by Rick Partlow
“Let’s just say,” Hollingsworth told me, quirking an eyebrow, “that you have a brand-new warranty on everything between your hip and your knee. There wasn’t much left and we had to grow the replacements in a cloning vat.” He shrugged. “Well, most of it. The skin and muscle. We replaced the nerves with superconductive fibers and hooked them through to your natural nerves with a small implant computer, and we replaced some of your ligaments and tendons with byomer, which is, I understand, the same thing you use for the motivators in your battlesuit.”
He snorted as if he found it amusing.
“It’ll be more durable than the original setup, so don’t worry about that. The nerves are still synching up with the superconductive fibers, which is why you may be feeling some pins-and-needles below the knee. It’ll go away in a day or two.”
“Am I good to go, then?” I wondered. I looked around, but didn’t see any clothes.
“You are,” Hollingsworth said, with something of a craftsman’s pride in his smile. “But you’re going to have to wait here. We sent for someone from your unit to bring you some clothes and escort you back. They should be here shortly.”
I nodded, setting back on the bunk.
“I got the room to myself,” I said, looking around at the three other empty beds in the room. “Did we not have many casualties?”
“There were a few.” He shrugged. “Mostly civilians from their militia. But you’re one of the last to recover. I don’t keep up too much with that end of things, but from what I’ve been told, there wasn’t much opposition on the ground, once the Fleet got past the air defenses.”
“No, I suppose there wouldn’t have been.” At least that was some comfort. “Thanks for taking care of me, sir.”
“It’s my job, son.”
He left the room, nose buried in the tablet and I discovered that I had to relieve myself. The door to the head was open and I was ambulatory and not burdened by a catheter, so I did it the old-fashioned way. When I came out, Captain Covington was waiting for me, arms full of a uniform and pair of boots.
“Skipper,” I said, trying not to flinch. I felt like I was six years old again, waiting in my room for my father to decide on a punishment for some mischief I’d been caught at.
He said nothing, just took the clothes over to the bunk and set them down, placing the boots beside them as if in some sort of sacred ritual, a memorial for the dead.
“I’m not here to lecture you about what you did wrong, Cameron,” he told me. “Partially because I don’t think you need me to, but mostly because you did a lot of other things right. You took a huge risk and went against express orders, and if things had gone differently, you’d be facing the court-martial you avoided just a few days ago. But that’s not what happened. The actions of your platoon saved the lives of thousands of civilians and probably prevented hundreds of casualties for our own troops, so instead, you’re probably looking at a medal.”
I walked over to the clothes, grabbing the pants and pulling them on, unable to meet his eyes.
“Scotty deserves a medal,” I told him, “not me.”
“There’ll be plenty to go around,” he assured me. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Gunnery Sergeant Hayes was awarded the Medal.”
Now I did look up into his grey gaze. The Medal meant the Medal of Valor, the highest decoration in the Commonwealth military. It was usually awarded posthumously.
“Colonel Oz should get one, too,” I judged. I hesitated, knowing the question I should ask and yet dreading it. “What was the butcher’s bill, sir?”
“Along with Gunnery Sgt. Hayes, you also lost Sgt. Joanna Carson, Corporal Andre Levoie, and Privates Nicholas Coffee and Cece Nemmens.”
Each name was a kick to the gut. Five dead, including Carson. I hadn’t even seen her fall. Levoie was a team leader from Third squad, and Coffee and Nemmens were both from Second. They’d probably died when the roof caved in on us.
“As for WIAs, well, that was nearly everyone.” He raised an eyebrow. “But you were the most seriously wounded and the last to get kicked out of sick bay. We have temporary barracks set up in downtown Dolabella, and they’re waiting for you there.”
I stripped off the hospital gown and replaced it with a T-shirt and a fatigue blouse, then knelt down and pulled on the boots, taking my time strapping them tight. My shoulders shuddered as I clenched my jaw against a sob.
“How can I face them?” I asked him, choking the words out. “How can I walk in there after what I did to them?”
“This is what being an officer is about,” Covington told me, his voice soft, the way my father’s had been when he gently explained to me what I’d done before laying down whatever punishment he thought was justified. “These decisions. There’s a price you’re going to have to pay for them, not just today but for the rest of your life. And it’s going to be worse than anything a court-martial could throw at you, son.”
