Front Lines (Front Lines 1)

“Marr, sir. Private Frangie Marr.”

“Okay, Marr. You study hard. You study so you know it all, not just in your head but in your fingers. That’s where the real memory is. In your fingers, in your hands. When you’re getting shot at your brain may forget and only your hands remember.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right.” He blows air out, making a fluttery sound with his lips. “The instructors are mostly hard-asses and they will be all over you, you understand, you being a female. Most of them don’t much like the notion of a young woman out in the action.”

“But not you, sir?”

“Well, Private, I don’t like the idea of judging people by superficial criteria. I’ll judge you the same way I judge every other candidate who comes through here.”

Only then does it dawn on Frangie that this doctor, this captain, is in charge.

“I’ll judge you by your work, and on whether I think you can send boys home alive who by rights should be dead. If you screw up, if you don’t memorize those manuals, and more besides, I’ll wash you out. That may sound harsh—”

“No, sir.”

“No?”

“Either I’m good enough or I’m not, sir.”

He nods and smiles. “Good talking to you, Private.”

They salute, and Frangie sits back down, shaking. Then she notices the handkerchief.

“Sir!” she holds it up.

“Keep it. Practice with it. That was a sloppy cravat. Sergeant Peel will scalp you if you show her that kind of work.”

She says “yes, sir” again and opens her manual. And once she’s sure the captain is out of earshot, she grins hugely and says, “This is going to be fun.”

20

RIO RICHLIN—ABOARD THE QUEEN MARY, NEW YORK HARBOR, USA

“Okay, deck six, forward eight, row B, bunk number seventeen,” Rio reads off the paper in her hand. She carries sixty pounds’ worth of gear, has just waited three hours to begin boarding, and then spent two hours just shuffling along in rows of packed bodies to find her spot.

“So this is luxury travel,” Jenou says.

“Biggest, fastest, fanciest ship afloat,” Cat says.

“It is magnificent,” Rio agrees. “I especially like the way they’ve managed to stack the bunks four high.”

The Queen Mary’s once-lovely cabins and staterooms have been largely stripped out, bulkheads knocked down to transform the lower decks into vast steel boxes stuffed to an almost comical degree with bunks. The bunks are four high and touch end to end, so a person could crawl the entire length of the hold without ever touching the deck. Not that anyone would want to. The aisle between two rows of bunks was just two feet wide, which barely allowed the heavily laden GIs to move to their assigned locations.

“I’m on the top level,” Rio says glumly. “So a nice, close-up view of that pipe up there.”

“I’m right below you,” Jenou says with matching glumness.

“It’ll be just like sleepover camp, kids,” Rio says with mock cheer. “We can light a campfire and roast marshmallows.”

“You’ve never gone to sleepover camp.”

“No,” Rio admits. “But the other comparison I could make is to sardines in a can.”

“She’s fast, that’s all that matters,” Cat offers.

“You in a hurry, Cat?” Jenou asks.