This doesn’t touch at all on some of the other fun I had in Basic. I never did get singled out like that first day by Hotass, so my experience wasn’t too bad. I’m not going to talk about juggling grenades on the range, or “learning” to shoot the M34 (because…. I scared the range officer when he saw what I was doing – remember, I’d already shot it, in combat, to the tune of several thousand rounds already). I won’t tell you about the hand to hand combat course, because it was both exciting and boring. I learned all about things like how Colonel Bradburry could knock me on my ass with a flick of his finger, or how Master Corporal Hotez was able to hit me hard enough to disable me when I’d taken shots like that dozens of times before without even thinking noticing them.
I won’t even talk about how I ended up being the top student in my basic training class – let’s just say, it involved showing what I could do both for – and to – other students. Maybe I’ll talk about that some, but not right now.
I’ve heard some people say that they hated Basic Training, and would never do it again. Frankly, those people are the losers who couldn’t hack it and got kicked out.
Chapter 12: Learning
I’ve already told you about joining the military. You’ve heard about some of the shenanigans in basic training, especially the “special” (and no, I don’t mean that in a nice way) education we had to shit er… sit through. The real learning, however, started afterwards.
At this point, having completed basic training and having attained the basic skills necessary to be used as a rifleman in an infantry platoon – the “cannon-fodder trigger pullers” as higher-trained people referred to us, I’d been promoted to Private (from Recruit). Whee, wasn’t that nice.
Actually, it really was. I didn’t realize I actually was being given a (small, admittedly) stipend of a thousand dollars a month for the 8 months of bullshit tolerance in Basic Training; when I was promoted to Private, I actually was getting paid twice that – apparently a private is worth twice as much as a recruit, and even a recruit wasn’t totally worthless. Coincidentally, I later found out that that was because as a recruit, you’d already been tested and evaluated, and there was a near-certain likelihood you’d make it through the rest of your training.
So here I was, somehow feeling like I’d accomplished something, but with barely shit to show for it compared to the several hundred thousand dollars I’d had in the safe in my office in the Bronx Headquarters. It was an odd feeling, because when I ran the empire, it was all mine.. here, I didn’t run shit, I was the noob, the “X”, from off the street. No-one trusted me with anything, but they still threw me enough cash to make sure my basic needs were met.
Oh yeah, I guess I should talk more about that. I didn’t pay for whatever I ate, I had a room of my own in enlisted quarters, with a private bathroom, and more than enough power to handle anything I might purchase, my implant gave me all the entertainment I wanted, audio, visual, and VR…. I had no clothes other than the uniforms they gave me. The uniforms were those funky gray pants and top, plus matching t-shirts, socks, and underwear, and boots. The socks and underwear were completely foreign to me until I had to wear boots (which were even better, being newer, than the ones we’d found at the safe house) for an extended period of time, marching literally miles with a full pack on my load-bearing equipment (“LBE”). The underwear served much the same purpose – to keep my skin from ripping off. I’d never been that physically active in my life before. We got exercise (“PT”) gear, too – sweatpants, shorts, etc…. again in that weird gray color.
The meals were also way more than I’d ever experienced before – I had plenty to eat before, but was always hungry. As it turns out there was more to food than just something to chew on; I had no concept of vitamins or supplements (“supps” as the instructors called them) before. At 6’2, I could look in the mirror and not see my ribs poking out anymore, and I was starting to see actual definition that wasn’t ribs – not to mention, my arms and legs started showing different patterns under the skin. An implant query told me that this was muscular definition, and when I dug a little further, I realized that this is what a well-rounded human being engaging in constant and varied types of physical effort should look like. I never had, before.
I didn’t NEED anything that wasn’t actually given to me. That meant… the several thousand bucks that was in my military bank account was mine – to spend on whatever I wanted, or to hang onto, it didn’t matter.
So, I was a soldier, fit, trained, and intelligent, equipped and ready to fight a war.
Or? No, not even close. I got formal orders – relayed via hardcopy from Master Sergeant Ballard, through Master Corporal Hotez.
