by Marko Kloos
She pauses and takes another sip before shaking her head once more.
“That kind of isolation fucks with people’s heads, knowing that you’re so far away from the rest of humanity that your local sun can go nova, and it’ll take a generation before someone on Terra can see the event with a telescope. And then there’s the environment. You could end up in a place where ten below is considered a heat wave. Other places, you have three quarters of the local year without a sunrise, or a sunset.”
I don’t quite know how to answer. Everything she says is true, of course. The colonies are not exactly vacation resorts, despite the fact that the government has to hold lotteries for spots on the colony ships. Just like the military, there are always a hundred times more applicants than slots. Still, there are only a handful of colonies whose population has even broken the million mark, and the idea of sharing a whole planet with a tenth of the number of people living in the Greater Boston area is something I can barely wrap my head around.
“I’ll put up with a few months of darkness if I don’t have to wear another bad air mask for the rest of my life,” I finally reply.
Sergeant Fallon gives me a smile that looks a lot like the ones my mom used to give me whenever I said something charmingly innocent and utterly ridiculous as a little kid.
“There’s no perfect place, you know. You always end up trading one kind of shit for another. Me, I’ll stick with the shit I know.”
“Well,” I say, “I’m sick of this shit, and I want to try a different kind for a change.”
We both laugh. I don’t want to think about the fact that I won’t see her again after today. I’ve laughed more in the last two months than I did in the two years before joining the service. My squad mates are the closest thing I’ve ever had to siblings, and if I have one regret about jumping ship and joining the Navy, it’s giving up my new circle of friends. I’m sure I’ll make new friends in the Navy, but I’ll be the new guy all over again, the one who has to prove himself.
“Well, I hope it works out for you,” she says. “Getting what you want is a rare event in the military, especially at our pay grades. Make the most of it.”
“I will,” I say. “And if I hear some jarhead talking shit about the TA, I promise I’ll pick a fight.”
Sergeant Fallon chuckles in approval.
“You better,” she says. “And just to make sure you don’t forget where you’re coming from, I’m going to make sure they put you in for the Combat Drop Badge. You wear that on your Navy uniform, you might as well have a tattoo on your forehead that says, ‘I am a former TA grunt.’”
The Combat Drop Badge is awarded to line troopers after their first drop involving hostile fire. What exactly constitutes hostile fire is up to the discretion of the battalion commander. Some unit COs set the bar rather low, and count drops where the lead drop ship may have taken a round or two of small arms fire, but the commanding officer of the 365th AIB has higher standards. Still, I have no doubt that anyone who can bend the battalion S2 over a barrel like that would also be able to make good on that promise and have the battalion award the CDB to a private with two battle drops.
“I think you’ve done enough for me, Sarge,” I say. Even though I wouldn’t mind a CDB above my left breast pocket, I don’t want Sergeant Fallon to push her luck with the brass. That Medal of Honor can only get her so much credit with the CO before he decides that she would serve the TA better as a recruiter in some forsaken office in northern Manitoba.
“You shut the hell up, and when that badge comes your way in the inter-service mail, you pin it on your Navy smock, and you show those desk moppers and console jockeys that you are a combat grunt.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
Without our afternoon coffee talks, the Medical Center becomes unbearably boring. My only form of decent entertainment, and my link to the world outside, walked out in Major Unwerth’s briefcase. I’ve slept enough to have plenty of sleep stockpiled for a year, and watching the tripe on the Networks got old again after an hour or two, so I spend my time going for increasingly long runs around the Medical Center. I don’t even realize how much I had gotten used to daily runs until now. The hospital-issued footwear is unsuitable for anything faster than a slow walk, so I get out my old civilian shoes, and map out a circuitous route through the miles of corridors in the Medical Center. I run as fast as I can without drawing the ire of the staff, through corridors and hallways, and up and down dozens of staircases. I just have my route perfected, when Corporal Miller comes in one morning just as I am putting on my shoes for another run.
