Starfist FR - 03 - Recoil (11 page)

The effect of all the training was that gradually the men and one woman of the Seventh Independent MPs began to see themselves in a different light. They were becoming physically fit, which gave them pride of appearance; they were mastering the long-lost or never acquired skills of soldiers; and they had a leader who shared their ordeals and really seemed to care about their welfare.

Office of the Commander, Seventh Independent Military Police Battalion Puella’s feet hit the floor at four hours that particular morning. She’d only gotten to bed at midnight, but the sleep she’d had was good, deep, refreshing and she was ready to begin her day, even though reveille wasn’t for another two hours. Since she was an NCO and the only woman in the battalion, she had been given a small room in the battalion headquarters shack. But that meant she was responsible for getting things ready for Colonel Raggel when he came into the headquarters, always around five hours. That meant coffee. In the time she’d been under Raggel’s command, Puella had come to realize what a wonderful drink coffee was. It had been two months since she’d had a taste of alcohol; she’d lost twelve kilos, and was finishing the twelve-kilometer run each morning without even being winded. She was remembering what it was like to wake up in the morning without the stomach-churning nausea and head-throbbing ache of too much booze the night before. The pasty whiteness of her complexion had disappeared along with the extra fat in her jowls, and when she looked in the mirror in the mornings her eyes were clear. Her hips, stomach, and buttocks had shrunk and the muscles there had hardened, and, miracle of miracles, her breasts had regained their firmness. Even her hair had taken on a healthy sheen. The only thing about her appearance that still made her feel a bit conspicuous, now that she was looking at life sober, was that she had no left ear. That had been shot off during the shoot-out in the bank at Phelps on Ravenette. But for some reason even she couldn’t fathom, she kept putting off getting a simple graft to replace the missing ear.

Beer was available to the men of the Seventh MPs but only at Mainside, about eight kilometers from their training area. Colonel Raggel had a hard rule that none could be brought back to the battalion unless it came back in someone’s stomach, and that man had better be able to handle it. The last time Puella had been at Mainside some men from the Fourth Company, her old company, had begged her to join them in the beer garden, to relive “old times.” But she just shook her head, smiled, and walked on. She knew very well what would happen if she took that first beer. As she walked away she heard someone mutter mournfully behind her, “Ole Queege ain’t our squeegee no more,” and, someone else added bitterly, “She’s sucking up to the CO. That’s how she got them stripes.”

She went to Mainside only to buy items she needed to maintain her uniform and personal appearance, which, since she had stopped boozing, seemed to be improving every day. And she had discovered she really liked sobriety. The civilian employees and permanent party military personnel who occupied Mainside enjoyed all the luxury of climatecontrolled facilities, but the Seventh Independent MPs did not, neither in their barracks nor at battalion HQ. The rainy season was ending but the nights could be uncomfortably damp. Puella slept in her underwear with her windows open, a ceiling fan circulating, and the insect-repellant fields turned on. Before she put her feet on the floor in the morning, she was careful to check that nothing had gotten through during the night. Each morning she emerged from her room in her skivvies, got the coffee ready, and straightened up the CO’s and the sergeant major’s offices before testing the coffee and performing her ablutions.

“Hi, Queege old Squeege,” someone said from behind Puella as she bent over the coffeemaker that morning. She whirled, startled. “Oh, Nix, what the hell you doin’ up this early?” She smiled, her face turning red with embarrassment to

have been caught in her undies. It was Sergeant Nix Maricle from the Fourth Company. She and Nix had “lifted” a few together and one particularly drunken night they’d gone all the way. Puella’s memory of the occasion was vague now except she thought she had enjoyed it. But that was then, this was now.

“Oh, thought I’d bring up the charge of quarters report from last night,” Sergeant Maricle said, never taking his eyes off Puella, whose nipples were clearly visible through her T-top. Her face turned even redder.

“Hey, you know it goes to the company commander first, Nix. He up this early? He sign it off? You know the colonel doesn’t want ’em closed out until after first formation.”

“Oh, yeah,” Maricle answered, “musta got ahead of myself.”

He grinned evilly. “Hey, Queege, we don’t see much of you down in the comp’ny no more.”

“Yeah. Well, the old man keeps me too busy up here for socializin’, Nix. You don’t mind, I gotta get dressed.” She turned back toward her room. Damn that lyin’ sonofabitch, what’s he want at this hour? she wondered, but she knew what he wanted.

