title: Call Sign: Lightning: Inside the Rowdy World and Risky Missions of the Marines' Elite ANGLICOs
author:  Scott Messmore 
description: Scott Messmore served as an ANGLICO for twelve years and spent nearly twenty years reporting for various small newspapers in Florida. He lives in Boynton Beach, Florida.
zlib_text: IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  William King
  
  THE ATMOSPHERE IN the steering chapel of the Spiritus Sancti was tense as the
  scouts pushed through the brocade-curtained archway into the cool basalt
  fastness of the command centre. Tech-adepts chanted, counting down the range.
  The machine language gibberish of shaven-headed monitors hummed in the
  background, a constant, incomprehensible babble. Above them, on the cat-walks,
  dark-robed figures strode from control-icon to control-icon, checking the
  purity seals of the major systems and wafting censers of burning incense. The
  chapel bustled with a controlled panic that Sven Pederson had never
  encountered before. The young Space Marine didn’t need the red warning globes
  hovering on either side of the holo-pit to tell him that the starship was at
  battle-stations.
  
  ‘Ah, gentlemen, there you are at last. I’m so pleased you could join us.’ The
  measured tones of Karl Hauptman, commander of the vessel, cut easily through
  the noise.
  
  ‘You summoned