Chains of Command (16 page)

“I hear they had some help from the Chinese.”

“And you’re going to check out their new cozy home.”

“That’s the idea,” I say. “Get eyeballs on the place so we can call in the rest of the Fleet and spoil their little party.”

“I would pay good money to be there when they drag the old NAC administration back home by their scruffs. Give ’em a trial, then hang ’em for treason. Or better yet, shoot them over to Mars and let the Lankies settle that account for us.”

“You want to be a part of that? Come with me. I need a platoon sergeant I can trust. Someone who knows the job.”

Sergeant Fallon barks a laugh.

“You want me to serve under you?”

“You’re the best platoon NCO I’ve ever had. I know it’s a lowly job for a master sergeant, but you know it better than anyone else I know.”

“Andrew, you can get any number of gunnery sergeants in SI who would jump at that chance. You don’t need me to ride herd on a bunch of space apes for you.”

“Look,” I say, and turn the bottle in my hands slowly. “I’m a fresh second louie. I’ve never been in charge of anything more than my battle armor and my radio set. I need people with experience ’cause I sure as fuck don’t have any. Not when it comes to leading thirty-six troops.”

“You’ve been in the shit for half a decade, Andrew. You’re a damn sight more qualified for the job than some boy wonder fresh from Officer U. Don’t fucking worry about it too much.”

“But I do,” I say. “I worry. Because if I find that I’m in over my head, I can’t call a time-out and have them fly in another guy to take over. I fuck up, three dozen grunts are going to bite it.”

“Your day job involves calling down airstrikes. Giving the cruisers targets to shoot nukes at. I think you can deal with the stress of commanding a grunt platoon.”

She puts her bottle to her lips and chugs about half the remaining contents.

“Besides,” she continues. “You know how I know you’ll be a good officer? Because you do worry. I’ve never met a second lieutenant fresh out of the academy who didn’t think he was God’s gift to tactical warfare. You’ll be just fine.”

“Come with me,” I repeat. “It’s a two-week mission. Maybe three. Keep the squad leaders on task and watch my back if things start going sideways. Keep me on the straight and narrow if I start going sideways.”

She doesn’t say anything. Instead, she keeps watching the crowd reacting to the events in the race we can’t see from our vantage point.

“They thought they got away clean,” I say. “Left us here to die. Never came back to check on the mess they left behind. As far as they know, we’re all dead by now, and Earth is Lanky real estate. Think about how much fun it would be to go after them and help fuck up their little paradise.”

“How many ships did they take with them?”

I think for a moment.

“A Navigator supercarrier. A cruiser. Three frigates, I think. And a destroyer. Along with a dozen freighters from the auxiliary fleet.”

“And that’s not counting what they may have squirreled away in their new home system before the Lankies cut their timetable short.”

“Correct,” I say.

“So we’ll be ludicrously outnumbered and outgunned,” Sergeant Fallon says.

“Almost certainly.”

“Fuck.” She grins. Then she looks back over to the crowd watching the race and lets out an exaggerated sigh.

“Two weeks,” she says. “Maybe three.”

“That’s the plan.”

“Did you talk to the general about this?”

“I did,” I say. “He says it’s up to you, but he gave his permission if you decide to come along.”

“What did you have to leave on the table for that?” she asks with a smile.

“Told him I’d join the Brigade and do training for a year and a half.”

She chuckles and drains the rest of her beverage.

“Man, you must really want to hang your nuts back over the fire.”

Sergeant Fallon chucks the empty bottle aside. It clatters to the concrete and bounces off a nearby barrier.

“Ah, what the hell. I’ve done nothing but whipping these hood rats into shape for the last year. This will be like an adventure vacation for me.”

She sighs again. Then she stands up and pats the concrete dust off the set of her fatigues.

“I’ll be your platoon sergeant, Andrew. As a personal favor. For what you did on New Svalbard, and everything after.”

I suppress the urge to jump up and cheer. Instead, I get to my feet in a dignified manner and merely allow myself a satisfied grin.

“Thank you,” I tell Sergeant Fallon. “I didn’t have a backup plan in case you turned me down.”

“Fuck my soft and squishy heart,” she grumbles. “As if I don’t have enough of my old squad nuggets ordering me around already.”

