Starship Troopers

The third shell peeled off when its last chute was gone and now I had nothing around me but my suit armor and a plastic egg. I was still strapped inside it, unable to move; it was time to decide how and where I was going to ground. Without moving my arms (I couldn't) I thumbed the switch for a proximity reading and read it when it flashed on in the instrument reflector inside my helmet in front of my forehead.

A mile and eight-tenths—A little closer than I liked, especially without company. The inner egg had reached steady speed, no more help to be gained by staying inside it, and its skin temperature indicated that it would not open automatically for a while yet—so I flipped a switch with my other thumb and got rid of it.

The first charge cut all the straps; the second charge exploded the plastic egg away from me in eight separate pieces -- and I was outdoors, sitting on air, and could see! Better still, the eight discarded pieces were metal-coated (except for the small bit I had taken proximity reading through) and would give back the same reflection as an armored man. Any radar viewer, alive or cybernetic, would now have a sad time sorting me out from the junk nearest me, not to mention the thousands of other bits and pieces for miles on each side, above, and below me. Part of a mobile infantryman's training is to let him see, from the ground and both by eye and by radar, just how confusing a drop is to the forces on the ground— because you feel awful naked up there. It is easy to panic and either open a chute too soon and become a sitting duck (do ducks really sit? -- if so, why?) or fail to open it and break your ankles, likewise backbone and skull.

So I stretched, getting the kinks out, and looked around... then doubled up again and straightened out in a swan dive face down and took a good look. It was night down there, as planned, but infrared snoopers let you size up terrain quite well after you are used to them. The river that cut diagonally through the city was almost below me and coming up fast, shining out clearly with a higher temperature than the land. I didn't care which side of it I landed on but I didn't want to land in it; it would slow me down.

I noticed a dash off to the right at about my altitude; some unfriendly native down below had burned what was probably a piece of my egg. So I fired my first chute at once, intending if possible to jerk myself right off his screen as he followed the targets down in closing range. I braced for the shock, rode it, then floated down for about twenty seconds before unloading the chute—not wishing to call attention to myself in still another way by not falling at the speed of the other stuff around me. It must have worked;

I wasn't burned.

About six hundred feet up I shot the second chute... saw very quickly that I was being carried over into the river, found that I was going to pass about a hundred feet up over a flat-roofed warehouse or some such by the river... blew the chute free and came in for a good enough if rather bouncy landing on the roof by means of the suit's jump jets. I was scanning for Sergeant Jelal's beacon as I hit.

And found that I was on the wrong side of the river; Jelly's star showed up on the compass ring inside my helmet far south of where it should have been -- I was too far north. I trotted toward the river side of the roof as I took a range and bearing on the squad leader next to me, found that he was over a mile out of position, called, "Ace! dress your line," tossed a bomb behind me as I stepped off the building and across the river. Ace answered as I could have expected—Ace should have had my spot but he didn't want to give up his squad; nevertheless he didn't fancy taking orders from me.

The warehouse went up behind me and the blast hit me while I was still over the river, instead of being shielded by the buildings on the far side as I should have been. It darn near tumbled my gyros and I came close to tumbling myself. I had set that bomb for fifteen seconds... or had I? I suddenly realized that I had let myself get excited, the worst thing you can do once you're on the ground. "Just like a drill," that was the way, just as Jelly had warned me. Take your time and do it right, even if it takes another half second.

As I hit I took another reading on Ace and told him again to realign his squad. He didn't answer but he was already doing it. I let it ride. As long as Ace did his job, I could afford to swallow his surliness—for now. But back aboard ship (if Jelly kept me on as assistant section leader) we would eventually have to pick a quiet spot and find out who was boss. He was a career corporal and I was just a term lance acting as corporal, but he was under me and you can't afford to take any lip under those circumstances. Not permanently.