Doom Fleet: The Boot Camp Years

All Quacked Up

Feeling utterly miserable after an afternoon of doing the lowly grunt work of cleaning the officers’ bathrooms as punishment for an ill-timed wiseass remark to a superior officer in the unit, Lieutenant Vardash, the young fleet officer Private Cossack in-the-future Terrible, staggered into his hole-in-the-wall quarters in the barracks. His bunkmate, Private Yaklitz, was lounging on the bed with a book opened, and glanced up when Cossack came in.

“Hey Cossack. Wow, you look like shit,” he informed him bluntly, and then wrinkled his nose. “You smell like it, too.”

Cossack grimaced, too tired to be insulted or point out that the fine aroma emanating from Yaklitz’s sock-clad feet was not much better and disgustingly reminiscent of the mires of a swamp planet. “Vardash had me sent over to do some work for Captain Mogor’s unit cleaning bathrooms, since he had someone else do ours two days ago.”

“I guess he didn’t like your comment about his fondness for our force captain,” Yaklitz murmured, not taking his eyes off of the book he was reading.

“Well he is an ass-kisser,” Cossack grumbled as he fished through one of his dresser drawers for a towel, and glanced curiously over at Yaklitz. In the few weeks he had known him, Cossack had never seen his bunkmate to be much of a bookworm aside from his collection of pornographic comics that he kept hidden under his mattress—not because he was ashamed of them, but out of habit. As he had explained to Cossack when they were first assigned to the quarters together, Yaklitz’s wife had a distinct disapproval of his reading tastes and, as he had told his bunkmate, threw them out whenever she saw them before proceeding to nag him with such guilt-laden lines as “aren’t I woman enough for you?” and other such loaded statements. Since spouses were permitted to visit fleet officers in their quarters when off duty, Yaklitz kept his collection carefully hidden in case of a surprise visit. Hence, Yaklitz’s sudden interest in a thick book immediately struck Cossack as something out of the ordinary.

“I didn’t know you were so into,” Cossack said as he glanced over, and frowned when he saw it was a textbook on the finer points of interstellar ship engineering, “ship construction?”

Completely absorbed in his reading, Yaklitz carefully turned a page and answered, “Mmm-hmm, I fully appreciate the intricacies of their design.” He turned another page and licked his lips, his eyes wide with interest.

While he grabbed a bar of soap out of a bucket on top of the dresser, Cossack immediately suspected something was up with the other private. Casually he strode over to Yaklitz’s bed and yanked the book out of his hands. His bunkmate’s behavior made sense when he saw a comic book carefully wedged in the center of the text—a distinctly adult comic book, featuring impossibly proportioned naked and attractive bodies of both their native breed of drule and other assorted alien races in kinky positions. “Interstellar ship engineering?” Cossack questioned with a smirk, although not without letting his eyes linger on the page, especially upon a nicely drawn drule clad in nothing but leather straps.

Yaklitz tore the comic out of his bunkmate’s hands. “Yeah. The primary principle being if the ship’s a-rockin’ don’t come a-knockin’,” he retorted.

“Right,” Cossack snickered. “New issue, huh?”

“You got it,” Yaklitz replied with a grin, and rolled back over onto the bed into a different position.

Meanwhile Cossack continued to fish the last thing necessary for his shower out of his dresser. Although he already had the soap, towel, washcloth, and shampoo, there was still one other thing he needed. Carefully making sure that Yaklitz was not watching, he fished it out and hid it as best he could in his large blue hand as he withdrew it.

It was his rubber duckie Quackers, or “Private Quackers” as Cossack now liked to call him since he had brought him along when he enlisted in the fleet. The young private was rather attached to the bath toy—one he’d had as far back as he could remember—and considered him a good luck charm. Of course, Cossack knew that others would not understand and might possibly even mock his loyalty to Quackers, so out of respect to his dear friend, he kept his enrollment in the fleet private and his quarters safely secured under clean towels and socks in his dresser. It was not so much that Cossack was worried about being mocked for having the duck. Granted, he did not relish being teased, but he was a big and mean enough guy that he could easily clean the clock or at least hold his own against anyone who dared challenge him. Rather, he was just keeping Quackers’ presence in the fleet a secret for practical reasons. With weenies like Lieutenant Vardash supervising the unit, and humorless sticks in the mud like Force Captain Yurak running it, Cossack got in enough trouble as it was without getting into additional fights.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yaklitz noticed Cossack’s careful withdrawal of something from the drawer, which his bunkmate then stuffed into his wadded up towel. “Smuggling something in to the showers?” he inquired curiously.

“Nah,” Cossack replied quickly, tightening his grip on the towel and slamming the drawer shut. “Just my shower stuff.”

