Launches from Vandenberg were always aimed toward the south, over open ocean and into a polar or near-polar orbit. It would never do to have the fragments of a failed launch coming down in a fiery footprint stretching across Greater Los Angeles. The tight clustering of the launches suggested that they were aiming for an unusually small launch window, which in turn suggested a rendezvous with a fleet of LEO-to-Luna transports already in orbit.
Dropping his gaze from the heavens, he gave her a long and appraising look in the moonlight. Then he shrugged. “I…guess maybe we’d best be getting back to the base, huh?”
She had to give that one some thought as well. There were regulations aplenty regarding sexual liaisons within military service, especially when there was a difference in rank involved that might be seen either as an abuse of power or as sex-for-privileges. Still, the practical implementation of those regs tended toward the assumption that men and women were going to do what was natural for them, and to turn a blind eye…unless the couple was flagrant in their play or the relationship involved “conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline,” as Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice so succinctly phrased it.
The question wasn’t what the Marine Corps had to say about a lieutenant sleeping with a captain. It was what she was ready for. She hadn’t had a sexual relationship with anyone since Yukio’s death, and that was two years ago now.
She knew she couldn’t put her life on hold forever.
“We don’t have to go back yet,” she told him. “Do you have the duty this weekend?”
He shook his head no.
“Me neither. We don’t have to report in until oh seven hundred Monday morning, right?” She stepped back into the surf, moving close, letting her hands lightly caress his body. “So…whatcha want to do about it, huh?”
“This,” he replied, reaching for her.
The kiss lasted for a long, long time.
TWELVE
WEDNESDAY, 7 MAY 2042
Recruit Platoon 4239
Parris Island Recruit Training
Center
1345 hours EDT
“Okay, ladies,” Gunnery Sergeant Knox said, grinning. He was holding a lump of something that looked like heavy, gray clay. He tossed it a few centimeters into the air and caught it again in the same hand several times, the soft slap of each catch emphasizing his words. “I wanna show you all somethin’ here. Somethin’ important.”
It was a sweltering, humid May afternoon beneath a brassy, overcast sky. Week Three of recruit training for Platoon 4239 had brought them face-to-face with a number of firsts as they settled into the boot-camp routine. Early in the week they’d run the obstacle course for the first time, a run through obstacles, over walls, and hand over hand along a rope above a mud pit in a routine euphemistically known as the “confidence course.” The recruits had also faced their first written exam, their first physical evaluation since the admission physicals, their first inspection, and their first parade to demonstrate their growing command of close-order drill.
Training had been grueling, an exhausting regime deliberately orchestrated to spring one surprise after another on the recruits as they struggled to overcome each new challenge. Head knowledge was emphasized as much as physical training, on the theory, as Knox expressed it, that “a smart Marine is a live Marine.” Because of the incessant heat, physical training, calisthenics, long runs, and close-order drill tended to be held in the morning or late in the afternoon; midday, before and after noon chow, was reserved for lectures and demonstrations, such as this one.
Of course, that often meant that the recruits ended up sitting in mud-drenched utilities after a late-morning romp in the mud pit or getting drenched in sweat running the confidence course, trying to stay alert while they listened to the lecture.
As he sat cross-legged on the ground, watching Knox work the clay a bit more, Jack realized that he’d really accomplished something just making it this far. In three weeks, attrition had whittled an eighty-man platoon down to sixty-one—reducing it by almost a quarter. There’d been that kid from Tennessee who’d pleaded with the DI one evening to be allowed to go home, tears streaming down his face; there’d been that sharp, smart-mouthed kid from New York named Doud who’d snapped in the mess hall and actually taken a swing at Knox…a swing that hadn’t connected but had resulted Doud’s being hustled away and never seen again. There’d been Martelli—one of the platoon’s “fat trays,” or overweight recruits—who’d washed out when he couldn’t pass the physical quals earlier in the week.