I was a damn good officer, and I knew my troops appreciated what I did, even when they didn’t like the orders. I wasn’t about to sacrifice that for anything, not even chumps like Brigadier General McFarlane, and sure as hell not Major General Simmons.
I had a nice place – that honestly, I needed to offload since it was no longer something I could use for my troops without taking heat. I ended up selling it not too long after, but I sold it to the NCO and enlisted clubs, making back all of what I’d put into it and then some – in fact, I ended up with nearly as much money as I’d spent on it, ammunition expenses included! The only drawback was that I didn’t have a private dojo anymore – but living in base officers’ quarters wasn’t all bad, and I did find a sneaky way to get my own space for practice, after all – I simply paid for the suite next to mine in senior officers’ quarters, and had them clear out all of the furniture. I still had to watch the noise, but that was tolerable. As a plus, that space also came in handy to hold personal weapons and other equipment later on, too.
I was also getting paid a pretty hefty amount of cash – and I found a “money guy” to handle investing it. That was going to pay dividends – no pun intended – down the road, but I had no idea at the time just how much. With the high degree of regulation involved, it was better to leave that to someone who knew how best to grow money with other money, just like it was better to let someone like me plan assaults and lead troops. Steven “Scrooge” McDirk was, frankly, an expert in his field – and while his fees were not cheap, he also tied them to the profit that he made for his clients. Since he was rich as all get out, I figured he was the right man for the job. His offices in Fayetteville weren’t too far away, so a quick trip to see him in person and I had a new attorney and investor.
My days were largely office-bound. I was granted the pleasure of sitting on my ass, doing essentially nothing other than coordinating efforts of my regimental commanders, passing on orders from higher, to them, as well as liaising with other units and organizations within the army for support and mission issues.
About the only actual joy I got out of it all, was when I was afforded the opportunity to get out of my office and spend time with the deployed units, in their comfortable and secure rear areas (my bodyguards were, I was sure, reporting back to Simmons and I couldn’t afford for my “mentor” to hear that I was taking “un-necessary risks” with my person). I won’t lie, I enjoyed the adoration and admiration of my troops – and, at the same time, I envied them, I was jealous of them, that they were in a position to engage in combat when the only thing I got to fight was the paper monster hiding my desk.
I spent more and more time in the officer’s mess on base, after hours. I’d fallen into the habit of leaving my office at 5, going to the mess and having a few drinks, engaging in idle chatter with whoever showed up for the next few hours, and then going back to my house and sweating out whatever alcohol I’d drank, in my private dojo. Shower and clean up, perhaps read a little, eat a light dinner, then go to bed.
I’d kept Jenkins as my driver, and she was pretty much at my beck and call whenever I wanted to go somewhere – the concept of drinking and driving was frowned on, to put it mildly – although with more and more people moving into the arkscrapers, it was becoming less and less of an issue on public roads. She’d be back outside my front door at 0700 and would ferry me back to the headquarters building on base, and then be available for anything, should I call. I’d work till noon, she’d drive me to the mess for lunch. (“James, really, you must understand that it doesn’t look appropriate to either higher - namely, me – or your subordinates, that you’d do something so mundane as to WALK where you want to go, not as a brigadier general!” “Yes sir, General Simmons, I understand sir, I will assure that my driver is available to drive me anywhere, rather than let my troops see me out and about for anything other than specific purposes.”)
She’d wait around, drive me back to the office… presumably, she got her own lunch before or after she picked me up – I remembered when I was a driver that I’d grab something quick in the mess – a few good words to the duty chef and he’d throw a few sandwiches, a bottle or two of water, and some snacks into a bag, and it was less than 5 minutes, and I never had to worry about running out with lunch half eaten so that I could pick up Colonel Watts.
Colonel Watts… then General Watts… I wondered where he was at. I hadn’t seen him since I was in special forces.
A quick directory search with my implant showed two “Major General Watts” in the system. “Fuck it, can’t hurt.” I sent an email to both, requesting further clarification of identification, as I was seeking a specific Major General Watts for professional development counselling.
Not getting an answer in the next few minutes wasn’t terribly surprising; it’s entirely possible that they could have been out of the country, in which case it would take longer for the message to replicate to wherever their local repeater was, and longer still for him to compose a reply and then for that reply to make it back to me.
Back to the paperwork.
That was my life. Monday through Friday, up, work, lunch, work, mess, home, workout, sleep. Repeat.
Saturdays and Sundays were – and had always been - just a lazy time for me, time to sleep in, usually still wake up at the same time, but rather than wake up and ‘take on the day’, I’d lay in bed and look out the window at the sky, and… wonder. Think. Question.
As much as I hated to admit it, that prick McFarlane had a point. I needed a hobby.
