Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty (31 page)

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Authors: Jean Johnson

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“But, a lottery ticket . . . Aren’t precogss ffforbidden to usse their abilitiess fffor . . . ?” He fell quiet as she lifted her fingers, silently urging caution.
Ia waited until they passed the knot of graduated recruits and family members stopped for a chat on the grass next to the path. A training class jogged by; from their plain brown T-shirts and their huffing breaths, she didn’t have to peek into the timestreams to know they were still in their first couple of weeks. She continued once they were out of earshot.
“We aren’t allowed to
personally
profit by them for more than a set amount of money per year—I believe an average year’s wages, whatever that’s considered to be right now. I haven’t ever exceeded even half that amount personally, I’m sure, and not at all in the last half year. Nor are we allowed to let any family member profit by more than that amount, unless it’s tucked into a managed trust account or they hand all of it over to a nonprofit entity. Nor can it benefit any corporation or other for-profit entity. However . . . the Afaso Order isn’t a for-profit entity.”
Not that it’d stop me if I had to give the money to a non-charitable cause or whatever else I may need to fund . . . and I will have to fund things at some point,
she added silently, but only silently.
“Nothing stays our hand legally for a proven good cause, other than that we shouldn’t exceed a certain, much larger amount per year. Which I have not yet done. Technically.” Shrugging, she added, “For that matter, I’m also technically required to undergo yearly psychic evaluation scans. Which I’ll be doing as soon as a certain trio of priests from the Witan Order back home arrive at the Afaso Headquarters tomorrow. But I don’t have to
tell
anyone I’m a psi, so long as I am scanned by authorized telepaths and the results are filed with a duly authorized psi organization. Which they are.”
Ssarra smiled humorlessly, showing hints of his teeth. “You should have been a law-sssayer.”
That amused her. “Yes, but I want to
save
the galaxy, Ssarra, not destroy it.”
Her dry counterargument delighted the Grandmaster; he let out a staccato hiss, the Tlassian version of laughter. Smiling wryly herself, Ia led the way to the cluster of white-clad, greenroofed barracks sitting in the distance.
CHAPTER 10
 
What did I think of my first command officers? Well, Lt. Ferrar was very quick on the mark. Intelligent, efficient, and possessing a nose for trouble. I haven’t seen instincts like that outside of long-time combat personnel, the occasional battlecog, and the Peacekeepers, but he’d only held his position for a year and a half when I encountered him. Then again, he was a Field Lieutenant, promoted out of the rank and file for his combat leadership skills.
Lt. D’kora . . . she amused me. The woman never asked a question if she could instead make it a statement. I think she asked maybe two, three questions the entire time I knew her. She was tough and efficient, too. The tough was easy to explain since she was from Eiaven, the heavyworld that colonized my home. Not quite as quick-minded as Lt. Ferrar, but smart all the same. The efficient? That one’s obvious, too. She was an officer in the Marine Corps.
~Ia
 
