Master Sergeant

by Mel Odom

  “You’re also going to be a long way from support teams.” Halladay blanked the holo with a gesture and looked at the other three members of the team. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you. Once you’re out in the jungle, separated from the fort, you’re going to be more on your own. And Kos, if he was behind this, is going to be gunning for you just as hard as you’re looking for him.”

  Let him come, Sage thought.

  “In the meantime,” Halladay went on, “we’ve got another problem. The Phrenorians appear to be intent on making the attack today a soapbox for them to gain points in the eye of the Makaum public.” He gestured above the holo and a new image took shape.

  Anger tightened the muscles in Sage’s jaw as he watched the Phrenorian aircars float over the burning buildings and heave out suppression bombs loaded with chembots that unloaded fire-quenching foam.

  The vid moved quickly forward in jerks, showing the Phrenorians putting out fires. Some of the buildings had been reduced to skeletons consisting of rock and burned timbers. One of the aircars floated to a landing in the middle of the empty market near the sagging well house.

  A tall Phrenorian warrior stepped out onto the ground and gazed around. “Greetings. On behalf of the Phrenorian Empire, I am hereby offering assistance to your wounded. Bring them to our facilities and we will treat them. We are saddened that you got caught up in an act of violence that was not your problem. In days to come, if we may offer our materials and labor, we will help you rebuild your dwellings.”

  Several Makaum natives came cautiously forward, then cheering broke out.

  “The Sting-Tails didn’t waste any time stepping in to grab the glory, did they?” Kiwanuka pursed her lips in disgust, and Sage noted the same grim intensity in her eyes as he’d seen in the holo training. She wasn’t just looking at the Phrenorians, she was peering at them through a sniper scope.

  Halladay froze the image. “Do you recognize this Phrenorian warrior, Top?”

  Sage studied the Phrenorian.

  “His name is Zhoh GhiCemid, captain of the Brown Spyrl.”

  Halladay looked a little surprised. “That’s right. He’s an important warrior in the Phrenorian Empire, from a family just a step down from their primes. From the intel we have on him, he’s always been on the forefront of the war.”

  “Then what is he doing here?” Sage asked.

  “We’re not certain, and, frankly, when Command learned of his presence here, we became concerned.” Halladay stared at the Phrenorian warrior. “At first the covert ops division thought Zhoh’s presence here indicated some kind of coming buildup, maybe a play for Makaum, but that hasn’t presented itself. There hasn’t been any buildup of warriors or materials. Our intel people are tracking down a rumor that Zhoh has fallen out of favor with the Phrenorian primes.”

  “I did some of the prelim backgrounding on Zhoh,” Murad said. “Zhoh’s family has always been the next tier down from the primes. They’ve always occupied a position of respect and authority. We weren’t able to make any sense of his presence here.”

  Halladay stared at the Phrenorian warrior. “Whatever his purpose here is, Zhoh apparently has an interest in you, Top. He backed you against Kos.”

  Sage shook his head. “I don’t know why.”

  “Just watch yourself out in the jungle, Top. We know the Sting-Tails are out there too. We just don’t know where, but you can bet they’ll be looking for ways to improve their situation on Makaum.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Personal Quarters: Sage

  Enlisted Barracks

  Charlie Company

  Fort York

  2228 Hours Zulu Time

  A knock sounded on Sage’s door while he sat at his desk and went through the files he had been going over with Lieutenant Murad and Sergeant Kiwanuka for the last two days. Over the last three days, they’d assembled the small platoon he’d chosen and eight fireteams, two of them equipped with powersuits; as well as ground-troop carriers, drivers, and mechanics.

  Sage knew their numbers were small, but trying to field a group any larger than that would allow others to know where they were. Small but invisible, large enough to make an impact. That was the desired goal.

  The Phrenorian influence in the sprawl had continued to increase. Zhoh GhiCemid had provided warriors to help rebuild the personal dwellings that had been lost, and they’d ended up working side by side with some of the Terran corps engineers. Peace was a fragile thing in Makaum these days, and all it would take was a spark to set it off.

