Lieutenant (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 3) (12 page)

Ryck had hated the fact that the LZ was on the low ground, but it turned out to be fortuitous.  By coming in from the northwest, the birds would be in defilade to the oncoming capys. 

Marines were darting out beyond the cover of the edge of the hedgerow, firing, then darting back.  As Ryck watched, trying to gather his thoughts, Pvt Lin darted out, only to fall in a flash of light.  Several sets of hands reached out and grabbed him by his legs to haul him back.

Ryck’s mind cleared.  He knew what had to be done, but this would be the hardest order he’d had to give.  He would be sentencing someone to death by his decision. 

“Joshua,” he croaked out.  We’ve got to get those four civilians down to the LZ,” he said, nodding his head to point at the four who were halfway down the hill and stumbling forward.

“And we’ve got to give the Storks time to land, get the people on board, and get out of here.  We don’t know what the capys have against air, but we can’t chance it.  We need to leave a blocking force here to cover the LZ.  If we don’t, the capys will overrun it before we can get the people off.”

“I understand, Ryck.  Give me a moment to get a team together,” Joshua said.

“No, not you!  I mean me.  I need three Marines, all with M76s.  You take the rest and the civilians and get out of here.”

“That be not happening,” he said, dropping back into his old accent for a moment.  “Look, you can’t even hold a weapon.  You’d be a liability.”

“I so too can hold a weapon, you grubber!” Ryck said, trying to shout but ending in a coughing fit.

When he stopped, he looked up into his friend’s face.  He was about to pass out, and he realized he would be that liability Joshua had said he’d be.

“OK, maybe not me.  But not you, either,” Ryck insisted.

“Really?” was all Joshua said.

“Yeah, maybe Ariana.  You said he’s coming along,” Ryck said, grasping at anything to avoid the finality that logic demanded.

“Come one, Ryck,” Joshua said quietly, leaning close.  Beyond his head, Marines continued to pepper the oncoming capys.

“I’m the only choice, and you know it.  Give the order.  Forget about our relationship.  If you really think Ariana or Watson is better qualified for it, then give that order, and I’ll follow it.  But if I’m the best for the job, as I’m sure you’ll realize, then give the order now.”

“But, but, you’re . . . ah, fuck it, I can’t do that.  What about Hope?  What about Hannah?  What about Ester? She needs her father. 

“I knew this would happen when you showed up and asked to be in the platoon.  I knew it!” Ryck said, choking back a sob brought forth from pain, frustration and a sense of loss.

“Give the order, Ryck.  Do what’s right.”

Back at Annapolis, Capt Klein had said that ordering men to die was the hardest thing a leader could do.  But the captain couldn’t have had something like this in mind.

Ryck looked up, catching sight of Sgt Ariana, who was nervously waiting for Ryck’s decision.  Ryck could take care of it right then, just give the sergeant the orders.  But in his heart, Ryck knew that while willing, Sgt Ariana was just not as capable as Joshua.  Neither was Watson.

If Joshua wasn’t his friend, his brother-in-law, he would still dread giving the order, but he would do it.  Lives were at stake, and the more he hesitated, the greater the chance that everyone would die.

He knew what he had to do.

“Joshua,” he said loudly, so the rest could hear.  “I’m giving you three Marines with M76s, and stay here while we get everyone loaded.  Do not let the capys past, or we’re all lost.  Once the Storks are loaded, get your asses down the hill and into the last bird.  You understand ?”

“Aye-aye, sir.  Who do I keep with me?”

Ryck looked at the waiting Marines, Marines waiting to hear if they would live or die.  He chose those with M76s. 

“Take Jones, Felicity, and Hogger.”

Shit, Hogger!  I threw him the M76, and now he dies because of that!

“The rest of you, let’s move it!”

“You heard him,” Sgt Ariana yelled out.  “Let’s go!”

Pvt Gilliard lifted Ryck up, ready to carry him to the LZ.

The Marines started down the hill, but before Gilliard stepped off, Joshua reached over to hug Ryck.

