by Marko Kloos
I keep my office door open most of the time, so nobody has to knock when they want to come in. Naturally, they all do it anyway, rapping their knuckles on the doorframe instead of the door. I look up when I hear the company sergeant’s typical double-tap pattern.
“Sir, we’re going to get a visit from command. I just got word from Norfolk.”
I look at the calendar next to the personnel roster on the wall. Four uneventful months have passed since my mother’s funeral.
“What does the brass want here in the middle of freaking February? Graduation’s still a month and a half off.”
“That’s above my pay grade, sir. I’m just conveying the happy news.”
I sit back in my chair and look at the world outside. It has been snowing since midnight, and the flurries are obscuring my view of the fjord. From the patterns of the swirls that are whipping the ground, I’m guessing the winds to be at twenty knots. The outside temperature display shows three degrees below zero, cold but not unseasonable. Iceland is surprisingly temperate in the winter, sitting as it does in the middle of the Gulf Stream currents.
“Did they say who it is?”
“It’s SOCOM Actual, sir,” Leach replies.
“Terrific,” I say. “When is he coming in?”
The master sergeant checks his watch.
“In thirty-seven minutes, sir. The bird is already on the way. They only let me know once his transfer flight from the continent was already on the ground in Keflavík.”
“A surprise visit,” I say. “In this sort of weather. They’ll have a fun time on the final approach. I wonder what he wants out here.”
Master Sergeant Leach shrugs.
“Like I said, sir. That’s above my pay grade.”
I check the schedule and see that the combat controller trainees are in the Dunker, an underwater vehicle-escape simulator set up in a deep indoor pool. It takes a lot of time to configure the machinery and get everyone into the safety gear that’s needed for the exercise, and there are always two medics in scuba gear present in case a trainee loses their shit while hanging upside down in the fake drop-ship hull and has to be extracted to keep from drowning. Calling them all back in for a dog-and-pony presentation for the CO of the NACDC Special Operations Command would mess up the training session and throw the schedule into disarray.
“If they didn’t send any instructions along, we’re going to go ahead with business as usual,” I say. “They want the red carpet, they’ll need to give us more than thirty minutes’ advance warning.”
“I don’t think the general is much of a red-carpet type anyway,” Master Sergeant Leach says.
“You got that right,” I reply, and a cloud descends on my mood when I think about the man who’s about to grace us with his compact and sour-faced presence. I get out of my chair and walk over to the door, where my cold-weather coat is hanging on a hook.
“Well,” I say. “Let me go and greet our special visitor. I’ll wait for him out by the landing pad.”
The tilt-rotor craft descends out of the swirling snow and settles onto the landing pad in a fresh gust of frigid air that stings my face with a hundred little needles. I’m out on the apron of the little airfield by myself, because I know that the man I am meeting doesn’t give the slightest shit about pomp and circumstance.
Brigadier General Khaled Masoud is a stocky, muscular man with a haggard face that makes him look ten years older than I know him to be. He steps off the tail ramp of the tilt-rotor bird in just his fatigues, without a winter coat. The floppy side of his SEAL beret is drawn so low over the side of his forehead that it almost covers his right eye. He has grown a short beard since the last time I saw him, and his close-cropped stubble is streaked with gray. He walks over to me and returns my salute, then shakes my hand.
“Major Grayson,” he says, his voice raised over the sound of the nearby engines. “Good to see you again.”
I merely nod instead of voicing the same sentiment in return because it would be a lie. After Leonidas, where I lost a quarter of my company due to Masoud’s deception of the garrison, I had vowed to frag the little bastard the first time the opportunity arose. Over time, my feelings have mellowed, but not very much. I am not willing to serve a life sentence for the satisfaction anymore, but I still avoid him whenever I can, and I won’t feel any sadness at the news of his death once that day comes. To me, he is the embodiment of both the very best and worst of our profession—exceptional at his job, but willing to burn down entire planets to see it through, with ethics relegated to the notion of a luxury for gentler times.
“Let’s get out of this weather,” I say, unwilling to ask him why he’s here and why he didn’t bother to give notice. I know that he’ll tell me soon enough. “My office or the mess?”
“Let’s do the mess,” General Masoud says, to my mild surprise. “I hear the chow here is great. I want to put it to the test.”
“Aye, sir,” I reply. “This way.”
Whatever brought the general to this island halfway between continents, he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry to share it, and I am in no hurry to find out. We get our food and claim a table in the officers’ mess, a small and comfortably appointed room with floor-to-ceiling windows that would offer a great view of the fjord in the distance if we weren’t in the middle of a snow squall right now.
It’s three in the afternoon, and we have the whole mess to ourselves because the handful of other officers at the base are all in their offices or leading training sessions right now. The room is quiet except for the occasional clanking of dishes and silverware from the kitchen on the other side of the food counter. My own meal consists of meat loaf and mashed potatoes. The meat is vat grown, but it’s real, not some flavored soy imitation. Right now, this sort of food is still reserved for the well to do and the people the government considers the most deserving. I know that we only get it as a perk, to keep morale and retention rates high. But I’ve stopped letting that knowledge spoil my enjoyment.
