The Marine Corps was not considered a combined arms unit for nothing, after all. Now if they could only get the politicians to understand that.
Chapter 25
Noah tried to pull himself forward, but with his legs doubled up, it was hard to get leverage. He took a deep breath, readied his left hand, then pushed, jamming his body under the MGS’ undercarriage to the point where he could just reach the access port. He touched his handheld to the port’s interface, and a small beep acknowledged the transfer of data.
Now to get out of here.
He’d pushed himself in, but he couldn’t push out. Squirming like a beached fish, he slowly edged back until he could grab the PSC-44’s vertical handle and use it to extract his body. That wasn’t what the handle was designed for, but he had to use what was available to him.
“Gunny, why the heck do they put these ports and readouts in so many grubbing hard-to-reach places?”
“For the same reason I told you three days ago. Simply because.”
Noah shook his head. It made no sense. All of the displays and ports should be in easy-to-access places. It took a frigate’s captain less time to get his ship’s readouts that it took the three of them to get the Anvil’s.
He glanced at his handheld’s display.
“Right at 120. Perfect, just like every check for the last five months.”
“As it will be for the next five months,” the gunny said.
Noah’s heart fell.
“Five more months? You heard something, Gunny? We’ve got another five months?”
“No, I haven’t heard anything, Noah. But we were supposed to be relieved three months ago, and that didn’t happen.”
“Do you think it’ll be that long, though? I mean, aren’t the negotiations about over?”
“You must be mistaking me for some First Ministry hack. I’m just a lowly gunnery sergeant, keeping my head down and trying to do my job.”
Noah didn’t feel mollified. The idea of sitting on the planet for another five months was frightening, and he didn’t think she should be joking about that.
The last five months had been a long, boring, exercise in wasting time. After the counter-ambush in the hills, the Pytor Velikiy command had agreed to a cease-fire. The task force had thought they would be recalled, and they’d even received a tentative date when an FCDC battalion was to relieve them. But the battalion didn’t come, and they were extended on planet. So, for five months, they went out on patrol every three days, then sat back at camp for two. There weren’t enough makeshift gyms they could build, enough books and flicks they could watch, that could fill up the time and keep their minds off home. Marines were dedicated hard-chargers, but they fared best when actively taking it to the bad guys. They were not a good police force.
More than a few fights had broken out, and the task force commander, a major from the regimental staff, had been busy with non-judicial punishment on close to a daily basis. Time-filling classes were now the norm for the grunts, and for the tankers, it was maintenance, maintenance, maintenance.
Noah’s PA buzzed for attention, and he pulled it out.
“The first sergeant wants to see me,” he told the other two.
“Well, then, I guess you’d better go see her. She’s not been in a mood, you know.”
“Oh, I know, Gunny. We all know.”
It was true. As the time slowly fragged on, she was becoming more and more of a, well, asshole would be an appropriate term. Nothing she did was wrong, per se, and all was according to regs, but she kept demanding stricter compliance with the skipper’s orders, letting nothing slide.
Noah wiped his hands on his overalls, then looked down at the grime that left behind. He momentarily considered changing into his other set, newly cleaned, but then shrugged that off. He was a tanker, and they were on the ramp. Being dirty was part of the job description.
The company office was only 40 or 50 meters from the ramp, and it took him only a minute to reach the igloo. There was no knocking on the hatch as when back in civilization, so he simply walked in.
The new igloos were impressive, he had to admit. Shipped folded up and fitting on a single pallet, when inflated, the outer skin foamed up, becoming hard within a few minutes. Air was filtered in by some sort of osmatic process, but noise was effectively blocked. After clanging around the ramp, inside the igloo was quiet and cool. If they could only get more of them for berthing, life on Novyy Ural would be much more comfortable.
“Sergeant Lysander, the first sergeant’s waiting for you,” Corporal Wythe, a driver from Third who had the company duty for the day said.
