"WHO IS THAT TAPPING AT MY CHAMBER DOOR?"
There was no need to ask, but old habits fade away more slowly than displaced Marines. Besides, Christopher's visitor had already borrowed his laser disc with Jack Webb as THE DI three times in the last week, and Christopher had begun to look upon this minor ritual as a flattering, albeit unconscious complement.
"Sir, Recruit Roach, SIR!"
"BOY, YOU'D BETTER HAMMER THAT DOOR LIKE YOU GOT A SET!"
"SIR MAY THE RECRU…"
"Drag it in here, CR."
The Malacan popped his head through the door and pushed a big grin around the room until he found Christopher sitting at his desk, writing. The Sergeant looked up. CR pushed himself to the edge of the door, checked his rear and slid the door shut behind him.
"Look what I got! I think it's what you were talking about." CR held out his hand, wherein sat a grooved brass bar with slightly more than razor-width slices angled across. "This baby's gotta be seventy-five, a hundred years old if it's a day!"
Where the hell had CR found an editing block several hundred light years away from the nearest stereo shop? Christopher had given up trying to guess where CR found the stuff he'd come up with on merely a moment's notice. The little bugger was an “Ace” scavenger. Since the beginning of military time, Scrounger was a rank of importance, which, in heavy or extended combat, could rate only slightly below General. And to a Flight-Grade jarhead, floating interminably in space, CR was just the right touch of home. Of all the strange creatures he dealt with, this smaller than usual being was as earth‑human as one could hope for.
Whatever music had found its way aboard; CR had been the pipeline for it. Whatever the initial investment had been, Christopher knew it had been way too much to be easily affordable for the Roach. But he had decided he liked this strange audible phenomenon of Terra, and it was worth it. Perhaps he had greater insight into his own species than could justly be expected. It had caught on with them and, perhaps because of the long throes through the universe, music had become the number one inter-intra-ship monetary system. Malacan crews were trading for anything that could electronically make noise. Even those that didn't understand music recognized that it, and the devices to reproduce it, could have tremendous value.
The discovery of Sergeant Christopher's R&B discs had been a find of tremendous proportions. After the 'Fall of Bay 3', as Christopher had dubbed it, CR had worked his way into the position of 'Dispenser of the R&B' and official Go‑between. It was like a gold rush of sorts, crewmen offering the Marine all manner of contraband. But Christopher, who had made it a point not to lose more than one stripe every six months, thought better of it. On the surface, anyway. A musical yenta was needed. Unknowingly, Christopher had constructed his first contract with the Malacans.
On 122 audio discs there were upwards of 3,000 tunes that could be traded, bartered, parleyed—in short, converted into a fortune, given the Malacan's growing affinity for Rhythm & Blues. Muddy Water's "One More Mile" alone had converted itself into a set of high-grade carving knives for Christopher and 'covered' night duty for Roach. The situation was a great merging of Marine ingenuity and Malacan enterprise.
The plan was simple. Since coHLI had banned the playing of music during work shifts, a source, as it were, was required to present new material to the marketplace. CR had supplied an old reel-to-reel tape machine and a nearly unrecognizable cassette/8 track deck to convert the laser disc to old fashion audio tape of various and sundry natures—cassette, 8‑track, reel-to-reel—whatever a crewman had that conceivably could pump out music could be accommodated. Christopher would make a 'sampler' up, CR would lie on his bunk when off duty and just 'listen and wait'. By dispensing the precious commodities with eye-dropper stinginess, they prevented a run on the market. But there was an even more ominous side to all of this. It offered Christopher an in to the crews. Crewmen would come up to him in the chow halls and glad-talk him and verbally try and muscle bits of information about what he had on his tapes and what it would take to liberate them. But the Marine had also earned some big credits for other actions taken in combat.
coHLI had chewed his butt out for twenty minutes (by Malacan standard it was a ‘chewing out,’ but by Griff's standards it was a “kiss on the cheek”) and he hadn't ratted-out CR as a cohort. He had accepted an official reprimand for 'disrupting' a work shift without so much as blinking and quietly went right back to his duties. It was also duly noted that while Christopher had indeed 'disrupted' the ship, productivity on the shift in question had jumped 8%. Jumped 8%, huh? Okay. Despite CR's objections that it was a slap in the face of the Free Enterprise System (a subject he'd heard about but actually had never really seen in practice), Christopher started offering a '5 song bonus' to the most productive shift under his charge in the course of a week. Productivity on his shifts was climbing at a fantastic rate!
