Major (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 5) (9 page)

Chapter 12

The embassy limo pulled in front of the terminal and stopped.  Ryck dutifully waited until the two guards jumped out and made a show of checking for a threat before opening the door for him.  Ryck stepped out, and two reporters called out questions while half-a-dozen news-drones hovered overhead.

Ryck waved at the reporters, ignoring the questions as he hurried in through the VIP entrance, to be met by Annabelle Trystin, one of the embassy’s handlers.

“We’ve got your bags in the secured holding vault,” she told him with earnest-sounding sincerity.  “They’ve been examined for any sign of tampering, and they should be safe now.”

Ryck might have even believed her concern had he not been in the meeting with her and at least 12 others the day before, where this charade was choreographed.  The Federation wanted to play up the fact that Ryck, who was now a minor undernet star throughout the Confederation, was only leaving because the Confederation was not able to ensure his safety.  In the diplomatic wars, this was pure gold.

Vice-Colonel Micah Enlightenment was waiting just beyond Ms. Trystin, and Ryck broke the script to go over and shake his hand.

“Well, you’ve created quite the fuss here,” Micah told Ryck.  “Makes all the rest of us look like wallflowers.”

“That’s not such a bad thing, sir.  Hard to be unnoticed and hear all the good stuff when there’re news drones following you everywhere you go, you know.”

“Well, you’ve given us all a bit of excitement, and it’s going to be rather dull here without you.”

“Uh, excuse me, Major, but this is not a secure area.  We’ve got to get you moving,” Ms. Trystin said, taking Ryck’s arm in her hand as if she was going to pull him along.

Ryck resisted for a second to say, “If you ever get to Tarawa, or wherever I am, I’ll buy you a beer.  Even take you to see the wife.  She says you Simonites are their lost cousins, needing to be brought back to the flock.”

“You’re on, Ryck,” Micah said before the slight Ms. Trystin was able to pull Ryck away.

The spaceport security personnel were trying not to make a big deal out of it, but they’d obviously been briefed, too, as they had a security lane opened as he was pulled along.  Ryck breezed through, confident that even if he were armed, he would not have been stopped.

Ryck, Ms. Trystin, and a lone Confed escort walked down the wide hall and shops until the escort swiped his pass on the lock for an unmarked door. 

“Here’s where I leave you, Major,” Ms. Trystin told him.  You’ve got about 20 minutes before boarding the shuttle, and then another 40 minutes and you’re on the
Holiday Extreme
,” she told him.  “We’ve got one agent on the shuttle, but he will not make the trip back with you on the ship.”

“Thank you, Ms. Trystin,” Ryck said, shaking her hand.  “And thanks for all your help.”

Help he knew had not been needed.  If the Federation really thought there was a threat, the Navy would have dispatched a combat ship to pick him up.  Instead, he was to be a passenger on one of the scheduled Holiday line cruise ships, and only in second class berthing at that. 

Well, it’s almost done, he told himself as he entered the room.

And was surprised to see Major Titus Pohlmeyer leaning up against the bar, a drink in hand.

Titus raised his glass to Ryck and beckoned him over.

“What, you making sure I get off the planet?” Ryck asked as Titus poured him an actual Reider single malt, not a fabricated one.

Ryck didn’t really single malts—well, to be accurate, he didn’t like the one time he’d tasted a non-fabricated one, but the fact that the bar had real, old-fashioned drinks made in distilleries instead of the latest fabricator impressed him.   He sniffed the dark amber liquid, then took a small sip.

No, he still didn’t like it, but he knew he should, so he kept up the charade and nodded appreciatively.

“Well, Major, it seems as if your time as a guest of the Free States was a little, shall we say, interesting?”

“Yes, you could say that.  Like the Chinese curse,” Ryck said.

“Sorry?”

“The Chinese curse:  ‘May you live in interesting times.’”

“Oh, I never heard of that.  But yeah, it could be a curse, I suppose,” Titus said, taking another small sip of his drink.

“I’m sorry I’ve been such a lightning rod,” Ryck said.  “I know it’s caused more than a few headaches.”

Titus waved off his apology with the hand still holding his drink.  “Now you’re just being diplomatic—too little too late.”

Ryck had to laugh, and Titus followed almost immediately.

“Yes, you might not have the natural proclivity to be a tried and true diplomat.  And that is what interested some of us.”

Ryck tried to look natural, as if nothing important had just been said while he attempted to make sense of what Titus meant.  His shadow’s presence in the waiting room was no accident, and there wasn’t much time until he would be boarding.  It wasn’t lost on Ryck that this was probably the first time since the incident that anyone from the Confederation could talk to Ryck without anyone in the Federation eavesdropping.

