BY JAMIE McFARLANE
TRAINING
To say I was excited at being picked to be in the Mechanized Infantry (MI) was something of an understatement. My new special squad and I had spent the better part of the last year slogging around in the hellhole the rest of the world called the Amazon. The one contributing factor to our selection into MI appeared to have been simply surviving a multitude of firefights without significant loss of irreplaceable or overly expensive body parts. It was math only the corporate-minded brass could come up with.
My excitement stemmed from the fact that MI units spent the majority of their time cocooned in fully mechanized, entirely enclosed, environmentally managed suits. Call me a whiner, but I’d spent enough time freezing my ass off in a puddle of mud and placed a high value on that last item—environmentally managed. If I was going to get shot at, at least my frakking feet would be dry.
Training in a Popeye, the name given to mech suits that I still don’t understand the reference to, is something akin to learning to walk for the first time from a baby’s perspective. The idea seems simple enough. Even worse, experienced operators make it look effortless. The first few weeks of training are spent doing simple tasks: standing up, sitting down, jogging in a straight line, jumping over progressively larger things, etc. Every day is harder than the last.
“Hoffen. Front and center. On the double!” The tactical command channel overrode all other communication and my squad leader’s voice, one Sergeant Asinhat, came through loud and clear. And yes, that’s his name. No I didn’t make it up. And yes he was one tough sonnavabitch because of it.
“Aye, aye, Sergeant!” I jumped, sailing four meters over my squad mate, Flick, and landed hard in the soft sand on the bank of the river. My miscalculation of weight, force and all the other crap I was supposed to keep in mind at all times caused my boots to sink half a meter into the crap they called tiger-shit around here. Worse yet, my landing splashed said tiger-shit up onto Asinhat’s shiny, clean suit.
“Just when I think there might be hope for you, Hoffen, you go and pull a stupid stunt like that,” he growled. “When we’re at rest, you’re going to polish my Popeye until Olive gets a hard on. You read me?”
“Yes, Sergeant,” I answered, snappily. There wasn’t a lot of latitude with Sergeant Asinhat and I’d learned when you screwed up, it was best to just take what was coming your way. I wasn’t sure where he was headed with the vegetables, but his intent was plenty clear.
SQUAD OF MONKEYS
“Today’s your lucky day though,” Asinhat continued. “We just got a call from the CO. Skampers overran Ichcapan with a platoon of squishies. She wants us to go over and clean ‘em out.” It was one of the confusing aspects of the Amazonian war—the Skampers didn’t have any more right to the contested area than did North America. I felt like we held the high ground in that our objective was to push the bastards out, although I wasn’t naïve enough to think we’d be going anywhere once we’d accomplished that task. The Amazonian forest was filled with resources and everyone on the planet wanted ‘em.
The idea of engaging a platoon of squishies was exhilarating. The weapons most squishies carried couldn’t do anything to a Popeye, beyond scraping off the lacquer. A platoon might carry a few bigger weapons, but as long as we maintained discipline, they were likely to have a worse day than we were.
Now was not the time to make a big deal of the fact that I was sinking deeper into the tiger-shit and in imminent danger of being balls-deep if I didn’t do something. Standing at ease, though, I couldn’t exactly wallow around and extract myself.
“Aye, Sergeant!” I answered. There was nothing to be done about my predicament so I resigned myself to work it out once the opportunity presented itself.
“I’m short a team leader and you’re up,” he said. “Think you can handle that?”
“Yes, Sergeant!” I answered. A tingle of excitement ran up my spine. It was my first team lead and I was ready.
“You’re going to take Flick, Corden and Quinfan to the north side of Ichcapan. I’ll take Speth, Rajish, and Mingli up the south road. You boys aren’t qualified for ammo yet, but if we move quick, it won’t matter. And I don’t need any heroes on this, you understand me? You’re wearing a million and a half creds of gear we can’t afford to be handing over to the Skampers, you copy?”
“Copy that, Sergeant,” I answered.
“Damn it,” Asinhat replied, recognizing my dilemma. He shoved his heavily armored arm toward my face shield. “Grab on. You look ridiculous.”
It was the change I’d been looking for. By offering to help, I was able to break parade rest and fire the arc-jets embedded in the soles of my boots. Between his pulling and my pushing with the arc-jets, my three-meter-tall suit exited the shite easily and I gently landed next to him.
“Why the frak didn’t you fire those jets earlier?”
