"Neither of those questioners was from our unit, Captain," Podesta protested.
"And the Colonel invited them to ask questions," Stark added, drawing the Captain's attention squarely on him.
"Neither of those points is in any way relevant! Middle management is not properly supporting the officers of this command, Sergeant Stark."
"I am not a manager, Captain," Stark stated crisply. "I'm a combat leader."
"You're whatever I tell you you are! I expect no repetition of the events of earlier today. Is that understood?" Ringon waited for only a second before continuing. "That is all. Except for you, Sergeant Stark. I want to see you alone."
The other Sergeants filed out, closing the office door behind them, as Stark remained standing at attention, face professionally blank. Ringon raised one angry finger, shaking it in Stark's direction. "I've heard about you, Stark. I've heard you're difficult. I've heard you don't like to take orders." Stark stood silent. "Well?"
Stark kept his voice emotionless. "I obey orders, Captain."
"You question every one of them!"
"I express my opinion in appropriate circumstances, Captain."
Ringon turned an even darker shade of red. "There are no appropriate circumstances, Stark! You're a Sergeant. You don't have an opinion." She paused for a reply.
"Yessir."
"You do exactly what you're told when you're told."
"Yessir."
"You keep your mouth shut."
"Yessir."
Ringon glared in frustration, then pointed toward the door. "That's all. I better not hear any complaints from your new Platoon Commander."
"Yessir."
Stark saluted smartly, holding the salute until Ringon was forced to flip a quick salute in return, then pivoted on one heel to exit the office. There he found himself facing the impassive presence of Vic Reynolds waiting just outside. "Mind if I walk with you?" she asked.
"No problem." They walked for a few moments, past rows of identical doors ranked like faceless soldiers. "You hear what went on in there?"
"Every word."
"So what do you think?"
"I think you are one lying son of a bitch. None of those 'yessirs' meant anything."
"They weren't supposed to mean anything. I was just acknowledging her statements, not agreeing with them."
"Ethan, you can't keep pushing the edge all by yourself. Sooner or later some officer will call you on it for real."
"Not these gutless wonders. Besides, I gotta protect my people."
"You've got to lead your people into combat, Ethan. That's why we're here, to fight wars, regardless of how worthwhile we think they are."
"I know that. I also know there's more than one way to fight a war, and I'm going to fight the smart way."
"You may be right. People still talk about that stunt you pulled in the Mideast."
"Stunt?" Stark questioned. "Look, some Major who didn't know his head from a hole in the ground ordered me to do a head-on assault against troops dug into a damn mountain."
"Which the Major was told to do by some Colonel who was told by some General."
"Which is beside the point! If I'd charged straight in I'd have lost half my Squad, at least, and not taken the objective."
"So instead you suffered a mysterious communications failure, assaulted the hill next to the mountain, took the hill, looped around behind the mountain, and started pounding on the enemy headquarters, which panicked and pulled its own troops off the mountain to try to stop you."
"Yeah," Stark agreed. "We blew them away, climbed up the back of the mountain, and planted the flag. Objective taken. What's the problem?"
"The problem is that immediately afterward that comm problem of yours disappeared. The techs never did find out why your Squad couldn't hear any incoming transmissions for more than an hour, did they, Ethan?"
Stark shrugged. "I guess it was one of those, um, intermittent things. You know."
"Uh-huh. How did you explain not following the last instructions in your Tactical?"
"I thought I'd heard new orders that superseded the old Tactical before we lost comms. You know how our Tacs can get slowed down because of enemy jamming and our own clogged comm circuits."
She nodded, as if accepting the explanation at face value. "And where was your Platoon Commander during all this?"
"Bleeding to death." Stark made an angry face. "He'd tried to lead First Squad up that damn mountain like Tac ordered. Too bad. He actually listened to us sometimes when we offered advice. Unfortunately, he also did everything his superiors ordered, to the letter. With everything they do recorded in the Tactical systems that's the only way for officers to get promoted, right? And he wanted to make Captain something awful."
"Bad enough to die for it, anyway. Since all this happened before I transferred to this unit, maybe you can tell me why you weren't court-martialed?"
