Recoil

by David Sherman

  When they began their review, Steiner had leafed through the printouts and handed Raggel the one for the CO of the First Company, a Lieutenant Keesey. “Git rid of this bastard, Colonel.”

  Raggel glanced at the man’s sheet. He could see nothing amiss with his record. “Why, Top?”

  “He’s a fuckin’ pervert, sir. He gits his rocks off hurtin’ people.” Keesey’s sheet went into the left-hand pile.

  Steiner pawed through the stack of sheets again and withdrew two more. “This here’s the sheets on First Sergeant ‘Skinny’ Skinnherd of Fourth Company ’n his company clerk, Corporal Queege. I’d git rid of both of ’em.”

  Raggel reviewed the sheets silently. “Well, Top,” he said, scratching his head, “this Skinnherd appears to be a good first sergeant, and this corporal, hell’s bells, she’s got the Bronze Star for valor! ’N lookit the schools she’s been to and her efficiency ratings! Looks like to me she’s eminently qualified in all phases of company administration, Top. Why the heck would I get rid of a good clerk?”

  “Skinnherd is a good top soldier, sir, most of the time. But two strikes against ’im: He’s a big boozer ’n he’s been porkin’ that corporal, at least that’s what every man in the battalion believes, and what they believes is what’s real to ’em. That ain’t good for anybody’s morale, sir, troop leaders formin’ love-bird relationships with the junior enlisted.” And then he told Raggel about the bet Skinnherd had made with Queege, one hundred credits if she could eat baby slimies and drink a liter of ale within a specified time.

  “Ohmigawd,” Raggel groaned. He felt sick even thinking about such a thing. He’d grown up on Ravenette and knew very well how disgusting the slimies were. “That’s, uh, inhuman!” he gasped. Furthermore, and he did not have to say this, Skinnherd’s conduct was unbecoming of a senior noncommissioned officer, abusing a lower-ranking soldier like that. “Uh, did she win the bet?”

  “Yes, sir, ’n then puked all over Skinnherd. Colonel Cogswell was there ’n he presided over the whole affair.”

  “Jesus God, Top, no wonder the Marines rolled you guys up like a rug.” And without another word Skinnherd’s sheet flew into the left-hand pile, but Raggel held on to Queege’s. “I don’t know about this corporal though. Good clerks are hard to come by.”

  Steiner shrugged. “Well, ever’body likes the girl; she’s sort of the battalion’s mascot, if you know what I mean, sir. But she is a good clerk. When Skinnherd was recovering from too much booze, she ran the company. The lieutenants who was appointed to command Fourth Company, they ran through there like a dose of salts, one after th’ other, ’n left the orderly room exclusively to them two. Queege held the place together more than once, when she was sober. But she’s a boozer, sir, a big one, ’n she’s got the reputation that she put out for Skinnherd. I’d send her home.”

  “Um . . . no, Top, I’m gonna keep her here. In fact I’ll bring her into battalion HQ, make her our chief clerk. Anyone who can choke down, what was it, five or six slimies, has got to be a determined individual. Think you can sober her up?”

  Steiner shrugged. “I kin try, Colonel.” He did not look very enthusiastic about the prospect.

  “We’ll both try. If she doesn’t work out, okay, I’ll send her home. But I’ll tell you what, Top, there’s more to this girl than meets the eye. I think if we can wean her off the booze, we’ll find us a mighty fine soldier under all those suds. I think her problem might be that nobody’s ever given her a chance to show what she can really do when she puts her mind to it. All right”—he set Queege’s sheet aside—“let’s winnow out the rest of the deadwood.”

  They spent the rest of that day going through the records. Once they’d decided on who was going to be relieved, they went back through the keepers and decided who would fill the positions of the men being sent home. It was already dark by the time they finished.

