The platoons started breaking up, a few Marines going into the stands to greet family, others seeking friends in other platoons. Ryck started to wander over to 1045, but Joshua met him half way. They gripped arms, Roman style, before pulling each other in for another bear hug.
“Congratulations, Marine,” they said in unison.
“Well, you glad we went Marines instead of the Legion?” Ryck asked.
“Damn right I am. You?”
“Nothing but the best, and fuck the rest,” Ryck responded with a laugh. “When you taking off?”
“Tonight, 2200,” Joshua told him.
“Wish I could go,” Ryck said.
Joshua’s parents had sent a ticket for back home for graduation leave. Joshua would be spending two uncharged weeks back there before reporting to First Marine Division right back here on Tarawa. Ryck could have taken the same leave, but he really didn’t have the money to spend on the ticket, and even if he went back to Prophesy, he didn’t have a home there. He could stay with Lysa and her family, but with little Kylee there now, he didn’t want to intrude.
“I’ll be stopping by and seeing your sis and niece, bro. Tell them all what a bad-ass you are.”
“Me a bad-ass? What about you?” Ryck asked, pointing at the PFC stripes Joshua had earned as the 1045 guide.
“Ah, I jus’ fooled them but good. Act like you know what you be doing, and they all believe it. ‘Sides, we all know what you did up there on the Wong.”
“Well, yeah, I guess.”
They both stood there for a moment, not knowing what to say.
“Hey Ryck! You coming?” Ham shouted out. Most of the platoon was going to go out in town to sample the infamous nightlife and probably get stinking drunk, and the new Marines were drifting back to the squad bay.
“Yeah, give me a sec, OK?”
“Well, I’ll be seeing you. Keep in touch, brother,” he told Joshua.
“Yeah, you too. Fair winds and following seas and all of that.”
They shook hands, then turned to join their platoon mates.
Ryck picked up his pace. He was going to tie one on, and one of those bastards was going to buy him the first round!
Third Marine Division
Embarked on the FSS Adelaide
Chapter 15
“Ready to get off this motherfucker?” Sparta asked him.
“Right skippy, there, corporal. Let’s diddi ho,” Private First Class Ryck Lysander responded.
Ryck was still the platoon boot, but taking out two of the miners had given him a degree of credibility. He’d been tested and blooded. Once the insurrection had been put down (not that they were allowed to use the “I” word), the lieutenant had even put him in for a meritorious promotion to PFC. He would have made it anyway in another month and a half, but this gave him a leg up on most of the rest of his recruit class. More than the stripe, though, when it came time to assign him to a squad, Sgt Piccalo-Tensing had fought for him. He joined Cpl Pallas’ fire team, which was down a man with Cpl Singh casevac’d back to the Dirtball. It felt good to Ryck to belong to a unit instead of being just an add-on.
The platoon had taken a heavy hit. Four of the Marines in Second Squad had been opened up like a can of sardines by the miners and killed. Three Marines had been injured enough while clearing the mine to warrant being casevac’d. This was supposed to have been a cakewalk, but that was before someone at UTOM Industries, the company that performed maintenance of the PICS, had both interjected a trojan in the electronics, then sold the information on how to exploit that breach to the miners. A patch had already been installed on the suits, and NIS was supposedly hot on the trail of tracking down the traitor. The scuttlebutt was that the breach was a pretty simple one, but one that could not have been implanted in the Legion’s Rigaudeau-3 suits. Underlying the fuck-up was the knowledge that the Marines had gotten off easy. They did not need the PICS to suppress a tax revolt on a piddly-ass mining planet like Atacama. If the suits had been neutralized while in combat with a real opponent, however, it might have been a disaster of epic proportions.
The issue with the suits, though, had kept the Marines on Atacama longer than usual while the vulnerability was investigated. By Federation charter, the Marines were not allowed to remain on a “peaceful” world while in a combat posture. In other words, they were not occupation nor police troops. They had a limited amount of time to consolidate, then leave the planet to the
Federation Civil Development Corps. The FCDC was there to “assist in the restoration of civil order and commerce,” but they had an awful lot of military gear and men to use it all for a supposed bunch of engineers and economists. With the security breach, though, the Council had extended the timeline of the campaign for an extra 45 days.
