The Big Damn Fight

The commander’s door was a hideous olive-green slab of gunmetal, painted over in places with equally drab faded white paint. A perfectly square plaque proclaimed this to be the Office of the Commander, with several names crossed out underneath. In fact, even the last name - ‘Caterine Zwinger’ - was crudely crossed out, leaving the identity of the commander in doubt.

“Don’t be silly.” Geraldine knocked smartly on the door. “Commander Zwinger is still in command. She’s nice. A bit quiet, sometimes, but-”

A horrifying slurping sound emanated from under the door, cutting the private off.

“Even so,” Raime continued, ignoring the sound completely, “this is a bit of an oversight. I would have thought you’d be a little more organized.”

The sound terminated as abruptly as it had started, leaving only distressing silence. Then a voice, presumably the commander’s, spake thus: “Come in! I haven’t got all day.”

“[Bleep]ing [bleep].” Geraldine muttered under her breath, and turned the handle.

“Commander-” Raime began.

“Salute.” The commander was a tall woman, wearing a buzzcut, officers’ stripes, and a flinty expression. “What’re you, deaf? Show respect.”

Geraldine nudged her companion with her saluting elbow. “Do it!”

Hesitantly, Raime saluted, tapping the side of her palm to her temple. Alarmingly, she felt her head wobble at the touch.

“You call that a salute, airman? I was saluting better than that on my first day here. I was born saluting better than that.”

“My sincerest apologies, commander,” Raime said insincerely. She saluted again. This time the tape held.

The commander made a show of being dissatisfied, but turned her attention back to the desk before her. “What kind of shit have you dragged onto my desk this time, Geraldine? I swear if you weren’t my favorite, I’d…” She trailed off.

“I’m sorry, commander. Raime has, um. She has some ideas about our organization skills and how we might, um, optimize them.”

“If I might cut in, commander…” Raime took a step forward, and leaned over the desk, picking up a portable projector. “Ah, this’ll do.”

“[Bleep], Raime, don’t tell me you have...” Geraldine began, and let ‘a presentation’ trail off when Raime proceeded to display a presentation.

“From what I was able to gather from the recruits and from the various public access terminals, plus a few server intrusions, your resource allocation is lopsided. Very lopsided. You’ve devoted nearly every soldier to surface defense, even though-” Raime paused here to rifle through a thick binder on the commander’s desk - “regulations state that regular hourly patrols are to be held in all sectors, with double duty in mission-critical areas such as-” Flip, flip, flip. “Weapons control, heavy artillery batteries, the Central Intelligence Center, and so on. Strategic zones.”

“Are you questioning my authority, airman?” The commander hissed, indignant. “Everyone fucking knows the alien menace are going to attack from the approach side.”

Flip. flip. “But even with troop distribution, that doesn’t make sense. No patrols is one thing, but there’s one place that even non-assigned personnel on this base need to go.”

“Enlighten me.”

Flip, flip, flip, flip. “Hydroponics. Hydroponics has had no patrol for ten continuous hours.” Raime’s lips were set in a hard line. “What’s more, no product has moved from Hydroponics to Preparation in the last ten hours; so my real question is this, commander-”

In one swift motion, she turned the projector to maximum brightness, aiming it directly into the commander’s eyes.

“What have you done with the real Caterine Zwinger?”