“My mistake, Sergeant,” I answered. “Won’t happen again.”
He shook his head but didn’t say anything. I watched his face through the clear, armor glass screen, as he handed out orders and set up tactical comm channels. After about a minute, my HUD’s display broke into two windows which I could see fully if I glanced to my right. One window had mission instructions from Asinhat, including navigation plans to get us through the dense jungle to the north side of the small village of Ichcapan. A village, might I add, that I could see neither strategic nor tactical value in, beyond that it was now occupied by Skampers. The other window provided a health and wellness display of my team: Flick, Corden and Quinfan.
“Any questions?” Asinhat asked.
“Where are we picking up a loadout?” I asked. We hadn’t yet trained with live ammo, and had dud loads on our backs so we wouldn’t be thrown off balance when we finally started. Popeyes were pretty amazing; each with the capacity to manufacture several different munition types, from simple jacketed fifty-cals, to heavier ERs (explosive rounds) as well as three different levels of EEs (explosive ordnance) – flash-bangs, grenades and BFGs (big fucking grenades).
“No loadout,” Asinhat answered. “A squad of monkeys could take out a platoon of Skampers in these suits and we have neither the time nor training for it. Get your team in position on the north side of Ichcapan in sixty minutes, you copy?”
“Aye, aye, Sergeant,” I answered. I didn’t like it. The idea of going into battle without ordnance struck me as hubris. Sure, when I was a squishy, I had nightmares of mechs showing up with or without loadouts. But to send a grunt into battle without ammo felt like an unpardonable sin. That said, I wasn’t in the business of questioning orders.
CONTACT
“Flick, scout ahead but don’t get more than fifty meters out, copy?” I ordered. None of us had known each other before joining the mechanized infantry but we’d become as close as four strangers could in our few weeks of training. It wasn’t a surprise to any of us that one of us was advanced to squad leader. That’s just the way the Marines operated and we’d seen enough combat to appreciate lack of confusion about where orders came from. I was probably the most surprised of any of them at my own appointment.
“Copy that, team leader,” he replied and crashed ahead along the jungle path. While he was the surest footed of the group, he conveyed zero stealth. Generally, a Popeye suit didn’t require a lot of stealth, but I might rather have kept surprise on our side, while Flick was taking more of a blitzkrieg approach.
“We’re Oscar Mike,” I announced and followed Flick down the path that would lead us to our destination on the north side of Ichcapan. I expected him to divert from the path and check for patrols. I was disappointed when I realized his navigation trail showed he hadn’t diverted even once in the first ten minutes.
“Hold up, Flick,” I said.
“Aye, aye,” he answered.
“You’re not scouting,” I said as we caught up to his location. “You’re just barreling down the path. What if you run into resistance?”
“I kick their asses, TL,” he replied, his voice indicating a certain amount of reproach.
“I was hoping to get intel,” I pushed back.
“No covering up Popeye’s approach, “ he said.
I recognized the swagger for what it was. Flick was convinced, as was reasonable, that we were more than enough for the platoon of Skampers and he wanted to get there first.
“Damn it, Flick, we have next to zero intel and no ammo,” I said.
“Fine,” he said. “Send me out again, I’ll stay off the path and try to be quiet. Satisfied?”
I sighed. “Fifty meters, no more.”
He turned and jogged down the path making an exaggerated show of jumping into the thick forest. I sighed. I should have taken him down, right then and there for his half-hearted attempt at following my orders, but I lacked the benefit of foresight. War is definitely a cruel teacher, as I was about to find out for not the last time in my military career.
About ten minutes from objective, Flick’s heart beat monitor spiked. We were all working hard to traverse the forest, and Flick harder than the rest of us. But this wasn’t just elevation due to exercise, something had his attention.
“Contact!” he exclaimed almost immediately.
“What do you have?” I slaved my suit to Quinfan so that it would follow along in his path. My AI would take every step Quinfan took, in just the same way, which would allow me to focus on something else for a moment. I switched my HUD’s view to Flick’s. He’d stopped moving about half a click ahead of our position and I cursed as I realized he’d exceeded my ordered max distance by ten times. One way or another I was going to hand him a beating when this was done.
Using a HUD to look through another suit isn’t perfect and Flick saw something that I hadn’t picked up on. Forty squishies had taken position behind barriers and were firing on him. It was a useless gesture, just as running would have been for them.
