Rage & Fury

by Darryl Hadfield

  He mumbled something about apologies and deaths but whatever. I had shit to do, so I hung up.

  My team – well, my actual team, since the other half of ‘my’ team was now in the local morgue, along with their usual leader – had already packed up their things, as well as those of the deceased, and then offered to help the MIB platoon – but they were already done.

  We’d done a clean-room pre-deployment routine, and that helped. In a nutshell, you strip naked, and everything comes off unless it’s physically attached to you and can’t be removed. This included things like earrings, rings, removable body mods, anything – and then you walk through a full-body metal detector into another room. You’re watched the whole time, both while you undress and then get dressed again, and by separate people, no less. This was to make sure you haven’t forgotten anything, and also to make sure that the person watching doesn’t make any incorrect assumptions. Unfortunately, there are always tell-tales. Things like how you trim your nails, anything in your bowels, and – worst of all – the implants.

  While it was difficult to cut an implant out and compare it to a civilian model (physically, they were the same), it was theoretically possible and I didn’t want those things disappearing. I had to make sure the local morgue wasn’t doing any funny business with the bodies, and I had to make sure they got secured and then transported properly back home. Bribes. Lots and lots of bribes. Again, why people can’t do their shit because it’s their job, and instead, accept extra payment – I really shouldn’t be surprised by this, but I always am.

  Do you have any idea how ridiculously difficult it is to transport a body from one country to another? Probably not. Take my word for it, it’s damn near impossible, all the fucking red tape. That said, It didn’t hurt that we were all under assumed names, and had cleaned everything up in our luggage, our equipment, EVERYTHING.

  It took some doing, not to mention several bribes, but I got us onto trans-Atlantic (civilian!) transport, along with the bodies of Justine and the others. Our weapons and ammo had been acquired locally, and we destroyed it all in the woods in a random stop on the highway back to Zagreb with thermite grenades. I got the adapter from Ivy to pull the recorded data off of the glasses so I could review it on the flight. Comically, it was actually a hard-sided case, the sort you’d put eyeglasses or sunglasses into to protect them from any external damage. I put the glasses in it to charge them, as well as pull the video off, and then pinged it with my implant to give me the data feed.

  Oddly, while it had the video I wanted to see, the video resolution was… blurry and scratchy – almost like the video optics in the glasses were damaged. That was strange to begin with; the glasses were solid-state and charged wirelessly, and had all electronics and power hardware embedded within the polymer frames of the glasses. I left them in the case

  Once we arrived back in the Continental United States (“CONUS” for us), we had unmarked transport to pick us up at the airport. Graves registration (through our own Logistics platoon) picked up the bodies- I stayed there until I had positive confirmation from the “John Smith, Mortuary Assistant” ID that was supposed to claim them, that he had them and had left the airport.

  We didn’t go home –the airport in Columbus Georgia was still our destination, but we went north of the city to an unmarked apartment building that was like a smaller version of an arkscraper, with underground parking and fairly decent security – for civilians.

  We made short work of it all, but I had to go through a rather unpleasant debrief when I got back.

  “Major Wolf, congratulations, and, we need to talk.” Colonel Bradburry was, to put it mildly, not happy. Not only had we lost an entire COB team, we’d lost the most senior team leader, and while we’d collected the data that command was looking for, it was at a price we didn’t want to pay.

  “Can do sir. What’s up?” I asked, as I sat into the seat he pointed at.

  “The video is gone.”

  “What video, sir?”

  “The video that Captain Hotez indicated that she took, of the vehicle that brought Lieutenant Colonel Trudeau to Stari Brod.” Oh shit.

  “I noted in my initial debrief that the video was of questionable quality, sir. Was it the same the whole way through?”

  “No, Major. It was gone – it wasn’t on the glasses or the adapter case at all. Analysis of the glasses and their adapter show that they’re working exactly as expected.” This was… even worse.

  Fortunately, I was a suspicious bastard. I had a copy of the video on my implant. “One moment please, sir.” I thought ‘at’ my implant… yep, still there. I connected to the battalion dataspace, and pushed an archived copy of the video into my private location. “Sir, I had a copy of it on my implant, and I’ve just dumped it to the dataspace. I’m more than a little suspicious at this point, however. I’ve used an archive copy; I would suggest we go with a single person – a junior person, from outside the unit – brought in and sequestered to review it, with offline processing. I’m maintaining the copy I have in my implant; I rarely take up storage space with much other than literature that’s important to me.”

  Bradburry was impressed. “Damn, son, I wouldn’t have expected that. Well done – and one more reason you deserve the rank you’re wearing now. It’s nice to see my efforts from a couple of decades ago have paid off so handsomely.”

  I had a momentary flashback of confronting this man on a bridge with a rifle and surprising him then, too. I had no intention of stopping, either – I appreciated the rank the army had given me, and I wanted more.

  Chapter 27: What is "Happy" anyway?

  2099 came to a close, and 2100, the first day of a new century, arrived.