 
JULY 30, 2490 T.S.
TUPSF
LIU JI
, DOCKED AT BATTLE PLATFORM
HUM-VEE
GLIESE 250 SYSTEM
 
Dropping her kitbag at her feet and setting her rolling case upright on its end, Ia saluted the blue-clad officer waiting on the gantry. He looked up from the datapad in his hand, no doubt expecting to handle only an inventory of supplies arriving on the courier ship, and quirked a brow at her. “Yes, Private?”
“Sir! Private First Class Ia, TUPSF Marine Corps, assigned to Ferrar’s Fighters, requesting permission to come aboard, sir,” she reported crisply. He returned the salute, letting her drop her arm. Fishing a datachip out of her pocket, Ia handed it to him. “Here are my transfer orders, Lieutenant.”
The lieutenant stuck it into his datapad and checked her orders. Nodding, he extracted it and gave it back. “Everything looks in order. Take the airlock behind me, turn right, go straight through three more airlocks, the lift will be on your left. Take it down to Deck 8. When you emerge, turn left, go to the second . . . no, sorry, third door on the left, and report to either First Lieutenant Ferrar or to one of his junior officers. I’ll have Supply deliver your mechsuit case to the flight deck. From there, you’ll have to get it to the right prep bay yourself, depending on which platoon you’re placed in.”
“Thank you, sir.” Hefting her things once more, Ia headed for the first set of airlock doors.
She hadn’t really needed to be told where to go; for the next two and a half years, the TUPSF
Liu Ji
would be her home, which meant she had studied its layout, routines, and missions as thoroughly as possible on the timeplains. Still, the courtesy was appreciated, if unneeded for navigating the multiple levels and airlocks of the modest-sized battleship.
Reaching the correct door, Ia pushed the buzzer, announcing her presence. Two Marines strode up the corridor, dressed in casual Browns. She turned to nod to them in greeting as they eyed her, and the door opened behind her.
“You’re the new transfer. Good, come in,” the woman in the doorway stated. Ia turned back to face her, meeting the other woman’s assessing green gaze. “The Lieutenant wants to see you.”
Nodding, Ia followed her inside. “You must be Second Lieutenant Lucille D’kora, sir,” she offered, nodding politely to the shorter woman. It earned her an arched brow. Ia shrugged. “I checked over the roster of Lieutenant Ferrar’s Company on my way out here. I thought it would be smart to get to know everybody in advance.”
“Yes, your record did indicate you like to prepare yourself. The DoI has already flagged your file with a few things,” D’kora added. “The Lieutenant wants to discuss them with you. Call me D’kora. I don’t answer to my first name. Neither does the Lieutenant.”
“Of course, sir. I’d say, neither do I, but I only have the one name.”
D’kora smiled briefly and gestured for her to follow. Ia had already foreseen this meeting. Depending upon her replies to his questions and his own internal thoughts—whatever those might turn out to be—the Lieutenant would assign her to a handful of different positions, most of which would progress her career. There weren’t too many ways she could mess up this interview, thankfully.
“That’s the company sergeant for Ferrar’s Fighters, Master Sergeant Brickles,” D’kora introduced, nodding at the freckled man seated at the desk in the front office. He lifted a hand briefly from his workstation console but didn’t look up. It was just as well; D’kora didn’t pause for anything more, just reached for the button on the frame of the next doorway. “He’ll be retiring in a few months. You’ll get a more formal introduction to the rest of the Company later.
Lieutenant D’kora and Private Ia to see you, sir.
”
“Come in,”
a male voice said over the door’s comm unit.
Touching the button to open the door, D’kora led Ia inside. The man seated behind the desk had dark brown hair like D’kora, but his was very short and crinkled, and only a few shades darker than his face. He rose at Ia’s approach, waited for her to set down her kitbag and stand her case next to it in the corner of the smallish cabin, then returned the salute she offered.
Ia offered him her datachip as soon as the brief formality was over. “Private First Class Ia reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Welcome aboard, Private. Have a seat,” Ferrar added, gesturing at the two chairs in front of his desk. Ia took the one on the right, and Lt. D’kora took the one on the left. Lieutenant Ferrar reseated himself, plugged her datachip into his workstation, and studied the file for a long moment. He nodded and touched a control that sank all four of the workstation screens down into his desk. “Everything’s in order, and the same as the advance copy I received from Personnel.
And
from the DoI. But we’ll get to that in a moment.
“In the last year, my Company has seen an increasing number of border violations, ranging from ordinary smuggling attempts to ship hijackings, to what look like possible supply runs attempting to circumnavigate the Salik Blockade. We are not officially a part of that Blockade,” Ferrar added bluntly, “but it is definitely beginning to feel like it.”
