Jethro: First to Fight (64 page)

“Just the fraternization charge?” Jethro
asked glancing at the nearest MP. The MP's looked at the DI's. The two DI's
nodded.

“I understand fraternizing with boots
while they are in training is a major no no. Is it effecting her training?”
Jethro asked.

“Somewhat. Her fellow boots are
resentful or envious of the contact which is causing undesired distraction and
friction,” The DI responded. He didn't mention the ice cream Kovu had smuggled
to the girl the first time.

“How far do you want to take this?”
Jethro asked. “I'd prefer not to wash them both out.”

Kovu looked ready to object but a simple
glare from Jethro shut him up. He exhaled heavily.

“I think we can keep it from going that
far. But this is it Sergeant. Next step we bring down the house on both of
them,” the DI said. “I'll deal with
her
punishment later.”

Jethro nodded. “Nonjudicial punishment.
I'll handle it.”

“Thanks Sergeant. Make sure it
doesn't
happen again.”

“I will.” Jethro drew the DI aside.
“Next time give me a heads up
before
it gets to this point so I can keep
a better eye on the situation.”

The DI's jaw worked and then he nodded.
“Fair enough. Just make sure he stays gone.”

“I will,” Jethro said turning to Kovu.
“I'll take it from here gentlemen,” he said nodding to the MP's. The MP's
nodded and left.

He escorted Kovu back to their barracks.
Kovu fidgeted, not liking the silent treatment at all. He was starting to work
back to his sullen brooding. “It's not like I did anything wrong,” he growled.

“How'd they catch you?” Jethro asked
conversationally.

“We got a little loud,” Kovu admitted.

Jethro snorted mentally. He could just
bet they did, cats yowled in their love making due to strategically yet
inconveniently placed barbs on a certain piece of a male's anatomy. At the
right angle they felt good, but other angles or after repeated playing the
repeated friction ended up causing pain. Which coupled with their heightened
pleasure tended to spice things up. “What was she supposed to be doing?” he
asked.

“Um... I...”

“She was on duty?” he growled grimly.

“
No
! I think she had someone
covering for her.”

“You mean you hope. So,
she
disobeyed
an order and
you
disobeyed an order. Wonderful.”

“We...”

“I don't want to hear it Private second
class.”

“I... hey I'm supposed to be a first
class!”

“Not anymore,” Jethro replied turning
and stopping. “You lost a rating when you disobeyed an order. Do you realize
you could have wound up in the stockade? That she could have been dishonorably
discharged? That
you
could be thrown out as well? Prejudicial to good
discipline, disobeying an order... Right now she is probably seriously pissed
and ashamed and being ground down over this by her DI's. You realize she is
being severely punished too? All because the two of you couldn't handle a
little adult self control?”

Kovu's eyes widened as he felt a pang of
guilt and remorse followed by more resentment. “It's not like we were...” He
started to protest but Jethro cut him off.

“You
disobeyed
an
order
.
We sort of frown on that sort of thing in the military. I'd of thought by now
that would have sunken in,” the panther said, eyes narrowing to pinpricks.

“I...”

“Kovu, shut it,” Jethro growled. He got
close, close enough to look the larger lion in the eye. Kovu was part American
cougar so he wasn't as big as a full African Neolion but he was still larger
than Jethro. Golden eyes met golden eyes and Jethro's were all business. The
lion gulped, remembering their encounter on the wrestling mat. “One rating. One
week pay. Restricted to barracks one month. One week KP. Keep your mouth shut!”
he growled as Kovu started to protest. There was something there, the hint of death
and mayhem in the panther's subsonics and body language that told the lion that
if he didn't toe the line he was history. It was something that made the lion
want to pant or run in fear. His own eyes dilated wide in fear.

“See? Still having problems following
simple orders. Want me to double it?” Jethro snarled. Kovu finally wised up and
went to full attention, eyes staring up over Jethro's head.

“Ah, the light dawns,” Jethro said,
voice dripping with sarcasm. He was not quite snarling, but his teeth were
bared. “You're a Marine. Start
acting
like one not some hormone drenched
twit with more balls than brains. In other words grow up and stop being such a
fuck up or I'll personally cut those damn balls off that you treasure so much
and ram them down your fracking throat. Understood?” Jethro snarled, ears flat,
tail thrashing. He looked to the side as a pair of privates passed them. The
privates slowed but when they caught his 'as you were' glare they sped up and
moved out of earshot.

When Jethro judged that the
eavesdroppers were out of earshot he returned his attention to the lion. “She
needs to focus on her training, you're distracting her and her team. That could
get them
killed
. Keep your pants on and fucking do your job. You
read
me Marine?” he snarled.

Kovu squirmed. “Um...”

Jethro's eyes glittered. “The proper
response is yes Sergeant. I better damn well hear it now!” He snarled, voice
dropping even lower. Normally, the more agitated a cat got the voice rose in
pitch. Jethro was controlling that, directing it.

Kovu froze, ears flat. He didn't know
they could embed themselves into his skull until now. “Yes Sergeant!” He
snapped.

“Good. I'll let the old man know what's
going on. He'll be pissed but since I'm handling it he'll hopefully not come down
on you any further with an article 15. If you don't fracking
keep
your
dick in your pants he'll get what's left of you only
after
I'm through
with you. Understood?”

“Yes Sergeant!” Slowly his ears started
to rise. He felt like a kitten all over again.

“Don't you ever, I mean
ever
disobey an order here or in the field or I
will
rip your throat out. DO
you
understand
me Private?” Jethro snarled, fur on end, lips pulled
back, teeth bared.

Kovu's eyes were wide and fully dilated.
His adam's apple bobbed up and down convulsively. For the second time since
they had met Jethro had scared the spit out of him without cloaking or flexing
a claw. His ears flattened and his tail drooped. He gulped and then nodded as
he straightened. “Yes Sergeant.”

