GWOT V - A New Hope
Jul. 23rd, 2022 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT V - A New Hope
Well, that was that, I thought to myself as Sergeant Driscoll excused himself from the passenger seat of my beat-up ride to shower, change, wash the blood off his face, and consider whether he wished to keep trying to rig fatal accidents for me or not.
Our mess was necessarily informal. I'd told everyone, no salutes in the mess. We'd eventually get a wardroom put together; meanwhile, we needed an infirmary and an armory more. Think of a pre-Firecracker hotel buffet. Now subtract most meat. Remove menu items a couple times. Now one more.
One of the duties I hadn't chosen to delegate was mess officer. As had been my habit ever since we'd set up at Camp McNasty, in the shade of the brush to evaluate the wrecked buildings, I stuck my head behind the serving line, into the kitchen, and especially into the improvised dish room.
Cleanliness may be next to Godliness, but it's closer to keeping the troops healthy. I couldn't keep bullets out of their guts, but I could keep bacteria out.
Satisfied, I helped myself on the main line to sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly. Heavy on the bread. A washable bowl of pretzels, for the salt. A plastic cup, also washable, for 'bug juice' - a universal military staple consisting of sugared drink to which Vitamin C had been added.
Two bites in, I noticed that a couple soldiers were wrinkling their noses. Well, I'd been hungry - I hadn't taken the time to go wash up. My bad. Especially going into the kitchen. I made a mental note to not fuck up that way again.
What happened next is a combination of angles, my habit of being casual, and arrant stupidity.
From the other door to the mess hall, I looked like any other California trooper. I had purchased BDUs with subdued captain's bars sewed on. I'd specified underside, because sniper checks are real, bro.
"Atten-SHUN!" called someone at the door. I glanced up, enough to not recognize the person at the door, and returned to another bite of my sandwich.
The next thing that happened was that the bench was falling over and someone was shouting in my face, "On your feet, PRIVATE!"
I'd been a security manager in a fucked up Site, physically fought Homeland cell extraction teams as a hobby to distract myself from being tortured, and had to keep physical order in a courtroom sentencing men (and the occasional woman) to horrible death.
So my reaction was that of a combatant. I suppose a born and bred officer would have picked themselves up, fixed the miscreant with an icy glance, and administered brief icy verbal justice.
Then again, a born and bred officer probably wouldn't have had a left hand with all the fingernails torn out by pliers. That had landed by horrible mischance against the concrete.
I grasped an ankle and yanked. The speaker started to fall to my new level. I didn't give them time, but followed up my initial dirty work with a lot more of it, working my way up their body and leaving no nerve cluster unharmed.
My solar plexus shot caused them to vomit copiously. I pulled my knee to the face just in time. Stood. Ignored my screaming left hand.
I had a moment to read their rank and service tabs.
I'd gotten that third Lieutenant I'd requested. And my God was she beautiful when she was furious, on her hands and knees, spitting with the clear intent of getting up and eliminating me from her world.
"Stand down, Lieutenant! That is an order!"
That was just to buy time. Because she'd already dropped a hand down to her boot, and I hadn't had time to strip the knife out of it.
One of the bravest privates I had yet to meet stepped between us at this moment.
"Captain Echo 18, Lieutenant Yarborough," he rapidly introduced, saluted, and retreated to the far side of the room.
I reached a hand down, my right of course.
This was of course, a significant risk. I could see the temptation.
Yarborough took the hand rather than the opportunity, allowed me to help her to her feet.
Not at all embarrassed. But even more pissed.
"Let's continue this in my office, Lieutenant." I paused. "And discuss etiquette among officers."
###
She was dabbing at her cheek with the issue handkerchief, apparently I had not pulled the knee as much as I'd have hoped.
"I'm going to lecture a little," I warned. "There's a time and a place for physical discipline. You didn't recognize me as an officer, you felt that you were being ignored, you didn't know I'd given an order not to salute in the mess. If you'd locked me up, that's in the realm of being a mistake. But I have soldiers and scout-soldiers who would have come up at you with a knife and not cared that you were an officer. Then it's an open question whether I lose one of you, or both.
