“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 one 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.[32]
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 too
k 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 defeated 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 . . .
Whether she wanted it or not, Noah knew she had to see a corpsman. He didn’t have his PA, which he’d left back in his locker, so it was up to the other Marine and him.
“Here, help me get her up,” he said, taking her right arm.
Lessa cried out as they lifted her to her feet, and she barely helped move her feet as they brought her down the tiny trail to the sidewalk.
“You!” Noah shouted to two Marines heading to the shower. “Get a corpsman, now!”
The two took off for sickbay, and Noah and the other Marine laid Lessa down on the sidewalk. She was moaning, barely conscious, but she had a death grip on his hand. It looked like one of her eyes was swelling shut, but other than that and the blood dripping from her nose, she didn’t look like she had any major injuries. But given the torn shirt, given the dirt where she’d been obviously held down, that wasn’t Noah’s only concern.
He knew he should leave it to the MP’s, but he asked again, “Who did this? You can tell me.”
“He . . .” was all she said.
And then the duty corpsman ran up, his stretcher trailing. He scanned Lessa first, then physically examined her while more Marines who’d seen the commotion gathered around before placing her on the stretcher.
“You’re going to be OK, Lessa,” Noah said, letting go of her hand as the corpsman trundled her down towards sickbay.
A lieutenant showed up, taking charge, and ordering any witnesses to wait until the MP’s arrived.
Noah disobeyed the order, slipping off and back down to billeting, sticking his head inside the SNCO cubicle. It was empty, so he headed for the Swamp, the all-ranks recreation center. He stepped in, still in his flip flops and gym clothes, and peered around until he saw him.
He marched up to him, then demanded, “You. Right now. Outside.”
Staff Sergeant Cain looked up from the table where he was sitting with Gunny Speck and Staff Sergeant Muser-Lopez.
“You done cleaning the Hombre?” he asked, smiling.
“Outside. Now!”
The staff sergeant looked at the other two, shrugged, and said, “Give me a moment to see what my junior Marine’s crying about.”
Noah waited until the staff sergeant was moving before following. He looked at him closely, trying to see any evidence that he’d been involved. He didn’t know what he expected, but he hoped he’d recognize it when he saw it.
They passed through the door and turned to the smoking table to the right, and the staff sergeant said, “OK, we’re outside. What the fuck do you want?”
“I know you did it,” Noah said, watchi
ng to see him flinch.
“Did what?”
“Up there, on the way to the showers.”
Noah thought he might have seen the slightest tic in the staff sergeant’s eyes, but he couldn’t be sure. He knew if he accused the man, and if he were wrong, his final days in the Marines would be a living hell. But he was sure he was right.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Lessa.”
“Lessa who?”
“You know damn well who that is. Sergeant Lessa Franklin.”
“Oh, your little girlfriend?” the staff sergeant said. “What about her?”
Noah felt the first tendrils of misgivings. The staff sergeant wasn’t looking guilty. What if he was wrong? But Lessa didn’t get hurt stumbling off the sidewalk. Someone did that to her. But what if it was someone else?
“She was assaulted, maybe half an hour ago.”
“And?”
“And I know it was you.”
The staff sergeant stood silent for a moment, just staring at Noah, before saying loudly—too loudly—Noah thought, “Wasn’t me,” and looking around as if to see if any of the half-dozen Marines standing outside the rec center were listening.
Noah grabbed the staff sergeant’s shirt, pulled him in close, then quietly, almost in a whisper, said, “Oh, there might not be proof, Staff Sergeant, and maybe you’ll get away with it, but between you and me, I know you did it, and you know you did it.”
It looked like the man was going to deny it again, but his expression changed, and in his own whisper, he said, “You were wrong, Lysander. Your little hottie isn’t a lez. She just hadn’t met a real man yet. But when she saw me leaving the shower, she just had to have me, so she dragged me off into the woods, begging for it.”
He took Noah’s wrist in his hand and pulled it down, tearing it off his blouse.
“And let me tell you, Lysander, she was a tiger, a fucking tiger.”
Staff Sergeant Cain was big even for a heavy worlder, and sane people rarely messed with them. But as the staff sergeant brought up a massive bicep and flexed it, Noah reared back and put every ounce of his strength into the blow that smashed into the man’s smiling face, dropping him to his knees. Noah immediately kicked the staff sergeant in the head, knocking him onto his back.
The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5 Page 72