by J. N. Chaney
The staff sergeant nodded, then turned on their speakers and faced the crowd. “I am Staff Sergeant Prospero, Union Marines. My squad is here to provide security until we can declare the city secure, but as of now, it looks like we kicked the tin-asses’ butts!”
The civilians cheered, people hugging and slapping each other on the back.
“I need you to remain in place for now, but as soon as we can, we’ll see about releasing you back to your homes.”
“Sergeant Amin, take over and get the squad in position while I go with Corporal Pelletier.”
The staff sergeant indicated that Rev should lead, and the two started pushing through the crowd. A Marine in a PAL-3 is a pretty imposing figure, and the people slowly parted for them, but not without calling for information. They knew something was up—they’d heard the people near Rev’s position cheer, and the mere presence of the infantry Marine got them excited.
The staff sergeant kept saying things like, “Things are going well,” and “We’ll keep you informed,” as Rev led them to the food court and Jeremiah’s Shawarmas. Rev asked one of the proctors to fetch Tomiko from where she was guarding the northeast corner of the market before going into the restaurant’s small office. There were two people inside, a proctor and a person in cooks’ whites. Maybe it was Jeremiah, but Rev didn’t ask. What he did ask was for them to give him the office.
The staff sergeant looked huge in the small room. Rev sat on the corner of the desk, but there was no place for a Marine in a PAL-3 to sit.
“How did it go? I saw the buildings there right across the street.”
“Navy Shrike. Almost hit us. And a shuttle crashed another five hundred meters away.”
Rev couldn’t see the staff sergeant’s face, but he thought he could see a slight slumping in the Marine’s posture.
“Third Platoon, Golf Company. Lost some good people there.”
“Have casualties been . . . uh, heavy?” Rev asked, his face scrunched up as he waited for the answer.
“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so. No one from my squad.”
That surprised Rev. A happy surprise.
“There weren’t many tin-asses in the city, at least not that we’ve found. More of those little ones.”
“The mini-Centaurs. They’re not manned,” Rev told them.
He didn’t know that for a fact, but it was the only thing that made sense.
“They’ll mess you up, the ones with weapons in the pedestals, but your Morays there,” the SNCO said, using their chin to point to Rev’s missiles, “will do the job.”
“I know. We took out two at the emitter station.”
“Good shit,” the staff sergeant said before reaching up and opening their helmet, revealing a crop-haired woman in her thirties. “Damn, it feels good not to be breathing canned air.”
She put her hand in through her open face shield and gave her scalp a good scratching. “What about you guys here? Did things go OK?”
“Lost up to a hundred, maybe,” Rev said bitterly.
“That courser you were asking me about?”
“Yeah, it hit us as we were moving here.”
“Shit, sorry. So, it hit you and moved off?”
Rev shook his head. “I kinda gave it a nudge to leave.”
The staff sergeant raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question.
“I just had the one Moray then, and my battle buddy reminded me of the shitty chances it would stop one.”
“Yeah? So . . . ?”
“It was on the bridge, so I took it out. The bridge, I mean. Dropped it into the river.”
“Damn. Really? We saw the bridge coming over. Had to detour, but I didn’t think a Marine had done that.”
Rev just shrugged.
“Most excellent thinking, Corporal, but given your rep, I’m not surprised.”
“My rep?”
The staff sergeant laughed and said, “Yeah, your rep. As in tin-ass killer.”
Rev frowned. Yes, he’d managed to kill Centaurs, but for various reasons, that had been kept under wraps. Evidently, not as well as the brass might have thought. He felt more than a little uncomfortable to have a staff sergeant defer to him when it came to that.
He was saved from responding when Tomiko entered the office. Propriety be damned, but Rev gave her a giant hug.
“You look like shit,” he told her, and it was true. Her eyes were hollow and flat.
She pushed him back at arm’s length and studied his face. “You boosted.”