"I don't understand. How's this thing gonna get us over on that old fart, Fungus?"
The reference to the Senior Malacan crew chief as a gaseous vapor caused Christopher to wince. There was no love lost between his business associate and his number-one shadow. CR turned the editing bar over in his hands.
"Watch and learn, lad. Watch and learn. Fungus is playing cat and mouse…"
"What's cat and—"
"Just . . . pay attention. What song is it that Fungus wants more than any other thing on this ship? A tune we just happen to have—almost intact!"
"The Thrill Is Gone?”
"Right!"
Surely enough, the senior crewman of C deck had been smitten by B.B. King's mournful Beale Street baritone from a by-gone Terran era. The baleful vocalizations and biting guitar licks, so stingily stating the blues, had blown the old bastard away! The dirge-like minor blues song could mellow even his abrasive personality.
The song had generally gained, however, the popularity of the entire crew and had been successfully traded for on several instances—even despite its tragic flaw! Unlike the other lays carried into deep space by the sergeant, all lasered and polished, this tune had been copied from an ancient celluloid disc and contained an audible blemish which those of the twentieth century had referred to as a skip. As much as old Fungus would have liked to drop the tune into his private coffer, because so many of the crews already had it, someone was always playing it! There was no urgency to obtain it. It was always playing somewhere in the background. And every time Christopher or CR had tried to lever the Chief into trading it off for a little covered duty or a couple of the pints of Christian Brothers he had stashed away, he’d push back about 'skipped lines' or 'damaged goods.'
This situation had escalated to a supreme test of wills and degenerated to a Mexican stand-off between two warring factions. After about two weeks of almost daily confrontation, it became clear that only the superior mind would win out in the end. What was at stake was more than the obvious. The crews were actually betting, and heavily too, on who would emerge victorious! Having known old Fungus to be an iron-headed old so & so, the odds makers were laying five to one on him! It became obvious to Christopher that a drastic and desperate strategy was called for.
"But he don't want it with a skip! The old prick is gonna bust our reproductive organs forever about those skips!"
"Right! Now hand me that blank tape. We're going to 'de-skip' the song." Christopher began copying the tune, not once but twice on the old reel-to-reel device. He fastened the editing block to the top of the ancient tape machine. "We caught a couple real breaks on this one. Old B.B. didn't go crazy with notes. If this was a Johnny Winters tune, we'd be screwed!" He rolled the newly recorded tape reel till he had about a foot and a half of slack tape that contained the chunk of music he wanted. He marked a spot he had determined as a break in the flow of the song with a yellow grease pencil and placed it in the groove on the block. It fit tightly. He repeated the process at the section of tape that ended the section of music he wished to extract.
"I learned this from my grandfather. Hand me the Exacto knife over there on the table…" CR, in the low lighted room, had to fish around on the desk for the razor-tipped scalpel. By then, Christopher had scissored about a four-inch long length of tape.
"All the solo lines—the melody he plays on guitar when he ain't singing—are very repetitive. So we're taking a chunk of solo that's almost exactly the same as the two or three bars that are 'skipped' and putting that chunk in the space with the skip. The trick… is catching it on the… beat! Where the hell's the Scotch tape?" Scotch tape was another purely Earth invention that had succeeded in 'impressing' the universe. The chance that it had been appropriated for another project was a possibility. Luckily for CR, it hadn't been. "For the last 80 or 90 years most of this shit has been done 'electronically.' You can see the end of one beat and the start of the next on a meter. This is called the hard way… hmmm. Presto! Let's see how we did."
The twosome sat there listening. The insert passed over the tape head without notice. CR was definitely impressed. This opened new doors in the business for him. He would soon master the art.
"Here." Christopher handed him back the editing block. “This is yours. Looks like you're off the night shift for another week."
"Yeah, but the best part is slipping it to Fungus!"
"You don't like him a whole lot, do you?"
"Aw, every time there's a small opening to crawl into and drag stuff out of, he shoves me in!"
"That's what you get for being five feet tall. Don't worry about it. I always thought you were wise beyond your height. You want a drink?"
"Nah. I go on shift at 06:00." Christopher noted the usage of military time instead of ship’s time as CR glanced around the room. "Hey, Sarge. You got something burning in here?" Christopher looked around the room and shook his head in negative response.
"What the hell is that odor?"
Ahh! The odor! It was sharp and burnt, and almost sitting on CR’s shoulder. It would have to be. The Malacan sense of smell was not very renowned for its acuteness, which lent a certain ironic repulsiveness to CR’s earlier description of his Chief.
