There was a certain amount of discomfort on phEY-QUAD with two WM sergeants wandering the halls freely. All four platoons were watching their leaders readily milk the lack of formality the deeper space situation had allowed. They had semi-misinterpreted the situation as lacking in depth of respect, and in so doing were slow to react to commands from any other but their original leaders, the Drill Sergeants. The idea of having instructors other than the original DIs was seemingly confusing them. And while none of it was actually conscious, the WMs weren’t getting a whole lot of respect from anybody. The entire project had been purely male dominated—and now the ranking officer was a woman. It was rubbing everybody, including coHLI, the wrong way. The new Marines had been on board almost twenty-four hours and he hadn’t met any of them yet.
On a more conscious level, both Tozzi and Fletcher realized right away that there was indeed cause for their boss’s irrational behavior. As nearly as they could analyze the situation (cost: one half carton of canned milk and three boxes of frozen chicken), Kelly’s short shifts on the Orbiter and daily return to the planet was turning her on and off like a light switch, and she was growing more and more frustrated. When approached by Fletcher about wearing the earpieces, Kelly blew up and threw Fletcher out of the office. A pow-wow was called by all those concerned, and it was decided that a shadow would be supplied just to keep and eye on her.
* * *
They looked like politicians running for office. All four Malacans stood in front of the crammed bus shaking hands and patting backs, acting more like Japanese tourists in New York than a work team. One recruit even produced a small camera and had Henry get off the bus and take their picture with Corporal Murphy and his security officers. The image was later removed from the camera and carefully examined by the glow of an overhead map lamp. But by the time the first rays of sunlight had begun to emerge from behind the darkness, Henry had led the three-vehicle caravan deep into the boonies in a densely vegetated valley.
“We found this place b’by accident.” He said between sucks on a Cuban cigar he had saved for a year and a half, just waiting for a special excuse to prevent it from getting any more stale than it already was. The thick smoke was irritating Roach, but as he was half blasted up from the bottle of Vodka Henry had supplied them with, he really didn’t care.
“No shit! What happened, a jeep overturned?”
“Huh? No. No, that’s an expression. It means, uh, we weren’t looking for it but we found it. Yeah. We wanted a departure line away from the base for training purposes. The weather guys were zoning out a map for us and every time they’d shoot a beam over here for a surface temperature, their scopes would indicate there was a blizzard over the valley.”
“No kiddin’!” CR said with some surprise. The foliage they were passing indicated a semi-tropical region that probably hadn’t seen snow since the planet’s last ice age.
“Yeah, there’s some sort of weird mineral in the soil that reflects most aimed beams. If they’ve noticed we’re gone yet, they can’t find us. Not with radar or satellite! T’they got to fall right on top of us!”
“Yeah, but they’re to busy fallin’ over themselves to do that. Those guys are really in charge around here, huh?”
“In charge! In charge of this!” Henry pointed to his groin area. CR just nodded knowingly, even though he had absolutely no idea what his newfound compatriot was talking about. What the hell could Henry have under his seat that the Army could be in charge of?
It didn’t matter. This guy Henry was okay in Roach's book. A Marine who didn’t scream at you or make you do calisthenics was a new experience, and he liked it. Besides, Henry had all the markings of a kindred scrounger.
The sun was starting to break through in its entirety now. Even with the air-conditioning active, Roach could feel the heat rising. The bus and its two tails turned off the dirt road they had been driving down and disappeared into the foliage. They rumbled along for about a mile, pushing limbs and small trees aside as they rolled, and finally emerged on the edge of a small clearing. There sat the two shuttles from G line with their engines turning. Lewis called to the crew to get up and start unloading, but Henry stopped them.
“Listen, f'fellas,” he said, “we’ll load the stuff up. You guys did a great job b'back there. We won’t forget it. I won’t forget it. You may get a little hell for this, and I’m sorry about that. I’ll t'try and square it with your NCO if I can. If anybody asks you, I got you loaded and we circled G line in a jeep looking for old engine parts. I’m Charley Johnson, I’m ...”
“I thought we didn’t need to know your name?”
“You don’t! That warehouse is doodly squat. Out here, that shit happens all the t'time, one way or another. But the colonel had this bus flown in all the way from the f'factory in Michigan to shuttle VIPs around in. It isn’t goin’ back! There’s a whole bunch of parts on this thing I can use, sooo...“
"Got’cha. Terrific. ‘Grand theft, auto’ and a parts stockpile! What’s chow like in the brig out here?"
