Imperial Recruit (Book 2 of The Imperial Marines Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  “I’m not entirely certain how he ended up shot while she was unarmed, but I’m sure the details will become clear as Major Martelle gets to the bottom of things and sends a follow-up brief for us.

  “And that, Senior Sergeant Gunnarsdotter, is why I needed to get my recruits out of the crosshairs, and this ended up being the easiest place I could find to make that happen. I apologize for my unexpected arrival, but I didn’t know I was coming until I called for the pinnace. I didn’t call because I figured it would be easier to explain the circumstances in person.”

  The tall woman sighed and seemed to droop a little as the fight went out of her. “This isn’t going to be easy. If we’re going to have everyone working here simultaneously, we’ll have to hot bunk. That’s going to cause a lot of bad blood between your platoon and mine.

  “Do your recruits know about the attack?”

  “No, and I’m doing everything I can to keep them from finding out. All they know at this point is that I’ve decided that it would be good to shake them up by bringing them here. I’d appreciate it if you’d play along with that.”

  She nodded. “I’ll come up with something similar to tell my people, but they’re going to see your people as interlopers. We won’t be able to keep there from being confrontations and tribalism.”

  Page scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Actually, it might be worthwhile to encourage that sort of thinking, at least a little bit. I understand that we don’t want any serious fighting, but Recruit Tolliver is a controversial figure inside my platoon.

  “She’s found a single friend and a dedicated rival, but everyone else seems to be waiting to see how things shake out. This entire situation with your platoon might get them to pull together in the face of a hostile outside group.”

  The tall woman stared at him for a moment and then slowly smiled. “So you’re saying that I should encourage a little competition between the platoons? That’s going to involve some hazing, you know. And my people are good. They might just trounce yours.”

  “I think you might be surprised. I happen to have a few credits I’m willing to put on the line for them. Unofficially, of course.”

  “Done. Still, you might be right. The situation is going to force your people to pull together. It’s also going to force my people to work harder, particularly if they think they have to compete with yours. The trick is going to be keeping things within manageable limits.”

  He started to say something, but she held her hand up. “Don’t think this makes the situation acceptable to me. I’m still pissed at the disruption you’ve dumped in my lap, and I’m not certain that your assessment of this girl is accurate. Since you’re shoehorning her into my training area, I need to make an assessment of her character. That means I’m going to test her in my own way, and you’re going to let me do it.”

  He felt his eyes narrow. “What do you have in mind?”

  She grinned like a shark. “Nothing that’s going to hurt her. Much. I just want to judge her character and assess what kind of person she is. I might have to accept your people because the major said so, but this is my price. Are you going to accept that, or do we rumble?”

  Frankly, he wasn’t sure that she meant the fighting part metaphorically. Still, he had enough on his plate, and he wasn’t going to make this more challenging.

  “Deal,” he said as he stood, extending his hand. “I look forward to seeing exactly what you have in mind. Honesty compels me to say that she’s a lot faster and stronger than you’d expect. She’s also smart and determined.”

  That was true enough, but he held back the information that Tolliver had received training from Lieutenant Na, had knowledge of things that no other recruit would have a clue about, and had marine implants and a nanogenerator. Those were his aces, and he wanted to see how Gunnarsdotter responded to that kind of surprise.

  And he wanted to win the bet.

  “Excellent,” she said, actually rubbing her hands together. “Let’s get things in motion. I figure the best way to make this work is to split the bunk room in half and put your people on one side. That’ll create a kind of no man’s land between the two platoons, but it should also create some unit solidarity in both groups.”

  “I can live with that.”

  This was going to force his people to pull together. And, honestly, he was tired of some of the whining and sniping that they were still doing. It was time they found an enemy to stiffen their spines.

  The only casualty of this might be Tolliver. She’d either make new friends in the next few weeks, or this was going to be the end of her.

  28

  Peter rubbed his face tiredly as he leaned back in his office chair. What a stinking mess this had become.

  “What do you mean they’re not on the planet anymore?” he demanded.

  Jomos gestured toward the ceiling. “One of my contacts in Fleet indicated that there’s some kind of kerfuffle at the Fleet training orbital. It seems that an unexpected load of marine trainees has crashed their party.

  “Since I can’t find any information about where the target is, I believe they’ve moved the platoon to a location where they think that we can’t reach them.”

  “Are they unreachable?”

  “Not nearly as much as they might hope. We’ve got just as many contacts inside Fleet as we do the marines, so while it’s not going to be simple to get someone on board that orbital, it’s not impossible either. I do think that this is going to make Lucinda’s option a little bit less likely to succeed, though.”

  That was certainly true. An outright assassination directly inside a Fleet orbital with no obvious means of quick escape or evasion wasn’t going to be the best solution to their problem. Luckily, that wasn’t the only arrow that they had in their quiver.

