Next to me, the third SI trooper is already on the ground, holding his nose. The master sergeant who led the attack is just now getting back to his feet, and I look on as Sergeant Fallon very deliberately cocks her leg and kicks the SI master sergeant in the small of the back. He shouts out in pain and falls backward.
There’s a loud and sharp whistle from the door. We all turn to see Chief Constable Guest, the moon’s top law-enforcement officer, standing in the doorway and holding the door open with one hand. The barrel-chested constable looks only very slightly less solid than the heavy steel door or the foot-thick concrete wall next to him. His other hand is hovering somewhere in the vicinity of his gun holster and the stun stick on his belt, and his sour expression makes it clear that he is currently thinking about deploying one or the other. He assesses the situation for a few seconds and then points at the SI troopers.
“You three. Out. And don’t come back in here. No argument, no debate. Leave now, or I will lock you up in my ice dungeon.”
The SI master sergeant looks like he wants to put up an argument anyway, but Constable Guest just shakes his head and removes the stun stick from his belt. Then he points over his shoulder with the crowd-control device, through the door he’s holding open with the other hand.
“Now.”
The master sergeant turns around and looks at Sergeant Fallon, who returns his gaze impassively.
“We are not done yet,” he says to her. Then he picks his beret up off the floor and heads toward the door. His comrades follow him, but not before shooting us hostile glances of their own. When they reach the door, Constable Guest steps aside for them, still holding open the hatch, and they file out one by one. Then he lets go of the door, puts the stun stick back onto his belt, and walks over to where Sergeant Fallon and I are standing. All around us, people haven’t even interrupted their conversations. The colonists on New Svalbard are some of the toughest people I’ve ever met, and our little interservice disagreement hasn’t even raised any eyebrows down here.
“You two of all people shouldn’t be down here picking fights with other soldiers,” he says to us in his laid-back Texas drawl, his tone stern and sorrowful, as if he’s lecturing his daughters instead of two hardened combat veterans. “When people get into it down here, I have to come and straighten things out, and then my expensive and hard-to-get hand-pressed coffee gets cold in my office. I don’t like it when that happens. It disturbs my peace. Please do not disturb my peace.”
“Sorry about that,” Sergeant Fallon says. “I would have avoided the whole thing, but those three had a tussle on their minds the minute they decided to walk over to our table. Hard feelings.”
“Well, maybe I need to ban Camp Frostbite personnel from town altogether again. Not that I have the manpower to enforce that right now. Or maybe I need to just ban all of you from all the bars in town.” He looks around and sighs. “But then you’ll have no place to go, and you’ll just beat each other up out on the Ellipse somewhere.”
“Won’t happen again,” Sergeant Fallon says. She bends down to pick up the table the SI master sergeant tipped over when he crashed into it. I pick up the plastic tumblers and put them back onto the table when she has righted it.
“See to it that it doesn’t,” Constable Guest says. “Please. It would go a long way toward restoring my good mood.”
Constable Guest is jovial, soft-spoken, and courteous. He’s also about the size of a drop-ship tail ramp, and probably roughly as heavy. I’ve not seen him in a fight since I arrived on New Svalbard for the first time a few weeks ago, but I have little doubt that he could mop the floor with half a squad of infantry grunts if provoked.
“I’ll give you a free pass on this one, because they came to hassle you and not the other way around,” he says. “But do not make this a habit, or you will get on my bad side. And as much as I respect your valor in the service of our Commonwealth, you do not want to find yourself on my bad side. I know you Earth folks aren’t used to being locked up inside for months to ride out the winter, but I cannot have hand-to-hand combat happening in my area of responsibility.”
Sergeant Fallon looks slightly embarrassed by Constable Guest’s dressing-down, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen that particular emotion on her face.
“That was my failure,” she says. “No excuse. I think I need to hop on one of those snow tractors and drive around in the fresh air for a day or two. This indoor living is starting to cloud my judgment.”
I have the taste of blood in my mouth, and my left lower lip is feeling a little puffy. It will probably be fat for the rest of the day. The girl Allie walks over from the bar with her dirty hand towel and starts mopping up the drinks we spilled when the fight started. I step aside to make room for her.
“We have a spell of decent weather coming up in a few hours,” Constable Guest says. “Winds down to below fifty, light snow. Good enough for outside pursuits. You may want to consider stretching your legs a bit. Maybe go up to the carrier. We’ll be able to run flight ops again for a little while, from what I hear. Take it easy, you two, and don’t cause me any more grief than you have to, please.”
Constable Guest nods at Allie and turns to walk out of the bar. He has to duck slightly to fit through the door as he leaves.
“Go into orbit to lock myself in an even smaller space,” Sergeant Fallon says. “No, thank you. I’m pretty fucking glad I pulled a TA ticket after boot, let me tell you. I don’t know how you fleet people can stand it.”
We look around, and nobody else in the bar is paying even the slightest bit of attention to us. We could sit back down and order another round of drinks, but I’m still unpleasantly buzzing from the adrenaline jolt, and the laid-back mood from earlier is broken thoroughly.
“Are we still running the show in the ops center?” I ask Sergeant Fallon, and she nods curtly.
“Padded the crew a little. Half civvies, half our HD people. We’re not letting any of the Camp Frostbite troops anywhere near the place, and the new troops are just going in and out of Frostbite.”
“I’m going to see what’s up in orbit, talk to Indy for a bit. I’ve been out of the loop for two weeks.”
“Hitting the ground running,” Sergeant Fallon says, and shakes her head. “No wonder you made E-6 so fast. You need to learn how to ride out downtime.”
“I’ve had almost two weeks of downtime,” I reply. “Twelve days of utter fucking boredom with a six-hour battle in the middle. If they gave out medals for sitting on your ass on a carrier, I’d have ribbons from my collarbone all the way down to my knee.”
“The constable would make a killer grunt,” I say to Sergeant Fallon as we walk on the Ellipse back toward the ops center. “If we even had battle armor for someone his size.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” she replies. “He’s too laid-back and too smart besides.”