by Jean Johnson
Ia gave him a half smile and spread her hands slightly. “In the four-star flesh. I’m here on the Leo for two reasons. Three, if you count the shakedown flight out here to help you and the Scadian Army fight off the Salik invaders earlier today.”
“Well, we appreciated that,” he agreed.
“No thanks are needed. First off,” she stated, digging a hand into her Dress Black jacket, pulling out a small black box, “I am authorized by the DoI to confirm your field promotion, Captain Brad Arstoll. Effective immediately, you are now officially in charge of D Company, 3rd Legion, and not just the Acting Captain for D Company, 3rd Legion, 3rd Battalion, 4th Brigade, 4th Division, 2nd Cordon Marine Corps. This box holds a data file with the pertinent DoI paperwork . . . plus your silver tracks, of course. You’ve earned them.”
“Thank you, sir,” Arstoll murmured, accepting the package. “I wish I hadn’t.”
“I know,” Ia murmured back, knowing he meant he wished he hadn’t earned it at the expense of the loss of his CO. “Captain Ling-Bradley was a good leader. But so are you.” She tapped the box now in his hand. “There’s a second datachip in here with a few precognitive directives you might find useful. Beyond that, I know the Corps trained you well. You have my confidence, and that of the Command Staff.”
“Huh,” he grunted, a humorless laugh. “Of course they’d be confident. The Prophet of a Thousand Years told them so. If this is just a favor to an old Basic Squadmate . . .”
“You’ve earned it, so step up to the job and suffer, soldier,” Ia corrected him firmly, pushing the box against his chest. He winced a little; his ribs were taped, waiting for the bone-set serum to finish healing the fractures earned in combat. She didn’t push hard, though, and removed her hand once he got the point. “Second . . . I lost five good men and women on Dabin. Lives I shouldn’t have had to lose,” Ia admitted, jaw tightening for a moment. “I may be a massive precog, but I can’t control everything. Because of it, I need replacements. I have two already in transit to meet up with my ship in the Tilfa System, but I’m here for the other three.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to take one of your Marines,” she added, glancing over her shoulder at the men and women listening with various levels of interest and boredom as the two of them had caught up with old news. Her words piqued interest even in the most bored of the soldiers. “The last two I need are serving in the Scadian Army in the Orbital Fleet. I convinced the Admiral-General to help with some premaneuverings on getting them transferred, so I have a writ from the Scadian military leadership allowing me to recruit whoever I like. I’ll still have to do a little diplomatic dancing once I get down to the surface, but it’ll be worth it.”
“Shakk . . . I wonder what strings you had to pull to get that done,” Arstoll muttered, eyeing her. “These colonists are proud as hell about serving their planet. They wouldn’t even have accepted our help if they’d had enough ships to cover all vectors. They don’t lack the fighting skill or the tactical smarts, and they don’t lack any bravery; they just lack the equipment to get the job done.”
“I know. That’s why I need two of them. They’re the best shot I have at filling the gaping holes the Salik blew in the best crew of the Space Force. As for the Marine . . . I’ll need your Private Second Class Julia Garcia.”
“Garcia?” Arstoll exclaimed, eyes wide with disbelief. Other voices joined him in their confusion.
“Wrong-Way Garcia?”
“That piece of skut?”
“Sir, if you think Garcia is going to . . . er . . .” The speaker, the woman with the missing ear, trailed off as Ia turned to face Arstoll’s soldiers. Her hard stare silenced all of them.
“Private Garcia,” Ia enunciated carefully, with just enough volume to fill the boardroom as she shifted her gaze from face to face, “is a far better soldier, and a far better Marine, than all of you combined. In my hands, within one year, she will be the hero of a hundred fights and the savior of more than a million lives . . . and that is not hyperbole, meioas. I have foreseen it—speaking of which,” she added, lightening her tone as she shifted her gaze to one of the taller, redheaded men. “Private McCraery, remember to hit the deck flat out instead of just duck on the sixteenth of September, at about two o’clock local. You’ll know when. I’d rather you didn’t get your head blown off because you overestimated the height of the incoming attack. Captain Arstoll will still need you afterward, so keep yourself alive.”
