Star Trek Deep Space Nine: Band of Redshirts

by the Starfleet Kid

The Dominion War wasn't just fought in space. Starfleet Marines, or redshirts, bled and died on a hundred worlds. What the Federation brought together as a company, the War united as a family. This is the story of one such company.

1. The First Drop

"All right people," the Lieutenant shouted over the sounds of our good-natured, anxious chatter. "This is basic landborne phaser training, so--- hey! You, in the back! Name!"

One of the shuttlecraft pilots, guy I knew named Ramirez, stepped forward. "Ensign Joaquin Ramirez, sir."

"Ramirez. C'mere a minute."

The ranks parted down the middle in a perfect aisle, connecting Ramirez to the Lieutenant. He made his way forward, tenuous. I knew I would've been the same. Provided I'd been able to move. Ramirez had just been assigned here due to his role as a shuttle pilot. He wasn't like most of us-- the quiet ones. You could tell the starboys from the redshirts down in the Training Hangar. Starboys liked to sit around, natter on about gossip and holodeck adventures they'd had. Redshirts, we knew better. There was no such thing as adventure for us. I'd like to say something noble like "we lived it every day", but really, we just knew better.

Ramirez came to the front, to where the Lieutenant was holding one of the standard phasers. "Sir," Ramirez said, his tone intended to draw out a mercy that didn't exist in the Lieutenant.

"Stand over there, Ensign." Upon the small stage stood a brick of what appeared to be solid duranium, next to which Ramirez was directed to stand. "Thank you. Now, then. Some of you are familiar with the operations of a phaser in shipborne operations. You can shoot just about anything with a phaser inside of a starship--- the fire-suppression systems will keep things from burning, and if that doesn't work, maybe you'll be lucky enough to be caught with the beam square on instead. After all, there isn't a lot of room in a starship. Lines of fire are only important in terms of corridor entry and egress. And it's more important to find somewhere to hide.

"Not so planetside. Those of you starboys, like Ensign Ramirez over here, who think it's all guts and glory, can go back to your holodecks. You've been sent down here in order to attain in part your Away Team Qualifications Ribbon. And if you can't cut it in here, as sure as Vulcan's hot in July, you will not cut it planetside anywhere else."

This was all three years before we'd make our names. No one I knew at the time --not even Ramirez-- will matter later. I'm only relating this because it's the day I knew for sure I never wanted anything else. I mean, Starfleet's a big place. You can get lost on some scientific mission out on the far side of the Quadrant, or you can just fade away into the backdrop of one bridge or another, making war or making peace or making love to some cutie on some random starbase. Now that I think about it, I don't even remember what number this starbase was-- I can only tell you that it sure wasn't Starbase 69. I was hurting for some action, and there were some cute starbunnies in that room.

But back to the Lieutenant for a moment. "You redshirts will be getting more of the same later on, so for the most part, anything I tell you here, you'll have to unlearn once you get your rifles. For now we will stick to the Mark I Starfleet standard-issue phaser. Note that this is different from the smaller officers' sidearms you will see your commanding officers wearing. Just Mark I.

"This particular phaser is capable of a number of settings. For example, the lowest setting will barely light wood. You'll need that if you're lost in the woods--- and judging by the look of some of you, it won't matter anyway."

At this, the Lieutenant pointed the phaser at Ramirez and fired, point-blank. To be fair, he aimed for Ramirez's hand. The beam struck Ramirez right between the third and fourth fingers, making him jump back. The Lieutenant grabbed his wrist and turned the wounded hand towards the crowd. "As you can see, it's good for little more than disabling your enemy's hand. Which is probably important, if you're going up against computer operators. But your adversaries will be far less susceptible to flesh wounds-- and what's more, they won't notice.

"Which is where the stun setting comes in." The Lieutenant tapped a button on the back of the phaser and then another, firing a bolt this time at Ramirez's right shoulder. Ramirez took it full on, jolted into a half-spin, and fell to one knee. "How you feeling, Ensign?"

"I can't feel my side!"

"That's right. This is why you need to aim carefully. You'll notice from his snivelling that Ensign Ramirez can still use his left arm. If you're lucky, your attackers won't be southpaws. But don't count on it. If you do use the stun setting, aim dead centre of the chest." As if his display hadn't been convincing enough, the Lieutenant aimed square in the rib cage on himself with his phaser's barrel. "Now, then. Let's move onto heavy stun."

"NO!" Ramirez screamed, crawling away. By this point --if I didn't make it clear-- the Lieutenant had everyone's attention. I'm sure someone was on the commlink to the Federation President, but nobody would've cared. We were Starfleet. We knew the risks--- or rather, we should've.

"Very well, Ensign. Now, you will notice that we refer to it now as 'heavy stun' rather than 'kill'. Now, some of you might be under the impression that it's just the Federation being nice and catering to your sensibilities--- that you don't want to actually have to kill someone else. And that's fine. But we've seen what's coming out of the Cardassian Union and Romulan Star Empire these days. We go up against those boys, and we're going to have to hope that 'kill' is still the word we have in mind. Heaven knows the Borg can shrug it off like you weren't even there."

At this, the Lieutenant aimed his phaser at the block of duranium and fired. The metal was scorched, but there wasn't any sign of it having had any penetrative effect.

"Note that heavy stun will not penetrate metal. This is why it's used on starships. It's powerful enough to bring down even a drunken Vulcan. But you can set it to the 'maximum' setting. And this will cause whatever organic tissue you strike with it to vaporize-- we still don't know exactly why that happens, but rest assured, you will destroy whatever you target. Of course, you only get one shot.

"The power cell in your average phaser will burn itself out in short order if you do fire on maximum. Shipside, this wouldn't be a problem normally. But on a planet, you may need to give your power cell time to charge itself. Burn it out, and your phaser is little more than a mechanical brick. Leave it on the wrong planet, and you could affect an entire civilization. We still deal in the Prime Directive in our line of work, so let's keep that in mind as well."

At this, the Lieutenant threw up the setting to maximum and fired a bright red beam straight through the duranium block in a matter of seconds, like it wasn't even there. As if he knew the precise depth, the beam discontinued in time to avoid putting a hole in the bulkhead.

"Don't think that a phaser makes you God. You have to be conservative, careful and consistent. You don't fire through corners, you fire around them. You don't use any more power than you have to. It's against Federation regulations --regulations that you will have to know-- to simply employ a phaser because you feel like it. You've got to be aware of your situation, at all times. Starfleet is giving you the power to wound, even to kill. You have to respect that power. Because one wrong move, and it will destroy you.

"Carrying a phaser not only gives you power, it gives you responsibility. Being armed makes you the target. You'll always be a target if you're in that uniform--- but carrying a weapon makes you that much more certain to die. This is why Starfleet weapons teams work together.

"You point that phaser, you'd better be ready to use it-- that means system clean, safety off, setting checked. You can't be afraid. Your enemy will use that fear against you. It takes a fraction of a second for whatever weapon he has to fire, and to strike you dead. And you have to strike that fraction of a second sooner.

"Remember that order. I will drill you on this until you get it. Trace, stun, kill, max. Trace, stun, kill, max. Conserve power, use good cover, work together. Otherwise I can train you until the rapture and you'll still be dead at first shot. Any questions?"

---

We were in that room for three weeks, twelve hours a day. What I learned in there lasted me through the Dominion War. Not just phaser tactics--- how to move, how to hide, how to run, how to fire. Redshirts don't just learn to march to the beat of a different drum. They have to learn to walk a whole other way. Otherwise there might not be enough of them left to send home.

Got my stripes after we lost Sergeant T'lani on AR-543. Murderous fire from Jemmy, and those damned spook mines they use --you may know 'em by another name, but our company took to calling them spook mines-- popped up all around us while we were on warp speed down one damned tunnel or another. T'lani wasn't content to just wait for the spook mine to reappear. We didn't have that kind of time. Jemmy could be all around us, those damned shrouds of theirs. T'lani stepped forward, left me in charge since I was section second. Not the way I wanted to get my stripes, but you know what they say about the good of the many. She took it on in single combat, fired four good shots into it before it detonated. Real cold logician, that one, but hot like her home planet.

I picked up a lot of lingo along the way. We had to stop saying "that girl's easy like Risa on Tuesday" after those madmen tried to shut the whole planet down. You wanna do that, you need redshirts, man. Or Jemmy. I'm still smarting over the way we lost Betazed. They thought they could see Jemmy coming. They didn't know what hit them. Even though they went hardcore partisan, communicating and co-ordinating by telepathy alone, it still took them almost until after the armistice to get Jemmy out of there. If they hadn't run out of the white, we might never have been safe on that planet.

Jemmy's like that. He squats in the bush on some planet somewhere out of touch from everyone else and his bioengineered brain calms him down. Me or you --well, unless you're a Vulcan-- we'd be freaking out, smacking our commbadges and praying to whoever's left out there to pray to, asking for salvation and redemption and a goddamned runabout even. Those things are death traps with warp engines, I'm told.

Jemmy doesn't care. You tell him to die and he does it with a smile on his face. If Jemmy even smiles. I don't think he can. After a while, their bony faces all look the same. And don't think I didn't get to see him up close. Just on account of us fighting and shooting at each other across hundreds of kilometres doesn't mean we didn't get real cozy. But that was why infantry tactics were so important to learn.

