The target was the standard silhouette, 60.96 cm by 114.30 cm. At a mere seven meters she knew she couldn’t fail to get each round into the X-ring. At fifty meters, that might be more difficult.
“Ready on the firing line!” A few seconds of silence and then the targets popped up. “Commence firing!”
Puella got all twelve rounds, including a reload, in 8.5 seconds. She could see her hits clearly, all dead center. The weapon’s slide locked open on the last round. She dropped the magazine and held it up for the safety officer to see. He checked each shooter’s weapon before allowing them to be holstered. “Alibis?” the range control officer asked. There had been no malfunctions. “Step back from the firing line. Do not handle your weapons! Reload your magazines while the targets are scored,” the RCO announced.
After each order the targets were changed for fresh ones. The old targets were scored electronically and then double-checked visually by the judges, who only then entered the official scores on each shooter’s scorecard. The shooters were allowed to see their targets and the scoring, and if they did not protest, the scores became official. Each shooter had scored 120 points on the seven-meter course, perfect scores. Puella glanced at Kries’s target and almost let out a gasp. His hits had cut a hole in the target precisely 2.5 by 2.5 centimeters! Truly remarkable. Puella’s hits had all counted for ten points each, but her spread was much larger than Kries’s.
“That boy is good,” Bill whispered from behind Puella, “but his groupings will spread out as the ranges increase. Remember, it isn’t the size of your group that counts, it’s the point spread. This stuff is showmanship, nothing more. And remember, it’s the team’s score, not the individual’s that counts. Grills’s and Totaro’s groups are no better than yours. And watch your trigger squeeze. At two kilos it can really screw you up if you jerk that trigger.” Puella smiled to herself. This made her feel a little better. She wasn’t the only nervous one; she could see that Bill was nervous, otherwise why repeat what every shooter knew by heart? Bill’s own group measured 3 by 3 centimeters. He looked out over the range toward the fifty-meter target line, wavering in the heat. “Now the going gets rough,” he said.
By the time the first match was over the aggregate team scores stood at 1447-90X points for the challengers and 1481-80X for the Seventh Independent MPs. While the infantry scored higher in the X-ring than the MPs, the challengees made up for that with more hits and no misses in the other rings; the infantrymen counted three misses on their targets, that is, rounds that had hit outside the seven ring. Corporal Totaro called out good-naturedly to his teammate Grills, “Those twenty misses were all yours, Andy!” Grills only grinned and hollered back, “Oh, sugar snaps!”
Puella had the highest individual score of her team, as did Kries for his. Kries caught her eye and saluted in her direction. Puella had never felt prouder of herself in that moment. She grinned and waved back at him. The infantrymen were taking their loss very well, she thought, but their commander wasn’t.
The MPs were ecstatic when the judges announced the aggregate scores. “You lucky bastards!” Myers screamed, standing and shaking a fist.
“Sit down, Colonel!” General Aguinaldo ordered, then he whispered something into General Miles’s ear and then leaned over and said something to Colonel Raggel, who descended from the stands to congratulate his team. “One more performance like that and we eat like kings,” Raggel said with a grin.
They took a break between orders to hydrate and rest. “You did really well,” Oakley told his teammates, “but next time, who knows? The heat’s getting to us all. We can’t afford to screw up on this next match. How do you feel, the two of you?”
“Never better!” Puella answered immediately, her eyes flashing.
“Just getting started, Coach,” Maricle answered. “Nobody puts the ‘nix’ on Nix.” He exchanged high fives with Puella. In the exhilaration of the contest both of them had forgotten the animosity that had developed between them earlier. They were partners now, doing the best they could and doing it well.
General Aguinaldo came down to congratulate both teams. “I’ve never seen better shooting, Senior Sergeant,” he told Oakley. “Are you sure none of you are really Marines?”
