Chapter 15

The pilot got us to the Demios with no trouble. When the hatch opened, the corpsmen rushed in and took Amy. They were clearly surprised to see the other passengers. As soon as the corpsmen cleared, I walked down the ramp, motioning the other passengers to stay.

My platoon was standing there in front with Firsk and Santiago along with the Sergeant Major. Behind them was the company and then I could see the entire regiment there.

When my boots hit the deck the Sergeant Major Finn called out, "Attention!"

I noticed that even the flight crew and assorted navy personnel had snapped to attention too. To say I was surprised was an understatement.

"Present, ARMS!" he called out next.

Every single person in that hanger bay saluted me and held it.

"On behalf of this Regiment I welcome you back and thank you for your uncommon valor and loyalty. I salute you, Marine," Col. Santiago called out in a loud voice.

"Order, ARMS!" SgtMaj. Finn called out and everybody finished their salute.

"At Ease!" he called out next.

"Sweeney you are one Shit-Hot Marine. Get cleaned up and see medical and then come see me. Mouth shut. Got it?" he told me privately.

"Aye Aye Sir," I said.

Everybody just sort of looked at me. I did notice, with the battlecomp's help, that there were a lot more of my regiment here than I had guessed there would be, considering the missile that sent me and Amy down the rabbit hole.

Santiago and Firsk along with some of the Navy officers went to the Osprey and in. I was too damn tired to care what happened to the Farans. I knew that I had no influence at any rate, so I pushed it aside.

I went over to the armor bay and Master Chief Chen met me along with Chief Bullwing and a couple of techs.

"What the fuck, Sweeney? Did you fucking roll in Lizard guts or something? You fucking stink! It's going to take me a fucking week to clean your 'skin'!"

Chen did not disappoint. If he was not complaining then you knew you were in some serious shit with him. As long as he was griping it was all good. The Navy people called our Assault Armor our 'skins' and when we took them off we were pretending to be something we were not. Human.

"I think I nicked my ax right there," I said pointing out a little nick on the blade.

"Stupid fucking grunt. It's not a fucking shovel!"

"Thanks Master Chief. It saved my life."

"You're welcome, Private," he said putting his angry long suffering Master Chief role on hold briefly. When I got my suit off he saw that some of that blood was mine and immediately called a corpsman. I looked down and realized I had managed to get a new hole poked in me. The suit had sterilized and stopped the bleeding and administered a pain killer, so I had forgotten about it.

The corpsman tried to get me on a mag-stretcher but I just told him to fuck off or I'd shove it up his ass. He agreed that I could walk after a quick readout from my battlecomp's bio-stat showing no signs of shock or other less obvious wounds.

Med-bay is right off of the hanger for obvious reasons, so it was a short walk. I got a complete scan. Everything checked out so they slapped some of my neo-skin on over a muscle-spider and it was turned loose. Every Marine has genetically identical 'spare parts' available, and with the neo-skin and spider I would be whole in about four hours.

Normally there is quite a bit of activity during the day when we are on board ship. It was the same today. What was weird was that everybody, and I do mean everybody, I passed said some form of 'Welcome back' to me. I generally am ignored.

I was hungry but Santiago wanted to see me right away so I found myself in his office. I was clean and wanted to get some sleep, but privates don't get to make many decisions. The Corporal at the desk waved me right in with a "Welcome back."

"At ease Sweeney. Sit down."

"How's Lt. Swanson?" I asked.

"Expecting a full recovery, I'm told. Will be back to duty inside of a week. I have only watched some highlights of the record from you and Swanson's battlecomps. I'm going to have a tough time keeping the eggheads from abducting you two. On a personal note I wanted to thank you personally for getting Swanson out of there. Her father has expressed his gratitude to me as well. I suspect you will hear from him in person at some point. Just a heads up, you'll get some kind of medal, Swanson too I imagine. I'm having chow brought up to you. You will need to be debriefed before you talk to anybody about what happened down there."

