Master Sergeant

by Mel Odom

  1030 Hours Zulu Time

  “Coffee, Top?” Inside his office, Halladay held up the coffeepot.

  “Yes sir.” Sage sat in front of the man’s desk, eyes forward, picking up everything with his peripheral vision.

  Halladay poured. “You want to add anything to it? The Makaum people have refined seventeen different sugars from various plants, and there’s at least a dozen different kinds of honey.”

  “No thank you, sir. Black is fine, sir.”

  Halladay handed Sage a cup of brew that was black as sin and smelled rich, then the colonel sat behind the modest metal desk.

  Sage sipped the coffee and discovered it was surprisingly good. He set the cup on his knee and waited.

  In addition to the efficiency desk that was clean and neat, holding only his PAD, Halladay’s office supported only a few items. A shelf along the back wall held print copies of field manuals. Sage kept a few in his kit himself on various pieces of armament that he was not well-versed on because PADs and Net connections were not guaranteed things and a man needed to know what he needed to know when he needed to know it if he was going to stay alive. Evidently Halladay felt the same way.

  There were also pads of actual paper, but they looked different than anything Sage had seen before and he thought maybe this was locally produced paper. Boxes contained pens and pencils, and those appeared to be homegrown as well. Beside them was a sliderule, and Sage was truly surprised to see that. Not many people knew how to use them.

  Halladay held his cup in both hands and peered over the brim. “The ambush, Top. Tell me about that.”

  Sage did, in a no-nonsense fashion, not glamorizing any aspect of anything that had happened, though he did mention the work done by the powersuit pilots and the snipers. They had been the backbone of the retaliation Charlie Recon had delivered.

  “Did First Sergeant Terracina tell you much about the recon work he’d been doing out in the wild?” Halladay asked when Sage fell silent.

  “Not much, sir. He was familiarizing me with the fort. He did mention that he had a network of assets that provided him intel about the drug traffickers working in the jungle.”

  The colonel grimaced. “We can suppose that particular well has finally been poisoned. The sergeant has, under my orders, been trying to thin the traffickers and serve notice to those who might want to haul contraband through this sprawl that that merchandise wasn’t going to be allowed. Terracina had a thin network at best.”

  “Sergeant Terracina told me Major Finkley had more luck turning assets, sir,” Sage said.

  Halladay’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Yes. That’s true. Major Finkley has managed a few coups around here regarding relationships with the locals and the corps. His father is a congressman.”

  “I’d heard that, sir.”

  “Do you know who told the sergeant about the drug lab you people raided?”

  “No sir. That never came up. We were more focused on the mission.” Sage paused just for a second, then hurried on before Halladay could pick up the slack in the conversation. “In fact, I’m not certain that Terracina was acting on information he’d gotten himself or someone had gotten for him.”

  “That’s going to have to be something you look into.”

  That surprised Sage. “Me, sir?” He’d figured one of the officers would have been assigned to the task.

  “Yes, you.” Halladay breathed out a little, just enough to push and hold before taking up trigger slack on a sniper rifle. Sage trained men on exactly that kind of breath. “As you probably know, most of the officers here are greener than grass. That’s why I was relying on Sergeant Terracina so heavily. Now that he’s gone, I’m going to be relying on you. If that’s too much, I need to know so I can plan on your replacement.”

  “There’s no reason to do that, sir.”

  “Really?” Halladay shot Sage a calculating look. “Because the scuttlebutt about you is that you don’t want to be here.”

  Sage decided in an eye blink to be truthful with the colonel. The man had heard about Sage’s protests about staying back as a trainer, and there was nothing to be done but to get those protests out into the air. “I want to be on the front line of the war, sir. That’s where I belong.”

  Halladay regarded Sage for a moment, then nodded. “I understand your feelings. I wasn’t exactly thrilled to be reassigned here either, but this is where the general wanted to be. And, for the moment, I go where the general goes.”

  “Yes sir.” Sage sipped the coffee.

  “It’s just possible I can help you get your wish, Sergeant.”

  Sage waited without commenting.

  Halladay gave him a thin smile. “The general’s not going to be happy with you even though Sergeant Terracina led this mission, and despite the fact that we’ve got standing orders to shut down the black-market ops wherever we find them. You’ve got a lot of men out there who are going to hold you accountable for the sergeant’s death.”

  For a moment Sage considered defending his actions regarding Terracina, then decided not to. It wouldn’t matter.

  “I know what you did and why you did it,” Halladay went on. “I’ve already reviewed the vid on Sergeant Terracina’s death. You saved a handful of men around you by cutting him free of the kifrik web. Maybe more. If that web’s integrity had been compromised, that jumpcopter could have gone down, as well as the soldiers that had survived the initial attack. It’s no consolation, but if Sergeant Terracina was conscious there at the end, I’m sure he approved of your actions.”

  All Sage could remember was the look of shocked betrayal that had been on Terracina’s face. “I don’t think he knew about the sabot round, sir.” He hadn’t realized he’d spoken his thoughts until the colonel responded.

  “Maybe not. Sergeant Terracina was hit pretty badly. Probably already dying.”

