In Every Clime and Place (10 page)

ASTEROID BELT RESCUE SUBSTATION ECHO 7

I put down the reader, trying to wrap my head around the way the planned piracy tied in with the mining company’s plans. “So after the attempts to stir up unrest on the outposts fell through, they figured they’d try to scare off merchant traffic?”

Jensen nodded. “They figured the outposts couldn’t survive without supply runs. They probably assumed that it would give the companies an excuse to shut down that nobody could argue with.” He took a few moments tapping on his screen. “I interviewed some survivors. The whole thing was pretty brutal.”

I reached for the device. “I have a high tolerance,” I assured him.

SNN News File 6, courtesy Brian Jensen

2 Dec 2075

Spacegoing Merchant Vessel
Arrow

Slawco Vajde smiled grimly as he strode through the captured freighter. His people had done well. Not too much damage to the ship’s cargo, and a suitable display of violence to cow the crew.
That is what this is about,
he reminded himself:
terror
.

The cargo was only valuable to the mining outposts. Food, water condensers, and replacement tools were not worth much on the black market. Scaring these vermin away from their real estate was. Not much different from the mission in Serbia, he thought.

He watched his soldiers hustling the remaining crew toward the bridge. One of the merchant crewmen made a sudden lunge, grabbing at a pirate’s assault rifle. A second pirate swung the butt of his weapon against the back of the crewman’s knees. As he buckled, the first man jerked his weapon away from the prisoner and smashed the stock into the man’s face.

A few of the prisoners screamed as their mate hit the deck, but the pirate brandished the bloody weapon at them and snarled bestially. The remaining captives scurried away from him, meek and frightened. Excellent, thought Slawco. Brutal but controlled. The blood and disfigurement of a broken nose and split lips would frighten onlookers more than a broken rib or wrist, but left the prisoner useful, if they needed him.

Slawco had learned much when serving with Colonel Radicz. Keep the scum frightened enough to obey, not desperate enough to rebel. Not until it is too late.

He waited in silence until the last of his soldiers reported in, hustling the merchant crew into a loose mob. The freighter’s crew numbered around two dozen, about a third of them hurt. They were frightened, unarmed, and utterly shocked. His troops numbered fifty, armed with modern assault rifles and submachine guns. Only one was injured, his skull cracked by a wrench. The man who did it died as a gruesome example against further resistance.

Slawco stood before the prisoners, hands clasped behind his back, looking them over with calculated contempt. “Nothing worth ransoming,” he stated flatly. “We seize the ship. Maroon the crew.”

He saw fear and hope in the eyes of some of the prisoners. Now was the moment. “Put the men in the escape pod and cut it loose. Kill any who can’t walk to it. We’ll keep the women until we get bored with them.”

Suddenly the merchant captain rushed him, clawed hands outstretched, screaming curses.

Slawco Vajde didn’t move a muscle. He knew he must show his people as well as the enemy that he felt no fear. He watched the man approach, hands clasped calmly behind his back.

A single shot sounded from behind the Serb commander. The captain jerked to a halt as a hole appeared above his left eyebrow and a spray of blood, skull and brains burst from the back of his head and spattered his crew.

Vajde turned away, nodding to the uniformed woman behind him. Tanya Kajosevic—andeo smrti, he thought. The Angel of Death. She was as good as her reputation. He hadn’t fought with her in the Struggle for Independence, but he’d heard of her exploits.

She returned the nod and patted the stock of her rifle.

He gave the command and walked away from the screaming and pleading as a picked squad of his men seized the male crewmen and marched them toward the hatchway. It would be easier to just shoot them, but to spread the fear of the raid, some survivors were necessary. When their story was heard, every crewman on this run would question his choice of occupation. He didn’t turn as the rest of his command descended on the six remaining females, tearing their clothing and wrestling them to the deck.

This action was necessary to create the fear that this type of campaign demanded. Terror and atrocity were weapons, like bombs and guns. He remembered what his commander had told him: a soldier never flinches from a necessary duty. But keep an eye on the ones who enjoy it too much.

USS
TRIPOLI

We rendezvoused with company headquarters on USS Halsey, and transferred the embassy staff and families, and the social workers and children. The ship would be a bit less crowded and things more normal. Maybe not as interesting, but less chance of doing something stupid without civilian women around. One of the women and I traded a smile and a fond memory, but no more. We both knew what it had been.

We also got resupplied, which meant we got to carry lots of heavy boxes under close supervision, something it’s hard for even infantry Marines to screw up.