That was actually the segment of my training that followed basic phaser. They trained us in close-combat, in fighting styles ranging from Vulcan to Klingon to Tellarite to Cardassian. They had to-- we had among our squad species from across the Federation. Caitians, Deltans, Andorians, Denobulans, but mostly Vulcans and humans. You could always tell the Vulcans from the humans just by looking at them, of course, and not because of the ears. Smarmy bastards. I've never liked Vulcans-- all but two, and T'lanis was one of them. I smell green blood or see blue skin or hear hoof-fall and right away, my teeth are on edge. I can't help it if I'm a little xenophobic. I know, Federation, we're all supposed to be pals, especially when you think of what Jemmy was coming to do with us, you'd think, for sure they all get along! But no. We had us some fierce lay-outs. Close combat stopped being a drill and started being a way of life.

This suited the instructors just fine. The redshirt boss at that starbase was a Captain Pirgo, though we just called him the Pig. I mean, Tellarites kind of look the point, though I imagine if a pig started walking around on his hind legs, he'd be a lot more like us and a lot less hell-bent for breaking cadets in two.

One time, there was this Benzite-- and you know how they have that breathing apparatus? Pig hounded him until he washed out because he thought Benzites had no place in combat. Never mind that the juice they have in those things is self-replicating. Way he talked, you'd think Benzite breathers had the same cell as your average phaser: runs out when you need it most.

I got through that. Then they put us through Vulcan. Man, it was so hot I thought I had gone to hell. I use that one a lot, stole it from the Lieutenant back in basic, so if I say 'such and such a zone was hotter than Vulcan', trust me, I know of what I speak. All I could do for the better part of our twelve weeks there was sweat my ass off. But we had calisthenics four times a day. All the instructors were Vulcans. You should've seen the Andorians. They were just about ready to strangle the first pink-skin pointy-ears they came across with their feelers.

It was hideous. Sand in everything --especially the phasers. We had a couple of biomechanically-handed redshirts by the end of that. See, if you get a chunk of silicon down the wrong part of the phaser, the whole coolant array goes to pot, and you're out of luck. Might as well hug it and take the hit to the body instead. It's the only way out.

We all thought about it, an accidental shot to the boot or to the arm, somewhere out of the way. The Vulcans were a step up on us: we couldn't use anything but trace setting. They fitted our commbadges with a trace-reader, so if we took a hit, we couldn't fake a real wound. The only way out was a detonating phaser. And nobody wanted a ticket out at the expense of a whole arm.

That was about the time--- no. No, it was just after. I was on a four-day leave, unusual even for the time, to Starbase 12. I'll never forget the place I was standing when I heard that the Dominion had destroyed Odyssey. I was on L-deck, the junior officers' quarters. It'd been a long night with a cute little deck lieutenant from one ship or another, if you get me. I was in the sonic shower, and I heard this gasp. Like, you shouldn't be able to hear things in the sonic shower. But this I heard.

I came out, threw on my uniform pants, and rushed out to find three other people standing around. All from whatever ship she was from --Challenger, I think it was, or maybe Enterprise. Either way, she was Galaxy-class. They were talking about how easily the Odyssey had been destroyed. First reports said that the Dominion had fired on her and taken out her shields with one round, only to deprive Odyssey of her place in space with the next. None of that was true; we'd later find out that a Jemmy fighter had rammed Odyssey right down the deflector dish. But at the time, Galaxy-class was the best we could do. And for one of those pretties to go down so easily without much warning... everyone was scared.

We lost a lot of good people trying to find out more. Sooner or later they made themselves --and their intentions-- known to us plainly. Founders. Vorta. Jemmy. They worked together. Species-level command structure, they called it. Then we found out specifics. Ketracel white. Where they came from. What they did to those who got in their way.

A less civilized Federation might've realized we had that in common. Hell, even the Maquis knocked off their racket and started joining up after a while. We had a common enemy. They wanted Spoony dead, and we wanted Jemmy dead. It was a fair compromise, especially since they were on the same team.

Spoony wasn't so bad to me at first. I went out with a platoon out of 345th. We operated from Bismarck, I think it was-- my first drop. We still called it a 'drop'. Apparently the term had originated from a time in the past when soldiers like ourselves would drop from the sky, somehow. I would guess that they used some sort of rocket boots. I can't imagine any other way for that to work. But then, I didn't make redshirt sergeant by being a brain.

---

It was just us and a few other divisions working against the Ninth Order of the Cardassian Union over on Garpi Prime. The captain was a real carbon rod, too-- his idea of a pep talk was some sort of speech about how "we go to gain a planet that has no profit in it but the name" or something. I don't remember how that went. We held the planet, city by city, and worked our way across with good air support. What really held it for us, though, was the Fleet. Whole Third Fleet came swooping in, cut off Spoony's supply lines. Like it or not, replicators and field medical stations only hold you out for so long. Like with phasers, they don't mean you can live forever.

That was when I started picking up on the game a bit more, after that first drop. I didn't really shoot at anyone-- they kept me back of the lines, doing clean-up. Brass called them "goodwill stations" or "police zones", that kind of nice-nice talk the Fed is known for. People on those worlds didn't care. They knew they were just another ball of rock in space for us to hang troops on. Or bury them on. To Command, it's all the same, as long as the right flag flies over that world.

It was about that time that I started to realize how drops worked. By all rights, we shouldn't have dropped off Bismarck-- Excelsior-class ships don't usually carry full battalions of redshirts. Usually we get stationed on ships that have room. After Odyssey, they stopped carrying civvies onboard Galaxy-class ships. By comparison to a barracks starbase-side, it was days off. Usually that's what we operated off-- either that or Nebula-class, since they had saucer sections big enough to accommodate both crew and redshirts. Later on we made some drops off Sovereign- or Akira-class ships. Actually, we were onboard Kaga, she's an Akira-class, when the Borg showed up right in the middle of the war. Here we were thinking about nothing but Jemmy, and Borg drop in. Enterprise was out of the war after that-- our second Sovereign-class ship in the whole Starfleet already sidelined in the blink of an eye. All we knew was that they turned up around Earth three days later after everyone took 'em for dead, with a quarter of the crew left alive.

My section second, Tim Walters, was on Enterprise. I've read the reports. I still can't believe what happened. Walters lived through it. You know how they feted Picard when he recovered from his Borg experience, even though he took down thirty-nine of our ships? Walters was like that. Only he'd lived. I guess after the Borg hive-mind died on Enterprise, Walters was only partially assimilated. He still remembers fighting hand-to-hand with a Borg on Deck 4 when something came out of its hand and bit him. Since they cured Picard, they'd come a long way in understanding Borg implants, and they were able to fix up some sixty or seventy Enterprise crew members and put 'em back in the lines. We still rib Walters for saying 'we' from time to time. But he's gotta be careful: those Borg drones are still in his blood, and if he's not careful, resistance is gonna get a might futile.

Walters wasn't with us until about, I'd say, a third of the way through the war. After all, they wouldn't have put him back in the line if they hadn't needed him quite so badly. Good with computers. He was a specialist, classification R-2. I still swear it's those drones in his hands.

I started to clue into specialist classifications about the same time. R-1 meant you got a sniper rifle that transported the bullets right into Jemmy's chest-- even through bare rock. R-2 meant you worked with computers. R-3, explosives experts. Give them a phaser and they'd give you a working antimatter mine. R-4 are engineers. They don't work with computers, they work with everything else. Bridges and doorways, that sort of things. Starfleet Corps of Engineers usually trained and provided those. And R-5s were the specials. You know, either they were Betazoids or reformed murderers or nimble knife-fighters, or they had a knack for combat, some other special trait to them. These were just for combat sections of course. Support sections had your counsellors, your replicator monitors, your battalions of combat engineers yearning to construct a starbase on the battlefield. Those types were in back of the line. Rumour had it that they had whole squads of specials that they put to use for one reason or another. Kind of creeps me out, to think of it. Those specials scared me as much as Jemmy.

Tim Walters should've been designated R-5, to be sure, but we didn't want to bump out Renalla Yan. She was our Betazoid-- full Betazoid, accept no substitutes. She knew we all thought she was real pretty to look on. There was no hiding it. Didn't bother her none. Our R-1 was an Andorian, by the name of Sholar. I've never seen anyone quite so possessive with his rifle-- but it was highly classified technology, so much so that we needed a special R-4 in our squad just to be allowed an R-1, someone trained and intelligence-rated to work on the sniper rifle. After all, Jemmy could already walk among us shrouded, and his Boss could take on our form to get inside our lines. Shooting through walls at us was the last thing we wanted to make him capable of doing.

And I don't doubt that the Founders knew about those rifles long before. But they were --I've read-- always so supremely confident that they could drown us solids in an ocean of their goo. And where they couldn't do it themselves, they had Jemmy. So it wasn't like they could lose. Or so they thought. At least, so we thought.

---

I suppose I should do something more than backstory you to death. After all, everyone knows this stuff-- we've all lived through it at this point. They told me when I came in, this is a debriefing, not a storytelling session. Still, nobody listens to me much back home so I'm much obliged for the chance to go on like an old man.

I was with the 345th for about nine months, until I started rating section lead worthy and getting the Brass' attention. This worked okay for me, as I didn't really know what else I was going to do in the line with the 345th. We made a couple other drops before I was transferred --once off Agincourt, a Nebula-classer, twice off Shokaku, an Akira-classer, and once more off Endeavour, a Galaxy-classer. Then they transferred me when Endeavour stopped at Starbase 183, and I went aboard Constitution, another Galaxy-classer to Field Officer Training for eight weeks at Starbase 34. I'd say more about the drops, but... well, there's some things I saw I don't want to get into. Things that keep me up at night. And some things I think are best left untold. Things like happened with T'lani-- after all, they wouldn't have even put me off AR-543 for training if she'd lived to fight another day. Whole experience from Garpi to AR left me feeling like Starfleet couldn't organize a replicator line, let alone a war. Jemmy had us back on our heels.

