Starfist: Hangfire (11 page)

Damn! he thought at first. Another deployment? He was both angry and excited. Angry because he felt his company had had its fair share of deployments recently, the affair on Society 437 involving his third platoon, and then the Avionian affair that had almost gotten him court-martialed. But he was also, paradoxically, thrilled, because deployments are what Marines live for. Then he thought, No, it's about those orders from Fleet. Top Myer had briefed him first thing that morning on the news Sergeant Major Parant had given him and Bass after the poker game last night. Sure enough, it was Commander Van Winkle, his battalion commander. "Captain, I'll be in your orderly room in five minutes. Be sure your first sergeant and Gunny Bass are there." The screen went back to the personnel projections, but Conorado was no longer interested in them.

Gunnery Sergeant Bass reported to his commanding officer three minutes and twelve seconds after the battalion commander's image blinked off Conorado's computer screen; Commander Van Winkle and Sergeant Major Parant arrived one minute, fifteen seconds later. Conorado, Top Myer, and Bass were waiting when they came through the door.

"You're early," Conorado joked as they came in.

"Into your office, Captain." Van Winkle nodded toward Conorado's open office door, not taking the humor of the moment. The four Marines trooped in and the door closed behind them, leaving the three enlisted Marines sitting in the outer office looking at each other in astonishment.

"I don't like it when things I don't understand begin to affect the men assigned to my command," Van Winkle began without preamble. "This," he handed Conorado a set of battalion orders, "I do not understand." Conorado glanced at the orders, looked up questioningly at his battalion commander and then handed them to Myer and Bass, who pretended to look surprised when they read them. Sergeant Major Parant, standing behind his commanding officer, nodded at Myer and winked.

It was just like Top Myer had said. The authority line on the orders read VOCCMC, "verbal orders, Commandant of the Confederation Marine Corps." The Commandant himself had given the order to detach the three Marines and send them off to—to someplace so remote nobody had ever heard of it before.

"Any idea what's behind this, Captain?" Van Winkle asked.

"No, sir. I was going to ask you that same question."

Commander Van Winkle shook his head and sighed. "I guess we're not supposed to know what's up with L Company, Captain. God knows, it's got to be harder on you than anybody else. Well, better get them up here and break the news."

"Where are they now, Charlie?" Conorado asked.

"Down in the VR chamber, practicing aerial gunnery spotting, Skipper," Bass replied. "I'm on my way." He left without further protocol.

"Now I want to know if you have been talking," Bass demanded. Pasquin, Dean, and Claypoole stood at rigid attention before their platoon commander's desk in his tiny office.

"About what, Gunnery Sergeant?" Pasquin asked.

"About Waygone or the Avionia deployment, goddamn it! Have you three been talking down in Bronnys or anywhere to anybody? Out with it!"

"No!" all three answered as one.

Bass stared at the trio silently for what to them seemed a full minute. "Okay," he said at last. "All right.

You know the penalty for talking about those operations. Well, digest these, then," he said, handing each a copy of the battalion order.

Each read them once, then twice. "Holy Hanna," Pasquin exclaimed. "Where's No-Novo Khongor, Gunny? What's the
Wanganui
?"

"One set of dress reds?" Claypoole asked, reading the orders. "What kind of deployment is this, Gunny?"

"Khongor is way the hell and gone from here, and we're nowhere," Bass replied. "The
CNSS

Wanganui
(AGS 742) is a goddamned surveying ship," he added disgustedly.

"Oh, no," Dean whispered "Surveying" reminded him of Society 437. "Gunny, are we being sent out as Marine guards on some surveying mission?" The question was so preposterous Bass had to laugh. Dean's face turned red. Pasquin and Claypoole joined in the laughter, but they weren't so sure the question was such a dumb one.

"Okay, here's what this means," Bass said at last. "The Commandant of the Marine Corps himself has issued verbal orders detaching you for some kind of duty on the
Wanganui
. I thought at first you'd blabbed and this was just the Corps' way of covering up an embarrassment, three of its men being sent off to Darkside—"

"Shit!" Pasquin exclaimed. Dean and Claypoole started violently.