They climbed out of the bus and sat in a shady spot as the flight line team loaded the shuttles. It was quick and quiet and left the four Malacans feeling it was something these guys had done before. There was a large cargo hauler from G-Line being rapidly filled, and a small Empress 4 with non-Marine markings. “Now where in the hell did Johnson come up with an Army passenger shuttle?” Lewis thought to himself. It was intriguing enough to almost want to ask him. He thought better of it. If he had needed to know, somebody would have told him! Besides, the less he knew, the better at this point.
When the last crate had been bolted in place, Johnson ushered them aboard the E/4. He was halfway through the hatch when he stopped suddenly and turned.
“I figured you g’guys deserved a better ride b’back than in a cargo hold. We’re gonna circle the p'planet once and come in on the short side of the Orbiter. Gonna dock right on one of the landing bays on your ship. We’ll be in one of the r’regular docking routes after we meet up with a few friends of mine, and nobody should be the wiser. Again, thanks for the help and good luck with the rest of your training. Semper Fi.” With that, he disappeared through the hatch, slamming it shut behind him. The lock bolt slid immediately into place and they could feel the vessel moving to lift.
“Damn,” remarked Lewis after watching the vertical launch through the monitors, “these bastards don’t waste much time, do they?” But his comment fell on closed audial canals, as his three teammates had already passed out and gone to sleep. With his face pressed hard against the small eight-inch porthole in the hatch, Lewis watched the atmosphere darken and turn black. Every once in a while he could see the hanger mountings of the other shuttle appear at the edge of the window. They couldn’t have been more than ten yards away. It made him uneasy. Boy, are they close! he thought as the intermittent spray of port-side guidance jets caused both ships to waiver and shear. He could not see the planet, below but after about twenty minutes a strange glow appeared off in the distance. He watched as they drew nearer until he could distinctly make out three shuttles from the phEY-QUAD and an oddly designed Marine lander, which could not have come from the base. Parts stock pile! He needs a parts stock pile! Lewis thought as the small one-man craft held his escorts together in formation. They held the tight diamond pattern that the Terran fighter pilots seemed to be so fond of, and it was clear that they were not much further apart than the two shuttles from the planet.
Without warning, all the angles suddenly changed wildly. Lewis could tell that the diamond had suddenly started to climb at a perfect ninety-degree angle to the planet. The intention had to be to approach phEY-QUAD from below. The two shuttles suddenly shifted also and began to accelerate and separate. They would overtake the diamond, one shuttle tightly above it, the other below. They stopped as if they were a solitary ship a few hundred yards from the C bay intake hatch and waited. One shuttle entered into the vessel to deposit its cargo while the others held their formation tightly.
Unless someone had the same vantage point that Lewis had and could actually see what was happening, he knew there’d be no way of telling that the formation had broken to enter and unload. Clever, he mused, very clever.
* * *
“TWOs, TWOs, TWOs” Maysfield’s voice echoed throughout the squad bays. The first eighteen hours were done, and the next Recruits in line for liberty were moving out to head for the departure chutes. So far it had gone well, as far as totally illegal procedures go. Fletcher and Tozzi had pretty much settled into some makeshift quarters as the initial training in hand-to-hand had begun. The diminished numbers and the assistance of the regular DIs had allowed for a more personalized initiation to the art of close quarters combat. The real show would begin when Kelly arrived—if Kelly arrived—and they launched.
The problem of Lieutenant Kelly was becoming of greater concern as she was spending less and less time at the Marine Stations. Finally it was decided that Christopher and Stone had better get themselves out on that Orbiter and recon the situation. Most of the returning Boots had opted not to stay on the Orbiter, earpieces not withstanding, so they had requested and were granted accommodations at the Marine Air Station on the planet.
It was an eye opener for most of them, never having seen just what exactly Marines at Station actually do. There was something exotic about aircraft that weren’t space-capable, and the 'copters in particular. Nobody had really said anything to the Marines on base as to just what these smaller aliens were doing there, but the Marines had been instructed to let Malacans watch and answer whatever questions they had. Rumors had started to fly when small clusters of Malacans were spotted snapping High Ones to passing officers and NCOs. There had been some initial confusion as to the usage of antiquated Marine terms most of the Flight Group hadn’t heard since the last John Wayne Film Festival, but within a few hours a common language had been established and Flight Line crews found themselves being ably assisted by the visitors.
