Sitting still on a range, it was one thing to have four Marines inside a crew compartment. Having four Marines inside while driving one, or more to the point, possibly fighting one was not only discouraged, but against regulations.
Noah didn’t even hesitate, though. He clambered over the turret to the commander’s cupula, and after the lieutenant hopped out, slid inside, trying to fit his long body into the tiny space between the TC and gunner.
“Sorry about the blood,” he told that lieutenant as she came back in and closed the hatch.
“That’s what we have steam cleaners, for, Noah,” she told him, then to Lessa, “head on back to the Night Witch.”
Noah wanted to ask the lieutenant what had happened. Why had the Ball Shot come forward? Was that on her orders? Or had the first sergeant sent it? Was anyone coming from the company? Was there a full assault on the company, for that matter?
But she was back on the comms, doing what lieutenants do. She didn’t need him interrupting her. He was feeling woozy, and he while he was very aware of his leg, he still refused to look at it. He tried to push himself farther away from the platoon commander and braced himself.
Riding four to a tank might not be too comfortable, but for him, it sure beat the alternative.
Chapter 21
“And how long will that take?” Noah asked Mr. Purile.
“Back at Archuleta? Two days, tops. Here? I’m guessing a week. We’ve got to do a lot of jury-rigging.”
Noah had been afraid that the Anvil was down for the count, so the fact that the armor tech could get her back up and running here on Novyy Ural was amazing. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t still antsy to get her back into service.
Not that I can ride anyway for another couple of days, he admitted to himself.
Noah had taken a dart right through the meaty part of his left thigh. It hadn’t hit anything vital, and he hadn’t had to be CASEVAC’d off planet. Doc had simply cleaned out the wound and given him a nano booster. The independent duty corpsman had given him a light duty chit for six days and braced his leg to keep it immobile, but Noah wasn’t going to stew on his cot with nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. With Corporal Lewis assisting, he’d hobbled over to the ramp to check on his tank.
Frankly, he was surprised that she’d looked as good as she did. She’d only been recovered the evening before, but with the left-side tracks and the MGS removed, she didn’t look too damaged.
The mine had detonated directly under the front of the track with most of the slow-acting force pushing like a huge catapult, flipping the tank on its edge before it fell over. The body of the Anvil had suffered only a minor breach—minor in tank talk, not minor as far as Ski was concerned. The blast had turned parts of the Anvil’s armored skin into shrapnel, riddling the young Marine and almost tearing off his left arm. He’d been put into stasis and was already on his way back to the regional naval hospital on Shiva where it was expected that with eight to nine months in regen, he’d be as good as new.
Purile—“Pure Dick,” as he was known to the Marines due to the civilian’s often condescending attitude he displayed to the enlisted Marines—and his two-man team would simply weld a patch and then replace four of the road wheels and the track. “Easy-peasy,” he’d told Noah.
Surprisingly, at least to Noah, was that fact that it was the damage to the gun weapons turret that had taken the most damage. The Anvil was a tough old girl, but she wasn’t designed to be upside-down. The MGS had been driven into the docking ring when she fell over. The MGS was a lost cause and would be sent back to division at Camp Tainio to see what could be salvaged. But the docking ring had been warped, and a new MGS couldn’t be installed as is. With the tight tolerances and connections, this would not be an easy fix, and Pure Dick was going to have to pull a miracle out of his ass to make the Anvil combat ready here on the planet.
“So, unless you have any further questions, Sergeant, I think I’ll get back to doing my job so you can get back to doing yours.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll just make myself comfortable.”
Pure Dick narrowed his eyebrows and frowned, but he didn’t say anything. Noah knew the tech didn’t want him there, but there wasn’t much he could say. A tank commander, even an acting tank commander, had every right to be there, observing. Most techs welcomed Marines getting their hands dirty, even for a Cat 3 repair, but Pure Dick wasn’t most techs. He was happy to leave the crews to Cat 1 and 2 maintenance—and he’d report a crew in an instant if he thought they were shirking their duties, but for Cat 3 or Cat 4 repairs, he was far more possessive of the process.
