Across the ballroom, key players were leaving, including General Xanderbelt, the senior Marine assigned to the home system, and the ambassador. A serverbot trundled up to the table and quickly took their plates and used silver, filled their water glasses, and deposited a dessert fork in front of each of them.
“I guess this is it,” Rev said as he shifted his chair to get a little better view. The serverbots were efficient, and with the Navy servers taking care of the head table and a few others in the front, it took only a few minutes for the room to be ready.
A Marine captain stepped up beside the main table, and after the crowd quieted, shouted, “Sound adjutant’s call!”
A drummer took up the beat, and after a moment, he and two trumpeters marched into the room playing the "Lost Legion March." They reached the head table and countermarched just in front of the adjutant, then as if collecting him, marched back to the main entrance. Drummers and trumpeters then executed right and left steps a sufficient distance to clear the entrance doorway. The adjutant took his place behind the cake escort.
Now, everyone was in place. It was somewhat of a formal way to do it, with all the marching back and forth, but supposedly, the same process went back to Old Earth.
These were volunteer musicians. The Congress of Humanity had professional musicians for ceremonies like this, but the Marines preferred to provide their own, and Rev thought that for infantry grunts, they acquitted themselves well.
A recording started playing “Semper Fidelis,” and two colonels, in full dress, to include swords, marched in the room abreast of each other. Once they reached the front of the room, they halted, performed opposing facing movements, then marched five steps before performing an about-face, stopping to face each other. This was repeated by two lieutenant colonels, two majors, two captains, two first lieutenants, and two second lieutenants, one of them being Bundy. Rev didn’t know where they scraped up another butter bar.
When Bundy and the other lieutenant came to a halt, the music stopped, and the officers formed a rectangle, lining the way from the entrance to the front and facing each other.
One of the trumpeters played “Attention,” and another recording of marching music started to play. The officers in the cordon flashed to present arms with their swords, which Rev thought was pretty cool. As a SNCO, he rated a sword but hadn’t bothered to get one.
“Remind me to order my sword.”
The general and the ambassador marched in, flanked by the officers. They reached the front, and with a lot less precision, turned to face the guests. The cordon came to order arms with their swords but remained at a position of attention.
A Marine scurried out to give the two notables throat mics.
“Please, please, take your seats,” the general said. He waited a moment. “As senior Marine in the home system, I want to thank you all for coming to help us celebrate our seven hundred and sixty-ninth birthday.”
The general wasn’t just the senior Marine assigned to the Congress—he was the third senior Marine in the Corps, a billet that usually led right to the top.
He spoke for about three minutes about traditions and service, which was far less time than Rev had expected. He ended repeating what was said in the message about being vigilant.
The ambassador was next, and she wasn’t quite so succinct. It was probably to be expected of a politician versus a Marine. Rev watched Bundy during her speech, still standing at attention. He might as well have been a statue. He was probably older than both colonels, but he managed just fine.
I should have expected it.
What he hadn’t expected was when the ambassador acknowledged the Centaurs. Rev had almost forgotten they were there, but the ambassador spent a couple of minutes pontificating about how, despite the animosity created by the war, they were now friends and looking forward to the future.
She turned and held out a welcoming arm toward the three Centaurs, pausing as if expecting a reaction. Slowly and haphazardly, muted applause trickled out. Rev couldn’t help but glance at the missing man table just forward of the stage, a completely serviced table with a white cloth, and an empty chair, representing all those Marines who had fallen over the years, Marines such as Staff Sergeant Montez, killed by a paladin as she saved Rev and the rest of her Raider team.
Finally, however, she was done. She stepped back and took her position beside the general, and the trumpeter sounded “Attention.”
A recording played the Union Marine Hymn as everyone rose from their seats. Four Marines pushed a silver cart upon which was an enormous cake festooned with the Marine Corps emblem, the numbers “769” and small flags of the planets that made up the Union. Rev stood on his tiptoes until he spotted the familiar green and yellow New Hope flag.
Behind the cake came the adjutant, and behind him, an elderly man and a smiling Randigold. Rev wryly shook his head. This was supposed to be a solemn occasion, but he should have figured she couldn’t keep the grin off her face.
The cake reached the general and the ambassador, and the escorts faced each other and then took two steps backward.
“The general will now cut the cake.”
The senior cake escort stepped forward, took an officer’s sword from the cake cart, and passed it over his left forearm, grip forward, to the general. The general stepped up and took it, and while the music played "Auld Lang Syne,” he carefully cut a piece of cake, then handed it to the guest of honor. She took a single bite and then nodded her approval.
He turned back to the cake and started to cut another piece.
“By tradition, the second piece of cake goes to the oldest Marine present. Today, that is Lance Corporal Tedly Forrest Khan. Lance Corporal Khan was born on March 2, 3731, and enlisted in the Ramper Marine Corps on his birthday in 3748.”
Ramper? Another provincial Marine. We’re taking over here.
“Lance Corporal Khan served as a communications tech, taking part in the punitive operation against the Hummingbird Faction.”
Geez, I sure don’t know much about our history. What the heck is that?
