Cecil the Combat Wombat: Platypus Platoon, page 1
Cecil the Combat Wombat:
Platypus Platoon
Kelly Grayson
Bondi Beach
New Sydney, Australia
August, 2227
August on the beach in New Sydney ain’t so bad, until you consider that August for us is what you Yanks call winter. As far as I could tell, I was the only one on the beach, save for a few surfers who would always be out there unless the ocean itself froze over.
Bloody mad lot, surfers.
There were a dozen or so out there on the breaks, clad in their neoprene wetsuits, looking for their rides in. It was barely 17 degrees today, and who knew what the water temperature was. I was cold just looking at them. I’m a fur-covered marsupial, but I felt the bracing wind even through my pelt.
Instead I just sat on the beach with the sun on my face, idly wondering why I had never learned to surf. I had a low center of gravity; I’d probably be good at it.
Probably because you’re a bleedin’ combat wombat, Cecil. You’re a warfighter, not an aimless civilian. Besides, you’re only a middling swimmer, and there are white sharks out there. Be your luck one would want a taste of wombat.
I gingerly shifted my injured left leg on the chaise lounge. I had gotten the external fixator removed weeks before and was down to just a cast. If I had been human, I could be using a walking boot, but as usual the Army moved at a leisurely (some might say glacial) pace at designing gear for wombats, so I was forced the lug around plaster of Paris for another month instead of a nice Velcro splint I could take off at night.
I had been riding a desk for the past three months while I convalesced, and Binsa Hamal had been my executive assistant. She enjoyed her new job about as much as I liked being confined to an office, which is to say not at all, but sergeant’s stripes had eased the blow. Ian had been promoted to 2nd Lieutenant and been given command of 1st Engineers, which now included six female mongeese.
Scuttlebutt had it that there was a reorganization of 5th Brigade’s command structure coming down soon, and 1st Engineers would be integrated into a larger unit. They’d be shuffling around personnel assignments, and until things all shook out, we had no idea where to put Binsa. Division’s only edict was that she was forbidden to serve under Lieutenant McMurtrie, her spouse.
Binsa knew the score but she didn’t have to like it. A good soldier, she threw herself into being a good executive assistant, all the while pestering me for reassignment to a combat unit. It wasn’t all bad; word had gotten out that Lieutenant Dundee’s secretary was a real bitch, and most people were afraid of her. Her sour disposition and self-appointed role as my gatekeeper kept the trivial bitching to a minimum.
I shifted uncomfortably on the chaise lounge and resisted the urge to scratch. My fur was growing back under the cast, and it itched like Hell.
Ten more days, Lieutenant Dundee. Ten more days and you’ll have this infernal thing off and you can get back to training. Ten more days, and no more being an admin cunt, a worthless pogue manning a desk while the real warfighters -
“Lieutenant Dundee?” A polite voice interrupted my reverie as a shadow fell across my face.
I cracked open one eye to see a PFC standing there with a folder in one hand and a buck slip in the other. He peered again at the buck slip and repeated, “Lieutenant Dundee?”
“I’m Dundee,” I replied evenly. “What is it, Private?”
Christ, how many wombats can there be in 5th Brigade with a cast on their left leg?
The kid popped to attention and saluted, and the wind blew the buck slip out of his right hand and down the beach. The kid looked uncomfortable as he held the salute, no doubt weighing the penalty for littering versus the penalty for not saluting an officer.
I took pity on the kid. “Stand at ease and go fetch your refuse, Private,” I ordered. The kid sighed gratefully and took off down the beach, doggedly chasing the yellow piece of paper as the wind made it a plaything.
When he came back, I was standing beside my chaise lounge patiently. He stuffed the buck slip in his pocket, tucked the folder under his left arm, and saluted again. “Sir, compliments of Colonel Gnad, Sir. He requests your presence at Brigade Headquarters at oh-ten-thirty tomorrow, Sir.”
