“Yeah. That’s some serious shit there. Word is that the lieutenant’s gonna get relieved. Sent back to wherever he’s from.”
“Angkor.”
“What?”
“Not Angkor Wat. Just Angkor. That’s where he’s from.”
“OK. Angkor. He’s AIW, then. Anyway, word I’m hearing is that he’s gonna get shipped back.”
“It wasn’t really his fault. Those idiots were screwing up. Showing off how good they were in Null G ops, and it came around to bite them in the butt.”
“He’s the commander,” Daryll said.
“Like I said, it wasn’t . . .” Rev started before trailing off. Yes, it was their own fault. They were showing off, just like Rev had said. But Daryll just stated it in a nutshell. Lieutenant Veang was the commander, and he was responsible for everything that happened in the platoon.
And the discipline shouldn’t have been that slack so that those four thought it would be OK to screw around like that.
Rev was a little embarrassed to have to be reminded by a civilian about how the military worked.
“It was just a bad situation,” he said.
“Word is that you saved one of their lives, too.”
Daryll waited with a pregnant pause, and Rev knew he had to respond. “No, I didn’t save her life. They told me at the hospital that I might have saved her time in regen, though.”
He didn’t bother to say that he could have kept her from having to be zombied and brought back. He’d leave it at that.
“Well, whatever you did, you made the Union proud. Good on you. Now, let’s get you out of that Oscar.”
“I can sure go along with that. These are more comfortable than our EVA suits, but still, I can’t wait to shower.”
Daryll helped him get out of the suit. He mimed taking a sniff, then recoiling in horror. “Yepper. A shower is a good bet.”
Rev slipped out of his longjohns, the sensor-ladened skin-tight suit he wore under the Oscar. It was almost a shame putting on his working overalls before cleaning up, but it still felt good. He pulled his quantphone out of the overalls—there were fifteen messages. The highest priority was for one from the first sergeant telling Rev to report to him as soon as he stowed his IBHU.
Rev sighed. A shower and some chow were going to have to wait.
Daryll assured him that he’d take care of Pashu and the Oscar, so Rev left and made his way to the company office. It was late, well past normal working hours, but the office was open. Lights shone out from under the commander’s and first sergeant’s doors. Corporal White was on duty, and as soon as he saw Rev, he buzzed the first sergeant. A moment later, the door flung open, and the first sergeant poked her head out. She spotted him, then, with a crooked forefinger, motioned him to come in.
“Good job, Staff Sergeant,” Corporal White quietly said as Rev walked past him.
“Sit,” the first sergeant said as Rev entered.
Rev took a seat beside Top Barber and Top Fitzwater from Second Platoon.
“Why didn’t you contact us, Pelletier,” Top Barber opened up with. “You were there for eight hours before you bothered?”
The first sergeant held up her hand before Rev could respond. “Staff Sergeant, I want a full statement from you now before things have a chance of fading. We’ll worry about why you were gone so long later.”
Rev’s platoon sergeant frowned, but she wasn’t going to naysay the first sergeant.
“From where?” Rev asked.
“From the moment you left the Good Guy until you reached the hospital and Nkomo.”
Rev took a deep breath, then started to tell them everything he remembered. The first sergeant interrupted a few times, but only for clarification. He went beyond just arriving at the hospital and told them what the master sergeant there had told him about the two troopers. It took about thirty minutes, and Rev’s throat was dry by the time he was done.
Top Fitzwater looked at the first sergeant after Rev finished. “That pretty much aligns with the video and what everyone else said.”
“Fucking Mentor. She’s the one that instigated the whole thing,” Top Barber added.
Rev didn’t know who Mentor was, and he wasn’t sure how what he’d said impacted on the other trooper. He didn’t know whose idea it had been to do the somersault.
“And the rest? They’re going to be led around by the nose by a corporal?” the first sergeant asked with a scoff. “Mentor isn’t the only one here at fault.”
She turned to Rev and said, “Thank you, Staff Sergeant Pelletier. You go get cleaned up and hit the rack. You’ve had a long day.”
Rev hesitated a moment, then asked, “Is the lieutenant getting sent back to Angkor?”
He immediately regretted asking. That wasn’t his concern. But once asked, he wasn’t going to back down and stared into the first sergeant’s eyes.
“Who told you that?” she asked him.
“I just heard it. A rumor.”
Rev could see his platoon sergeant tense up slightly, as if waiting for the first sergeant’s response. In a moment of clarity, he realized that Top Barber was worried about her own position as platoon sergeant. If the lieutenant was going to get canned, then was she next?
There was a long wait before the first sergeant spoke. “How officers deal with situations is none of our concern.” Rev thought she was going to weasel out of the question with that answer, but she continued. “I will say this, though. It is awfully difficult to relieve someone of duty in the Guard. It has to be approved by CoH J3, and politics rears its ugly head when that happens. No nation or planet wants one of theirs to be kicked out, you know.
“I think you’d have to kick the Counsellor Prime in the nuts, grab his wife’s ass, then stomp on his dog for good measure to get kicked out.”
Top Barber almost imperceptibly relaxed just the tiniest bit.
