Confederation (In Her Name, Book 5) by Michael R. Hicks

Author:Michael R. Hicks [Hicks, Michael R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Michael R. Hicks
Published: 2009-08-10T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Six Years Later

Captain Reza Gard sat at a nondescript desk in the small cubicle that served as his company’s CQ and administrative office, trying valiantly to deal with the paperwork that he could not in good conscience leave for his adjutant, Corporal Alfonso Zevon. Zevon, who only recently had been transferred to A Company, 1st Battalion of the 12th Guards Regiment (Red Legion), had transformed the company’s paperwork, which Reza considered to be a small slice of Father Hernandez’s Hell, from an unqualified mess into a real system. It was a gift that Reza was endlessly thankful for, especially since Zevon also happened to be an expert marksman and a good fighter. What terrible thing he had done to earn himself a posting to the Red Legion, Reza did not know, and would never ask.

He looked up as his First Sergeant poked his head through the door. “Reza,” Eustus said, “there’s a message coming in for you on channel five. It’s from Nicole.”

Reza’s skin tingled at the sound of her name. It had been months since he had last heard from her, but he had felt recently that something was different in her life, something good had happened. He felt it in his blood, the blood he had shared with her. “Thank you, Eustus. I’ll take it in here.” Eustus smiled and ducked back out.

Reza shook his head as he thought about his friend. Eustus had insisted on staying with him in the bloody machine that was the Red Legion, despite receiving several offers to be posted to other, more “reputable,” regiments. He had also received several offers – strongly supported by Reza – to go to officer candidate school, but that, too, he had refused. “Why would I want to become an officer?” he would ask, seemingly perplexed. He had risen through the enlisted ranks on his own merit, and now served as the senior enlisted man in his company. He was honored to serve Reza, and Reza was equally honored to have him.

Washington Hawthorne, too, had joined the Legion – by choice, amazingly enough – two years after graduating from Quantico. He had survived long enough to become Reza’s executive officer, and would soon be up for command of his own company, an event that Reza awaited with anticipation and pride in his friend’s abilities.

As for Reza himself, his start in the Legion as a much-maligned rifleman who had spent nearly as much time fighting his fellow Marines as he had the Kreelans had changed five months after his arrival to the unit. At the Battle of Kalimpong, half of their battalion was wiped out in an ill-planned attack against a Kreelan mining operation that had been discovered in the system’s asteroid belt. Reza had managed to rally the survivors in time to beat back a fierce Kreelan counterattack that had come very close to destroying their ship, the old cruiser Pegasus (which not long after, Reza lamented, had been burned into vapor by a Kreelan battlecruiser).

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