“I’m so sorry, my brother.  I’m sorry,” Ryck whispered in Joshua’s ear.

“Don’t be.  You gave me the chance to prove myself, and I hope I’m doing that.”

“You be doing that, my brother, you be doing that. Just make sure you get your ass down the hill and onto the birds, you hear?”

“Sure thing, Ryck,” Joshua said, but they both knew it would never happen.

Joshua wheeled to join the other three Marines who were sending a volley of fire down the hedgerow to the capys.  All four began screaming like banshees.

“We gotta go, sir,” Gillaird said, pulling Ryck away. 

The private pulled and mostly carried his platoon commander down the hill to the LZ.  Two of the Storks had landed and were embarking civilians and Marines. 

Behind Ryck, the crescendo of outgoing fire kept rising.  He could barely make out the shouting as he was half-dragged around the edge of the marsh.  One Stork was already lifting off, and the other waited, ramp down, a crew chef waving them to hurry up.

Ryck was fading.  Breathing was getting almost impossible as he labored to draw in air.  Just as Gilliard dragged him up the ramp, behind him, the sound of Marine fire faltered, then stopped.

Ryck grabbed the crew chief by his flight suit as he was pulled past, a deathlock that the crewchief couldn’t break.

“We’ve got four more Marines out there.  We have to wait!” he shouted.

The Stork lurched into the air.

“Let me go!” the crewchief shouted, trying to pull off Ryck’s hand.

“No, go back!  That’s an order!” Ryck gasped out.

The Stork leaned forward and started to gather speed.  Ryck looked back, and in the gap between the ramp and the fuselage, he had a momentary glimpse of the checkpoint where Joshua and his three Marines had given the rest enough time to take off.  Capys swarmed the hedgerow and were moving down the hill.

The inside of the cabin went momentarily white.  The capys were firing at them, and if the decreased engine noise was any indication, the Stork’s shields wouldn’t hold up under many more hits. 

The crewchief managed to pry Ryck’s hands off of him.

“We aren’t going anywhere, lieutenant except back to the
Rio Pacure
.  If we make it, that is.  If you got men back down there, sorry, but they’re dead now.”

Pvt Gilliard helped Ryck down into a seat as darkness took over and Ryck knew no more.

Zephyr-Hadreson

Chapter 11

Ryck groaned as he started to surface, the familiar itch/ache cross of regen pervading his senses.  He thought he was almost through, almost finished, but this felt like when he first started.  Did he have a relapse?

Then his thoughts coalesced.  He wasn’t on Alexander, where he’d first endured regen.  He was with Second MarDiv, now, a lieutenant.

“Joshua!” he shouted, opening his eyes.

He was in a darkened room.  His left arm and leg were immobilized, and tubes ran from his body into an assortment of monitoring machines.  The flowers in a vase beside him, as well as the sunlight that fought to make it into the room past the blinds, were enough to let Ryck know he was back on a planet, probably Zephyr-Hadreson, and in regen once more.  The thought made him shudder.

He looked around for his call button.  He had to know what had happened.  Had Joshua and his three Marines made it off the planet?  Who in his platoon hadn’t made it?

He caught sight of a figure sitting in a chair in the corner, deep in the shadows.  Ryck tried to raise his body to get a better look, and the person stirred.

Hannah stood up, coming forward until she was standing beside him, saying nothing.  Ryck wanted to reach out, to hold her, but he couldn’t reach across with his good arm to touch her.

“Joshua?” he asked.

Hannah simply shook her head.

The tears came unabated then.  They were not just for Joshua, but for all of his Marines.  For Jones, Felicity, and Hogger. For Lin, Timothy, Abbas, Howell. Prez. Ughar, Keith.  For the children in the back of the truck, for the old lady who had stared at him.  For everyone.  He didn’t even know yet who had made it and who hadn’t.  But he grieved for them.  They were his Marines and his charges, and he had let them die.

Hannah stood beside him, hand on his wrapped left arm, and let him cry until he was too exhausted to cry anymore.  Ryck tried to control his breathing, to gather himself.