CHAPTER 14

The Limited Duty Officer Academy at Fleet Station Newport is one of the most taxing schools I’ve taken in my time in the service. It’s only a week of classroom instruction, and there’s almost no physical component involved, but getting lectured on officer uniforms, etiquette, and Fleet history and regulations is hard to endure. I know that while they’re teaching me stuff I mostly know already, my new platoon is getting ready for deployment without me. They already cut down the LDO indoctrination to one week instead of two because of our personnel situation, but it’s still a week I could be spending getting to know my new troops and training with them instead of looking at a holoscreen while some Fleet desk jockey drones on about tropical and cold-weather uniforms and how to handle your fork at a formal dinner.

Most of the new officers at LDO Academy are shipboard specialists. There are only two infantry grunts in my class, a new SI lieutenant and a Fleet Security officer. Whenever you stick a bunch of troops from all over the service into a class together, the grunts will naturally gravitate toward each other, and we spend our off time swapping battle stories and running together to remain in fighting shape. I’ve not been back in a classroom setting in years, and it just reinforces to me that humans weren’t meant to sit on their asses for eight hours a day, especially not combat soldiers.

On the second day at LDO Academy, I get an incoming message on my PDP at evening chow. I check the screen to see an inbound connection request from Major Masoud at SOCOM. I leave my half-eaten meal behind and step out of the mess hall to respond to the call.

“Your SI sergeant and his two junior NCOs are in,” Major Masoud says. “Not a problem. They have the chops for the job.”

“They do, sir. What about Sergeant Fallon?”

“It’s your choice,” Major Masoud says. “And I know Sergeant Fallon’s service record, of course. But she’s HD and barely space-qualified. You want to take an HD NCO on a mission out of system?”

“There’s no better platoon sergeant left in the Corps,” I say. “Yes, I want her to come along. We’ve been in combat together off-world. I assure you that she knows her business. On this planet or any other.”

“Oh, I have no doubt,” Major Masoud replies. “Your pick. You want to bring her, you get her. But your platoon may not be altogether happy with a platoon sergeant from Homeworld Defense, regardless of her reputation in the Corps.”

“I don’t need Sergeant Fallon on my team to make the platoon happy,” I say. “I need her to keep the platoon alive and on the job.”

Major Masoud flashes a curt smile.

“Fine,” he says. “She’ll be your platoon sergeant. But be very careful, Lieutenant. This is an unorthodox platoon composition, to say the least. It’s not a common thing to give your platoon-sergeant slot to an HD NCO with minimal space-warfare training. You may be setting yourself up for circumstances that are beyond your ability to control.”

“Yes, sir,” I reply. “With all due respect, that has been the case ever since I signed my terms of enlistment.”

He looks at me as if he’s considering how to reply.

“Your orders are on the way for Gateway on Monday,” he says. “We have absolutely no time to waste. Prepare yourself, Lieutenant Grayson. This may be the most important operation you’ll ever be a part of.”

He disconnects the link, leaving me to look at the momentarily dark screen of my PDP.

“Aren’t they all,” I say to the battered little device.

My LDO Academy class ends with a fizzle instead of a bang. We’re all experienced former NCOs with a low tolerance for dog-and-pony shows, so there’s no corny motivational ceremony, no formation in dress uniform under the eyes of the academy commander with guidons flapping in the wind and long-winded speeches about duty and leadership. Instead, we have a quick little step-out-and-shake-hands affair that lasts all of three minutes, as if our instructors are fully aware of the fact that we are itching to get back to work after a week of learning stuff that’s of very little importance to the war effort. I say a quick good-bye to my infantry running mates, and we dissolve and head out into the weekend quickly and separately, just the way we arrived. I’m on a shuttle back to Luna not forty minutes after I received my official blessing to go forth and be an officer in the NAC Defense Corps, and I feel that I’ve mostly wasted a perfectly good week.

The shuttle schedules are once again all fucked to hell, so it’s Saturday morning before I get back to Luna and the married quarters I share with my wife.

When I unlock the security pad at the door and walk into the place, Halley is asleep in the bedroom, with the sliding door to the sleeping berth open. I put down my gear quietly and step into the kitchen nook to coax a cup of soy coffee out of the personal brewing unit on the counter, a small, officer-only luxury perk Halley got from the supply group a few months ago. There are only a handful of coffee capsules left in the little drawer underneath the unit. As shitty as the military coffee is, we’re running short even on that horrible stuff. Too many mouths to feed, not enough to feed them with.

“You’re home,” Halley says in a sleepy voice from the bedroom as I sit down at the kitchen table. The table is piled high with stacks of printouts and other instructor paraphernalia, and I shove it aside to carve out a little bit of real estate for my coffee mug and my PDP.

“Good morning,” I say. “Coffee?”

“Affirmative,” she answers.