“You do know we have a gym, right?” she says. “It’s on the top floor, right next to the rec room. We use it for light rehab. It has weight machines and everything.”
I was up there once, to see if the rec room was worth my time, and I decided that it wasn’t after seeing the people in there mostly lounging on chairs and watching the Networks on the screens overhead. It’s like the government considers Network access an essential patient need, just like food and medication. It feels disturbingly like being back in the PRC—everything is public property, even the food you eat and the clothes you wear, and everybody just sits around and drools at the Network screen.
“I guess I can stand lifting a few weights again,” I say, and Corporal Miller smiles. I suspect she’s not used to her patients actually wanting to work out again.
“Looks like you’re about back to normal,” she says. “Maybe the doc’s going to release you a bit sooner than we thought. How would you feel about that?”
“I’d probably kiss the doctor on the mouth,” I say. “Regardless of age. Or gender.”
Corporal Miller laughs.
“Well, let me see what I can do. You seem to be bored to tears in here, and if you can spend three hours a day running around the place dodging meal carts, you’re probably ready to go back to your unit.”
A few hours later, the door of my room opens, and one of the doctors comes in. I don’t have a particular doctor assigned—they all work in shifts, and I’ve seen half a dozen different ones since I got here. They all wear Class B uniform shirts under their medical smocks, they all have captain’s bars on one collar and the Medical Corps device on the other, and they all talk in the same detached, semi-interested manner.
“I’d say your nurse assessed you correctly,” he says as he walks in. I have been pumping out a set of push-ups, with my feet on the bed and my body at a slight downward angle. Before I joined the military, I could barely complete twenty regular push-ups. Now I can do three sets of thirty while my legs are up on a bed or window sill, the result of doing hundreds of push-ups a day back in the TA.
“Yes, sir,” I reply as I finish my push-up and jump to my feet in a deliberately light-footed manner.
“You’re not asking what she’s right about,” the doctor smiles.
“Doesn’t matter,” I smile back. “Corporal Miller is right by default.”
“Good attitude,” he says. His name is stenciled onto the breast pocket of his white smock: DR MORELLI.
“So are you going to let me out early?”
“Do you want to be let out early? With your kinds of injuries, you can get by with claiming a few more weeks of downtime.”
“I’ve had about all the downtime I can stand,” I reply. “I’m ready to move on.”
Doctor Morelli consults the clipboard he carries, and shrugs.
“Well, your abdominal fusing worked like a charm, and you’re good as new, medically speaking. Your lungs are back to normal, too, but I guess you’ve already figured that out, since you’ve been breaking the speed limit on every floor in this place.”
He flips through the printouts on his clipboard, and then scribbles something with his pen.
“I’m releasing you back to active duty as of tomorrow morning. If you feel that you require follow-up care after all when you’re back in your unit, you are to report to your designated medical facility on-base. Other than that,
I’m marking you as fit for unrestricted duty.”
It’s amazing what modern medicine can do. Two weeks ago, I was shot through my lung and lower intestines, and now I am once again fit for unrestricted duty. Back home in the PRC, anything worse than a headache meant having to go over to the Public Clinic, where you have to wait just about all day just to see a doctor’s assistant, and where any injury more serious than a hangnail means you’ll be in misery for a few weeks because the diluted prescriptions don’t do much for the pain. I still live in government housing, I still eat government food, but my new status as a soldier makes me more worthy of being kept in running condition.
I don’t voice all those thoughts to Doctor Morelli, of course. Instead, I just nod, and try not to look too relieved about being let out of this place.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I say. “I really appreciate it.”
“Not a problem,” he replies, and I can tell that he’s not used to being thanked for active duty releases. There’s no combat here, and the risk of dying is much lower in a hospital rec room than on a spaceship or in an infantry battalion, but all things considered, I’d rather die from small arms fire than boredom.
