Tales from the Service: An Officer’s Confidance

2950-09-27 – Tales from the Service: An Officer’s Confidance 

Sergeant Hassan Russel rolled his shoulders as the can-opener rig finished disassembling the outer plates of his armored Rico suit. He waited until the inner framing split along carefully fitted seams, then hopped down nearly a meter to the deck plating below. After nearly a full twenty-four hours of operating almost continuously in the suit, he knew he reeked, with his smart-fabric bodysuit’s evaporative wicking never quite able to keep up with the perspiration of combat, even simulated combat. 

Fortunately, the cycle of post-op debriefings was usually not held for a few hours after the Marines re-embarked, allowing everyone the opportunity to wash themselves, grab a bite to eat, and even catch a nap. Hassan doubted he would be able to do more than one of those things, however; as one of his unit’s two sergeants, he knew a vast array of administrative and logistical forms would be waiting on his slate when he returned to his bunk in the onboard barracks. 

As soon as he took headcount and made sure that all twenty of his men – Beaumont and Szarvas, downed by simulated enemy fire, had been re-embarked separately – had been successfully extracted from their Rico suits, Hassan dismissed them to whatever recuperative activities they thought best. Most headed for the lift that would take them up to the mess deck, as that was where they knew to find the simulated-killed members of the unit. 

Hassan headed instead for the bank of acoustic scrubber stalls next to the arsenal and can-opener compartment. Normally, Sergeant Escarro and Lieutenant Yeung would have done the same, but Escarro had been downed in the exercise, and Lieutenant Yeung’s temporary replacement was nowhere to be seen. That was just as well; at the moment, Hassan wanted to see neither of them. 

Finding none of the eight stalls occupied, Hassan set one to its maximum settings, then stripped off his sweat-soiled bodysuit and tossed it into the chute. Since there was no need to wait for an acoustic scrubber to warm up, he stepped in, wincing as the emitters bombarded his skin with high-intensity ultrasonic waves, inexorably stripping off the dust and grime. 

“I told you he’d try something.” 

Hassan turned around and found Lieutenant Coughlan standing in the doorway, her arms folded. Though she was also dressed only in her own bodysuit, she looked far less grimy and bedraggled than he would have expected. Hassan felt self-conscious for not having pulled the privacy screen for his stall into place, even though he usually didn’t bother. Even so, he saluted as smartly as was possible stark naked. 

Coughlan rolled her eyes and waved her hand, seeming not to notice his nakedness. Probably, she didn’t; after all, she had to be a graduate of Camp Cactus, just like every other Marine. The few women who volunteered for service as Marines were given no special considerations save a slightly altered diet and one or two extra issues of sanitary products. 

Hassan relaxed and returned to his shower, turning around to let the acoustics scrape grime off his chest. As he did, he heard the adjacent stall activate. Though she had as much a right to shower in the grunt section as Lieutenant Yeung, it struck him as deliberately out of place. 

“Acoustics are just as good as privacy jammers.” Coughlan was barely audible over the humming of the scrubber machines. “So let’s talk off the record.” 

Hassan froze for several seconds. After he’d thrown Escarro into the path of simulated enemy fire, he’d had plenty of time to consider the possibility that Coughlan had entrapped both of them; they could both be busted down for brawling during a combat operation. “I have nothing to say off the record or on it.” 

“Commendable. So maybe I’ll talk first, then maybe you’ll have something to say.” Coughlan paused for several seconds, perhaps focusing on the task of cleaning herself. “Escarro has nothing to say either. He said you and him miscalculated a quick peek over the hill and only you got back to cover in time. Unless you have a different story, my plan is to mock you both in the debrief for trying to get yourselves killed in the stupidest way possible and leave it at that.” 

Hassan frowned, but said nothing. He’d started the operation thinking Coughlan was just trying not to have her boat rocked in an overly cautious way, and he’d spent most of it wondering whether she’d bring the hammer down on him for doing what she’d suggested but never ordered. Now, he suspected he’d misjudged her on both accounts. 

“Since on the record, I’m going to have to call you an idiot, I’m going to expect you and Escarro to act appropriately humiliated. Make it good, Russel.” 

“I think I can do that... on the record.” Hassan winced. He thought he knew what the Lieutenant was getting at. 

“Good man.” Coughlan chuckled. “Off the record, Escarro and I both owe you a drink, but something tells me I’ll be paying for both of them.” 

