by Terry Mixon
Well, there was nothing he could do about it, at least not directly. That was one of the lessons he’d learned early in life: you could only be responsible for your own actions. Other people had to take responsibility for the things they chose to do.
Right or wrong, everyone had a vision of what was in their best interest. No amount of arguing was really going to change their minds, not if they had what they thought were compelling reasons.
“So, what are we going to do?” he asked slowly. “If the person that’s followed Tolliver here has as much influence as you say, they’re going to be able to throw a lot of money and other enticements at my people. How do we prevent them from being tempted into doing the wrong thing?
“Or is that how we’re going to handle this at all? Do we just accept the shocking yet inevitable betrayal and wait for one of the drill instructors to try something? I have to say that that’s not my favorite option.”
Na shook her head. “I’d rather be proactive. We need to find a way to bring your people onto our side. I understand that some of them don’t like that Andrea is here, and they’d prefer that she didn’t graduate.
“Balanced against that, we have their careers as Imperial Marines. That has to count for something. No marine really wants to betray their fellows.
“Your people are probably some of the best at what they do, and they’re your family. Given the options I see, I don’t think they’d be inclined to betray you personally. If they know that you’re looking for trouble, that’s got to discourage betrayal.
“And that fits in very well with something that Major Martelle suggested. If the bad guys intend to turn one of the drill instructors, they’re going to have to approach them with a lot of money to even consider the offer and not telling someone about it, even if they decline.
“What if we authorized them to keep the hush money, so long as they informed us that they’d been contacted and then they worked with us to try to stop whoever was perverting the process? That way, they’d get the benefit of keeping the money and upholding the honor of the marines. A win-win situation.”
Page considered the idea. “Is that legal?”
“So long as they pay the taxes and report it to their superiors, I think it might be. In any case, I can send a message back to my Imperial Intelligence contact, and I’ll wager that he can make certain that no one gets into trouble. He wants this to succeed as much as I do, even though I’m not sure his motives are as pure.”
“Let’s say that’s the way we go,” Page said. “Are we really sure it’s going to work? Tolliver has a lot of baggage simply because of where she came from, and some of those folks that are approached might not see stopping her as being at odds with being a marine.
“The Singularity is our enemy, and they’re going to think that perhaps Tolliver shouldn’t be allowed to graduate even if the means of stopping her are dirty.”
Na sighed. “It’s a risk. We’re still going to have to keep our eyes open, but we can at least give them the opportunity to do the right thing. If they know that we’re watching, they’re not going to be able to be too overt in their actions.
“Their best opportunity to succeed at this was with our ignorance. Somebody working behind the scenes might have been able to engineer a situation or series of situations that guaranteed her failure to graduate. That option is off the table now.
“I think with the balance of our foreknowledge and your people’s consciences, we’ll be able to stop anything like that. Obviously, you’re going to have to watch Tolliver very closely going forward, and if things start happening that don’t make any sense, you’re going to have to act.”
He had to agree with her logic, but that opened a new set of pretty ugly possibilities.
“If they can’t stop her with subversive tactics, then they’re going to have to do something significantly more overt to ensure that she doesn’t graduate. To me, that means an attack of some kind. They’ll have to try to kill or maim her so severely that she’s washed out of the service.
“I suppose they could also try to rig up some set of circumstances that made her look as if she’d done something so heinous that she’d be thrown out, but that’s a lot less straightforward than simply killing her. How do we keep an eye out for that without sending up all kinds of red flags?”
The lieutenant crossed her arms over her chest. “Before Andrea left to come here, I told her to keep her implant recorders running at all times. She’s got plenty of storage space to save that kind of data for twelve weeks. If she does—and I have no reason to expect that she won’t—she’ll have a record of everything that happens around her.
“I did that so that when the inevitable fights break out, she’ll have proof that she didn’t start them. I get that a certain amount of conflict is not only necessary but desirable. Still, with all the strikes she has against her, I wanted there to be no doubt of what had actually happened.
“If she’s doing that, that’ll provide some evidence in her favor if someone tries to frame her somehow. While I’m certain that implant recordings can be manipulated, she wouldn’t be able to do so without it being detected.”
“That will be useful if it comes down to that,” he agreed. “Let’s hope it doesn’t. Our best bet is to catch them when they approach my people if they do. I can’t see my people betraying their oaths as drill instructors like that.”
The creed of an Imperial Marine drill instructor had its roots in the Marine Corps of the United States of America back on prespaceflight Terra, back before all the individual nations were absorbed into the Terran Republic and then later into the Terran Empire. It was almost word-for-word identical to that sacred promise even after so many millennia.
It said, “These recruits are entrusted to my care. I will train them to the best of my ability. I will develop them into smartly disciplined, physically fit, basically trained marines, thoroughly indoctrinated in the love of the Corps and the Empire. I will demand of them and demonstrate by my own example the highest standards of personal conduct, morality, and professional skill.”
