“Well?” June asked.
“It’s what I want to do now,” Fromm finally said. “Maybe in ten years I’ll change my mind and do something else, but this is what I’m doing now.”
Brad started to say something else again, but June shushed him.
“I hope you don’t regret this,” she said. “But I fear you will.”
New Parris, Star System Musik, 164 AFC
“As you may have guessed, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve got our new marching orders,” Fromm told the assembled company officers, platoon commanders and senior NCOs. The non-coms were the oldest people present, all veterans with no less than twenty years in the service, people who had been involved in at least one of the many wars, police actions or low intensity conflicts the USA could not seem to escape as it carved its own place in the galaxy. Charlie Company’s commissioned officers ranged in age from their late twenties to early sixties; the older officers had found their niche and were unlikely to rise in rank but were damn good at their job. The dynamics of the Corps often led to senior officers commanding people old enough to be their fathers or grandfathers, resulting in numerous leadership challenges. Young Second Lieutenants were expected to lean heavily on their NCOs, but by the time they got their silver bar, they’d better had learned to do their own thinking, doubly so for those who made it to O-3 rank. Fromm’s service record was decent enough that people respected him despite being on the young side.
“We will be deploying in twenty-one days,” he continued. It’d been a month since the FTX, and while he wasn’t a hundred percent satisfied with the company’s progress, the higher-ups had decided they were ready to dance and he was willing to lead them.
“’bout fucken time,” First Lieutenant Ivan Guerrero of Second Platoon muttered under his breath. One of the older breed, Charlie-Two’s commander had been driving his people hard ever since the FTX; that platoon was the fittest unit under Fromm’s command. Which meant it was going to get the toughest assignments. Guerrero knew that, and he was willing and able, full of gung-ho oorah attitude. Maybe to a fault.
“It is what it is. There hasn’t been much need for ground-pounders since the war started,” Fromm said, and nobody could argue the point. After the Days of Infamy had kicked off the conflict, the ensuing fighting had consisted solely of space actions, and most of those hadn’t involved any Marine boarding parties. Warp insertions had been a most unwelcome surprise to other Starfarers in the early days of America’s entry into the galactic community, but now just about every alien warship carried a large contingent of troops aboard, making warp raids insanely risky. On the other hand, being forced to carry large security contingents meant enemy ships had less space for weapons, shields and other important systems, so in a sense Marine Assault Ships served an important purpose even when they weren’t used. In any case, the one-way teleportation trips had become as rare as massive paratroop operations back in pre-Contact days. Word was that a lot of Marine Assault Ships were being pulled off the line to be reconfigured, although nobody was sure into what.
Fromm agreed with Guerrero’s sentiment, but he hadn’t minded the quiet time, either. He’d spent the previous months making sure his company was as ready as it could be for the hard days ahead. And he knew only too well that there were going to be plenty of those. He’d been on the front lines during the Days of Infamy and come back from that deployment with three replacement limbs and a large selection of bad memories.
And a handful of good ones, mostly involving a certain female spook he hadn’t seen in half a year, but that wasn’t important now.
“So here’s the deal,” he continued. “The 101st Marine Expeditionary Unit has been assigned to the USS Mattis as part of Landing Squadron Three.” A Landing Squadron consisted of three Marine assault ships like the Mattis, a four-frigate escort, and three logistics vessels. “All part of Expeditionary Strike Group Fourteen. We will sail off to reinforce Sixth Fleet at New Jakarta.”
More nods, and several somber expressions. New Jakarta was a Pan-Asian colony and warp junction; its location made it a possible target for the Vipers. In theory, the system was shielded from direct invasion by the fact that all its warp lines led to neutral or friendly star systems, but Melendez System had been in a similar position, and the enemy had simply pushed through neutral space, daring the local Starfarers to make an issue out of it. So far, nobody had objected. Some, as in the case of the Lizards, had actually abandoned any pretense of neutrality and welcomed the Tripartite Alliance. Sixth Fleet, plus whatever forces the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere could put together, would make sure any attacks there were met head-on.
