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"Oh, he's there, somewhere," Ryan answered. "What I don't know, is where in the hell he thinks he's going."
CHAPTER 13
Rochester, NY, United States, Sol III
1925 EDT Monday September 14, 2009 ad
Major John Mansfield crouched low, hiding in the shadows of the roof of the trailer. He could hear the crunch of gravel as his target approached and this time there would be no way to escape. He'd been tracking him for the last four days and tonight would be the time of reckoning. Preparing to spring he pulled his legs under him and clutched the sheaf of paperwork attached to a clipboard in one hand and a pen in the other; being adjutant for the Ten Thousand was no picnic.
As the official perso
It had become something of a game. Cutprice would set up an obstacle course, human and often physical, between himself and his adjutant. Mansfield would try to pass it to get the colonel to take his paperwork in hand. Once a human being put something, anything, in the colonel's hand, he was very conscientious about completing it. But forget putting it in an "In" box.
But this time Mansfield had him dead to rights. The colonel had become a little too complacent, a little too regular in his schedule. And Mansfield had used all the tricks. A dummy was occupying his bed so no one would know he was stalking the night. No one had seen him crossing the compound so none of the troops would give him away this time. And a female trooper who really needed the colonel to sign a waiver so she could be promoted out of zone, a waiver that had been approved by her company commander, the sergeant major and the adjutant, had spent the evening plying the colonel with Bushmills. With any luck his defenses would be low enough that Mansfield would surprise him for once.
He crouched lower and leaned to the side, peering around the sign a
"You lookin' for me, Mansfield?"
Major Mansfield stood up and looked at the figure that was now standing on the stoop of the porch. Now that it was in the light it was clear that the figure was both shorter and darker than the colonel. And wore the wrong rank.
"Sergeant Major Wacleva, I am, frankly, shocked that you would stoop so low as to assist this juvenile delinquent over my shoulder in his avoidance of duty!"
"Ah, don't take it personal, Major," the young looking sergeant major responded in a gravelly voice. "It is the age-old dichotomy of the warrior and the beancounter!"
"Since when did you get cleared for words like 'dichotomy'?" the adjutant asked with a laugh.
"Since the colonel spent half the night getting plastered with Brockdorf," Wacleva responded sourly. He pulled out a pack of Pall Malls and tapped out a cancer stick.
"Yeah," Cutprice said with a laugh. "Did you know she was a philosophy major before she enlisted?"
"Yes, I do, Colonel," Mansfield answered testily, finally turning around to look at the officer. "Which is why she's one of the very few people I know who can read the Posleen mind. And did you know she needed your signature to get her promotion to E-6?"
"Why the hell do you think I'm standing on a roof in the freezing cold?" Cutprice asked. He took the pen out of the S-1's hand. "Which one is it?"
"Oh, no, you're not getting away that easily," Mansfield answered. "Among other things there's a real strange one in here. I think we might need to send a squad down to North Carolina to spring one of our officers."
"Who's in North Carolina?" Cutprice asked, stepping lightly off the roof and landing on sprung knees. "Goddamn it's nice to be young again."
"No shit," the major responded, landing next to him. "I think the last time I could be assured of doing that and not killing myself was in '73."
"With all due respect, sirs, yer both wimps," the sergeant major growled. "Try being old before '73. I couldn't do that when I was datin' yer mothers."
Cutprice chuckled and reached for the sheaf of papers. "Gimme the 3420, I promise I'll do the rest."
Mansfield and the sergeant major followed the colonel into the trailer and Mansfield extracted a sheet of paper from the pile as the sergeant major went to the sideboard. "One 3420, complete and ready to sign," Mansfield said.
"Hmm." The colonel read it carefully. The game went both ways; Mansfield had twice inserted orders transferring himself to a command slot so the colonel was now careful to read the documents he signed. "This looks kosher," he said, scrawling a signature.
"So is this," Mansfield said. "There are two documents here. One is from Captain Elgars and the other is from her original shrink."
"Elgars doesn't ring a bell," Cutprice said, picking up the printout of an e-mail.
"And it shouldn't, she's never been 'with' us, so to speak," Mansfield said. "She was at the Monument, the sniper who is the reason it has a brand-new aluminum top."
"Hang on a bit," the sergeant major rasped. "Redhead, broken arm. What's she doing as a captain?"
"Just about everybody that was there got battlefield commissions," Mansfield pointed out. "Unless they specifically turned them down," he added with a "hrum, hrum."
"Well, I didn't turn it down, it's just a reserve commission and I'm acting in my regular rank," the sergeant major said with a grin. "That way when I retire I get major's pay and in the meantime nobody can make me a fuckin' adjutant."
"Elgars was in a coma so she wasn't in a position to turn down a promotion to first lieutenant," Mansfield continued. "And she got promoted in her zone automatically, since she was officially on the roll as patient status."
"That's the silliest fucking thing I ever heard," the sergeant major said, pouring himself a drink and setting the bottle on the table. Then he paused. "Naw, I take that back. I've heard sillier stuff. But it's close."
Cutprice glanced at the two letters. He had come up from the ranks himself and he was a little short on college education, but he was a fast and accurate reader. The letter from the psych was the normal bureaucratic gobbledygook. The patient was refusing "treatment" and acting manifestly crazy. The shrink tried to cloak that with words she thought the colonel probably hadn't heard, but in that the psychologist was wrong; the colonel had heard them before from shrinks talking about him. The letter from the captain was a bit different. Straightforward, spelling wasn't too great, but that was normal for enlisteds which was what she really was. She wanted to see another shrink, her original one was treating her like she was nuts. Yada, yada. Huh?
"She says she's got two people's memories?" Cutprice asked.
"Apparently so, sir," Mansfield replied.
"No wonder her shrink thinks she's nuts," the colonel mused. "She says she thinks the Crabs did it to her."
"Her treatment was experimental, sir," Mansfield noted. "It . . . sort of hangs together. And she doesn't want to discontinue treatment, she just wants to continue with a psychologist that doesn't think she's nuts."
"Sure, if you're willing to believe she's not," Cutprice said.
"We've got a lot of people who are a few bricks short of a load," Wacleva pointed out. "Look at Olson, I mean, nobody is sane if they go around wearing a God King crest all the time."