EPILOGUE: FLIGHT LINE G - JANUARY 18, 2056
The lackluster wash of teal that comprised sunrise over Hanger Four spread through the northern sky in a manner that led you to believe God just didn't give a good damn if another day started on this planet, which he had either forsaken or forgotten. Marines stationed there could never really decide which—or if it really mattered, for all that!
The hydraulics shop coming off night shift stood at the gate in a very un-Marine like fashion. The smoking lamp had been lit and tired leathernecks gathered to mull over the latest crisis created by the morons in Washington, and how they could manage to screw up Marine operations on a planet so remote that God had to look it up on a star chart to find it! Staff Sergeant Schaffer, preparing to begin the day shift, had drifted in to the group from behind the off-duty seven-man team. As had become their ritual, day and night merged and would separate not by the raising or lowering of what faint illumination the orbiting celestial bodies offered, but by the Terran flight squadron support teams merging at the flight pits to watch the change of security patrols at the eastern perimeter. As on Earth, air stations throughout the universe are guarded by Marines. While there was nothing new in that, the two teams approaching each other to pass antique firearms off from night to day patrols always paused the Earthers.
These soldiers did not possess the 'smart' appearance of the Earth-born Marines. They were baggy-panted, bandy-legged creature, their blouses tugging at their buttons as if the entire universe was pushing down on their heads, trying to squeeze them out their pant legs like so much toothpaste left in a deflated tube. The Corps had never designed uniforms with them in mind. They walked like men, but ran like apes, body weight shifting from side to side, the products of a planet with a greater mass than earth. Of the lot of them, the tallest was a full inch shorter than the minimum height for a Marine, and yet the smallest had a neck thicker than the Corps' heavyweight boxing champion. Only their covers, the angular caps of the old 20th century USMC, and the small anchor, globe and eagle on the collars of their antique cammys offered the non-Marine military and locals at the station any clue as to their purpose for being there. This pitiful bunch was the remnants of Gunny Christopher's Glass Marines. Colonel Griffen had intended only to have them trained as Marines (allegedly), but Gunny had misunderstood the order (allegedly). One hundred and eighty-five green cards later and a couple dozen light years from South Carolina, they became the first deep space graduating class of Parris Island—and they had made it known very quickly, it was wise to give them a wide berth. The Army had found that out the hard way—and scuttlebutt was that the Army had never gotten over it.
In combined exercises at Fort Grant on Salo Majoris (another solid favorite location for space grade Marines, it wasn't the end of the galaxy…but you could see it from there!) the Army brass had sent them out in the never-ending, pouring, salt filled rain to wander through the valleys and ravines of the backlands until the Army found and ambushed them. Or they drowned first! Some exercise for Marines! Walk around blind until the enemy finds and shoots you. But by 11:30 hours, it had become clear that the Army was just not capable of finding them. So Gunny sent out scouts to find the Army. The scouts had come back and reported that the two Army chase platoons had pitched tents—tents, no less!—and bivouacked for the night. The idea that the Army had left 184 Marines and one very pissed off Gunnery Sergeant walking around on a hostile planet—in the dark, in the rain—waiting to be ambushed really kind of offended their sensibilities! So Gunny turned his unit around—and attacked! Not that there had been much call for it lately, but it seemed the Marine thing to do! Gunny Christopher was "Old Corps", a legacy that could trace his unbroken line back to the first war to end all wars. And while his grunts were from another place, and perhaps another time, they had turned out to be as "Old Corps" as he was.
They were well past the sentries—human, laser-guided, and electronic—before anyone knew they were there. They had invaded the perimeter from three sides, howling and screaming and discharging their weapons in the air like a pack of banshees, not leaving one tent standing and beating down the lumps appearing under the flooding canvas. The commanding officer that had issued the order that left the Marines in the wet darkness was sought out, carried (tent and all) and, before Christopher could stop them, quite unceremoniously dumped in a flooded gully serving as a latrine. Then, as quickly and quietly as they had come, they disappeared.
The Army finally found them around daybreak. They had successfully invaded the officer's club. There, based on a story their Gunny had told them, they revived another tradition—carrier landings! Flooding the top of the bar with beer, they would take a running start, jump up with their arms spread, and fly the length of bar like a great open air ship landing on a carrier. Gunny neglected to tell them that this sort of behavior was frowned upon these days. However, the average grunt butt-humping anywhere in God's galaxy proudly asserted that even if they had known, it wouldn't have mattered—they were real Marines!