With the bulk of the FCDC kept off the planet, the Marines had taken over most of the processing of the civilians. This was something the Marines didn’t like to do, and they lacked the manpower to do it well. Certain FCDC teams were assigned to the Marines and even given Marine uniforms, so at least the interrogation of the leaders of the revolt was left to someone else. Ryck had watched four of these fake Marines march into the internment camp while he was on watch and drag off one of the women there. Ryck had no love lost for the miners, but he didn’t want to think of what would happen to that woman. It was her own fault, wasn’t it? Refusing to pay the taxes to the Federation, the same Federation that paid for the Navy, the Marines, and the FCDC to protect them? The Federation was the strongest power in the known galaxy, but still, there were threats, both from the other non-aligned planets and groups as well as conflicts between planets within the Federation’s sphere.
All of that was way above Ryck’s pay grade. What he did know was that he hadn’t joined the Corps to be a prison guard. The eight weeks he’d spent being just that had been more than enough. At least he wasn’t the junior man in the platoon anymore, even if he was still the boot, although the reason for that was not what he would have wished. Two Marines in Third Fire Team, LCpls Verrit and Samuelson had been caught fucking one of the detainees. There was no indication that this was anything other than consensual, so there was no court convened for rape, but contact like that was strictly verboten, and both men had been busted to private and would serve 30 days in the brig after they returned to the Dirtball. Ryck had talked to Sams about it, and the big guy had smiled and said it was totally worth it, even with the brig time and getting busted.
Now, finally, it was time to leave. All their gear had already been embarked, and with the FCDC personnel on deck, they were free to leave for the trip back to the Dirtball. Rumor had it that they were getting a diversion to Vegas for three days liberty, but the brass refused to confirm that. Like most Marines, Ryck had been on Vegas on the way to Tarawa for boot, but he had never gotten out of the spaceport.
Ryck shouldered his ruck and filed after Sparta. He didn’t look back as he entered the Adelaide’s personnel hatch.
Chapter 16
“You are one sick mother,” Sams said as he sat down, looking at Ryck’s breakfast.
“Eat me,” came Ryck’s rote reply.
Food aboard the Adelaide was pretty damn good, even for a farmboy such as Ryck who was used to a degree of “real” food. Sure, his family had a home fabricator, and sure, they bought manufactured food, but being on a farm and surrounded by other farmers, Ryck had often eaten natural food, even meats. While some of the other Marines, mostly from the big industrialized worlds, blanched at the thought of eating animal flesh, to Ryck, it was special treat. He thought those who said animal flesh was not “normal” were pretty weird, given that some of the bases for the fabricators came from pulverized insects, coal by-products, or other things best not imagined.
The Navy being the Navy, the Adelaide had one hellacious commercial fabricator. It shouldn’t have made a difference as the bases were all the same and a fabricator followed set formulas, but the senior chief in charge of the mess could whip up some tasty chow, be
tter than a grunt could expect. It was common knowledge that the officers got some natural foods in their mess, but Ryck didn’t care. The crew’s mess was plenty fine. Even the bacon he was eating tasted natural. Ryck knew that it was made from a mixture of some of the twelve bases that fed the fabricator, but when he ate it, it seemed like the real deal to him. Sams wasn’t commenting on that, but with what Ryck had covered it.
As a young boy, bacon had been Ryck’s favorite food—real bacon, not the fake bacon made by Sunshine or Healthy Choice. On each birthday, that was what he wanted. That and ice cream. Fab ice cream was pretty indistinguishable from hand-cranked ice-cream made from cow’s cream, even if the luxury brands such as Swiss Heaven or Ben and Jerry’s tried to convince people otherwise. Their little home fabricator could do a pretty decent job on sweet sauces, too, such as chocolate and strawberry. Ryck, though, loved the raspberry sauce, and he lathered it over his ice cream. On his seventh birthday, he had jokingly said he was going to put the sauce on his bacon. All his family had laughed at that, telling him that was silly. Ryck had meant it as a joke, but their reaction raised a degree of stubbornness in him. They couldn’t tell him he was silly. So he insisted on it. His mother had given in, and with ten slices of sizzling bacon on his plate, had hesitantly dribbled the raspberry sauce on it.
