Luna Marine(50)
“Now, since I know that you could not count to twenty-one even if you were barefoot and you removed your pants, I’ll make it simple for you. The odds are something like three hundred thirty to one against you, son. Six months from now, you are far more likely to be serving in Siberia or some dink country you’ve never heard of and couldn’t spell if you had, than you are to be playing space he-ro!”
Jack flushed, suddenly angry. “But my recruiter said—”
“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?”
Cold fear clawed up the back of Jack’s neck. “Sir! I’m sorry, I mean, this recruit is sorry, sir!”
“I know what you are, recruit! What I don’t know is what you were just doing with that constipated, sorry-assed turd you call a brain! While in ranks, you will not speak unless I demand a response from you! Do I make myself clear, Flash?”
“Sir, yes, sir!”
“Hit the deck! Gimme one hundred! Move!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” He dropped to a push-up position and began doing push-ups.
“And you will sound off with each one!”
“Sir, yes, sir! Three!…four!…”
“I did not hear one and two, recruit! I must have missed them! Start over!”
“One!…Two!…”
Knox dropped into a crouch next to Jack, speaking softly now, but still with that whipcrack of command in his voice. “And as for what your recruiter may or may not have promised you, maggot, perhaps you would like to take that up with the regimental chaplain. Or maybe you’d like to run home to your momma! She might feel sorry for you. But I do not!” Straightening suddenly, he walked on down the line of men.
“And while Recruit Flash is demonstrating the proper technique for push-ups, the rest of your sorry-assed wannabes might consider this! Every Marine, and I don’t care if he’s a fighter jock joystickin’ a Valkyrie, a space Marine on the Moon, a guard at an embassy or a goddamned cook, he is, first and foremost, forever and always, a Marine rifleman! You people will learn that lesson, and you will learn it well, because if you don’t, some goddamn dink is gonna pop you a new asshole right between your eyes!”
He walked on down the line, and Jack kept pumping, calling off the numbers. “Eighteen!…Nineteen!…”
He had to concentrate, because the other recruits were calling off the numbers of their push-ups and were a bit ahead. By the time Knox had reached the end of the line and started making his way back, half a dozen other recruits were pumping and counting as well. And yet, over the cacophony, Gunny Knox’s Voice of Command cracked and badgered, pushed, snapped, and berated. “I don’t think any of you will ever have what it takes to be a United States Marine, but by God in heaven I am going to try! I am going to personally break every last one of you miserable lowlife worms, and in the process I guarantee each and every one of you that you will wish that you have never been born! And then we will take what’s left and begin molding it into something that might, perhaps, begin to resemble a Marine!”
Jack’s arms gave out at sixty-four. He kept trying, struggling to raise himself, but by that time the DI had decided that the entire platoon needed to report to their racks inside the barracks to learn something about how to properly stow gear. And after that…perhaps a little run to warm them all up for the afternoon’s activities….
“Give it up, Ramsey!” he bellowed. “That is pathetic! On your feet! And you have the unspeakable gall to think you can become a Marine? Move out! All of you, move out! I want to see nothing on this grinder but amphibious green blurs! On the double, move-it-move-it-move-it!”
The most humiliating part of the whole sorry affair was the sudden realization that his mother might have been right about his chances to get to space by joining the Corps.
Alexander Residence
Arlington Heights, Illinois
0810 hours CDT
Liana Alexander slammed the door behind her as she stalked into the house. Damn the man! Damn, damn the man! How he could be so insufferably arrogant, so cold, so…so heartless!…
Such a simple request, and he’d refused her, point-blank!
She walked into the E-room and dropped onto the sunken couch facing the wall screen. Picking up the remote, she thumbed through several menu selections, calling up her Earthnet access. David must have some files in here, things he was working on now, preliminary reports, something that would be useful!
David didn’t know that she knew his private file-access code: Sphinx. Not that he’d ever tried very hard to hide it from her. In fact, he seemed to assume that she simply didn’t have the brains to work any electronic equipment. Well, it was true that she had trouble recording more than one program at a time off the entertainment feeds without getting hopelessly lost in all of the menu selections and information trees. And she had trouble with some of the interactive Net services. So many choices!