A moment later, she shut off her stall’s acoustics. Hassan couldn’t help himself; he turned around and snuck a look at her as she walked out past him to the dispenser filled with fresh, auto-fitting shipboard fatigues. He immediately wished he hadn’t; Marine training taught every cadet to de-sexualize nudity as much as possible, and he knew he was looking at Lieutenant Coughlan in a way he had never seen another Marine. He quickly turned away, knowing that opening the door to biological pressures would only cause him trouble, and that he had plenty of that already. 

“Don’t worry.” Hassan almost jumped from the sound of Coughlan’s voice, and turned to find her standing right in front of his stall, matter-of-factly pulling on fresh fatigues. A day and a night of suit operations followed by the scrubbers had stripped off her characteristic makeup, and the only thing its absence revealed was the deep bags under her lively eyes. “If I’ve judged him right, Escarro will think better next time.” 

Despite himself, Hassan chuckled. “God, I hope he thinks at all next time, Lieutenant. He’s a good Marine mostly.”  

“One of the best, by all reports. Off the record, he’s right, in a way.” Coughlan shrugged, fitting her tunic over her shoulders. A moment later, twin holographic rank insignias appeared over her shoulders. “I’m a piss-poor replacement for someone like Yeung.” 

Hassan suppressed an instinct to disagree; even in the context of an informal, off-the-record chat, he knew it unwise to contradict his superior. As far as he’d seen, Coughlan had done all right on the ground, but her opinion was law, and his was meaningless. He grunted noncommittally and focused on playing the scrubbers over his lower back, which always seemed to become a lake of sweat during extended suit ops. 

Coughlan stood there and said nothing for several seconds before finally turning and marching away. Hassan counted the paces of her bare feet on the deck. Just as she reached the doorway, she stopped once more. “Better wrap up, Russel. Briefing in one-ten.” 

“Aye, Lieutenant.” Hassan replied, turning to snap another salute. By the time he did, however, Lieutenant Coughlan was gone. 

 

This concludes the account sent in by Lieutenant Coughlan and Sergeant Russell,

t least, the parts we deemed interesting to this audience. There are elements of it which seem strange for an account presented jointly by these two people, but I will not pry into the meaning of the inclusion of these details here, as it does not impact my impression of the truth of the story. 

Naval Intelligence has vetted this story and signed off on it, and I can confirm that a Marine exercise was conducted within the date range covered in their supporting paperwork. Obviously, the story demonizes one Sergeant Escarro, but I can find no record of this person existing, and the public service records of the two submitters do not allow an easy identification of this person. Most likely the account has been anonymized sufficiently to protect a man they consider to be a “good Marine” despite obvious flaws in his character. 

[N.T.B. - I hope they cleared this with the real person who Escarro is based on before sending it to us; given what we are told of Lieutenant Coughlan, I suspect this would be something she would have thought of, if this story did prove to be mostly true.] 

Details

Tales from the Service: A Sergeant’s Decision

2950-09-20 – Tales from the Service: A Sergeant’s Decision 

Though some of you might complain about the lack of war-front news in recent weeks, I for one appreciate the quiet. The yard techs have almost restored Saint-Lô to operational status, and other damaged fleet units have been seen on initial post-repair shakedown cruises throughout the Maribel system. 

[N.T.B. We should not forget however that this period of quiet is letting the enemy build up their strength as well. Hopefully they’re having more trouble getting their damaged ships back into service than we are, but I wouldn’t count on it. Their fleet has the advantage of highly standardized equipment over Fifth Fleet, even if their supply lines are longer.] 

Sergeant Hassan Russel found Sergeant Escarro standing in the remains of a dirt-and-stone breastwork near the top of the hill, the bodies of two enemy soldiers sprawled nearby over the broken remains of a crew-served laser emplacement. Hassan had never been terribly concerned by bodies, and the knowledge that these were phantoms fabricated by the exercise simulation system made it easy to pick out the artificial way in which their limbs hung in simulated death.  

“Was wondering when your boys would make it up here, Russel.” Escarro put one heavy boot on top of the breastwork and raised himself up to peer over the opposite side of the hill. Even in his bravado, he was careful not to leave his silhouette exposed on the skyline for long; he stepped back a moment later. “No matter. This rabble was no trouble.” 

