Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil (8 page)

Zechariah Brattle’s Office, Interstellar City, Kingdom Zechariah Brattle rubbed a hand wearily across his brow. He’d been had, hoodwinked, fooled and he was sick to the depths of his soul that he could have let the scientists get away with it. His routine inquiry to Universal Labs in Fargo on Earth had just been returned. According to the lab, Dr. Joseph Gobels was still on Kingdom and had reported nothing about finding a living Skink. “If you have any further information on this matter, please communicate it to us at once as it may be of the greatest importance to the Confederation,” the message concluded. There was no denying the imperious tone of the message or that it was perfectly justified.

“So what am I to do?” Zechariah asked himself aloud. “Admit how serious a mistake I made?” He smashed a fist onto his desk in frustration. Well, admitting to that publicly wouldn’t be half as bad as when he told Hannah and the boys that Moses had been kidnapped by a pair of rogue scientists. He thought about taking it to the Lord in prayer. “No, Lord,” he said quietly, “You have given me this cup for a reason and I’ve got to drink from it.”

So what does a man do when God has given him a job and then stands back to see how well he handles it? Zechariah knew. “Lord, I’ll try this first,” he said aloud, and then he sat down and wrote a long letter, which he sent by FTL drone to the one person he knew who could help him. He sent it to Charlie Bass.

SEVEN

Office of the Commanding General, Task Force Aguinaldo, Camp Swampy, Arsenault The rain fell in sheets outside the headquarters building. General Aguinaldo had set up his training base in the tropical region of Arsenault because he was certain the Skinks came from a watery world and he believed that when the place was finally discovered his Marines and soldiers would have to be prepared to fight them there under the worst conditions. His mission was twofold: to find their home world and destroy them once and for all, and to be prepared at a moment’s notice to fight them if and when they appeared again anywhere in Human Space. But just then he was not quite ready to do either, at least not with the forces currently available. Colonel Rene Raggel, late aide to General Davis Lyons, who had commanded the secessionist army on Ravenette, sat quietly in General Aguinaldo’s office, waiting for him to return from a staff conference. The Marine corporal who was Aguinaldo’s enlisted aide had given him a delicious cup of coffee and told him to make himself comfortable. Raggel was tired. He had only just arrived from Ravenette, but his orders had been to report immediately and directly to the task force commander. So there he sat, still dripping from the downpour outside. When he’d first arrived at Camp Alpha, Arsenault’s main spaceport, he’d been impressed by the beauty of the world in that northern hemisphere. But deep in the tropics in the middle of the monsoon season, he wasn’t so sure anymore about the

“beauty” of the place. And, of course, everyone was still talking about the tsunami that had killed so many in that region only recently.

The room was not climate-controlled and one of the windows was open. The roar of the rain was muted but it was a constant background noise. A damp breeze wafted in through the window. It actually felt good. Suddenly several tiny blue flashes winked at the window. Obviously the building was equipped with some form of the commercial Silent Guard system that fricasseed insects trying to fly through it. Raggel was getting comfortable. That breeze, laden with moisture as it was, felt delicious. He wondered what it’d be like in the room without the Silent Guard system. If he sat there much longer, Colonel Raggel realized, he’d doze off. He yawned and looked around the room. It was absolutely bare of the usual memorabilia with which flag officers decorated their office suites. A stand directly behind the general’s desk held three flags: Confederation of Human Worlds, Confederation Marine Corps, and one with two gold novas—the insignia of the Marine Corps Commandant, which Aguinaldo had been before being given command of this task force. As the rank of commandant was also the position—the Marine Corps only had one person of that rank at a time—he wondered what insignia Aguinaldo was wearing as a full general—a rank the Confederation Marines hadn’t had before Aguinaldo received this assignment. It was a Spartan office. Raggel smiled. This General Aguinaldo and Raggel’s erstwhile commander, General Davis Lyons, had in common a disdain for military pomp. He liked that.

“Keep your seat!” Aguinaldo said as he burst suddenly through the door. “Johnny!” he called to his enlisted aide, “another cup of joe in here! Refill, Colonel?” He extended his hand to Raggel and shook it hard, then plopped into the chair next to him at the small coffee table. He stretched his legs out and sighed. “Damn staff conferences, endless conferences, Colonel, you know what I’m talking about.”

