by Rick Partlow
“Keep ‘em coming until I stop talking,” I told her.
She poured me another two fingers of vodka and I frowned, wishing she would just fill the damned glass up. I sighed, picked it up and downed it without tasting it, just waiting for the vodka to do its fucking job and push the damned faces out of my head. The faces of the children…
“Alvarez.”
I wasn’t surprised, mostly because I was too drunk to be surprised, but I wasn’t too drunk to recognize the voice from beside me at the bar. I turned and nodded to Captain Phillip Covington. He’d appeared like a camo-clad ghost beside me on the next barstool over, elbows leaning on the polished wood.
“Sir. What are you doing at the finest bar on…?” I frowned, and my eyes seemed to go slightly out of focus when I did. “Forgive me, I can’t seem to remember the name of this place.”
“Calliope,” he supplied, what might have been amusement behind his cold eyes. “That’s the planet. This….” He motioned around us. “…is the very imaginatively named Calliope City. Which is barely necessary, since there doesn’t happen to be any other city on this planet. And this is the only open bar in the city, so far. Though I’m sure they’ll get around to cleaning up the others in a few weeks.”
Covington waved down the bartender and she walked back over from serving a local, a harried look on her face. The Skipper was right about this being the only bar, and it was getting busier the later I stayed. When I’d come in, just after local dusk, there’d only been a handful of patrons, Fleet techs from the uniforms. I hadn’t noticed the others file in, but now there were at least a couple dozen Fleet spacers and even more Marines, gathered at high-tops and tables and squeezed around the bar, the buzz of their conversation a background static I’d been shutting out.
“Whiskey,” Covington told the woman. “Whatever you have. Just fill it to the top.”
He turned back to me while she hunted down a bottle.
“You usually drink alone, Alvarez?” he wondered.
“It’s the only way I drink, lately,” I confessed, feeling no shame in it. I probably shouldn’t have been saying all this to Covington, but I just didn’t care. “Can’t drink with the platoon.” I looked into the empty glass, wondering why the bartender hadn’t come back to fill it yet.
“I see the other platoon leaders out here some nights,” Covington said, his tone casual, conversational, but the question there and unstated.
“Yes, sir, I’ve seen them, too.” I smacked my glass down on the bar, getting the attention of the friendly older lady and nodding toward it. “And I know they’ve seen me.”
The bartender set a glass nearly overflowing with something amber and disgusting-looking in front of Covington, then went back to get the vodka again.
“I can understand,” Covington told me, taking a sip of the whiskey and grimacing. It must have tasted as bad as it looked. “You’re OCS, they’re all Academy grads. You’re the oldest of them, the most experienced. They’re all from Surface Dweller families and not a one of them has spent a day in the Underground or lived off free soy and spirulina. Has to be tough relating to them.”
“The people I relate to,” I told him, “have a nasty tendency to wind up dead. So, they’re probably better off letting me drink alone.”
He laughed at that and I had to remind myself he was my superior officer and probably quite capable of kicking my ass so I wouldn’t take a swing at him.
“Son, do you know how long I’ve been a Marine?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many friends do you think I outlived?” He gulped down half the whiskey, licking his lips with an absent expression on his face, a thousand-meter stare in his eyes. “How many times do you think I sat where you’re sitting?”
“Counting this one, sir?”
His eyes flickered toward me, coming back into focus, and I thought for a second he was going to bite my head off. Metaphorically, though literally was still a strong possibility.
“Point,” he conceded. “I suppose the question you have to ask yourself is, what sort of life do you want after this war?”
“Are you really sure it’ll ever end, sir?” I asked him.
“It will.” He sounded confident.
“We fought them before,” I reminded him. “We could have ended it then.”