“Pre-op intel said we’d have friendlies up here. Did you find any prisoners?” Hassan looked around. The remains of Incarnation equipment and men littered the fortification, but there was no sign of anyone or anything else. 

“Picket line. Expendable.” Escarro gestured to the bodies. “If we had friends up here, they’re in lockup somewhere that way.” He gestured over the hill, where both men knew a large enemy force was simulated, assuming intelligence had gotten that much right. 

“We tripped their early warning system.” Hassan glanced up at the high, wispy clouds scudding across a lavender sky. “Probably Siroccos inbound.” Hassan had been strafed by these swept-wing Incarnation ground-attack aircraft in real action before, and he had no interest of being caught on an exposed hillside when they appeared. 

Escarro laughed. “Probably.” 

Hassan switched comms channels. “Squad, find cover. We have probable enemy air inbound.” 

“If we lie low on this side of the crest until they go over, they’ll spot the drop site before they spot us.” Escarro eased his huge Rico suit down against the breastwork, waving one arm for Hassan to do the same. “Coughlan’s got most of our anti-air, let her deal with them if she can while we go on and win this thing.” 

Hassan dropped down opposite Escarro, commanding his suit antenna to extend high enough to remain in contact with the Lieutenant and his other men, scattered about behind him. “Order are we stay here.” 

Escarro switched from radios to using his suit’s speakers, turning the volume down to its lowest setting. “Orders from the Colonel’s painted mascot." His voice dripped with scorn. “I wonder what sorts of favors she does for him to keep her job... It’s probably the only thing she’s good at.” 

Hassan, glad that his helmet hid his horror, did not reply. Insubordinate remarks could relegate a Marine private to scrubbing deck plating shipboard for weeks, and could get a sergeant busted down to private and then sent to scrub the deck plating. 

The vibration sensors in Hassan’s suit picked up the distant rumble of air-breathing turbine engines and estimated that they were coming directly from the simulated enemy base. “Signal silence, everyone. Enemy air incoming. Let them pass.” 

“As soon as the Old Man sees her fail in the field, he’ll drag her back to being his bedwarmer.” Escarro chuckled. “So let’s make her fail. Better it happens on exercise instead of when people are dying for real.” 

Hassan shifted to lower his profile even further as his helmet speakers played the slowly-increasing thunder of Sirocco engines. “That's a bad idea, Escarro. Even if you ruin Coughlan’s day, you’ll be busted harder than her.” 

“Not if we’re together on it, Russel.” Escarro picked up a chunk of local rock and slowly crushed it to powder between his servo-articulated suit fingers. “They won’t bust our company right out of sergeants just to protect her.” 

Hassan glanced up at the heads-up display above his helmet visor. His men and Escarro’s had all taken cover in the fortifications they’d just stormed. If the hill were to be strafed, they’d be well protected against the sweeping curtain of laser fire a Sirocco could drag across a battlefield. He could tell from the tone in the other sergeant’s voice that it would be unwise to refuse his request, and he couldn’t bring the matter to an officer’s attention without costing Escarro any potential for a future in the Marines. 

“Come on. What about it?” Escarro hefted his huge suit-linked railgun. “Trust me, I’ve got it all figured.” 

Hassan knew only one way to solve a thorny problem: the Marine way. In an instant, his suit legs extended and he sprang up towards Escarro, grabbing the handgrips built into the other’s suit shoulders and locking his gauntlets. Before Escarro could even bark an interrogative, Hassan engaged his suit’s jump rockets at full power. The rockets weren’t designed to lift two suits at once, but like most Marine equipment, they were heavily overengineered, and hauled both into the air easily.  

“What are you doing?” Escarro, still barking through his suit’s speakers, swatted at Hassan’s grip, but nothing short of breaking the suit’s robotic hands off at the wrists could free him. 

Hassan released his grip only about ten meters into the short flight, then cut his jets and told his suit to land as close to its start position as possible. Escarro, acquiring a slight tumble as Hassan pushed free, continued upward for a moment, then arced down the opposite side of the hill. 

As he started to descend at a far more controlled pace, Hassan saw the Siroccos. Five of them skimmed the lowland beyond the hill, flying in a tight V formation at an altitude of barely twenty meters. The course would have been impossibly dangerous for anyone but stunt flyers and the cybernetically network-linked. 