Top Fitzwater was not so relieved. “Sorry state of affairs when a trooper’s life ain’t worth the same as the CPs dog.”
“Titan bullshit,” the first sergeant said.
She turned to Rev. “You have anything for me?”
“No, First Sergeant.”
“OK, then. You go on and get out of here. I don’t have to tell you, though, that if anyone comes nosing around, asking questions, you say nothing and refer them to the Brigade Public Affairs Office.”
Rev got up, avoiding his platoon sergeant’s eyes. He felt her burning a hole in his back as he left, and he didn’t relax until he was out of the office and heading to berthing.
The first sergeant never did let Top Barber ask again why he hadn’t called back to the company area from the hospital.
13
The next two days were a sea change in how the others interacted with Rev. No one, other than the two Mad Dogs, had treated him poorly, but there had been a degree of hesitance in connecting with him.
That was all gone. The other staff sergeants and sergeants first class stopped to chat in the commons area. Junior Marines smiled or even thanked him for helping Corporal LeMay. Evidently, she’d been a popular NCO.
And the attention was not just about the accident. It was like a dam breaking. He’d been used to the sidewise glances when Pashu was attached, but for the most part, it was like his IBHU didn’t exist.
Now, particularly with the other SNCOs, there were frank discussions about his experiences fighting with her. Rev was conscious of the warnings about the others trying to dig out information that they could take back to their intel branches, but while he realized that he could be a little naive, he thought there was just frank curiosity. And from a tactical standpoint, if he was going to fight with them someday, they needed to know what he brought to the table.
And, if he was completely honest with himself, he was grateful to let the others know that he’d tasted Centaur blood. Except for a minority of troopers who were sent to the Home Guard for purely political reasons, the troopers were all top-notch soldiers, Marines, guardsmen, and so on.
Rev had a deep-seated feeling of . . . not that he had an inferiority complex, per se, but that he’d succeeded in combat solely because of Pashu.
Judging from the reactions when he first started relating some of his war experiences, some of the others might have thought that, too. No one was hostile, but it was as if Rev could hear them think, “Sure, that’s all fine and dandy that you dropped a riever, but you had that massive weapon for an arm.”
It wasn’t until Ting-a-ling mentioned that as a lightly armed Raider and long before he’d gotten Pashu, he’d taken out a paladin with an incendiary grenade while perched on top of the thing. That caused a few jaws to drop, and Rev made a silent promise to thank his friend.
And that revelation immediately jumped him up a few steps on the ladder of respect. But even better, that started a series of stories from the others about their encounters. This time it was Rev’s mouth to drop open. He was serving with some Grade A, bona fide stud warriors here. After experiencing the ridiculous morass of a bureaucracy that was the Home Guard, and after the accident, he’d been getting a little concerned about what might happen if they did get into a fight. Now, he was feeling much more comfortable. These troopers, from all over the galaxy, were the real deal.
And it wasn’t just within the company. The first evening after the accident, four SNCOs from the Alliance—which was nominally a strategic competitor of the Union—came by and dragged him to the SNCO Club and plied him with drinks. LeMay was from their planet, Tatterhall, and they wanted to express their thanks. Rev brought along Ting-a-ling and Staff Sergeant Rice Unifora, and Rev had the best night since he arrived on Enceladus.
One bump in the road remained: the lieutenant. If anything, the officer was showing open animosity toward Rev.
The first sergeant seemed to have been right about whether the lieutenant would be leaving the Guard. Four days later, and he was still commander. But he’d taken a pretty big hit, and every time he came across Rev, he glared as if everything had somehow been Rev’s fault.
Rev was only a little ashamed that he’d hoped the lieutenant would be relieved and sent packing. He could justify it in his mind by saying that the platoon commander should have instilled more discipline, but he couldn’t fool himself that even a small part of that was simply because the man didn’t like him.
“He’ll get over it,” Rice had said while they were discussing the platoon commander.
“Don’t worry about him. He’s a good guy, and he knows his stuff,” Ting-a-ling said.
“Easy for you to say. He likes you,” Rev said.
“What’s there not to like?” Ting-a-ling asked. “I’m a great guy.”
“Well, I guess I’m not, ’cause he hates me.”
“You’re overreacting, Rev-boy. Just lay low and keep out of sight. The top runs the day-to-day stuff for the platoon, anyway. And in a year and a half, the lieutenant will be done and gone home.”
“None too soon, if you ask me.”
Rev knew Ting-a-ling was right, but he didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of having Rev admit it.
Rev almost jumped. Punch had been so quiet lately that when he did say something, it often took Rev by surprise.
“Thanks. I’ll go and take it.”
He looked at the other two. “I’ve got a call coming.”
“Mala?” Rice asked.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, look at him. He’s getting red,” she said, reaching over to pinch his cheek. “It’s so cute.”
“I should have never told you two about her.”
“I’ve never known a guy who doesn’t want to brag about his conquests,” Rice said with a laugh.
“It isn’t like that. She wasn’t a ‘conquest.’”
“You keep telling yourself that. You might even believe it someday.” Rice stretched, arching her back. “And I think I’m hitting the rack. I’ve got battalion duty bright and early. By the Mother, I hate that.”
