Casserine

by Bernard Lee DeLeo

  “Well, until they work the bugs out of the gravity suits,” Adrian noted, “the only way to work on Casserine is after a long stay here. Anyhow Tim, we appreciate the extra stuff you all smuggle in here for us.”

  “It’s the least we can do,” Tim replied quickly. “Have you met our new Commander, Major Stedman? She said she wanted to meet you and the Major.”

  “She met me when I came aboard,” Adrian replied, remembering the tall, lanky brunette, who greeted her when Adrian came on board with her research discs. “She seems to like a more hands on approach. She went over the supply sheets with me personally. She’s not hard to look at either, but I guess you noticed that,” Adrian kidded.

  “Major Stedman runs a tight ship, Ma’am, and I don’t know what you mean, Ma’am,” Tim deadpanned, going along with the joke.

  “I think you do, Mister,” Adrian smiled. “Hey, how does Risling like his first star?”

  “The General’s a lot like Jake, Ma’am. He never seems to change from what I’ve seen. Something’s up though back at the base. The Earth Command Space Corps flagship ported a few weeks ago, and they had closed door meetings during his entire visit. General Risling, and his Chief of Staff, looked pretty grim after the ship’s commander left.”

  “I hope it has nothing to do with Casserine. Jake likes this place more than the home he grew up in,” Adrian replied thoughtfully.

  “Don’t you ever go a little stir crazy here, Lieutenant?” Tim asked. “I mean we all thought the Major was a little nuts for volunteering for this place year after year, but you seem a little more…ah…”

  “Social?”

  ‘Tea,” Tim agreed, nodding his head. “You always come on board for long periods when we come in and say hello to everyone. It’s only been since you arrived at Casserine that the Major even comes up to see us. He seems to enjoy the visit when you make him come, but I doubt he’d do much more than wave otherwise. Don’t get me wrong, he always did keep in touch.”

  “He’s not as closed up as you think, Tim,” Adrian laughed. “Jake enjoys the dinners on board during your visits. The war on Omaha Mining Colony did something to his social skills. I think he likes the vast openness of Casserine, and it’s been growing on me too. If not for our contact with the ships and base, I might go a little nuts.”

  “You and the Major are coming to dinner tonight, aren’t you?”

  “Major Stedman made it official,” Adrian answered. “Jake and I are expected. She seemed a little put out about it though.”

  “She doesn’t care much for the enlisted and officers all dining together when we visit here,” Tim explained. “I guess when Captain Malcolm explained about Jake’s insistence on dining with the crew, Major Stedman took it up with the General. Whatever he told her ended the discussion. Captain Malcolm told me to be sure and say hi to you and Jake.”

  “Where’d he get assigned?”

  “He’s flying cruisers now,” Tim answered. “His promotion to Major should be coming pretty soon too. Many of our reserve pilots have been reassigned somewhere else in the last few months. The rumor about trouble at the Tarawa Jump Gate circulated a month ago, but we’ve already had ships fly in from Tarawa, and they say things are quiet there. It’s probably some pirate trouble on one of the outlying colonies.”

  “Anyway, we’ll be joining you for dinner. I hope Jake’s fraternization bug doesn’t get all of you on Stedman’s bad side,” Adrian remarked.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Tim replied. “Major Stedman will see over time that formalities don’t mean much out here. We snap to out in space though. She’ll understand once she meets Jake, I mean the Major.”

  “It’ll always be Jake to you, Chief,” Adrian said. “Just remember the titles when we’re within earshot of Major Stedman.”

  “Will do, I.”

  Adrian’s communicator buzzed, and she picked it up, winking at Tim. “Salome’s sex parlor, we aim to please, Salome speaking.”

  The Chief burst into laughter over Adrian’s adlib. He heard Jake’s bass chortling laugh, joining him for a moment before commenting.

  “Okay, Salome,” Jake put in. “Tell that Chief magpie with you to quit grab assing around, and haul this stuff up. That’s you, ain’t it, Tim?”