“Russel, you bas-” 

Escarro never finished his invective; he struck the rocky soil and even the suit’s adaptive padding couldn’t save him from being winded by the impact. Hassan heard him bounce at least once, then roll and skid some distance as the roar of aero-engines grew into a steady thunder. Knowing how little time he had, Hassan dove back into the breastwork and hunkered down in the strange duck-and-cover posture of a suited Marine, kneeling down and facing his heavy chest armor upward and toward the possible threat. 

The Siroccos swept over an instant after Hassan returned to position, their myriad lasers scything the ground below. Hassan’s suit flashed warnings as energy beams struck his armor, but it was over in an instant. Only a few of the indicators stayed yellow, and none of them went red. 

A moment later, the number of suit status indicators in his heads-up display nearly doubled, as the Marines’ tactical operations network switched Escarro’s squad to Hassan’s command. 

Hassan breathed a sigh of relief. Somewhere on the other side of the hill, Sergeant Escarro was locked in a simulation-deactivated suit. Hopefully, he would have a few hours to think about the consequences of his plan to bring down Lieutenant Coughlan before anyone came to get him. 

“Lieutenant, Escarro is down. I’m going to give his squad to Corporal Kovacic.” Hassan reported. The details could wait until later. 

“Acknowledged. Reconfiguring the squad-net. Hold position until enemy air is sorted.” Something in Coughlan’s voice suggested she suspected something, but that, like the details, could wait until later. 

Hassan switched back to his newly overcrowded squad channel. “Kovacic, you’re taking Escarro’s boys. Everyone else, on me. If those Siroccos come back this way, let’s make them pay for it.” 

Details

Tales from the Service: An Officer’s Exercise

2950-09-06 – Tales from the Service: An Officer’s Exercise 

After Trond-Arud, it seems Fifth Fleet is a bit light on cruisers; more than a third of the units remaining in the fleet are undergoing repairs, and most of those are light cruisers designed for scouting. 

Fleet Headquarters has announced that several new units currently in the final phases of construction and fitting out will be arriving to replace the damaged and lost vessels, but they did not release any timetable. Unfortunately, everyone I'm talking to suggests that without a good cruiser force to scout for the fleet and pursue fleeing enemies after a battle, Fifth Fleet might be consigned to defensive duty for the remainder of the year. 

Fortunately, the news from Seventh Fleet over at Sagittarius Gate remains good; Seventh seems to be staging operations deeper and deeper into the Sagittarius Frontier, and reported the destruction of an Incarnation forward operating base only last week. Perhaps their successes have diverted Incarnation forces from this side of the Gap, as their offensive also seems to have stalled out after Håkøya. 

[N.T.B. - Nate’s supply lines are long, longer still since Sagittarius Gate sits on the easiest and most direct route across the Gap. My guess is, it’s taking them time to re-arm for the next push, but I don’t see any reason these quiet months will last much longer, especially if Fifth Fleet doesn’t have enough cruisers to harass their rear areas when their fleet is on the offensive.] 

When the dropship ramp fell with a tooth-rattling crash, Sergeant Hassan Russel was the first one out on the left side, alongside Sergeant Escarro on the right. Though the salt flats onto which they’d landed threw up billowing gray clouds of dust on the impact of both the ramp and their boots, their helmet heads-up displays sketched out the outlines of the nearby terrain hidden by the dust, courtesy of onboard radar. 

“Clear right. Squad, let’s move.” Escarro’s voice was, as usual during operations, a low, hoarse growl. Nobody knew whether he practiced this, or whether adrenaline did strange things to his vocal chords. 

Hassan toggled his onboard comms to broadcast only to his squad. “Clear Left. On me.” With that, he took several loping steps away from the dropship, dropped to one knee, and scanned the empty wasteland ahead, trusting Escarro to do the same on the right. Behind them, the turreted weapons of the dropship were positioned to engage surprises appearing in their flanks. 

“Dropzone is clear.” Lieutenant Coughlan’s sharp voice, in contrast to Escarro’s, was precisely the same as the one she used aboard ship. “Squads, proceed to point Beta.” 

According to the briefing, the exercise’s Opposition Force would be dug in along a defensive line interposed between Beta, the top of a rise at the edge of the salt flats, and the ultimate objective, Point Delta, a ramshackle burg ten kilometers beyond that point. In theory, friendly insurgents familiar with the terrain would meet the Marines just below the hilltop to point out the strong points in the defensive line. 

