by Rick Shelley
“Learn what?” Lon asked.
“Learn to stick a sleep patch on you when you don’t have to be up before the chickens,” Sara said. She sat at the table in her usual place—nearest the stove and food replicator.
“I tried not to wake you,” Lon replied. “Breakfast will be ready in two minutes.” He set a cup of coffee in front of her. Sara closed her eyes while she took her first sip. Lon always made the coffee too strong, but—this morning—that was just what she wanted. Sara had only had three drinks the night before, but that was more alcohol than she usually drank in a week. There was no headache—no hangover. She had applied a patch, what men in the Corps called a killjoy patch, to avoid that before going to bed, but she still felt a little sluggish.
“You called the officer of the day yet to make sure the whole regiment didn’t move without leaving a forwarding address?” Sara asked as she set the coffee cup back down.
“No, I haven’t called the OD yet,” Lon said. “All I did was check the complink to make certain there were no important messages. And I’m not planning on going in to headquarters at all today.”
“I noticed you weren’t in uniform,” Sara said.
“Come on,” Lon said, starting to dish up the eggs and sausages he had cooked. “I have learned to relax a little.”
Sara smiled. “A little,” she conceded.
“We’ve got snow on the ground,” Lon said. He put one plate in front of Sara and took his around to the other side of the table and sat across from her.
“I know. I looked out. Enough snow to look pretty, not enough to be a nuisance if we want to go anywhere. A few hours and the streets will all be clear.” There were few wheeled vehicles on Dirigent. Most automobiles and trucks were ground-effect vehicles—floaters. The passage of one floater’s fans normally left clear pavement behind, except when there was wet, heavy snow. Then it might take considerable traffic. It had been twelve years since the Corps had needed to put snowplows on tracked vehicles to clear streets in the city or on base. This time, the snow was not excessively wet and the temperature would probably climb above freezing before noon. By sunset there might be almost no evidence left that it had snowed at all.
Lon and Sara ate silently for several minutes. The years had made them both comfortable with long silences. Neither one felt the need to fill every moment with sound. When they had finished eating, Sara got up and put the dirty dishes and pans in the dishwasher, then went back to the bedroom to get dressed.
Lon went to the living room and turned the entertainment console on to get the news summaries. The night’s snow was the major story, which was a relief, since that meant that nothing more … traumatic had happened on Dirigent and no dire news had come in from elsewhere. After a few minutes he keyed in a filter command for news about the Corps. New Year’s Eve had passed without major incident. There were notes of a couple of minor fights, but nothing more serious. The fights had both been between soldiers, and none of the participants had been injured. Had civilians been involved, it might have been different.
“Anything world-shattering on the news?” Sara asked when she came out dressed for the day.
“Maybe thirty thousand soldiers went out to drink in the new year last night, and all that happened was two minor fistfights,” Lon said. “You’d think they were monks instead of soldiers. Sometimes I think we’re the most peaceable bunch of humans in the galaxy.” Even after more than twenty-five years on Dirigent, Lon found himself occasionally astounded by how little crime, how little violence, there was. It had been five years since the last killing on the world, and the killer had been a recent immigrant, not a member of the Corps. The stern discipline within the Corps was reflected to a large degree within families—the tradition of obedience and duty. Also, there was little economic distress due to the almost constant influx of revenue from off-world. The police force, with the best preventive and investigative equipment made, was also a deterrent to crime; the odds of escaping detection—and punishment—were slim.
Lon got up from the sofa and stretched. “I think I’ll take a walk. I need to get a little exercise. It’s been three days since I went to the gym.”
“Just don’t get carried away. It’s cold out. And your parents might be here before noon.”
“Just a quick turn around the neighborhood,” Lon promised.
The houses for married personnel had been laid out with military precision. The sizes of houses and lawns varied in strict proportion with the rank of the soldier each was designed for. The most senior officers, colonels and lieutenant colonels, were along one street, nearer Corps headquarters than the rest. Majors and captains were quartered in the next blocks. Farthest off were the few lieutenants and senior enlisted personnel who were married. At all ranks below major, married men were the minority in the Corps. Marriage was—unofficially—discouraged until the soldier had at least ten years in uniform and had reached the rank of captain or lead sergeant … for officers and enlisted personnel respectively.
Lon had set himself no route before leaving the house. He turned right and started walking. The sidewalks had not been cleared, so he left a clear trail in the snow, the ridged soles of his boots crunching snow underfoot, giving a muted sound track to his walk. The air was crisp, bringing a tingle to his face and ears before he had gone a single block. He kept his hands in the pockets of his overcoat, out of the cold. He had gloves with him but did not bother to put them on.
He walked, at something less than a normal marching gait. Even five years earlier he might have felt compelled to jog. He still ran, perhaps three days a week in garrison, but not as far or as intently as he had when he was younger and considered himself a distance runner. He was not constantly trying to meet his best recent times for the mile … or any other distance. It was enough for him to maintain a significant edge over the time he would have to meet when he took his annual physical fitness test. No one in the Dirigent Mercenary Corps could let himself get flabby or out of condition. Even the General, commanding officer of the Corps and head of state for the world, had to meet the same physical conditioning standards as any private just completing recruit training to remain in the DMC.
