Read In Every Clime and Place for Free Online

balance and position despite the lack of gravity. “Listen up, Marines! We will be entering the airlock shortly. The gravity should kick in any minute. Once it stabilizes, lock and load.”
    Presently, we felt the ship turn as it entered the docking bay. We all caught ourselves against the bulkheads except for the gunny, who stood like he was carved of stone. I felt the weight of my gear press down on me as we entered the artificial G of the station. The craft slowed and came to a halt.
    The white light of the cabin turned red. The platoon bay echoed with a chorus of low metallic clicks as magazines were slipped into weapons and bolts pulled back and released. We made the trip with weapons empty in case a rough ride jostled us around and some shitbird had a finger inside the trigger guard.
    When we had loaded up, we clicked the quick release straps on our harnesses and detached from the bulkhead.
    The light turned green. A large section of the hull fell open, forming a ramp. Pilsudski’s squad was out the hatch, splitting left and right in a matter of seconds. A heartbeat later, I heard Sgt McCray’s voice in my helmet speaker.
    “Go!”
    We sprinted out the hatch. My fire team broke left, running past some of Ski’s Marines who were prone around the craft, covering the area. Sabatini was in the lead, O’Rourke slightly behind and right, then me behind and left, and Johnson, with the automatic, bringing up the rear. If we took fire, he would be least likely to be hit. He could then engage the enemy with automatic fire while we assaulted them.
    We rushed to cover behind the landing legs of a docked shuttle. We crouched behind them, covering the left side of the landing bay with our weapons. I felt my heart beating faster than usual, and the sweat of nerves was starting to bead on my face.
    “Three-one in place! All clear!” I whispered into my helmet mic. We were fire team one in third squad. Corporal Chan led fire team two.
    We treated this like a hot landing because we were at our most vulnerable when exiting the assault craft. If the rebels had seized the airlock, and considered us a threat, all they had to do was set up one crew-served weapon, a machine gun or grenade launcher, to cover the ramp. If we filed off parade-ground style, they could mow us down like wheat. We had learned a lot about amphibious landings in the last few centuries.
    I know there was no water, so “amphibious” isn’t exactly right, but this was an assault from one environment into another all the same. And the term stuck. Three centuries of tradition unmarred by progress.
    After we established that we were not going to be ambushed, Sgt Hernandez and one of his teams took up position around the assault vehicle. His other team would be under Lt Mitchell’s direct command.
    The lieutenant spoke with the officer in command of the guards at the airlock. We assembled to either side of the big inner airlock hatchway. It ponderously swung open, and Ski’s squad whipped through. We waited for the “all clear” before following. From here on in, we assumed every hatch, corner and passageway was a potential ambush.
    I got my first look at the interior of this outpost. It made me miss some of the shithole slums in war-torn Africa. It looked like the late twentieth century artist Escher had designed a tenement block in Hell. The living areas were built on the inside curve of the asteroid’s outer crust. Housing consisted of apartment blocks crammed together side to side, stretching toward the stone overhead. Elevators led “up” to the mines in the center of the rock. A web of steel alloy rigging held everything in place. The effect was like being in a bowl with a huge rocky ceiling irregularly set with lights, many of which had been shot out during the riots, giving the whole place a twilight gloom. The sounds of sporadic gunshots and sirens drifted through the air that stank of burning equipment and homes.
    And dreams.
    “And they actually