Angles of Attack (Frontlines #3)(62)

“This is serious trade currency, Dmitry. You can probably trade that to the galley cooks for a week of field-ration picks.”

“I pay you for what I owe,” he says. Then he nods at my bandaged hand. “You trade hand of yours for enemy battlespace coordinator.”

I open my mouth to tell Dmitry that that isn’t quite the case, but he waves me off impatiently.

“Yes, yes. I have codes for transition point. Was not personal favor. You save yourself and ship so we can go back to Fomalhaut.” He pronounces the system’s name with a -ch sound in the middle. “But is no matter why. You still lose fingers, and I still put air in lungs. Maybe—if things do not go all shit again—I go home one day. Because you hold hand in front of gun and make shots go down and not here.” He taps at his forehead and chest.

“You got anyone at home? Family?”

He blinks, as if my question has thrown him off a little. Then he reaches into the pocket of his lizard-pattern fatigues and fishes out a little personal document pouch. The SRA version looks much like the ones we carry around, just a tiny waterproof sleeve big enough for a handful of ID chips and maybe a letter hard copy or two. Dmitry reaches into his pouch and takes out a print image. He puts it in front of me almost gingerly.

“Maksim,” he says. “Husband. Big, dumb, but good heart.”

The image shows a soldier about my age. He has an aggressive buzz cut, and he’s dressed in the same lizard-pattern SRA battle dress tunic Dmitry is wearing. The undershirt is striped horizontally in alternating white and blue, and the beret under his shoulder board is sky blue.

“He’s a marine, too?” I ask.

“Like I say. Big and dumb.”

I grin and hand his picture back to him. Dmitry takes it and slips it back into his document pouch carefully.

That kind of personal disclosure requires a tit for tat. I take my own personal pouch out of my leg pocket and open it. It has my military ID in it, the last letter I got from Mom, and two pictures of Halley. I take out the one of her in her flight suit, the one I’ve been carrying around since she sent it to me back before I even joined what was still the navy back then.

Looking at her smile and that rugged short haircut of hers gives me a momentary ache that’s far worse than what I’m feeling from my healing nose or the bandaged hand. I give the picture to Dmitry, who raises an eyebrow and nods in appreciation.

“She is pilot,” he says. “Good pilot?”

“Good pilot,” I confirm. “Instructor at Combat Flight School.”

“What is she pilot of? Big piece of govno with big gun for shooting Russian marines? What do you call, Shrike?”

“Not a Shrike. Wasp and Dragonfly drop ships. Small piece of govno with smaller guns for shooting Russian marines.”

Dmitry chuckles, his eyes still on the picture of Halley. “Show me other one.”

I hand over the second picture, which is one of Halley and me at a fleet rec facility two years ago. We’re both wearing dress blues, and Halley’s fruit salad of medal ribbons is slightly but noticeably bigger than mine.

“Girlfriend? Wife?”

“Fiancée,” I say.

“What is fiancée?”

“We’re getting married,” I reply. “Once I get back. If we get back.”

Dmitry reaches into a different pocket and produces a small metal object, which he holds up and turns slowly with his fingertips. It’s a stylized eagle holding a wreath in its talons. The wreath has the Roman numeral III in its center. The eagle’s wings are stretched out behind it, a raptor in the middle of a high-speed dive for its prey.

“Another present,” he says. “I have these for fifteen years. Now I give to you.”

He hands the eagle badge to me. I put it on my palm and look at it.

“Are these jump wings?”

“I get at spaceborne training course. Is for dress uniform, to look pretty. Not for battle dress. You keep, maybe give to fiancée. You can tell her you took off body of dead Russian.”

“I can’t take your damn jump wings, Dmitry.” I put the eagle badge on the table and carefully slide it over to him. If the Sino-Russian marines put half as much value on their original set of jump wings from their version of a School of Spaceborne Infantry as our own SI troopers do, he just gave me the most sentimental thing he owns aside from the picture of Maksim.

“You take, or I punch color from your hair again, Andrew,” he says without smiling, and his expression makes it pretty clear that he won’t brook an argument. “Is poor trade for left hand, I know. But you take anyway.”

He pushes the eagle back across the table. It certainly looks like it has been worn for fifteen years. The gold enamel on the wreath in the eagle’s talons is rubbed off in spots, and all the high points of the relief stamping are worn smooth. I wonder if that little set of jump wings has been on a contested planet with its owner while I traded shots with him at some point.

“Fine,” I say. “Now shut up about the whole thing. Like you said, I was just making sure our ticket back didn’t get yanked.”

I open Dmitry’s bottle again and put another splash into my coffee. Then I hand the bottle to Dmitry, who accepts it without hesitation before taking a long swig. Then he caps the bottle and puts it back on the table.