“YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“Your mamas and your daddies and your aunties and uncles and grampies and grannies ain’t here to rescue you anymore. And I don’t care if you’re eighteen or thirty-eight, it’s time to grow the eff up, grow an effin’ pair between your legs—females too—and learn how to walk, talk, act, shoot, fight, and be a soldier in the Fleet.”
“YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“Good. You’re starting to get the beat of things, a little. And believe me, there is a beat. And a rhythm. You’re gonna find that in virtually everything you do in the Fleet. Look for it. Use it. The harder you try to cling to the old you that showed up here today, the harder it’s going to be. But the more you let the rhythm take you—the more you let yourself mold to and grow with the change—the easier it will become and the less stressful this is all going to seem.
“Because make no mistake, recruits, stress is what Induction Service Training is all about. I can see it in your faces right now. It’s effin’ hot. Your arms are about to fall off. Your feet and legs are starting to get numb. You’re wondering why the hell you had to wait out here for so long just to listen to me jaw-jack. It’s part of the program, people. Part of the program. And you can either resist the program, or git’ with the program. Now what do you want to do, recruits?”
“GET WITH THE PROGRAM, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“Gawtdamn, now that’s what I want to hear! Okay, enough of me running my mouth. In front of you is the building you will call home until Pickup Day. As soon as you enter that building, at no time will you leave it unless told to do so by an NCO or an officer, is that understood?”
“YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“You will obey every command given to you, and if you do not understand the command given to you, you will request clarification in a proper and respectful manner, is that understood?”
“YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“Are there any questions for me at this time?”
The rectangle remained silent.
“No questions then? Alright. Time to whip a little training on your asses. You are now standing in what is called a mass formation. Most of the time you’ll be broken down by platoons, but once in a while it’s convenient for us to line you up like this as a large group. There are certain commands you will be given—whether in mass, or in platoon—and you must follow those commands in unison. Do you understand?”
“YES, FIRST SERGEANT,” shouted the formation.
The first sergeant laughed, and the other NCOs laughed with him.
“Ch’yeah right, we’ll see about that. Okay, here it comes . . . Companaaaayyy!”
The NCOs surrounding the formation snapped their heads towards the recruits and repeated the preparatory command.
“Right-FACE!”
I did my best to mechanically rotate ninety degrees to starboard, bringing me face-to-face with another recruit who had turned the wrong way. An immediate chorus of hoots, catcalls, and profanity issued from the surrounding pack of NCOs, as recruits who had turned left—or not turned at all—blushed and shuffled their feet until everyone was facing in the same direction.
“Jesus H,” said the first sergeant, shaking his head and smiling. “It’s gonna be a real fun group. Real fun. File from the left . . . column left . . . MARCH!”
None of the recruits moved.
“I said march, gawtdammit!”
Suddenly people were bumping into people as half the formation lurched forward and the other half stayed where it was. Like buzzsaws, the surrounding NCOs descended into the throng, screaming, insulting, kicking, hitting, and knocking bags to the ground. The recruit behind me barged into my back full-force and I dropped both bags, suddenly relieved to be rid of them but then regretting it as a female corporal appeared and slapped the back of my head.
“PICK UP THOSE EFFING BAGS RIGHT NOW, RECRUIT!”
“Okay, okay, I only dropped them because—” (slap)
“SHUT YOUR HOLE, RECRUIT, IS THAT HOW YOU SPEAK TO A NONCOMMISSIONED OFFICER?”
“No, ma’am, I—” (slap)
“MA’AM? MY HELL, RECRUIT, YOU’VE BEEN HERE LESS THAN ONE EARTH HOUR AND YOU’RE ALREADY EFFED UP BEYOND BELIEF!”
“Yes, ma—errr, yes, Corporal. I mean, no, Corporal!”
“I’M WAITING, RECRUIT! PICK UP YOUR BAGS AND GET BACK IN FORMATION!”
I quickly retrieved my bags—happy to not receive a fourth whack on the back of the head, and got back in line while others did likewise. In two minutes the entire mass formation was once again standing at attention, facing the first sergeant, who no longer seemed to be smiling.
“Wow,” he said. “That was just effin’ ugly. Y’all act like you just got out of the nursery. Am I gonna have to come around every day and wipe ass on y’all? Am I?”
“NO, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“I hope not, because from what I’ve seen in the last five minutes none of you has what it takes to ship out on Pickup Day. To be Fleet you have to think. And right now I can tell that not a gawtdamned single one of you is doing any thinking. You’re all just going along and pretending to do whatever the eff it seems like you’re supposed to do, and hoping nobody gets up in your ass about it. Listen, Fleet doesn’t want dummies in its ranks. I’m not a dummy, and none of these other NCOs is a dummy. Dummies get people killed, even in training. Or should I say, especially in training. We don’t need dummies. So I might as well just outprocess the whole effin’ five hundred of yah and put your butts back on the runway, right?”
“NO, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“Prove it. Someone raise their gawtdamned hand and tell me what was the first thing you all did wrong just now.”
A hand went up meekly, fifty down and third rank.
“You,” said the first sergeant.
“We didn’t follow the command correctly?”
