by J. N. Chaney
He took a deep breath and pushed the door open. Sergeant Mason was sitting in an easy chair beside his bed, a red robe over his hospital sweats. He turned at Rev’s entrance.
Rev stopped. Mason’s dull right eye looked out from a face that eclipsed Colonel Destafney’s. And where the colonel’s followed the contours of a normal skull, Mason’s did not. The metallic shell was depressed where the sergeant’s left side of his skull should be.
Around his neck was a piece of parachute cord, a single round hanging from it. His Hog’s Tooth.
“Sergeant Mason, do you remember me?”
There was no comprehension behind the Marine’s single remaining eye.
“It’s me, Sergeant Pelletier. I was Corporal Pelletier then. I was your—”
“My spotter. I remember you,” he said with slow, separated words as if speaking took an enormous amount of energy.
Does he remember what happened?
Suddenly, Rev thought this might be a bad idea. He’d falsified records, after all. He’d dodged one bullet with the Omega Division agent, but was this tempting fate?
“I remember you. I remember being in the hide. I . . .” He paused for a good twenty seconds, slowly breathing in and out. “I don’t remember after that.”
Am I a shit for being thankful for that?
“They say I killed an Angel shit sniper just before he got me. Is that what really happened?”
“You’re a Hog, right?” Rev said, pointing at the round. “That tells the story.”
“But what happened? Why can’t I remember?”
Because you were already dead when I took her out.
“I want to remember,” he said, his voice rising in pitch.
Rev looked at the cam covering the room, almost expecting to hear the nurse running down to pull him out.
“It was like they told you. You saw the sniper at the same time she saw you. Only you were quicker. You nailed her first before her round nicked you.”
“Nicked.” That’s a freakin’ understatement. She killed you.
“That’s pretty much it. And now you’re a hog. Not many of you, and you should be proud.”
At the mention of “hog,” Mason looked down, took his Hog’s Tooth in his hand, and stared at it. A smile, untouched and completely normal, spread across the otherwise mangled face. Rev could see the tension leave the body.
Rev moved closer and put his left hand on Mason’s arm. “Look. From what we could tell, the sniper was about to take me out. You reacted, and she had to shift her aim to you. You saved my life.”
Which was complete bullshit. He just blurted it out.
“I did?”
“Yeah, you did. And I wanted to thank you.”
Mason looked up from his Hog’s Tooth and stared at Rev.
“Not only that. A couple of days later, I saved a girl. A little girl. If you hadn’t saved me, I wouldn’t have been around. So, you saved her life, too.”
That seemed to register, and he said, “Only doing my duty.”
“I know. That’s all we can do.”
Rev spent the next hour sitting beside Mason, chatting about inconsequentials. Mason’s memory of the far past was much clearer. His voice started slurring more, and he was more halting, but he recalled details of his time as a child in much greater clarity than Rev could. Several times, he had Rev laughing at some childish exploit.
Rev was surprised when the nurse popped his head in and said, “Sergeant, Yuri’s doctor’ll be here in fifteen minutes. It might be better if you were already gone.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure,” Rev said, standing up.
Before he could step away, Mason grabbed his left arm and weakly brought his hand to clink on the metallic side of his face. This Brothers and Sisters of Steel thing, as Bunny called it the night before, tugged at Rev’s heart. The Corps was a tribe, but the Brothers and Sisters of Steel was a tribe within a tribe, and both Rev and Mason were connected because of it.
“Take care of yourself, Hog,” Rev said before stepping away.
“Thank you, Sergeant,” the nurse said as Rev stepped through the door.
Rev had been surprised when he saw Mason’s name, and for a moment, he’d been selfishly afraid that his lie would get out. When he saw Mason, when he heard the sergeant struggle to speak, he pitied the man, wondering if a life like that was worth living.
But after listening to the sergeant tell stories, listening to the joy he’d had in his life, he forgot that Mason was still severely disabled to the point that he might never totally recover. He was just a fellow Marine. That’s all.
He sauntered back down the passage, a slight spring in his step. The world seemed just a bit brighter than it had a few hours ago.
31
Rev was home. Not his parent’s house, but his home. He walked into the barracks and turned left into the wing that served as the Raider and Recon office spaces. He’d intended to check in with the top and the lieutenant, but instead, he opened the hatch into the tiny closet that acted as the First Team office.
“Well, I’ll be damned. ’Bout time you decided to show up,” Tomiko said from where she was sitting with Yazzie.
“Shouldn’t you be out in the field training to kill tin-asses?” Rev asked.
“Don’t need no training,” Yazzie said. “We know how to do it.”
“Come here,” Tomiko said, standing up and giving Rev a hug. “I’m only gonna say this once, so don’t throw it back on me. I missed you, Big Guy. Even if you’re gonna take the element back from me.”
“Don’t be too sure about that,” Rev said. “I think you need to stay as the element leader.”
“What? You know something? Is Delacrie leaving? But if he leaves, then Nix is still senior to you.”
Rev already knew that his mission was a live proof of concept mission, and that was his focus. It felt weird, but he had to accept that he was the package now, and the team—the entire platoon—was his security. He wasn’t just another member of the team.
