The first Shockfrost cocktail goes down smoothly and quickly, so I chase it with another. My hand is aching again, that unpleasant deep and painful throbbing that comes with deep tissue damage, and I use the last third of the second glass to wash down a pair of Corpsman Randall’s little chemical helpers. Then I run Sergeant Fallon and Dr. Stewart through the events of the mission from my perspective. By the time I am finished, the alcohol has warmed me up considerably, and the painkillers have started to deliver the goods.
“We got the big picture from the post-op briefings your skipper sent back. They’ve had a bunch of meetings about it already. My God, so much talking. And it’s all like a snake biting its own tail. Never gets anywhere.” Sergeant Fallon takes a sip from her own drink.
“What’s the story on Midway? When did they rejoin the party?”
Sergeant Fallon’s expression darkens. “That chickenshit fuckstick of a reservist,” she says. “We sent them messages constantly after you left. They were all the way in deep space, trying to map a sublight path back to Earth, as if they had thirty years’ worth of reactor fuel with them. Week or so ago, they came limping back with dry water tanks. And get this: The task force CO tries to claim command. Of all the Commonwealth units in the system. Because he has a golden wreath and a star on his shoulder boards, see.”
“Bet that went over well,” I say.
“Oh, yeah. Regulus Actual told him to go piss up a rope. Not in so many words, of course. Turns out the general spent three weeks in his cabin, never once stepped into the CIC. Had the surgeon write him a chit and claimed health issues. He had the XO bring him his meals to the flag cabin. Personally. His XO relieved him of command and locked him in his cabin for good. No word on whether he got a spanking or two on top of that.”
I don’t want to laugh—the one-star jackass in question cost us several drop ships and thirty lives with his orders—but the mental image of the reservist general with his CDU pants around his ankles getting his ass beaten by the senior NCO makes me crack up nonetheless.
“Anyway, they came back and rejoined the orbital parade, and we’ve all just been a big, happy, dysfunctional family ever since,” Sergeant Fallon says. “Nothing too exciting. Nothing like what you guys went through.”
“So who’s in charge now?”
“We do shit by committee right now. The COs of the HD battalions are in command down here. We get together on video-conference with all the COs in orbit once a day to chitchat. Patrol assignments, replenishments, that sort of thing. Bores me to tears. But I guess talking’s better than shooting at each other.”
“Anything’s better than shooting at each other,” I say, and look at my bandaged hand.
“Don’t worry too much about that,” Sergeant Fallon says. “They can do miracles with body-replacement cybernetics these days. Ask me how I know.”
I don’t really want to talk about our brief stay near Earth anymore, because every time I think about it, I have to consider just how close I was to getting off Indy and over to Luna. Just one drop-ship ride, ten minutes of transit, and I would have been breathing the same air as Halley. Instead, I am back here at the ass end of the settled universe, in a crummy little bar on a frigid little moon, and there are once again twenty-eight light-years and God knows how many Lanky ships between me and her. But I don’t want to tell my companions that this is what’s on my mind. I don’t know Dr. Stewart well enough to share these personal concerns, and bitching about not having seen my fiancée and missing a few fingers would seem like self-indulgent whining sitting next to a woman who lost her leg in combat and who got stranded here by her own command, exiled from Earth altogether. So I do the only prudent thing left to do for someone in my place at this point in time, with the resources at my disposal.
I hold up my empty glass and turn it in my hand. “You think I can get another one of these, maybe?”
CHAPTER 20
When I wake up the next morning, it feels like someone clubbed me in the head with a rifle butt last night.
I’m in a bunk, and I’m still wearing my fatigues, but the room around me is absolutely unfamiliar. I sit up—slowly—and try to orient myself while the room around me is not only spinning slightly, but also drifting in and out of focus.
My boots are by the side of the bunk, neatly parked side by side, and my fatigue tunic is neatly draped over the back of a nearby chair. The room I’m in is pretty austere, almost as sterile as a shipboard berth on a fleet vessel. There’s an open door on one wall that leads into a small bathroom, and I heave myself out of the bunk to do my morning business and restore some of my cognitive and sensory functions.
I’m in the middle of washing up when the door on the other side opens, and Master Sergeant Fallon walks in.
“Good morning,” she says when she sees me swaying in front of the sink in the bathroom. “How are you feeling?”
“Like hammered shit,” I croak.
“You wouldn’t listen when I told you that the fifth Shockfrost cocktail was a bad idea. You’re quite a bit heavier than you look, by the way.”
“Did you drag me here all by yourself?” I grab a towel from a nearby rack and start blotting my face dry. “Where is ‘here,’ anyway?”
“My quarters,” she says. “You didn’t have assigned quarters yet, and you were in no shape to request them from the civvies. Looks like you came straight to the bar from the landing pad. I can appreciate a soldier who has his priorities so clearly in order.”
“Well, I stopped by the ops center first,” I say. “Left my armor with the constable.” I look over at the bunk, which is a standard military folding cot. “Wait. If I slept on that, where did you sleep?”
“Next to you, dipshit. Floor’s too fucking hard.” She chuckles when she sees my surprised and mildly embarrassed expression. “Don’t worry, lightweight. I was pretty drunk myself. There was no funny business. You were a booze corpse, and I don’t poach among the junior NCOs anyway. Especially not the almost-married ones.”
She picks up my tunic and throws it in my direction.
“Get dressed and pop some headache meds,” she says. “Conference with the CO committee in fifteen. Looks like we’re going home soon.”