by Scott Moon
Kevin opened his mouth to answer, then shut it as Yang marshaled them outside. Forming into ranks was now second nature. Uniforms looked as though they belonged in the military, despite the lack of emblems. Kevin and his classmates each had two pocket patches: name and another displaying UNA 8970. Pressed and bloused fatigue pants almost seemed formal and everyone stood straighter. Chaf, who had slouched to disguise his height and broad shoulders, looked like a poster for any branch of military service.
Foster still looked like a ball of energy and mischief. Joii remained the small young woman with the monster tattoo on her neck. Her confidence was steady and more stable — deeper — than other recruits’.
“Training Platoon 8970, forward march,” Milarns said as Priest left the field without explanation. Officers and noncoms came and went a lot more than Grandfather Brandon had described to Kevin and Arthur. There was an air of urgency and intrigue — one more inscrutable mystery of the armed forces.
“Connelly, move to the front and think of a cadence. I feel a run coming,” Milarns ordered.
Kevin complied.
Citizens wandered a park near the training area. Not even Foster understood why civilians would want to have picnics and watch young men and women tromp around a parade ground or do jumping jacks. Kevin didn’t know why citizens were allowed to see basic training but wasn’t surprised. His grandfather had described this scene often, usually because of some young woman he claimed to have impressed with his marching prowess.
When the platoon came even with a large group of spectators, Milarns ordered them to step it up. Kevin couldn’t think of a cadence.
“For the love of the Corps,” Milarns grunted. “Yang, please take up the slack for Recruit Connelly who has forgotten everything we have struggled to teach him.”
Chastened, Kevin focused his attention on Yang and Milarns as though they ruled the universe. When his turn came to sing out, he hammered ultra-rhythmic lyrics memorized from family stories. Before long, they were well clear of the barracks. Buildings he had never seen rose all around them. In the hazy, rain-shrouded distance, starship construction cranes towered and he thought of home.
Milarns directed them to a new facility, a hospital by the look of the plaza. Training Platoon 8970 stood at parade rest until admitted into the state-of-the-art facility in groups of three. Joii and Dallas Ross were in his group. Yang situated them in a small waiting room and handed them tablets with forms to complete.
“The Corps wants you to see clearly and interface with technology,” he said. Moments later, he was talking to a nurse in the hallway by the sound of it.
“Doesn’t sound official out there,” Joii said.
Kevin and his classmates listened as Yang got the brush-off several times. From the sound of the conversation, it was a well-explored theme of hope and rejection.
“But Sallie-mae, you know you are the only one for me,” Yang said.
“First of all, Corporal Yang, you know that isn’t my name…”
“You wound me…”
Joii made a surprised sound as she followed the instructions on the tablet.
Kevin looked down and started the program. “This is a vision test.”
“No shit,” Dallas said. “They’re going to wire us to machines, especially if we make it into the Pilot Corps, which none of us will.”
“Thank you, Mister Positive,” Joii said without looking up from her work.
“All I know about the Pilot Corps is that they’re all officers — with officer privileges — and they have to be tough. Got to withstand insane g-force and be able to stay in the cockpit for like a week,” Dallas said.
“You have a big brother or something in the SPC?”
Dallas settled into his chair, chastened after being caught in his blatant hero worship. “Uncle.”
Joii nodded and continued with her tablet exam.
“How are you doing?” Kevin asked.
She didn’t look up. “Once you start, you have to watch the icons. No looking away, sorry.” She tapped the screen a few times. “No headaches, no nightmares,” she said.
Dallas snorted.
Kevin wanted to respond, but his vision test began and he couldn’t believe Joii could talk and follow the complex instructions and visual cues at the same time.
A large, powerfully built medical technician stepped into the room, followed by another who was even larger.
“Who is first?”
Joii looked up from her chair, one hand still touching the tablet screen on her lap. “You two look like prison guards.”
