“Solution?”
“Canned his ass,” the SEAL said, not looking up from his flower arranging. “His personal efficiency was great but he was enough of a bastard it grapped with the team efficiency. Is Driscoll the type to backstab?”
“In a heartbeat,” the first sergeant admitted. “And he’s got a real case of the ass at a Nugget, now. Entirely Driscoll’s fault. He stuck the kid in a Wyvern sim for six hours.”
“Ouch,” Miller said. “Is the kid sane?”
“Bitch is that he just went through pre-mission phys,” Powell said, finishing his fungal treatment and putting the bottle away. “Threw up all over himself for four hours.”
“And he stayed in the can?” Miller said. “Good lad.”
“Seems to be,” Powell said. “But is he worth losing the most efficient ops sergeant I’ve ever had? First, there’s not a damned thing to do with Driscoll on the cruise. Second, I need him where he is, at least until I can get a replacement. But figuring out who he is going to grapp, just to pass the time, is getting to be a full-time job. Looking for a job in Ops, Chief Warrant Officer Miller? Nothing but headaches and no extra pay, but you get petty power and the chance to grapp people on the side.”
“Not on your life,” Miller said, chuckling.
“I could ask the Old Man to draft you.”
“We share a room and you have to sleep sometime.”
“Point.”
“Switch him out for one of your team leaders,” Miller said. “That puts him in the position to be grapped by Ops instead of doing the grapping.”
“Point,” Powell said. “I wish he’d shown this proclivity before we left Terra, though. That way I could have done the switch with time to shake down. Doing it mid-cruise is going to suck. No, I’m not going to shake up the teams that badly. Putting Driscoll in a team leader slot would just destroy a team. But, yeah, Driscoll’s got to go. What’s the word from on-high?”
“Runner found a world right off,” Miller said. “One that has air and water and all that. But we’re going to do a full system survey before we approach. I’d say three days, minimum.”
“I’ll pass that on,” Powell said, grinning. “Otherwise I’m sure the scuttlebutt circuit will have it as we’re going to crash into the sun.”
“Grapp…”
Berg stuck his head out of his bunk at the sound of rapid and constant bitching from down the compartment. He was recovering from his third day of VR training in the Wyverns. After what had apparently been a serious drubbing from Top, Driscoll had, in very simple terms as if he was a slightly retarded child, explained that he was to take a break every fifty minutes. Hattelstad had been designated as his spotter, which had thrilled Hatt no end since it meant two days of, basically, looking at a grapping Wyvern that wasn’t doing anything.
“What happened?” he asked PFC Walker who was at the back of the group.
“Driscoll got pulled out of ops,” Walker said. “And Staff Sergeant Sutherland got pulled over to be the ops sergeant!”
Sutherland was First Platoon’s Alpha Team leader and assistant platoon leader. The move had pulled a serious spoke out of First Platoon’s wheel.
“Maulk,” Berg said, rolling back into his rack.
“Don’t worry, man,” Sergeant Dunn said, walking by his rack. “It wasn’t just the maulk he did to you. He’s been grapping up royally ever since we left. I’m surprised Top kept him as long as he has.”
“Force Recon staff sergeants are hard to find,” Sergeant “Onger” St. Onge said from across the compartment. “But, grapp, Sutherland. Why couldn’t Top have picked Summerlin or Rocco?”
“Or a sergeant,” Jaen said. “I know the position calls for a staff, but a sergeant can do it, especially on a cruise. I mean, all it is is grapping writing training schedules.”
“You hear?” Drago said, walking into the missile room. “They found a planet!”
“We’re in a star system,” Berg said, taking a sip of water. As predicted, he’d smoked through training in the suit, once he didn’t have to spend six continuous hours in it. He’d run through his mandated training items in two thirds the time considered “standard” and was now on his WCT testing. “Most star systems are probably going to have planets.”
“It’s a moon,” Gunnery Sergeant Frandsen said. “One around a big Jupiter type planet. What he meant was that we’ve found a planet that might support life, so we’re going to do a ground survey.”
For WCT a senior NCO, operations NCO or higher had to be present to prevent cheating. Frandsen was one of two obvious choices. Since some of the pass/fail points were subjective, Berg had been told he was grapped. Big-Foot was unrelenting. You did it perfectly by the book or Frandsen would screw your scores so hard it would look like you shouldn’t have passed Basic much less be in Recon. So far, however, Berg had smoked the tests to even Frandsen’s satisfaction.
“Well, if I want in on that, I’d better get back to testing,” Berg said, draining the bottle of water. “Permission to resume testing, Gunnery Sergeant?”
“If you think you’re up to it, PFC,” Gunny Frandsen said, shrugging. “But if you’re going to puke, you need to call the session.”
“No problem, Gunnery Sergeant,” Berg said, sliding into the suit.
“You sure about this?” the first sergeant said.
“Is that my signature on the pad?” Gunnery Sergeant Frandsen said, warming up to full Frandsen-Rage.
“Calm down, Big-Foot,” Top said, shaking his head. “I take your word for it. I’ve just never seen you give someone a one hundred percent score. Not even your own troops.”
“I’ll take Two-Gun any time he wants to transfer,” Big-Foot said. “He’s got a much better handle on the physics maulk than I do. That’s where everybody falls down. I’ve been saying—”
“If we’re going to throw these sensors at them we need more basic physics training,” Top said. “I even agree. If you can figure out how to get that done, send me a memo.”
“Well, one thing that comes to mind is that we’ve got a team of top physicists, all of them former professors, sitting around with their thumbs up their butts.”
“Point,” Powell said. “But that’s for later. Shiny. He’s passed on WCT. But we’re not posting the score. Just that he passed. And don’t put anything on the scuttlebutt circuit. He just passed. No big deal. Got it?”
“Yes, but why?”
“Kid’s got enough problems,” Top said. “He’s smart as hell and he passed the new FOT course. Face it, he’s better prepared for this than most of the old hands. That’s causing some resentment. This would cause more. Let him just glide in.”
“Shiny,” Frandsen said. “If you say so.”
“We’ve got a planet to survey,” Top said. “Make sure your teams are prepped. Let me worry about the rest of the company.”
“Are you sure about this?” Captain MacDonald asked. “The team hasn’t trained together, yet. And Two-Gun is brand new.”
“That’s the team to use, sir,” First Sergeant Powell replied. “Because of Two-Gun. Probably there’s not going to be anything weird on this world. It’s pretty dead. But if there is, if there’s something weird, I think that Berg’s background would be useful. He’s shown a better ability than anyone in the company, excepting me, at reading the more complicated sensors. Charlie Second is my recommendation for first plant. But it is, of course, your decision, sir.”