Posleen FanFic

by Leigh Kimmel

  Then came AOBC, the accident, and the Board of Inquiry.

  And now, nine years later, this. He looked down at the paper again, his brain floating precariously free, as if the head space and timing settings were loose.

  * * *

  Dear Sir:

  Pursuant to Presidential Directive 19-00, you are ordered to report to RAMSTEIN AIR FORCE BASE, FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY, no later than 2400 HOURS, 20 NOVEMBER, 2001, for transport to FORT KNOX, KY ARMY BASE, for further duty with the armed forces of the United States of America. Failure to report will be prosecuted under Section 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: Failure to report for hazardous duty. All requests for waivers on the basis of age, civilian position, health or compassion shall be considered after reporting. Public transportation may be compensated using the attached vouchers. These are good for air travel using United States flagged carriers, MAC or CRAF aircraft, as well as train, bus or taxi when within the United States or certain other national jurisdictions, but may not be used to reimburse travel by personal vehicle. In the event that the vouchers are not accepted, reasonable travel costs will be reimbursed directly.

  DO NOT BRING: personally operated vehicles, personal weapons, radios with attached speakers, large musical instruments or ANY communication devices to include cellular phones or pagers.

  Do bring: 2 (Two) week's civilian clothing, uniforms, toiletry items, small entertainment devices, radios or music players with headphones, small musical instruments and/or reading material.

  Tom looked at the return address again. There had to be some sort of mistake.

  * * *

  "There must be some sort of mistake!" Kay couldn't believe it, staring down at the telegram in her hand. "Why the hell would they call you up? They can't-- they pulled your commission, right?" The concept itself was so far outside the realms of reality, even when dealing with a government bureaucracy, it beggared belief. "It's been nine bloody years! What did the military guy from the embassy say?" She waved the telegram around as if swatting flies.

  "He said I wasn't the only one. There appears to be three of us in country. He's going to book us a flight back to Frankfurt together, as soon as the other two make it in. They're apparently working as civilian contractors with the NATO Military Integration Liaison Teams out in Lviv--"

  "I don't care where the others are working! This is bullshit!"

  Tom looked as his wife for a moment, knowing what was coming. "C'mon Hon. What's the worst thing that could happen? I mean, I didn't break any laws, so they aren't going to throw me into jail. Maybe this is just some sort of training exercise, and I'm still in their computers someplace as a very inactive reservist. Stranger things have happened." He started talking faster, because he could see the warning signs of a really major wobbly coming on. "So I get a flight out to Knox and back. Whippy skip. Maybe a week, ten days at the most."

  "And what do I do with Allison and Edward in the meantime?"

  "We can call Vita and see if she can drop them off at school, and pick them up again. I don't see that as the major problem, Hon. Nope. The major problem will be getting this dog-and-pony show over as quickly as possible. I'm scared it'll be a classic case of hurry-up-and-wait." Tom had found over the past decade that faking an overreaction had the effect of disarming his wife's own overreaction. It was a trick that would come in handy over the next several days.

  "Have you ever heard of anyone doing this before?" It was obvious that Kay still wasn't happy about it, but at least she hadn't stopped thinking yet.

  "No. And that tells me that everyone from the gate guards at Ramstein all the way to the MEPS station at Knox, and back, will be staffed by povlabis."

  "MEPS? Povlabis? What is that, Ukrainian?"

  Tom grinned slightly, as if he had put one over on her. "Nah. MEPS is 'Military Entrance Processing Station'. And the other, I just made it up. Persons Of Very Little Ability, Brains and Initiative."

  "Piker." She looked around their flat, and out the window at the early season snow falling onto the street, momentarily covering the Podol district, turning it temporarily into a fluffy, white paradise for the district's children, their own included. All too soon, it would become a muddy, waterlogged mess, but at least the kids would be able to play in it some, before the real winter set in and the river froze over entirely. Finally, she sighed. "Ok, what is the worst thing that could happen?"