Colonel Raggel regarded Aguinaldo carefully. He was dressed in a combat field uniform, as was everyone he’d seen at the headquarters. He was short, sinewy, his dark complexion bespeaking more of his Filipino father than his Dutch mother. He was not an awesome person—he did not try to overpower people with a “commanding” presence—but he was a man who radiated confidence and energy. And Raggel’s insignia question was answered; Aguinaldo wore four silver novas on each collar, one more than any other Confederation Marine Corps general officer.

The corporal served Aguinaldo’s coffee and poured some more into Raggel’s cup. “May I call you Rene, Colonel? Thanks, Johnny,” he told the corporal, “please shut the door and tell Dottie we’re not to be disturbed, will you?” Dottie was the Marine commander who ran Aguinaldo’s personal staff and his office, which included keeping his daily agenda. Aguinaldo regarded Colonel Raggel over the rim of his coffee cup. “Think we’ll have rain, Colonel?”

“Intermittent showers, sir. Quite normal for this time of the year,” Raggel replied, and they laughed. Even though he had no idea why he had been called there, by name, from Ravenette, the Marine’s personality was having its effect. Raggel was beginning to relax in Aguinaldo’s presence.

“Rene,” Aguinaldo began, “I know you just got down here, haven’t had a chance to check in, get quarters even, but we’ve a lot to do and I want you to start right now. To make a long story short, Rene, when I went out looking for reliable officers to work with me getting my task force combat-ready, your name came up. You worked with General Cazombi, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir. I worked with him on the surrender terms and POW repatriation process after General Lyons surrendered our army.”

“I know. I know we were on opposite sides in that war. But that was then, this is now. The president has ordered that we forget all that. The Coalition worlds are back in the Confederation and we are facing a mutual danger far, far more potent than the late, short-lived secessionist ambitions. I need good men to face that threat, and you, Rene, have been recommended to me as someone I can rely on.”

Raggel wiped a drop of perspiration running down the side of his cheek.

“Wondering why it’s not climate-controlled in here, Colonel?” Aguinaldo asked with a grin.

“Um, it is rather warm in here, sir.”

“We believe the Skink home world is very much like it is here right now: hot and wet. We’re training to invade that place when we find out where it is. So I am acclimating the task force for those conditions—and that includes my staff and me. Get used to life in the tropics, Colonel.”

“Very good, sir. May I ask to whom the honor goes for recommending me?”

“Volunteered you is more like it.” Aguinaldo grinned. “Alistair Cazombi. You’ve had police experience, Rene?”

Raggel had come to like General Cazombi very much but the question surprised him. “Yes, sir, but that was a long time ago.”

Aguinaldo leaned forward and placed his coffee cup carefully on the table. “Okay, Rene, here it is. I have a military police battalion that’s been assigned to my task force. It’s full of misfits and virtually useless as a military unit. I want you to take command of this battalion, knock it into shape. You have unlimited authority to do that. Promote, demote, transfer anyone who doesn’t cut the mustard. Whatever equipment or training they need, you ask and you shall receive. You have thirty days from today to get those duds ready for training. For all I know, we may not even have that much time. This could be a come-as-you-are war, Rene; the Skinks could show up anywhere at any time and we’ll be off to the races. That is why you’ll see no dress uniforms of any kind in this task force, combatticals only, because we have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. Can you handle this assignment? I’m not asking if you will—you have no choice—but I’m asking if you can.”

“Uh, sir, that sergeant major sitting in the outer office—?”

On the way in Raggel had nodded casually at the senior noncom sitting stiffly in a corner, a massive man with bumps on his clean-shaven head. He’d noticed the crossed pistols on his uniform, the traditional insignia of the Military Police Corps, and wondered what the man was doing sitting outside the task force commander’s office.

“That is Command Sergeant Major Krampus Steiner, formerly the senior NCO of the Seventh Independent Military Police Battalion. Dottie will give you the personnel records for every man—and the one woman—in the battalion. Go over them with Steiner. Dottie’ll give you an office to work in. See if you want to keep Steiner. If you do, fine; if not, get rid of him. But I think you’ll want to keep him. Oh, I’ll formally introduce you to the rest of my staff after you’ve vetted the Seventh’s personnel files and selected whom you want to work with down there.

“So I ask you again, Rene, can you work with these guys and make something out of them?”

“Yes, sir, I can.”

“Good! Dottie!” he shouted, “send the sergeant major in here right now!”