A corporal stepped up to the recruit with the raised hand and began bawling the recruit out for not beginning and ending his sentence with “First Sergeant.”
“Wrong,” said Klauski. “Someone else?”
Another hand went up. “First Sergeant, we ran into each other, First Sergeant.”
“Wrong.”
“First Sergeant, the people up front didn’t know what to do, First Sergeant.”
“Wrong.”
“. . . not in unison!”
“Wrong . . . wrong . . . wrong.”
The first sergeant put a palm up to his face and wiped it across his mouth in exasperation.
I finally raised my hand high.
“You,” said the first sergeant.
“First Sergeant, we didn’t ask for an explanation of the command, First Sergeant,” I said as loudly and with as much gusto as I could muster.
He snapped his finger and stepped forward.
“Abso-effin-lutely correct, Recruit. Did everyone hear that? Finally, someone is paying attention to what I first told you. You never follow a command that you don’t understand first. Two times I stood up here and gave a command that more than half of you didn’t know what the eff to do with. At least one of you should have stuck a paw in the air and respectfully requested clarification on ‘right-face’ and ‘file from the left column left,’ but you didn’t do it. Maybe ’cause you’re scared, or maybe ’cause you’re just stupid, I don’t know. But get it through your skulls, recruits. Whether you’re stupid or scared. You have to understand what the eff it is that you’re doing, or you’re going to fail. And when people in uniform fail, it usually means people in uniform die.
“Now, I hope this little object lesson has sunk in. Ready to try it again?”
“YES, FIRST SERGEANT,” shouted the formation.
“Are you sure?”
“YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
A hand went up. This time, not mine.
“What is it, Recruit?”
“First Sergeant, uhhhh, respectfully request—”
“Who respectfully requests?”
“Uhh, First Sergeant, I r
espectfully—”
An NCO jumped into the speaking recruit’s face and barked about the proper way to self-reference during IST.
“One more time, Recruit,” Klauski said.
“First Sergeant, Recruit Trucco requests clarification on ‘right face’ and ‘file from the left column left,’ First Sergeant.”
“Beautiful, Recruit Trucco.”
The first sergeant proceeded to explain: posting NCO demonstrators in order to properly display facing movements and the somewhat more complicated columnar split-off movement known as file-from-the-left-column-left. After which he called the formation once again to attention—the sunlight slamming down on us as Sol rose higher into the blue sky—and repeated his first two commands.
Right-face went much more smoothly, with only a few people messing it up.
Filing was more problematic, but after the left-most column—which had been the first row prior to facing right—stumbled through it, the other columns got the idea, and one by one they broke off and filed up the steps and into the reception center.
CHAPTER 15
THE CALYSTA WAS MUCH MORE SPACIOUS THAN I REMEMBERED Fleet ships being when I’d first signed up. She had wider corridors. Larger compartments. Not nearly as much exposed wiring and piping. Brighter lamps in the ceiling, all spaced at closer intervals. And so on, and so forth. They even had several flavors of ice cream in the galley’s little dessert bar.
I stared at the brightly-colored frozen dessert food, and wondered how long it’d been since I’d treated myself to such a delicacy.
“Life’s a little easier up here this time, isn’t it?” Captain Adanaho said to me as she sat down at my table, watching me take slow, deliberate spoonfuls of Neopolitan into my mouth.
I swallowed—savoring the taste of the vanilla mixed with strawberry mixed with chocolate—and aimed my empty spoon at her.
“You could say that, yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Helps that the Fleet has had much more time to refine its various starship designs,” she said, poking at her own tray with a pair of chopsticks. It seemed she had rice and teriyaki beef, plus a vegetable side that looked suspiciously like some form of seaweed.
“A lot’s changed since I first went to space,” I said. “All of this would have seemed like decadent extravagance in the wake of New America being attacked. Earth was really scrambling then. Can I admit to being relieved that the designers thought to put a few creature comforts into these new ships?”
“It’s part of Fleet’s long-term plan,” she said. “When the armistice stabilized the situation with the mantes, Fleet turned its focus from rapid counterattack and repulsion, to a more permanent security mission designed to protect both those colonies which had escaped being molested during the war, and those colonies which had been ceded back to us by the mantis Quorum. You can’t keep people in space forever, and expect morale to remain decent, when the living conditions are too Spartan. So, Fleet’s civilian contractors started getting creative with the amenities. Now life aboard ship for long durations is tolerable.”
“When you’ve just come from the conditions I’ve lived in for the last few years,” I said, “this is more than tolerable. It’s practically paradise. I really should see if it’s possible to import a few of these goodies down to Purgatory’s surface, once we get back.”
“Yes,” Adanaho said, her eyes losing focus. “Once we get back.”
I stopped, a fresh spoonful of ice cream halfway to my lips.
“You’ve got doubts?” I said.
“Yes, and no,” she said, looking around her quickly, to be sure nobody was sitting within earshot of us. “I don’t like talking about it out in the open like this, but if you’d seen some of the information I’ve seen, you’d realize that things aren’t looking so good. Yes, the armistice is intact. For the moment. But there are strong signs that the mantes are preparing for something. All our data points to that. And we’re not sure if or when the fragile truce is going to break.”
