Jael clicked off the player as Hawkins sat down beside them. "Hello, Sergeant… " she began, then stopped. What caught her attention was the dark place on each sleeve, where chevrons had been removed. Then she saw his collar tabs. "You're wearing an ensign's bar!" she said. "You've gotten promoted! Congratulations!"
There's an interesting change, Hawkins thought. When I first knew them, she wouldn't have spoken first like that. Not with Esau present. She'd have waited for him to talk.
"Does that mean Ensign Berg is dead?" Esau asked.
"I'm afraid so. Killed in the first minutes."
Jael blushed. She'd overlooked how promotions came about in battle. Suddenly congratulations didn't seem proper.
"And you're replacing him," Esau said. "I figured he might be dead when I heard you giving orders he'd usually give." He paused. "Does this mean B Company's not getting shut down? Even after all the casualties?"
"Yep. We're still in business. We've been reorganized, of course. We're down to three platoons of three squads each, with most of the squads down to eight men for now. But we'll get first call on replacements, as the wounded recover and do rehab."
That'll be awhile, Esau thought. From what he'd seen and heard, most wounds were a lot worse than his and Jael's.
"I could fight right now if I had to," Jael said. "I don't hurt much, and I didn't lose that much blood. Esau's hampered a lot worse with his hands than I am with my shoulder."
Esau held up his bandaged hands and looked at them wryly. Only fingertips projected. "At least Jael doesn't have to tell me not to pick my nose now," he said.
Hawkins laughed. He'd never heard Esau say anything remotely humorous before. "There you are!" he answered. "Every cloud has a silver lining."
"Captain Fong tells me I'll be back on duty in a week."
"That's what I heard, too. Good thing. I need you." He held out a pair of sleeve patches. "Ensign Zenawi is Lieutenant Zenawi now, our new company commander. He told me to give you these; you're 2nd Platoon's new sergeant. If you're nice, maybe you can get Corporal Wesley to sew them on for you."
Jael laughed. "Might be she would." She took the patches from the ensign. They were a staff sergeant's stripes: three chevrons and a rocker. There ought to be two rockers, she told herself. The other platoon sergeants have two. Probably, she decided, the army didn't like to jump someone two grades.
"And while you're sewing on chevrons," Hawkins added, "these are yours." He handed her a pair of buck sergeant's chevrons. "You're in charge of 3rd Squad now. There isn't any 4th Squad yet. Maybe later."
She took them without hesitating. "Thank you, Ensign Hawkins," she answered. "I'll do the best I can."
Hawkins went on to tell them that 2nd Platoon's fit-for-action were on R amp;R, with Jonas Timmins as acting platoon sergeant. They'd ridden AG sleds to the upper reaches of their old friend the Mickle's, for a day's fishing. General Pak had foreseen the desirability of such days, and requisitioned abundant fishing equipment before they'd left Terra. Nothing fancy-gear you could use without instruction.
Esau had gone grim. "How's Lieutenant Bremer?" he asked.
"He's under-medical treatment. Had you heard something?"
"On the beach he said he was going to shoot me for a coward if I didn't go back and get my blaster."
Jael took command then, telling what had happened, and how Zenawi had stepped in. The story took Hawkins by surprise. He turned to Esau. "How did you feel when he said those things?"
"I couldn't believe I was hearing them. I felt… betrayed. Killed. Stabbed in the heart. Then Jael… " He described what she'd said, and what Lieutenant Zenawi had said. "And Lieutenant Bremer just sort of… caved in. Then I realized he'd lost his mind, and that he knew it. But I still felt… dirty, from what he'd said."
Hawkins nodded soberly. "Lieutenant Bremer's body wasn't wounded. His soul was, by all the killing. It was more than he could deal with. That's how some people are. He's in convalescence now. Major Ranavati is his doctor-a psychiatrist and Gopal Singh healer. The rumor is, when the lieutenant returns to duty, he'll be assigned to General Pak's staff, as assistant to Major Pelletier. Where he won't have responsibility for men in combat."
He grinned then, taking both Jerries by surprise. "As for you two-you did very well out there. Lieutenant Zenawi said in his debrief that you saved a lot of lives. If that tower had been in operation when our floaters came, it would have cost us dearly."
Esau nodded. "We could see that, Jael and me. No ride home probably."
Hawkins got casually to his feet, as if nothing heavier had been talked about than 2nd Platoon's fishing trip. "Well, I've got more wounded to visit. You two get well quick. Especially you, Esau, because a platoon leader's nothing without a good platoon sergeant to pass all the hard work to."
Then he was gone. Jael got up from her inflatable chair, knelt beside her husband and kissed him. "I'm proud of you, Esau," she said. Then she too grinned. "We've got to get well quick, so's we can slip off together behind a thicket."
He half grinned back at her. "You sure know what to say to a man. That'll about cut my healing time in half."
Before supper, Isaiah Vernon stopped to visit. He was wearing a new servo. The old one's cooling system had needed work, and they'd decided to install his bottle in an improved model.
"Division got hundreds of them before we left Luneburger's," he said. "In case enough people signed agreements and were injured badly enough to qualify. And for replacements like mine.
"From the beginning my old one hadn't worked as well as it should," he went on. "The robotics tech said I should have complained then, but I didn't know. I thought that's just the way they were. Then, when we ambushed the Wyzhnyny patrol, I took some slammer hits, and coming back in, I started to heat up pretty badly. Lieutenant Koshi told me to lie down, and radioed for an AG sled to come get me. Me and two others with damage.
"It made it more real to us-to me, anyway-that bot or not, you can get hurt or killed in those fights. But none of us did. We killed one hundred nineteen Wyzhnyny, by count, but none of us died. These servos are really good."
Briefly then they talked of other things, mainly things that had happened on Luneburger's World. They said nothing at all about their families or where they'd grown up. Maybe later. Meanwhile, those places, those people, didn't exist anymore.
In adjacent cots after lights out, Esau whispered to his wife. "I've been thinking."
"What about?" she murmured sleepily
"About Isaiah, and what Tom Clark said to the medic on the medivac. I think maybe I will sign a bot agreement. If it's all right with you."
She didn't answer at once. Then, "That's up to you, not me," she said.
But she didn't sound as if she really meant it. More as if she thought it was what she should say. And at any rate, in the morning he had other things on his mind.
Chapter 53
Petition to Kulikov
It was late afternoon. General Pak was reading staff reports when his Intelligence chief rang. "General, the buoys have something you need to see. Corporal Chen has it framed for you."
Frowning, Pak looked at his screen and touched a key. He recognized at once what he was looking at: a column of tanks, or perhaps artillery, moving out of a forested, hilly area. Limestone hills. Magnification was set low, allowing him to see the column's full length. He zoomed in to examine a single vehicle-an armored, self-propelled howitzer-then backed off a bit. A whole unit of howitzers. Judging by Wyzhnyny standing in open hatches, they were heavy stuff-perhaps eight-inchers.