"Heck, Vic, we won. That meant some General was a flippin' genius, right? The senior officers were too busy taking credit for their brilliant plans to blame me for some comm problem. I mean, how could they give themselves medals for winning the damn battle if what I'd done hadn't been what they wanted?"
"I see. You're a lot more devious than I've given you credit for, Sergeant Stark."
"I am not devious." Stark glared at her. "I do what I have to do when I have to do it. I don't sneak around planning things behind people's backs."
Vic held up her hands in a calming gesture. "True. Sorry if I implied otherwise, Ethan. But you take some major risks doing things without orders, or different than orders. Why?"
"Let's just say I owe somebody." He nodded grimly, as if to himself or unseen comrades. "Yeah. I owe somebody."
Vic peered at Stark as if she'd never seen him before. "I sometimes wonder. It's like you're fighting some other war the rest of us aren't."
"Maybe I am."
"You want to talk about it?"
"No, I don't want to talk about it."
"Why don't you want to talk about it?"
Stark glared at her. "How the hell do I talk about why I don't want to talk about it without talking about it?"
"Now you're being unreasonable."
"And now you're being a woman."
Vic pretended to be aghast. "You know I'm a woman? And here I thought the uniform had hid it all these years."
"Ah, hell, Vic." Stark started laughing despite himself. "Why do you care what happens to me anyway?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
Stark laughed again. "How much trouble can I get into with you looking out for me?"
"I shudder to think." She grinned maliciously. "Speaking of trouble, Ethan, you ever hear what happens when you cross a Special Operations Sergeant with an ape?"
Stark rolled his eyes with exaggerated disinterest. "I guess you heard I went on a date with a Sergeant from Ranger Company. Okay, Vic, I give. What do you get?"
Vic smiled wider. "A dumb ape."
Stark ducked his head quickly to hide an involuntary smile, then looked back up, face impassive. "I hadn't heard that one for, oh, a coupla years now."
Vic nodded back innocently. "Just wondering if it tracked with your experience, Ethan."
"Nah. There aren't any apes dumb enough to mate with the Spec Ops Sergeants I know."
"Oh, come now, Ethan. She's such a sweet little thing. Nice body, too."
"How do you know? Anyway, she also knows about twelve ways to kill a man with her bare hands without breaking a sweat. Speaking of breaking, she can do that to bones pretty easy, too."
Vic smiled again, this time pityingly. "Didn't get lucky, huh?"
"I'm still in one piece. I call that lucky. Besides, turns out she's just looking for a friend."
"Ouch." Vic winced. "Don't worry, Ethan, I'll be your friend."
"Gee, thanks. Will you go to the Moon with me?"
"Let me think about it. Mother always told me to avoid men in uniform."
"Your mother wore a uniform," Stark pointed out. "You told me she was a Sergeant. And, if I remember right, you told me your father wore a uniform, too."
"So? That just means Mom spoke from experience." The levity vanished from Vic's face as she leaned close, scanning their surroundings to ensure that no one stood close enough to listen in. "It's going down. We onload tomorrow."
"Damn. Where do you find out all this stuff?"
"A girl's entitled to a few secrets, Ethan. But if you've got anybody you need to say good-bye to, you better do it tonight."
Stark thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Nah. Everybody I'd want to say good-bye to is coming along, right?"
"Ethan, you need a life."
"Vic, I'm a Sergeant, and I've got a Squad of people depending on me. That
is
my life."
Sometimes that life was better than others. Right now they sat within a laboratory complex they couldn't use, under strict orders not to touch any of the equipment, chafing at the weeks of unaccustomed living in underground quarters. Not that Stark let them spend all their time in comfort there. "Chen, I could've put six rounds through you while you hung above the surface that time."
"I thought I was pushing off from dust, but it was rock,"
Chen complained, huddled behind a jagged boulder that apparently had been blasted out of some distant area before slamming into place here unknown centuries ago.
