“OK, we’re ready for them,” a petty officer said, coming into the station.
“That’s us,” Staff Sergeant Rapa said, powering up his HED.
Veer and Williams helped the Marines and troopers take out the popsicles. Each of them was put in a cradle with old-fashioned straps securing them. The ship’s surgeon made his readings, then gave thumbs up. They were ready to go.
Not everything was ready, though. As they filed off the shuttle, Staff Sergeant Francisco and Corporal Hamilton came back onboard, pushing Gunny Medicine Crow’s Palomino.
“Hey, what’re you doing with Isá?” she asked, watching the bike disappear into the cargo bay.
“Orders,” Rapa said. “The Intel types want to get their hands on it.”
He lies well, Esther noted and filed that fact away for future reference.
The bike was not going to Intel. Staff Sergeant Rapa had approached her the night before about it. The gunny had taken a liking to the bike. Who wouldn’t? But she had gone further than most, for reasons Rapa had tried to explain but still eluded her. But the bottom line was that he wanted to take the bike back before the new Mei Shan landlords claimed it.
Esther knew what he was suggesting was illegal. It could even be career-threatening, both for Rapa as the mastermind and for her as the officer-in-charge. But she didn’t hesitate. Medicine Crow had gone above and beyond, but she would never be recognized for it. None of them would. If they were all going to be screwed, it would be nice to screw over someone else in this mess. She wasn’t sure how he was going to get the bike all the way back to Earth where Medicine Crow was from, but she wasn’t going to ask. The SNCO mafia could get almost anything they wanted done.
They all stopped at the airlock, eight Marines, five FCDC troopers, and two civilians, bonded by their experiences. The shuttle slowly rose before speeding up. They watched until it disappeared from sight.
“I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be here,” Esther said, initiating the airlock sequence. “But we might as well make the best of it.”
FS PORTOLUMA BAY
Chapter 25
“Well, sir, I’d best get the team up here, then,” Esther said, her voice tight as the anger smoldered inside of her.
Esther knew she could be a hard-ass, but she didn’t consider herself an angry person. This mission, though, had seemed to put her in a permanent state of anger, and it had been difficult for her to avoid lashing out as Lieutenant Commander Chacon briefed her. The only thing that held her back was the knowledge that the man had no control over the situation, either.
Esther had figured that something was up five days after the Mei Shan team’s arrival. They’d invaded the station amidst palpable excitement and had not only repaired the lab, but two days later, construction crews arrived to start an expansion of the facilities. That construction effort came to a screeching halt three days later after one of the corporate bigwigs came down to the station and locked himself and his retinue in the lab with the scientists for five hours. When he came out, he was not looking happy. Two hours later, the construction crew was picked up and lifted off-planet.
With the security turnover with the Mei Shan team completed, the Marines had simply sat around, watching serioholos on the new projectors the Mei Shan crews had brought with them. Once a day, Esther had asked when they would be taken off the planet.
For Esther, that occurred on the ninth day. Leaving Gunny Medicine Crow in charge, she was shuttled to the Porto where she’d cooled her heels for a day until the captain had briefed her.
She left the captain’s stateroom to the comms shack and had the sailor on watch connect her to the station. One of the Mei Shan techs answered, and she had to wait while he got the Gunny.
“This is Gunnery Sergeant Medicine Crow,” the gunny said as she took the mic.
“Gunny, you’ve got 90 minutes to pack up and get ready to leave,” Esther told her without preamble.
“Ninety? That’s not enough time, ma’am. The weapons are still in the racks.”
“I had to fight to get that. They wanted an hour.”
“What’s up, ma’am?” the gunny asked.
“I’ll tell you when you get up here. Go to it.”
She cut the connection, then went back to the small stateroom she’d been assigned as the senior Marine onboard. It was tiny, with a rack that pulled down from the bulkhead, but she was glad that she wasn’t sharing it with anyone else. She was not in the socializing mood. She pulled down the rack and got on, not even bothering to take off her boots.