“Hey! Puella! Not so fast.” Maricle came toward her. Her shorts clung tightly to her buttocks and her breasts were clearly visible to him through her T-shirt. A thin sheen of perspiration glistened on her neck and face and her dark hair hung tantalizingly down the left side of her head, hiding the scar where her ear had been. “Hold up. Let’s have us a cup of coffee, huh?”

Puella turned to face the man and said, “Don’t mess with me, Nix. That coffee’s for the CO and the sergeant major—”

“Oh, yeah, not for us peons, huh?”

“—’n I got a lot to do to get this place ready for the colonel, who’ll be here in a few minutes, if Steiner doesn’t beat him to it. And you kin explain to ’im what the heck yer doin’ up here so early. So clear off, old buddy.”

“Aw, Queege old Squeegee”—Maricle imitated a falsetto moan, stepping closer, a leer on his face—“come on, gimme a little smooch, jist fer old times’ sake?”

“Sergeant, get the heck out of here! I don’t have time for this crap.”

“Okay, okay, Queege old Squeegee, you jist ain’t no fun no more, you know that? Yer mighty high hat now you been screwing the battalion commander, or is Steiner doin’ yer ass?”

Puella exploded. “Don’t you call me ‘old Squeege’ anymore, you sonofabitch! You do and I’ll bust your fuckin’ chops for ya! ’N I hear any more bullshit about me screwin’ the CO

or the sergeant major, motherfucker, I’ll put yer stupid ass so deep in the shit that not even fuckin’ Hercules’ll be able to dig it out!”

“Then fuck you, bitch!” Sergeant Maricle shouted, his face turning brick red. He spun around and stomped angrily out of the orderly room. Puella stood there, fists clenched, breathing heavily, fighting to get control of herself. It felt good that she’d told Maricle what she thought of him—and all the others who’d been insinuating things about her relationship with the battalion’s leaders, because he would surely tell everyone he knew what she had said—but she also felt intensely embarrassed because the way she had just talked to Maricle was the way she used to talk to everyone—when she’d been on the booze.

Colonel Raggel arrived at a minute past five hours. “Good morning, Sergeant,” he said cheerily as he came through the door. “We should have some sunlight this morning.” He stopped beside Puella’s workstation and looked down at her, an expression of concern on his face. “Everything all right this morning, Sergeant?”

“Fine, sir,” she answered, but she was still smoldering from Maricle’s visit.

It was obvious to Raggel that something was wrong. “Coffee smells good,” he said, and turned away and poured himself a cup. “Refill?” he asked Puella, who nodded. “I ran into Sergeant Maricle on the way in,” he commented as he poured.

“Looked like he was coming back from here.”

“Yes, sir, he was. He said he brought the CQ report for Fourth Company early. It hadn’t been signed by the company commander and I told him it wasn’t due until after reveille,” she lied, looking away, “which he should’ve known,” she added, looking back at Colonel Raggel sharply.

“I see.” The battalion commander sipped his coffee slowly and sat on the edge of Puella’s desk. “Well, the sergeant major will be out on the range all day today with Second Company and I have a meeting with General Aguinaldo’s G1 at 0830, so can you run the battalion by yourself for a while?” He grinned at his clerk as he said this.

“Oh, yes, sir.” Puella brightened at the chance to change the subject. “Are they gonna fill the vacancies we asked for, sir?”

“Mebbe, mebbe,” Raggel said, taking another sip of his coffee. “You make a good cuppa, Sergeant. How’s it goin’ otherwise?”

Yes, Puella thought, he is probing. Do I look that upset? she asked herself. “Oh, just fine, sir, just fine.”

“Um, huh,” he set his cup down. “You know, Sergeant, when I first took over this battalion the sergeant major told me I should send you home. He thought you’d been too tight with your first sergeant—Skinhead, Skinnard, whatever—and the men in your company. I disagreed and now both he and I are very happy we kept you here. You are doing a superb job. You keep it up and I’ll see to it that you’re rewarded. I have the authority to promote every enlisted person in this battalion to whatever grade the TO&E calls for.”

Puella almost started to cry at this point, not because she hadn’t known that the colonel liked her work and was going to promote her eventually, but because coming so soon after the run-in she’d had with Maricle, it was wonderful to know how much the man supported her. “I-I—” she croaked.