“In the last four months, we’ve seen our border encounters increase to at least once a week,” D’kora stated, supplementing his claims. “And in the last three weeks, we’ve had border encounters five times. Three of them have involved the SF-MC in combat.”
“As good as we are, we’ve taken some hits,” Lt. Ferrar continued. “The Personnel Department knows that this Company is four bodies short. Three bought a star due to sabotage on a smuggler’s ship, and the fourth I sent back home on the last supply transport so he can get a higher level of medical care than what the Navy doctors here on the
Liu Ji
can provide. Now, I need two privates, a corporal, and a sergeant to fill out my ranks. The Department of Innovations seems to think that
you
, a Private First Class, would make an appropriate replacement sergeant. But you’re fresh out of Basic.”
Pressing a button on his workstation, he raised up his far right screen. A touch of his hand angled the screen so that it faced Ia and D’kora, though the lieutenant had to shift in her seat a little bit to see it comfortably. Hands flicking over the keys, Lt. Ferrar called up part of her record.
“So. I have a few questions. The incident with Recruit Kaimong. Why did you go after him?” Ferrar asked her.
“I was there,” Ia stated simply. The look he leveled her said that wasn’t enough. She shrugged. “I knew I could track him.”
“Just that?” the Lieutenant questioned her.
Ia shrugged again. “It’s all in my report to the Camp command staff. I knew he was armed, and I knew he was dangerous. The priority of the moment was catching him before he could encounter any unsuspecting personnel, or worse, innocent civilians. I knew I could track him through the bush, finding him that much faster. It made sense to offer.”
“You were barely trained. A raw recruit. A
civilian
,” D’kora scoffed.
“I’m a second-generation firstworlder, sir,” Ia retorted levelly, glancing at the other woman. “I may not have been trained by military standards before my enlistment, but I went into the Marines with far more training than the average civilian ever gets. You’re from Eiaven. You know what it’s like on a new but inhabitable colonyworld. It takes at least five generations to tame a world enough that survival is no longer the education system’s first priority. I knew I had the training to be useful in that particular situation. Keeping quiet made less sense than offering.”
“Right . . .” Ferrar muttered. “Moving along, we have another blip on your files. This time during your vehicular training sessions. The cameras caught an incident where you spent time calming Recruit Kumanei when she lost control of her hexawalker during maneuvers, and almost fell off a cliff. You successfully talked her through her predicament,” the Lieutenant pointed out. “How did you know what to do?”
“I did pay attention to our instructions on hexawalker operations, sir,” she countered dryly.
“I meant, how did you know how to explain it in a way that Recruit Kumanei understood?” Ferrar corrected. “You weren’t using the standard explanations and terminology the Terran military gives to its recruits.”
“She’s from Tokyo Underside, sir,” Ia explained. “They use a lot of public transport, a few hover vehicles, some ground cars, and a lot of wall-crawlers. Of those four, the wall-crawlers are probably the closest to a hexawalker. Where I grew up, we have numerous kinds of vehicles for wilderness explorations, both for surface and subterranean. I’ve manned both hexawalkers and wall-crawlers back home,” she confessed, shrugging. “I took a chance that she might know how to operate one—I’ve heard they’re popular among teenagers down in the Underside. Luckily, she did.”
“Your reaction time on your fellow recruit’s crisis was also commendable. How did you know she was in trouble?” the lieutenant asked next.
This was an easy question to answer. “I was keeping an eye on my squad mates as well as on the exercise objectives, sir. Kumanei just happened to be next in line when I looked up and saw that she didn’t look right. Knowing her background, it was easy enough to guess that she’d mixed up her control commands.”
“Yes,” Lt. Ferrar murmured, brown eyes flicking between her and his workstation screen. “Your profile suggests you’re rather quick in many things.” Bracing his forearms on the edge of his desk, Ferrar laced his fingers together and gave her a look of polite interest. Not quite a smile, but polite and attentive. “Alright.
You
tell me why I should make you a Buck Sergeant.”
“You shouldn’t.” Ia watched him blink, and guessed he had made the offer to see if she was the kind of glory-hog who would take the promotion. She didn’t wait for him to respond beyond that, but laid out her logic. “I’m a wet-behind-the-ears recruit fresh out of Basic, sir. No one in your outfit would be willing to take a sergeant’s level of orders from someone like me. Corporal, you might be able to get away with. It’s a higher rank than PFC, but not that much higher in responsibility and authority. It would be a challenge since I
am
fresh out of Basic, but that level of promotion wouldn’t stir up anywhere near the same degree of resentment and resistance as making me a sergeant would, sir. Not even a relatively lowly Buck Sergeant.”

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