by Marko Kloos
“How many of theirs?”
“Three at least. Wasn’t pretty.”
“It never is.” She looks at me with a slightly quizzical expression. “You okay?”
I could invite her into my office and talk about what happened, but I suddenly feel that Sergeant Fallon isn’t the right person to unload my concerns onto. So I just shrug and nod.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Just tired. First mission where I got to do nothing but fly a chair with my ass, and I’m worn out more than if I had cleared the damn station by myself.”
“I hear you. I got to babysit the rest of the platoon and take Third Squad for some cardio while you guys went off to kick in doors and shoot people. But I guess my days of leading assaults are coming to an end. Too many damn rank stripes.”
“I’m pretty sure you’ll get your chance on this run sooner or later,” I say.
“Out here, I’m okay with babysitting,” she says. “I know my limitations.”
She pauses and looks at me as if she wants to say something else. Then she glances over to the quarterdeck and nods.
“They’re not a bad bunch. I may have to revise my opinion of the SI as a bunch of overconfident space monkeys.”
“When they’re done cleaning and stashing their shit, have them grab chow and enforce some rack time for First and Second Squads.”
“Copy that,” she says. “You should do the same. Grab chow and head for your rack.”
“That’s all that’s on my mind right now,” I lie.
Sergeant Fallon walks back to the quarterdeck, and I close the hatch and get my PDP out of my pocket. Then I send Halley a message.
>Are you free for chow right now? Need to talk.
Her reply comes back maybe twenty seconds later.
>Be topside in 10.
It’s strange, but for once I don’t want or need my former squad leader’s counsel, even though she has been the closest thing to a mentor I’ve had in my military career. Instead, I just want to talk events over with my wife instead, even though she is not an infantry trooper—or maybe partly because she isn’t one.
Halley and I meet up in the officers’ mess ten minutes later. I grab a meal tray and a drink while she finds us a table, and then I give her the rundown of the mission in between bites while she listens and silently eats her own meal.
“Second Lieutenant Dorian,” she says when I am finished. “That’s your drop ship pilot.”
“He’s good,” I say. “He really knows how to handle his bird. And he didn’t hesitate when I told him to shoot that shuttle down.”
“You were the mission commander,” Halley says. “Had you told me to, I would have done the same thing in his stead.”
“Without flinching?”
Halley stabs her food absentmindedly without taking her eyes off me.
“Is this bugging you? Like Detroit did?”
I consider her question for a moment.
“A little,” I say. “I mean, it’s not like Detroit. Not really. That was a military target. And they had their warning. Several warnings.”
“But.”
“But,” I repeat. “I just feel like I’ve stepped over a line somehow. These are our own guys. And we drew first blood. I did. Not directly, but I ordered my guys to, and they listened.”
“Of course they did. You’re the officer in charge. But you didn’t draw first blood, Andrew. They did. You said they fired first. Injured one of your NCOs.”
“Yeah, they fired first,” I say. “Humphrey told them to freeze. They opened up. And then we did. But that ship? They were unarmed and running away. And I told Lieutenant Dorian to shoot them in the back.”
“They fired on your guys before they boarded their alert bird. And they would have given you away the second they cleared that rock and had line of sight to wherever their home base is. Count on it. I would have,” she adds, and pokes her soy patty again for emphasis.
“I know,” I say. “I know all of that. That’s why I told Dorian to fire.” I shrug. “Still doesn’t mean I’ll ever feel great about it.”
Halley looks at me and shakes her head with a smile.
“See, Andrew, this is one of the reasons why I married you. You don’t just follow orders. You don’t pull that trigger lightly. But you do make the call when you have to. And then you agonize over whether you’ve made the right call.”
“Self-doubt.” I smile. “Not very officer-like, is it?”
“That’s how I know you’re a good person. You doubt yourself. But it’s a good thing when you’re in the killing business. Only a sociopath is always and absolutely sure he’ll always make the right call.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Don’t mention it,” she replies. Then she puts her fork down, reaches across the table, and puts her hand on mine.