But there had been a few recruits who had opted to stay on the Orbiter, and a great degree of concern was expressed to Christopher over the general well being of Lieutenant Kelly. They had seen the symptoms before, and while it was taking longer to affect the female human, the signs were there. While the general alien opinion of the Army was rather mixed, those who had come into direct contact with the Base CO had decidedly not liked him. He had obviously elected to go with the flow. From the dead black hole was hanging every scalp, so to speak, he could on the wall.
Under normal circumstances, it was a direct violation of the law to appear in uniform in a bar or the like. But, as the extra cargo weight of civilian dress often prohibited them being taken on board, the wearing of field dress had been approved as acceptable garb to bar hop in. They dressed accordingly.
It had never occurred to either Christopher or Stone just how massive the Orbiter was. It was at least twelve times bigger than phEY-QUAD, and while about half of it was given to military functions and machinery, the rest of it seemed to run as an endless maze of bars and shops and entertainment areas that were perfectly designed to remove a Marine from his paycheck. Unfortunately, most of the Marines on the planet below were on call 24/7, and in their few spare free moments usually found sleeping more to their tastes. But the Army and other Earth military had almost 39,000 men stationed in or around the area, so the party almost never stopped. Nonetheless, the two camied figures, while sticking out like sore thumbs, moved in a pleasant ignored obscurity.
At any given time, any number of assorted deep space crafts were docked at the Orbiter and either ignored their quarantines or just simply didn’t know what they were dealing with. The Blue Light blazed at Little Boston 'round the clock. There were constant crowds and the odd street fight to content with, and any number of distractions for sailors of the void to contend with. Finding one single Molly in the constantly shifting throngs would take some doing.
They conferred briefly on the immensity of the mission, and decided only a methodical bar-by-bar search would yield results. By the fourth bar, they were experiencing a low ceiling visibility problem. Christopher tried for almost a full minute to brush something off his left shoulder before he realized it was the floor. He had fully exceeded his body’s capacity for alcohol and wiped out off the seat. Eventually Stoney reached down and grabbed him by the collar, and between the two of them Christopher managed to get back upright into a chair.
They had sat there about another ten minutes when they realized that they were losing control of the helm and that steering to the next bar may be damn near impossible. Sending up a flare would be in order if this continued. They ruled that option out when they realized they no longer knew which direction the ship lay in. Concern for Kelly’s possible plight had abated somewhat. When Stone inquired as to what they were going to do to get Kelly on board, after a moment of silence Christopher responded, “Kelly who?”
It is doubtful that either Stone or Christopher had consciously realized the amount of personal pressure that their mission had created. Perhaps more so for the Gunnery, as he had been a party to the goings on almost since its inception. When examining the evidence, the amount of booze either had slammed down was relatively small compared to what they had, on occasion, consumed on various Liberties and Leaves when their duties had not been the center of galactic attention. The alcohol had the same effect on them as a heavily soaking and lubricating oil did on a rusted spring. It had seeped its way into the sluggish and jammed coiled spring and caused it to suddenly release. The sudden discharge of the spring had released it from the mechanism it had been trapped in and left it jiggling loosely.
Things began to rapidly re-tighten when two Army Military Policemen appeared from seemingly nowhere and stood in front of the floundering Jarheads.
* * *
“Under the influence, improperly uniformed, disorderly, disruptive to station operations, and failing to obey a lawful order! Your four sorry butts’ll be Jack Hammered till your dingle balls drop off!” Maysfield walked calmly past the captives. “I figured all I’d have to do is stand by the chute and wait for Roach and Lewis—but you two!” He glared at Homer and Meatball who quietly stood at attention, eyes dead forward. Neither of the four could believe that Henry had fingered them so quickly. He had walked straight up to the old Master Sergeant and angrily pointed in their direction. While they couldn’t hear what he had to say, it was obvious that it was nothing good.
“You’re employed by the Corps! You’re expected to act a certain way as befitting the situation!”
They could tell that at any second Maysfield would flip out completely, and the real retribution would be quarter-decked out in liberal quantity. Before that could happen, Sabott, who had been leaning in an open hatchway gazing out into the stream of people passing in the outer corridor, suddenly turned and cut Maysfield off.
“Okay, Abner, they’re gone.”
