by Leo Champion
Jessica Cantrell, the profile said. It showed a smiling blonde girl in a bikini. West Palm Beach, Florida.
He opened a Message window.
“James Bellis,” he typed, “says he always loved you and he’s sorry.”
He was about to hit Enter, then decided to add a line. Whoever this girl was, she might want to know a little context.
“He died well, for his friends.”
* * *
“So it turns out that some Army guys went hungry because of those MREs they threw out of the plane,” said Garza in an East Vasimir enlisted dining hall. “They’re not too happy.”
The actual matter of the stolen C-175 itself, Mullins had heard, the Air Force was being forgiving about. Their own people had been saved by the operation, after all. Apparently they’d written the plane off as a combat-loss and thanked Doom for getting Cramer and her section out.
“Screw them,” said Corporal Hernandez. “They had a couple of two-MRE days. Terrible.”
“You know what Army’s like,” said Garza. “Whiny about that stuff.”
“In fairness,” said Mullins, “there kind of is the fact that Delta Company and the engineers held a bunch of them prisoner.”
“Same division as the ones who went hungry,” said Mandvi. “Thirty-First, the ‘Iron Hammer’ Division.”
Hill came in, chuckled as he took a seat with the group.
“Army doesn’t like us,” he grinned. “Just had a couple of ‘em try to start something with me, on my way here.”
“We were just talking about that,” said Garza.
“Called 1/4/4 the Blue Falcon battalion,” Hill grinned. “As though we’re their buddies to fuck them in the first place!”
There were laughs around the table.
“So in addition to a senior European Intelligence officer who wants Bravo Company’s blood,” Mullins said, “we’ve now managed to piss off an entire Army division. Is that about right?”
“Yep!” said Mandvi. There were grins and laughs all around, and Mullins pretended to agree.
In his pocket, his phone vibrated. He picked it up; the Earth-clock app was telling him that it had just become 12:00 Eastern Standard time.
Saturday November 11th, 2215.
Four years, five months and six days to go.
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