“But remember that they chose this. That crew chose to disregard your warning and keep going. Everyone you’ll come across in this system, they made the choice to blow up our comms relays and steal a trillion dollars’ worth of gear. They made the choice to take their own and then leave us all to die. They had their choice, and they chose to fuck the rest of us. Keep that in mind when you go up against them. Because I sure as hell will. And don’t you lose a single night of sleep over that shuttle.”
At that moment, I feel a profound swell of gratefulness that Halley managed to get herself assigned to this mission, and that I can sit here with her, over this crummy Fleet lunch, and have her give me reassurance. I knew the things she’s telling me all along, of course, but it’s liberating to hear them from my wife, who knows me better than anyone else in the world. We can’t share a berth on this ship, so I won’t be able to fall asleep next to her, but she’s here with me, a hundred and fifty light-years away from Earth, and whatever is going to happen while we’re out here is going to happen to both of us.
“You look like you’ve been awake for a week, Andrew. Finish your damn food and hit the rack while you can, will you?” Halley says in a gently chiding tone.
I am tired—more so than I usually feel after a mission, even though I didn’t do very much, physically speaking. In fact, hitting the rack has a lot more appeal to me right now than finishing the other half of the cheese-and-bologna sandwich and the dollop of fortified vegetable blend next to it. I push my tray across the table toward Halley, who is almost finished with her own food.
“You want this?”
She looks at the remaining half of my sandwich and sticks out her tongue a little.
“I’m good,” she says. “Had enough of the Classic Number One Lunch Combo at Drop Ship U to last me until retirement.”
“Fine.” I pick up the tray again and look for the dish drop. Halley looks up at me with an amused expression and shakes her head slightly.
“Leave it on the table, Lieutenant. The orderly will clean it up. Rank perk, remember?”
“I’ve been an NCO for too long,” I reply, and put the tray down again. “I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to this officer thing.”
“Sleep,” she repeats and nods toward the exit hatch. “You need to be rested next time the balloon goes up.”
Mercifully, the balloon does not go up while I am in my bunk and in a deep, dreamless sleep. Sergeant Fallon either doesn’t need me for platoon business for a watch cycle and a half, or she noticed how much in need of sleep I seemed. When I wake up, it’s not because some ship alert or overhead announcement wakes me, but because my body decides that I am rested enough.
I check the chrono and find that I’ve been out for over eight hours straight, an almost indecent luxury for someone on a warship in the middle of a hot zone. I get up from the bunk, which I never turned down before falling asleep, straighten out the cover blanket, and change into a fresh set of fatigues. Then I check the terminal on my desk for messages and alerts. There are about fifty or so, but none of them are urgent or require immediate replies.
On the other side of the hatch, I hear muffled cheers and the so
unds of physical activity out on the quarterdeck. I unlock the hatch and step over the threshold to see what’s going on.
The platoon has converted the quarterdeck into a fighting ring. In the absence of a proper ring with ropes and posts, they have rigged a virtual one with tape markers and about two dozen individual thermal foam pads from their personal gear, magnetically connected to make a square the rough size of a SIMAP ring. The Spaceborne Infantry Martial Arts Program is the close-combat system they teach the SI and Fleet grunts as soon as they get out of Basic, and it’s wildly popular as a communal exercise and intra-unit competition sport among the troops. On a warship, you don’t usually have the space to be able to run a few kilometers every day, but there’s always a five-meter-square patch of deck free somewhere to set up a SIMAP ring. In this particular makeshift ring, Corporal Giddings is currently fighting one of the privates from Second Squad. They are locked in an embrace in the center of the ring, trying to keep each other’s arms down while attempting to push the other off balance. Giddings has the better technique, but the private from Second Squad—Minie?—has probably thirty pounds on the corporal, and wins the pushing contest by sheer physics. Giddings loses his balance and stumbles backward, then falls into the crowd lining the edge of the ring. The watching troops cheer.
Sergeant Fallon is watching the scene from the edge of the little passageway between the staff berths and the quarterdeck. She’s leaning against the bulkhead, arms crossed in front of her chest, and she looks mildly amused. I walk up next to her, and she nods at me.