She must have drifted off, because a gentle rapping outside her hatch woke her.
“Who is it?” she asked, her mouth dry and nasty.
“It’s Gunny, Skipper. We just arrived.”
Esther stood up and opened the hatch. The gunny was still in her HED poly skins, and she had to be dying to get out of them.
“Um . . . go get cleaned up and get some chow in you. Let me check with Commander Chacon, but plan on meeting in the wardroom at, say, 2000.”
“Roger that, ma’am.”
Speaking of eating . . . Esther thought as the gunny left.
The Porto’s wardroom was small and had only one sitting, and that sitting should have ended about ten minutes prior. But the fabricator was available around the clock. Esther had only eaten twice on board, and she was hungry. She had some time to kill, so after confirming the meeting with the commander, she headed on down and dialed up some beef stew and a jackfruit smoothie. She sat down and buried herself in the food, trying to focus on the food and calm down.
It wasn’t working. She was still angry when she went back to her stateroom, and that hadn’t ended when she picked up Commander Chacon. Moving down the passage, she tried the breathing exercises her brother Noah started her doing back when they were teens. She wasn’t sure if it did any good, but she hoped she looked calm, at least, as she and the commander entered the wardroom where her Marines waited.
Commander Chacon motioned for her to take the lead. Esther had thought he would do the brief as he was more familiar with the situation, but she nodded, and moved to the front of the small group.
“That was not the easiest mission I’ve had,” she started. “And I’m sure you can all say the same thing. We’ve lost one of us for sure, and that could end up being two. Seven more are going into regen—well, maybe not Sergeant Rikoman, but you know what I mean.
“But no matter what, we upheld the honor of the Corps. We got hit, but we hit back.
“That’s not why I called you here, though. We’ll write our after-action reports. I’ll conduct your exit interviews. But that will start after we get a good Navy meal and some sleep in a real rack. Right now, I wanted to let you know just what the heck has happened.”
Almost as one, seven Marines leaned forward to hear what she had to say.
Esther took a deep breath, looked at the ship’s skipper, and then turned back to the Marines.
“As you know, Mei Shan bought the bio-rights to whatever Allied Biologicals had on the planet. How that worked, I don’t know, and it’s not important. What is important is that the planet is a bust. That is, what is on it is a bust. There is no known biological gold mine.”
The Marines broke out into quiet murmurs at that, looking at each other in confusion, and Esther held out both hand, palms down, to quiet them.
“Whether there was ever any potential, we don’t know yet. What is pretty clear, though, is that Allied Biologicals knew pretty early on that the line of research was a dead end. That might have been after the initial word had been leaked, or it could have been a scam from the beginning.”
“Scam?” Sergeant Delay asked.
“Yes, a scam. We are now sure that from the time we arrived, the planet was a dry well. There was scientific interest, both as a ribbon world and because of its life forms, but nothing there is of benefit to man.”
“No medical miracle?” the gunny asked. “No cure for the Brick?”
/> “None at all. Which should have been obvious. Have we ever discovered organics on any planet that we can make use of? The capys can eat earth products, but have we found anything we could use? We were all pulled in by the promise, an empty promise.”
“And that’s what all the arguing was about. Tantou, and I bet Polonov, they knew all along. But the others, they weren’t in the loop, and when their experiments were going south, they started to see the light,” Staff Sergeant Rapa said, sounding disgusted.
“Yes, it seems that way. And Allied Biologicals needed to keep the facade going.”
“Until they could sell the rights!” the gunny exclaimed as the impact hit her.
“You got it in one, Gunny. We’re sure that’s exactly what happened.”
“What about everybody else?” the gunny asked. “Why were we getting hit if what was there was worthless?”
“That probably wasn’t known initially. It looks like it was coming out, though. The station we took? Their research had pretty much uncovered it.”
“Is it true that AB pushed that raid?” Rapa asked in disgust.
