Jethro: First to Fight Read Online Free Page A

change,
but for now his people had left out any sort of major habitation module on
them. They could be added later as need arouse.
    Then there was San Diego. What a debacle
that Bernal Sphere was turning into. The admiral had thought of it, it was a
brilliant piece of engineering. The shell was cool, they had a caretaker crew,
but again, with the admiral out of the system construction had halted before it
could really get off the ground. There were thousands of buildings cut into the
inner surface of the sphere, but with no reactors to power the base they were
all collecting dust. Well most of them, a few were active, but not many.
    The admiral and the staff had envisioned
San Diego as both a port, a training base, and a place away from Anvil and the
colonies that the dependents could call home.
    After the admiral had gotten things
under control and sent Vulcan out to repair the colonies the colony populations
had let loose, dropping their mandatory population controls in favor of
expansion into the new life support. Free love, he thought with a wry twist of
his lips. Even some of the military personnel had gone along with that,
applying for and usually getting permission to marry and have kids.
    Last year the unofficial census the
media had performed reported the system's population had tripled. Tripled, when
up until the admiral's arrival it had been dropping by a few thousand a year as
colonies failed or people left... or died at the hands of the corrupt.
    With the system economy in the tank more
and more people were turning to the military. Some thought of it as a free hand
out, a free pass to get an education and pass the time without having to pay
taxes. Some were desperate to provide for their children, he could understand
that. But those who wanted a free ride were abruptly disabused of such notions
when they learned about military discipline and how hard military life was.
    They had a few problem cases, people who
just thought it was one big joke. The JAG office hadn't been called in for many
such cases, a Captain's mast was all it took to sort out the flakes, and a few
incidents of hazing had sorted out others. Only the genuine wannabe hard cases
and career fuck ups had been stupid enough to push it beyond that. He'd had to
sign off on only 3 dishonorable discharges this quarter.
    They had something like four, no closer
to five percent of the system's active middle class population, somewhere
around 45,534 people in uniform right now, and another ten thousand civilian
contractors serving as support personnel. Many of these people had families,
dependents who weren't in the service and or had children. That made an already
complicated situation worse in some ways since San Diego was still up in the
air.
    The Marines were getting out of hand,
they had grown by nearly two hundred percent last year, with another four
thousand waiting for the next boot camp cycle. Which was another headache, he
thought with a pang. Major Forth and his jarheads were like rabbits. Go forth
and multiply was a joke among some of the staff.
    John hadn't planned on the focus being
on the Marines. He'd wanted a strong navy with a light but growing Marine
company on each ship... and more on San Diego. Right now they had almost as
many Marines as they did enlisted, it was a problem he hadn't anticipated.
    Part of the problem was the way the
Marines recruited. Marine recruiting was all inclusive, if you could walk,
slither, or crawl they'd take you no matter your education. The navy however
was a bit more picky, it had to be. You couldn't have people who knew next to
nothing working on something that could kill a lot of people after all!
Jarheads, he thought, shaking his head. They really did only know which end of
the gun the rounds came out of.
    Right now a lot of the recruits were in
four categories. The people wanting to get a better education, the ones who
wanted to support themselves or their family... those were the better ones,
they were