Wyatt turned to them and hiked a thumb toward Gabe. “This is my brother. Won a big battle so they sent him here to drink rum on the beach.”
“Must be nice,” one of the Ghosts quipped.
Gabe ignored all this. He wanted to ask his brother a load of other questions. Like what he’d been up to since they’d last seen each other, or more to the point, how Wyatt had got mixed up in Special Forces. But he had his orders, and Wyatt surely did, too.
“Cap said you need some supplies.”
In answer, Wyatt snapped his fingers. A woman behind him slapped a laminated piece of paper into his hand. Wyatt in turn handed it to Gabe.
“Just a few things, then we’ll be out of your hair.”
“Guess we’ll have to catch up another time,” Gabe said, scanning the list. Rations, fuel, ammo. The usual stuff. Except for the last two items.
“Yellow paint… and… you’re taking all our beer?”
Instantly the Vectes regulars at Gabe’s back started to grumble.
“No, ’course not,” Wyatt said. “Read it literally. We just need the kegs. Doesn’t say they need to have anything in them.”
“I don’t understand.”
“And you can’t ask for an explanation. So it goes, eh, bro?”
Gabe grunted, his brain kicking into overdrive. True, he couldn’t ask questions, but the need for kegs was going to be an issue. The latest shipment had just arrived. Emptying them sounded fun and all, but the sun had barely come up. Last thing he needed was a bunch of sauced-up enlisted stumbling around all day. Then he tried to imagine what a spec-ops team needed with twenty empty beer kegs. Nothing leapt to mind.
“Problem?” Wyatt asked.
Gabe motioned for his brother to join him off to the side. They walked fifteen feet from the others and turned their backs slightly.
“Were it anyone else asking, I’d just follow my orders and give you what you need, but… Wyatt, c’mon, all our kegs? Emptied or full, doesn’t matter. I’ll have a riot.”
“We can help you quell a riot.” That grin that Gabe knew so well crept onto the younger man’s face. He’d seen it a hundred times. It usually led to Gabe and Oscar having to step in and save Wyatt from yet another scrape.
“You know, I’d hoped you’d mature a little once you reached adulthood,” Gabe said. “If you reached adulthood, that is.”
The man shrugged. “Never asked for you and Oscar to take me under your wings.”
“You would have died if we hadn’t.”
“True,” Wyatt admitted. “I’m grateful for that. Seriously, I am. But the fact remains…”
Gabe looked at the man beside him. No matter how hard he tried, he still saw him as the scrawny, sickly, awkward boy who was in the process of being kicked to death when Oscar and Gabe had stepped in and chased off the gang of idiots picking on the weakling. That had been their first day at the orphanage, and the boy called Wyatt rarely left Oscar’s or Gabe’s side in the years that followed. They came to think of him as their little brother. For better or worse.
“Felt like all Oscar and I did at Mercy School was watch your back.”
“And look at me now,” Wyatt said, spreading his arms. “All grown up.”
“Physically, anyway.”
At that Wyatt just grinned. “Your clearance level means I can’t share details, but I’m pretty sure it’s me protecting you now, brother.”
Gabe shook his head. The arrogance of Ghost Squad was legendary, and only made worse by the fact that they’d earned it.
“Look, about your list… you said you just need the kegs, not the beer.”
“Correct.”
“Would something else do in their place? I can’t ask what you need them for, but what about… hmm… we’ve got a palette of air tanks left from a year back. The dry dock pump failed, so for about three months the fish-heads had to dive to fix scrapes on the hulls. Now they’re just collecting dust. The tanks, not the sailors.”
Wyatt rubbed his chin, deep in thought. Finally he glanced up.
“Show me.”
* * *
An hour later the four landing craft began making trips back and forth to the LCU, taking loads of the old unused diving tanks, along with the rest of the supplies the Ghosts had requested. When the tedium of loading began, Gabe ordered those of his men who had duty to get to it. The spectators drifted off soon after. Show over.
