by Marko Kloos
When two vets of Mars get together, they invariably compare landing zones, and everyone knows which beaches got hit hardest. Red, Orange, and Yellow Beach got pounded but held the line until the end. Blue and Purple had to join up and fight back-to-back to make it off that rock. And you rarely ever meet a veteran of Green Beach, because it got overrun by the Lankies when their space control cruiser hit a mine and couldn’t keep the minefield open for orbital fire support. A whole regiment of SI landed at Green, with a full SRA marine regiment alongside them, and the ones who survived could fit into three drop ships with space left over for a few cargo pallets. Green got it the worst by far, but no beach was easy, and every regiment got a severe mauling. We went to Mars with twenty thousand SI, SRA, and Eurocorps marines and came back with eleven thousand, five hundred. The SI contributed over eight thousand men and women, and fewer than five thousand returned, a quarter of them wounded.
“Can’t believe you were down at Yellow while we were stacking Lankies at Red,” I say. “I wonder if any more of the old squad are SI or Fleet now.”
“Not that I know of. After you were gone, Corporal Jackson went MIA on a mission in the PRCs. I hear she joined the Brigades, but you know the rumor mill. I didn’t buy it, because come on. Corporal Jackson?”
“She did,” I say. “She’s General Lazarus’s head of security. More than that, I think.”
“No way.” Hansen narrows her eyes and squints at me in an appraising sort of way. “Are you fucking with me right now?”
“Nope. Had quite a few drinks with her when I was with the Brigades. She’s a colonel now. You join the Brigades, they make you an officer in a hurry if you have prior experience in the corps.”
“Well, fuck that. They could offer me twenty-star general and my personal city block, and I’d decline. I can’t believe she jumped ship. Or you know what? I think I can.”
Hansen slugs the rest of her bug juice like it’s a shot of liquor.
“Priest didn’t re-up after Detroit. Took his money and got out after his first four. I think losing Paterson and Stratton fucked him up a little.”
“It fucked us all up,” I say. “I would have stayed with the squad. But they didn’t give me the choice.”
“Yeah, the sarge told us all about it after she got back from Great Lakes. I hear you two were the best of pals in the hospital. I wonder what happened to her. She dropped off the radar after they broke up our platoon and spread us around. I think they stuck her into the 330th.”
“After a month in the brig, if I recall correctly. For disobeying orders.”
“How do you know that?”
I just shrug with a smile. “She told me the tale.”
“What? Where? When?” Hansen looks genuinely puzzled. “You met her after you left the TA?”
“They shipped her battalion out for garrison duty to get rid of them. We ended up on the same carrier, going out to the frozen-ass end of nowhere. And she was my platoon sergeant on the Arcadia mission three years ago.”
“You were on that mission? The one where a company of SI and a handful of podheads tippy-toed into the system and made the whole garrison surrender?”
“I had one of the platoons in that company.”
“Well, fuck me.” Hansen shakes her head. “Your career officially turned out way more exciting than mine, I think.”
“Excitement is overrated,” I say. “Could have stood a little less of it sometimes.”
“Well, it’s your own damn fault, chowderhead,” she says. “You could have stayed in your console jockey job. But you just had to run off and become a podhead.”
“My wife called it the nutcase track. Of course, she’s flying drop ships, so it’s not like she has a leg to stand on.”
“Nutcase track. I like that.” She looks around in the room and sighs. “I don’t know if I could do that. Being married to another grunt. Or pilot. Seems like it would be a lot of work to keep things going when you’re deployed most of the time. Even without the constant chance of death.”
“It’s only hard when we’re apart,” I say. “When we’re together, it’s no work at all.”
“But you’re apart most of the time. I just stick to having fun on leave. And every once in a while, you end up on a ship with a decent pick of guys for the temporary space husband position.”
Space husband and space wife are the corps terms for dalliances on deployment. Everyone knows they happen, and the brass tolerates them grudgingly, as long as you stay outside your direct chain of command. Deep-space deployments are long and both dangerous and boring at the same time, and there’s not much that can prevent those temporary bunkmate hookups from happening. It’s easier to keep things discreet the higher up in rank you climb because the senior noncoms and officers often get private berthing, but I know that even the junior enlisted find ways to stray on deployments, because humans are humans, and we do what we’re coded to do. I’ve been able to spend most of my leaves with Halley, and we’ve been deployed together more than once, so I’ve never felt the need to stray. But I’ve always felt some attraction to Hansen, and for a moment I wonder what would happen if Halley wasn’t on Ottawa right now and my former squad mate made an advance. We’re the same rank and not in the same chain of command, so nobody would bat an eye. But despite the lingering remnants of physical attraction, I dismiss the thought almost immediately. I only served for a few months with Hansen when we were both in the TA, and after eight years, we’re practically strangers to each other again. Halley and I have managed to build a relationship despite everything the corps has thrown at us, through many separations, and the mere thought of risking everything we have for some brief fun is not even remotely in the cards. I’ve almost lost her in battle a few times, and at this point, I could weather the loss of a limb better than losing my wife.