“Shut the hatch! Let’s do this quick before they come back!”
The Recruits had heard about this in the movies. Maysfield and Sabott were obviously going to throw them a blanket party, a Red Code, a dry shower. Something really bad!
“ATTENNNNNN’HUT!” The four went erect at the Master Sergeant’s command. “Corporal Johnson has informed me that the four of you recruits have gone far beyond the expectations or call of duty, and that through your efforts a mission in the interest of the Corps has been accomplished. You selflessly risked your careers and freedom to see to it that the mission was completed satisfactorily. Upon conference with my fellow Drill Instructors, we have decided to award you the unofficial and temporary rank of acting Privates in the United States Marine Corps! For the remainder of our docking procedures, you will be allowed to comport yourself with all the bearing and dignity of an actual, By-God Marine. Would any of you gentleman care to join us for a beer!”
* * *
“You think we been made?”
Christopher swung his head around the well-treated lounge that passed as an Officer’s Club. By the neonesque purple light, he could see any number of unmarked patrons hunkered down in small cubicle-like areas. Syrupy ballads played a little too loudly in the background, which, with the assistance of the earpieces, the Marines found rather annoying. “No,” he said calmly and fairly soberly. “No, I don’t think so. This doesn’t look like a shake down to me. It looks more like prom night in Army town.” The sudden clank of glasses on the bar they were elbowed on caused both of them to turn around. A round, bearded-faced being with a strange golden skin smiled softly at both of them.
“Gentlemen of the Corps,” it said with an oddly feminine voice that belied its mouth, “you are welcomed here with the Colonel’s compliments. I am told your script is of no value amongst those of our gather. Only the script of the Armed Forces of America is of value. What can I get for you, please?”
“The Armed Forces of America!” Christopher said wryly to his number two man. The bartender readily received the tone of displeasure.
“It is said,” he began as he started filling the glasses with small cubes of ice, “that there is little love between those of the Corps on the planet, and those…” he gestured with his head to the crowd in the cubicles, “with the ugly green uniforms. Perhaps, uh, I can offer you the hospitality of my house. I share much the same opinion.” As it talked, a familiar bottle of Tennessee bourbon appeared from a hidden space under the bar. “I have been saving this since...” His eyes surveyed the room quickly, then rolled upward, pulling the edges of his lips with them, “since the last time these, uh, gentlemen, destroyed my humble house.” The being poured a Marine’s share of the fluid into the glasses and, as if he was covertly performing an illegal act, produced a third glass a bit smaller than the two he had set up already. Without the aide of ice, he filled an equal amount for himself and caused it to disappear without waiting for his guests to join him. “Up the Army!” he said, and removed his glass. He held the bottle teasingly, as if in wait of its reuse.
“Now that’s wide!” said Stone. “Hell, I’ll join you in that and wish well to you, yours and theirs!” The being smiled.
“Hey, bud...”
“You may be calling me Lanif.”
“Lanif. What is this place? Are we pinched?”
“Pinched, sir?”
“Uh, arrested.”
“Why no, sirs. Not at all. The colonel has just been informed by your Lieutenant Kelly that those Marines from an out-world craft have arrived. I suspect Colonel Tywell wishes to... to... excuse me, sir. Are you not well?” Lanif was looking at Christopher, who had suddenly turned white as a sheet. Beads of water had appeared on his forehead, and his eyes were getting a strange glazed haze.
“Colonel... who?” he mumbled.
“Tywell, sir. Colonel Tywell. Excuse me, gentlemen.” The being turned and motivated towards the far end of the bar and several newly arrived, middle-ranking officers. Stone looked at his paling friend.
“Talk to me, quick! What’s happening?”
Christopher pushed back into the deep cushions of the high-backed bar stools they were sitting on. “Tywell. That was the name of the guy that got me in all this in the first place!”
“Tywell? You were porking Tywell’s old lady? HA! Way to go, white guy! He’ll have us all doing hull repair without environmental gear!”
“Man, I didn’t know it was his wife. HELL! I didn’t even know she was married! This guy’s been shooting at me from halfway 'cross the universe, and I’ve never even met him!”
“You never met this joker? Tell me you’ve never met this joker!”
“Shit, no, I never met this guy! Hell, I—”
“Well! If I was you, MISTER GUNNERY SERGEANT ROBERTS, I wouldn’t worry. I’d keep my mouth shut and smile a lot and try to get Kelly back to the ship, A-sap!”
