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Master Sergeant Repeth bolted breakfast and immediately went to talk to Captain LeBrun. She’d formally reported to him yesterday evening in her dress uniform, but there had been little time to talk. The formation of Homeland Security troops she had seen one barracks over had brought some questions to her mind.
“What is it, Repeth?” LeBrun was a weathered man, tanned leather over Eden Plague over age, she thought. He seems old inside, old for an Army captain, most of whom are younger than thirty. Maybe he’s up from the ranks. She pushed her speculations aside.
“I was wondering about the Homeland Security platoon next door, sir. What are they doing here? Are they coming along?”
“Yes, they’re coming along. That’s actually a company, Master Sergeant. Smaller unit size, though they will pick up a few more before we go.”
She frowned. “It may not be my place to say, sir, but...unless they’re Edens now...”
LeBrun nodded. “The atrocities.” He took a deep drag from his cigarette, and Repeth noticed the well-used ashtray, formed in the shape of a Ranger tab, half-full of butts. Fresh butts, she thought, since first thing this morning.
“Yes, sir. I wonder how many had ‘SS’ instead of ‘HS’ on their uniforms just a few weeks or months ago. There were a lot of bad apples in the Security Service.”
LeBrun stared at her, leaning back in his creaking metal chair, a piece of furniture that, like everything else in these barracks, looked like it had been in use continuously since the Vietnam conflict. “And I heard you have some personal experience with them.”
He picked up a file from his desk. Inside she caught a glimpse of her own official photo. He spoke as he skimmed, “Triathlete, black belt in several martial arts, never failed to max the male standard PT test, even went to the Olympic track and field trials. Expert in all weapons quals, honor grad at your 3RT school, honor grad at jump school, distinguished grad at Close Quarters Combat school, on and on and on. Lost both feet to a mortar shell in Iraq where you were assigned to train their police in special tactics. And then it ends abruptly. The report says you deserted, were convicted in absentia and dishonorably discharged, but it’s a Unionist document so I don’t put much stock in it.”
LeBrun tossed the file back onto his desk with a thump. “Then it picks back up with a blizzard of nearly simultaneous orders – signed by the President, for Pete’s sake – pardoning you for all acts, rescinding the charge of desertion, reinstating you in the Marine Corps, promoting you, awarding you the goddamn Navy Cross for saving the President’s life, and then assigning you to humble little me.” His expression was not unfriendly, but skeptical.
“And you want the gaps filled in.”
“That would be nice,” he said drily. “I do need to know my people.”
“Yes, sir. I contracted the Eden Plague on the cruise ship Royal Neptune – the one they sunk on Infection Day. I swam across to the USS Somerset and sneaked aboard. I found the chaplain there and told her what was going on – she believed me once they sank the cruise ship – and she smuggled me off with the wounded. I thought about rejoining my unit but my feet were regrowing. I hid the situation as long as I could, but when martial law was declared they mandated Eden Plague testing for everyone. That was when I went AWOL. On the other hand, they had suspended the Constitution, so –”
LeBrun waved her explanations away with his hand. “Never mind the legalities, just the facts.”
“Yes, sir. Well, they caught me in Alabama when I ran out of mountains to hide in. They put me in a camp in Iowa. I escaped from that, made it to the Mexico border, swam the Rio Grande and made my way to South America. I volunteered for the Free Communities Armed Forces. US refugees with the right training were being swept into a Special Operations command under Colonel Nguyen, who was working for Chairman Markis. I was involved in a number of missions culminating in my...well, in the action described on the award.”
“Singlehandedly saving the life of the President of the United States,” LeBrun quoted from the award’s text. “What in the hell do I do with you, Repeth?”
“What do you mean, sir?” She drew herself up, dropping unconsciously to parade rest.
“You’re a bona fide hero, but you’ve been fighting against your country for the last ten years.”
Her expression tightened. “With all due respect, sir, the UGNA wasn’t my country. My country is the people and Constitution of the United States, and I was fighting for them, against the fascists. Sir.”
LeBrun stood up, and she realized he was no taller than she was, a whippet of a man of perhaps five foot eight, but his sharp eyes and intense demeanor gave him an outsized presence. He took a final drag on his current smoke, then ground it out. “Good. I just wanted to hear it from your own lips, Top.” Clearly the nickname was an expression of trust: “you are my top soldier,” in Army terms.
He reached up to the breast pocket of his camouflage jacket and pulled out a new pack of cigarettes, looking speculatively at her as he performed the smoker’s ritual of rapping the packet twice on his palm to seat the tobacco, opening the cellophane, then the box lid, then the foil inside, finally drawing forth one of the coffin nails to light with tilted head.
She suddenly had a vision of him with a fedora, film noir.
LeBrun took a deep drag before he spoke, fragrant smoke puffing from his lips with his words. “Do you think you’ll have any problem making the adjustment from the Special Operations mentality back to a line unit?”
She took a slow breath, thinking over her response. “Not if you let me do my job my way, sir,” she finally said.
“By which you mean stay out of your hair. You’re the only platoon leader that isn’t an officer. On the books you’re just my platoon sergeant and I’m the platoon leader. That means there’s no green looey to blame things on if they go wrong. No buffer between you and me. That means neither of us gets any excuses for screw-ups. You okay with that, Master Sergeant?”
She nodded sharply. “Yes, sir.”
“Fair enough.” He waved in the direction of the door with the hand holding the smoke. “You’re dismissed.”
“Sir.” Repeth snapped to attention, faced about and marched sharply out of his office. She was halfway to her barracks office when she realized they hadn’t discussed the Homeland Security company. She wondered whether that was deliberate.