  "Now your talkin'. Let's see." Tom looked up at the ceiling, unconsciously mimicking his wife's own habit. "If there were going to be a really big war, we'd know about it, right?" Tom looked around, thinking, trying to remember everything he'd forgotten about the military structure of the reserves. "Ok. If they had to call up the reserves, they'd start with the active reservists and national guardsmen. Step two would be to call up all the recently discharged who were still in the inactive ready reserve and stick them back onto active duty, or use them to round out the open slots in the reserve units. They'd also activate the reserve training divisions like the 91st out in California, or reconstitute it if it's been mothballed in the interim, if there was a probability that a lot more bodies would be needed."

  "Stop saying 'bodies.' You're making me nervous."

  "Nyis, dear. Ok, so we've nationalized the reserves. We've activated the training divisions and kicked the 'selective service' over into 'draft' mode. It'll be six to nine months before those come together, meaning a year or more before the first training cycles, using the reserve training divisions, are finished. You'll still get the recruits from the active component, but that won't be very many. From there, the recruits go to their advanced training courses. Result: Up to two years before a real sizeable mass of privates come online."

  Tom looked around again, thoughts trying to catch up with his voice. "In the meantime, where needed, they'd activate the remainder of the inactive ready reserve, those that had been out more than two years, but less than eight years since they enlisted, say. After that, who's left? Everyone else on the inactive lists, the recent retirees that they could coerce back into uniform, the borderline medically disqualified and way down at the end, me. I'm so far down the list that they'd have to be expecting to lose World War III before the computers would spit my name out." Tom walked over to the window, opened it, and stuck his head outside into the snow, peering through the sycamore trees that bracketed the bottom of the Andreivskii Spust. After a moment, he pulled it back in, turned, and said "And I don't see any WW III outside the building, do you?"

  "And the aliens?"

  Tom blinked. He hadn't thought about that. Once the initial hooraw had blown over, everyone had gone back to their lives, secure in the knowledge that the world's armed forces were up to the task of protecting the planet from any 'alien invasion'. Then he shrugged, stoically. The ghosts were back, momentarily, but he shrugged them off. He had had a lot of practice at doing so. Finally, he sighed. "Dunno. Frankly, how bad can that be? But I gave up the commission. Why would they want me?"

  * * *

  "What was that, Geezer?"

  "Sorry?" Tom looked up from where he was writing into a little notebook. He was trying to remember everything he could about military customs and courtesies; he could have asked the guys he was traveling with, but they had already started making fun of his age. The whippersnappers.

  "You just mumbled something. Sounded like you sighed, then said 'In transit *mumble* *mumble*'." The second corner of the traveling triangle was a big bulky type who had announced his name as 'Terrance K. Schank'. That was how he talked, as if you were hearing it over a public address system. Tom expected every sentence the man boomed to be followed by a burst of static and "using a white courtesy telephone, please".

  "Ah, oh. Um, 'In transit, gloria mundi'. The original is 'sic transit gloria mundi' and is Latin for "And so passes the glory of the world". However I just wrote 'In transit', which would mean 'Experiencing the death of the glory of the world", but in reality the 'in transit' bit was English and not Latin. Thus, 'In
transit, the glory of the world." You know, all the world's a stage, sort of thing. Sitting here, watching the tireless ebb and flow of random effing humanity, as we hurry up and effing wait for the next effing piece of our little effing odyssey to drop into effing place, pick us up, and shuttle us off on our own effing merry little way."

  There was a short pause while the two former NCOs digested this.

  "Geezer?" This came from the last corner of the small group, an average sized joe of no significant distinguishing characteristics. The Sergeant First Class had a low, pleasant speaking voice, normal body structure to go with his average height. He had hazel eyes, mud colored hair and could have passed for any normal class of traveler, from any number of Western or even Eastern European countries. His parents, to make up for being so average, and having passed on their lack of distinctiveness to their only son, had apparently named him Zedulon Yanik Xavier Wesley Vance Unger-Thomas. He said that they could call him Stuart, but to make things easier, he would just answer to Zed.