“Uh . . . yes, sir,” he agreed hesitantly.
“Private Sangwan, since you were trying to be so generous with praise for Private Garcia,” Ia added, turning back to the woman with the regenerating ear, “you can go help her pack her things. We leave in thirty-three minutes from Docking Bay B. Dismissed. Corporal Vance, you were about to ask your CO for a priority list of mechsuit repairs, on behalf of the Leo Major’s manufactory bays. You will need A through C Squad functional in the 1st Platoon, followed by B through E in the 2nd. The rest in those two Platoons have minor repairs they can manage on their own. The 3rd and the 4th Platoons will just have to wait their turn on the things they cannot fix themselves—Private Sangwan, you have been dismissed.”
“Beg pardon, sir?” she asked, glancing between Ia and Arstoll, then at Ia’s green-and-gray stripes . . . which were on the sleeves and pant legs of an otherwise all-black uniform. “Aren’t you like Special Forces, or Army, or something?”
Ia pointed at the stars on her shoulder board, speaking slowly and clearly. “I am Command Staff, soldier. Everybody in the Space Force is under my chain of command, save only for my peers on the Staff, the Admiral-General, Secondaire, and Premiere of the Council. You have your orders. Dismissed.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” she muttered, face flushed with embarrassment. Turning crisply, Sangwan headed for the doors out of the Company boardroom.
“Captain Arstoll, when you have a few minutes later on today, please remind your troops how the Space Force chain of command works,” Ia stated dryly, watching the other woman retreat.
“Sir, yes, sir,” he agreed, giving the departing, flinching Sangwan a hard look. “I’ll have her checked for a lingering concussion, too. I thought my Marines could count four stars on their own.”
A few of the others carefully looked anywhere but at their CO and the visiting, white-haired brass in front of him.
Nodding, Ia closed her eyes for a moment, focusing, then opened them. “Sergeant Yangley, the Navy order forms for what you need to requisition materials for the life-support bays are now appearing on your workstation screens back in the clerk’s office. I’ve already filled in the authorization codes for everything but the fish stock. Scadia doesn’t have enough of the right kind of fish just yet for your shipboard aquaculture needs.
“Being aware of that, I have brought over a tank of tilapia from the Damnation, along with enough feed to last them until you get the cycle balanced in the second bay and it becomes self-sufficient. Private Runde will already be loading them onto the hoversled fetched for her from the ensign on duty. Make sure to sign for them. Get to it.”
“General, yes, sir,” the sergeant replied crisply, turning to leave on his appointed task.
“Good meioa. The rest of you already know what you need to do. Since I am aware of those needs, and that when you put your minds to it, you are a competent crew, you don’t have to ask your captain anything right now; you have my permission for the tasks at hand. Go do them,” Ia directed the men and women before her. “That means dismissed.”
They scattered. When the last of them had left the room, Ia moved over to lean back against the table next to her old Basic Training Squadmate. It felt good to slouch a little, good to rest for a moment.
“Rank hath its privileges,” she murmured, glancing at him. “I hope you don’t mind me sending them off like that, but they honestly can handle everything, and this is literally the only time off I’ll have fr
om my duties for months to come, waiting for Garcia to pack. It’s not much of a Leave, but I’ll take whatever I can get. So . . . How are you doing, Brad? I mean, really doing?”
Brad shook his head. “Between you, me, and the bulkheads?” he asked in a bare murmur, not nearly as sure as she was that there weren’t any listeners still nearby. “Like fresh, steaming shit. I had the Captain on the commscreen when the hull breach hit our docking bay. I saw him get sucked outside. He was not in a pressure-suit. This is not how I wanted my next command.”