I took the folder from beneath his left arm and flipped it open. “Stand at ease, Private,” I ordered absently as I began reading. The kid dropped his right hand, clasped it behind his back with his left, and took a half step to his right to place his feet shoulder-width apart. If any of the stiffness went out of his body, I didn’t see it.
“For your general military education, Private,” I said conversationally, “a salute is a gesture of respect between warriors. We also don’t salute when our hands are full, we don’t salute indoors, and we don’t salute when in civilian attire. You may have noted that I am wearing swim trunks and no rank insignia.”
The kid looked uncomfortable but said nothing.
Wasted breath, Cecil. When in doubt, a private would salute a flagpole.
“We also don’t salute when we’re not wearing our covers, which is the main reason we don’t salute indoors,” I continued, perhaps just a bit spitefully. “Where is your cover, Private?”
The kid’s face registered surprise, his eyes flew up towards his hairline and a flush crept across his face. “Sir, no excuse.
“Check behind you against the seawall when you leave, son. The wind probably carried it there. Did Colonel Gnad say what he wanted?” There was nothing in the folder but a notice to report; the kid could have left it behind.
The kid stammered, “No Sir, I was just given the-“
“I’m still on leave for three more days!” I protested indignantly and immediately regretted it. The private had no answers to my protest, and he didn’t need to see anything from me but cheerful and willing obedience to orders.
I handed him back the folder and said, “Dismissed, Private. Don’t forget to find your cover.” I think I kept the resentment out of my tone, for the most part.
When the kid was gone, I angrily kicked the sand and fetched my towel.
Probably has mess hall inventory for me to do, perhaps an assignment as Officer in Charge of Condiments. Fuck. Me.
Colonel Brian Gnad was the commander of 5th Brigade, Australian Army, in command of 4,000 human and uplifted soldiers. We were understrength at only two battalions, but it was still a sizeable force. To his face, everyone called him “Sir” or “Colonel Gnad.”
Unofficially, which is to say behind his back, the uplifted troops called him the Old Man, or Wombat Prime. Colonel Gnad was pushing fifty, late middle age for an uplifted wombat and impossibly old for our feral progenitors. The fur on his muzzle was going gray, and his hindquarters were dappled with white spots like an Appaloosa horse, a hereditary holdover from the tiger quoll DNA they spliced into his genetic code.
Gnad was the first uplifted species in Australia’s history, and a huge morale boost not only for our military services but for the Aussie psyche as a whole.
In 2125, the country was drought-stricken, our economy in shambles, with much of our infrastructure and power grid wrecked in a low-level aborigine insurgency that had suddenly bloomed hot.
They blamed our devastating drought and economic woes on our hubris and arrogance, said we’d angered the Creator and defiled Mother Earth and set about what they considered a correction of Australia’s path.
They were pretty effective at it, too, especially when foreign powers saw their resistance movement as a means to destabilize our government. Power grids were sabotaged, municipal water supplies tainted, computer viruses crippled our communications networks.
Now how the aboriginals – excuse me, indigenous peoples – got the expertise and know-how to write computer viruses and sabotage sophisticated power grids, I’ll never know. Anyway, it was before my time.
But rolling our technology back to 21st century standards didn’t satisfy ‘em, but of course by then we realized that the insurgency that became known as the Aboriginal Resistance Movement (ARM) had been almost entirely co-opted by foreign agitators. By the time I rolled into the war, most everybody we were fighting were Russian and Chinese “advisors” of one sort or another, sub-Saharan African mercenaries and a growing number of uplifted abominations.
I say “abominations” because only a madman cunt would uplift a friggin’ honey badger or a Tasmanian devil, and the bleedin’ Russians had done both. So we fought the war in the bush with 20th century weapons against Russian and Chinese surrogates, much like America did in Vietnam in the 1960s.
The people who say history never repeats itself bloody well haven’t been listening.
So along came a wombat/quoll hybrid in 2179, a genetically engineered marsupial with human intelligence and a keen wit. Cadet Brian Gnad wasn’t only keeping up with his human counterparts in education and military training, he was better than most of them.