That was where I met Walters. It was a long time since I'd found someone to talk to, mostly because I went quiet unless someone was shooting me. After a while, you get to realize how much of a privilege communication is, when you see girls you loved or men you called brothers lying in their own blood --or with nothing left of them but a name on a casualty list. You stop talking, because if you do, what comes out is nothing more than rage and anger. You're afraid to take the chance. That's how I became. Suppose I still am.

We got to be close, Walters and me. We both had that unspeakable horror. His was on Deck 4 of Enterprise. Mine was on Rintral IV, buried under the rocks of what we'd taken to calling Larvin Point. Our first patrol past that point captured a snivelling Vorta of the same name and took him back to be interrogated. He suicided on the way back, soon to be replaced by another fresh out of cryo. But Jemmy came looking for their Vorta. They couldn't help themselves. We slaughtered them by the hundreds. After a while, we forced ourselves to stop caring. And finally, the Starfleet Corps of Engineers just detonated the whole of the pass (which became Larvin Pass) that led to Larvin Point. It took a week for Jemmy's new boss to arrive from their cryo chambers. By that point, we had so many Jemmy corpses --and casualties of our own-- on our hands, that we all just started wondering if we were going to last the war.

Walters pointed out to me that the Borg and the Dominion have that in common. They just keep coming. You're not a name any longer-- you're a number. First of Seven, Four of Five. They don't value their lives. After all, they've got nothing to do with it but suck down the white and destroy what they're sent to. They're implacable. At least Jemmy has the merits of not making you into one of him. He just makes you good and dead.

And that's the thing. Walters was Borg. But what they did to him was nothing compared to what Jemmy did to me. Even if there is an armistice, he's still there in my mind. I'm thankful for Renalla every day. She kept us all focused. She would just reach out, into our minds, and take the grief, the horror, and all that hatred away from us. If it wasn't for her, I'd be off curled up in a corner someplace. I might be parsecs away, but my mind would always be holding Larvin Point.

That was nothing compared to what came after we cleared training, though. Walters and I fixed up to stick together, which is why he became my section second. I also saw to his R-2 rating. Breaking into officer routines isn't so bad. Breaking the troops... well, that's different. Took me about a week to sort out all the questions of who was section leader.

---

Just in case you don't know, each section has a leader who oversees two companies. My two companies --Delta and Echo-- are part of the 202st Starfleet Marine Division. They still call us Marines just for good measure, but we take the term 'redshirt' to heart. It all started back in the days when the Federation was all of ten worlds, and the uniforms were a bright red, or green, or blue. I think that was it, anyway. Green was brass. Blue was science. Red was everyone else. Mostly the cannon fodder. So we came to be known as 'redshirts'. Being a redshirt became a mark of impending doom: then Starfleet Command got whiff of it and changed it so nobody wore anything but white. Marines got word of this and went ape on them --unless we were fighting on a snow-covered world, we were easy targets. And even then, they weren't exactly warm. So Command changed the uniform again. Now everyone was a redshirt. The only difference was the collar and the arm braids. But the name stuck.

Somewhere along the line, starboys got their name from the redshirts. Probably along the course of one barroom brawl or another. Starfleet Command likes to promote interservice rivalry, between the starboys and the redshirts and the engineers. Engineers, I'd like to note, are and ever have been just that: engineers. No one calls them any different. Many have tried to come up with a suitable nickname for them. Many have found themselves in a malfunctioning turbolift or an improperly sealed airlock as a result. So we just call them the Starfleet Corps of Engineers. It's safer for everyone that way.

Anyway, the Two-Oh-Second was the pride of Starfleet, mostly because it had a whole Vulcan battalion. This was all the rave back then: to have battalions, sections and platoons worked out and shaken down on the basis of planetary or species affiliation. The idea was, I'm told, to once again promote rivalry and competition. Jemmy didn't care much. And instead of losing one or two sons and daughters, whole planets suffered if a platoon, squad or even a division was utterly wiped out. It wasn't a smart policy, but we worked around it.

Not that it shook the Vulcans any. Some of the younger ones --who still had something to live for-- realized that psych-warfare logic made such sections a ripe target for Jemmy. Wipe out a whole section of Vulcans and cripple a major Federation world-- made sense to me when Ronik explained it to me. Ronik is my section officer, and I reported to him. I mean, he was my section officer. I apologize if I switch back and forth from present to past tense-- I figure you guys must hear that a lot.

Anyway, Ronik wasn't so bad for a Vulcan. He didn't like war a whole lot-- he was a thinking man, see. But he did what the Federation told him was the greater good. No disputing with Ronik. He knew the way he liked his sections, and he knew the way Lieutenant Sorvik liked his regiments. Sorvik's job was to know how Commander Tulin liked his battalions, and Tulin had to learn real quick how Captain Valan liked his division. Vulcans right up and down the officers' corps. Made an enlisted man kind of hesitant to command. But I got my sections in shape, bunked them off in pairs, worked them in drills in the same pairs, kept them alive in pairs. It was Walters' idea-- exponential infantry. We had sixteen redshirts per, thirty-two in the section. Eight were specials. To a Borg-brain like Walters, pair, quad, eight, company, section... easy organization. Earned us both a commendation for original thinking. Then Starfleet went and upped section size to forty, twenty per company. Tim needed a week to adjust. You'd think he'd be able to adapt more quickly.

Ronik was decent. While we were on Starbase 435, he had us up for dinner one night and broke out some Romulan ale. We had a fine time griping to our CO, sharing with him what the troops told us. He just took it all as serenely as it could come. And, you know, I can see why. Fellow like Ronik knows the history of thousands of wars inside and out. By some armies' standards, Starfleet does right by its troops like they're being put up in a resort, not sent out to war. But Starfleet's designed to be better at everything. Funny how that resort feeling left the Vulcan command with a lot of gripes and a low efficiency rating.

Which is why Captain Valan cracked down on us before we even left dock. I had a hard time with the men because of that. Triple sets of cali drills-- for everyone, even the support sections. Daily lessons in phaser rifle handling, Jem'Hadar infantry tactics, Cardassian psychostrategy, air- and space-defense measures, electromagnetic countermeasures, proper conduct while off-duty... anything you can think of, we had to reinforce into the troops, then model ourselves after the lesson. That was the hardest part-- since Walters and me were easy-going about stuff most of the time, we even had to clamp down on each other. One night we got to fighting about it before I shrugged off the synthehol and made him calm down enough to see he was bleeding. I hit him pretty good with a right hook and went straight to the sickbay, hoping I wasn't in the process of getting assimilated. Fortunately, I wasn't.

Then orders came down that we were to report to USS Thunderchild, NCC-63549, for impending assignment. Rumour claimed more ears than any concussion mine ever will, and before we knew it we were touring off for all points between. Orders came down to keep the troops from firing their rifles outside of approved rifle training areas, to keep their mouths shut about the troop movements, to stay calm and to report any overly heroic or defiant displays to the division psychiatric section. Needless to say, just reading those orders to the troops made us all feel a little more mortal. We didn't have any problems in-section-- and I asked Renalla to keep an eye out, if you will, for anything. All she got was anxiety and hope in varying degrees. I was glad to hear it.

Thunderchild was Akira-class. She was one of the finest ships I've ever had the privilege of calling my own. It was around that time that we were introduced to the Shadowfax-class troop transports. Each one was like a runabout, only equipped with twin rows of seats running aft of the transporter room and warp core assembly. These seats faced across, rather than forward, and they were meant to be used as dropships. Enough room in each for a section.

Ours was USS Rienzi. Each of the Shadowfax-classers were named for a famed horse, either of war or of speed, from literature or history. There was Bucephalus, Traveller, Secretariat, Snowmane, Gringolet, Rozinante, and Rienzi. These eight were loaded onto Thunderchild, and when the battalion went into battle, each would have a starboy crew of four onboard to operate the rotary phaser cannons and fly the thing, so we wouldn't have to. Tim and I each sat in back, while Ronik sat up front with the starboys.

We did dropship training for a week, since we weren't just beaming in anymore. Bad experience on Sarlacc III: a whole regiment had beamed onto the planet, only to be destroyed by a well-placed Jemmy minefield right in the middle of their beam-in points. I heard later that this particular world was hard to beam into, so Jemmy just put the mines between the transport-enhancers and waited. Spook mines. They'd never had a chance. We wouldn't let Jemmy have that easy a go of it again. Next time, we'd be ready to go down the long way. No sure thing that we'd have to, though. I certainly felt more comfortable with Rienzi and her sisters in the skies above us, but Peregrine-class fighters were just as reassuring. Air superiority... angels on our shoulders. Makes it easier to sleep at night, believe me.

The first night after we dropped the first time, down on Buruta II, was the most comfortable night I'd spent on a planet since I'd signed up. That was the first drop I made as a sergeant, first drop with the Two-Oh, first drop in Rienzi. That many firsts, and not a Jemmy to show for it. I think they let us in, personally. Considering what came after... I wouldn't be surprised.

---

We made camp right around Rienzi. Our R-4, a Caitian named M'nur, used the Mk I Fieldworks and Tunnelling (FaT) unit to set up some trenches and underground depots for storing munitions. I ordered eight shirts on the watch around Rienzi. We were three klicks from Rozinante, and two from Snowmane. We were right where we should've been. Setting up the perimeter was the first step.

It was a quiet night, all things considered. Jemmy was probably scouting us out before we could get up the low-level tachyon fields. They instituted those --modified transporter beacons that worked sort of like a proximity detector. After a while, Jemmy got the hint and started laying charges just close enough to break the proximity detector, and force a patrol sortie out of our circle. It was an effective tactic. Until we started manning phaser drones.