Headquarters, Seventh Independent Military Police Battalion, Fort Keystone, Arsenault Colonel Raggel and Sergeant Major Steiner sat in a small office cubicle just down the hall from General Aguinaldo’s office, methodically going through a manning roster and personnel summary sheets on the men and one woman currently assigned to the Seventh Independent Military Police Battalion. With Steiner’s help—mainly his candid appraisal of each man—Raggel formed two piles of summaries: on the left, those who would be sent home; on the right, the ones who’d remain assigned to the battalion. The left-hand stack was very small, by comparison, and consisted mostly of officers and noncoms and a few other ranks whose records revealed total inexperience or monumental incompetence or men about whom Steiner had nothing good to say. That stack consisted only of the worst incompetents and drunkards. Colonel Raggel soon came to realize that if drinking to excess were the only criterion for sending a man home, the Seventh Independent Military Police would soon cease to exist. Conspicuously missing was the sheet of Lieutenant Colonel Delbert Cogswell, the officer who commanded the battalion on Ravenette. He had retired as soon as the battalion had been repatriated. “A decent enough officer, Colonel,” Steiner had remarked, “but too fond of the booze.” Steiner did not drink, at least not to excess, a rarity in the Seventh MPs, and he despised those who did, although under Colonel Cogswell he had been powerless to do anything about it. Things had changed. Raggel had gone over Steiner’s sheet first. A professional police officer in civilian life, he had earned several citations for bravery and two or three complaints for excessive use of force. When Raggel asked him about those incidents he had replied, “I only beat the bastards that deserved beating. Ya gotta understand, Colonel, when ya deal with scum sometimes they gits to ya.”

Raggel had decided on that basis, and his sobriety, to keep Steiner as his sergeant major. When they began their review, Steiner had leafed through the printouts and handed Raggel the one for the CO of the First Company, a Lieutenant Keesey. “Git rid of this bastard, Colonel.”

Raggel glanced at the man’s sheet. He could see nothing amiss with his record. “Why, Top?”

“He’s a fuckin’ pervert, sir. He gits his rocks off hurtin’ people.” Keesey’s sheet went into the left-hand pile. Steiner pawed through the stack of sheets again and withdrew two more. “This here’s the sheets on First Sergeant ‘Skinny’

Skinnherd of Fourth Company ’n his company clerk, Corporal Queege. I’d git rid of both of ’em.”

Raggel reviewed the sheets silently. “Well, Top,” he said,

scratching his head, “this Skinnherd appears to be a good first sergeant, and this corporal, hell’s bells, she’s got the Bronze Star for valor! ’N lookit the schools she’s been to and her efficiency ratings! Looks like to me she’s eminently qualified in all phases of company administration, Top. Why the heck would I get rid of a good clerk?”

“Skinnherd is a good top soldier, sir, most of the time. But two strikes against ’im: He’s a big boozer ’n he’s been porkin’

that corporal, at least that’s what every man in the battalion believes, and what they believes is what’s real to ’em. That ain’t good for anybody’s morale, sir, troop leaders formin’ love-bird relationships with the junior enlisted.” And then he told Raggel about the bet Skinnherd had made with Queege, one hundred credits if she could eat baby slimies and drink a liter of ale within a specified time.

“Ohmigawd,” Raggel groaned. He felt sick even thinking about such a thing. He’d grown up on Ravenette and knew very well how disgusting the slimies were. “That’s, uh, inhuman!” he gasped. Furthermore, and he did not have to say this, Skinnherd’s conduct was unbecoming of a senior noncommissioned officer, abusing a lower-ranking soldier like that. “Uh, did she win the bet?”

“Yes, sir, ’n then puked all over Skinnherd. Colonel Cogswell was there ’n he presided over the whole affair.”

“Jesus God, Top, no wonder the Marines rolled you guys up like a rug.” And without another word Skinnherd’s sheet flew into the left-hand pile, but Raggel held on to Queege’s. “I don’t know about this corporal though. Good clerks are hard to come by.”

Steiner shrugged. “Well, ever’body likes the girl; she’s sort of the battalion’s mascot, if you know what I mean, sir. But she is a good clerk. When Skinnherd was recovering from too much booze, she ran the company. The lieutenants who was appointed to command Fourth Company, they ran through there like a dose of salts, one after th’ other, ’n left the orderly room exclusively to them two. Queege held the place together more than once, when she was sober. But she’s a boozer, sir, a big one, ’n she’s got the reputation that she put out for Skinnherd. I’d send her home.”