“We don’t need a slacker,” I said. “Not in my platoon.”
“If we’re going to see some action, Philips might be exactly what we need,” Thomer suggested.
“I’ve got his file,” I said.
“Have you read it?” Thomer asked.
“Not yet,” I said, feeling a shudder when I realized how much Thomer sounded like me talking about Ray Freeman to that Naval Intelligence officer. “Tell you what. You bring Philips here at 1500 hours. That will give me a chance to go over his record.”
“Thank you, Master Sergeant,” Thomer said. Enlisted men addressed master sergeants as “Master Sergeant.” Simply calling us “sergeant,” a name generally used for sergeants and staff sergeants, did not pay sufficient respect to the rank.
I had twenty minutes to read the Philips file. I only needed five.
Thomer and Philips showed up at my desk precisely on time. Thomer reported in his charley service uniform. Philips came in a government issue tank top and boxer shorts.
Philips and Thomer and every other member of the platoon, for that matter, looked approximately alike. They were all standard government-issue military clones. They all had brown hair, shaved along the sides of their heads, and brown eyes. Philips, however, stood out. Because he wore a tank top, I could see the scars on his arms and chest. He’d been shot twice in the right arm and once in the right shoulder. The scars were closely grouped as if the bullets had been fired in a single burst. It was the kind of wound you got in combat.
“I watched you run the obstacle course this afternoon,” I said to Philips.
He gave me a lopsided smile and said nothing.
“I’ve read your record. You are a forty-six-year-old buck private. So far as I know, you are the only forty-six- year-old buck private in the seven-hundred-year history of the Marines.”
“The folks at the orphanage always said I would make something out of myself,” Philips said, his face bursting with pride.
“According to your file, you recently pissed on a sergeant while he was asleep in his rack,” I said.
Philips shrugged. “It was too far to walk to the latrine.”
“You glued a major’s grenades to his armor?” I asked.
“They never proved it was me,” Philips complained.
“Was it you?” I asked.
Philips shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe.”
“Are you hoping for a court-martial, Private?”
“Sergeant Harris,” Thomer interrupted.
“Yes, Sergeant?”
“Have you reviewed Philips’s combat record?”
“Are you trying to protect him?” I asked.
“I’m just making sure you’ve seen his record.”
“As a matter of fact, I have.” Philips had been in four major battles in the early part of the Separatist War. He’d been involved in several smaller actions before the war, too. He’d received and probably lost more medals than the three next-most-decorated men in the platoon. “Yes, Sergeant Thomer, Philips has a good combat record. That does not mean I want to babysit a burnout.”
“You talking about drumming me out?” Philips asked.
“That just about sums it up,” I said.
“Sergeant, you see, I horse around some, and I don’t take well to authority, but I love the Corps. My problem is, I came to fight. I get real fidgety when I have to sit around on a ship.”
“Are you saying you want to stay?” I asked.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Philips agreed.
“Maybe we can take care of some of that excess energy, Private,” I said. “I hate to lose a man with combat experience.
“But about pissing on that other sergeant…If I so much as see your pecker, Marine, I will cut it off. You read me, Marine?”
“I do,” Philips said.
“Now if you will excuse us, Philips, I would like to speak with Corporal Thomer for a moment.”
Philips looked from me to Thomer, then back to me. Neither Thomer nor I spoke as he left.
“I understand you and Philips are buddies,” I said, once Philips was away.
“He’s a good Marine,” Thomer said defensively.
“And you believe he can perform in combat?” I asked.
“I’d stake my life on it,” Thomer said.
“You just did,” I said. “That will be all.”
Over the next two weeks I tested my platoon. I took the men to the firing range and liked what I saw, particularly from Philips. Because of my Liberator genes, I could shoot better than any man I have ever known. I set unchallenged records in the orphanage and boot camp. No one ever outscored me on a firing range, until the first time I took my new platoon to the firing range. Shooting at targets three hundred yards away, I had a hit rate of 96 percent that day. Philips’s rate was 97 percent.
I did not know how well he had shot right away. As we left the firing range, I stopped to look at the board that listed our scores. I had known that Philips did well; but until I saw the score by his name, I had not realized that he outshot me. I stood there puzzled, trying to figure out why the highest number on the board was not next to my name.
“Still want to transfer him out?” Thomer asked as he walked past me.
At the moment, the answer was, “Yes. Absolutely.” No one had ever outscored me.
“He’s a good shot,” I conceded. I told myself that my marksmanship had deteriorated during the time I spent playing farmer. Had I taken the time to warm up, I would have easily outshot Private Philips. I normally scored a perfect 100 percent at three hundred yards.
Philips did well in hand-to-hand. I did not fight him, mostly because I did not want to take a chance of breaking his neck. He partnered up with the three men from his fire team and subdued each of them quickly.
Evans and Sutherland generally asked me if I wanted to go hit the noncom bar with them when we turned in for the night. I always said, “No.” I liked working with them, but I did not like them. They were too damned by- the-book for my taste. Also, I had a mission that I wanted to plan out.
One night, though, Evans and Sutherland brought Thomer along with them. “Hey, Master Sergeant, the whole platoon is headed out to the canteen,” Thomer said. “You want to come along?”
I smiled and closed down my computer. “I’m feeling a little parched,” I said. I got up and followed the men out of the barracks.
When we got to the bar, the place was chaotic. Five hundred, maybe even six hundred, Marines had crammed into a bar meant for no more than three hundred men at a time. The crowd was so loud that you had to shout to be heard, and everybody wanted to be heard. The din smothered the room and gave it life.
“We’re over there,” Evans yelled, pointing toward a corner of the room that was particularly crowded. My entire platoon had crammed in there, and it looked like men from a couple of other platoons had come to join them.
“Can I get you a beer?” Thomer asked.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll pick up the next round.” He nodded but probably did not hear me.
As I approached the table, I heard a harmonica. Somebody was playing an old folk tune. The music was fast and lively, like a square dance only faster. Peering through the crowd, I saw Philips wearing that same mangy tank top he had worn to my office. He had slung fatigues over his shoulders, but he didn’t bother fastening the buttons.
Philips worked that harmonica like a master. His head swayed one way then the other as his harmonica sawed back and forth across his lips. His face was bright red, and a vein ticked across his forehead. He had his right foot up on a bench and tapped his heel with the rhythm. The music whirled and spun. A few of the Marines clapped their hands with the beat.
When he finished his song, Philips tucked the harmonica in his pocket and smiled at me. The crowd thinned