  “It looks like you’re going to have to make a trip up there to at least start working with some of the individuals that can get access to the areas that the marine recruits will be utilizing. I’m not sure how simple it’ll be to sabotage equipment that will affect her. I’d prefer to keep the death toll to a minimum, but if we can’t narrow the attack down to the target, we’re going to have to make this messier.”

  His lieutenant nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that, and it may not be as tricky as you fear. Each of the recruits is assigned specific equipment for their use. In this case, I’m thinking of vacuum suits.

  “If she’s working outside and something goes wrong with her suit, so long as we can engineer the event to happen when she’s nowhere near rescue, she’s going to die, and it won’t affect anyone other than her.

  “I’m not certain at this point that I need to be there, so I’d prefer to work through cutouts. If we’re going to generate a larger incident—say, the crash of a pinnace—it would probably make more sense for me to be there because I can see some of our contacts wanting to back out of doing that kind of work.”

  Peter thought about the various options available to them through that kind of sabotage and slowly nodded. “If there’s a change in plans, they might not be able to communicate with you down here without raising suspicions on their end. I want to keep the command-and-control loop as tight as possible for this operation.

  “To do that, you’ll need to go to the orbital. What’s your plan for doing so?”

  “The supply system would be easiest. While Fleet uses their own personnel to manage all sorts of things aboard that orbital, the delivery of supplies is still handled by civilians. Admittedly, they’re trusted merchants but still civilians. A small fraction of them has existing relationships with the organization.

  “If I need to get aboard the orbital, we have one of the merchants that deliver supplies there on our payroll, as well as somebody in the supply section. I’d have to be packed aboard a crate with life support and transferred aboard the station, where our inside contact would see that I’m extracted without raising any eyebrows.

  “I’m certain an orbital of that size has places to put me that are ou
t of the way. Once the contract has been executed, I can get out the same way.”

  Peter shook his head. “That’s not going to work. They’ve already had one attack. If something happens in orbit, they’ll lock everything down until they can figure out what happened.

  “Once you get everything lined up to execute, you need to get out of there. We can’t afford to have them capture you because it’ll lead right back to the organization.”

  Jomos nodded. “When would you like me to leave, and how soon would you like the mission carried out?”

  “As soon as possible. I’d imagine that the equipment will be scrutinized very closely, as these recruits are not used to working in a vacuum. Everything needs to look good for the first several excursions. Wait for them to grow a little lax before you initiate the sabotage.

  “Be careful. We haven’t got a choice about carrying out this contract, but I don’t want to lose anyone. You’re very important to the organization and me. This job isn’t worth seeing you apprehended or killed.”

  The burly man stood and grinned. “You can rest assured that I’ll be gone before anyone has reason to be looking for me. I’ll talk to my contacts tonight and see about getting ferried up to the orbital sometime tomorrow. With any luck, we can close out this contract in a week.”

  Peter didn’t say anything as Jomos left his office, but he couldn’t help but be concerned. There was more going on than met the eye with this entire thing. The outright violence in the barracks had unsettled him.

  He still didn’t know why their contact had resorted to violence in the first place, and once he’d done so, Peter didn’t understand how the marine officer had been able to fend off an armed attacker when she was presumably unarmed.

  At least a little bit of information had made its way back to him. The officer his contact had assaulted was female and had apparently confronted the contact in the act of planting the evidence.

  It would’ve been awkward to have his man captured, but it wouldn’t have led back to him or the organization. Not after all of the hard work he’d done to make sure the man thought that he was working for an entirely different crime family.

  Unfortunately, now that violence had been committed, everyone’s nerves were going to be frayed. He wanted to get this work done sooner rather than later, but he wasn’t going to take any unnecessary chances, particularly with one of his trusted lieutenants.

  If anyone captured or killed Jomos, that would lead the authorities directly back to his organization and him personally. That needed to be avoided at all costs. Even if it meant that they had to wait until Tolliver was back on the planet.

  He cradled his head in his hands and wished for the millionth time that he had never met that damned woman. Well, he had, and he still had to deal with her when this was all over.

  He picked up his portable com unit and dialed a number from memory. When someone on the other end picked up, he allowed a wolfish smile to cross his lips.

  “Adrian, it’s Peter. I have a job for you. You’ll love it. Can we meet?”

  It was late by the time Andrea and the rest of the recruits had eaten, and the drill instructors had escorted them to where they’d be sleeping. To her surprise, the room was relatively small and didn’t seem to have enough bunks. Every one of the recruits already there was glowering at her and her platoon mates.

  “Listen up, recruits,” Page said. “As marines, we often have to do things that force us to improvise. This is one of those situations for you.

  “At this time, we only have enough bunks for half the platoon to be asleep at the same time. That means hot bunking. The same will be true of the recruits already here for training.”

  The man half turned to the hatch, just in time for an Amazonian blonde female senior sergeant wearing a drill instructor’s hat to step into the compartment. Based on how the other recruits snapped to attention, this was their senior drill instructor.