If one of his people betrayed that creed, it would kill him.
“Well, I think I understand the problem that we’re facing, Lieutenant. I think I’d best go speak with my people and make sure that the worst-case scenario never comes around.”
He rose to his feet and smiled at her. “Yesterday, I was kind of annoyed at the level of complication that Tolliver’s presence was creating. Now, I think I’m going to take this as a challenge.
“Now I’m looking forward to figuring out exactly what’s going to happen next. Playing chess with opponents that I don’t even know is going to be an interesting test, and I look forward to defeating them on the field of battle, no matter what kind of battle this actually turns into.”
Then he gave her a cold, sharklike grin. “If things do go bad and someone tries to harm one of my recruits, I’m going to come down on them like a platoon of Marine Raiders dropping from orbit.”
She matched his grin with one of her own as she stood and extended her hand. “And I’ll be right there with you, Senior Sergeant. You can count on it.”
Once dinner was over, and they’d finished cleaning up the barracks to the drill instructors’ satisfaction, Andrea climbed onto her bunk and collapsed, completely wrung out.
The amount of work they’d put her through while wearing weights made her ache all over, and this was only the first day. She knew that the next twelve weeks would feel like an eternity and that by the time she’d finished training, she’d feel as if she’d been run over repeatedly by a cargo truck.
Her bunkmate didn’t look much better, but at least Diana wasn’t completely exhausted. She could tell that when her friend’s head popped up to look at her.
“So, what do you think about day one? Did you have as much fun as I did?”
Andrea groaned and covered her face with her arm. “You think this was fun? You’re sick.”
Diana laughed. �
�Oh, I wouldn’t say that I had an incredible amount of fun in the ha-ha sense, but sure, this was fun. We got to do things that I hadn’t even dreamed about doing before, and this is only the beginning. I can’t wait to start learning how to do things with powered armor, flechette rifles, and all that other stuff. This is going to be terrific.”
Andrea couldn’t argue with the general concept. Working with those kinds of things was a lot of fun. Still, learning the equipment wasn’t just an isolated task. They did it so that they’d know how to fight. That meant killing and death. Not exactly what she’d call fun under any circumstances.
“Powered armor is a blast to operate,” she allowed, moving her arms so that she could look at her friend, “but we’re learning how to use it because it protects us from getting shot. Flechette rifles are also awesome, but we’re going to use them to kill people that are trying to kill us. So, while training can be fun, I wouldn’t say that the use of it is always going to be a pleasure.”
Her friend hoisted herself up to sit beside her on the top bunk. “I remember you saying that you’ve used armor and flechette rifles before, among other things. You had to use them to fight, didn’t you?”
Andrea nodded. “I didn’t get to use powered armor in the fighting, but I’ve trained in it since then. I was wearing modified mercenary unpowered armor back then.
“I did get to use a flechette rifle to defend some marines against attackers on the raid where I was rescued. I can’t talk about the specific details of that operation, but I had to kill people, and that was the furthest thing from fun that I can imagine.
“I was terrified and angry and a whole lot of other emotions that were hard to process.”
“That had to be difficult for a little girl,” Diana said, her voice filled with sympathy. She put her hand on Andrea’s leg and squeezed it gently.
“Actually, it wasn’t as difficult as you think,” Andrea said with a shake of her head. “I was raised in a school where those that didn’t fit in or didn’t succeed at the level expected of them were killed.
“The crèche started out with two hundred girls. By the time they graduate, only a third of them will still be alive.
“Worse, the ones who have survived will have been molded into ice-cold monsters that only care for their line and the ruling caste of the Singularity. Trust me when I say that it’s not the kind of place that makes one feel love and joy toward their fellow human beings.
“It didn’t make me happy to do what I did, but I don’t feel the slightest bit of regret or remorse for killing those men and women at the time. They would’ve done worse to me if they could have. Now? I don’t know how I’d feel.
“In any case, while it’s definitely fun to do the training, I recommend that you never lose sight of what our ultimate goal is. Basic training is meant to weed out those that can’t fight or that the Marine Corps doesn’t want for other reasons.”
Diana took a deep breath and nodded. “When you’re right, you’re right. Still, today was fun. I think that you can look for joy even in ugly places, Andrea. Not everything we do is work or business, but even when we’re working, we can still find something pleasurable about it.
“Like, for example, what we’re going to do to Claudio tomorrow.”
The idea of that actually did make Andrea smile. “We really should work out a plan in advance. If we’re going to be making a run through the confidence course and potentially the obstacle course, that will put him at a disadvantage, and we need to make sure to capitalize on that as much as possible.
“This is our chance to make sure that everyone else knows what taking us on means. If they want to try to bring us down, we want them to know just how much of a risk that will be for them personally. We’re not someone that they want to mess with, and they need to understand that at a visceral level.”