"I'm not going to make this an order. Just a suggestion. Avoid going hands on with your own personnel; save it for the enemy. Because you can hit them, at some risk to your career and later to your life, but they cannot hit you back. If it really happened, they really get to go break rocks, or more likely clear mines thanks to all the little presents the Americans left us. And I need every warm body I can get. That's an end of it."
My hand was still screaming. But I had to get this brand new unknown on board with me or we were all dead.
"Consider this your commanding officer's courtesy call. Help yourself to what little I may have in the mini-fridge. Sorry, I don't drink. But pass me an ice pack."
She took a water bottle and an ice pack for herself, and passed me her orders and profile. Only then did she hold the ice pack to her face, then her solar plexus, then her thighs, then her knees. Utterly unselfconscious.
I wanted to fall in love but knew better.
No profile restrictions except the usual "No ruck marches, no lifting more than 100 pounds" for someone who had come out of the short and stout side of the human factory with a side of distaff gender.
Her orders attached her to Campos Sector as a military police platoon leader.
Awesome except that I didn't have any MPs. Not a single solitary one.
"No, sir, I brought only my driver, and he's not an MP," she answered my specific question.
"He is now. We'll go through the personnel list and get you a cadre. You can't have - and don't want - Driscoll or the mortar platoon NBC sergeant. We'll put together a two week MP Academy for them and as installation commander I'll designate them. Then you can do the homework, literally, on how to get them correspondence coursework through Camp SLO or whatever."
She blinked. If her eyelashes weren't so short, it would have been attractive.
"What was your last assignment?"
"Riverside," she said briefly.
Even I knew that had been a clusterfuck. Civil war had hit the Los Angeles Basin a lot harder than it had Northern California, and the people who had fallen back to the hills above Riverside had been sorted three times - left their homes in LA, refused the initial amnesty, and decided not to leave when the Americans pulled out.
"Doing?"
"Internment camp. Reaction platoon."
Much was explained. She'd been a leader of the California Republic's equivalent of a Homeland cell extraction team. Just with a lot more people and a hell of a lot more tear gas.
"I'll want you teaching combatives to everyone. Including me. As an instructor, of course, you will find yourself going hands on with your students a lot.
"This -is- an order. I will put it in writing, just in case I get killed, and you will carry a copy of it. I expect that in the likely event that someone loses their temper and attacks you, you will beat the ever living shit out of them. Try not to kill them but I'm putting it in writing to cover you if that unfortunate event occurs."
She blinked.
"I suspect working with you is going to be even more alarming than a few minutes ago," she parried.
"As a unit, we have two huge discipline problems. One of them is that about half our personnel have not been through _any_ military courtesy or induction training. In other words, they're stone killers but they haven't even had Boot yet. The other huge discipline problem, which I hope I've addressed, is Sergeant Driscoll. He has a week to get on board with the new program, and if he does, he earns a clean slate from nearly getting my ass killed yesterday. He did get three others killed. Still thinking about that. He has no MP aptitude but he's a skilled NCO.
"So he's all yours. I'm doing a platoon swap. I'll give his platoon to Lieutenant Adams, you get a new MP platoon and him as your platoon sergeant. Keep an eye on him but this is his last chance. Now, what can I do to make your life easier?"
She got up and closed the door.
"Request permission to speak freely on a personnel matter?"
"You'd better." It was my turn to parry.
"Part of the reason I requested a transfer is because I have many enemies."
"Something we have in common."
"The other is that I'm about two months pregnant."
I started a mental timer in my head.
Technically, by California labor law, I couldn't ask a Goddamn thing out of the hundreds of questions that would occur to someone at this point.
"What reasonable accomodation can I provide to you, as your commanding officer, in connection with this personal matter which is properly none of my business?"
That was the one question I could legally ask. And she seemed to sag with relief.
"For example, I can ask our assigned physician to step in. She has worked with me before, not only during the Resistance but ... I kind of drafted her after the Firecracker."
"No, but thank you, sir."
A long pause.
