by Jean Johnson
The others started to cheer, until Ia’s voice cut through her platoon mates’ celebration, cracking like projectile fire, ringing off the bulkheads of the large room. “Like hell they are!”
Everyone stopped cheering and Ferrar stopped in his tracks, checked in midstride for the doors. He arched a brow at her. “Oh, they’re not, are they? Are you countermanding one of my orders, soldier?”
“Are you on duty?” Ia shot back, hands going to her scarletclad hips. A small handful of men and women choked on their laughter, some even hastily turning away and mock-coughing to clear their throats.
Lt. Ferrar grinned at her, and swept her a mock-bow. “A hit, meioa, and square on-target. You’re quite right. We’re all on Leave at the moment, and I can’t order you to do a thing.” He leveled a finger at her. “But you still owe me a drink at the very least, for being rude to a superior. On-duty or off.”
Ia lifted her index finger. “One drink.” Stepping to the side, she gestured at the double doorway. “After you, meioa . . .”
Still smiling, Ferrar led the way off the ship.
It was a bit of a hike; the gantry attached to the side of the Liu Ji itself was a quarter of a kilometer long. The group, which seemed to comprise most of the 2nd Platoon and several more from the 1st and the 3rd, laughed and chatted among themselves as they made the trip. Following directly behind the Lieutenant meant Ia wasn’t entirely a part of the camaraderie behind her. She idly studied the dozens of flatpics mounted on the walls of the gantry, each bearing hundreds of rotating images taken from the various homeworlds and hometowns of the beings serving on board the Johannes.
Not all were Human, though the vast majority were. There were aliens living on Terran-controlled worlds, of course, and some did offer to serve in the Space Force. Because of the sheer differences in biology—carbon-based, oxygen-breathing, and blood-bleeding similarities aside—they were usually shunted off to specific Cordons in the SF-Army and the Navy, replete with their own ships for biological and psychological comfort. The Chinsoiy . . . were too different to serve, requiring daily doses of radiation which would kill a Human in the long run. The Dlmvla were methane-breathers. Only the V’Dan-born were lumped in among the Terrans.
Her own homeworld wasn’t represented. Yet. A lot of the images were of domeworlds, and many were from Earth. But one shot showed a lightning storm, four writhing bolts caught lancing between ground and sky. A lump of homesickness formed.
The recycled air of the station, while clean and fresh thanks to the Terran plants imported for the residents to enjoy, and better-smelling than the smaller confines of the Liu Ji, didn’t smell right. The steady faint whoosh of the lifesupport fans weren’t the same as actual gusting breezes, and the lightning in that one image didn’t move. It was static. Far away.
“Rumor has it you don’t drink, Corporal.”
“What? Sorry, sir. No, I don’t,” Ia confirmed, looking up at Ferrar. He had slowed just enough to pace beside her. “A history of genetic alcoholism in the family.”
“Pity. But that’s alright,” he allowed. “Someone needs to be the designated pilot; I guess that’s you, tonight. The real question is, are you going to force me to drink something nonalcoholic when you buy me that drink?”
She smiled wryly. “Hardly, sir.” Risking a glance over her shoulder at the Marines following them, their casual and camouflage Browns traded for a plethora of civilian hues, she added half under her breath, “I have a sneaking suspicion they’re going to be ordering me Bloody Marys. I’ll need to pass word to the bar staff to make sure they’re Virgin Marys. If they slip up and serve me something fermented, you can have it.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I’m not fond of tomato juice. I’m more of a bourbon man.”
“Duly noted.” Behind her, someone called out a question for the Lieutenant, which sparked a running conversation that carried them all the way to the white-walled, plant-filled, multileveled atrium that served as park and commerce sector for the Platform.
The wave of off-duty Marines spilled down the stairs and across two balconies, past a lawyer’s office advertising specializations in both military and civilian laws, an ice cream shop— where they promptly lost nine or ten members of the group who clustered with all the fascination of young children around the chilled display cases inside—and into a faux-brick fronted, shadow-steeped pub. Tables and chairs filled over half the bar, which was deeper and larger than it seemed. What looked like a good sixty or seventy off-duty Marines lurked, drank, and played, some throwing darts, others taking potshots at holographic enemies with toy laser pistols in the back corner, and a couple playing pool at the billiards tables across from the bar.