“I can see him, Wythe,” the first sergeant said from her open office, which consisted of a partitioned-off section of the rear of the igloo. “Come on in, Sergeant.”
“Yes, First Sergeant? You wanted to see me?” he said as he entered her office.
“We just received word from the Naval Hospital at Tainio—”
“About Miriam? Is she OK? What happened?”
The first sergeant held up a hand to stop him, saying, “She’s fine, she’s fine. And Chance is fine, too.”
“Chance? Who’s Chance?’ he asked, confused.
“You son? That Chance?”
“My son?”
Noah sank onto one of the two chairs in front of the first sergeant’s desk.
I’m a father? he asked himself. I am a father!
Noah had been expecting this, but not for another week-and-a-half, and it hit him hard. It was difficult to fathom.
And Chance? he wondered as the name sunk in. What happened to Ryck?
“He’s your first, right?”
“Uh, yeah, First Sergeant. I thought we’d be back by now, and I’d be there.”
“Doesn’t always work out. I wasn’t there for my first two,” she said.
“Really? How did you handle it?”
The first sergeant looked at him as if he was an idiot, then said, “Uh, Sergeant Lysander, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a woman? You know, as in I’d have had to be there?”
Noah looked at her, trying to make sense of what she said before it sunk in.
“Oh, yeah. Of course, you were there. Sorry.”
“I was just trying to lighten the mood, but you new fathers can get so discombobulated when you get the news. I was there, but Fierdor wasn’t. He was deployed.”
It took a moment for him to realize that Fierdor must be the first sergeant’s husband’s name.
“Uh . . . how did he take it?”
“Don’t know. I wasn’t there with him. But first, congratulations. Second, the skipper’s getting a line back. Go to the comms shack, and you’ll be able to talk to your wife.”
“But’s it’s just after zero-two-hundred there,” Noah said.
The first sergeant just let out a single laugh, then shook her head before saying, “She just gave birth, Sergeant. She’ll be up, believe me.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess so,” he said, then as it all started to sink in, he started feeling excited, and he said, “I’m going over there now. Thanks, First Sergeant!”
He ran out of the company office and over the last of the six igloos.
The skipper was coming out as he rushed up, and he said, “Congratulations, Sergeant Lysander. I’ve cleared a line back for you. Mr. Drury said he’ll have it in about five.”
“Thank you, sir!” Noah said, barely waiting for the skipper to clear the door before he entered.
Mr. Drury was a retired Navy communications specialist, now working for the Corps. He and Staff Sergeant Oscar Lenz were the entire communications detachment for the task force. Noah barely gave a glance to the stretched-out figure of the staff sergeant, snores emanating from under a blanket, as he ran in.
“Congrats, Sergeant. Just hold on a second while we’re routing.”
Interstellar comms had been an issue since mankind started exploring the stars. The solution was hadron communications, where twinned receptors created by spli
t-manufacturing allowed for instantaneous comms. The expense and requirements for military-only secured lines meant that a small task force such as this one had only two lines back to division. They could hook into the planet’s commercial communications nodes, and for a call about a new child, that should be good enough, but their orders had been to limit all comms to the official military lines.
Noah waited impatiently until the routing was done, and Mr. Drury pointed to the small desk. Noah jumped up and sprinted to it.
“Miriam! How are you?” he asked her.
She smiled and said, “Tired, but happy. I’m glad I did it this way.”
“This way,” he knew, meant without drugs, a practice that had been becoming more popular over the last decade or so. She looked tired, though, her hair a mess, her face still a bit flushed, but she was smiling and seemed at peace with herself.
“Uh, where’s, uh, Chance?” he asked, stumbling over the name.
She let the pickup pan down, and a small, very red body was at her breast.
“Say hello to Daddy, Chance,” she said.
Noah didn’t know what to say. That little guy was his son, and a feeling of protectiveness flowed through his body. It killed him that he was on some far-off planet, doing nothing, while his son—and wife, of course—were so far away.
