17
“Miko, you OK?” Rev asked as they left their debrief.
“Looking forward to catching a bit of shut-eye, but yeah.”
“No, I mean . . .”
“What, Rev? Spit it out.”
He looked around at the rest of the team to see if anyone was listening, then lowered his voice to barely above a whisper. “That Angel shit you zeroed.”
“Saved your ass, right? Bam! Right in the side of the head,” she crowed.
“Yeah, you did. But, you know, are you OK with that?”
“OK with saving you? I don’t know. Ask me in a year, and I’ll tell you,” she said, punching him in the upper arm. “Or is this one of those things you see in the holovids, you know, where if you save someone and you have to take care of them forever. If it is, I ain’t playing that game. I’ve seen how much you eat.”
She isn’t getting it. That, or she’s purposely avoiding the question.
He still thought about the kapo he’d shot. The kapos that had been killed when he took out the mini-centaur had been collateral damage, but the one coming out of the factory had been a direct kill. And now, Tomiko had purposely killed another human being, too.
“It’s OK if you want to talk about it. I’m here whenever you need me.”
Tomiko stopped dead, grabbing his arm and swinging him around to face her.
“Wait a minute. You, who’ve killed one tin-ass and sent another into the river, the hard-ass Marine, are asking me if I’m OK because I wasted a mother-fucking traitor to humankind?” Her eyes flashed with anger. “What, because little ol’ Miko doesn’t have the fucking balls to do her job?”
“No. I didn’t mean it like that,” Rev protested.
“Then what the hell did you mean?”
Rev stood there, towering over his friend, his mouth gaping, but no words were coming out.
“Yeah, I thought so. Listen, Rev, I love you like my brother, but you don’t have a clue as to who I am.” She spun away and hurried after the rest of the team.
“What the hell did I do wrong?”
<You said she was weaker than you.>
He hadn’t been asking Punch, but he subvocalized, “I did not. I was just concerned that she would be upset.”
<Would you ask anyone else the same thing?>
“I . . . I think so. I mean, maybe.”
<Whether you would or not, she thinks you are trying to protect her.>
“I am.”
<Maybe she doesn’t want to be protected. Maybe she wants to be accepted as just a good Marine as you are.>
“That’s not fair. I do accept her.”
<Is that how you treat her? Think back to Tenerife. What did you give her to do, and what did you take? Did you ask for her input?>
“I was senior to her. I had to make decisions.”
<Senior because of alphabetical order when the two of you were entered into the system that first day, not because of experience or time served. Think of how she would interpret your actions there, and now with this.>
Rev watched Tomiko catch up to Hussein and start walking beside him. She said something to him that made him laugh.
Crap. Punch’s right. How can a hunk of crystal understand human emotions better than I can?
All the more evidence that his battle buddy was more than just a tool to use in battle.
Rev jogged after the team, catching up as they hit the tarmac and turned left to where a team of Ninety-nines had erected about forty bivouacs so far. Each bivouac was shipped on a small pallet. When the activator was hooked to the nipple, the foam expanded into pre-programmed shapes. From activation to finish, one building took about three minutes before the Ninety-nines could start attaching the climate control systems and bringing in furniture or whatever.
That could have been me, he thought with a shudder. If I hadn’t convinced that doc . . .
A thirty-year commitment, with a casualty rate that was the same as everyone else’s . . . no, being a Ninety-nine was not the way to go. Far better to take your chances early in Direct Combat, and if you go down, you go down fighting.
Staff Sergeant Delacrie led them to the right row and to their assigned bivouac. Rev was just glad that theirs was already up. Tomiko wasn’t the only one who could use some sleep.
They trooped through the hatch.
“Look who’s here,” Ting-a-ling said. “Welcome to our humble abode.”
The Frisian flight must have just beaten them there. They were opening their racks along the front of the bivouac, taking the right-hand side. More racks were against the bulkhead, ready for use, and the climate control system blew cool air through three vents.
“This isn’t too shabby,” Rev said, looking around the Quonset-shaped building. “Hard to believe we’re in combat.”
“Stippy-do Marines,” Ting-a-ling said to the laughs of the other Frisians.
“Eat me, crayon. But you can sleep outside if you want,” Tomiko said, still sounding a little angry.
Rev grimaced. Crayon was their new nickname for the color-coordinated Frisians, but with the tone in which she said the word, it could be taken as intended to be an insult instead of normal trash talk.
“Oh, I don’t want to embarrass our hosts. Our tan-master said we needed to blend in with you jarheads and not show you up. And, as you can see, we’ve already claimed this little piece of heaven as our area. You snooze, you lose.” Which was a rule no matter in which military you served.
“Grab the opposite side,” Sergeant Nix said, “before the other teams stake their claim.”
Rev would just as soon have the back so people weren’t stumbling past in the dark on their way to the head. Evidently, close to the door had some kind of premium.
Despite that First, Second, and Fifth Teams were still out on their snatches and wouldn’t be able to contest any claim, there was a quick rush as Marines and commandos grabbed their racks, dropped their gear, and got situated.