“Unlike the Federation, the Free States is a democracy,” Titus started.

“Hey, we are too!” Ryck protested.

“Yeah, sure, and your Chairman shits roses, we know.  No offense, but you in the Federation think you are the natural inheritors of Earth and all her history just because you still hold most of the planet.  But so are we, so is the Brotherhood, so is every other government of man.  We all came from Earth.  We in the Free States left when the Federation started removing rights of the citizens.  We kept democracy alive, not you,” he said with passion.

Ryck pointed as his watch and said, “What’s your point, Titus.  I’m boarding in 15.  You trying to convert me or something.”

“No, sorry, I just meant that as a democracy, we’ve got many factions, all seemingly working against each other.  If the Peoples’ Rights Party says the water is wet, the Freedom Party will say it’s dry.  Hell, the Liberty party will say there isn’t any water in the first place.  But there is one thing that everyone agrees is that we need to be on good terms with the Federation.  Our recent, uh, incident did no one any good, and we can’t afford that.  We all banded together to fight the Trinoculars, right?  We need to be able to stand firm again.”

“For what?  You think the Brotherhood is going to challenge you, and you need us?” Ryck asked, trying to see where Titus was going with his line of thought.

“No, no.  We’ve been cooperating with them.  We see no threat there.”

“Then who?  The Alliance?  Any of the independents?  You outgun any of them.”

“Just suffice it to say that some of our big brains think there is a possibility that there is someone else out there.  And a schism in humanity is not a good idea.  Not now.  Not ever, really.”

Ryck placed his drink on the bar and took half a step back.  “Someone else?  Who?  And why do your scientists think that?”

“I don’t know.  I’m just a dumb grunt like you.”

Like grubbing hell you are.  You’re connected
, Ryck thought.

“But we calculate that there is an 18% possibility that there could be another threat.  Maybe not now, maybe not for 100 years.  But even so, stupid things like your incursion into our space, then our retaliation, were wasteful and could have escalated.”

“And why are you telling me this?”

“Because of who you are,” Titus said.

“I’m a major who has been fired from his assigned billet.”

“We both know that isn’t true.  You do shit roses, even if your chairman doesn’t.  Whatever you do comes out with you as a hero.  And you are being groomed.”

Ryck didn’t bother to argue.  He wanted to see where this was going.

“All we want is to have an open dialogue.”

“Who is ‘we?’”

“Hmmph. ‘
We
’ are a group within the government who feel cooperation is in all of our best interests.  It is highly military, but we come from all walks of life.”

“So that still begs the question, why me?”

“Back to my point.  You are not a democracy.  You are an exocentric, repressive government.  But your military is pragmatic.”

Ryck did not take well to someone else criticizing the Federation, even if he’d sometimes thought the same thing.

“Our military
is
the government.  Our chairman is a retired admiral, or hadn’t you heard,” he said sarcastically. 

“Who is hamstrung by your bureaucracy, just like any other head of government.  But as a whole, your military—your Navy and Marine Corps—acts rationally.  You can’t be ideologists when you are putting together an operations order.”

“I still don’t know why you are telling me this.  I’m only one major.”

“But there are others like you who we are reaching out to,” Titus said, closely watching Ryck’s face.

“And, uh . . . I mean, just what are you reaching out for?  What do you expect?”

Is there some sort of attempt to foment dissent going on here?

“Nothing.  We expect nothing.”

That was not what Ryck expected to hear.

“Nothing?  Then what are you doing now?”

“Just trying to keep the lines of communication open.  That’s all.”

“That’s it?” Ryck asked, his disbelief evident in his voice.

“That’s it.  We’re not trying to recruit you for some nefarious scheme.  All we want is for you to know that should anything ever arise, anything, that in your opinion would benefit the United Federation if you could communicate with us, then we are here and would welcome the chance to cooperate.  The situation may never arise, but if it does, we don’t want things turning bad because of a lack of communication.”

“And what do you think is going to happen?” Ryck asked.

“Frankly, I don’t know.  But I do know that with better communications, then maybe we could have averted the fight in Cygni-B, and Free State soldiers and sailors and Federation Marines and sailors would be alive and well now.  Politicians, playing their games, spent our lives as playing chips.”

Which is exactly what Ryck thought of the fight.  He looked into Titus’ eyes. 

Is he telling the truth?
he wondered. 
Is this legit?

