Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty (53 page)

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Authors: Jean Johnson

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JUNE 14, 2491 TS
BATTLE PLATFORM
HUM-VEE
ALBEDO ICE STATION, SJ 723 SYSTEM
 
“Hey, Sergeant.” The redheaded chaplain jogged a couple steps, catching up with Ia. She smiled and nodded at the younger woman. “How’s the shoulder?”
Ia flexed her right shoulder. “Back in its socket, and cleared for combat, sir.”
Bennie grinned. “No scars again, I take it?”
Ia shrugged. “Nope. Still none. I heal too well. Doctors think it’s the high metabolism and high cellular density working overtime together.”
“And how are you sleeping at night?” This time, the chaplain’s tone was softer, yet more pointed.
She didn’t dissemble. “Lousy. The burn-out survivors on that catalyzed domeworld were bad enough, but . . . the ones that didn’t make it . . . The people I couldn’t save are haunting my dreams again.” The two of them waited a moment for the next section seal to cycle them through, then Ia continued. “But I’m cleared for all activities again. That’ll help.”
“And you’re quite good at it. Are you going off-ship on Leave?” Bennie asked.
Ia shrugged. The movement didn’t make her shoulder so much as twinge, which was a relief. Popping it out of its socket had not been a pleasant experience, and a dumb move on her part. Lieutenant D’kora was half the heavyworlder she was, but the woman could certainly move on a combat practice mat. “For an hour or two. The Captain wanted to see me for a chat, first.”
“Anything up, this time?” Bennie asked.
Ia mock-clawed her fingers. “He’s secretly a zombie, and wants to pick my braaaaaaiiinsss . . .”
She laughed. The chaplain gave her an odd look, then chuckled softly as well. Bennie also shook her head. “You have a very strange sense of humor, Ia.”
Shaking it off, Ia sighed. “Just the usual weekly review of the troops under my purview.”
“Good luck with that. Maybe I’ll see you down in Frostie’s?” the chaplain added, stopping with Ia as they reached the lifts.
Ia raised her brows at the news. That hadn’t been a high probability. It might make things interesting, if the chaplain saw her in action. “You’re going down there?”
“Chaplains know no Branch boundaries. So I’m allowed to go into a Marine Corps haven,” Bennie quipped. She hung back as Ia tapped the button. “That, and I heard the chaplain from the
Alvin York XVII
will be there, overseeing a birthday party for a pair of Marines who share the same natal day. I haven’t seen Delilah in a while, and thought I should go.”
Stepping into the lift, Ia shrugged. “Then I guess I’ll see you there.”
Wondering what else could go odd with her day, Ia rode the lift up to the same level she had first visited. The front office was the same, even the same clerk. Ferrar didn’t look that much different, either, save only for the twin silver bars on his collar points. His skin was still a rich brown, his dark hair close-cropped to his head, and his gaze was still direct. This time, as he had for the last handful of months, he merely gestured for her to sit rather than exchange a formal set of salutes.
“Report,” he ordered.
“Spyder got ‘Happy’ Harkins to smile.” That lifted his brows. Ia smirked. “Twice, no less. I think he’s ready for a promotion to Lance Corporal soon. Serving with Gaskins’ GroPos settled him down from the recruit I knew, and I think he’s finally getting the hang of command. Double-E and Knorrsson should be promoted as well.”
“What about Guichi and Cooper?” Ferrar asked, making a note on his workstation. “I could use another full-mech sergeant. I’d like to pull from my own ranks before sending out a requisition for more personnel, though.”
Ia shook her head. “They’re both content with their rank and pay grades. Especially after that last evaluation raise. You might want to consider Private Adams in C Squad. He’s quick, he adapts well, and he can get the others in his squad to cooperate. They listen to him.”
“He’s not exactly an asteroid-buster,” Ferrar pointed out, glancing briefly at her.
“No, but it’s a skill set. It can be learned.” She waited while he made a few more notes.
“Anything else,
for
the record?”
“No, sir. A Squad is doing fine. So is the rest of the 2nd, as far as I can tell.”
Nodding, Ferrar signed off his workstation and shut it down, lowering the screens into the desk. Leaning back in his seat, he laced his fingers over his brown-uniformed stomach. “And off the record?”
Ia looked past him, skimming the timestreams. “I foresee you getting another ‘hunch’ and passing it along to Captain Sudramara. Shake up the patrol schedule, big time. And keep news of the change confined to this ship.”
“I’d wondered about that.” Sighing, Captain Ferrar rubbed at his forehead. “Changing the schedule without reporting it in will skim us very, very close to insubordination. But . . . it does feel like we have a leak somewhere in the system. If the
Ackbar
hadn’t suffered a tank leak and been forced to backtrack to the closest system for repair and refueling, they wouldn’t have caught that clutch of raiders forcing the fueling station to refuel their ships. That was a nasty firefight.”
“I know.” At the Captain’s sharp look, Ia shook her head. “It’s not what you think. I’m just agreeing. The
Ackbar
came out of that one with a bad limp.”
“Right. So . . . the patrol schedule. Any clues on how we should shake it up? Or is the future a big ball of misty possibilities?” Ferrar asked sardonically.
Mist wasn’t her problem, usually. Seeing
too
much was the usual headache, unlike most other precogs. Ia looked past him at the wall, skimming delicately through his and the captain of the ship’s timestreams. “. . . I just get the feeling we’ll be near Oberon’s Rock again in two days. Two and a half days, actually.”
Ferrar leveled a look at her. “We just
came
from Oberon’s Rock, Sergeant. That’s on the
Triskelle
’s patrol route, and they’ll be passing through in just under two days.”
“I know, sir.” She held his gaze steadily. “I just get the same feeling thinking about it, like what I got when I heard about the
Ackbar
.”
“That someone knows all our exact patrol routes, and is drafting in right behind us the moment our back is fully turned?” he asked. She didn’t answer, because it was a rhetorical question. Ferrar knew it, too, and slowly nodded. “For such a simple-seeming mining consortium, Oberon keeps attracting a lot of attention, doesn’t it?”
“That it does, sir.” Sensing the meeting was over, Ia flexed her hand, thoughts already on the coming confrontation.
“Right. I’ll bring up the
Ackbar
and the fact that we’ve already thwarted a couple of other piracy attempts to Sudramara, and aim for arriving in that system a few hours after the
Triskelle
leaves. Anything else, off the record?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Nothing really worth noting. Except for the nagging feeling we’re beginning to piss off whoever is so interested in a simple mining company.”
“I don’t have to be a psychic to know we’re pissing them off, Sergeant,” Ferrar stated. “Frankly, I don’t give a damn. They can’t do a thing to us. There is no criminal organization that will ever match the TUPSF Marines, let alone outnumber us. They’d be suicidal to try.”
She seized on that opening, smiling slightly. “On the record, sir . . . if they ever do try something, do I have your permission to ‘chastise’ them appropriately?”
Ferrar chuckled. “All by yourself? Not even
you
are that good of a soldier. This is the work of some very well-connected, very large crime syndicate—if you do ever have to go after them, then yes, you have my permission. Just make sure to bring the rest of the Company along for the ride. That’s on the record. Whoever these people are, I want them shut down. If you get any ‘ideas’ on how to do that . . . then by all means, follow through.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“You’re taking your Leave on the Platform, right?” Ferrar asked her. She nodded. He grinned. “Good. You’ve been trading too many Leave hours for voluntary guard duty—I know you’re a long way from your homeworld and you want to save up enough time to be able to travel there and back, but you also need to relax once in a while. So. Buy me a drink at Frostie’s?”
“Yeah, right. When are you going to buy
me
a drink?” she shot back, rising from her seat.
“When you outrank me,
Sergeant
.”
“If I ever do, I’ll hold you to that.” Nodding politely, she headed for the door. “I’ll see you down there as soon as I change, sir.”
 
