Noah's Story: Marine Tanker (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 3)

by Jonathan Brazee

  “You gonna stare at that all night, or you gonna drink it,” the bartender asked, stopping in front of him.

  Noah looked up at the bartender, but he couldn’t detect any animosity in the man’s question.

  “Drink it,” he said, reaching down to pick up the glass and send the sweet liquor cascading down his throat.

  Chapter 32

  “One more push,” the nurse-midwife said from between Miriam’s legs.

  Noah watched as Miriam first grunted, then shouted as Hannah Belle Lysander made her entry into the universe. He felt an ache in his heart as his daughter opened her mouth and screamed her displeasure.

  With deft hands, the nurse-midwife cut the umbilical, gooped it shut, and placed the baby girl on Miriam’s chest. Noah crowded close, putting his hand on Hannah’s back, marveling at the pulse he felt. What had before been to him merely a concept, an idea, was now a living, breathing person.

  “She’s beautiful,” he said, his voice in awe.

  There’d been no way he was going to miss her birth. No deployment, no duty, and thanks to the first sergeant running interference for him, he’d made it, catching an Albatross ride in from the Winston Training Ranges when Miriam started labor. Six hours later, Hannah Belle had made her appearance.

  Unlike with Chance, this time, Noah was going to be part of the naming. “Hannah” was from his mother’s first name. Miriam had chosen “Belle” simple because she liked the sound, and Noah was OK with that. Right now, they could have named her “Hombre” and he’d love her no less.

  Hannah’s squalls quieted, and she fell asleep on Miriam. Noah leaned over and kissed his wife’s head.

  “You did great, honey.”

  “Yes, I did, didn’t I? Look at her.”

  “I can’t keep my eyes off her.”

  While things could always change, it looked like Noah would finish up his enlistment with Third Tanks. He hadn’t re-enlisted, so the Corps was not about to PCS[8] him with a year left in service. Gunny had even asked him if he wanted to transfer up to the battalion staff for the remainder of his time, and Noah was seriously considering it.

  Things had gotten better with the company. Staff Sergeant Cain still kept him at a cold arm’s length, but when nothing happened to the staff sergeant, the other Marines who’d rallied to him seemed to forget about Noah. They weren’t as welcoming, but neither were they antagonistic. From comments they’d made when things were tense, Noah was pretty sure Cain had misrepresented what had happened, but Noah’s pride was such that he never tried to set the record straight.

  Still, Gunny had sensed the tension, even pulling Noah aside to find out what was wrong. Noah denied that there were problems, but he knew the gunny didn’t believe him. He was pretty sure, though, that was the reason she’d asked him about moving up to battalion.

  Looking at his daughter, he’d just about made up his mind to accept the offer. He’d miss the Hombre, but this way, unless the battalion deployed as a unit, he’d be there every night for Hannah and Chance. It seemed like a good trade-off.

  “Hannah Belle, don’t you worry about a thing. Your daddy’s here to take care of you.”

  Chapter 33

  “Chance, leave Tabitha alone!” Miriam said.

  “Come here, little man,” Noah said, lowering himself to one knee, and when his son slowly wandered over, continued, “You have to remember not to bother other children. Tabitha wants to talk to her mommy now, so don’t interrupt.”

  Chance lifted a hand to the back of his head and said, “I’m not bothering her. She wanted me to.”

  “Don’t fib to Daddy,” Miriam said, pushing the stroller with a sleeping Hannah in it back and forth.

  “I’m not fibbing!”

  “Look, Chance. I told you I’ve got to go away for awhile. You have to be a good boy and do what mommy says, OK?”

  “Why do you have to go?” he asked.

  That tugged on Noah’s heartstrings, but he kept his voice calm and said, “It’s my job, Chance. But I’ll be home soon, I promise.”

  He didn’t have to be going at all, he knew and as Miriam kept reminding him. He’d delayed accepting the battalion job, wanting just one more exercise, one more chance to play. And it wasn’t as if it would be forever. Rampant Force was only scheduled for twelve days. In three weeks, he’d be back, and then it would be up to battalion to work on the training schedule until his release from active duty.