  As humor went, Tom thought, it was a pretty feeble attempt. The man's repeated attempts to talk about which part of the family the various names came from were, however, politely ignored. It was however quite annoying that Master Sergeant Schank kept calling him Rhett.

  "Yeah?" asked Tom, looking up from his notepad.

  "You're mind is just too far out there, dude. They do say that senility is a sign of advanced old age, you know."

  Tom snorted. "I'm only thirty-seven, thanks."

  Zed (or Stuart, or Rhett) gasped, while Terry said, awed, "Gosh! That's ancient"

  Then Zed nodded. "Ahah! I know what it is. You were an officer, weren't you?"

  Tom froze, then unfroze, and shook his head in an affirmative. "For a while, yeah."

  The two NCOs looked at each other, then nodded solemnly. "That'd be it, yep," said Zed.

  "Such deep thinking, such deep thoughts," intoned Terry. "I almost want to spring to attention and salute."

  "You'd disturb the locals," said Tom, jerking a chin at the Ukrainian Army privates patrolling through the airport with their Kalashnikovs strung across their backs.

  Zed thought about this for a moment, then an elfin grin appeared momentarily across his face. Catching the grin, and its unspoken meaning, Terry sprang to attention just as Zed did. They both snapped off text book, parade ground salutes, in unison, and in perfect, flawless Ukrainian said "Yes, our captain!"

  Tom looked at the two, frowning to keep from breaking out into laughter. "Sit down, you fools," he replied, also in Ukrainian. He at least knew that much of the language.

  At Tom's response, the two NCOs broke into soundless laughter and sat back down to watch as around the room, all of the patrolling privates turned and began patrolling elsewhere. Specifically, anywhere but close to the three plainly dressed men[, all three of whom exuded an air of competence and command.][ed cmt: Do I want that bit? or is that overdoing it?]

  * * *

  The glass hit the cheap-linoleum covered concrete floor, shattering into several hundred pieces. Kay would have screamed at it, had indeed screamed at equally inconsequential things over the past forty-eight hours, but she was finally beginning to maintain calm in the face of her two children, who stood, frozen, expecting another outburst. Even Edward, the younger of the two, had noticed the intermittent explosions were happening more often over the two days since Papa had left for the airport.

  One or the other of their parents were often gone for days at a time, away on business, and to the children, it was just the normal state of affairs. The parent who stayed at home during these instances normally just dealt with it. They went to their job, came home at night, the local au-pair had been with them long enough to know what her job was when this was the case.

  That their Mama was reacting poorly to the absence of Papa was something the children found new and unexpected. And generally, "new" and "unexpected" were not descriptions that went well around Mama. If the children had been old enough, they might have described it as a negative feedback loop of her own devising. It was necessary for them to, as Papa called it, 'walk on eggshells', and so they did what they could to not cause trouble, or worse, more explosions.

  Kay, on the other hand, was trying to cope as best she could with the absence of her husband, and doing her utmost to not take out her frustrations on the kids. Thus, the explosions directed at inanimate objects. With a bitter sigh at the frustrations that tormented her, she reached around the corner of the fridge and found the broom without looking. "Stay on the chairs, kids. Let me get the glass up, first."

  Allison said, "Can I help, Mum?"

  "Not yet, dear. Once I get it into a pile you can hold the dustpan."

  "Can I hold the dustpan, too?" asked Edward, hoping to help.

  "Well, I suppose you could both hold it? But let me get the glass off most of the floor first, so you don't have to step in it."

  There followed much verbal horseplay as Kay kept the two children occupied with eating their lunches, making jokes about their ('American') manners and ('Murican) accents, and asking what they had learned in school the previous week.

  Eventually, they got the glass cleaned up and the floor swept, hoovered and mopped. As the cleanup operation continued, Kay said less and less, and by the end of the job, the tears had returned.

