26
“Ah, the prodigal son returns,” Ting-a-ling/Bob said from over the back of the dilapidated couch in the commons where he and Rice were lounging.
Rev opened his cell and threw in his valpack. He vaulted over the back of the couch and landed in a sitting position between the two of them, his body bouncing both of them in the air.
“Hell, Rev, you’re too damn big to be doing that,” Rice said as she clutched at the armrest to steady herself.
Rev grabbed them around their necks and pulled them in, giving each a kiss on the top of the head.
“You know, I hate to say this, but it’s good to get back,” he said.
“What, storm clouds on the home front?” Bob asked, carefully taking Rev’s social arm off from around his neck.
“No, not at all. Things went very well, in fact.”
Bob gave him a piercing look, but Rev shook it off. He’d give him the lowdown on Malaika later.
“So, what did you two do during the break?”
“Lots of duty SNCO,” Rice said. “With all you gone, there wasn’t much of a pool from which to draw, you know.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be standing enough duty when you guys go after we get off alert status.”
Rice frowned, and Rev immediately regretted his statement. Bob hadn’t gone home, choosing to wait until the leave period after they got off alert status. But Rice was stuck here for the duration. Paxus didn’t pay for their soldiers assigned to the Home Guard to come home on leave. She’d been with Fox Company for two years now, so it would be another year before she saw her family again.
There was an awkward silence, not broken until Bob rescued him and said, “We got over to Titan for two days. Played tourist and everything.”
Rice added, “The Hall of Humanity is all it’s cracked up to be, too. Very impressive.
“I’ll have to make sure I see it. It’d be a shame to spend three years in the home system and not really see the capital.”
Titan was not officially the capital of anything. Titan and Enceladus were both parts of a CoH enclave with no local government. But in common usage, Titan was usually referred to as the capital, with the Hall of Humanity, as seat of the COA bureaucracy, being the capitol.
“You did miss a big something while you were gone, though,” Rice said.
“What?”
“Veang’s gone.”
“What? They sent him back to Angkor? For the accident? Now?”
“Not to Angkor. He got bumped up to Brigade Ops,” Bob said.
Which in military parlance meant he’d been shit-canned but not bad enough to get sent home. No one, particularly an officer, wanted a staff job on such a prestigious posting.
Rev never liked the lieutenant, and he didn’t think the lieutenant liked him. But he didn’t deserve to get fired.
“And guess who came to replace him?” Bob asked.
“Crap. From the look on your face, it’s a Mad Dog.”
“Far from it. It’s a Union Marine.”
That caught Rev’s attention. He sat straight and asked, “No shit? Where’re they from? Regular or provincial Marine?”
“Ah, all you yootie jarheads are the same to me,” Bob said. “I don’t remember where he’s from. But he said to make sure you reported in to him when you got back.”
Technically, Rev was still on leave until morning, and so he wasn’t “back.” But he was curious, to say the least.
Probably some stick-in-the-ass regular Marine.
Still, any Marine was a good thing.
“We’re heading for the Ramshead in a few minutes after Toshi gets back from the mini-exchange. We’ll wait if you want to go check out the new platoon commander now.”
It was a cardinal rule that if someone was on liberty, much less leave, and they were around the flagpole, they should not pop their heads up out of hiding. That was a good way to get snagged for a work detail. And the new lieutenant would still be there in the morning when Rev’s leave officially ended. But Rev’s curiosity was overwhelming.
Screw it. If I steer clear of Gamay or Barber, I should be in the clear.
“Give me a moment to get into a clean uniform, OK?”
Rice made an effort of taking his right arm off from around her shoulder, then held her nose. “You might want to consider a shower, too.”
He took a sniff and had to agree. “OK, give me twenty or thirty minutes, and I’ll head out with you.”
He jumped over the back of the couch, grabbed a clean uniform from his cell, and ran to the shower. With the sonic blast on high, he was clean enough for military work after a single sixty-second cycle, even if he felt rubbed raw in a few spots.
“I’ll be back in a few,” he told his two friends. “Don’t leave without me.”
He headed down to the company offices. Knowing officers as he did, he’d bet that the new lieutenant would be there studying up on his platoon despite the late hour. He managed to avoid the senior SNCOs and slipped into the office. Corporal White was behind his desk, a sure sign that at least one of the officers was there.
“You don’t have to check back in until tomorrow,” the corporal said.
“I know. I just heard that our new platoon commander is a Marine, and I wanted to welcome him aboard. Is he here?”
“That’s why I’m here, Staff Sergeant.” Rev nodded and started to head over to the platoon commanders’ office when he added, “And if you can get him to leave, then I can get out of here, too.”
Rev laughed. “I’ll do my best, White.”
He stepped up to the door, rapped on it, and announced, “Staff Sergeant Pelletier, sir. May I come in?”
The Marine inside was facing away from the door. He turned around and said, “Enter, Staff Sergeant.”
Rev froze, his mouth open. Standing in front of him was Second Lieutenant Aristotle Bundy, Perseus Union Marine Corps, and now evidently assigned to the Home Guard.