Not only was Wombat Prime a proof of concept, but he was proof that Australia was back. We had turned a corner, it seemed. One day we might catch up with our more prosperous, more advanced allies.
Now, almost 50 years later, most of our power grid had been restored, Sydney had been rebuilt, and the University of Adelaide was cranking out roughly 300 uplifted wombats a year, albeit with gene splicing from American opossums rather than the native Australian tiger quoll that had contributed some of its genetic code to Colonel Gnad.
That alone made him one of a k
“Lieutenant Dundee?” the adjutant asked, interrupting my reverie. “Colonel Gnad will see you now.”
I checked my watch; 1030 on the nose. With a pained grunt I hefted myself to my feet, limped into Gnad’s office and marched to within three feet of his desk, came to attention and barked, “Lieutenant Cecil Dundee reporting to the Brigade Commander as ordered, Sahr!”
Gnad replied, “At ease.” He nodded toward the door and told his adjutant, “Give us 30 minutes alone, Bob. No calls.”
Captain Robert Keenan nodded respectfully, did an about-face and marched out of the office, closing the door behind him.
Wombat Prime waved me to a chair, which I gratefully accepted. He walked to a sideboard, opened a decanter of bourbon and held it poised over a crystal tumbler; eyebrows raised.
“A little one, Sir. Thank you.”
Gnad snorted, filled the glass to the brim and walked it over to me. “Absent friends,” he toasted, and lifted his glass. I parroted the line and together we tossed back our drinks. It was good bourbon.
“Convalescing well, Captain Dundee?” he inquired politely.
“Cast comes off in nine days, Sir,” I grimaced. “I can’t wait.”
“Eager to get back into the fight, are we?” he grinned.
“Yes Sir,” I chuckled. “Driving a desk is no duty for an honest soldier. I’m supposed to be shootin’ and lootin’, not chained to a desk like some headquarters pogue.”
Gnad cocked one eyebrow and smiled wryly. “Careful who you say that to, Captain. Some of us headquarters pogues may take offense.”
I blushed like a ripe tomato and stammered, “No offense intended, Sir. I merely meant that – “
“In your future military career, Captain, it would behoove you to remember that a senior officer is not expected to lead from the front. An ancient American general named Omar Bradley said ‘amateurs talk tactics and strategy, professionals talk logistics.’ Now that you’re a senior company-grade officer who will one day attain much higher rank, you’d best remember that. Even headquarters pogues have their uses.”
That’s the third time he called me Captain. Is the Old Man going senile?
“Sir?” I asked, confused.
He fetched a small box from his desk and tossed it onto my lap. I opened it; the three gold pips of a Captain. I raised my eyes to the Old Man’s.
“It comes with another decoration,” Colonel Gnad explained gently. “For this one, I think you had best stand at attention whilst I read the citation.”
Bewildered and feeling not a little flushed from the bourbon, I scrambled to my feet. Gnad waited until I came to something approaching attention before he continued.
“Attention to orders!” he barked. “First Lieutenant (Captain designate) Cecil J. Dundee is hereby awarded the Victoria Cross for conspicuous gallantry and valor in combat!
In combat action in the Warrumbungle region on or about February 17, 2227, Lieutenant Dundee led a combined force of humans, wombats and mongooses…”
Mongeese, I thought.
“… numbering approximately 70 personnel, against a numerically superior force of ARM militants and uplifted honey badgers, inflicting heavy casualties on the enemy. Lieutenant Dundee, despite being wounded by grenade fragments and being shot in the leg, led his men in neutralizing a clandestine uplifting lab and recovering valuable intelligence materiel, including a Russian prisoner. Dundee’s courage and valor are in keeping with the highest standards of Australian military service. Entered the Army from the University of Adelaide.”
My head swam. Captain? The Victoria Cross? I’m just an honest sergeant masquerading as an officer!
“Anything to say?” Gnad beamed at me, his eyes twinkling.