Walters was good for that. He actually rigged up the drones to respond to his nanotech. So he'd be controlling the perimeter in his sleep. No one questioned it. It kept us safe and made patrol easy walking. Though nobody slouched or snoozed--- Walters had his eyes on that, too. And he wasn't above a shot across the bow.

Walters made my job easy. Him and Renalla both. Renalla could gauge in a minute where everyone was at-- and co-ordinating counterattacks was so easy with her around. Jemmy could block comm channels, but he never did clue into telepathy. I figure it's just as well. Jemmy didn't have much of a mind to be read. And if he started comin' back at Renalla, well... that would've been worrisome.

I suppose the hard thing about Renalla was that she knew how I felt about her before I did. That made a double problem for me. First off, the moment you start feeling all Starfleet-standard-issue touchy-feely about someone if you're a redshirt, you should get yourself a transfer notice. Because you will see that person bleed, you will see that person maimed, and you will see that person die. It's not inevitable. If you transfer, that is.

Renalla knew how I felt about death. Renalla knew most of us better than we knew ourselves. We were fascinating to her. That night she volunteered to join me in the command post, keeping an eye on the surround. I was working on the sensor calibrations when I noticed she wasn't moving much. Thinking I'd caught her sleeping, I made a sudden motion towards her, and she jumped.

She shook it off, and I caught her looking at me with a startled gaze that told me just how deep in my cortex she'd been when I glanced over.

"Hello," she said, half-startled.

"You know what I'm thinking," I said, "And not 'cause of the look on my face."

"Yeah," she replied. "It's so strange, you know... I mean, I'm not letting myself speak into others' minds without permission or orders."

"I told you before, that's how I want it. I know you have that ability, but you know how I am."

"You really think it matters to them?" she asked.

"Of course it does, Ren. Each of them --they're all thinking that they're the only ones who are going through this right now."

"It's just an illusion. I know it. You know it."

"They don't. And I need them to believe they're in this alone. Otherwise they'll never work together."

She gave me a look I didn't need to be Betazoid to read. "I don't understand. My people have nothing to hide from each other. We can't. It's all there, like the wind. We don't keep it to ourselves, we just let it pass between us."

"There's an old Earth expression for that: not seeing the forest for the trees."

"I don't understand."

"Like the Vulcans do. All about the greater good. Always putting yourself second."

"We're supposed to be doing that. You know: Fed, fleet, home, self. For me, home is wherever there are voices telling me that life exists."

"Those voices... too much for me."

"Well, yes," she whispered, moving closer to me. "If you say them out loud. And if you can only trust your ears."

"But you don't understand, now. What you call a limitation, I call a blessing. I don't want to hear them. I have enough battling around in me, that I don't need to take them on, too."

"Then how can you lead them?" She paused for a moment, then added, "not that I'm questioning your command abilities, or anything."

"No, I don't take it as such. Still. I think I'm better qualified because I think I understand them. I want them to surprise me. I don't want to get too close to them, either."

"The loss of any one voice diminishes us all."

"That's just what I mean. I wouldn't be able to cope with it. I'm--- I'm not. I just keep thinking about all the folks I lost."

"That you lost?" Her tone was an unmistakeable surprise.

"Yeah. I mean, I already feel a sort of... common sense. Like we're all the same out here. Even you specials. We all bleed red."

"Except the Vulcans."

"You know what I mean. Redshirt outside, red meat inside."

"Yeah. I know what you mean. Still. I also know you pretty well."

"You think so, do you."

"Yeah. I mean, you've done pretty well for yourself, considering the trouble you got into when you were a kid. I just kind of wish you could forgive your father for----"

"Hey," I snapped, a bit too forceful. "That's just the kind of thing I don't want bringing up."

"I'm sorry," she said, and she rolled down off the pancake of mud we were sitting on, into a reclined position. Her big dark eyes just kind of caught the starlight above, reflecting it back. I could see the universe, through her eyes. "I just wanted you to know that I'm not afraid."

"Of what?"

"Any of you. Especially not you, Sean."

Ren and I had been friendly with each other before, but she never called me by name. It'd always been Sergeant Dixon. But I got used to it. She was about the only person I was comfortable with calling me by that. We talked most of the night-- I kept my tricorder out on area sweep, and with the patrols reporting to my command post every few hours, I didn't get much sleep either way.

---

We'd converted the floors and seats in Rienzi down for bedding-- there were also sets of second racks above the seats designed either for bedding down or stowing phaser rifles. And since we'd dug out our dumps, we had extra space for everyone except the patrol dogs and the guys in charge to get a good night's rest. Not that I would've slept anyway. Not that Walters would've passed up the chance for some sack time. He was awake in parts of himself even when he was sleeping. It was just the way he'd been reconstructed. Didn't bother any of us none.

But Ren didn't leave. There was an extra bunk back on Rienzi-- I'd made sure it was available for her. She didn't want it. She was more than content to sit there, watching the cosmic show go on, with me as the only other member of the audience.

It was about that time that I heard the noise on the far side.

"Fire on high!" went out the challenge.

"Fire down below!" came back the countersign. I recognized him instantly-- it was hard not to tell. Rocket boots with fuel packs off to one side, a phaser holster on one side, a tricorder on the other. Helmets under one arm, connected by a fat wire to their belts. This redshirt was a Pathfinder.

"Report," I demanded, straightening up to full height. Pathfinders dropped out the back of a Mk VII shuttlecraft, high orbital, and went down, head-first. They had shield generators in their helmets and along their kit, to keep the ground fire off their fuel cells. It was their job to scout out a beacon site for us, and keep the position as undetected as they could until we gave Jemmy no reason to mistake us.

"Reckon Jemmy ain't got a clue we're here, sir."

"How can you be sure?"

"Sensors didn't detect a thing--- no life signs for thirty klicks around. And no one's been around to check on that beacon."

"You've done well. Two-Oh-Second appreciates your hard work."

"Thank you, sir. Much obliged. This is regiment HQ?" The trooper looked disappointed.

"Actually, they're off at..." I checked the heading for him. "Three-one-five. Six klicks."

"You change your perimeter landing routines before you left the ship, sir?"

"Pardon?" I saw it. I saw the look the same time he did. Renalla had this momentary look of pure fear on her face. "STARFLEET ON YOUR FEET!"

I don't know how I screamed so loud, but I did. This was no Pathfinder. He scowled and lunged at me, but I stepped aside and watched him splash into a puddle of that damned goo.

By this point, the entire section was up in arms. A few phaser shots came across, bathing the surround in that crimson of the 'kill' setting. But it was already swimming in Founder. I tossed out my tricorder and scanned for it, but it was gone. Just like that.

"Sir?" came about ten bewildered screams.

Walters came bolting up. "What in hell---?"

"At ease! SECTION!" I bellowed again, and brought everyone down a few settings. "Safety arms! Stand down!"

Walters was just staring at me. "Nicely done, Dix."

"I did NOTHING. The only reason I'm still alive is because I knew more about the drop than he did. Pathfinders tell US the perimeter, NOT the other way around. Bastards--- Scholtz! Patch me through to Bucephalus. We've got to inform Section HQ-- Jemmy knows we're here now."

"What about those Pathfinders?" Walters asked. I gave him a look that I hoped could convey the bad timing of his inquiry.

"We'll just have to hope they made it back." But I knew better. I'd seen what just one g'jube could do to a perimeter. Pathfinders were hopeless-- all on their own with only each other to depend upon. The Founder set the beacon right where it was supposed to be just to throw us off. That night didn't have much more until dawn chased it away.What it brought for the morning was anyone's guess.

Sure enough, when I got the report back from HQ, their advance patrols had happened upon the bodies of ten Pathfinders. There'd been an attempt at concealment, but it's hard to hide remains from a tricorder. We beamed the corpses back to Thunderchild for proper treatment and identification. Though it wasn't hard.

After all, they were only Pathfinders. They were acceptable casualties. Whether or not a whole section would qualify for that honour was something I was afraid we were about to find out.

---

I ordered the troops to start making hasty provisions for what I thought was sure to follow. After all, I'd been at Larvin Pass. It doesn't take long for Jemmy to figure out that there's a Starfleet presence on a planet. What I didn't realize at the time was that the 317th was on the far side of the ridge, some hundred-plus klicks over, fighting a desperate battle to link up with us. They were supplied well, they just didn't want to lose the front. After all, we were inserted mostly to plug a gap.

That wasn't the original orders, though. Originally we were supposed to drop on some population centre and flush out Jemmy, like a city or a starport, I don't recall. I --and, by default, Renalla-- were the only ones who knew of this. But I wasn't scared. I would've been more comfortable fighting in a city. At least there you can be content with lines of fire six metres long and be comfortable with your eternal anxiety. Fighting out in a wooded area gave me a sense of calm I should never have experienced on a battlefield. Sure, we were redshirts, but we were also asking for it by not closer to Jemmy.

One thing before I go on, though. There's no place worse for a redshirt than in a cave. We call it "the Janus effect", for two reasons. One, a lot of good redshirts lost their lives on a planet of that name, fighting some kind of acid-shooting creature. But also, because you need two faces-- one to look behind, one to look ahead. Jemmy could turn up anywhere. Of course, in the wrong tunnels, you really needed spherical perception, the ability to see in as many directions as you could take fire in. Not many caverns are conveniently sized for us redshirts to march all in a row. Those are the ones you hope you never have to see. Those ones are usually widowmakers.