Rev shook open his rack and eyed it dubiously. It didn’t look too sturdy, and as an augmented Marine, he had more than the usual bulk. He sat on the edge. It creaked but held. Tentatively, he lay down.
“Damn! This is a pretty good piece of gear,” he said, surprised at how comfortable it was.
“You Union folks can do something right, at least,” Ting-a-ling said from his back.
“But we won’t tell your tan-master if you decide to rough it,” Tomiko said as she tried hers out.
“What’s the equivalent of a tan-master?”
<There is no direct equivalent, as you know. But based on positions, a tan-master is at about a captain-level in the Corps.>
It was just idle curiosity. Rev had seen the green-master, the highest Frisian attached to the regiment, but he’d never seen anyone else. With sixty or so of the commandos still attached as part of the pan-humanity cooperation mandate, it made sense that there would be someone higher. Not that the Frisians had ranks. At least according to them.
“So, Ting-a-ling, a tan-master is the highest rank here with us?” Rev asked.
“We don’t have ranks in the Host,” BooBoo, one of the other commandos, said, something Rev expected. They were touchy on the subject.
“Sure, you don’t,” Tomiko said. “You keep telling yourself that.”
“We don’t. We have our occupational slots, that’s all.”
“Yeah. Ranks, just like us. You just use a crayon box to identify them.”
“Butkyluvytch, you know our buddies in the Imperial Jarhead Corps need their ranks so they know what to do,” Ting-a-ling told Booboo.
The Frisians looked like Union citizens, they had no discernible accent, and these commandos shared the Marines’ warrior ethos, but every time Rev heard one of their impossible-to-pronounce names, he was reminded that they came from a different nation—that, and the fact that they kept insisting that the Host did not have ranks. It wouldn’t be that big of a thing except for the fact that they lorded it over the Marines as if it were a good thing.
This was a long-standing issue, one Rev normally ignored, but he decided to get into it this time.
“So, Ting-a-ling, you’re a blue-master, right?”
“I always said you were a smart guy for a jarhead, Rev. You could pick that right up,” he said, pointing to the blue collar tab on his uniform top.
“So, if a yellow-tab walks in here and tells you to, I don’t know . . . clean the heads, what will you do?”
“Clean them, of course.”
“Because he told you so.”
“Yeah.”
“So, he can give you orders.”
“Yeah. And your point is?”
“My point is that he can give you orders because a yellow-tab is a higher rank than a blue-tab.”
“Au contraire, good Corporal. He can give me orders because, as a yellow-master, he’s in the slot to give me orders. It’s got nothing to do with military rank. I could be a yellow-master tomorrow and be giving him orders.”
Tomiko rolled onto her back, pulled the small Marine-issue pillow over her face, and screamed into it.”
“Give it up, Rev,” Nix said. “They’re never going to admit it.”
Ting-a-ling gave a self-satisfied smile as he kicked off his boots and lay back.
“Because we’re right,” Huska said, one of only two commandos whose name anyone could pronounce.
Rev rolled his eyes and lay back on his rack. The Frisian commandos were good guys and good fighters, and he rather liked them. But this one issue was frustrating. Rank was rank, and it didn’t matter if it was a color or the same traditional ranks most Marine Corps had used for a thousand years.
“Get some sleep, Corporal,” Ting-a-ling told him. “We’ll be going out again soon enough.”
Which was good advice. It didn’t matter whether Corps or Host, a warrior always grabbed sleep whenever they could.
But first, he had something to do. Tomiko had put her rack next to his, so he leaned over and tapped her shoulder. She opened her eyes and gave him a blank look.
“We OK, Miko?”
“Shit, Rev. Of course, we’re OK. You’re my compadre. Just quit being a dick sometimes.”
She turned her back to him and pulled the blanket up over her shoulders. The words were as good as he could have hoped for, but her tone was still sharp. He was tempted to ask her again, but he didn’t need Punch to tell him that wouldn’t be a good idea.
With a sigh, he lay down and tried to sleep. He had just started to drift off when the front hatch swung open, letting in a hot, humid rush of air. Rev cracked an eye to see the gunny standing there. He quickly shut it again as if that could make the man disappear.
“Third and Fourth teams. I need four people each for wire duty. Be outside in ten, full battle rattle.”
The door closed, but Rev refused to open his eyes, praying he wouldn’t hear what came next.
“First, you’re up. Take Badem to make your four,” Staff Sergeant Delacrie said.
Rev let out a sigh. Ting-a-ling had been right. They’d be going out again soon enough so that he could really use the sleep now. It was too early to start relying on boosts.
“Butkyluvytch, that’s us,” Ting-a-ling said from across the bivouac.
Rev sat up, then reached out with a foot to kick Tomiko’s rack.
“I heard, I heard,” she grumbled.
Rev stretched, then started donning the same gear he’d taken off just fifteen minutes before. He looked across the center aisle where Ting-a-ling and three other commandos were gearing up.
“So, Ting-a-ling, that wasn’t no yellow-master telling you to get ready. So, was it his rank that mattered?”
Ting-a-ling gave Rev a raised eyebrow, then a snort. “I would’ve thought you, of all people, would know by now. Rank or occupational slot, everyone jumps when a gunnery sergeant says so.”