  Glad for the break, Sage glanced up at the door and stretched the kinks out of his back and shoulders. “Come in.”

  Kiwanuka entered with meal packs in her hands. The smell of spices tickled Sage’s nose and his stomach rumbled in anticipation.

  She looked at Sage and held up one of the boxes. “I checked at the mess. They said you hadn’t been in.”

  “I forgot.” The maps and the intel had consumed Sage. He’d worked to transfer and organize everything to his PAD, adding in maps, geological surveys, and even Net chatter uploaded by military personnel during their free time as well as civilians working for the corps.

  “I thought you might have.” Kiwanuka glanced at the desk, which was covered with Sage’s gear. In between studying the field service reports of the soldiers he was taking, he’d been working on his personal equipment, cleaning it and speccing it out. “I think you’ve got a desk in there somewhere.”

  “Let me find it.” Sage stood and cleared the equipment from the desk onto a plasteel locker at the foot of his bed. He took the food cartons from Kiwanuka and set them on the desk. “Smells good.”

  “It is.”

  “That’s a lot of food.”

  “I haven’t eaten either. I thought we could eat and talk.” She glanced at him for a moment. “I can go back to my quarters if you’d rather be alone.”

  “I don’t mind the company.” Sage pulled a folding chair from beside the neatly made single bed and set it up on the other side of the desk.

  Kiwanuka sat and gazed around the room, focusing on the bed. “You haven’t slept in three days?”

  “I’ve slept six hours every night.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You made your bed this morning? Expecting a surprise inspection?”

  “I make my bed every morning. No inspection should be a surprise. You should be ready to go at all times.”

  Kiwanuka smiled and shook her head. “I only make my bed when I know there’s going to be an inspection.”

  “You run your barracks.”

  “I do, and I schedule the inspections.” Kiwanuka smiled again as she shrugged out of a backpack and set it on the floor. “That’s how I know it’s an inspection day. So, the army taught you to make your bed every day.”

  “No. My mother did that. She was born in Argentina, in a border town that was constantly caught up in one skirmish or another. She never had a home till she met my father and he married her and took her away from that. She always promised herself if she lived long enough to have a house and possessions, she would take care of them. She always did. I learned to appreciate what I had through her.”

  “Sounds like you have a good mother.”

  “I did.” The old pain tweaked through Sage but he quickly pushed it away.

  “‘Did?’”

  Sage reached into a small cupboard on one wall and took out two acrylic plates and flatware. “My father and I lost her a few years after I joined the military.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “You’re close with your father?”

  “I lost him three years after we lost my mother. He was in action on Serack.”

  Kiwanuka’s face darkened. “Serack was a bad place to be.”

  “It was. My father was one of several soldiers that didn’t make it back.” Serack was one of the first major Phrenorian offensives. Military historians likened it to Chosin Reservoir during the first Korean War.r />
  For a moment, Kiwanuka was silent. “‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t seem like enough.”

  “Sometimes it’s all we have.” Sage passed over a plate and flatware. “I’m hungry, Sergeant. Let’s eat.”

  Kiwanuka took the plate and set it down on the desk. “This is kind of fancy. I thought we’d eat out of the boxes.” She held up chopsticks. “I’m not one to insist on atmosphere.”

  “I like to eat off a plate when I get the chance.” Sage felt a little uncomfortable at the admission. “Tonight we have the chance.”

  “Your mother teach you that too?”

  “No. I’ve eaten enough meals out in the field that got mixed with dust and other debris that I learned to appreciate having a meal that’s going to stay the way it was prepared and taste the way it was meant to. Where we’re going in the morning, there aren’t going to be many opportunities for a sit-down meal. Or plates.”

  “Next time I’ll bring a picnic basket. However, there is an upside. I might be lacking in etiquette, but I brought beer.” Kiwanuka opened her backpack and brought out a six-pack of locally bottled beer that was chill enough to start sweating. She split the beers, then they worked together to dump the contents of the food cartons onto the plates.