  “So, you’ll be a good boy? You’ll take care of Hannah?”

  “Yes. I love Belle.”

  Noah didn’t hold back his smile. He called his daughter “Hannah.” Miriam called her “Hannah Belle.” Somehow, Chance chose to call his sister simply “Belle.” It was probably going to screw up the little girl once she got a bit older, but for now, he liked that Chance was making his own relationship with her.

  “OK, come give me a hug.”

  Chance leaned into Noah, content to accept the embrace.

  “Come on, people, load ’em up!” the Gunny Speck shouted.

  “That’s us,” First Sergeant St. Cloud said, kissing each of her kids, then Fierdor.

  Noah squeezed Chance a little tighter, then stepped to the stroller and kissed the sleeping Hannah on the forehead.

  “I’ll see you soon,” he told Miriam, kissing her cheek, his hand straying to her belly where child number three was incubating. It seemed that they’d barely settled into their new routine with Hannah when she became pregnant again.

  “Remember to get your resume out,” she reminded him. “You promised.”

  “I will, I will.”

  “Let’s go, Sergeant,” the first sergeant said. “We’re last again.”

  He followed her to the bus where Gunny Speck scanned them in. One step up, he turned to wave, but Miriam was in deep conversation with Fierdor, and she didn’t see him.

  No one had saved him a seat, so he slid into the empty one beside Barb McDavitt who was already head back and fast asleep.

  He looked again as the bus pulled out, but he couldn’t spot Miriam. He’d liked to have gotten in one more wave, if for nothing else, to help assuage the feeling of guilt he had. Miriam hadn’t wanted him to go on this last exercise, and he hadn’t been 100% truthful in telling her he had to go. The bottom line was that he wanted to go—and with little Hannah waking up throughout the night, as much as he loved and would do anything for her, he was a little relieved to be getting a break. And that relief he felt was eating him up inside.

  A good father would never feel that, right?

  Still, he felt a little thrill as the buses left the battalion area and headed for the main gate.

  ITZUKO-2

  Chapter 34

  “Tank, four o’clock,” the staff sergeant said. “Priority 1.”

  Noah immediately swung his turret around, abandoning the line of APCs advancing at about four klicks out. The tank was solo, emerging from depression, and it was cock-eyed to the main battle. He instinctively knew that the driver would over-correct, and that would cause the gunner to fall short in trying to acquire the Hombre.

  “Goose it, Llanz!”

  Using the combat assist instead of full auto, he smoothly brought his 75mm to bear and thumbed the trigger. From the staff sergeant’s shout until round downrange had been just over four seconds.

  The railgun round was fast, but somehow the opposing tank managed to snap off a shot. Llanzo’s sudden acceleration, however, coupled with the opposing gunner’s mistake that Noah had foreseen, rendered a clean miss. Not so with the Hombre’s shot. It was a clean hit, knocking the other tank out of action.

  “Now back to the APC’s,” the staff sergeant said.

  But it was too late. The other three tanks had already engaged and destroyed the opposing Aardvarks.

  “Shit, get back to school, zeroes,” Llanzo said. “You expect to be tankers with that weak shit?”

  Noah looked down at the opposing forces list, then said, “I think that’s it. There’s no on
e left.”

  “No shit? In one day? I bet there’s going to be some heavy ass-chewing tonight. So, what now?” Staff Sergeant Cain asked.

  Less than two minutes later, he had his answer. They were to return to the ramp.

  Rampant Force was a two-pronged exercise. During the first phase, the participating units acted as the OpFor for Armor School. The next phase would be a force-on-force against each other. In this case, due to scheduling, the OpFor mission came first. It was fun to beat up on the students, and it was always embarrassing for a tank or Aardvark to get taken out by them, but the real thrill was the force-on-force. This was just a warm-up.

  Beating up Armor School wasn’t that difficult, but to wipe them out in one day was almost unheard of. Normally, it took two to three days. During the third reset during Noah’s own Armor War, three student Mambas had managed to evade destruction for almost the entire four days, falling within an hour of endex.

