Starfist: Hangfire (7 page)

"Thank you, bosun," Sturgeon, unable to return the salute with a bag in each hand, said with a nod. He looked around to get his bearings and headed, in the proper short-step shuffle that kept the shoelets attached to the deck, toward a sign that read TRANSIENT TERMINAL SHUTTLE. He stepped out of the shufflers before boarding the local shuttle. The transient terminal was maintained at 0.5-g, so he wouldn't need magnetic assistance to stay on the deck there.

Several Marines were waiting for transportation planetside, mostly couriers, junior officers, and mid-level noncommissioned officers. Sturgeon exchanged proper greetings with them. He was on leave, so he had to buy a ticket on a United Atmosphere shuttle. He and the couriers ignored each other, though the juniors were all acutely aware of the brigadier and behaved themselves better than they would have had a flag officer not been present. The army and navy personnel—an army major the highest rank among them—did their best to ignore the presence of a Marine brigadier.

The wait for the shuttle wasn't long. A steward, following proper military protocol, held Brigadier Sturgeon aside until everyone else boarded, then sat him closest to the exit so he, as the highest ranking person on board, could be the first off when the shuttle landed at Lynn J. Frazier International Airport outside Fargo, home of the Confederation Council—in effect, the capital city of the Confederation of Human Worlds.

Sturgeon might be on leave, but he wasn't going to waste any time being a tourist. He would go directly to the heart of the Confederation military establishment—both the Combined Chiefs of Staff and Headquarters Marine Corps were in Fargo. His first order of business would be to find a place to stay.

CHAPTER FIVE

Housing was provided for military personnel assigned to duty at the Combined Chiefs or the headquarters, but visitors were on their own. Brigadier Sturgeon managed to find a room in a modest bed-and-breakfast a short tube ride from the Hexagon. It was a somewhat longer tube ride to HQMC, on the top of what passed for a hill in southeastern North Dakota—the Marines had always liked to keep themselves separate from mere soldiers and sailors.

Brigadier Sturgeon didn't bother to completely unpack before he put on his dress reds and his overcoat. It was May, mid-spring, but the temperature hovered not far above freezing. Properly dressed, he headed for the Hexagon to pay a visit to the C-1, the Combined Chiefs personnel department.

Regardless of what he'd said to Colonel Ramadan, he suspected the foul-up lay with the Combined Chiefs rather than HQMC.

Brigadier General (Select) Wolford M'Bwabor-Onorosovic, IV, Second Deputy Director, Assignments Division, Confederation Armed Forces C-1, welcomed Brigadier Sturgeon into his office most fulsomely.

"Brigadier! Welcome to the Hexagon!" M'Bwabor-Onorosovic grasped Sturgeon's hand in both of his and pulled him to a visitor's chair. "It's quite rare that we receive a current commander of any combat arms unit, much less the commander of one of those Marine FISTs." He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling as though seeking guidance. "As a matter of fact, I believe you are the first FIST commander, current or former, I've ever had the pleasure of meeting." He gave an impression of skipping as he walked to the far side of his desk and sat in his commanding chair. His chair was on a low platform, not visible from the desk front, so that he sat higher than his visitors and they had to look up at him. Seated, he clasped his hands and leaned over his forearms, which lay on the desktop. His smile was broad, intended to be infectious. Sturgeon didn't return it.

"How do you like Fargo so far? Is this your first visit?"

"Haven't seen anything but a couple of tubes and a B-and-B so far, but I've been here before, so I know what I'm not missing."

M'Bwabor-Onorosovic laughed loudly, but short of a guffaw. "I know what you mean, Brigadier, I do indeed." His head shake failed to budge his grin. "I cannot for the life of me comprehend why anybody would put a city, much less a capital city, in such a barren location. I grew up on Argent, you know.

Have you ever been? The most beautiful planet in all of Human Space. Marvelous, towering forests, waterfalls to dwarf Angel Falls, seas so clear you can still see everything around you at a depth of a hundred feet, fruits and flowers that could have served as the model for the Garden of Eden myth." He chuckled, then started and looked pop-eyed at Sturgeon. "No offense intended; I mean if you are Judeo-Christian. I don't intend to slight anybody's religious beliefs."

