They exchanged a look, then Doc nodded. “Agreed, but he’s just stating the obvious, captain. Of course the men are going to fight better than the women. It’s genetics, we’re bigger and stronger. But his same argument could be applied to other men in the team.”
Harris waited for Doc to continue on, and he did. “Take Smith, for example. He’s smaller than the other guys, younger, not as much experience. McKinley would beat his ass, too. So would the rest of us. Does that make him a liability on the team? The fact is that McKinley would probably beat everyone’s ass … except for Brown and maybe Bulk,” he shot Harris a look. “And maybe you, sir.”
Harris arched his eyebrow and smirked at Doc. “I can hold my own, Doc.”
“I know you can, captain,” he smiled. “I’m just saying that if that’s his argument, then we’re all liabilities. I would never admit this to him, of course, but even me. He’d beat my ass.”
Harris pressed his lips together and shook his head. “I disagree. McKinley would never beat your ass, Doc, ’cause you’re not stupid enough to pick a fight with him.”
Doc smiled back. “No, I’m not.”
“Anyway, don’t sell yourself short, Doc. McKinley’s bigger, but you’re faster. Don’t ever discount speed in a fight. If you can land a hard punch quickly and get the hell out of there, then you got yourself a winner. And I’ve seen you do that before, you forget that.”
Doc nodded, smiling. “Maybe.”
“Anyway, this whole thing with McKinley, it’s just the way he works, you know that. He uses fear and intimidation as a shield. Scare them enough, and they won’t try it on. And if they do, then and only then, will he need to step up to the plate and deliver the goods. He would’ve learnt that the hard way, growing up the way he did.”
Doc seemed to think about this a moment, and nodded in agreement.
Harris shrugged at him. “McKinley can be an asshole at times, Doc, but I like having that asshole on my team!”
Doc nodded. “Agreed.”
*
When they arrived at the mess, Harris did his best to study the two sharpshooters without making it obvious. Welles was avoiding all eye contact with anyone but Colt. McKinley was making eye contact with everyone except Welles and Colt. It was no surprise when the two sharpshooters sat on different tables. The lieutenant positioned himself at the second table with Carter, Louis, Smith and Bulk, who’d joined them for lunch. Welles and Colt naturally joined Brown on the first table.
Harris and Doc got their meals, headed over to the first table and sat down. He struck up a conversation with Brown about the latest NBA scores, anything to keep himself occupied, ensuring he looked oblivious to what had just gone on. He didn’t want to look like he knew what had happened, and certainly didn’t want to look like he was overcompensating for the rest of the team’s avoidance of the women.
It wasn’t just for his sake, it was for Doc’s too. It was important that the men didn’t realize just how much information Harris managed to extract from him at times. But if Harris wanted to control a situation he needed to know every detail about it, and he often relied heavily on Doc flying under the radar to get it for him. Although, that said, Doc knew when to draw a line in the sand with Harris’s demands.
Welles and Colt had been eating in silence. This was clearly killing Colt, who Harris had gathered loved to talk. She’d been looking around the room, and listening in on Harris and Brown. As soon as their chat hit a lull, she looked over at Doc and started a conversation of her own.
“So where are you from, Doc?”
The medic finished his mouthful. “Colorado.”
“Country boy?” Colt queried.
“Yes, ma’am,” he nodded.
“Doc’s quite the skier,” Harris told her.
“Yeah?” She studied the medic curiously.
“State Junior Champion,” Doc said proudly.
“Yeah? So what happened in your later years, then?” Colt joked.
Doc gave a laugh. “Studying for medical school and then joining the army, I suppose. Although, I was a ski instructor during my senior years in high school.”
Brown laughed. “Ha! Is that where you honed your skills with the ladies, Doc? Taking all those rich women for skiing lessons.”
Harris had a grin on his face as he watched Doc for his answer.
“Sergeant Brown, I’ve always been the consummate professional,” Doc smiled, then seemed to want to move the conversation along. “What about you Colt? Where are you from?”
“Orlando.”
“Florida? Nice,” Doc said, then looked over at Welles, who was still quietly fuming. “So Welles, whereabouts in Australia you from?”
She glanced up at Doc, then back at her food. “Brisbane. That’s where I was born, but we moved around a lot.”
“Yeah, why’s that?” Doc wasn’t going to let her go back to her lunch that easily. Harris knew Doc had seen her file, and knew very well why, but he was flying under the radar, as he did so well.
She looked up at him again. “My father’s job meant we had to move from time to time.”
“Yeah? What’d he do?” Doc asked, looking down at his plate and shoveling another mouthful.
Welles looked at him for a moment, glanced at the rest of the table and then back down at her food.
“He was a soldier.”
Brown looked over at Welles, curious.
“Yeah? Anyone we’d know?” Doc continued.
“I don’t think so, no,” she said politely.
Harris found it intriguing that she wanted to hide the fact that her father had been a Space Duty colonel, and an Original at that. Most people he knew would brag about it.
“What about you, captain? Where are you from?” Welles, it seemed, wanted to move the conversation onto someone else now.
Harris finished his plate. “My family is from New Orleans, but after my father died, we moved to Detroit, Michigan.”