Seems to me, though, like fighting in a big empty field is murder. We fight in a cave and we die, one at a time, surprised or bushwhacked. We fight in a field, and all Jemmy has to do is hold down the trigger. That's what scared me most. Redshirts are trained to do two things: fight and die in close-quarters. All our phaser tactics are adapted to deal with corners and with closed rooms. We've become so specialized at doing that, to the point where we look at history and ask ourselves, how the hell did they DO that? Massed numbers of men charging forward into massed counterassaults, armoured land vehicles (without even an antigrav pad on them!), marching ---marching! in rows! How many redshirts can Jemmy shoot through with one tunnelling beam? Let's find out!

The concept is foreign to Starfleet. So you can understand my anxiety going into battle with nothing between me and the death Jemmy was bringing but a tree here, a berm there, the occasional bit of underbrush running along a winding stream off to our right. That's not a place to do battle. What are you supposed to do, line up and prepare to die? No, thanks. I had the FaT out to get us some lines of fire. I called over Corny.

"CORNY! Front and CENTRE!" Poor Kornilov had the most unfortunate name in Starfleet. But there was a guy like him in every squad, on every command, and hanging around every starbase, in the whole Starfleet. You know the type. They think our civilization peaked just before the Eugenics Wars, right around 1985 or so. So they get all up in arms playing on the holodeck like they're Americans or Britains or whatever other countries there were back then. Nowadays a nation-state is as foreign a concept as fighting in the sunlight. But there's still those who cling to such ideas.

Kornilov was one of those types. His specialty was his home region's history. We still call it "the Ukraine" now. I don't know why--you know the region in and around the northern half of the Black Sea's shores, on the Asian continent. Provided that you're from Earth.

In the time Corny loves reading about, his ancestors were put on massive farms, forced to work for the state (some kind of Red Union), and conscripted into the Red Army. I don't know if they had redshirts, though the way Corny tells it, they didn't need uniforms. They had partisans who fought the way we do today. Corny gets a certain gleam in his eye when he tells us that the redshirt fighting style was invented by a little old lady in Dnepropetrovsk, his home town. It's usually followed by a few objects hurled in his general direction, and a collective groan.

Fortunate I was to have him around, with his interests in military history being what they are. "Corny. You know field infantry tactics? Think twentieth century. That's your thing."

"Yes, sir. I don't know if I can be of any help to you-- maybe... if I may?" He pointed behind us, probably back towards his kit.

"Go ahead," I replied, and he dashed off, coming back a moment later with a padd.

"This is a brief history of the battle of Kursk. Largest tank battle in history. You can see how" --and at this he tapped the pad, setting in motion a number of boxes which flowed freely around the map-- "how the tanks operated in formations against one another. It's not anything we'd be used to. We'll have to rely upon two-dimensional thinking."

"That's going to put us at a tactical disadvantage. We can't go a couple decks down, or tunnel around them. We'll have to engage them in open combat."

"I would think so, sir."

I dreaded it. We've reached an evolved sensibility now, one the redshirts of Kursk time couldn't understand. Casualties are not acceptable-- not even in war. We can't just send people out to die. We're required to do whatever we can to safeguard the lives of everyone who fights with us. And that includes not sending them off to die stupidly. Not even for the greater good.

I don't know, that's how I was raised anyway. I don't doubt there were a couple people in that squad who were completely taken with this romantic, backwards way of conducting a war. I had Medic Singh set up his shop right down in the command post, and had M'nur dig him out more room and better cover from the direction from which we expected to be attacked.

"What we need to form is what the old sort would've called a hedgehog, sir. Bristling in all directions, even upwards."

"With what? Spears and arrows?"

"No, sir. Our lines of fire can be enfilladed in such a way that we can form a completely circular control point."

"That still makes us highly susceptible to air attack."

"I thought about that--- not if we get these unicorns in the air. Where they should be, sir."

"All right. I'll call in air support."

"Sir?"

"Well, I'm not just going to let them lift off without cover."

"Cover from what?" Walters said. He'd just come up to see what the fuss was all about.

"Jemmy ground fire. We can't risk our horses being cut down."

"They've got ablative armour, and their shields will be up. They're smart enough to get out of here if they need to, but they're not as fragile as you seem to think they are. What's your angle, Corny?"

"Continuous, sir."

Walters gave him a confused look. "Come again?"

"You familiar with the concept of a hedgehog formation?"

"Yeah. I've been trying to corral everyone into forming one, but I can't raise Baker company on the channel."

"We need runners, sir."

"Runners? But the horses are resting on them."

"No, sir--- runners. People to run back and forth between formations with orders and messages. Jemmy can't jam us unless we're dead."

I thought for a moment, and said, "Let me go you one better. REN!" Renalla came running over from where she was setting up a heavy phaser rifle emplacement with M'nur. "Get me the Lieutenant."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"He's a Vulcan. You're a Betazoid. Can't you communicate?"

"It'll be difficult at range. Let me see what I can do." She closed her eyes and turned her back to the front lines. "I think I've found him. What should I tell him?"

"Corny-- explain this to the corporal."

"Yes, sir!" Corny looked like I'd just given him permission to go to heaven. Given the way he was looking at Renalla, I don't doubt that's just where he was.

Within a matter of minutes, the regiment had formed a continuous front, completely circular. The horses were getting ready for takeoff, with the understanding that they were to operate in a limited offensive role, sweeping through enemy emplacements to take out munitions or well-covered holes. And so we waited, rifles at the ready. The Lieutenant came up to me about an hour later. I was explaining to Walters how I wanted the auto-rifles slung in covered positions to simulate heavy rifles when I heard his flat yet powerful Vulcan tone

"Sergeant Dixon," he said. "While I was pleased that you arrived at the same solution to our defensive dilemma, I must admit that I was very impressed with your solution to our communications difficulties." He indicated Renalla with an arched eyebrow. "However, I would prefer if, in future, you use a physical, rather than mental, messenger."

"Yes, sir," I mumbled. Green blood must cut off the circulation to the innovative parts of the brain. I thought it was a good idea.

"Very well. Our situation remains grave. What are our options?"

"We know that Jemmy is going to come at us soon, sir."

"What proof have we of that?"

"Rienzi picked up faint life signs from three directions when she lifted off five minutes ago, sir. We suspect we caught a few Jem with their shrouds down."

"Yet their offensive still remains formless."

"Afraid so, sir. But I have relay points every hundred metres along the perimeter. Just far enough apart to avoid concentration, but within range of a voice."

"Well done. We should divide the circle into equal triads, in order to better co-ordinate defense. Should one side come under heavy attack, proper communication can make reserves that much sooner in coming from other points."

"Permission to speak freely, sir."

"Certainly."

I shrugged and shifted my weight onto one foot. Hadn't noticed I'd been subconsciously standing at attention in his presence. I mean, Ronik wasn't such a bad guy, but he stood almost two full metres in height. Such a dominant figure made a dominant man, even if he was beyond acting that way. Suppose the green blood took that out of you, too.

"Reckon that's just what Jemmy's going to expect, sir. They're counting on us having limited numbers. That's why I set up concentric levels of defense. I figure they've got our perimeter scouted-- that's why I had us set it up in such a way that the first line is easily abandoned, but hard to hold from the outside in."

"Illogical. If we hold this position, we should stand fast."

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, but we don't exactly have any place to retreat to. Jemmy's going to expect us to keep the horses on the ground so we can fight our way back into them, one metre at a time."

"An unorthodox solution, this idea of yours to set the entire regiment's transports to flight."

"Well, sir, I was thinking we should contact T-child as well and have them ready emergency beamout within the third level of defense. If we fall back too hard, I don't think we can afford too many casualties."

"Agreed. However, our mission will be a failure, and we will be forced to abandon goods in order to focus on personnel retrieval. Such an object is... not wise."

"No, sir. But, if I may?"

"Of course, Sergeant. I value your input."

"Thank you, sir, and if I may, I appreciate the chance to say it just the way it's gonna sound." I shifted my weight again. I saw Walters peering at me like I was already crazy. "I reckon this ain't a fight we can win if we think about it in terms of exit strategies before we've entered the battle. We need to be fierce. Fierce like Jemmy H. himself, sir."

Lieutenant Ronik gave me a long, hard, Vulcan look. He pursed his lips and sent one eyebrow headlong. I swear, it shot up a good half-metre. After a moment, he tilted his head, and said, "Sergeant, you are clearly a human soldier, leading an entire unit of human soldiers. No other species I have encountered has had such a singular capacity for ignoring their emotions in so Vulcan a manner when the moment befits."

"Again, not to be too blunt, sir... but we're not ignoring anything. We're just advancing it in a different direction."

"We will follow your direction. To whatever end."

"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir." He nodded at me, and turned. His retinue of staff officers trampled off after him, leaving me with Renalla and Walters.

"Do you think you can pull off even half the crap you just told that man you could?"

"Oh, Tim, don't be like that," Renalla said with a touch of desperation in her voice. "Sean's just doing what he can to get us out of here."

"If you're askin' me, he shouldn't have slept through all them classes on defensive infantry tactics."

"Yeah, well, we all can't absorb information the way you do," I shot back, with special emphasis on the collective term. I know I hurt Tim more with that statement than any Jemmy could've with any weapon. But he just snickered.

"Look, we got work to do," he said. "We can settle this later."

"All right," I replied. I myself was hoping not to survive the day. I'd grappled with Tim before. Let's just say that he got more out of the Borg than just trauma. That man was tough.

---

I moved a few guns around, kept checking with the listening posts and monitoring stations--- nothing to report. If Jemmy was out there, he was doing quite a job to keep himself hid. I went around, trying to give everyone a reassuring word or two, trying to keep their fighting spirits up. It was little use. Even the best-prepared defense was nothing to Jemmy. He didn't care if he died. They just grew more of him. And there was only one way to fight that kind of growth: a stasis field. For the time being, we were to be the emitter.

I caught Renalla as I made my way along the line, and I pulled her aside. "Promise me something, Ren?"