  The net was alive with chatter as they returned to the ramp. Marines were feeling their oats. Noah had to admit it had been fun, but he felt a little sorry for the students. Their confidence had to be crushed. Still, it had probably been a good lesson. With the first set ending so quickly, there would probably be time for three more sets before the war’s endex, and he was pretty sure they’d do much better the next go-round. They’d be going next against Bravo and a platoon of Aardvarks, though, while Charlie sat it out.

  After that, though, would be four days of intense combat, with Bravo and Charlie, along with Alpha Company, Third Tracs, against Fourth Tank’s Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie Companies (Fourth Tanks’ Charlie Company was a Mamba company). It should prove to be interesting. This would be Noah’s last hurrah, and he was bound and determined to kill lots of bad guys without getting the Hombre killed.

  It was a three-hour drive to the ramp, and they arrived shortly before chow.

  Noah hopped out, his stomach growling, when the staff sergeant said, “Start clean-up, Sergeant Lysander. I’ll send someone to relieve you after we eat.”

  Which meant once chow was over, and Noah would be left with field rats. This wasn’t the first time this had happened.

  “Roger that,” Noah answered.

  No one else was left behind from the other tanks, and he could see only one tracker over with the Aardvarks. He idly wondered what she’d done to piss someone off. Sitting on his turret, he wasn’t in a hurry to get going, and he knew the staff sergeant wasn’t expecting him to do much. There were a few things that really should be done before stopping for the night, but they had at least a full day and probably even longer, if the students could make a better showing of themselves, before the vehicles would be taken out again. He was half-tempted to just take a nap until he was relieved, but finally, his sense of duty got the better of him, and he climbed down off the Hombre, grabbed a mud pick, and started levering off slabs of mud from the tracks and road wheels. That had to be done long before the power washers were brought out.

  He'd cleared most of the major chunks of mud when Llanzo came back to relieve him.

  “Sorry about that,” Llanzo said, which was as close to saying this was bullshit as he was going to get, Noah knew.

  “What was for chow?”

  “Some sort of breaded patty, spaghetti, or ansome rolls. And the typical sides. Mostly shit, you know.”

  “‘Shit’ I can’t get now that the chowhall’s closed up for the night.”

  Llanzo just shrugged.

  He’d been right, though. That would have been mostly shit. The spaghetti was universally detested, and the ansome rolls were almost inedible, some new “full-nutritional” meat roll with a red sauce that couldn’t quite figure out what it was supposed to be. Even the word “ansome” made no sense to anyone.

  “Well, I’ve got most of the mud off. You can probably start with the power washer. The turret’s gone through analytics, but I haven’t connected yours or the TC’s interfaces.”

  “You know, he said I can leave after you go. We’re supposed to meet back here at zero-seven-hundred.”

  “Yeah, I know you’ll be bugging off, but our SOP is to pass on what’s happened, so consider yourself informed.”

  Noah turned and stalked out of the ramp. He could be angry, but that would only be a waste of energy. A few more days of this, and he’d be heading back to a desk job until his EAS.[9]

  He stopped by the chowhall to see if there was anything left at all. The old lady cleaning dishes gave him half a key lime pie, so he took it and walked to the overlook, a bluff that gave way to the Area 4 Training Range. There was nothing much to see—the Itch’s minor moon was low in the sky, so illumination was minimal. But it was peaceful. Behind him, he could hear laughter. He knew the mood was high, and with Fourth Tanks arriving in three days, Marines were getting excited.

  He swiveled to look beyond the camp, across the creek, to the lights of Alpha Camp. It wouldn’t be such a happy place there, he knew. The students were not at boot camp, but the instructors couldn’t be happy about their dismal showing today. He wondered if Mr. Duval was with these students, if the B103 was. Heck, maybe the B103 was one of the two tanks he’d taken out during the too-brief battle. The thought made him smile.

