drinks, and claimed a patch of grass to ourselves near the chain link fence.  When there weren’t any trains in the switching yard on the other side, you had a clear view of the airport beyond the tracks.  At that time, it was not what one might call a large airfield, but it was a busy one.  Firefighting tankers and land management planes frequented it, as did the occasional helo-shuttle from the Army base up in Flagstaff.  Private planes used it as a hub between Phoenix and Las Vegas.  Eno’s Mexican Diner, the only place to eat at the one-building terminal, made his lion’s share of profit from it all.

Not that his menu didn’t earn it; he made the tastiest green chili enchiladas next to my mom’s, stuffed with fat shrimp and rice with this creamy cilantro sauce...I’m torturing myself thinking about it. 

Anyway, that sunny, breezy afternoon was my second clue that there were storm clouds building on the century of peace that the United Earth had taken for granted.  A rhythmic thumping began to reverberate the air, audible even above the noise of the bands and the crowd.  I remember looking up and becoming mesmerized by the neat formations of military aircraft approaching from the west.  First came several waves of Huey-shuttle helicopters—-the kind that resemble the rotor-driven helos, but are designed for flight both in a planet’s atmosphere or out in space.  The thumping sound that is so much like the traditional Huey comes from the Anderson power plants that provide the thrust.

Those choppers landed, and a mere few minutes later came the larger Sea Hawk models that have the rear ramps.  What really got my attention, and the attention of most everyone at the festival, was the arrival of the mammoth C-130 Galaxies, those huge prop-driven planes that can carry incredible payloads.  They make a lot of noise when they come in, and there were three of them.  People began to realize that the U.S. Army had just planted more aircraft at our little regional airport than some military bases normally have.

I knew more than most did about those aircraft, because I’d harbored a fascination for such things since my freshman year in high school, thanks to my history teacher.  The curriculum he presented for his 9th graders encompassed the 2nd and 3rd World Wars, his reasoning that it was important the new generations of upcoming adults remember such things, since the world government was so bent on doing the opposite.  He told us that to forget the horrors and carnage that encompassed war was to allow ourselves to be blinded in preventing one from happening.  I really got into studying that, and discovered an interest in the designs of the various air, sea, and land craft.  They were brute and scary to look at in a book, even more so in real life, and there I was—-we all were—-staring at those very things in our own airport across from our town festival.

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The music waned, as did the general din of laughter and conversation, and a tense quiet fell over the fairgrounds, all faces turned in the direction of the airfield.  From those aircraft were pouring a hell of a lot of soldiers; all of them clad in field gear, helmets, packs, and most notably, weapons. 

People started to gather along the fence, gawking, mummering among themselves, some snapping photos with their phones.  The whole thing kind of put a damper on the festival, I seem to recall a steady outflow after that as people started for home.  The band that was performing wrapped up, and began putting their equipment away, as did the vendors.  By dinnertime, the annual shindig was over a full two days early, only scattered litter remaining to give a clue that anything had been going on at all.

As did everyone else that day, I imagine that there was an expectation of it being a big news story, but it wasn’t, at least not the way I expected.  GNN mentioned something about increased movements of military units throughout the world, but panned it off as simply a general restructuring.

There was stuff going on out in space, too, I remember.  The Space Navy was said to be shifting fleets around from one duty station or another, but those were labeled as training exercises.  There were reports of the Air Force increasing patrols over the coasts, particularly where the Surface Navy had ports and bases.  It came off as a busy period for a military that had been facing being mothballed for decades, probably a political maneuver to glean more funding from Congress.  Almost as a passing thought, the news anchor blurted something about increased Storian activity along the galactic frontier, and discord in the U.N. as their representatives spurned attempts to convince Emperor Grozet to tone down the violence against his colonies that were crying out for independence.

