And you hate the very thought of getting the personal letter from the Minister of War, Sebastian thought. You're terrified your daughter won't come home one day. Well, you've a right to be … but she's the right to make the decision herself anyway, when the time comes.
"Are you asking-or telling-me not to answer her questions?" he asked. "Not to discuss my life with my granddaughter?"
"Of course not!" Collum's vehement denial was genuine, Sebastian realized. "You're her grandfather, and she loves you. She wants to know about your life, and you have every right in the universe to share it with her. For that matter, you damned well ought to be proud of it; God knows I'd be, in your place! I'm just … worried."
"Have you discussed it with Fiona?"
" 'Discuss' isn't exactly the verb I'd choose." Collum shook his head with an expression Sebastian recognized only too well. Fiona, after all, was very like her mother had been.
"I've voiced my concerns," Collum continued, "and she shares them, I think. But she's got that damned O'Shaughnessy serenity. She just shakes her head and talks about leading horses to water, or tying strings to a pig's back leg."
" 'Serenity' isn't exactly an O'Shaughnessy characteristic," Sebastian said dryly. "Trust me, she got it from her mother's side of the family. But she's a point. You'll not convince Alley to do anything she thinks is wrong. And you'll not convince her not to do anything she thinks is right."
"I know that." Collum inhaled deeply. "And I know it's not something that's going to happen tomorrow, too. But she adores you, Sebastian, and she's not immune to that New Dublin tradition. I'm not saying she wouldn't be considering the Corps even if her grandfather had been a mousy little civilian and not a genuine military hero. I think she would. But I'll be honest. It scares me."
"Of course it does," Sebastian said gently. "And you know I've never tried to glamorize it, or underplay just how ugly it can really be. But I adore her, too, you know. If this is something she's seriously thinking about, then I want her to know what it's really like. The bad, as well as the good. And I promise, I'll never encourage her to do anything behind your back, Collum."
"I never thought you would." Collum stood, and touched his father-in-law lightly on one shoulder. "I guess as much as anything else, I just needed someone to lean on for a moment about it."
Chapter One
The command sergeant major, 502nd Brigade, 17th Division, Imperial Marine Corps, looked up at the crisp, traditional double-tap knock upon his office door.
"Enter!" he said, raising his voice slightly, and the door opened.
He watched critically as the tall, broad-shouldered young woman marched through the doorway, braced to attention, and saluted smartly. There was still just a bit too much of Camp Mackenzie in that salute, he reflected. Too much spit and polish and new, unworn edges. But that was only to be expected in such a recent graduate of the Corps' premier training camp on Old Earth herself.
"Private DeVries reports to the Sergeant Major!" she announced crisply.
He tipped his chair back slightly, examining her with the same, thoughtful expression which had greeted literally generations of new Marines. Her red-gold hair was short, almost plushy, just beginning to grow back out from the traditional close-shaved smoothness of boot camp. Despite the fairness of her natural coloring, she was tanned to a dark, even bronze, and he noted the sinewy strength of the forearms bared by her fatigues' precisely rolled up sleeves. Her boots were mirror bright, the creases in her fatigues sharp as an old-style razor, and a smile hovered invisibly behind his evaluating eyes as he reflected on how happy she must have been to be issued her smart-cloth uniforms. It had been quite a while since his own days at Camp Mackenzie, but he remembered perfectly how … irritated he'd been by the Corps' insistence that boots had to experience traditional old-style uniforms which actually had to be ironed-and starched-to maintain precisely the correct appearance.
For all of her height, the young woman in front of his desk was younger than he usually saw. He doubted that she would ever be a full-breasted woman, but at this particular moment, she still had quite a bit of filling out to do. Despite her solid, hard-trained physique, she still had the "not-quite-finished" look of adolescence's last gasp in more than one way, yet despite that, the black, single chevron of a private first class rode her right sleeve, just below the crowned stinging-wasp shoulder flash of the Imperial Marine Corps.
He completed his leisurely examination while she held her salute. Then he returned it, with the less punctilious, well-oiled ease of long practice.
"Stand easy, Private," he said.
"Yes, Sergeant Major!"
She dropped not into the stand-easy posture he'd authorized, but into a precisely correct parade rest, and despite his many decades of service, his lips twitched, hovering on the brink of a smile, as she stared straight ahead, a perfect regulation ten centimeters over his head.
He let her stand that way for a couple of seconds, then climbed out of his chair and walked around his desk. He stood directly in front of her, half a head shorter than she, scrutinizing every detail of her appearance one more lingering time. It was, he was forced to concede, perfect. There wasn't one single thing about it he could have faulted, any more than he could have faulted the perfection of her non-expression as she stood statue-still under his microscopic examination.
"Well," he said finally, and opened his arms wide to envelop her in a crushing hug.
"Hello, Grandpa," the private said, her contralto voice huskier than usual, and wrapped her arms about him in return.
"I tried my damnedest to get home for your graduation formation, Alley," Sebastian O'Shaughnessy said a few minutes later, half-sitting, with his posterior perched comfortably on the corner of his desk and his arms crossed. "It just wasn't on."
"I knew when they assigned you out here that you wouldn't be able to be there, Grandpa," she told him, and smiled. "I'm just glad my own movement orders left me enough slack to stop in and visit you on my way through.
"I am, too," he said. "On the other hand, my spies kept me informed on your progress." He frowned portentously. "I understand you did fairly well."
"I tried, at any rate," she replied.
"I'm sure you did. And I guess I'll just have to be content with your graduating second in your training brigade. But by a full tenth of a percentage point?" He shook his head sadly. "I mean, I had had my heart set on your graduating first, but I suppose that was unrealistic of me."
His eyes flickered with laughter, and she shook her head.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, Grandpa," she said politely, "but I was at a certain disadvantage, you know."
"But nineteenth in PT?" he said mournfully. "It's a good thing you maxed everything else, that's all I can say!"
"Only two of the boots who beat me out in PT were from Old Earth," she told him severely, "and both of them were male, and one of them was a reserve triathlete in the last Olympics. The others were all from off-world. From heavy-grav planets, as a matter of fact. And only three of them were female."
"Excuses, excuses," he chuckled, shaking his head while he beamed proudly at her. "If it hadn't been for that small arms record you set, you'd have only graduated third, you know!"
"But I'd still have topped my regiment," she shot back.
"Well, I suppose that's true," he conceded with a chuckle. Then his expression sobered. "Seriously, Alley. I'm proud of you. Very proud. I expected you to do well, but you've managed to exceed my expectations. Again."