the Marine Corps, son,â Foss told him. âThe only easy mission was the last one.â
2
27 OCTOBER 2159
Marine Receiving Barracks
Star Marine Force Center
Twentynine Palms, California
1825 hours, PST
âSo whatâs the dope, Gare?â Lance Corporal Roger Eagleton asked. âYou hear anything?â
âNope,â Garroway said around a mouthful of steak-and-cheese. âYou think they tell me anything?â
âYouâre the one with the famous Marine ancestor,â Kat Vinton told him.
âI guess. So why would that mean theyâd tell me whatâs going on?â
âI donât know. With your name, we figured they were grooming you for a recruiting tour, yâknow?â
âYeah,â Corporal Bill Bryan added. âJust to keep you happy, soâs you can be convincing with your sales pitch. You know. âJoin the UFR/US Marines! Travel to exotic climes! Explore strange new cultures! Meet fascinating people! Kill them.ââ
âOoh-rah.â
They were seated at a long mess table, showered, dressed in newly issued utilities, and packing in their first meal in ten years. The chow was first-class and there was lots of it, butnow that their stomachs had gotten rid of the last of that damned packing gel and had some time to settle, they were hungry . Even three-lies-in-one field rations would have seemed like food of the gods under the circumstances.
âHow about you, Sarge?â Kat asked the big man at the end of the table. Staff Sergeant Richard âWellâ Dunne was acting platoon sergeant now and the platoonâs liaison with all higher authority. âThey tell you whatâs going on?â
âNegative,â Dunne said. âThe word is to sit tight and all will be revealed.â
âHurry up and wait,â Garroway said. âThe litany of the modern Marine Corps.â
âFuck that shit,â Sergeant Wes Houston said. âItâs been that way since Sargon the Great was a PFC.â
Garroway continued to eat, but he was somewhat unsettled. Katâs crack about his famous ancestor had caught him by surprise. His great-grandfather had been Sands of Mars Garroway, a tough old-Corps Marine whoâd led his men on a grueling march through the Vallis Marineris during the U.N. War of 2042 to capture an enemy-held base. The man was one of the legends of the Corps, another live-forever name like Dan Daily, Smedley Butler, and Chesty Puller. When heâd gone through his Naming Ceremony, heâd deliberately chosen his motherâs maiden nameâGarrowayâhoping, perhaps, that some of the luster of that name would rub off on him.
Now that he was a Marine himself, though, he frequently found himself wishing it wouldnât rub off quite so much. Officers and NCOs tended to expect more from him than of others, and everyone else assumed the name meant he had things easy.
The fact was that there was no favoritism in the Corpsânot below the rank of colonel, at any rate, not that heâd been able to detect.
âThereâs one piece of good news,â Dunne said. âThe TIGpromos are probably gonna go through. Thatâs something, at least.â
Appreciative claps, whistles, and cheers sounded from around the mess table. It was good news.
In the service, being promoted from one rank to the next required passing advancement tests, but more it required TIGâtime-in-grade. Garroway had boarded the Derna right out of boot camp as a wet-behind-the-ears private first-class, pay grade E-2. The voyage out to Lalande 21185 had taken ten years, objective time, though relativistic effects contracted that to four years, shipâs time.
His promotion to E-3, lance corporal, had been pretty much automatic. Technically, heâd needed six months as an E-2 and four years subjective counted, even if heâd slept through most of it in cybehibe. Heâd received his chevron above crossed