Read Starfist: Lazarus Rising Online
Authors: David Sherman; Dan Cragg
Tags: #Military science fiction
In moments, every Marine had a liter-size schooner of ale and the girls were guiding them to tables.
"Vait, vait!" Big Barb yelled when she saw some of the girls trying to move sailors and fishermen from their tables to make room for the Marines. "Is der whole platoon here? You vant upstairs room? I got you upstairs room all for tird platoon. Vinnie, Hildegard, Asara! You run upstairs, make sure der banquet room is ready."
The three young women broke away from the Marines, eeled their way through the now crowded main room, and raced upstairs to check on the private banquet room.
A moment later one of them reappeared at the head of the stairs and called out, "It's ready!"
"Upstairs, upstairs vit you!" Big Barb shouted at the Marines. She spread her arms and urged them toward the stairs, looking like nothing so much as a sheepdog herding a flock of lambs.
The Marines laughed and joked and exchanged individual greetings with the locals as they let themselves be funneled upstairs. Nearly half of the people who climbed the stairs were women. The room they went to was considerably smaller than the main downstairs room, but it was large enough to hold six tables that could each easily seat eight, and had enough space left over for a small dance floor. Pitchers already set on the tables kept more ale cool, and dishes with small-food were within easy reach of every chair. A bar with spigots, bottles, and glasses was at one end of the room, and a table piled with covered hot-trays ran the length of one side.
The Marines didn't at all mind the close contact with the young women who pulled up chairs and crowded their way between them.
Not all the young women sat with the Marines at first. About half of them busied themselves refilling schooners from the bar spigots before they found seats.
"Hi, Marine. You look lonely. Mind if I join you?"
Corporal Claypoole was hardly lonely. Most of second squad was at his table with him, as were six of Big Barb's girls. He turned his head and looked up.
"Jente?"
The young woman from Brystholde he'd met at the party smiled down at him.
"Jente! Sure, sure." He pushed his chair back and scrambled to his feet. "Please, join us." He looked around for a chair but she already had one. He helped her sit, then wedged his own chair back in.
"What are you doing here?" Unless something had happened in the days since the first party, Jente was one of the nice girls Top Myer had warned them to treat the way they'd want their sisters treated. She definitely wasn't one of Big Barb's girls.
She raised an eyebrow at him. "Oh? I'm not welcome? Aren't you happy to see me?"
Claypoole blushed furiously. "Of—of course I'm glad to see you. It's just that I didn't expect to see you," he vaguely waved a hand,
"here."
She raised both eyebrows and pinched her lips together to keep from smiling at his embarrassment. "But we agreed to see each other again."
"Yes, I know we did. But this is the first time I've been off base. I planned to come to Brystholde this week, just like I said I would." They had spoken a couple of times since the party, and arranged for him to visit her as soon as he could get a couple of days' liberty.
"Do you want me to leave you," she vaguely waved a hand, "here, and wait for you to come to visit me?" She made to push her chair back.
"No—no!" He clamped a hand on her thigh to keep her from rising. "Please stay.
It's just that I'm surprised to see you—" He again made a vague wave.
Jente could no longer restrain herself and laughter pealed out.
She leaned toward him until their foreheads touched. "I know what this place is and who—what—Big Barb's girls are. Barb saw us together at the party. So when this affair was set up, she called me and invited me to come and keep you company." She pulled back a little and cocked her head at him, but decided not to add,
I'm here protecting my interests.
Claypoole grinned. "I'm glad you came." He leaned in and lightly kissed her lips.
He didn't notice the roars of laughter from the other Marines until he saw Jente blush.
He looked indignantly at his tablemates. Corporal Chan was senior to him, and so was Corporal Doyle. But Claypoole was a fire team leader and Doyle wasn't. He outranked everybody else.
"As you were, people!" he said haughtily when the laughter ebbed. "I'll thank you to behave yourselves. There's a lady present."
That set off another roar of laughter, this time punctuated by the higher pitched laughter of the women. Claypoole turned redder than he already was.
Sigfreid, who had paired off with Chan at the FIST party, leaned across him and put her hand on Jente's arm. Jente leaned close to hear what Sigfreid whispered into her ear. She laughed, then whispered something back. Both women laughed loudly.