"Belay that!" Bass commanded. "Belay that. I don't think that's what this is all about. I did at first, but not now. You said you didn't blab, so you didn't. Besides," a wry smile crossed the platoon commander's face, "who ever heard of going off to jail in your dress reds?

"All right. We're going up to see the Skipper, and then Top Myer wants to talk to you three."

Within twenty-four hours every man in L Company was convinced Pasquin, Dean, and Claypoole were in fact on their way to Darkside, and each began uneasily reviewing every word he'd said, drunk or sober, since the company had returned from Avionia. One thing they all knew for sure: Pasquin, Dean, and Claypoole were definitely in some very deep shit.

Top Myer accompanied the trio into orbit. There he swung every bit of weight a first sergeant can swing to be allowed onto the fast combat support ship, the
CNSS Yi Sun Pok
, which would carry them to Novo Khongor and eventual rendezvous with the
Wanganui
. He needed a private meeting with his Marines before the starship launched.

He closed and dogged the hatch to the small compartment the three men would live in during this journey to... wherever the hell Novo Khongor was. Then he stood, feet spread, fists jammed on his hips, and glared at them long enough to make them very nervous. He kept glaring until they began to sweat.

"I don't know where you're really going or what you did," he began softly, "but it can't be anywhere or anything good. What did you do?"

The three cast quick glances at each other. Pasquin, as senior man, spoke. "We didn't do anything wrong, Top. Honest."

Myer snorted. "A corporal and two lance corporals? Infantry? You expect me to believe you didn't do anything wrong? What, do you think I've spent my career as a chaplain's assistant?" They later swore that smoke and flames shot from his nostrils when he snorted.

"All right, then, answer one question for me—and tell me the absolute truth." He waited until each of them agreed. "Did any of you say anything, I mean word one, to anyone outside of Company L about what really happened on Avionia?"

"No, Top!" they said simultaneously.

"Absolutely not, First Sergeant," Corporal Pasquin said. "We all know what would happen to anyone who let it slip. I think before anybody in the company would let anything slip you'd have to get him so drunk he couldn't talk."

Myer peered intently at them. They didn't flinch, and he decided they were probably telling the truth.

"Well, then," he said in a more conversational voice, "the three of you, for reasons unknown, are departing on a deployment to a place nobody I know has ever heard of on an unspecified mission. As you well know, every time Company L or an element of it deploys, I give an unofficial briefing to the men before we arrive on-station. Sometimes I have information to impart that is unavailable to our commanders. Sometimes I put a different slant on the mission." As he spoke he removed his fists from his hips and clasped his hands behind his back. He began pacing from side to side; the compartment only allowed two steps in each direction. "This is the only chance I have to brief you on this mission, and it's very difficult because I have no idea where you're going or what your mission is." He shook his head and a corner of his eye twitched. Three of his Marines were going somewhere and he had no idea what harm they would face. What could he possibly say to help them accomplish their mission and stay alive and unharmed?

"You are Marines. Moreover, you are members of the most decorated combat unit in the Confederation Marine Corps, 34th FIST. Even more than that, you are members of Company L, the best infantry company in the entire Marine Corps. You know that." He wheeled on them and glared.

"Don't let it go to your heads! It doesn't matter how good a Marine you are or how good your unit is. All it takes is one lucky shot and you're dead! That's what combat is, it's a toss of a coin." He stopped glaring and resumed pacing.

"Wherever this place is you're going, whatever your mission is, once you get there, remember four things. You are among the best of the best. You represent not only yourselves, but Company L, 34th FIST, and the entire Marine Corps. You will accomplish your mission, whatever it is, and you will return to Camp Ellis alive and in one piece." He glared again. "Just remember, if you don't come back to me alive and in one piece, your asses are mine." He came to attention. "Corporal Pasquin, Lance Corporal Claypoole, Lance Corporal Dean, good hunting." He grasped each of their hands to shake, then spun about and left, almost forgetting to undo the hatch before opening it.

"Don't you ever scrub the air in this scow?" he snarled at the first sailor he passed. Particles in the air had to be the explanation for his watering eyes.

CHAPTER EIGHT

This happened a dozen years earlier:

"Mud. That's all this damn place has," First Geologist Donny Yort snorted.

