“The best I have left is brew made with Earth-grown malt.”
“That will do,” I said handing him a twenty.
The bartender smiled and gave me very little change.
It took a few minutes to fight through the crowd and find the table. I handed Vince his beer. He looked at the label, and asked, “Earth-grown malt? I thought you didn’t taste any difference?”
“I don’t.” I smiled, nodded, took a swig of my beer. “But you’ve sprung for Earth-grown so many times, I felt guilty.”
Drinks did not come free on board the Kamehameha, but they were pretty damn cheap. Even hard stuff like vodka and whiskey cost only one dollar per drink.
As far as I was concerned, the only difference between Earth-grown and outworld beers was the cost. The snobbish crowd said they tasted a difference, but I never did. For reasons I could not peg at the time, Lee preferred Earth-grown brew; but I had not bought the beer for the taste, I bought it for the occasion.
Most of our platoon sat around this table in two nearly concentric circles. “Guess we’re standing,” Lee said.
“Have you guys heard anything?” someone asked.
“You kidding?” a familiar voice burst out. “They’re corpses. Corporals are always the last to hear shit.” Just across from me, Sergeant Shannon sat with one leg up on the table. He looked relaxed, and his smile was almost friendly.
“We’ll all know soon enough,” Lee said.
The banter continued. We no longer seemed like a divided platoon. Shannon leaned back in his chair and listened to the conversations around him.
“Harris?”
Captain McKay, probably fresh from the officers meetings on Terraneau and still wearing his whites, tapped me on the shoulder. He smiled and spoke in a quiet tone that was just loud enough for me to hear him above the crowd. “Harris, I suspect that you are just about the most important person in the fleet right now.”
“Begging your pardon, sir, I don’t understand.”
“That an Earth-grown brew you’re drinking?” he asked, looking at my bottle. “The record from your helmet…that was the key to all of this. I showed it to Klyber, and he showed it to the Linear Committee.
“Do you know what Admiral Klyber told the Committee? He told them that our enemies ‘no longer fear us.’ ‘No longer fear us,’ that was what finally woke them up. That and your video feed. Life in the galaxy just got a little more exciting thanks to that goddamned helmet of yours.”
“I’m not sure what to say,” I said. I could not tell if McKay was angry or pleased. He sounded sarcastic, but I wasn’t sure if he was joking or angry. He did not stay long, either. A moment later he waved to the platoon and disappeared into the crowd.
“We have our orders,” Sergeant Shannon said as he called Lee and me into his office the next day. “Have a seat.”
We pulled chairs up to his desk. Judging by the time mark on the communiqué, Captain McKay had sent the orders less than an hour earlier. “The Kamehameha has been assigned to a planet called Ezer Kri. Ever heard of it?”
“No, Sergeant,” Lee said.
“We’re invading Ezer Kri?” Lee and Shannon stared at me. “Ezer Kri has been in the news. I’ve been following the story.”
“You know about Ezer Kri?” Shannon asked. He picked up a combat knife and wiped its blade on his forearm.
I began to feel self-conscious. “The story is all over the news. Ezer Kri has a large population of ethnically pure Japanese people who want to make Japanese the official language of the planet. The governor of the planet went to DC and the Linear Committee said no.”
Shannon smiled. “Japanese? There’s got to be something more. You can’t invade a planet just because a bunch of people want to speak Japanese.”
“I thought the old races disappeared,” Vince said.
“You run into it a bit out here,” Shannon said. “But I’ve never seen an entire planet like that.”
“So we’re sending a fleet?” I asked. “Are we going to blockade the planet or something?”
“I don’t know what Klyber has in mind,” Shannon said. “He is sending the Kamehameha and a few support ships.”
“Is Admiral Klyber coming along for the ride?” Lee asked.
“I don’t know if he returned to ship after Terraneau,” Shannon said. “We’re still six days out from Ezer Kri. Harris, see that every man in the platoon gets his armor shined and ready.”
“Yes,” I said.
“You should be keen on maintenance considering all the trouble your faulty helmet has caused,” Shannon said.
“One other thing…I worked you both over when I got here. The whole deal changes now that we have an assignment. You understand? I’ll be depending on you.”
“Yes,” Lee said. “Understood,” I said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The rain streamed down in sheets. Sudden gusts of wind slammed into the sides of the armored transport, battering it off course. I always hated ATs, steel-plated boxes designed with more concern about durability than aerodynamics.
We called the cabin area of armored transports the “kettle” because it was metal, potbellied, and had no windows. Inside this kettle, we heard wind rattling the cables that ran between the AT’s tail and its stubby wings. The sounds of wind and rain were our only contact with the outside. I looked up through a hatch in the ceiling and saw the pilot flipping switches and pulling levers to smooth the ride.
The walls of the transport groaned as the ship touched down. Then the rear of the ship split open revealing a ramp for us to disembark. We had arrived.
They packed both of Captain McKay’s platoons into one transport—sixty privates, sixteen corporals, and six sergeants. We came wearing armor and carrying minimal field supplies. Larger ships would bring artillery, vehicles, field hospitals, and temporary housing. For the time being, all of our equipment came strapped to our backs. I was not concerned. We had twenty-three hundred field-ready Marines on the ground, fighter craft circling the sky, and the only thing our enemy wanted was permission to speak a foreign language.
Shannon, his M27 braced across his chest as if he expected resistance, charged down the ramp shouting for the platoon to follow. He vanished into the glare of the landing lights.
We touched down on a temporary landing strip built by field engineers. Six other ATs landed around us. Above the brightness of the landing lights, I could see the deep black of the night sky.
“Line ’em up!” McKay shouted, his voice thundering over the interLink.
“Get a move on!” Sergeant Shannon yelled. The platoon assembled quickly, forming ranks and standing at attention. Shannon inspected the line, then took his place at the head of the platoon.
The rain fell in glassy panes, which splintered in the wind. Huge drops tapped on my helmet and shoulder plates. Out of the side of my eye, I could see steam rising from spots on the racks of landing lights.
Nestled in my temperature-controlled bodysuit, I felt warm. The temperature inside my armor was a balmy sixty-eight degrees.
Captain McKay crossed the landing pad to inspect the platoon. Dressed in his Charlie Service uniform, he looked cold and wet. His face was pale, and his shoulders were hunched. “Report, Sergeant?”
“All accounted for, sir!” Shannon said with a smart salute.
I heard the whirr of a wing of Harrier fighters doing a fly-over. Captain Olivera had orchestrated the landing by the numbers. First he scanned the area from the Kamehameha to find an appropriate drop zone. Next, he sent in a team of commandos to secure the area, followed by the field engineers who erected the temporary landing facility. Once the zone was secure and the facility was constructed, fighters were sent to patrol the skies. It all seemed like overkill for Ezer Kri. From what I heard, Governor Yamashiro had even offered to let us use the local spaceport.