He asked Punch to pull it up so he could read about it later.
He left the Corps in 3752 and joined the civil service, assigned to a wide variety of positions spanning his career. He is now the Assistant Counsel for Environmental Reestablishment with the Congress of Humanity.”
Assistant counsel? Provincial boy and lance corporal sure made good.
The general handed the cake to Mr. Khan to the applause of the crowd before he proceeded to cut another piece.
“And, as is tradition, the third piece is offered to the youngest Marine present. Lance Corporal Ethereal Randigold was born on August 19, 3815. She enlisted in the New Hope Marine Corps on January 3, 3825.”
Enlisted? She’s a conscript, just like me.
“She was assigned to New Hope Marine’s 48th Support Battalion, before being reassigned as a Direct Combat Raider, where she took part in operations on Mistake, during the invasion of New Hope, and on Mother Earth herself.”
Rev glanced at the Centaurs. They showed no emotion, not that Rev would recognize it if they did.
“She is now assigned to Fox Company, Second of the Second, in the Home Guard.”
Applause broke out as the general handed her the cake, but no one was louder than the New Hope table.
As soon as Randigold, still smiling from her left ear to the edges of her mask, took a bite, the trumpeter sounded “Attention.”
The cake escorts pulled the cake to the side, and from the entrance, the color guard appeared, marching between the cordon, past the general and ambassador, and recovered their respective flags. They marched back to the center and formed a line abreast.
On command, they started marching forward, the drummer beating out a cadence. Once they reached the door, the general and the guest of honor marched forward between the line of escorts and exited the ballroom. The two colonels came to carry swords, marched forward unti
l they met at the centerline, performed opposite facing movements, and in step, started marching out. As they passed the lieutenant colonels, those Marines did the same, and when they reached the majors, the majors did the same and so on until Bundy and the other second lieutenant left the ballroom.
The last to march were the drummer and the trumpeter. They marched all the way forward, countermarched, and marched back the length of the ballroom and out the doors.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this ends the official ceremonies, and General Xanderbelt wants to thank all of you for attending our celebration. You are welcome to stay and enjoy a piece of cake, and the bar will be open.”
Most people kept their seats as both the Navy servers and the serverbots rushed out with prepared pieces of cake. Rev was a little disappointed that he wasn’t going to get a piece of the official cake, but then he realized that even as big as that cake was, it wasn’t big enough to serve everyone, and trying to would probably take them into the morning.
The participants came back into the room and made their way back to their seats. Bundy was just Bundy, but Rev thought Randigold was going to crack her mask she was grinning so broadly.
The serverbots brought out both chocolate and white cake. Rev took both. There was only one birthday ball per year, and he felt he could splurge after vowing to hit the gym in the morning.
He tried both and declared the white cake better. That set off a round-robin of cake testing. Chocolate won four to three. But it wasn’t the cake that was important. It was that they were having it together.
With the entire battalion on alert, only Tsao was allowed to drink, but she drank soft drinks along with the rest. Rev didn’t know if that was because she wasn’t a drinker or if she was doing that in solidarity. It didn’t really matter, though.
The New Hope Marines used the table as a base, but there was some wandering to see other tables, just as other Marines and some civilians came to theirs. The general and the ambassador made their rounds to each table, and of course, Randigold had to take a holo with both of them.
The ambassador agreed, but Rev caught the odd look, bordering on what might have been fear as she stood beside the lance corporal/PFC. Rev hoped Randigold didn’t notice.
Lieutenant Vreemish stopped by the table in his dress red uniform, the form-fitting pants and short jacket emphasizing his augments, with a small flask and two glasses in his hand. As far as Rev had seen, he was the only karnan at the celebration.
Rev thought of the D-4 agent who’d told him to form a closer relationship with the man. He wasn’t sure just how he was supposed to do that.
“Heard you got to Staff Sergeant Kvat,” he said, towering over the sitting Rev.
There was a stirring among the others at the table, and Randigold looked like she was going to jump across the table like a guard dog.
“For the record, I would like to think I would never even contemplate embarrassing a fellow trooper as I heard someone did it to him,” Rev said.
The lieutenant let out a small chuckle. “Oh, yes, I understand that completely. But whoever did it, that was a good one—not that you would know who did it. And who knows? Maybe it’ll teach him a little humility.” He took in the rest of the table. “Of course, none of you heard me say that. Well, anyway, I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday and bring you a Donat Azurco.”
He only then seemed to notice that no one had alcohol. “By the Mother, I forgot you were on alert. Sucks to be you.”
“I’ll take a rain check, sir.”
“You got it.” He nodded at fellow lieutenants Bundy and Macek, then wandered off.
All eyes turned to Rev with a single unspoken question.
“He was on Earth with us. Good guy,” he said, leaving it at that.
Slowly, people started filtering out, led mostly by those who had to go back to Titan. Tsao gave each of them a hug, telling everyone to let her know if they were going to catch the sights there so she could be their guide. Rev could tell she was earnest about that, too, and he realized that it must be tough for her there. She wasn’t the only Union Marine in First Brigade, of course, but she was the only New Hope Marine.