He offered me a hand up and I took it, letting him help me back to my feet.
“But that’s a judgement you’re going to make on yourself. Your people won’t hate you for the ones who died as long as you don’t throw their lives away. They’ll love you for winning, for leading them into the guns of the enemy. And as much as you may hate yourself for it, you have to let them.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I changed the subject.
“What are we doing now, sir? Do you know? Are we staying here?”
“For a while. Nothing official has been announced, but everyone knows this was the last domino to fall. We’ve taken back our worlds, now it’s time to take down the Imperium. I’m sure that’ll require a bit of reshuffling, reinforcing, restocking. You know how it goes.”
The ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“In fact, while you’ve been on the mend, we’ve been getting reinforcements in. Fresh battalions of Drop-Troopers, with Vigilantes right off the production floor, and officers straight out of OCS. Once you’ve checked in on your people, you might want to take a transport buggy over to First Platoon, Alpha Company, Fourth Battalion. There’s someone there who wanted to say hi.”
Dolabella had come back to life in the last four days, the remnants of the population moving back into their houses and pulling down the boards from their businesses, already trying to restart their lives without a break.
I’d tried to catch one of the transport buggies, the automated, open-topped cars making their way back and forth from one end of the town to the other, but the first two had filled up quickly and I’d finally just decided to walk. It was, I’d discovered, mid-morning, and the sky was blue and beautiful. It might have been a spring day in any city where thousands of people hadn’t died in a war. It was educational.
There were no haunted looks in the eyes of these civilians, no resentment, only gratitude. More than one rushed out from their shop or their restaurant or café to shake my hand and try to give me free food as I walked across the downtown to the Marine encampment on the opposite side from the industrial district. They had no way of knowing who I was, that I’d been there when they’d been freed from the pens, but they knew what I was, and that was enough.
It almost made the losses worthwhile. Almost.
I took a breakfast sandwich when it was offered to me by an older lady wearing a stained apron and a huge smile, both because she’d insisted and because I was starving, and I ate it on the way.
I found her in a makeshift, outdoor platoon area, a ring marked off by empty cargo containers between temporary shelters thrown up from buildfoam. Folding seats were gathered in a circle around a sand table and four very young-looking squad leaders listened while a seasoned gunnery sergeant stood off to the side, arms crossed, scowling in general disapproval, as if he began the day pissed off and then went looking for privates to justify it.
“This will be our patrol area,” the young platoon leader told her people, pointing at the north side of the city-in-miniature as represented on th
e sand table by empty ration wrappers and a few stray rocks. “We’ve been tasked with making sure the Tahni didn’t leave any troops behind for sabotage or insurgency operations. We’ll be running two patrols a day, one at dawn and one just before dusk. Second Platoon will take the night shift for the first two days, then we’ll switch unless they’ve pulled us off it by then. This isn’t rocket surgery, just basic tactics. I want you to go over the tactics and movement techniques involved with your squad, so get a lesson plan ready before lunch and present it to Gunny Bruell for approval. Are we clear?”
“Ooh-rah, ma’am!” the junior NCOs chorused.
“Then get going!” the Gunny snapped. “Get your asses in gear!”
The squad leaders scattered to the wind and the Gunny grumbled after them, leaving just Second Lieutenant Victoria Sandoval. Vicky’s hair was cut shorter than I remembered from her last video and she’d lost some weight, thinning out her face, leaving edges sharper. I stayed where I was, partially concealed behind a maintenance rack and the Vigilante suit resting upright in its grasp.
I stepped out from behind the battlesuit. Her eyes flickered toward me, not truly seeing who I was at first, then snapping back up and locking on mine. Then she was flying across the distance between us and throwing herself into my arms, kissing me fiercely. I held her tight, not wanting to ever let go, reveling in the feel of her, in the warmth against my body.
It wasn’t exactly model military decorum, and someone might have been watching but neither of us much cared. It lasted forever, and once forever was over, she hugged me around the neck, burying her face in my chest and sobbing softly.
“The Skipper told me about Scotty,” Vicky said, the words muffled against my chest. “I’m so sorry, Cam. I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“It should have been me,” I said, pulling away from her, bitter anger rising in my gut. I’d been unconscious for days and feelings I hadn’t yet had time to deal with welled up unbidden. My fists clenched and I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting to let the tears come because I knew they wouldn’t stop anytime soon. “It was my command. No one else should have had to do it.”