“Yes,” Lieutenant Commander Chacon said. “Too late, though.”
“What about the attacks on us?” the gunny asked, seemingly pushing for something.
Esther looked at the commander to make sure she could give out more.
“Sources indicate that the indirect fire attacks were made at the behest of Allied Biologicals. They wanted to push a sense of urgency into the bidding process.”
“If others are desperate enough to hit Marines and FCDC, then whatever was being guarded had to be pretty valuable,” Gunny Medicine Crow said, the bitterness evident in her voice.
“What about the Brotherhood? Were they here?” Staff Sergeant Rapa asked.
“Almost certainly,” Esther answered.
“Were those memitim that the two gunnies zeroed?” he persisted.
“Probably. We’ll never know for sure, though.”
“So, we get into a sniper match with Brotherhood memitim, and what, we just ignore it?” the gunny asked.
“They won’t admit it, and to be frank, neither will the Federation. You won’t mention it again, once we leave this wardroom.”
“That’s bullshit, ma’am,” Sergeant Delay said. “They killed Spig. Dead. No resurrection.”
“That’s right, they did. And Gunny Medicine Crow killed one of them. Dead. No resurrection.
“Look, I know you’re all upset. The Brotherhood is never going to come clean on this. They don’t want anyone to know they were taken in. And the Federation isn’t going to force the issue.”
“Why not, ma’am?” the sergeant asked.
“Because it’s not worth a war. No single Marine is. Not Spig, not anyone else. No, according to the records, Spig was killed in the line of duty in action against criminal elements.”
“So, what’s going to happen? I mean to AB? Mei Shan, they’re one of the biggest corporations in the world,” Staff Sergeant Francisco asked. “They’re not going to stand by and let some two-bit company take them like that.”
“They probably will. Whatever they paid for the rights, that’s peanuts compared to the damage they’d suffer if it were known that they’d allowed themselves to be taken. If I had to guess, I’d say they’ll keep the research station open, always on the brink of making a breakthrough. Eventually, it can be closed down on a cost-benefit basis.”
She looked at the Marines as they took it all in. Most looked royally pissed—just as she felt. There wasn’t much else to say. Oh, there probably was, but Esther certainly didn’t know everything about the situation.
“Sir, do you have anything?” she asked Lieutenant Commander Chacon.
“No, I think you covered it.”
“OK, well, everybody settle in. Grab some chow and get some rest. I’ll contact you tomorrow when I find out what’s next.”
“May I speak with you privately, ma’am?” the gunny asked as the rest of the Marines filed out of the wardroom.
Esther nodded, and the two Marines returned to her stateroom. Esther closed the hatch, then pointed to the fold-down stool in its slot in the bulkhead. The gunny remained standing.
“Captain, all of this is so much bullshit, I don’t know where to start.”
“You think I don’t know that, Gunny? You don’t think I’m royally pissed?”
“I killed for them, ma’am. I killed three people, not to protect the Federation, but so the Allied Biological CEO can buy a blue Lambo to match his red one. In my book, that’s murder. You don’t have that on your hands, ma’am, with all due respect.”
What the . . . just who the hell do you think you are, Gunny?
Esther pushed back on the volcano that threatened to erupt and said instead, “Because you pulled the trigger, you think that makes you more liable? I’m the one who ordered you into the fight. I’m the one who ordered Marines to kill and die. I’m sorry Gunnery Sergeant, but you don’t have a flying fuck of an idea on how heavily that weighs on a commander’s shoulders. You were obeying orders. I gave them!”
The gunny didn’t seem to understand she was treading on thin ice as she said, “You should know, of all people. Your father led the Evolution, so we could escape the yoke of corporations, yet now you seem to be surrendering to them. How can you do that, you of all people?”
Esther was gobsmacked. She slowly stood up to tower over the shorter Marine, her fuze exploding.