"None taken, General," Sturgeon said with a patience he didn't feel. He wanted to conduct his business, but he had to humor the man, who seemed to him more and more a buffoon. "I'm a Marine.

We swear by the most shocking things."

"Yes, well." Right. The general realized that the man before him was not an administrator or bureaucrat. He quickly eyed the panoply of ribbons on Sturgeon's scarlet tunic. Some of them he recognized, such as the Gold Nova—the military's second highest decoration for heroism—and the Bronze Star with gold starburst, another decoration for heroism in action against an enemy. Most of the others he didn't recognize, though he suspected they were campaign medals. One made him blink: the Marine Enlisted Good Conduct Medal. Then he remembered that all Marine officers are commissioned from the ranks. He shuddered internally. Sturgeon was a real combat Marine, almost the only one he had ever faced, definitely the only one he'd ever been alone with. The broad smile disappeared while he cleared his throat, then slapped itself back into place.

"Well, Brigadier, you didn't make the trip all the way from Thorsfinni's World"—Where in Human Space is that?—"to hear me prate about my home world." He changed his voice from jolly to sincere and lowered the beam of his smile. "What can my office help you with?"

"General, as you know, I command a FIST. Thorsfinni's World, as you may know, is classed as a hardship post. The normal tour of duty is two years, two and a half at the outside. Some of my people have been there three and a half years. No one has been transferred out in... well, when I left there hadn't been any changes of duty station in four months. If there weren't any transfers while I was in transit, it's now nearly six months. I fear the Assignments Division has somehow—inadvertently, I'm sure—misplaced 34th FIST."

The sincere smile stayed on the Second Deputy Director's mouth, but his eyes went blank. Misplaced a FIST? "That's impossible, Brigadier. The Assignments Division doesn't make the change-of-duty-station transfers. That is done by the chiefs of the services. We receive the change-of-duty-station requests, verify them, and issue transfer orders under the titles of the services. We are a conduit, not an originator."

"Headquarters Marine Corps doesn't make such mistakes," Sturgeon said firmly. "The Marine Corps is a small organization. Everyone in the Corps knows where each unit is. It's easy for us to keep track of our people. As you said, all transfers are funneled through your division. That's a lot to keep track of. It doesn't at all surprise me that a small unit in an out-of-the-way place could get overlooked."

"But my dear Brigadier..." The general brushed his hand over a contact spot on his desktop and a display and keyboard morphed out of its surface. He tapped several keys and watched the display come to life. His smile morphed into a moue and his eyes from blank to confused. Slowly, he looked at the Marine. "There is no record of orders for change of duty for anyone in 34th FIST entering the system in the past eight months." He pulled himself fully erect and said with the sincerest gravity he could muster,

"Brigadier, I'm afraid your 'small organization' did indeed manage to lose track of some of its people."

Moments later, a very dissatisfied Brigadier Theodosius Sturgeon was following a guide through the warren of hallways and pedestrian streets in the Hexagon, on his way back to the tube. He was very annoyed by his meeting with the Second Deputy Director of the Assignments Division of C-1. They had to have somehow lost the requests that came to them from HQMC. The Marines never made such mistakes. Never.

He'd go to G-1 at HQMC and get hardcopy of the orders. Then take them back to the Hexagon and wave them under the nose of that supercilious Brigadier General (Select) Wolford M'Bwabor-Onorosovic IV—though he'd rather not have to deal with that ass again. He snorted. For all of his bonhomie, M'Bwabor-Onorosovic had kept the formality of them calling each other by rank, instead of using first names as flag officers more commonly did in private.

I guess he likes being called General, Sturgeon thought. As a brigadier general (select), his actual rank was colonel, but he was in a flag position. Sturgeon knew he outranked him, but M'Bwabor-Onorosovic was not in his chain of command. He snorted.

Brigadier Sturgeon had no trouble finding a seat; the tube car he rode in was almost empty. At the first stop along the way he looked out the window on the opposite side of the car and saw crowds of people waiting on the platforms leading into Fargo. He glanced at the time: It was after 1600 hours, quitting time for government workers. Too late to find anyone in G-1. Then he finally noticed the rumbling in his stomach. He'd been in Fargo for six hours. How long was it since he last ate? He remembered breakfast on the
Admiral Stoloff
, nothing since. No wonder he was hungry; he hadn't had lunch and it was near the dinner hour. What to do: Get off at the next stop and head back into the city? Come back in the morning, maybe make an appointment instead of just dropping in as he did at the Hexagon?

