In Every Clime and Place

by Patrick LeClerc

  The chow hall was cleaned up and the tables pushed to one side to leave most of the deck clear for dancing. A collection of music was scrounged from among the platoon and played over the intercom. It was the usual horrible military mix: half country and western and half modern dance music. If you were a white Yankee city kid like me, you just suffered. The latest incarnation of the immortal American art form known as rock and roll didn’t lend itself to dancing.

  I spent the first half of the evening sampling Kelly’s finest and shooting the shit with Sabatini, Pilsudski and Cpl Chan. Chan, being of Chinese ancestry, was whiter than the rest of us white guys as far as dancing was concerned.

  Chan and Pilsudski spent about an hour discussing hand-to-hand combat, while Sabatini and I spent the hour mocking them. Cpl Chan was a black belt in some martial art or other, and Pilsudski was a fencer, so they both considered practice for murder a hobby.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not squeamish. It’s just that, to me, killing people is work. If I’m not on duty, I’d just as soon drink and flirt, thank you very much.

  “Ya know,” Sabatini said, “why the hell don’t you guys just learn to shoot? It’s a lot more efficient.”

  Chan looked offended. Pilsudski smirked and replied, “The art of the sabre has been passed down for generations in my family.”

  “Which is why Poland had an empire spanning the greater part of the known world?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. “Oh, no. Wait. I’m sorry. That was everybody else.”

  Sabatini laughed. Ski just glared at her. He could hardly take issue with her ancestors; they ran the Roman empire. He turned on me, instead.

  “I suppose you think the Irish have a great military tradition?”

  “We do. It just so happens that all our victories were against other Irishmen.”

  Pilsudski shook his head and returned to discussing the finer points of disemboweling or whatever the hell it was. I turned my chair around and looked out at the dance floor.

  “Will you look at Johnson?” I asked Sabatini.

  She laughed. The young Marine was struggling to impress the female social workers with the intensity possible only in a nineteen-year-old old male who hasn’t seen an available woman in six months. He was doing everything but snorting and pawing the ground.

  “Why are you so calm?” she asked. “You’re a guy. Why aren’t you acting like a stallion in rut?”

  “I’m old and jaded. Also, I dance like an Irish American.”

  “How’s that?” she asked with a smile.

  “It’s a rare phenomenon, usually only seen at weddings. We drink too much and then stagger rhythmically in time to the music.”

  “And how does somebody get to see this phenomenon?”

  “We usually get caught crossing the dance floor on the way to the head. Then you’re stuck out there until the song ends.”

  She laughed. “Seriously, you’re funny as hell. Women like that. You could get lucky.”

  “Thanks for the thought. Why the concern about my sex life?”

  “I just worry. I haven’t seen you with anybody since I got transferred here. I can’t see why. Unless, maybe, you and Terry...”

  “I told you, I can’t dance. Nor can I stand show tunes or coordinate my wardrobe. I joined the Corps so I wouldn’t have to decide what to wear.”

  “Are you gonna spill the beans or not, Paddy?” She leaned closer, giving me the cold smile that meant she had a straight flush or an enemy in the crosshairs. “We’re supposed to trust one another. You trust me to guard your back, talk to me.”

  “OK.” I sank the rest of my beer and got a fresh one. “I don’t deal well with casual relationships. I fooled around with a petty officer in the Navy medical corps once. We had a good time, got along, so we hit the rack. I thought we were an item.” I took another pull at my beer and smirked at my past foolishness. “On leave in Nairobi, I walked into one of our regular slop chutes, sat at the bar, and saw her with her tongue down some Navy dickhead’s throat.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Beat the shit out of him, trashed the bar, spent a night in the brig and lost two stripes. Terry was my partner in crime, so he lost his rank, too. I decided I was better off steering clear of casual flings.”

  “Wow,” she responded. “I’m impressed.”

  “At what aspect of my glorious failure?”

  “That O’Rourke had rank to lose, and that you two would trash a bar.”