He was not going to be some sort of agent.  And he was not going to work for the Confederation.  But if this was an honest reach-out, then what harm could it do?  Communications were good, right?

Titus reached into his pocket and pulled out a business card.  No hi-tech communications gear, just a nicely-printed card on heavy bond.  It had his name, rank, position, and net-number. 

“That’s it?” Ryck asked.

“Sure.  Just give me a call if you want.  Nothing more.”

Ryck pocketed the card.  He wasn’t sure if he would keep it or if he bought into Titus’ request.  He would have to think on it.

He looked at his watch.  He had five more minutes before boarding, and he wanted to end this line of conversation until he could digest it all.

“So, do we have time for another round?  But not, uh, not this stuff,” he said, pointing at his still mostly-full glass of single malt.  “Sorry, but it’s not really my thing.”

Titus smiled and said, “I think I have just the thing.  I know all of you think it’s funny that we do the Roman thing.  We do, too, but it’s become a thing of pride.  But there are a few things Roman that deserve emulation, and this is one.”

He reached behind the bar and grabbed an odd-shaped bottle full of a bright yellow liquid and poured two glasses. 

“This, my friend, from the slopes of Vesuvius itself, is the nectar of the Gods.”

Ryck took a hesitant sip of the radioactive-looking drink.  It was sweet, almost too sweet, but it hit his senses like tungsicle.
[7]
  It was lemony goodness with a kick.

“This, my friend, is
limoncello
,” Titus said.

Ryck downed it and held out his glass for a refill.  He had a 40 minute flight up to the
Holiday Extreme
, and this was going to help grease the skids.

Chapter 13

“Noah!  Where’s your lunch kit?” Ryck shouted as the twins rushed to get their jackets. 

“I’ve got it, Dad,” Noah shouted back.

“No you don’t,” Ryck shouted back, spying the kit under a towel on the counter.

“Oh, OK.”

His son’s somewhat scatterbrained manner was beginning to worry Ryck.  Hannah told him not to be too concerned, but how could anyone say he has something when he clearly didn’t was beyond Ryck.  Noah was somewhat of a fussy eater, and if he didn’t have his kit with the ten recipes that he would accept, then he’d have to make do with whatever the student fabricator could do with the school’s recipe bank.

“Esther, can you grab Benjamin?  We’re late!”

Ryck could get his company ready for deployment to the far reaches of space, but getting his kids ready for school and out the door on time seemed beyond him.  It took some heavy shepherding, but finally, the three kids were in the hover, and Ryck was on the way.  He dropped Benjamin at day care first, handing him over to a very young-looking girl, then rushed back to the hover where Noah and Esther were arguing over something—Ryck could understand the words, but for the life of him, he couldn’t make out heads nor tails as to who was taking what position.  It was about some singer—he gathered that—but if that singer was good or not, Ryck didn’t have a clue.  “Bosh” and “kipper” were two words that meant nothing to him.  It was as if his kids were speaking another language.

He pulled in front of the school, offered his cheek for a kiss, and watched the twins run up and into the building before pulling out and making his way to headquarters.  Mylana, their new babysitter would pick them up after school and bring them home.  Like Charise, whose Navy husband had been transferred, Mylana was the wife of an enlisted man, a Marine corporal.  And like most families where the husband was a mid-to-lower ranking sailor or Marine, budgets were tight and jobs for wives few.  Many tried to make ends meet with housekeeping or babysitting for officers or high-ranking enlisted.

“If the Corps wanted you married, they would have issued you a wife,” was a very old, but still relevant saying.  Pay for the lower ranks was not good, and housing for married Marines was not available until a Marine made sergeant.  Ryck felt guilty for using the wife of a fellow Marine as a servant, of a sort, but he and Hannah could not manage the kids alone, and he knew Mylana really needed the money if she was going to stay on Tarawa with her husband.

Ten minutes late, he zipped past the gate at headquarters.  The new scanner worked much quicker that the one it had just replaced the week before, reading Ryck’s biometrics in a split second and letting him through.  Ryck passed the main building, with the flag officer parking in front, past the B Parking, reserved for colonels and sergeants major, and past C, which was for lieutenant colonels and first sergeants.  With the earlier arrivals filling up D and E parking, he finally found an open space in F, a good eight or ten minute walk to the building.  As a company commander, he’d had his own parking spot right in front of his company headquarters.  He thought the parking situation was a pretty good reflection of his place in the Corps.  As a major at headquarters, he was pretty much a nobody.  He’d light-heartedly shared that observation with two other majors at the gym after his arrival, and neither of them thought it was as humorous as Ryck did as they started into a serious bitch session on the parking situation. 