“We have a week to implement any changes and fix anything that needs fixing,” Fromm said. He glanced at the company’s senior NCO.
“We’ll be ready, sir,” First Sergeant Markus Goldberg said confidently. Privately, Goldberg still harbored doubts about Third Platoon’s Lieutenant O’Malley. The officer’s slow reaction time and tendency to rely too much on his sergeant had become apparent during the FTX. A counseling session had ended with multiple assurances things would change. Fromm had fought off the urge to meddle, and now he was worried he might have overcompensated and left the unit in the hands of a subpar commander.
“I know everyone will be ready,” he said in a confident tone.
* * *
“Why don’t we all take a breath?” Lance Corporal Russell ‘Russet’ Edwin said in what he thought was a reasonable tone. He was the only asshole without a drawn weapon and when you’re outgunned, your best option is to be reasonable.
The hooker’s crib was much too small to fit four people. A bed and a small dresser filled most of the space; the only other piece of furniture, a nightstand, was currently being wielded by the hooker in question, a plump and pretty girl by the name of Francesca, formerly from the People’s Republic of Sicily, here on a guest worker’s visa earning a living the old fashioned way. She was crouched on the bed, naked as the day she’d been born, ready to start swinging with her improvised club. Blood was dribbling from a cut on her lip, and the left side of her face was already beginning to bruise. Her eyes were bright with murderous rage.
Standing next to the bed was Russell’s fellow Marine, PFC Hiram ‘Nacle’ Hamlin, a lanky kid straight from New Deseret, currently holding a set of brass knuckles that Russell had given him for Christmas. There was blood on the business end of the weapon, but Russell was certain none of it belonged to Francesca but rather to the other bleeder in the room, a fat Navy asshole who was half-propped against the opposite corner, his nose spurting red and glaring out of the one eye that hadn’t been punched shut. His injuries wouldn’t stop him from using the holdout beamer he was clutching in a trembling hand, though. The little pistol’s power pack only had enough power for six shots, but each of them would cook twenty or thirty pounds of flesh and organs with a direct hit, or burn right through an arm or a leg. The bubblehead had been nerving himself to shoot Nacle, Francesca or likely both of them when Russell walked into the room and interrupted the ongoing drama.
Just seconds ago, he’d been enjoying the amorous attentions of another lady of the night, a sweet little thing from the Canary Islands whose name he couldn’t recall at the moment. Shouted curses and the sounds of a scuffle next door wouldn’t have drawn him away from what’s-her-name, not usually, but he’d recognized Nacle’s voice, and the cursing had gotten his attention. Nacle only cursed when the shit had well and truly hit the fan. So he’d rushed towards the noise and walked into this Charlie-Foxtrot.
The bubblehead turned his beamer on him. Three pounds of trigger pressure and Russell would be seeing Jesus or the guy downstairs, more likely the latter, or even more likely he’d be seeing nothing at all. It was times like these when Russell wished he could believe in something.
“Easy there,” he told the Navy guy. “Chief Petty Officer Murphy, right?” He’d seen the bubblehead around, mostly in low-rent whorehouses like this one. Murphy had a bad rep; he was an
asshole, the kind who liked to get rough with the girls, ignoring safe-words and house rules; he’d been banned from a lot of establishments in and around Pendleton as a result.
“Edison,” Murphy said, or rather lisped; a thin spray of blood and spittle accompanied the name, and Russell caught a glimpse of jagged broken teeth. Nacle had been going to town on the fucker before the beamer came into play.
“That’s me; Lance Corporal Edison,” Russell said cheerfully, as if he’d run into the guy at a party.
“Your cock-sucker buddy just tried to kill me.”
“She told you never to lay hands on her,” Nacle said through clenched teeth. “She told you.”
Shit. The kid was sweet on Francesca. He didn’t play with whores all that much, and when he did he got all romantic on them. Stupid.
“Stow it, Nacle,” Russell hissed at him before turning back to Murphy. “Hey, Murph. Let’s be reasonable. There’s been no real harm done…”
“No harm?”