Chapter 16
Being a Navy trainee is like being a student in an exclusive private college where the students happen to dress in dark blue uniforms. There are no stern drill instructors like Sergeant Burke, and nobody ever raises their voice at us. Our instructors are Navy officers dressed in immaculately starched khaki shirts and slacks.
We live in dorms, with separate rooms for every trainee, and my first night in Navy training is the first night since PRC Northshore-7 I have spent in a room all by myself. The Navy training companies are all quartered in giant buildings named like ships-Enterprise, Intrepid, Iroquois-and while the buildings are old, the interior of our particular “ship” is new and spotless. The furniture in my room is made of wood-grained polymer, and it looks like nobody has used it before me. There’s a brand new PDP on my desk when I move into my room, the shelves on the wall are lined with reference materials printed on real paper, and my room even has a private bathroom, complete with shower stall.
Navy Indoc training takes five weeks, and nearly all that time is spent in air-conditioned classrooms. There are physical exercise sessions every day, but most of them are ball games between different training platoons or companies, and none of the PT sessions involve running up and down the roads of the Naval Station. Our instructors explain to us that outside runs are restricted because of the abysmal air quality so close to the Chicago metroplex, so we just kick and throw balls to each other in the gym of our “ship”.
The first week in training, I suffer a bit of a culture shock from my transition. In Basic, I followed the policy of always running with the crowd, and never sticking out. Here in Navy Indoc, I stick out no matter what I do. My responses to instructor orders are too loud, my salutes are too sharp, and my PT scores are too good. The creases in my uniform are too precise, my shoes too spotless, and my classroom answers too prompt. Not a week into Indoc, the entire training company seems to know that I’m a transfer from the TA.
Sticking to yourself is not difficult in Indoc. We have a regular workday, just like in the TA, and the evenings and Sundays are our personal time. I spend my free time working out in the gym, or staying in my room and reading manuals. Our PDPs are fully enabled, unlike the one I had in Basic, and I spend a lot of time exchanging messages with Halley and my old squad mates. The squad gives me a good ribbing over being a Navy puke now, and Halley is simply astonished that I managed to make the jump between services. When I send her the first message from my new node, GRAYSON.A/INDOC/RTC/TERRA/NAVY, she accuses me of playing a very elaborate prank on her. It takes two cycles of replies for her to realize that I am, in fact, in the Navy now.
>I have no clue how you pulled that one off, but congratulations!, she writes.
I’m far away from the 365th AIB right now, and well out of Major Unwerth’s reach, but for some reason I don’t want to tell Halley about Detroit over the MilNet. It’s not just that I don’t know who else might be reading our exchanges, but I also find that I’m not able to frame the events in written language. I make three attempts at composing a message, but all of them end up in the electronic trash bin of my new Navy PDP. Instead, I just tell her a slice of the truth— my squad sergeant managed to pull a few strings for me out of sympathy.
>You’ll go to Luna for A-school in a few weeks. Are you excited?
>Hell, yes, I reply. I’ll be the first welfare rat from my block to go into space. Do you get to see Earth from your window, or what?
>Nope. Our quarters have no windows. There’s a clear panorama wall in the mess hall, but it faces the wrong way. All you’ll see is a bunch of stars.
>I’ll deal with it somehow. Maybe we’ll bump into each other up there?
>I doubt it. Your A-school is in a different complex from Combat Flight School. They don’t give us a lot of time off, anyway. But hey, we’ll be on the same rock together. Maybe we’ll get posted to the same ship.
>That would be great, I reply, but I think I just used up all my luck last week, so I won’t hold my breath.
In Week Four, we get a break from the classroom. For the Shipboard Safety Training, we move to another building on the base. This one houses a full-sized simulator of a Lancer-class fleet destroyer. It’s a complete and utterly convincing replica, a five hundred foot long hull with navigation lights, antenna arrays, missile silo covers, and armor plating. The whole thing looks like it could be towed into space and added to the fleet if needed.
Shipboard Safety Training is like starship kindergarten. We learn how to properly move in the narrow aisles and gangways of a Navy warship. As big as the destroyer hull looks from the outside, there’s very little space on the inside.