“Hey, let me change the subject, okay?” He knew perfectly well what some of the men said about Sergeant Queege. Sergeant Major Steiner had already busted the lips on one man who had been rash enough to make a snide remark to the old soldier’s face. The man had been smart enough to know he’d been out of place so he never lodged a complaint. Besides, every man in the battalion feared Steiner because before Raggel’s advent as battalion commander he’d settled many disciplinary problems with his fists. But the battalion really did not have many of those problems under Raggel’s leadership. “I’d like to ask you a personal question, Sergeant.”

“Okay, sir, fire away.”

“Well, I’ve been wondering why you haven’t seen the medics and gotten that left ear of yours fixed.” He laughed. “You got that at the bank back on Ravenette, didn’t you?”

“Um, yes, sir, that’s right. Well, I just haven’t had the time—” She knew immediately that was not the right answer.

“I mean, I just don’t, well . . .” She shrugged.

“When you put your hair back it shows up mighty ugly, Sergeant. Hell, it’d be an outpatient operation, over in fifteen minutes, and nobody’d ever know it wasn’t the ear you were born with. Go over to see the medics when I get back.”

“Well, sir, it just is”—her face turned red—“it just is, it’s the only damned reminder I got about what happened that morning. See, when I got this Bronze Star, sir, I got it for running away from a fight when we got overrun by th’ Marines on th’ coast! I was still hungover that morning and when these Marines started coming out of nowhere, I nearly shit myself, sir! So I beat it back to Phelps and warned the general. ’N that’s how I got this medal.” She flicked the ribbon on her tunic with a finger. “I deserved a medal for what I did in the bank, sir, but then everything collapsed, we were all taken prisoner, and”—she shrugged—“I never got nothin’ so I really don’t feel I deserved this valor medal. That’s why I’ve kept this scar ever since.”

“Um, I figured it was something like that. Who were you with at Phelps that day?”

“Third Company, 78th MPs. We was part of the 222nd Brigade of the Fourth Independent Infantry Division under Major General Barksdale Sneed, sir. My company commander was Captain Maxwell Smart. My platoon sergeant said I’d get

a medal for shooting it up in the bank, but we was all captured and nobody had time to put in any recommendation. Story of my life, sir.” She grinned at her battalion commander.

“I know General Sneed very well. Gallant soldier. Well, you probably wouldn’t have gotten another Bronze Star for the bank shoot-out, that wasn’t combat-related,” he said speculatively, “but they’d have given you the Soldier’s Medal for Heroism, that’s for sure. Too bad, Sergeant.” He picked up his cup and drained it. “Well, get to work,” he said, sighing. “Give me all the data on the vacancies we have, personnel, equipment, armaments. I want to take that with me to my meeting.”

He stood. “You make a damned good cup of coffee, Sergeant!

I might just give you a medal for that alone.” He winked at Puella before going into his office.

TEN

Main Conference Center, Office of the President, Confederation of Human Worlds, Fargo, Earth Accompanied by some of her closest advisers, the president watched the man on the vid screen closely. His words swept out over the tens of thousands of faithful gathered in the stadium. Even watching him on a vid, it was difficult to resist the hypnotic cadences, the almost irresistible force of his compelling gaze, his wonderfully pitched and mellifluous voice, speaking extemporaneously and without mannerisms, illustrating his points by using examples from the common lives of his audience, images that everyone could understand.

“Yield, sinners!” The command rang through the small studio where Chang-Sturdevant, Marcus Berentus, General Alistair Cazombi, and Huygens Long sat, transfixed. “I bring you the Final Awakening! Through me you shall find a New Birth, a Regeneration, and your very nature shall be changed as was mine when, Lord Be Praised! I was lifted unto the Kingdom of Heaven and Born Anew!” He varied his tone from whispers to shouts, swaying left and right to the rhythm of his words. He spoke in colloquial English, never referring to his listeners in the third person but as “you,” all of whom, he told them, were sinners and damned—unless they came forward now to the “Anxious Bench,” a large area reserved before the podium where the sinners knelt and wept and confessed sins while the audience prayed for them. Several hundred people were kneeling there,

arms raised, hands clasped, professing and beseeching absolution. “I cannot give you absolution!” Jimmy Jasper thundered down at them. “Only God can do that! Open your hearts now, you sinners! Let the Holy Spirit enter your hearts and save your souls from damnation and the eternal fires of Hell! Come to the Anxious Bench and cleanse your souls of evil!”