"Sure. What?"

"One of us has to get out of here."

"I hope it's you."

I looked at her for a moment. "You know what I think about that."

"Don't do anything stupid, okay? We're both getting out of here."

"No. I don't mean that."

"What?"

"I mean, if I have to order you out---"

"They'll have to court-martial me." Her big dark eyes were sincere. "I'm not leaving without you. Remember what I said before-- Fed, fleet, home, self?"

"Yeah."

"I left out friends. They come way ahead of all that."

"Don't say that."

"I'm a Betazoid. We don't say things we don't mean."

"I thought that was the Vulcans."

"No, they can't lie. We just don't allow ourselves any pretense at all. And I'm telling you. We're getting out of here. Maybe not all of us, but you and I."

"So you can read the future, too?"

"I can fight for the one I want." She smiled. "And if that doesn't work, I'll just steal a horse and reel around the sun, go back and try again."

"Time travel."

She snickered at me. "You get those stripes for conspicuous statement of the obvious, or what?"

"Conspicuous?"

"I don't know what it means either-- they just have it on the medals. I think it means someone noticed."

"Well, in that case... your concern for me is very conspicuous."

"Okay. If it's not, I'll just funnel it all right into your brain."

"Don't." She was kidding, I know--- but I wasn't. Last thing I needed was a bunch of happy-friend feelings jamming my signal when I'm trying to shoot Jemmy dead.

"No, I wouldn't. But... well... just watch your back."

"That's what I have Sholar. He can pick them off if they get too close."

"Right..." She smiled at me and said, "I'm in the line at point 315."

"Okay." I still don't know why she told me that. I don't think she did it to worry me. But I was nursing point 315 for the next four hours.

I don't remember where I was at the exact moment Jemmy arrived. We were expecting him, of course, just... not quite so many of him. Wherever I was, it wasn't between point 180 and point 225. Because right in front of them, unshrouding with precision, emerged a full section of Jemmy. Redshirts opened fire instantly, but Jemmy kept on coming. A second section materialized behind them. Then a third. Then they broke into a run.

I showed up just as the seconds materialized. Then I realized that there weren't enough corpses on the ground.

"Scopes DOWN! Scopes DOWN!" They were firing blind. They weren't checking to tell the difference between the holo-Jemmy and the real thing. And that was just what Jemmy wanted. Three sections that came at us, but afterwards there weren't more than eight or nine bodies on the field. They tried it again a moment later between point 315 and point 360, then once more around both 135 and 270. So they knew our defenses now. Classic Jemmy move. No surprise there.

It came as no surprise, then, that they left point 315 alone. Not much return fire had come from there-- Ren had everything under control. I don't doubt that she was violating orders --and Starfleet regulations-- by conducting unwanted telepathic activity. I don't doubt it, but at the same time, I was as thankful to her for doing it as I was to Jemmy for leaving that point alone. Funny when I realized later that I was thanking Jemmy for trying to squeeze us along an axis running from around 315 at one end and 135 at the other.

To be honest, I wasn't sure if Jemmy was going to commit or not. At that exact moment, part of me wanted to believe that we were deluding ourselves in believing that our ten-klick perimeter would hold. But part of me was wondering if we were just completely off it, thinking Jemmy would risk open combat.

Either way, our position must've come to form a real thorn in Jemmy's side. I say that because moments later, two formations appeared. One on either side of us, marching square at us.

"RANGE!"

"One klick and closing, sir!"

"HOLD your FIRE!" I bellowed up and down the line. The order carried along. I hadn't made it to our end of the line-- Delta held the far point at, I'd say, 248, and Echo met Baker up around point 003. Delta was going to take some serious casualties once Jemmy hit the line--- they were coming at the hedgehog in four lines of fifteen. But we couldn't hit them yet. And they knew that. "ON the line!" I shouted. Everyone with a rifle stood ready to fire. We were all hanging on a razor's edge.

That was the exact moment the other formation unshrouded. Less than twenty metres from the first lines.

---

I'd like to say in retrospect that I handled that well. But no one did. Jemmy sprang down into our trenches, teeth bared and blades drawn. We were steeling ourselves for ranged combat and they'd come in right under our sensor grids. Target fixation. That wasn't a mistake I'd make again.

At the same time as the first lines were breached, the distant formation broke into a hard run, firing as they moved. Our flank gunners did a good job putting wounds on Jemmy or pinning him down at that distance. But it was little use. We had a break in our first line. And all we could do was push back!

"STARFLEET!" I screamed. "CHARGE!" We broke from the line, phaser rifles charged and pointed. Some of us kept firing, but the troops in the front trench weren't going to benefit for it. Jemmy was all over them, and no one was willing to take the risk of friendly fire. We hit them hard in an open drive, phaser rifle shots catching them in the chest. Where we had to, we engaged them hand-to-hand. There were more of us than them, and they fell back, giving the front trench troops doing the fighting a chance to retrieve their rifles and cut them down.

"DOWN! Get DOWN!" I yelled, and came up shooting. So did the rest of the line. For now, we held the first trench. I had everyone fall back moments later, just to be on the safe side. There was no way they were sneaking one past us again.

Meanwhile, on the flanks, our troops were hitting the second formation with all they had. They began to beat a retreat, and I saw some of our troops starting to break formation, moving forward.

"HOLD the LINE!" I yelled to them, three times. Eventually they got the message. Especially when a withering crossfire from the sides started to pinch in at them. Jemmy had just been moving into his own trenches. There were about ten to fifteen of them in a narrow position behind a berm half a klick off, and they were firing point-blank. Right into point 315.

"All right--- Sholar! Put some fire on that position!"

"You got it." Sholar fixed his headset, raised his rifle and, moments later, pinched off a shot. Then another. And another. Ten bullets. Ten dead Jemmy out in the trench.

"Nicely done, Sholar."

"Of course it was, pinkskin. What did you expect-- for me to miss?" Andorians don't take praise well.

I could still hear gunfire across the way, but it was too far to run, and we couldn't risk breaking our lines to hold another.

What I didn't realize was that the direct assault we were about to suffer --something like a hundred Jemmy all breaking in on our lines-- had already fallen upon the far side of the circle.

"SIR! They're coming again!"

"STARFLEET!" I turned and readied my rifle. "FIRE at WILL!"

We must've cut down twenty of them before they broke into the trench. Still they kept coming. We fell back out of the first line while Jemmy fell in. Still they kept coming, right into the first line. Walters had his auto-rifles positioned to pinch off a section of the circle before Jemmy even held it. Thirty or forty of them cordoned off into a narrow corridor barely wide enough to lay in. We didn't hesitate. We charged right up and opened fire on them from standing positions.

But then, that was just what their second line was counting on. Another thirty of them unshrouded and fired on us from close range. I saw three, maybe four of ours go down before I realized what was going on. Everyone went down, pinned. Jemmy was counting on that. They wanted that trench as much as we didn't want them in it.

I tore open my side pocket and retrieved a spare officer's phaser I'd picked out from the munitions dump. Thinking fast, I set it to overload, and triggered the auto-fire setting. Then I lobbed it not into the trench. It landed just beyond. The auto-fire didn't work, but the whining noise made Jemmy nervous. He couldn't find where it landed. Some of them stood up. We put them back down. Some of them rolled around. We put a stop to it. And when their second line was close to the trench, in a run, they were almost right on top of the phaser when it went. The formation went in four directions, and at least six of Jemmy were bleeding or not moving on the field.

The rest were up to us. Sholar was doing his best, but it was hard to fire at close range-- his weapon was designed for klicks, not centimetres. Besides, I'd just ordered another charge into the trench. Sholar knew better than to drop his rounds in a hole that had us in it. We all did.

We charged in. I myself danced with two Jemmy, cracking one across the face, and shooting down another. Walters kept them from breaking left or right; they couldn't get past those auto-rifles. With each Jemmy that went down, along with a couple of our own, we had more troops focusing on each other, and less on their own combats. This gave us time to evac wounded, to toss Jemmy's bony corpses up along our front trench for better cover, and to strip the white from them. That was the best we could do in terms of psych-warfare. We knew Jemmy wanted the white. That's why we didn't leave him none.

We also stripped him for other intel. We'd sit Jemmy up in a trench, make sure he was dead with a tricorder (or a phaser rifle-- we weren't picky), and check him over for anything we could pass on to the higher-ups. Rifles, plans, shroud units, anything we could find. One Jemmy had a time bomb strapped to his kit-- but by then, he was in a pile with his brothers and everyone got sprayed with guts. I suppose Jemmy didn't give us much credit, expected us to just keep fighting over the dead. We thought better of that.

Jemmy came at us, using all kinds of tricks, and we'd held. But orders came down that night-- we were moving on, further up to an elevated position. The zone was compromised and we needed to be gone by morning. We packed everything we could back into Rienzi and sent the horses up ahead with the kit in them to clear a hilltop. We were to beat to defensive formations after a brief dinner, and make for a position bearing 075 from the beacon. One of the horses was going ahead to reposition that beacon for us.

I didn't get to eating straightaway. I went over to the medics' area. Of my sixteen troops, we had three in sickbay. I don't know what you'd call it-- sickbay, okay? Jemmy had these rounds that never let you stop bleeding. They were giving the medics fits. One of them, Private Marianne Leduc, was hemmorhaging pretty badly out of this sucking chest wound. I didn't think she'd make it. But Singh and two nurses did what they could. Marianne spotted me --we'd talked a bit during my walkabout-- and the look in her eyes was of such shame.

"I'm sorry, sir. I should've side-stepped when I thrusted. Rookie mistake."

"Make it up to me and get back in that line. Soon."