Pending possible legal action, the unit had been dropped off on a backward little pesthole of a planet that made the Arizona dessert look like a garden spot, for more "exercises to develop discipline." Gunny Christopher got shipped to a Military Investigations Board to be convicted and later tried. It was almost two weeks before anybody realized that even pestholes had things of value to somebody. One hundred and eighty four unsupervised Marines had been dropped right in the middle of a full scale, genuine inter-planetary war. Of the one hundred eighty four that went in, only seventy-three had come out. Having run low on ammunition, supplies, and personnel, they had ignited high-energy fuel (about 890 million gallons, near as could be reckoned) in one final stand. The blast was so intense it had been reported as a solar flare half a galaxy away. The generated heat had fused an entire desert into a sheet of glass. The invaders were repelled, the natives liberated, and the Army pressed for "Conduct unbecoming Marines."
"Ga'damned shame what the Army's gonna do to them", a Lance Corporal from Florida exhaled with the smoke from a butt. "Back at the Island, we heard one of them even got the Medal of Honor."
"Well, son, it wasn't one Medal of Honor, it was four. One lucky winner walked out alive." Sergeant Miller, the team leader, clarified, spitting out a large wad of chewed tobacco and not quite missing the leg of his utility suit. "But what I'd like to know is how a unit that earns Griffen a Presidential Reprimand can, less than a month later, get voted four M-O-Hs by the Congress of the United States?" Miller paused, trying to wipe the deep-staining hydraulic fluid off his hands with a solvent-soaked rag. "But you're right, it is a shame what's gonna happen. Bad 'nuff they're giving the Corps over to the Army."
Schaffer turned away from the group and directed himself towards G hanger. Miller thought he heard him mumble, "It is a damned shame what's gonna happen to those boys—but it ain't gonna happen on my shift!"
Hanger G was like any other hanger in a seemingly endless collection of hangers in the Marine space network. The only difference between this hanger from any other in the chain was the unusually greater mass of the planet on which it sat. The gravity left humans huffing and puffing after even mild activity. Except for the Marines in Christopher's unit, who had all been born on a rock like this one, few of the jarheads left the artificial gravity of the immense poly-carbon domes that covered the hangers and the launch pits. As approached for landings, these domes appeared on the horizon as great golden igloos, a mile long and nearly as tall. To the Marine pilots charged with ferrying the immense military haulers in and out of orbit, the view was the only thrill on a planet that seemed geologically engineered for boredom. The ground crews found it somewhat less exciting—but that went with the job.
Schaffer knew his remark had set wheels in motion. He had relied on an ages old Marine tradition of self-reliance in impossible situations. Inside of twenty minutes, every jarhead from three stripes down would know the bird scheduled out of hanger G at 14:20 hours wasn't going to fly… without a word ever being spoken. Eyebrows would rise, hands would signal, but the word would get out. It wasn't going to be one of their spacecraft to shoot down the last functional combat unit left in the Corps—especially at the request of the Army. So what if they were aliens! They were Marines. That was all they needed to know. Somebody would think of something.
The yellow gear in the next runway was towing a bird to the line as the flight crews raced towards it for last-minute pre-flights. As fuel was dumped and cries of "Good to go! Good to go!" began echoing through the launch pits, Schaffer stepped up his pace to a trot. His preoccupation with the immediate problem had cost him. He was still better than a company block from G hanger, and when that bird's engine started burnin' and turnin', if he didn't make it inside he'd have to…
"FULL BURN! H LINE. H LINE," a Georgia accent warned through loudspeakers that shook the ground with amazing urgency.
"Ah hell! That fuggin' rebel Timmons is in the tower, and I ain't gonna make it in!" Schaffer whined to himself. "The bastard's gonna push it just to see me grab ground in a clean jump suit!"
"ILLUMINATED PATH, T MINUS NINE AND COUNTING. D&C, D&C!"
D&C. Duck and Cover. Across the field, bodies dropped to the deck as if suddenly struck by the unseen hand of God. With a rumbling 'pow,' the chemical propellants would ignite and the flight path would illuminate across the top of the dome with a blinding ferocity, warning any incoming flights off the KU transmission to check their flight plans or decide what kind of barbecue sauce they wanted to cover themselves with. You could see the flash from the edge of the atmosphere straight to the ground. And if you were on the ground, it was better to D&C than go blind!
Schaffer grabbed ground and cupped his hands along the sides of his face. He found himself surrounded by members of his own ground support crews who had come out to meet him. The tribe's gathering, he thought to himself. Through the loosely-laced fingers of his right hand he found himself looking into the face of his crew chief—he already looked pissed off. By 13:30 hours, there probably wouldn't be a tractor left in hanger G that would make fitness-report, a virus in the computers or something. Word was traveling fast. Hold your ground! Protect your own!
