Tywell did a real dance for the two Marines captive at his bar. The name 'Christopher' had not come up in the conversation. Speculation later on was that after a week at the orbiter, Kelly must have had other things on her mind than the details of an incoming freighter. And Tywell, in rather an indelicate way, was letting them know just what the pecking order was—for Kelly and for when the Army absorbed the Corps. Throughout the conversation, Tywell kept looking at his watch and, as if on a signal, looked at his watch one more time, ended the lecture abruptly and made a bee line back into his office, explaining that he had a serious appointment at 14:00 hours before his evening appointment with the Lieutenant at 20:00 hours.
Christopher had turned around and sat with his elbows on the bar, casually expressing his views on Tywell and the entire Army to the bartender. He had reached the part about 'space happy asshole' when Stone poked him hard enough in the ribs to lift him off the stool. "Bobby, will you get a load of this!" he stammered. Christopher swiveled quickly. There, at the colonel's door, stood a more than solidly built WAC Sergeant, doing final inspection on her hair and make up. She looked left and right and entered the room without so much as a knock. "Sonofabitch!" said Christopher.
No sooner had the cry been uttered than a cleaning cart pushed by three Malacans swung into the Officer's lounge followed by a big Top Sergeant.
"Oh fuck," mumbled Stone, "here comes hell, Gunny."
There was no sign of recognition on the part of the workers. Lewis separated from the detail and started towards the far end of bar, away from the Top's view. He looked up at Stone as if to say 'you go about your business, we'll go about ours'. Stone didn't have to be told twice. He looked past his recruit and waved the bar keep in.
Lanif acknowledged the wave and moved slowly towards the pair. His eyes were held fast to the second hand of a large illuminated chronometer on a far wall. When he reached the duo, Stone began to entreat for another bourbon—but a large hand went up from the bartender, directly in front of Stone's face. Lanif brought his other hand up with all five fingers extended, and began retracting each finger in unison with the sweeping second hand. Five, four, three, two—Lanif's thumb shot up atop his fist in the old 'thumbs-up' motion of success.
Before either Stone or Christopher could express a question, the volume of the music in the room jumped and a familiar earthesque voice began crooning a soft, melodic tune. Chances are, though I wear a silly grin... the barkeep looked up and grinned rather sardonically.
"You can set your watch by it! A female walks in, one minute fifteen seconds later... POW! The whole orbiter gets to know the Colonel's business!"
"You mean..."
"I mean he's shrewd, this one. He knows these strange chants of your Earth makes them... what? Crazy?"
"I don't believe this! This is gotta be a breach of the Military Code of Ethics!" Stone fairly glared at Christopher. "He's setting these women up!"
"No!" Lanif cut him off. "Neither one of them actually realizes what's happening. To them, it's perfectly natural. Two lonely people—floating past a dead black hole! What do they know? He figured it out by accident. I see you've been warned!" He pointed to the earpieces of the earthmen and the Malacans busily hustling about the lounge. "But Tywell has no creativity! None! He's been using the same two recording box tapes for the last six months. I know every chant on it! Everybody on the orbiter knows every chant on it! He has two of your recording boxes, big ones, with wheels that spin!"
"Reel to reel!" Lewis interjected. The Marines and the bartender immediately stared him down.
"Two reel to reels! The first one has all these oddly voiced singers, and they get slower and slower with every chant. In exactly..." Lanif gazed up at the clock. "Ten minutes and thirty seconds from... NOW!... he and his friend will come and sit there, the darkest spot in the lounge. For half an hour I'll ship… what do you call them, Zombies?... by the quart into the darkness. Then twenty-five minutes after that they'll go back into the office and just as the first tape is ending, he'll turn the second machine on. They call it 'The Classical Hour' on the floor. It goes non-stop until… what's the name of that chant... You may have seen this old motion movie about this attractive silver-haired earth female pursued by this unusually short earthman... what was it called? Ten!"
"He's playing Ravel's Bolero!"
"That's it! It builds and builds and builds... bump, bah bah bah, bump, bah bah bah, bump! After twenty minutes of that, the prices at the pleasure houses double. And nobody complains! By the time it ends, the deed has been done! But ask your Lieutenant Kelly. She'll be able to tell you all about it in the morning!" Lanif smiled wryly and walked off.