  Sage inhaled the aroma of the foods. “Fujian style?”

  “Jiangsu, actually. One of the entrepreneurs who set up shop just outside the fence is from Nanjing, China. He’s an old man, but he likes to travel and ended up here. The place is small, but the food is good and the price is pretty decent.”

  “How much do I owe you?”

  Kiwanuka laughed. “That wasn’t a hint for you to reach for your creds. This is on me. Next time you buy.”

  “You’ll have to recommend a place. I haven’t exactly gotten to know the neighborhood since I’ve been here.” Sage put the fork aside and sharpened a pair of the chopsticks Kiwanuka had brought.

  “I will.” Kiwanuka opened one of the beers. “The menu isn’t as robust as it could be. Mr. Huang grew up on the Yangtze River near Nanjing. He conscripted into the military, but retired.”

  “To open a noodle shop?” Sage grinned.

  “Every noodle shop he’s ever opened has been on some frontier.” Kiwanuka took a long drink of beer.

  Sage grinned, understanding then. “I take it Mr. Huang doesn’t just sell noodles.”

  “He doesn’t. If he did, Mr. Huang would not be able to continue to afford his grandchildren the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed.”

  “So he’s a spy.”

  “Mr. Huang trades in . . . secrets. He’s very good at keeping them, and he’s good at finding them out.”

  “Does the top brass know this?”

  “No.”

  “You’re holding back?”

  “I am.” Kiwanuka set her beer aside and used her chopsticks to pick up a morsel of spiced meat. “I have found, in my career as a non-com, that it’s often beneficial to have intel sources the officers don’t have access to. It allows a more rounded view of things as they shape up. A system of checks and balances. I don’t always have to know only what Command wants me to know. And I don’t want to be limited to their intel sources.”

  Sage picked up a sliver of meat. “I’ve eaten Jiangsu food before. They do a lot with beef and pork. This is neither of those.”

  “Jiangsu cooks also use a lot of fish and turtle meat, both of which Makaum has a lot of. Different than what you might be used to.”

  “And this is?”

  “Jasulild.”

  “What is that?”

  “It might be better to tell you after we finish eating.”

  Sage popped the meat into his mouth and chewed. The flavor was tangy and the spices enhanced the taste. “Okay.”

  Kiwanuka eyed him in idle speculation. “Do you want to know?”

  Sage plucked up another morsel. “We’re about to go out into the wild, maybe be cut off from support for long periods of time so we can disappear into the jungle and look for those labs. I think it would be helpful to know more about what we can find to eat out there in case we run low on supplies and don’t want to return to the fort, or we get cut off for a while by enemy forces.”

  Kiwanuka pointed her chopsticks at a chunk of meat lying atop a pile of seasoned rice. “Jasulild is a kind of cuttlefish. They’re ugly and they smell bad, and one of them is big enough to eat you if you don’t eat it first.”

  “I guess if you catch one, there’s plenty to go around.” Sage picked up another piece of meat and chewed.

  “There is.” Kiwanuka smiled. “Mr. Huang buys jasulild from the Makaum fishermen. He told me that if I really want to know what’s out in the jungle, I should talk to one of the hunters that forage out there.”

  Sage had been thinking the same thing. Having the local hunters as scouts would be a bonus, but after the attack in the marketplace, gaining the trust of the locals would be hard. “Did he give you any names?”

  “He did.”

  “Do you know any of them?”

  “I don’t. I tried to talk to them, but they weren’t interested in anything I had to say.” Kiwanuka took another bite, chewed, and swallowed, then frowned. “It’s hard to get to know these people. They prefer to keep to themselves.”

  “And they don’t trust any of us. Especially after today.”

