An Officer’s Duty (31 page)

Tae glanced between her and Ia. “Actually, sir, I wouldn’t mind hearing about Ia’s time in the Corps, and your impressions of her. It’s not often a drill instructor gets to hear firsthand accounts of how his charges fare long after they leave Basic. Particularly in a military the size of the Space Force.”

Ia rolled her eyes. “Honestly, you don’t
have
to dissect every little thing I have done. Particularly not in front of me. I’m not that special.”

“You may be a cadet when you’re on the clock, and thus an officer in training,” Tae told her, “but a drill instructor
always
outranks a former recruit
off
the clock. And I really do want to know. I always imagined you’d do me proud…
if
you ever learned your own limitations.”

Bennie glanced at Tae, then looked at Ia. “Wait—you said Sergeant Spyder went through Basic with you. Would that mean Sergeant Tae knows him?”

“You’re telling me that Recruit
Spyder
made it all the way up to Sergeant?” Tae asked, raising his brows in surprise. “That green-haired, tangle-tongued…?”

“Sergeant, yes, Sergeant. He even led Ferrar’s Fighters in the rescue invasion at Zubeneschamali, with their full confidence in him,” Ia bragged, grateful for the excuse of being able to talk about someone else for a change. “He was the senior-most of the few sergeants who hadn’t been kidnapped, and the one with the most boarding party experience, both with Ferrar’s Fighters and his previous Company. I gave him the layout of the place, discussed several options, and put him in charge of carrying it out—and I’ll tell you, he saved our hides in record time. We got pinned down in this big room with no way out, until Spyder and the rest broke through the enemy’s forces.”

“Yes, he has handled himself very admirably, Sergeant,” Bennie added. “If he’d had a full year of noncomm experience under his belt,
I’d
have nominated him for a Field Commission, and I’m outside the normal chain of command.”

Ia nodded in agreement, glad her friend was getting the recognition he was due. “That’s pretty much all he was missing. Here—there’s even a song in the Corps about him.”

“A song?” Tae asked, lifting one brow. “Recruit Spyder ranks a Marines song? This, I gotta hear.”

“A song?” Meyun repeated, giving the trio a bemused look.

“It’s a Marines thing,” Ia reassured him. “Marines sing, and make up songs about each other.”

“It’s to the tune of the Itsy Bitsy Spider,” Bennie warned him, grinning. “It’s not
much
of a song, but he did get one, and it has circulated all over the
Liu Ji
’s patrol route.”

She gestured at Ia, who launched into the tune, replete with Spyder’s mining colony accent.

Tae blinked, winced, and started laughing. “That’s too funny! If your voice were just a little deeper, you’d even sound like him, Rec…
Cadet
.”

Harper grinned as well. “So what other stories have you got for us?”

Ia and Bennie smirked at each other and started compiling a verbal list for both men.

MAY 27, 2493 T.S.

The steady
thoom thoom thoom
of rapidly running mechsuit legs echoed across the confidence course. Her inner thighs always chafed a little bit when she did this, but that was as much the fault of the body-hugging pressure suit she wore beneath the ceristeel plates as the need for the slightly waddling movements required by the bulk of the machinery itself. Ia was used to it, though, and ran with almost the same ease she would have used without her burden.

Leaping for the cover afforded by a low bluff, she tumbled over one round-planted shoulder, spun, and aimed the black-painted rifle in her grip at the target, just barely visible through the trees. The beam of light was difficult to see in the bright light of day, since the e-clip powering the laser had
been fitted with a calorie restrictor chip, but the heads-up display flickering across the inner curve of her faceplate let her know she had scored an accurate enough hit. The holographic, vaguely humanoid-shaped target darkened on the left arm. Not a vital hit, but enough to temporarily incapacitate it.

She could have aimed a little better, but not today. Today, Ia was holding back on the confidence course. Launching herself away from the berm of grass and earth, she sprinted for the next obstacle, shooting on the run at the other targets. She clipped two more enough to incapacitate, and scored killing blows on the last three.