  “Yes Sir,” Tim replied, still trying to stop laughing. “Good to talk to you again. The Lieutenant says I will be seeing you at dinner, Sir.”

  “I imagine so,” Jake replied agreeably, “but what’s with all the

  Sirs?”

  “New management, Jake,” Adrian explained.

  “Uh oh.”

  “It’s nothing like that, you big boob,” Adrian continued. “The new pilot’s still getting used to the glaring informality of these runs out here to the frontier.”

  “I see. In any case, I’m going to get out of the way here so Tim can draw up these cells. You better get on out here and get ready to go back on for dinner, Salome. You know how long it takes you to preen yourself, and the gang may need some pre-dinner entertainment.”

  “Why you.” Adrian stopped as she heard Jake click off, and she saw him down below, giving her a little wave with his hand under his chin.

  “Do you two keep this going all the time,” Tim asked wonderingly. “I can’t tell sometimes when you guys are kidding.”

  Adrian patted his shoulder on the way by. “Think nothing of it, Tim. Sometimes we don’t know when we’re kidding either. See you at dinner, Chief.”

  “See you later, Lieutenant,” Tim laughed.

  Adrian walked through the passageways, acknowledging the greetings from the Tennyson crew, she and Jake knew from prior runs. Reveling for a few more minutes in the intoxicating lightness of walking around in the normalized gravity of the ship, Adrian took her time getting to the loading bay. She watched them draw the last of the fuel cells in through the space locks separating the Tennyson’s huge storage area from Casserine’s heavy gravity. With the breakthrough in shielding, the supply ships could now dock at the surface for as long as they needed, without worrying about the energy draw from the planet.

  The chief docking officer saw her and gave her a thumbs up. Adrian waved and exited through the personnel lock next to the supply door. Jake had left the portable gangway in place for her to get down to the planet surface. Adrian braced herself by holding on to the railing which bordered the room. The space lock allowed gradual normalization within the room to Casserine atmosphere. The weight of Casserine’s gravity came back in a familiar flood of descending heaviness. She sighed, and walked slowly down the makeshift gangway, careful of her footing at all times.

  Adrian reveled in the strength she had acquired by living with Jake on Casserine. The only place she could show off her added physical power was in normalized earth gravity, which only happened off world, and took its toll in misery when she returned to Casserine. As she braced herself for each step, she remembered how Jake’s seeming indifference to the changes from one place to another, had begun to bother her more than the physical aggravation she experienced. She had begun kidding him about bringing part of Casserine with him wherever he went, thereby cheating the reentry problems. Jake would laugh self consciously, and then come over and pick her up, offering to carry her around rather than have to listen to her whine.

  Adrian looked up in time to see Jake waiting at the end of the gangplank, tapping his foot, as he stood with his arms crossed over his chest as if her journey down to the surface was taking forever. When he knew she had seen him, Jake moved quickly toward her. He grabbed her left arm and ducked under it, so her arm wound around his shoulders. She giggled as she tried without success to pull away.

  “Let me go, you brute.”

  “But Honey,” Jake said, lifting her off of her feet, and walking down toward Casserine’s surface, “I’m just trying to help.”

  “You were on the Tennyson earlier, Jake, and you stayed for a few hours talking to all of your buddies in the cargo bay,” Adrian countered, as Jake released her. “I s
aw you skip down the gangplank like you never even felt the gravity difference.”

  “I didn’t skip down the gangplank,” Jake protested, but Adrian saw a tightening around his mouth.

  “You’re holding out on me,” Adrian accused, poking Jake in the chest with her finger. “Okay, what are you on, some kind of secret potion or something?”

  “You’re the Doc, Adrian,” Jake pointed out. “Take a blood test. I’m not holding out on you. You were on the ship longer than I was. The bill came due on your little visit, and now you’re looking for someone to blame.”

  Adrian started an angry retort, and then stopped. She shook her head smiling as she walked towards their living quarters instead. Glancing back over her shoulder, she beckoned Jake to follow. “C’mon, you big boob. You’re right. I should have come down out of there when you did.”

