Direct Fire #4 Drop Trooper Page 21

  “Captains fight wars, Top. That was what he would tell me. He would never let them promote him off the battlefield, out of combat, not because he loved it, though he might have, but because it was what he did best. He could see the flux of the battle, see who would break and who wouldn’t, knew by instinct who to put where. It’s a rare gift, and one tied, I think, to the bedrock of his conscience, to his instinctive knowledge of what was right. He could see it in others and valued it over all the ooh-rah bullshit and bravado. If you wanted to impress Phillip Covington as a Marine or as a person, you had to be willing to stand up for the right.

  “When the time came…,” she said, and her gruff, harsh voice finally broke. She didn’t sob, and if there were any tears, they were hidden beneath the brim of her cover. “When the time came to make a choice between letting himself be saved or accomplishing the mission, Captain Covington made the only choice he could, the only one that fit with his unmovable conscience. He sacrificed himself not just to accomplish the objective but so his Marines wouldn’t die trying to save him, because he valued their lives over his own.”

  She paused and sucked in a deep breath.

  “The greatest memorial we could give such a man is to follow his example, and to lead by it. And the greatest honor we could give him now, at the end, is simply to say that this man, Phillip Covington, was a Marine.”

  We hadn’t planned it, hadn’t rehearsed it, but we said it in chorus as if we had.

  “Ooh-rah!”

  It was, I thought, the perfect eulogy, and she was the perfect person to give it. If Voss had lived, she would have insisted on giving it and while we all would still have honored the Skipper’s memory, this was more fitting.

  “Battalion, attention!”

  I marched forward, ready to take over and say a few words of my own, but before I even had the chance to salute, Greg Cronje burst through the tent flap, his face red, his eyes wide. My first thought was that he’d brought a weapon and I made ready to either run or fight depending on what he did, but he was unarmed and when he lunged for Top, it was only to grab the mic on the stand beside her.

  “I respected Phil Covington!” he insisted, his slurring words amplified across the tent. I could smell alcohol on him and I wondered where he’d gotten it. Any personal stash he might have had would have been destroyed with the Iwo, so he had to have bought it, or paid to have it made for him. “Honestly, I did! I would never have done anything to hurt him! It wasn’t my fault. I had no choice but to….”

  I’d heard enough. Maybe Top would have been right if the bastard had stayed away, had kept his head down and tried not to make waves, but to show up drunk for the Skipper’s memorial…. I took a step toward him, full intent on turning him into hamburger.

  But Top was closer. And I’ll be damned if she wasn’t faster, too. I didn’t even see her knee rise up between Cronje’s legs, but everyone heard the wheeze of breath leaving him as he doubled over. He didn’t drop the mic then, miraculously, holding onto it as if by instinct. When the right cross smashed his nose, though, his fingers went slack and the microphone fell with a thump that came through the speakers, and the impact of the captain’s back beside the mic came through as well despite his attempt to drown it out with a choked cry of pain.

  There was no sound. Everyone had been at attention, and with the position came an inertial resistance to moving or speaking that lasted a few seconds into the event. And of course, there was the shock and disbelief, not that Top was capable of violence, but more that Cronje had dishonored the memorial. But the shock evaporated into outrage and concern, as embodied in the persons of Captain Geiger and Lt. Freddy Kodjoe rushing toward the front.

  Top moved not a centimeter, hands at her sides, fists clenching and unclenching, as if she were trying to decide whether Cronje deserved to be hit again.

  “Did you fucking see that?” Cronje was whining, rolling to his side, blood gushing out of his smashed nose. “She struck a superior officer! I’m fucking filing charges!”

  “Greg,” Geiger growled, “you have exactly thirty seconds to get your worthless ass out of here or you’re looking at a court-martial for drinking on duty. Don’t make me repeat myself or we’ll add assault and battery to the charges. As far as I’m concerned, you took a swing at First Sergeant Campbell and she defended herself.”

  Cronje squawked with outrage, wobbling slightly as he got to his feet. He cast a pleading glance at Freddy, who was standing off to the side, staring between the two captains.

  “Freddy!” he said. “You saw what happened! You’ll testify that she assaulted me, won’t you?”

  I searched Freddy’s face and saw anger and disgust, though I wasn’t sure just yet who it was aimed at. Freddy Kodjoe’s lip curled in a scowl.

  “I,” he declared, “didn’t see a Goddamned thing.” He turned to go back to his platoon, but paused next to me, unable to meet my eyes. “I’m sorry, Cam. He wasn’t worth it.”

  I wasn’t surprised to be called into the Brigade Commander’s office the next morning. If anything, I was surprised it took that long.

  McCauley’s office was the exception to the rules the rest of us were under because he was a general and they make their own rules. We were in tabernacles, the Hebrews wandering through the desert for forty years, while McCauley had one of the few surviving administration buildings at the spaceport, the doors repaired from where Force Recon troops had breached them, air conditioning already installed along with a collection of folding, plastic desks and wheeled office chairs, and a very expensive overhead holographic projector.

