Starfist: Hangfire (3 page)

"Did you kill anybody?" Van Winkle asked as soon as the door was closed.

"Nossir," the fire team leaders barked.

"Any serious injuries? Other than the guards you had to overcome at the entrances to the command center?"

"Sir, we might have given a guard a concussion," Corporal Kerr said. He gave the number of the room where they'd subdued the five people.

"Sir, a guard put up a pretty good fight," said a fire team leader from Kilo Company. "I think we broke his nose and an arm." He gave the number of the room where they had stashed the man.

Nobody else had anything more severe than bruised egos to report. They were all pretty smug.

"Don't feel too good about yourselves," Van Winkle told them. "Imagine if it had been actual hostiles who burst in here? There'd be quite a few dead people here, and we'd be getting ready to move out on a live operation. With the navy command center in hostile hands, we'd have no way of knowing what we were up against or how much intelligence they had about our strength and intentions." He looked at his Marines sternly. He was pretty sure, though, that no one else could have made it all the way to the command center without being discovered the way his six fire teams had. If for no other reasons than nobody else was likely to have the floor plans.

"Well done, Marines," he finally said "Now Lieutenant Troud will debrief you. Lieutenant."

"Sir!" Troud came to attention.

Van Winkle left the room and the debriefing got under way. The navy was going to want to know every detail of how six Marine fire teams got from outside the building all the way into the command center in its heart without anybody sounding an alarm.

CHAPTER TWO

It was a quiet Sixth Day night in Big Barb's. Only a half-dozen or so fights had broken out. No more than three patrons of the combination bar, restaurant, ships' chandler, and bordello had to be carried out insensate from the vigor of the fisticuffs. The usual raucous singing seemed muted, fewer voices than normal shouting imperfectly remembered lyrics. Raised voices didn't stay raised for long—the more boisterous speakers seemed cowed by the hollow booming of their voices in the relative quiet.

There wasn't anything in particular wrong. It was simply that the Marines of Lima Company's third platoon, the main military habitués of Big Barb's, were tired from the training exercise late the night before. And the fish the inhabitants of the area of Thorsfinni's World called "herring" were running, so most of the fishermen and other seamen who were the bulk of Big Barb's clientele were at sea.

Tired Marines and absent sailors made Big Barb less than her normal jolly self—she wasn't making as much money as on a normal Sixth Day night. Her great bulk threatening a stool's integrity, she sat alone at one end of the scarred bar and glowered out at the half-empty room. She sniffed; not even wonderful Charlie Bass was there. She remembered the deal she'd made with him for the promotion party nearly a year earlier, and a smile threatened to break up the storm cloud of her face, but she battened the smile down.

Several Marines from third platoon sat at a table in the corner nearest the kitchen exit. A few of Big Barb's girls kept them company—partly because they enjoyed the company of the Marines, partly because they hoped to entice some of them to the private rooms upstairs, where the girls made most of their money.

Carlala, a new girl, sat on Claypoole's lap. With the fingers of the arm draped around his shoulders, she idly played with the short hair on his scalp. She leaned against him so that a breast settled lightly on his chest. From time to time, in seeming casual movement, her cheek gently brushed his. Carlala might have been new at the business, but she already had distinct ideas of how to arouse a man without being overt. She wanted to jiggle her bottom on him because her subtlety didn't seem to be getting any reaction, but jiggling would be too overt.

Instead of being aroused, Claypoole absently lay an arm around her waist and let his hand curl slightly where it rested on her thigh. His other hand moved languidly between the stein of Reindeer Ale he sipped from and the Fidelon which he puffed just enough to keep it from going out. Truth was, he was barely aware of the young woman on his lap; his thoughts were elsewhere.

Carlala was certainly pretty enough, and Claypoole had cheered and whistled as much as anybody else a few weeks earlier when she made her first appearance at Big Barb's. She was a bit shorter than average, but her smile and sizable bust made her appear taller in men's eyes. Claypoole had been up stairs with her more than a couple of times. If he'd been in a normal mood that evening, he'd be reacting strongly to her. Probably he'd even be thinking that of all Big Barb's girls she was his favorite. He might even think he'd like to take her away from Big Barb.

