The Infinity Brigade #1 Stone Cold (18 page)

I raised my hand to respectfully interrupt the Drill Sergeant. He raised an eyebrow but signaled me to speak.

“Everything in those containers have survived for years without me and I without them. I would just as soon not know what was in them. I’d rather they just went to the holocaust museum. The single exception is my uncle’s LandSpeeder. That I would like to keep. Is it possible to store it at a Marine facility until I can find a permanent home for it?”

Senior Drill Sergeant Montgomery smiled. “Harris had you nailed. He predicted this is what you would want to do. I have some documents here that you can sign that will transfer your interest to the foundation in control of the museum. Further, the captain of the Puller has stated that he has some free space in his forward hold for the LandSpeeder which he is willing to make available for your use on one condition.”

I had a feeling I knew what that condition would be but I waited for the Sergeant to confirm it.

“He would like to be able to take it out for a spin on Earth sometime.”

I put my thumb print on the tablet the Drill Sergeant passed to me. This turned the six storage containers over to the foundation. “Done and done,” I said as I handed the document back to the Drill Sergeant.

“Now,” Senior Drill Sergeant Montgomery said, “I told you there were several matters to discuss. The second involves your grades and performance reviews.” 

Now understand where my head was at here. There were lots of things I suspected the Drills would want to talk to me about… there were a lot of things they could talk to me about.  In many ways I was an accomplished screw-up. All that said, my grades were not one of the things I expected them to talk to me about. I knew for a fact that my grades were top-notch. They always were. 

Part of my problem growing up was that I was always a gifted student. I got superior marks without really having to work for them. This meant I had a lot of free time. A smart kid with a lot of free time is typically a recipe for trouble. When it came to baking up a batch of trouble, I was a natural… so good in fact, I wasn’t even always aware to the trouble I was getting myself into. 

“As I said,” Sergeant Montgomery continued completely unaware of the confused mess of possible scenarios my mind was racing through, “to a man, the Drill Cadre is impressed with you. Upon occasion we run into a candidate, such as yourself, that shows potential to do great things in the Corps. We like to give such candidates a chance to explore their potential more fully by interacting with more experienced troops.”

“In order to make that possible, it’s essential to give these exceptional candidates credentials that the more experienced troops will recognize. For that reason we offer these candidates true brevet promotions so they can function in a population of regular Marines. It is purely voluntary and I will warn you son… it is not for the faint of heart.”

I will freely admit… this is not where I thought Senior Drill Sergeant Montgomery would be going with this conversation. There was a certain shock and awe factor that befuddled the senses. It took me a moment to realize the Senior Drill was waiting for me to say something.
Had there been a question that somehow I missed hearing
? I searched my memory but I couldn’t recall one being asked. I finally made one of those intuitive leaps that inspire the young and from which they make major motion pictures…

“Drill Sergeant, if you are asking me if I volunteer to take advantage of such an opportunity then my answer is an emphatic… Hell Yes Drill Sergeant!”

Senior Drill Sergeant Montgomery grinned. It wasn’t an evil grin but it was predatory none-the-less. It might have been the type of look the spider give the fly when it invites the fly into its web.

“We’ll see if you feel the same way when all is said and done,” he answered cryptically.

Chapter 18: Ensign Stone…

It was with some reluctance that I handed back my Ensign armband. I had been proud to wear it but regardless of what happened from this point forward, I would never be wearing an armband like that again.

The Senior Drill explained that most brevet promotions of the type I was about to receive actually occurred during the Advanced Individual Training or AIT phase of our education. It was rare to begin with but even rarer to occur at the end of Boot camp. In my particular case the brevet promotion order had been signed in advance by Commodore Catherine Kimbridge. She had given the order to Senior Drill Sergeant Harris to use if he and the other Drill Sergeants saw in me what she apparently saw in me. No pressure.

As I entered the B-TOC for Alpha Platoon, I was dressed differently. Sewn to my collar was a single yellow butter bar. I was no longer a recruit. I was no longer an acting Ensign. I had had been officially sworn in over the radio by Captain Mueller of the
GCP Puller
who was acting under the orders of Commodore Kimbridge. For the duration of my training I was an Ensign. Depending on how I did in my training, I would or would not be able to retain that rank.

I had asked JJ and Gretchen to join me in the Alpha B-TOC. They were already there with Tommy Cochran when I walked through the airlock.

“Well,” I said, “good news and bad news.”

“I’ll bite,” Tommy said. “What’s the good news?”

“I get to keep the LandSpeeder!”

“OUTSTANDING!” All three of them echoed at once.

Suddenly JJ saw my collar. “Sweet mother of pearl! Is that what I think it is?”

I did my best to look confused. I’m not sure I managed to pull it off… but hey… I never claimed to be a thespian.  At any rate I said, “Oh this little thing? It’s just something I threw on at the last moment. Do you like it?”