It wasn’t a question but a statement of fact.
“I had to. I was at the end of my rope there, Miko.”
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” she said.
“Miko, this is Staff Sergeant Prospero.”
“Prospero? I’ve heard about you. Echo, right? Talent Moreno’s in your platoon.”
“Second Squad. Good Marine.”
Rev didn’t know who this Moreno was, but with the entire regiment coming from metro Swansea, it wasn’t surprising that there were lots of short degrees of separation.
“So, just passing through?” Tomiko asked.
“Here to relieve you while the regiment conducts sweeps. I need a brief of the situation, and Corporal Pelletier here said you’re the one I need to talk to.”
Tomiko took the next few minutes and gave a thorough debrief despite her obvious fatigue. Augmented or not, XL-12’s or not, forty hours without sleep took a toll on a person.
Rev listened to her debrief. He knew most of it, but some things were new to him. That was his fault. He should have asked the same questions of her when he arrived at the market.
“Remind me to conduct better briefs in the future.”
Is Punch being sarcastic? Is that even possible?
As a personal reminder—not one he asked his battle buddy to note—he was going to have to learn more about battle buddies and their programming.
But that was for some time later, not now. Tomiko was wrapping up, answering a few questions from the staff sergeant.
“Well, if that’s it, I guess you’re hereby relieved. Good job, you two.”
“Any idea when we’ll get comms?” Tomiko asked.
The staff sergeant shook her head and said, “Not until we either secure the planet or have to sound a recall.”
“Well in that case, we’re to stay here until we get word,” Tomiko said.
“Sounds good.”
“I’ll come out in a bit to help with security if you need me,” Rev said. “I’ve got another dozen hours or so before I crash from the ATP boost.”
“That sounds good, too. We can always use more trigger-pullers. Check in with Sergeant Amin. He’ll find you a position.”
“Roger that.”
The staff sergeant reached out again to bump fists with the two of them, closed up her helmet, and left the office.
“What about you? You going to hang out here?” he asked Tomiko.
“Well, since I didn’t boost, I’m running on empty. That couch over there is calling my name.”
She stumbled over to the small, ratty couch, barely big enough for two people to sit abreast. Luckily, she was a small woman, and she collapsed into it, her legs drawn up. She gave Rev a wink, and within thirty seconds, she was out cold.
10
The two Marines stayed at the market for three more weeks. Fighting had been much lighter than expected, and the city was declared secured late on the first day of the landing. The planet was declared secured after fifty-two hours.
But that didn’t mean they could just pack up and leave. Three hundred million citizens had been prisoners for close to ten months. People had been displaced. Infrastructure had been destroyed. It was going to take some time to put things back together.
And perhaps most of all, all those people needed to be screened. The brass hadn’t foreseen that humans would actively work for the Centaurs, and now they were scrambling to
address the situation. Teams were being brought in, and every single citizen was going to be interviewed before they were released.
The lieutenant and master sergeant had come to see Rev and Tomiko the second day. Rev had reached the end of his boost, and he was out cold, but Tomiko had been given their marching orders. They were to stay at the market and assist in the screening. They were a known factor to the people, and that was assumed to be beneficial in the process.
It wasn’t. Rev woke up to a market surrounded by memory wire, armed Marines guarding the entrances. Fydor LaMare, the other cordon captain, and some of the proctors had approached Rev to let the people out, promising that everyone would be screened, but the Omega Division officer who’d arrived to take charge of the process gave that an immediate no. With the OD officer in civilian clothes, the animus that quickly grew was aimed at the Marines. The master sergeant who came with the OD officer bore the brunt of that, but Rev, Tomiko, and the rest of the uniformed Marines received their fair share of the hate. Even Lima seemed to resent their presence.
To make matters worse, with all the civilians kept as prisoners—ironically more so prisoners than they were with the Centaurs—food distribution was spotty at best. The restaurants and food stalls in the food court attempted to feed everyone, but they weren’t set up for that. They were out by the second day. The Navy started shipping in combat rations, but there never seemed to be enough.