Lewis, who had been party to the entire conversation, realized fast enough what was happening. He leaned across the bar in front of the two stunned Marines as if wiping a spill and, through a fake smile, muttered, "Tie the Top up!" to his superiors and walked away.
The eye contact looked like a billiard game as eyeballs rolled in heads signaling for somebody to make a decisive move. Stone got elected. He rose casually from his seat and walked to the military communication port and picked up the receiver. He hung up after about a minute or so and walked over to the behemoth in Army green.
"Excuse me! You Top Sergeant Kazga?" he said respectfully.
The Top looked up and nodded.
"Master Sergeant Maysfield wants you back on board. He thinks you might be interested in something he found!"
For the second time in two days, the old Top had the feeling he was about to be bamboozled by the Marine Corps. He sat motionless, weighing the odds on what was really going to happen. At last he decided that since he had come this far, he might as well go all the way. He rose silently and motioned to Stone to lead the way. The pair left.
Christopher sat, uncertain as to whether or not it was prudent to talk to Lewis directly. But Lewis had decided for them. He fairly grabbed Roach by the collar and dragged both the startled Boot and the cleaning cart out of the room with Meatball following up the rear.
* * *
Ho Chi had to run halfway across the orbiter to find Geronimo. Geronimo was almost exactly the same size as Roach. Except for the pug nose, they looked very similar. Chi had grabbed him by the throat and pulled him off the slot machine he'd been donating to all afternoon. Ho had him half-undressed by the time they reached the maintenance room. Roach was already down to his shorts.
Geronimo didn't need too much persuading to take Roach's place in the clean-up crew. The Army had already run him off two hot slot machines. The idea of spending the next eight hours of his Liberty cleaning heads didn't exactly thrill him, but there was some sort of logic to the honor of 3030 being at stake. If Maysfield ever found out a mission had failed because one of his by-God recruits failed to perform correctly... the thought sent chills up his spine.
Lewis didn't particularly care why he did it, as long as he did it. He was banking heavily that the enormous Top couldn't really tell them apart to look at them. Sure, a guy like Christopher could because he'd spent so much time with them—but from what Lewis had seen, most Terrans couldn't. Kazga might recognize the outrageously ugly and ill-fitting civilian shirt the Roach was wearing, but Geronimo looked enough like the scrounger to pull it off. The rest was going to be up to Roach and Homer.
"Ya know wha'cha gotta do, right?" Lewis looked nervously at Roach.
"Shit, yeah. So long as Homer can steal those cassettes from Sabott's hut, all I need is about an hour and a half to get our shit together."
"You have to be done! Done! By 19:00 hours, clear? You've got ten minutes to get in, do the job and get out!"
"Shut the fuck up, Lewis! You just keep that ugly-assed Top away from me for ten minutes and we're good to go." He looked over at Homer. "Okay Homer, you know what you gotta do!" Roach looked suddenly disgusted and looked down at the floor. "This is killin' me!" he said, looking up at Homer again. "Find Arnold! We need muscle! He's gonna have to carry all that gear off the ship in a sea bag and make it look like he's carrying laundry or somethin'! If one of the DIs catches him, they'll confiscate it as contraband."
* * *
"You dick-faced, Jarheaded Mother Fucker! You dragged my ass all the way up here for this?" The Top turned two small cans of creamed corn over and over in his immense paws. "They coulda picked this up at the commissary or one of the exchanges!"
"Hell, you say!" Maysfield looked up at the Top with a dead seriously expressed look of surprise. "Now, ya see Stoney, in my day, in the old Corps, you couldn't get stuff like that anywhere but on the black market! Gosh, Top. I AM sorry as hell! I honestly believed..."
Kazga stood there looking blankly at the Master Sergeant, not hearing a word he was saying. They'd done it again! They threw up some smoke and he'd fallen into the trap. WHAT could they be up to?