“More,” he had insisted.
His parents, Myke, and Lysa watched him as he defiantly raised a forkful of raspberry-covered bacon to his mouth and put it in his mouth. He had thought he would have to choke it down, doing it just to show his family that he was not some little kid, but to his surprise, he actually liked it. Now, aboard the Navy ship where fab bacon was offered for each breakfast and he could dial fab raspberry sauce from the dessert line anytime he wanted, this had become his daily ritual.
“Really, man, why do you always do that? That and your ketchup and polly sauce shit you put on stuff?” Sams persisted.
Ryck just raised his middle finger in response.
Life aboard the Adelaide was an odd confluence of relaxation, stimulation, and boredom. There really wasn’t that much for Marines to do. They had cleaned and re-cleaned all their gear. They had taken care of some admin. The little “gym” on the ship was not much and large enough for only a handful of people at a time. On the plus side, the ship’s entertainment system was immense, with what had to be every flick, song, book, and show ever recorded. They couldn’t communicate with the outside while in bubble space (unless a message torp was sent to pierce their bubble, and that was done only for extremely high-priority communications), so camming family or friends was out until they dropped back into real space, but still, there was more available to watch than anyone could view in their lifetime. The food was great, and there was plenty of rack time. It should have been a Marine’s dream, but in reality, after a day or two, most Marines became antsy. They wanted to do something, not just be cargo.
Sams sat down and dug into his pancakes. He made exaggerated eating sounds, smacking his lips.
“Enjoy it now, Sams, ‘cause you ain’t getting any of that when your ass is locked up in the brig,” T-Rex told him.
T-Rex was LCpl Sylvester Harrington Smith Pulaski. He was an immensely strong Marine, with broad shoulders that had to give the armorers nervous breakdowns when it came to fitting him. He had essentially no neck and seemingly little short arms, hence the “T-Rex” nickname. He was also about the smartest Marine Ryck had met, with a broad knowledge on just about everything. He spoke as if he was barely educated, but that didn’t fool anyone.
“Don’t need food there. I’ll have my memories of the lovely Miss Sorada to fulfill me,” Sams said dramatically, his voice pitched higher than normal.
“Hope she was really worth it, when we all are out on the ville, getting some,” T-Rex replied.
“Oh, she was, she was. Better than any D-town ho, that’s for sure.”
That brought a round of laughter. Ryck was glad he wasn’t facing the same fate as Sams, but still, there was a degree of envy in him. Getting laid while one a mission had a certain swashbuckling flair, something to tell the other grandpaps as they sat around the retirement home years from now.
Ryck took another bite of his bacon, looking around at the other Marines. He’d been with the unit only a short time, but somehow, it seemed longer. He felt like he fit in, as if this life was made for him. This was a long way from the dusty fields of Prophesy, but sitting in the crews mess, light-years from the farm, it seemed as if it was destined. He felt more at home than in the house where he’d been raised.
Not completely at home, though. Two sailors took their trays to the next table and sat down, their connectors clearly visible on the backs of their shaved heads. Unlike the other sailors, navigators, as these two were, and gunners never wore covers. The interfaces they needed to connect to the cybercomps that kept the ship’s bubble whole and the ship on course, or in the case of the gunners, that enabled them to control the ship’s weapons systems, were surgically implanted into their brains through the back of their skulls. The “cybos” generally kept to themselves, an elite among the rest of the crew. They gave Ryck the creeps, though. The Marines also used biofaces, of course, but theirs were patches that were placed on the skin, not drilled though the skull.
Ryck tore his gaze off of their heads and speared his last piece of bacon, mushing it around his plate to mop up the last of his sauce. He popped it in his mouth and contemplated going back for another serving. There was nothing to stop him, nor would anyone even care, but he decided against it as a show of inner discipline.