By the time the second and final match began the temperature had risen to a sizzling 36.6 degrees Celsius. All the shooters except Puella began to feel the heat and the strain as the match progressed. She had perspired heavily during the first match, but now the sweating had stopped and she did not even feel thirsty. She was thriving, and before long was actually beginning to enter that rare state of physical and mental ecstasy known as “gunner’s high,” where she no longer felt her body but seemed to float on the firing point, her M26 a mere extension of her mind, as in a trid game where all she had to do was think and the weapon pointed and discharged itself.
By the time she finished the last order at the fifty-meter range, cleared her weapon, and held it up for the range safety officer’s inspection, she knew she’d fired the impossible “possible,” and that is all she remembered until she returned to consciousness lying on the ground, with Sergeant Darryl Kries kneeling beside her.
“Looks like the heat got to you there, young lady.” Kries smiled. “I gotta tell ya, though, I’ve never seen such shooting. You finished before anybody else, but when you collapsed on us, General Cumberland halted the match.”
“Y-You mean—” Puella croaked as she tried to rise.
“Yeah. We couldn’t continue with you lying out there. He called off the match for now. I mean, we were almost done when we had to stop to haul you off the line and get your body temperature down. That gave everybody an unexpected rest and a chance to hydrate, which nobody would’ve gotten if we’d finished the match. So he said that wasn’t fair. We’d have to fire the whole order over again when you were back on your feet, which you ain’t gonna be for a while. My legs were wobbly too. I’m glad he called it off.”
Someone squatted next to Puella. It was General Aguinaldo. “I have something to show you, Sergeant.” He nodded at one of the judges who presented Puella’s target. The entire X-ring had been shot out. “You scored fifteen hundred points on that match, Sergeant, a perfect score. Nobody’ll ever take that away from you. When you’re feeling better, come and see me. We could use a marksman like you in the Corps.” He got to his feet. “This match is over,” he announced. “The judges have canceled it on a technicality. And I declare that we all get under some shade, barbecue some steaks and drink some beer, because you’ve all earned it.” He put his arm around Darryl Kries’s and Bill Oakley’s shoulders and guided them toward a grove of trees where the barbecue had been set up. “We might could use you two in the Corps, gentlemen, even if you were outshot by a woman.”
“Oh, sugar snaps!” Andy Grills muttered, trudging behind them to the BBQ.
“I want a rematch!” Lieutenant Colonel Myers screamed at Aguinaldo’s back.
“Anytime, Pommie,” Raggel said, helping Puella to her feet. “I don’t think Pommie’s going to be around for the next one,” he whispered. “And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, Sergeant Queege. We won, based on your score alone.”
Puella turned to Sergeant Major Steiner. “Top, you remember that time on Ravenette, when I ate those slimies in a bet with my first sergeant? I thought that would make me famous.” She shook her head.
“Well, you’re famous now. We used to call you ‘Queege old Squeege,’ but now the boys are calling you ‘Annie Oakley.’ ”
Orderly Room, Headquarters, Seventh Independent Military Police Battalion
“I have something to tell you,” Colonel Raggel said. He, Sergeant Major Steiner, and Puella were sitting in the battalion orderly room. It was several days since the match. “I’m
leaving.”
“What!” Steiner exclaimed.
“No!” Puella protested.
“Yes. I’m due to be promoted to brigadier general very soon and General Aguinaldo wants me to take o
ver General Miles’s division.” He smiled. “Old Pommie Myers has been sent home too.”
“When do you leave, sir?” Steiner asked.
“Soon as a replacement can be found for me here. But there’s something I want to show you two right now.” He reached behind him and produced two handsomely embossed folders. One contained Puella’s promotion warrant to the grade of senior sergeant. The other made her eyes pop.
Across the top of the vellum certificate was embossed a handsome, full-color reproduction of the Lannoy Army Silver Medal of Valor. She read the certificate: “ ‘CORPORAL PUELLA QUEEGE, 21993000, SEVENTH INDEPENDENT MILITARY POLICE BATTALION, DID, ON OR ABOUT . . .’
“This was on Ravenette!” she gasped.
“Read on,” Colonel Raggel said.