  Jake came up behind her and swept Adrian up in his arms, carrying her up the steps toward the entrance to their quarters. “Need a lift, lady?”

  “You know, Jake,” Adrian sighed, leaning her head into his chest, “I could get used to this.”

  ‘What’s the packet you’re handling?” Jake asked, as he stepped through the entrance to their quarters, and restored Adrian to her feet gently.

  “Don’t change the subject,” Adrian said, as she held the small packet behind her back. “Are you getting stronger, Jake? You never picked me up like that before. Even when you carried me to the cave during the attack, you eased me up on your back like I weighed a ton. Now, all of a sudden, you can practically put me under your arm like a briefcase, what’s the story.”

  Adrian could tell her observation had startled Jake, and as he tried to stammer out an answer, Adrian wrapped her arms around his neck, sticking the packet in her jacket pocket. “What’s the big deal? If you’re getting stronger, spit it out. I won’t hold it against you. What do you think, I’ll double your chores or something?”

  Jake chuckled uncomfortably. “I guess maybe I am getting stronger, happy now? Can I see what you have there?”

  “You know,” Adrian said suspiciously, “I think I will do a blood workup on you. I want to find out what all this sudden reticence is to talk to me about an important anomaly concerning your physical well being.”

  Jake stayed silent, weighing his options, before picking his words carefully. “I have been changing Adrian. It started way before I met you. The change was so gradual, the base never picked up on it until I was wounded. Risling talked to me just after I took you down to the surface, when I made my weekly report. He explained I should have died from the head wounds, and there had been a noticeable change in my physiology.”

  “Wait a minute. I treated you at the base. I.”

  “Apparently, you saw me after the Med Officer on the Gibraltar. Risling told me the Doc took one look at my head wounds, and shook his head. He bandaged me, because I was still breathing, doped me up, and told the Med Personnel on duty to keep me warm and quiet, because I didn’t have much time to live. When they arrived at base, I was still alive, and you took over.”

  “You did have a couple of mean looking creases, but.”

  “The Doc from the Gibraltar told Risling I had cracks in my skull. He swore the Doc to silence, and now you know why we have to go back to base every once in a while.” Jake paused for a moment, and sat down on his favorite chair, while Adrian sat on their couch next to him. “Risling ordered me to keep you out of the loop, and see if you underwent the same gradual changes. You were right about my not feeling the same misery when I return to Casserine after being in normal gravity. I’ve been pretending for a while now.”

  “Have I been changing,” Adrian asked in a hushed voice, enthralled with Jake’s revelation.

  “No,” Jake replied. “Risling has a theory my changing has to do with the venom I absorbed from the Queen at Omaha. They told me on the Med ship off Omaha, if the Queen had been able to inject the stuff into me, I would have been dead. Remember when I told you she opened me up pretty good, right through my armor?”

  Adrian nodded.

  “The Queen had the stuff on her mandibles too. The stuff made me more sick than the wounds did, but when I started to recover, I recovered really quick. A colonist shot me up when I was stationed at the Tarawa Jump Gate, during the border war we were pacifying at the Bedford Colony. He put a blaster round right through my armor, and into my left shoulder before the stun grenade I threw nailed him and his buddies.”

  “Doc Parmitage, our on site Med Officer, told me to start thinking about what to do outside the Marines. That freaked me, but three days later I was released back to active duty, and he just told me I had been lucky. I took another even harder hit on Rigel, later on during the same mission, and recovered.”

  “So, maybe we could use you to make some kind of vaccine,” Adrian said excitedly. “I could.”

  “They’ve been trying, Hon,” Jake interrupted. “No luck, and on top of that, they rounded up some of the poison off the Bugs at Omaha. When they applied even a tiny amount to a person’s skin, it caused violent seizures and death if not treated. The volunteers they tested the theory on never developed any heightened healing power either.”

  “So, some condition in the cave with the Queen, along with the thousands of variables, from your adaptations growing up on a farming colony, to serving in the Marines on Omaha, combined to make you a DNA one-in-a-million shot. I can understand Risling’s interest, but not the secrecy,” Adrian commented.