“I’m going to assume you’re speaking as a strategist who has to plan for worst-case scenarios,” I said to her, putting my spoon down.
“That’s true,” she said.
“But me being here is cause for hope?”
“Also true.”
“So what does your gut tell you? Which way is it going to go?”
Adanaho closed her eyes and ran a hand over her forehead, rubbing softly. “I just don’t know, Chief. I think that’s the part which is driving me nuts right now. The lack of knowing what the future might hold. What can be planned for, and what’s unknown. I mean, how did you do it, during your years of captivity? How did you know when to relax and just live your life?”
I chuckled bleakly.
“I’m not really sure it was anything like a conscious decision,” I said. “We all just kind of went from day to day at the start. Nobody knew anything. We had no contact with the rest of the Fleet. We were beaten, and we knew it, and so far as we could tell, death was going to visit us any day. It got a little easier when The Wall went up. Then it became clear our incarceration was going to be more long term. Which is why news of The Wall’s gradual contraction hit us in the face like a brick. Our hope for a future—any kind of future—crumbled.”
“That’s what I am afraid of now,” she admitted, continuing to poke at her meal without showing much enthusiasm.
“You know,” I said, “has anyone in Fleet ever considered the idea that the way to beat the mantes for good is not to entrench ourselves and hold, but to pull up our stakes and run?”
She stared at me.
“There’s no way Earth’s sixteen billion people could ever possibly hope to run,” she said.
“I know that,” I said. “But the galaxy is a big place. The mantes don’t control the whole thing. Hell, they don’t even control a small fraction of it, despite their reach. There is plenty of room for humanity to get lost in. Find new worlds, far, far away from the mantis threat. Put down and settle in. Go dark, maybe. Just kind of fade off the face of the universe. Nobody to bother us if we don’t bother them first. Keep quiet.”
“If it comes down to it, yes,” she said. “The Fleet is prepared to bundle as many colonists as it can into emergency departure flotillas, and head for unknown territory. But who is to say we won’t just find something or someone even worse than the mantes?”
“A distinct possibility,” I said, leaning back in my seat and resting my hands across my full belly.
“Don’t you have family back home?” She asked. “I’m surprised you’d even consider running if you’ve got people you care about back on Earth.”
“My mother and father are still on Earth. At least as far as I know.”
“Don’t you ever send them messages? Why didn’t you go back to see them after it became possible again?”
“I don’t really know,” I said, frowning. “Mom and Dad . . . they kind of took it hard when I told them I’d signed up. They weren’t there to see me off to IST. Dad especially thought I was making a huge mistake. Me, and all my friends.”
“What about them?” she said. “Your friends?”
“Not sure,” I said. “None of us were sent to the same IST installations. After graduating high school, we scattered. And once I got stuck on Purgatory, things just kind of went into bizarro mode for me.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ve no idea what it was like, existing with the mantis threat all around you every day. Caged. With only enough land under your feet to scratch a minimal living out of. My life back on Earth, before the war . . . it quickly got far away, and faded out of my thoughts. There were immediate concerns always in my face, every minute of every day. Including my promise to Chaplain Thomas. It took all I had to build the chapel, and by then, I was building new relationships with new friends, and before long, we all had new lives. Not great lives. Not lives I’d recommend to anyone in your position. But lives just the same. Earth . . . became a bit of a fairy tale
for me. And when the armistice happened, I didn’t have a huge desire to go back. What would I do? Where would I go? Would my parents be glad to see me, or would they slam the door in my face?”
She ate in silence for several minutes.
“You must feel very, very lonely,” she said, not looking up.
“I have people back on Purgatory,” I said.
“That’s not what I mean,” she said.
I thought about it for a second, then sat up.
“If you mean lonely for a wife or girlfriend, yeah, you could say that.”
“Was there ever anybody? Someone you wanted to make a family with?”
“The chapel became my home and the congregation became my family. But there was one person. We called her the Deacon. A former gunner.”
“So what happened to her?”
“Well, we were good friends, but when the armistice became a reality, she fled back to Earth the second she could catch a ride to orbit. I never saw her again, and never heard from her again either. As much as I hated life on Purgatory during our stint as POWs, I think she hated it even more. I suspect she probably considers me to be part of a long and uncomfortable set of memories she’d just as soon forget.”
“A shame,” Adanaho said.
“Maybe,” I said. “But what’s your excuse, ma’am?”
“I’m still under thirty,” she said, cracking a little grin at me.
For the first time since boarding the ship, I belted out a genuine laugh.
CHAPTER 16
Earth, 2153 A.D.
THE REST OF THE MORNING WAS A COMPLETE BLUR FOR ME.
Immediately inside the reception center, each recruit had a number stamped to the back of his or her hand, with an accompanying barcode. Depending on that number, each recruit was broken off and directed into a different, gymnasium-sized room, where more NCOs waited.
When about forty people had filed into the room where I once again stood at attention, we were ordered to drop our bags—at last!—and then wait while an NCO came around to each of us and proceeded to dump everything out of our bags into piles on the floor in front of us.
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