Delaying Actions by Kevin Trainor ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The characters and situations of the TV program "SPACE: Above and Beyond" are the creations of Glen Morgan and James Wong, Fox Broadcasting and Hard Eight Productions, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Mom & Dad, I'm sorry not to have written or called in so long, but I wanted to wait until I was someplace where you couldn't talk me out of doing what I have done. The censors will snip out stuff I can't tell you, like where I am and what exactly I'm doing, but I can tell you that I enlisted in the Marines and finished my training last month. Earth is now just a little blue ball in space for me now, and I tell you truthfully that I don't really expect to see it --or you-- again. At least you don't have to worry about me getting blown up in one of those fighters. I didn't qualify for flight training, but Sergeant Hernandez says that's OK, they need Marines on the ground just as bad as they do in space. Sergeant Hernandez is my squad leader, even though he's just 19, a year older than I am. He joined right after the Battle for the Belt and has seen a lot of action since then. Lieutenant Czerny is 22, but he just graduated from some college in Texas and went through training with the rest of us. Our commanding officer is just like Sergeant Hernandez, 19, but Captain Hawkes looks much older than that. Some of the guys say that's because he's an In Vitro and flew with the 58th Squadron before they disbanded it, but I don't think anybody really knows. Any time somebody asks him he just changes the subject or walks off. The Sarge says the Old Man has been through a lot and he probably wouldn't talk much either in his boots. Then he changes the subject too. Our unit has already been in a couple of fights against the Chigs, just raids really, but I guess we did OK even if we lost a couple of the guys. One of them was Sara Fujisawa, my squad's grenadier. I loved her and I think you would have liked her, but I guess we'll never know now. A Chig mortar bomb hit right next to her on [CENSORED] and blew both her legs off right at the hips. We tried to stop the bleeding but it was no use and she died before we could even get her back to the LZ. When we got back to the ship I just wanted to curl up and cry but the Sarge took me down to the enlisted club -there's a little bar on the ship just big enough for a couple dozen of us to sit and drink and listen to music on the box or maybe play some VR game- and made me drink with him while they packed up Sara's gear to send home to her parents. He gave me her knife and her stripes and told me that's what Sara'd want. I don't know how he knew that, but he knows lots of things I never would have thought like how I was in love with Sara. After a while the LT and Captain Hawkes came in and drank with us too, and I don't remember too much after that until I woke up the next morning with the first hangover I ever had. It was pretty awful, but you know that. Now I'm a lance corporal in charge of half a squad, but it's just me and Okoye and Pedersen (that's the way she spells it, she's from Sweden I think and that's how they spell it there) so it's not any big deal. I feel as if my life is moving so much more quickly now, not just in combat but on ship as well. It's almost as if I'm hurrying to get somewhere even though I'm not hurrying at all, you know? Maybe not. Anyway, I hope everyone is fine. Say hello to the Hallorans for me, and if any of my old classmates come around, now you know what to tell them. Love, Jacob ********************************* "Six pairs of issue socks." "Check." "One pair of boots, black, all-atmosphere insulated combat." "Check." "Okay, that's all his issue gear. One Emerson Portacorder, with storage chips." "Check." "One pair of Navy issue dungarees." "Check." "One really awful hula shirt." Captain Cooper Hawkes raised his eyes from the datapad to stare balefully at the young corporal. "We're doing a final inventory, not a fashion analysis, Corporal." The chunky blonde looked up and flushed. "Sorry, sir. That's all there is." Hawkes nodded and stabbed at the pad. "Print here, Corporal." She stood up and pressed her thumb against the flashing square on the pad's surface. As Hawkes turned to leave, she blurted out the question he'd been dreading. "Sir? Ah, you've been through this before...does it get any easier the more you do it?" He turned and looked at her, and something in his eyes made her shiver, as if the cold of space itself was washing through the compartment. For a split second he was tempted to unleash all his pentup anger and sorrow on her, but with hard practice had come control, and the second passed. "No, Corporal. No, it doesn't," he answered woodenly, and began the long walk to the officially-secured enlisted club. Hernandez would be there, along with the handful of survivors the Sixth Raider Battalion had recovered from the latest affray. Together they would hold the wake for Lance Corporal Vandersen, Lieutenant Czerny, and the rest of their brothers and sisters who would never come home again. Hawkes would remember his own dead, too; 'Phousse, Wang, Vansen, Winslow, Pags and all the rest. They would be with him tonight. Somewhere West would be doing the same, and so would Colonel -no, General now- McQueen. When the drinking was over, and the unconscious carried off to their racks, he would put it all away in a little box in his head. Until the next time. The End -------------------------------------------------------------------------