That something was up was rapidly becoming common knowledge amongst the recruits, thanks to Roach. Word was spreading like wildfire, and volunteers were showing up all over the place to assist him. The Instructors had too much going to notice that there were things happening that might have been out of the norm. Christopher and the two WMs were locking horns with Kelly, trying to convince the Lieutenant to stuff her ears with the plugs—but all it was doing was pissing her off more than she already was. Stone and Maysfield were busy playing 'hide the green weenie' with the security man from the planet. This left only Sabott and Rojas for Roach and Homer to contend with.
It took a small staged fistfight in front of the DI hut to tie Sabott up, PTing the perps. Homer could feel his entire inside structure pumping like a cheap sump as he crawled into Sabott's hut. What he needed was crucial—but he really wasn't even certain what it looked like. He could hear Sabott counting off in the yard in front. So long as the voice sounded like it was facing away from the small porthole, the Malacan was free to move around. If Sabott turned and faced the hut with his back to the yard he'd be, looking right in on Homer!
Homer had never made it past the hatch of the hut. There wasn't really enough room for the Drill Instructors to call more than one or two boots into the hut, so they stood them in the hatchway and talked out at them. As he looked around the room, everything seemed so alien—almost evil! But there, just as Roach had described, were five neatly stacked plastic boxes not much bigger than the palms of his hand. He picked one up and shook it. Sure enough, there was something inside each one of the boxes.
It suddenly occurred to him that he had another problem. He didn't read the Terran language well enough yet to know what was inside the boxes. Should he take them all? Just one or two and hope to get lucky? He sat on the deck, dazed. As he turned the boxes over in his hands, he began to notice that almost all the boxes had a picture or diagram of sorts on the front. The one that was maroon and gold had the anchor, globe and eagle on it. This HAD to be one that he needed. Another had a picture of Earthmen in uniforms surrounded by big metal tubes they seemed to be blowing into. As he studied the pictures, he noticed that the formation they were in seemed familiar. They had to be marching! This had to be another one he needed. It was time to decide. He went with his first instinct. He'd keep the two. He put the rest back where he'd found them—and realized that the missing two left a gaping hole in the stand where the Sergeant kept them. Sabott was too sharp to take a chance on leaving things that way.
It took Homer a minute to figure out how to open the boxes; they didn't open from the top or bottom but seemed to slide open in halves moving on hinged sides. When he removed the contents, he saw the small brown strip feeding through the mechanism. At least these were the right items. He slipped the empty boxes back into place in the stand, the tapes into his pocket, and peered cautiously outside to see where Sabott was.
* * *
By 16:30 hours it was over. Stone and Christopher had been sitting at the bar for almost twenty minutes to see how long the whole thing was going to take, and speculating on whether or not the well-built WAC would devour the Colonel's insides. They were on the verge of placing bets when she appeared in the doorway and staggered down the hallway, casually bouncing off the walls on the way.
There was a third party watching, pushed deeply into the darkest corner and writing details captured off a stopwatch. He made a final note and checked his chronometer one last time. By now they should be ready for him. He eased off his station silently and slowly pressed against the wall to be as inconspicuous as possible.
He vanished quickly down the corridor and turned into the maintenance shaft leading down to the reactors. They had found a small unfinished toilet that served their purpose as if they had designed it themselves just for this mission. He entered into it past the two guards they had stationed at each end of the hallway.
The machinery had been set up and checked. There was some concern about the old cassette deck. The quality of sound was sometimes poor, the playback head being slightly worn out. It had served Rojas' purpose enough, drilling the platoons over and over again to the same five or six marches that the meager tape collection allowed. It would have driven Terrans to distraction, but the Malacans didn't mind. They didn't quite understand the value of brass in the world of music, or the association of music to marching, but it seemed to work well enough. And they liked music. Any music.
Two thin wires, one red and the other white, connected the cassette deck to a battered old reel to reel that had started earning its owner immense dividends until his induction into the military. The speaker had been removed, and a frail headset cannibalized from what had once been non-working headphones had been soldered through a few capacitors and resistors onto the leads. They couldn't risk an amplifier, so the earpieces had to do. He stood, pressed against the door he had shut behind him and looked at his cohort finishing a soldered connection on an output circuit in the rear of the cassette deck. The short recruit stood in the doorway surveying the pile of miscellaneous junk and shook his head negatively. Then he reached in his pocket and produced a thin brass bar with several thin slices cut into it. Then he looked to his assistant.
