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"You'll be fit for duty in four days, Hook," she said. "You'd never have been unfit if you'd reported that immediately."
"Well, I couldn't see it there, could I? Ma'am," he said reasonably.
A few of the others laughed when the doctor had gone. Hook glared them into silence; he was a big young man, six feet, and strong in a lanky long-muscled fashion; few cared to meet his flat hazel eyes for long. Unarmed combat had been one of his better specialties; that and marksmanship had saved him from washing out after repeated "marginal disciplinaries" on his Recruit Evaluation Forms. When everyone was quiet he swung back onto his pallet and lay on his stomach as he looked out the window again.
"Lucky… the boil wasn't on your ass… Hook," a voice said from the lower bunk, with a strong choppy Sun People accent. "Then everyone… would see… you're a half-assed… excuse for a Marine."
He leaned over, glaring at the sweat-wet face of the sick man below him. "Get off my case, Edraxsson!" he said. "You've been biting my ass for a year now, and I'm fucking sick of it, you hear?"
"That's because you're… a disgrace to my beloved… Corps," the noncom said. "But I'm going to make a Marine out of you… yet, Hook," he said, eyes begi
"Shut the fuck up, Edraxsson," Hook barked. "You're just a useless cripple here, not a fucking noncom, so shut up!"
Edraxsson smirked, despite the fever from his infected foot- a pack mule had stepped on it, and driven filth into the wound while he was out on patrol. Hook felt something spark behind his eyes, like a small white explosion, and reached for his webbing belt where it hung on a wooden peg driven into the adobe wall.
Right across the face, he thought. That'll shut him up, I'll give him the buckle-
"Hey, heads up!" one of the other patients said, craning her head to get a better view through the narrow window and the thick mud-brick wall it pierced. "Something going on out there!"
Hook had a better view. The Gatling was crewed up, and the colonel leading it out at a gallop. His eyes went wider; something was up. When he heard the crackle of shots and then the ripping-canvas sound of the machine gun in operation, an icy trickle reached up from groin to stomach and cooled the rage there the way salt spray would a candle-flame on deck.
"Something's going down."
Marian Alston-Kurlelo ate slowly, with conscious pleasure. She loved the sea, but there were things you just couldn't expect on salt water, and a good ham-and-eggs breakfast was one of them. They were due to leave Westhaven today; touch at Portsmouth Base, and then south with the fleet. At least they'd be sailing out of Alba's late fall into the Mediterranean's mild winter…
She ignored the occasional courier who came in to drop off a written message or consult in whispers with her hostess; the last thing a busy subordinate needed was their elbow joggled.
There was even tumeric for the scrambled eggs, and acorn-fed Alban hams were better than anything Smithfield, Virginia, had ever turned out. They were going to be far foreign for a good long while soon, probably eating hardtack-what the enlisted ranks called dog biscuit, with reason-and salt cod.
"What's the status on the Merrimac?" she asked, in a quiet moment.
"The dockside people were working all night in shifts, Commodore," Commandant Hendricksson said. "They're putting the finishing touches on stowage now, completing her provisioning."
That had had to wait until the cargo from Irondale was loaded, since stores needed to go on top to be accessible during the voyage south. Which they wouldn't, under tons of rolled steel plate, boiler, engine parts, and ca
"Talbott and the Severna Park finished their loading yesterday, so that's six hundred tons of coal along with it-yah, should be ample."
Alston nodded, calculations ru
Hendricksson nodded; she was a tall fair woman, in her late thirties now, built with a matronly solidity and usually showing a calm, stolid reliability. "It may not be spectacular, but we do get things done here," she said.
The commodore inclined her head. The ex-Mi
Martha's back in Nantucket Town… Pulakis is farming on Long Island, Alonski drowned on that fishing boat, poor bastard, and Greta's been in charge here since the Alban War. Hasn't been back to the Island more than a couple of times.
She'd done well, though; it was a post that suited a lover of schedules and lists and procedures. Her husband was a civil engineer of like outlook, out since the crack of dawn supervising the laying of a new water main.
"In fact, you've been doing a damned good job here overall," Alston went on, and Hendricksson glowed. The commodore didn't give praise lightly.
They were breakfasting in the commandant's residence. Fort Pentagon was garrison and civil headquarters here in Westhaven. The commander's house was inside it, built around a courtyard of its own, mostly cobbled, but with a small rose garden and a wooden jungle gym set amid grass with trampled bare spots here and there. A groom led a horse by, sparrows hopped about picking oats from the cracks between stones, someone went through the courtyard gate with a basket of laundry on her hip and laughed with a Marine who'd leaned his rifle against a wall to offer her a hand. This kitchen looked over the yard, flooded with light from the big south-facing windows; it had a pleasant austerity of flagstones and scrubbed oak, stone countertops and big cast-iron stove from Irondale. Pans and dishes were racked on the walls, sacks of onions hung from the rafters with bundles of herbs, and the ham stood in carved pink glory near the big black frying pan. The air smelled of sea and cooking.
Swindapa looked up from where she'd been dandling the commandant's youngest. "I'll go see about getting our du
"Thanks, "dapa," Marian said. "I had some stuff with the armorer, too-see to it, would you, sugar?"
Her Python, specifically; her katana and wasikashi she looked after herself, but something had been rattling in the pistol last time she had it on the firing range. Coin' to need that, she thought, with grim resignation. You wanted your tools in good shape when your life depended on them, and Westhaven had a first-rate firearms man, trained at Seahaven Engineering back on the Island.
"Let's go take a look at things in general," she went on, throwing down her napkin.