“Fuck that!” Roddy protested. “We weren’t out of jurisdiction when we first spotted his ass!” He extended a leg to step over onto Skeeter’s boat.
“I said, AS YOU WERE, Ensign!” Grabowski’s voice had a fire in it that froze the young soldier in midair. Even in the darkness, Skeeter could almost see the man’s face glowing red with embarrassment, rage and humiliation. He also knew better than to open his mouth. Grabowski might be an old dog, but he still had sharp teeth.
“It’s ok,” Skeeter intervened. “I got nothing to hide.” Not now, anyway. He’d long since tossed the drone remote overboard. Right now, it was resting in the slimy, gooey mud at the bottom of the river, but only after he’d sent the drone to a similar watery grave. It had been designed to float in case of a crash landing on water, but Dee had attached adhesive weights to it beforehand to make sure it sank … and quickly. The Authority or the ZiPs might find it, but it wouldn’t be easy … but first, they’d have to know said drone even existed.
They damned sure wouldn’t find that out from Skeeter.
The older Guardsmen shrugged. “Very well.” He glanced over his shoulder at Roddy. “All right, do it quick.” A thought struck him as the other soldier stepped onto the boat. He quickly added, “That doesn’t mean toss the boat either.”
You could almost see Roddy physically deflate. He already had visions of tearing this fancy little rig apart. Grudgingly, he replied with gritted teeth, “Aye aye, Chief.”
Grabowski turned back to Skeeter to find him holding out a pack of Martian smokes, one offered through the opening. He started to give the fishermen a stern reprimand, but Skeeter gave him a pirate’s grin.
“You did say you were out of your jurisdiction, didn’t you?”
The soldier stared for a moment with pursed lips. The man indeed had some balls. He broke into a chuckle and took the cigarette. He noticed the graphic on the pack as he did. A red hound. Red Rover brand. Not your typical smuggled fare. High-quality tobacco just like he smoked when garrisoned in Mars City.
It had been a long time. A long, damned time! It almost seemed like another lifetime … someone else’s even. The memories seemed ancient now, foreign. It suddenly dawned on him that he never thought about Mars anymore. He never wanted to.
When Skeeter raised his lighter, even more memories came rushing back. Memories more recent, harsher, like a sledgehammer to the face. Without thinking, he grabbed the man’s arm and held it in a desperate iron grip as he stared at the tattoo on the forearm.
Almost every man who’d been there had it somewhere on their bodies, a reminder that they’d been the lucky ones. They’d survived the madness and the carnage and lived to tell about it.
The tattoo was simple: an image of the moon with a devil’s pitchfork thrust into it. Above it was inscribed: “HELL ISN’T BELOW…” Below it, the phrase finished with, “IT’S HIGH ABOVE!” If you were a Guardsmen who did combat during the Lunar Rebellion, it was a badge of honor.
“You were there?” was all Grabowski had to ask. The meaning was understood.
“Afraid so,” Skeeter replied. “You?”
“Aye.”
“What unit?”
Twenty-fourth Mecha. Martian Brigade.”
Skeeter’s eyes grew wide with recognition and awe in the artificial light. “The ‘Gods of War!’ My God! Talk about the tip of the spear! You guys were in the shit!”
“It was shit, alright,” Grabowski replied. “What unit were you in?”
“I was in a reserve unit called up from down here. Remote suppression.”
“You operated drone gunships.”
Skeeter nodded. “I’m almost ashamed to say I never left the command module. I never set foot inside a dome during the entire mission.” He lowered his eyes. “From what I saw … I never wanted to.”
“Hell, if I could’ve … I’d have traded places with you in a heartbeat. Don’t ever be ashamed for not wanting to die,” Grabowski told him. “Too many good men did. Besides, those drones saved a lot of lives. A lot more would’ve died if it hadn’t had been for you ‘gamers.’” He used the combat soldier’s slang term for the remote drone operators.
Skeeter lit the man’s cigarette and then lit one for himself. They both smoked in reflective silence for a few moments. Behind Grabowski, Roddy was growing frustrated.
“I’ll be damned!” he cursed, slamming a live well shut.
“Problems, Ensign?”
“Fish!” Roddy spat the words out in disgust! “Nothing but fish!”
“It is a bass boat,” Grabowski stated.
Of course, there would be fish. Skeeter had made sure of that even before they’d launched. It was all too easy.
But Roddy wouldn’t let it go, “I’m telling you … this guy is dirty! He was up to something!”
“Yeah … looks like he was having a pretty good afternoon angling ‘til we showed up.”
“Listen, Chief …”
Grabowski had had enough, “Get back on the ship, Ensign. We’re done here.” He raised a fist into the air, giving the “all clear” signal, and their aerial support gunned their engines and shot back toward Authority property, the night returning, as the spotlight beam disappeared.
Roddy obeyed grudgingly, muttering under his breath. Later, he would be vindicated, but for the moment, he was nothing more than a frustrated grunt. Grabowski would finish his smoke and flick it into the river before stepping back over into the cockpit of the gunship. As he was doing so, he looked to Skeeter one last time.
“You might wanna find another fishing hole from here on out.”
“Sounds like some good advice,” he acknowledged. As the CPO started to close the canopy, he couldn’t resist. “Hey … one more thing, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.”
“Do you hate them? I mean … those colonists you fought.”
He’d been asked that many times before. How he wished he’d been at Luna Three. You didn’t have to worry about hating those colonists. There weren’t any left. They were all vaporized into cosmic space dust. He sometimes wondered what was worse.