The beamer wavered between Russell and Nacle.
“The med techs will fix your mouth, Murph. No fuss no muss. You just tripped and fell, that’s all. That shit happens all the time. But you pull that trigger and it’s all over, brah. For whoever you shoot, and for you.”
“Fuck you!”
“Fuck me? Murph, you pull that trigger, you’ll be fucking yourself.”
The asshole was drunk, in pain and pissed off, so there was no telling what he was going to do. Russell waited, wondering if this was the way he was going to step out. The sad thing about all this wasn’t that he’d been this close to death a bunch of times before, but that he’d been this close to death in a whorehouse a bunch of times before. This was supposed to be the kind of place you went to forget about all the close calls that happened when you were on duty. But Russell had always been a frugal shopper, and bad things often happened at discount brothels.
Nacle tensed up, about to do something stupid.
Stop! Russell texted him via his imp’s tactical channel. The kid froze.
Out loud: “Whaddayasay, Murph? Can we work things out?”
Murphy looked like he was trying to think about it but finding it a bit of a chore. Concussion, maybe.
“Va fanculo!” Francesca screamed all of a sudden and threw the nightstand at the bubblehead.
If she’d tried that boneheaded move on a Marine, she would have gotten blasted, and everyone else as well. Murphy didn’t have those killer instincts, though. He flinched and threw up his arms to protect his already battered face, and Nacle and Russell lunged at him before he could bring the weapon back into line.
The beamer went off, but Russell had already grabbed Murphy’s hand at the wrist, and the charged-particle bolt made a hole in the ceiling. Nacle had the asshole pressed against the wall and was delivering a series of brutal underhand jabs, the brass knuckles making a wet smacking sound every time they hit flesh. Murphy whimpered, then screamed when Russell got enough leverage to break the man’s wrist. The little pistol dropped to the floor. Francesca started to make a grab for it, but Russell kicked it under the bed before things went from bad to unsalvageable.
The Navy puke sagged down, barely conscious. “You fucking asshole,” Russell said in a mild voice. “You pull a gun on me, you better have a plot saved up.”
“He was hitting her,” Nacle said, punching him one more time. Murphy went limp and they let him flop to the floor like a bag of meat. “She called me on my imp. I was kind of okay if all they did was have sex, you know? It’s her job. But he didn’t have to hit her.”
“I know.” Russell turned to Francesca, who was beginning to get the shakes. “Where’s Ronnie?”
She shook her head. “Dunno.”
Ronnie was the whorehouse’s bouncer, a massive guy with heavy-worlder muscle enhancements. He must be drunk or stoned, or Murphy had paid him off to look the other way while he had his fun. Either way, he wasn’t going to be much help.
“Grab his shit. All of it,” Russell ordered Nacle while he knelt down and groped under the bed until he found the beamer.
“He pay you?” he asked Francesca while his buddy gathered the bubblehead’s clothes and personal items.
“No.”
“Okay. Put the stuff on the bed, Nacle.” He rummaged around until he found a couple of credit sticks among Murphy’s things, the kind of device you used to pay for stuff you didn’t want showing up in your financial statements. Prostitution was technically illegal in New Parris, although nobody had ever been arrested for it unless there’d been another crime involved. Francesca’s work card listed her as an ‘entertainer.’ Russell checked the credit sticks’ balances and handed her one of them, about three hundred bucks’ worth, three times her going rate for a full evening. “That should cover your time. This never happened, got it?”
She nodded. Russell wouldn’t expect her to hold out if the cops leaned on her, but hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
“Give us the room. We need to take care of this.”
“Molto bene.” She hugged Nacle and whispered something in his ear before she threw a bathrobe on and left. Hopefully the guy would get a discount for his next date. Least he should get for almost getting their asses killed.