"Thanks Sir. I'm pretty hungry," I said not commenting on a medal. I didn't need any more medals.

"I imagine. You were down there for almost eighteen hours. I simply can't quite understand how you two survived. We had you listed as killed in action. I have never changed a Marine's status back from KIA before you two. I wonder if anybody ever has."

"Is there anything on the battlecomp's record that I should be aware of before the top brass gets wind of it?"

"No sir. Nothing I can think of," I said, lying through my teeth.

The battlecomp did not record private channel or proximity band communications. It also had no idea that when we took our helmets off we kissed.

"Good."

"Sir. Chow is here," came the aide's voice.

"Bring it in Tika," Santiago said.

I noticed it was the same meal he had. We enlisted ate very well but officers got a little better. After getting a chance to stuff my face, Santiago started to ask questions.

"What are your thoughts on the Farans? They've got Fleet all stirred up."

"They're small and look a little like us, is all I know."

"I know. Not exactly the best place to have a Q&A. How did you get the Dragons to go for the duel? I've never heard of such a thing."

"Dragons usually can't resist going medieval. I'm sure you know that all Dragons carry swords. Many Gators do, or at least the higher ranking ones do. I've carried my ax for a long time. It always gets the dragons' attention and most of the time the gators. Skinks don't care. Lizards probably decide who is in charge by who is the most dangerous. They always target officers first. It probably gets them status. When I challenged them, they couldn't resist I guess."

"But you're not an officer. Why did they accept your challenge?"

"Not sure. They must have been threatened by our attack and had something to prove."

"I'm not so sure. No way to know though. Once again you seem to know Lizards better than anybody else. Oh, and the retrieval was started by the ship's XO. How did you swing that?"

"No idea. How did we fare on the evac?" I said not willing to share my ideas on that.

"Better than expected. We only lost a handful to the missile alone. The wounded on the field who had to be abandoned mostly didn't make it. That was seventeen. We issued magies to weapons."

Magies were short for mini-aegis weapon systems. It was pretty much effective all the time and rendered the missiles and bombs useless to the Lizards. It tapped into the battlecomp's net and with thousands of sensors from all the deployed Marines it did not miss.

"Well, go get some rack time. This is far from over I'm sure."

"Aye Aye Sir. And thank you."

"I would have done it for any Marine down there. There was not much I did, though. The Navy must like you because they started the retrieval on their own. I'm not going to cause a stink though. It saved time. I just cleared the way."

I slept well. It seems I always do. Most get jittery before a drop or after one. I just slept. When I woke the next morning there were no messages waiting for me so I went to chow early.

Sanchez sat down across from me.

"That was some seriously weird shit yesterday," she said.

"Huh?" I replied not sure what she was talking about exactly. The formation was weird but I had a feeling she was not talking about that.

"Your prize fight with the kindergarten dragons."

"How did you find out about that?"

"The squids broadcast it across the net. Fucking looked like some bullshit holo until we realized it was real. Of course only recon knew it was you right away."

"Fucking squids," I said angry that everybody knew. It would end up going public at some point. Communications to and from Military vessels were screened. No wonder I was getting funny looks this morning. The boots were looking at me like I had sprouted horns or something.

"How in the fuck did you get them to not shoot your ass where you stood?"

"I appealed to their better nature."

"Hah! However you did it, it has made you a god among Marines now. Hell it almost makes me want to fuck you right here on this table."

"I didn't do it for that," I said.

"I know. So does everybody else, but it was some show. I've never seen or even believed anything like that could ever happen."

"I was surprised at most of it too."

"I mean that the way you moved. Everybody in Whisky sort of knows how good you are with Armor. When we are fighting though, nobody has time to really watch you or anybody else for that matter. Just skipping along you can see some of the difference, but that fight! That shouted loud and clear that we are all just boots compared to you. Plus every fucking boot is going to want to carry an ax now."

