on the prissy side, and, like all second lieutenants fresh out of the Academy, he was inexperienced. Capricorn Zeta, I’d heard, had been his first time in combat.
That by itself is no crime, of course. The fact that he’d been tasked with taking his platoon in on a direct assault against Capricorn Zeta suggested that his superiors thought he could do the job. But for the enlisted pukes under him, both Marine and Navy, there was going to be a trial period when we were all keeping a wary eye on the guy. Would he be a prima donna? A perfectionist? A martinet? Or a decent Marine who listened to his NCOs and looked after his people?
“Okay, Doc,” Singer said after a moment, switching off the holographic screen. “Thanks for coming.”
“You wanted to see me, sir.” Any maybe ream me a brand-new asshole.
“Thought you’d like to hear,” he said. “You are officially off the hook.”
I blinked. “Sir?”
“Headquarters has chosen to see your actions at Capricorn Zeta—in particular your unauthorized sampling of the prisoners’ DNA—as ‘an appropriate display of initiative in a combat situation.’ ”
“That’s … uh … good news, sir.” Singer seemed a little too cheerful, and I was waiting for the other combat boot to land.
“We will ignore the fact that you went over my head and failed to ask my permission to take those samples … and your failure to observe established protocol in the handling of prisoners … and your use of a comm channel compromised by newsbots. This time!”
The sheer threat wrapped into those last two words was like a blow. “Yes, sir.”
“There’s also the small matter of your assaulting a civilian at the Free Fall last night. I can not overlook that.”
“It was a reporter, sir. He tracked me to the Free Fall! All I did was … push him a little. Sir.”
“You pushed him. Witnesses say you threw him thirty meters! What were you on, G-Boost?”
“No, sir!” G-Boost is an artificial protein that bonds with the respirocytes all FMF personnel carry in their bloodstreams. It temporarily makes us stronger, faster, more alert, with better endurance. It’s also tightly controlled, and you do not use it casually. The Freitas respirocytes in my blood had boosted my strength a little, of course, by improving the efficiency of my oxygen metabolism. But no, I’d not been Boosting.
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely, sir! It will not happen again, sir.”
“It had damned well better not!” He gave me a sour look. “Okay, you have a choice. Accept my NJP here and now … or you can request to see Captain Reichert.”
Shit. I hadn’t realized I was in that much trouble. NJP meant non-judicial punishment. The Marines called it being NJP’d, while the Navy referred to is as captain’s mast, and military slang called it being booked. Lieutenant Singer, as my immediate CO, could impose any of several punishments on me. Reichert was the Bravo Company commanding officer, and next up the command ladder from Singer. If I asked to see him, he might throw it out—fat chance—or he could give me more and worse than a mere second lieutenant could hand out, including, if he thought it serious enough, a court-martial, and that’s when things got really serious.
It wasn’t a real choice. Getting NJP’d was definitely preferable to a court, and having Second Lieutenant Singer come down on me was better than the company commander.
“Sir, I will accept whatever punishment you think fit. Sir.”
“You have any excuses for your behavior? Extenuating circumstances?”
They drilled the correct and acceptable reply to that question into your head in boot camp. “No excuses, sir.”
Yeah, the more I thought about it, the more I knew I’d screwed up big-time. It hadn’t seemed that way at the time … but laying hands on a civilian like that, tossing him across the compartment? If he’d missed the net he might have gone on to hit the rotating deck hard enough to hurt himself, especially since he obviously wasn’t experienced with low-G.
“Okay, Doc. I understand your problem with the newsies, so I’ll go easy on you. Fourteen days’ restriction, fourteen days’ extra duty.”
This was going easy on me? Singer had hit me with just about the hardest punishment he could manage as a lowly O-2 imposing Article 15 punishment.
But then, if he’d chosen to hand me company-grade punishment, I could have lost seven days of base pay, taken a reduction in grade, from HM2 back to HM3, and had a written reprimand put into my personnel folder. And if I’d gone up in front of the Old Man, I could have been slapped with restriction and extra duty for forty-five days, forfeiture of half my pay for two months, reduction in grade, a written reprimand—hell, even bread and water for three days if he was feeling real generous.
So maybe I was getting off light after all.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“I also want a written letter of apology to Mr. Ivarson on my desk by oh eight thirty tomorrow.”
I started to bristle, and I almost said something like “I’m so sorry you’re an asshole, Mr. Ivarson,” but bit my tongue. This wasn’t the time to try to win points with insulting comments that could only make things worse.
“Aye, aye, sir.” I hesitated. “Uh … will this be going on my record, sir?”
“Do a good job, keep your nose clean … and no. No it won’t.”
I sagged with relief. A downgrudge letter in your file will pursue you to the end of your naval career. “Thank you, sir.”
“Okay. That takes care of you and your reporter friend. Back to what happened at Zeta Capricorn. Damn it, Doc, do you have any idea what kind of a firestorm you’ve released around here?”
“I wasn’t aware of any firestorm, sir.”
“Jesus, Doc! Where’s your head, up your ass? To start with, we just might be looking at a shooting war, and all because you released information about the ethnic and political identity of our prisoners onto the open Net! Half the world wants to nuke or railgun Dushanbe into a kilometer-deep crater right now. And Dushanbe claims we’re lying, that we set the whole thing up to discredit them, to create a causus bellum.”
Well, they would claim something like that, I thought. But I didn’t say so out loud.
“Captain Reichert has been ragging my ass, asking me how I plan to tighten my operational security in my platoon. What the hell am I going to tell him?”
“Sir. You can tell him that the man responsible has learned his lesson and promises not to open channels directly to the HQ Net again.”
“Why’d you do it, Doc?” The anger evaporated, and he seemed friendly again … a bit puzzled, perhaps, at why I’d been so careless. Or maybe the anger had all been a put-on, a bit of drama designed to show me he cared.
“I saw a chance to gather some useful intel, sir.