“No shark,” General Masoud says as we begin our meal.
“Sir?” I ask.
“That Icelandic specialty,” he replies. “Basking shark. There wasn’t any at the chow buffet. I was hoping they’d have some.”
“You don’t want to try that for lunch,” I say. “That’s more of a dare. They ferment it for a few months to get rid of all the toxins. They don’t serve it in the chow hall because of the smell. And nobody but the locals would eat it anyway.”
“Pity,” he says. “I wanted to take them up on the dare.”
“If you really want some, you can get it at the civvie terminal at Keflavík. There are stores that sell it. But I have to warn you. It smells like a gym sock that’s been soaked in old piss for a month. If you get any, don’t open it on the transport home, or the crew chief will throw you out of the back of his ship.”
General Masoud takes a bite of the food on his plate. It’s a roasted potato and sausage dish, with onions and peppers and lots of real cheese. He nods with approval and picks up another bite with his fork. “We are an amazing species, when you think about it. We’re able to survive in environments that would kill off other species in a single generation. All because we’re able to turn anything into food. Even poisonous shark meat. Of course, the Lankies are even better at life than we are. Amazing adaptive skills. Their home world must be a scary fucking place.”
“I hope we never find out,” I reply. “As much as I want to pay them a visit. With a two-hundred-megaton planet buster as a host gift.”
“Sooner or later, we will have to find out, Major Grayson. We kicked them off our turf here in the solar system. But one day they’ll try again. Here or in whatever colony systems we still have left. Make no mistake. This isn’t over until one of us wipes out the other.”
“Billions of planets in our galaxy,” I say. “Infinite space in the universe. And we fight each other to the death over a fucking grain of sand on a beach.”
General Masoud shrugs. �
��Find a way to make them see it like that, and we can all retire. Recycle those warships, dismantle the nukes. Until then, we have to be ruthless. Because they don’t saddle themselves with these moral questions. Notice how they’ve never tried to communicate with us, either?”
“We haven’t figured out a way to talk to them. But I’m pretty sure we got the message across that we don’t want to be food,” I say.
“Maybe it’ll stick. Or maybe whatever is making them seek out our planets for themselves is bigger than their fear of our missiles. Maybe they figure the risk is worth it.”
“Could be they have no choice,” I say. “But to be frank with you, I don’t care why they do what they do.”
“If you want to really beat an enemy, you have to care. You have to know what drives them. What makes them tick. Their greatest desires, their biggest fears. So you can kick them where it hurts the most. Kick them until they are down, and then keep kicking. Until the threat is gone for good.”
I take a bite of meat loaf and chew the food slowly, deliberately, a skill I had to learn once I left the PRCs. I haven’t had anything made of soy in a long time, and if I can help it, I never want to eat that stuff again. To me, flavored soy will always be the taste of welfare rations and wartime deprivation.
“You’ve come a long way since the first time we met. You were a sergeant. Then you made lieutenant for Arcadia,” Masoud says. “Then captain. And now you’re a staff officer.”
“You’ve gone up the ranks as well since then,” I say.
He looks at the gold-wreathed single star on his shoulder epaulette with something like mild disdain.
“I hate seeing gold up there,” he says. “That wasn’t ever a goal for me. General officers don’t get to do pod drops. They don’t get to move the levers on the field. They just get to push icons around on a hologram. But there are more staff and general slots open than people to fill them. The officer corps took a beating in the years before Mars.”
Masoud looks at the insignia on my epaulettes, the same but in silver thread, and smiles. “But I don’t need to tell you that, do I?”
“I thought I was safe,” I say. “Limited-duty officer. Restricted to my occupational specialty. And then they just quietly removed the limit and ordered me to staff school.”
“Combat vets have the edge in the new promotion points system,” Masoud replies. “And that’s a good thing. Most of the junior officers in the Fleet have never seen battle. The special tactics platoons all have veterans at the helm from company level up. But the SI, that’s another story. Half the line companies have fresh captains who were still in the academy during Mars. I hear the new junior officers are standing in line to volunteer for garrison duty at Outpost Campbell. Just so they can maybe take shots at a Lanky and get a combat badge.”
“All the peacetime rank-jockey bullshit all over again,” I say.
General Masoud shrugs once more. “It’s what it is. And we’re stuck with those wreaths on our shoulder boards, whether we want them or not.”
He shakes his head and takes another bite of his potato-and-sausage scramble. Then he looks at me appraisingly.
“Unless I have you all figured wrong. I mean, it’s an easier life now. Especially at our rank.”
He gestures with his fork to indicate the empty mess and the loaded trays at the buffet counter. “Good food. Hot water on demand. Liberty in the evenings and on the weekends. Regular leaves. Seeing sky overhead instead of deck plating. What kind of fool would rather be in armor and freezing their ass off out on a colony planet somewhere?”
“Only the rarest sort of imbecile,” I reply. “Someone who hasn’t learned his lesson yet.”