“Can I touch it?” Gretchen asked in amazement.

For the next several minutes the three of them took turns grilling me about what had happened. Finally JJ said, “You know what this means now don’t you?”

I was almost afraid to ask but curiosity got the best of me and I did a foolish thing. I encouraged JJ to enlighten me. I should have known better but as I have said on numerous occasions… I was young and given to fits of defective thinking.

“You can give orders to the Drill Sergeants now!”

I shook my head. “JJ, the fact that you CAN do a thing… does not imply that you SHOULD do that thing. My rank is a brevet rank. What the Lord giveth the Lord can taketh away.”

***

I stood looking out the door of the shuttle that had carried me to the
GCP Puller
. This was a Bowman-class ship so I knew it was not one of the biggest in the fleet… still, to me, it seemed massive. I have been in the main cargo hold the last time I was on her. I had not had the chance to see her from the outside. This time everything was different. I sat behind one of the two shuttle pilots as our shuttle landed in the forward shuttle bay. The view took my breath way. The absolute black of space contrasted with the brilliant white of the
Puller’s
hull metal skin.

A Marine lieutenant approached the open hatch of the shuttle. I saluted. “Sir, permission to come onboard.”

“Permission granted,” the lieutenant responded. He was tall and lanky with a tuff of barely managed red hair on his head. “I’m Lieutenant JG Havastraw. My friends call me ‘Red’.”

He held out a meaty hand. Not knowing what else to do… I shook it.

“Ensign Stone reporting for duty,” I said as I stepped off the ramp of the shuttle.

Lieutenant Havastraw laughed. “Whoa, slow down there young Padawan. I’m your mentor these first few days. You need to report first to the Captain and then very likely to the Marine Commander.”

“I stand corrected Sir”

The lieutenant shook his head. “Let’s get one thing straight right away. This isn’t AIT or Boot Camp… This is the real world. You are a Marine now. We recognize and respect rank but nine times out of ten we are working as a tightly knit group. Most of us call each other by our nicknames unless we are in the presence of non-marines. My name is Red. What shall I call you young Padawan?”

I was unsure what a ‘Padawan’ was but I was going to be looking it up as soon as I could. “My friends call me AG… will that work?” I asked.

“It does for me… if it does for you,” Red grinned as he clapped a hand on my back. “Drop your duffle. I’ll have an enlisted grade carry it to our quarters. The Puller is too small for private digs so you’ll be bunking with me. It ain’t much but its home. Meanwhile, you and I need to pay our respects to Captain Mueller.”

The walk through the
GCP Puller
was mesmerizing. It was bustling with activity.  Every motion and movement of the crew seemed almost choreographed. It was an impressive testimony to the efficiency of their training. Even Red twisted and turned on cue to avoid collisions with the various members of the crew as they hurried about their business. They seemed to instinctively realize I was the newbie and steered clear of me.

In short order we were outside a door on what I would come to learn was the command deck. Red stood at attention in front of the door. I missed my cue and was still gawking when Red whispered ‘Attention Marine’.

I snapped to attention immediately.

“Lieutenant Havastraw and Ensign Stone to see the Captain at his pleasure,” Red spoke into the empty space between himself and the door. Apparently there was a microphone buried somewhere in the wall or ceiling. After a few minutes, the door swished open and we heard a single word. “Enter.”

Captain Mueller was a small man but there was an aura of authority about him that defied explanation.  I had a feeling people followed his orders because not to do so would place a person at odds with the universe.

He looked at Red briefly but spent most of his time staring at me. It was one of those… let’s see if we can
plumb-the-depths-of-your-soul
looks. Despite the intensity of the glaze I found myself liking this man.

His office was simple without being Spartan. He had a picture of a young woman and a child. I got the feeling they were a daughter and grandchild rather than his wife and kids. I learned later that the two were the only surviving members of his extended family. We shared a common history with regard to Mars.

“So you are our young prodigy,” the captain said simply.

I’m not sure what a person is supposed to say to that so I did a rare thing for me… I exercised discretion and kept my mouth shut. The Captain nodded to himself.

“Mister Stone, you are in a word… an odd duck.”

I know this was more than one word but again I was practicing that discretion thing so I didn’t say a thing.

“Your test scores and aptitude ratings are off the chart… and yet your personal history seems to tell the story of a man hell-bent on finding trouble. Absent the last several months I don’t know why anybody in the armed services would give you the time of day… and yet here we are.”

The Captain paused to get up from his desk. He was taller than I expected but still not a big man.

“To date son, in the GCP, only three people have seen a brevet promotion to active service during Boot Camp. One is dead. He died last year on a ship like this one… the
GCP Heidman
. One is the commander of the Marine contingent on this ship. The third is standing in front of me. What I’m telling you son is that you have been handed a rare opportunity to excel. Don’t go looking for trouble the minute you’re facing the south end of a north bound horse. You are a Marine. Trouble will find you on its own.”

