Gust Front

«Airborne, General, sir. I'll be there with bells on.»

«Just be sure you're there with all your medals on.» Jack smiled one of his cold thou-shalt-obey smiles. «Medals, Mike, not ribbons. And all of them.»

* * *

«Absent companions,» toasted Mike, as junior in the group.

«Absent companions,» chorused the inebriated crowd huddled around the new French High Commander.

The main ballroom of the Fort Myer Officers' Club was jammed with the Military District of Washington's finest. The bright light of the chandeliers pulled out highlights on gold braid and jewelry throughout the room as the officers and their ladies danced the minuet of power. The room was packed with generals of every rank; full colonels were not much more than waiters. But the entire room's focus was on the small group by the head table where a circle of aides and senior subordinates clustered around four officers. Three of them were four-star generals; one of them was a mere captain.

«By rights, mon ami, you should be factored in that toast,» said the guest of honor, with a companionable clap on the shoulder to Mike.

«Well, there ain't many left from my impromptu first command, that's for sure.» Mike looked around at his company, only faintly uncomfortable with the situation.

In the year after his return from Diess he had been dragged around the United States as a talking head for the Public Information Office. During the tour he had intimate conversations with every kind of senior officer. He was sure at the time that the Curse of the Medal was on him; that for the rest of his career the closest he would come to the front was talking about it with a commentator. He was finally reprieved with his current command. So he was comfortable with senior officers at this point. And he had no problems with uniforms.

Before the tour began the first thing that was required of him by the PIO was the purchase, at fabulous expense, of a set of the new Fleet Strike Mess Blues. The group of designers and forward-thinking military officers that designed it rammed through some wildly successful combinations of Galactic technology and the modern mania for efficient and comfortable clothing. The daily wear uniform, combat silks, was as comfortable a set of clothes as any casual dress maniac could desire and even the standard dress uniform was extremely comfortable compared to the norm. That mania for casual comfort had ended abruptly at Mess Blues.

Designed to highlight several traditions from members of the Fleet Strike amalgam, the uniform also called on futuristic styling. A long mag-sealed tunic of Navy blue, worn flapped open, was lined with the branch color of the wearer, in Mike's case Infantry sky blue. Around the middle was worn a full sash cummerbund of «Redcoat» red (the identical shade was used by, variously, the American Marines, American artillery, French paratroopers and the Red Army) looped with gold. The shoulders and sleeves were again covered in gold loops, the number of loops denoting rank. The pants were piped with red. It was topped by a simple Americanized beret in the color of the different branches of Fleet Strike. This gave the unfortunate impression that all members of the Infantry were on a UN Peacekeeping mission, but that impression would pass with time.

This admittedly flashy uniform was, in Captain O'Neal's case, further highlighted by a frightening set of medals. In the case of most persons with multiple layers of «fruit-salad» the weight was on the lower end, the various commendation medals and other bits of colorful «I Was There» ribbons that say that the wearer has been a good boy and gone where a soldier was supposed to go. In Mike's case, the weight was uncomfortably skewed in the other direction.

Besides the Medal, specifically awarded for single-handedly taking out a Posleen command ship at the Main Line of Resistance on Diess, he had been separately awarded for three other actions during that forty-eight hours of madness that saw victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. There was a Bronze Star for organizing the demolition of Qualtren, despite the accidental consequences, a Bronze Star for organizing the survivors under the rubble left from the explosion and a Silver Star for the relief of the Tenth Panzergrenadiers at the Boulevard of Death. He had not wanted any of them and argued that, by tradition, they should all have been lumped into one award. But they came piecemeal instead.

Along with those awards, and two Purple Hearts, there was a mass of foreign decorations from countries as widely varied as England and mainland China (almost three companies of the regiment China had sent survived due to O'Neal's platoon). A single Army commendation medal, a good conduct medal and an I-Was-There medal for Desert Storm huddled at the bottom.

In any other company the combination of uniform and fruit-salad would have looked maniacal, but that was in any other company.

The cluster of officers around Géneral Crenaus included the American High Commander in Ground Force Mess Dress, a veteran of Just Cause, Desert Storm and Monsoon Thunder along with so many odd little out-of-the-way missions he had long ago stopped trying to remember them all. His «fruit-salad» was also impressively high protein, low fat. General Horner, in Mess Dress, had managed to be involved instrumentally in all three operations and although he was light on «Forgot To Duck» Purple Hearts, his commendations were all about being out front leading troops.

And it turned out that Géneral Crenaus, in French Mess Dress, tails, stovepipe hat and all, had apparently been involved in every action the French had been able to think up over the last couple of decades. And, apparently, a few they were not quite willing to admit to as well.

Between the Mess Dress on all the senior officers and the medals on every chest, Mike was wondering when the Valkyries were supposed to show up and go violently mezzo-soprano.

«I like that one,» said General Taylor rather thickly as he pointed to an unrecognized decoration on Captain O'Neal's chest. He had managed to ingest better than a quart and a half of scotch during the course of the evening. «I didn't think there were any Japs with you on Diess.» The decoration worn just above the Combat Infantryman's Badge looked somewhat like a golden rising sun.

Géneral Crenaus laughed grimly. «That's not for saving Nip ass, bon homme. That is simply an award for being there. I have one as well.» He pointed to the same medal on his own chest.

«That's not the Diess medal,» pointed out General Horner, peering at O'Neal's chest. «That's our Diess Expeditionary Force medal,» he continued, pointing at a normal-sized medal of tan and red.

«Not for being on Diess, mon Général,» corrected Géneral Crenaus's senior aide from the periphery where the aides danced attendance. «It is a Federation recognition device for being in the effect zone of a nuclear blast.»

«Oui, this one is entirely our young friend's fault,» laughed the boisterous French general, thumbing in the direction of the captain. «However, on reflection, I can hardly fault him.»

«Fine, great,» said Mike, feeling the bourbons the senior officers had been pressing on him. «Next time I'll leave your Frog ass swinging in the breeze.»

Géneral Crenaus laughed uproariously to the apparent relief of the officers in the outer ring. «I sincerely desire that there is never another such incident, my young capitaine.»

Mike, in the meantime, was rather drunkenly looking at his Star Burst medal upside down. «You know the bastard part of it, sir?» he asked as he swayed forward and back; trying to maintain balance with his head down was getting harder and harder.

«What?» asked General Horner, knocking back his Absolut and picking another off a passing tray.