“Up from the dead, I see.”
“You should have roused me earlier. I look like a sloth.”
“No need to get you up,” she replies. “The NCOs had everything well in hand. Be glad you got to tune out for a good stretch.”
“You must be bored to tears. Babysitting junior NCOs, and you can’t even take a break to go see the evening race.”
“It’s a change of scenery,” she says. “And I don’t mind this. Beats getting shot at.”
The next pair on the mat are Sergeant Humphrey and Private Rogers, which seems like an unfair matchup from the start. I’ve served with Humphrey before—she was part of the SI detachment on Indianapolis last year, and I’ve been in the ring with her myself a few times during our long transit back to Earth. Humphrey is much stronger than she looks and rock hard when it comes to taking punches. She’s not in my weight class, but I remember how she almost cleaned my clock twice in the ring last year. Her opponent, Private Rogers, is a female SI trooper about Humphrey’s height, but without her athletic build. Rogers has blond hair she keeps in a tightly tied ponytail, a hairstyle that isn’t quite against SI regulations, but that involves considerably more maintenance hassle than the standard “helmet-short” style that Humphrey is sporting.
It seems that this particular fight would last the ten seconds it ought to take for Humphrey to make contact and punch her lighter, less muscular opponent out of the ring, but Rogers is holding her own. She’s faster and has a little bit more reach than Humphrey, and she has learned to put those advantages to use. They circle each other, and when Humphrey bulls in to flatten Rogers with a combination, her opponent moves out of the line of attack and counters with her own combination that catches Humphrey off-center. They don’t give each other much leeway, but I can tell that Humphrey is holding back just a little, turning the bout into a training opportunity for the younger private.
Sergeant Fallon and I watch as the seemingly uneven fight develops into a fluid, dynamic engagement that is fun to watch. Rogers knows that Humphrey can clean her clock at any point if she leaves herself open or slacks off, and she puts all her heart into the fight. The troopers around the ring cheer when Humphrey drops her guard just a bit near the end of the round because her arms are tired, and Rogers exploits the momentary weakness by moving in and firing off a fast left-left-right combo. The straight right makes it through Humphrey’s guard and smacks her in the mouth. The reply comes swiftly and forcefully, Humphrey returning the favor with a left jab and a powerful right cross that plows into Rogers’s gloves and makes her hit herself in the nose with her own padded fist. Then the buzzer sounds, and both fighters break off the engagement and bend over with their hands on their knees, panting and gasping for air. Humphrey is bleeding from the lip, Rogers from the nose, but both are grinning as they tap each other’s gloves.
“Not bad,” Sergeant Fallon concedes. “My little hood rats would wipe the floor with ’em, though. They don’t do rings. Or rules.”
“Why punch someone when you can shank them,” I say.
“Precisely.”
“Hey, Lieutenant,” Gunny Philbrick calls out from the other side of the quarterdeck. I look over and see that he’s putting on a pair of gel gloves. “Want to go a round?”
“Mind your rank,” Sergeant Fallon says. “You don’t mix it up with the enlisted.”
“This is SIMAP,” I reply. “There’s no rank in the ring. It’s a tradition.”
“There’s always rank,” she cautions. “Especially when there are bloody noses involved.”
Most of the troopers turn their heads to see how their platoon leader is going to respond to the challenge. If I accept, I may get my chops busted by my own platoon sergeant. If I refuse, I look like I’m chickening out. I don’t know most of the junior enlisted, but I know Philbrick, and I suspect he’s offering me a chance to show my PFCs and corporals that their leader isn’t some soft Fleet console jockey.
“Toss me some gloves,” I shout back, and some of the enlisted holler their approval. Someone else chucks a set of gel gloves in my direction, and I catch them and take off my CDU blouse.
“Can’t pass up a dick-measuring challenge, can you?” Sergeant Fallon says in a low voice and shakes her head, but she smiles dryly as she does it.