“You going to hang, Knight?” Noah asked.
“Nothing else to do, so yeah, if that’s OK,” his new driver said.
Nothing else to do but think, I know.
Knight Lewis had been the Ba-Boom’s driver, the only one to escape the tank when it was hit. Gunny Hattori, who was a short-timer whose retirement date had actually been a week ago, and Dirk del Moses, the Ba-Boom’s gunner, had been KIA in the blast. The Ba-Boom was destroyed, and no Pure Dick magic was going to change that. If she were deemed salvageable, she’d be going back to the factory refurbishment center. So, Lewis was without a home, and Noah was without a driver.
One thing was nagging at Noah, though, and he shouldn’t be hopping up on the Anvil.
“Knight, get up on her and, you know, sort of look inside.”
Lewis looked at Noah with a confused expression on his face for a moment, then he blanched. It took a moment, but he nodded, then walked over to the Anvil and pulled himself up. Pure Dick gave him a dirty look that the corporal ignored. He hesitated, then leaned over the MGS connector ring and into the tank. He leaned back, and Noah could see him let out a big breath of air. The corporal turned, then jumped off the tank and came up to him.
“Clean. Nothing there.”
The last time Noah had seen the inside of the tank, it had been covered in firefighting foam and the smell of burnt flesh. He’d been taken back before they’d extracted Ski, and he didn’t know when Staff Sergeant Cremineli’s remains had been removed. But he was pretty sure that no one had cleaned the Anvil in the field, and as far as he knew, there wouldn’t have been a reason for any Marine to have worked on her. That meant that Pure Dick, along with Gretch Frieslander and Pop Maud, had cleaned out the mess inside. The team had arrived with Alpha Company, so this was the sixth tank that had needed this type of cleaning.
Suddenly, Noah wasn’t as fed up with the head tech. That had to be pretty rough.
“So, Knight, tell me something about yourself,” Noah said, wanting to move on.
“Me? Not much to say, Sergeant.”
“There’s always something to say. You’re from Thomaston, right?”
“No, Tomas, not Thomaston.”
“Oh, Tomas? Like in—”
“No, not like that at all. That’s pure Hollybolly. It’s not so bad, believe me.”
“OK, so tell me, what’s it really like? I mean, we’re going to be getting pretty close, so you might as well spill.”
Lewis seemed to be mulling things over, then he shrugged, and with a smile, said, “Well, parts of Live or Die were sort of true, but all that shit about the Ghost Oath, that’s pure pig-piss. Never happens like that. I mean, when I was a sprout . . .”
Noah leaned back as Corporal Lewis began to tell his story.
********************
“But I don’t understand. I thought you said that was illegal,” Noah said, almost an hour later.
“Yeah, it is, but not really. I mean, no one does anything about it. We just, I mean, it’s fun, you know.”
“Doesn’t sound like fun to me,” Noah muttered.
Noah had asked Lewis about himself because he wanted to know more about him, and he thought the corporal needed to focus on something else rather than on the loss of his two crewmates. But Lewis had turned out to be a good storyteller, and Noah had become interested in the story itself.
Maybe I need to focus on something else, too.
And it had worked. He felt better, watching Pure Dick bitch and moan over the Anvil and listening to the adventures of a young Knight Lewis on Tomas. If half of what Lewis was telling was true, then the real Tomas was much more interesting than what was portrayed in the movie.
“It’s stupid, I know. But you have to consider it a rite of passage. Like humping Mount Motherfucker at Charles.”
“Ah . . . I guess you have a point at that. I hated doing it—”
“Everyone hates doing it.”
“But I was glad to have done it. Past tense.”
“You were glad to have done what, Sergeant Lysander?” a high-pitched voice asked from behind him.
Noah turned around to see a short gunnery sergeant standing there. It took him a second before he tried to jump up, saying, “Drill Instructor Chimond . . . uh, Sergeant Chimond.”
The gunny frowned, then looked down at the insignia on her collar and asked, “Have I been demoted, Sergeant.”