The liquor had slowed Christopher’s mind. He stared blankly at Stoney for a minute, trying to figure out why he was calling him Gunnery Sergeant Roberts. The only guys who had ever called him that were... He pulled his shirt forward by the pocket under the new nameplate he had put on his blouse. A civilian crew had just manufactured the plastic tag with his name and rank onboard ship. They had changed the rank and made the rest of it to match the nameplate on his door.
* * *
“Tres bien, mes enfants, tres bien!” Sabott stared into the crate of rain gear, fingering the micro-material as if it were gold. “Rojas, look at this! There isn’t a packet here larger than a pocket in a fatigue vest! A whole friggin’ six-man tent! Less than four pounds, rods and all!” Rojas peered in over his shoulder. He had been examining a box of foodstuffs.
“Hell,” he said turning to Lewis. “You guys were rockin’ an’ rollin’ when you clipped—er, selected this stuff.” He looked up as a six-man work squad appeared from the next bay to start putting the goods away. He stood and faced them. “Okay, now listen up! We gotta fly with this shit! DON’T WHACK IT! YA KNOW WHERE THIS STUFF IS GOIN’, YOU KNOW WHERE IT CAME FROM. I WANT IT IN THE LOCK UPS, TAG IT… RADIOACTIVE WASTE! SEAL IT AND BRIDGE IT INTO THE SHIP’S COMPUTER. MOVE! FAST! I GOTTA FEELIN’ WE GOT VISITORS COMIN’! CLEAR?”
A unisoned “Aye, aye!” filled the bay, and the roar of forklifts followed almost immediately. Pallet after pallet flew down the bay and turned off in the direction of the food storage lockers. Sabott turned to Lewis.
“Lewis, get some guys and gather up all the C and K rations and MREs you can find. Stack ’em in a way that it’ll look like a dispensing area for mess, TO BE FOUND. I want the galley either torn down or covered, NOT TO BE FOUND. Clear?” Lewis nodded and motioned to Roach. The two booked out, double-timed.
The large bay area grew unusually quiet. Rojas sat Indian style on the deck next to Sabott. “Can what we’re doing be worth all this?”
Sabott pursed his lips and shook his head. “Don’t ask me,” he said in a stoic tone. “I’m dead already!”
* * *
The Top and Master Sergeant stood toe to toe. Maysfield had dealt with the Army on these treasure-hunting expeditions before and if he threw up enough smoke, they usually went away. But this guy was different. He’d been around for a while, that was for sure. The MPs had already rousted out about two dozen Malacans and taken them to an interrogation room somewhere in the heart of the orbiter, drawing little distinction between coHLI’s crew and the Marine Recruits. But the Top had. Maysfield saw it in his eyes. Something larger than a warehouse break-in was afoot. Things weren’t flying right.
“All right, Jarhead,” he snarled at Maysfield. “You and me’ve done this before! You got a bunch of these little fuckers shaved to their assholes and a bunch that ain’t. You got tons of radioactive waste logged into the ship’s computer but I couldn’t spot one single stop on your route that was even mildly radioactive. This shit don’t fly with me! You rollin’ over or do I have to go looking?”
“Go lookin’? What the hell for? Your boys already—”
“Those fuckin’ idiots couldn’t find a pecker in a pair a’ pants they were wearin’ durin’ the search! You know it! I know it! The Army knows it! That’s why I’m here! So what’s it gonna be, Marine? Wanna go for a walk?”
Abner put on his best snarl. “You got no right—”
“I got every right in the book. And you know it! Enough talk, time to party. Follow me!”
They began walking through the entire sub-frame of the phEY-QUAD, corridor by corridor. It took three hours to complete the circle. Jesus, Maysfield thought. This guy must have all the time in the world! His degree of thoroughness impressed the senior Marine. It was as if he was a bloodhound, smelling the faintest odor of trail. Not enough in the air to say “AHA! Here it is!”—but enough scent in his nose to keep sniffing. At the port side air ducts he had seen the scrape marks where a platoon of frantic Boots had braved slime-infested crawl spaces in full gear to snake through on a drill. He had examined the seals on the radioactive lockers and noted that they were not only fresh, but located in an area half way around the vessel from the ship’s main storage compartments, which were only about one-third filled with nuclear waste. The Top stood motionless, looking up a vent duct. For a moment, Maysfield was certain he was done.