He couldn’t say that, however . . . yet.
“Nah. I’ve just been out of the loop. Better for you to keep charge.”
“But you’re senior to me,” she said cautiously.
“Only because Pelletier comes before Reiser alphabetically. Besides, it’s not like we’re a real element with Delacrie acting Team leader.”
“You sure about this?”
Does she suspect something? She’s a pretty astute cookie.
“Well, if you don’t think you can handle T2 and me . . .”
“Eat me. Just be prepared for all the shit duties me and T2 have been doing while you’ve been lounging around on your ass taking it easy.”
“Does that mean I get to tell—” Yazzie started to say before Rev and Tomiko cut her off with a resounding, “No!”
“You may have picked up Lance Coolie, but you’re still the boot, T2,” Rev said.
“If I was in the grunts, it would be different,” she grumbled.
“But you’re a Raider, not a grunt.”
“Hey, let me look at that thing,” Tomiko said, reaching out for his social arm. “With Hus-man grabbing all the attention back at the hospital, I never really got the chance to check it out.”
Rev hesitated a moment, and then felt embarrassed about that. There was nothing to be ashamed of. He held out his hand, and Tomiko put her left one as if shaking his, her right hand on top.
“Why the silver instead of skin. You and the top, both?” Yazzie asked as she moved forward to touch his arm, too.
Rev shrugged and didn’t answer. They weren’t Sisters in Steel, and he didn’t want to discuss it. Maybe with Tomiko later, but not with Yazzie there.
“Military issue,” he said as the hatch opened and the staff sergeant entered.
“Oh, Pelletier. Welcome back.”
“Thanks,” Rev said, taking Delacrie’s proffered hand. “Good to get out of that hospital.”
“What’s your status? You on light duty?”
“No. Full duty. Lean, mean, and green, ready to go.”
“Good. I was just with the lieutenant, and he said we’ve got some sort of special mission coming up. Don’t know exactly what, but it’s going to take all hands. You’ll be acting element leader again, so I want you to get up to speed as soon as you can.”
Tomiko started to open her mouth, but Rev nudged her to tamp that down. Things would be clear soon enough, and he wasn’t about to hem and haw around the acting team leader.
“Have you seen top and the lieutenant yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Get that done, then do whatever you’ve got to do for the rest of the day. Be sure to hit the armory and get a new M-49. We’re going to the range bright and early in the morning.”
Rev had to fight to hold back a smile. An M-49 was no longer his primary weapon. He had a few things with just a tiny bit bigger boom, now.
“I’m on my way,” Rev said as he stepped for the door.
“Hey! The club tonight. I’ll get everyone else together. You still owe us a wetting down,” Tomiko told him.
“I didn’t get to go to your wetting down.”
“You snooze, you lose. You still owe us.”
Rev raised a hand in surrender. “Get everyone, not just the team. If I’m buying, I might as well go bankrupt doing it.”
“Infantry in the house! Order up some more pitchers.”
Cricket, Orpheus, Yancy, and Dyce Stewart swaggered in. Rev tried to catch Tomiko’s eyes, but she was deep in conversation with Yazzie. When Rev told her to get everyone, he meant the teams and their DC crew. Dyce was a friend of Cricket’s, and if everyone brought a friend, maybe he would go bankrupt before the night was over.
Hell, he’s a good guy. No harm, no foul.
He stood to give them all a high five, but Cricket grabbed Yancy and pulled down his arm.
“No way, Yance! Left-handed.” He held his left hand high, waiting for Rev. “Just don’t break my hand with that robot arm of yours.”
With a laugh, Rev gave him the high-five, then he had to go around the table as everyone wanted in. Leave it to Cricket to break the ice. The others had been surreptitiously eyeing his arm, and Bundy had asked a few questions, but that was about it. Now, after high-fiving everyone, his arm was fair game. Rev spent the next five minutes telling them about its capabilities and his training, and then he had to go on display. As the host of the gathering, he was supposed to personally pour the first beer for each person, and they all insisted that he pour the four newcomers with his social arm. That wasn’t good enough, though. He then had to top off everyone else.
Rev wasn’t as skilled with his arm as he’d like to be—too much time training with Pashu, not that he’d have that any different—and he was afraid he was going to spill something, and that was suddenly important to him.
Luckily, he made it through each stein, and he got a round of applause. Inordinately pleased with himself, he sat back down.
“Thanks for inviting us,” Ting-a-ling said, moving to sit next to him.
“You’re part of the platoon. Why wouldn’t I?”
“You know . . .”
Rev did know, but he refused to acknowledge it. It was bullshit, as far as he was concerned.
The Frisians were taken off the training schedule, their weapons locked in the armory. They weren’t under arrest or anything like that, but it was made perfectly clear that they were essentially, and supposedly temporarily, grounded.
“I know that you’ve bled with us, and that makes us brothers. That’s what I know.”
“Still, not everyone’s of the same mindset.”
“Screw them. Politicians, shit. All of them. Yours and ours.”
“Yeah, screw them. Still, thanks for the invite.” He pointed at Rev’s arm and said, “You’re pretty good with that.”