The last time Hassan had trusted pre-op briefings had been the drop to Meyerfeld more than two years before. There, it had turned out that most of the briefing material about enemy strength had been laughable fantasy cooked up somewhere in the rotten bowels of Naval Intelligence. Not only had the enemy force been nearly double what had been estimated, it had been equipped with a few heavy armored vehicles, something the briefing had insisted wouldn’t be present. Casualties had been high, but fortunately, the drop, three Marine regiments and one armored regiment, had still been enough to overwhelm Incarnation troops on the first day, before any chance of reinforcement.  

Hassan, the greenest Marine in the unit for that drop, had trusted that there would be no enemy armor, and had been among the wounded within an hour of coming into contact with the enemy. He’d been too aggressive in rooting out Incarnation infantry from a tenement complex and had left himself exposed to fire from a heavily armed and armored vehicle hidden just in front of the tenements.  

As Hassan’s squad-mates piled out of the dropship and darted past him in pairs to take up station ahead, he turned up the gain on the regiment-wide comms channel which none of them could hear. Colonel Glass was barking orders, but none of them were to Hassan or his compatriots, and from the tone, Hassan guessed that things were going according to plan. True, this was an exercise, not a real drop, but top Marine brass had just as little faith in intel as Hassan himself, and planned exercises accordingly. Hassan had never been on one, at least not since Camp Cactus, where things had gone according to plan. 

At last, Harriman thumped Hassan’s suit back-plate with the closed mechanical fist of his own suit to indicate that everyone was off the transport. Standing, Hassan fell in beside the private, using his suit’s IFF system to locate everyone. The disembarkation had been swift and efficient. By the time Lieutenant Coughlan and her thirteen-Marine center squad put their boots into the dirt, his boys and Escarro’s would have the forward area cleared out more than a kilometer. 

The first Marines in Hassan’s squad reached the bottom of the hill just as Coughlan’s voice returned to their comms. “Escarro, Russel, I’m tracking movement to your front. Probable friendlies. Hold fire.” 

“Yessir.” Hassan didn’t like missions with friendly non-Marine involvement, but those were the norm now, and the exercises had to account for it. Forty Marines charging into battle in their big Rico suits could only be called a precision strike compared to a carpet-bombing, and only marginally so. “Beaumont, Kovacic, keep those comms open.” 

“They’re open. Nothing yet, Sarge.” Kovacic, whose suit was equipped with an electronic warfare system, sounded uneasy. “If they’re up there, they can see us. Why aren’t they hailing?” 

“Could be-” 

Whatever Private Beaumont, the other electronic warfare system carrier, was going to say, his speculation was cut off by a burst of static on the line. On Hassan’s heads-up display, Beaumont’s suit indicators blinked off, then most of them returned, blinking red. Only the center chest components stayed entirely off. According to the simulation system used in the exercise, Beaumont was dead. 

“Hellfire. Take cover! Kovacic, shut off your-” Hassan stopped short, Kovacic had already shut off his open comms system, no doubt recognizing that this was what had made Beaumont easy to target. Ahead of Hassan, the other Marines all charged for the nearest cover they could find. Despite Coughlan’s order, two or three began spraying the hillside above with their suit-linked heavy railguns. 

“Lieutenant, we’re taking fire from the hilltop and we’ve got one man down.” Hassan tried to sound matter-of-fact, but even though he knew this was an exercise, his heart was pounding. “Permission to engage?” 

Even as he spoke, Hassan noticed a series of flashes to his right. Glancing that way, he saw fourteen hulking armor suits riding columns of rocket exhaust up from a mad haze of salt dust. Escarro, it seemed, hadn’t waited for the Lieutenant’s permission. 

“Negative. Hold position but do not engage. Command says they’re in contact with friendlies on that hill.” 

Hassan peeked out from behind the boulder he’d picked for cover in time to see a beam of scintillating light jab out from the hillside and paint a black scorch-mark near one of his men. “Cease fire and stay behind cover!” He barked before switching back to Coughlan. “Not sure how that’s possible.” 

Escarro and his Marines reached the apex of their arcing flight. As they began to hurtle downwards toward the hillside, they began firing as well, lacerating the barren terrain with their railguns and scorching it with their plasma lances. The beam weapon which had “killed” Beaumont and had chased the rest of Hassan’s squad behind cover flashed once into the air, then fell silent. 

