Thor reached into his ruck for a bulb of soda from his “emergency” rations, and paused. “What the hell?” he muttered, finding something hard and not bulb-shaped. He grasped it and pulled it out. It was a rock, about five kilograms’ worth. Just a rock.
“You rat bastards,” he said disgustedly. It was a running gag. Every time they came back from a mission or a field exercise, some jackass was able to slip a local boulder into his gear. He must have a pile of forty of the damned things in the corner of his barracks room now. No one knew why he kept them. Neither did he, except that they were mementos, sort of. He even had one from Earth.
Everyone laughed aloud, except Dagger, and even he snickered. Gorilla said, “Another rock for your collection, Thor.”
“Yeah, yeah. Rocks, concrete core samples from the engineers, always something. Sooner or later someone’s going to get me busted for smuggling a Rumakian Sacred Piece of Granite or some shit. And I’ll make you guys cough up the duty.”
“You’d have to,” Ferret said. “Dagger would have all your cash.” Everyone laughed at that, even Dagger.
The hazing about the shootout picked up again.
“ ‘Hi, my name is Thor, and I can’t hit the broad side of a warehouse.’ ”
“ ‘Dagger, shoot me now before I try to beat you again.’ ”
“ ‘Duh, me Thor, me think me shoot straight.’ ‘Dat’s okay, said the young maiden,’ not wanting to embarrass him, ‘I’m thore too!’ ”
Dagger said nothing. He didn’t need to. Thor said nothing, trying to make them pick something else by being boring.
Ferret made a single comment and shut up. “You better be able to shoot better against the Blobs than against Dagger,” which let the conversation segue into a discussion of what the next mission might be. There was no question that the next mission would be against the Blobs. There were few other threats currently, and none that required the special skills of DRTs. The question was whether it would be a raid, a recon, another casualty-racking attempt at a snatch or some new vac-brained plan from the whiz kids on the Strategic Staff.