“Ain’t about that, Sarge,” I reply, and fasten the integrated wrist wraps of the gel gloves.
“Sure it ain’t.”
Wearing just the thermal undershirt on my upper body, I am keenly aware of the extra ten or fifteen pounds of garrison flab I’ve put on since I started the basic-training supervisor job last year, but the gloves still feel good on my hands. Stepping onto the mat is like walking back into a favorite rough-but-friendly watering hole. Something in my brain just switches gears whenever I feel the gel cushions over my knuckles and the tight wrap of the stabilizer around my wrist. I was never a fan of physical violence back home when I was still a PRC hood rat, but I’ve come to love the SIMAP sessions with the SI guys on deployments. It’s a simple, primal contest of skills and physical ability, and it engages your body and brain completely, with no room for mental baggage or bullshit.
“You sure you want to get punched in the face by an officer?” I ask Philbrick when we meet in the middle of the mat to touch gloves.
“Can’t find anyone else to fight,” he says. “Nez is out. And all these wimps are too chicken to punch the gunny.”
I’ve seen Philbrick fight many times in the SI rec room on Indy. I fought him myself at least a half dozen times, back when we both had the same rank. He’s slightly taller than I am, has more reach than I do, and he’s surprisingly nimble for a tall guy. We tap gloves and take up fighting stances, and then the fight is on.
I haven’t been in the ring for over a year, and I can feel it. Just twenty or thirty seconds of trading punches with Philbrick and I’m panting for air. He has long legs with plenty of reach, and he likes to use them in the ring. A snap-kick connects with my upper thigh and makes me grunt with the pain of the impact. I reply with a sideways kick that makes him dodge backward, but that throws him off balance a bit, and I step in and follow it up with a left-right combination that rattles his cage. Then we are close enough to each other to trade body shots for a few seconds. I dole out two and collect as many before we push apart again. On the periphery of the makeshift ring, the troopers are cheering us on, but I’m barely aware of them, tunnel vision in full effect.
In the ring, two minutes are practically an eternity. By the time the signal sounds, I’m sweaty and as worn-out as if I had run a few miles in full battle armor, and my thigh and jaw hurt from where I collected some solid, painful hits from Philbrick. But I know I got him back in roughly equal measure, and I’m glad that I was in good enough shape—or he was cautious enough—that none of us humiliated the other in front of all the junior ranks. We tap gloves again, a little worse for the wear than at the beginning of the round, and the enlisted troopers all around us voice their approval again.
“You’ve gotten slower,” Philbrick says, panting.
“And you’ve gotten uglier,” I pant back.
Overhead, the ascending two-tone trill of a 1MC announcement sounds, and the room goes quiet instantly.
“Now hear this. Platoon leaders, pilots, and senior NCOs, report to briefing room Delta at 1730 Zulu. I repeat, all platoon leaders, pilots, and senior NCOs, report to briefing room Delta at 1730 Zulu.”
I trade looks with Sergeant Fallon, who checks her chrono and makes the hand signal for “double-time.”
“Looks like fun’s over for me,” I say to Gunnery Sergeant Philbrick. “Gunny, you have the deck.”
“I have the deck,” Philbrick confirms. Then he raises his voice to address the rest of the platoon.
“On your feet and get the gear stowed, people. Let’s get ready for infantry business again.”
CHAPTER 20
There’s a familiar face in the briefing room this time, and seeing Lieutenant Colonel Renner sitting in the front row with her senior personnel is evidence that this briefing is going to kick off something big. I take a seat next to Sergeant Fallon again, and when Halley walks in with her fellow pilots, she picks the row right in front of mine. We exchange glances as she sits down, and she gives me a brief smile and a furtive thumbs-up.
Major Masoud is already at the front of the room in his worn but immaculate fatigues, the sleeves sharply folded without a single crease or wave, his camouflage beret tucked underneath the rank sleeve on the left shoulder with the beret badge precisely facing up and out. The golden thread of the drop badge sewn above the left breast pocket is so worn and faded that it looks like silver, but as far as I can see, not a single thread on his tunic is out of order.