  She broke me up. I laughed uncontrollably. Everybody at the table turned to watch me shudder helpless in the grip of mirth. I couldn’t stop until I was out of breath and tears were running down my cheeks.

  “Oh. Oh, shit,” I gasped, “That’s funny. Come to think of it, those are the most unbelievable parts of the story.”

  When I recovered and our neighbors returned to their symposium on slaughter, I turned the tables. “Alright, fair’s fair. What’s a fabulous babe like you doing in a dump like this?”

  She thought for a minute, swirling her beer in the glass, as though seeking the answer in the depths. “When I first joined the Corps, I got off on being one of the only women around so many men. I had my pick.” She shrugged. “I was young and stupid. I wound up with a lousy reputation and lots of complications. Now, I make it a point to be real careful.”

  I nodded in understanding. I raised my glass. “To knowing when to be careful.”

  She grinned and touched her glass to mine. “I’ll drink to that.”

  We emptied our glasses in one long swig. I beat her by about a second.

  “Well,” she said, “I better turn in. I’ve had as much beer as I can hold.”

  “Take care, Marine.”

  She leaned over my shoulder. “Good night, Mick. Don’t drink so much you can’t find your way to the squadbay.” She turned away and walked out of the chow hall. Watching her leave, I wished for one lustful second that she wasn’t in my fire team. Probably for the best, though. She was too good a Marine and too good a friend. I was better off not screwing that up by nailing her.

  That’s me, hopeless romantic.

  It turned out Sabatini was right. I wound up impressing one of the young ladies greatly with my wit and knowledge. We talked, drank, and nature took its inevitable course. I was drunk enough to go to bed with her, but sober enough to be discreet, which is just about the right amount of drunk, if you ask me.

  Chapter 13

  8 JUN 2078

  ASTEROID BELT RESCUE SUBSTATION ECHO 7

  I finished reading Jensen’s lines about the ex-colonel.

  “So this was a bunch of failed rebels and terrorists?”

  “And a few real soldiers in exile. I interviewed Radicz in prison.”

  I nodded. “There were a few who knew what they were doing.”

  “We did manage to confirm the identity of a few fighters wanted for war crimes.” He brought up another file and slid the device across the table to me.

  SNN News File 5, courtesy Brian Jensen

  17 Nov 2075

  Unconventional Forces Training Station, Ganymede Tanya Kajosevic lay on her belly, feeling the cold of the ground seep through her insulated space suit. She adjusted the scope, allowing greater distance from her eye to accommodate the face shield of the helmet. It made for an awkward position, but she didn’t think of that. Discomfort was part and parcel of sniping. She recalled lying motionless for hours in the rubble of her homeland, waiting, patient as death, for her target to present itself.

  She fired, then observed the distant paper target through the more powerful spotting scope. High. The gravity made more difference than she’d expected. She turned the dial on the turret of her rifle scope and made a note into the microphone of her helmet, updating her file on her computer.

  She was alone on the makeshift range. The others didn’t understand shooting. They had no respect for their weapons. They gave homage to the philosophy of accuracy by volume. They made excuses. Asked her why practice shooting out here when t
hey would do most of their fighting on a ship, or a station, close range and artificial gravity?

  But she knew they were wrong. Shooting was her religion. It was a skill that must be cultivated, nurtured, maintained. And how could she feel worthy of her weapon if she didn’t even know the idiosyncrasies of shooting here, at their home base?

  She pulled the trigger again, consulted the scope.

  Good. On target.

  Here there was little wind in the thin atmosphere. Little that needed correcting. But the elevation, the drop of the bullet which the maker of her rifle had calibrated to Earth, was very different. That was hard to account for, since it changed according to your angle to the pole. The laser range-finder automatically adjusted elevation, but it was useless out here. The spin of the moon was different as well. At long range the Coriolis effect moved the round enough to matter. On a ship, with artificial gravity created by rotation, it was more marked. Shooting in a new environment required practice, experimentation, repetition. Do it until you understand it, until it becomes deeper than understanding. Deeper than thought.