  I felt good. That wasn’t just because of Ivy’s gorgeous long blonde hair barely covering her tits while she was riding me – I felt good about… everything. Didn’t even have a hangover from the ridiculous drinking binge we went on, the night before.

  I fit in, I was doing well, I’d gained not insignificant rank and was headed for more. My boys were doing well – well, not all of them – Corporal First Class Melody Dobie and Corporal Francine Jones, as you might guess, had the wrong parts to be “boys”.

  Fortunately (or unfortunately), they weren’t the trans-types (ie. Born with tits, and want to trade in for a dick, or, vice versa). We weren’t anti-trans in the teams, we just didn’t want the extra hassles that came along with it. Those two – “Butch” and “Frank”, respectively – were about to bump one level. Ry, my oldest friend from pretty much anywhere that still knew me, was going to get a bump, too, but-

  “HEY! Quit fantasizing over fucking those two and concentrate on ME, dammit!” Ivy was a demanding bitch, but she was my demanding bitch.

  I flipped her over and pinned her, face-down, smiling at the sound of her moan when I grabbed her throat and squeezed while I entered her from behind. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing si- Daddy! Nothing!” Her impudent little grin came through, anyway, so I stopped – and immediately heard her whine as she started grinding against me.

  This was fairly typical of the time we’d spent together. We didn’t “date” like most people do, but we did spend a lot of time in bed – or up against the wall, hanging from the ceiling on a swing, on the floor, or occasionally somewhere a little riskier.

  She was fun, and I enjoyed time with her. It felt GOOD, and like I alluded before, it wasn’t just the physical – mentally, emotionally, I felt great.

  She liked it rough – turns out that back after I finished basic training, she’d picked me as her latest victim – she liked to see who would fight back. Apparently, I was the only one who’d ever fought back and managed to get in a shot or two (okay, so I barely kept her from knocking me out immediately. I *WAS* the only fresh private who ever talked smack to her and managed to hold out as long as I had). She liked the domination aspect of it, and she liked it enough to push until she found someone who would go the extra mile – and our second
‘bout’ clinched it.

  I got her off easily, making sure she asked like a good girl before she came, and then layed back on the bed. She lay there, until her orgasmic shaking subsided – then she curled up next to me.

  “Thinking about the award ceremony?” she sounded almost like a little kid when she talked like that; I figure she must have had some fucked up trauma to make her into such a submissive masochist, and then maintain it afterwards, too. We got more than a little bit of psych training as well, did I mention that before? “Childhood Sexual Trauma can lead to sexual disorders and dysfunction.” Whatever.

  “Yeah, this will be the first time for me… I’ve had troops get promoted under me before, but awards are a little different, and my experience isn’t something I’ll have to deal with, ever, I hope.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine – you know from, yeah, your own experience, what they’re probably thinking. From what I’ve heard, it’s mostly the same regardless of Arkie or streetganger origins.” Funny she’d mentioned that; while infantry was predominantly street gang kids but still had a lot of officers and senior enlisted who were from the arkscrapers, SF was nearly entirely street gang. “Just treat them the same as you have all along, pin the fucking thing on and be done with it. Take your mind off of it. What’s up next for you? Are you deploying with the regular battalions to Micronesia?”

  “Hunh.” My grunt was a general suggestion that I didn’t really want to talk about it, and not just because Operational Security – OpSec – made it a bad idea. The awards – bronze medal, and a handful of purple hearts, plus of course the promotions, were for my team alone; we did these things within the teams, plus the CO and his Sergeant Major, plus the Regimental CO and his RSM.

  That fit fine with me.

  We were in a larger conference room, chairs cleared, for a relatively small formation. There weren’t many of us – the 16 guys on my team, 18 with the CO and his SMaj, and 20 with the Regimental CO and the Regimental SMaj.

  This was my first formation with a unit this size, too. Normally you’d have the entire platoon arranged tallest to shortest, then dressed into three ranks so that the tallest people were on the ends, shortest in the middle. Here? It was both simpler and more complicated. I stood at the front of the formation, each of my brick leaders stood behind me, and each of their brick’s members were arranged two by two behind them. All of us were at ease, by the time the big boys came in.

  Our CO, Colonel Wentz, and his Battalion SM, Sergeant Major Cedeno, stood in front and off to our right. The Regimental Commander, Brigadier General Watts and Regimental Sergeant Major Ballard, followed them in, and stood to our left.

  Blah blah blah. I fucking hate speeches. Watts’ speech came down to, “good job, keep it up.” Wentz was basically the same.

  “Sar’nt Major! Assemble the men!” barked Wentz. BSM Cedeno called us to attention, then saluted and handed off to the Regimental Sergeant Major, who called me up to the front.

  I handed out awards first – the lowest ones. Purple hearts to MCpl O’Leary (not CFC O’Leary, that was his brother, who was in another brick), MCpl Jim Fara, Cpl Francine Jones, and MCpl John Turner. Good job, boys and Francine.

  Then came the fun part.

