Behind us, our platoon and the rest of Delta Company was busy packing our personal gear into pallets to be loaded after the maintenance racks. We’d take the battlesuits with us onto our drop-ships, wearing it because this wasn’t a secure base where we could be sure it would be an unopposed lift-off.
“You said it, Gunny.” But I wasn’t watching our shuttles or our people.
Less than half a kilometer down from our position, Alpha was loading up their shit, and it seemed like all my problems were there with them. I couldn’t see Cronje from here, and he might be at a battalion meeting for all I knew, since I hadn’t seen Captain Covington for an hour or so, either. But Freddy was out front of his platoon, directing Marines here and there and generally trying to make himself look useful. It was a rookie move, and one I’d known was a waste of time and energy back when I’d been a squad leader, thanks to the good example of Lt. Ackley, my first platoon leader. The enlisted knew what to do and the NCO’s would make sure they did it. As an officer, my job was to make sure it was getting done, not to direct every move.
Vicky was doing it the right way, observing from the edges, here and there darting in to spot-check someone’s work. She was my other problem. Or rather, the lack of her. It had been a solid week since the incident with Sgt. Butler and I hadn’t heard anything else from Alpha Company since, which would have been fine if it hadn’t included Vicky. I hadn’t pushed it, though. I understood the predicament she was in and I’d told her to lay low and stay away from me until things smoothed over.
I just didn’t know when that would be.
“Lt. Alvarez.”
I spun on my heel at the voice coming from where there’d been no one a moment ago and nearly had a heart attack before I realized it was Top. Delta Company First Sergeant Ellen Campbell’s forehead came up to my nose and she probably weighed fifty kilos, but I would have picked her in any fight in or out of the armor. She’d been in the Marines since before the beginning of the Commonwealth, on and off, and she was probably the oldest person I’d ever met. I figured that meant she came from money, because the only people back in those days who could afford the anti-aging treatments were rich, but I’d never dared to ask her about it.
“Yes, First Sergeant?” I said, trying not to act as if I’d just about jumped out of my skin, but the quirk at the corner of her mouth told me she knew.
“Captain Covington wants to talk to you,” she said, nodding back to the other side of the shot-up storage building where my platoon was packing up.
“Right.”
That was odd. If the Skipper wanted to talk to me, why hadn’t he just called me on my ‘link? And why would he send Top? That was like sending the managing partner of a restaurant to go refill drinks. I shrugged it off and kept walking, figuring I’d find out soon enough.
Covington was waiting for me around the corner, just out of sight of the loading area…and so was Commander Hofstetter. She was still in her dress uniform, and I wondered if she even owned a set of utility fatigues.
“Commander,” I said, nodding to her, hoping she understood that we didn’t salute in the field.
“I’ll leave you to talk,” Covington said, turning on his heel.
“Sorry for the subterfuge,” Hofstetter told me, “but I didn’t know if you’d have time to make it to Brigade before you left, and I figured it would be better not to walk out there in front of everyone to have this conversation.”
“A conversation you didn’t want to have over our ‘links either,” I assumed. My stomach muscles tightened the way they did when I was dropping into combat in my Vigilante.
“Let’s just say that Brigade would be happier if there were as little record of any of this as possible.”
She motioned for me to follow her and we paced farther away from the working Marines, probably to avoid one of them walking around the side of the building to take a piss break. And they would, because Marines were only a step above the street people I’d run with as a kid when it came to personal hygiene.
“This didn’t go quite as smoothly as we would have liked,” she admitted. She scowled. “Captain Cronje is a stubborn, stupid son of a bitch, though you didn’t hear that from me. He kept insisting that he still wanted to press charges against you and finally I had to tell him that his only alternatives were to drop the charges or wind up with a sure-fire, no-bullshit letter of reprimand in his file and a court-martial for Lt. Kodjoe, and that was if I wasn’t in a bad mood and didn’t decide to take my chances and include him on the court-martial, too.” She snorted a laugh. “That part was a bluff, of course. You’re about to ship out to the biggest battle of the war so far, and there was no way Brigade was going to lose one of their company commanders at this point.” She shrugged. “But he caved, so I suppose I am not as bad of a poker player as my ex-husband used to tell me I was.”
“So, it’s over?” I suppose the question was hopeful, but to my ears, I sounded desperate.
“The legal part’s over,” she corrected me. “I have a feeling there’s a personal aspect to this that won’t be settled for a while.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” I gave her a short version of what had happened on the way back from the