Welles nodded at him. “‘De-troit Rock City’?”
Harris smiled, amused. “You know your rock ’n’ roll classics, corporal.”
“Looks like you’re at the wrong table, Welles,” Colt laughed. “It would appear we’re flying the flag for the USA at this one. The multicultural one is over there. Well, except McKinley, of course.” She motioned over to the other table.
Welles glanced over at McKinley, then back at Colt. “I’m fine right here, thank you,” she said dryly.
Doc flashed his eyes to Harris. He looked down at his watch and stood to take his plate to the counter, and then turned back around to the crew. Time to throw them in the deep end again …
“Soldiers,” he called, “lunch is over. Break back into your main teams and do what you need to do. I want the stores unpacked, the engines checked, and the weapons locked and loaded. We’ll meet back here in the mess hall at 1800.”
*
Carrie sat there cringing. Fuck! An afternoon with McKinley in the weapons store was not something she was looking forward to.
“You have yourself a fun afternoon, now!” Colt said with sarcastic cheer, as she followed Brown out of the mess hall.
Doc stood from his seat at the table. “It’ll be fine, Welles.”
Carrie looked up at him. “So long as I don’t go and shoot him!” she said with a tinge of venom.
“Well, I’d prefer it if you didn’t shoot him, ’cause that’s just gonna make work for me,” he said with a straight face.
Carrie didn’t want to, but smiled in spite of herself. Doc seemed pleased with her reaction, smiling himself as he departed. She looked around for McKinley, but he’d left already. She sighed loudly as she got up from the table and headed for the weapons store.
When she arrived, he was already working, bending over inside one of the metal cases. She stood in the doorway for a moment, thinking about how best to tackle the situation.
“You going to get to work, corporal, or stare a
t my ass all day?” he said casually, pulling himself out of the crate and looking around at her with a smart-ass smile. “The UNF has rules about sexual harassment, you know.”
Carrie gave him a blank look, as if the thought of staring at his ass bored her. She moved through the door and over to a box of crates, as McKinley gave a quiet, guttural laugh. She studied what he was doing. He appeared to be about to clean and load the weapon he’d pulled out of the crate.
“So we’re checking and prepping the weapons, right?” she asked.
“That’s what the captain said. You listen to orders?” he said looking down the sight of his gun.
She ignored him, biting her tongue.
He looked around at her and said in his best condescending voice, “I’m assuming you know how to check and prep all these types of guns, corporal.”
She bit down harder on her tongue, feeling the steam build in her ears.
“Or do you only know how to shoot them?” he continued.
“Look, McKinley!” she fired, as the steam fired outwards. “You don’t like me and I don’t like you, that’s a given, but unfortunately we’ve got to work together, so how about you drop the attitude?”
“Drop my attitude?”
“Yes, your attitude!”
McKinley stared at her like she was some kind of crazy woman.
Carrie seethed with anger, but managed to reel it in and contain it. “Just tell me what you want me to do exactly, and I’ll stay out of your way.”
He stared at her again. “Boxes here,” he pointed with his gun to the metal crates beside him. “These guns have to be polished, loaded and locked and on these racks ready to go. Can you manage that?” he said slowly as if she were stupid.
Do I get to test them out on you? she thought savagely, but went back to biting her tongue. She walked over to the crates he pointed to, opened one and took out the weapon inside. It was the latest, state-of-the-art, laser-fire assault rifle, just like the one he’d been prepping. It was sleek, black and huge, fitting between her shoulder and almost fully-extended arm. She grabbed a cloth from over where McKinley was and began to polish the weapon. She pulled it apart delicately and made sure it was clean throughout, then put it back together and double-checked the sight. She flicked the laser sight on and shone it against the wall, then turned and aimed it at McKinley to check the body heat reading on the top side of the gun. She saw his orange blob appear on the screen. It was perfect. She smiled to herself as she turned back and shone the laser against the wall again, picturing McKinley’s head against it. Bam! She made the sound effects in her head, then smiled to herself.
She knew the laser-fire rifles were the way of the future, but personally she still had a soft spot for the weapons of old. Although some predicted they would soon become extinct, she believed otherwise. There were still many people who liked the idea of pumping lead into someone, leaving fragments of bullets that would need to be dug out and removed. But others liked the wounds the laser-fire rifles left on their victims: deep, penetrating cuts into the flesh with laser burns in and around the wound, which caused immense pain. Both weapons were deadly, both weapons could inflict serious injury. Some considered the laser wounds worse. After all, with a traditional bullet wound, you needed to dig out the bullet, stem the bleeding, and stitch the wounds back together again. With a laser wound, you had to stem any bleeding, control the burns by freezing the affected tissue until it could undergo Intense Tissue Rejuvenation, or ITR, therapy which was applied through a series of injected bio-organisms to eat the dead flesh, then light therapy to kill the bio-organisms, and skin grafts to rebuild what was once there. In Carrie’s mind both wounds were terrible, but as a shooter her preference for a weapon was based simply on size and ease of use—the standard UNF handgun. At least, up close. From afar it was her sniper rifle.