Dodging through the maze of wooden logs, she used their scant cover at the end to crouch low and take potshots at the hologram of an enemy vehicle. Two, three shots scored deeply enough into one wheel well to sever a lubricant pipe. The rest knocked out the illusionary enemies scrambling to organize themselves in a semblance of counterattack and defense. After the eighth volley, she leaped forward, firing one more shot to knock down the last simulation. Hooking a servo-hand around another log at the end of the course, she used it to swing herself around and sprint back down toward the finish zone.

The confidence course and its obstacles were squeezed into a crowded, back-and-forth pattern between two long, high walls on which some of the holographic scenery for the current training simulation was being projected. Ignoring the rope swing—the weight of her and her suit, hitting the rope at that speed, would have ripped it from its frame—she leaped over the mud pit, clearing it by a meter and a half from sheer power-assisted momentum. Ia dodged a fake hand grenade and sprinted over the last dozen meters of trampled dirt, until she dropped back into the bunker where everything had begun.

Thud.

Panting inside her suit, Ia took the time to power down her mechsuit-sized rifle, stripped the energy clip from the butt of it, and returned both to their storage lockers. Only when the lockers, one for rifles and one for calorie-restricted e-clips, were sealed tight did she turn around and slap the red button on the bunker wall, ending the simulation run. Lights on the course outside flashed amber for ten seconds, then glowed green for five more and shut off, removing all the holograms.

The display board totaled the number of obstacles successfully navigated, enemies killed, incapacitated, or still capable of combat, objectives achieved and objectives missed, ending with a number that wasn’t quite 85 percent of her best run to date.
Solidly in the mediocre, for me.
Satisfied, Ia relaxed.

With the course both cleared and shut down, Ia unsealed her faceplate, sucking in the warm, pre-summer air. Unlocking the exit door of the bunker, she eased her bulky, mechsuited body up the stairs, emerging in the sunlight to an audience of observers. A few clapped in applause, but the rest gave her performance wry looks at best. Several of the other cadets formed up and jogged down the stairs, taking her place in the bunker for their own run.

Others at the Academy might choose to run the obstacle course as a part of their daily exercise regimen, but at the moment, Ia was the only one who ran it in a mechsuit. That meant she had to run it alone to avoid accidentally injuring a fellow cadet. She didn’t mind, though; the lack of others on the course meant that she could split her attention between carrying out the familiar tasks of mock-combat and skimming the timelines, practicing her battlecognition.

Two people hung back in the viewing stands. One was Chaplain Benjamin; the other was a commodore, the one-star equivalent of a brigadier general. The commodore moved to intercept Ia. Bennie followed, her expression sober.

Since he was wearing his Dress Blues cap, Ia saluted him, servo-arm whining faintly as she lifted its mechanical fingers to her helm-bubbled brow. “Commodore, sir.”

“Cadet Ia, this is Commodore Hadrabas,” Bennie introduced quickly. “Commodore, this is Cadet Ia.”

He saluted her back, then dropped his hands to his blue-clad hips. “So, you’re the infamous Cadet Ia. I didn’t know you could run the confidence course so…quickly.”

Considering it wasn’t her speed she had slacked on, Ia shrugged inside her suit. The joints and servos hummed quietly, copying the action externally. “I’ve had better days, sir. And worse days. Can I help you, sir?”

“Yes, actually. The Command Staff is thinking of fielding a number of Service personnel for the 2494 Alliance Winter Olympics. Can you ski?” he asked bluntly.

“No, sir…and if you are thinking of suggesting I learn in order to compete in the biathlon, sir, I would like to point out there are many, many more personnel in the Space Force who shoot far better than I can,
and
already know how to ski,” she countered firmly.
This is indeed what I thought it was going to be. Time to nip this firmly in the bud.
“Not to mention it would become a public relations disaster if you attempted to order me to learn and participate anyway, sir.”

“Excuse me?” he asked, lifting his hand to his cap so he could tip it back and look up at her. Wearing her mechsuit as she was, Ia stood taller than the commodore by almost half a meter.

“Commodore, I would have to refuse to perform any task that could be considered a dereliction of my duty, sir,” she stated crisply, ignoring the sweat beading on her skin under the heat of the late spring sun. “My
duty
as a Field Commissioned officer is to return to an active combat post once I have graduated from this Academy, sir. I am not the best marksmeioa in the Service, I am not qualified to ski in a biathlon, I
cannot
learn either skill well enough to improve them in time to compete at the regional level, never mind qualify nationally in time to register for the 2494 Olympics…and it is
illegal
for anyone to be coerced into cooperating in the Games, sir,” Ia told him.