“Getting there.”
“I like how you all go for broke with that metal-look.”
“What do you guys do?”
“Well, most of us go through regen.”
That surprised Rev, and he wasn’t sure why. He knew the Union military’s policy on regen for Marines, sailors, and CRA troops was just that, policy, not hard and fast regulations. But because of that, he never considered that anyone else would put the needs of the soldier first—especially the Host, which most Marines considered a sort of faceless hive-military, where individuality was subsumed.
“We’ll get regen, too,” he said, almost defensively. “Just after the war.”
“No. Don’t take me wrong. I think it’s kinda cool. And I know an engineer. He lost an arm, and the regen wouldn’t take. They gave him a prosthesis and let him stay in the Host. Most of it looked like a normal arm, but he could take off the hand if he wanted, and they hooked him up with a bunch of attachments. Tools and stuff, you know. Stippy-do. If they gave me fake arms, I’d want them to goose it up, you know. Give me a 30mm cannon on one, a Tessid launcher with the other. Pow, pow,” he said, miming using both arms to kill imaginary Centaurs. “Why not go all the way.”
Rev almost choked on his beer, and he turned to stare at the Frisian blue-master.
Does he know something?
But Ting-a-ling was laughing, and others were joining in with more and more outlandish applications for a prosthetic arm. One made Rev blush—of course, that was Tomiko’s suggestion—and others went well into fantasy and science fiction. Rev kept watching the blue-master, but he was in on the fun, and it didn’t look like he was hinting at anything.
“Keep a recording of all of this.”
Rev didn’t know what prompted that. Maybe it was just an abundance of caution, a better safe than sorry. Or maybe, he wanted some deniability if it came to it. He’d escaped the Omega Division once unscathed, but that didn’t mean he’d do so again.
“Do you think he knows something?”
“Visible signs? What visible signs?”
Rev sat there in silence for a moment. Punch could do all of that? He was Rev’s private lie detector? He was going to have to give that more thought, but Tomiko gave him an elbow in the ribs as Cricket was up and miming something anatomically impossible to everyone’s laughter.
Rev joined in, more as camouflage than anything else. He didn’t think Ting-a-ling knew anything about Pashu, and he trusted the Frisian with his life, but what with all the “they’ve got a Centaur” controversy, and despite what he’d just said a few minutes ago about being brothers-in-arms, he had to keep in mind the fact they were not Union.
“We’re running low on brewskis,” Strap said, holding up an empty pitcher. “I love drinking sergeant-beer. Much, much better.”
Whatever Ting-a-ling or the other Frisians knew, it was out of his hands. He punched in another five pitchers, ignoring the charge. If he was paying for this shindig, he might as well make it epic. You only made sergeant once, after all.
32
Rev sat in a windowless van in a remote range in the foothills, a range guarded by heavily armed MPs. Daryll was running a diagnostic check on Pashu.
“Will my blood-alcohol content show up on Daryll’s stuff?”
“Tell that to my head.”
“Very funny.”
“No, Punch, it wasn’t. That was sarcasm.”
“You’re good to go, Rev. Break a leg,” Daryll said, pulling the cable from the jack on Pashu, not the one in his neck.
Rev stood up from the chair. It looked like it had been f
ilched from a dentist’s office, but it was good enough for government work. Daryll had assured him that a better donning system was being developed, but for the moment, it was the chair and hoist crammed in the back of a commercial trailer.
He extended Pashu, twisting it at the shoulder. It moved smoothly, without a hitch. It still amazed him that it reacted to his thought as good, if not better, than his right arm.
“Let’s do it.”
He stepped out the back of the trailer and slipped behind it where Major Jewell, one of Colonel Tolouse’s staff, stood waiting.
She touched her ear and whispered, “He’s ready.”
Not too quiet for Rev not to hear. People seemed to focus on Pashu, forgetting that he’d had quite a few augments done before this project. He had a feeling that might come in handy sometime, so he wasn’t running around reminding them. Already, he knew that the good major was having an affair with a Navy captain. Not that he cared about what two adults did behind closed doors, but maybe some little tidbit would pop up about which he did care.
The major held up her hand against his chest while she listened. “The colonel’s going to speak first, then you’re hot.”
There were some bleachers fifty meters in front of the trailer where the Raider Platoon, Colonel Destafney, Lieutenant General Locklear Begay, the commanding general of the Safe Harbor Marine Force, and Lieutenant General Trejo, the HQ general who’d been monitoring Rev and who’d allowed Rev to come back to Camp Nguyen, were seated. No one else.
Doctor Chakrabarti and her staff were off to the side of the bleachers. The doctor looked like she was alternating between a nervous breakdown and absolute pride.
“General Trejo, General Begay, Colonel Destafney, Marines and sailors of the First Raider Platoon,” Colonel Tolouse said as he walked to stand in front of the bleachers. “While the general officers are aware of why we’re here, it’s time to reveal to Colonel Destafney and the Raider Platoon your next mission. So, without further ado . . .”
The colonel stepped back with a dramatic sweep of his arm to encompass the remote range. Rev started forward, but the major put her hand against his chest again.