"T MINUS ONE. WE ARE LIT!"
You bet your ass we are! Schaffer thought to himself.
* * *
Schaffer studied the MAF for the 14:20 hours launch craft. A MAF, Maintenance Action Form, stayed with a craft from the day it rolled off the assembly line till the day it was listed as 'scraped' so it could be disassembled and used for parts. If a pilot reported something as small as rust on the head of a radio knob, it was on the MAF, followed by the action taken to correct it, and signed off and stamped by the CDI—Collateral Duty Inspector. Schaffer knew he had a good crew. He couldn't remember the last time a MAF indicated any problem. Things always went off without a hitch. They had pilots, machines, fuel, and enough jarheaded techs to man two of the three shifts… properly! And they did great work. This, too, was a tradition.
It bothered the hell out of Schaffer, as it did most of his contemporaries, that a Marine Officer would volunteer to sit on an Investigations Board that was hell-bent on destroying the last active, strictly combat unit in the Corps… and the Corps itself. But The Book required a Marine officer to participate on the board. If this knucklehead running the station was willing to fly three light-years to be that officer, general consensus was that it was worth a few enlisted heads being put on the block to stop him. 'Good of the Corps' and all that. Most of the Marines remaining in the Corps were Legacies, men whose families had served over and over through centuries of conflict. Like Christopher, most could trace their roots back beyond present day humdrums to the glories of antiquity. There was even a rumor somebody's great-great-great-whatever had actually been to the Shores of Tripoli. That was the scuttlebutt, but nobody was sure just who, and there was an undercurrent of suspicion that it was just boredom-induced BS.
Most civilians don't know that US Marine Corps is a year older than the country it serves. On November 10, 1775 at Tun's tavern, the first Marine recruiter slicked the first Marine into signing up. They were the President's Men—until the US of A started running out of men qualified to be Presidents in the early part of the twenty-first century… though it'd be a cold day in hell before it would be spoken out loud by a Marine. And on that cold day, a Major, watching his command being thrown needlessly into a meat grinder in a place God would have considered if the world ever needed an enema, sent a letter to the press. It was the beginning of the end… more or less. The Major, while publicly pissing off every politician in the US of A, had saved a long list of Marine names slated for extinction, so there were no hard feelings for what happened next. Congress had split the Corps away from the department of the Navy, turned off most of the money, and started whittling their numbers down. There were now less than 50,000 Marines in the whole universe—less than the number of Marines sent to the Isle of Iwo Jima. The latest news from home had the Corps being turned over to the Army. If there was any wonder at the respect the air station grunts had for Gunny Christopher's Glass Marines, one need only look at the treatment the Army had gotten at their hands.
Budget and politics had become the curse of the Corps. The only reason it hadn't been put on eBay and sold was the proficiency of operation needed for space travel, and a really sweet deal Colonel Griffen had made with an alien official involving a truckload of butane lighters and a bunch of Marines. Marines had spent centuries posted as guards on ships at sea—why not ships in space? The embarrassment arising from a breach of inter-planetary contract caused by disbanding the Corps scared the sweet b'Jesus out of the politicians. So for now, they were safe.
Schaffer looked at his watch. 13:20 hours. In moments, Marine Major Edison and his two visiting escorts (they were Army, so nobody bothered to learn their names) would be arriving to review the flight plan and examine the MAFs. The window for launch angle was an hour and twenty. By 15:40 hours, the rotation of the planet past its two small suns would make a proper trajectory impossible for at least a week. G hanger had scoured the assigned craft since twenty past daybreak, and there wasn't a problem to be found—not a virus in the computers, not a speck of corrosion, or a weak seal—they were victims of their own efficiency. Schaffer stood, eyes affixed to the launch pit monitors, waiting for the wave of a hand or the rush of an avionics team leader that would signal a scrubbed flight. "Henry," said Schaffer to his CDI, a corporal from Iowa who was sitting at a desk behind him, "it's all over but the shoutin'!"