“Hey, Frostie!” Ferrar called out, striding between the tables with the confidence of familiarity. He clapped his hand on Ia’s shoulder, pushing her forward. “We got a new one!”
The bald, spectacle-clad man behind the bar, with a chestlength, blue-dyed beard and muscles almost as big as Ia’s brother’s, looked up at the tide of men and women flowing into his establishment. He grimaced and lifted his chin at a woman with bright cerulean hair who was serving drinks a few meters away. “Hey, Rostie, we’re being invaded. Quick, call the Marines.”
“We are the Marines!” Ferrar catcalled back. “Eyah?” he added over his shoulder.
“HOO-RAH!” The call-back came not only from his own Company members but from most of the other Marines in the pub as well.
Pushing Ia forward, Ferrar stopped her at the bar and introduced her. “Frostie, this is Corporal Ia, 2nd Platoon A Squad Alpha . . . and a hell of a good fighter. She is also on permanent Designated Pilot Duty. Show ‘im your unit, Corporal.”
Ia obediently held out her left wrist and her military-issued ident. She knew it was so that he could put her ident and its bank account on permanent file in his records, running a tab for her.
“ ’Zat right?” Frostie asked her, picking up a scanner wand and tapping the brown plexi housing on the back. “No alcohol?”
“None whatsoever,” Ia confirmed. “I don’t like it, and I don’t want it. I’ll take a dark ginger ale in a mug, though.”
“Got it.” He thumbed the controls on the wand, then set it down. “One permanent DPD on your bar bill. And one frosted gingersnap on tap, coming up,” Frostie muttered, fetching a cold-misted mug from the cold locker under the bar.
“She’s also paying for my drinks tonight,” Ferrar stated. Behind them, the other servers were taking orders, each one with a different shade of blue hair. It was the only way to tell which ones were the servers, since Ferrar’s Company had clustered around them like bees in a hive.
“One drink,” Ia retorted. She lifted her chin at the bartender, who she knew was also the owner. “Make it a bourbon. The most pretentious-sounding bourbon you’ve got.”
“Gingersnap and a fancy-pants, got it,” Frostie acknowledged, handing over Ia’s drink before moving off to fetch a liquor bottle from one of the back shelves.
“Why, Corporal, are you trying to be nice to me?” Ferrar asked. The woman Rostie slipped behind the bar and started helping Frostie pull drinks from the spigots. This was an old-fashioned pub, not an automated commissary. “Or are you trying to bribe me?”
“Nah. Just trying to shut you up,” she quipped back. “If I bought you something cheap, you’d grind your gears all night about it. Be honest, you would.”
Chuckling, the Lieutenant took his drink from the bartender and nudged her ahead of them. Together, they squeezed a path away from the now crowded bar. “True. I would. Thank you for the good stuff. By the way, this first drink, you drink with the officers, meioa. Every fresh-blooded newbie in my Company gets that right.”
One of the Marines they passed—not one of Ferrar’s—looked up at that. “Hey newbie, you earned a nickname yet, or should we just call you Red?”
He grinned, and his companions chuckled. Ia stopped and faced the man, free hand going to her hip. “Yeah, I earned a nickname. Do
you actually want to hear it, or do you just want to laugh into your drink?”
He smirked and sipped at his beer. “Only if it makes a good story, meioa.”
“Hey, Double-E!” Ia’s shout cut across the babble of voices in the pub. “You asked me for a story before the mess on the Clearly-Standing. You want that story now?”
“If you can tell one even half as good as you can sing, hell yeah!” the tall, dark-skinned Marine called back, lifting his mug over his head. He worked his way closer, as did several others, until three dozen of Ferrar’s Fighters crowded around the other Marines’ table. “Lay it on me, Corporal. Make it a good ’un.”
The one who had asked her about her nickname craned his neck, looking up at the crowd, and lifted his brows in surprise.
“You must be one helluva newbie, if you’re already a corporal, an’ they ain’t giving you shakk ’bout your first combat,” the Marine told her, brows quirking.
“Maybe they’re just waiting for her to fall flat on ’er face,” one of his friends snickered.
Ia didn’t bother to respond. Instead, she lifted her free hand for silence, or as close as she could get to it in the now crowded pub, and took a quick sip of her ginger ale to wet her throat. Her fellow Company mates shushed and nudged each other, grinning at her in anticipation. When she had an acceptable level of quiet, she lowered the frosted glass and began, pointing at her would-be hazer.
