by Marko Kloos
He hands me the printout he’s been holding, which is a standard orders form with my data on it.
“Enjoy your leave, Captain. You’ve earned some time off after two deployments in a row. On December 1, you will report to the transfer station listed on your orders, and they will arrange for transportation to your new command.”
Knowing Colonel Masoud, I have the distinct feeling that he already knows the exact nature and purpose of my new command. But I know he takes pleasure in playing his cards close to his chest.
“Yes, sir.” I get out of my chair and salute, then turn on my heel to leave.
“One more thing, Captain.”
“Sir?” I turn around again to face the colonel.
“You need to correct your uniform.”
“How so, sir?” I ask.
“I distinctly remember putting you in for the Fleet Cross after Arcadia. I also remember reading that the award was approved and issued. But your ribbon rack isn’t showing that award.”
I look down at the rows of ribbons on my Class B shirt. They’re sorted by order of award precedence, and the item on top is the blue-white-red ribbon of a Silver Star, with a little gold star in the center to denote a second award. Colonel Masoud is looking for the black ribbon with the white, vertical center stripe that belongs to the Fleet Cross. Mine is still in the award box, where it has been since the skipper of a previous command awarded me the medal six months after Arcadia.
“Huh. Must have forgotten to update my ribbon rack, sir. I don’t wear this smock a lot.”
“I see.” Colonel Masoud studies me for a few moments with dark eyes that don’t betray any emotion.
“Captain,” he says finally. “Let’s skip the pleasantry bullshit for a minute. You still have a chip on your shoulder about Arcadia. Even after three years.”
“I didn’t know there’s a statute of limitations for being angry that a third of your platoon died. Sir.”
“And you blame me for that. Even though you were the one who planned and executed that assault. That hardly seems fair.” Colonel Masoud leans back in his chair and folds his arms in front of his chest. “We lost over a third of our entire Spaceborne Infantry branch on Mars. Do you blame command for those deaths too?”
“That was different,” I say. “We all knew the plan from the start before we went into battle on Mars. We didn’t use anyone as diversions.”
“And troops died nonetheless, just like on Arcadia.”
“Maybe fewer would have died if you had let me in on the plan. Maybe I would have planned things differently. I wouldn’t have felt like we had no alternative.”
Colonel Masoud sighs and unfolds his arms again. Then he leans forward and puts his elbows on the desk in front of him. He studies me over his steepled fingers.
“Captain Grayson, you are one rank away from being a staff officer yourself. If you want to stay sane, you must stop second-guessing your choices as a field commander. It’s not productive. It serves no purpose. And it will mess you up in the long run. If you falter or hesitate on your next combat drop because you are thinking about the casualties on your last drop, you will not be able to function, and more troops will die.”
“With all due respect, sir—I hope I never stop second-guessing myself. I’d like to think that I still have a shit left to give about the fate of my troops.”
Colonel Masoud flashes a thin-lipped smile.
“Why do I have the feeling that every time you say ‘with all due respect,’ you don’t really mean it?”
I hesitate for a moment. Then I return his smile in an equally humorless fashion. I don’t want to spend my leave time in the brig, so I moderate my reply and don’t give him the two-word answer that’s really on my tongue.
“Because you are unusually perceptive, sir,” I say instead.
For a moment, Colonel Masoud just looks at me, and I am convinced that I’ve managed to tip-toe right across the line with him. Then he sighs almost imperceptibly and shakes his head.
“Maybe we’ll talk about this subject again when you are a staff officer. But the next time I see you in service Bravos, I will see that Fleet Cross ribbon on your uniform. You’re dismissed, Captain.”
“Yes, sir,” I reply.
I pick up my gear and walk out. In two weeks, I will worry about uniform ribbons, black ops, and cloak-and-dagger stuff again. Until then, I have fifteen days of leave, far away from Lankies, drop ships, and Colonel Khaled Masoud.