Only one of the people seated at the conference table in the senior staff meeting room reacted to the geologist's blunt statement, Dr. Horter Hottenbaum, the administrative chief of the exploratory mission to the planet Society 362.

"But—" Hottenbaum began.

Yort looked levelly at his boss and cut him off. "Mud to a depth of up to a mile in places." Yort enjoyed making people think by using archaic units of measurement. He pushed a button on the control panel set into the tabletop in front of him. A series of 2-D images marched past on vidscreens placed so everyone at the table could see them without turning around. The display wasn't necessary, but Yort also enjoyed showing graphically what he was talking about—he believed it made people think what he was saying had great importance and they would pay it closer attention. Some of the images were of low, shallow-sided hills, others of plains; several showed forests that appeared more to drip than to grow.

Inset in the corner of each image was a close-up of the ground, which was uniformly brown and wet.

"Nowhere less than a hundred meters. My opinion is that just getting through the mud to begin drilling for minds could make drilling cost-prohibitive."

"But Engineering's got..." Hottenbaum twirled a hand in front of his chest; he was a botanist and couldn't think of the term. "...got stuff to harden mud so it can be drilled through." He looked at Chief Engineer Baahl for confirmation.

"Polyfrazillium-3," Baahl said. "Inexpensive, easy to use. Can cake a hundred-meter-diameter column of firm dirt through a mud lake half a kilometer deep."

"So—" Hottenbaum looked triumphantly back at Yort, but Baahl interrupted him. "On a dry day." The chief engineer shook her head.

Hottenbaum was so dismayed by her comment he didn't notice the way her hair billowed out when she shook her head, a sight he normally loved. "Beg pardon?" he said.

"Polyfrazillium-3 won't set on a day with humidity over seventy-five percent. I don't think anyplace on this planet ever dries out that much." Baahl glanced at the chief meteorologist for confirmation.

"To put it in layman's terms," Chief Meteorologist Slyvin said with a shrug as he pushed a button on his console, "the sun never shines here." He stifled a smile when that pompous Yort's images were replaced by his. The images of the planetary surface were replaced with a picture taken of the planet during the exploration ship's approach several months earlier. It showed solid, globe-girdling cloud cover. "The average humidity planet-wide is ninety-two percent. Average number of days per annum without rain in all reporting areas, 0.7. Average annual rainfall in all reporting areas..." He shook his head. "I don't understand why Society 362 isn't covered with a worldwide ocean."

Society 362 had an unofficial name, Quagmire, but nobody ever used it in staff meetings or anyplace else it would be recorded.

"But—" Society 362 was the first exploration mission on which Hottenbaum was chief administrator.

He dearly wanted it found habitable so it could be colonized. Few scientists ever served as chief administrator on more than one expedition. He needed a finding of habitability to ensure his place in history.

Dr. Achille Marcks, the expedition's chief psychologist, knew that and wasn't about to let Hottenbaum raise another objection. He cleared his throat loudly and said, "Dr. Hottenbaum, let me remind you that nearly three-quarters of the members of this expedition are veterans of at least one other BHHEI mission, and several hundred have multiple explorations behind them. We have been here for eight standard months. The weather, with its constant overcast, is such that 943 out of the 1,006 people on this expedition have had to be treated for the form of depression known as ‘seasonal affective disorder.’ At this time..." He consulted his personal vid even though he could have used the tabletop console to put the data up for all to see as the geologist and meteorologist had. "...261 are unable to perform more than the most rudimentary functions of their roles due to SAD. Perhaps a few score of them will require extended talk and/or chemical therapy after they leave here. Psychology has no choice but to recommend, in the strongest terms, against colonization."

"But the centauroid life-forms are so interesting, they have to be studied." Hottenbaum turned pleading eyes toward the faunal life-form group head.

"Come on, Horter!" said Chief Biologist Winny Rendall. "We've seen heptapods on enough other worlds; they've lost their novelty."

"But they don't have heads—"

Rendall cut him off with a sharp laugh. "So what? When you look at the location of the sense and ingestion organs, everything is within the normal range of location and relationship." He shrugged "Casing the brain inside the thorax makes more sense than our exposed housing. The head and neck are pretty vulnerable to injury, you know."