"I don't know if I'm going to keep it."
It's grisly to think of it that way, but that's my life. My new police commander, whom I desperately needed, had just told me that she had a wound. Maybe the wound would be within the next 2-3 months and require a week or maybe more of recovery. Or maybe she would progressively deteriorate in functionality for five months, be useless for another two, and then require extended leave for at least another three months. Legally entitled in fact to six months. But McNasty was no place for any child let alone a baby.
She'd also said 'it.'
No mention of father. There were all sorts of ways that could have happened, some bad, some very bad. There were medical issues there as well.
"You are entitled by law and regulation to whatever medical care can assist you with your decision. I hardly need to add that the longer you wait, the more the decision makes itself."
There was also a tactical medical issue. Probably not the brightest idea to have a pregnant woman teaching close combat. Or stacking on a door for that matter. Even lead fumes were a potential hazard.
At what point did her right to expose herself to risks cross my duty to my personnel? Not just her but other soldiers that might be placed in danger if she caught a stray round?
Hell, life is dangerous. Lots of pregnant people got vaporized in San Francisco, and they'd been given no chance to take the oath and put on the uniform.
"Thank you for informing me. Keep me updated as appropriate. If you decide to proceed with the pregnancy," I glanced at a calendar, "I will take you off the line when medical direction requires me to do so. We can find you admin stuff to do until a certain number of days prior, which I will have to look up. We can work on either a duty station transfer or a TDY for medical care. This is a forward combat base, we can see Mexico from here. So when it's time, you're out."
"If you decide not to proceed, and/or if you decide you need additional medical or psychiatric care, the physician will assist you with days off endorsements. The reasons can be blank. I don't gossip."
She restrained herself from letting out a sigh of relief. So this was going better than she had feared.
"I do need you to do your job one hundred percent. When you can't, you need to tell me." A pause. "Anything else on this matter?"
She shook her head.
"Dismissed to settle in. My orderly will assist you."
The door closed and it was my turn to shake my head.
Goddamn it.
Bred. Bread. Breed. Bleed.
What has this fallen world come to?
Well, that was that, I thought to myself as Sergeant Driscoll excused himself from the passenger seat of my beat-up ride to shower, change, wash the blood off his face, and consider whether he wished to keep trying to rig fatal accidents for me or not.
Our mess was necessarily informal. I'd told everyone, no salutes in the mess. We'd eventually get a wardroom put together; meanwhile, we needed an infirmary and an armory more. Think of a pre-Firecracker hotel buffet. Now subtract most meat. Remove menu items a couple times. Now one more.
One of the duties I hadn't chosen to delegate was mess officer. As had been my habit ever since we'd set up at Camp McNasty, in the shade of the brush to evaluate the wrecked buildings, I stuck my head behind the serving line, into the kitchen, and especially into the improvised dish room.
Cleanliness may be next to Godliness, but it's closer to keeping the troops healthy. I couldn't keep bullets out of their guts, but I could keep bacteria out.
Satisfied, I helped myself on the main line to sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly. Heavy on the bread. A washable bowl of pretzels, for the salt. A plastic cup, also washable, for 'bug juice' - a universal military staple consisting of sugared drink to which Vitamin C had been added.
Two bites in, I noticed that a couple soldiers were wrinkling their noses. Well, I'd been hungry - I hadn't taken the time to go wash up. My bad. Especially going into the kitchen. I made a mental note to not fuck up that way again.
What happened next is a combination of angles, my habit of being casual, and arrant stupidity.
From the other door to the mess hall, I looked like any other California trooper. I had purchased BDUs with subdued captain's bars sewed on. I'd specified underside, because sniper checks are real, bro.
"Atten-SHUN!" called someone at the door. I glanced up, enough to not recognize the person at the door, and returned to another bite of my sandwich.
The next thing that happened was that the bench was falling over and someone was shouting in my face, "On your feet, PRIVATE!"
I'd been a security manager in a fucked up Site, physically fought Homeland cell extraction teams as a hobby to distract myself from being tortured, and had to keep physical order in a courtroom sentencing men (and the occasional woman) to horrible death.
