The shuttle van approached the front gate of Gibraltar Base. The MP at the guardhouse checked our ID's, and then waved us in. After three minutes we reached the men's BOQ and I hopped out of the van, duffel bag in tow. It was early in the morning; the sun rose to the east, crowned by clouds.
I entered, seeing the familiar sights, hearing the familiar sounds, and smelling the familiar smells of the men's BOQ.
"You'd better get dressed," Lieutenant Michael Meyers said to me. "Remember the whole battalion is doing roll call. Class A's are the uniform for the day."
"Yeah, I wouldn't want to be AWOL," I answered.
I went to my room and quickly got into my Class "A" service uniform. One of the things I learned in Basic was how to put on Class "A's" in under a minute while being able to pass inspection. After that, we all went to the officers' mess.
I heard Melissa call out my name. I looked and she was dressed in a blue outfit, the type of outfit typically worn by Air Force hospital officers.
"How was your Christmas?" she asked.
"I loved it," I said. "I had dinner with my family, and two days before I had a reunion with my friends from Jamaica. And your Christmas?"
"It wasn't so bad. We had a miniature Christmas celebration."
"One of my old childhood friends was on a ship for Christmas," I said. "I bought this at a boutique near my home."
I gave her a silver necklace, placing it around her neck. "Merry Christmas."
"Will you join me for breakfast?"
"Sure," I said. "Let me go get some food."
And so I did. I asked her about her miniature Christmas celebration.
"Just a bunch of us girls in the little kitchen we have. Egg nog, cookies, cake."
"Not very healthy food," I said, taking a strip of bacon. "Now jerk turkey, that is healthy."
"Jerk turkey?"
"A Jamaican cuisine using jerk spice. It's really spicy."
"I can see where you get your personality, Lieutenant." She drank some apple juice from a paper cup. "I really do want to see my family back in Georgia. I will file for a vacation request."
"When?" I asked.
"Sometime in the spring. Georgia is really cold in the winter. We should take leave at the same time so we can fly to Georgia and see my family."
"Only if we fly to Jamaica to see my family afterward," I said.
This was it. This was the next huge step. And yet, I recalled my encounter with Ellie, and even though I enjoyed Melissa's company, in the back of my mind I was wondering if I was with her to make up for Ellie not getting together with me.
"Come on," Lieutenant Jack Emerson said to me. "The colonel is waiting for us.
Ooooooooo
All of us were dressed in Class "A" service uniforms, and we all stood at attention in the parade ground. We were all organized by troop, and Lieutenant Colonel Lupon Kravshera faced us. We saluted him, and he returned our salute.
Officers from the headquarters section inspected the other officers, while sergeants from the headquarters inspection inspected the other enlistees. Their eyes were like hawks, inspecting the tiniest detail.
"Troop and company captains," said Kravshera. "Roll call." He then called them all out by name, and all of the troop captains answered, including Jack.
Jack then called for roll call in our troop, starting with Mike, then me, then Executive Sergeant Rebekah Avital, then the rest of the enlistees. After Jack was done, the colonel asked him who was present.
"Everyone in my troop is present, sir," he said.
Once roll call was done, Colonel Kravshera faced us.
"We are done here," he said. "Now all of you maintain operational readiness."
"Yes, sir!" we all said.
Oooooooo
My role in maintaining operational readiness was filling out paperwork in the 18th ATAC troop office. Jack was out in the field with Sergeant Avital.
Private First Class Glenn La Belle had been assigned to police the troop office.
"Here is the list of the office inventory, sir," he said to me, handing me a slip of paper. "And all of the office equipment is in order and working, sir."
"And how are you doing, Private?" I asked.
"I sometimes miss living in the BEQ, sir," he said.
I recalled the camaraderie the men in the BOQ had. "Report to Sergeant Avital. I am sure she has a suitable duty for you."
"Yes, sir," he said, leaving the office.
Ooooooooo
"All right team, there's the hill," said Jack. "Let's change it."
It was only a hill in a programming sense, of course. We were in the hovertank simulators conducting a drill. We were up against another team. Our objective was to capture a hill, which another team was holding. Colonel Kravshera and his staff were monitoring us.
The simulators and the equipment were expensive, from what I had heard. It was similar to what I had worked with when I was in hovertank school. It was still cheaper than using the protoculture and ammunition in a live fire exercise, which we had done a couple of times before the war. Fighting the enemy bioroids did provide plenty of live fire practice.