“Before, we’d barely had star travel for twenty years, the colonies were new, and there was a huge resource outlay establishing them. Fighting the first war nearly bankrupted the Commonwealth. The cease-fire seemed like a gift from God and we grabbed it with both hands and hoped it was all a huge mistake that we wouldn’t make again. This time, too much has already been lost, too much invested. After the Tahni attacked Mars, no one in the Commonwealth government will be satisfied with less than an unconditional surrender.”
“Tahni don’t surrender, sir.”
I hadn’t meant to lace the words with quite that large a dose of invective. The bartender came to my rescue with a refill and I doused the images of my platoon executing the Tahni troops with another shot of vodka.
“Not easily,” he agreed, like he was pretending not to notice my tone. “Things happen in war. In all wars. And I’m not going to lie and tell you that you’ll ever be the same person you were before, but there’s a clear choice to make about what you do once this is all over.”
“You mean whether to stay in or not, sir?” I guessed.
“I’m not sure that’s going to be an option.” Breath hissed between his teeth, like speaking on the subject caused him physical pain. “If we do the right thing, if we take care of the Tahni threat, the government isn’t going to keep paying for a military the size it is now. There will still be a Marine Corps, of course. Force Recon is cheap and I’m sure they’ll keep a platoon of them on every Fleet ship for security. But Drop Troopers?” He shook his head. “Individually, we don’t cost much, but the logistical support for us is damned expensive, and there’s no reason for them to keep it up when the need isn’t there. They might keep a battalion of us, a brigade at most, most of them on Inferno.” He downed the last of his whiskey and the face he made might or might not have been from the taste. “And I’m not at all sure I want to spend the next ten years on Inferno.”
“What would you do, sir?” I asked him, having to force my mouth closed first. The thought of the Skipper as anything but a Marine seemed like a violation of the natural order.
“Well, that’s the real question, isn’t it? For you and me. Me?” He shrugged. “There’ll always be a place for people who do what I do. The Corporate Council has its own Security Force and I’m sure they’ll be hiring after the war. Or I could use all that money I have saved up to buy a stake in a ship and travel to all the places I’ve always wanted to see. For you….” He jabbed a finger at me, the other four holding onto his glass. “…the question is, do you see yourself holding onto all this, all the memories, the things the war has done to you, the changes it’s made in you, or do you plan on setting up on that farm you and Sgt. Sandoval have been talking about?”
I gaped at him in disbelief.
“How the fuck…?” I stopped myself and blinked to try to make my brain work again. “How did you know about that, sir?”
“About you and Sandoval?” He favored me with a thin, wry smile. “I’d have had to be blind and deaf to miss it. About the farm?” He shrugged. “Well, when someone like Vicky Sandoval begins asking Top questions about how to use the Veterans’ Settlement Bonus and what planet she thinks would be the most favorable to settle on, it doesn’t exactly require a quantum-core computer to add two and two together.” Covington motioned for the bartender with his empty glass. “Have you heard from her?”
“No.” I rested my elbows on the bar, my arms encircling my empty glass like I was guarding it from predators. I stared at the stacks of bottles and refrigerated kegs behind the bar, but my eyes were focusing light years away. “Not since she left. She’s probably busy.” I shrugged. “Or you know, some OCS p
latoon trainers are real hard-asses about comms, they won’t let you send messages if anyone in the platoon fucks up….”
I trailed off. I was making excuses. She had other things to think about, and maybe that would include well after she got her commission. Maybe I was part of a life she was leaving behind at OCS. Maybe that last, frantic time we’d had together had really been goodbye. I’d told her I’d always be there for her, but she hadn’t made any such promises.
“Sir,” I told him, “I’m not sure I’m going to be the same man I was before when I see her again. The things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done….”
“Cameron, I am going to give you this advice like you were my own son.”
I stared at Covington in expectation, wondering what words of wisdom he would bequeath to me.
“Pull your shit together. You’re better than this, stronger than this. You’ve seen worse. I know you have. If I didn’t think you could handle this, I wouldn’t have sent you to OCS.”
