Voyage of the Wolf Scene 3

   

  Staff Sergeant Delacroix felt the engines of the ship rumble louder as the Wolf came up to speed on its exit vector from Earth orbit. He heard his tools rattle in the tool box while he tightened a nut on his suit's right knee actuator. It had been giving him trouble in the last few boarding exercises they had conducted in the previous weeks. The ship, like most Synod freighter layouts he had been given to study, was composed of three parts: the crew support section and bridge in the fore part fore the ship, the engines and engineering section in the aft part of the ship and the cargo or passenger area between the two. The Wolf has refitted the cargo pods in the middle with crew quarters for his Marines, combat suit storage and maintenance area, a small medbay and a virtual training area with VR goggles, training weapons and trackpads as well as three small cockpit simulators for the pilots of the shuttles.
     Sergeant Delacroix was pulling maintenance on his suit along with the rest of his marines. They would be conducting a training exercise against the marines of the Surprise in a few hours after their jump to Mars orbit. He had a full platoon of thirty-six marines divided into three squads of twelve, one squad for each of the shuttles. Each squad had three fireteams of four, two fireteams were standard rifle teams with a leader, grenadier, gunner and assistant gunner. The third fireteam was a command/support team with four suits of powered armor. Sergeant Delacroix ran the command team along with the toon leader Lieutenant McCloy who commanded the entire platoon.
     "How is it coming Staff Sergeant?" Lieutenant McCloy said as he sat down on the bench next to him.
     "Good sir, but you should try that shoulder joint. I fiddled with it to loosen it up but you should try it and make sure." Delacroix grunted as he struggled with the knee actuator and the wrench. "God dammit," he hissed, "I swear, engineers make this shit and don't bother to take into account people are gonna have to get their hands in here and fix it, because in their minds it is never going to break or need adjusting."
     "So situation normal." McCloy laughed and began to open up his armor.
     "Yes sir, and it is all fucked up as usual." he growled in frustration.
     "Well we need to get this stuff worked out before people start shooting at us. Because as much as I love a challenge going into battle against a technologically superior opponent with malfunctioning equipment made by the lowest bidder is not my ideal afternoon."
     "Oh, I'm right there with you sir, but you are now bucking tradition and the Corps loves its traditions." Delacroix said as he let out a rough laugh.
      McCloy climbed into his suit and Delacroix helped him button up. He left the face plate up and rotated his shoulder through its full range of motion. "Feels good, Staff, much better. One problem down a dozen more to go."
     "Murphy's Law sir, we are all subject to it and the Marine Corps seems to pray to Murphy like some ancient god. When everything goes smooth I start getting real nervous, sir."
     "Cause that means we are walking into an ambush."
     "Damn right, every freaking time.