“Oh, shit, no. I mean, sorry. Gunnery Sergeant Chimond. I just didn’t expect to see you here. Did you just arrive with the mech company?”
“Yes, I came in with them. And you must be Corporal Lewis?” she asked.
“Yes, Gunny. Corporal Knight Lewis.”
“In case you couldn’t guess, I was Sergeant Lysander’s DI at Charles, what, five years ago, was it?”
“Yes, Dri . . . Gunny. Six years. I’m just . . . I’m just surprised to see you here. And thanks for looking me up.”
“Well, we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other, Sergeant.”
“Oh, yes. And we’re glad you guys are here. Tanks with no infantry is bad news. But with you here, now, that’s going to change things. And if you don’t mind, I’d like to sit and chat if we have time, to find out what you’ve been doing since Charles.”
“Oh, we’re going to have time, Sergeant,” she said, smiling as if she was enjoying an inside joke. “Starting now. What’s the status of Charlie-One-Four?”
“The Anvil? Oh, she’s taken a beating, but Pure Dick, I mean, Mr. Purile, the head tech, he thinks he can get her combat ready in six days.”
“Come show me,” she said, walking up to the Anvil.
Noah looked to Lewis, raising his eyebrows and shrugging his shoulders, then hobbled after the gunny.
Pure Dick was inside the open turret, back towards them as the three Marines reached the tank.
“Hey, Casper, you going to get this baby running, or is that more of your braggadocio?” the gunny asked.
Pure Dick turned around, disdain stamped on his face—until he saw who had spoken.
“Ivy, as I live and breathe, what brings you to this festering armpit of a planet?” he asked, a huge smile on his face as he pulled himself out of the tank and jumped down to hug the diminutive gunny.
“Orders, of course. Took me awhile to implement them, what with the company deployed. I had to hitch a ride with the Aardvarks to get out here.”
What? She “hitched a ride” with them?
Noah had assumed she was with the rifle company, but that would mean she wouldn’t have to hitch anything to get here. So, if she wasn’t with the Aardvark platoon, and she wasn’t with the rifle company, then she had to be assigned to Charlie. Noah had always assumed the gunny was infantry. She’d served with 2/3 during the Evolution and had fought on First Step, where his brother Ben had been killed. The gunny had even said that Ben and Yale Haerter had saved her platoon when they’d taken out the Armadillo that had been rigged as a mobile bomb. Then, there was the Silver Star she’d worn as a corporal, and it was usually the grunts who earned that. She’d also gone through a long regen, and as Noah had learned the hard way, when tankers were killed, it usually was permanent with no hope of resurrection.
And there was only one gunny in Charlie who was waiting a replacement—or had been waiting a replacement until the Ba-Boom had been destroyed.
“Uh, Gunny,” he asked, interrupting a reunion that would normally have had his undivided attention, “are you, I mean, are you our new platoon sergeant?”
The gunny turned around, and her eyes clouded over.
“Yes. I should have arrived before you deployed, but the board was extended, so Gunny Hattori volunteered to stay on until I could arrive.”
Shit. And that cost him his life.
“He was a damned good man and a friend,” she said, her voice somber.
“Semper fi,” Noah, Lewis . . . and Mr. Purile said.
“But we march on, right? And as I don’t have a tank now, and you don’t have a commander, Lieutenant Moore’s assigned me to Charlie-One-Three. So, you two are my crew.”
Chapter 23
Chili made a weird squeaking sound by using his hand up against his cheek, as Gunny Chimond left the E-5’s tent where she’d just told Noah to meet her at the ramp at 1400.
“Cut it out, Chili,” Noah said. “That’s not copacetic.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have told me you guys called her ‘Chipmonk’ at Charles.”
“I never did. Only some people did,” Noah protested.
Chili was right, though. He should have kept his mouth shut, and he felt he’d betrayed the gunny. She’d been one of the few DI’s who’d taken an interest in him at boot camp. The other DI’s were all over Esther, who had been kicking ass there. They considered him the black sheep of the Lysander family, riding him hard. Chimond, who seemed to notice everything, had helped Noah get through the training.