He touched his ‘link to the payment terminal, then pushed his seat back and headed for the door without another word. I watched him go, trying to decide if his words had been as underwhelming as they seemed or if the vodka had dulled my senses enough that I just couldn’t appreciate them.
I was still staring at the door when a local girl sauntered over from the other end of the bar, wearing a painted-on dress and a smile to match. She touched the back of the seat Covington had been using and looked a question at me.
“This taken?” she asked it aloud when I didn’t respond.
“It’s all yours,” I assured her.
She was younger than me. Maybe twenty, but most likely closer to eighteen. Too young to be in here, but then again, this wasn’t Earth and things were different in the colonies. Not really my type, but attractive for all that. Trying too hard with the short, red dress and too much makeup.
“Buy me a drink?” she wondered. The smile faltered. “The owners jacked the prices up for you guys so most of us can’t even afford it right now.” She shrugged. “Not that I’m complaining about you being here, given what y’all did for us.”
“This one was easy,” I assured her. I waved at the bartender, who had to be pretty fucking tired of me by now. “Whatever she wants,” I said, tapping my ‘link. I turned back to the girl. She was twisting a blond curl around her finger. Her nails were as red as her dress. “I don’t even think we took a casualty here. Not like last time.”
“Sure blew the shit out of the town, though,” she said, snorting a humorless laugh. “Again, not complaining….”
I grinned.
“That’s because you weren’t in it,” I assured her. “Since the Tahni didn’t have any hostages, we got to hit them from the air, from orbit. All that was left was digging out some of the more stubborn types.”
The bartender handed the blond a mixed drink and refilled my vodka.
This was gonna cost a lot, I realized. I hadn’t been paying attention to the drink prices, but the girl said they’d jacked them up. Not that it mattered. I didn’t have much else to spend my pay on, anyway.
“You can always rebuild a city,” I reminded the girl.
“I guess you’re right. I’m Breanna,” she told me, extending a hand. I shook it. It was rougher than I’d thought it would be. She worked for a living.
“Cam,” I returned. “Nice to meet you. What do you do here in Calliope City, Breanna?”
“Well, I used to work in the fabrication center,” she said. Then she laughed, almost a giggle. “I’ll probably have to find another job until they rebuild it, though. These last few months, though, I worked in the algae farms. Everyone did, that or the soy farms. It’s all we got to eat. And there was nothing to do except work and sleep and eat, and I guess from what everyone is saying, we should be glad the Tahni even let us eat. But I don’t feel grateful to them. I’m just glad they’re all dead.”
She’d gotten up a head of steam but it had run out and her shoulders sagged as though it had taken too much energy to be so honest.
“It feels like it’s been so long since I could just get dressed up and go somewhere,” she said, taking a careful sip of the drink. “So long since I didn’t have to look over my shoulder.”
“Glad we could help,” I said, raising my glass in salute.
She accepted the toast, taking a sip of her drink.
“You said ‘this time’ you didn’t take casualties,” she reminded me. “Did you last time?”
I hid behind my drink for a moment.
“Yeah,” I said. “It was pretty ugly. I don’t especially want to talk about it, if it’s okay with you.”
“Oh, sure,” she said quickly, her face falling as if I’d slapped her.
“Everybody else wants me to talk about it,” I explained. “But talking about it just makes me remember it’s going to happen again. And I’d rather not think about that right now.”
“I understand,” she told me, and seemed to mean it. “That’s why I came out tonight, you know? Because I didn’t want to think about all that. I just wanted to…you know, have fun.”
She caught my eye and I don’t think there was any way, even three sheets to the wind, that I could mistake that look for anything else.
“Is that why you’re out tonight, Cam? To have fun?”
“Yeah, I guess it is,” I said, shrugging.
"Then why don’t we stop paying too much for shitty drinks,” she suggested, raising an eyebrow, her fingers resting on my bicep, “and go somewhere and have fun?”