So my reaction was that of a combatant. I suppose a born and bred officer would have picked themselves up, fixed the miscreant with an icy glance, and administered brief icy verbal justice.
Then again, a born and bred officer probably wouldn't have had a left hand with all the fingernails torn out by pliers. That had landed by horrible mischance against the concrete.
I grasped an ankle and yanked. The speaker started to fall to my new level. I didn't give them time, but followed up my initial dirty work with a lot more of it, working my way up their body and leaving no nerve cluster unharmed.
My solar plexus shot caused them to vomit copiously. I pulled my knee to the face just in time. Stood. Ignored my screaming left hand.
I had a moment to read their rank and service tabs.
I'd gotten that third Lieutenant I'd requested. And my God was she beautiful when she was furious, on her hands and knees, spitting with the clear intent of getting up and eliminating me from her world.
"Stand down, Lieutenant! That is an order!"
That was just to buy time. Because she'd already dropped a hand down to her boot, and I hadn't had time to strip the knife out of it.
One of the bravest privates I had yet to meet stepped between us at this moment.
"Captain Echo 18, Lieutenant Yarborough," he rapidly introduced, saluted, and retreated to the far side of the room.
I reached a hand down, my right of course.
This was of course, a significant risk. I could see the temptation.
Yarborough took the hand rather than the opportunity, allowed me to help her to her feet.
Not at all embarrassed. But even more pissed.
"Let's continue this in my office, Lieutenant." I paused. "And discuss etiquette among officers."
###
She was dabbing at her cheek with the issue handkerchief, apparently I had not pulled the knee as much as I'd have hoped.
"I'm going to lecture a little," I warned. "There's a time and a place for physical discipline. You didn't recognize me as an officer, you felt that you were being ignored, you didn't know I'd given an order not to salute in the mess. If you'd locked me up, that's in the realm of being a mistake. But I have soldiers and scout-soldiers who would have come up at you with a knife and not cared that you were an officer. Then it's an open question whether I lose one of you, or both.
"I'm not going to make this an order. Just a suggestion. Avoid going hands on with your own personnel; save it for the enemy. Because you can hit them, at some risk to your career and later to your life, but they cannot hit you back. If it really happened, they really get to go break rocks, or more likely clear mines thanks to all the little presents the Americans left us. And I need every warm body I can get. That's an end of it."
My hand was still screaming. But I had to get this brand new unknown on board with me or we were all dead.
"Consider this your commanding officer's courtesy call. Help yourself to what little I may have in the mini-fridge. Sorry, I don't drink. But pass me an ice pack."
She took a water bottle and an ice pack for herself, and passed me her orders and profile. Only then did she hold the ice pack to her face, then her solar plexus, then her thighs, then her knees. Utterly unselfconscious.
I wanted to fall in love but knew better.
No profile restrictions except the usual "No ruck marches, no lifting more than 100 pounds" for someone who had come out of the short and stout side of the human factory with a side of distaff gender.
Her orders attached her to Campos Sector as a military police platoon leader.
Awesome except that I didn't have any MPs. Not a single solitary one.
"No, sir, I brought only my driver, and he's not an MP," she answered my specific question.
"He is now. We'll go through the personnel list and get you a cadre. You can't have - and don't want - Driscoll or the mortar platoon NBC sergeant. We'll put together a two week MP Academy for them and as installation commander I'll designate them. Then you can do the homework, literally, on how to get them correspondence coursework through Camp SLO or whatever."
She blinked. If her eyelashes weren't so short, it would have been attractive.
"What was your last assignment?"
"Riverside," she said briefly.
Even I knew that had been a clusterfuck. Civil war had hit the Los Angeles Basin a lot harder than it had Northern California, and the people who had fallen back to the hills above Riverside had been sorted three times - left their homes in LA, refused the initial amnesty, and decided not to leave when the Americans pulled out.
"Doing?"
"Internment camp. Reaction platoon."
Much was explained. She'd been a leader of the California Republic's equivalent of a Homeland cell extraction team. Just with a lot more people and a hell of a lot more tear gas.