McKinley watched her with a curious look on his face. He set the gun he’d finished onto the rack, closed the crate and moved to the next one.
“So, how’d someone like you get into guns anyway?” he asked as if it were a joke.
Carrie glanced over at him. “Oh, you’re making conversation now.”
“Not a conversation, just a question.” He kept his focus on what he was doing as though he wasn’t particularly interested in her reply.
Her eyes narrowed and studied him.
“How’d you get into guns?” She turned the question back on him.
“I believe I asked you first, corporal,” he said, still acting like he was uninterested.
Carrie studied him a while longer. He held his gun out in front of him, and she saw the silver band around his right wrist catch the light. His eyes looked back at hers, waiting for an answer.
“My dad was a soldier,” she told him. “I grew up with guns, shooting targets and stuff. You?”
“Shooting targets,” he said amused. “What’d you shoot back there in Australia? Kangaroos?”
“I’ve never shot an animal in my life. Only humans,” she said with a calculated smile. “You?”
“What code?”
“What?”
“What code was he in? Army, navy, air force?”
“That’s another question?”
“I’ve let it slip until now, but I believe the correct way to address a senior officer is ‘sir’,” he said, still not looking up from what he was doing.
“That’s another question, lieutenant?” she shot back, refusing to call him “sir”.
McKinley looked over at her, smirking, waiting for an answer.
Carrie shook her head, relenting. “He started in the army and ended up in the UNF. You?”
“Space Duty or Earth Duty?”
Carrie pursed her lips and stared hard at McKinley. “You, lieutenant?” she asked again.
He gave a laugh and looked over at her. “Cop.”
“Your dad was a cop?”
“Detective, to be specific.” He looked down the sight of another gun.
“Yeah, what division?” she prodded him, the way he’d prodded her.
“DEA, undercover.”
“So that’s how you got into guns?” she asked, going back to the original question.
“Nope,” he shook his head. “Daddy never took me shooting targets,” he smiled condescendingly.
“Well, maybe that’s why I beat you today,” she retorted quickly. “You didn’t get enough practice in with your daddy.”
McKinley dropped his smile and gave her a cold blank stare with those blue eyes of his. “It’s a little hard to fit in target practice when you father’s dead, corporal.”
Carrie dropped her smug smile a little. She wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. She wouldn’t put it past him to lie just to win an argument. McKinley turned back to what he was doing.
“Yeah, well,” she said, hoping to call his bluff, “we’ve all lost parents haven’t we?”
He glanced over at her, then back to his crate, muttering quietly, “Not the way I have.”
She looked at him, wondering what he meant by that, but it seemed he was going back to looking not interested, so she continued on with her work.
“You never answered my question, corporal,” he asked after a little while. “Was he on Earth Duty or Space Duty?”
She looked at him again, confused. “Why are you so interested in my father?”
He shrugged, his face devoid of emotion. “I’m just trying to figure out how much of a military brat you really are. Did Daddy get you this job?”
Carrie felt a fire flicker in her chest. “No, my shooting got me this job, lieutenant! I thought I made that pretty clear on the range this morning!”
McKinley gave a short, sharp grunt. “Well, like I pointed out earlier, corporal, a good soldier knows how to do more than just shoot. The day you can talk about something other than your gun, then we can have this conversation. Until then, I don’t want to hear it. Until then you’re a walking time bomb who, I
know, will falter at the first fight you come across. ’Cause in real battles you don’t get to hide behind sniper lines, corporal. You actually have to come face to face with other soldiers and get your hands dirty.”
“Fuck you, McKinley!” she spat.
He shook his head. “I just hope that when you falter, you don’t take anyone else down with you. Liability, Welles. Liability!” and with that he shut the crate he was working on and headed for the door. “I got more important shit to do than babysit your ass,” he muttered to himself and left.
Carrie was fuming. She slammed the crate she’d been working on shut, and plonked herself down on top of it, running her hands over her face. She shut her eyes tightly, trying to calm down her anger. Don’t let him get to you. He’ll see when we finally hit the field. He’ll eat his words! Ignore him!
“So, things are going well, then?”
She opened her eyes and saw Doc leaning in the doorway, an e-clip in hand.
“I just saw McKinley stomping down the corridor,” he explained.
“I haven’t shot him yet, sir, but I’m very, very close,” she seethed.
Doc looked at her for a moment. “Welles, just let it go and he’ll get bored. The more you bite the more he’s going to bait you.”
“Hmph!” she grunted. “He’s not baiting. I know what baiting is.”
Doc moved over and took a seat on the crate next to her. “Look, he’s a hard-ass and he can be a prick, but at the end of the day he’s a damn good soldier, and one worth following. He sets high standards for himself and for the team, and he pushes everyone to make sure they’re pulling their weight. It’s just what he does. Every team has the hard-ass that constantly tests them. Captain Harris usually fulfils this role and when he’s not around McKinley kind of steps in for him. He’s a hard man, but he helps to make the other men harder, too. Unfortunately, it’s a prerequisite for this job.”
Carrie looked skeptically at Doc, having a hard time buying the fact that McKinley was some kind of decent guy, doing a decent thing here.
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