"Don't think," Stark ordered harshly. "Don't guess. Know what you're doing every second." He shifted to view another member of the Squad trying to advance under cover, bobbing among the rocks that littered the open area not far from the entrance to the lab complex. On his HUD, targeting data painted the soldier with an array of kill points. "Hector, keep your head down."
"I gotta see where I'm going, Sarge!"
"No, you don't. You memorize the route you're going to cover before you rush forward." Stark shifted to the Squad-level broadcast. "Listen up, people. This is just like back home. You know how to move under combat conditions. Do it!"
"Sarge?" Gomez asked. "It's really hard moving here. You know, every time I push or shove I either do it too hard or too light. And everything looks wrong 'cause there ain't no air."
"No kidding, Gomez. Here's a question for you, and I want everybody to listen to the answer. How do you get better at something?"
"Uh, you practice, Sarge."
"Very good. So guess what we're going to do until we know how to do it cold?"
"Okay, Sarge," Gomez agreed without noticeable enthusiasm. A ragged series of reluctant assents came from the rest of the Squad.
"Good. Now, we're going to run through another advance and another fall-back drill. If you apes do a good enough job on those, we can take a break."
Two hours later, soldiers still sweating from the exertion of moving under conditions alien to their every experience had their battle armor laid out for maintenance. Desoto moved close to Stark, indicating the other soldiers with a tilt of his head. "They're trying hard, Sergeant."
"I know that. But they haven't learned it all yet. They gotta try harder."
"They're tired, Sergeant."
"Would they rather be dead?" Stark raised his voice, addressing the Squad as a whole. "Anybody got any comments or complaints?" Soldiers exchanged glances but remained silent. "Come on. Open up."
Murphy looked at Stark defiantly. "None of the other squads is doing this, Sarge. They drill a little bit, but nothing like this."
"None of the other squads?" Stark asked. "Which squads in particular?"
"I don't wanna get nobody in trouble, Sarge."
"You won't. This stays in this room. Which squads?"
"Well, Second Squad in First Platoon. That's one."
"Uh-huh." Stark swiveled his head to view every member of the Squad. "Last op. How many casualties did Second Squad, First Platoon take?"
"Three," Gomez offered. "One dead, two wounded, right?"
"It was four," Mendoza corrected softly. "The fourth had a light wound."
"If they didn't have to leave duty, it don't count," Gomez argued.
"Knock it off," Stark interrupted. "Now, how many casualties did this Squad suffer?"
"None, Sarge. We were lucky."
"Really?" Stark demanded. "You think luck is all that kept you alive and in one piece? You guys are alive because I won't settle for less than the best from you. You're all alive because I drill you when your buddies in other squads are lying in their bunks playing vid games. And you know what? I'm going to keep drilling you until you're all perfect."
"But there's no enemy here," Billings pointed out. •
"Not yet," Stark agreed. "You want to wait until they show up to learn how to move and fight up here, Billings? Any of you want that?"
"Wouldn't matter if we did, would it,
SargentoT
Gomez mocked.
Stark bared his teeth. "No, it wouldn't. I'll kill you all from drill before I let one of you get killed because I didn't push you hard enough."
"We got any say at all in that?" Carter half joked.
"No. Anybody want a transfer?"
A long silence stretched, then Billings pointed toward an outside display monitor. "Hell, Sarge, if we transferred we'd have to leave here, and I'm starting to like this place."
The joke brought a scattering of laughs from the rest of the Squad, before the soldiers turned back to conducting maintenance on their battle armor. True to form, the Mark IV's were displaying their malfunctions in manners ranging from uncomfortable to potentially lethal. However, in a highly unusual development, spare parts flowed in an abundant stream whenever requested. While unwilling to look a gift horse in the mouth, Stark had been on too many underfunded and undersupplied operations not to be suspicious of such apparent wealth.
Billings, still grinning at her own joke, gestured to indicate a vague direction. "Seriously, Sarge. Any chance of seeing that colony? The one they're building out on the plain?"
Stark shrugged. "They're building it. Or digging it. Probably both. I doubt they need any sightseers hanging around."
"Are there people there yet?"
"Yeah. I hear a bunch of civs have already come up to help build and run the thing."