"You mean 'coffee'? That stuff right behind you?"
The Malacan walked over to the modified brew-master and sniffed. “Yeah. This is it. What is this stuff?"
"It's a drink made from boiling a bean. Watch it. It’s hot! Throw some in a mug, stir in a little sugar. If it tastes bitter stir in some of that powdered milk."
They sat there talking for about twenty minutes… and drinking coffee. Well. Christopher sat there. CR was doing the talking—faster and faster. Christopher hadn't considered the effect of caffeine on the Malacan nervous system. By the time he left for his shift, CR had adjusted every air duct in the room, rebuilt the work station, and crossed Bach's "Brandenburg Concerto No.3 in G" with John Lee Hooker's "Endless boogie" using his editing block and a Marine Kabar knife. That night, CR would win a 'five song bonus' single-handedly, which really raised his status in the eyes of his contemporaries. Just to annoy to Fungus a little more, CR donated the five tunes to the crew—of which, one was "The Thrill Is Gone.”
Deskipped.
SHIP'S LOG
MONDAY
55 - 05 - 24
ENTRY 11
Just came off shift. Make note for future—find out what Friday has been doing with the coffee grounds. Gave a cup of joe to Cock Roach. By 05:30 hours, the little bastard looked like a mortar round in an ice skating rink. I couldn't believe it! He cleared out three tons of steel scrap in less than forty minutes—by himself! I'll keep this one on file under motivational aids.
Tomorrow at 06:00 we make our first pick up. Section A6 set the barges up. Why do I get the feeling another tactical withdrawal is in order? I would have asked the Captain directly, but since the incident in B3, I've thought the better of saying anything directly to him. I think I'll wait till he's got something to say to attempt communication. I've acclimated my own situation and myself to the crew, I think, but I'm still experiencing periods of motion and space sickness. This artificial gravity is something else. It's better than Andersen's homemade liquor. You're moving then—Bang! You stop dead in your tracks.
Engine number four is a bugger. It supplies the drive for the time bends but it is definitely on its last legs. coHLI won’t admit it, as well as the ship’s chief engineers, but when it misaligns it's time flow functions, we run the risk of implosion. It scares the hell out of them when old number four starts banging and spitting. The chief engineer tried to explain what happens if it goes off and I didn’t understand a damned word he said, other than “we all die!” Maybe I’m just too damn dumb for space flight.
I’ve been trying to hide the loneliness I’ve been feeling in the mindless day-to-day duties I’ve been given. It hasn’t been helping. This is a pointless expedition to go out on. I seem to have no meaning or purpose anymore.
At 05:50 the crews gathered in A6 bay. Since the barges had already been assembled and loaded there was little to do, so crews shouted taunts at each other, bragging well in advance over who was going to claim the bonus from the sergeant. maWha Captain coHLI sternly watched from the observation deck. It was getting Christopher nervous. He felt a certain relief when he was strapped into his chair for lift-off. It would have surprised him to learn the cause of the Captain's stern expression.
The time frame was frantically quick—almost three times the amount of raw tonnage as Picatinny in slightly more than twice the time. The routing of the materials on return was what concerned Christopher. At Picatinny, it was a C crew that had retrieved the material and it was returned to a C level bay. The ship was less than 15% capacity on any storage level, and this load was headed for C level, too—instead of A level by virtue of the crew that handled it. The Malakans seemed to have a reason for everything, even if they were sort of sloppy. Perhaps he just didn't understand their system yet.
Christopher grinned as they launched. Three times the material in twice the time. If there was a 7‑11 anywhere in the neighborhood, he knew a way to get it done in half that time!
The landers touched down on the outskirts of an open field of huts similar to those at Picatinny. This wasn't listed in the itinerary. These huts didn't belong here. Christopher stood at the loading bay door. In the dim pre-morning light his crews rushed past him. CR flew by and Christopher tried to pull him aside to get the inside scuttlebutt on what was really going down. But Roach would not be deterred, so Christopher stood in the bay door to survey the field ahead as the first faint rays of sun rose, sending shafts of light across the skies.
Off to his right, a group of four men in Marine green appeared on the horizon and trotted towards him. Where the hell did they come from? This was not even a work squad. It was a fire team, complete with APWs and body armor. Cautiously, Christopher climbed off the outer lip of the lander and walked toward them.
"Sergeant Christopher?" the squad leader called out.
Christopher nodded.
"Colonel Griffen sends his regards."
