Brenna and Mariel find Garrick in the weapon cleaning pit after an urban combat exercise.

   As a westerly wind picked up and mountain peaks beyond Superstition Mesa vanished behind dark, brooding clouds, Garrick and his men entered the armory’s covered weapon cleaning pit.  White colored steel lattice work, held up by steel columns painted red, supported a wooden planked roof that gave this place the appearance of a sunken elementary school lunch area.  Tables and benches equipped with old newspapers, bore snakes, solvent, cleaning rags and gun oil lay arranged in neat rows.  Members of the training squadrons assembled here to clean their weapons after live fire exercises.

    A pervasive sense of defeat hovered over the four-dozen men working in the cleaning pit.  Garrick walked toward Greg Schmidt, who sat along the outer edge.  His gloomy expression indicated he’d not done very well in reaching his objectives either.  The older man pulled a bore snake through his disassembled rifle with care, then used a pen light to check the weapon for any residual fouling.  He frowned, ignoring Garrick completely, while he reinserted the brass weight of his bore snake back through the rifle and gently tugged it through again.

    “Tough exercise, huh?” Garrick began.

    “Nothing that a little heavy artillery wouldn’t fix,” Greg responded, keeping his attention riveted on the task of inspecting his weapon.  “Seems to me the best way to take a city is to completely level it first.  Any senior commander crazy enough to attack an urban environment outnumbered like we were today ought to be strung up and flogged.”

    Garrick nudged him.  “Watch yourself.  People are listening.”

    At this, Greg fell silent for a moment, carefully applying oil to the action of his rifle.  “I suppose you and your guys tromped the OpFor,” he said.

    “No,” Garrick replied.  “We held the objective for less than fifteen minutes before an entire OpFor company counterattacked and pushed us out.”

    Greg reassembled his gun, then stared straight into Garrick’s eye.  “So you’re not invincible after all, Mister Ravenwood.  That’s the best news I’ve heard all day!”  Candidate Schmidt, who’d always treated Garrick with kindness, made no effort to hide the bitter edge to his voice as he looked away in disgust.  “If they wiped you out, then none of the rest of us stood a chance.”

    Although that remark had been meant as a compliment, the words stung and left a lingering welt.  Garrick took his shotgun apart in silence and only grunted in farewell when Greg Schmidt departed.  Suddenly, he wanted to be left alone and didn’t feel like talking to anyone.

      In the midst of oiling the shotgun’s hammer action, a strong gust of wind whipped loose newspaper across the pit, and a swirl of dust billowed around his work.  In an effort to restrain the fluttering paper, Garrick accidentally knocked over a jar of gun oil.  Uttering three loud curses, Garrick reached for a clean rag to mop up the spill.

    “Your ubermadchen’s here,” Talon Waldheim teased.  “Watch your language, Overhead!”

    Garrick caught a glimpse of grey cotton running sweats rippling in the wind across a familiar female form as he looked up, and heard Brenna’s light laughter in response to a remark Mariel had made.  Garrick let his eyes linger on his Lithian girlfriend, thinking about the words he’d written for her the night before.  These remained in his breast pocket while he waited, with rising nervousness, for an opportunity to give them to her.

    Brenna could tell, as she approached the pit with Mariel, that an ugly mood prevailed among the men assembled there.  She met Garrick’s grey eyes and noticed the strange mix of frustration and delight expressed therein as his glare softened and he shifted over to make room for her and Mariel on the bench.  Brenna picked up a fresh rag and dabbed Garrick’s soiled cheek with it.  “You’ve been rolling in the dirt, but your face is still cleaner than your mouth,” she teased.

    He shook his head and tightened his lips.  Though he wanted to embrace and kiss her, he did not.  “I’m sorry, Brenna.  I’m glad you’re here, but I’ve just finished a really tough exercise and I’m not looking forward to my After Action Review.”

    Mariel began taking her rifle apart.  “Urban combat can wreck anyone’s day,” she remarked.  “It’s nearly as humiliating as qualifying with one of these.”

    Talon Waldheim, sitting behind her, overheard the remark.  “Is that weapon not big enough, lieutenant?  You want a real man’s gun?”

