Almost cold enough to Be. The Ons and Offs flowed more normally. It was Becoming…
Berg looked up at a sudden laugh and saw Mimi Jones sitting across from him.
It was the place that Gunga-Din had occupied for the last six weeks and it shook him just a bit to see the petite young lady sitting in Prabhu’s seat. It also, for just a moment, angered him. He’d been trying to avoid looking across the table for the last ten minutes. Nobody had anything to say. The losses were still too fresh.
“What are you doing here?” Berg asked roughly.
“Looking for you,” Mimi said. “I wanted to ask you some questions.”
“I’m fresh out of answers,” Berg said.
“I think you can tell me these,” Mimi said. “Whose seat am I sitting in? Who was he? What was he like?”
Berg teared up and turned away.
“His name was Arun Prabhu,” Sergeant Jaenisch said. “He was a Hindu who didn’t know a grapping thing about it. We called him Gunga-Din.”
Mimi quoted.
“What?” Guppy asked. Lance Corporal Francis Golupski was the sole survivor of Staff Sergeant Summerlin’s Alpha Team after the attack of the giant crabpus. The shaken lance corporal hadn’t said anything since returning to the ship.
“It’s the closing lines of the poem,” Mimi said gently.
“Yeah, that says it,” Hatt said, nodding. “He was a damned fine guy. Never touched a cheeseburger once he found religion.”
“He sounds like a fine man,” Mimi said. “I wish I’d known him.”
“Oh, he was a character, all right,” Jaen said, his jaw working. “One time in Singapore…”
Still too much Heat. It could feel the Ons and Offs struggling. If only the Heat would not flow to it, constantly. If only the temperature would lower enough. It felt that this had happened before. Vague memories of prior times of cold and then the Heat returning. Cold was Life. The Heat was… Death.
“You’ve hardly said anything,” Mimi half shouted, tracking down Bergstresser where he was standing in the corner. Miss Moon was leading the group in a chorus of “Nearer My God To Thee” while Staff Sergeant Sutherland accompanied on the bagpipes. Sutherland was making heavy weather of it. He’d been fine for “Amazing Grace” but on this one he was having to make it up as he went along. It didn’t help that from somewhere a bit more than “one shot of medicinal bourbon” had turned up.
“Not much to say,” Berg shouted, then took a suck off a bulb of Gatorade. “We took a lot of losses. Most of the people I’d gotten close to in the unit, among others. Too many good people.”
“They were your friends,” Mimi said.
“No, actually,” Berg said. “They were my buddies. I hated more than half of them. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t rather have died than them. That’s what being a buddy means in the military.”
“I was told, by others, that more would have died if it hadn’t been for you,” Mimi said. “Does that help, at all?”
“No,” Berg admitted. “I was just doing my job. I couldn’t save Mammoth. I didn’t stop the crabpus from taking Drago and Crow and Lacey. I couldn’t save Candle-Man or Summer. Nobody could. I hate that God damned planet.”
“But you’re going on to others, still,” Mimi pointed out.
“Still in question,” Berg said. “If the CO turns the ship around, I’m going to withdraw my volunteering. This is a good unit, but… Sorry, I don’t think I’m cut out to be a Space Marine. Not if it means another world like that.”
“But you are good at what you do,” Mimi said. “If you don’t continue, more people will die because you are not there. Or, the person that takes your place will be lost. Look at Chief Miller.”
The chief warrant was in the corner arm wrestling with Lyle. The armorer might have been a paraplegic once, but he’d made up for it in the weight room. The chief wasn’t losing, yet, but he wasn’t winning, either.
“He had his whole team wiped out in the Dreen War,” Mimi said. “He’s here. Because this is where he needs to be. This is where you need to be, Two-Gun.”
“Don’t call me that,” Berg said. “I hate that name.”
“No you don’t,” Mimi said. “You’re too much of a Marine to hate it.”
“Why are you here, Miss Jones?” Berg asked, exasperated.
“Because everybody else is singing and you’re sitting in a corner, brooding,” Mimi said. “Because you think too much. Because you know too much. Which is why you need to be here, PFC Bergstresser. Because you think. And because the next time you step out that door, you have to be mentally ready for it. Captain Blankemeier needs you that way. Your CO, your first sergeant, your teammates need you that way. I need you that way. Because the next time, the life you might save is mine or Miriam’s.”
“Or lose,” Berg said. “That’s another possibility, you know. We lost a scientist and twelve Marines, today. Losing you or Miss Moon is a very real possibility.”
“One that’s reduced if you’re here,” Mimi said, lifting up on tiptoe to press her finger into his forehead. “If that is here.”
“Okay, okay!” Guppy shouted as the song died. “This is one that I know Danno can’t grapp up! March! March! March!”
“For Crow!” Jaenisch shouted drunkenly. “For the Crow-Man! March! March!”
“Okay, okay,” Staff Sergeant Sutherland said, taking a drink. “Lemme get my breath.”
“I don’t know that one,” Miriam said.
“Simple lyrics,” Sergeant Jaenisch said, grinning. “Don’t know if you’ll like ’em…”
“March?” Mimi asked. “Dirty song?”
“March of Cambreadth,” Berg said, his jaw flexing. “It’s only a dirty song if you’re a pacifist.”
“Okay, here goes,” Sutherland muttered, warming up the pipes.
“You’re right,” Mimi said when the song was finished. “Not much of a song for a pacifist. Are you a pacifist, Berg?”
“No, ma’am,” Berg said.
“So you gonna ‘fight as one in heart and soul’?” Mimi asked.
Berg looked around the compartment, empty though it was of a lot of people, and admitted what he’d been fighting for a long time. He didn’t want to be anywhere else. It didn’t seem to be the right response to losing so many friends, but it was what he truly felt in his heart.
“Hymn!” Guppy shouted, standing up and swaying and putting his hand over his heart. “The Hymn for God’s Sake! We haven’t sung the Hymn!”