“That’s not what I meant, Top,” I told her, and I was surprised at the impatience in my tone. I was a butterbar, and Second Lieutenants didn’t get mouthy with Master Gunnery Sergeants. Not if they wanted to keep their ass intact.
“I know what you meant, boy,” she said, not sounding angry. “You’ve been around this block. You’ve seen more than Cronje ever will, had to make decisions he’ll never have to face. So, you tell me. Did you do the right thing?”
“I thought I did before I talked to Commander Hofstetter,” I admitted. “The way she laid it out, though, it sounded a lot like I didn’t. Like I was hotheaded and stupid.”
“She’s a lawyer,” Covington spoke up, finally. “She gets paid to make reality conform to the accepted narrative. That’s why everyone hates lawyers.”
“Even their own lawyer,” Top added.
“There’s only so much we can control in combat, Cam,” Covington went on, ignoring the joke. “Things are being thrown at us and we work with the information we have because hesitation can mean disaster. Maybe there was some other way you could have prevented Lt. Kodjoe’s platoon from carrying out Cronje’s illegal order, but what good would it have done if you’d thought of it after they’d already killed all the civilians?”
“Wouldn’t that apply to Captain Cronje too?” I asked. “I mean, he made a call based on what he knew. Maybe he was just doing what he thought was right.”
“I might believe that if I didn’t know Greg Cronje. The man’s sloppy, and I used to think it was on purpose, that he was too loose and too relaxed because he knew he wasn’t that good of a leader and wanted his Marines to love him anyway. But now I know it’s more than that. He’s mentally lazy. He gets fixated on one tactic, one way of doing things and won’t look aside to the left or right. He had it in his head that the only way to stop his people getting killed was to kill the civilians to get to the insurgents. But there was no imminent threat to his Marines. All he had to do was withdraw from the warehouse, set up a perimeter and order his people to fire on any vehicles that tried to leave.” Covington shrugged. “Of course, it would have taken longer, wouldn’t have looked as efficient, and he’d already fucked up the mission. He got impatient, sloppy, and when it all blew up on him, he blamed you for being the one to point out his mistake.”
He speared me with a stern look.
“I’ll tell you this, Second Lieutenant Alvarez, if I had to choose one of the two of you to take over this company in combat, I would take you over Captain Cronje every day of the week.”
“Unfortunately,” Top interjected, “we’re not the only ones you have to worry about.”
“What?” I blurted. “You mean the JAG lawyers? The Provost Marshal?”
“She means Alpha Company, son,” Covington told me. “This war is far from over, and we’re going to be working beside them the whole way. I’m sure Lt. Sandoval isn’t going to hold this against you, but the rest of them….” He shook his head. “It could get ugly. Fratricide ugly.”
The hackles rose on my neck and I stared at him in disbelief.
“They wouldn’t actually do that, would they?”
“I’ve seen it happen, more than once. Sometimes it was blatantly obvious and the guilty party went in the Freezer, punitive hibernation. They’re still there as far as I know. Other times, all it took was pretending not to see what was going on one sector over, and no one could ever prove beyond a shadow of a doubt it had been intentional.” He smiled thinly. “It’s easy to get men and women conditioned to kill the enemy. It’s a bit harder to make sure they remember who the enemy is.”
“So, what should I do?” I asked, trying not to sound hopeless.
“Keep your head down and your mouth shut as much as possible,” Top suggested. “Leave them be and let it die down, if Cronje will allow it. That’s all you can do.”
“And don’t gossip about it,” Covington suggested. “Not even with the other platoon leaders, not even with Lt. Sandoval. If one wrong word taken out of context gets back to Cronje, it could light this whole mess on fire.”
“Gossiping isn’t really my thing, sir,” I said, chuckling.
“If anyone asks,” he went on as if I hadn’t spoken, “tell them the facts, what they could read if they looked up the after-action report. No opinions, nothing about who’s at fault.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. “And you think that’ll work?”
“Probably not,” he admitted. “But it has a better chance than anything else.”
“If that doesn’t work,” Top said, “there’s always wall-to-wall counseling.”
“Now, Master Gunnery Sergeant,” Covington chided her, “company commanders do not go around punching each other over disagreements. At least not in the open where anyone can see it.”
“Yes, Captain.” She grinned. “Sorry, Captain. I must be thinking of another captain.”
“Don’t worry too much about it, Alvarez,” Covington told me, apparently sensing I was getting freaked out. “The Tahni will probably kill you long before Cronje gets a chance to.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, closing my eyes and letting my head lean back. “That makes me feel so much better.”
7
The biggest problem with Port Harcourt, I decided, was that it didn’t have any bars.
It didn’t have any human population grateful for being rescued and eager to restart their prewar lives, reopening bars and restaurants and giving away free drinks to the Marines who came to patronize them before we made our way to the next planet. Those were all gone, those battles won, and now the planets we conquered were full of enemies, even the civilians. Maybe especially the civilians.
We huddled in our compounds and sent out surveillance drones and patrols and shuttle overflights, warning the Tahni