"Griffen? Corporal, what's this all about?"
"Sorry, Sarge. We're under orders to keep moving. The unit's pulling out within the hour. Ain't no place to be left behind. If God ever decides to give the universe an enema, this place is prime turf! It's a two mile run back… "
"So you guys ran two miles to tell me Griff says 'Hello'!"
The Corporal looked down at his shoes and smiled. "No Sir. This came in our wizzer. Griff's orders are that you're not to open it until after you've conferred with phEY-QUAD's Captain. Off the record, sarge. Whatever he's got cookin' for you, he don't want anyone to know about it, and he's goin' through a whole lotta trouble to make sure no one's talking. You don't want to know where we're goin' from here! And it ain't home!" The Corporal handed Christopher the packet, snapped him a high one and he and his unit left. Christopher stood watching them disappear into the early morning fog that was beginning to rise as the day’s heat filtered onto the oddly cold ground. He fought a strange impulse to run after them. He was forced back into reality by the sounds of sleds being pushed onto the barges.
Off to the left was a small fire stand. A large pot with the faintest of familiar odors coming from it hung atop, warming itself and the Malakans who drew and drank from it. Christopher walked over and discovered a vaguely brownish liquid. If nothing else, this morning he finally learned what Friday had been doing with his spent coffee grounds.
Before the first sled had come off the lander barges, Christopher had fled bay C. His exit from the landers was so quick and unexpected, he had startled a sled team and they toppled their cargo—crates marked 'FRAGILE' and 'CAUTION' had gone sliding across the well-polished bay floors at a remarkable speed. If one is to believe the mythology that was to arise years later, it was said that Sergeant Christopher, Mr. Robert/S did not merely pass through the outer doors, but had in fact taken them with him!
Be that as it may! If there is truth in legend, in truth Sergeant Robert S. Christopher had made the distance from C bay to the Captain's quarters in less than five minutes—a distance that at the quickest pace imaginable should have taken well over fifteen! The banging at the captain's door awoke night shift crewmen who were sleeping three floors below. There was a certain lack of (shall we say…tact?) involved with Christopher's request for entrance to the Captain's quarters. It was felt that the banging with both hands on the door as hard as he could (and leaving indentations, which are still there by the way!) was, well… simply the "Marine Way' of doing things that required 'doing'! However, some felt that turning up his collar translator and screaming at the top of his lungs "OPEN THE DOOR, YOU HAIRY-ASSED LITTLE BUTT-WIPE!" was a bit much given their stations aboard ship. Rumors that when the door finally opened, maWha Captain coHLI was sitting there holding a 9mm Smith & Wesson automatic pistol (that Colonel Griffen had given him to protect himself) are, as of yet, unfounded and probably greatly exaggerated!
"When you first came aboard, I told you that while you were not what I had hoped for, I would take what I could get. Judging by the communiqué from your Colonel, he also would have hoped for something better. But such IS the universe!" The banging of coHLI's fist on the table startled Christopher, who was neither prepared for nor expecting his assault to be met with defiance.
"It seems that your government—in Washington! Over some . . . some . . . idiotic grievance, has been whittling away at your numbers and restricting our own usage of Marine friendship and protection. We cannot dispute the facts in this matter. Rumor has it that Washington wants us to employ your Army as security! When we first landed in Newark, it took Griffen two of your hours to convince the Army that blowing us up off the runway might not be a wise way to begin a relationship with another planet! These are the people your president wants us to take aboard! Now you know why we have so little use for your elected officials! We find it much more sensible to be born stupid rather than elected to that position!" coHLI’s body was tense but his face looked tired and surprisingly old to Christopher. It was a side of the Captain he would not have thought possible. It was taking some of the starch out of his khakis.
"Before we enlisted Marine assistance, whole crews and cargos disappeared in the void. No idea where, no idea why. It was becoming a great concern to those of us who wanted to go beyond the known universe. And then I meet your Colonel Griffen! Hope at last! A back to scratch for scratching in return!"
coHLI paused and paged a stevedore for liquor. It was his way of regrouping. Christopher's palms were starting to sweat. He was starting to get a really bad feeling about the way things were about to go. He could feel the insides of his field clothes getting clammy. This was not a good sign.
A tall stevedore entered with a tray of Walker and coHLI poured himself a solid three fingers even The Duke would have thought twice about. Christopher just watched—the way a hunter would watch a wounded tiger walk out of the bush and straight towards him. "Your Colonel and I have been friends a very, very long time. It is… sometimes difficult… for one friend to turn a friend down."