That did happen sometimes; Bronnoysund, the liberty town outside the main gate of Camp Major Pete Ellis, was home to a fair number of fat, happy housefraus with a brood of children—in a couple of instances, grandchildren—who had once been Big Barb's girls.

These Marines were behaving in a most uncharacteristic manner. Not one attempted to steal a kiss or tried to feel the softness of a breast. None even patted a nicely rounded bottom. Neither did they seem to have any great interest in getting drunk. They'd had a robust dinner when they arrived a couple of hours earlier, but they hadn't eaten with any of the high gusto with which they normally tore into their reindeer steaks. Since then they'd drunk slowly and talked quietly about inconsequential things, paying the girls no more attention than they might have given kittens hunting wild yarn about their feet.

All the Marines present that night had been stationed with 34th FIST for more than the two years, the normal duty assignment for FIST Marines. Not that Marines were always transferred after two years; sometimes, simply by happenstance, a Marine might stay in one place with one unit for two and a half or even three years. But Thorsfinni's World was classified as a hardship post, and the Confederation Marine Corps was conscientious about transferring men from hardship posts on time.

"CARLALA!" The booming voice rang out over the bang of the door its owner flung open.

Carlala—and all the other girls—looked toward the main entrance to Big Barb's. A dozen big men rolled in. Big Barb herself looked up and momentarily forgot to glower. One of the fishing boats had come to port, and its crew was primed for a night out.

Carlala looked at Claypoole and very deliberately said, "Someone wants me. Do you mind if I go to him?"

Claypoole gave her an absent smile and said, "Have a good time."

With her mouth little more than an inch away from his, Carlala reconsidered the kiss she was about to give him. She gave one wiggle on his lap, just to remind him of what he was missing, then rose and danced off toward the fishermen who'd just arrived. The other young women were already on their way.

In moments each fisherman, one or more of Big Barb's girls clinging like lampreys to him, was headed to satisfy his heart's most immediate desire—to a table for his first good meal in more than a week, to the bar for his first drink since sailing, or for the stairs, to the private rooms on the second floor.

The Marines continued to drink slowly and talk quietly about nothing in particular. Until...

"Think they forgot about us?" Lance Corporal Van Impe asked. He'd been with 34th FIST for more than two and a half years.

"Not a chance," replied Corporal Dornhofer. Of the nine Marines around the table, he'd been on Thorsfinni's World the longest, and he'd been a Marine longer than the others. "There are a lot of things Mother Corps forgets to give her Misguided Children. Mother Corps forgets to promote people." He nodded at Lance Corporal Chan, who had been filling a corporal's billet for longer than normal. "She sometimes forgets to give people medals. She even forgets to issue us gear that works right." Schultz, Claypoole, and Dean smiled; they knew that drill by heart. "But one thing Mother Corps is real good about remembering is rotating people off hardship posts."

"Mother Corps thinks everybody deserves to get the shit duty." Corporal Goudanis chuckled without mirth.

Claypoole, Dean, and Chan looked at each other. They'd arrived on Thorsfinni's World together. The other six had been with 34th FIST longer than they had. Even though they were past due for rotation, they didn't quite feel they had the right to complain in such company.

"We aren't the only ones, you know," Lance Corporal Watson commented.

Corporal Linsman nodded. "Gunny Bass, Staff Sergeant Hyakowa, Corporal Kerr—"

"Kerr doesn't count, he was away for almost two years," Van Impe said.

"Recuperating from wounds suffered on a deployment with us," Dornhofer reminded him. "That counts."

"—Lance Corporal Dupont," Linsman continued, ignoring the interjection, "all three squad leaders, half the gun squad."

"Captain Conorado, Top Myer, Gunny Thatcher," Dornhofer said, picking up the roll call. "Hell, everybody in the company headquarters unit."

"And that doesn't count the men from the other platoons," Goudanis added.

"Anybody know about the rest of the battalion?" Dornhofer asked.

Nobody had enough friends in the other blaster companies—or any of the FIST's other units—to have any idea whether it was just Lima Company that wasn't getting transfers or if the stagnation had spread further.