All of the last few days spewed forth with “How dare you, Gunnery Sergeant! You don’t know the first thing about my father, what he believed in, what he fought for, what he died for! He believed in the Federation, all of it. And that includes the corporations. He did what he did to save the Federation, and some of what he did was horrible. He killed 11,000 people on Watershed. Men, women and children. How the fucking hell do you think he felt about that? He was devastated, but without a doubt, he’d sacrifice another 11,000 in a bleeding second if that was what it would take to save the Federation. Eleven-thousand more innocent souls.
“Let me tell you this, Gunnery Sergeant! If you try and bring my father into this to shame me because you don’t have a clue as to what sacrifice means, I will fucking crush you like a cockroach,” she said, her nostrils flaring.
The gunny didn’t seem cowed in the least. She leaned her head back to look Esther in the eyes.
“With all due respect, ma’am, I’ve 22 years in, so I’ve got my validation. I can resign today, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can write me up, you can court martial me, but when I’m 70, I get my retirement one way or the other.”
Esther stared at the smaller women. She had so many things she wanted to say to put her in her place, but she was a captain in the Marine Corps, not some hooligan. If the gunny was willing to accept a validation instead of a full retirement and not receive pay until she was 70, then who was she to stand in her way? She took two long, calming breaths and gained control of herself.
“If that is your wish, Gunnery Sergeant, so be it. Head down to personnel and fill out your resignation. I’ll approve it and forward it out today.
“You’re dismissed.”
Without another word, the gunny came to a position of attention, performed an about face, then marched out.
Esther started at the empty hatchway.
How the hell did it come to this?
Esther had never felt a significant connection with the Gunny. That wasn’t very surprising. Esther tended to keep people at bay, preferring a professional relationship, and from what she’d seen, both in the gunny’s records and in person, she was much the same. But Esther respected her, and after their mission together, she’d come away thoroughly impressed. Gunny Medicine Crow was an invaluable asset to the Corps, and if she left, it would make the Corps just a little bit weaker, and little less capable.
Maybe she’s just blowing off steam, and tomorrow, this will all be ignored. I’m willing to forget it happened.
Deep in her heart, however, she was pretty sure that come morning, the gunny’s resignation would be on her desk for signature.
TARAWA
Chapter 26
Esther hit send and closed the secure PA. She hadn’t written anything new there that she hadn’t said during her debrief, but procedures had to be followed. This had only been the Marine Corps debrief; she’d be going through it all over again once she got back to Mars. Her next set of briefs wouldn’t be quite as detailed. It wasn’t that she would be holding back anything vital to the Second and Fourth ministries—but although she worked for the Chairman, she was still a Marine, and Marine-related issues stayed in house.
Not that she’d been totally open with the Corps, though. She reached down to her cargo pocket, feeling the resignation letter Gunny Medicine Crow had given to her while aboard the Porto. She’d decided not to turn it in. If the gunny was serious about resigning, she could still do that when she got back to her regular billet at Sniper School.
She checked the time, then grimaced. Of course, she missed chow. Just as well, though. She’d be leaving in the morning to return to Mars, and the thought of New York’s Old Fashioned Pizzeria’s pizza had been bubbling around in her mind all day. Maybe she could head on out for half a pie, then go to the Globe and Laurel for a transfusion of Marine Corps history. Station One might be the largest military installation in the Federation, but the Marine Corps footprint there was minimal at best, and down on the surface of Mars, it was almost non-existent.
She stood up and decided to go back to the Q and change before heading out into the ville, but as she walked back, a voice called out, “Is that you, Lysander?”
Esther turned around to see Falcon Upshick, someone she hadn’t seen since NOTC.
“Falcon, as I live and breathe. I’d have thought you’d be in the brig by now.”
“They just haven’t caught me yet,” he said with a deep laugh. “But what about you? I heard you’ve got some desk job on Mars?”
“Yeah, payback for having fun in Recon.”
Esther's Story: Special Duty (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 4) Page 13