"WHOA! Let's cut the 'I love you, you love me' bullshit! There’s a bullet flying around with my name on it!” Christopher pushed forward in his seat. "Where do I fit into this picture?"
Captain coHLI put his drink down. He slowly edged across the table till his face almost touched the sergeant's. "There are almost 1100 of us on board, counting officers and medicals. You... are to train us to be Marines!" The captain’s voice had started trailing off after the ‘you’ and by the time he had reached the word ‘Marines’ he had all but swallowed his tongue. He looked up at the Marine rather sheepishly as if surprised himself at the audacity of the request.
For a second, it appeared to coHLI that Christopher had suddenly found a small bone stuck in his throat. His head jerked almost convulsively and his mouth kept moving as if to form words. But outside of some choking noises, no words came forth. Finally, Christopher slid backwards in his seat, then rose again to his tallest, most militarily correct height. With coHLI still in his crouched position leaning over the table, the sergeant now towered over him. coHLI raised his head; Christopher lowered his eyes and snapped to attention.
"Sir! Sergeant Robert S. Christopher would like to inform the Captain that he feels that since both the Captain and Colonel Griffen are obviously out of their friggin' minds, it would be unwise to touch this assignment with a ten-foot pole! Sir!"
That wasn’t quite the response the captain wanted to hear.
* * *
Now, your average Malacan, given the over-all dimensions of his head, has no nose to speak of. For whatever reason, despite the two small openings and slight bridge, the little buggers couldn't smell the proverbial 'fart in a space suit'! They are indeed the perfect garbage men for the galaxy. But Mother Nature tends to be universally kind to all her children, often giving in abundance to one sensory experience when having deprived another. And so, despite the lack of an outer lobe to speak of, the average Malacan can hear two ants humping on a ball of cotton three blocks away if he wants to! To the 1100 officers, crewmen, medicals, engineers and cooks aboard the phEY-QUAD, the after-shock of the captain’s brash request must have sounded like two large planets colliding.
Negotiations for the contract were in full swing—the crew could tell that by the way the Captain's chair was banging up and down. For almost an hour there was a pitched artillery confrontation as coHLI and Christopher discussed the details, article by article. This wended its way down to heavy machine gun fire against an amphibious assault as the sergeant began losing ground on the battlefield of logic. By the time hostilities abated to small arms fire the crew decided that it would be impolite to receive sounds escaping from the Captain's quarters—beyond what was reasonable, of course. There was a sudden, deadly silence. coHLI stormed out of his own quarters to disappear somewhere on A deck. The tall stevedore entered the room quickly to begin the clean-up procedures.
There sat Christopher, head held up with one hand, and turning the paper from the wizzer over and over with the other.
* * *
"Will you stop calling me 'Light Bulb'? That's not my name!"
"Yeah, well you'd better get used to it! Mister RobertS can't even spell your name, let alone say it! But what do you think! Is he going to do it?"
"Who the hell knows, all Earthmen are crazy! You can't tell one minute to the next what they're gonna do. Their faces never have any expression. And they all look cross-eyed to me. It’s damned spooky!"
"Personally, I hope he does it! I'll do anything to get off garbage duty! That's why I let them talk me into enlisting."
"Listen to him! Enlisting! That's an 'earth' word for you. You got into this the same way we did! You go, or don't bother trying to earn a paycheck. Some choice!"
"Roach is right, and he knows Mister RobertS best. Besides… how much worse than this can it be?"
|
DS - 7800 - 48 To: MARINE DETACHMENT MCS phEY-QUAD In Transit SERGEANT R.S. CHRISTOPHER |
55 - 05 - 25 From: OFFICE OF NTA BEAUFORT AIR STATION S.C., U.S.A., EARTH COLONEL A.L. GRIFFEN |
AS OF THE IMMEDIATE DATE YOU ARE ORDERED TO PROCEED IN UPGRADED TRAINING METHODS AS INDICATED BY SHIP'S CAPTAIN. MALAKANS WILL SUPPLY ALL MATERIALS AND EQUIPMENT. ANY ADDITIONAL MATERIALS OR EQUIPMENT REQUIRED WILL BE AUTHORIZED VIA STANDARD PROCEDURES. WHATEVER YOU DEEM NECESSARY FOR THE SUCCESS OF THIS PROGRAM, I FULLY AUTHORIZE WITHIN THE REASONABLE LIMITATIONS OF THE PROJECT.