“Oh,” Yaklitz replied, feigning disinterest to hide his awakened curiosity. When Cossack turned around to start for the door, Yaklitz tossed his book to the side, leapt off the bed, and yanked the towel out of Cossack’s hands. The surprised Cossack had barely had time to react and voice a protest before Quackers fell to the floor.

Grinning with unashamed amusement when he saw that his bunkmate had a rubber duck, Yaklitz dove for the fallen latex waterfowl just as quickly as Cossack himself. It was a close race, but Yaklitz was an inch closer and snatched it before Cossack could grab it. Triumphantly Yaklitz held Quackers up and examined him. “So,” he chuckled as he stared at the wide-eyed and annoyed expression of his bunkmate, “a rubber duckie, huh?”

“His name is Quackers,” Cossack informed him, lunging at him. Yaklitz in turn backed away and hopped up onto his cot, holding the duck up high.

“‘Quackers?’” Yaklitz repeated, dissolving into helpless laughter. “You have a rubber duck named Quackers? A first circle first-son noble and the guy with the shortest fuse and best aim in the unit has a rubber duck named Quackers!” Yaklitz exclaimed and fell to his knees on the bed, gasping for breath in the throes of hilarity as Cossack snatched Quackers from the enemy hands of his bunkmate.

Cossack narrowed his eyes at Yaklitz as he brushed a bit of dirt off the duck that had gotten on him during his unfortunate fall to the floor. “Yes, Private Quackers is my lifelong friend and good luck charm, and like me and you he is a noble officer in King Zarkon’s fleet,” he informed the other private huffily. “I watch his back, and he watches mine. I talk to him; he gives me advice. We have an understanding. We have for years. That’s just how it is.”

Yaklitz sat up, trying to get his snickers under control. “I got it, Cossack, no problem, I understand,” he assured him. “You’re nuts and you talk to a bath toy duck, but whatever.” He laughed again. “Oh wow, wait until the guys next door hear this one.”

“I don’t think you want to tell them about Private Quackers, Yaklitz,” Cossack said, eyeing the other private pointedly.

“I don’t?” Yaklitz said with a smug grin. “Why not?”

“For one, I may like you, Yaklitz, but Quackers did not get a good first impression,” Cossack murmured, glancing at the duck’s painted plastic face for a moment before regarding his bunkmate. “So I think you ought to apologize to him and keep knowledge of his enrollment in the fleet confidential.”

Yaklitz stood up and leaned against his own dresser. “And why would I do that, when those guys will buy me several beers in exchange for such fascinating insight into one of their fellow officers?” His yellow eyes were alit with amusement as he awaited Cossack’s response.

“Because,” Cossack replied with the hint of an evil grin forming on his face, “this nutty officer who confers with a rubber waterfowl has just been advised by his loyal shower companion to show your wife all the hiding spots of your vast library of pornographic graphic novels on her next visit and bring her up to speed on any issues she missed, should you choose to disclose his identity to any unapproved personnel in the unit.”

The grin on Yaklitz’s face faded. “You wouldn’t.”

Cossack shrugged in mock innocence. “What can I say? That Quackers is a bastard if you cross him. I really suggest apologizing, unless of course you think Deachine would like to hear in detail about how heavily you drooled over that lovely drule in leather on page 7.”

With a sigh of defeat Yaklitz flopped back down on the bed. “Cossack, you’re a ruthless bastard… and you talk to a friggin’ duck.”

Carefully wrapping Quackers back up in the towel, Cossack flashed his bunkmate a fangy grin of victory. “Yes I am, Yaklitz my friend, and yes I do.” He paused by the end of the other private’s bed. “So do we have an agreement?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Yaklitz agreed. “I’ll respect Private Quackers’ privacy so long as he keeps my wife blissfully unaware of my 2-D harem. But if she finds and confiscates even one because of you, his yellow ass will be the centerpiece of the mess hall table with your name tattooed on it in permanent marker.”

“And likewise, should you have any hand in revealing his presence to the unit, your collection will be messengered to your dear wife faster than Vardash snapping to one of Yurak’s barked orders. So it would seem we’ve reached an understanding,” Cossack said happily. “Excellent! See, Quackers is a nice guy once you get to know him. I’m sure the two of you will be good friends.” With Quackers securely stashed in the blanket, Cossack started for the door to head off to the showers. “See ya later, Yaklitz!”

Picking up his discarded comic as he stretched back out on the bed, Yaklitz waved back distractedly. “Later.”

Just before the door shut, the smug Cossack squeezed his towel and the hidden bath toy private within it, creating a loud rubber squeak that made Yaklitz look up at the closed door and shake his head in bemused disbelief. On the other side of the door, Cossack grinned. Score another victory for Private Quackers.

The End

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