"Well?"
"You're live, sound man! I got those heads as demagnetized as they can get, and even gave you a signal boost. I think it'll work."
"Let's find out."
A time check was given and then a sound check. Homer had gotten the right tapes and Kong had done a better than adequate job of gearing the machinery up to the task. Roach slipped into the headset and calibrated the meters off of a thousand-cycle tone that had been borrowed (without permission) from the ship's acoustical gear. As if suddenly struck by palsy, he stopped and looked up. There was only one major decision to be made. He wondered if he had the authority to make that decision on his own. Authority? What did authority have to do with any of this? Hell! This was war!
* * *
Time was zeroing down towards 20:00 hours. Christopher and Fletcher had toyed with the idea of jumping the Lieutenant and stuffing her ears full of plugs until she normalled out. The idea was squelched by Tozzi who casually pointed out that under a full head of steam, neither Fletch nor Christopher could take her out in a fight—and in her current agitated state, it was doubtful they could take her out with a tank.
By 19:45 hours, Maysfield and the Top had nearly come to blows twice, taken two complete tours of phEY-QUAD, and were now arguing military law as they marched through the numerous public corridors of the orbiter, looking for the lost clean-up crew. Sabott dragged behind them, wondering if they realized just how similar they were and speculating which was harder, their heads or their asses. They found the crew working its way back towards the Officer's Lounge.
"You mean to tell me," the Top Sergeant demanded of the three, "that you've cleaned your way all the way down the deck and back again!"
"Ga'dan it, Kazga! I told you TWICE just how quick these little..."
"I'm asking them, Abner, not you!"
And so it volleyed back and forth until they joined the Marine entourage already assembled in the bar. It should be noted that by 20:30, when Tywell entered with Kelly for the warm-up Zombies, both the Top and the Master Sergeant were standing elbows on the bar engaged in a major league pissing contest that was the center of attention—nearly a perfect counterpoint to the elevating music piping in from Tywell's office.
Enthusiasm had become preoccupation as the war of the seniors escalated. No one noticed as Geronimo and Roach slid silently under an empty table and quickly exchanged clothes again. When Roach emerged, Lewis boldly walked up to Tywell's booth.
"Begging the Colonel's pardon, sir." He smiled into the dark booth. "With your permission, we'd like to clean up your office and go home sir, it's been a long day."
The Colonel looked less than thrilled. "Can't be done now. We have a full night of work..."
"Take all of ten minutes, sir. Just enough time to tidy up, punch the time clock, and impress your lady friend here with just how neat your office is kept." Lewis smiled in at Kelly. The expression on her face told him that she was already halfway to heaven. She just kept nodding in time to the music. It sent a chill along Lewis' spine. The alcohol she was consuming in her audibly disturbed state was leading more and more to an openness to suggestion. In a dazed state she looked up at the alien and smiled an approval.
The smile didn't go unnoticed. "Go to it. You've got about ten minutes."
Lewis thanked the Colonel and backed away slowly, smiling in the front while waving the cart to the office door with the hand behind his back. When he was convinced the officer was no longer watching him, he turned and casually walked from the bar up to and through the office door.
The door shut and all three went flying to position. Meatball pressed his ear to the door and motioned the all-clear. He kept a stopwatch running. "Nine minutes, thirty." He called.
Lewis looked at Roach. "Dammit! We're off the schedule already!"
Roach never stopped moving. "Lewis, pull your head out of your butt and find those recorders!" They dove headlong onto the deck and crawled along the moldings for a plug, a speaker wire, anything that would bring them to the recorders.
"Nine flat!"
"Lewis, think! Where would you…" Roach broke off the sentence. Against a far wall was a long black leather couch. "There! There, Blue!"
They jumped the high-backed couch and peered over the edge. Built into the wall behind the couch was a large open cabinet and the two reel-to-reels they'd been hunting for. Also built into the wall were two gigantic speakers and an amplifier that had to be, as near as Roach could guess, one hundred watts per channel and fresh out of the box.