Slowly, as more and more people were interviewed, they were released, and things started to get back to normal. Not completely normal, but in that direction.
Not everyone was getting released. The numbers of Angel shits uncovered were surprising. The bulk never became kapos, but they were nevertheless considered security risks.
Tomiko and Rev were debriefed as well. At least their debrief was conducted by Marines, not OD. Rev gave his account, uploading his recorded feeds. Between him and Tomiko, they made sure that Lima, Fydor, Amicia Lin, Beth Rysth-Lorraine, Nik Orleans, and the proctors were noted for their contributions. And for Rev, he asked if Tanton McCough could be retroactively reenlisted back into the Corps.
He knew the old man would appreciate it, but it went beyond that. Getting killed in the line of duty as a Marine would result in many more benefits for his family than if he was just among the millions of civilians who had died since the initial Centaur invasion.
Three weeks at the market were followed by four with the rest of the platoon while waiting for a lift off the planet. Three Marines and a corpsman from the platoon had been lost during the mission. Sergeant Jessie Milano and Doc Raize Portis from First Team had died while unsuccessfully trying to hold off five or six mini-Centaurs from their civilians. Scores had died under the onslaught, but Milano and Portis’ actions allowed even more civilians to scatter to safety.
No one knew what had happened to Corporal Tank Listerman and Lance Corporal Mud Dog Hringa, also from First Team, which left everyone with a hollow feeling in their gut. NIS and ODIS would investigate later, so hopefully, their stories would eventually be told.
Finally, however, the platoon’s number came up, and it was time to leave.
As they lay on the ground in their sticks, Rev looked across the spaceport’s apron to the civilian shuttle waiting for them to board.
“Hey, Hus-man, at least this time we’re not going Navy,” Rev said.
“I hope they got chow. I’m sick of D-rats.”
Rev and Tomiko’s first shuttle ride had been on a Navy Isis shuttle, packed with gear, and Hussein had waxed poetic about the benefits of hitching a ride on a civilian craft. Rev hoped Hus-man had been telling the truth and not just feeding the boots sea stories. He was rather sick of D-rations as well, and he could use a little pampering.
A trolley rolled up, manned by a petty officer.
“OK, Marines. All your ammo. I need it dumped now!”
“Really?” Tomiko muttered in a low voice, too low for the petty officer to hear, but not low enough for augmented hearing. “They trust us to fight, but not enough to believe we won’t shoot up our ride home?”
“I mean it,” the petty officer said when no one got up. “You are not going to get on your shuttle until all your ammo’s turned in.”
“OK, people. You heard him,” the gunny said, getting up and dumping ammo into the trolley’s open hopper.
With a sigh, Rev got up and started dumping ammo as well. M-49 darts were very compact while in their magazines, and he got rid of close to two thousand. He left one magazine with 114 darts in his shin pocket. If caught, he’d say he forgot it. But they weren’t on the shuttle yet, and who knew if there were more Angel shits, or even a mini-Centaur still roaming free.
Tomiko gave his shin a pointed look as he sat down on the tarmac before she patted her upper arm. A 57-dart mag would easily fit there unnoticed.
A yellowshirt shouted at them to get back up, telling them it was time to embark. They marched in stick order across the tarmac to the pretty shuttle. A logistics staff sergeant waited at the hatch and scanned each of them before they got on board.
An attendant, impossibly clean looking in his blue trousers and yellow shirt, welcomed them aboard and directed them to the seats.
Tomiko took a seat in the last row, and Rev plopped down beside her.
“You going to miss this place, Miko?” Rev asked.
“Are you high?” she asked with a huff.
“Oh, come on. Nice weather. Lots of O2 to breathe. Off on our own. What could have been better?”
She just shook her head.
Even after almost four years with his battle buddy, it still sometimes surprised him.