“I’m so sorry I wasn’t there, Miriam. I wanted to be, you, know.”
“I understand, honey. It is what it is. Mann and Val were here, so it was OK,” she said, panning the pick up to where her friend Mann and his wife, a staff sergeant with 1/11, were sitting.
Both waved and said “Hi, Noah,” in unison.
Noah felt a small pang of jealousy. Mann and Val lived in the same complex as they did, but Noah hadn’t really gotten to know either one of them well, yet both of them had been at the birth of his son.
“Thanks for being there with Miriam,” he said, pushing his jealousy back.
“No problem. We love her,” Mann said. “And she’d do the same for us.”
Miriam panned the pickup back to her chest where Chance was suckling.
It was probably his first meal, he realized. I wonder how many other firsts I’m going to miss?
“What do you think? Isn’t he beautiful?” she asked him.
“He sure is. Chance. I didn’t know we’d considered that,” he added, wondering if should even mention it.
“Oh, you know how it goes,” she answered, seemingly unconcerned. “I know we mentioned ‘Ryck’ and a few others, but we never really decided on anything. And when they asked me here, I had to give them something, so I just told them Chance. Chance David Lysander, my little man.”
Noah didn’t know what to say, but he was a little hurt, and that dampened his joy at becoming a father. As he remembered it, they’d pretty much decided on Ryck. He’d told Miriam it was up to her, but that was him trying to be the understanding husband. He hadn’t expected her to pick something entirely new.
I’m not going to let that spoil the moment, he admonished himself. And Chance isn’t a bad name. Kind of a strong name, in fact.
“Chance is fine, and I can’t wait to see him.”
“When are you getting back?” she asked.
“Who knows? Soon, I hope.”
Even if this was a secure line, deployment dates were never discussed in a call like this. But Noah hoped “soon” was OK to say.
“Oh, he’s asleep,” Miriam said, pulling Chance back and turning him around. “Here, look at his face.”
If he’d felt the tug of fatherhood before, the minute he saw Chance’s face, that tug became a tsunami. He wanted to reach into the screen and take his son into his arms.
He knew they weren’t going home today. They weren’t going home tomorrow. But they’d better go home soon or he was going to go UA and get back somehow to see his son, Marines be damned.
QUINTERO CRAG
Chapter 26
Noah stood on his seat, half of his body out of the hatch as Llanzo turned the corner in trace of the Gunny. The Boudicca II was barely a month old, and she still smelled of the factory, but Noah wasn’t jealous. He was happy to be with the Anvil.
“Keep it tight. We’ve got eyes on us,” he told his new driver.
“Roger that. I’ve got it.”
Knight Lewis had gone with the gunny as the driver of the new Charlie-One-Four, which had been his original position on the Ba-Boom. Sergeant Llanzo Shearer had been with Third Platoon, but with the personnel shortage, he’d been pulled to bring the Anvil to a combat-ready status. Technically, Noah was still the gunner, but he was also the acting tank commander.
Noah was tail-end charlie for the platoon, but the platoon had the position of honor, leading the rest of the company after the skipper. As the company commander, in his Eruption and the first tank in the column, turned through onto camp Tainio’s parade deck in view of the stands, the crowd erupted into cheers. The grunts were already in formation, five of the division’s nine battalions, but even with the PICS Marines, they didn’t offer the same visuals as the Davises did. Noah felt a surge of pride, and he tried to keep a stern visage, regardless of the fact that in the back of the division formation, he’d be a good 300 meters from the stands.
The skipper stopped the Eruption at his position, a lone Marine ground-guide leading him in. One after the other, the Kiss of Death, Ball Shot, Boudicca II, and the Anvil pulled in behind her. The remaining platoons fell in behind them, and then Alpha and Bravo Companies to their right.
And then it was time to wait for the rest of the division units to form up. Standing on his seat and looking forward, Noah pitied the grunts. The first company to form up had probably been standing there at attention for 20 minutes so far.