“Scotty was a good man,” she said, stopping me with a hand on my chest. “And he was a good Marine. He knew what he was doing, and he knew you would have done it if you could.” She gave me a stern look. “Don’t second-guess him. It was his choice.”
“I’m going to have to record a message to his family,” I realized, horrified. My legs felt as if they were going to give way, and I collapsed into one of the folding chairs. “What the hell am I going to say to them?”
Vicky sat down beside me, grabbing my hand in hers and squeezing it.
“Tell them the truth. He gave his life to save his friends.” She shook her head. “It’s more meaningful a death than most of us are going to get.”
“I’ve been thinking about that a little since you left,” I confessed. She was still holding my hand and I felt her fingers tighten reflexively.
“What?” she wondered, forehead creasing in confusion, or perhaps concern. “Dying?”
“That, too.” I shrugged. “I mean, how could you not? But mostly what happens if I don’t. If we don’t.”
“I thought we’d already decided on that. Remember? The farm, the shared nightmares, the kids we would freak out with our war stories?” She was trying to make light of it, but there was a stress behind the words.
“We did,” I acknowledged. All those videos I’d recorded and deleted, everything I had told myself she didn’t need to hear I just blurted out anyway. “But we both keep changing, Vicky. The war keeps forcing us apart, and it’s nobody’s fault, it’s just the way things keep happening. Every time we come back together, we’re different people. Shit, sometimes I feel like I’ve aged a million years. And I’m just afraid that one of these times when I see you again, that new version of you isn’t going to love the new me anymore.”
I thought she might be angry. I could understand her being angry. Instead, she kept hold of my hand and kept her voice steady and calm.
“Let me tell you something, Lt. Alvarez. You are my anchor. However much either of us might change, because of this….” She ran a finger over her lieutenant’s bar. “…or because of what we go through, no matter how much we get tossed around by the waves in this shitstorm of a war, you are the one thing that holds me to a center point. Without you, I’m just drifting.”
“That was almost exactly what I said to you in a video message I recorded,” I told her, laughing softly. “I didn’t send it because I was dealing with some stuff and…well, you had OCS and I didn’t want to lay it all on you right then.”
She leaned over from her chair and pressed her forehead against mine.
“Things are going to get crazy pretty soon,” she warned. “We’re going to be invading Imperium worlds. I can’t wrap my mind around that shit unless I know we’re going to be there at the end. So how about this? We don’t have to promise we’ll love each other after all this is over. We don’t even have to promise we’ll like each other. We just have to promise we’ll give it a chance.” She drew back and offered a hand to shake. “Deal?”
“Lt. Sandoval,” I told her solemnly, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”
WHAT’S NEXT IN THE SERIES?
CONTACT FRONT
KINETIC STRIKE
DANGER CLOSE
DIRECT FIRE
ALSO BY RICK PARTLOW
If you enjoyed Drop Trooper, you will love Wholesale Slaughter!
Start a new adventure today!
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Thank you for reading Danger Close, book three in Drop Trooper.
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ABOUT RICK PARTLOW
RICK PARTLOW is that rarest of species, a native Floridian. Born in Tampa, he attended Florida Southern College and graduated with a degree in History and a commission in the US Army as an Infantry officer.
His lifelong love of science fiction began with Have Space Suit---Will Travel and the other Heinlein juveniles and traveled through Clifford Simak, Asimov, Clarke and on to William Gibson, Walter Jon Williams and Peter F Hamilton. And somewhere, submerged in the worlds of others, Rick began to create his own worlds.
He has written a ton of books in many different series, and his short stories have been included in seven different anthologies.
He currently lives in central Florida with his wife, two children and a willful mutt of a dog. Besides writing and reading science fiction and fantasy, he enjoys outdoor photography, hiking and camping.
www.rickpartlow.com
Table of Contents
Danger Close
Contents
Copyright
WHAT’S NEXT IN THE SERIES?
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
&nbs
p; Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
WHAT’S NEXT IN THE SERIES?
Also by Rick Partlow
FROM THE PUBLISHER
About Rick Partlow