It was only when the last boat was loaded, and Wyatt came over to say goodbye, that Captain Phillips strode up and took in the scene.
“Get everything you need?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Wyatt replied.
“Good. I want you to relay a message to your captain for me.”
“Comms down?”
“No, comms are fine, thank you very much. I need something impressed upon him, and that means someone needs to say it to his face.”
“Fair enough.” There was that grin again.
Phillips stepped up to the young man and stared up into his eyes for a moment. She was as stocky as they came. Twice as wide as Wyatt and all of it was muscle. A cast-iron wall of a woman. Yet there was something about the way Wyatt held himself that made Gabe wonder which of them would win in a scrape. The boy Gabe had first saved in that orphanage bathroom had been as useless as a sack of hammers, but you didn’t survive a childhood like that without learning how to survive, and Gabe and Oscar had taught him plenty. The rest had been sheer willpower and—if Gabe was totally honest—a penchant for deviousness that rivaled anyone.
“Do you find something funny?” Captain Phillips asked. Under any other circumstances she would have tacked a rank onto that, just to show it was lower than hers, but none of the Ghosts’ armor had ranks displayed, or names for that matter.
“No ma’am,” he replied, looking into the middle distance instead of her face, which was only inches away.
“Good. Now here’s the message.”
Please don’t take out a notepad and pen, Gabe thought, willing the advice to reach his brother through sheer mental force.
Wyatt stood still. Waiting. Playing the game.
Good.
“Nothing interesting ever happens in these islands,” Phillips said, “and I like it that way. We have our base, the Gorasni have theirs. All the rocks in between are just that. Rocks. Useless rocks.”
“I—”
She stepped on his interruption with all the considerable force her rank and stature allowed.
“Useless is good, Ghost. Useless is better than a mountain of body bags. Do you understand?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Good. Doesn’t matter if you understand, though. Impress it upon Captain Deevers.”
“I will.”
“Then you’re dismissed.”
Wyatt saluted. It was, Gabe thought, the perfect salute to give someone you didn’t think deserved it. Just an inch on the respectful side so as not to be called out on it, and nothing more.
The conversation over, Wyatt turned on his heel. In the process he met Gabe’s eyes. It was only the briefest of instants, but Gabe had known Wyatt through the toughest years of their lives, and had a deep knowledge of all the looks the man could give and what they meant.
This look? It meant trouble.
Phillips nodded, then turned on her heel, matching Wyatt’s exit with one of her own.
Gabe caught up with Wyatt as he was climbing aboard his craft.
“She’s serious, by the way,” Gabe said.
“I could tell.” Wyatt winked at him.
“It… It’s good to see you, Wyatt.”
“’Course it is.” His grin matched the tone.
Gabe lowered his voice. “I’m serious, brother.”
At that Wyatt swung his legs back over the side of the boat and approached. He clasped hands with Gabe, then pulled him into a soldier’s embrace.
“I know you are,” Wyatt said. “It’s good to see you, too. I wish Oscar was here. Family reunion, eh?”
/>
“We should arrange that,” Gabe replied. “After… well, after.”
Wyatt’s grin faltered a bit. “One day at a time, eh? But if the stars align and that reunion can happen, first round’s on me.”
“Holding you to that.”
Wyatt saluted. A much less formal version than that he’d given Phillips. Then he was back aboard his boat, and the motor revved.
Gabe watched his brother speed off back to his ship. After a while he realized that Phillips was standing beside him, doing the same thing. When the rafts were all back in the mothership, and the ramp retracted, she turned to him.
“I got the sense,” she said, “that you know that little prick.”
Gabe nodded. “Wyatt Callahan. We grew up together.”
“I could look him up, but we both know the file will be restricted. What can you tell me about him?”
“He’s a good man at heart,” Gabe said carefully. “Unfortunately, that heart is buried under a lifetime of shit.” Sprinkled here and there with the best advice and support Oscar and I could give, but I know it wasn’t enough. He left this unsaid.