The first man snorted. “Takes a lot of forearm strength to hold you down during the procedure. Have your eyes worked on isn’t natural for most.”
“What are they doing to our eyes?” Kevin asked, losing his place in his test.
“Corrected to 20/20 and prepped for inserts and various tech,” the medical tech said.
“For the Pilot Corps?” Dallas said. “Fuck, I lost my place.”
“For any Corps you can make it into,” the second medical tech said.
Joii stood and handed over her tablet. She looked small between the broad-shouldered men who led her from the room.
“I bet you got the SPC,” Kevin said.
“Really?” Dallas asked. “Damn, I lost my place again.”
“Really,” Kevin said.
He didn’t see Joii until the next day. His eye surgery was surreal. The oversized medical technicians stood by the procedure and assisted doctors and nurses with tools and moving him from time to time. The bigger of the men rested one hand on Kevin’s shoulder, but only had to hold him down once as machines clamped onto his forehead and lasered his eyes.
“This one doesn’t seem to give a shit about his eyes,” the doctor said as he worked.
“Or he has giant brass balls,” said another doctor that reminded Kevin of Gunnery Sergeant Lacy and her strikingly blond hair.
“You know we don’t put them all the way under,” the big medical tech said. “Just a little something to calm them.”
“Well, this big scarecrow is plenty calm is all I am saying,” the first doctor said.
Everything got dark and hazy after that. Kevin didn’t mind.
13
NCO Club
CERTAIN types of infrastructure surrounded every military base in the modern world. Basic Training Facility 029 was no exception. The recruits only had two weekend liberties during their time here, but the officers and noncommissioned officers had needs on a more regular basis. The Pickle wasn’t the worst bar Robert Priest had patronized.
“I get why we’re here. It’s not that unusual. Got to raise them up from pups, right? My problem is you and Lacy,” Henrietta McCraw said, leaning her muscular forearms on the chipped wood of the bar. Unbound, her medium length red hair surrounded her in wild mystery that men couldn’t always resist. She had darker skin than a normal redhead, the bridge of her nose a collage of freckles and scars. The hair stuck out rather than hang down in waves. Her eyes and her mischief drew friends and more-than-friends into her orbit. And then they were too close to escape.
“I’ve got no problem with her and she doesn’t have one with me. I just don’t like her,” Priest said, turning to lean his back on the bar and survey half a dozen other people in the hazy room. With no music playing and the power drunks barely getting warmed up, he doubted there would be any kind of action in the middle of the week.
He focused farther and farther ahead until he couldn’t see anything.
McCraw waved her hand in front of his face and snapped her fingers. She slapped him on his left cheek, barely getting a response. “Come on, Priest. I was on Brookhaven with you. I know it was bad.”
He didn’t argue. Pulling his attention back, he felt a tear slide from the corner of his eye. Henrietta McCraw wiped it dry with rough strokes of her palm, leaned close, and bumped her forehead against his.
Priest smiled. “Thanks, Henri.”
She shrugged an
d settled in beside him, bumping his shoulder with hers a little harder with each repetition. “You want to?”
“Really? I thought we made a pact never to get that drunk together again. I always want to,” he said.
“You were all right,” she said. “I guess. For having no stamina.”
“Whatever.”
“Whatever.” She faced him. “Are you playing me, trying to get in my pants with PTSD?”
“You heard me,” he said. “Thanks for hanging with me.”
They drank beers and watched the crowd of off-duty drill instructors and other facility personnel gather with special attention to a pair of nurses who seemed new. Courtship rituals near military bases were dangerous but always fascinating to watch. New faces. New bodies. New personalities. Hopefully new stories and zero drama.
Natalia Lacy walked in looking more like her former rank than her current noncommissioned status despite civilian clothing. She was fit and more feminine than her uniform allowed. With her gorgeous hair free of the regulation-perfect braid, she hid part of her face.