Commodore Hadrabas frowned up at her, clearly not happy at being thwarted.

She lifted her chin half a centimeter and smiled ever so slightly. “It is also my duty to point out these facts to you, sir, in order to ensure that
you
take no action which would be detrimental to the Space Force. Now, is there anything that
is
within the proper course of my duties as a cadet and future officer that I can do for you at this time, sir?”

He frowned, scowled, quirked a brow, and sighed roughly. Folding his arms across his chest, Hadrabas lifted his own chin. “Are you always this stubborn and intent on having your own way, meioa?”

The corner of her mouth curled up further. “Commodore, at this time, I would like to ‘plead the Fifth,’ sir, as, one way or another, my answer would probably incriminate me.”

He chuckled for a moment, then raised his brows. “Are you
sure
you wouldn’t like to learn how to ski, Cadet? It would be a cushy reassignment.”

Ia dropped her smile, giving him a cold, sober stare. “I was very serious in my reply, sir. I would consider it an order to commit Fatality Number Four, Dereliction of Duty…and under the Terran United Planet’s duly registered Alliance Charter of Rights, I would have to register a formal protest as a conscientious objector to any such ‘cushy’ reassignment. Sir.”

Bennie spluttered at that, apparently choking on her own spit. She coughed hoarsely a few times, cleared her throat, and visibly bit her lower lip in the effort to contain her amusement. Ia didn’t show any such signs of mirth, herself.

Staring at her, Hadrabas shook his head slowly. “I’d been told about you…but I’ll confess I didn’t believe it until now. Mind you, Cadet, I’m disappointed you won’t even try. It’s been a sting in the Terran pride that the damned Solaricans have won nearly every single biathlon event, particularly in the heavyworld categories, since the inception of the Alliance Summer and Winter Olympics not quite two hundred years ago. You’re from the heaviest inhabited planet we have, yet no one on Sanctuary wants to learn how to ski. Hell, no one on Parker’s World wants to learn, either.”

“The concept of willingly hurtling oneself down a hill at speeds in excess of one hundred kilometers per hour, on a planet where just
tripping
can kill you, is not one easily grasped by my colonymates, Commodore,” Ia muttered, softening her expression with a touch of humor. “Let alone one that they’d willingly embrace. We don’t even have skating rinks…and I’d imagine the people of Parker’s World would be just as reluctant.”

“I’ll pass that information along, Cadet. What about the Summer Olympics?” he asked her, tilting his head slightly in speculation.

“That would still be a dereliction of duty, sir,” she countered bluntly. “I’m not the fastest, I’m not the strongest, and I’m not the best. If I may be excused, Commodore, I need to get my mechsuit powered down and cleaned up for the day. That takes a minimum of half an hour after rolling all over the obstacle course, and I have…forty-seven minutes before the supper hour,” she explained, glancing at the subtle numbers of the chrono built into her left forearm plate. “It’s also Wednesday, sir. All Cadets are required to attend supper in Dress Blues on Wednesdays at the Academia. I’d really rather not be late.”

He flipped a hand at her. “Dismissed. I guess I’ll just go watch the other cadets as they perform on the course, then.”

“Sir, if you’re looking for a good marksmeioa among the cadets,” Ia offered, “I suggest watching Cadet Djalu. I don’t know if she skis or not, but she’s leading all the scores from the targeting range, right now.”

Hadrabas nodded to her. “I’ll keep that in mind, Cadet.”

“Mind if I accompany you, Cadet?” Bennie asked, trotting to catch up with Ia as she turned and strode away.

Ia slowed her steps, since her mechsuit legs were longer and covered more ground than the other woman could comfortably walk. “Not at all, Commander.” She shared a brief smile with Bennie at the long-standing joke between them from their time on the
Liu Ji
, addressing each other by titles instead of names, despite their long friendship. Sighing, Ia wriggled her nose. “The worst part about being in a mechsuit is either I have to disengage my gauntlet just to scratch my nose, or risk putting out my eye. Or endure the itch endlessly.”