"Okay, this is what we got," said Sergeant Avital. "They have the high ground, so they have an advantage."
I did not understand the reason for doing this in real life. In real life, we would go around them, or at least call for an air strike or an orbital strike. But in this exercise, there were no reinforcements.
"Take Ducasse and La Belle and screen for any enemy activity," Jack said to me.
And so I did, operating the controls so that the simulated hovertank would move in the simulated world. The simulated world had tall trees, large enough for us to use as cover.
"I don't see any enemy activity," said La Belle.
"I see something," said Private First Class Philip Ducasse. I looked at the screen and saw two VHT-1's in battloid mode on the hillside.
"All right," I said. "Jack, we need some cannon fire…"
"Look out!" yelled La Belle.
The screen went blank, and the message "You Are Dead" appeared.
I hopped out of the simulator. The room we were in was huge, with simulators and cables. A control room was on the other side of the window.
In case any of us "died", we were told to wait outside until the simulation was finished. I went out to the unremarkable lobby, reading some of the magazines on the table.
A few minutes later, Jack and the others came out.
"You need to stop dying like that," Mike said to me. "You're the one who's gonna have to do the performance evaluations for our troop."
"At least you'll have something to do before you go to the New Year's Party," said Jack.
I walked back to the troop office. It is a bit chilly outside, being the beginning of winter in this part of the world. I entered the office, noticing the difference in temperature.
I accessed a computer terminal in the office. Sergeant Avital had shown me how to use it, to access the battalion's computer database to do things like simulation evaluations.
This was not a multiple choice test where I would simply take out an answer book and compare it with the answers on the tests. As I heard the audio and looked at a bird's eye view of the simulation, I would have to take notes of what we did and how each soldier performed. I knew that the headquarters staff was doing the same to judge the troops as a whole.
I could see the part where I "died".
"Watching the game, sir?" asked Sergeant Avital.
"Yes," I said, even as I scribbled notes about those of us who played the war game. "Still, it's just a game. I mean, those simulations, if you get killed, you just go back to the office. In real life…"
"Well, Lieutenant, it is better than nothing. And they are cheaper than live exercises. We can't very well blow each other up during training."
I understood her point. "I wonder if I would able to actually do that in real life, knowing that I or my friends could get killed."
"I still wonder that, sir," said the sergeant, "and I've been in combat more than you."
I looked at the papers beside the keyboard, continuing the evaluations.
Oooooooo
"I have to admit, you are a better dancer than the first time," said Melissa. "But you have a lot to learn."
We were in the O-club. I had earlier picked up Melissa at the women's BOQ, soon after I finished the training evaluations for my troop. The club was currently decorated with a banner reading "Happy New Year", for it was New Year's Eve. The plasma televisions showed New Year's celebrations in time zones ahead of ours. All of us were dressed in dressy civilian clothes. I wore khaki pants and a collared polo shirt, and Melissa wore a red casual dress.
After the song was done, we sat down at a circular table with Jack and Lieutenant Nina Washington, who had come here on leave and was staying at a guest lodge that the base offered to UEF servicepersons as hotel lodging. Other officers in the battalion sat at adjacent tables, nursing their drinks. Just outside the club were uniformed military police.
"We get to ring in the New Year before anyone in Jamaica does," I said.
"I once celebrated New Year's in a club in Monument City, back when I was a butter bar," said Jack.
"It has a more exciting nightlife than here," said Nina, sipping her drink. "I might have actually been at the same club as Jack, and didn't know it."
"Yeah, I mean those clubs were so crowded, the colonel could have been there and we wouldn't have seen him."
I smiled. Colonel Kravshera did have a noticeable skin color.
"I was thinking of taking some paid leave in the summer," said Melissa. "Go back to Georgia, and then take a flight to Jamaica to see what it's like?"
"Have you been to the Caribbean?" asked Nina. "I had a trip to Barbados two summers ago."
"No, I haven't. The closest I've been is the east coast of Florida. Look, there are my friends."
"Shall I join you?" I asked.
Melissa went to another table where two ladies were sitting. I had already met one of them before, a dark-haired lady named Tam, who worked at the base hospital. The other lady had red hair. Tam wore a blue dress, while the red-haired lady wore a green dress.
"Hello," said Tam.
"Hi there," I said.
"I'm Kristin," said the red-haired lady. "I'm a medical officer at the Air Force hospital."