"Damn, Blue!" he sputtered, "this guy's got a speaker in every corner and a small sound wall hidden behind his couch. The whole damned couch is vibrating! What a deal this bastard's got. He's drilling 'em with volume as well as audial stimulation." A wide grin crossed his face. "A hun'red watts per! Boy, am I gonna fix this guy's ass! Hand me the—"
"Eight minutes, thirty! Move it, boots!"
"Yeah! Give me my headphones and the editing block. Where's the edit?"
Lewis fished his pockets for the small reel that the Roach had prepared in their toilet workshop. "Roach, what's on here?"
"Not now, Lewis! This second recorder's on a timer, and I can't tell when it's set to go off!"
"Yeah, but—"
"Lewis, shut the fuck up and hold these speaker wires!" He disconnected the second machine and inserted his headphones into the speaker sockets.
"Eight flat!"
"Ah, fuck!" Roach was frantically fast-forwarding the tape. Every few hundred feet or so he'd stop it and run the tape, listening for a part of a song he'd never heard. It took him six tries. "This is gotta be it. Now to find the—"
"Six minutes, thirty!"
"Here! Blue, give me the... okay, okay. Razor! Razor!" Roach looked up. There was a horrified look on both Blue Lewis and Meatball's face. Nobody had thought to bring a razor blade to cut the tape. "Okay, don't panic," Roach said, as much to himself as them. "Check the desk, Lewis. A knife, a scissors, a... forget it!" Roach had seen something he could use, but didn't have time to explain. He hurriedly placed a section of the big tape on the editing block and made some marks. "Feed me and don't—"
"Five flat!"
"Don't let the tape get tangled or pulled!" Roach backed off the couch carefully, dragging the tape with him. There, on a small table, was a full-sized military paper cutter. All fifty cast-iron pounds of it. Lewis stared in amazement as Roach removed the tape from the block and lined it up on the edge marks of the cutter. "Lewis! Pray this thing is sharp!" Before his stunned compatriot could utter a sound, he reached up, grabbed the handle of the cutter, and guillotined it down with a frighteningly loud thud. A free end of tape floated loosely through the air.
"Damn, I'm good!" Roach wailed. "Lewis, roll up the free tape on the take-up reel! Now!" He shot to the recorder and drew in the slack on the feed reel. Carefully he scratched a small piece of scotch tape he had cut earlier from a small pad. He had taken the time to prepare several splices and wasted no time joining the fresh cut to the cut on the tape they had brought.
"Roach, what's on the—"
"Four minutes, flat!"
"NOT NOW, LEWIS!" Roach pressed the tape down and fed it onto the take-up reel. He placed a pencil in Lewis's hand and positioned the edited tape he'd brought on the pencil so it would spin freely under the second reel as he fast-forwarded the tape. "Don't let it come off!" was all he said as the wheel spun and the edited tape shot onto the reel. "I got no time to do this right!" he moaned. Taking the free end, he wrapped it around the take-up reel two or three times until it was taut.
"Three minutes, thirty!"
He threw the machine into rewind. There was an audible sigh of relief when the take-up reel caught tight and began to rewind. "Number one, get past the edit without breaking! BOOM! Gone. Next... Next! Rewind before the timer kicks on!"
"Three minutes, flat. Starting vacuum cleaner!"
"Now, Lewis! Watch this!" Roach stared into the diminishing spinning reel. With a sudden turn of his wrist, he shut the machine down, stopping it less than a handful of turns from the end. He pressed the phones tightly against his head to hear over the vacuum cleaner and spun the reels back and forth to cue the first song. "Done!"
"One minute, thirty!"
Lewis was throwing tools into the bag at a furious rate as Roach reconnected the speakers and pushed the couch back into place.
"One minute, flat!"
Meatball had been frantically pushing the vacuum cleaner over the rugs, but as Lewis noted, the place still looked like a shit hole. Roach calmly walked over to a dimmer on the wall and dropped the lighting down until the entire room was lit by little more than the illumination of two or three candlepower.
"I knew that sleaze would have a dimmer! We're done with thirty seconds to spare! Let's book!"