  “Top, take the files on these rejects down to battalion personnel. If they’ve gone back to the barracks for the day, roust ’em out. I want reassignment orders on these men in my hands by zero-six hours tomorrow morning. First thing tomorrow I want this Queege standing tall in my office at HQ. I’m going to talk to her. Next, I want the men we’re sending home assembled so I can talk to them. I’m telling them precisely why they’re being relieved and then you will see that they’re on their way. Once that’s done, call the battalion into formation. I want to talk to everyone who’s left over. I apologize for keeping you up like this, Sergeant Major, but we’re both going to lose a lot of sleep before this battalion is ready to go into its deployment training phase.”

  “Well, sir, I had an old first sergeant a long time ago who used to say, ‘You git yer best work done between retreat and reveille.’ ” Steiner chuckled and stood, extended his hand. “Thanks for keepin’ me on, sir. We’ll surer’n shit shape this outfit up, ’n it’s about gawdam time someone did!”

  Office of the Commander, Seventh Independent Military Police Battalion

  “Funny, isn’t it, how our paths have crossed, Corporal,” Colonel Raggel said. “Did you know we heard about what you did in that bank at Phelps all the way up to General Lyons’s headquarters?”

  “N-No, sir,” Puella answered. It was “oh-dark-thirty” in the morning, she’d had no booze since leaving her home world, Lannoy, and she was very apprehensive that her new battalion commander had called her into his headquarters office at that ungodly hour for an “interview.” Everyone in the battalion knew vast changes were coming and they all expected this new broom of a colonel to sweep the unit clean. She shifted her weight in her chair and licked her lips nervously. Colonel Rene Raggel was of medium height and weight, broad at the shoulders, eyes a bright blue, close-cropped hair light yellow. Everyone knew he’d been close to General Davis Lyons during the Ravenette War. It was mystifying to Puella how such a man had gotten appointed CO of the battalion, but here he was, fresh as a daisy and full of energy even at such an ungodly hour.

  “Well, we did know about you, Corporal. That”—he gestured at the ribbon on her tunic—“is partly the reason I’m not sending you home with your first sergeant.”

  Puella gasped, “Yer sendin’ Top home, sir?” She knew better than to ask why although she really did not know why. She felt a sinking sensation in her stomach. Who would run the company now?

  “And I’m bringing you up here to be my chief clerk, Corporal Queege.”

  “S-Sir?” Surely she hadn’t heard him right. Colonel Raggel smiled at the mixed expression of horror and astonishment that crossed Puella’s face.

  “And, as of right now, you are Sergeant Queege.”

  “Sir?”

  “You heard me. The TO&E calls for a sergeant major, but that’s Steiner and I’m keeping him on up here, and a senior sergeant as chief clerk in my office. I am also authorized two junior clerks but they won’t be available for a while yet, so you’re it, three-in-one, my one and only administrative honcho. You do well for me in this job and before this is all over you’ll have a senior sergeant’s stripes to go along with that Bronze Star there.”

  “Ah, ah—” Puella could not get the words out.

  “Some other things you need to know, Sergeant.” He smiled briefly. “I’m going to work you harder than you’ve ever been worked before. We’ll be up before dawn each day and we won’t hit the sack until long after dark. We’re going to get most of our important work done between retreat and reveille. That’s a promise. You ever come in here with the smell of alcohol on you, you’re finished, and believe me, I won’t just send you home. You probably won’t have time for much off-duty shenanigans, Sergeant, but you will not engage in same. You’re a full noncommissioned officer now and you will conduct yourself accordingly, is that understood? If anybody in this battalion gives you a hard time about anything that you can’t handle yourself, you let me or Top know about it. No hesitation. You work for me now and I won’t tolerate anyone’s giving my chief clerk a ration of shit. Is that clear?”

&nbs
p; “Yes, sir!” But she wondered just what he meant by that remark. Who in the battalion would ever give “Queege old Squeege” a “ration of shit”?

  “Very good, then. Your first day on the job begins right now. Sergeant Major Steiner’s got a heap of work for you to get started on. He also has your promotion orders and a new set of chevrons; pin ’em on. So go on out there and get busy. Two final things: If you ever need to see me about anything, don’t hesitate to come in here or grab my attention wherever I may be. As my chief clerk, you’re the next closest person to me after my sergeant major. Don’t abuse that position, but take advantage of it whenever you feel it’s necessary. And last, everything you hear and see up here stays up here. Guys will constantly pump you for information. Don’t utter a word to anybody, clear? Okay, big day dawning, we gotta get cracking.”