I introduced myself. "Nice to meet you," I said.
"So this is the man you're talking about," said Kristin. She looked at me. "You should watch out for Melissa here. She can be wild."
I laughed. "And you have been here how long?" I asked.
"Three years."
"Do you have any plans for the next year?" asked Tam.
"We're thinking of taking paid leave either in late spring or early summer," I said.
"That's a few months from now," said Melissa. "I'm thinking a weekend trip to Casablanca sometime this month."
"It's winter," said Kristin. "Not great beach weather."
"Better than spending the weekend here, not that the O-club is a bad place."
I walked a few feet to join my friends. We all had another round of drinks.
"I wonder what sort of New Year's celebration they have on that planet you're from," I asked Mike.
"Glorie Colony," said Mike. "Basically we go out at night and down a few shots of whiskey. I remember one time when we saw Glorie's two moons shining at the time. It was the sticks back during my formative years. Wooden buildings and sidewalks in the town. We had to use an outhouse. The only place that has concrete buildings and running water was the military base."
"You must have moved there when you were what, ten?" I asked.
"Eleven years old," said Mike. "On Earth we did not have much, so my parents decided that there would be opportunities on Glorie."
"And what do your parents do?"
"Scratch dirt and make babies. That was the reason the Glorie Colonization Bureau accepted them; they were healthy adults of breeding age. Got to have a large population for the colony to be able to feed and clothe itself."
"I thought a large population would be poorer," I said, remembering the overpopulated impoverished nations of Earth.
"Well, when nearly every hand is needed to grow food, there aren't that many people left to make other things like tools and parts, let alone spacecraft. Things like video games and cell phones are much more common on Earth. Plus we have a lot more clubs and restaurants in Tangier alone than in all of Glorie Colony."
"And you joined the Army because you wanted to visit Earth."
"Pretty much. Interstellar travel is expensive and the only way of leaving Glorie is to join the UEF."
"Of course, they could have stationed you on the base on Glorie Colony," I said.
"Yeah, we go where the Army sends us," said Mike.
"How many people live in the colony?" I asked.
"When I left, it was about fifty thousand people, not including the soldiers stationed at the military base," said Mike. "The colony is heavily subsidized by the United Earth Government."
"They want to make sure humanity survives in case of a war with aliens. Like what we have now."
Soon the clock approached midnight. We watched the screen as it counted down towards New Year's for Morocco.
"Happy New Year!" we all shouted. I gave Melissa the first kiss of the new year. A few other couples, including Jack and Nina, also kissed, anticipating a bright future even in these trying times.
"Join me for the first dance of the new year," I said.
"I am filling a little drunk," answered Melissa. "But okay."
I took her on the dance floor. I felt so great, like my troubles were deeply buried like a scrap of paper in a cluttered room.
Oooooooo
"How are you doing?" asked Melissa as I saw her in the bathroom mirror.
"Just shaving," I said, as the razor made a track through the shaving cream. "I heard ladies shave. Maybe I can help you."
Melissa and I decided to take a trip to Casablanca the second weekend after New Year's Day, as we both had the weekend off. The weather was cloudy, not like a warm day in Casablanca would have in the summer, let alone the warm days in Kingston, Port Antonio, or Montego Bay. But while the beach boardwalk was not crowded, it did provide a quiet atmosphere, which we appreciated. Gibraltar Base was never that quiet.
We had stayed in a hotel that had been constructed about ten years ago. From the outside, it was a glass and steel structure, like a box bent facing away from the Atlantic Ocean. Our room had a king-sized bed, a Toshiba plasma television, and a desk with padded chairs. A soft carpet covered the floor.
"I say we have ourselves a nice breakfast," said Melissa. "Just let me put on my makeup."
One of the things I liked about her is that she can put on makeup and jewelry quickly; I presumed that it was something she learned in the Air Force.
We left the room, walked down the hallway to the elevator, and then pressed the button for the lobby. After walking through the marble-tiled floor of the lobby, we reached this little café where the hotel served breakfast. Menus were printed in Arabic, Spanish, Italian, and of course, English.
"I remember a trip my girlfriends and I took to the beach here last summer," said Melissa, sitting at a table covered in a green tablecloth. "The beaches were a lot more crowded."
"I don't mind," I said. "We don't have to squeeze our way through a crowd every time we go out."