“Come on up here and help me mop this up, Russel.” Escarro grunted into the comms channel as his suit landed. Even with both mechanical and gravitic cushioning, landing a Rico suit after a high jump could knock the wind out of you. “Got a good look at them from the air. Light Incarnation infantry with a couple dug-in guns... Well, they had dug-in guns. Strnad got ’em.” 

“Coughlan told us to stay put.” Hassan peeked out from cover to watch the fighting uphill without the aid of his suit’s sensors and computers. It looked like a rout; if Escarro was right, this was probably some sort of early warning picket line for the main line of defense. True, the “enemy infantry” were computer-generated phantoms, but the simulation system would make them look and act real enough, at least as long as the Marines stayed in their suits. 

“Coughlan’s way the hell back by the dropship.” Escarro almost snarled the Lieutenant’s name. “It’s you and me up here.” 

Hassan, remembering the Lieutenant’s grave prediction about trouble, swallowed nervously. “Lieutenant, Sergeant Escarro is requesting support to my front. Permission to advance?” 

“He’s wha-” Coughlan seemed angry rather than surprised. “Permision granted, Sergeant. Both of you clear the top of that hill, then stay there.” 

Hassan winced and switched back to his squad’s channel. “Okay boys, we’re going forward. Escarro’s men know we’re coming up but stay out of their line of fire. Stay on the ground and keep an eye on your sensors... Something isn’t right here.” 

Details

Tales from the Service: Filling An Officer’s Shoes

2950-08-30 – Tales from the Service: Filling An Officer’s Shoes

Though it seems the Navy is not yet willing to abandon forays into the Håkøya system entirely, this week it is being reported that several detachments of Fifth Fleet’s light cruisers and the more nimble heavy cruisers have returned to the outer Maribel system after simultaneous forays into the inner Nye Norge region. Other than Håkøya itself, most of the systems in this area are inhabited only by mining installations, and most of those outposts have probably been abandoned due to the risk of Incarnation raids.

The purpose of these forays was unclear, but probably it served mainly as a reconnaissance-in-force to gauge the level of Incarnation activity around Håkøya. Only the ill-fated mission to the Trond-Arud system has been publicized in any detail, and those details are grim: three light cruisers were lost, and the major ships that returned all suffered damage that will render them combat-incapable for some time. None of the four enemy cruisers present are thought to have been destroyed.

Coming so soon after the minor failure of the raid into Håkøya a few weeks ago, the action in Trond-Arud does suggest that the fleet’s cruisers are simply not equipped to fight their rough Incarnation equivalents.

[N.T.B. – There are three things of note which I’ve found in the reports from Trond-Arud.

Firstly, the cruisers seem to have been operating without their usual supporting; only a handful of the Navy’s fast fleet destroyers are reported to have been present. I can’t imagine why the remaining ships of each cruiser’s battle squadron were detached, but the action would certainly have gone better with them present. Were the ships dispatched to each of these systems similarly operating without support?

Secondly, the battle report suggests that the four Nate cruisers at Trond-Arud knew our ships were coming, including details of when and where. Their attack at the system outskirts couldn’t really be coordinated without that information. This is probably an indication that Incarnation spies are still operating here in Maribel.

Thirdly, the four light cruisers involved in this action were some of Fifth Fleet’s smallest; it’s hardly fair to put them in the same category as an Incarnation Tyrant-type. The heavy cruiser Badurad Page was the largest Fifth Fleet ship present, and it seems to have done better than the others. In terms of tonnage, Nate had a big advantage, even with fewer hulls.]

At the Colonel’s entrance, everyone in the barracks scrambled to line up and jump to attention. No command needed to be barked to the Marines; the glint of gold holographic insignias hovering over the newcomer’s shoulders was all they needed.

With an approving nod, Colonel Glass took a few steps down the long double line of Marines. There were thirty-six bunks on each side of the corridor, but only twenty-two of them had occupants on the left, and nineteen on the right. “I see you boys have settled in nicely.” He turned to his left. “Sergeant, have all of your troopers returned from shore leave?”

“No, sir.” Sergeant Hassan Russel shook his head without relaxing his stiff at-attention posture. He had just been promoted to Sergeant, and hoped he looked as intimidating with sergeant’s pips hovering over his shoulders as the man he had replaced. “Private Graner and Private Maslanka are due back on the next shuttle.”

“They’d better not miss their ride, then.” Glass turned around to face Sergeant Escarro, head of the opposite file. “And yours?”

