Free Postal Marine 1: Bellicose by Ben Wilson

return from the orbital, Makaan continued to assign Bophendze to the worst duties. He became the Oneday regular brig guard, which at least gave him Twoday off. Then somehow Corporal Makaan had worked a deal with the other three teams in their pack to have Bophendze clean their berthing areas, which took most of the duty day. Fourday he was on kitchen duty. Fifeday he worked in the hangar. The last two days of the week tended to vary, depending on what deal Corporal Makaan had worked out with another unit. Bophendze slowly felt less like a marine and more like a maid. The joke amongst those in his team was that all he lacked was a scanty outfit to complete the ensemble.
    Throughout his servile sentence, Bophendze's team continued to just meet the satisfactory standard of an Imperial Postal Service Marine. With Bophendze not in the team they were forced to operate one man short. That affected their performance. That his team preferred to operate one man short disheartened Bophendze. Nobody literally was better than him.
    On the seventh week, he was on loan to one of the gunnery crews. One of the worst assignments on the ship was to clean and lubricate the cruiser's main weapons. The ship was armed with six dual 250 millimeter cannon batteries, in addition to four guided missile tubes. The six batteries were distributed in pairs at three equidistant points around the narrow part of the ship.
    Each gun had a recuperator that reduced recoil transfer to the ship. The recuperator had a greased metal rod that guided the piston. That grease slowly deteriorated and had to be replaced a few times each year. The Postal Service had the guns re-greased after every major combat operation.
    It took Bophendze the better part of a day to strip off and apply new grease for each gun battery. To re-grease all the guns took most of the week. As nasty as the job was, he was not assigned maid duties in other compartments where other Marines would laugh and call him names.
    Bophendze finished re-greasing the guns on battery two on Twoday. He did his best to get the large globs of grease off. To be completely grease free would require an hour of scrubbing at least. He started walking out of the battery to his berthing area.
    “Hey!” a gunner yelled.
    Though surprised, Bophendze turned slowly because he was exhausted. “What?”
    “Thanks for all your help. Tell Corporal Makaan we give our regards.”
    “Sure.”
I'd like to give him something to regard.
    Maybe I can get transferred out of the infantry? After a few trips to the hangar and now the gun batteries, maybe I'm more suited to being a mechanic? Why was I not given the chance to choose my job when I enlisted? I did sign up for twenty years, after all. I can't do all these bosun jobs for twenty years.
    His musing stopped. He had been so tired he was not paying attention to where he was going. He looked at the passage he was in and realized he had missed a turn. He walked back down the passage, hoping to catch a familiar landmark. Not finding one, he turned down another passage. He put his hand in his pocket, and felt the implant. He started to roll it in his fingers.
Would having the implant at least keep me from being lost? It could be any kind of implant. Either way, it can't make things any worse than they are now. All I need to do is find a way to get it installed.
    He looked for landmarks, not trying to look lost or concerned.
I know those pipes.
He started down another passage toward an intersection that looked familiar. As he reached the intersection, he thought he heard somebody running up behind him.
    He started to turn when a sack came down and covered his head. Its mouth tightened around his neck. He could not see through the thick material that the sack was made of. He reached up to pull it off when somebody kneed or punched him in his gut. He started to double over, but his head was being pulled back by whoever held the sack. He felt hands grasping his arms, but slipping off