  “Lt. Alvarez here for the general,” I told the clerk in the front room of the office, walled off from the general’s private offices with a curtain because the Tahni didn’t have the same ideas about privacy that we did, apparently.

  The clerk was a First Lieutenant, and I tried to imagine how I would feel going through the Academy, serving my time as a platoon leader…and then winding up filing reports and filtering appointments for a general. So, when the clerk scowled at me, I didn’t take it personally.

  “Let me check and see if he’s available.”

  I stood at parade rest in front of the man’s chest-high desk, savoring the smell of his hot coffee and wishing I’d had time to grab a cup to go before I’d been called here from the chow hall. I wasn’t a huge fan of coffee before the Marines, but at this point, I would have taken an IV drip of the stuff. He murmured something into his ‘link, then listened for a moment.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, then his eyes flickered upward to mine, meeting them as briefly as possible, as if he was disappointed at the answer he’d been given. “You can go in.”

  The divider was hard plastic, unfolding from one wall to another like an accordion, and the door was a part of it, just to give the office something more permanent than some flimsy curtain to push aside. I knocked, knowing it would be expected.

  “Come.”

  I sucked in a breath, steeling myself for what was to come, and pushed the door open.

  “Close it behind you,” McCauley said, motioning to the door.

  I shut it, then came to attention and saluted as sharply as I recalled how. It had been a while.

  “Sir, Lt. Alvarez reports.”

  He returned the salute quickly, which was better than I’d hoped for. When senior officers were upset, sometimes they’d make a junior officer or enlisted man hold the salute for a long time while they decided whether or not to release them.

  “At ease, Alvarez,” he told me. “Have a seat.”

  I sat upright, not quite at attention but not relaxed even one little bit. I was sure the next thing out of his mouth would be an order to tell him what I’d seen at the memorial, and when it wasn’t, I almost stumbled over my words, since everything I’d prepared was how to color the story to keep Top out of the brig.

  “Alvarez,” he said, fingers intertwined on the desk in front of him, expression unusually pensive, “you’re getting bumped up to Fi
rst Lieutenant. It’s a little early, but not that early. You’re going to be the permanent replacement for Phil Covington as Delta Company commander.”

  Oh, okay. That’s what this is about.

  I shifted mental gears and tried to think of something intelligent to say. “Thank you” didn’t seem right because I was absolutely certain I didn’t want the job.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, instead. “If I may, sir, how are we handling my company XO and my replacement as platoon leader?”

  He regarded me evenly, a hint of approval in his eyes as if I’d asked the question he’d expected.

  “You have the choice of Lieutenants Cano or Kovacs for your XO. There are a few platoons out there who lost enough people that we’re folding them into other units and we’re going to draw platoon leaders off that pool. You’ll get two, one to replace you, one for your XO. I know you’re entirely missing Second Platoon, I read the reports, but that will have to wait for the replacements to arrive from Inferno. You’ll get a complete unit with a PL already in place before we ship out of here.”

  I nodded, trying to figure out why I was here. Captain Geiger could have told me all this herself, and I was sure he had to have gone over it with her. Brigade commanders didn’t call lieutenants into their office just to discuss company business.

  “Captain Geiger, by the way,” he went on, “is now Major Geiger, and she is the permanent replacement for Colonel Voss.” He waved a hand in a rolling motion. “And she’ll be picking her XO from among her senior company commanders, and getting replacements for them, etc.…”

  He leaned back in his chair, regarding me with hooded eyes.

  “I’m telling you this rather than her,” he finally clarified, “because I wanted to let you know that Major Geiger, now that she is your battalion commander, is putting you in for a Silver Star for your actions at the spaceport.” He shrugged. “After reviewing the recordings, I intend to approve it. I wanted you to hear it from me.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, blowing a soft breath out through my teeth.

  He raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth turning up.

  “That will make, unless I’ve lost count, two silver stars and a bronze on your chest, Lieutenant, every one of them with a V for valor.”

  “I’ve been lucky enough,” I said carefully, “to serve under some incredible leaders, sir, Captain Covington chief among them.”

  “And he will get his recognition as well, I assure you,” McCauley told me, nodding as if he knew where I was going next. “But I wanted to talk to you about your future, Cameron.”

  Oh, boy. It’s Cameron now.

  “Where do you see yourself when this war ends, son?”

  When the war ends? Shit, I had a problem even seeing the war ending, period.

  “I thought I’d take my Resettlement Bonus, sir,” I confessed. “Find a nice colony and set up a homestead there.”

  “And likely someone who joined the Marines to get out of the Trans-Angeles Underground would find that appealing,” McCauley admitted. “For a while. But you’re going to live a long time. Do you think you could settle for the life of a yeoman farmer for the next two or three centuries?”

  “What did you have in mind, sir?” I asked, knowing he was going to get to it eventually and wanting to get it out of the way now instead of dragging it out.