“Pay attention and draw near, for the story you will hear is one you would have more than liked to see,” she stated, tightening her gut so that her voice carried the patterned, rhyming words without her having to shout each line. “It’s about a call for distress, some pirates in a mess, and a TUPSF battleship called Liu Ji. We were out on patrol, just taking a stroll, when the Gatsugi gave a distress ring. The story unfolds with the pirates in their holds . . . and a Marine whose praises you will sing!”
“Yeah, but you ain’t singing,” her catcaller muttered. He got nudged from behind by Estradille, and subsided. Ia continued, looking over his head at not only her fellow members of Ferrar’s Company but the other off-duty soldiers in view.
“We answered their call by speeding one and all, to get to the scene of the crime. The pirates had boarded, their cargo to be hoarded, but the Liu Ji got there in time. I suited with my friends, and we attacked from several ends; the Lieutenant said that we would split apart:
“The 1st Platoon would go and help them overthrow, with the 2nd set to carve the pirates’ heart.” She winked at Ferrar, lifting her glass in brief salute. “We set off in our shuttle—their ship was fit to scuttle—and grappled to the side of their hold. Our entrance was too easy; it made me slightly queasy, and the tactics set to trap us were quite bold. The pirates on the ship were going to give us all the slip, and they’d set up force fields to make us slow. The moment we unsealed, their plan would be revealed—the hull had been charged and set to blow.”
One of the women at the table in front of Ia lifted her brows. “’Zat true?”
“Word for word, soldier,” Ferrar told her. “I don’t know if she can keep up this rhyming stuff, but truth is, it was Corporal Ia, here, who first scanned the explosives. She was—”
Ia held up her hand, cutting him off. “I’m telling this one, Lieutenant. At Ease.”
That earned her a frown from Ferrar, and more than a few astonished stares from her fellow Marines. Ferrar didn’t protest, though. In fact, he grinned into his drink, sipping at the bourbon she had bought him.
Tapping her lips with her finger, indicating silence, Ia continued. “Their bombs we neutralized, but then we realized that we weren’t dealing with your standard scum. The ship was moist and dark, Choya writing for their mark . . . but from the Salik worlds some had also come. Our lieutenant split our might, some went left to go and fight, and she told me ‘take your squadron straight ahead.’ So, knowing from the ship and its heat and moisture drip, I knew that down below was where they’d fled.”
Her hazer wrinkled his nose. “Salik. V’shakk. Pond-sucking scum!”
Someone else shushed him, gesturing for Ia to go on.
“We came down by the stairs, working group by group in pairs, and I set my plan in motion with my team. We’d ambush and have fun, when they came all at a run, brought from their bridge by my teammate’s taunting scream.” Ia raised her mug at Estes, who gave a little head-bow from her position at the far side of the table. Acknowledgment made, Ia continued. “Two came at her demand, one with a grenade caught in his hand, and he yanked upon its safety-holding pin.
“I grabbed it from the guy, said ‘thanks’ and went bye-bye, and ducked into their bridge to do them in.” Ia grinned as that earned her a couple chuckles. “I threw the charge inside—well, they had nowhere to hide, and when it went, it splattered half the crew. Unfortunately for me, I was caught by the debris, and painted helm to boot in bloody goo.”
That earned her more than a few grimaces, though the few noises of disgust were hastily hushed.“Their captain, who was sound, prepared another round . . . but the thing went off while still wrapped in his grip. So again I was in style with all manner of things vile, adhering to my armor with a drip.” She paused again to take a sip of her drink, wetting her throat.
The Marine who had started this eyed her askance. He then looked at Ferrar, standing behind Ia’s right shoulder, and lifted his chin. “You’re kidding me, Lieutenant. This couldn’t have happened like that. Not word for word!”
Ferrar shrugged and nodded. Ia went on with her rhymed tale, carefully sculpted for this moment in the handful of days it had taken the Liu Ji to reach the Johannes.“We captured all the rest; I put the comm system to test, and announced that we had seized the bridge’s crew; then the rest of my squad, out on cleanup promenade, announced we had more battle left to do. Some pirates on their way were going to spoil our fray, so I ordered a pincer team attack. Someone hit a spot that got the Salik hot, and blew up one of their mechsuits’ power pack.”