Jethro held the glare for a full minute.
“Good. Dismissed. Get your ass in that barracks and prepare for inspection in
twenty. Since you've got too much
time
on your hands I'm going to have
to take
time
from my busy schedule to
do
something about that.
And since I'm not
happy
about that you damn well won't be
happy
about the attention either when I'm through with you.”

“Shit,” Kovu muttered as he turned in an
about face and took off at a trot.

Jethro watched him go and turned. He
sighed and shook his head. He sniffed the air as the wind shifted. He turned,
facing the wind and then looked into the shadows near the edge of the barracks.
A familiar shape was there. “Anything to add Lieutenant?” he asked casually,
voice returning to normal.

Valenko rumbled a chuckle as he stepped
out into the light. “No, you handled that about as well as I would have. Next
time take him to me before you decide on a punishment though,” he rumbled.

“Yes sir,” Jethro nodded.

“We officers like to at least pretend
we're in charge you know,” Valenko rumbled, but his eyes twinkled.

Jethro snorted, feeling his anger ebb.
The stupidity of the situation would normally amuse the hell out of him. He
hoped they both enjoyed it, the female was probably going to not be interested
in Kovu for a long damn time after her DI's got through with her. Knowing the
male of the species, Kovu had probably assured her everything would be okay,
and that they wouldn't get caught. Now they both knew better, as did others.
Perhaps their example would do some good once the grapevine got wind of their
punishments. “Shows what you know. You should never of let them promote you.”

“Yeah yeah. Funny,” the bear rumbled
with a subterranean chuckle, waving a hand paw dismissively. They both knew the
old saw about how the sergeants really ran the roost. “I take it Kovu got into
some mischief?” he asked.

“You're supposed to pretend you know
everything. Not working with your image,” Jethro said with a smile as he
sauntered over to the bear. The bear mock growled. Jethro chuckled. “Yeah,” he turned
to look over his shoulder. “You could say that. I heard him talking about his
girl Kiara and how she was a new boot who had gone sleeper. Apparently he
decided to make up for lost time when she woke.”

“Oh.”

“Which the DI's took exception to. I
can't blame them.”

“Oh,” Valenko replied, tone now
decidedly darker and more ominous. “Problem with discipline?”

“Apparently.”

“Is he working out?”

Jethro looked at the barracks and
signed. “Yes and no. In the field he is half way decent. Maybe eighty or ninety
percent in sim combat. I need, hell you need him one hundred percent. We need
to get him through the hormone soaked teen years and get him thinking with his
other
head.”

The bear snorted. It sounded like a
sneeze. “A soldier who won't...”

Jethro held up a hand. “Spare me sir. I
know the drill. But there is a time and a place for everything and when someone
in your chain of command gives you an order to keep distance...”

“You damn well better obey it. All
right. Point. I've got some stuff coming up but I think I'll leave it in your
hands. But if you can't handle him he's out. Whatever is left of him of
course.”

“I know. I'll do my best.”

“You do that Sergeant. Dismissed,”
Valenko growled. Jethro came to attention, saluted and then about faced. He
moved off sharply. He had work to do.

...*...*...*...*...

Ox finished with the UAV and UTV
projects and passed them over to engineering to put them into limited
production. He moped for a day or so before he returned to his favorite, tinkering
with the various powered combat armor designs.

Riley was amused at his apprentice's
preoccupation, but went along with his apprentice more out of curiosity than in
just humoring him.

One of the things the Tauren went back to
was adjusting and improving the space boosters. He improvised a sled. The sled
was three times larger than a suit, almost as large as a full up shuttle. It
had massive weapons on it. The sled could carry half a squad of Marines in
armor, plus half a squadron of fighter's worth of ordinance. It even had a
corvette's main Neutron Particle energy weapon mounted between the legs of the
pilot. Jethro wasn't sure how the Tauren had pulled that one off.

What it didn't have was a conventional
power plant, the entire thing was powered by superconductor capacitors. The
sled didn't have grav plates either, it had an old fashioned chemical drive. It
was short ranged, but had a brutal kick to it, almost too much for the inertial
dampeners built into the suits could handle.

Getting the interface from the suit to
the sled worked out was an ongoing issue. During simulations, they noticed a
lag, but attributed it to the limits of the software.

When the sled was ready for a flight
test Valenko's squad was of course tapped to play guinea pig. Since Jethro had
his flight pack, he was naturally selected to be the test pilot.

“Ox, what the hell did you do? What is
this thing?” Asazi demanded, looking the craft over. They were in the newly
minted orbital base's main hangar. The thing floated, in the center of the bay,
tethered by bungees. A crew of robots were standing by, ready to fuel the
craft.

“It's a sled. Like we used in Pyrax. But
it's armed and dangerous.”

“Definitely dangerous,” Asazi said. “I
don't want to ride that damn thing! It's a menace!” she shook her head. “It's
liable to blow up with all the ordinance hanging all over the thing!”

“Oooh,” Sergei's eyes widened in comical
interest. “Can I fly it? Can I?” he asked eagerly. Some of the squad chuckled,
Asazi rolled her eyes in exasperation.

“It's got a hell of a punch. The idea is
to get in, punch a hole, then off load. If she's got enough fuel she can RTB.
If not, well, she's ultimately expendable,” Ox said, sounding as if the last
part was a bit reluctant. Which was understandable, he was the designer, it was
his baby after all.

“I'm going. Alone,” Jethro said, turning
on Sergei.

Sergei pouted. “No fair. He gets all the
fun,” he grumbled. That got another laugh from the squad.

“Fun he says,” Jethro sighed. He eyed
the Tauren. “I suppose this is payback for the wings and UAV's?” he asked.