  “Attention to orders!” Goddamn, Ballard had a piercing voice. Battalion Sergeant Major Cedeno called off each in turn, who came up to the front, saluted me, and was promoted in a formal ceremony. It occurred to me while Frank – Sorry, that’s Francine; there was some weird story in her history that resulted in her getting ‘Frank’ as a nickname – walked up, that I’d never gotten a promotion in an actual parade, or even anything more formal than someone shoving a box with dress rank insignia across a desk from me.

  “Congratulations, Corporal First Class Jones!” I shook her hand, she smiled, stepped back and saluted, and went back to the ranks.

  Butch was next. Sorry, my bad – Corporal First Class Melody Dobie was called up, same routine.. I handed “Master Corporal Dobie” the little box with dress rank, shook her hand, smiled, stepped back, saluted, went back to ranks.

  Last was fun – Ry. When called up, he came up front and saluted, which I returned.. and taking the little box with rank insignia in it from Battalion Sergeant Major Cedeno, I turned and opened it and showed Ry. “It gives me great pleasure to promote you to the rank of Master Sergeant Ry Little.” He didn’t smile, nothing. Typical Ry; I was gonna have to break him out of that – so I whispered, “What, do I hafta gut one of these officers to make you smile?”

  His eyes went wide. “N-N-No sir! Thank you sir!” I winked at him, and he smiled slightly. That was better.

  Then things took another surprise. BSM Cedeno handed off back to RSM Ballard, who dismissed the “parade”.

  I did some brief handshaking, congratulations, small talk, etc… and then I heard Ballard’s voice again.

  “Close and secure the doors.”

  Thaaaaat was not part of any parade drill I’d ever done.

  “POST.” Okay, normally that was a command given when in formation, but… we weren’t in formation. What the fuck?

  Everyone else seemed to know what to do – everyone moved to the center of the room, forming a loose circle.

  Out of no-where, knives appeared. Most of them were issued fighting blades, a few – like Rage, which was now in my hands, were personally purchased, and a few were more decorative folding blades.

  Watts walked to the middle of the room, a naked fighting blade in his hand. His other hand held.. OHHHhhhh now I see where this is headed. His other hand held a flask that looked surprisingly like one I’d seen Ballard with, long ago. He walked person to person, dripping a few drops of the flask’s contents onto each person’s blade – even I could smell the distinct aroma of a Port or Sherry. Ballard was behind him, with that little tube of CLP again, following him around, clockwise, from person to person. They finally dropped on their own blades, and put away their bottles.

  Everyone pulled out the distinctive dark gray cloths and wiped down their blades – and then, with a smooth stroke across our palms, intoned: “Our Blades, Our Bodies, Our Souls – for God, Goddess, and Freedom.”

  This time, however, we didn’t disperse immediately. Knives were all sheathed, and Watts spoke up.

  “There are hard times coming, and I don’t mean missions. You all are aware of the changing mindset of our government, and the population that thinks they elected the government. We remain vigilant, obedient to commands, but never lose sight of the cost of freedom. I pray none of you have to pay that price, and, if you do, know that you’re not alone. All of you know one another – and now we bring Major Wolf into our fold, as well. Regardless of whether you stay in COB, or move to another unit, remember each other, remember our goal, remember your purpose before your intent.”

  “Dismissed.”

  We filed out then, quietly. ‘Purpose’ and ‘Intent’? Where had I heard that before?

  We had the rest of the afternoon off, and I spent it thinking.

  What was my purpose? What was my intent? I went back, way back, to the discussion with Sensei Kim – Colonel Marshall – and his comments about those two words.

  I knew I wanted rank, I wanted the power that came with it. So far, that had worked out well – I was 30 years old, a Major in Special Forces, and still on the way up.

  I think…

  I think I’m going to see what Ivy’s doing, and give her something to do if she’s not busy.

  ---

  I spent the rest of the year on missions, mostly foreign stuff, but a few domestically – we did anti-terrorism, and it seems like that had only gotten worse in the last decade or so.

  Some of the missions were a little boring – while I could fill the role of a sniper, I didn’t really enjoy it. During the 2100 summer Olympics in Cincinnati, Ohio, we got the JOY of travelling there in advance, my entire team, to do security. Some of it wasn’t so bad – the Midwest wasn’t really that bad of a place if you could get o
ut and see around – but with more and more people into the Arkscrapers (and Cincinnati had two), and less and less athletes willing to compete outdoors, it meant we were mostly stuck inside.

  I never did buy into that bullshit about radiation clouds, even though the 8-day war had left some nasty shit floating around. If it’d been that bad, I’d probably have been born with a third eye or four arms or something stupid like that.

  In any case, we were inside, and didn’t get to get out and see much. We had all-access passes, and got in to see any event we wanted, provided we weren’t on duty, and remained accessible to command for the duration of the event taking up the entire month of August. That, of course, didn’t include the three months that we spent beforehand, reviewing positions, procedures, and routes. Yes, Routes; we occasionally had to do security for individual athletes because fans from one country would try to do-in the athletes from another country – both because they hated them, as well as because it gave their own athletes that much more of a better shot at their given events.