  He looked down at the pie, realizing he hadn’t thought to bring a spoon. With a shrug, he reached in with his hand, ignoring the crud from washing the Hombre, and grabbed a handful, stuffing it into his mouth. To his surprise, it wasn’t bad. If he didn’t know it was fab, he wasn’t sure he could tell. He wondered if the dining chief would give him the programming.

  Or maybe it’s the mud and grime, he thought to himself, smiling widely.

  He finished the pie, licking the plate, wishing he had more. He wasn’t in the mood to draw some field rats. He stood up, looking down the bluff, when the thought hit him. Slowly turning back, he tried to pierce the darkness between him and the camp to see if anyone was there.

  Turning back around, he cocked his right hand back, holding the pie tin.

  I can’t believe I’m about to do this!

  With a one-step assist, he flung out his arm, sending the pie tin spinning out into the darkness. He followed it down the best he could, but it went far enough out and then down into the shadows that he lost sight of it.

  Flying a pie tin wasn’t the most egregious sin a Marine could do, but it was so unlike Noah. And he felt great. Somewhere down there in the darkness, was a piece of trash, trash that he, Noah Lysander, had tossed there.

  Yeah, I’m such a grubbing outlaw!

  He turned back, feeling surprisingly better. Life was too short to go through it angry, he knew.

  Both Alpha and Bravo camps were semi-permanent, which meant they had hot showers, and Noah sure needed one. He walked down the trail to the large warehouse-like building that served as billeting, dumped his overalls, put on gym shorts, a shirt, and flip flops, and grabbed his kit before heading back out to the showers. There was a plasticrete sidewalk leading to the showers, but Noah didn’t like the way it grabbed at his flip flops, so he padded alongside it on the well-packed dirt.

  The showers were off from the rest of the buildings, set on top of a huge French sump. The wastewater went through an initial filtration unit, then out onto the gravel of the sumps before eventually making its way into the aquifer. Marines or anyone using the camp were restricted to approved soap. It was supposedly a green system. The heads, however, flushed human waste into holding tanks that were regularly sucked empty with the waste going to a processing plant. With the two different systems, they were not supposed to piss in the showers, something that was taken as a standing joke.

  Noah was wondering if he should have made a stop at the heads first. He’d already flown trash off the bluff, and could he live with himself being such a criminal?

  Yeah, I think I can.

  He was chuckling at himself when he heard a muffled curse off the trail, then mumbling. Someone was upset. He stopped, trying to see through the foliage, but the darkness def
eated him. He was about turn back and continue when he was sure he recognized Lessa’s voice, and he knew something was wrong.

  Off the sidewalk to the left was mostly scrub and low trees. Small trails led into the brush, and Marines had been known to use them for illicit and licit activities that required privacy. Noah couldn’t imagine that Lessa would have need for either. To the best of his knowledge, she wasn’t a stim-freak, and with her devotion to Tammy, he didn’t think she’d be there with someone else for a little extra-marital fun.

  Noah searched the brush line until he found a trail, then half-ran down it, barely getting ten meters before it opened up, and he could see Lessa sitting on the ground, knees bent with her head between them. Another Marine was kneeling, hand on her back. One of her flip flops was missing, and the acrid smell of vomit reached up to him.

  The Marine, who Noah didn’t recognize, looked up at him and said, “I was going to the showers when I heard her throwing up in here. I want to get a corpsman, but she says no.”

  “No corpsman,” Lessa said, sounding dazed.

  “What happened?” Noah asked, kneeling on the other side of her.

  The light of the minor moon barely penetrated the small opening, and it wasn’t until Noah leaned in close that he saw the dirt smeared on her face, the blood coming out of her nose. He pulled her arms from around her knees, pushing her upright, and he saw that the front of her shirt had been ripped open. His heart fell.

  “What happened, Lessa? Who did this to you?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. I don’t remember!”

  “Were you . . . you know . . .” he asked, not voicing his fear.

  “I . . . I . . . maybe. I can’t . . .”

  Noah was sick to his stomach. The torn shirt, the face that had been held against the dirt, the dirt on her chest: he was afraid what they indicated. At the least, she’d been jumped. At the most . . .