"What was that about?" Claypoole asked.
Jente covered her blush with her hands and shook her head.
Claypoole looked at Chan, who spread his hands and shrugged; even he hadn't been able to make out what the two young women were saying just below his chin.
"But—" Claypoole objected. If Chan hadn't heard and Jente wouldn't say, he had no way of knowing. He thought he should know, because he was pretty sure it had something to do with him—and why Jente was there.
He was right, and Jente wasn't about to repeat to her quarry what Sigfreid said, about how many of Big Barb's girls had married men they'd met on the job—or what she'd replied, that Jente'd become one of Big Barb's girls, if that's what it took to land Claypoole.
Jente wasn't the only woman present who didn't work at Big Barb's. Kona, a widow in her late thirties from Hryggurandlit, sat close to Sergeant Ratliff at the table the squad leaders shared with Corporals Kerr and Dornhofer and Lance Corporal Schultz. Their table wasn't as crowded as the others. The more junior men generally preferred to party away from the sergeants, and most of them were wary of Schultz.
No one at their table drank as much or laughed as long or as hard as everybody else; the men and most of the women were older and ruled less by their hormones.
Stulka, who was one of Big Barb's girls, was the youngest and most flirtatious.
She was fascinated by the quiet threat that radiated from Schultz no matter how relaxed he was, and her hand flitted from his thigh to his shoulder to his cheek to his back in an endless round of contacts. Schultz didn't seem to notice. Gotta, the brunette from the party, sat primly next to Kerr. Blond Frieda, who had helped Gotta break Kerr's foul mood, was with Dornhofer. Klauda hadn't forgiven Kerr for the way he'd dumped her onto the ground when Big Barb startled him, so she paired off with Sergeant Linsman. Linsman didn't say anything, but he thought there might be something unmilitary—certainly un-Marine—in a sergeant having a girl who'd been dumped by a corporal. But he decided to overcome his scruples in the spirit of the liberty. Sergeant Kelly neither knew nor cared to know the name of the woman who propped her leg over his knee. She was pretty, friendly, and available, which was all he cared about that night. He wasn't even aware that she was one of the "nice girls"
Top Myer had warned them about. She certainly wasn't acting like a "nice girl," not the way she levered herself onto his lap and allowed him to kiss her.
Ratliff wasn't known for being reflective—in that group, Kerr was the reflective one, though Schultz sometimes surprised people with his perceptiveness and analytic abilities—but he was the one reflecting.
"Look at them," he said. "They seem so happy, so carefree. No one who didn't know would guess the hell they've just returned from."
Kerr looked up from idly twining a lock of Gotta's hair around his finger. "The return from hell is
exactly
why they're so happy," he said. "On some level, just about every one of them believes he should be dead. So they celebrate the life they aren't sure they deserve."
Ratliff nodded. "Party hard, just in case the universe realizes it made a mistake and takes them."
"Right."
"Hell of a way to make a living."
Linsman snorted. "Do you think anybody does this to make a living?"
Nobody said anything for a while. Kona almost imperceptibly increased the distance between Ratliff and herself.
Ratliff couldn't let it go for long. "I keep looking and not seeing faces I saw the last time we were here. And I see faces I've never seen here before. It makes me wonder how many faces will be different after our next deployment. If one of the missing faces will be mine."
"Get out," Schultz said.
Ratliff grunted. He knew Schultz wasn't
telling
him to get out, but had asked if he was thinking about it. Kona lifted a hand to his shoulder and moved a shade closer.
"He can't," Linsman said. "We're quarantined. All transfers, retirements, and resignations have been canceled for the duration."
Kerr laughed bitterly. "Are they going to quarantine 26th FIST? The
Grandar Bay
? Kingdom?"
Schultz nodded. "A little while."
"And knowledge of the Skinks will still get out," Kerr said.
"Someone will notice," Linsman agreed. "It'll come bit by bit, but it will come."
"Skinks?" Kona asked. "What are you talking about?"
Linsman closed his eyes.
Ratliff shook his head. "Nothing," he told Kona. "Forget we said anything."