They bolted towards the door and nearly collided with Tywell coming in with his latest conquest. They stood, almost at attention, as the Colonel surveyed the quarters. Roach was certain they'd left something out of place. "Excellent!" was all the Colonel said, and stepped aside. Again, they quietly tried to break for freedom.
"Wait!" he suddenly cried out. Lewis turned slowly; there was no chance to run. "I reward excellence!" the Colonel bragged to Kelly, who was eating it up. The Colonel reached into his pocket and pulled out a script twenty-dollar bill and extended it towards Meatball, who was closest to him.
Roach reached across his body and snatched the bill. "Why, thank you Colonel! We believe in excellence, too! We did the best we could do for you in a short amount of time!"
* * *
They slid back into the lounge and stood at the end of the bar. Roach waved the bill at the keeper of the bar and motioned for three beers. He was slowly obliged. All eyes, except the two senior sergeants, were on the clock.
The second tape had triggered flawlessly within a few seconds of their exit. The volume had climbed again. There were two minor classically orchestrated pieces that went by (that nobody could identify), and another round of beers for the recruits who were conducting their own countdown. And then it began. Bump, bah bah bah, bump, bah bah bah, bump. Ravel's Bolero began to fill the room in all its sexual splendor, softly growing louder and louder. Lewis almost panicked.
"Roach, it didn't, it didn't—"
"Relax! Wait! I figure we got at least a good ten minutes of this before our edit kicks in!"
On it played, rising and falling, twisting and turning with all the energy of two lovers in the depth of the love act. Bump, bah bah, bump. Bah bah bah, bump! Gathering momentum, it spiraled ever upwards, louder and louder. Agitation at the bar was increasing, as the Marines grew more and more restless. Even the two old sergeants began to notice the excitement in the air. The lounge filled with an unnerving quietness, all human noise being supplanted by the constant, even, pulsating pounding of Ravel's Masterpiece, moving relentlessly to a final, crashing crescendo that would fill the room and explode throughout the orbiter announcing the colonel's latest victory!
As it moved towards its undeniable climax, it suddenly occurred to Lewis that he still didn't know what exactly it was that he was waiting for.
"Hey, Roach," he whispered. "What did you put into the tape?"
The Roach grinned an evil grin. Before he could open his mouth, Ravel's torrid piece had reached its zenith. It burst as though a dam had been shattered—but not into the resolve of the song. It went flooding straight into another Masterpiece.
It is often assumed, because of its immense popularity with the Hollywood set through the years, that the Marine's Hymn is the official music of the United States Marine Corps. Most people are surprised to find out that it is not. The Grand March Master, John Philip Sousa in his eighth year as leader of the Marine Corps Band in 1888, penned a stirring march for his Corps called Semper Fidelis. It was recognized by Congress and soon became THE song of the Marine, that motto of the Corps, replacing "To the Shores of Tripoli." In direct contrast to the pulsating beat of Ravel, the March Master had contrived a rolling and steady beat which even today is recognized as a rhythm of the military. BBBBRRRRRUUUUMMMPP, Babum, BBBBBBRRRRRRUUUUUMMMPP, Babum, bah bah bah, bah bah bah, bump babump! It drives and drives until it is overtaken by the forceful military trumpets calling the troops to march. It rapidly stirs the soul and moves the listener to the march. In desperate times it had moved a million Marines to war, and in less desperate times moved them to rise to the challenges of peace. And Roach had juiced it to almost twice the volume level of Ravel.
"I toyed with using The Star Spangled Banner," he grinned, taking another pull from the half-full beer bottle in his hand. "Then I thought, nah! Let 'em know where the bullet came from! One shot! One kill!"
In truth, he'd done better than he could have hoped. The sudden screaming call of Marine trumpets lifted every seat in the lounge and rocked the orbiter. There was a brief moment of volume shock that stunned Terran and alien alike—then, snaking over the rolling drums, a woman's voice was heard screaming from the colonel's office, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOIN', ASSHOLE?!"
It was instantly followed by a sudden, sickening thud that reminded those at the bar of a body being dropped to the floor. There was a second even louder thud, followed by the sound of cracking wood as the door to the Colonel's office came flying down, frame and all, with the Colonel still on it. He was naked and flopping like a fish out of water trying to get off the door—which was about two feet longer than the width of the hall. He was tilted backwards, trying to roll off it, but not doing a very good job.