Corporal Tiberius Augustus Kirk had been Henry since the day he arrived at Parris Island. It was like anything else in the Corps; you could learn to accept it and live with it, or die trying to hold on to a damn small piece of civilian sanity that you really didn't need anyway. Greatly desiring to continue existing in the world owned by his Drill Instructor, he let himself become Henry. He never quite understood why Henry, but it didn't matter. For a guy from a small town in the middle of nowhere, hell, he'd done all right. He'd posted a tour in space and, with a little pushing from Schaffer, he'd made Collateral Duty Officer in less than two years. It wasn't all Schaffer though. If electricity ran through it, by it, past it, over or under it, Henry knew the why, where, how, and when of it! It was a knack he never knew he had until he was eight light-years away from home. What he found most amusing about the entire situation was that the whole show seemed to run on batteries! And it was his job to see the charger was plugged in at night—or the show got cancelled.
"Boss," he drawled, never raising his eyes from the hometown newspaper he was reading, "you worry t'too damn much."
* * *
"Excellent job, Staff Sergeant!"
Schaffer's eyes rolled slowly into the Major's as he handed him the flight orders.
"Thank you, sir," he said, nearly lifelessly. The Major seemed to be too taken with his two visiting comrades to notice the rising depression in the room. He was putting on quite a show for the Army aviators. After keeping the Control Bay standing at attention for nearly twenty minutes, the Major had finally released them and returned his attention to Schaffer. It was 13:35 hours. In his most authoritative voice, the Major bellowed, "I guess this means we have permission to launch, Staff Sergeant."
"Ah, hell no you don't…Sir!" The calm voice wafting from the corner desk at the monitor station startled the bay. "All due respect! You got a one-thirty-seven-stroke-six-dash-three-D showin' bad! And it's right in the middle of the TND panel! Just looky there…"
All eyes swung towards the monitor screen. Henry was pointing to a small black hole in a universe of red lights on a panel marked Tactical Navigation Devices. "I can't let you boys any higher off the ground than the heels of yer boots… Sirs!"
The Major wheeled around in a full 180-degree pivot. He glared menacingly at Henry, about to explode. "Corporal, who the hell are you to—"
"Corporal Tiberius Augustus Kirk! Collateral Duty Inspector… Sir!"
If the Major had planned to explode, Henry had just defused him. If the CDI didn't stamp and sign off on the flight plan attesting to a craft's readiness for flight, a three-star general couldn't order the ship up.
"…And!" Henry knew he had the upper hand and, sure as furry little critters wore Marine uniforms, he was going to play that hand out. "…if the Major wishes to sign off himself and launch, DESPITE a bad one-thirty-seven-stroke-six-dash-three-D," Henry slammed a fist down on the MAF resting on the desk with enough percussive force to cause the jarheads sitting at their stations to jump. "…I'd be the first to file charges of protest as soon as possible. Sir!"
That one got the Major. A charge of protest from a flight grade CDI could end your career.
"Corporal, are you threatening me?"
Henry's eyes were calm, but locked on to his superior's eyes. His hands, however, were pulling the flight orders so tightly between them that his knuckles were turning white. For one brief moment, every swinging Johnson in the room was certain Henry and the Major were getting ready to spontaneously combust. In a flash, Henry broke off visual contact and slammed the flight plans down with alarming force. "Sir, there's only one bottom line, and only one of two things can go on it—my signature or your butt! You wanna borrow my pen? Sir!"
Things were not looking good for the Major, especially with the Army standing right over his shoulder! He was starting to break out in a cold sweat. The CDI had him. A new line of attack was called for. "Corporal, I would suggest you investigate the situ—"
Henry cut him off again. "Do ya know what CDI means, Sir? Corporal… Don't… Investigate… Sir!" Henry turned to Schaffer, who had chosen the moment to grin like an idiot. "Staff Sergeant, I'd suggest you get the Avionics team out there pronto! By 15:40 hours, if the problem ain't corrected, this flight is scrubbed!"
For the next hour and twenty, the Avionics crew assaulted every navigational device in hangar G, in the craft, and on the station, top to bottom. By 14:00 hours they had broken the station record—nine and a half miles of wiring had been checked for operational correctness in less than forty-five minutes. A crew cannibalized the two below-deck crafts for parts that might be needed (which wasn't exactly regulation, but was known to happen from time to time when the supply of replacement parts would run out). A newly arrived Private Montez even tried looking up what a one-thirty-seven-stroke-six-dash-three-D actually was in a tech manual. A Corporal Weinstadt, in his second tour of duty, quickly informed her to forget the textbook stuff and just start looking! She'd know what a one-thirty-seven-stroke-six-dash-three-D was when she saw it… 'cause it looked just like a snipe!' The Control Bay consumed three pots of coffee, re-downloaded fourteen new navigational diagnostic programs through the craft's computers, and even found time to christen the two Army officers Captain Crash and Lieutenant Burn. The Major spent a good forty-five minutes extolling his exploits in the Army-Navy game of 2214… and Henry? Henry sat at his desk, not investigating, calmly reading his hometown newspaper, and at precisely 15:40 hours, CDI Tiberius Augustus "Henry" Kirk, USMC, entered unfit for flight into the station logbook, stamped it, and signed off on it. It was over.
