“Impressive, aren’t they?”
I very deliberately did not spin around like an idiot at the unexpected question, though my hand did tighten on the loading lever. I recognized Top’s voice. I pushed the hopper shut and turned toward her. She was watching me, hands on her hips, an amused expression softening the hard lines of her face.
“They are. Did you come down here in the middle of the night just to get one more look at them before you went to sleep?” I smiled to take the edge off the words. It felt strange being able to talk to Top this easily. Even as a platoon leader, she’d intimidated the hell out of me. When had that changed?
“I came,” she told me, not seeming to take offense, “because you’ve been buried under mounds of paperwork and I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Paperwork?” I repeated, frowning in confusion.
“Sorry, old habit. Back when I was your age, the military still filled out all those reports on actual paper. It was a nightmare. We had warehouses full of that shit, too much to ever scan all of it into our computer systems, so most of it got tossed in the incinerator a century ago.”
“That sounds horrific,” I said. “It also sounds just like something the military would do. How did you find me here anyway?”
“I tracked your ‘link.” She nodded toward the device on my belt. “You can do the same to anyone in the company now, by the way, if the need arises.”
“I knew that,” I told her, “but I think I’d managed to make myself forget it, because I know how much I would have liked it when I was an enlisted Marine.” I shuddered involuntarily. “So, what was it you didn’t want to interrupt me about?”
“Many things,” she said, being as cryptic as she’d always been, though at this point in my career, I found it less mysterious and fascinating and more annoying. She leaned against the bulk of one of the Boomer suits. “First of all, Private Vince Delp.”
I moaned and covered my face with a hand.
“Don’t tell me he’s gotten into more trouble. I thought the extra work details were helping keep his nose clean.”
“They have been,” she said. “So far. He hasn’t touched the booze since that one night on Point Barber, as far as I know.”
I sagged with relief.
“Thank God. What is it, then?”
“It’s a temporary solution, sir.”
I blinked, realizing she’d called me ’sir.’ It might have happened before, but it hadn’t struck me as significantly as it did in that moment.
“I get that,” I told her. “He needs psych counselling, and I thought about ordering him to it, but….” I hesitated, wondering if I should admit it, then deciding she probably already knew. “I went to a head-shrinker myself, and I just know that if someone had ordered me to talk to her, I wouldn’t have admitted a damned thing.”
“Probably true. And keeping him busy might work through this next campaign.” She shrugged. “And maybe this is the last campaign, but the kid is going to have to face this for the rest of his life.”
“We all are,” I muttered. “But yeah, I’m going to push through a medical recommendation for him afterward. I just didn’t want to do it before the last push. I kept thinking how I would have felt if I’d gone through what he has and someone told me I couldn’t be there for the last dust-up.”
“What the hell do you mean ‘if’ you’d gone through what he has?” Top spluttered, half a laugh and half a snort of disbelief. “You’ve gone through twice as much as that kid. And it wouldn’t matter if you hadn’t. There’s something my father used to tell me, Lt. Alvarez. Life, he would say, is a grindstone. Whether it grinds you down or polishes you up depends on what you’re made of.”
I shrugged, uncomfortable with the implications of that.
“Maybe so,” I allowed, “but we don’t get to choose what we’re made of, do we? Delp has done the best he can for us when he’s in the suit. I’m going to make sure he gets help the minute this whole thing is over.”
“That’s bad luck, you know,” she reminded me. “Talking about the war like we’ve already won it.”
“I know,” I admitted. “But I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately. And if we don’t, if I wind up dead…well, at least it’ll be a surprise. But if this is the end of the war, I need to decide what I’m going to do after.”
“Let me guess. General McCauley gave you his spiel about being Commandant of the Marine Corps.”
I guess I must have looked shock, because she laughed, a remarkably burbling chuckle for someone I’d never thought of as particularly good-humored.
“Oh, yeah, he’s pulled that one out of his ass before. Tried to use it on the Skipper once or twice until he gave up. The man sells the Corps like it’s a multi-level marketing scheme.”
Whatever that was. I didn’t ask, figuring it was another one of those dated references to the old days.
“He’s not wrong, though,” she said, frowning as though she found the admission distasteful. “You’re going out of this war with a shitload of fruit salad on your chest. You might not make Commandant of the fucking Marine Corps, but you could probably wear a star someday…if that’s what you want. Is it?”
“A star?” I shook my head. “I don’t know. The Skipper told me generals were mostly politicians and I never saw myself as a politician. But staying in the Marines….” I tilted my head to the side like I was trying to look at the question from another angle. “If you’d asked me a year ago, or even three months ago, I would have