When Lon eventually increased his pace, it was strictly as a response to the cold. It wasn’t enough to turn him back toward home immediately, but a little more speed did help offset the nip in the air. A brisk walk helped to keep stray thoughts from intruding as well. He was as off-duty as a regimental commander ever could be. Unless the communications link in his pocket beeped, he was free. He looked around, enjoying the snow-covered scenery, the antiseptic look of fresh white covering everything. The residential area was set far enough from the rest of the base that there was nothing overtly military about his surroundings. He saw children playing in a few yards, some attempting to build snowmen … without marked success. The snow wasn’t wet enough for that. At least no one tried to use him as a target for snowballs.
Lon walked three blocks, then turned to his left and walked a block over to the next street of houses, then turned left again and, unconsciously, increased his pace a little more. It was cold enough that he felt no desire to prolong the morning walk. He found himself whistling, some unidentifiable mélange of partially remembered songs strung together in a way guaranteed to offend the ears of anyone who appreciated good music, but Lon had the sidewalks to himself. There was no one to scream in agony at his efforts.
He went two blocks beyond the corner he would have turned at to go directly back home, then finally crossed back to his own street. His exertion had him feeling a little warm, except for the persistent chill against his exposed face. He intentionally turned the wrong way on his street, away from home, and went two more blocks before he crossed the lane and reversed his course.
Sweating and freezing at the same time, he thought as he kicked snow from his boots on the front porch of the house the family had moved into when he won his promotion to colonel. This one had more room than they could possibly need.
That’s about standard for an infantryman. He took his hands from his pockets and rubbed vigorously at his cheeks. They were more than a little numb after a half hour in the below-freezing air. Before going inside, he turned and scanned the street in both directions. There was no one else in sight.
“You look like a lobster just pulled from the pot,” Sara said when she saw Lon’s face.
“I’d almost trade places with one,” Lon said, rubbing at his cheeks again. They had started to tingle. “Very nippy out. You catch the forecast, by any chance? Our 4th Battalion is due to go out on overnight maneuvers tomorrow. The colder it is, the more bitching there’ll be.” He stomped his boots on the rug in the entryway a couple of times to get rid of any vestiges of snow and to warm his feet.
“No, I haven’t checked the forecast yet, but I’ve heard some of the things you said when you had to go out in the cold, or in the rain,” Sara said, turning away to hide her grin. “Serve you right to be on the other end of it.”
Lon took off his coat and hung it in the closet. “I never get to hear any of it since I made colonel. Everyone’s too careful for that. But the looks.” He laughed. “Especially since I won’t be out with them. It’s not the whole regiment.”
“Well, you could always go out with them just to show the men your heart’s in the right place,” Sara suggested, more in jest than earnest. “Suffer with them, be the stalwart campaigner you always claim to be.”
“And listen to you complain about me being away when I don’t have to?” Lon asked, falling into the same bantering tone. “I don’t have three layers of men keeping me from hearing the awful truth at home.” Both of them were comfortable with it after the twenty-three years they had been married. It had helped carry them through some of the more difficult days in those years. “You’d remind me of it for months. Besides, I’ve been in the army long enough to know not to volunteer for anything I don’t have to.”
“Me, complain?”
“You know why Napoleon always had his hand inside his tunic, don’t you?” Lon asked as they moved from the foyer into the living room. “It was because Josephine’s nagging gave him ulcers.”
“Are you two at it again?”
Angle’s parents hadn’t seen or heard her come into the room. Her unexpected question startled both of them.
“We’re just talking,” Sara said. “We do that now and then. It helps pass the time between meals.”
Angie wrinkled her nose at her mother. At sixteen, Angie Nolan was a beautiful young woman with a trim figure. Even just a few minutes from sleep, her face looked fresh and clear. There were no dark circles around her eyes, no hint of sleepiness in her face. Her shoulder-length blond hair had not been combed yet, but there were few visible snarls to it.
“You want breakfast?” Sara asked.
Angie shook her head, which dislodged most of the tangles in her hair. “We’ll be having dinner in a couple of hours. I’ll just have some juice and maybe a piece of toast.”
“Too many cookies and chips at the dance last night?” Lon asked.
“No,” Angie said, drawing the word out like stretching a rubber band. “I’m just not hungry. I don’t like to eat right after I get up. Makes me feel bloated. Is Junior going to be here for dinner?”
“He said he would be,” Lon said, nodding. “But I wouldn’t count on it until you see him. He was going out to meet friends when he left here last night. They might not have found their way back from Camo Town yet.”
“Lon!” Sara said, a world of admonishment in the word.
“What did I say?” Lon asked.
“Mother, I’m not six years old. I do have some idea what goes on in the world. Nothing Daddy says is going to shock me senseless.”
Sara took a deep breath. “It had nothing to do with you, dear.”
Angie looked from her mother to her father, then back. That response was not what she had been expecting. “I’ve got to shower and get dressed,” she said then. She didn’t wait for a reply. Sara watched Angie until she turned into the hallway and the stairs leading up to her bedroom. Lon started chuckling as his daughter went out of sight.