Very much contrary to the recommendation of “Scrooge” McDirk, my financial advisor, I decided I wanted to start skydiving. After my horrendous introduction to the Rangers, my direct-instruction airborne course actually had me enjoying it all – and in fact, I even sort of liked my instructor, who was the same guy who suckered me into jumping out of that airplane the first time.
I was still based at Fort Gibson – I was, after all, the commander of the 82nd airborne – but I was honestly surprised at how few skydiving businesses were in the area. You’d have figured that with that many troops in the area, there would be a booming business in it.
“Michael’s Mania” was the best-rated place around apparently, but for some weird reason, they were by appointment only.
I pinged the comm address through my implant, set for anonymous (Look, I was the COMMANDER… I had to watch out for both people who were out to cause trouble, as well as Simmons getting wind of what I was doing – or in some cases, both).
“Michael’s Mania, how can I help you?”
“Hey, I’m interested in getting into skydiving as a civvie, and it sounds like you’re the best place in town to go through. How do I get started?”
“You sound like maybe you’re from the base – are you airborne qualified?”
“Um…. Yeah, why?”
“Well, the regulations on skydiving as a civilian are fairly strict, but if you’re basic jump qualified, we can do a quick checklist to validate you, and you skip right to ‘A’ status. About the only thing you’d have to watch out for, is if your commander doesn’t like it. I hear the new 82nd CO is a real dick about high-risk recreational activities.”
Oh really, now. That was news to me.
“Nah, I don’t really give a shit what the commander says. I wanna get out and see if it’s any fun, and if I like it, I’ll do it again. Not letting some dipshit general tell me what I can and can’t do!”
“Hey buddy, just so you know, there are a lot of military guys who come in here – I’m retired military myself, so I don’t mind telling off the mil types, but watch your ass, man.”
“Don’t sweat it man, I’ll take care of it. So how do we get started?”
“Easy. Come on down and we’ll talk through the basics and work through it piece by piece….” He gave me an address and a few preliminary things to handle before I came over, but I told him ‘Jim’ would be by the next Saturday, which was his next available opening for class tim
e.
I got my medical records collected, grabbed my log book (which sadly, hadn’t had any new entries since my combat jumps in the Polynesian islands), and the following Saturday, I had the duty driver (Corporal Jenkins deserves her time off too, you know) drop me at the shop with directions to be available for a pickup later that evening.
When I walked in, imagine my surprise when I saw Master Sergeant Breshears look up at me. “Wait, are you ‘Michael’??”
“Wow, sir, long time no see! I wasn’t expecting you – I heard you were…” he paused – realizing things were going to get a little awkward since he was expecting ‘Jim’ to show up, “I heard you were promoted way up. What’s got you here?”
“Well, I’m the 82nd commander now. Thought I’d stop in and see if any of my boys were coming here without a chit allowing them to.”
“Umm… hold on one second sir.”
He stood up and walked to the door, flipping a switch next to it to turn off the “OPEN” sign outside.
“I was expecting someone, but they’ll have to come back.”
“Ahhh, so you DO have people running afoul of… how’d you put it… “the 82nd CO who’s a real dick about recreational activities?”
He looked worried, then quizzical, and then laughed. “You motherfucker, it never occurred to me that you were ‘Jim’.. and yeah, I had heard that the new CO was a real asshole.”
“Well, I am, but not about this kind of stuff. I’m curious who you’d heard that from, actually – I’d like to set them straight. And I figured ‘Jim’ was a safe bet, since I hate the name and always go by James, instead. I didn’t expect YOU, though!”
It was fun reminiscing about old times. He’d gotten out not too long after I’d left 75th’s COB; he didn’t think his chances of promotion were that good. “Seriously? That honestly sounds like a load of shit. I’m guessing you went to… let’s just call it ‘another unit’, and while the workload isn’t crazy, you’re also not always here, thus the ‘by appointment only’ stuff.” There was always a new ‘super-secret’ unit starting up when knowledge of the last super-secret unit’s existence eventually leaked to the public.
“I umm… can neither confirm nor deny that, sir.” He winked.
He noted that my log book had my ‘official’ dives from when he’d originally trained me, more from Ranger school, and other combat jumps from when I was the CO of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment. None of my COB jumps were logged, though, of which, there were more than a few. He said we could easily fix that – and he ended up backdating my training dates, boosting my numbers that in turn made me as a new student look more like the experienced skydiver that I really was, lying to present the truth.
Skydiving was a lot of fun, and something that I did for a long time afterwards, whenever the opportunity presented itself. We did some crazy stuff, too – the “wingsuit” from a few centuries back had made something of a resurgence. I ended up buying a lot of gear for myself – couldn’t hurt to have some fun stuff laying around, after all – and I preferred to have my own gear to use, rather than stuff that hadn’t seen the kind of care and attention that I lend towards my own stuff. That, and, you could spend some extra cash and get some really nice equipment, far better than average – and I did.