He was tempted to say no, but that would only screw up its machine learning.
“It’s called sarcasm.”
“Sort of. Not really, I guess.”
“Hey, what did I tell you?” Hussein asked, leaning across the aisle. “This is the way to fly.”
The shuttle attendant was coming down the aisle, pushing a cart. Mouthwatering aromas filled the cabin. Rev wished Tomiko hadn’t picked a seat in the back, but he waited his turn. The attendant finally reached them and passed a meal to him with a cheery, “Enjoy!”
Rev cracked it open. He didn’t recognize what kind of pasta was the main course, but he didn’t care. After almost eight weeks of D-rats, anything would be heaven.
He ate while a recorded voice gave them a safety brief and was licking the box clean as the shuttle took off.
He never looked back down at the planet as they climbed into the atmosphere.
11
“How drunk am I?”
That’s it?
One thing that bothered Rev was that his augments didn’t increase his alcohol tolerance. He massed a good fifty kilos more than he did pre-augment, but that didn’t affect how much he could drink. He was still somewhat of a lightweight. That wasn’t going to stop him from making a brave attempt to put a dent in Lateeka’s supply.
He wasn’t the only one. With an actual ninety-six—four days of free leave—the regiment’s Marines and sailors were in party mode. No one knew why there had been so few Centaurs on the planet, probably in the low hundreds, not that anyone was complaining. Even with the mini-Centaurs, the mission on Tenerife had been accomplished with only moderate casualties, at least when compared to other missions, and that deserved a celebration. Lateeka’s wasn’t the most popular Marine hangout in the city, but it was packed to the gills.
Best of all, at least from Rev’s perspective, was that all of their crew had made it back. No one was even wounded. That was three major battles, and they were all still among the living. And since the dead can’t drink, they were going to take it upon themselves to honor those who’d fallen.
“Hey, Bundy. I think that pitcher’s looking mighty dry,” Rev said.
“That’s Sergean
t Bundy to you, asswipe.”
“OK, Sergeant Bundy, I think that pitcher’s looking a might dry.”
“Damned corporals, always whining about something. Back in my day—”
“When ships were made of wood and Marines were made of steel,” Tomiko and Cricket shouted in unison, raising their steins as they cut him off.
Cricket sloshed half of the beer out in the mock toast, and Udu punched him in the arm—which made him slosh more—and shouted, “Alcohol abuse!”
Bundy half-heartedly grumbled, but he left to get another pitcher.
Rev just sat back and smiled. Bundy had only picked up Sergeant three weeks ago, and the rest of them were enjoying giving him shit. This wasn’t his official wetting down, but they were going to ride their friend awfully hard tonight.
“How was dinner?” he asked Tomiko, having to raise his voice to be heard over the din.
“You know, same-old, same-old,” she said, draining the last of her beer. “Mom wanted to know when I was going to get out of the Marines and find a husband.”
“Sucks to be you.”
Their ninety-six had started that morning after formation, and those who could had first gone to visit family, Rev included. But whereas Rev had been happy to see his mother, stepdad, Neesy, and Grover, Tomiko’s home life was a little more problematic. Rev had asked out of concern, but seeing the cloud form over her eyes, he wanted to change the subject.
“So, what’s going to happen with the Angel shits?” he asked her.
Fyr, hearing the question, leaned in to listen to what Tomiko was going to say. During the trip back, that had been the main topic of discussion, but it hadn’t been talked out. Everyone still wanted to know.
It was one thing to protest outside of the bases or the Government House on New Mars, but these Angel shits had turned on their race and had been actively helping the enemy enslave fellow humans. And if the little bits and crumbs that trickled down to the enlisted Marines were any indication, there had been a lot more of them than they’d previously believed. Most of the kapos and other quislings had not survived. Some had been killed fighting the Marines, but more had been killed by the other citizens, often beaten and torn apart by bare hands.