  “This is Senior Sergeant Ingrid Gunnarsdotter, and she is the senior drill instructor for the platoon you will be sharing space with. You will extend every courtesy to her that you would to any of your usual drill instructors. If she gives you an order, you will carry it out immediately. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Drill Instructor!” they all shouted.

  The woman took a single step forward and glared at the recruits on her side of the bunk room. “And the same is true of you when Senior Sergeant Page gives you an instruction. Is that clear?”

  The other recruits shouted their understanding. That didn’t do a single thing to tamp down the hostile looks that they were still shooting toward Andrea and her platoon mates.

  “There are going to be limited training resources as well as sleeping accommodations,” Page continued. “We will work out a training schedule so that everyone can still accomplish everything they need to learn, but it’s not going to be comfortable, and there’s going to be friction. I expect everyone in this compartment to keep their irritation within acceptable limits.

  “Now, since only half of the recruits can sleep at one time, we’re going to split you up and move to around-the-clock training. When I call up your name, select a bunk, and get some sleep. If I don’t call your name, step over to the side of the compartment and get ready to have a very long night of learning the basics of vacuum safety.”

  Even as he was reading names off from memory, Drill Instructor Gunnarsdotter was doing the same. That was going to make the other platoon even crankier. Why couldn’t they just hot bunk everyone so that the platoons were kept working as a single unit? It seemed as if they’d picked the worst possible solution to the problem.

  That made her wonder if the choice was intentional. If they were avoiding the easy answer, then there was something about it that wasn’t optimal. Or splitting up the platoons would produce something else that they wanted.

  Were they looking to generate conflict between the recruits? She supposed it was possible.

  In the end, her name wasn’t called, so she wasn’t going to get any sleep tonight. Neither was Diana or Claudio. Perfect.

  Andrea started to file out of the compartment as Page gestured for them to do, but he quirked a finger in her direction and pointed at the tall, blonde drill instructor.

  “Tolliver, I want you to accompany Drill Instructor Gunnarsdotter. She has some questions for you, and I expect you to cooperate fully, except where you cannot do so due to the information being classified. I expect you to be as forthcoming and cooperative as you can possibly be.”

  Well, that was great. Now she had to go with the strange drill instructor and be grilled about her background again. This would happen when she graduated and was assigned to a unit too. Everyone would want to know about her and her background. Again and again for the rest of her life.

  She braced to attention and waited for the strange drill instructor to send her people out into the corridor and followed as directed. The strange recruits were all looking at her with rising suspicion.

  Her tattoos had been unusual, she supposed, but now they knew there was something different about her, and people always hated or feared anything different. That was one of the sad parts of being human.

  It seemed it was going to be her continual struggle to fight for acceptance. Well, if that was what it took to make it easier for the next person from the Singularity, then she’d fight hard.

  Gunnarsdotter led her platoon to what was obviously a massive airlock with both doors open. It filled the entire corridor. They all marched through it and into a wide area that held some cutters and other small craft.

  The recruits didn’t go toward any of the small craft but instead went to lockers and began pulling out vacuum suits. Another pair of drill instructors were already there and began inspecting the recruits as they dressed. Obviously, they still didn’t trust that the recruits had the necessary experience to do the task correctly.

  While that was going on, Gunnarsdotter gestured toward one of the cutters. “If you’ll accompany m
e, Recruit, I have a few questions for you. Ones that I’m very interested in hearing the answers to.”

  The woman’s tone didn’t sound at all inviting. In fact, she sounded angry and suspicious. Did she have a grudge against people from the Singularity? From everything that Andrea had heard, there were going to be a lot of marines that felt that way. Yet one more hard fact of life that she was just going to have to live with.

  “Yes, Drill Instructor,” she said morosely.

  With that, Andrea walked up the ramp and prepared to be interrogated. Again.

  29

  Fei was exhausted by the time the military police finished questioning her, and she’d gone back to the medical center to get another session of regeneration done on her arm. It was now late in the evening, and she knew that her day wasn’t anywhere close to being done.

  She knew that because she’d just gotten a summons to Major Martelle’s office. She’d only just gotten back to her own office.

  Even though there was still a lot of work going on downstairs, she was able to leave the barracks by the back door without disturbing the crime scene. She still wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen there. The body of the intruder had been removed, but the wreckage remained.

  How they planned to replace everything so that the recruits didn’t notice that their belongings had been messed with, she didn’t know. Everything was regimented inside the wall lockers, but each individual would remember the little details about their kits and the placement of their things.

  Hell, even the way they made their beds would make it obvious to some that something had changed. It was a dilemma that she wasn’t quite sure how to solve. Luckily, she had a couple of weeks to figure out how she’d manage it.

  She passed a couple of armed marines stationed at the back door and returned their salute. Another pair was parked in front of the barracks to make sure that no one disturbed the crime scene. Not that she expected anyone to try now.