CHAPTER 4
LEAVE
I always feel a disconnect for the first day or two of leave. It’s like dropping off a cliff and hitting the water hard, only to feel yourself sinking in a bottomless pool. In the Fleet and on deployment, my life is structured, scheduled, regimented, and confined. I move in the tight quarters of a warship, work in watch cycles or physically and mentally grinding ground deployments, and move and live under constant supervision. Then I leave Gateway and go Earthside, and twelve hours after the end of my deployment, I have freedom of movement and unlimited travel privileges on an entire half continent, with nobody looking over my shoulder. I know where I am going and how to get there, but I feel lost and anxious at first, too much elbow room after too long a stretch in a metal tube in space.
None of the northbound shuttle flights have available passenger slots tonight, so I leave the base and take the train up to the transit station in Richmond. From there, I switch trains to a maglev going up the East Coast. It’s slower than flying, but faster than staying on the base in Norfolk overnight and taking a chance with shuttle seats in the morning. But I don’t mind the maglev trip so much. As the train zooms north through the Washington/Baltimore metroplex and then Philadelphia and New York City, I have time to decompress and get used to being among civvies again, even if I stick out in my uniform and with my sidearm and gear bag. With the threat of surprise Lanky incursions removed for now, at least we no longer have to carry alert bags with PDWs and light armor, but we still have to wear pistols. I spend the time reading news on my PDP and looking at the urban landscape gliding by outside. The train cuts through some of the most densely populated ground on this planet, but it feels nowhere near as claustrophobic as the enlisted mess on a frigate at chow time. Somewhere between Philadelphia and New York City, I doze off, and by the time I wake up from my nap, the train is slowing down to pull into the Boston transit terminal. For the last leg of the journey, I have to change trains to the Green Mountain Line, and I manage to catch the last maglev for the evening with ten minutes to spare.
It takes a little under an hour to get from Boston to Liberty Falls. I take this ride almost every time I come down to Earth because I usually take the shuttle down to Homeworld Defense Air Station Falmouth, just south of the Boston metroplex. And like every time, my anxiety starts falling away when the maglev passes the Vermont line and crosses over into mostly unpopulated mountains. When I reach the Liberty Falls stop, I am still tired and a little bleary-eyed, but I no longer feel lost and unmoored. If I have a home on this planet, this is it, even though the place where I stay doesn’t belong to me or Halley.
The streets of Liberty Falls are quiet at this hour, ten minutes past midnight on a weekday. It’s mid-November, and there isn’t any snow on the ground yet, but the air is clean and cold, and there’s frost on the grass outside. In another fifty or sixty years, one of the nearby metroplexes will probably grow to swallow up this tidy little town, but for now it’s as different from the PRCs as Mars is from Greenland.
At Chief Kopka’s restaurant, everything is dark and locked. I didn’t tell my mother or the chief when I would be in because I didn’t want anyone to stay up and wait for me. The chief added Halley and me to the biometric security pad at the back door a few years back so we can let ourselves in, and I let the pad scan my fingerprints and then head upstairs to the small guest bedroom Halley and I get to use whenever we are on Earthside leave. It’s a small room, with just enough space for a bed, a pair of dressers, and a desk, but it looks out
over Liberty Falls’s main street, and it has a private bathroom. Compared to most Fleet accommodations, it’s palatial, and much cozier than a windowless berth with steel furniture that’s bolted to the deck. I drop my gear bag, take off my uniform shirt, and get the PDP out of my pocket to send a message to Halley.
>Made it to the Falls.
Her reply comes back a few minutes later.
>Bastard.
>Love you too.
>If you really did, you would have spent a night on a crappy cot in the TPU on base in solidarity with your wife.
>It appears that even true love has its limits. Waiting for you while drinking the chief’s coffee. Hurry up and have a safe ride down.
>Enjoy your coffee. See you tomorrow. And go to sleep. I need you rested.