“Do you want me to call a nurse?” Hannah asked quietly.  “The doctors said you might be thirsty when you came to.”

“No, not yet.  I just need you here now,” Ryck said. 

He was thirsty, which was a side-effect from the induced coma in which regen patients were placed.  He looked to his left to see his arm bandaged. It wasn’t in a regen cage, so the arm had not been amputated.  He tried to lift his body to look down to his legs.

“Lay still,” Hannah said, leaning forward and placing a hand against his chest.  “You’ve got complete nerve damage in your left arm and upper leg.  One lung was damaged, as was your heart and liver.  You’re going to survive, but you’ve got some time in regen to endure.  The doctor says maybe a year until the nerves have knitted.”

“A year?  That’s not so bad, I guess,” Ryck said, although he dreaded the thought of the process.  Regen sucked, to be blunt, with constant pain and itch.

“So, you know about Joshua,” Ryck said.

Stupid thing to say.  Of course she knows!
he berated himself.

She slowly nodded.  Ryck knew his wife, and he knew she was trying to marshal her thoughts to say something.  Ryck just lay there, waiting for her.

“I . . . I read the report of the battle.  And I’ve talked to Stu Watson,” she began.

Watson made it?  Good.

Ryck had thought the sergeant had made it on one of the Storks, but in the end there, he was out of it and he wasn’t sure what he remembered and what he imagined.

“I need to ask you something,” she said, moving around the bed and bending down so she could look into his eyes.

“Did you order Joshua to stay back while you escaped?”

Ryck was stunned.  The intensity of Hannah’s eyes scared him, and her use of “escaped” was like a dagger to his heart.  It wasn’t like that, was it?  He didn’t sacrifice Joshua and the three Marines just to save his ass, right?

But maybe he did.  He got out, he was back home with his wife.  He had a rough year in front of him, but wouldn’t Joshua do anything for that year, even in regen?

“Maybe he’s still alive?  The capys, they don’t move fast, and Joshua, you know him, he can run.  When we go back, maybe we’ll find him and the rest,” he offered, grasping at straws.

“You don’t know.  Of course not.  The planet was interdicted two days after you escaped.”

Interdicted?

That was planet death.  The Federation had only done that twice, once in conjunction with the Brotherhood to wipe out the Soldiers of God home base.  If the Federation had cleansed GKN with its planetbusters, nothing would have survived.  Nothing.  The planet was dead.

As Ryck tried to absorb that, Hannah leaned in closer and asked once again, “Did you order Joshua to hold them back so you could escape?”

Ryck stared into his wife’s eyes.  Ryck had given the order because it was the right order, and Joshua had known it.  He had expected it, almost begging Ryck to give it.  He had done it because that was what he’d been taught to do.  He had to ignore the personal and act the professional.  But as Ryck tried to read inside Hannah’s mind, he knew she didn’t want to hear that.  She didn’t want reasons.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

A cloud seemed to form over her eyes, but that could have been Ryck’s imagination.  She stayed there a moment, still bent over, before slowly straightening out. Ryck waited in the silence that took over the room.

“I be goin’ home,” she finally said, quietly reverting to her Torritite accent.

“Sure, I understand.  You’re probably exhausted, waiting for me to come to, and you need to absorb that.  I’m going to be stuck here for awhile, but we can talk after you’ve gotten some rest, OK?”

“No, I be goin’ home.  To Prophesy,” she said.

Ryck’s heart lurched as her words fell on him.

“But . . . uh, sure.  When will you be back?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  Probably never.  I don’t know what I feel now,” she said, facing away from him.

“But, we’re married,” he said.  “We are a team?”

She wheeled on him, anger making an appearance by her demeanor.

“I’ve lost two brothers to your precious Marine Corps. Two
alderbruten
.
[31]
  And my lovin’ husband be the one who killed our Joshua,” she hissed, venom dripping from her words.  “I want no more of your death machine, no more bein’ the hired enforcer for a corrupt Federation.  I be done!”

Ryck sat gaping as his wife wheeled about and stalked out of the room.