Teal is puzzled by my triumph. “T’ey’re yours?” she asks.
“I am theirs,” I say. “Outlaw ladies held up the Dodge stage. Time to make them welcome!”
BACKGROUNDER, PART 2
Now is not the time to get into all the branches and divisions and shit, but while we’re watching more internationals and ladies arrive on our scene, light ’splainin’ is in order.
International Sky Defense (ISD) is our overarching authority. Its symbol is a flaming shield protecting a speckled blue marble, Earth, kind of like SHAEF but spacey. At its highest level, ISD Joint Command is staffed by politicians and retired military commanders from all signatory nations. Joint Command, everyone assumes—but no one I’ve met actually knows—reports to the Wait Staff, representatives of the Gurus.
Below Joint Command, each signatory nation assigns warriors and resources and helps pay for ISD’s orbital assets, transfer craft—space frames, sleds, and such—and weapons, including R&D.
The United States “loans” Navy, Marine, Air Force, and Army warriors to ISD. Other countries assign, we loan; same difference. Skyrines sometimes combine not just with international units, but with other U.S. services, mostly Army or Air Force—and since we’re already under NAVSEC, the secretary of the Navy, and he’s mostly obedient to Joint Command, that means we can run into warriors from just about any branch of service, and any signatory nation, recognize them more or less as partners, try hard to respect their command hierarchy, and work together efficiently, mostly without invoking esprit de corps, which can make Marines pugnacious.
Historically, that’s how we see ourselves—Skyrines are nothing more nor less than Marines who ride rockets. Some say we’re a touch more civilized than ground pounders, but frankly, I don’t see or feel that, and once all the battles are won and the Antags have fled back across the sea of stars, we will happily revert to the well-trained, tightly disciplined, rudely judgmental bastards we have always been.
Even with all that, when we’re off the field of battle and engaging in additional training or just plain R&R, we manage to get into some lovely threaps—that is, swedges, stoushes, dustups, squash-downs, knucklers, blennies, bruisers, fwappers, scratchers, jawbusts, jointers, joists, jaunts, jousts, teethers, chirps, flips, funsies, fisticuffs, ball-tug, dentals, gouges, or, in more common parlance, disagreements, tête-à-têtes, contretemps—fights.
Eskimos = twenty words for snow. Skyrines = twenty-plus phrases for getting scrappy, in that friendly sort of way where we rarely kill each other.
If you don’t understand where fights will begin, and who is going to be on your side, and who is just not, you can get into trouble fast. Among the ISD signatories, U.S. Marines buddy up well with Filipinos, Koreans, Japanese, the few Guamanians we run into, Fijians (Pacific Islanders in general), New Zealanders (especially Maoris), and Australians. We get along okay with Brits and the French. The Italians have wine and MREs to die for and the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in space, except for all the rest. We love the Indians and Pakistanis and Sri Lankans and Tibetans, and of course, there’s Kazak and the ’stans, good people all.
Skyrines mostly get along with the Chinese, but we can have issues with Russians, though both are terrific at the beginning of a drunk and downright fierce on the Red.
Canada, Germany, Austria, Spain, most of Eastern Europe, all of South America, and Africa—but for Somalia, Ethiopia, and Yemen—are not signatory.
WHILE TRAINING AT Hawthorne, we used our one day of R&R to visit Lindy’s 1881, a rough local bar in the small, square desert town. There, by severe happenstance, we met up with a stack of eleven Russian exchange officers. They had been invited to Hawthorne to lecture and critique U.S. training practices. What numbnuts depot clerk let them out all at once to do the town has never been revealed.
The encounter started off jovial. The Russians tried to explain, over beer and cold peppered vodka, how training at Socotra—off the tip of Yemen—and in Siberia was so much harsher and more realistic than anything we went through here at Hawthorne. Kazak disagreed and gave them the stink-eye. His people and theirs have history. It was obvious words would soon lead to deeds. After a few minutes of verbal give-and-take, Tak, Kazak, Michelin, myself, and four female Skyrines conferred how best to deploy a Fist Marine Division.
One of those sisters was then–First Lieutenant Coyle, chaperoning her brood and standing aloof from us grunts, but nodding to the music and enjoying the ambience—until she saw she could not get her chicks out fast enough to avoid the coming scuffle.
The sisters walked between their brothers and formed a loose line between them and the Russians. This encouraged the Russians to smirk and question our masculine courage. They gave each other encouraging looks and foresaw easy mayhem followed by another round of cold vodka.
The locals, a crusty, paunchy crew, well past their middle years, cleared chairs and tables and sat by with big grins.
Meanwhile, Michelin casually took post by the bar’s rear exit.
The Russians led with three burly toughs. At a barely perceptible nod from Coyle, the sisters withered and allowed their line to dimple, then to break up. Brothers and sisters re-formed into flanks on both sides of the long bar, opening up space at the side of the establishment for our rear echelons to maneuver.
And so we did.
The Russians, no strangers to bar fights, observed these tactics through a vodka haze and finally recognized the seriousness of their plight. Smirks turned to frowns.
Kazak, with a wink at Tak and me, said something very offensive.
Game on.
Our Russian allies whipped out a steel grove of navy-issue Iglas—wickedly practical blades—and, from puffy pant legs, slowly pulled knotted climbing ropes and lengths of tow chain. Brows furrowed, knuckles white, balancing from foot to foot, they swayed one way, then another with choreographed precision, like flags in a wind, toward our flanks—admirable to see in men so full of Russian spirits.
And then—they chose their opponents and leaped.
Kazak gleefully ran Tartar interference through the melee, snatching at knotted ropes, taunting, dancing away with wiggling fingers from the slashing Iglas—sowing wholesale confusion. Tak and I worked around Kazak’s quantum indeterminacy and doubled in at the conclusion of his feints, disarming four of the biggest Russians and dislocating their shoulders with precise sweeps-and-bows.
First Lieutenant Coyle and our sisters dealt summarily with the younger, less experienced, and thus meaner chain-wielders. After their wrists were snapped and they were disarmed, Coyle, with a lovely flourish, sent Russian officers reeling one by one down the length of the scarred wooden bar to the rear exit, where Michelin booted them through a banging, shivering screen door. Bruised and battered Russians piled up in the rear parking lot.
Just before our brave allies pushed off the oil-stained gravel to return for another round, earning our respect and doubtless forcing us to trade lives for Skyrine honor—U.S. Marine Brigadier General Romulus Potocki slammed through the front door, bellowed like a bull, and, before anyone could react, underhanded a stun grenade between the tables.
When the smoke cleared—everyone in the bar reeling and most of us bleeding from the ears—Potocki called us all to attention. Those who could still hear alerted to his presence, and the rest, observing them, followed suit. Even the Russians, slumping through the screen door and past Michelin, stood up straight, if they could.
All but one beardless stripling who had hidden behind an overturned table, and now rose with a howl to whip his chain around Tak’s head.