  Puella jumped to attention and raised her arm in a salute. “No, no, none of that!” Colonel Raggel smiled. “Henceforth and for as long as you are in Task Force Aguinaldo, you are in a combat zone, Sergeant. That’s the reason the uniform of the day is always field combat, no Class As, no mess dress. We’re in the field, no saluting required. Now”—he stood and extended his hand—“get to work, Sergeant!”

  As she left the colonel’s office, Puella was walking on air. She’d already forgotten what he’d said about anyone giving her a hard time.

  CHAPTER

  * * *

  EIGHT

  Office of the C5 Military Assistance to Newer Worlds, the Heptagon, Earth

  Robier Altman did have a contact at the Heptagon, the headquarters of the combined military of the Confederation of Human Worlds. Altman prepared a report for his contact, an army colonel by the name of Akhen Farbstein. Farbstein was an assistant director in C5, the civil affairs division of the Combined Chiefs of Staff. His specific job was to liaison between State and the military, and he was responsible for making recommendations for military assistance to recently colonized worlds. Farbstein was very conscientious about his work, and very good at it. But he was on leave when Altman’s report on Haulover reached the top of the queue on his console. His desk was being covered by a colonel named Archibald Ross.

  Every bureaucracy has someone in it who doesn’t read memos or daydreams through meetings or doesn’t pay attention to the news. If a bureaucracy is big enough, it will have someone who embodies all three of those failings. And face it, the Heptagon constitutes one of the largest bureaucracies ever devised by humanity.

  Colonel Ross didn’t read all the memos that came to him, daydreamed through many meetings, and didn’t always follow the news. His superiors knew that, though their realization hadn’t come until he’d reached his current rank. By way of making amends for their negligence, Ross’s superiors had resolved not to promote him again. They didn’t give him a negative, or even a marginal, officer efficiency report. They just neglected to put the simple word outstanding anywhere in their reports. Nobody had asked him to submit a letter of resignation, but that lack of an “outstanding” rating anywhere gave him to understand that he had reached his terminal rank and might as well begin his retirement proceedings—without expecting even a graveyard promotion to commemorate his forty-five years of service.

  Knowing his days in the army were numbered in small numerals, Ross had been paying even less attention to memos, meetings, and the news. If that wasn’t enough, the previous night he and his wife had a fight that lasted into the wee hours, and resumed that morning before he was fully awake. So he merely skimmed Altman’s report, getting just enough out of it to know that attacks by persons unknown were taking place on a recently colonized world called Haulover, and that the local planetary administrator was requesting military assistance in dealing with whoever was making the raids. Up to the time of his latest—it might as well be negative—officer efficiency report, he’d paid enough attention to be aware that pirates and other freebooting miscreants had taken advantage of so many army divisions’ being involved in the war on Ravenette, and had increased their nefarious activities in those areas from which army and Marine forces had been withdrawn or drawn down for deployment to the war. Similarly, there had been a number of skirmishes between neighboring worlds that bore ill feelings toward one another after they were free to do so because of the absence or low staffing of Confederation military forces.

  So Colonel Ross made the obvious—to him—assumption that whatever was happening on Haulover, pirates, other freebooters, or hostile neighbors were behind it.

  Disgruntled, and angry at the army—not to mention furious at his wife for what he saw as a totally unjustified attack on his abilities as an officer, which were forcing him into retirement before reaching flag grade—he decided to endorse and forward the request to the Marine Force Reconnaissance Company of the—he had to check which Fleet Marine Force was responsible for that sector of Human Space—Fourth Fleet Marines. If any glory, or any commendations, was to come out of the deployments, let them go to someone the army hated and let the army stew in its own juices for underappreciating the abilities of Colonel Archibald Ross!