|
COLONEL A.L.GRIFFEN |
‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑
Don't say a damned word! Semper Fi—do or die! Pay particular attention to the Die part. I expect this done within 16 to 18 weeks instead of the traditional 13. By 19:00 hours today you'll have received a class 'B' size wizzer with a care package from home.
|
Griffen! |
|
DS - 7800 - A1 To: OFFICE OF NTA BEAUFORT AIR STATION S.C., U.S.A., EARTH COLONEL A.L. GRIFFEN |
55 - 05 - 26 From: MARINE DETACHMENT MCS phEY-QUAD In Transit SERGEANT R.S. CHRISTOPHER |
AS PER CLASSIFIED ORDER DS-7800-48 DATED 55-05-25, WILL HAVE GREAT DIFFICULTY IN COMPLYING WITH ORDER. NUMBERS ALONE PREDESTINE FAILURE. GIVEN SPECIFICATIONS OF THE PROJECT, WOULD REQUIRE THREE TEAMS OF FOUR TO SIX MARINE INSTRUCTORS EACH WORKING FOUR TO SIX MONTHS TO COMPLETE, AND THEN STILL COULD NOT SEE SUCCESS AS END RESULT. HAVE ADVISED SHIP’S CAPTAIN OF SAME.
PLEASE REVISE.
PLEASE ADVISE.
|
SERGEANT R.S. CHRISTOPHER |
‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑
Are you fucking nuts, or what? Who do I look like to you? Randolph Friggin' Scott or Jesus H. Christ! I can see us pulling up to the nearest planet with a barber shop—Excuse us. We’d like 1,100 "high & tights" please, from the top of our flat little heads to our furry little belly buttons!
There comes a time in every Career Marine's life when he's got to switch from Bourbon to Beer. Give it some thought!
|
Bobby Christopher |
|
DS - 7800 - 50 To: MARINE DETACHMENT MCS phEY-QUAD In Transit SERGEANT R.S. CHRISTOPHER |
55 - 05 - 26 From: OFFICE OF NTA BEAUFORT AIR STATION S.C., U.S.A., EARTH COLONEL A.L. GRIFFEN |
YOU HAVE YOUR ORDERS. PROCEED AS DIRECTED.
|
COLONEL A.L.GRIFFEN |
‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑FOLD‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑
Dear Randolph Friggin' Scott,
You now have 18 to 20 weeks to crank me out U.S. Marines! You have all the toys you need in storage compartment C, improvise whatever else. I'll send you some heavy-duty electric shavers in the next wizzer and back you 100% on whatever else you deem proper. Pick your favorite Senior Drill Instructor. I'll send you a Senior and three Junior Drill Instructors to assist you—temporarily! You understand that I can't guarantee that if they're missed, I won't have to pull them.
|
Griffen! |
PS ‑ I'll still be drinking your skinny butt under the table on my 90th birthday!
For lack of a better term, there is a certain defiant attitude that can invade a Marine in a dire situation. It’s an attitude that history seems to have bred into the species. Colonel Lewis 'Chesty' Puller once, when finding he and his men desperately surrounded on all four sides by the enemy, relayed the message that, as he was surrounded on all four sides and the enemy was closing in fast—the enemy couldn't get away from him now! Needless to say, old 'Chesty' and a lot of his Marines made it through.
Christopher found himself in such a situation. He could refuse and Griffen couldn't force him to comply. But in a short amount of time, Griff would just reissue the order and this time Christopher couldn't refuse. In the meantime, Griff would keep him floating in space with his thumb up his keester.
The numbers involved would cross the eyes of the best of Drill Instructors. A Marine Recruit Training company usually consisted of four platoons totaling, maybe, 160 to 190 recruits. These recruits would be charged to (and be the 'sole property' of) one Senior and three Junior Drill Instructors for each platoon. The idea of having one DI for nearly 1,100 recruits was more than ludicrous. Not only was it impossible, it was just damned Ignorant!
Christopher sat quietly in his quarters, sipping at coffee that was still too hot. He was surrounded on all four sides by more than a thousand short, squat, ugly and Marine‑Ignorant enemies. And to make it worse, the Colonel sitting up top of them forcing the issue was a friend of the family! Friend? He was part of it! For a fleeting second, his mind's eye saw himself as a Corporal standing in front of his father, a retired grunt Sergeant Major, saying, "But Pop! I didn't lose the stripes for disobeying orders—it was for when I told Griff to 'Blow it out his ass'!” No. He might survive Griff and he might survive his old man—but the two of them together? No way! As he assessed the situation, he realized that there was nothing in his directives that required he train 'all' the Malacans. In fact, there was nothing specified at all!