Scars ringed her head, bisecting her mouth horizontally and continuing well out of sight in her miraculous blond hair. Priest’s heart pounded as he remembered the wounds as they had been when he reached her on Brookhaven. The scars described an inaccurate report of what happened because they ran together and others were invisible. Catastrophic injuries mingled with massive, lifesaving surgery damage. People who didn’t know her stared, often exclaiming involuntarily at the sight of her.
Slight makeup concealed what Frenchie had once called scar tissue wings radiating out and up from her eyes like pinkish-white mascara gone rogue. Surgeons had smoothed out what they could. Flashes of light from the dance floor revealed their failures.
“Did those monsters cut your head in half?” a man asked.
Priest waited for her to punch the asshole and was almost disappointed when she bought the inquisitive young DI a drink instead.
“Pool room,” Priest said. “If she saw us, she doesn’t care we’re here.”
Henrietta McCraw led the way into the next room and grabbed pool sticks.
“Nice ass,” Priest said as he followed.
“I work out,” she said. “What’s your excuse?”
The sound of smashing pool balls soothed Priest. Despite his banter with McCraw, he drank too much and watched her match him whiskey shot for whiskey shot despite his advantage in weight and metabolism. She was tough as hell and he loved her without thinking too much. Sometimes it was awkward. Other times it was natural as best friends.
Noncommissioned officers and enlisted personnel were not allowed into, or near, officers’ clubs. The reverse did not hold true — not in today’s military. The practice was fraught with problems but unavoidable in places where there were not enough officers to have their own place.
NCO clubs needed fewer amenities — often existing in homemade shacks on barely survivable frontier worlds. Officers respected their subordinates. The good ones kept to themselves as much as possible even when trespassing. Which led to Captain Uriah Jameson and Second Lieutenant Nu Abimbola playing eight ball at the next table in the back room of the Pickle.
Milarns and Davis paused at their game on the third table.
“Congratulations on your promotion, Captain,” Priest said.
“Thanks.” The officer turned back to his game.
Abimbola watched, his dark skin a mark of his Earth heritage even though he was just as mixed as everyone on Earth. Priest knew little about him except that he did his job and was a mellow drunk, smiling like a wise man and laughing whenever some barroom tough guy tried to provoke him.
“Snap out of it,” McCraw said, pushing her chest against his arm as she passed to take a shot at the seven ball, corner pocket.
Priest blinked twice and pulled his stare from Abimbola.
Jameson, barely visible in the periphery, stood straighter and dropped the butt of his pool cue on the wood floor, letting it slide through his palm like the shaft of a spear. “You should have followed orders on Brookhaven.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” McCraw said.
Priest turned to look at the captain. “She’s here, in the next room before you take that line of bullshit too far.”
Jameson chewed his teeth for a moment as he locked eyes with Priest. “I was, am, her friend. Thanks for saving her. The fact remains that Doctor Robedeaux escaped because the mission failed. You disgraced the Marauders and cost thousands of lives.”
Priest remembered the radio broadcast that the doctor had been recovered. Premature, it turned out. Robedeaux was hard to hold against his will.
“And yet she was the one who took the blame and got demoted,” Priest said, laying his pool stick on the green felt table next to him.
Jameson stepped forward. “I didn’t ask for a promotion!”
“Don’t care,” Priest said.
McCraw pushed between them, handed Priest his pool stick, and kept her back to the captain. “Your shot, tough guy. Settle down or I’ll ball punch you in front of your friends.”
“What friends?”
Abimbola calmed Jameson, guiding him toward the door with his happy and wise drunk routine. “My captain, let’s go find some women. That is what we should do, Captain. No fighting. Not in an NCO club.”
When Priest didn’t respond to McCraw’s body guiding him back to the game, she stepped back for distance and palm-struck him in his solar plexus. He grunted and pretended she hadn’t knocked the wind out of him. The only way to save face was to turn back to the game.
Sliding the pool stick over his knuckle, he slammed the white ball with just enough force to crack his target into a neat rebound.
