Plague Wars 06: Comes the Destroyer (22 page)

But who could he talk to? If he reported her, she would never fly again, and he didn’t want that. Was it because he selfishly wanted to keep getting laid? He also wondered how she was beating the random drug testing.

Wrestling with it affected his performance for the next week. He kept trying to talk to her, but every time he did she just dragged him into bed and told him how much she needed him, and that she’d lay off the stuff, that this time had been the last.

He pleaded every day for her to go to the doctors or the chaplain and self-report. Doing so would avoid disciplinary action, though who knew whether she would keep her wings. Maybe they would put her in a treatment program and give her another chance.

Every day she refused.

Five weeks into the training, they were ready to move on from simulators. Facing climbing into an actual ship and flying for real, no free respawns after crashing, was what pushed him into action.

One email sent from an anonymous rented terminal in the Quarter was enough to prompt a half-assed raid on the flower shop, enough to show compliance with some kind of rules, but he heard later they had found only some traces of the drugs. The proprietors had cleared out hours before.

They must have been tipped off.

Vango was starting to get an idea of how pervasive the problem was.

The next time he tried to go to eat at a restaurant in the Quarter, a couple of the security guards there told him he wasn’t welcome there anymore. After getting the same treatment from the next three places, he realized that he’d been blackballed from sin city.

Somehow, someone had found out it was him from the “anonymous” e-mail, and that was that. They wouldn’t do anything serious to him; after all, the last thing whoever ran the place wanted was for the EarthFleet pilot son of Chairman Daniel Markis to come to some harm that could be traced to them. The hell that would rain down on the Quarter would be Biblical in proportion.

Losing the privilege to eat and drink well didn’t bother him much, but it didn’t take long for Stevie to find another source from somewhere, and he realized that trying to cut off her supply was no answer. She was sick, and she needed help. If that cost him getting laid, or even her friendship…Vango decided he had to do it.

“Come on, Stevie,” he begged her as they lay sweating in her bed after another athletic bout. “You gotta talk to someone before they catch you.” Right after she was done seemed to be the moment she was most amenable to hearing things she didn’t want to, but instead of responding she just snuggled, turning her face into his chest and away from his eyes.

A few more attempts at conversation earned him an annoyed look as she slid out of his embrace and showered. “I’m gonna go to the casino. Wanna come?” she asked.

“No. It’s almost midnight. I gotta get some sleep. Early go tomorrow,” he replied as he watched her dress in her civvies. He’d learned that what she was really asking was for him to be her chaperone and keep her out of serious trouble, while she pushed against his boundaries, acting wild and blaming him for anything that didn’t work out.

Once she left, instead of sleeping he lay staring at the ceiling for over an hour. Eventually he made a choice he should have long ago, because if he let her, she was going to drag him down with her.

Slowly he scoured her quarters for everything of his – underwear, toothbrush, a hardcopy letter from his mother – that had gotten left there over the past weeks. Throwing it all in his gym bag, after one final look around, he shut her door for good. Although he didn’t want to report her, the decision to break up with her turned out to be easier than expected.

She came after him the next day, though she had the courtesy to wait until after training had ended. The beer she poured over his head and the attempt to slap him made her meaning plain. That look of angry betrayal on her face as she stormed out of the O club seared itself into his mind. He told himself she would get over it, and that he had to do it.

When she didn’t show the next day he figured she was sulking, drunk or high and sleeping it off.

He almost called it right. Stevie never woke up from her last and final high. He found out when he went by and a couple of cleaners were prepping the room for another occupant. Staggering away, he wandered the corridors with no idea of where he was going, until he found himself sitting on a bench in the central park.

It seemed like serendipity, if not outright divine intervention, that Jill and Rick had shown up, and he was going to see them tonight. He never felt so in need of friendly faces as he did now. The only person that even came close was the chaplain, Captain Forman, but she was back on
Orion
. Besides, when he’d expressed interest in her, she’d made it clear she was way out of his league, or something like that.