* * *
The Class 'B' wizzer was about half the size of a fifty-gallon drum cut vertically in half. Christopher sat in solitude in the C level storage bay. The boxes from Picatinny and the A level retrieval filled only a minute portion of the immense room. He had not found the courage to open either. What was in the boxes and crates was anybody's guess. He was reasonably certain that there was a cache of Anti Personnel Weapons and assorted outdated weaponry. But just based on the size of the wizzer, Christopher knew what the contents were.
When the Horse Marine began to vanish at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, so did the Campaign Hat—the straight brimmed, high domed Stetson hat associated so strongly with the Marine Corps—and, later on, Smokey the Bear.
When the Marine populace in general had long since gone over to the angularly cut cover (developed from a style of hat once popular with railroad workers) that helped them earn the nickname "Jarheads," there was only one member of the team that was still allowed to wear the 'Smokey Bear'. They were a small, rather intense group who, through the centuries, even most civilians had learned to single out at a distance.
To the recruits whose lives were entrusted to them, they were "fuckin' lunatics" who's M.O., in the old "Nam" days, oft-times did not discount the maltreatment of the troops—if it had been in the troops best interest. While it had served its purpose then, it had created an image that almost a century later, Marine DIs still had not fully overcome. The need to create a harder warrior than the element he’d be sent to required a particularly unique terror to forge the metal with.
That tool had long since been laid aside, but they had still found ways to instill a terror so greatly in a boot that even years after his graduation no enemy would ever be found that could terrorize them more. Places such as Korea and Viet Nam had mandated that this be so. They had served as hard lessons, which centuries later were not to be forgotten—and so those beneath the Smokey Bears remembered. They knew how things worked for the Corps—every war zone they were sent into on a moment’s notice was crazier than the war zone before it, so they saw that things were kept one step crazier for their boots than the next war could ever be. And all the war zones that they had been told were 'not' war zones were the craziest war zones of all! And this knowledge was also stored safely under the Campaign Covers.
For more than three hundred years, the demand on a United States Marine had been greater than the demand on the next man in the line. Few ever realize that a Marine is not a soldier in an Army. He is the member of a Corps, a limited number of men often controlled by those who are not military. In troubled places a Marine may be sent without an Act of War being declared. Nations would call these events history; the Corps would call it tradition. And this too would be remembered by and charged to the men in the Smokey Bears.
When a Marine is entrusted to wear the Campaign Cover, it transforms him. To the outsider, the most noticeable change is to the voice. Either the voice will travel to the top of his throat and leave his mouth as words spitted from a demented 'Popeye', curt, cutting, and abrasive—shrill beyond ignoring. Or it will settle in his chest and meander outward in a resonant southern drawl, defiant and commanding. But there are other changes, too. It enables a man to wear starched khaki and run with Marine Recruits, eight and ten years his junior, through the heat of Parris Island. It gives permission to an otherwise sane and rational man to act in an insane and irrational manner if needs be for the benefit of the unknowing lives left in his charge. It is a badge that will enable him to hound, bully, and in general fuck with the minds of the boots whose nightmares he'll redefine. It will give him the right to stick his face in the faces of countless recruits and ask angrily, "What makes you think you're good enough to be with us! To join our Beloved Corps!" It gives him the right to do this to and for the boots he is charged with—and the right to stop others from doing to them. They are his! And what they become, do, or are as Marines will reflect forever upon him, for he has sown the seed. It has been written that only God can make a tree—well, there's only one thing in the universe that can build a Marine!
Christopher popped the cylinder open. Inside the carrier, sure enough, was his Smokey Bear and a holstered .45 Auto on a wide black leather belt, indicating his status as Senior Drill Instructor, as only they were authorized to carry that forgotten weapon. In ceremonies, it had replaced the sword for the Non-Commissioned Officer below the rank of Sergeant Major—another gesture to tradition, not forgetting that which had seen its time and served well.
It was time to decide on a course of action. There was no way to dodge the bullet. The boxes and crates around him were of little consequence without the right men. Well, there were 1,100 of them to choose from. But which ones or how many?
The Corps through most of its history had never been keen on 'draftees,' preferring the motivated enlistee to begin the process. Christopher knew there wasn’t one enlistee in the lot.