“The pilgrim, on his knees on the road, then clasped his hands together,” Chaplain Delilah Smithson recited. The others lounging around the table listened avidly to the short little tale. “And to his surprise . . . so did the bear! Greatly heartened by this, the pilgrim then began to pray. ‘Oh, Heavenly Father, pleeeeease let this be a Christian bear! I don’t want to be eaten by those evil nasty devil bears!’ ”
“. . . And?” Lieutenant Nyugen asked, polishing off the dregs of his beer.
“And the bear, to the great shock of the pilgrim, began to pray, too!” Delilah told the mix of noncoms and officers from three different ships crowding one of the longer tables in the brick-walled pub. “Kneeling there on the side of the road across from the pilgrim, paws clasped together, the bear prayed, ‘Oh, Heavenly Father! For this meal, which we are about to receive . . . we give thanks.’ ”
Laughter roared across the table from her listeners, Ia included. She hadn’t heard that one before.
Delilah smirked and saluted the others with her scotch on the rocks. “I told you it was an oldie, but a goodie! That one predates the Industrial Revolution.”
“That’s worth buying you another round,” one of the sergeants from Delilah’s ship quipped.
“I’ll get it,” Ia offered, rising from her seat.
Ferrar looked up at her, a pretzel halfway to his lips. “You’ll buy
her
a drink, but you won’t buy one for
me
?”
“She tells a better joke than you, Captain.” Grinning as the others laughed and Ferrar mock-scowled, Ia headed for the bar. Halfway there, she heard the catcalls from one of the tables closer to the entrance.
“Lookit the civvies! Think they’re lost?” “They gotta be, to wind up in here.” “A business suit, in a dive like this?” “This is Ma-
reen
country! Not some fancy wine cellar!”
Swerving their way, Ia swept the enlisted snickering into their drinks with a quelling look. “This is an open, public bar. It is
not
exclusively Marine country. And you will
not
insult Frostie by driving away more potential customers. Is that clear, gentlebeings?”
Most of the Marines at the table knew who she was, by now. There was only one woman with chin-length white hair who ever showed up in bloodred clothes at Frostie’s Tavern. Ia had the white hair since birth, and was clad in a bloodred vest and matching silk pants. She had also earned their respect through her Bloody Mary reputation by now. The men and women at the table stopped their catcalling, burying any further comments in their drinks.
The gentleman who had been hazed strolled over to her. Lifting her left hand in his, he smiled, brown eyes gleaning with humor. Bowing over her fingers, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles. “My heroine. I thank you for such a gallant rescue. May I buy you a drink, lovely lady in red?”
“Whoa! Somebody’s gonna try t’ melt the Snow Princess?” Coughing on his drink, a private from Ferrar’s 3rd Platoon rasped out, “I’d pay to see if he succeeds!”
“Shut up, Han,” she retorted. “Don’t make me bust you back down to recruit.”
“Oh, I think I can handle this, my lady,” the businessman stated, smiling pleasantly, if darkly. With his long, dark hair pulled back into a braid and a ring in one ear, the smile made him look more like a corporate raider than a mere corporate man.
“With respect,
I
can handle this,” Ia told him, holding up her other hand. “I have a reputation in here. You don’t.”
“Oy!” Detaching himself from another table, Corporal Spyder swaggered her way, beer in hand. “Ia, izzis meioa botherin’ you?”

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