"Yes, sir. I'm trying, sir. I'm so sorry, sir. I'll make it up to you, I swear it."

"For the uniform, Private."

"For the uniform, sir." Hers was a shambles, mostly because Singh had needed to cut away so much of it to clear the wound. They had nothing that could counter the coagulant in the round. But they'd removed it-- I saw it lying on the ground where Singh or one of the nurses had tossed it aside, and I picked it up.

"I don't want you to lose this," I said to Leduc. "After all, these medics do such a good job, you're gonna need some proof of service."

She tried to laugh, but it came up as a gurgling, hacking cough. "Sir," Singh said, and offered an open hand in a direction away from Marianne. When we'd moved out of earshot, he spoke plainly to me. "I can't do anything for her. We need emergency beam-out."

"I don't have a problem with it."

"No, sir. I mean that we can't contact T-child."

Nothing panicked me quite as severely as hearing that. "Dixon to Thunderchild." I slapped my commbadge again. "Dixon to Thunderchild. Anyone there?" I shook my head. "Nothing."

"I know. You don't suppose---?"

"Dixon to Ronik."

"Ronik here. Go ahead, Sergeant."

"Lieutenant, sorry to bother you--"

"There is no need to apologize for contacting your superior officer, Sergeant Dixon."

"No, sir, I just--- well. Have you had any contact with Thunderchild lately?"

"No. They have left orbit."

"Can I ask why, sir?" There was only one reason an Akira-class battleship left orbit. The same reason we were down on the planet. Namely, the Dominion.

"I am unable to provide you with specific details at this time. I apologize."

"There's no need to apologize for not informing a subordinate, Lieutenant," I replied, consciously derisive.

"Very well. Ronik out."

"What's that all mean?" Singh demanded.

"Means we're all alone out here. Is there anything we have on the horses that could help you along?"

"No. I need a sickbay and some diagnostic equipment. These wounds aren't sealing shut."

"Sterilize her and bag her if you have to. I need as many of my section as you can get in the line."

"I'll do what I can, but the rest just took close shaves or wounds to extremities. This one's--"

"Yeah, I saw it, Doc. Now listen." I know I was panicking. He knew I was, too. I'd never lost anyone under my own command yet. It was different being responsible for them. And I didn't want that on my conscience before the march. "I don't intend to leave anyone behind."

"We wouldn't do that," he replied.

"You know what I mean."

"You mean--- well, we'll do everything we can."

"Unless that means she lives, it's not."

"All right," he said, raising his hands to me. "Let me work."

I moved on, and my feelings were all over the place. I think I was mostly hungry, tired, and taking it out on anyone that got in my way.

"Hey," I heard behind me. I turned, and it was Renalla.

"Hi," I replied.

"I know." That was all she said.

"Know what?"

"That you don't want to talk."

"Suppose not." She knew I wanted to tell her. She knew I wanted to pour it out to her. And I know she did, because she made it her business to know.

"Everything's ready to go," she offered.

"Thanks." I sat down, watching Singh work.

"Anything I can do?" she asked.

"No, thanks." There really was nothing she could do-- at least, not there, under the afternoon sun. Actually, come to think of it, that planet had two of them, a twenty-eight hour day. Binary system. It was a neat little planet. Very few indigenous life forms bigger than insects-- and even then, we didn't see many of those. The planet itself got bitterly cold in the wintertime. Made me very glad we were there in its summertime. I would've hated to do anything more than push Jemmy off the far side. Definitely not a planet worth settling.

Ren just kept searching my feelings. I know she did, even if I told her to stay out of my head. She cared, and she wanted me to know she cared. It was just hard to show it any other way than she was accustomed. You know, with a full-on sharing of everything. But I wasn't up for that. Mostly because I didn't want her to know how I felt. About her, about Marianne lying bleeding in the middle of a field, about this godforsaken field on this godforsaken world in this god--

God... how I wanted to be anywhere else. A nice, pleasant field, not unlike this one--- but not like this. Not with Renalla and me both in uniform. Something a little more comfortable, under those fair, temperate suns, the two of us orbiting each other just like those suns. Far beyond these two stars, far beyond the reach of that bastard with his cold, grey hand pointing his rifle with the poisoned rounds that bled you dry, pointing that damned rifle straight into my heart, and firing.

You see, it wasn't Starfleet or Jemmy or anything else that made me think of throwing down my rifle in despair and running, hard, in whatever direction suited me. It was the Betazoid trying so hard to bring a touch of humanity to a world without it. It was the woman lying on the table, bleeding to death and apologizing to me for it. It was the starship that was supposed to cover us that'd mysteriously vanished.

And I knew exactly what that meant. Jemmy had gone and put a ship of his own in orbit. Probably one bigger than ours. Either it was here or on the way. One way or another, it only meant one thing. We were stranded without a hope of safety. Which meant we had to make such a hope for ourselves. Or die trying.

---

It was about then that I got back to dinner. I got my kit and traded out my waste pack for some replicated vittles. That was the way it worked: you wanted out, you put back in. After all, they didn't replicate food from thin air. They needed molecules to derive atoms from, to conserve power. I didn't think about it too hard.

Ren came up to me and wanted to talk some more, and I couldn't evade her by playing the good sergeant. "What is it?" she asked.

"I don't want to get into it," I said. And that was very true.

"Look, I understand."

"No, I don't think you do," I said, turning to face her, my tray of food nearly levelling hers. "You're offering me the chance to get things off my chest. To share my feelings. To make my true self known. And I'm telling you, I can't do that."

"Oh," she muttered. But I didn't stop there.

"What you don't see is that I can't do that. I can't open up to you. Because if anything ever happens to you, then I'm going to blame it on myself."

"But why?" she asked. "You can't protect me. You can't protect any of us. In fact, it's suicide to try."

"Don't you---" But then I caught myself. At least four privates were staring, watching us. I pulled her aside, a few metres off from the group. "Don't you get it, Ren? Every person I've ever cared about, every single one of them, has suffered for it."

"It's you that's not getting it, Sean. They would've suffered anyway. There was nothing you could've done."

"You don't know who I mean."

"Specifically? No. But you don't think I know?"

And she was right. Of course she knew. She'd made it her business to know my mind inside-out. "Maybe you do."

"Suffering isn't anything that can be helped. The Federation takes good care of everyone it has to take care of, and we're all grateful for a capable and compassionate sergeant like yourself, but don't forget. You say you only bring suffering. But every one of those kids over there is relying on you. And so am I. So maybe now isn't a time you should be thinking about yourself."

"And so what if I am? I didn't give up myself when I took these stripes."

"Then maybe you should look into giving them back." She looked at me, plain, her eyes black night at cloudless noon. "Because if you're not willing to give yourself, wholly, for the section, for the cause, for the uniform... well, then, I'm not sure that uniform fits you as well as I'd like to think it does."

"I don't understand," I lied. I was just desperate to keep her talking to me.

"There's a private back there killing herself to live-- for you. There's a whole company of which she's just one of sixteen, and the other fifteen-- all thirty-two of them look up to you. They are counting on you. Everything they see around them tells them they're dead-- that as of this moment, we're all dead, and that the only way out is to go into battle. They see it like that because one look at you and they know it's going to be trouble. And I'm telling you, that's not the way things work on this side of the wormhole."

"Yeah? And how do they work, then?"

"They work by your subordinates looking to you to inspire them to something other than death--- to trust life, to embrace life, and to carry them home. That's what they need right now. They can't have you sulking in your tent. They need a leader. And Starfleet picked you for the task."

"So what? Doesn't mean I can't do it my way. Or does it?"

"If your way isn't making these kids feel like they're in this for the right reasons, what are they fighting for?"

And that was an excellent question. What the hell were we fighting for? At that point in the war, the Romulans were covering their asses, the Spoonheads were just joining up with Jemmy, the Klingons were fighting everyone, even us. And somehow we were supposed to hold a line. What line? We didn't start this war, but by God, we were going to finish it. Or so we were told. The old Jemmy lie, about how 'victory is life', came back to me. What was victory to us at that point? Sustaining the Federation with our blood? That wasn't a practice we could count as such. Our objective was to win the war. But the tactics were all cluster-fragged. And there was nothing anyone could do to turn the fight around. All we knew was that between us and home was an incommunicative starship and a lot of Jemmy.

We eventually marched and made our way up the hills, where we took up a position on the dusky side of a ridge. Just to give you an idea of it, we were a hundred metres off the plain, and we had a section of ten, maybe fifteen metres' width between either side. It stretched for a length of, I'd say, about a good klick and a half, and gave us a commanding view clear out to the lower points of the mountain ridge just beyond us. We'd dropped in on the valley floor on purpose: we hadn't counted on Jemmy getting the drop. But, between two marshes and with high ground in close proximity, we had a fighting chance of holding the position for long enough to pick a direction and advance in it. That was all we needed.

The horses rode ahead with the engineers and medics, and the wounded. Leduc was still holding steady. Tim Walters had some big idea about reprogramming his nanoprobes to seek out the stuff in Marianne's blood, and Singh was trying to get the engineers to approve the mechanics so he could take care of the medical side of things. He'd needed to use the horses' EMH programs. When we got to base, there were eight identical holograms roaming around the camp, looking to diagnose and treat everyone's illnesses.

One of them came across me and Ren as we hiked it up from the valley floor. "You appear to be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I can offer you several treatments."

"And you're lucky you're a hologram or I'd slug you back down this ridge-- how's that for a treatment?" I have no patience for holograms. Some types prefer to go off to a holodeck, get their jollies shooting up or seducing some computer program. Me, I don't live out fantasies. Don't think it's proper to not involve flesh and blood. War did a little too much of that for my liking, to be sure. But I definitely wasn't for going without.