  Edward, always the more observant of the two children walked up and hugged his Mama's leg spontaneously in sympathy. Seeing this, Allison took advantage of Kay's free leg, and when the adult bent over and grabbed the two in a bear hug, the sobs once again broke loose, wracking her body as she tried to ignore the lonely future that she could see, stretching out before her.

  * * *

  The gymnasium was full of tables, the tables were full of computers. Behind the computers, there were chairs, and they were full of civilian clerk typists ruffling through stacks of paper. Above each desk was a placard, happily proclaiming that the desk beneath was for this group of ranks, and that group of SSNs-Ending-In and a single digit. The room had started out full, but that was six hours ago, and it was starting to look like he would have to stop stalling. He'd been able to wander back and forth between various points of the room, here gathering up a cup of coffee (cream, two sugars), or there a packet of crackers (soup, two each), while the mass of humanity (reservists, recalled) separated themselves from the feckless mass and joined the line that they clearly belonged in.

  As each person reached a desk, there'd be a flurry of scrambling through boxes of personnel files, until the correct one was found, pulled out, verified and then handed to the person in question. They would then be sent through one of the several doors leading out of the gym, and according to his observation, that was the only way out of the room. His attempts to exit had been politely refused by the Military Policemen standing at the door, nominally there to check IDs against movement orders, but obviously also to prevent people from leaving once they had arrived and signed in.

  In one corner of the gym, there was a single desk with a placard proclaiming that the MP sitting below was the source of any help that the returning reservists might require. Apparently, the help that the MP Specialist 4 was equipped to give, however, was minimal. Apparently, it consisted of asking what rank someone had when they mustered out, and then asking what the final digit was in their Social Security Number. Tom knew he would be presenting a problem that the MP would no doubt be hard pressed to answer, given that he himself would be hard pressed to answer it.

  Each time it looked like the crowds were thin enough that someone might start taking notice of him, forcing him to run the gauntlet and annoy the MP, another bus load of reservists, fresh from the Louisville Airport, would arrive and restock the tank. But the last bus had been over forty-five minutes ago, and it didn't look like there would be much more. And he had to use a latrine, badly. All that coffee. Tom sighed, braced to attention, and marched resolutely over to the MP.

  Said worthy glanced up from the FM he was busily memorizing.
"Can I help you ... Sir?"

  Possibly, Specialist ... Mott, possibly. There is some difficulty as to which line I'm supposed to be in.

  "Easy enough." A hint of resignation creased the MPs face, but he gamely pursued the requirements of his post. "What's your rank?"

  "Well," Tom shrugged, "that's the problem. I don't think I have one."

  "Not a problem. You're not IRR, then?"

  "Nope, at least I don't think the inactive ready reserve database includes me."

  The MP looked the supplicant over, noting his age by the graying of his hair, and the lines on this face. "In that case, what rank did you hold when you last served, reserves or active?"

  "Um. That'd be first lieutenant. But--"

  Now appraised of the man's previous rank, the MP was all business. "There you go, Sir. In this case you will be in one of the Company Grade Officer lines. All the returning soldiers are taking their previous ranks. I'm sure that the Army will decide if you should be promoted past that once you've had a chance to settle in. So for now, you are certainly still an LT. Last digit of your SSN, Sir?"

  "But there's still issues with that, Specialist."

  "No worries, Sir. The entrance specialists," Spec4 Mott waived a hand around to indicate all the desks and their attached civilians, "will sort it out. We just sorted everything by last rank held to make it easier to track you down. That is by no means an indication of what rank you will be holding during the emergency."

  Tom scrunched his forehead up. "Why not just use the computers?"

  "Network's down, Sir." The specialist shrugged, indicating that this was the normal state of affairs.

  Tom reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. Then he shrugged. "Oh boy. Ok, I guess that's where they'll find my file, then," he said, waving his own hand over at the "Company Grade Officers, SSNs ending in 6" desk. "This'll be interesting." He looked back at the Specialist. "Thanks for your help, Specialist Mott. Hopefully I won't be back over here in forty five minutes causing trouble."