CHAPTER
NINETEEN
Candidates’ Quarters, Marine OTC, Arsenault
By the time they were into their fourth month at Camp Upshur, the remaining officer candidates had begun to adjust to their daily routine quite well. That was when Jak Daly began to have a serious problem. He decided that he wanted to go back to the fleet, back to Force Reconnaissance.
Lieutenant Stiltskein’s casual remark that there was a war going on while they were “stuck” back in OTC had got Daly thinking. He knew without anyone telling him that Fourth Force Recon Company would be involved in the war, and he began to feel his proper place was with them, not on Arsenault, studying battalion maneuvers in brigade operations and other esoteric matters far removed from the life-and-death struggle his buddies were engaged in. So each night Daly found a seat in the company dayroom to watch the worldwide news broadcast on the Military News Network, which kept the far-flung installations on Arsenault connected to the rest of Human Space. It made no difference that the news about the war was more than a week behind real-time events; for Jak Daly, the war on Ravenette was happening right now.
One night MNN showed recent footage of Marines in combat at Fort Seymour, successfully repulsing a massive attack by the Coalition forces. In passing, the commentator noted that Marine Force Reconnaissance units were operating behind enemy lines to develop intelligence and upset the enemy’s logistical posture. That was all it took.
“Manny,” Daly told Ubrik when he got back to their room, “tomorrow I’m going down to see the company commander and ask to be dismissed from OTC.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Ubrik sat up in bed. He’d been rereading Caesar’s de Bello Gallico in preparation for a discussion on “great commanders” in their military history class the next day. “Family problems?”
“No.”
Ubrik turned off his reader and swung his legs to the floor. “I could tell something was eating at you these last weeks, Jak. Why do you want to quit now? Muhammad’s cavities, buddy, you’re a cinch to graduate in the top ten percent of this class!”
Daly did not answer at once. “Manny, I want to go back to the fleet. I want in on this war on Ravenette.” He shrugged. “I’m a Marine and I’m not going to sit here while my buddies are risking their lives on this goddamned Fort Seymour place, wherever in the hell that is.”
“Jak, they’ll never let you go, you know that.”
“Well, I’m going to give it a try, old buddy.”
“You’re going to leave here before you even get into Felicia’s drawers?” Manny grinned, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “That’s not like you, Jak, to leave important business unfinished.”
Daly perked up a bit. “How do you know I haven’t? Mission accomplished, time to return to home station?”
“You bastard!” Ubrik laughed. They were both silent for a moment. “Well, Jak, I know you well enough now to know I can’t talk you out of this foolishness. But, man, I’m going to miss you! I’ve never in my life felt as close to anyone as I do to you, Jak.”
“Hey, I feel the same way about you, Manny. We’ve been through some shit together, haven’t we?”
“You bet.”
Neither man got much sleep that night.
Company Office, Marine OTC
“Get your ass the hell outta here, Candidate Daly, and don’t bring this subject up again in my orderly room!” First Sergeant Beedle roared. His eyes flashed and his shaven head gleamed and the veins in his neck stood out, but Daly did not move.
“I request permission to see the company commander, Top,” Daly repeated, staring at a space on the wall just above the top sergeant’s head. In his hand Daly carried his formal letter of resignation from OTC. He leaned forward and placed it on Beedle’s desk. “It is my right to see the company commander and request he forward this letter through channels, First Sergeant.”
“Don’t tell me what your ‘rights’ are, pissant!” Beedle roared as the hairs in his nostrils flared menacingly, but he took the letter. “Sit your ass down over there while I take this—this letter in to the CO’s office. You can damn well wait there all day, for all I care.” He snorted again, stood up, knocked once on the CO’s door, and entered, closing the door behind him. Daly took a seat and grinned at the company clerk, a lance corporal who pretended to busy himself with office work.
From inside the CO’s office that worthy roared, “Send that pissant little sonofabitch in here!”
That morning was the first time Daly could remember hearing anyone use the word pissant. He filed it away for future reference as a useful adjective and marched smartly into the CO’s sanctum.
Office of the Commandant, Marine OTC
It took several days for Daly’s letter of resignation to reach Brigadier Beemer’s office. At each stage along the chain of command—battalion, brigade, Training Directorate—it was endorsed with a hearty “RECOMMEND DISAPPROVAL.”
Duty uniform for all military personnel at Camp Upshur was utilities, and that was what Daly was wearing—freshly cleaned and pressed, of course—the day he was ordered to report to Brigadier Beemer’s office. He’d changed into a fresh set immediately after morning PT, which that particular morning, as luck would have it, consisted of a fifteen-kilometer jog under the baleful eye of the indestructible Lieutenant Stiltskein, the man whose casual remark had started Daly on his long and embarrassing odyssey to the commandant’s office. Every step of the way up the chain of command each officer who had interviewed Daly had regarded him as someone halfway between a traitor and a madman, and they were not at all reluctant to let him know what they thought of his request.
Now he sat in the Spartan waiting room outside the commandant’s office, anticipating the summons to his interview. People—officers and civilian staff—came and went while Daly sat patiently, regarding Brigadier Beemer’s administrative NCO, a pretty sergeant, out of the corner of his eye. As each visitor passed through the waiting room, Daly imagined he looked at him as if he had leprosy. Time dragged on toward the lunch hour and still Daly sat there on a hard wooden bench. He tried to strike up a conversation with the sergeant, but she claimed she was busy. Actually, she was reading something on a vid display for most of the time Daly was there.
“Candidate Daly?” Daly jumped. His mind had been wandering. “You may report to the commandant now,” the admin sergeant announced. “Report formally.”
