It saved us.
11
I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.
As we came back into the ship after the raid on the Skinnies — the raid in which Dizzy Flores bought it, Sergeant Jelal’s first drop as platoon leader — a ship’s gunner who was tending the boat lock spoke to me:
“How’d it go?”
“Routine,” I answered briefly. I suppose his remark was friendly but I was feeling very mixed up and in no mood to talk — sad over Dizzy, glad that we had made pickup anyhow, mad that the pickup had been useless, and all of it tangled up with that washed-out but happy feeling of being back in the ship again, able to muster arms and legs and note that they are all present. Besides, how can you talk about a drop to a man who has never made one?
“So?” he answered. “You guys have got it soft. Loaf thirty days, work thirty minutes. Me, I stand a watch in three and turn to.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I agreed and turned away. “Some of us are born lucky.”
“Soldier, you ain’t peddlin’ vacuum,” he said to my back.
And yet there was much truth in what the Navy gunner had said. We cap troopers are like aviators of the earlier mechanized wars; a long and busy military career could contain only a few hours of actual combat facing the enemy, the rest being: train, get ready, go out — then come back, clean up the mess, get ready for another one, and practice, practice, practice, in between. We didn’t make another drop for almost three weeks and that on a different planet around another star — a Bug colony. Even with Cherenkov drive, stars are far apart.
In the meantime I got my corporal’s stripes, nominated by Jelly and confirmed by Captain Deladrier in the absence of a commissioned officer of our own. Theoretically the rank would not be permanent until approved against vacancy by the Fleet M.I. repple-depple, but that meant nothing, as the casualty rate was such that there were always more vacancies in the T.O. than there were warm bodies to fill them. I was a corporal when Jelly said I was a corporal; the rest was red tape.
But the gunner was not quite correct about “loafing”; there were fifty-three suits of powered armor to check, service, and repair between each drop, not to mention weapons and special equipment. Sometimes Migliaccio would down-check a suit, Jelly would confirm it, and the ship’s weapons engineer, Lieutenant Farley, would decide that he couldn’t cure it short of base facilities — whereupon a new suit would have to be broken out of stores and brought from “cold” to “hot,” an exacting process requiring twenty-six man-hours not counting the time of the man to whom it was being fitted.
We kept busy.
But we had fun, too. There were always several competitions going on, from acey-deucy to Honor Squad, and we had the best jazz band in several cubic light-years (well, the only one, maybe), with Sergeant Johnson on the trumpet leading them mellow and sweet for hymns or tearing the steel right off the bulkheads, as the occasion required. After that masterful (or should it be “mistressful”?) retrieval rendezvous without a programmed ballistic, the platoon’s metalsmith, PFC Archie Campbell, made a model of the Rodger Young for the Skipper and we all signed and Archie engraved our signatures on a base plate: To Hot Pilot Yvette Deladrier, with thanks from Rasczak’s Roughnecks, and we invited her aft to eat with us and the Roughneck Downbeat Combo played during dinner and then the junior private presented it to her. She got tears and kissed him — and kissed Jelly as well and he blushed purple.
After I got my chevrons I simply had to get things straight with Ace, because Jelly kept me on as assistant section leader. This is not good. A man ought to fill each spot on his way up; I should have had a turn as squad leader instead of being bumped from lance and assistant squad leader to corporal and assistant section leader. Jelly knew this, of course, but I know perfectly well that he was trying to keep the outfit as much as possible the way it had been when the Lieutenant was alive — which meant that he left his squad leaders and section leaders unchanged.
But it left me with a ticklish problem; all three of the corporals under me as squad leaders were actually senior to me — but if Sergeant Johnson bought it on the next drop, it would not only lose us a mighty fine cook, it would leave me leading the section. There mustn’t be any shadow of doubt when you give an order, not in combat; I had to clear up any possible shadow before we dropped again.
Ace was the problem. He was not only senior of the three, he was a career corporal as well and older than I was. If Ace accepted me, I wouldn’t have any trouble with the other two squads.
I hadn’t really had any trouble with him aboard. After we made pickup on Flores together he had been civil enough. On the other hand we hadn’t had anything to have trouble over; our shipside jobs didn’t put us together, except at daily muster and guard mount, which is all cut and dried. But you can feel it. He was not treating me as somebody he took orders from.
So I looked him up during off hours. He was lying in his bunk, reading a book, Space Rangers against the Galaxy—a pretty good yarn, except that I doubt if a military outfit ever had so many adventures and so few goof-offs. The ship had a good library.
“Ace. Got to see you.”
He glanced up. “So? I just left the ship, I’m off duty.”
“I’ve got to see you now. Put your book down.”
“What’s so aching urgent? I’ve got to finish this chapter.”
“Oh, come off it, Ace. If you can’t wait, I’ll tell you how it comes out.”
“You do and I’ll clobber you.” But he put the book down, sat up, and listened.
I said, “Ace, about this matter of the section organization — you’re senior to me, you ought to be assistant section leader.”
“Oh, so it’s that again!”
“Yep. I think you and I ought to go see Johnson and get him to fix it up with Jelly.”
“You do, eh?”
“Yes, I do. That’s how it’s got to be.”
“So? Look, Shortie, let me put you straight. I got nothing against you at all. Matter of fact, you were on the bounce that day we had to pick up Dizzy; I’ll hand you that. But if you want a squad, you go dig up one of your own. Don’t go eyeing mine. Why, my boys wouldn’t even peel potatoes for you.”
“That’s your final word?”
“That’s my first, last, and only word.”
I sighed. “I thought it would be. But I had to make sure. Well, that settles that. But I’ve got one thing on my mind. I happened to notice that the washroom needs cleaning … and I think maybe you and I ought to attend to it. So put your book aside … as Jelly says, non-coms are always on duty.”
He didn’t stir at once. He said quietly, “You really think it’s necessary, Shortie? As I said, I got nothing against you.”
“Looks like.”
“Think you can do it?”
“I can sure try.”
“Okay. Let’s take care of it.”
We went aft to the washroom, chased out a private who was about to take a shower he didn’t really need, and locked the door. Ace said, “You got any restrictions in mind, Shortie?”
“Well … I hadn’t planned to kill you.”
“Check. And no broken bones, nothing that would keep either one of us out of the next drop — except maybe by accident, of course. That suit you?”