“Hoffen, I’m frakked,” Flick cried out and he turned away from the line of men. From the corner of suit’s optical sensors I saw something that made my heart sink. A grav-tank was dug in and had lined up on our approach. Someone must have heard Flick coming, or he’d tripped a cry-baby. Whatever had happened, he was deep in the shite.
“We’re coming!” I said and took control back from Quinfan. “Team, on the double!”
I surged forward. No way were we leaving Flick to stand alone against a grav-tank, even though we didn’t carry a single thing that could stand against it. Damn it, Flick.
An unhindered mech suit can move at ridiculous speeds. Double that if you’re willing to take risks. I’d put Flick into the position he was in and I’d be damned if I wouldn’t do everything possible to get him out. A mech suit’s armor is nano-crystalized steel, which is about the hardest thing humans know how to make. The only real threat on the battlefield was a really big gun. The type of gun only another mech can carry, or worse yet, the big gun mounted atop a grav-tank.
On my HUD, Flick’s bio sensors grayed out just a moment before a wave of destruction caused by an explosion radiated through the dense jungle.
TWO HUNDRED KILO GORILLA
“Shit,” Corben said.
I muted the team comm channel and switched over to Asinhat’s command channel. “Sergeant, Flick’s down,” I reported. “There’s a grav-tank and it’s tracking us.”
“Find cover,” he replied. “I’ll take it out.”
My HUD showed that Asinhat’s squad was two minutes out – a lifetime in close-quarters combat.
“Incoming!” Quinfan’s comm broke through; the AI recognizing the tactical value of his statement.
I turned. The grav-tank’s smaller gun, one still big enough to cause us problems, although not quite the finger of death as the main gun, was hammering away at the vegetation, clearing a deadly path in our direction.
“There’s two of them,” Corben’s panicky voice cut through.
“Pull back,” I ordered. “On me. On me!” I repeated. In the heat of battle, it was easy to lose track of orders. I’d mentally marked a bluff only a click away. The grav-tanks would have to work hard to chew their way through the forest in order to catch us and that would leave them open to Asinhat’s squad.
I stumbled forward as I took the punch of a lighter tank round in the shoulder. My suit’s display showed damage, but I was still operational. Quinfan and Corben had both taken hits and it looked like Corben’s suit was nearing failure. We leapt up the side of the hill just about the time Corben’s suit actually gave out.
“Eject, Corben,” I said. It was a hard order to receive. The suit would provide protection against the ground forces, but he’d be a sitting duck to anything bigger.
“Frak you!” he replied.
“Damn it!” I said and overrode his suit’s command structure, depositing him onto the ground. He banged his hands into my helmet as I picked him up. Quinfan and I continued up the two-hundred-meter slope that wouldn’t slow the tanks down too awfully much.
“Hold your position, Hoffen,” Asinhat ordered. “We’re having trouble catching up.”
I looked at my HUD’s tactical map in confusion. We’d made good time running through the forest, but Asinhat and his squad should be making incredible time following an enemy through the ruined forest.
“You gotta be kidding me,” I answered. “Corben’s out of his suit. Flick’s already down.”
“That’s an order, Hoffen,” he replied.
“Frak!”
I jumped in the air. Using the benefit of the arc-jets in my boots I slowed my descent enough to deposit Corben on the branch of a big tree. My plan had been to lead the Skampers away from his position, but my orders were contrary. I’d never directly disobeyed an order during combat. I didn’t believe in it, even if it meant my life. Any decent Marine in leadership had to make hard decisions even when it meant sacrificing a couple for the benefit of a bigger group. Didn’t mean I liked it.
“On me!” I ordered Quinfan. “Coming at you, Sergeant!” If I couldn’t put more distance between what remained of my squad and the tanks, I’d at least not lead them right to Corben, who I suspected was fit to be tied.
“Copy that, Hoffen, almost in range,” Asinhat replied.
There’s a certain clarity of purpose derived when running into fire as opposed to away. In the latter case, there’s an expectation that eventually, you’ll outdistance or evade the fire and reach safety. In the former, there’s a certainty that every step ratchets up the tension. Both had their place and if Asinhat needed time to catch up; then by god, I was going to give it to him.
That said, I wasn’t suicidal either. A grav-tank doesn’t have tracks like the legendary tanks from so long ago. Instead, they hover along anywhere from two to four meters above the ground. Basically, they’re a floating, heavily-armored turret with a bad attitude. The thing is, that with all the destruction they were doing, the definition of where the ground was, was starting to become a fungible topic. With all the crap they were knocking down, they were pretty well elevated.