Russell considered his options. He could call Gonzo and a couple of other close friends, the ones who’d help you move a body, and make Chief Petty Officer Murphy disappear. He’d done it before, but never on New Parris. There was shit you could pull off on deployment in far foreign that just wouldn’t fly at home, and the Marine Corps’ main base was as close to home as it got. Too many cameras, too many people with their imps recording everything they saw. If the asshole went missing, there would be an investigation, and even though Murphy clearly didn’t have many friends, the chances of their getting away with killing the bastard weren’t great.
If it came down to it, he’d do what he had to, but there were alternatives.
* * *
“You shoulda wasted the fucker,” Gonzo commented when Russell told the story over a card game a couple weeks later, on their last liberty before they sailed off on the Mattis.
“More trouble than it was worth. I took care of it.”
“How?”
“Well, turns out Murph had a whole system going. He liked to beat on women; guess that was the only way he could get it up. He bribed the bouncer to look the other way and brought a couple doses of memory-wipe drugs and a full set of nano-meds to his dates. He’d have his fun, then heal up the girl and make sure she didn’t remember anything. He’d been doing it for a while. So we used his own drugs on him, made sure his imp wasn’t recording, which it wasn’t, and when he woke up the next day he had no idea what’d happened to him, other than he was missing a bunch of teeth; the nano-meds he’d brought fixed his insides and the broken wrist, but not his mouth.”
“That it? All he got was a beatdown he doesn’t remember?” Gonzo said. “He pulled a gun on you and Nacle. That don’t seem fair.”
“No, that wasn’t it. I figured that kind of hobby costs a lot more money than a Chief Petty Officer makes. I did a little digging that night and found out he’d been skimming supplies off his ship and selling them on the side to pay for his fun. He was at the Med Center trying to get new teeth fabbed when the MPs picked him up. He’ll get a good fifty years’ hard labor; some of those supplies were pretty important, the kind of stuff that gets people killed if they run out at the wrong time.”
“What an asshole.”
“Chances are he won’t live through those fifty years. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
“How about the bouncer?”
“He’s MIA. A lot of people weren’t happy with him after it all came out, and nobody’s going to miss him.”
Everybody at the table nodded. The local cathouses enforced their own brand of justice, and they could play very rough. Ronnie’s over-muscled body would never be found, and he was sure the bouncer hadn’t gone gently into the night, either. Russe
ll wouldn’t be surprised if someone invested some money into making sure former CPO Murphy didn’t make it out of prison in one piece. He wouldn’t be surprised at all.
“Well, that’s that, then,” Gonzo said.
“Yeah. Nacle should be all right now.”
“Well, he won’t end up on the wrong end of a court martial, but that don’t mean he’ll be all right. He’s sweet on that girl, isn’t he?” Gonzo grinned; he was clearly planning to give the Mormon kid a hard time about it. Russell reminded himself to make sure things didn’t go too far; he’d seen how Nacle reacted when he got his dander up.
“He’s a romantic. He’ll get over it. It’s not like he was going to marry her and bring her to Mama and Papa over at New Deseret. It don’t matter none anyways. We’re off to kill us some ETs. That will cheer him up.”
“True that.”
Two
Earth, Sol System, 164 AFC
“Let’s be blunt, Commander,” the Marine Major said. “Your career in the Navy is ruined. You know that.”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Lisbeth Zhang agreed, trying not to squirm in her seat. The jarhead was simply stating the facts, but she didn’t enjoy being reminded of them.
Even in wartime, you didn’t go very far after losing a ship, let alone both vessels in the task unit you were commanding. If you did, you’d better go down with said ship. You most certainly weren’t supposed to be the sole survivor of such a disaster. Whatever the circumstances, at first glance it looked as if she’d abandoned her command and left everyone in it to die, and too often a first glance was all you ever got. Her subsequent actions on Jasper-Five had not been enough to redeem herself in the merciless eyes of the Bureau of Navy Personnel. As far as BUPERS was concerned, Lisbeth had been tried and found wanting. She’d been cleared of any actual wrongdoing, but that didn’t mean she was going to be in a starship bridge any time soon.
No Price Too High (Warp Marine Corps Book 2) Page 4