The PDP in my leg pocket lets out a little chirp. I pull it out to check the screen.
“I’m being summoned,” I say. “Being in charge is a pain in the ass sometimes.”
“Don’t I know it,” Hansen says. “Hey, it was good to catch up, Andrew. Let’s hit the RecFac sometime soon and continue this. I want to know more about that crazy-ass mission you were part of.”
“We’ll be on this boat for a while,” I reply. “Plenty of chances for drinks, I think.”
I get out of my chair and pick up the tray with my half-eaten lunch on it.
“Never thought I’d see your face again, especially not on a Fleet ship. Life’s full of surprises, huh?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Only in our line of work, they’re usually unpleasant. Good to have exceptions to that rule every once in a while.”
I put my tray into the recycler rack and walk out of the wardroom. I don’t know if it’s the knowledge that someone else from my first unit has gone through almost the same stuff and survived or the meds Dr. Saults prescribed, but on the way back to SOCOM Country, I feel better than I have in days.
My good mood evaporates when I get back to my quarters a few minutes later. I can see that something isn’t quite right when I step into the passageway leading to my compartment. The door of my stateroom is open, and a Fleet staff sergeant is standing astride the threshold talking to someone inside. My stomach drops a little with foreboding when I see that the staff sergeant is wearing a black armband that says SF. He’s a master-at-arms, a member of the Fleet Security Force, the branch tasked with shipboard security and law enforcement.
He hears me coming and turns around. As I expected, he’s wearing the badge of a master-at-arms on the chest of his blueberries, just above his name tape.
“Captain Grayson?” he asks.
“That would be me,” I confirm. “What’s the problem, Staff Sergeant?”
Instead of replying to me, he sticks his head into my stateroom and talks to whoever is inside. Then he looks back at me and points into the stateroom.
“The security officer would like a word with you, sir.”
The staff sergeant makes w
ay for me, and I step across the threshold and into my stateroom. Inside, there’s a Fleet officer standing in front of my open locker, and when I see that my private compartment is open, I know why he’s here. The officer is wearing captain rank, and his blueberry tunic sports a master-at-arms badge as well. His name tag says “DAVIS, R.”
“Captain Grayson,” he says. “Please confirm for me that this is your locker.”
“It’s my stateroom,” I say, unable to hide the irritation in my voice despite the knowledge that I’m most likely in big trouble. “It follows that it’s my locker as well.”
“We did a walk-through scan of the officer quarters,” Captain Davis says. “The millimeter-wave sensors indicated the presence of a firearm in your stateroom, so the master-at-arms called me to open your cabin to conduct a lawful search and investigation.”
He turns to the locker and pulls my M17 pistol out of the personal compartment. The slide is locked to the rear, showing that the weapon is unloaded. Then he reaches into the compartment with the other hand and pulls out the stack of full magazines.
“Any reason why you would have an unauthorized firearm in your locker, Captain?”
“That gun is personal property,” I reply. “Part of my weight allowance. It’s a gift from a different service.”
“Even if personal sidearms were authorized on this ship, they would have to be registered with the master-at-arms and stored in the ship armory,” Captain Davis says. “If they were authorized. Which they are not.”
“My mistake,” I say. Behind me, the master-at-arms shifts his position a little and crosses his arms in front of his chest.
“I’m afraid I can’t leave it at that, Captain. I’m going to have to report this. By authority of the commanding officer of this ship, you are hereby ordered into confinement in your stateroom until I have reported this infraction to the CO for further determination of your status,” Captain Davis says.
He sticks the pistol magazines into the leg pocket of his trousers. One slips out of his grasp and clatters to the floor. He reaches for it, but it’s closer to me than to him, and I snatch it off the ground and hand it to him. Behind me, I can tell that the master-at-arms has assumed a slightly alarmed posture. I smile grimly. Neither of them are combat grunts, and they don’t look like they spend much time in the ship gym or a SIMAP ring in their free time. With the anger I feel right now, I could probably mop the floor with both guys in ten seconds flat, but that would just get me into even deeper shit. Maybe it’s the stuff Dr. Saults prescribed, but I find it a little easier to just open a mental valve and let some of that pressurized rage escape, enough to keep me from doing something stupid. Still, it’s disturbingly satisfying to imagine what it would feel like if I grabbed Captain Davis and bounced his head off the edge of my locker a few times for taking the pistol my friends in the Brigades gave me as a parting gift when I left.
“Understood,” I say. “You go do what you have to do, Captain.”
Captain Davis steps around me and out of my stateroom. I walk over to my desk and sit down in front of it, intentionally failing to pay attention to them as they close my door and lock it with their master access fobs from the outside. Then I sigh and turn on my terminal screen to check my updates, trying to ignore that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I may spend the rest of this deployment in the brig. The strange thing is that I wouldn’t care at all if it wasn’t for the fact that Halley will be upset. The meds do a fine job leveling out the highs and lows of my emotional state. Maybe too fine a job.