"I would advise against that. It's like a giant bull's-eye to Dragons and Gators. Lt. Swanson will vouch for that. She has seen it. How is the company after they tried to blow us up?" I said wanting to talk about something else.

"We didn't lose anybody to it. You don't make it to recon not being able to bug out or not knowing when to."

"What happened after?"

"Nothing really. No massive rush or anything to take advantage of our disorganization. Lizards just baffle me sometimes. Hell, most of the time they do.

"So what did you see down there? I mean you were down there for a long fucking time."

"Lots of shit that I'm not supposed to talk about yet. I can tell you this. There are an awful lot of Lizards left underground but their fighting ranks appear to be thinning out."

"Do you think you killed their leader?"

"Doubtful. It wasn't the only one wearing red. So when do we get dropped again?"

"Ten days is what I've heard."

"Pvt. Sweeney reporting as ordered Sir," I said, and got a wave from Santiago to sit so I took a chair.

He finished reading whatever and looked up.

"Lucky for you the eggheads would rather talk to an officer than a Private. Swanson is armpit deep in them right now along with top brass. Good for her career, bad for her mood. Plus the freed captives are more than willing to tell us everything they know.

"Me. I've got you and will get Swanson when she gets back. The E.T.'s aren't all that interesting and they are pretty much the property of the eggheads now. They don't appear to have developed interstellar travel. Thought you might like to know that we've sent some self-tunneling plasma munitions down there. Eggheads are still telling us not to send atomics because of damage to the planet so we'll just smoke them out," Santiago said with a little grin.

"They make it?"

"Not yet."

"Won't be much down there by the time you do."

"I know. But it's still got to hurt them."

"It's the power plant that got them, I'd say. It's what recycles and creates air along with power, I think. There were a lot of cables running off of that thing in many directions. It looked like they had some redundancy but not a lot."

"So do you have any new ideas how to beat them?"

"No. I bet the brass is going to want to repeat what happened though. Doesn't have a chance in hell of working."

"Are you sure?" he said sounding a little unhappy at what I said.

"Yes Sir. Even if we weaken their forces again they aren't stupid. No way will they have those areas so undefended now. It would be easy to stop such an assault. Simply jamming the doors so we could not open them would have done it. Trapping the tunnels, ambushes, gun emplacements, lizards with weapons, there are lots of ways to counter such an assault."

"You sure know how to dash a man's hopes, Sweeney."

"Sorry Sir. The eggheads need to figure out a way to get munitions down there and blow them to hell. No other way about it."

"Don't think that will happen any time soon. Our mission is to take the planet back, not break it."

"There aren't any shortcuts, Sir. We kill everything they send up, then we tunnel down and destroy what comes up until nothing comes up, then move on to the next grid. All this has shown us is that there are a lot to kill, how far down we need to go, and that it's working."

"I think you might be right, Sweeney. I don't like it but that doesn't change it. Think Swanson will feel the same way?"

"Yes Sir. We figured we were dead many times. As much as I hate to say it, we got lucky. We won't get that lucky again."

"They might end up sending you down again."

"Swinging a pick can't be that much different than swinging an ax, Sir."

"Let's hope you don't have to make that choice."

Three more raiders showed up for the party. Amy was not back yet and I had not been able to talk to her, let alone see her. It was harder than I thought. Santiago kept me busy. It became obvious that the entire ship had seen my fight with the peacocks. It served to isolate me from the rest of the regiment for the most part. I did get a couple of rocks asking me where they could get an ax like mine. I told them to ask Master Chief Chen, wishing I could be a fly on the wall to watch that exchange. My own company, Whisky, though treated me the same or a little better. Nobody from Whisky asked me how to get an ax. My squad leader had more or less given up the idea that he could give me the shit duties before and now that my time was completely occupied by Santiago, Firsk, and the bridge, I was more or less out of the rotation.