You could rightly ask yourself how we as a global nation could have been so blind to the warning signs of something bad fast approaching, but you have to understand that several generations had lived and died since the last wars.  No one remembered what it was like, or even what the preludes looked like.  The populace had been pacified and fattened by over a hundred years of global peace and prosperity.  Science and unification eliminated famine, water shortages, and disease; even most cancers.  The economic boost brought on by worldwide government and planetary trade with Attaya and Storia’s colonies nearly did the same with poverty.  People were content, and either too ignorant or afraid to try to comprehend what was staring us all in the face; war on the largest scale ever conceived was in its birthing pains—-a war that would literally span galaxies before its end nearly four long years later.

Our own government was doing its best to hide that from the public eye by explaining things away with excuses and faux reasoning, presumably to prevent panic.  For the most part, the ruse worked, for a while at least.  Don’t forget that people wanted to remain pleasantly oblivious to the facts.  Life was just too damned good to allow such things to mar it.  There had been a deliberate regression in fashions that had been building for almost twenty years before all of this growing unease.  A demand for automobiles designed after the 1940’s, the mode of dress for men and women alike mimicking the same, even trickling down to household furniture.  My own parents owned replica TV’s and radios from the era.  People liked to sit on their porches in the evenings, or go on picnics.  A trivial concept like war was unwelcome to that mindset.

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Mark Bordner

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Other, more deliberate warning signs appeared soon after the Fall Festival.

Prices of certain goods began creeping up, unbeknownst to the populace that this was due to the fact that the military was stockpiling them; sugar, flour, rubber, metals, and fuels of any kind.  People grumbled and complained about it in their daily gatherings in front of the coffee shop or hardware store or after church on Sundays.  The grumbling grew louder when the price hikes transformed into outright shortages.

Factories were the next warning bell; converting to war production.  When a toaster plant closes for a week to retool, then brings the workers in to begin making plasma bullets and artillery shells, it tends to open previously tightly shut eyes.  Shipyards both planet-side and up at Star Harbor began churning out starships for the Space Navy at an unheard of rate.  People began wanting to know what was going on, even though the answers had been painfully obvious for weeks and months before. 

The clamor was again silenced in the first weeks of October, when without explanation, advertisements and newsreels started announcing the need to plant personal edible gardens, the importance of obeying blackout requirements when air raid sirens sounded, and advising storage of a two-week supply of goods in one’s basement.  Stunned, people looked to one another for reassurance that wasn’t there.  The first real threads of fear were born.

I have to admit to you right now that I was among those that wanted to deny reality.  My own life that year was simply too wonderful to allow such things as politics and unrest to spoil it.  My friends and I went about the business of seventeen-year-olds with a renewed fervor, trying hard to silence the voices in the back of our minds, screaming that things weren’t good at all.

I even fooled myself to the point that even the sudden, massive recruiting effort sprung by the armed forces did not seem out of place; telling myself that it was merely a convenient opportunity to grab some college money for a university that my parents could not afford.

The recruiting campaign was global, and presented in large numbers at high schools and universities, even offering early school graduation for seniors if they signed up for a four-year term of service in the branch of their choice.  I was dubious at first, mostly overwhelmed by the choices that were suddenly and profusely being pushed at my age group.  So many of my classmates were enlisting in droves, a lot of times spurned on by their friends to do the same or risk not looking cool.

Both the space and surface navies spouted glamour, the recruiters bragging about the basis in technology and travel to exotic ports-of-call in their snazzy uniforms.  The Air Force promised much of the same, only with an emphasis on pilot training.  I don’t think the poor Army guy had much success with his presentations, I mean, how do you make living in trenches or driving tanks look appealing?  Maybe for the jocks and the guys trying to out-macho one another.  No, I knew that if I were going to sign myself over like a piece of property for the price of a college tuition, I wanted something more than a fancy uniform or immersed training in technology.

We were allowed to scout out the recruitment desks in the gym either before and after school or at lunchtime, and there was never a shortage of kids gathered around the recruiters, bombarding them with questions that ranged from the expected to the ridiculous—-one wiseass had wanted to know if there was a pay allotment for visiting brothels when on leave.