A dark-haired waitress took our order. I had some fried eggs and bacon and toast, and Melissa had eggs and sausage and some hash browns. I had ordered tomato juice for a drink, and Melissa ordered orange juice. The hotel breakfast was superior to what was served in the officers' mess in Gibraltar Base, which was why I had to pay more for the hotel breakfast.
I could taste the fried eggs and bacon, and the tangy taste of the tomato juice, and feel a slight rumbling.
"Do you feel that?" asked Melissa. "Is that an earthquake?"
"I don't know," I replied.
And then I heard this loud, high-pitched horn. It sounded like an air raid siren.
"I think our little vacation is over," I said.
Gulping down the tomato juice, I ran to the elevator. It felt so long for the elevator to open and then take me to the floor where our room was. I had to insert the room key threw times before the electronic lock released the door. I turned on the television in our room, which I had set to run in English.
"The military has confirmed an ongoing attack in Casablanca," said a Moroccan government official whose voice was clearly dubbed. "We have been informed the enemy Bioroids have landed in the city. The Royal Army and Navy are already engaging the enemy, and we have requested backup from the United Earth Forces."
"So it is an enemy attack," said Melissa, who had come with me to the room.
"Good thing I came prepared," I said. I recalled that the 17th ATAC troop was on-call this weekend, so they would already have scrambled, and Colonel Kravshera and the rest of the 6th Battalion would catch up with them shortly. I took a suit of MARPAT camouflage from my duffel bag.
"You'd better get suited up," I said even as I started out the door.
"I'm not a fighter," said Melissa.
"You're a healer."
"I only do physical therapy."
"There will be wounded. We will need all the help we can get, madam."
"Thank you for your advice, Lieutenant."
I picked up the phone. Not surprisingly, the phone line was down.
Rushing down to the lobby and out the door, we could see smoke coming from every direction. I looked up and saw one of the alien ships, which was probably providing cover fire for the invading forces.
I knew I had to join the local forces, if I could not link up with my battalion.
We went down to the parking garage where we had parked our rental car, a red Volkswagen Jetta. Getting into the Jetta, I started the engine and drove the car out of the garage and onto the streets of Casablanca.
"Where are we going?" asked Melissa.
"We have to contact Gibraltar Base somehow," I said. The streets were mostly empty; most of the civilians had pulled over and sought shelter from the bioroids. There were a few military vehicles driving down the streets.
There was a roadblock ahead, manned by green-uniformed, lightly-armored soldiers. I immediately got out.
"Can any of you speak English?" I asked.
One of the soldiers, a young man in his early twenties, approached. "Yes, I speak English."
"I'm with the U.N. Army," I said. "She's a medic with the U.N. Air Force."
"We asked for reinforcements."
"My fellow troops should be arriving soon," I said. "They are the 6th Hovertank Battalion. I need an airlift to join my troops."
"Let me write it down."
And so he did. He then talked to another man, who was presumably his superior officer. I looked around, seeing smoke coming from the distance. I wondered if this was happening elsewhere in the world. Were the aliens invading Jamaica? It would be night there.
I heard one of the men yell. I looked up and could see the bioroids riding on their flying sleds, intent on destroying everything on the way to their goal.
"Take cover!" I yelled.
And I did. We were clearly at a disadvantage from the enemy approaching the ground.
I took cover behind a car just before I heard a blast. I peeked and noticed rubble.
"Are you all right?" I asked Melissa.
She nodded. I looked up and saw fighter jets engaging the enemy spacecraft, and a few of them exploding into a fireball. For a brief moment I wondered if they were drones, or if the drones had all been shot down and the live pilots were now engaging the enemy. Ahead, I could see the bioroids landing on the street.
There was no argument. We had to retreat.
And we did. We ran as fast as we could, turning a few corners and passing buildings, barely noticing their features.
We then came across civilians running in the opposite direction, and I could see way. There were three bioroids on the street, flanked by enemy troops.
And we ran along with them, fleeing towards safety. I was hoping a helicopter or something could pick me up and bring me to my battalion.
And then our path was blocked. Our only escape was into the buildings.
We fled into a building that looked like it was a flower shop. It was now packed with people who were seeking refuge from the invading aliens. Many of the people looked at me.
"Listen up," I said. "We just have to stay low. Reinforcements are on the way."
Suddenly, the enemy troops busted in and opened fire. They all held their weapons at us.
There was no way to win.