“Why are those guys shaved, Master Sergeant?” The question seemed to come out of nowhere, and it caught Abner off guard.
“Uh, it’s a fad. Hell, like, uh, shavin’ your head when you cross the equator! You know how these guys are.”
“No, I don’t! How are they?” The Top swung his head from the vent it was pressed in to look Maysfield square in the eyes—and for the first time in nearly two decades, he was getting nervous. “All right, Jarhead. Second floor. Let’s go!”
* * *
From his vantage point at the bar, Christopher could see Kelly appear in the doorway of the CO’s office across the hallway. Nice! he thought. Straight from the Command Base into the Officer’s Lounge! Now why didn’t we think of that? Kelly was too busy giggling into the outer office to notice either him or Stone staring from the darkened bar.
“This is not,” Christopher mumbled out of the side of his mouth to Stone, “the Drill Instructor Martha Esparenza I knew at the Island! Old man Kelly must’ve had a hell of a sense of humor. She... JEEssus Christ! Now what’s wrong with that picture?”
Stone took the half-statement as a test question and studied the Lieutenant twisting her body to slowly leave, but keeping her head facing into the office. Her nipples had grown erect and were struggling to break out of the confines of the white blouse she was uniformed in.
“She’s got her headlights on?”
“Bingo! She’s foldin’ like a deck of cards. I know that woman. She don’t giggle, she don’t mess around with people she works with, and I’ll give you five to one odds she don’t do the wild thing with the lights on! I just hope she’s kept her mouth shut about us!”
“You mean you!”
“I mean me!”
The WM Lieuie never turned around to look into the bar, but pulled herself away and stumbled a little shakily down the hall. For a minute or so after that, nothing moved in the hallway. Then the door opened and a man appeared and looked into the bar. Framed against the fluorescent military lighting inside his office. He was a medium-built man wearing a short Eisenhower-styled jacket, a matching piss-cutter on his head, and a full Colonel’s insignia on his collar. He walked in and straight towards the two Drill Instructors at the bar.
* * *
“Shit, you say, Henry!” Schaffer pushed back in the old wooden swivel chair it had taken him so long to find. Most chairs were collapsible aluminum, but the Gunny wanted wood. It wasn’t an office if it wasn’t wood. It had been worth the effort to carry it halfway across the universe. It made things feel like home. “The little bastard just stuck his face right in there, huh! Maybe there’s something to these guys after all.”
Henry stood outside the doorway to the small control bay office and talked loudly enough for the three engine mechanics at the nearest table to hear. His excuse for not coming in all the way was the removal of the heavy coveralls that protected his camys from the deep-staining red hydraulic fluid that soaked into the cloth of your issued clothes and rendered them unfit for service. The Midnight Rider had sprung a leak or three in its latest mission, and Henry had wasted no time secreting a crew to cannibalize the Army’s bus for some needed lines to repair the unregistered craft. There were no parts to spare from the stores—hell, there were no spare parts! During a recent Readiness Inspection, he had found himself doing what his predecessors had done—taking the most recently inspected craft off the line, bringing it below deck, and stripping it for parts that were needed for a ship coming up for inspection. It was an ugly way to do things, but it worked. He stood there stripping his coverings off and looking oddly satisfied.
“Gunny, the little p'pricks were swinging! Like they’d d’done it before—no questions asked, hold up your end. Good team!”
“Yeah!” Gunny dropped forward until his elbows touched his desktop. The aluminum surface was hot. “Henry, they’ve been runnin’ around here like they owned the place. But they couldn’t just look, they got dirty. Showed us two new ways to repair hull metal that’s been heat damaged. Saved four panels for us. I just hope Tywell’s boys haven’t noticed that they’re saluting anything with two stripes and above!”
* * *
Lewis looked over at the Roach. The Corporal of the security team at the warehouse was looking straight into his face. Roach kept wiggling his nose and then flicking at it with the pointer finger of his left hand as if chasing a bug away. He and Lewis had stopped at the water cooler on the tram taking them into the heart of the Orbiter's military complex, and unloaded about half the contents. Roach’s face was looking like an unsqueezed sponge. He wanted to look to the Earthers as if he was as drunk as an alien could get on short notice.
