Starfist: Wings of Hell by David Sherman & Dan Cragg

resumed and everybody’s attention returned to what they’d been doing before the appearance of Big Barb’s chef at Schultz’s table.
    Only a few bites into the meal, Corporal Claypoole looked at Sergeant Kerr and asked, “What’s he doing here?” He poked his spoon in the direction of Lance Corporal Ymenez.
    “He’s in your fire team. What do you think?”
    “He’s a temporary replacement, until Wolfman comes back.”
    “He wants to stay with the platoon, and Ensign Bass wants to keep him.”
    Claypoole nodded and dropped the subject. Even with some nourishment entering his system, he didn’t feel up to pursuing anything.
    During the rest of the meal, the four of them talked—and Kerr made sure Ymenez was included in the conversation—about the usual things military people talk about when on liberty: places they’ve served; good places to pull liberty or go on leave; men they’d served with; mutual acquaintances and friends from other duty assignments; odd things they’d seen or done; lessons learned from various deployments. Everything, in fact, with one glaring exception—women. It’s virtually impossible for four unmarried enlisted men to converse for more than five or ten minutes without the topic of conversation shifting to women. But Kerr and Schultz knew that something must have gone very wrong between Claypoole and Jente, and Ymenez followed their example.
    So they waited until the dishes had been cleared, and Kerr, Schultz, and Ymenez were on their third mugs of Reindeer Ale—Claypoole was still drinking water—before Kerr asked:
    “What the hell happened with your girlfriend?”
    At first Claypoole denied that anything had happened, saying that he’d spent the night with Jente, then she had work to do on the farm today, so he came to Bronnoysund, to Big Barb’s, to be with other members of third platoon.
    “Right, nothing happened,” Kerr said dryly. “And the first thing you did when you got here was get passed-out drunk. What’s next? You have an instantaneous interstellar matter transmitter you want to sell me?”
    Instead of answering, Claypoole looked around. “Where’s a corpsman? I need a corpsman.” He rubbed his temples.
    Kerr reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a med packet. “You don’t need a corpsman. I’ve got what you need right here.”
    “Gimme!” Claypoole reached across the table to take the packet of hangover pills, but Kerr snatched it out of the corporal’s reach.
    “I’ll give you one when you start talking,” Kerr said.
    Claypoole started to get up, to go after the pills.
    “Talk,” Schultz growled.
    Claypoole froze, slowly turned his face toward the big man, and eased himself back onto his chair.
    “Well.” Claypoole stopped to clear his throat. “Everything was fine this morning until”—and it all came tumbling out. He paused only once, to swallow a hangover pill when Kerr passed one over.
    “…and that’s why I came to Big Barb’s, to get drunk and forget her.” He shook his head. “But I can’t figure out what got into her, why she went crazy like that and kicked me out. Things were going so well between us up to then.” He looked at the tumbler of water clutched in his hands. “I need something stronger than this.”
    “Marriage,” Schultz rumbled.
    “What?” Claypoole yelped. “I can’t marry her—I can’t marry anybody ! And she knows it.”
    Kerr leaned back and thought for a moment before asking, “This wasn’t the first time she asked when you were going to get promoted, was it?”
    Claypoole had to think about it before he could answer. “No, she’s asked once or twice before.”
    “Did she ever mention marriage?”
    Claypoole shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I can’t get married, so I don’t even think about it.”
    Kerr leaned across the table and put a hand on Claypoole’s shoulder. “Jente’s a single woman, Rock. She thinks about marriage.”
    “Babies,” Schultz added.
    “Babies?”