Now it’s not the case that anything can be done from below a tank. It’s been tried and maybe in the beginning it was a good idea, but nowadays those tanks have a layer of armor that can withstand damn near anything. You can actually explode something big enough that tosses the tank like popcorn from an uncovered pan, but it’s mostly just inconvenient.
For Quinfan and me, however, the wreckage gave us some pretty good lanes in which to hide. Grav-tanks aren’t really designed to aim below their horizon and we were going to take advantage of that.
“Fire, danger close!” Asinhat warned over tactical. I checked the HUD and he was right. He’d lined up on the first tank and we were directly in his line of fire. Quinfan and I jumped up from the toppled tree mess, scrabbling over the thick trunks like the lizards we’d observed so many times back at camp. We’d be open for a second, but if Asinhat was going to unleash what I would have, a few dents from the smaller tank guns was the least of our worries
There’s a basic problem with crawling up and over a pile of logs, especially when highly explosive shells are involved. For less than a quarter of a second, my butt was in the air. That was all it took for the blast wave to catch me dead on that same ass, picking me up and tossing me through the air. It was the sort of thing the mech suit’s inertial systems were good at absorbing. It turned out we’d yet to train on how to roll into a protective ball, using the heavier plating on the back, somewhat mimicking the armadillos I’d seen once in a zoo. More importantly, it’s just not that big of an idea and I self-taught the skill in midflight.
Don’t let anyone fool you, inertial systems are great, but the suit designers are all about survival and comfort is not high on their list. I can confirm that being thrown through a fully grown tree is painful. I know what you’re thinking, the blast wave probably softened it up for me. Tell you what, give it a try and get back to me on that.
I checked Quinfan’s biologicals and found he was still up. My position as TL for Team Two gave me access to the first squad’s tactical displays. Asinhat had disabled the first tank, but in the process, he’d opened himself up to reprisal. I looked on in disbelief as he turned toward the second tank, its turret zeroing in on him at the same moment. If he’d simply run, he might have stood a chance, but that just wasn’t the type of man he was. They say heroes aren’t born, they’re just ordinary people who do ordinary things under extraordinary circumstances. I call bullshit. There was nothing ordinary about Sergeant Asinhat as he stared down a forty tonne grav tank and traded shots.
There’s a general rule in combat I’ve learned to accept – bullets make a mess out of people.
I’d have given Asinhat a zero percent chance of surviving his stand-and-deliver approach to a tank that outweighed him by thirty-nine and a half tonnes. The frakked up part is that his shot went high, just grazing the top hatch, which I’ll get back to in a minute. The second thing that didn’t go as expected was that the Sergeant wasn’t turned to paste. Instead, the tank’s round clipped his arm or shoulder, hell it could have been his pinky for all I knew, but the generally explosive round simply ripped off the right side of his suit.
“Squad control transferred,” my AI announced and my squad display updated, showing four new Marines under my control, including Asinhat, whose bios showed critical, but alive.
For as long as Marines have existed, we’ve lived by a simple credo – leave no man behind. For whatever reason, Asinhat had seen fit to make me TL and now with his inability to lead, squad leadership fell to me. I had two options, cut our losses or recover the sergeant. As long as Asinhat’s bios were up, there would be no running.
“Rajish, get me a tactical scan on that tank,” I ordered. In my peripheral, I’d caught that Asinhat’s round had struck the tank, I needed to know just how much damage he’d caused.
“Everyone else, stay low,” I said.
Find best view of strike on tank. My AI accessed every soldier’s combat data stream and pieced together a vid-sequence. I watched as Asinhat’s round streaked toward the tank and gouged a furrow into the damn thing’s lid. Just about then, Rajish must have jumped up to gather the tac-scan, because I saw the chance I was looking for—the chance that the sergeant’s bravery bought us. It wasn’t just a furrow. He’d popped its top. That explained why the tank’s operators weren’t immediately following up.
“Quinfan – take the team up the bluff and grab Corben,” I said. “Head back to HQ, double-time.”
“What are you doing, TL?” Quinfan asked.
“I got a plan, but need that tank distracted,” I answered and promoted him to TL.
“You heard the man, we’re Oscar Mike,” Quinfan ordered.