Everything confused him right now, when he just wanted to fly and fight the aliens.

Women
.

That brought his mind back to Stevie, and his heart broke again. It was all he could do to force himself off of his bunk, dress in civvies, and go find his friends’ quarters.

Three beers later he found himself sobbing on their couch, with Jill holding him like his mom used to, Rick with a hand on his shoulder. “I should have done something more,” he said as he set the empty on the coffee table. “I could have saved her.”

“I doubt it,” Rick replied. “She was going to wreck herself eventually.”

No one spoke for a moment, until Vincent pushed himself away with mild embarrassment. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about,” replied Rick. “Did she have family?”

“All dead in the nukes. She spent a year living like an animal on the edge of the DC dead zone before the government came back and rescued her. She had nobody. At the end, she didn’t even have me. I failed her.”

“Look,” Jill said in that matter-of-fact tone that seemed to promise everything would be all right. “This is a tragedy and it hurts, I know, but peacetime rules don’t apply. In a better, saner world, she would have gotten help. Maybe you should have reported her, but you made the call and now you have to live with it.”

“Wow, you’re some comfort,” Vango retorted.

“When I raised my right hand and took the oath of enlistment,” she said, “I really didn’t understand what that would mean. Now, almost three decades later, I’ve seen a lot of good people die. You wanted a warrior’s life. You have to take the bad with the good. If you think you made a mistake, then learn from it and do better next time.”

“Maybe coming over here wasn’t such a good idea.” He made as if to stand up.

“Your choice, Vincent Markis,” Jill said flatly. “I never treated you with kid gloves before. Why should I start now? You had a good cry, and you’ll have a few more bouts of grief, over drinks or locked in your room, but eventually you’ll get over it. Now if you want to keep drinking, we’ll be happy to get smashed with you and tell you it’s gonna be all right – because it will, after a while. I’m just not telling you it ain’t gonna hurt in the meantime.”

“Things like this aren’t supposed to happen,” he protested. “Dad and Mom said the Eden Plague would fix humanity, but that was bullshit.”

“Your parents aren’t infallible, you know,” Rick said gently. “And it did fix me. When your father released it, I had been in a wheelchair from the time the muscular dystrophy took hold. I would have lived ten, fifteen years more, tops, getting worse and worse. And it did get rid of a lot of problems – but not all of them. People still have free will.”

Jill said, “Some people can get offered heaven but they refuse and make their own hell. You can’t be responsible for their choices.”

Vincent shrugged, suddenly exhausted. “I think I’m gonna hit the sack now.”

“You want the couch?”

He shook his head. “No, that’s okay. I’ll be better back in my own bunk.”

Rick stood up with him, throwing a brotherly arm across his shoulder. “I’ll walk back with you.”

In that time she felt cautiously confident that she had cleaned out the worst rot from Bravo Company, and that she could rely on them.

At least, the enlisted. Captain Rapplean and the company’s lieutenants were still suspect, but with decent NCOs in place, that could be handled.

As she came back from Monday morning PT, Sergeant Major Tano intercepted her and pulled her aside in a far corner of the company formation pad, his two escorts thankfully elsewhere inside Battalion spaces.

“You’re getting Bravo Company noticed,” Tano said.

“Just trying to whip them into shape, Smaj,” she replied.

“Not saying it’s a bad thing, but bad things are coming. Simms is going to do a surprise inspection tomorrow, at first formation after breakfast.”

“No problem,” Repeth said easily. “We’ll be ready. Hell, we’re ready right now, except for a few little things.”

Tano shook his head and scowled darkly. “No, you don’t understand. You’re ready for Simms to inspect the company, but afterward he likes to hold a kumbayah session with the lower enlisted.”

“What? What does that mean?”

“He’ll get the lower enlisted into the auditorium, kick out the NCOs and officers, post guards and then talk to them by himself.”

Repeth looked away for a moment, staring at nothing. “That’s…weird.”