  Had Colonel Ross been in a better frame of mind, he might have remembered that President Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant had just made a startling revelation to the Confederation Congress, and had a press conference scheduled to make public news of strange developments on the fringes of Human Space. Such a memory might have had him hold off in forwarding Haulover’s request until he learned what the president’s announcement was. But he didn’t remember, so he sent off his recommendation without any consideration of the fact that there might be more to the incidents on Haulover than a rebellion, bandits, pirates, or a hostile government.

  Office of the Company Commander, Fourth Force Reconnaissance Company, Camp Howard, MCB Camp Basilone, Halfway

  Commander Walt Obannion, company commander of Fourth Force Recon Company, ignored the sudden rush of upraised voices in the outer office in favor of continuing his review of the planned training schedule for the next month. Not that the schedule would be rigidly followed; deployment orders could come down at any time that would take away part of his unit, or even every available Force Recon Marine. Besides, he had a good idea what the hubbub was about. He was proved right when he looked up at a sharp rapping on his doorframe.

  “Sir, Ensign Jak Daly reporting for duty!” said the newly commissioned, recruiting-poster-handsome officer standing in the doorway.

  Obannion blanked his monitor and rose to step around his desk, hand extended.

  “Welcome aboard, Ensign,” he said, shaking Daly’s hand. He let go and stepped back to look the ensign up and down. “Well, Jak, it doesn’t look like your second trip through Arsenault did you any harm. None visible, anyway. I heard you had quite a fight with the elements. You fully recovered from that?” He waved Daly to one of the two visitor chairs and returned to his own seat behind his desk.

  “I’ve recovered, sir,” Daly said; he’d waited for Obannion to resume his seat before sitting himself. “But a lot of other people never will.” His gaze briefly went to a different place and time while he flashed back on the tsunami that had hit the town of Oceanside on Arsenault while he was on liberty there. He shook himself and returned to the here and now to look Obannion in the eye. “It was like being in a war where we couldn’t shoot back. All anybody could do was try to save himself and as many other people as possible. I did what I could.”

  Obannion nodded. Daly’s words were modest but the way he said them implied that he’d acted heroically. It looked to Obannion to be the same kind of arrogance Daly had exhibited when he’d been a squad leader—just a little more than the other squad leaders. But it was an earned arrogance, proved when he’d taken command of his platoon when everybody above him was killed or wounded on a platoon raid during an ultra-secret mission.

  “You did good on Arsenault, Jak,” was all Obannion said. He’d been thoroughly briefed. “Now, you’re probably wondering how it happened that you got reassigned to Fourth Force Recon as soon a
s you got commissioned.”

  “Yes, sir, that question did cross my mind. I’d expected, per policy, to be assigned to a FIST to get experience as a platoon commander before I returned to Force Recon.”

  “Then I guess you haven’t heard much about our part of the war on Ravenette.”

  “Not much, sir. Fourth FR raised hell behind enemy lines, but I haven’t heard any details.”

  Obannion nodded; he wasn’t surprised that word of individual actions and casualties hadn’t made it to Arsenault before Daly graduated from Officer Training College. He’d just returned to Camp Basilone a couple of hours ago, so he hadn’t had time to talk to anybody in the company yet.

  Obannion raised his voice. “Sergeant Major, would you get Captain Qindall and Warrant Officer Jaqua, please. I’d like to see the three of you.”

  “Captain Qindall and Gunner Jaqua, aye aye, sir.”

  There was the sound of the sergeant major’s chair pushing away from his desk, followed by footsteps. Captain Stu Qindall, the company executive officer, appeared in the doorway of Obannion’s office and entered, followed by Warrant Officer Krispin Jaqua.

  “Detail reporting as ordered, sir,” Sergeant Major Maurice Periz said as he entered the office behind Jaqua.

  Obannion shot him a look then shook his head slightly. He should have known that everybody he wanted to see would be right outside, waiting for his summons. “At least I don’t have to worry about having to repeat anything,” he said drily, then stopped while Qindall and Jaqua greeted Daly and congratulated him on his commissioning.