Major (The United Federation Marine Corps Book 5) Read online

  “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 to
ok 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.

  Chapter 14

  “Major? A Major Nidischii’s here to see you,” Teresa sent to him over his PA.

  She was sitting only 4 meters away in the outer office, but she always used the PA paging circuit when she had something to say. Some days, he wondered if she ever left her desk from the time she sat down in the morning until she left in the afternoon.

  Almost immediately, Bert came into the side office and asked, “You got a moment?”

  Ryck had more than a moment. He’d been spending his last 45 minutes playing Bojangle Beat on his PA. It may have been considered a kids’ game, but he’d gotten hooked on it while playing the twins at home, and now his competitive nature was pushing him to get to the point where he could beat Esther, the family champion.

  “Sure. What’s up?”

  Bert took Gunny Harris’ seat, pulling it over closer to Ryck’s. “You willing to leave this cush job?” he asked.

  Ryck looked at him stupidly before asking, “What do you mean?”

  “This job,” Bert said, sweeping one arm to take in the tiny office. “Do you want to cut your tour short?”

  Ryck’s heart jumped.

  Damned grubbing right I do, he said to himself.

  “How? I’ve got almost two years left here,” he said out loud instead.

  “Well, you know that I’m going to the Raiders in another two months,” Bert started.

  “Uh, kinda hard to forget it as often as you tell me about it.”

  LtCol (Sel)[8] Nidischii had been given orders to the Marine Corps Special Operations Battalion, the Raiders, as its new commander. Bert had wanted a straight infantry battalion as some of the specialty battalions could put impede an officer’s career, but a command was a command, and Marines don’t turn them down. If the command board thought Bert was the best man for the billet, then that was that.

  “Yeah, well, anyway, one of the company commanders is now in regen for the next nine months”

  “Regen? We don’t have any of the Raider companies in action yet,” Ryck said, pulling up the week’s report as if he didn’t know it by heart.

  “Not combat, but a hover accident. Pretty bad, I guess.”

  Hover accident? That royally sucks, Ryck thought.

  A Marine is always aware of the risks of his job. It was part and parcel to what he was required to do. But a hover accident was so mundane that it was unexpected.

  “The bottom line is that we need someone, and someone quick. Someone with recon experience, someone with combat experience, someone with command experience. As I’m the incoming commander, LtCol Entebbe asked me if I knew of someone with these qualifications. Do you know anyone like that?”

  He wanted to jump out of his chair, hand in the air while shouting “Me! Me!”

  But it wasn’t that simple. He hadn’t really checked off his headquarters tour yet. And he’d be working for his friend. Their relationship would change again, and working alongside people for whom you cared was not easy. He’d learned that with Joshua.

  Most of all, though, there was Hannah and the kids. He’d gotten used to being around them, being both a husband and father. He wanted to say yes to Bert, his heart screamed out to say yes, but what would Hannah say? What would she think?

  “I don’t know what to say. I’m honored that you would consider me—” he started to reply.

  “Who says anything about you? I was just asking you if you knew of anyone,” Bert said.

  Ryck stared at his friend in confusion, afraid he’d misunderstood. Bert looked back at him with a serious expression for a few moments before he broke out into laughter.

  “Of course I want you. I’ve already gotten the OK from Colonel Lipper-Mendoza,” he said, referring to the SpecOps Group commander, “and I’ve talked to Colonel Ketter. He’s agreed to cut the orders if you want. You’re covered here as far as that’s concerned. Really, all I need is a yes to get the ball rolling.

  “I need to tell you, though, that while the battalion’s here for now, the companies won’t be for much longer. Things are coming up.”

  Ryck didn’t bother to ask what. Unless he was in the battalion, he didn’t have the “need to know,” and Bert couldn’t tell him anything. The recent redesignation of the battalion as the “Raider”
battalion was a hint, though. The original Raiders, Edson’s and Carlson’s Raiders back in the old US Marines during World War Two, were elite units that performed difficult amphibious missions. They might have been the first SpecOps in the US to see action, but their mission was more combat than recon. Rumors abounded, but if the name meant anything, there wouldn’t be as much poopin’ an’ snoopin’ but something more in the lines of taking it to the bad guys.

  “Uh, well, I need to talk to Hannah and see what she says,” he said, already trying to form in his mind just how he was going to bring it up with her.

  “Sure thing. It’s just that I’ve got to know. Can you tell me by morning? The company needs a new commander and ASAP. If you don’t want it, then we’ve got to decide on someone else.”

  “Oh, I want it. You know me. But I can’t just make a decision like that on my own. I’ve got Hannah and the kids.”

  “Of course,” Bert said. “I realize that, and I am not trying to push you. I think you’re the man for the job, but it’s your decision.”

  “Sure, I understand. And yeah, I’ll let you know in the morning.”

  “OK, then. I’m going to shove off. Larry’s going into surgery in an hour, and I want to be there when he goes in.”

  “Larry Painter? He’s who got hurt?”

  Bert nodded.

  “Tell him—uh, no, maybe not. It might sound too weird coming from me if I do take over his company.”

  “No, I think it’s OK. I tell him you wish him well. He’s never been a genhen, so coming from an experienced genhen like you, he’ll appreciate it.

  “But now that I see you’re only on Level 4,” Bert said, using his pursed lips to point at Ryck’s PA, which was on his desk, “maybe you aren’t the man for the job. Can you even beat Esther yet?”

  “Eat me,” Ryck said with a laugh. “I doubt that you could beat her, either.”

  “Ah, but I’m not stupid enough to challenge her,” Bert said. “Sometimes it’s more important to know when to pick your battles. Anyway, I’m off. Tell Hannah hello from me, but don’t you go blaming me for trying to take you away for three more years.”