“It’s worse than that. He tries to get them talking, tries to convince them he’s their best friend and pal, and they should open up to him about any perceived problems in the company. If that doesn’t work, he’ll get them talking about how far they are from home, how they miss their sweethearts, how scared they all are of the aliens…anything to get them emotional and blabbering.”

Repeth turned to Tano in shock. “Oh. My. God.”

“Yeah, in spades.”

“A bunch of privates are too stupid to keep their mouths shut. They’ll start saying any damn thing that comes into their heads to try to please the big boss.”

Tano smiled with absolutely no humor involved. “That’s only the start. Not only does he try to get them to talk bad about the chain of command,
he records everything himself
. And he forbids them to do the same. Sweeps the room for bugs, makes sure the troops’ cyberware is all shut down.”

“Because an unedited rendering would show just how insane the whole thing was.”

“To a real Marine, yeah. Or even a decent Ground Forces or Navy officer. But to a hometown politician that’s never worked with troops, or someone’s daddy or mommy… I can tell you he doesn’t like hard chargers like you. He wants a frickin’ college campus here for some reason, with everyone kissing his ass. I think he already knows the entire chain of command doesn’t trust him, so he tries to get troops on his side.”

Repeth’s jaw had sunk lower and lower, and now she closed it with an audible snap. “I knew he was bad but… We have a lunatic for a commander, trying to undermine his own chain of command and convincing the troops to spill their guts to him, only to use their babbling against them. But why?”

Tano shook his head, in uncertainty not negation. “Maybe he’s reporting to an officer or politician with an agenda of some sort. Maybe someone wants the Marines’ reputation damaged. We’ve always been the fleet’s guarantee against mutiny or, on the flip side, individual Navy officers getting big heads when they have an independent command. Maybe the Ground Forces feel like they have no status anymore, hanging around Earth and manning a few asteroid fortresses, and they want to undermine us.”

Repeth chewed her lower lip. “Or maybe some politician is trying to save money by reducing the expenditures on Marines, or…I just don’t know.”

Tano said, “We can speculate all day. I just wanted to give you a heads up.”

“What do you want me to do?” Repeth immediately realized that was the wrong tack. “Never mind…I’ll figure out a mitigation plan.”

“You’d better, Top. If this keeps up, something bad is going to happen, no matter how hard you train your people. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down; you know that. You haven’t rocked the boat too hard yet, but Simms may be gathering evidence in case you do.”

Slowly a genuine smile spread across Repeth’s face, quickly suppressed. “Sergeant Major, I believe I can handle this situation. Thank you for tipping me off.”

Tano cocked his head critically. “Be careful, Top. You’re a good NCO. I’d hate to lose you.”

“And if I’m not careful? If I go out on a limb?”

“I’ll back you up, under two conditions. One,” he held up a thumb, “I’m not gonna get court martialed, and two,” he added his index finger, “you and your fancy husband bring this son of a bitch down once and for all.”

Repeth’s eyebrows went up in surprise.

“Oh yeah,” Tano said, “I looked into Lieutenant Commander Johnstone’s background. Don’t worry, I’m on your side. It just seems to me that someone with his skills ought to be able to, well, help out.”

“Sergeant Major, I have no idea what you are talking about, and if anyone asks, that’s my answer.” She showed her teeth once more, then nodded as she turned to go. “Good day to you, Smaj.”

Quickly she gathered her platoon sergeants together, four NCOs she trusted, and put out the word to tell the troops that no one was to volunteer anything if the colonel asked any open-ended questions. “Tell them that anyone who runs his mouth, anyone who does anything more than answer a direct question will be in for a hell that they’ll never forget.”

She hoped that would mitigate the problem, and would lay the groundwork for the next part of the plan she’d thought of. Next, she went and looked up Sergeant Dasko.

Dasko was the best of her NCOs, a squad leader. As soon as he had enough seniority she’d try to make sure he got a platoon. Most importantly, she was sure he was both completely reliable, and also flexible-minded enough to do what she asked.