A Loss of Innocence, Chapter Two, Part Four

The week with Shannon wasn’t nearly long enough.  We spent our days sampling the diversions that Lunar Base had to offer.  We played competitive video games until they reminded us too much of the war we were fighting.  We journeyed into the civilian portion of the colony, looking at all the people in civilian clothes going about their business just as they would back on Earth.  We ate in a restaurant that over looked the Sea of Tranquility at Earthrise, the green and blue of our home world capped with alabaster white and accented with cottony fluff.  We strapped on nylon and polymer wings and flew in the natural one sixth gee of the moon, soaring up and down thermal currents in a massive gymnasium equipped for fliers.  We made love in the close darkness of the NCO quarters, in the cramped confines of a “borrowed” rover on an impromptu trip over the surface, and in the restroom of a large clothing store.  We were full of life and promise, both us determined to live up to the motto Shannon had mentioned at breakfast the other day. 

Our week ended on a bittersweet note.  Disentangling myself from Shannon’s arms on the last morning of our leave, I noticed that my terminal was beeping insistently.  Swearing silently to myself, I logged in to the system and saw that there were two messages from Dunkel, one addressed to me, and the other thoughtfully addressed to Shannon “just in case she was with me.”  I chuckled.  Dunkel didn’t miss much.  Both of us were ordered back to active duty that afternoon.  We were to report to the base education center for our NCO certification classes.

In the Solarian Marine Corps, it took more than time in grade to advance in rank.  The training that each of us received before we ever saw combat was equivalent to a bachelor’s degree at any large university.  To advance beyond the level of Private First Class (PFC), a more rigorous training course was required, one that focused almost as much on book learning as it did on physical fitness and combat skills.  For the next eight weeks, Shannon and I would be trained in group psychology, motivation and leadership, munitions and weapons systems, physics, rudimentary astrogation (and the mathematics behind it), military intelligence, and exobiology.  This was on top of a physical fitness routine emphasizing “dirty” fighting methods for the armed and the unarmed soldier.  We were expected to have a working knowledge of all these subjects, care for those under our command, and be a lethal fighting machine ourselves.  It was a heady task.  If we couldn’t make it through the course, the Marines had two options.  They could sweat us through with tutors and special help (if they decided we measured up), or they could bust us to PFC, and there we would stay for the duration of the war.

Normally, Marines newly promoted to Corporal would go through the school no later than sixth months after making grade.  I was a special case, having been bumped two stripes for my “valor” and the little speech I had made to our platoon while on the Rak’Lan station.  Hopefully it wouldn’t give me any embarrassing social distinctions as I went through the course.  After the eight-week course, we would report to Dunkel’s platoon and be deployed for action.

Shannon and I dressed in companionable silence that morning.  Neither of us had anything to say after a week of almost non-stop conversation.  The things we had tried so desperately to forget during our leave had erected an invisible wall between us.  It wasn’t precisely awkward, but neither was it comfortable. 

My eyes met hers in the mirror as she was brushing her teeth and I was shaving.  What exactly did I feel for her?  Was she a close friend, a comrade in arms, someone with whom to share moments of glory and sorrow?  Was she just a convenient lay, the first of many that I would have on my infrequent shore leaves?  Was I in love with her?  Did I even know what love was?  At twenty-one, I was just barely old enough to cast a ballot, and yet I was about to be entrusted with the lives of men and women as a section leader.  If I had the responsibility for the lives of the men and women under me, then wasn’t I old enough to know what love was?

I closed my eyes as the razor rasped against my stubble.  I recalled the hollow tightness in my chest as I gazed deeply into those green eyes, her fair skinned, angelic face framed by the red hair as she moved above me.  I remembered the feel of her hand in mine as we watched the recreational fliers for the first time, and her squeal of delight as she soared off of a man-made aerie, moving her brightly colored wings in time to classical music piped surreptitiously into the gymnasium.  In rapid succession, there was the glint of candlelight in her eyes, the glow of Earth light on her hair, the soft moans of ecstasy in my ear, and the warmth of a leg thrown haphazardly over me as she snored. 

I opened my eyes to see her looking at me quizzically, her head cocked the side.  “Wassah mattah?” she asked, her mouth full of white foam from the toothpaste.  She spat quickly in the sink, rinsed her mouth, and smiled slowly and she ran a towel across her face.  “What’s the matter?” She repeated.

“Nothing,” I replied, planting a kiss on the tip of her nose. 

“That’s a pretty big nothing,” she replied, throwing her arms around my neck.  Her gaze bored into mine.  “What?”

I turned to the sink.  “Carpe diem,” I said, cupping my hands together and splashing hot water on my face.  The water covered the two or three tears that crept out of my eyes.  Part of me realized that neither one of us was ever going to be safe.  Neither one of us was guaranteed a future beyond the next moment. 

It was in a bathroom that I shared with an Irish girl, with a towel wrapped around my waist, that I first became aware of my own mortality.  That awareness was wrapped in the knowledge that I was falling in love with someone that I could lose in an instant.