“Should I be worried?”
A loaded question, and one Gabe wasn’t sure how to answer. He’d only worked with her for a few months, and their relationship was still as rocky as the eastern shore. Gabe was used to giving advice and having it listened to, usually followed. But Phillips seemed to think that discarding his advice—or just not asking for it at all—was the right way to establish the proper pecking order. Navy first, in her base.
“Worried? I don’t think so,” he said. Then he added, “But today might be a good day for a readiness drill.” To her credit, she pondered that. Then she turned and looked at the LCU out at sea.
“They could have come a lot closer,” she said, almost to herself. “A bus like that… could have come right up to shore.”
He remained silent. The reason they’d anchored so far out was obvious. Whatever else they had in their hold, it wasn’t for prying eyes. After a few seconds she turned and marched back to her office.
Ten minutes later, the announcement went out for a readiness drill.
2: CALM WATERS AND CHOPPY SEAS
At 9AM sharp, Gabe walked down to the shipyard and out onto dock number one.
The Gears under his command stood at attention, in a neat line along the old wooden planks of the dock. Opposite them, on the side where the boats were moored, the sailors stood. Three per boat. Pilot, navigator, engineer. Technically they answered to Phillips, not him, but since being promoted Gabe had earned their trust and respect. He couldn’t remember the last time any of them had asked Phillips before following one of his orders.
There were sixteen patrol boats in all. They gleamed in the morning sun.
The Gears stood in full combat loadout. They were a pool from which to be drawn. When a patrol went out, a minimum of two Gears would accompany the sailors. Two was the norm around here, with so little activity on dry ground. A full squad of six could be deployed, though, and in a pinch as many as ten warriors could crowd in.
One hundred and sixty Gears lined the dock.
Gabe walked down the line of soldiers first, inspecting their kit as much as the look in their eyes. “Vacant stare” was what he drilled, and vacant stares were what he saw. As for the kit, things weren’t quite as satisfactory.
“Private Howe!”
“Sir!”
“Break that Lancer down and clean it again. I can see grit from here.”
“Sir!”
The man stepped out of the line and run-marched back to the armory.
“Corporal Davis!”
“Sir!”
“Is that a standard scope on that Longshot?”
“No, sir!”
“Well what the hell is it, then?”
“Sir, the scope is from a Pesanga boar rifle. Traded for it when I was—”
“Is it better than ours?”
“Sir, yessir! Their optics are—”
“As you were, soldier.”
The woman clapped her jaw shut.
“Adapt and improvise,” Gabe said. “Well done, Davis. Just clear it with me next time, please.”
She smiled, slightly. The smile vanished when Gabe threw an extra glare her way. It was a fine line, he knew. Most of his fellow lieutenants were all about regs. Everything by the book, the COG way was the only way, the COG way was best. Army before Navy. That sort of thing.
Gabe Diaz didn’t hate many things, but blind obedience bugged him. There were always other ways to do things. Creative ways to solve problems. It was all in one’s mindset. Thinking not just about results, but of consequences, what to do about them, and the consequences of those actions, too. Initiative and critical thought were as essential as a properly cleaned and oiled Lancer, in his book.
On the line of one hundred and sixty Gears, he counted six with fresh “NO80” tattoos. Several more had actually used a torch to emblazon the slogan on their armor. It was time, Gabe thought, to address the phenomenon directly.
“Private Abbot!” Gabe shouted at the sixth tattoo wearer. The man was near the end of the row, and stiffened at his name being called out.
“Sir!”
“Explain that.”
“It’s a tattoo, sir.”
“No shit, Private. What does it mean?”
The man’s posture shifted, suddenly nervous. “I’m sure the LC knows. Sir.”
“I’m asking you.”
“No eighty. No eightieth year of war.”
“An end to the war?”
“Yessir.”
“This year?”
The man nodded.
“And those of you wearing this, are you aware of some victory plan? Something that I’m not? A final push? A great offensive?”
No one spoke.