* * *
They stood at attention and saluted the exiting officers. Major Edison had pulled Schaffer to the side and read him a small riot act about Readiness Reports and Fitness Reports and Report Reports being on his desk by 09:00. It was the type of reading out that the jarheads on the flight line referred to as an old-fashioned down-home butt puckerer.
The whole of Control Bay G watched the trio walk the length of the hangar and out into the dome, then disappear into an Officer's Club. Save that their heads were all turned in the direction of the exit, they were all still at attention. Except for Henry. He had sat down almost immediately and started re-reading his newspaper. There was a macabre silence hanging over the bay that spread throughout the hangar and through the dome as team after team suddenly realized something had ended the battle. The brass was grounded for at least a week. It seemed as if the entire dome had stopped breathing and was holding it's breath to see who had actually won! Then, as if a strong wind had blown through the dome, a rustle that turned into a rush that turned into a roar blew across the pits, swirled through the dome, and exploded into an insane victory yell. Teams from the launch pits charged the Control Bay as if it was an enemy bunker. Asses and elbows jarred each other as a human swarm cluster-fucked its way around Schaffer, expecting explanation. But the man just stood there with a slightly dazed expression, unable to speak. And again, the stillness of death filled the room. And slowly, starting as a mumble and graduating to a stutter, Schaffer turned and faced the newspaper at the desk behind him.
"H'Henry," the voice said carefully, "w'whatcha do to the Major's aircraft?"
"Didn't do nothin'," came an animated but strangely calm voice from behind the newspaper, "and wouldn't do nothin'! Bad juju, bossman. They put you in the brig and loose the key for doin' stuff like that!"
Schaffer wobbled, then slid down in his seat and just stared at Henry. Somehow that little weasel had engineered the whole campaign—and wasn't going to say anything about it! It became the universal thought of the Control Bay as a bizarre un-Marine-like silence filtered in again. They had made mission—but nobody knew how—so they sat, and they stared at Henry, who sat, eyes affixed to his paper… until 15:39 hours, when the paper lowered and Henry's eyes fell again on the Control monitor. The Bay began to rumble with a warning of a launch in the next Bay.
"FULL BURN… F LINE… D&C… ILLUMINATED PATH… T MINUS NINE AND COUNTING", rumbled the voice warning of pre-launch procedures.
G hangar began to tremble from the F line path illumination. Sure, you couldn't leave the planet's atmosphere for a week, but weather ships went up every day at 15:40 hours and orbited the planet, no matter what. From the corner of his eye, Schaffer caught a red flickering in a black hole in Henry's monitor board. And as the ship jumped from its pad with a great 'pow', Schaffer, noticed a pin-point red light flickering in the black hole that had caused the scuttling of the Major's craft. The flicker blossomed into the same bright red dot as its brothers. The fault hadn't been in the Major's craft—it was in Henry's monitor!
"Just like ole' faithful." Henry was grinning a devilish grin. "H-line rumbles it out, and F-line rumbles it back in. And I can't find me a single one-thirty-seven-stroke-six-dash-three-D resistor on the whole damned planet to fix the problem! Didn't I tell you, you worry too much?"
Schaffer, for the first time that day, selfishly delighted in a sigh of relief. Henry had come through in a quiet, unobtrusive way, and bought another week. He took a hell of a chance, never blinked, never sweated, and all Schaffer could think was, Don't ever play poker with this guy!
* * *
At 22:00 hours, the Major sat alone in his office. The Beaufort Air Station in South Carolina seemed even farther away than it actually was. He was trying hard to remember flying in a craft slower than the speed of light. He was sailing away to a time when one of his mother's relatives from a long time past, a naval mid-shipman, went with Presley O'Bannon to the shores of Tripoli in a craft made of wood and canvas and rope. The graveness of the situation was weighing heavily on him, and the fantasy was a welcome, if short, relief. He would have happily stayed at those shores, but a scratchy voice needling through the intercom alerted him to an incoming call from Washington, and brought him home.
"…Yeah, Griff? Colonel Griffen? With flying colors, just like you said they would! Yes, Sir. Some silly-shit burned out bulb! Oh, they're mad as hell. They'll keep me here on the ground for weeks. Now! What do you want me to do next with those Glass Marines of yours?"