What I hadn’t appreciated at the time was that the Captain was trying to get my measure as a man. Was I an exceptionally gifted but angry lout? …or was I a man destined to add to the sum of human achievement? …or did I fall somewhere in between? Our conversation took a series of bizarre twists as the GCP Puller’s Captain tried to answer those questions.

Captain Mueller walked over to the nanite-infused sapphire glass window that graced his office. The ship was tilted in such a way that the window afforded a view of the Red planet.

“I just read something by Stephan Hawking... he was a brilliant theoretical physicist who passed away in the early twenty-first century before all of this.” The Captain waved about the room casually. 

The Captain picked up a tablet off his desk. “He wrote… ‘To understand the universe you must know about atoms. About the forces that bind them, the contours of space and time. The birth and death of stars, the dance of galaxies, the secrets of black holes. But that is not enough. These ideas cannot explain everything. They can explain the light of stars, but not the lights that shine from planet Earth. To understand these lights you must know about life...’"

Captain Mueller looked back at me. “Son, I want to ask you a question. There is no right or wrong answer. It’s a personal choice and the answer you give me will never impact how you are treated on this ship. Are you a man of faith?”

I paused before answering. In my admittedly limited experience as a soldier, this type of conversation rarely came up in briefings. “Suppose I am sir.”

“Are you comfortable enough in your belief to explain why?”

The short answer was no. I didn’t like talking faith and religion and all that mumbo-jumbo. I was of the belief that mankind had, by-in-large, taken something that should have been good and used it to pervert and do harm. I had a feeling though that this conversation was going somewhere and that if I wanted to know where I needed to keep it going.

I cleared my throat and gave the Captain my best off-the-cuff scientific explanation for the existence of a divine being. As I was speaking I realized I actually did believe in what I was saying.

“Sir, the more complex a system is the more potential it has to interact with those things around it. We are more complex than a sheet of paper and we are more complex than a duck. Not surprisingly, we interact with our environment more than either. The physics of n-dimensional space… space beyond our four dimensions almost demands something greater than ourselves… An Uncreated Creator if you will.”

Captain Mueller nodded. “But nothing about good or evil? This ‘Uncreated Creator’ to whom you refer could be malevolent. Perhaps he created houseflies just so he could watch people pull their wings off.”

I shook my head. “No sir, I don’t believe that and, if you will forgive me for saying so, neither do you.”

Captain Mueller raised an eyebrow. I heard Red take a slight intake of breath. Maybe I had just crossed an unseen line. I’ve always been the type of guy that needs, at a fundamental level of my being, to test the boundaries. Today would be no different.

“Explain yourself Ensign.”

“Sir, you are serving as the Captain of a starship for a Galactic Coalition whose expressed purpose for existence is to secure, promote and protect the common good. The operative word is ‘good.’ I watched my home and planet wiped out by a great evil. It put me in a bad place for a long time. I accomplished nothing while I was in that place. I choose, Sir, to believe that I can be part of an organization that can be a force for good. I want my life to mean more than the sum of breaths that I took while living.”

Captain Mueller seemed satisfied with my answer.  He put the tablet he had been reading back on his desk. He pointed to it while speaking to me.

“This brilliant man for whom I have the greatest respect is correct as far as he goes. That said, as a man of both science and faith, I know the explanations we, as humans seek, must and often do, transcend where logic can take us. The Lord I follow said ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”

The Captain looked me straight in the eye. “Life, Ensign Stone, is a very rare and precious gift. As an officer in the Marine Corps you will be charged with protecting, preserving and upon occasion… taking life. You need to take seriously your responsibility to know which of the three is paramount at any given time. I believe you have it in you to be great. Do not disappoint me.”

After a few more encouraging words the Captain briefed me on what to expect over the next few days. The recruits currently on Mars would reclaim their makeshift billets in the
Puller’s
main cargo hold. The
Puller
would then be breaking orbit and heading for Hupenstanii space.

Once there, we would meet up with a contingent of Hupenstanii Marines for joint exercises. I would be working closely with Lieutenant Havastraw who would be functioning in the role of mentor and advisor. I would be reporting directly to Commander Savage who was the officer in charge of the Marines on the
GCP Puller
. My duties would include overall command of the four training brigades from New Parris Island. I would be coordinating their activities with those of the active duty Marines. In short, newbie and experienced would be thrown together and my job was to make sure they mixed well.

It was expected that the recruits would be joining their Hupenstanii equivalents for some of the exercises. I was looking forward to meeting the Hupenstanii. I led a somewhat sheltered life and had never met an alien of any type. Part of my job would be to insure the recruits… my recruits… were aware of differences in cultural norms and would not needlessly give nor take offense when none was intended.