  Sage closed his eyes and banished the image of the sergeant’s face. That memory would return, but for now he needed it out of his head.

  “If he had known,” Halladay stated firmly, “Sergeant Terracina would have approved what you did. If the situation had been reversed, he would have cut you loose too.”

  That didn’t matter, though. On his first night at his new post, he’d killed one of his own team.

  “Some of the soldiers out there will realize what happened. Word will spread. And I’ll make sure to get the word out too.”

  Sage nodded, but he didn’t think that would much matter. He was still new to the fort, and he was going to be in charge of a lot of the training. He would have been going against the grain to begin with.

  “Can you still do this job, Sergeant?” Halladay’s voice turned hard and cold. “I need a man who can run this fort, get these men into fighting shape so they can stay alive out there. I don’t need a man who’s going to spend his time feeling like he needs to be elsewhere. Are we clear on that?”

  Anger flared inside Sage and he kept it carefully under control. “Crystal, sir.”

  “Good. Because the work that Sergeant Terracina had been doing isn’t finished.” Halladay turned and waved a hand over his desk. In response, a holo fired up and painted images in the air over the desktop.

  Makaum sprawl glowed in the center of a vast, deep jungle. Fort York and the Terran embassy sat at one end of the sprawl and the Phrenorian embassy, marked by the hivelike buildings the Sting-Tails preferred, sat at the other. A third embassy, smaller and made of the elliptical construction favored by the (ta)Klar, sat due east. Opposite the (ta)Klar embassy, stalks of prefab buildings housing the corps stuck out of the ground like arrows. All of the structures looked artificial against the jungle.

  Halladay leaned over the holo and nodded at Sage to join him. Sage took his coffee to the opposite end of the desk and peered down.

  “Sergeant Terracina gave you the ground view of the situation. I’m going to give you the overview.” Halladay pointed at the fort. “Here we sit, in potentially hostile territory, depending on how close the war wit
h the Phrenorians comes. Intel suggests that Makaum may be of more importance to the Sting-Tails than we initially thought. The brass is thinking the natural resources here are starting to look good to the Phrenorian commanders. Or maybe they’ll target us because we’re a supply line to Terran forces. They’ll gear up to fight us for the planet, or they’ll rain fire down on us. Either way, this planet has generated enemy interest.”

  The theories had circled the grapevine, but Sage hadn’t put any trust in them. Command had a tendency to overthink situations. Right now, the war was still out in space, not here. “Doesn’t the Makaum government understand that, sir?”

  “Our diplomats are endeavoring to bring that understanding into sharp focus every day, Top. There’s a lot of resistance on part of the Makaum people. For one, they don’t want anything to do with the war—or with us, for that matter. For another, the Makaum people have split over offworlder presence among them, and Terran military presence in particular.”

  “Sergeant Terracina had mentioned that, sir.”

  “Drop the ‘sir.’ We’re talking right now. I don’t need a yes man at this moment. I’ve got green lieutenants and a major who’s more interested in furthering his political career than in paying attention to this fort. And a general—” Halladay stopped himself and took a breath. “The point is, I need a man who can think for himself. Especially after what happened last night.” He locked eyes with Sage. “Looking at your service record, you’re supposed to be capable of that.”

  Sage nodded. “I gathered that the locals don’t much care for offworlders.”

  “Some of them don’t.”

  “Is the fort what split the populace?”

  “No. In the beginning, I’m told, the Makaum people enjoyed interstellar trade. Some of them, very few, even joined ships when they could. Makaum doesn’t manufacture enough trade goods to bring in commerce.”

  “The corps seem to be mighty interested in things here.”

  Halladay grinned ruefully. “A few of the corps were already here, stealing what they could, but those efforts were at a minimum because nobody wanted to build a Gate to more easily reach this planet, and the Phrenorian patrols shot them down. When we built the Gate, when Terran soldiers built the fort here, that’s when the majority of the corps set up shop and went into business above and under the table. We constructed the road for them to travel, and we provide the protection from the Phrenorians as well as the anti-offworlder contingent among the Makaum. We seeded our own problems.”

  “Then why allow the corps to be here?”

  “Militarily, we’d shut them out. But corps presence here is also political. The corps have a lot of weight back on Terra. Weight that can’t be ignored. So we were encouraged to help the corps engage with the Makaum. On one hand, they pay taxes that help fund the war effort. Of course, they make profits from that help as well. Corps always do. On the other, the corps own several key politicians in the Alliance who control our purse strings. We allow the corps here, they continue our funding. Of course, without us using the munitions they provide, demanding more and better, they wouldn’t have the profits they do.”

  That was always the situation for a military man. War depended on munitions and weapons that were supplied by defense contractors, but those same contractors depended on soldiers using them out in the field. War was a flame that fed itself when it came to profits. As long as those corps remained on a winning side.

  “So we’re stuck with them here.” Halladay took a breath. “They go about their business under relative protection from the Phrenorians, and they conduct their black-market enterprises under the same umbrella.”

  “What do the Makaum people think about the black market?”