"I'll want you teaching combatives to everyone. Including me. As an instructor, of course, you will find yourself going hands on with your students a lot.
"This -is- an order. I will put it in writing, just in case I get killed, and you will carry a copy of it. I expect that in the likely event that someone loses their temper and attacks you, you will beat the ever living shit out of them. Try not to kill them but I'm putting it in writing to cover you if that unfortunate event occurs."
She blinked.
"I suspect working with you is going to be even more alarming than a few minutes ago," she parried.
"As a unit, we have two huge discipline problems. One of them is that about half our personnel have not been through _any_ military courtesy or induction training. In other words, they're stone killers but they haven't even had Boot yet. The other huge discipline problem, which I hope I've addressed, is Sergeant Driscoll. He has a week to get on board with the new program, and if he does, he earns a clean slate from nearly getting my ass killed yesterday. He did get three others killed. Still thinking about that. He has no MP aptitude but he's a skilled NCO.
"So he's all yours. I'm doing a platoon swap. I'll give his platoon to Lieutenant Adams, you get a new MP platoon and him as your platoon sergeant. Keep an eye on him but this is his last chance. Now, what can I do to make your life easier?"
She got up and closed the door.
"Request permission to speak freely on a personnel matter?"
"You'd better." It was my turn to parry.
"Part of the reason I requested a transfer is because I have many enemies."
"Something we have in common."
"The other is that I'm about two months pregnant."
I started a mental timer in my head.
Technically, by California labor law, I couldn't ask a Goddamn thing out of the hundreds of questions that would occur to someone at this point.
"What reasonable accomodation can I provide to you, as your commanding officer, in connection with this personal matter which is properly none of my business?"
That was the one question I could legally ask. And she seemed to sag with relief.
"For example, I can ask our assigned physician to step in. She has worked with me before, not only during the Resistance but ... I kind of drafted her after the Firecracker."
"No, but thank you, sir."
A long pause.
"I don't know if I'm going to keep it."
It's grisly to think of it that way, but that's my life. My new police commander, whom I desperately needed, had just told me that she had a wound. Maybe the wound would be within the next 2-3 months and require a week or maybe more of recovery. Or maybe she would progressively deteriorate in functionality for five months, be useless for another two, and then require extended leave for at least another three months. Legally entitled in fact to six months. But McNasty was no place for any child let alone a baby.
She'd also said 'it.'
No mention of father. There were all sorts of ways that could have happened, some bad, some very bad. There were medical issues there as well.
"You are entitled by law and regulation to whatever medical care can assist you with your decision. I hardly need to add that the longer you wait, the more the decision makes itself."
There was also a tactical medical issue. Probably not the brightest idea to have a pregnant woman teaching close combat. Or stacking on a door for that matter. Even lead fumes were a potential hazard.
At what point did her right to expose herself to risks cross my duty to my personnel? Not just her but other soldiers that might be placed in danger if she caught a stray round?
Hell, life is dangerous. Lots of pregnant people got vaporized in San Francisco, and they'd been given no chance to take the oath and put on the uniform.
"Thank you for informing me. Keep me updated as appropriate. If you decide to proceed with the pregnancy," I glanced at a calendar, "I will take you off the line when medical direction requires me to do so. We can find you admin stuff to do until a certain number of days prior, which I will have to look up. We can work on either a duty station transfer or a TDY for medical care. This is a forward combat base, we can see Mexico from here. So when it's time, you're out."
"If you decide not to proceed, and/or if you decide you need additional medical or psychiatric care, the physician will assist you with days off endorsements. The reasons can be blank. I don't gossip."
She restrained herself from letting out a sigh of relief. So this was going better than she had feared.
"I do need you to do your job one hundred percent. When you can't, you need to tell me." A pause. "Anything else on this matter?"
She shook her head.
"Dismissed to settle in. My orderly will assist you."
The door closed and it was my turn to shake my head.
Goddamn it.
Bred. Bread. Breed. Bleed.
What has this fallen world come to?