“What the fuck, Abimbola?” McCraw said from out of Priest’s vision as he stood from the shot.
He turned and saw the new lieutenant, fresh from Officer Candidate’s School, striding toward him.
The punch came without warning, but everyone saw it coming. It was the only thing that could happen. Priest took it across his forearm and traded punches. His attacker was lean and tough. Neither had an ounce of fat. Priest was heavier and more muscular than Abimbola. Not by a large margin but enough.
Punching, kicking, wrestling to the ground and back to their feet, both men grunted and cursed until they were tired and panting at each other. McCraw and other soldiers, including Milarns, stood around them with arms crossed.
“He is the only reason you are still in the Marauders. You are an ungrateful prima donna with too much invested in your own legend!” Abimbola said.
“Fuck him and fuck you,” Priest said. “Maybe you should run this bullshit past Lacy in the next room.”
“He is talking to her now,” Abimbola said, words measured and precise. “She’s not your friend, Priest.”
Something changed in the room and the fight became a war. Priest didn’t understand why the last statement set him off, but he launched himself at the lieutenant with a battlecry, smashing aside McCraw and others in his way.
Two seconds later, he had Abimbola pinned to floor as he dropped punches on his face.
McCraw and Milarns tackled Priest.
McCraw punched him in the groin with a flourish of swear words. Milarns placed him in a vicious rear choke and delivered him the point of red-spotted unconsciousness.
“Stop now, Priest,” Milarns said. “Or I will choke the piss out of you.”
14
Wrath
KEVIN fell to the back of the group, not because that was the plan but because he wasn’t sure he could take another step despite Gunnery Sergeant Priest’s promise he would run another mile with the rest of the training platoon.
“Try doing this with a teammate over your shoulder! Try doing this under fire! What the hell is wrong with you, Connelly? I thought you were tough!”
Kevin focused on breathing and moving his feet. He made a list that started with “run for one more minute” followed by “run for one more minute.�
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Priest struck Joii on her training helmet.
Kevin stared. This wasn’t like the ball-cap-wearing gunnery sergeant from Marauder Recon. He rarely raised his voice and never struck a recruit outside of combatives instruction.
Joii issued some kind of animal growl-shout as she ran. The sound echoed through the unit. Kevin was too tired to take part.
“Connelly,” shouted Priest. “Your lieutenant is down. You’re needed at the front! Move your ass. People are dying all around you!”
Kevin sprinted to the front of the line. Spots of color danced in his vision. He couldn’t feel his feet. For one surreal moment, he saw another training platoon watching the physical training spectacle this had become in horror-struck fascination.
A moment later, Priest was running on his left, speaking into his earpiece so they bumped heads several times. “You’ve got to do this. You’ve got no other choice. Marauders, Oorah!”
Sergeant Lacy appeared out of nowhere to run on the left of Priest just as he was pacing Kevin.
“What are you doing, Gunny? What the hell are you doing?” she said.
“You’re not my boss,” Priest said.
“Wrong. I will always be your boss!”
Priest laughed crazily. Part of the sound could have been a sob.
“We are not on Brookhaven. You square your shit right now or I will blast you back to reality!”
Three more strides seemed like an eternity.
“Training Platoon 8970, walk it off,” Priest said, then veered away.
Yang took over. “Well done,” he said. “Yes, I gave you a compliment. Don’t let it go to your head.”
Kevin watched Priest and Lacy arguing near the edge of the physical training equipment. Joii stepped beside him as they reformed Training Platoon 8970.
“What the hell was that?” Kevin asked.
“I think he is having a flashback. Foster told me that Priest saved Lacy’s life on Brookhaven.”
“Where or what is Brookhaven?” he asked. “Is that a planet, station, or ship?”
“Planet,” Joii said.
Yang watered them and told a long, dry tale of the SMC and SAC organizational hierarchy. Kevin started to feel human as sweat began a long drying process under his training uniform.