The day we hooked up with the
Halsey
, O’Rourke rejoined the team. We greeted him with our customary abusive affection. He wasn’t letting the dizzy height of his new rank go to his head, but he was pissed that he had missed a booze-up.

Just when I needed it most, the Navy’s answer to Santa Claus showed up in the person of CPO Kelly. He got my attention unobtrusively as O’Rourke and I were going off duty. “You two jarheads got a minute?”

“Whadaya need, Chief?” I asked.

“I need some help moving some supplies.”

O’Rourke, never one to leap at the chance of extra work, and having already humped more than his fill of cargo for one day, asked, “Who the fuck told you the Corps was your personal hauling service?”

I dug my elbow into Terry’s ribs. “We’d be delighted, Chief.”

I spotted the raised eyebrow when the Navy man had made his request. He was letting us in on one of his illicit transactions, and if I could keep my colleague quiet, we could make out pretty well.

It turned out that we were picking up some brewing supplies from Staff Sergeant DeMers. The Marine had acquired the supplies for the sailor’s brewing operation by virtue of his position at Company HQ. A few bottles of champagne liberated from the embassy were passed in payment for the cases of ingredients. We carried the supplies down into the cargo hold of the
Tripoli
, accompanied by the two staff NCOs.

There we looked upon the Promised Land.

Carefully hidden behind the orderly stacks of cargo, closed off from the rest of the hold by the Chief’s desk and files, were a half dozen glass carboys containing beer in various states of brewing. In some, the yeast was gurgling away happily, sending little bubbles of CO2 out the airlock covers, while in others, the finished brew was conditioning, ready to be transferred to bottles scrounged from the galley. An antique capping machine stood in a corner and glittering bottle caps lay scattered about like jewels from a leprechaun’s hidden treasure in a faery glade.

“Jaysus,” breathed O’Rourke reverently. I bowed my head in homage.

“Now, if you two bellhops don’t have any pressing business,” said Chief Kelly, “you can help me bottle the next batch. And dispose of some of the previous, of course.”

“I’ll never say a bad word about you again, Chief,” promised O’Rourke.

“God bless ya, Chief,” I agreed, “even if you are a squid.”

“I’ll stay and hoist one with you,” said SSgt DeMers. “Show these two how to fill and cap. Then I’m gonna deploy to the rear before you three hooligans get maudlin and start singing When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”

“You Frenchies are awful snotty for a culture that eats slugs, DeMers,” observed Kelly.

We had a laugh and set to learning the intricacies of bottling beer. It’s a fairly complicated science, and our instruction was not aided by the availability of free samples, but over the next hour Terry and I became proficient. SSgt DeMers made a dignified withdrawal, and we helped the Chief get his next batch bottled, labeled and stored safely away from prying eyes.

Chief Kelly noticed that we were more surly than usual. “What crawled up your asses? O’Rourke, you I understand. Your right arm was busted and learning to whack off with the other one must’ve been a strain. But what the hell is your problem, Collins?”

Terry extended a one-fingered salute with the hand not holding his beer.

I thought for a moment, shook my head. I hadn’t planned to talk about this to anybody, but the Chief’s homebrew was a warm, friendly glow in my stomach and my thoughts were becoming clear in a sluggish sort of way. “I don’t know, Chief. It’s Lance Corporal Sabatini.”

He gave a low whistle of appreciation.

“Well, there is that. But I think I pissed her off and I can’t figure out why.”

Kelly looked me over for a moment. “You ain’t married, right?”

“Nope.”

“How old were you when you joined the Marines?”

“Eighteen. What the hell has this got to do with anything?”

“I bet you didn’t have any sisters, or at least none that were around your age, either.”

“OK, Nostra-fucking-damus, what are you getting at?”

“You never learned how to read women, you dumb jarhead. She said something, or didn’t say something, or looked at you a certain way, or not, and you totally missed what she meant because you think of her as one of the guys.”

“Huh?” I offered.

“Look, I’ve been married eighteen years,” the older man explained, “and I’ve spent a lot of time on stations with a lot more women than you guys have. You grunts don’t see many girls who ain’t for sale.”

“I told you—” Terry began, but I motioned him to silence. I won’t be lectured on women by anyone in my fire team. Especially O’Rourke.

“So what are you saying, Chief?”

“Tell me what happened, the way you saw it. Even if you don’t think anything happened. Tell me what didn’t happen. Then I’ll draw upon my vast experience to let you know where you fucked up.”