Estes, not quite opposite from Ia on the far side of the crowd-ringed table, mimed a BOOM explosion with her hands and her lips. That earned her a few chuckles from the other members of A Squad who had been there.
“So again I was designed in blood and gore that made me blind as it smeared across the front of my faceplate. But we got our enemy, and went back to the Liu Ji . . . and the Lieutenant said ‘Bloody Mary!’ at my state.” Turning, Ia saluted him with her mug. He lifted his shot glass of bourbon in return. With that acknowledged, she returned to her tale. “I’d washed off all the goo—you’d think I had enough to do—when the klaxon came resounding down the hall. Some pirates had been stashed, so back to war I dashed, answering the Navy’s distress call.
“I gathered up three men and went back inside again, and we split up once more to take them out; Hmongwa and Dexter, the enemy, they vexed ’er, their armor—”
“—Hmongwa and who did what?” someone spluttered, laughing over the names.
“Hey, that is not easy to rhyme!” Ia shot back, pointing at the woman, one of the non-Ferrar Marines at the fringe of the crowd who had drifted closer to hear her story. “Where was I? Ah, yes, here we go . . . Hmongwa and Dexter, the enemy, they vexed ’er, their armor and their weapons set to rout. With I and Adams in like mind, we got ourselves around behind, and I grabbed the nearest Choya by the throat. I broke his scaly neck, dropped him softly to the deck, and went for the next alien of note.
“He had grabbed a Navy man—I didn’t like his plan, so I took my knife and severed half his neck. We pinned the other two, our reinforcements coming through as the dead one’s blood began to slick the deck. I released my captive’s arm, with no more intent to harm, but didn’t realize that that wasn’t all. You see, I stepped into the blood that had spilled out in a flood . . . and I slipped and took a really stupid fall.”
She paused a moment, giving them a grimace of embarrassment, then finished the tale.
“Well. I lay there on the floor, amidst the bloo
d and gore, then pushed to get back up onto my feet. I slipped twice more and fell,” she complained, waggling her finger at the others, “and damn it all to hell, but if ‘Bloody Mary’ wasn’t my defeat!”
Roars of laughter filled the pub. A couple of hands reached through the crowd, some slapping her on the back, others gripping her by the shoulders. Ia clamped down hard and tight on her psi, to the point of an ache behind her temples, and lifted her mug in salute.
“To Bloody Mary!” Hooke shouted, raising her own mug.
A forest of arms, some slopping still-full drinks, shot up into the air, echoing her cry. “Bloody Mary!”
The crowd started to disperse. The nameless Marine who had started it all—just as she had foreseen—lifted his half-empty mug at her in salute. “That’s one helluva tale, meioa. An’ if it’s true . . . welcome to the Marines, Bloody Mary.”
Giving him a little bow, she turned and followed Ferrar and the others to a table off to one side. D’kora was now there, as well as Lt. Cheung and Staff Sgt. Blakely of the 1st Platoon, Lt. Nguyen of the 3rd, and Staff Sgt. Chirol Kulo’qa. Cheung offered a seat to Ia while more sergeants gathered. By now, she was known to the other squad sergeants in her Platoon, Pleistoch, Buddanha, Likkety, and Culper. She, of course, knew them all too well, already.
Buddanha would retire in half a decade after several fierce battles, losing most of his legs, half of one arm, and facing years of regenerative surgeries. Culper would be listed as CPE, the military’s shorthand for all individuals lost behind Salik enemy lines; the acronym meant, “Captured, Presumed Et.” Pleistoch would earn a Field Commission before dying on his second posting, while Cheung would die somewhere around his fourth promotion. Kulo’qa would serve as an adjunct to the V’Dan military, earning honors from both sides.
Ferrar . . . she couldn’t quite see. There was a grey spot coming up in a few months; too many possibilities emerged from its far side to be easily calculated. Most wouldn’t harm her path, so she hadn’t tried to push through the mist cloaking that knot in the waters. A few of those potential-possible paths would strengthen her goals, but she didn’t know how to achieve them. Yet. As for the last two, Nguyen would be transferred shortly after that masked point in time. Blakely would earn her own Field Commission, and rise to be a general on the Command Staff many years from now.