His stomach rumbled again. No, that would take too long. He'd only been a commander on the one other occasion he visited HQMC, but he remembered there was some sort of flag officers' mess. Surely his uniform and ID would get him into it for an early dinner, even though he wasn't headquarters personnel.

The Fargo tube system had gaily decorated stations, each unique, often with colors and designs representative of their location. Stops in residential areas usually had murals of the neighborhoods, images of children playing in parks and the like. A mural at the main campus stop for the Confederation University of the Worlds displayed ivy-covered walls and cap-and-gowned people striding along flagstone pathways, even though no ivy grew on the university buildings and nobody wore caps and gowns any longer, even at graduation ceremonies. The HQMC stop was no exception. Sturgeon was almost the only person who got off the tube car, and he paused to take in the mosaics.

The walls had scarlet and gold tiles in the form of the Confederation Marine Corps emblem, a rampant eagle standing on a globe floating on a starstream. Off to the sides the various campaign medals Marine units had been awarded were picked out in brightly colored tiles. A frieze along the base of the walls displayed the colors of the many enemy units the Confederation Marines had defeated in battle. At both ends of the platform were the emblems of the two Marine Corps directly ancestral to the Confederation Marines: the United States Marine Corps and the British Royal Marines. There were more campaign medals and enemy colors depicted than the last time he visited. He recognized most of the medals—he wore several of them—and there were a few colors he had helped take. His chest swelled and a lump formed in his throat at the sight.

Alone, Sturgeon faced the Royal Marines emblem and saluted it. He about-faced and saluted the emblem of the United States Marine Corps. He knew that without them the Confederation Marine Corps would not exist as the premier fighting organization in human history, and he would not have the Corps as the family he loved so deeply. Moisture formed in the corners of his eyes, and he wiped it away as he turned to head for the lift into the HQMC building complex.

At the surface was a small plaza that split into several walkways headed in different directions. He took the one that went straight ahead to a gate watched over by a small guard-post. A few people trickled out through automated side gates that checked their identification.

A lance corporal with a military police band wrapped around the upper left sleeve of his dress reds overcoat stepped out of the gatehouse and stood at parade rest. He carried a hand-blaster in a shiny white holster hanging from a white Sam Browne belt, a sparkling brass whistle was suspended from the lapel of his overcoat, and a scarlet and gold aiguillette was wrapped around his shoulder. When Brigadier Sturgeon approached within a few paces, the lance corporal snapped to attention and saluted with a white-gloved hand.

Sturgeon came to a halt in front of the MP and returned his salute.

"Sir, how can I help the Brigadier?"

"I'm visiting Earth on leave, Lance Corporal, and have been eating civilian and navy food for the past couple of months. I'm here hoping I can come aboard to get some good Marine Corps chow," he said with a twinkle in his eye.

The lance corporal repressed a laugh. "Good Marine Corps chow" sounded like an oxymoron to him.

He said out loud, "I believe that can be arranged, sir." He gestured to the gatehouse.

Sturgeon stepped inside, removing his hat as he passed under the lintel. Almost immediately he saw the ID verifier. He stepped close to it and stripped off his black leather gloves while the MP, who hadn't removed his hat, went to the comm unit and called the sergeant of the guard to report the visitor.

"Been stationed here long?" Sturgeon asked when the lance corporal completed his call.

"Six months, sir." The lance corporal faced him, again standing at attention, with a small table between them.

"At ease. This is your post. You don't know me."

"Thank you, sir." He slipped easily into parade rest but didn't lock his hands behind his back. Though unlikely, there was always the possibility that the brigadier was a spy or saboteur and that the guard would have to go for his weapon. Strange brigadiers simply didn't show up at 1630 hours very often.

"Good duty?"

"You know it, sir."

Sturgeon chuckled. "Actually I don't. I've spent my entire career in FISTs or on Fleet staffs. This is only my second visit to Fargo."