"We may have just condemned ourselves to Darkside," Kerr said.
The existence of the Skinks, the sentience they'd fought on Kingdom, was of course a tightly kept state secret. It had been made very clear to the Marines of 34th FIST that any man who let the secret out would be sentenced, without trial, to Darkside, the penal world from which there was no parole. That had been conveyed to them when nobody outside 34th FIST except a few individuals very high in government and the military knew about the Skinks. How few? Not even the Commandant of the Marine Corps was cleared for that information.
"Only if someone tells," Schultz said.
"Tells what?" Kona asked.
"Nothing," Ratliff said. "There's nothing to tell."
Stulka, Frieda, Gotta, and Klauda looked confused. Kelly and his girl were otherwise occupied and hadn't heard a word.
"ATTENTION ON DECK!" a commanding voice boomed out.
Chair legs scraped and falling chairs clattered on the floor as the Marines reflexably rose and stood at attention. Male voices ceased instantly. Only the higher voices of the women continued for a moment as they looked at the entrance to see what was happening.
Staff Sergeant Hyakowa stood just within, sideways to the entrance. Captain Conorado marched past him and through the room to the bar, followed by Top Myer and Gunny Thatcher. Conorado and Myer stood in front of the bar, facing into the room, while Thatcher went behind it. Conorado took a step forward.
"At ease, sit down," he said. "Ladies," with a nod and a smile, "please excuse the military formality. We aren't here to interrupt the party. Thank you," he said to Top Myer, who handed him a filled schooner. Then back to the room, "I want to tell everybody to have a good time. Enjoy yourselves, just don't get into any trouble that will force me to take action. Ladies, these Marines have just been through a very rough time. Be patient, and be nice to them.
But!
" His voice cut through the whoops at that. "But! Don't take any guff off them either. You don't have to do anything you don't want to. If anyone tries that, he has to answer to me."
"
After
he answers to me," Myer growled. He looked pointedly at the women he recognized as being from the neighboring towns and villages.
Many of the women tittered, and several playfully slapped at their Marines.
"Now, if everyone will rise for a toast." He waited a moment for everyone to stand, then raised his schooner. "To our fallen comrades, all of them true Marines."
He put the schooner to his mouth and took a sip of the Reindeer Ale. "Good stuff,"
he murmured, and put it on the bar. "That's it. Have a good time. I'll see you at morning formation in one week."
"ATTENTION ON DECK!" Myer roared, and the Marines snapped to attention as the three left the room.
Hyakowa was the last to leave, but had something of his own to say before he left.
"They're off to New Oslo or wherever," he said, "but I'm staying here in Bronnys.
Don't make me waste my liberty playing mother hen." Then he waved a hand at them and left.
CHAPTER 17
"Sir! I lost the Fly!" the surveillance technician shouted.
"You don't just lose a Fly, what are you talking about?" The lieutenant looked up from the RPV console he'd been trying to repair. Everything in the RPV section was breaking down these days. In fact, everything everywhere in the Army of the Lord seemed to be breaking down. He got up and leaned over the technician's shoulder.
The screen was blank.
"It just disappeared," the technician confessed. "There was this flash and it was gone. Someone shot it down, that's what I think."
"What sector were you searching?"
"X-Ray Romeo 546371, an abandoned village named New Salem, sir. In support of 2nd Regiment's reconnaissance platoon."
The lieutenant thought for a second and remembered that the platoon was commanded by Lieutenant Ben Loman. His upper lip twitched; he had no use for Loman.
"What is the position of the village relative to the platoon?" he asked.
"It's about forty klicks to the south of the platoon's last reported position, sir. Heh heh, guess New Salem ain't so abandoned after all, eh, sir?" The lieutenant gave him a hard look. "The platoon is preparing to fort-up there for the night," the technician continued quickly. "The lieutenant asked me to use the rest of the daylight to extend my surveillance area."
"Play it back." He turned to his sergeant, who was also busily trying to repair something. "Sword, get Battalion. I think we've found a hot one here. Tell the duty officer to hang on, I'll be with him in a minute. And get a message through to Ben Loman to hold where he is until further orders." He turned to the technician. "Play it back," he said again.