The rest settled in, telling stories that Rev would guess were at least half true. There was no rank at the table, either. That would come back in the morning, but for the moment, they were all just Marines.
“Look at those wimps,” Thassom said four hours later as one of the last tables broke up, the drunk Marines staggering out of the room. “Can’t hang worth shit.”
That didn’t stop the table from answering back when the group turned at the door and let out an “ooh-rah!”
Four Marines in the battalion, including Corporal Incrit, also on soft drinks, came to join the New Hope Marines when their table mates left them. There was a sense that no one wanted to let go of the night. And with tomorrow a day off, by order of the battalion commander as a salute to the Marines, there was no reason to cut it off before they were kicked out.
Their night was, in fact, cut short twenty minutes later, however, when their alert tethers kicked off. Everyone grabbed theirs in unison.
“Well, boys and girls, I guess we’ve got to go to work,” Bundy said. “We’ve got thirty minutes before muster.”
Everyone stood up, ready to jump on a tram back to Camp Reyes. It was going to be tight, but at least each of them had been cleared to be here, so a few minutes late wasn’t going to be a big thing.
All Rev could think of, though, as he looked at the table in front of him with what now were five empty birthday cake plates, was that he wasn’t going to get to the gym after all.
30
Six hours and thirty-two minutes after receiving the alert, Second Battalion, Second Brigade, was spaceborne, beating the requirement by twenty-eight minutes. Things had been so rushed that Rev hadn’t even hung up his blues but had just tossed them on his rack in the rush to get changed, grab his deployment pack, and get to muster, and then he’d had no time to get back.
From what they’d been told so far, this was the real deal, and Second of the Second was just the tip of the spear. More units were being scrambled, and they’d be following over the next week as soon as they could be mounted out and ships assigned.
The stakes couldn’t be higher, to the point of whether the Congress of Humanity could continue as a viable force in the galaxy. After the common enemy of the Centaurs bringing humankind together, what was happening on Cat Scratch could very well tear the alliance apart and spiral humanity back into a never-ending series of conflicts, confrontations, and out-and-out war.
The Home Guard was being thrust into the conflict. If they could not handle the situation, then there was the very real possibility that a great power war could be the result. That was a huge responsibility being thrust on their shoulders, and Rev hoped they were up for the task.
They didn’t have all the details yet, nor an operations plan. Those were being worked on now. But the crux of the matter was one that had been a tinderbox for fighting for thousands of years: land.
Cat Scratch was colonized early in the first diaspora—“colonization,” however, was being generous. With an oxygen-based atmosphere and close to Earth-normal, it was a logical choice, requiring minimal terraforming.
But the planet never became the paradise that was envisioned. Wisteria Industries, who won the terraforming contract by being the lowest bidder, botched the job, wasting money and years before finally being bought out. By that time, the resources the first surveys hinted at never came to fruition, and the new parent company decided to pull the plug. Technically, the planet was inhabitable, so they were within their rights, under the Standard Charter of the time, to do so.
But it was hardly a Garden of Eden. The O2 percentage at sea level was 13.2%—livable, but far from the 20.9% of Earth-normal. Arid and dusty, the local fungi—the highest form of native life—shot spores twice a Cat Scratch year, which was about nine Earth months. These spores were so virulent that they m
ade hay fever an ancient tickle with a feather. Every spore season, the spores mutated, making it difficult to develop effective antihistamines.
With millions of inhabitants, modern medicine could develop those in days, but given the hostile environment and lack of commercially viable resources, the entire population consisted of squatters--descendants of various religious cults and other groups who sought refuge there. Most of the young left the planet for greener pastures, so the population hadn’t exceeded thirty thousand at any time over the last hundred years.
For most of its existence as a human-inhabited world, no one cared if the residents were illegal. The planet was a harsh mistress, and if they wanted to scratch out a life there, they were left to their own devices with only tramp ships bringing in supplies and taking out the few products the people could produce.
Until the rediscovery of gorbnium. Those early surveys hadn’t been totally wrong. The gorbnium had always been there but scattered in wide, low-density deposits. With the Centaur’s scouring of Nimon 22, one of humankind’s largest suppliers of the rare earths, there was a shortage, and with new mining methods that didn’t need dense deposits, suddenly, Cat Scratch was back on the map. Six years before the war ended, Evvo, Inc, a subsidiary of the Chang-Moud Group—who’d inherited the rights to the planet when they bought out the previous holder—returned to the planet and erected an industrial site.
The inhabitants protested, but the site was far from their small, scattered settlements. And with the ongoing fight with the Centaurs, no one paid much attention to them.
With the war over, Evvo poured resources into expanding their operation, running huge bucket wheel “eaters,” which took in the soil and extracted the gorbnium. After denuding their initial surface gorbnium fields, they moved to the next big field, which was right in the heart of the largest human concentration of settlements.
The Scratchers protested again, sending representatives to Titan to plead their case. Their contention was that after almost seventy generations, they were the rightful owners of the planet. CMG lawyers argued that they had no rights. They were squatters.
An Uneasy Alliance: Book 4 of the Sentenced to War Series Page 28