I sign off MilNet with a grin. Then I undress to take a shower in the little bathroom and wash the travel grime off before going to bed. My mind wants to keep me awake with replaying the conversation I had with Colonel Masoud, but my fatigue wins out, and I fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow.
In the morning, I wake up to the sound of activity downstairs in the restaurant. I can smell the faint scent of fresh coffee and hear the clinking of plates and the low din of conversation. I check my chrono, which shows 0638. Then I get out of bed and grab a set of civvie clothes from the dresser. At some point in the last two or three years, when our stays here in Liberty Falls became semiregular, Halley and I bought a few civilian outfits to wear while we’re on leave so we won’t stick out everywhere we go here in the safe little ’burber town. People here aren’t used to seeing armed corps personnel in the streets. Before then, I hadn’t even owned any nonissued clothing in years. After so many years in uniform, putting on civilian clothes feels a little bit like I’m pretending to be someone else.
“When did you get in?” my mother asks when I walk downstairs and into the restaurant, where she is busy setting the tables. She puts down the bundle of napkins in her hands and comes over to give me a long, firm hug.
“About 0100,” I say. “Couldn’t catch a flight from Norfolk on short notice, so I had to take the train. Good morning, Chief,” I say to Chief Kopka, who sticks his head out of the kitchen at the sound of my voice.
“Morning, Andrew. Cup of coffee, Captain?”
“Affirmative,” I say. “Very much affirmative.”
He nods and disappears in the kitchen again.
“How long is your leave?” Mom asks.
“Two weeks,” I say. “Two deployments’ worth saved up.”
“Is Halley coming too?”
“She’ll be in later today. She had to stay up on Luna overnight because she couldn’t get a late shuttle down.”
“I’m so glad to hear it,” Mom says. “It’s been too long. Six months since you’ve been home. At least your wife makes it down here once a month or so.”
“The commute from the moon is a lot shorter than the one from Mars orbit, Mom. Just the transit back from there takes a week.”
“How are we looking up there?” the chief asks. He’s coming out of the kitchen holding a little serving platter with a mug of coffee and a small container of cream.
“We’re playing whack-a-mole with the leftover Lankies,” I say. “All air missions. We fly patrols and drop missiles on anything that moves. I get to sit in a drop ship all day and look at console screens while flying through shit weather.”
“I figured they’d all be dead by now.”
“So did we all. But they’re still popping out from under the surface. Like cockroaches. But we’re much better off than the year before last.”
“Those were dark days,” the chief says. “The darkest.”
“Mars wasn’t a win. But at least it wasn’t a loss. We’ll get ’em off that rock, sooner or later.”
I sit down in one of the booths, the customary one that Halley and I pick when we’re down here, and the chief puts the serving platter onto the table in front of me.
“Is that cream?”
“Sure is,” the chief replies. “Got eggs again, too. The breakfast menu is almost back to the way it was.”
I pour a healthy dollop of the fresh cream from the chilled porcelain container into my coffee.
“The Fleet chow has gotten better, too. Maybe things are looking up again.”
Chief Kopka smiles and does a little drumbeat with his hands on the table. “Things are looking up. I can source fresh milk and eggs again. And meat and pork and chicken. I don’t care how they unclogged the supply chain. I’m just glad I can cook proper food. For a while there, I was sure I’d have to shutter the place. Of course, that wasn’t exactly our biggest worry.”
I stir the coffee, take a sip, and let out a little involuntary groan.
“Good, huh?” the chief says.
“Good doesn’t cover it,” I reply. “I’ve been looking forward to this cup for six months.”
The chief has to prepare breakfasts, and Mom has to set the tables and get the place ready for opening, so I leave them to their tasks and sip my coffee leisurely while I watch the pedestrian traffic on Main Street through the window by my booth. I used to have a massive chip on my shoulder about these upper middle class ’burbers, living in relative wealth and comfort not two hundred kilometers away from the PRC where I grew up with none of those privileges. But over the years, I’ve come to realize that they’re no more to blame or hate for their circumstances than any welfare rat, and I’ve stopped feeling guilty about enjoying the little luxuries of this place.