She stood up and said, “Make sure you darken your door. You don’t want to embarrass yourself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. Lonely boy, far from his girl. She calls him on a private line. You know how things go.”
“Oh, geez, Rice. Why is it that every woman I know has her mind in the gutter?”
“Because men who don’t understand women fall into two groups: bachelors and husbands.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s because you’re a bachelor.”
Rev just shook his head. “I swear, I don’t understand women.”
“That’s what I just said.” She leaned over and gave Rev a kiss on the top of the head. “Don’t fret your little mind about it.”
Ting-a-ling stood up. “I was going to make the same kind of crack, but she beat me to it. I’m hitting the rack, too. You go take your call. Have fun, but not too much fun.”
“You, too?”
Rev shook his head as his friend entered his cell. Rev didn’t think he was a prude, but sometimes, he just didn’t understand his fellow Marines and troopers.
* * *
“Busy. They’ve got us hopping. We just got back from a two-day training cycle out on the surface.”
“They’ve got surface training? I thought it was all, like, underground,” Malaika said.
“Gravity’s so weak here that they give us harnesses to counteract it. We do vacuum ops right on the surface. Cheaper than getting the Navy to take us somewhere.”
That, and they don’t like carting us around as if they were just bus drivers.
“I guess that makes sense. You be careful, though. Vacuum ops are nothing to underestimate.”
You’ve got that right. Not that he was going to tell her about what happened to LeMay and Wuhing. No use worrying her.
She broke contact with his eyes, trying to look around him. “So, that’s your quarters?”
“Yeah,” Rev said, scooting to the side of the pickup so she could see. “My home for the next three years.”
“It looks . . . small.”
“That’s because it is. I’ve got this little cubbyhole at the entrance where I can sit and work on my terminal, and then the rack. No head. I gotta go out for that.”
“It’s kinda cute, though. Looks like enough room for two in that rack, if you know what I mean,” she said with a throaty laugh.
Yeah, I know what you mean, he thought, trying not to roll his eyes. First Rice, now you, Mala?
“Unfortunately, only assigned personnel in the base. No visitors. And you’ll be a civilian soon enough.”
“Damn, Rev. Just joking. Trying to, you know, remind you of what’s waiting back here when you come.”
“Yeah, I knew you were joking. I was just playing along.”
Except he didn’t know she was joking. In retrospect, of course, she had to be, but he’d thought she was serious. Sometimes, it seemed as if they didn’t understand each other at all.
“Speaking of which, what’s your status on that?”
“Already started the process. I had my first Run Amok Week brief today.”
“Shouldn’t that be ‘Don’t Run Amok Week’ brief?” Rev asked.
“Ha-fucking-ha. You need to get Punch to give you better lines, ’cause it’s not like I haven’t heard that, oh, about a hundred other times today.”
The Corps hadn’t been discharging any significant number of Marines since before the war, and now, with combat vets returning into the civilian population—particularly with large numbers of augmented Direct Combat Marines—there was concern that the trauma of war could manifest itself in bad ways. Someone with a PTSD event, someone far stronger and quicker than a normal human, could pose a danger to the populace. So, the Reintegration of Returning Marines had been reestablished and updated. Every discharging Marine had to go through a week of briefs, exercises, and psychological evaluations.
That was almost en
ough reason for Rev to stay in uniform in and of itself.
“So, what are they—” Rev started to ask before he was cut off by his hatch chime.
Rev wasn’t expecting anyone. With his first free time since forever, he hoped it wasn’t the first sergeant with another shit detail.
“Wait a second,” he told Malaika as he set the hatch to transparent.
Lieutenant Macek was standing in front of his cell.
“Can I help you, sir?” he asked through the intercom.
“I was hoping that we could talk.”
Rev could see that something was bothering the lieutenant. Why he’d be coming to see him was something Rev didn’t know, but Marines supported Marines.
“Wait one, sir. Let me cut off this call.”
He turned back to Malaika. “I’ve got to go, Mala. Something just came up.”
“What? But we just started chatting,” she said, disappointment taking over her face.
“I know, but I’ve got the lieutenant here, and you know officers. Can’t wait for whatever it is. Besides, this setup is pretty righteous. I can take incoming calls right here in my cell, and if you’re at the USO, these don’t cost us a bit. We’ll have plenty of time to chat.”
“Well . . . OK, I guess. It’s just that I miss you so much.”
“Me, too. But I’ve got to go.”
“Wait.” She looked around to see if anyone was looking, then leaned over and planted a kiss on the pickup. “Think of me in your dreams.”
It was almost a relief when Rev cut the connection. And that made him feel guilty. Shouldn’t he miss her as much as it looked like she missed him? But the lieutenant was waiting, and he didn’t have time for that.
He opened the hatch and started to get out.
“Can I come in?”
Rev looked around his tiny space. The lieutenant wasn’t a particularly large man, but Rev was, and with their augments, both were rather bulky.
“It’ll be kinda tight, sir. There’s not much room here.”
“I’d rather have a little privacy, if you don’t mind.
An Uneasy Alliance: Book 4 of the Sentenced to War Series Page 11