Starfist - 14 - Double Jeopardy
Page 35
Louis Cukayla, Johnny Paska, and the commander of the mining camp that hadn’t stood down when Commodore Borland gave the order were held in the Grandar Bay’s brig as far as Thorsfinni’s World. There they were handed off to another navy starship for the next leg of their trip to Earth, where they likely faced numerous charges from the Attorney General’s office.
The Ministry of Interplanetary Affairs sent delegates to Opal to establish diplomatic relations, a necessary step before beginning the investigation to discover who on Opal was behind the secret operations on Ishtar, and possible subsequent criminal charges.
The Grandar Bay reached Thorsfinni’s World in due time, and Brigadier Sturgeon granted the FIST a week’s planetary leave.
Lance Corporal Schultz reluctantly rejoined third platoon. He didn’t speak to anybody, or in any way acknowledge anything said to him.
Third platoon didn’t waste any time getting to Big Barb’s and causing instant pandemonium. Shrieks and screams of joy reverberated off the walls as soon as the girls saw the Marines come through the door. If any of them had attempted to walk to the Marine she liked the most, she would have been trampled by the rest, who ran so fast their feet barely touched the floor.
“Tim, Tim!” shouted two voices in point and counterpoint. Big Sergeant Kerr braced himself well enough that he barely staggered when blond Frida and dark Gotta threw themselves into his arms.
Skinny-almost-to-the-point-of-painfulness Carlala shrieked and threw herself at Corporal Dean, wrapping her arms and legs around him and kissing him as though trying to suck the air out of his lungs. Either that or blow his lungs full.
Young Stulka, too excited to emit a proper shriek, squealed as she ran to PFC McGinty and peppered his face with tiny kisses.
Vinnie was more restrained in greeting Corporal Doyle. It was as if she knew he’d be embarrassed if she simply jumped on him at first sight.
The other women exuberantly greeted their men, except for Hildegard, who hadn’t paired off with anybody since Godenov was killed on Haulover—she hadn’t paired off with anybody in particular before him, and then only the one time, right before Thirty-fourth FIST deployed to fight the Skinks. And for Erika.
Not all the Marines were there. Corporal Claypoole had headed straight for Brystholde and Jente’s farm, where, to the extent they could, they were “living in sin.”
Sergeant Ratliff wasn’t there, either. He’d decided to go to the village of Hryggurandlit and pay a surprise visit to Kona, the widow who’d taken up with him at a FIST party. This was the first time he’d been to Kona’s village, and at first she wasn’t exactly happy to see him. After all, she was a respectable widow woman, and it was unseemly for her to be having an affair with one of those ruffians from Thirty-fourth FIST. On the other hand, she was a widow, and her neighbors should grant her a certain leeway. Ratliff was quite an acceptable man to come courting, if that’s what he was doing. And if it wasn’t exactly what he was doing, well that was just too bad, and her straitlaced neighbors could go and suck eggs if they didn’t like it.
Einna Orafem heard the commotion and burst out of the kitchen, almost bowling Big Barb over in her haste to get to Lance Corporal Schultz. After ascertaining that he was alive and well and in the barracks, she retired to the kitchen and called him on his personal comm. She ordered him in no uncertain terms to meet her at her home. The FIST had a week’s leave, and she was taking a week off to spend with him. If Big Barb didn’t like it, tough. Just go ahead and try to fire the best chef her establishment had ever had.
There was one other. Erika rampaged through the mass of bodies tangling inside the entrance to Big Barb’s, pushing people out of her way in her search for Corporal Pasquin. She finally pried Dean and Carlala apart and demanded to know where her Raoul was. She wailed when he turned a stricken face on her.
“He’s not dead,” Claypoole said. “But he’s bad off—”
That was all Erika waited to hear. She broke through the rest of the crowd to the door and headed for Camp Ellis. She made such a fuss at the main gate that the Sergeant of the Guard assigned an MP to take her to the base dispensary—and bring her back once she found out what had happened to her man.
Lieutenant Haku, the FIST’s assistant surgeon, was still at the dispensary, making sure the base medical team had the information it needed to treat the few wounded who still needed hospitalization.
“Where is he?” Erika demanded when she broke in on a conference he was having with a general practitioner and two nurses. “Where is Raoul?”
“Raoul? Who’s Raoul? And who let you in here?” Haku asked, taken aback.
Erika gathered herself and said more calmly, “Corporal Pasquin, Company L. He was wounded. Where is he, I need to see him.”
“Oh, my.” Haku turned to the other doctor and the nurses. “Will you excuse us, please?” He guided Erika into an unoccupied examination room and closed the door.
“Please sit, Miss … What’s your name?”
“Erika. Raoul’s my man. Where is he? Why haven’t you taken me to see him?”
Haku sighed, and guided her to a chair. “Please sit, Miss Erika.” He waited until she was seated, and squatted down in front of her. “I’m afraid Corporal Pasquin, Raoul, was very badly wounded. He’s in stasis, waiting for transshipment to a proper hospital.”
“In stasis?”
“Yes. To keep him stable. We did everything we could for him on Ishtar, and then on the Grandar Bay, but he needs more surgery and more care.”
“Where are they going to take him? I’m going with him.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s not possible.”
“Then how long is he going to be gone? How long will I have to wait?”
Haku hung his head for a moment. This felt worse than telling someone her husband had been killed—something he mercifully seldom had to do; the Marines usually took care of informing the next of kin.
“He’s not coming back.”
“Then I’ll go to him.”
“Miss, you won’t know him. He suffered very severe brain damage. He’s going to undergo years of therapy and rehabilitation before he’ll even be able to talk normally and walk without assistance.”
“I don’t care. I’ll nurse him.”
Haku shook his head again. “Erika, he lost a big chunk of his pre-frontal cortex. That’s the part of the brain that controls decision making, social behavior—and personality. The Raoul you knew doesn’t exist anymore.”
After a few more minutes, Lieutenant Haku escorted Erika back to the entrance of the dispensary and handed her over to the waiting MP, who took her back to the main gate. She cried softly the entire way. The Sergeant of the Guard took pity on her and had the MP drive her all the way home. She never stopped crying.
Erika disappeared into her apartment and wasn’t seen for several days. When her friends came to see her, she sent them away without even opening the door.
When Erika finally emerged, she wore black.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
DAVID SHERMAN is a former U.S. Marine and the author of eight novels about Marines in Vietnam, where he served as an infantryman and as a member of a Combined Action Platoon. He is also the author of the military fantasy series Demontech.
www.novelier.com
DAN CRAGG enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1958 and retired with the rank of sergeant major twenty-two years later. He is the author of Inside the VC and the NVA (with Michael Lee Lanning), Top Sergeant (with William G. Bainbridge), and a Vietnam War novel, The Soldier’s Prize. He recently retired from his work as an analyst for the Department of Defense.
Starfist: Double Jeopardy is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by David Sherman and Dan Cragg
All rights reserved.
Published in the Uni
ted States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sherman, David.
Double jeopardy / David Sherman and Dan Cragg.
p. cm.—(Starfist ; bk. 14)
eISBN: 978-0-345-51913-9
1. Marines—Fiction. 2. Life on other planets—Fiction. I. Cragg, Dan. II. Title.
PS3569.H4175D68 2010
813′.54—dc22 2009042831
www.delreybooks.com
v3.0
Table of Contents
Cover
Other Books By This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
About the Authors
Copyright