14
“Get up. You’re out of here,” the guard Rev called Cow Eyes told him, kicking his feet.
Rev yawned, stretched, and sat up. “Why? What’s going on?”
“You’re leaving. That’s what’s going on.”
That’s quicker than I expected.
Rev had only spoken with Major Yarborough the previous day, and he’d been told this could take a week or more to get through the system. He looked around the cell. There was a clean set of overalls folded on the chair, ready for the next day, but nothing else.
“Do I get my uniform back? And how about my arm?”
He didn’t have to specify which arm. D-4 had to know all about the IBHU program. Heck, there were OD agents at the asteroid. But they were all playing this game, refusing to acknowledge what they knew or revealing information. “Arm,” in this context, was his social arm.
This is all so stupid.
“You’ll get them when you leave the facility.”
With a shrug, he followed Cow Eyes out of the cell. He didn’t bother to look back. They walked down the passage and into a room that had been locked before but was now acting as an issuing center. About a dozen members of the two teams were already there, picking up their uniforms, shucking their prison overalls, and changing.
Rev didn’t need the nametag to find his issue. His social arm on top was all he needed. He snapped the arm in and picked up his utility blouse . . . and stopped. Two corporal’s chevrons drew in and captured his eyes. He reached up and ran a finger over them.
He’d accepted the demotion, but it had been an abstract at the time. Seeing the chevrons, it was now real.
“That sucks, Rev,” Tomiko said as she stepped up beside him.
“Fuck it. It’s not as bad as Nix and Delacrie. Give me a year, and I’ll have my sergeant’s stripes back.”
Rev had told her about it the evening before and what was going to happen to Nix, Delacrie, and him, but he’d held back on Lieutenant Harisa for reasons he didn’t quite understand.
“Still sucks,” Tomiko said.
He dropped his prison oranges and put on the utilities. Even with the corporal’s chevrons, it felt good to be back in uniform, with the PUMC across his pocket.
Rev kept looking up as the rest of them were escorted in, but the lieutenant never showed. It looked like she’d already been yanked from the Raiders. They hadn’t even let her say goodbye.
Fair winds and following seas, Lieutenant. You’re a good Marine.
There were a few backslaps and some handshaking as the Marines acknowledged the fact that they were getting out and going home. It was a subdued lot, however, without real celebration.
The group milled around wondering what was next when a gunnery sergeant in dress Charlies, the more informal version of the dress uniform, and a dead give-away that he worked in an office, strode into the room.
“Alright, Marines,” he said in a weak facsimile of a DI’s gravelly voice. “I need all of you to follow me. We’re holding up a ship for you to get you back to your home.”
“After all this shit, we really don’t get to see the capital?” Tomiko whispered. “Figures.”
“Why the sudden rush, Gunny?” Now-sergeant Delacrie asked. “I mean, we’re not objecting, but we were told getting us out was going to take some time.”
“The ODs didn’t tell you?”
“Tell us what?”
“The reason your release was expedited is that you’re needed back at your unit. The tin-asses have launched an all-fronts attack. This is going to be the big one, the one for all the marbles.”