“Somewhere” turned out to be a block of temporary apartments the Fleet Corps of Engineers had set up in some old offices, about a kilometer from the bar. Fall was settling into Calliope City and the night breeze was chilly, a wind stirring the high clouds, a few stars peeking through. A lot of the city was just gone, the wreckage bulldozed by the Engineers, leaving bare foundations ready for rebuilding, and it gave the walk a haunted, empty feeling.
Which matched the feeling in my stomach.
Breanna pulled me along by the hand, seemingly unaffected by the cold even though her dress was low-cut and exposed a lot of leg, but when we pushed through the door of her place and she wrapped her arms around my neck and kissed me, her skin was freezing to the touch.
Her lips tasted of alcohol and breath-freshener mint and she was skinnier than I’d thought, firm and soft against me, and dizziness washed over me, a combination of the vodka and the touch of her skin. She pulled the fasteners of my fatigue top loose and stripped it off of me, letting it fall to the bare floor just inside the front door, then began working at my pants. I was in a fevered rush, unthinking, uncaring, ready to let it happen.
You made a promise. You said you always keep your promises.
I pulled away from her, drawing in a breath, unsure whose voice I was hearing in my head. My thoughts were spinning out of control and it was hard to reach into the whirlpool and draw any single one out.
“What’s wrong?” she asked me, grinning, reaching into my pants again. “You got the bed spins and we aren’t even in bed yet?”
“Wait,” I said, stepping back out of her reach and trying to catch my breath. I was still dizzy and I put out a hand to steady myself, feeling the rough surface of the newly-poured buildfoam wall beneath my palm. “Stop. I can’t.”
“What do you mean you can’t?” she asked, hands on her hips. She’d pulled off her dress and I didn’t even remember her doing it, and the sight of her sent my heart beating faster again, but I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on staying calm. “You looked like you were halfway there a second ago.”
“I’m sorry, Breanna,” I told her, bending down and grabbing my shirt and nearly keeling over from it. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have come here. I can’t do this. I can’t do this now….”
And I was out the door and back into the night, running away, not from her plaintive, insistent cries, but from myself.
15
I hesitated with m
y finger hovering over the call button, afraid.
What the hell are you afraid of?
What I might find out, maybe? Maybe I just didn’t want to know what was wrong with me. Maybe she’d just tell me I was a shitty human being.
But would that be any worse than living with the guilt? The guilt of letting Carson and Delp kill the prisoners, the guilt of Valentine’s death, the guilt of not being able to save those people on Demeter and Vistula…hell, I even felt guilty for ruining Breanna’s first night out on the town since the invasion, as absurd as that seemed. I felt like I should go back and apologize to her, but I was too embarrassed.
I glanced around in the hallway of the makeshift headquarters of the temporary Fleet base on Calliope to make sure no one else was around, then I touched the button.
And waited.
“Come in.”
I didn’t know what the office had been before, but whatever previous identity it had possessed had been stripped bare down to white plaster walls and left that way, as if the current resident didn’t believe she’d be here long enough to make them her own. She sat at an ancient, metal desk, the chair upholstered in what might have been faux leather or, given the fact we were out on one of the outer colonies near the ass-end of nowhere, it might have been real leather.
The woman sitting in the chair was as plain and severe as the office, her uniform unadorned by decoration or achievement, marked only by her Fleet rank as a Lt. Commander and the badge of her branch, medical corps.
“Dr. Atherton,” I said, tentative and quiet, “I’m Lt. Alvarez. I’m one of the Marine Drop Troopers. Can I come in?”
“As I am currently between patients,” Atherton said, the corner of her mouth curling upward in dry humor, “please. Be my guest. Close the door behind you.”
I’d been planning on it. As much as I was hesitant to come in myself, I was even more worried about someone from my unit seeing me here.
“You don’t have any other patients?” I asked, pushing the door closed. “Do people not…come to you for anything?”