Christopher looked at Fletcher and pointed. "This is the guy that wanted my balls for poking his old lady!"
Fletch looked downward at the naked man, who had finally managed to roll off the door to his right and out of sight from the lounge. "No kiddin'!" she said, obviously unimpressed.
And the band played on.
From inside the office came a steadily-flowing string of obscenities. There was the sound of bare feet slapping leather, trying to get traction. With a blood curdling scream, Kelly, short of nakedness by a half-slip, came flying through the opening and slammed into the outer wall of the lounge. She bounced off, her momentum causing her to go flying backwards, and she fell towards the lounge. She was bounding like a kangaroo, only in reverse, and regained her balance by landing flat-footed on the edge of the lounge doorway.
In the flash of an eye, the old Top Sergeant had sprung to his feet and called out loudly, "OOOFFFFIIII...SSSIIIRRR, h'ooooonnnnn DEK!"
You would have thought the commanding general of all combined forces had walked through the door. Anything in a uniform jumped to its feet and snapped to attention so fast that drinks went flying in all directions. Kelly's feet were moving up and down and she went flying forward after the Colonel like a hawk.
"PAH...RAYED! RHHESSSTTTT!" called the Top. Across the lounge, legs spread apart and hands joined behind backs.
The recruits hadn't snapped to attention. They figured they had already done their part in the latest combat episode of the Corps' history. They were leaning in their corner taking it all in.
"Has to be the volume of those speakers. It must have pumped up the vibrations," mused Roach amidst the Colonel's whimpering screams as the Lieutenant pummeled his face in. There were two or three sudden thumps as the Colonel took several severe spinning back kicks at close quarters and got thrown against the wall, finally sliding down towards the deck. In a few short seconds, the tape ran out and only Kelly's heavy breathing could be heard.
The Lieutenant turned limping heavily back towards the lounge, apparently having turned an ankle while kicking the Colonel's lights out, still spouting streams of challenging insults to the Army as she went. Her appearance in the doorway reminded some in the crowd of old westerns they had seen—only the gunslinger here was naked from the waist up. As she dragged herself toward the bar, the Top sprung to attention, called out loudly, "MA'AM!" and held out a freshly opened bottle of beer to her. Maysfield looked favorably on his counterpart for the first time that day.
Kelly snatched the beer from his hand with a snarl, poured half down her throat, and the rest over her head. As she approached Christopher, he snapped quickly to attention.
"Ma'am!" he called out. "The Gunnery Sergeant would like to point out that the Lieutenant is fairly out of uniform!" He held out his hand and produced a set of earpieces. Kelly had to stand on her toes to look into Christopher's eyes, snarling and sputtering like a wolf with a paw caught in a trap. Roach gave Lewis five to one odds that she was going to bitch-slap the hell out of him. She drew her hand back as if she was going to slap, but her hand moved with lightening speed and snatched the two little rubberized discs from his hand. She turned slowly around and walked off towards the office to retrieve her uniform, stuffing the earpieces in her ears as she went, still growling like an angry bulldog.
Tozzi looked at Fletcher. "Should we go in after her?"
Fletcher leaned back on the bar, took a long swallow of beer, then said, "Not unless we want our asses kicked, too! We'll wait by the door!" As the two Mollys left the lounge, they saw the two senior Sergeants standing over Tywell's twitching body.
"I'll be damned!" said the old Top to the Master Sergeant, as he pointed to the colonel's naked genitals. "I guess he ain't a full bird, now is he?"
Maysfield nodded in agreement, tapped the Top in the chest and motioned that they return to the lounge for another beer.
Back at the bar, Gunny Christopher turned towards the Roach. Through the darkness, Gunny saw CR throw him a thumbs-up. The three Boots came to attention, snapping a salute any DI would have been proud to call his own. They turned and walked through the new found silence back towards their ship, having had more than their fill of shore leave for this trip. Stone had walked towards the door and stood there watching them exit. They had gotten about twenty feet away when he heard Meatball say to no one in particular, "Ga'damn, we're good!"