I found another hobby, too. After a few dozen civilian jumps, tooling around in the air, I asked Michael who did the flying, to which he said he farmed it out to a friend – who I ended up meeting, and who convinced me (which wasn’t hard to do) to pursue a private license for that, too.
Not a bad way to spend the weekend – flying jumpers up, then enjoying an hour or two on my own – or, riding up while someone else flew, while I jumped out.
Sometimes, you just need a break.
Chapter 33: Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts.
Remember what I said about needing a break? Too much isn’t a good thing.
I was skydiving on a weekly basis, despite McDirk’s protests that it was, “a most unsavory way to die.” Hell, even Major General Simmons finally heard about it and suggested it wasn’t a particularly wise choice of hobbies – although he did finally relent and agree that I needed to stay active and as long as I was working with a known, high-quality instructor and that I was taking a heavy personal interest in my own safety, that it was an acceptable hobby with satisfactory risk mitigation.
Michael’s business boomed, when my troops found out that “the old man” was not only a jumper, but that he was also often the guy flying the airplane, too. That was great in that I liked seeing friends prosper and do well, and almost as great because it gave me a newfound respect for troops that I might not otherwise meet – but it also meant that I was always hearing stories about deployments, complaints (which, arguably, it was good for me to hear since I could do something about them)
I found myself thinking of them more and more as, “My Kids” even though I couldn’t identify more than several dozen of them by name, and those only because I saw them frequently. It was nice to have a line into the “E-4 Mafia” though; I took advantage of that on more than a few occasions, in discussions that started out with, “So, if I wasn’t the old man, what would you bitch about, and what would you be excited about enough, to tell me?”
I shit-canned one battalion commander because of that, I also promoted several deserving people who otherwise wouldn’t have gotten further than the rank they were already at. Unfortunately, there were also several cases where people tried to ‘leak’ things to me and ended up getting censured for, as a result of presenting less than the truth to me.
I was a hard-ass, but I was a fair one – which came from all quarters, enlisted and commissioned, male and female, gay, straight, you name it. I cared about my troops and did whatever I could to keep to support them when they made honest, serious efforts to remain combat effective. Those were the kind of people the USCA needed; those were the kind of people that society needed. Unfortunately, that was only my opinion, and the growing ‘Intendancy’ overwhelmingly thought otherwise.
I spent 8 years as BGen CO of 82nd. It bored me to tears; I was barely ever allowed to deploy with my troops, and I was stuck behind that goddamned desk more often than not.
20 AUG 2114
In Re:Brigadier General James Wolf
S/N 20690401142857
Pursuant to general orders of the Commander, subject soldier is promoted from O6 rank to O7 effective 03 SEP 2114.
Subject soldier transferred to Army Special Operations Command, Washington DC, to assume the role of G3 Operations & Planning.
…
So I packed my shit – more than a duffle bag and barracks box at this point, but not by much – and made plans to move. McDirk wasn’t thrilled about not having ready access to me, but hyperloop tubes were spreading across the country. It wasn’t going to be long before you could hop into a pod and be halfway across the country in a matter of hours – cross-country in less than a working day, and speeding up all the time.
“Steve, give it a rest; it’s not like you can’t reach me by implant, and, I trust you – at least, I believe your best interests are aligned with mine.”
“Yes, but James, there are often occasions when it’s simply imperative that I reach you without fail on short notice. If your stated intent is to be financially fluid to the extreme, we can do that, but I need ready access. Here, I can at least walk into the building and yell until you hear me – if you’re in DC, I don’t have that luxury.”
He had a point, but it was easily enough addressed. The implant network was at this point fully extended across nearly all the continental United States; the only issue became security – which I overcame by setting up a commercial comm code and set it to forward all calls to my military-configured implant.
“Steve, I’m going to send you a comm code. Write it down, file it, store it, whatever – but if you need to reach me, anytime, anywhere, that code will get to me. The only way it won’t get to me is if I’m not in the country, and even
sometimes THEN it will get to me right away. With the next duty station I’m transferring to, I’ll have a fairly high comm bandwidth priority, and I can set my own priority for anything coming to me. If you use that code and you don’t reach me directly, leave a message, and odds are good it will hit my implant in less than 10 minutes.”
He looked a little confused, since I’d done all of this while he’d been talking – I hadn’t lost my ability to implant-multitask in ways that were still shocking to other people who just assumed there were limitations to the implant, rather than pressing the limits like I’d done every time I accessed the damn thing.
A week later, I was settling into a civilian arkscraper apartment, rather high up in fact - the DC Arkscraper was one of the first (because, well, we just HAVE to have protection of our democratic rulers, you know!) to be pushed over 200 stories, even though the seat of government had since moved to the larger arkscrapers in Manhattan.
Rage & Fury Page 33