There’s a lively part of Shipboard Safety Training, and that’s the firefighting and evacuation drill portion. We all get to don sealed vacsuits with oxygen tanks, and the shipboard systems do a convincing job of simulating a major fire on board. We take turns connecting flexible hoses to wall-mounted valves, and dragging our fellow students to safety through smoke-filled corridors. Outside of the Quarterdeck hall, this is the first time I actually get to work up a good sweat in Indoc, and I enjoy doing something physical for a change. I have the feeling that the evac drills are largely a feel-good measure to make the enlisted personnel feel like they have some control over their fates when their ship is on fire and adrift in deep space, but I suppose it’s better than sitting on your hands and waiting to burn or suffocate. So I learn how to direct fire suppressant, operate the thermal imaging gear built into the vacsuit, and search smoke-filled spaces for victims.
We spend a whole day doing emergency drills on the simulated destroyer, culminating with a full pod evacuation from low alert status. Navy ships have life pod systems that are distributed all over the hull, so that no crewmember has more than a compartment or two to cross before reaching a pod in an emergency. When your ship breaks, you’re supposed to find a pod, launch away, and hope that the expeller motor doesn’t fire the pod into the gravitational pull of a gas giant.
The pods on the simulated destroyer don’t launch out of the hull, of course. We rush to the nearest escape hatches, slide down into the pods, and activate the hatch controls. The pod gives a little jolt to simulate a successful launch, and then the exercise is over. I notice that everyone’s pod makes it off the ship and into space, and I wonder just how often a pod evac results in a hundred-percent evacuation rate. The instructor in charge of the exercise just smiles when I ask him that question on the way out of the simulator, and I draw my own conclusions.
At the end of our fifth week in training, we take a battery of skill tests and written exams to verify that we haven’t slept through Indoc, and most of us are pronounced fit to join the Fleet. On graduation day, we get to dress up in our new Navy dress uniforms and pass in review before the training division commander. Then they hand
us ball caps and declare that we’re now welcomed into the Fleet.
I receive a merit promotion at the ceremony. The Navy grants me a bump to E-2, because I had the highest combined test scores of my training company. I should feel good about finally receiving a promotion and getting a rank device pinned to my bare collar, but all I can think about is the fact that I would have been an E-2 in the TA by now as well. I shake the Commanding Officer’s hand, and smile when he puts the E-2 chevron on my collar. I carry the platoon guidon as we march out of the review hall, but I don’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything at all in the last five weeks.
>Did you feel a bit let down by Indoc after Basic? I ask Halley through MilNet later that evening.
>Sort of, she replies. It was a bit of a snooze, wasn’t it?
>I just don’t feel like I’ve actually earned those chevrons. That was like college with uniforms and better food.
>I hear you. Don’t worry, things will be different in A-school for you. If yours is anything like mine, you won’t have much free time most of the week.
I very much doubt that Neural Networking school is anywhere as demanding as Combat Flight School, but I also doubt that it’s as relaxed as Indoc. Anything less formal and strenuous would have to involve the trainees spending all day in their beds and eating hand-delivered meals.
The next morning, I haul my new duffel bag onto a shuttle to Luna.
I’ve never been religious. My mother was raised Catholic, like two thirds of the people living in our corner of the Greater Boston metroplex, and she tried to raise me in the faith as well, but I never went to church again after my first communion. Seeing the planet from orbit, however, is the closest I’ve ever come to having a religious experience. The shuttle takes off, climbs through three hundred thousand feet of ever-thinning atmosphere in ten minutes, and then rolls over onto its back, giving its passengers a perfect view of the planet below through the windows along the dorsal ridge of the ship. Small shuttles like this have no artificial gravity system, and we’re strapped into our seats with six-point harnesses. When I feel the pull of gravity lessen, I have to resist the temptation to just unbuckle my harness and push off the floor to bounce around the inside of the shuttle.