  “We haven’t given them any reason to. Even before today. The corps are here to exploit them and their planet. The (ta)Klar want the same thing, only they use a more passive approach, like a terminal illness.” Kiwanuka’s eyes narrowed in distaste. “The Phrenorians and Terran military see Makaum as a potential prize if the war pushes in this direction, which in all likelihood it might. You can’t blame the Makaum people for walling us out as much as they can.”

  “I understand it, and I’ve seen it before. The people in my mother’s town had the same feeling toward the peacekeeping forces.”

  Kiwanuka tilted her head to one side. “You went to your mother’s town? I thought you said she left there.”

  “She did. But she went back to see her family. She had two sisters and a brother there. Nieces and nephews.”

  “You weren’t close to them?”

  “No.” Sage picked up more food and ate. “My mother married my father. He took her away from there.”

  “They resented your mother?”

  “No, but they pretty much hated my father. They weren’t too fond of me either. Both of us represented ties to a world they wanted no part of.”

  “Then why did you go?”

  “To protect my mother. There was a lot of insurrection there then, and it remains now.” Sage shrugged. He tried to put away the memories, but only succeeded in dulling them. The mixed scents of spicy food and underlying layer of gunpowder haunted him. “Some places never know peace.”

  “I know.” She was quiet for a moment, picked at her food, then talked without looking at him. “I was born in Kampala, Uganda. You’ve heard of it?”

  “I have.” Sage was glad of the distraction. He was never comfortable talking about himself on a personal level, and he didn’t want those old memories rattling around inside his head now. He had enough on his plate.

  “My father serves with President Walukagga as a diplomatic attaché.”

  “Sounds like he’s an important man.”

  “He is, but he’s also an inflexible man, and not very giving when it comes to family. I don’t know what my mother sees in him, except maybe the fact that being married to him affords her a lot of political standing, which is unusual for a woman in that country. She went to Uganda on a medical-relief mission. She’s a surgeon and has done a lot in the field of nano-meds. She’s created a few patents, then given them away to charities to help in Africa.”

  “That’s a good thing. Most people I know aren’t that generous.”

  “Wealth has never been one of my mother’s goals. She’s always wanted power and recognition. That’s why she married my father.”

  Sag
e sipped his beer. “Given that kind of background, you could have had a choice of careers.”

  Kiwanuka looked at Sage and smiled ruefully. “So how did I end up in the Terran Army amid all the other possibilities?”

  “Something like that.”

  She opened another bottle of beer and took a sip. “Because my brothers and sisters did those things and I wanted to go my own way. I grew up in a large family. My mother and father, and most my siblings, are comfortable with Terra and a couple of the outer systems. I wanted to see more. So did my brother who died on Iracko.”

  Sage remained silent, sensing that wasn’t the only answer. There was pain and fire in Kiwanuka that hadn’t been put there by her parents. She hesitated for a long time, obviously trying to figure out how much to talk about. Sage let the silence stretch. The decision was hers, and he didn’t want to take on any more weight than he had to. Once a private thing was shared, it couldn’t be taken back.

  “And because of Phiromera.” Kiwanuka put the bottle aside and her hands shook just a little. “She was a friend of mine in Kampala. Her mother is one of my mother’s best friends. Phiromera and I grew up together. We were always different from the other children, planning to go out into space as soon as we turned eighteen. Her parents designed colony ships and had come to Uganda to help manage the displaced people. Phiromera and I wanted to be on one of those ships.” She took a breath. “Only that didn’t happen. When we were twelve, Phiromera was raped and killed by one of the terrorist gangs in Uganda. They took us both, but I got away before I was killed.” She halted for a moment and gathered her thoughts, but there was a lot told in that silence, a lot that was left unsaid. “By the time I got help, the men who had taken us were gone and Phiromera was dead.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  A hard gleam glittered in Kiwanuka’s gray eyes. “We’ve both lost people, Sage. We know what that’s like. These people on Makaum, they’re just starting to learn about loss on a scale they’ve never considered before. Until we arrived, they didn’t have any of the problems they have now. They had to worry about natural predators, putting food on the table, raising their kids right in a way that made sense to them, but that was all.”