  “There seems to be a general belief,” he told me, “that once this war is over and won, the military will be cut back to nothing. I am here to tell you, that is not the case. If we beat the Tahni at Tahn-Skyyiah, which I believe we will, the Fleet and the Marines will still be needed to enforce the peace.” He shrugged. “And just because the Tahni are the only other intelligent life we’ve discovered so far doesn’t mean they’re the only ones in the galaxy. We’ll still have a sizable military, and the problem in my estimation, will be a shortage of available officers.” He pointed across the desk at me with a computer stylus. “With your record, son, you could be sitting in my chair in another ten years. You could be Commandant of the Marine Corps in twenty, if you’re any good at schmoozing with politicians.”

  I rocked back just a centimeter, trying to imagine myself as a general. Hell, I was having trouble picturing myself as a company commander and I’d already done that. I had to admit, it was appealing—not the part about being a general, but the idea of a home, of something that would still be there for me after the war.

  But isn’t Brigantia a home? Isn’t Vicky a home?

  They were…but they weren’t something I knew, at least not yet. I’d never been married, never lived with a girl for more than a few days. And I certainly had no idea how to be a fucking farmer. I knew how to be a Marine, and I knew I could learn to be a company commander or whatever came next, in that framework.

  “You don’t have to make up your mind now,” McCauley told me. “Even if things go perfectly—and they never do—we’ll be stationed here for weeks, possibly months. And God alone knows how long it will take to secure the Tahni home system. But I did want you to start thinking about it.”

  “Yes, sir,” I told him, meaning it. “I will.”

  “Very good, Lieutenant.” He made a dismissive gesture. “There are a lot of administrative duties that go with your new position, but I’m sure Major Geiger will go over those with you when you meet with her later this morning.”

  “Sir,” I said, swallowing hard before I could force the words out, “there is one other thing. Captain Cronje, sir. I wonder if you’ve reviewed the recordings of his actions at the power plant.”

  McCauley’s expression darkened, and I thought, perhaps, I had really stepped in the shit this time.

  “I have,” he said. “It was disturbing and shameful, but….” He tossed his head. “It’s no longer something with which we need to concern ourselves.”

  That, I thought, was an odd phrasing.

  “What do you mean, sir?”

  He regarded me with eyes gone cold, and looking into them I decided maybe the man did have combat experience, after all.

  “Captain Gregory Cronje,” he told me, “walked to the edge of the perimeter fence at 0235 this morning, put the barrel of a service pistol into his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

  22

  Aside from the general’s digs, one of the first things the engineers set up in Deltaville was the Officers’ Club. There has to be some deep, philosophical statement about the military in there somewhere, but since I was an officer now, I didn’t try to find it, just went to have a drink.

  It was the first night off I’d had in a week, every night where I wasn’t leading the company on a combat patrol, I was devoted to planning sessions the pacification of nearby cities. Deltaville wasn’t the only city on this world, of course, though it was where the Tahni had shot their load and concentrated all their defenses. It was a difference in psychology, I suppose, putting all their eggs in one basket and chancing everything to one, huge battle rather than distributing them evenly and forcing us to root them out a bit at a time. It was tough to say which strategy would have killed more humans, but the one they’d chosen had left the other cities nearly defenseless, which had worked out pretty well for me, personally, because I hadn’t looked forward to riding one COP to another. And the difference between a Forward Operating Base and a Combat Outpost is stark.

  As things stood now, we were launching airmobile raids out of Deltaville, Force Recon troops mainly with Drop-Troopers on the outskirts for a rapid response force. The flight time was a bitch, but at least we could sleep in our own cots at the FOB most nights. I could live with it. The downside was, I hadn’t had a chance to do more than wave hello to Vicky in six days, but we’d finally managed to get the same night off.

  The Officers’ Club had been a storage building for construction equipment, so it had plenty of room, though it was short on furniture. Some bright engineering crew had made a bar from a row of Tahni cargo containers covered by plastic doors salvaged from the wreckage. Barstools were actual T
ahni chairs, and I guess there were advantages to going to war with another bipedal humanoid. The liquor was synthahol made in a food processing unit, the lowest common denominator of anything drinkable, but no one was complaining.

  Vicky was waiting for me when I arrived, sitting at the bar, nursing a plastic cup with some sort of mixed drink and a forlorn expression.

  “Hey,” I said, leaning over to kiss her, not bothering to check who was watching. They could put the Article-15 right next to my silver star. One of my silver stars. I frowned at her expression. “Everything okay?”

  “I love you, Cam,” she told me, “but if you think I’m remotely okay, you’re worse at understanding women now than you were when I first met you.”

  I shaped a silent whistle and sat down beside her, waving at the corporal tending bar.

  “Whatever you have that’s closest to tequila,” I told him before I turned back to Vicky. “So, spill. What is it? You lose somebody on your last patrol?” I hadn’t heard about any casualties in the Drop-Troopers the last few days, but sometimes the brass didn’t want that kind of thing spread around.

  “I haven’t been on any patrols,” she ground out, downing half of her drink in one gulp to punctuate the sentence.

  “What?” My face screwed up in confusion. “But I saw the patrol roster. I know Alpha went out twice already.”