  “Everything’s on a need to know basis in the service,” Jake pointed out. “You know that as well as anyone. If Risling hadn’t kept it quiet, some government guy would have nailed him for it. He takes orders just like we do. I am sorry I couldn’t tell you about it though.”

  “Forget about it,” Adrian replied. “After all, I’m only your wife.”

  “Uh oh.”

  “Just exactly who did you think I would be selling your secrets to, from Casserine, pray tell,” Adrian asked, smiling menacingly.

  “Risling has been tracking your progress too, and he wanted the process to be as close to a clinical one as we could get. He felt if you knew about what they were tracking, it might cause some slight change. I know it sounds farfetched, and that you think I betrayed you in some way only you can imagine, but I did what I was told. Risling’s reasoning sounded plausible, and I couldn’t think of any way it was detrimental to you. After all, you volunteered to come here.”

  “Jarhead justification.”

  “I can see you have no intention of accepting any explanation for my actions in this, do you?” Jake asked, as he shifted over to the couch. He wrapped his arms around Adrian, who had crossed her hands over her chest, and turned her face up in the air away from him.

  “Correcto.”

  “How about if I showed you something, Risling ordered me in no uncertain terms, not to tell you,” Jake offered, kissing her softly on the back of her neck.

  Adrian turned in Jake’s arms, warding him off as he tried a more romantic tact. “Show me, but it better be good.”

  “How about I take you through a few exercises first, just to help you readjust to our gravity after your time on board the Tennyson,” Jake urged, opening Adrian’s top a little to force his way to her neck.

  “Later.”

  “Now,” Jake said, picking her up off of the couch, and heading towards their bedroom.

  “Beast,” Adrian said, pulling his head down to her as Jake paused to kiss her passionately.

  “Hussey,” Jake replied, pulling away. “At least the crew on the Tennyson won’t be able to hear you scream this time down.”

  Adrian’s startled gasp, as she slapped him with her open hand, evoked a laugh from Jake who set her down on the bed. He forced her onto her back, holding her hands to the sides of her head. “You promised me you were never going to mention that again, Jake. How did I know the Tennyson had a policy of open com units in all the storage areas on the ship?”

  “It certainly gave them
something to laugh about and share all over the galaxy,” Jake said, kissing Adrian’s bright red face. She had blushed crimson at the memory of the first time the Tennyson had been able to dock for an extended period on Casserine.

  “The lightness of the change in gravity, and.and we were in there alone…I.” Adrian stammered her explanation.

  “A justification?” Jake asked, needling her as he continued his lightkisses.

  “Oh Jake,” Adrian whispered. “We must be the laughing stock of the base by now, not to mention every ship in the quadrant.”

  “What you mean we, Ke-mo sah-be?” Jake asked, spinning their Lone Ranger word gag back on her.

  “Why did you have to bring that up again? I had finally managed to block the memory enough so I could face the Tennyson crew. I’ll never be able to go back on board for dinner,” Adrian added, cringing under Jake’s touch.

  “Relax Hon, we’re famous now.”

  “Oh my God,” Adrian said in a hushed tone, still reliving their tryst in the storeroom of the Tennyson, delivered by sound to the immense entertainment of the Tennyson’s crew.

  Jake pulled her top off as she struggled weakly. He paused long enough to remove his own, and then returned to his mate. “Remember when we came out of the storeroom?”

  “Oh…my…God.”

  “You couldn’t understand the applause, or why everyone was lined up in the corridor outside. At least not until Jenny, that ensign from supply, ducked into the storeroom and shut the hatch. When her voice came over the ship’s intercom, shouting testing, testing, testing.”

  “Oh…my…God.”

  “I thought you were going to pass out,” Jake laughed, stroking her sides as she shuddered.

  Adrian slapped both hands to her face as Jake slipped the rest of her clothes off and his own. “I am not going back on board ever,” she vowed.

  ‘With your talent for blocking out everything you don’t want to hear, you’ll be fine,” Jake replied, returning to their previous embrace as Adrian still kept her hands over her face. “I thought you were magnificent.”