Renalla gave him a stern look and we moved on. The section fell in behind. We came upon M'nurr, working the FaT on the rock. It wasn't cutting near as deep as it had into the valley's soft bed. But we made do with what we could get out of it. We didn't know what was to come next.

In fact, nothing was to come of it. Jemmy held off. Something was going on overhead. We just weren't being told what. I'd get into the long version, but put it this way: Thunderchild had to take off after a Jemmy fleet arrived. Jemmy had been planning a major offensive to take that planet. That would've meant our annihilation. Except, at the same time, some bold Starfleet types had taken out a white processing station on our side of the wormhole. So Jemmy didn't have the supply lines to make the planet stick. We didn't know that at the time-- but then, if we'd known what we didn't know, we would've been a whole lot less calm about the situation.

---

Meantime, we held out. I ordered perimeter patrols three times a day. We did armed calisthenics every morning, broke out into a full training routine to keep our skills up. Before we knew it, Camp Khan Noonien Singh (we'd made the mistake of letting Corny pick the name, and he did so, after one of his old Eugenics Wars heroes) was blooming nicely. As camps go, it wasn't half bad. The bugs were killer-- they had these kinds of lice down there that would actually burrow under your skin. They gave Singh fits six ways from Sol, I can tell you that.

We sent up Snowmane and Rozinante once every couple days to broadcast from high atmosphere. Just to see if anyone was out there. And of course, there was no one. We couldn't figure out why.

In that time, a lot of things happened at the camp themselves, though. Herman Lange, from Delta, and Ashley Fitzgerald, from Echo, fell in love and started talking marriage. Marianne Leduc made a complete recovery, thanks to Tim Walters' nanoprobes. Dr. Singh started processing them, only to find out that the nanoprobes were processing his equipment. Tim managed to call them off after about a week of futile resistance. And we lost Robert Dalton while out on patrol, only to find him down a hidden cage, knit up in some giant trap-door spider's clutches. After we subdued the spider, we brought Dalton back to base, and he was back on patrol again --after as much ribbing as medical treatment-- in about a week's time.

Don Bluvid, David Emerson, and Lorelei Minor put together some kind of three-part harmony group, and they were tasked with keeping morale up between our two companies. Sure enough, these Starfleet minstrels of ours did their best-- although Rachel Pratt nearly took out Lorelei after rumours of Minor stealing Emerson from Pratt started to circulate.

And, of course, there was good old drunken revelry. They named the regiment pub Botany Bay, in memory of Khan's mighty starship of old. It was really nothing more than a replicator modified to bypass the restrictions on brewing synthehol beverages and a few wooden logs stuck into the ground. And, to be honest, Corny's accounts of Khan were suspect even among those of us who knew nothing of hundred-year old events. Sure enough, some wag --probably Ben Cohen, being Echo Company's resident prick-- dug up copy that said Botany Bay was little more than a garbage scow. Naturally, Corny took to fighting, and didn't stand a chance. Three days in sickbay for broken facial bones that the Doc couldn't set without using a surgical procedure.

We were down there a month and a half. In that time, not the slightest sign of Jemmy. If he was out there --and I personally think that he was-- he was keeping calm. It started to worry me. Every day I'd lead a patrol up to the highest peak, some twenty-five klicks, four hour trip. I made a point of bringing Ren with me every time. We'd talk most of the way up-- not in the usual way, mind you. I'd started to open up to her a little. Every day I'd get the same bunch from my company together and we'd make our way. I insisted that Marianne Leduc come with us, to get her strength back up. Her, myself, Renalla, Park Yoon Chow, Sholar, David Emerson, and Rachel Pratt. Sholar I brought along because his scope could see through rock and woods. And I wanted to know if Jemmy was sapping our whole position.

All the troops I brought were from Delta Company, because Delta was technically my company-- mine, my own, assigned to me. Tim Walters was in charge of Echo, on paper at least. Eight companies total from our regiment, all under Ronik's command. And I was one of four lead sergeants. Tim was just a buck sergeant-- we had eight of those, technically. Ren was Delta's. So, really, I was completely expendable. Or so I started thinking. Ren made it clear to me how much she cared about me. At one point on one patrol, when she'd snagged her heel on a root, Rachel Pratt dropped out to help her, being the company medic and all. Emerson ambled up to me with this look on his face.

"Permission to speak freely?" he practically whispered.

"Go ahead," I whispered back.

"You do know, don'tcha, Sarge?"

"Know what, Dave?"

"Beggin' your pardon, sir, but the girl likes you." He indicated Ren with a nod of his head.

"She's a Betazoid, Dave. If she can't tell that I feel the same way, then I'm doing a better job of blocking her out of my mind than I give myself credit for, don't you think?"

Emerson got a wounded look on his face. "Yes, sir. Reckon so."

I patted him on the shoulder. "But thanks for the heads-up. Just want you to know that I'm real happy for you and Rachel-- whole staff is pleased to see so much love in wartime. Reminds us all of home."

"Uh, Sarge? Staff's mostly Vulcan, ain't they?"

"I'm not counting them," I told him with a wink. "They don't feel a damned thing."

Sholar broke in. "What are we waiting for? Don't we have fighting to do?" Sure enough, we did. Ren was up and walking again, so we moved on.

From the top of this climb --we'd refused to let Corny have anything to do with it, so we'd taken to calling it Delta Peak-- you could see everything there was to see. One time when we were up there, we watched Rozinante take off for high orbit. Perfectly clear day-- we followed her right up until she was a glimmer in orbit. We could see everything. Way I thought, we had to. Nothing was keeping us in one place, after all, except vigilance and the anticipation of a ticket home. Without Jemmy around, though, Buruta II wasn't so bad. I could've lived comfortably on that planet given access to an industrial replicator and a few other goodies. After all, with Ren around, and the company at my disposal... what else could a man ask for? Every day T-child didn't come back was a day closer to making this world my own. Buruta II (and its hellbugs) didn't just get into you. It was a place you got used to, after a while, like a pair of old boots you've walked around in long enough to make comfortable.

Speaking of which. Normally the walk up Delta Peak wasn't bad. It was the nattering that got on my nerves. I really had to concentrate to talk to Renalla --you know, the way Betazoids talk to each other. She'd shown me how after I gave in and let myself trust her. It took all the concentration I had. I didn't much object, though-- I had good soldiers around me. Couldn't have picked a finer bunch to fight and die with, by my experience.

But Rachel and Dave would get into it sometimes, and Marianne and Park would join in. Then Sholar would tell the lot of them to pipe down. One of them would appeal to me or to Renalla. Usually Renalla would marm them to keep down on patrol. It'd last a couple minutes. Then Marianne would prod Dave, or Rachel would re-state the argument differently. Anything, really, was fair game. The way the war was being fought. How Rachel and David were going to spend their leave time. Whether or not T-child was a smoking ruin on the far side of the planet by now.

The same topics buzzed through camp. There was actually a "day we get to go home" pool on a board over the replicator, off in Botany Bay. I myself picked stardate 51202. I don't know why. Okay, I do. We were the Two-oh-Second. It made sense, even if it wasn't particularly inspiring. But Renalla was a little more hopeful-- she'd picked 50999. We'd landed on 50902. We'd fought with Jemmy on 50915. And we didn't hear from T-child until 51101. When we did, they were all rush-rush. We wouldn't find out for some days why.

See, the whole war seemed to turn around the starbase right at the mouth of the wormhole, an old Spoonhead station that they'd used to oppress the Bajorans. Deep Space Nine was the lynchpin in the Federation's whole plan. It held the key to the door to the Gamma Quadrant. That key was named USS Defiant, NX-74205, captained by none other than the immortal Ben Sisko. And ol' Sisko was planning on taking his key and locking that door shut. The process was named Operation: Return. We were briefed to be ready for anything. As redshirts we were equally going to be at the ready for Security and of boarding operations. Anyone came aboard, we were to deal with them. If we had to fight for DS9 deck by deck, so we would.

But all this was provided that T-child made it through the fire in one piece. Sisko was calling in all the favours he could to get that station back. Rumours about a minefield and some other heroics filtered through the ranks-- but I told the troops to put less stock in the possibly-true and deal with the real, hard facts. We were going into battle. I didn't want any ghosts of Jemmy yet-to-come scaring the red shirts off their backs.

To be fair, the uniforms were pretty comfortable, but they were grey and black. A hell of a thing to be fighting for, to be sure. But the collars were at least the right colour. And you couldn't ask for a more durable garment, either. We ran, fight, bled, died in these things. We sweat, we froze, we slept, we lived. That uniform becomes a part of you after a while, like... like a second skin. Doesn't matter how much skin you're wearing if you're fighting Jemmy, though--- all he wants to do is blast or punch through it.

I think that T-child made a major error in not coming back sooner, but I never griped too hard to anyone. After all, redshirts answer to starboys. Not the other way around. Still, we could've used a bit more of a transition period from the wide-open fighting we'd done, back to confined spaces and hull breaches. Guess that would've been too much to ask for in wartime. After all, we weren't off on leave. It just felt like it for lack of quarry. Besides, T-child only wished she had the easy time we did on Buruta. I know this for a fact since I had a few late night, uh... discussions with a few of the engineers on this very topic. Lucky for me Rachel Pratt could keep a secret.

Still, we had more griping --mostly because of the close quarters and the shared bunks, and above all the lack of starlight overhead at night. Like I said, Buruta II sure got comfortable after a while. But orders were orders: we, along with Bravo and Charlie companies, were to be ready to board anything we were ordered to board. No horses. Just guts and glory.

The stardate was 51143. The place we were heading? Starbase Deep Space Nine.