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There were colorful posters taped to the wall behind the desks, each corresponding to that particular branch and claiming that theirs was the best choice.  The recruiters boasted improbable stories of what fun they had, and passed out pamphlets that listed all of the various pay scales and sign-up bonuses.  Each new recruit was promised $10,000 on top of their own college funds, money that could be left in a trust fund for their parents.  Not one of the kids thought to ask about the risks involved, how dangerous training might be, or the chances of Earth sliding into its first war in a century—-nor did the recruiters bring it up.  I was no wiser, never having asked about any of it, either.  I’d successfully blinded myself, focusing instead on maybe taking up one of those tempting offers, and being sure that I chose the best one.

I listened to their pitches from the back of the little crowds for the better part of a week, observing how each recruiter’s mannerisms betrayed their carefully concealed desperation; they were pushing hard to get signatures.  The military was beefing up the branches, and quickly so, gathering as many warm bodies as humanly possible in a short period of time.

One in particular stood out from the rest, though, and that was the recruiter for the Global Marine Corps.  He was a hard-looking, grey-haired man with cold eyes and a firm jaw.  He answered questions directly, and without the sales pitch that the other guys were depending on.  The gunnery sergeant was visibly uncomfortable with his assignment, and there were times that I almost thought he were really trying to discourage anyone from enlisting with him.  I was oddly drawn time and again to his desk, and he took notice of me pretty quickly, the way I hung back and listened and watched.  His frosty gaze met mine, and a shiver ran through me.  He was intimidating and reserved, proud without being aloof.  Shoulders always squared and back straight, each movement a necessary one and no more.

It was Thursday before I finally spoke to him.  I’d drifted through my classes all day, classes that were by then noticeably thinner with so many of the senior class already signed up and off to basic training.  The football coach was ranting in the hallway after lunch, bitching at the principal about how his entire varsity team was gone, and what in the hell were they to do about the coming season?  When the last bell of the day rang, I went directly to the gym, and weaved my way through the gathering gang of curious and misinformed, stepping right up to the Marine desk and looking the gunny in the eye.

I’ve listened to the things you say, I told him.  How come the Marines pay less and offer lower bonuses than the other branches?

It had been a question that needled me all week long.  I mean, the Marines are traditionally the toughest bunch of assholes this side of the sun, and have the most difficult training requirements of them all, with a dropout rate of 40%.  The Corps churns out fresh graduates that are nearly as chiseled as the Special Ops, so it was strange to me that anyone would want to endure that sort of thing for less money.

That gunny held my stare with no effort at all, and replied smoothly, "Because we want candidates that want to be the best there is; not for the money, but to stand above the rest.  To be the best."

I was proud of myself for asking something that no one else had, but his candid response rocked me.  I also appreciated that he was clearly telling it like it was, without the glam and glamour.  That sold me right then and there.

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Mark Bordner

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Sign me up.

The gunny’s expression softened a little when I said that, almost imperceptibly so, but it did.  Without another word, he flipped a sheet of paper over and slid it across the desktop at me, a single sheet that was a curt contract for four years of service in the Global Marines.  I signed it with the pen he handed to me, raised my hand and repeated the oath as he gave it, and watched while he took an ink stamp and plowed a big, red A over the top of my contract.

What’s that for? I asked.

Don’t worry about it, he answered before explaining to me when and where I was to be to catch my ride to the Phoenix airport with the other batch of recruits that I would be traveling with.

Needless to say, that evening was one of upheaval in the Carreno household.  My mother did not take to my decision at all despite the financial boost that what the Corps offered would do to help them.  My dad was introspective about it at first, but eventually came around to my side, reasoning that the service would be able to offer me a brighter future than any civilian corporation could.  He wasn’t overly thrilled about my having done it without at least talking to them about it first, though.  There were many tears shed that night, and more than once I questioned my logic in that mostly sleepless eternity before dawn.  Fortunately for me, my parents had pulled themselves together, and gave me a cheerful sendoff after a hearty breakfast that I could only pick at