  If the others lacked the discipline to face the cold, the discomfort, to become shooters, that was not her concern. She was not an officer. Not a leader. She did not have the colonel’s feel for command, for the temper of his people. She had no skill with people. She acknowledged that, accepted it. Communication was not her strength.

  But she could shoot. She had a connection to her weapon, to the flight of the round, to the way the heat or humidity would influence its path.

  She fired the rest of the magazine into the bullseye, then went back inside the base and cleaned the weapon.

  Chapter 14

  18 NOV 2075

  USS TRIPOLI

  As I ate chow in a bleary-eyed haze the next morning, I remembered the news items I had dug up the day before. I glanced at my watch. I had an hour before formation. I washed down the last of my eggs and toast with a second cup of joe and headed for Sgt McCray’s office.

  “Sarge,” I said when he admitted me, “I found some scuttlebutt on the newsnet that Lt Evers might want to see. Mind if I run over and let him know?”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  I figured Sgt McCray wouldn’t object, but I had to follow chain of command. If he thought I skipped him, he’d tear me a new asshole even though he made no attempt to find out what I was bringing to the lieutenant. Sgt McCray didn’t concern himself with intelligence reports. They were somebody else’s problem.

  I checked my uniform in the mirror before I banged on Lt Evers’ hatch. When he called me in, I halted two paces in front of his desk and stood at my best approximation of attention.

  “Stand at ease, Corporal,” he drawled. “What’s your business?”

  Lt Evers was tall and lean. His blond hair was cut to regulation length. His blue eyes regarded me through wire-rimmed spectacles. He was one of the few Marines I knew of who wore glasses. When I first met him, I wondered why he hadn’t had corrective surgery, like most everyone else in the service. Then I found out that his long-distance vision was better than twenty-twenty and he didn’t want to sacrifice it. He wore glasses for paperwork and computer work.

  Evers was a career officer by blood. His ancestors fought under Washington, Lee, and MacArthur. Like Pilsudski, he started out in Recon. He only got posted to Intelligence by accidentally letting the brass catch on that he picked up languages easily and was a natural at deductive reasoning. He was like a heavily armed Sherlock Holmes.

  He was also the most formal, polite Marine I ever met. A man who wouldn’t say “shit” if he had a mouthful, as my sainted Irish mom would have said. As an intel officer, he had to interact with generals, members of other services, civilians, and public officials, so he had become a master of etiquette. The first impression he made gave no hint to the fact that he had learned his trade stalking poachers and rebels in the wilds of Africa.

  “Sir, I was reading through the newsnets, to see if I could find anything about the riots on Sunflower One. I stumbled across this.” I handed him a memory stick with the information I had uncovered, as well as possible links and related sources.

  He took the stick from me with apparent calm, but I could see his brain working. “Thank you, Corporal. Checking the net was good thinking.”

  “I just thought the situation was strange, sir. Is there anything we should be worried about?”

  He looked at me for a long moment before speaking. “Corporal, I can’t feed rumors or encourage speculation on that sort of information. You’re a good team leader and you show initiative. That’s admirable, but temper your enthusiasm. I trust you’ll keep your theories to yourself.”

  “Aye aye, sir!” Suitably chastised, I withdrew.

  ****

  When I got back to the squad, I found that Sgt McCray had decided to hold one of his “Team-Building exercises.” I guess he was upset that half of his Marines were hung over or had big, stupid, I-just-got-laid smiles on their faces.

  I was in ship-shape. Two liters of beer is no excuse for a hangover, but we had a lot of young PFCs who were never taught to drink properly, so they weren’t as bright-eyed as Sarge wanted.

  It could have been worse. He could have let Chan lead us through one of his unarmed-combat drills. Cpl Chan’s idea of discipline was to grab his Marines without warning and fling them around the squadbay. As a zillionth degree black belt in some obscure subphylum of Karate, he used his skills whenever he felt that the troops needed to be taught a lesson. Or when he just got bored.