    Mariel could have reprimanded the officer candidate for the discourtesy implied in the double meaning of his words, but instead of using her authority to shut him up, the lieutenant dealt with this issue in a different way.  She turned and patted Talon’s shoulder as if he were a child.  “Nothing you’ve got would ever satisfy me, soldier,” Mariel quipped, drawing laughter and applause from some of the other officer candidates nearby.  Talon Waldheim flushed in embarrassment.  He would not soon live that one down.

    Brenna understood the remark and her eyes widened, but she looked down and said nothing in response.  Tamarians, at least the secular ones it seemed, operated under a double standard within the realm of sexual morality.  They remained deeply concerned about external issues, such as the clothing a woman wore in public, yet never considered risque conversation an activity more wisely shunned.

    Mariel, who lamented that men only seemed interested in what she looked like, often used her slim shape to manipulate them.  However, she never subjected this conduct, nor her own propensity to engage in innuendo, to the same scrutiny by which she measured the behavior of men.  Her response, while effective in stopping further harassment, demanded that Mariel’s highly sharpened wit exceed the intellect of her antagonist.  She was smart, and in most instances the lieutenant easily outmaneuvered her adversaries.  But Brenna found this proclivity debasing of her friend, and genuinely wished Mariel could simply rise above the gutter talk that so easily sprang from her lips.

    Although Brenna said nothing about this, Garrick accurately read her facial expression and knew that she felt bad for Mariel.  He’d learned enough about the way his girl thought to understand how she linked underlying attitudes with behavior, yet he also believed that Mariel most likely handled the situation in a far more effective manner than an authoritative tongue lashing, or filing a formal complaint would have achieved.  Talon Waldheim could easily protest that his remark had been uttered in complete innocence, and though everyone would secretly know that such a claim was a complete lie, Mariel might emerge from a formal investigation looking like a feeble, whiny female.  She’d just proven herself neither feeble, nor whiny, but rather, a smart woman fully capable of holding her own among soldiers.

    Garrick remained silent, completing his cleaning task, enjoying his nearness to Brenna and building up the nerve to give her the note he’d written.

    Gusting wind waxed in strength.  Dark clouds rolled in from the mountains, their sullen spires flattening into high altitude, anvil-shaped crowns from whence thunder began rumbling.  Branches bent with increasing urgency, their quivering leaves rattling in drum riff rhythm as a cell of hard rain clattered on the weapon pit’s roof.

    Looking up at the metal lattice supporting the roof boards, Garrick imagined the structure a giant lighting magnet and frowned.  “It wouldn’t hurt us to get out of here,” he said.  “Are you done with that rifle, lieutenant?”

    Mariel, who’d put better than 500 rounds through her gun rolled her lovely brown eyes at Garrick.  “If you can clean it faster than I, have at it!” she quipped.

    He hadn’t meant that.  “Here,” he offered.  “Let me help you finish.”

    Working cooperatively, the two of them completed their cleaning just as a blinding flash illuminated their surroundings.  Garrick counted the elapsed time between the lightning and subsequent thunder, divided by five, and in so doing calculated the distance of the strike from their location as a little less than two miles.

    Rain pelted the trio and drenched them as they raced toward the armory.  Upon reaching the shelter of its overhanging roof, the two Tamarians paused to catch their breath while thunder roared overhead and hailstones began hammering the ground behind them.  Brenna smiled, unaffected by the short sprint, noting that the dirt she’d seen on Garrick earlier now ran in rivulets down his cheeks and smeared when he wiped his face on a sleeve.  She repressed the urge to clean him up, because she knew Garrick didn’t like to be “mothered.”  In addition, she suspected he would shower before attending the After Action Report with TAC Vogel.

    Mariel opened the airlock door and held it against the gusty wind before walking into the vestibule.  She paused when Garrick and Brenna didn’t follow.  “Aren’t you coming in?” she inquired.

    “I’ll be there in a minute,” Garrick replied, his words a signal to both women that he wanted a moment alone with Brenna.

A Prayer for the Living