“Hi, Teresa,” he said to the office secretary as he made it in with a few minutes to spare.  “Anything for me?”

“The colonel was in at 0600,” she told him.  “And he wants that outline for the UD brief like yesterday.”

“Thanks, Teresa.  I’ll have it by 1000,” he said as he walked past her and into his little cubbyhole, nodding at Gunny Harris, who had the cubbyhole adjoining him.

“Sir, the colonel wants that—” he started.

“Got it,” Ryck interrupted.  “Teresa’s already been on my butt about it.”

Ryck powered up his repeater, waiting for his AI to kick in.  He pulled up last week’s Units Deployed brief, then the detailed readout as of midnight, GMT.  It wouldn’t take long to get the outline done, which he then had to submit to the colonel before he could finish the actual brief itself.  It was overkill, he knew, but overkill was the norm here in the Puzzle Palace.

Colonel Oishi had been passed over on the last BG board, although Ryck hated to use the term “passed over” with regards to being promoted to brigadier general.  With only an 8% selection rate, not getting selected was hardly a condemnation on a colonel’s career.  But with the new board coming up in four more months, the colonel was driven to show just how good he was, and he took micromanaging to a new level.

For all of that, he wasn’t a difficult man for whom to work.  Ryck rather liked him, in fact.  And the job was easy.  Ryck’s office was technically in Operations, the J-3.  He worked closely, though, with J-1, Personnel.  Ryck’s entire purpose of being was to monitor the disposition of all combat troops in the Corps and prepare the brief that the colonel would give each Thursday at the commandant’s command brief.  It was easy work, and he had time to hit the gym on a daily basis.  Best of all, he was home by 1700 every day.  He was actually watching his children grow and be a part of that.

But he was bored, he realized, despite trying to bury it.  He should be happy, but when he entered the data that 3/6 was conducting a raid on a suspected illegal weapons complex, or 1/8 was testing a new reki with the Navy, he was jealous.  That was where he belonged, out there.  But he knew he had to serve his time in headquarters.  Just keeping his head down and preparing the reports was a career check mark, but if he wanted to make the best use of his time, he needed to get out and about, he needed to understand better just how this place worked.

When he’d reported back from new Mumbai, he’d spent two days in debriefs.  He’d even passed what Titus had told him—not all the details about the reasons for keeping the lines of communications open, but the offer itself.  He also reported that the Confederation thought there could be some unspecified threat out there.  His debriefers dismissed the possibility of a threat, saying that was just part of the game to pull the Federation in, but he was ordered to keep Titus’ number, and to contact him every once in a while.  After his two whirlwind days of debriefs, Ryck was assigned to his present billet, and things became instantly quieter.

Ryck glanced at his watch.  He’d be done before the 1000 time he’d given Teresa.  And then, the colonel would not give him the go ahead until around 1400.  He had time for a good workout and lunch.

Ryck pulled out his PA and dialed Colonel Ketter. 

“Sir, this is Major Lysander.  I’ve got a court reserved for 1130, but Major Nidischii’ had to back out.  Are you up for a game?”

There was a pause, then, “Are you really a glutton for punishment, Major?”

Ryck had not seen the colonel for some time after his arrival.  He’d apologized for his previous actions again when the colonel had given him his new orders, but Ryck still felt awkward about their relationship, and majors didn’t just go make social calls on colonels they didn’t know or who weren’t in their chain of command.  But then, two weeks earlier, they’d met in a Five tournament, where the colonel had pretty much demolished Ryck to crash him out.  Ryck still wanted to make amends, to prove to the colonel that he wasn’t some arrogant prima donna.  This was him reaching out.  Of course, it was up to the colonel if he even wanted Ryck to reach out.

“Well, sir, I was feeling poorly, then, not up to snuff.  And I’ve been practicing.”

“Ah, with your wife, right?  Can you beat her yet?”

Hannah didn’t look like an athlete, but she was murder on the court, usually beating the much more fit Ryck by playing the game to win, not to overpower someone.

“Not often, sir,” Ryck admitted.

There was another pause, and Ryck wondered if the colonel was going to blow him off.  Ryck probably would have, if their positions had been reversed.

“1130?  OK, major, let’s see what’s changed in you.  See you there.”

Ryck thanked him and cut the connection.  He wondered at the word “changed.”  Did the colonel want to see if he’d gotten better on the court, or if he’d had some more fundamental changes.

He turned back to his report.  He’d get it done, then try and find a game to warm up first.  He’d need it if he was going to have a chance to beat the colonel.