Daly stood and straightened his uniform blouse. “Sergeant, I’ve got more time reporting formally in this Corps than you have reading novels on duty time.” He glared at the young woman and knocked once on the brigadier’s door.
“Come.”
Daly closed the door softly behind him and marched to within three paces of the brigadier’s desk, where he came to attention. “Sir, Candidate Daly—”
Brigadier Beemer stood up and extended his hand. “Between two old salts like us we don’t need that formality. Have a seat, Candidate.” He waved Daly to some chairs around a small conference table. At first Daly thought he hadn’t heard the brigadier correctly, but Beemer came around his desk, laid a hand on Daly’s shoulder, and gently guided him to a chair. “Coffee?” he asked.
“Uh, yessir, thank you, sir.” Daly was so astonished at this reception he would have drunk swamp water if the brigadier had offered him some. Daly felt a tiny prickle of satisfaction at the look of consternation on the snotty admin sergeant’s face as she served them the coffee.
“Calling you ‘Candidate’ is so stilted and formal,” the brigadier commented as he reached for the coffee carafe. “May I call you Jak?” he asked, pouring Daly’s coffee for him. “Sugar, cream?”
The brigadier could have called him Jack Shit for all Daly cared, he was so utterly amazed at the commandant’s informal, avuncular manner. The few times Daly had seen the brigadier at Camp Upshur he had appeared distant, “frosty,” too far up the flagpole for a lowly officer candidate to be sitting like this, chatting and drinking coffee with him. “Yessir,” Daly replied, then added, “I mean, you can call me Jak, sir, but, no thanks, I don’t take cream or sugar.”
“Aha, spoken like a Marine!” The brigadier, Daly noticed, did take sugar and cream. Beemer leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, and balanced his coffee cup on a knee. “Jak, I’ve read your letter, and let me say I agree totally with your reasoning on wanting to leave here and go back to the fleet. I do.” He nodded and sipped from his cup. “We’re Marines, and when there’s fighting to be done, that’s where we belong. Jak, tell me a little bit about your family.”
As Daly talked about his upbringing on New Cobh, the brigadier listened intently, nodding every now and then and smiling knowingly. “My dad whipped me too, when I was a boy, Jak, whaled the dickens out of me for breaking some windows in a neighbor’s home.” Beemer laughed at the memory. “Never broke another window in my life! Joined the Corps instead”—he winked—“really learned how to break things up!”
Daly laughed. He’d never before felt so relaxed and comfortable in the presence of a senior officer. Something about Brigadier Beemer, something he projected easily in the conversation, gave Daly the conviction that he really cared about him and that any enlisted man could talk to him and get a fair hearing. All the hours he’d been sitting in the anteroom waiting, all the harassment he’d gotten coming up the chain of command to reach that point, washed away in the first few minutes in the brigadier’s presence.
The brigadier’s office was as Spartan as the anteroom: his desk, the small conference suite, a few plaques and certificates hanging on the wall. One of the certificates made Daly’s heart race faster. Across the top was embossed a midnight-blue ribbon speckled with silver stars, the unmistakable ribbon of the Confederation Medal of Heroism, the highest decoration for valor the Confederation could bestow. To meet a man who had one was the rarest of privileges because it was almost always awarded posthumously. Brigadier Beemer was one of those rare men. Almost as if reading Daly’s thoughts, the brigadier said, “Jak, you and I, we’ve both been in the shit. I’ve seen your service record; four Bronze Stars with Gold Starburst devices, very prestigious decorations for valor. I’ve read with admiration the citations and, personally, I’d have recommended you for higher awards. You not only qualified Expert with the blaster, you made Sharpshooter with the maser, and Expert with the M111 sabot rifle. You probably can call cadence with the best of them in close-order drill too.” Beemer smiled.
“Jak, I know what you’ve gone through to get up here today. All along the chain of command you’ve been told the only way to get out of OTC once you’re accepted is to die, to be medically disqualified because of disease or injury, or to flunk out due to academic or disciplinary problems. You aren’t the first candidate to make a request like this. All my people are expected to discourage such requests. But, Jak, I, of all the people in this college, do understand why you wish to be released and return to your unit, and I respect your reasons and I admire you for writing this letter.” Carefully, he placed his coffee cup on the table and leaned toward Daly. “But I have to deny your request.”
“May I ask why, sir?”
The brigadier smiled and leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been in this man’s Marine Corps for sixty years, Jak. I once sat where you are now. Yes, I did. I’ll tell you what that old colonel told me then. It’s the men who served under you and the officers you served under who recommended you for commissioning. Oh, maybe not in so many words, but it was the confidence of the men under you in you as a leader, as much as what you did, that convinced your superiors to recommend you to attend OTC, and if you back out now, even for the best of motives, which you certainly have, you are not only letting them down, Jak, you’re letting down the future generations of Marines who would be serving under you. I can’t let you do that, Jak. Request denied. Return to your classes.”
Daly knew he had taken his cause as far as it was going to go.
The brigadier stood and extended his hand and they shook. “I’ll see you again, Candidate Daly.” Daly stepped back two paces, came to attention, did an about-face, and marched out of the office.
On his way back to class Daly had to smile to himself. He’d just been given a snow job by one of the smoothest operators in the Corps, but the funny thing was, it had been one of the most satisfying experiences he’d ever had, far, far more satisfying, he knew, than getting into Candidate Felicia Longpine’s drawers, which he had not yet been able to do. Now, though, he was going to have another chance, and like any good Marine, he fully intended to carry out his mission to a successful conclusion.