Danger Close #3 Drop Trooper

by Rick Partlow

“What you’re asking,” she said, eyeing me with shrewd discernment, “is whether any other Marines have been desperate enough to come see a Fleet psychological counselor. And the answer is yes, plenty have. But I honestly don’t think anyone knows where my office is yet. I’m surprised you found it. Please have a seat.”

  The chair on this side of her desk was nowhere near as comfortable as the one she had, which was a surprise. I’d expected something soft and inviting. I settled into it anyway and it creaked beneath my weight.

  “So, um, how do we do this?” I wondered. “Are there like alpha wave detectors or sonic stress analyzers built into the office or something?”

  Her peal of laughter was genuine and loud, and warmth flooded my face.

  “I’m not trying to interrogate you, Lieutenant,” she said, the laugh cycling down into a chuckle before it died. “It’s not my job to figure out if you’re lying to me. I’m just here for you to talk to.” She spread her hands. “So, talk. Tell me what brought you to this office today.”

  “Ma’am, it’s just that….” I closed my mouth, not knowing how to go on. “I just made 2nd Lieutenant less than two months ago,” I started again. “I went through OCS on Inferno. Before that, I was an E-5, a squad leader.”

  “Having trouble fitting in as an officer?” she wondered. “All those Academy ring-knockers shutting you out, don’t want to talk to a lowly former NCO?”

  “No…well, yeah, that too,” I admitted. The fact she was familiar enough with the situation to guess told me I was hardly the first newly-minted L-T to run into this problem. “But that’s only part of it. I mean, I guess that’s why I’m here talking to you, because there’s no one else I can talk to who would understand.” I stopped. That didn’t sound right. “I can’t talk to any of my friends from before because they’re still NCOs and I can’t be out drinking with them, telling them my problems.”

  “And what problems are those, Lt. Alvarez?” she asked, steepling her fingers as she regarded me with a carefully neutral expression.

  “I lost a Marine a few weeks ago,” I told her. It was the easiest way to start, even though it was just a fraction of why I was there. “The first one since I became a platoon leader.”

  “And you feel guilty? Like you should have been able to save them?”

  I resisted an urge to roll my eyes. I wasn’t being fair. It was a reasonable assumption, but Marines don’t like assumptions.

  “No. It was a fluke. They weren’t even on the front line of the battle. That’s the thing, though, this isn’t the first person I’ve lost.” I debated the best way to say it without sounding like I was complaining about the hand I’d been dealt.

  “I’ve had most of my platoon killed out from under me when I was a team leader.” I shrugged. “I was kind of a loner then and I didn’t really feel a connection with them, and I guess it didn’t bother me that much. I mean, I almost died, too, and that didn’t even bother me back then. I didn’t have much to live for, if I’m being honest.”

  I was rambling. I never talked this much and it didn’t feel natural, but if I wasn’t here to get it out in the open, then why had I bothered to come at all?

  “But then, there were others….” An image of Maria flashed across my memory. I hadn’t thought much about her lately. “I started to feel a part of the Marines, a part of my platoon, my company, started to make friends. It was hard, caring about anyone except myself, or believing anyone else could care about me. And a lot of them died.” Henckel’s face echoed back through time, earnest and cocky and always trying to prove himself to me. Lt. Ackley, so severe and businesslike, but always ready to teach, to pass on what it meant to be a leader. “I started feeling it. It hurt, bad. Bad enough I wished I had died instead of them.

  “This one…it didn’t. I felt bad, but it didn’t last. We had the memorial and she was gone and that was it. I haven’t really thought about her. I barely knew her. And I’m worried about that.”

  “You think you’re getting detached again? The way you felt when you first joined?”

  “Not like then. Then, I didn’t feel a connection because I’d never belonged to anything before. Now, it’s more like there was a part of me that could care, could be hurt by all this, and I feel like it’s been burned away. That there’s nothing left of that person and I’m changing into someone else.”

  I was babbling, not making sense, but Atherton wasn’t stopping me. She’d been telling the truth, she was here to listen, no matter how much meaningless blather I threw at her.