My PDP buzzes halfway through my second cup of coffee. It’s not the distinct alert pattern of a Lanky incursion, so I ignore the device until I am finished with my coffee. Then I take it out and check the screen.
>About to hop on the shuttle. I’ll let you know when we’re skids down and I’m on the train.
>See you in a few hours.
I always have to smile at the notion of one of the Fleet’s best drop ship pilots having to make the trip down to Earth in a dingy shuttle, strapped into a seat in the back next to a hundred console jockeys and wrench spinners. With her drop ship, she could ferry herself to any place in the NAC without having to take trains or go by departure schedules. The Fleet would never let her use a drop ship as a personal taxi, of course, but I’m amused at the thought of a Dragonfly landing on Main Street right in front of the chief’s restaurant, and Halley casually hopping out of the cockpit like she’s parking a hydrocar.
I nurse my coffee until just before eight o’clock, when the chief opens the doors of the place for breakfast. Halley and I always clear out when the restaurant opens so we don’t take up space for paying customers. The chief keeps insisting that we don’t owe him anything for all the food and drink we have gotten from him over the years, but between all of that and the rent he doesn’t charge us for the use of the private guest room upstairs, I know that I’ll give him a sizable chunk of my discharge pay if I make it to the end of my service time alive.
Most of the shops on Main Street aren’t open this early, but some are. I go for a walk and look at store windows, checking out things I don’t need and can’t afford even though my service account has almost a million Commonwealth dollars in it after eight years of service. All of that money only gets released after I leave the military. Main Street stretches for two kilometers, from the transit station in the south to the recreational park with the little waterfall in the north, with lots of quaint little stores and public buildings in between. The library on the village green is open, and I walk in and sit down at one of the public terminals to catch up on news.
Halley sends me an update an hour later.
>On the train from Boston. ETA Falls 1045.
I log off the terminal and put my jacket back on for the hike down to the transit station, where the train will arrive to the minute in a little less than an hour. Usually I feel a pleasant anticipation when I know I’m about to see my wife again, especially after six months apart, but this time there’s a fair bi
t of anxiety tempering the pleasure. I haven’t told her about my new assignment, and I can’t imagine she’ll be wildly excited about me going off to another deployment again without any idea where I’m going just yet. We got spoiled being stationed Earthside or on Luna together, and only now, after my eighteen months in the Brigades and two deployments over Mars, do we get to feel the full weight of the hardships again that come with military marriages.
My wife steps out onto the little plaza in front of the transit station just as the first snowflakes of the year are drifting out of the sky. She’s in her Fleet service Alphas, the slightly dressy uniform with an overcoat, and she’s carrying just a little kit bag.
“You still look strange in civvie threads,” she says to me after our exchange of firm hugs and publically appropriate kisses.
“I feel strange,” I say. “Like I’m playing someone in a Network show. But it’s comfy and warm at least.”
“I can’t wait to get out of this monkey suit.”
“Why are you wearing your Alphas?”
“I was at PXO course for the last ten days. Monkey suit mandatory.”
“What do they teach in PXO course? ‘One Hundred Ways to Chew Out Junior Officers’?”
“You learn that every XO gets to kill three enlisted fuck-ups per deployment cycle, no questions asked.” Halley shoulders her bag and looks around the plaza.
“Hey, look at that. Snow.”
“It won’t stick just yet. Ground’s still too warm. Temperatures like this, we’ll barely have frost at night.”
“Yeah, but it looks pretty. I’ve seen nothing but grungy bulkheads and artificial lighting for almost two weeks.”
We walk up the road toward Chief Kopka’s restaurant. As always, Halley cuts through the little park in front of the transit plaza and runs a hand across the grass, which is lightly frosted with snowflakes. She does this every time we get into Liberty Falls. If they ever get rid of this park and pave over the lot, I think she’d declare war on the town government. I watch her but don’t join in.