VI
Davenport
Verde
Federated Suns
16 July 3152
“How the ****** did you get him to go for this?”
Justin managed to kill the laugh before it left his mouth, and he somehow transformed the hysterical look into dignified anger. “Say that again?”
Ken bowed his head sheepishly. “Sorry. How the ****** did you get him to go for this, ma’am?”
“******, Ken,” Justin said, before leaning his head towards the sky. “Sorry God.”
He turned as Margot casually shrugged. “I’m just an operator until this is over. So, how the ****** I got him to go for this is simple: I asked him. The Prince is a soldier, a great one. He’s arguably the best MechWarriors alive, and he trusts his people to be just as good at their jobs. I asked. It’s pretty ****** simple, right?”
Ken nodded. “Yes ma’am.”
“I’m just an operator for now.”
Justin felt the grin, the “I’m winning against my sister in an argument” grin, tug at the corner of his face. He turned to her. “So, there’s no reason, none at all, that a Field Marshal or any other general officer should actually involve herself in operations. Nowhere in the history of realism has that occurred. You going out there is bad fan fiction, so, if you’re just an operator, why don’t you stay behind?”
“If you’re just an operator, ma’am. And the answer is no, Master Chief.”
“You literally just said you were just an operator!” Justin shot back.
“What, have you never met a hypocrite before?”
“The good idea fairy strikes again. This is stupid, Marg.”
“No, it’s hypocritical. I just said that! Pay attention, Master Chief.”
“******, man,” he replied. “That is….”
“Yeah, you got nothing, J. Because I’m smarter than you.”
“I’m telling mom,” he replied. “She’s probably only three martinis in.”
The doors opened and Rollins walked in with two intelligence officers in tow. “What have we learned?”
“If I may, sir,” Ken said, standing. “We learned that the Field Marshal is a hypocrite, that the Master Chief is dumber than she is, and that their mother lives in Drunkville.”
“We’re from Saginaw!” Justin retorted. “That didn’t warrant a mention.”
The comms unit dinged, and one of the analysts pressed a holographic icon. A shadowed face appeared in the center. “Has your prince decided?”
“Marshal Zibler here. Yes, he agreed.”
The figure paused and then nodded. “You are fortunate to have such a warrior for a leader. Who will head the operation?”
“Technically, it is a AFFS JSOC operation, with Department of Military Intelligence Section Six operators serving as the Special Reconnaissance element, and two troops of Gold Squadron, MRT WAG, Federated Suns Navy, serving as the Direct Action element, working in tandem with Allied Insurrectionist Forces who serve in an intelligence role.”
The tengu mask nodded. “This is acceptable, if you are true to your word.”
Justin physically bit his tongue and smiled at the mask, a bitter, hollow smile. “Given recent history, I would suggest proving the Combine is capable of keeping its word and that you and your people are capable of keeping your word.”
The mask bowed perceptibly. “Perhaps this will set your mind at ease, Master Chief.”
As he spoke, two small windows appeared at the bottom of the holo, one with a blueprint projection of what Justin believed was the facility, and the other video footage from the inside. Even he whistled. “Yeah, that puts my mind a little at ease, ninja.”
“You pushed for this to work, Master Chief. Your doubts were healthy, and now we can achieve victory together. We will update you as we gather more intelligence.”
The holo cut out. “He’s clearly planetside. The videos aren’t live, obviously, but they are only a few days old I think. Do they have access to their own HPG?”
Margot looked at the analyst. “Most HPG stations are still down, but anything is possible. These people are dangerous, in some ways, namely intelligence gathering and infiltration, better than us. Now, I am very confident that we’re better at Direct Action, but still, demonstrate extreme caution with this group, but use what they can give us. Rollins, Zibler?”
Rollins shook his head, but Justin cleared his throat. “Right. We’re definitely better fighters, but their intelligence capacity is better than anything I have ever worked with. Keep sharp, people. We can’t afford any screwups.”
He listened to the rest of the briefing, and when it ended, he was the first out of the room, the pent up fury inside pushing him to love faster. The whole operation set his mind reeling; he hated the Combine, passionately, because of his excellent grasp of history and because of his love of his nation. Working with them hurt his soul. Rage threatened to explode within, so he did the only thing he could.
Justin fled, to the only place that ever gave him comfort.
Margot followed the sound, and she found him exactly where she thought she would. He stood in the center of painted red square, his M42B URG-I carbine held at modified compressed high ready, horizontally above his right shoulder. He wore full kit, and the plies of 6.8x51mm brass, hair slicked back with sweat, and brass rakes indicated he had already run a course or five. She smiled at that; no matter what kind of “cool guy” job you had, in the military, everyone cleaned brass, policed cigarettes from the ground, and generally cleaned things nobody had any business cleaning. It was the way.
She grabbed soft and hard ear pro from the line and walked to the red square next to her brother, her own M42B at high port in her right hand. She knew he felt her presence, but he said nothing and worked through the drill, snapping his rifle from modified collapsed high to presentation, which meant turning the rifle horizontal to its rightful position while presenting, and chained shots, first one, then two, then three, four and beyond, presenting the rifle and firing in sequence from his initial stance. After a few sequences, he transitioned to his support shoulder and replicated the exercise.