A loud, resonating fart sounded from below him.
“Grubbing hell, Llanz. Even here?”
“As I keep telling you, unum saltum, et siffletum, et unum bumbulum.”
“I’ll freaking ‘bumbulum’ you,” Noah said, keeping his face locked to the front.
Llanzo was a senior sergeant with two years as a driver, and his quals were high, but he had digestive issues. Worse than that, he was pretty complacent about passing the resultant gas. Noah had the hatch open, so it wasn’t bad, but in a closed tank, the filters were designed to keep bad things from getting into the tank, not releasing gas that originated from inside. Noah had a sneaking suspicion that Llanzo was sent by Third because of his flatulence.
Noah had to look up the Latin LLanzo kept spouting: it meant, “One jump, one whistle, one fart.” Evidently, back on Old Earth, there were “flatulists,” sort of court jesters, or later, comedians, who were paid quite well to entertain jokes and well-times farts.
The universe is a crazy place.
It took another fifteen minutes before the entire division, at least those units which weren’t deployed, to form up. Finally, the last of the arty was in place behind everyone else, and in unison, every tube opened up, sending a shock wave over the division and up into the stands. The crowd erupted into cheers and applause.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” the narrator announced over the sound system. “Welcome to the Fourth Marine Division’s Birthday Pageant. Today, the United Federation Marine Corps celebrates 317 years of service to our great Federation.
“The Fourth Marine Division has a long and glorious history, and the battle streamers on the division colors represent 67 different operations. Standing before you is Major General Stanley H. Carrigan, the commanding general. Joining him in the staff is Sergeant Major Filipe L. J. J. Lopez-Sivla, the division sergeant major.
“If I can turn your attention to the reviewing stand, our guest of honor is Vice-Minister Patricia Q. Howland, accompanied by Lieutenant General Kristof K. Kravitz, the United Federation Marine Corps Chief of Research and Development.
“Please stand, as we present the colors. The color guard, composed of six Marines and one Navy corpsman representing each regiment and separate combat arms battalion, is led by Se
rgeant Gustavio Miller.”
The crowd rose to its feet as the drummer commenced with a beat. Noah was standing at attention the best he could considering he was on top of his seat, and he could only peripherally see the color guard do its thing. Then it was 45 minutes of speeches, and Noah quickly zoned out. The grunts were at parade rest, but he couldn’t do that standing on his seat, so he simply leaned back a bit, his butt on the edge of the hatch. LLanzo was sitting, his head out of his hatch, but that didn’t stop him from “bumbulumming,” if that was even a word.
Finally, those giving speeches must have been tired, and the adjutant yelled out, “Pass . . . in . . . REVIEW!”
There was almost a palpable sigh of relief as the drum picked up the beat, and the color guard marched to the far right-hand side of the formation before doubling back to cross in front of the bleachers and spectators. Both the guest of honor and Lieutenant General Kaufmann saluted as the Federation colors passed them. Behind them, a line of Marines, all in historical costumes going back to the formation of the Marines marched past, the narrator explaining each uniform. And then, at last, the first of the grunts stepped off.
Noah had never actually stood as a grunt in a division-sized formation, but he could imagine the feeling as blood started flowing back into legs pushed into motion. He was in the Anvil, but he shook out his legs, too. Eventually, it was their turn. With the skipper leading, First Platoon followed four tanks abreast, and in turn were followed 50 meters back by the four tanks from Second Platoon.
“Eyes . . . right!” the skipper passed over the net, saluting as he reached the reviewing officer. LLanzo kept his eyes straight ahead, but Noah snapped his head to the right at a 45-degree angle. Once the Third Platoon passed the vice-minister, they were essentially done. A ground-guide was waiting for them at the end of the parade deck, and First Platoon turned into the parking lot while Second and Third proceeded to the lowboy for transport back to Camp Archuleta.
The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5 Page 69