And this is how I pay her back?
Short, somewhat squat, and with a high-pitched, almost cartoonish voice, she didn’t look much like a Marine at first glance. But she missed nothing and was extremely competent. The fact that she’d just served on the staff sergeant’s promotion board back at HQMC was a testament to her reputation.
Still, Noah was a little torn about her arrival. He respected her, and while he knew she could be demanding, he welcomed having her as their platoon sergeant. He wasn’t as thrilled to have her as his TC. A Davis normally had a three-man crew, but they were still considered fully-manned with only two Marines. Noah wasn’t a senior sergeant, but he’d hoped to remain as the Anvil’s tank commander. Now, with the gunny taking over, that opportunity was gone.
It could be worse, Noah thought. She’s got to be better than Cremineli.
And he immediately felt guilty for the thought. He’d never had much respect for the staff sergeant, but the man had paid the ultimate sacrifice.
No matter what he felt about the gunny taking over the Anvil, though, she was his TC, and he owed her his loyalty above and beyond for what she’d done for him at boot camp. He needed to bump up her street cred.
“I told you she earned a Silver Star, right?”
“Probably because she’s so short the bad guys couldn’t draw a bead on her,” Cliff said to the laughter of the rest of the sergeants.
Noah rolled his eyes, then said, “What I didn’t tell you was that at Charles, she was a corporal.”
“So, there are other corporal DI’s. Not many, but still . . . ” Chili said.
“A corporal?” Barb McDavitt asked. “When the fuck did you graduate, Lysander?”
“I was with 9055. We graduated six years ago,” he said, knowing that Barb had caught his point.
“Corporal to Gunny in six years? Bullshit.”
“She’s wearing the rockers, Barb.”
“Holy fuck! Six years? What is she, a water-walker?” Chili asked.
Noah just shrugged.
“And she was with 2/3 on First Step during the Evolution.”
“No shit? When was that? Ten years ago?” Cliff asked.
“Wait a minute,” Barb said. “So, let’s say she enlists during the Evolution. In five or six years, she only makes it to corporal? Then she not only goes to the drill field, but becomes a tanker and somehow makes it up three more ranks in six years? I’m calling bullshit.”
Noah shrugged
.
“Like I said. She’s got two rockers, last I looked. Not only that, but the reason she was late reporting? Because she was sitting on the staff sergeant promotion board.”
Barb leaned back in her chair, looking thoughtful. She was a big, burly Marine, almost as tall as Noah and so one of the tallest Marines in the company. A gym rat, she bulged with muscles upon muscles, which were very evident when she lounged around with her overalls top pulled down to her waist exposing her tight tanktop undershirt as she was doing now. Barb, a gunner in Second Platoon, tended to look down on those who didn’t meet her standards of what a Marine should be, and she was harder on female Marines than males, as if any weakness a female Marine exhibited somehow reflected on her. She hadn’t held back on her impressions of the gunny, but it seemed that Noah’s comments had given her pause. If Chimond had made sergeant to gunny so quickly, if she’d been selected to sit on a selection board (probably the only E-7 on the board), then looks could be deceiving, and the gunny had to be good to go.
“OK, so she’s hot shit. She still sounds like a chipmunk when she talks,” Chili said. “So, are you going to call or not, Noah? Shit or get off the pot.”
Noah looked down at his hand. He was sitting on a blockade, and if he could draw Barb or Chili to be more aggressive, that could give him the pot.
“I’ll see you and raise you ten,” he said, trying to show no emotion.
“Fuck, you’ve got nothing,” Barb said. “Starting with having no balls. I’ll see you.”
The hand went around several more times before they presented, and Noah pulled in the pot. Cliff’s spies would have won him the pot if he’d stuck with it, but he’d been right in egging on the other two Marines.
“So, you were just trying to distract us with all that crap about the gunny? That’s how you’re going to be playing it?” Chili asked.
“We do what we have to do. And with that, my fellow sergeants, I’d better go round up my driver and see what the good gunny wants,” he said, standing up.
The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins: The Complete Series: Books 1-5 Page 67