“I never know what’s going to come out of your mouth,” Sara said when she turned back to Lon. “Honestly! Barracks talk.”
Lon’s chuckle threatened to get completely out of control. “If you think that was barracks talk, then you’ve never heard the real thing … and I know better. You grew up in a pub. You probably heard worse before you were half Angle’s age.”
“That’s beside the point. Anyway, my father never let the soldiers who came to the pub get too far out of line. He could tone them down in a hurry, and you know that.”
Lon moved to Sara, put his arm around her, and led her toward the kitchen. When she started to resist a little, he tickled her side.
“Stop that,” Sara said, but there was no protest in her tone. “I’ve got to get this place ready for dinner. Your parents could be here in an hour.” They kissed quickly, and Sara pushed Lon away. “Go watch cartoons or something.”
Lawrence and Maddie Nolan both looked younger after living on Dirigent for six years than they had when they arrived. It was something Lon and Sara talked about occasionally, and even their children had noticed the change in their grandparents. The stress lines had disappeared from their faces, making them look softer, younger. The voices and movements were more relaxed. It was rare for either of them to even mention Earth any longer, though Lon’s father admitted that they kept track of news from there. Filtered by distance and time—the “latest” news from Earth was always at least a month old before it reached Dirigent—the information was rarely more … emotional than lines from a history text.
Despite the quarter-century difference in their ages, Lawrence and Lon now looked more like brothers than father and son. Lawrence was a little heavier, a little softer in appearance, but with the help of his implanted nanotech health maintenance system he was maintaining his apparent age at about fifty, close to Lon’s real age. Lon’s hair was beginning to show a little gray, since he did not have his HMS programmed for cosmetic effects. Few active members of the Corps did. A semblance of age lent authority. Most waited until they resigned or retired before having their systems reprogrammed in that fashion. Then they might shed apparent years in weeks. Molecular repair units could even carry melanin out into hair to remove gray.
“You figure this will be the year you make General?” Lawrence asked his son as soon as they were alone in the living room. Maddie had gone to help Sara in the kitchen. Angie had come downstairs just long enough to greet her grandparents, then had disappeared upstairs again to resume a complink conversation with one of her friends from school.
“We’ve been through this before, Dad,” Lon said. “I don’t ever expect to become General.” There was only one General at a time in the DMC, elected for a one-year term by the fourteen regimental commanders from among their own number. “It would break too many traditions, and the Corps is almost as tradition bound as any army on Earth. No first-generation Dirigenter has ever held the post, no one whose father wasn’t an officer in the Corps has ever held it. And on and on.”
Lawrence snorted. “I’ve done a little research. Only one man who wasn’t born on Dirigent has ever commanded a regiment. You. Only one man who didn’t have any ancestors in the Corps has ever commanded a regiment. You. And on and on. There’s no reason to think you won’t be elected General before you retire.”
“I’m not so sure. Maybe if I hang around another twenty or thirty years and everyone else on the Council of Regiments has had a turn or two already, they might decide the only way to get rid of me will be to let me play General for a year, but I don’t expect to stay on that long. Staying fit enough to pass the annual physical fitness test gets harder every year. Even if I don’t decide to pack it in and take over Sara’s parents’ pub sooner, I can’t see me staying in the Corps more than another decade. If that. Once Angie graduates from high school, I might dec
ide enough is enough just about anytime.”
“The kid who kept saying, ‘All I ever want to be is a soldier’?” Lawrence asked.
Lon frowned. “You don’t know how many years I’ve spent having nightmares about that sentence. Ever since Junior started saying the same thing. Anyway, I’ve been a soldier more than half my life. I’ve seen more than enough of what that can mean.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to raise ghosts. Let me ask you something else, then. Who do you figure will be the next General?”
Lon smiled. “I don’t have a clue, but Sara’s back-fence gossip circle says it’ll be Bob Hayley of 15th unless he’s off-world when election time comes around in March. And 15th Regiment is at the top of the rota for regiment-size contracts, so that’s possible. And if Bob is off on contract, there’s no favorite for second choice among the wives.”
“Not electing someone who’s off-world … is that another of your hidebound traditions?”
“Pretty much. It’s not a written rule, but it’s never been done. I don’t know. It might just be superstition, afraid to jinx a man who might be in a combat situation, or fear that he might be killed or captured. But, once elected, the General doesn’t leave Dirigent during his term. Ever. Any diplomatic travel is generally done by civilians, usually career bureaucrats or retired senior officers.”
“So if Colonel Hayley is off on contract when election time comes around and there’s no clear second choice, then your chances are as good as anyone else’s, right?” Lawrence asked.
Lon laughed. “You got a bet on with someone?” He didn’t wait for his father to respond. “No, if Hayley isn’t here, it’ll probably end up with Murtaugh, Mills, or Dumbrovski. They’ve all been on the Council longer than me and haven’t had a shot at the top job yet.”
“None of them has a record to match yours, and the word I’ve been hearing is that Murtaugh hasn’t got a shot at ever becoming General. Something about a contract on Aurora.”