“ ‘. . . IN THE TOWN OF PHELPS ON THE WORLD KNOWN AS RAVENETTE, WHILE TEMPORARILY ASSIGNED AS A PATROL OFFICER TO THIRD COMPANY, SEVENTY-EIGHTH MILITARY POLICE BATTALION, TWO HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SECOND INFANTRY DIVISION, DISTINGUISHED HERSELF BY CONSPICUOUS GALLANTRY AND INTREPIDITY . . .’
“I can’t believe it.” Puella sighed and laid the certificate down. “How did—”
“Easy. I contacted General Barksdale Sneed, the former CG of the Fourth Composite Infantry Division, to which the Seventh Independent and the 78th MPs were assigned when you were on Ravenette. He prepared the recommendation. Your army chief of staff approved it. I’m going to announce your promotion and present you with the medal tomorrow morning. I have a bunch of other commendations to pass out. And I’ll announce the imminent change of command. But I wanted you to know first. Sorry you have to wait until tomorrow to put on your new chevrons.” He held out his hand. “One more thing. I’ll be needing a good sergeant major and a good senior sergeant up at division. Either of you interested?”
At first both were silent. Steiner was the first to speak. “Who’s gonna help the new CO run this battalion if you’re gone? Thanks, Colonel, but I think I’ll just stay here. Aw, shit, boss, I’m too old for the infantry.” He laughed. “But your askin’ me to go with you is the finest compliment I’ve ever received. Better than any medal.”
“Oh, I agree with that, sir!” Puella blurted out.
“Well, what about you, then, Puella?”
“Well, sir.” Her face turned red and she looked at her feet, then she shifted her weight nervously. “Uh, it’s like this, sir. I had an announcement to make too, sir, but you beat me to it and now I feel like I’m deserting you.”
“What in the hell do you mean by that?” Raggel asked.
“Well, I’d be proud to go with you, sir! You’ve done more for me than anybody! I mean, I’d love to go with you, sir, but, and I would’ve told you, but I was just waitin’ for the proper time to . . .”
“Now’s as good a time as any. Spit it out.”
“Well, sir, I took General Aguinaldo up on his offer. I’m transferring to the Confederation Marine Corps.”
CHAPTER
* * *
THIRTY
Marine House, Sky City, Haulover
Lance Corporal Skripska had laid the weapon out on a table in the front room. Daly pulled up a chair to examine it. Two tanks, one larger than the other, were attached to a packboard similar to a type the Marines had seen in military museums. The board had four straps: two shoulder straps, one chest strap, and one in the right place to go around the waist of a small man. The tanks were connected at their bottoms via a boxlike structure. A flexible hose led from the bottom of the box to a nozzle and grip that closely enough resembled the trigger-receiver group of a blaster to make it clear what it was. There were gauges on the tanks and the suspended box. The markings on the gauges looked like slightly curved lines placed almost randomly across each other. While Daly touched the weapon here and there, he was careful not to touch anything that looked like a control, and kept clear of the obvious trigger.
When he was finished going over everything else, Daly looked again at the gauges and said, “Either it’s almost full or it’s almost empty. Tomorrow we’ll go someplace and test it.” He peered at it some more before saying, “You know what this reminds me of? Back in the twentieth century, some armies—including the U.S. Marines—had a weapon called a ‘flame thrower.’ It had some sort of flammable liquid in two tanks, and compressed air in a third.” He looked at the other Marines.
“The liquid was sticky, so when it hit someone it stayed right there and kept burning. Hit someone with a big enough splash and he turned into a living torch.”
Corporal Nomonon grimaced. “Ooh, nasty.”
“I had to dig that acid out of Rudd’s arm,” Sergeant Williams said. “It was still eating its way through. That flame thrower sounds just as bad.”
“I’m going to secure this in my room for now,” Daly said. “I’ll put it in the landcar before dawn—I don’t want the locals to have any idea we have it.” He rose and picked up the weapon just as Corporal Jaschke came from the kitchen.
“Soup’s on,” Jaschke announced.
“Can half of everything fit into one serving bowl?” Daly asked.
“Ah, yeah. It won’t be all that appetizing like that, but I can do it.”
