Starfist: Wings of Hell (41 page)

Lance Corporal Schultz was nowhere to be seen, and the quality of the food coming from the kitchen dropped noticeably shortly after the big man disappeared into it.

That was the situation into which Sergeant Ratliff, Corporal Claypoole, Lance Corporal Longfellow, and PFC McGinty entered.

Stulka saw McGinty, squealed, almost dropped the tray she was carrying before managing to put it on a table, and ran to him.

Ratliff twisted around when a low voice behind him said, “Hey, sailor, buy a girl a drink?” It was Kona.

Ratliff grinned and said, “I’d love to, but you gotta stop calling me a damn squid!” He had to struggle to maintain his balance when she threw herself into his arms.

Claypoole and Longfellow exchanged looks, then headed for the tables that held the rest of the platoon—Longfellow eagerly, Claypoole less so. He didn’t expect to see Jente here and couldn’t for the life of him remember whom he’d paired off with after she’d kicked him out before the last deployment—or if there’d been more than one; he thought there might have been at least two, maybe three women. Not that it much mattered whom he’d paired off with; she wasn’t Jente.

It was well into the evening and every Marine was fed, a sheet or two to the wind, and with a woman—except for Sergeant Kerr, who had two women, and Corporal Claypoole, who had none. Big Barb had done her wailing act about wanting her Cholly and insisting that a skinny woman like Katie wasn’t enough woman for him, then had gone back to tallying the day’s take. The locals, many of whom had to go out on fishing boats early the next morning, were drifting away, well enough fed and far enough drunk.

The door opened, with considerably less exuberance than it normally did, and a figure slipped quietly inside. She stepped aside once she was through the door and looked around. She saw the man she was looking for and sighed with relief—that he was back, seemingly whole, and not encumbered. She wasn’t sure how she would have reacted had he been with someone. She softly stepped toward him. She moved so quietly and smoothly that she was almost there before any-body noticed her; Sergeant Kerr raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything.

She reached the man she’d come for, placed her hands gently on his shoulders, and bent to kiss the top of his head. She found herself standing face-to-face with him, with his arms wrapped tightly around her and his mouth crushing hers.

“Oh, Rock,” she murmured when they broke apart enough to take a breath.

“Jente,” he murmured back.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered.

“I missed you,” he rasped.

“Let’s go,” she said, almost too quietly to hear.

He picked her up and started toward the stairs to the second floor.

She slapped at him playfully and giggled. “Not here, silly. Let’s go home.”

“Home?” he croaked.

“Home.”

He looked into her eyes, searching. He didn’t find any sign of the woman who had angrily thrown him out of her house. “Live in sin?”

She bit her lower lip and nodded. “Live in sin.”

“Home,” he agreed, and carried her to the entrance and outside, without a word to, or even a glance at, the other Marines.

Silence reigned when the door closed behind them, but not for long. The Marines hooted and shouted comments. The women cheered and clapped their hands delightedly.

“Way to go, Rock!”

“Claypoole’s got it bad!”

“I didn’t spot the ring through his nose until it was too late to save him!”

Some of the women looked speculatively at their Marines. The Marines were men, and they were…well, they were women.

EPILOGUE

From time immemorial, network news, in its endless competition for audiences and ratings, has relied more on appearance than substance. For hundreds of years the “sound bite” has delivered the news to trillions of viewers—thirty seconds of words intermixed with short vid segments and a voice-over delivered by a newscaster more meticulous about his or her personal appearance than the facts of the news being reported.

What sticks in the minds of viewers is not the news itself but the
image
of trustworthy Dan, or Katie or Hugh or whomever, as the photogenic news personality of the hour, carefully groomed talking heads, who become so adored by their audiences that every word they utter is taken as gospel. They, not events, come to determine what is the news. Network executives love that because if people are drawn to their coverage because of trust in the newscaster, ratings go up and so does advertising revenue, and that is the all-important factor in keeping them solvent. So packaging is and always has been more important than product in the news business.

The Confederated News Network was no different in that dog-eat-dog world than any of the other networks, although CNN, more than its competitors, did strive for accurate and objective reporting much of the time. And the icon for that sort of old-fashioned news reporting was Jack Wintchell, because Jack was a news
reporter,
while all the other personalities in the business were merely news
readers.

Jack Wintchell had been investigating and reporting stories for half a century. He had a well-deserved reputation for meticulous honesty. That is why Marcus Berentus, the Confederation Minister of War, had turned to him for help in reporting the machinations of Haggel Kutmoi. It was Jack’s story on Kutmoi’s illegal fund-raising that had helped swing the recent presidential election in favor of Cynthia Chang-Sturdevant. Possibly his influence alone had done the job, so highly regarded was Jack among the countless viewers who hung on his every word.

Now, tonight, he was preparing to deliver possibly the most important newscast of his long, respectable, and influential career. He sat patiently in his dressing room at CNN headquarters in Fargo. A hair stylist was putting the finishing touches to his trademark coiffure: chestnut hair that looked as if he’d just come in out of the wind. His shirt, wrinkled, open at the collar, sleeves rolled up past the wrists, made him look as if he’d just rushed into the studio to deliver the hottest and freshest news anyone had ever heard. That and his rapid-fire delivery, as if what he had to report was too important to wait one more second, were a good part of his appeal.