The general looks at me with a neutral expression for a few moments. Then he allows himself one of his tiny smiles.
“I’ll not fault you for being content with what you have now. God knows you’ve done a lot for the Corps. If anyone has earned the right to some easy duty, it’s the SOCOM vets who have bled for this peace. That’s why I am stopping by here with an offer, not an order.”
“An offer,” I repeat. “From you.”
“Not from me personally. From the head of SOCOM. Your branch’s commanding officer.”
I put down my fork. On the other side of the window next to us, the snow is blowing sideways across the landscape. It’s cold outside, at least by Earth’s standards. On New Svalbard, a day like this would be considered mild and almost balmy.
“I figured you didn’t come all the way out here just to sample the potato hash,” I say.
“Oh, I didn’t make this trip just to talk to you. I am on my way to some joint-service dog-and-pony show in Britain. This was just a convenient hop. A chance to check in with you. And offer you a shot at an assignment that just came open.”
My initial impulse is to tell him that I am not interested in anything he has to offer. There will be an ice-sculpture contest in hell before I ever trust this man again, not after he used my infantry company as bait to distract an entire planetary garrison. I am just about to open my mouth to tell him that. Then I take a few slow and deliberate breaths until the urge passes. I don’t want to show any sort of weakness in front of General Masoud, and being unable to control anger is as much a weakness as an inability to control fear.
“A combat deployment,” I guess. “And you need just the right person for it. I’ve heard that one before.”
“It’s a field deployment,” Masoud says. “I don’t know if there will be combat involved. I have a special tactics team about to go on deployment without a commanding officer. Their CO just got medevaced off the ship with a major health issue. He’ll be out for at least a month. And I can’t send out a company with a section commander in charge of the whole shop. That’s too much lifting for a lieutenant.”
“A regimental STT?” I ask, and Masoud nods.
“STT 500. Attached to the Fifth SI Regiment. They’re on the Washington right now. Getting ready for a deterrence patrol. I need someone to take over for Major Mackenzie. Someone who knows their ass from a hole in the ground.”
“I can’t be the only qualified O-4 in the cupboard,” I say.
“You’re not. I have several other people I can order to take the slot. But you’re more experienced than either by half. STT 500 is a varsity team. I want them to go into action with a varsity commander. Not a burned-out lifer trying to ride out the few years until retirement.”
Major Masoud looks around in the mess.
“And you’re the only one on my list who can hand over their shop and hit the ground running with the 500 without fucking up an ops cycle. You have what—a month left in this training flight?”
“A month and a half,” I say.
“I can order one of the HQ staff officers from Norfolk or San Diego to serve out the rest of this cycle for you. Hell, I have half a dozen light-duty people in Norfolk alone that I’m tired of finding make-work assignments for. None can take command of a line company right now. But all of them can keep your seat warm here at the ISTS.”
“So I’m the best for the job. And coincidentally the only one who’s easily replaceable right now.”
“You are the easiest to replace, that is true. But you’re also the best for the job. Don’t doubt that.”
I want to tell the general that if he said snow is white, I’d feel the urge to go outside and check for myself. But he’s still the head of the SOCOM branch, and it’s entirely within his powers to make my life difficult for the rest of my service days. It’s not smart to irritate someone who can make me take inventory of air filters and undershirts on Fleet Base Titan until I retire.
“But this is an offer. Not an order,” I say.
“That’s correct. You are the most qualified. But you also have more deployments than anyone else on my short list. That’s why I am offering it to you instead of just sending movement orders through MilNet. If you would rather not stick your neck out, you have earned that right. We don’t know what’s going to happen
in six months, or a year from now. The Lankies may show up again and spoil the peace. This may be the last quiet posting you’ll get for a while.”
He looks around again with a mildly disdainful expression, as if the thought of a quiet posting were offensive to him, and takes another bite of his food.
“Of course, the reverse may also be true,” he continues. “With everyone fighting over combat command to pad the personnel file. Especially the captains who want to step up to major. It’s a big jump from O-3 to O-4. Every ribbon counts in that competition. Could be you won’t get another shot at a line company for a good while. Maybe you’ll get another school assignment after this one. And anywhere else would be a downgrade from this luxury resort.”
The little bastard is blackmailing me, I think.
There’s no doubt in my mind that he has the last say in the staffing decisions for the STTs on deployment. The point system is good for promotions, but the command of a company-sized special tactics team is a badge that only the SOCOM leadership can award. He doesn’t say it out loud, and the implication is subtle, but I refuse to believe that it’s unintentional. If I turn down the job, he’ll make sure I won’t get another, and I’ll be looking at a succession of rear-echelon and instructor assignments every twelve months until he gets bored of fucking with me.
“Let me think about it,” I say. “Just for a day or two.”
General Masoud puts his silverware on his plate and wipes his mouth with a napkin. Then he flashes his barely there smile again.
“I figured you would be jumping at the chance. STT 500 is probably the best team in the entire Fleet. If I made that offer to any other major in SOCOM, they’d offer to arm-wrestle a Lanky for it.”