  “And that’s it?” she asked me. “That’s the main thing that’s bothering you? That you’re changing?” She leaned forward across her desk, smiling but with a tinge of sadness in her eyes. “Because I’ll tell you straight-up, Alvarez, you are. That may not be what you want to hear, but it’s inevitable. Death changes you. War changes you. Being an officer changes you, like it or not. You’re responsible for more people, and the more lives under your command, the greater chance you’re going to lose one. You aren’t going to react to their deaths the same way you did to your friends getting killed.”

  She rubbed at her eyes, as if the whole conversation was exhausting her.

  “Maybe if this was the Pirate Wars, where we rarely lost more than a few Marines or Fleet crew even in the big battles, officers could afford to get broken up over every casualty, but in this war? Total war with both sides throwing everything they have at each other? You’d go insane. I know it’s not exactly comforting, but I will tell you this; the callus you’re growing over your soul is necessary for now, but it doesn’t have to last. You can go back to being a normal person after this is all over.” She shrugged. “I should say, it’s possible to go back. I hope you can do it. Not everyone can.”

  “The reason I’m worried,” I said, finally drilling down to the meat of why I was there, “is that there’s somebody who I….” I faltered. This wasn’t something I was used to talking about. “There’s a woman who I’ve known since I reported to my unit. She was an NCO and she just left for OCS a couple months ago, right when I reported to my platoon.”

  “You two are involved.” Another assumption, but a good one.

  “I love her.” It sounded so juvenile when I came out and said it. “We’ve talked about settling down on one of the colonies after the war, about starting a family. But last night, I was at a bar here in Calliope, drinking pretty hard, and some local girl wanted to take me back to her place and I went with her and I didn’t even think about Vicky until the last second. I mean, I was just going to go ahead and have sex with this girl and the thing is, it wasn’t because I was lonely or horny. It was like I’d made this assumption that when Vicky went to OCS, it was goodbye. That when she came back, she’d see what I’d become and she wouldn’t want to be with me anymore. I wasn’t just afraid it might happen; I knew it was going to happen.”

  “It might happen,” she acknowledged, spreading her hands as if in admission. “And not just because you’ve changed. What do you think will happen to her when she faces the same sort of pressures you’ve already encountered? When she finds out she can’t look out after each of her Marines the same way she used to when she was a squad leader, that they’re going to die and there’s nothing she can do to change that? You think that won’t change her?”

  She sighed, eyes flickering downward as if she were considering her next words carefully.

  “Lt. Alvarez, I’m going to come clean with you. I know who you are. I know your record. I suspected you might be coming to see me.”

  “How?” I asked her, shaking my head. “I didn’t even know I was coming until this morning.”

  “Your company commander told me that you might be looking for some help.” She smiled with what seemed like genuine fondness. “Phil is a tough old son of a bitch, but he does care about his people.” The smile turned down and her eyes took on a deep sadness. “I don’t know how he does it, when he’s seen so many of them die.” Her shoulders shifted as if she was shaking o
ff the thought. “So, I know about your criminal record,” she went on, “the reason you joined the Corps in the first place. I know about Brigantia, and Ambergris, and the medals. About Maria Shepherd, Private Henckel, and Lt. Ackley.”

  She settled back into her chair, her hands folded in her lap.

  “I won’t lie to you, Lieutenant, your career is not what I’m used to. Even most of the combat veterans I see in here who’ve been in the service their whole lives don’t have the sort of resume you’ve built up in just the last three years. And I can’t help but wonder if some of that is because of what you said, that you didn’t really care if you lived or died. But I believe what you’re really scared of is that you’ll live through this. That you’ll have to keep the promises you’ve made, get married to your Vicky, wind up on a farm on some backwater colony raising algae, and a brood of little Camerons and Vickys.”

  The laugh burst out on its own, the image flashing in my mind of the two of us dressed in coveralls and brimmed hats looking so ridiculous that I couldn’t help it.

