"Thank you, Sergeant," she said. "Ah, he told me to tell you that I'm supposed to be assigned to Lieutenant Kuramochi's platoon."
"Figured that." Hirshfield nodded. "The Lieutenant's nine people short. I imagine you'll go to Third Squad-that's Sergeant Metternich's squad. It's shortest right now, and Metternich's the senior squad leader. He's pretty good about bringing the babies along, too. No offense."
"None taken, Sergeant," Alicia replied, not entirely honestly.
"Good." Hirshfield's eye gleamed with a certain gentle malice. Then he spoke into the boom mike attached to his headset. "Central, Metternich." He waited perhaps half a heartbeat, then spoke again, smiling up at Alicia. "Abe, got one of your new people here. You wanna come by the office and pick her up, or should I just give her a map?"
He listened for a moment, then chuckled.
"All right. I'll tell her. Clear."
"Sergeant Metternich is sending someone to fetch you," he told Alicia, and pointed at the utilitarian chairs against the wall opposite his desk. "Park your fanny in one of those until whoever it is gets here."
"Yes, Sergeant," Alicia said obediently, and parked her fanny in one of the aforesaid chairs.
"Yo, Sarge. You got somebody for me?"
Alicia looked up as the short, almost squat PFC poked his head in through Hirshfield's office door. The newcomer was even darker than Hirshfield, with broad shoulders, heavy with muscle, and a thatch of unruly black hair.
"Medrano!" Hirshfield beamed. "If it isn't my favorite Marine! And I do, indeed, have somebody for you. Right there."
He pointed, and Private Medrano turned his head in Alicia's direction. He looked at her for a moment, then looked back at Hirshfield.
"Golly gee, thanks," he said. "Did you tell Abe what you had for him?"
"And spoil the surprise?" Hirshfield arched his eyebrows.
"Thought not," Medrano said, and shook his head. Then he looked back at Alicia and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Come on, Larva."
He pulled his head out of the office and headed back the way he'd come without even looking to see if Alicia was following him. Which she was, of course, if not precisely cheerfully. So far, she reflected as Medrano led her briskly out of the office block, none of this day seemed to be going exactly the way she'd hoped it would.
"Where's your gear, Larva?" he asked without turning his head.
"They're holding it for me at the pad," she replied.
"Guess we'd better head over there and collect it, then," he said, then turned left and headed down one of the walkways.
His greater familiarity with the local geography quickly made itself apparent. Alicia had followed the map the arrivals sergeant had loaded into her personal com to find her way across Gyangtse's capital city of Zhikotse to Sergeant Major Winfield's office in the planetary militia barracks the battalion had taken over. The path Medrano picked to get them back to the field and her arrival shuttle pad was far more winding and complicated, making much more use of twist y back alleys rather than following the newer, wider thoroughfares. It was also much shorter, and they got back to the capital's smallish spaceport in little more than half the time it had taken her to get to Winfield's office from the pad.
"Fetch," Medrano said dryly, parking himself comfortably in one of the chairs provided in the baggage-handling section. He pointed at the single manned window, then leaned back in the chair and crossed his ankles.
Alicia glanced at him, then crossed to the window and the local civilian standing behind it. On most planets, baggage claim would have been handled by an AI, or at least a self-serve computerized system. But she'd already realized that Gyangtse's poverty was pronounced, at least by the Empire's generally affluent standards.
"What can I do for you?" the short, wiry (like most Gyangtsese she'd so far seen) civilian inquired genially.
"I need to collect my gear," she told him, sliding the electronic claim ticket across the counter to him. "I came in on Telford Williams."
"No, really?"
The Gyangtsese grinned at her, and she felt herself color ever so slightly. Of course he'd known she had to have come in aboard the Williams. The transport was undoubtedly the only ship to have made Gyangtse orbit in the last several days. But although the man was obviously amused, he didn't make a big thing out of it as he accepted the claim tag and slotted it into his terminal.
"DeVries, Alicia D., right?" he asked as the data came up.
"That's me," she confirmed.
"Okay." He tapped something into his keypad, then nodded. "Bay Eleven," he said, pointing at the numbered baggage bays against the rear wall. "It'll be up in a couple of minutes."
"Thank you," she said, and he nodded at her again.
"You're welcome," he said. "And, by the way, welcome to Gyangtse, too."
"Thanks." She nodded back, and headed over to the indicated baggage bay.
Her baggage arrived almost as promptly as the clerk had suggested it would, and she dragged her foot locker clear and checked its security telltales to be sure it hadn't been tampered with. Then she hauled out the pair of duffel bags which went with it and checked them, as well. She piled the bags on top of the locker, pulled the web strap taut across them, then switched on the foot locker's internal counter-grav unit. It rose obediently, and she gave it a push to make sure she had its mass distributed evenly. It bobbed gently, but stayed on an even keel, and she nodded in satisfaction.
She activated the tractor leash, tethering the locker to the small unit on her belt, and turned back to Medrano. The locker and duffel bags floated obediently across the floor, staying precisely the regulation meter and a half behind her.
"Everything?" the older private asked, coming to his feet.
"Everything," she confirmed. He glanced at the baggage critically, but seemed unable to find anything to pick apart.
"Then let's grab some transport," he said, and she followed him out of the pad waiting area.
Medrano commandeered one of the field's limited number of jitneys and punched destination coordinates into the onboard computer while Alicia loaded her baggage into the cargo compartment. She closed the compartment door and climbed in beside him at his brusque gesture, and the jitney hummed rapidly away.
Alicia glanced sidelong at Medrano's profile. She badly wanted to ask questions, but everyone she'd met so far today seemed far too interested in depressing the newbie's pretensions for her to offer him the opportunity to do some more of it. So she switched her eyes back to look straight ahead through the jitney's windscreen, possessing her soul in patience.
Medrano leaned back without speaking for a minute or so, then smiled ever so slightly.
"It's all right, Larva," he said.
"I beg your pardon?" She looked at him a bit warily, and he chuckled.
"Oh, you've still got a long way to go before you're a member of the lodge, Larva," he told her cheerfully. "And all us growed up Wasps're gonna make your life hell before we let you forget it, too. But there's just the two of us right now, and I know you've got questions. So go ahead. 'S all right."
"All right," she said. "I'll bite. Staff Sergeant Hirshfield said something about things heating up here in Gyangtse. What's going on?"
"That'd be good to know, wouldn't it?" Medrano's grin turned crooked. "The Lieutenant can answer that one better than I can, but the bottom line is that this whole sector used to be League systems. Which means we've usually got someone making trouble and generally showing his ass, and half the time they seem to think they can actually kick the 'Empies' back off their planets. It's not gonna happen, of course. But the local idiots manage to forget that from time to time, and it looks to me like that's what's getting ready to happen here."