"We've got a lot of new men in the platoon," Goudanis said. "But every one of them was a replacement for a Marine who was killed or injured too badly to return to duty." He shook his head. "I don't remember the last time we got a new man as a replacement for someone who rotated out. Except Corporal Doyle."

"Special situation," Linsman said.

"Doyle's a pogue," Van Impe said. "Pogues don't count."

"That's a good point," Dornhofer said to Goudanis, ignoring the remarks about Corporal Doyle. "And it really bothers me. A few FISTs, most particularly the 34th, have an unusually high number of deployments. That means we suffer a high number of casualties. Normal procedure is to transfer a Marine out of one of these high-deployment FISTs into a unit that doesn't deploy so he gets a break from being the tip of the pointy end." He glanced around the table. "I think every one of us has a wound stripe.

Several of us have more than one. The longer a Marine is in a high-deployment FIST, the worse the odds against him surviving."

He looked at Schultz. "What do you think, Hammer?"

Schultz grunted. "Mother Corps sends, I go." It really didn't matter to Schultz where he was stationed or for how long. All he asked was to remain a lance corporal until he retired after forty years' service and to be in a unit that had a lot of combat deployments. Thirty-fourth FIST was the best assignment he'd had so far—perhaps no other unit in the Confederation Marine Corps had as many deployments as it did. If he spent the rest of his career with 34th FIST, that was fine with him.

They were silent for a long moment, each man thinking his private thoughts, then Dornhofer leaned his elbows on the table and said, "Something's going on. I've been thinking about requesting mast to find out what it is."

"Request mast?" Chan asked. "You don't have to be so formal about it, the Skipper will see any man in the company who knocks on his door."

Dornhofer shook his head. "I don't mean Captain Conorado. I mean Brigadier Sturgeon."

Every Marine had the right to "request mast," to go to the commander at the appropriate level to get a problem resolved. He didn't have to explain the problem to anyone under that commander—no one could shunt the problem aside or bury it. Request mast was a very serious matter, and never undertaken lightly or for frivolous reasons.

"Brigadier Sturgeon!" several of them exclaimed.

"You don't fool around," Linsman said.

"Why not go to Commander Van Winkle first?" Goudanis asked.

"Because the battalion commander doesn't know anything that the FIST commander doesn't, and the brigadier probably knows things Van Winkle doesn't."

"Don't you think if the brigadier knew he'd have told us by now?" Dean asked.

Dornhofer didn't answer. He knew what Dean was thinking. Confederation Marine Corps officers were all commissioned from the ranks. Every one of them knew what it was like to be on the bottom of the chain of command and have to carry out the orders or live under the dictates that came down that chain. Every one of them knew from firsthand experience what the junior enlisted and junior noncommissioned officers were capable of. Even if the institution the enlisted men sometimes called

"Mother Corps" was occasionally negligent, the officers could be counted on to do their best for their Marines.

"If something's going on that affects us like this, either he doesn't know or he's under orders to not tell us," Linsman said.

"If he doesn't know, somebody needs to tell him. If he's got orders not to tell us, those orders are wrong." The others, even Schultz, who was content being with 34th FIST for an extended period, made movements or noises of agreement.

There was nothing they could do about the situation that night other than complain. But Marines on liberty, with money in their pockets, beer at hand, and willing women nearby, don't stay disgruntled for long. After a while they set about getting happily drunk and started looking for proper female companionship.

As it turned out, by the time Dornhofer filed for his request mast, he couldn't see the FIST

commander.

CHAPTER THREE

It was snowing heavily in Fargo on the day Assistant Attorney General Thom Nast had his second interview with Madame Chang-Sturdevant, President of the Confederation Council.

That first time he'd been only a special agent of the Ministry of Justice, laughed at by superiors who thought him a fool. Madame President, however, knew better and she had given him the job of cleaning up the poaching operation on Avionia, which had resulted in the arrest of numerous government officials, chief among them the Attorney General herself. Nast had subsequently been promoted to Assistant Attorney General and put in charge of the Organized Crime Directorate.