Greenflies by Darling Andrew Leete

Author:Darling, Andrew Leete [Darling, Andrew Leete]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-08-19T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14: Close Combat

“So, Hegerty wakes up in the next morning, hung over and praying for death, in the middle of a field of donkeys. He had no memory of how he got there, of course, ‘cuz he’s good and Irish, but it turns out he owned those donkeys. He’d gotten them fairly in trade from a local Afghan warlord by offering him Captain Ramachandran’s hand in marriage.”

“Thanks again, Liam,” said Leena.

“Anytime, Cap’n,” piped in Hegerty.

All of Gamma Team, save Colonel Marshal himself, were seated at a table in the base Cantina, with Meg, Franz, and a few others from Physics and Xenosociology. They had been regaled by Lt. Rice’s stories of missions and downtime with Gamma Team from long before the alien incursions. The stories were entirely made up, of course, but the audience suspected a certain degree of embellishment. What they did not know was that these stories were written for Gamma Team by Caufield and her aide, for the sake of faking social interaction with other soldiers in places just like this. Such story-telling could instill trust, the same sort of trust they needed from Meg, their source of bait and a potential leak of their secret. Before the alien incursions changed their training regimen, Gamma soldiers had been subjected to regular acting lessons.

Rice continued his story. “But, it turns out that the Afghan warlord was even drunker than Hegerty, because he hadn’t noticed the previous night that his lovely bride-to-be was an Indian and hence human garbage by his tribe’s standards.”

“Ah, I love this story,” said Leena, sarcastically.

“Well, when he hears that the warlord wants to renege on this deal, the Colonel acts all indignant, and demands that either he fulfill his duty to the woman the Colonel considered to be like a daughter or offer some other form of compensation. In the end, the warlord gave up the position of a Taliban weapons cache, and Hegerty got to keep his donkeys.”

“What did you do with those things, anyway, Liam?”asked Meg from down the table.

“Followed through on some of those promises of food aid you Americans made,” said Hegerty, grinning. “Good eating on a donkey.”

The cantina was essentially a tavern on the edge of the training side of the base, but there was never any need for ID for the few people who were under-age here. While the place was mostly filled with noisy soldiers, the people who did most of the drinking here were handfuls of scientists from the research side who weren’t allowed off-base to find a real bar. The soldiers, rumors and stories aside, didn’t drink much. At the level of physical performance expected of them in training, a single hangover could do a world of damage to their career. Even the Recovery workmen kept their habits under control, due to their unpredictable work schedules.

A table with such an eclectic lot wasn’t that unusual a sight. There was a certain degree of mutual self-interest involved in scientists consorting with soldiers and vice versa.

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