“Who do you mean, Solomon or Absalom?” I asked. There were more, but those were the only two I could name offhand.
“Who is Absalom?” the colonel asked.
“He was one of David’s sons. He rebelled against David and tried to take over the kingdom.”
The colonel turned and walked into the passenger cabin. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered to himself. “Had a son who tried to take over the kingdom…son of a bitch.”
I took my seat. A few minutes later we flew out of Earth’s atmosphere. In the old days we would have spent up to five hours flying to the Mars broadcast station, depending on where Earth and Mars were in their orbits, and many more hours flying from the last broadcast station to the fleet. Transferring in a self-broadcasting ship took mere seconds. We cleared Earth’s atmosphere and tint shields formed over our portholes. An instant later, we were approaching the Central Cygnus Fleet.
As I returned to my locker to stow my Bible and grab my sack, Colonel Grayson came up to me again. “So do you believe in God, son?” he asked.
“I’m a true believer,” I confessed. If God was a metaphor for government, then my enlistment in the Marines made me some kind of cleric. During my days as a colonel, I might have qualified as a high priest.
“You know what, Harris? You’re nothing like I expected,” Grayson said. “Admiral Brocius called me in the other day and told me to let you do whatever you wanted with your platoon. What do you want to do with it?”
“I haven’t reviewed my men,” I said.
“They’re good men. I run a tight operation.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, knowing full well that Marine colonels have little to do with the readiness of platoons. There were too many layers between the colonels and their grunts.
“Sounds like you and Admiral Brocius are great pals,” Grayson continued. “Having an admiral watching your back, now that’s a pretty good trick for a sergeant in the Marines.” His expression became more serious, and the old smile vanished. “You just remember, Liberator or plain old government-issue grunt, war hero or fresh recruit, it’s all the same under my command. And you are most definitely under my command, Master Gunnery Sergeant Wayson Harris. Screw with me, and I will bury you deep before your admiral can help you. Do you read me, Marine?”
“Yes, sir,” I said. It was a warning, and a fair one.
We traded salutes, and Colonel Grayson left the ship. I grabbed my gear and followed.
My orders placed me in charge of a platoon on the U.A.N. Obama, one of twelve fighter carriers in the Central Cygnus Fleet. The Obama was home to two hundred platoons. In all, over eleven thousand Marines lived on the ship. My platoon would stand out.
When Admiral Brocius gave me command of the platoon, he told me to “make things happen.” He gave me the license and the equipment to do just that. Of the two hundred platoons on this ship, my platoon would be the only one to which the admiral had assigned a self-broadcasting scientific explorer. The bird we transferred in on was to remain behind for my use.
No one met me as I entered the Obama. No surprise. During the old days, when the Broadcast Network let you talk to anybody almost anywhere in the populated parts of the galaxy, subordinates or commanders met you as you entered new posts. Now, without the Broadcast Network, transfers went unheralded.
Not that I needed an escort. Having served on two fighter carriers, I had no trouble finding my way around the Obama. I located the barracks, then found the unit that housed my platoon.
A sergeant approached me as I entered. “Can I help you?” he asked politely. Though we were both sergeants, I outranked the guy. He was a staff sergeant, an entry-level sergeant. I was a master gunnery sergeant, one rung from the top of the only ladder that enlisted men could climb.
“You can help me find my rack,” I said. I introduced myself.
“So you’re running the show?” the sergeant asked. He introduced himself as Sergeant Ross Evans, and said, “You know, we had a captain running the show before you.”
“From an officer to an enlisted man,” I observed. “That must mean you’re in for some action.”
“I like the sound of that,” Sergeant Evans said.
“Round up the men,” I said. Yes, I was already issuing orders. I did not come to make friends. Besides, Evans was a standard government-issue military clone. He was built to take orders.
I went to the back of the unit and found my space. I stowed my gear, kicked my rack a few times to make sure it was solid, then set off to review my platoon. What I saw gave me hope.
Marine platoons are divided into squads. Evans was one of my three squad leaders. Staff Sergeant Dave Sutherland and Sergeant Kelly Thomer ran the other two.
Every squad has three fire teams. Every fire team has four men—a team leader, a rifleman, a grenadier, and an automatic rifleman. The fire teams and squad leaders make up thirty-nine of the forty-two men you typically find in a platoon.
I quickly learned that Evans and Sutherland were by-the-book leaders who tolerated no nonsense in their squads. They made them run double time in drills. Either one of their squads would have made a good backbone for any platoon.
As the lowest-ranking squad leader, Thomer inherited the problem cases. Evans’s squad ran the obstacle course in four minutes flat. Sutherland’s boys did it in 4:20. All but one of Thomer’s boys ran the course in 4:10, but that last one shuffled in at 5:12. That was the first time I laid eyes on Mark Philips, the Marine Corps’ oldest E1.
An E1 was a buck private. That was the rank they assigned you the first day at boot camp. When you graduated from camp, the Corps automatically promoted you to private first class or E2. Philips, however, who looked to be in his forties, still held the rank of plain old private. When I checked his records, I saw that he’d once worked his way up as far as lance corporal—an E3, but now he was back down to E1.
I watched the rest of Thomer’s group dash across open ground. They flashed across rope bridges and other obstacles. Philips brought up the rear, trotting at a comfortable pace and not looking the slightest bit winded. He had no trouble climbing rope lines hand over hand. Monkey bars did not faze him. He simply felt no need to push himself.
“Who the hell is that?” I asked Sutherland as I watched Philips stroll to the end of the course.
“That’s Private Philips,” Sutherland said. “He’s the platoon asshole.”
“That’s why God invented transfers,” I said.
Sutherland smiled and nodded his agreement.
“Why don’t you send Thomer by my office,” I told Evans.
He smiled and left without a word.
“You might want to check his records before you transfer him,” Thomer said.
“We don’t need a slacker,” I said. “Not in my platoon.”
“If we’re going to see some action, Philips might be exactly what we need,” Thomer suggested.
“I’ve got his file,” I said.
“Have you read it?” Thomer asked.
“Not yet,” I said, feeling a shudder when I realized how much Thomer sounded like me talking about Ray Freeman to that Naval Intelligence officer. “Tell you what. You bring Philips here at 1500 hours. That will give me a chance to go over his record.”
“Thank you, Master Sergeant,” Thomer said. Enlisted men addressed master sergeants as “Master Sergeant.” Simply calling us “sergeant,” a name generally used for sergeants and staff sergeants, did not pay sufficient respect to the rank.
I had twenty minutes to read the Philips file. I only needed five.
Thomer and Philips showed up at my desk precisely on time. Thomer reported in his charley service uniform. Philips came in a government issue tank top and boxer shorts.
Philips and Thomer and every other member of the platoon, for that matter, looked approximately alike. They were all standard government-issue military clones. They all had brown hair, shaved along the sides of their heads, and brown eyes. Philips, however, stood out. Because he wore a tank top, I could see the scars on his arms and chest. He’d been shot twice in the right arm and once in the right shoulder. The scars were closely grouped as if the bullets had been fired in a single burst. It was the kind of wound you got in combat.