  “Many of the Makaum have learned to appreciate profits as well as the offworld goods—legal and illegal. Several of the Makaum have gone into business for themselves, becoming outlaws among their own people. We’re blamed for that as well, for providing the temptation and for not being able to control the situation. Dealing with the Makaum black marketers is tricky. Unless we can prove they’re pursing illegal business, we can’t move against them. Ultimately, though, they view the corps as interlopers, parasites on a business they can now run without outside interference since they’ve learned how to manage it. They, and the corps, tend to play us in the middle. We defend the corps’ legitimate business interests, and we take out the Makaum black market.”

  That had happened on other worlds Sage had served tours on, and that clash had resulted in spectacularly difficult situations for a soldier simply trying to get the job done.

  Halladay pointed toward the jungle. “Out there, in millions of square miles of jungle, small battles take place on a regular basis. Sergeant Terracina and his people have discovered bodies of the Makaum people as well as offworlders where they fell. If we don’t find the bodies quickly, there are carrion feeders enough out there that the evidence disappears pretty readily.”

  “Are there villages out there?”

  “A few. Not many. And those communities tend to be travelers living more like hunter/gatherers instead of villages. Those people live lives of desperation. This sprawl is the first place the Makaum people have successfully put down roots.”

  “What makes this place so special?”

  Halladay shook his head. “I don’t know. Our scientific division can’t explain it.”

  “Can the corps?”

  “No. And I’ve talked to several sympathetic Makaum who have been forthcoming, and they don’t know either. Some of them think that the planet has finally started to adapt to them and is allowing them to become part of the ecology. But only in this place. One of our ecology specialists believes the planet is allowing the Makaum people to live and gather here to shape them—or to find a way to develop something nasty that will kill out human life once and for all.”

  “How?”

  “Maybe by creating a new predator that’s smarter and faster than anything we’ve seen. Maybe by growing some new biological strain.”

  “Sounds like they believe the planet is sentient.”

  “Live here for a while. Maybe you will too. The possibility crosses my mind more than I’d like it to.”

  Sage stared out into the almost impenetrable jungle, remembering what it had been like last night to battle the ambushers. “What kind of support can we count on from the Makaum people?”

  “Not much. Those who resent offworlders in general aren’t going to help in any way. Those who do support the presence of offworlders are mostly waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “To see who can give them the best deal. Either way it goes, the Makaum know that Terra or Phrenoria or the (ta)Klar want them as a source of labor. The way they look at it, their days of governing themselves are probably over. At the very least, their world will never be the same again.”

  Sage nodded.

  “Sergeant Terracina and I were waging war against the corps as much as we could.” Halladay looked at Sage. “The general isn’t in favor of that action and isn’t exactly supportive.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it can be problematic. If we step on the toes of the corps, we could lose access to the space stations that orbit this planet. Command isn’t prepared to replace those space stations. Losing them would make our job of policing Makaum a lot more difficult.”

  “Why don’t we have our own space stations?”

  “They’re expensive, and Command hasn’t yet decided if Makaum is important enough to defend. Right now all of our heavy space stations are out there shipping weapons and supplies to different units.”

  “This planet supplies a lot of raw material to the war effort.”

  “You and I know that. So do the Phrenorians, which is why they’re trying to win over the Makaum people diplomatically.” Halladay looked at Sage. “With the Makaum people split the way they are, putting a military space station in orbit might be a waste of resources. Why put a space station out
there only to lose the ground war if the Makaum people decide to stand against us? Any space station Command puts up there would become a target the instant Makaum decides we’re not who they want to support in this situation. You can bet we’d be the last to find out.”

  Sage rubbed his fingers over the stubble on his chin. “Yeah. But the corps can put up space stations because they’re making profits—legally and illegally. The civil war here promotes a smokescreen for them.”

  “Exactly, and we’re providing protection for them while they do it.”

  “We know what the Phrenorians are here for. Why are the (ta)Klar onplanet?”

  “To keep things stirred up between us and the Sting-Tails. As long as Terra stands against the Phrenorians in these sectors, the (ta)Klar don’t have to commit assets.”

  The (ta)Klar Consolidation had a reputation for engaging mercenaries to fight their battles, but they won most of their conflicts through finesse, through seizing control of trade or politics—usually both—and raising the stakes so high that war became too costly for worlds that committed military and materials to the effort. They had a history of walking into star sectors depleted by interstellar war, raising up armies dependent on them, and sorting through the detritus of what was left to manage a profit. No one on Terra knew for certain how large the (ta)Klar Consolidation was, but it was immense.

  “The Makaum Quass friendly to Terran interests appreciate the efforts we’ve made to keep the black market and biopiracy under control,” Halladay said.

  “But the general doesn’t agree with those efforts?”

  “On paper, sure. In practice?” Halladay shook his head. “General Whitcomb thinks it’s too risky. The diplomats rain heat down on us because they believe a course of action further splits the Makaum people.”

  “What do you think?”

  Halladay’s face hardened. “I think that the criminal element on this world needs to be brought under control if we’re going to help these people. And if we’re going to protect ourselves. Whether we’re out in the jungle pursuing those cartels and biopirates or sitting here, we’ve got targets pinned to our backs.” He paused. “I don’t like being a target.”