“Perhaps you plan to surrender on New Year’s Eve, then?”
They grew shifty. The silence remained.
Gabe stood there, staring at them, knowing that Phillips would be watching this from her office. He had to play this right, and wished now he had just ignored it. Phillips hadn’t told him to put an end to the slogan, after all, but he thought it was probably a test, considering she’d said nothing about it as of yet.
“This war, between the Coalition and the UIR,” he said, in his lowest tone that would still carry up the dock, “will end when people way above our pay grade decide it will end. This year, next, or ten more down the road. That’s not our decision. They make the strategy. We carry it out.”
Silence reigned on the line, but something else, too. A tension in the air. That barest hint of defiance or, perhaps, disobedience.
“We all want the war to end, Abbot, but it’s strategy that’s going to win it. That and all of us, doing our part to the best of our ability. It’s most definitely not an arbitrary timeframe chosen because it makes for a good tattoo. Am I understood?”
“Sir!”
“So I’m going to work under the assumption,” Gabe went on, “that when I see ‘no eighty’ on your arms and armor, painted on walls and hulls and signs, that what you’re telling me is that you’re going to kick so much UIR ass in the next six months that the Indies’ll surrender out of sheer exhaustion.”
They knew this tone, and what it prompted. A chant erupted from the line, all bellowing the single syllable in unison.
“HOO!”
“Good. Gears, dismissed.”
The Gears turned and marched off back to their duties. Gabe turned to the sailors, then, and repeated the process. Their half of the dock included the boats, though, and inspecting all of them took the better part of the afternoon. Whatever reservations they might have held about having someone outside the Navy inspect their boats had vanished a long time ago. Gabe had made sure of it, mainly by studying. He knew as much about their boats and procedures as any Naval officer, and with that knowledge he’d earned a grudging respect.
By the time he reached the last boat, the sun was
already kissing the horizon. Gabe was invited, as was tradition, then stepped aboard and started with the engines. He’d already noticed that there was oil in the water beneath this craft, and the smell of it was everywhere. When the engineer lifted the hatch to access the engines, it hit them all like a fist.
“Call me crazy, sailor, but I think we’ve got a leak here.”
“Negative, sir.”
Gabe glanced at the woman, ready to argue, but there was a calm in her face that gave him pause. She radiated confidence.
“Care to explain, Petty Officer Gian?”
“This is the CNV Righteous, sir.” She gestured to the twin engines below the deck hatch. Gabe knew the name. The boat had arrived from Merrenat a few weeks before, part of a program to test out changes and improvements to the old, trustworthy ship platform.
The engine bay was filthy. Amber liquid, burned black in places, covered nearly every surface. Some of those surfaces weren’t present on the rest of the fleet.
“They’ve added turbos,” he said, more to himself than Gian.
“Correct. Fifty percent improvement in raw power, once they’re spooled up.”
He nodded, impressed in spite of himself. “I’ll take your word for it, but that still looks like a leak to me.”
“No, sir,” she said. “The wrenches from Merrenat tell me that’s ‘expected venting of excess lubricant that results from prolonged use of…’ Etcetera, etcetera.”
Gabe frowned. “So we have fifty percent more power, but can’t use it without leaving a nice slick trail for the enemy to follow.”
“Plus it’s stinking up our docks,” Gian added.
“That, too.” Gabe swatted a bug behind his ear, not quick enough to avoid a bite though. “Well, give them whatever data they need, and call a leak a leak, will you? I’ll amend it with my feelings on the matter. Which is to say, I think it’s total bullshit in its current state. Useless.”
“Yessir!”
“In the meantime, run the Righteous at a lower power to prevent this excess venting.”
“Um,” Gian said. “That’s not possible, sir.”
“Pardon?”
“Design flaw, I think.” She gestured to the engine bay. “The turbos take up so much room that the engine is no longer sufficiently cooled, even when normally aspirated. We’re getting this, uh, expected venting, no matter how hard we push her.”
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