  Sgt McCray’s exercise consisted of each fire team sitting in a circle and disassembling all of our weapons. We then put all the pieces together in a big ammo can and the team leader would pass out parts to his Marines who would each reassemble his own weapon. As O’Rourke was still missing, Sabatini got the privilege of assembling two rifles, which did little to improve her mood.

  When Sarge gave the signal to start, I immediately began grabbing pieces out of the ammo can, knowing by feel which weapon they belonged to, and handing them off to my Marines, or piling them in front of me if they were bits of my ACR. We worked well as a team.

  Johnson was a bit haggard and red-eyed, but he kept diligently working, despite his obvious wish that he could just hang his head in a toilet and pray for a quick death. He needed a lot of instruction from the Collins & O’Rourke School of Advanced Carousing. He worked on automatic pilot, enduring the hangover and doing his job. He was turning into a good Marine.

  Sabatini looked pissed, probably at being punished along with the rest of us, but she worked like lightning. I put the parts of her ACR to her right and O’Rourke’s to her left to help her out, but I think she would have done OK even if I hadn’t.

  When the ammo can was empty, I rapidly assembled my own weapon. Over the last dozen years I’d reached the point where I could strip and rebuild an ACR in my sleep. I was the first one in my team finished, but I couldn’t take credit. That went back to the long line of sadistic sergeants who’d forced me to do it over and over. When I finished, I slapped Johnson to wake him up and grabbed O’Rourke’s half-finished rifle from Sabatini. We finished ten seconds ahead of Chan’s team.

  “Halt!” Sgt McCray bellowed when we all presented our weapons. “Chan! What the fuck is wrong with your team? Collins’ shitbirds beat you even without that useless fuck O’Rourke!”

  “That’s an advantage for them, Sarge,” Chan offered in defense.

  “Shut up!” The sergeant surveyed his squad in disgust. “You are a sad frigging disgrace to my Marine Corps. If you can’t present yourself like Marines after a few beers, you ain’t worthy of the title. Maybe you can join up with those social workers you’re all so hot to screw. Now break down those weapons again! This time, I expect you to finish today!”

  “The beatings will continue until morale improves,” I muttered. Johnson nearly smiled, and Sabatini fought down a chuckle. My philosophy has always been that anything we can laugh at, we can get through
.

  We broke down our weapons again, groaning and calling down muttered curses on our fearless leader’s head.

  This was going to be a long day.

  “Oh, shit, man,” groaned Johnson. “What the hell is his problem?”

  “Suck it up, Marine. He’s got a point,” I explained. “What if we got attacked today? We can’t let our readiness lapse just because we had a party last night.” I still wasn’t thrilled with the situation, but I had to defend my superiors to my team. I was secretly happy that we hadn’t had more beer available.

  As expected, the session dragged on. By the end, Sgt McCray had us doing it blindfolded. I was glad we got out before he made us do it one-handed. My team held together well. Johnson kept his breakfast down, just moaning low and promising to murder his recruiter when he got out. I think we were all sharing a group fantasy of beating the shit out of Sgt McCray, but at least something united us.

  “Alright. That’s as much as I can stand to watch,” he grunted at us at the end of two hours. “Now shove some chow in those ugly faces and get your useless asses to your posts. You have guard detail at thirteen hundred. Dismissed!”

  We filed out. I pulled Johnson aside. “OK, Marine, drink a canteen full of water. Then get some painkillers from sickbay, get one of the docs to give you a B-12 shot, grab a shower and drink another canteen. You’ll feel like shit for a few hours, but you’ll live.”

  He nodded in thanks and stumbled off. Sabatini and I hiked to the chow hall.

  I became aware of her glare burning a hole in the back of my head. I faced her with an innocent smile. “Something on your mind?”

  “Did you screw one of those social workers last night?”

  That I had not expected. I was taken aback, but not about to be held answerable to a lance corporal, especially for behavior which had no bearing on my duty. “That’s not something a gentleman answers.”