They must be bored up in CIC today, because the wheels of justice grind exceptionally quickly today. Not even an hour after the start of my confinement to quarters, the access panel outside lets out a chirp, and my door unlocks with a soft metallic clanging sound. When it opens, the staff sergeant master-at-arms is standing in the threshold.
“Captain Grayson? Follow me, please. The skipper wants to see you.”
“Great,” I say. “Let’s go.”
I stand up and straighten my uniform. Then I follow the master-at-arms out into the passageway. Whatever they have in store for me, at least they aren’t under orders to cuff me, which relieves a little bit of my anxiety.
I half expect to be led straight to the ship’s brig, but the master-at-arms takes me up to the command deck instead. He walks me past the CIC and down a passageway I haven’t walked before. Then he presses the access-request button, and a few moments later, the door unlocks.
“I have Captain Grayson for you, ma’am,” the master-at-arms says.
“Send him in,” Colonel Yamin’s voice says from inside. “And then wait outside until I call you back in, please.”
“Aye, ma’am.” The master-at-arms moves aside and gestures for me to go, and I walk across the transom and into the compartment beyond. This must be Colonel Yamin’s day cabin, the spot near the CIC where she takes a break and does private business while she’s off watch but not on free time.
“Good afternoon, Colonel,” I say.
“Not such a good afternoon, I think,” Colonel Yamin replies. She is sitting at her desk and tapping around on a data pad. Then she looks up at me, puts down the pad, and nods at the chair in front of her desk.
“Close the hatch behind you and sit down, Captain.”
“Aye, ma’am.” I close the door and walk over to the chair. As I sit down, I see my M17 on the pile of printouts stacked on the right side of Colonel Yamin’s desk. She picks it up and tosses it onto the desk space between us.
“What the hell is this shit, Captain Grayson?”
I could give in to my natural reflex to be a smart-ass and tell her that it’s a US M17 service pistol, but Colonel Yamin has never struck me as the kind of officer willing to tolerate smart-assery.
“It’s a sentimental item,” I say. “That pistol was given to me after my exchange service with the Lazarus Brigades. It’s an obsolete souvenir.”
“It still fires bullets. And you kept it in your locker with several full magazines. Don’t tell me you had intended it to be just a paperweight, Captain.”
“No, ma’am. It’s mostly a keepsake. But I won’t tell you that I didn’t consider its value in an emergency.”
“You’re not green, Captain. I remember you well from Phalanx. We had a brief talk on the observation deck right before the battle.”
“I remember. I gave you a bunch of shit over Arcadia.”
She looks at me with the slightest hint of a smile flickering in the corners of her mouth.
“And do you still have the same reservations about the former renegades?”
I consider her question and shrug.
“About some of them. Not about you. You skippered a cruiser. You didn’t try to kill me or my troops.”
“I’d like to think that I wouldn’t have followed that order,” she says. “But I did follow others I shouldn’t have obeyed. But those are my consequences to deal with, not yours.”
She pats the pistol on the table.
“Talking about following orders. You aren’t a nugget fresh out of officer school. You know that sidearms, personal or issued, aren’t allowed on this ship. The XO briefed you about that when you came aboard, did he not?”
“He did, ma’am. I just chose to interpret the order in a flexible way.”
“You are an officer. You’re one rank away from being a staff officer. You know good and damn well that we can’t just ‘choose to interpret orders in a flexible way.’ If everyone starts doing that, we might as well turn the corps into a debating club.”
On the way here, I had consigned myself to the idea of an extended brig residency, and I don’t want to give the skipper an excuse to lock me up and throw the access fob out of an airlock. But all things considered, the situation is a little absurd, and I can’t help venting my discontent.
“I will take the consequences, Colonel. I skirted the regulations on purpose. You can’t let that slide, I know. But the whole thing is dumb as hell.”
&n
bsp; Colonel Yamin’s eyes narrow a little. She sits back in her chair and lightly taps her fingertips on the tabletop.
“How so, Captain?”
“We’ve been carrying sidearms on ships for years now. Everyone’s used to it. We know the things won’t do shit against Lankies if we end up ejecting onto a moon. But it’s a badge of independence. Of being able to have a tiny say in your fate if things go to shit. And it was a big thing when we all started carrying. After the exodus, I mean.”
“Go on,” Colonel Yamin says.
“It was a sign of trust. Like command didn’t treat us like idiot children. Or potential mutineers. It was egalitarian.”
I make a gesture that encompasses the room.
“And then we get posted to this cruise liner. And I have to give up my sidearm because command doesn’t trust me not to put holes into the hull, or shoot some trainee by accident in the fucking mess hall.”
The anger takes over just a little, and I start talking faster and with more volume.
“My job is to shoot out of a launch tube carrying enough firepower to kill Lankies. To blow up drop ships or armored vehicles. On the battlefield, I have a control deck in my suit that lets me drop megaton-size warheads from orbit. If I fuck up, I’m nuking a civvie settlement or a whole battalion of SI. And once I’m back on the flight deck, my superior officers don’t trust me with a fucking fléchette pistol. That doesn’t make even the slightest sense. Not to anyone who has lost body parts for the corps.”