SHIP'S LOG
WEDNESDAY
55-06-27
ENTRY 12
"Laid to" on the Captain last night. There was just no way I was going to take on 1,100 Ignorant Civilians. I started out with a list of about 65 guys from the crew that I was reasonably sure were at least bright enough to listen. Make that 65 and 2/3rds! I took Roach on too. He's short even for one of them, but he's tough. I've seen him stand toe to toe with Arnold without even a thought about all of his muscles. Nobody else in the crew seems to be able to do that. For reasons unknown to me, Arnold seems to be the crews’ idea of what a 'bad-ass' is supposed to be. After those, who all volunteered immediately—volunteered under orders I suspect—I GQ'd the crew for the rest. All of whom volunteered immediately too! If ten of these poor bastards make it through, I'll be surprised.
Contacted Griffen and secured Maysfield and a staff of Jr. DIs to prep these little wonders for me and then assume some of the duties. Wait'll they get a load of him! Griff's shuttling him over to Salo Majoris. THEY think they've got Liberty. Ha!
Have had the recruits and I relieved of all ship's duties. coHLI has a really low priority itinerary laid out for this voyage, figuring we'd be drifting around in space for five or six months 'training'! Priority stops are so low; if the ship didn't show up, nobody will miss it. I screwed him into the carpet and told him to follow the routing. With 185 men relieved of duty, this ship'll still function as if nothing was wrong—listen to me! Nothing wrong!
Commandeered Roach & Eggplant to help me open those crates to see what Uncle Griff gave us to play with. Just what the galaxy needs—185 pint sized John Waynes running around with 30-year-old Anti Personnel Weapons.
Christ! I hope nobody gets shot!
Have to go to 'B' deck now and break the troops in with the "you're not a Marine yet" speech.
Wait till Griff gets the list of names for payroll!
"You 185 men have been selected to become United States Marines—if you're good enough. I am your senior Drill Instructor. I will teach you how to think! I will teach you not to think! I will teach you how to walk, talk, and in general conduct yourselves as members of the United States Marines. I will motivate you! I will wipe your noses and your butts until you are capable of doing these things for yourselves. I will feed you! I will tuck you in at night! In short, I will own you! I will change everything you know! You will learn the history and traditions of my beloved Corps, and you will know and understand the difference between the two! And you will love it. Or YOU WILL DIE TRYING! It is the most difficult journey you have ever embarked on. There will be many… MANY times you will want to give up! I promise you this. I WILL NEVER GIVE UP ON YOU! NOT EVEN WHEN YOU’VE GIVEN UP ON YOURSELF!
As of now, you are relieved of all duties pertaining to the operation of this vessel. You are no longer accountable to your political leaders, religious leaders—your mothers and fathers. While you are a part of the Marine Recruit Battalion, detached though you may be from the body proper at Parris Island—YOU are accountable TO ME!
Do not… DO NOT… mistake yourselves for United States Marines! YOU ARE NOT! You have not… even… begun!
Tomorrow! We will anchor for two days off of a moon of Salo Majoris in the Delphinus Cluster. You have been secured two days Liberty. On the second day, a special Marine field team will meet you. FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS!
The last point I will make IS THE MOST IMPORTANT MESSAGE YOU HAVE TO RECEIVE AND UNDERSTAND—your lives will depend on each and every one of you learning it!
MY NAME IS SERGEANT ROBERT "S." CHRISTOPHER—NOT MISTER ROBERTS!"
phEY‑QUAD LOG BOOK
maWHA CAPTAIN coHLI
54th DAY OF sahjo DARHI
I have had all the cargo for shipping secured into areas where it will not interfere with the current proceedings.
Sergeant Christopher has accepted his job and is at this moment meeting with that portion of the crew that he has selected. At his insistence we will maintain our posted itinerary. I offered to reroute the flight plan and he read me what friend Griffen calls "the riot bill.”
I was most soundly put in my place!
We anchor tomorrow. I have instructed ship's physicians to spend the evening tutoring Sergeant Christopher in our physiology and anatomy. It is at his insistence, so I do not know why.
Christopher, as to his requirements, will instruct me for landing exercises. Must remember to get Griffen those socks.
"Jeeheezus H. Keyrist! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS SHIT!"
The sound echoed through C deck. A cold chill went through Cock Roach and his cohort, a rather darkish colored crewman Christopher had taken to calling Eggplant. They slowly began to back up, uncertain if they should edge their way to the door and make a break for it.
Christopher stared into the box. His body weight seemed to flow into his butt. He sank down, first into a squat and then into a sitting position.
"Plant, CR, get outa here! Go back to your quarters and prepare to disembark."
He didn't have to tell them twice.