I wasn’t offended. Older veterans had been telling me how little I knew for twelve years. I had been telling kids like Johnson for eight or nine, so I assumed my apt-pupil expression, opened another brew and ran down my conversations with Sabatini over the past few days, from the deployment through the party to her apparently unwarranted attitude problem.

By the time I finished, Kelly was laughing quietly at me. “Christ, you Marines are dumb!” He wiped his eyes. “I guess you have to be to volunteer for the beach-storming, police actions and other stupid-shit assignments you get. And you keep reenlisting, so you probably have an IQ around six.”

“When you have quite finished laughing at the expense of God’s Own Marine Corps, feel free to enlighten me,” I said with a forced dignity.

“She wasn’t trying to tell you how you were attractive to women in general, shit-for-brains! She was trying to let you know she thought you were attractive to her. Jesus, you are dense. Am I the only Irishman on this boat with anything upstairs?” He fell to laughing again.

Oh shit.
I insisted he was wrong, but I knew better. “How do you know?” I fought for time.

“Look, Einstein, there were two ways to interpret what she said. You took the other. Since she’s pissed, that was obviously wrong. What’s left is that she was trying to tell you she has a thing for you.”

“But we’re in the same damn squad!” I was babbling. “We work together. It’s against every reg in the book!”

“So’s drinking in the hold, boyo.”

Well, he had me there. Never one to stop at good enough, he hammered his point home.

“Besides, the regs are fighting biology. Anyplace else, you two would be shacked up, with half a dozen kids, like the good Catholics you’re both supposed to be.” He smirked, knowing how poor a Catholic I was. “You can’t fight nature, lad.”

“Bullshit,” I rallied halfheartedly. “Pulling night shifts and being in space at all is fighting nature. We do it every day.”

“And to stay sane, we break the rules.” Chief Kelly smiled beatifically.

I was caught between admiring him and wanting to punch him in the mouth.

“I told you!” Terry shouted. “I told you it wasn’t the same.”

I’d almost forgotten he was there. I was too busy trying to sort out the implications of Chief Kelly’s observation to deal with O’Rourke like the professional team leader I was supposed to be. “Shut up.”

“No. I told you she was disruptive—”

“Stow it! She’s a good Marine.”

“Christ!” he blurted. “You’re standing here talking about how she wants you to nail her—”

“Enough!” I swung at him.

He knew me well enough to expect it. He blocked and threw a right at my jaw. I halfway dodged and only took a glancing blow.

As I regained my balance, O’Rourke came at me with a barroom haymaker. I ducked, stepped in and drove a short, vicious right into his breadbasket. He gasped and folded up, then sat down heavily.

“Shut the fuck up!” I said unnecessarily. He was too busy fighting for air to argue. “Sabatini may be a woman, but she’s a damn good Marine. Just like you are an undisciplined prick but a damn good Marine, and I’m a drunk who wouldn’t mind losing a stripe right now if you don’t shut up, but I know I’m a good Marine. I stood by you when McCray wanted to bust you for insubordination. I got you a fucking promotion over everybody’s objections because I know you’re a good man in a fight. I stand by my Marines against anybody. She’s one of us, tits and all, so if you say one word against her
as a Marine,
I will beat the living shit out of you.”

I dragged in a long breath before continuing. “She’s a woman. And a Dago. Same way Johnson’s black and we’re dumb drunken micks. Make fun of that all you want. It’s what keeps us going. But don’t ever say one of my Marines is a detriment to my fire team. I stand by all of you. I wouldn’t trade one of you for the ghost of Chesty Puller or Jesus Christ in a flak jacket. Do you read me, Marine?”

He looked at me in silence for a long moment, letting my words sink in through the anger. Finally he nodded. “Aye aye, Your Fucking Majesty.” But there was a pale hint of a smile behind it.

I extended my right hand to help him up. He took it after a second’s consideration.

“That was against the regs, too,” Kelly pointed out. He hadn’t moved from his seat throughout the brief skirmish.

“Fuck you, Chief,” I said, which was insubordination, for anybody keeping score. “Make yourself useful and get O’Rourke another beer.” Mine was still in my left hand, miraculously unspilled.

“I’ll do you one better.” He rummaged around and produced a flask and three shot glasses.

I thought that maybe I’d transfer to supply after this cruise.

He handed us each two fingers of whiskey. “Now, drink to your friendship and shake hands like good Irishmen.”

We obeyed. Unspoken apologies flashed in both of our eyes. Terry and I would get past this. Now, all I had to do was smooth things over with Sabatini and hope the team could stand the strain. I helped myself to another nip of courage before I left the Chief.