“Look!” Roach curtly spat out. “What is it with you guys! For the last time, me! Lewis, over... uh, over there, and, uh, Meatball—he ain’t here. We was driving around the station, drinkin’ with Corporal Johnston? Johnson! I gotta get me a Jeep!” He looked up at the sergeant of security with a nice wide grin. He had been talking into his belt buckle and shirt buttons. The sergeant looked over at Corporal Murphy.
“Well, Murphy? This one of them?”
The corporal dropped his chin to his chest. “Christ, Sarge. I dunno! They all, well... they all look alike to me!”
The sergeant just shook his head. There was no known way of fingerprinting his captives. Their skin stretched when put under pressure, changing the print every time it was taken. His witnesses were unreliable, and nobody was being intimidated into a confession. He had no choice.
“All right. Get out of here," he said to the fourteen semi-prisoners sitting crossed legged on his floor. "But don’t get lost! I may want to..." He looked down at Roach, who was still grinning stupidly up at him. Hell, he thought, I could wring a quart of gin from this guy’s face! The cop knew it was senseless. “Get this guy the hell out of here!” he shouted at Lewis, who ran immediately over and feigned guiding Roach out the door.
As the door to the tram shut behind them for the return trip, Roach wiped the smile off his face and looked up. “How’d you like that?” he said. “They think WE all look alike!”
* * *
Fletcher had adopted the four female recruits and was systematically going through the required gender courses that had been neglected. It presented a number of problems. It’s one thing to explain the proper method to prepare one’s hair, and another to explain it to one with no hair at all.
With the average Malacan female being almost 30% larger than the male, the rape prevention classes went fairly by the wayside. The concept of rape was apparently foreign to them. Having (in their minds) been moved to a status on par with the average male recruit, they had little or no curiosity about the matter other than to ask, “Does that really happen on your planet?”
The Career Woman classes were another matter. It had never really occurred to female Recruits that when their initial contract was completed, they did have options. That the Corps would offer a bonus—a near un-godly sum at the present rate of exchange—for a successful re-up met with great approval. More difficult than the concept of rape was the concept of an earned promotion and an entitlement to obtain a college degree. The news nearly stunned all four of them into a dazed silence. It didn’t take Fletcher long to realize that in exchange for sexual security (dead black holes not withstanding), professional advancement had been bartered off. This was going to change that. Maybe.
Fletch had spent the better part of two days condensing courses and answering questions, but still walked away from the experience with the strong sense that she had missed something. She had a headache of monumental size, and collapsed directly onto the makeshift hammock that was serving as a bunk. Tozzi, who had been sitting there reviewing the latest communications from home, didn’t have to say a word. She knew the look.
“I know it ain’t the material!” she said after about five minutes of waiting for Fletcher to open up.
“I don’t know what the hell it is? They’re just... they don’t... They’re not WMs.”
“Is that what’s botherin’ you, Ace?” Tozzi turned her chair around, making an ungodly noise that reverberated through the small room. “God, I hate when it does that! Okay, look. They just spent the first two-thirds of boot camp being told they were men. We didn’t know, and they didn’t know any better. Now we’re telling them, ‘Okay, you're a WM and that’s different!’ Oh, it’s different all right. It’s a Corps concept, an American concept, a human concept and a sexual concept—all at the same time! And it’s all Greek to them. How much can you really expect them to assimilate in a day and a half, Fletch? In their minds, they’re the same as the male recruits. Same, same. I don’t think I helped to much by kicking the shit out of Sabott and getting away with it.”
“What are you saying, Tozzi? I gotta show them that they’re women?”
“Yup!”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that? I’m not even sure they ARE women!”
“Believe me. They are! They know they’ve got some sort of kinship with us. They’re just... not sure how.”
“Like us?”
“Like us.”
“One thing’s for damn sure. We’re not going to get them off this ship for all the brass on a General’s chest. I’m becoming a little bit more than worried about Kelly.”
* * *
“You three assholes wanna try it again?”
Lewis looked up at Rojas from the deck he had just been thrown to. “Staff Sergeant Drill Instructor Rojess. This Recruit isn’t certain what the Staff Sergeant is—”
“Eighteen hours. You, Roach, and Meatball. Homer’s already there. I talked with Master Sergeant Maysfield. We figure you got it coming.”