“One in medbay, Colonel.” Escarro, far taller than Colonel Glass, stared straight ahead, not daring to look down to meet the officer’s gaze. “Reaction to local food.”

Glass nodded, folded his hands behind his back, then turned back towards the door. Hassan’s hope that the inspection would be perfunctory and brief died when the Colonel stopped well short of the threshold. “I just spoke with Lieutenant Yeung. They’re sending him back to the Core. He’s damned mad about it, but if the med-techs say that’s what he needs, then that’s what’s going to happen.”

In most units, talk of losing the commanding officer would have provoked a murmur, but the two files of Marines remained entirely silent, not having been given permission to stand at ease. Yeung had been their leader for longer than any of them except perhaps Sergeant Escarro had been in the unit. Losing him, even temporarily, was like being deprived of a parent.

“Most likely, Yeung will be back out here busting your asses in four to six months, but I can’t just leave you without a lieutenant for that long.”

At the Colonel’s words, huge Sergeant Escarro stood up somehow straighter. Hassan knew the man was anticipating a field promotion; there was no other candidate for the job.

“Nor do I want to fill Yeung’s shoes when he’s going to want them back.” Colonel Glass, with only the slightest glance toward Escarro, continued. “Until his return, my adjutant, Lieutenant Coughlan, will serve as your company commander. I trust I do not need to tell you how to obey her orders as if they were Lieutenant Yeung’s.”

At her name, the slight, lanky staff officer following Colonel Glass stepped into the barracks. Hassan didn’t even glance at her. Coughlan was well known among the ranks, mostly for being the biggest ego in the entire Twenty-First, and for having the absolute minimum combat experience possible to be a Marine officer. Coughlan, a staff officer, was rare among the already-uncommon women in the Marines for wearing makeup while on duty. She cared very much about her appearance, rarely got her feet muddy, and never got into a Rico suit if she could at all avoid it. When she did suit up, it was in one of the Twenty-First’s barely-armed, sensor-festooned electronic warfare suit, a machine that spent most of its time sitting behind the lines collecting data, jamming enemy signals, and generally doing anything except fighting the enemy.

Across from Hassan, Escarro’s face darkened, but his expression remained blank. No doubt, the senior sergeant had even more reason to be suspicious of Coghlan than Hassan did, and now he had one extra reason – she’d deprived him of advancement he probably thought he’d long since earned.

“This is, of course a temporary arrangement.” Glass, with a long glare at Escarro, walked down the line of Marines. “But reports of your behavior will be communicated to Yeung as soon as his recovery has advanced. Are there any questions?”

Of course, there were none, and Glass knew there wouldn’t be; he hadn’t waved them to ease yet. With a curt nod, the Colonel turned on his heel and marched out.

As soon as his retinue had followed, Lieutenant Coughlan palmed the control to close the door. Only when it had hissed shut did she wave the Marines to ease. “Let’s just make this as easy on each other as possible.” She folded her arms and leaned on the closed door. “I’m not Yeung, nor do I want to be. Sergeants, you know what this unit needs. My comms and my door are always open, but the less trouble you make for me, the less I need to be in your business. Are we all clear?”

Escarro snapped his right hand up into a sharp salute. Hassan followed suit, and soon the entire double row of Marines was doing the same. Coughlan’s position on the Colonel’s staff earned her a salute any time she crossed paths with the rank and file, Hassan felt like saluting her in Yeung’s place was somehow wrong.

“Good.” Coughlan returned the salute, and forty-one right arms fell away from the salute posture. “We’re on the training routine for the day after tomorrow. That means everyone lined up at dropship embarkation at zero four thirty. I’ll check on your sick man, Sergeant Escarro.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” Escarro managed to sound almost earnest.

With a suspicious, arched-eyebrow look at Escarro, then at Hassan himself, Lieutenant Coughlan made a quick exit.

As the door shut behind her, the men quietly returned to what they had been doing before the Colonel’s arrival. Hassan returned to his bunk and retrieved the reader slate he’d dropped. One by one, murmured conversations began to break out. Invariably, the Lieutenant’s name was involved in at least one of them.

“Oy, none of that!” Sergeant Escarro barked. “Another word against the Lieutenant, and I’ll put you in the medbay next to Haines.”

Hassan rolled his eyes, but the senior sergeant was right. Even if nobody liked Coughlan, she was their commanding officer now. It wouldn’t do for the men to be grumbling about their officers.

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