“Sir, I… I don’t deserve this,” I stammered. “I was just doing my duty as I saw it. My men are the real – “
Gnad cut me off with a shake of his head and waved me back to his seat. “It’s been my experience, Cecil, that the men most deserving of decoration rarely believe they deserved it. I read your AAR, Captain. That was a hairy operation. I doubt I could have led it any better. Getting out of it with most of your people alive took more than luck.”
“Sir, I’m not sure I’m ready for this sort of responsibility,” I blurted.
Gnad frowned at me, stared for several moments and sighed. “Did you think you were ready to be a lieutenant after Wombeya Caverns?”
I shook my head, no.
“Yet you managed to pull off a very dicey operation after several other units had failed, and with minimum loss of personnel.”
Those were my wombats and men, I thought. There are no such thing as acceptable losses, and they are not “personnel.”
Colonel Gnad read the expression on my face and grunted. “You’re still beating yourself up over the loss of your men,” he observed.
Christ, can the Old Man read my mind?
“That’s the mark of a good officer,” he went on. “I noticed it in you after Wombeya Caverns; that’s why I recommended you for promotion. But you can’t let it hinder your performance or get in the way of your mission. You didn’t do that, either, which Warrumbungle proved.”
“Do you really think I can do this, Sir?”
Gnad glowered at me and I felt my heart flutter a little. “I’m the one who put you in for the decoration and the promotion, soldier,” he growled. “I wouldn’t have fucking done it if I wasn’t confident in my decision. I remind you now that you are an officer, Dundee, and when an officer receives an order that he dislikes, he says ‘Understood, Sir’ and proceeds to carry out the order to the best of his Goddamned ability. Are we clear?”
I came back to attention and barked, “I will carry out my orders to the best of my ability, Sahr! I will do my best to justify the Colonel’s faith in my ability, Sahr!”
“That’s better,” Gnad allowed, then handed me a folder and waved me back to my chair.
“What’s this?” I asked.
Gnad didn’t answer directly. Instead, he walked back over to the sideboard and poured us both another round of bourbon. “Drink up, Captain, we’re wetting down a promotion.” After I took a sip, he went on. “Have you heard about the Division being reorganized?”
“Just some scuttlebutt, Sir. Nothing concrete.”
“It’s a done deal,” he sighed. “In another month, 1st Infantry Division will consist of five full brigades, and not just in name only. I’ll retain command of 5th Brigade. Interior command wants to use 1st Division as a test-bed for integration of uplifted indigenous species throughout the military; no more isolated specialty detachments like your First Engineers. We’ll have uplifted species integrated throughout combat and support units. I need a solid officer to command the project.” He gestured at the folder with his glass and grunted, “Read.”
I opened the folder and scanned the document. “Project for the Utilization of Sentient Species,” I quoted. “Who in bloody Hell came up with that acronym?”
“Some egghead in a think tank somewhere, no doubt,” Gnad rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, but PUSS?” I asked. “You’re going to call a military unit PUSS?”
“Forget the Goddamned nomenclature for a moment, Captain,” Gnad snapped. “Think instead of the possibilities. If we play this right, we could integrate the armed forces with uplifted species. If we prove the concept, PUSS will be redesignated as Fox Company of the 5th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division. As we build up our strength, members of your company will be reassigned in specialist roles in other companies and subordinate units, fighting right alongside human soldiers. You’ll effectively be a training cadre, and you’ll have the luxury of writing your own Table of Organization and Equipment (TOE) and developing your own doctrine. It’s a helluva deal for a wombat, even if he is still only an honest sergeant at heart.”
“A whole company?” I asked.
“Captains command companies,” he pointed out.
“We’re not even close to company strength now, Sir. I only have 44 wombats and six mongeese as it is.”
“You’ll be getting two platoons of human troops, fresh out of training. They’ll – hopefully - have no biases or preconceived notions about uplifted species. You can mold ‘em to your needs. A replacement squad of new wombats is en route here now. That’ll bring your complement up to 100, give or take.”