  “I don’t think I’m scared of it, ma’am,” I told her, trying to be honest. “I just think I can’t believe it’ll ever really happen.” The words tumbled out. I hadn’t said them before, not to myself and certainly not to Vicky. “Everything the two of us are, who we’ve become as people, is so wrapped up in the Marine Corps, in the war…I just don’t know how we’re going to live without it.”

  “And maybe you won’t. It won’t be easy. You’ll have to reinvent yourselves. You won’t have any choice, because there won’t be a war to fight. The question is, are you too afraid of the hard work of doing that to even try? Are you afraid of a problem you won’t be able to shoot your way out of?”

  I opened my mouth for an automatic denial, ready to tell her she was wrong, that I was willing to do anything to make it work with Vicky…and then I closed my mouth and forced myself to actually think about it.

  It was scary. Scarier than a whole brigade of Tahni High Guard.

  “So, what do I do?” I asked her.

  “Talk to her.”

  “I’ve tried. She’s at OCS and she’s barely sent me any messages, and she never answers mine.” I winced. I sounded like a fucking teenager…like the teenager I’d never had the chance to be.

  “It’s not important that she answers,” Atherton said, “or even that she sees it. It’s important that you say it. Write what you’re feeling. And if you don’t feel comfortable sending it to her, or think she has other things to think about right now, then just delete it. You don’t have to be completely honest with me, Cam, or even with her. But you do have to be honest with yourself.”

  “Maybe I’ll try that,” I said, nodding slowly, staring at the blankness of the bare wall but seeing Vicky’s face.

  “You’ll have plenty of time,” she told me, then leaned forward as if we were conspiring. “Don’t tell anyone you heard it from me, but I understand you’re going to be pulling out of here in a few days. And you’ve got a long trip ahead of you.”

  16

  I checked the hatch again just to make sure it was locked before I sat down on my bunk and touched a control on the tablet propped up facing me. A red indicator blinked, assuring me the message was recording.

  “Hi Vicky,” I said. “I know I haven’t written lately. I’ve been going through some shit and I didn’t want to try to talk to you about it until I’d wrapped my head around things. I think I’ve been a bit unrealistic about us.” The words poured out, tumbling like a grenade tossed into the room. “I listened to you talk about living on a farm on a colony world and raising a family and I co-opted your dream of a better life just because I didn’t have one of my own.

  “The truth is, I don’t have a dream for a life after the war. I don’t have any idea what kind of person I want to be, much less what I want to do with myself. The question is, what am I if I’m not a Marine? If I’m not a Drop Trooper? I’ve never had to answer the question of what I am because other people have always answered that for me. I was an orphan. I was an outsider, a streetboy, a criminal, a grifter. A prisoner. And finally, a Marine

  “And I’ve made myself fit into all those versions of Cameron Alvarez because I didn’t have any choice. I was pushed into all of them. Being a Drop Trooper is the first thing I’ve done that I ever took any pride in, that ever made me feel like something more than what I am, than an orphan, an outsider, a streetboy. People’s lives are in my hands. Victory or defeat, part of that is what I do.” I shrugged. “There’s bad sides to it, too, I know that. There’s horror and death and sometimes I feel like it’s all for nothing, that I’m not helping anyone. But I ran into someone on Calliope who told me otherwise. There are innocent people counting on us to do our jobs. But I know this won’t last. Once the war’s over, there’s no way the Commonwealth is going to keep millions of men and women under arms. The Skipper told me once it takes a hundred noncombatant support troops to keep one Drop-Trooper in combat. That can’t last.

  “But when I think about a life after the Marines, I see us together, but I don’t see what we’re doing. I don’t see me as a farmer. I’ve never been to a farm and I don’t know a damned thing about it. I’m not sure you do, either, but I know it’s something you’ve been telling yourself for a long time, and I would never tell you to give up your dream.”

  A sob welled up and I tried to keep it inside. Not because I didn’t want Vicky to see it, but because I knew if I started now, I’d never finish this video.