I stayed down for a moment as the Skamper tank absorbed the data it was receiving. Four of the original eight Popeyes were making all possible haste from ground zero and they did what any self-respecting, testosterone fueled soldier would do. They gave chase.
Mech suits and grav tanks make good time and it wasn’t more than twenty seconds before I was on my own. My tactical display tracked a few dozen Skamper squishies working their way over to Asinhat, but the AI gave me an estimate of ninety seconds before their arrival. No matter, what I had in mind would take less than thirty.
I jumped up from the cover I’d taken and laid heavily on my arc-jets. The extra lift allowed me to turn in mid-air and I landed atop a fallen tree trunk, my suit’s boots immediately changing the surface of the sole to allow for sure grip. For weeks, we’d practiced negotiating all manner of tricky footings and I made a mental note to never complain about training again. I took off at a run, choosing my footing carefully. The lead squad of squishies dove for cover as I jumped over Asinhat’s unconscious body protectively. I knew they’d recover, but the audacious often win in combat and well, I was going with that.
Asinhat was a bloody mess and at the very least, missing his left arm. The damage to his torso wasn’t particularly clear, but a pink mess of foam covered the pieces of him that were still attached and to my thinking, those were the important bits.
The Skamper squad recovered sufficiently, because I was starting to take an increasing level of well-directed fire. I knew I was protected, but wasn’t certain I could take an entire platoon, which was exactly what was headed my way. No matter, I didn’t intend to be here long enough to make it a party.
I picked Asinhat up and slung him over a shoulder. The mechanized suits add several hundred kilograms to a Marine, and they’re designed to carry a fallen comrade, even when both are fully loaded. To lighten my load, I dropped my dummy loadout. It was then my eye caught that Asinhat’s loadout had dropped to the ground. It was standard procedure, when retrieving an incapacitated Marine still in their suit.
I felt bad as I unceremoniously dropped Asinhat back onto the jungle’s floor. I tried to be gentle, but gentle and hasty collided. Hasty won. I’d strapped on my own dummy loadout enough times that it only took moments for me to clip on the hundred fifty-kilogram pack of death. As soon as I did, new options became available on my HUD. The AI recommended the fifty-cal, full-auto to deal with the Skampers and for a moment, I considered it. I’d have taken a lot of satisfaction in laying down some hurt. The thing was, I had a squad that was being chased by a full-up grav tank, and I needed to get Asinhat out of harm’s way. I pushed down the battle monster and picked Asinhat up again and made tracks.
The mech suit’s ammo manufacturing plant is relatively simple, at least in concept. It mixes the right amount of explosive material with the right type of payload and feeds it through barrels that slide out just past your suit’s glove. The experience for the operator is much like that of firing a pistol, only the pistol has a barrel the size of man’s arm. As I chugged up the hill, following the sweep of destruction made by a grav-tank on full chase mode, I realized that Asinhat had used most of the explosive material. I had plenty enough to manufacture fifty-cal rounds, but tank busting had been taken off the plate. No matter, I had different plans for the tank.
“Quinfan, slow up,” I ordered. “I’m inbound and loaded for bear. That bastard has a weak lid and I’m going to bust it.” My plan was simple. I would jump onto the tank, peel back the lid and let loose a fusillade of fifty-cals. Since a fifty-cal round wouldn’t penetrate the tank’s armor, I figured they’d bounce around inside and do what needed doing.
“Copy that, TL,” Quinfan replied.
Three clicks later, I got my first sighting of the grav-tank. My team had indeed slowed and was weaving back and forth, keeping just ahead of the tank’s light turret range, their movement too sporadic for a lock from the main gun.
You’ve no doubt heard that no plan survives contact with the enemy. It’s a lesson every good Marine needs to learn. Those who are able to adjust accordingly, survive, those who don’t have harder days. The problem appeared to be that someone must have warned the tank that I was coming and I’d picked up a load. Hell, maybe the tank just decided I would be easier to pick off. Whatever it was, my plan wasn’t going to work if I had its undivided attention.
With good line of sight, the tank turned its light turret on my position and started firing away. I was at long range, but with its rate of fire, it wouldn’t take much for it to zero in on me and Asinhat.
“Frak!” I veered off into the jungle at an oblique angle away from the Skamper’s platoon. Now I was caught between two enemies. No doubt, the Skampers would be bringing up some real hardware to deal with my suit.