I get back up and drop another capsule into the brewing unit. Halley’s mug is on the kitchen counter, half full of cold coffee. I dump her mug out into the sink, rinse it, and place it underneath the brewing unit.

“Almost out of coffee,” I say.

“No need to try and order more.” Halley comes traipsing out of the bedroom, dressed only in her PT shorts and a green flight suit undershirt, her hair tousled and as unruly as her short cut ever gets. She hugs me from behind and kisses me on the back of the neck.

“Look at you,” she says. “Second lieutenant. I’m no longer poaching among the NCO corps.”

“One week of shake-and-bake school,” I reply. “And I think I may have been asleep half the time.”

“Well, we gotta celebrate tonight while we can. Maybe I can talk the handsome corporal in the O Club out of a bottle of fizzy stuff. He’s been checking me out coming and going for weeks now.”

The coffee brewer spits out its finished product into Halley’s mug. I take it out of the brewer and hand it to her. She takes the mug with both hands and sits down at the kitchen table. I sit back down in front of my own mug.

“Want to do breakfast?” she asks. “It’s 0730 already, but if I get ready quickly, we can catch the tail end of morning chow.”

I look at my wife, at the way even the baggy and unflattering military-issue underwear can’t completely conceal her shapely form underneath, and find that powdered egg and soy sausage patties are not quite the first thing on my list of desires.

“Or I could get out of these sweaty CDUs, hop into the shower, have my way with you in the cot, and take my chances with lunch later.”

Halley looks at me and smiles with her lips on the rim of the coffee mug.

“Plan B it is,” she says. “Go rinse off.”

A good while later, when we’re back in the sleeping nook, with our limbs all tangled up in the sheets and each other, Halley starts humming a tune with her head resting on my shoulder.

“You’re in a good mood this morning,” I observe. “Something I did?”

“Mmmm-hmmm,” she confirms. “That, too. But I got great news yesterday after morning orders.”

“And what are those?”

“I’m handing the keys to the shop to someone else for a while on Wednesday. I got orders for a new assignment.”

I turn to look at her. “Combat unit?”

“No clue. Orders say to report to the 160th at Campbell on Wednesday morning.”

“Down on Earth?”

“Mmm-hmmm,” she says again. “Don’t know what for, but it’s probably to qualify on a new bird, or to do some snake-eater shit for HD. The 160th has all the top-flight hardware. The important thing is that I’ll be free. I’ve been in that instructor slot for too fucking long. Over two years of classes, simulator, flight lessons, classes, simulator, repeat ad nauseam.”

“If they have you flying combat drops for HD, things might get a bit hairy,” I say, remembering all too well the night in Detroit seven years ago when a shot-down drop ship cost us half a squad of dead or wounded.

“You are going out of system on a recon run against God knows what,” Halley says. “Don’t talk to me about hairy. I can handle myself, you know.”

“Better than anyone else I know,” I concede.

We lie in silence for a few moments. Outside in the hallway of the residential pod, an announcement interrupts the quiet hum of the environmental system, inconsequential administrative crap.

“Isn’t it fucked up?” Halley chuckles. “We have a year of married residential bliss, getting laid every other weekend and spending more time together than ever before. And we both can’t wait to get back into combat. What the fuck is wrong with us?”

“I’m not looking forward to battle,” I say.

“Bullshit.”

“No, really. I don’t. But Mars is going down soon. All hands on deck. All bets on one hand. And I don’t want to just sit and wait for that to happen. I don’t want to babysit recruits until we all get orders to file into the drop ships and hope the Orions do the job.”

“You want to control your fate,” Halley says.

I hold up my hand, the left one that was shot to ribbons last year by a security police officer on Independence station. It’s impossible to tell by looking at it where the flesh ends and the prosthetics begin, but I can feel the precise fault line between living matter and cosmetic synthetic material without fail.

“This stopped hurting six months ago,” I say. “But I’m still taking the pills.”

Halley reaches up with her own hand and runs a finger down the center of my palm.

“Why?”

“Feels good. Helps me sleep. Cuts down on the dreams. I take that stuff, I sleep through maybe half the night instead of waking up every other hour.”

“You talk to the Fleet shrink any?”

“Sure.” I shrug. “Felt like I was wasting her time. The fuck do I have to complain about, really? Made it through Fomalhaut and Earth last year. Get to live on base with my wife. Low-risk training job. Bunch of new ribbons on the smock. So what if I can’t sleep through the night anymore? I didn’t suffocate on Mars. Or get blown up on Long Beach last year when we all transitioned into the middle of a Lanky battle group.”