* * *
“This just can’t be a coincidence . . . sir,” Rev said, sitting across from his friend. After a shocked moment, the two had jumped into a back-pounding exhibition. It took a minute for it to sink in and for Rev to take the seat.
Bundy gave a guilty look, then sheepishly said, “No, no coincidence, and it was a surprise to me. I knew I couldn’t stay in tanks, what with them all being mothballed, but I envisioned a nice, comfy support billet as befitting my decrepit age. But when the brass decided to send me here, I had to take a crash course in all things infantry. Me, a grunt. Can you imagine?”
“But why? I mean, why here?”
Bundy grimaced. “It’s because I know you.”
“And, that means . . . ?”
“Rev, you’ve got to realize that you’re unique. You’re one of only a handful of IBHUs in the galaxy.”
“I’m rather aware of that, sir.”
“I’ve got the impression that there was a lot of debate about sending you guys here to the Home Guard.”
“Except for Pierson.”
“Yeah, him. He might be a hero, but no one in the Union hierarchy was going to send him here. But forget about him. I think that if it wasn’t for what happened on Earth with you, and then when the Mad Dogs sent their karnans here, without those two things, you’d all have been kept back in the Union, far from the madding crowd, and most important, out of sight.”
It wasn’t as if Rev hadn’t come to that conclusion on his own. He nodded at Bundy to continue.
“But . . .” He hesitated a moment as if to figure out how to phrase what he wanted to say. “Look, we’ve got Genesians embedded in our brain.”
“But, I’m not—”
“I know. Those who’ve served with you guys know. But the Union is big, with people from all sorts of backgrounds. To say that some don’t trust you would be an understatement.”
“What, they think that we’ll all run amok and wipe out cities?” Rev asked in disgust.
“Kinda, yeah.”
“Really? I was being sarcastic there.”
“I know. But there is some of that fear. And if you ran amok, as you put it, here in Enceladus, it would be pretty embarrassing.”
“So, you’re here to keep an eye on me. And since you’re my friend, they figure if I go batshit crazy, you’ll have the best shot at calming the monster down,” he said, the bitterness dripping from his voice.
It wasn’t that anything Bundy said was new to him. But to have it blatantly thrown in his face hurt. He’d given his all in fighting the Centaurs. Hell, along with Lieutenant Vreemish, he’d helped save the Mother. What else did he have to do to prove himself?
“And they sent you. No disrespect, sir, because I know you’re capable, but you’re coming to an elite infantry unit with no infantry experience. And again, with all due respect, you’re not really a young man.”
“Don’t I know it,” Bundy said. “But it isn’t up to the Home Guard who’s sent. It’s up to the providing government. And with the strength of the Union, and maybe more importantly, with the percentage of financial support we send the Congress, well, if they want to send a lowly second looie to a specific platoon, then it’s going to happen.”
And if that means firing the existing officer and sending him up to brigade, then so be it.
Rev was stewing in his own juices. This was BS.
“I know it doesn’t mean much, but it isn’t you alone. All of you have gotten or are getting nannies.”
“Is that what they call you? Nannies?”
“No, they don’t. But that’s what we call ourselves, and for the record, we think it sucks. The commandant thinks it sucks, too, but he was overruled on this.”
Rev sat silently for a long moment. He didn’t like the fact that he was considered some sort of wild animal who had to be kept on a tight leash.
“Are we cool?” Bundy asked, and Rev realized that his friend was nervous. Bundy, the cool, calm, and collected leader of their posse.
Rev might be angry, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He was a Marine and a trooper. That’s it. And it wasn’t just him. Bundy was equally powerless. He was trapped here out of his fields of expertise only because they’d bonded what seemed like a million years ago when they stood on the yellow footprints at Camp Nguyen.
“Hell, Bundy. Uh, sir. We’re cool. How could we be anything else?”
Relief flooded Bundy’s face, and for a fleeting moment, Rev wondered what would have happened if he’d said they weren’t cool. Nothing? Someone else would come in and take his place?
But truth be told, if he had to have a nanny, then he’d rather it was Bundy. It wasn’t just because the man was capable, but that Rev trusted him.
They sat for a moment before Bundy asked him about his family, and Rev asked about Bundy’s kids. Rev was still upset, but he was able to push that aside as the two caught up. After five minutes of talk, Rev remembered Corporal White outside.
“Hey, can we take this somewhere else? The company clerk is waiting for you to leave so he can.”
“What? He’s still here?”
“That’s the Home Guard way. You’ll find out this isn’t the Corps, and things are different.”
“If I’d realized he was there, I’d have told him to take off. But yeah, let’s pull chocks. Anywhere we can go?”
Rev thought for a moment. They could meet the others at the Ramshead, but the dynamics, with Bundy being an officer, had now changed. Besides, he owed Bob one. He said he didn’t remember Bundy’s name or where he was from? The two had shared more than a few beers together. He was probably laughing about it right now.
“Not many right here where we can get away, but if you’re up for a tram ride, there’re a lot of places at the commons.”
“Sounds good to me. I’m still on Swansea time. Lead on, good staff sergeant.”
“Aye-aye, Lieutenant.”
A very relieved Corporal White mouthed a grateful thanks at Rev as the two left the office.
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