Sgt Piccalo-Tensing entered the mess decks, spied the Marines, and made a beeline to them.
“Shit, what’s PT got for us now?” Wan asked, quickly pushing more of his food into his mouth as if afraid he wouldn’t get the chance to finish.
“What’s up, Sergeant?” Pallas asked.
Cpl Pallas and Sgt Piccalo-Tensing were both NCOs, but Pallas seemed more at home with the non-rates. There seemed to be an underlying tension between the two men that Ryck didn’t understand.
“Word just came out, and I thought I would pass it to you. We’re dropping out of bubble space at 1400. At 1800, liberty is being called. Vegas.”
There was a moment of silence before whoops of joy rang out, not just from the Marines, but from the sailors who had been sitting within earshot. Vegas! Some Marines might go through an entire enlistment without getting to any of the fabled four liberty ports of Vegas, Kukson, Ramp it Up, or Pattaya.
“Liberty brief will be at 1700 in the chapel. And there will be an inspection. No raggedly ass Marines will be allowed off the ship,” the squad leader said before turning around and leaving.
“My fucking grandmother! Vegas!” one of the sailors said.
Ryck didn’t quite understand the reference of that, but he understood the tone of the sailor’s comment.
“Vegas! This is going to be epic!” Sams said.
“What do you mean, there, brig rat?” T-Rex asked.
“No, no, I’ve got my brig time back on the Dirtball!” Sams protested.
“You sure? Seems to me you’re not in the brig now because this ship doesn’t have one. I think you’re restricted to the ship,” Cpl Pallas told him.
“No fucking way! I gotta go see England,” Sams said, jumping up, half-eaten breakfast still covering his tray.
He jammed the tray into the galley window and rushed off to see the staff sergeant, almost at the run.
“They really going to keep him on the ship?” Wan asked.
“Nah, they won’t, but it’s good to yank his chain. He’s been bragging about nailing that miner so much, he needed to be taken down a notch,” T-Rex told him.
“That said,” Cpl Pallas added, “your civvies really need to pass muster for a place like Vegas. I don’t know about you all, but I didn’t expect this, and I think I might need to hit the ship’s store for something better than my ripped t-shirt.”
Even on a combat mission, Ma
rines always travelled with at least one set of civvies. Ryck’s were brand new, so he thought they would be fine. It wouldn’t hurt to check them, though. No way he wanted to be delayed in getting off the ship.
Vegas!
Chapter 17
“You’re really trolling for more brig time, aren’t you?” Pallas asked Sams as the private showed off the new tattoo on his upper arm, a Star, Globe and Anchor with “Third Marine Division” written below it.
Ryck took another swig of his Bud while he examined Sams’ bodywork. Tattoos were against Marine regs. It has something to do with how tattoos could affect both regen and how biosensors monitored the body’s readings. There was no such restriction in the Navy, and many Marines got them when they left the service, but active duty Marines were required to keep their bodies clean. No tats, no genmods.
“Ah, that’s the beauty of this. Look!” Sams said while flexing his biceps.
He reached across with his left hand and pushed at something. To Ryck’s surprise, the tattoo disappeared. That caught his interest.
He leaned closer to look and asked, “How did you do that?”
Wan, Pallas, Hu, T-Rex, and Smitty leaned forward, too, Hu knocking over his Slicer Lite to spill on the peanut covered floor of the bar.
“Alcohol abuse!” was shouted out by the rest of them in unison, as was expected, but their attention was on Sams as he did something else with his left hand that caused the tattoo to re-appear.
“It ain’t a tattoo. Me and Aesop here,” he started, tilting his head back on the lance corporal who’d come in with him, “saw this place over on Sahara, by the Poseidon Club, and we went in. This is what they call a ‘refractive body art,’ or some bullshit. It has to do with light waves and such, and when I touch this point here,” he said, indicating a small point at the top of the anchor, “it polarizes so it goes stealth-like.”
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