Empire of Man 01 - March Upcountry by David Weber, John Ringo

say, I'm not going to have anyone carrying unnecessary stuff," she continued, fixing the Pinopan with a frigid eye. "However, I'm not going to tell you, the armorer, what you really need to do your job, either. I'm going to leave that entirely up to you. But I will tell you that nobody else in the Company is going to hump one item for you. Is that perfectly clear?" she ended, with another rock-hard index finger, and the armorer gulped and nodded his head.
    "Yes, Sergeant Major." He winced internally at what that meant.
    "You are being given slack on what you've got to carry," Kosutic said, " because you have your own stuff to hump. Not, by Satan, so that other people can hump it for you. Clear?"
    Index finger.
    "Clear, Sergeant Major."
    "So, if you want your hammer, or wrench, or whatever, fine. But you —" index finger "—are gonna hump it. Clear?"
    "Clear, Sergeant Major." Poertena's voice sounded more strangled than ever, not least because Julian stood grinning at him behind Kosutic's back. The sergeant major gave the armorer one last glare . . . then turned to the squad leader with cobralike speed.
    "Sergeant Julian," she said mildly, "I'd like a moment of your time out in the passage."
    Julian's smile froze, and he cast a burning glare at the Pinopan before he followed the top sergeant out of the shuttle bay. Poertena, for his part, could have cared less about the glare. He was trying to figure out how to fit two hundred liters of tools into a ten-liter space.
    * * *
    "We can't fit that in," Lieutenant Jasco said, slowly and carefully so that Lieutenant Gulyas could understand. He pointed to his pad, where the loading program was already in the yellow. "We're . . . gonna . . . be . . . overloaded," he continued in the simplest possible terms, and Gulyas gave him a friendly smile that stopped at the eyes. Then he reached up to clap the much larger platoon leader on the shoulder.
    "You know, Aziz, you're an okay guy, most of the time. But from time to time, you're a real prick." He went on as the other lieutenant's face colored up. "We need trade goods. We need ammo. We need power. But if we don't have enough supplements to last the whole trip, we're all gonna die anyway!"
    "You've stripped the ship of every last vitamin and herbal remedy!" Jasco snapped, slapping the hand off his shoulder. "We don't need three hundred kilos of supplements!"
    "No," Gulyas agreed. "By exact calculation, we need two hundred and thirty precisely balanced kilos for six months with no casualties. If we take no casualties. And if we stay six months. Neither of those is likely, so we probably need less. But what about waste? And we don't have the precise supplements we need. And what about a trooper's opening up his kit and finding that mold has eaten his stash overnight? If we don't have enough supplements, we're all dead . So we've gotta have all the supplements we can hump; it's that simple."
    "We're overloaded!" Jasco snapped, waving the pad. "It's that simple!"
    "Can I be of assistance, gentlemen?" Sergeant Major Kosutic appeared as if by magic between the two lieutenants. "I only ask because some of the troops seemed to be interested in this discussion, as well."
    Gulyas looked around the shuttle bay and noticed that work had almost stopped as the troopers slowed down to watch the two lieutenants argue. He turned back to the sergeant major.
    "No, I think we have it under control." He looked at Jasco. "Don't we, Aziz?"
    "No, we don't," the junior lieutenant said stubbornly. "We're running out of room for the loading. We can't afford three hundred kilos of supplements."
    "Is that all we're taking?" Kosutic sounded surprised. "That doesn't sound like enough. Hang on." She keyed her throat mike, and used her toot to bring the two lieutenants into the circuit. "Captain Pahner?"
    "Yes?" came the growled response.
    "Priority. Supplements, or trade goods?" she asked.
    "Supplements," Pahner said instantly. "We can raid instead of trade