“Do it. Kindy, Williams, Belinski, put four chairs and a table in the prisoner’s room. The four of us will eat with him—all of us serving from the same bowl to show him it’s not poisoned. Everybody else eat in here. Oh, and provide a pitcher of water and five glasses.”
Secure Room, Marine House
Buben, the prisoner, was still secured to the chair, which was bolted to the floor and facing the small table, which was also bolted down. He watched suspiciously as Sergeant Williams and Corporal Belinski put the bowl with the food and the water pitcher on the table that Sergeant Kindy had placed in the center of the room. He seemed to count the glasses and small bowls that Ensign Daly had brought in. Despite the suspicion in his expression, his nose quivered at the smell of food, and a bubble of drool appeared on the middle of his lower lip.
“Are you hungry, Buben?” Daly asked. “Would you like to eat?” He tilted the serving bowl so the prisoner could see into it and scooped a healthy serving into one of the smaller bowls, which he handed to Belinski.
Using his fingers, Belinski popped a piece of fish into his mouth and made a production of chewing and swallowing before taking another mouthful. Daly repeated the process with Williams and Kindy, then served himself and ate a bite. Buben’s eyes followed each movement and more drool started dripping down his chin, but he didn’t say anything.
“All right, Kindy, work your magic with his bonds so he can eat.”
“Aye aye,” Kindy said. He put his bowl on the table and wiped his fingers on a napkin before he stood and stepped to the prisoner’s side. He moved at a leisurely pace until he reached for the binding that restrained the small man’s right forearm. Then he went fast, loosening the bond and stepping out of the way.
Buben made no aggressive movements when his right hand came free; instead he opened his mouth and used his free hand to point at it.
“Sure, Buben, I’ll be happy to feed you,” Daly said, putting his own bowl down and filling the last one. He stood, and staying on the prisoner’s left side, reached around to put the bowl on the small table in front of his chair.
Buben didn’t try to bite Daly when Daly’s arm was within reach. Instead, he leaned forward as far as the tape holding him to the chair back allowed and began plucking fish, vegetables, and potatoes out of the bowl and stuffing them into his mouth. When he finished eating, Daly put a napkin in reach, but the prisoner looked at it uncomprehendingly.
“How about some water, Buben,” Daly asked. “Are you thirsty?” Again, he served the other Marines and himself, and they all drank before he poured a glassful for the prisoner.
The small man gulped the water down and reached his glass over as far as his bindings allowed.
“More, Buben? Certainly.” Daly held the pitcher over the offered glass and refilled it. The prisoner didn’t gul
p the second glass quite as fast as he had the first. “Would you like more food? Or are you full now?” Daly indicated the serving bowl.
The prisoner placed his glass on the table in front of him and held out his bowl. This time, he took time to examine the potatoes and some of the vegetables before eating them.
“Looks like he’s never seen a spud before,” Kindy remarked.
“Or green beans,” Belinski added.
“Different folks, different strokes—or, in this case, cuisines,” Williams said.
Daly looked at the prisoner’s belly, which was now slightly distended, and said, “Pretty soon we’re going to have another problem—he’s going to need to make a head call.”
“You can handle it, boss,” Kindy said. “I’ve got full confidence in you.”
“Thanks, Him,” Daly said drily. “I love you too.”
The others chuckled.
Daly used a napkin to wipe his fingers and mouth then pointed at the napkin he’d placed in front of the little man. “Don’t you want to clean up a bit?” he asked.
The prisoner blinked at Daly then looked at the napkin in the ensign’s hand.
“Like this,” Williams said, and demonstrated.
Hesitantly, the prisoner picked up the napkin and dabbed it at his lips, then scrunched it up and worked his fingers through it, an expression of wonder on his face.
“Never seen a napkin before either,” Belinski observed.
“Either that or his world has a caste system,” Daly said, “and he’s in a low caste that isn’t allowed napkins. You notice he didn’t look for eating implements either, but went right to it with his fingers. And he didn’t show any surprise when we ate with our fingers.”
Williams shook his head. “He’s an uneducated peasant, a serf. Probably illiterate as well.”
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