Direct Fire #4 Drop Trooper

since they cleaned up the battle damage from the Tahni occupation. So, it has that going for it. I guess it’s nice, except I already have three Marines in my platoon who’ve been busted for drunk and disorderly.” I ran a hand across the back of my neck, feeling a weariness that was more spiritual than physical. “Not to mention the four that want to get married to locals. It’s enough to make a guy miss Hachiman. I mean, your pee would freeze before it hit the ground in the winter, but at least there were no civilians for the Marines to assault, batter, or impregnate.”
I’d laughed at the stories my barracks-mates had told when I was an enlisted man, rolled my eyes at them as a squad leader, and somehow had never expected just how much less funny they would be, how much trouble they would cause me as a platoon leader. The Marine Corps might cut an officer some slack for breaking regs to win a battle, but God forbid if I was late filing a report on military dependents.
“God, you’ve become a cynical bastard.” Freddy nudged my arm. “What happened to that idealistic officer trainee who risked it all to improve our OCS training class?”
“That trainee became an actual platoon leader,” I shot back. “You know the drill, man. I’ve spent twice as much time filling out and filing personnel forms and incident reports as I have organizing tactical training.”
“These are the easy days, my friend,” Freddy said, nodding as if he had suddenly become the aged, sage philosopher of the group. “You’ll miss this place when we’re gone. Enjoy it while you can.”
“Well, don’t get too attached to it,” Vicky warned us, nodding toward the front entrance to the dining room, “because I think we’re about to get our marching orders.”
The door was as old-fashioned and anachronistic as anything else in the restaurant, and its brass hinges squeaked as it opened. The first Marine through was the Skipper, Captain Covington, my company commander. He was lean and rangy, not particularly imposing physically, and you could almost overlook the man until you caught a glimpse in those eyes. They were killer’s eyes; the eyes of a man who knew death on a first-name basis.
I was primed to push myself up from the table, waiting for the call to attention, but it didn’t come for the Skipper, because there were other captains in the room. Technically, I suppose he had them on time in grade—he’d been in the Fleet Marine Corps since the Pirate Wars over twenty years ago—but that wasn’t going to bring a room full of officers to their feet.
The woman following behind him did. She was tall and commanding, with an arch to her eyebrow that always made me wonder if I was in the middle of fucking up and she was the only one who could see it.
“Attention!” Captain Cronje, Vicky’s company commander, did the honors. His voice was a little on the high-pitched side and he always seemed a little manic for my tastes, but she insisted he was well-respected and not a bad guy to work for.
“At ease,” Colonel Voss told us, striding purposefully across the room, the soles of her boots clomping on the hard wood floor as she claimed her table at the front of the cluster of Marine officers.
Her XO, Major Lundy, followed behind, clutching a tablet in his right hand as if it contained the secrets of the universe. I was sinking back into my seat when Covington slid into the chair beside me, nodding a greeting.
“Show’s about to start,” he said. I wasn’t sure if he meant the briefing or the next phase of the war. Or both.
“Sir,” I asked the question softly enough not even Vicky could hear it, “just how come you’re not up there?” At his narrowed eyes, I went on. “I mean, how come you’re not a battalion commander? Or a general for that matter? I mean, you’ve been in longer than anyone I know except for Top.”
The Skipper didn’t smile much, but he did now.
“The hardest battle I have ever fought,” he confided to me, just as quietly, “was to avoid getting oak leaves pinned on my shoulders, Alvarez. I joined the Marines to fight, not to manage. If I’d wanted to be a manager, I’d have gone to business school and got a job in the Corporate Council.” He nodded toward the battalion commander. “Listen up, this is going to be…interesting.”
Colonel Voss had the pinched face and perpetual look of disapproval of one of the primary school teachers I’d been foisted upon when I’d first arrived in Trans-Angeles. I’d never liked her and had no reason to respect her because I’d never seen her do anything more substantial than brown-nosing the brigade commander, but I was curious about what she had to say. She touched a control on her ‘link and the image of a planet snapped to life near the ceiling, projected from the holotank installed there. It was a living world, a temperate one from the look of it, not a steaming hell-hole like Inferno or an iceball like Hachiman.
“This is Port Harcourt,” Voss said, her tone dramatic, perhaps intentionally so. “That isn’t what the Tahni call it, obviously, but their name is pretty much unpronounceable, so we’re going with Port Harcourt.”
A low roll of chuckles at that, though not from me.
“Port Harcourt is the outermost of the Tahni core worlds, their oldest and most heavily populated colonies. It’s our first steppingstone in the campaign to take down the Tahni Imperium.”
“Ooh-rah!” The exclamation came from several of the officers, but the closest was Cronje, and he added a postscript. “Time to kick their asses, ma’am!”
“Ooh-rah!” she agreed, and somehow made the battle-cry sound pretentious and academic. “This is a key objective in our campaign. It’s vital that we gain control of its resources to stage supplies for the push toward Tahn-Skyyiah, their home system. And more than that, we