Maysfield had indeed taken an uncharacteristic turn when Rojas had called him away from his unscheduled tour of the vessel with the Army Top. Maysfield had looked over at the Top (who was preoccupied with some fire hosing that for no known reason in the universe was dangling from the ceiling) and with a half stern, half sour expression on his puss immediately agreed. Rojas had expected at least a little flak but realized right away old Abner saw it as an immediate means to spite the Army. Imagine! Right under the Army’s nose, a second Liberty for the crew that had vanished with the goods, right before their eyes!
Meanwhile, Top Sergeant Kazga was having his own set of Marine-caused problems, and it was starting to get under his skin. He had let the little buggers walk out knowing full well about the unscheduled transfer of supplies on a hunch that there was a good reason for it—but that idiot Murphy had given away the colonel’s bus! There was hell to pay for that. Tywell would crawl up his ass and dance a foxtrot if his favorite toy (not counting his dick) didn’t get found. Not that Kazga really cared. He’d been dealing with officers, both good and bad, for what seemed like forever and he knew how to deal with them all. What was starting to really drive him wild was why!
Everything taken was meant to support troops. At first he had considered a possible mutiny aboard the alien craft, but the Marines and the aliens were sharing leaves and going off in different directions. Goods on the black market surfaced immediately, the need to disperse them being the safest way to go. But what he was seeing was too weird for even him to deal with. There were signs of running tracks, mess areas, and squad bays. Maysfield had explained most of it away. But this, he thought, gazing up toward the ceiling at what he’d swear before Christ was a shooting range, was going to take one whopper of a yarn! He could understand Maysfield’s concern, but there was no real way for Kazga to explain that he wasn’t so much evidence-gathering anymore as curiosity-satisfying. But the senior Marine’s general bad attitude was starting to really rub his buttons counterclockwise.
It was clear that he wasn’t going to get any straight answers. He looked at Maysfield, muttered, “I’ll be back,” and made his way toward the lift taking him from the upper decks to the exit chute. He stood at the back of the car, and as he dropped towards the lower deck, he became aware of just how pissed-off he really was. Some old desires of wanting to strangle somebody in frustration began to creep into his emotional baggage. When the lift stopped at the crew level and three aliens got in, obviously on their way to shore leave, Kazga knew it wasn’t going to go well for them. They were Marine employees—but while they were attached to the orbiter, they were under Army command!
It was Lewis who looked back and realized that the giant Top Sergeant that had let them into the warehouse was simmering in the rear corner of the elevator. His eyes fixed on the Top’s and he knew there was almost recognition on his face. He elbowed Roach who turned and snapped the higher rank an involuntary salute. Oh, shit! he thought, Bad, bad move!
They stood frozen in place like some bizarre Rockwell painting of future shock, and all remained that way until the lift hit bottom.
“All right, boys!” the Top snarled. “Come with me. I got a little job for you to do!”
There wasn’t a protest to be raised. All three knew they were a heartbeat from being caught. Lewis was virtually certain they had been—and why the giant wasn’t signaling for the MPs was anybody’s guess. Kazga marched the captives down the ramp, but instead of heading them into the orbiter, he took them down the service corridor that led to the maintenance area. The small hostage group entered into a maintenance room. They surprised a squad of Army broom engineers that were smoking and bullshitting. The Top exploded. He dismissed them all and sent them away.
“Now! You boys see what I’ve got to deal with?” he grunted. “Here the colonel’s favorite, ultra-modern bus gets heisted, a military warehouse gets damn near emptied, and now this! Would you believe the colonel assigned clean up and maintenance to Army Security? Now, I know you boys COULDN’T FUCKIN’ POSSIBLY know anything about the stolen goods—am I right?”
The trio just shook its collective head to the negative.
“And I know,” he continued, “that you boys wouldn’t wanna see me get into any more trouble than I’m already in—ain’t that so?”
Again the heads waved, only vertically instead of horizontally.
“I knew I could count on you guys. Why, hell! You’ve been out there, floating around with those Jarheaded Marine pricks long enough to be... hmm… To be Jarheaded Marine pricks—yourselves.”
There was a fidgety silence. It had suddenly occurred to Kazga that he had struck a nerve. It was an idea worth following up on. Later.
“Now boys!” he said in a rather chilling tone. “I’m gonna let YOU help ME get back to the Colonel’s good graces. I want you to take these brooms and mops and cleaning gear, start at the Colonel’s Ossifer’s Club, and scrub your way down to the cathouses on R level. Am I clear? If you hurry, I figure it should take you… oh, ‘bout 10 hours!”