Turns out there’s one final, and ultimately important rule that applies to more than just battle. And that is that no matter how big you think you are, there’s always someone bigger. Mechs looked down on squishies and tanks look down on mechs. Turns out Hogs look down on all of us. I’d been too busy to pay attention to a command channel that had transferred to me with Asinhat’s squad leadership position. Just like I could override and view every action my squad members were taking, so too was command able to do the same.
To say I was shocked when the Skamper tank simply exploded is something of an understatement. The blast wave caused me to stagger and my visor blanked momentarily, shielding my eyes from its brilliance.
“This is Lieutenant Irawan,” a woman’s calm voice filled my ears. “I understand you boys are looking for a ride. We’re offering a first-class beverage service.” I smiled and shook my head, leave it to the Zoomies.
“Copy that, Lieutenant,” I replied. “We have wounded.”
I finally caught a view of the Warthog that had delivered the kill shot on the tank. While I wasn’t a history buff, even I knew the Warthog had been in existence far longer than dirt and today, I was certainly glad for that. Behind the stubby, little fighter craft a long rectangular transport sailed in and set down next to the tank’s burning hulk. We were in dense jungle and the only clearing available had been created by that explosion.
A mech transport is a straightforward ship. Long rails are suspended at the top and the Marine’s suit clips in, leaving the Marine to hang, feet dangling when the floor drops. In flight, this design allows for insertion from just about any elevation—the suit’s arc-jets are more than capable of arresting the fall on up to 1.2g planets.
With Rajish’s help, I clipped Asinhat into one of three special slots that carried emergency medical facilities and five minutes later we lifted off. I appreciated that the Lieutenant gave us a quick pass over the battlefield where we’d had our asses handed to us. The Hog pilot had made quick work of scattering the Skamper’s platoon. There was no way he or she had gotten them all, but I felt like enough blood had been spilled for that day.
OLD FASHION DRESSING DOWN
Once you’ve been in combat, other things become just a bit less stressful. Early on in boot, I used to feel quite a bit of stress when I was being reamed out for this or that. Turns out, after people have been shooting at you, a red-faced Captain’s ire just doesn’t compare.
Apparently, I’d done about a million things wrong in our encounter. At the top of the list was ignoring the command channel, not fragging Corben’s suit, splitting up the team and on and on. Thing was, she was probably right, although I was concerned she might actually blow an aneurism or something; her face was outrageously red. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was healthy, as foamy bits of spittle exited her mouth and sprinkled my cheeks.
“Are you listening to me?” She was finally finished.
“Yes, Ma’am,” I answered.
“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” I answered.
“And!?”
“I appreciate you sending out that Warthog,” I said. “Saved our bacon.”
She blinked at me, unbelieving. “Are you making a joke?” I replayed the sentence in my mind. The only joke I could imagine was bacon and Warthog.
“No, Ma’am,” I answered.
“Get out!” She pointed to the door.
My steps were light as I exited. I’d expected to be disciplined or worse. The operation was pretty messed up and I was in charge at the end. The Captain had been clear that my inability to reign in Flick at the beginning was a black mark on my record and he’d paid the ultimate price, something she was hanging on me. I understood.
My next stop was to see Asinhat.
“Hoffen,” he acknowledged as I entered the room.
“How are you feeling, Sergeant?” I asked.
“Terrence,” he held up his remaining good hand. “You saved my life out there. I wanted to say thank you.”
I shook his hand. “Pete.”
“I know the Captain probably gave you a pretty good tongue-lashing about Flick. That’s her job, but you did a lot right out there and she knows it. Thing is you kept your head on straight and came up with a plan when it was required. It might not have been my plan, but hindsight is for brass.”
“Any word on your arm?” I asked.
“Turned down,” he answered. “They’re going to patch me up, but the arm’s too expensive and we lost two suits. Simple economics.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Headed stateside in twenty-four,” he said. “It’s okay. I’ll get to see my family and they’re giving me a cushy desk-job.”
“Doesn’t seem right, Sergeant,” I said.
“It’s just how it is,” he said. “Something else. He reached under a leg and pulled out a dark plastic sleeve and handed it to me.”
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Look inside.” I pulled out a rank insignia. It was crossed rifles on a red field with a single pair of stripes, or that of a Lance Corporal.
“Really?”
“Congratulations, Hoffen,” he said, saluting me.
I returned the salute. “Thank you, Sergeant.”
“You earned it.”