Diana looked impressed. “Well, okay then. What do you have in mind?”
Andrea held her hand up and then raised herself to her feet to look over the wall lockers beside them to make sure that Claudio and his bunkmate weren’t listening.
They weren’t there, so that was good. Considering that they were restricted to the barracks at this point, they had to be in the bathroom or taking a shower. Either option was good enough for her.
She dropped back down to sit beside Diana. “The confidence course is designed to help build teamwork. It will be hard for him to get through it without failing if he’s operating alone. That may mean he’s going to have a partner that we don’t know about yet.
“The key to getting through is assessing each obstacle and figuring out how we can work together to help both of us get past it. Anyone trying to get through the confidence course solo will end up doing something that makes their failure inevitable. If we can work together like a well-oiled machine, assisting one another over the hard parts, then we’re going to beat Claudio.”
“Do you know anything about the obstacles we’ll be facing?”
Andrea shook her head. “My guardians were intentionally vague about that. I’m already coming into this with advantages that the rest of you don’t have, even though the drill instructors are packing me down with weights. My implants are going to help me with the problem solving, though, and that’s something that they can’t stop me from using.”
Diana cocked her head. “Really? Tell me more.”
“I have marine-grade implants, and they have software built into them that helps me with tactical problem solving. They’re going to suggest potential solutions that we can utilize on the confidence course.
“It might not be as helpful in the obstacle course. Those obstacles are meant to be done solo, so finding ways to work together on them will be more difficult.
“Still, there may be parts of the obstacle course where we can help one another, but we won’t know until we get a look. We’ll be able to make plans for our second run through, though, and I’ll help you assess things that didn’t work as well as we’d like. Sometimes, all you can do is try to do better the second time at something.
“I expect that you’re going to have some insights that can help me with this. Teamwork isn’t exactly my strong suit, and I’m going to be counting on you to help me beef up my interpersonal skills. I just don’t see the human angle as clearly as the rest of you. If you see something that will help me bond with the other recruits, please help me.”
Diana extended her hand and grinned. “You can count on me, partner! We’re going to figure this out, and we’re going to have fun doing it.”
Andrea couldn’t help but smile at the girl’s broad grin. She really liked Diana, even though she was so different from her. Maybe it was because she was so different.
She was really looking forward to thrashing Claudio. That really would be a lot of fun.
17
Fei tried to get some sleep, but rest proved elusive. After a couple of hours, she just gave up. She needed to do something. She needed to feel like she wasn’t just waiting for an inevitable disaster to strike.
She rose from her uncomfortable bed, dressed in her uniform, and went to her utilitarian desk. The built-in computer system was able to monitor the vid pickups placed around the battalion area.
There were pickups scattered across the entirety of the base, she was sure, but she didn’t have the authorization to tap into those feeds. With the problems looming over them, perhaps she needed to see about rectifying that.
If someone wanted to sneak into the barracks, they wouldn’t have an easy time of it. They’d be crossing several monitored areas just to get into the general vicinity around the barracks itself.
That wasn’t so critical if the enemy was going to use an insider as their weapon of choice. However, if that didn’t work out for them, they’d have to get up close and personal, which meant a much greater likelihood that they’d be spotted.
How would they go about mitigating that outcome? Hell, how were they going to get onto the base at all? It was heavily guarded.
/> To her mind, that meant they’d have to subvert the security systems. That was, after all, the easiest way to slip into a location without being detected. Her platoon had had an expert at that kind of thing, and she really wished she had Corporal Riggio Gomez helping her now.
Interesting. While the name was ubiquitous in the Empire, she wondered if her old tech specialist was related in some way to Sergeant Sophia Gomez, the hostile drill instructor.
She paused her original line of thought and brought up Sophia Gomez’s record. She no longer had access to Riggio’s, but she had an archived copy from six years ago in her implant records.
A quick check confirmed her wild speculation. The two were related. Extremely closely, in fact. Brother and sister. The odds against that were quite literally astronomical.
Unless Earl Still Water was playing even more games.
Why would he do something like that? What purpose could it possibly serve?
Fei sighed. There was no way she’d be able to guess the answer. She’d just have to accept the data and see if she could use it at some point. For now, though, she needed to focus on the problem at hand: the barrack’s vulnerability to penetration.
When human beings relied on electronic monitoring devices for their safety and security, they tended to forget that those same devices could be subverted. If that happened, most people were caught flat-footed.
She didn’t want to be caught like that, and she refused to rely on others for Andrea’s safety. That meant she needed to cobble together a backup system that she could use without fear that the enemy could subvert it.
That really made her wish that she had the specialized gear to use for that kind of thing and an expert to set it up. The types of combat remotes that she was used to using were easily visible because of their size.
The same was true of most of the monitoring around the barracks. No one bothered to hide the fact that the recruits were being watched. Why should they? After all, that was only to be expected.