Other news personalities dressed to the nines when on camera and flew into rages if one strand of hair wound up out of place. They never seemed able to catch on to the simple fact that Jack Wintchell’s disheveled appearance, although as meticulously planned and groomed as their own sartorial splendor, lent immediacy and authenticity to his reporting. He looked as sweaty and hardworking as Joe and Jane Citizen, just back from a hard day, their feet up, a drink in one hand, eyes glued to the vid screen, anxious to find out what the rest of humanity was up to. And Joe and Jane loved him for it.

“Jackie, m’boy,” Collard Simperson, CNN’s news director, enthused, rubbing his hands together excitedly. “You’ll knock ’em dead tonight, knock ’em dead!”

“I always do, Collie,” Wintchell drawled. He regarded his carefully dirtied fingernails as the stylist put a finishing touch to his hair.

“Ah,” the stylist said at last, “you are
perfect,
Mr. Wintchell! Perfect! I’ve never seen you so, so,
Jack
as you are right now, sir!”

“Thank you, Henri.” Wintchell held out his hand and Henri obligingly assisted him to his feet. “Collie, old boy, let us proceed,” he said, and together they marched boldly into the studio.

“Tonight,” Jack intoned at the start of his report, “we commence an historic new beginning.” These words shot into the homes, offices, stadiums, bars, clubs, and bistros, on hundreds of worlds spread out over the vast reaches of human space; many did not hear them until two weeks after they had been spoken, but because it was
Jack Wintchell
talking directly to them straight out of their vid screens, his words had the immediacy of live broadcasting.

“My friends, the alien menace known as the Skinks has at last been eliminated. Our brave forces have achieved total victory in the campaign against them on the world we know as Haulover. I ask you this: Can’t we now beat our swords into plowshares? Can’t we now get on with the business of business and return without fear to the peaceful pursuits of our lives? Yes! Go to your representatives in government and tell them that we no longer need to live in fear that every light in the nighttime sky presages death and destruction. Tell them: The future is
ours
and we must seize it. Tell them: The trillions we have earmarked for war can now be spent on peace! Tell them:
No more war!

“I pray now, tonight, before you all, that we take the road to peace and prosperity and leave war behind us forever.”

Jack paused at this point and gazed earnestly into the camera. He looked as he always did, a haggard fighter, a man of principle and truth, everyone’s Uncle Jack, telling them straight, telling it like it is. Tears of joy ran down the cheeks of countless viewers over Jack’s memorable words in that memorable speech on that memorable night.

“Friends,” Jack continued sonorously, “Madam Chang-Sturdevant has been reelected our president. I am proud to have had a hand in that process. May God grant her the wisdom to lead us into this new Golden Age of Humanity that is now dawning. She has her work cut out for her. She has much to do to clean up her administration, reorganize our military forces, get this Confederation at last back on track. But she can do it, with our help and with God’s loving kindness.”

Jack paused again. He fixed those trillions of eyes with his own, gazing soulfully out at them from their vid screens. “This is my last broadcast,” he announced solemnly. “Tonight I am concluding my fifty years in the news business. It has been a good run and I have loved every minute of it. But it is time to say ‘Good night’ one final time. And so, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer and all the ships in space, this is Jack Wintchell saying good night and good-bye.” Real tears sparkled in Jack’s eyes as he spoke.

It was the greatest speech of Jack Wintchell’s long career. It was also the worst advice anyone had ever given the human race.

The Prime Master sat at the small desk in his tiny office, through which anyone seeking audience with the Emperor must pass. Few who sought it were allowed passage; the Prime Master tightly controlled who might disturb the Emperor. Nearly everything that others thought should be brought to the attention of the living god could be disposed of by the Prime Master.

So when two drones, launched by the Grand Master commanding the corps on the world the Earthmen called “Haulover,” reached orbit around Home and their messages were downloaded, the messages, still sealed, were brought immediately to the tiny office and handed to the Prime Master.

The Prime Master broke the seals and read both messages, only to find that they were identical. The messages included the information that twenty-seven drones had been dispatched with the exact same message. The Prime Master dismissed the High Master who had brought him the messages, giving him instructions to bring him instantly any other messages that might come from Haulover, regardless of the hour. If he was in session with the Emperor when a message came, the High Master was to wait in the tiny office until the Prime Master finished with the living god.

The High Master bowed himself out of the Prime Master’s presence.

The Prime Master destroyed one copy of the message, and sat for a long time, reading, rereading, and pondering the preserved copy.

An entire corps had been destroyed by the Earthmen. While that corps had inflicted significant casualties on the two Earthman Army corps that had annihilated it, it had inflicted little damage on the Earthman Marines who had assisted the Earthman Army in the destruction of the corps.

It didn’t take the Prime Master long to decide that the Emperor didn’t need to be bothered with knowledge of the fate of the corps, any more than the Emperor had needed to know of its existence on the Earthman world of Haulover to begin with. Should the name of the Grand Master who had died in his failure ever cross the mind of the Emperor, and the Emperor inquire after him, he could always be told the Grand Master in question had died in a hunting accident. Such accidents were not unknown, whether they had happened in fact or not.

The Prime Master read the message again. This time, by the time he finished reading, he smiled beatifically. The message included a great deal of information about the Earthman Army and airpower and their tactics. That was intelligence that would serve the Emperor’s army well when it next encountered the Earthman Army. As it most assuredly would.