Transitioning a weapon from primary to support and back again was standard practice for AFFS and Free Worlds League SOF, a legacy from their shared U.S./Commonwealth heritage. Everyone did it well, but most shooters needed thousands and thousand of practice rounds to gain that proficiency. That was not the case with Justin and never had been. Margot was never one to believe in the “over-the-optics” myth – combat shooting forced operators to fire several shots without using sights initially with great accuracy, but shooters always found their optics as quickly as they could – but Justin always intuitively seemed to know where the target and his barrel were in relation to each other. That’s why she always considered him one of the best five or six gunfighters alive; he could simply could put the shots where he needed to. It was intuition and natural ability honed to supernatural perfection with thousands of hours and millions of rounds. He couldn’t teach it. He couldn’t even put it into words, but Margot just knew that, if something had blinded him, he would still be able to land every single one of his shots in whatever he needed to kill. He had done it before.
Finally, he finished and changed his magazines. “Everything ok?”
She sighed. “What was that about today? You’re the one who argued for working with these people. You said we could trust them. Today, you acted like we couldn’t trust him, so I need to know what the ****** is going on.”
Justin slipped the selector’s switch to SAFE and lowered the weapon. He still wore a single point sling, which made transitioning shoulders easier but left the weapon to dangle kind of uncomfortably, but the awkward released position didn’t seem to bother him. “We can still trust them. He just….”
His voice trailed off, and Margot forced annoyance and frustration away. “He just what, J? He pissed you off with his ‘keep your word’ bullshit? He pissed me off too, but I didn’t snap.”
“Yes ma’am,” he replied. “Sorry ma’am.”
“Oh don’t you dare pull that ma’am bullshit on me right now. You’re going to tell me what the ****** is going on with you before I beat your ass up and down this course.”
He turned to face her, his face white. “Do you think you could?”
“You’re ****** right I could, Justin Mark Anthony Zibler.”
Her use of his confirmation name forced him silent for a moment, and he blinked. Pushing her hands down to her side, she waded in. “I’m one of the best ****** long shooters this nation has ever produced, and I am one hell of an operator. No, I’m not as naturally gifted as you – nobody can shoot like you can; it’s God-given talent maybe four other people alive have – but I am no ****** slouch and you know it.”
He raised his hands. “Marg, I never thought or meant to suggest otherwise. I know how good you are.”
“I know you know how good I am, you ****** idiot, but let me ****** finish. I’m an even better sister, and you’re going to give me that same respect by not ****** hiding. You don’t like being the center of attention because the last time you were, it almost ruined your life, but this op is putting you at the center. It’s your op. Now what the ****** is eating at you?”
He sighed and glanced down. Margot felt sadness and the urge to comfort her brother tug at her heart suddenly, and she felt horrible, but he began speaking before she could apologize. “It’s me,” he announced, his voice agonized. “I got a look inside of myself, and I hate what I see.”
Margot inhaled sharply. Her brother was a deeply compassionate and moral man, but his self-image could often turn bad. When it did…well it wasn’t pretty.
“What the hell do you mean? What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m…prejudiced. I held the Combine thing against them from the beginning. That’s…I’m awful and judgmental and quick to anger and…”
She held a hand up and cut him off. “You have never held anyone’s skin color, sex, religion, orientation or anything of that nature against anyone, ever. You have treated every DCMS detainee with the same kindness you show everyone, so don’t give me that shit.”
“Yeah, because those are individual people. They’re the product of a tyrannical and xenophobic system that represses its own citizens so badly that most are illiterate, but I still…hate the Combine.”
“You hate a nation that is so evil that it represses its own people. You hate a nation that glorifies death and violence, that worships the men responsible for the Nanking massacre on old Terra and the cult of death those men worshipped at. You hate a nation that has killed probably billions of innocent people, our people, throughout history, and you hate a nation that still is somehow worshipped and glorified by countless individuals through space and time. That’s not prejudice, Justin. You don’t care about race or faith or sex or what a person identifies as. Hell, you’re basically a hippie surfer, but you hate something with reason. That doesn’t make you awful. It makes you human.”
He rocked back a little in shock. “But..”
“There are no ‘buts’ here, J. You could let that become prejudice of course, but you have never done so. You’re working with them now, and you never let the citizen aspect ever stop you from being kind. I know this because I have seen it. You don’t like the Confederation either, or the Clans, but you have been repeatedly decent to individuals from those places. Hell, I have your file, idiot; I know you don’t trust the Draconis March, either.”
“It’s not the March. It’s the loyalties of the March under Sandoval.”
She laughed. “Yes, dumbass. Now say that again with the others?”
“It’s…it’s not the people of those nations. It’s the system. It’s Kurita and its death cults. It’s the Confederation and its inhumanity. It’s…”
“It isn’t the individual people or the families or even the soldiers. It’s the systems, the tyranny, and the genocide. Don’t get it twisted, J; the Combine is evil and always will be evil. The system makes it so, but the people are victims, and every blow we strike against that system is a blow landed for humanity and decency and freedom. That’s our duty.”
“De oppresso liber.”
“Exactly, though you don’t get to say that shit, swabbie. That’s an army thing.”
“So,” he started, his mood already lifted. “You really think you can take me on this course?”
“God no, but I’ll beat your ass on the UKD. You want odds?”
“Out there? God no, in turn.”
“So we’re even,” she relied. “Equals?”
He nodded. “Yeah, we are.”
“Except I’m cooler and better-looking, you ****** nerd. So pick the drill, Master Chief. I need to put some ****** rounds down range. Running DMI sucks and I miss the teams.”