  “But I don’t want to lose you. And I think that’s why I made myself part of your dream. But I also don’t want to lie to you, and, maybe more important, I don’t want to keep lying to myself. If you come back from OCS and we have this talk and I tell you how I feel about this, and afterward, you still want to try to figure out a way we can be together, then that’s what’ll happen. But if things have changed, and maybe what we had has changed, I don’t want you to think you’re abandoning me or I’m abandoning you. What we had was incredible. It saved my life. But things don’t last forever, no matter how much we love them.

  “I do love you. And I love what we have together. And if it ends here, it’ll still be beautiful when we remember it. And I’d rather it end while it still leaves us only good memories, not after it falls apart and the only thing we recall is how much we came to resent each other.”

  I had to clear my throat of the lump that had formed while I spoke and I wiped at my eyes.

  “Anyway, that’s what I had to say. I hope you don’t hate me for it. And I hope I don’t hate myself.”

  I touched the control to stop the recording and gasped in a shuddering breath. It had been a lot harder than I thought. I tried to imagine how Vicky would react when she heard it, wondering if she’d be hit as hard as I was or if she’d get cold and hard and freeze me out of her thoughts for good.

  I flicked down the menu bar and examined the choices.

  Edit.

  Send Message.

  Save File.

  Delete.

  My finger hovered over Send Message for a full three seconds before I stabbed it decisively into the Delete control. “Are you sure?” it asked me.

  “Good question.”

  I touched yes, but I might have been lying.

  After it assured me the file had been deleted, I composed myself, touched record again and sat back.

  “Hey Vicky,” I said, forcing a cheerful tone into my voice. “Sorry I haven’t written lately, but I know you’ve been in the hardest part of OCS and I didn’t want to distract you. Also, we’ve been insanely busy and well, you’re never going to guess where we’re heading…”

  “I swear to God,” Scotty said softly, pitched so that I was the only one in the shuttle who could hear him, “that I thought we wouldn’t see this fucking place again until the war ended.”

  “There’s an old saying,” I told him, staring out the side viewscreen as the baked, dry plains of Inferno’s northern continent passed by beneath us
. “If you want God to laugh, tell him your plans.”

  Scotty eyed me sidelong, the corner of his mouth turning up.

  “When did you get to be all old and wise?” he asked me.

  “They pin it on along with the gold bar.”

  I glanced behind me, saw the other platoon leaders huddled with their platoon sergeants, not just from our company but from the entire battalion. Ahead of our position were the company commanders and first sergeants, all of us crammed into one shuttle while the rest of the troops waited on the Iwo Jima, sitting in orbit while we went to the oracle to bring back knowledge.

  “Yeah, well, I wish they’d pinned on some dirt on why the hell we’re here,” Scotty said, leaning back against the headrest. “I’ve never heard of shit like this, hauling our whole battalion from Calliope all the way back ten fucking light-years to Inferno. I thought the whole idea was we were supposed to stay out there….” He motioned upward. “…and hop from system to system until we’d cleared all the Tahni occupation.”

  “The high command works in mysterious ways. And they generally don’t share those ways with second lieutenants. I don’t even think the Skipper knows. Maybe Colonel Voss knows, but I think she has orders not to tell anyone. She went down ahead of us, so she probably knows by now, anyway.”

  “And the Sgt.-Major probably knows, too,” Scotty said, a sour expression passing over his open, broad-featured face. “He’s always lording it over everyone with how much top-secret shit he knows. Like the Tahni are so scared of him. Asshole.”

  I couldn’t help laughing, even though Scotty should have known better than to badmouth a superior NCO in front of an officer. But I don’t know if he’d quite got the part where I was an officer, yet. To him, I was the platoon leader, sure, but I was still just Cam. And maybe that was okay. I still needed someone who just thought of me as “Cam.” And if I couldn’t share everything with him anymore, at least he could share it with me.

  “So,” he said, a shrewd glint in his blue eyes, “you gonna sneak off and see Vicky at OCS while we’re here?”