Ia clasped his shoulder, giving him a brief moment of comfort. “I know. I wish I could’ve helped prevent it . . . and I know you’ll hate me for saying this, but . . . you’re going to be the right person in the right place at the right time because of this. Not just today, but multiple times in the next few years. The universe needs Captain Brad Arstoll to take full command of D Company. Do good things with it. Save lots of lives. Make as good a career for yourself and the meioas under you as you can.”
“How do you live with yourself?” Arstoll asked her, frowning at his former Squadmate. “Seeing what you do. Knowing what you do. Doing what you do, and not doing. If even half the rumors running around the Space Force in the last few weeks are true . . . how is it that you’ve stayed sane?”
“I have too much work to do to go mad and not enough time to dwell on my mistakes. Or to keep track of old comrades, other than snatches here and there. You ever heard what happened to Sung, and Crosp, and the others from Basic?” Ia asked. “Spyder’s with me, and Sergeant Tae’s the uncle of my first officer, of all things, but I’ve been too busy with other concerns to check on the rest.”
“Uhh . . . Crosp got called back home to take up the reins of the family business. That was before the war started,” Brad dredged up out of his memory. “Sung . . . hell if I know. The one thing I knew, she was being shipped off from Basic to stand guard at some embassy among the Gatsugi. She’s probably still doing that. Sergeant Linley always praised her hand-to-hand and her observational skills, said she’d be great for guard work. Oh, and ZeeZee made it to Sergeant First Class last year. Wait, you said Spyder’s with you?”
Ia nodded. “Lieutenant Second Class—Field Honor, like you and me—and he’s in charge of my 2nd Platoon, plus serves as the tactical coordinator for all mass troop movements. That got put to the test on Dabin just recently, which is why I need replacements. He does say ‘hi,’ by the way. Sorry, I almost forgot to mention that. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately.”
“I can only imagine what you have to keep track of. Can you, ah . . . you know, see them right now?” Brad asked her. “I mean, see the others in our old Squad since you say you’ve got a few minutes?”
Ia lifted her brows at the suggestion, then shrugged. “I suppose I can check.”
Closing her eyes, she flipped herself onto the timeplains and searched. It didn’t take long to find the old threads from her Basic days, nor to follow them down through to the current day. Sobered, she opened her eyes again.
“I’m sorry to report that Sung died during the initial invasion of the Gatsugi homeworld. She was taken out while defending the Terran Embassy from a clutch of Salik robots,” Ia stated quietly. “She took more than a few with her, but they still took her out.”
“Damn,” Arstoll whispered, hanging his head. “I liked her.”
Another brief glimpse—since she had the time to spare for it—gave Ia another view on their old Squadmates. “I can see ZeeZee’s still a Sergeant First Class. He’ll live for at least three more years, but I cannot guarantee beyond that point. The second war front will evoke too many shifting possibilities for his sector of space—if he goes, it won’t be by war, but by little butterfly-wing effects. Crosp . . . has two kids, twins, and looks like he acquired a thriving munitions business with military contracts, so he’s still supporting the war effort in his own way.
“The rest are . . . still enlisted in the Corps in various duty posts around the war front, except for Kumanei. She opted for pilot training in the Navy, and is flying drop ships as a Chief Yeoman out of . . . Battle Platform Anna Yesarova,” Ia concluded, double-checking the name. “I can’t tell you where, though; that’s classified above your pay grade.”
“What’s this second war front you mentioned?” Arstoll asked, distracting himself from the grim news of Sung’s death.
“The Greys are coming back. Don’t share it with your troops just yet,” Ia added, ignoring his sharp, worried look. “They don’t need to fret themselves to death over it.”
“Shakk . . . Ia, can anything be done against them?” he asked. “I don’t think our tech’s progressed nearly enough to even sneeze on them, but . . . well, we beat them back with psis last time, so we do have enough of ’em this time, right?”
She shook her head. “They’re a dying race, and they’re growing more and more desperate. It’s even odds they’ll get their hands on the Salik anti-psi machinery, and if they do, it’ll be a very hard-fought war. But we will stop them.
“I have foreseen it.”