30 JAN 2088
In Re:Private Wolf
S/N 20690401142857
Pursuant to general orders of the Commander, subject soldier transferred effective immediately from the Basic Training division of Logistics Command, to the Advanced Training Division of Logistics Command, for purposes of Advanced Infantry Training as mandated by Infantry Command. Course date 9 Feb 2128
…
Hunh. So I was going to be an infantryman. That was okay with me, as I already knew that casualties tended to be higher in Infantry Command than any other command, with the constant low-intensity battles we were fighting around the globe. I wanted rank, and while I couldn’t kill off my superiors here like I could on the streets, they could always die by other means, opening up positions for me.
Then it hit me… I was no longer in Basic Training. “Well duh, James, you already said that.” Fuck you. It’s one thing to say it, it’s something else to realize it, to really know it.
I looked at Master Corporal Hotez who’d already turned away and was walking to the next room over, with a handful of similar sheets. “So Corporal Hotass, does this mean I’m no longer in your chain of command?”
She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to look maliciously at my smirk, and for a second, I thought I’d made a terrible, horrible, fatal mistake.
She stalked back over to me and hissed, “What did I tell you about calling me that!”
“As I recall, you’d made a rather dire threat that I kinda liked the sound of.”
She pushed me back into my room, kicking the door shut and dropping the papers, hands scrabbling at my uniform as her mouth sought mine. Her tongue was in my mouth and my own hands were sliding her top up her torso. By the time we’d backed up far enough that the edge of my bed tripped me, she’d ripped off my top, had ripped my t-shirt in half, and had my pants half undone. I’d done not quite as much damage to her uniform, because holy fuck, she was strong – she was 5’8 and built like a brick wall, and a small part of my brain suggested I’d done “a bad.”
Her blonde hair was short, but not so short I couldn’t get a handful of it. My fingers twisted and gripped, forcing her head backwards, and I attacked her savagely with my mouth, a hand forcing up her shirt to grab some of her amazingly huge tits to squeeze. She’d already shoved a hand inside my pants and was stroking my cock, an amazing feat when my pants and underwear were still on.
I shifted gears, still trying to cut her tonsils to shreds with my tongue, feeling my teeth mash against her lips, and shoved my hand down her pants to feel… no hair. That was…strange, but I liked it.
Curving a couple of fingers, I found out she was enjoying this as much if not more than I was, with the degree to which her black issued underwear was soaked. She yanked away and stripped off her top and sports bra, her eyes never leaving me. The look on her face did, I swear, look like she wanted to kill me.
She attacked me then, I mean REALLY attacked me… she threw a fist at my head and I barely dodged in time – then her hand opened and curled around my neck, pulling my head against her chest, holding me between those massive tits of hers while her knee came up and slammed repeatedly into my stomach. It hurt like hell, but I’d tensed my abs already so it didn’t quite knock the breath out of me.
I pulled my arms b
ack to guard my stomach, and she stepped back off of me – and the bed - but I could feel her undoing my belt and pulling my pants and underwear down. By the time I looked backup, she had a murderous look in her eye, but she’d taken off her boots, pants, and underwear… she was smoking hot.
I dropped my arms as I sat up, gawking at her, and then she lashed out with a brutal side-kick that slammed me back onto the bed, ears ringing. I could feel her crawl on top of me, the “upper mount” position we’d learned in hand to hand combat… and then she was ON me. No, you idiot, think about it.
She was riding me and punching me – if I covered my head, she hit my abs, if I covered my abs, she hit my head… It was the weirdest feeling in the world, and then she stopped punching, tensed and came on me. I looked at her and let down my guard for a moment, so she renewed her assault – but this time I could feel her squeezing my entire length.
It was about that time she got one solid shot high on my left cheek, and knocked me out cold.
I woke up an hour or so later, my own fluids pooled on my belly and smeared across my face, and she was gone. I had a blinking notification in my vision, my implant telling me I had a private message waiting for me. When I opened it, I saw it was… from her.
“I warned you. Don’t do it again, or you won’t wake up.” There was no signature, but the email headers made it clear that it was from her.
I felt aroused, but also ashamed at how easily she’d managed to play me like that.
Wilco, Master Corporal Hotez. I don’t think I’ll make that mistake ever again.
I picked up the single-sheet orders document that she’d handed me in the first place and read beyond the initial paragraph. It had a date and course reference – I was going to be doing Advanced Individual Training at another base, and indicated I was supposed to basically park my ass where I was, for the next 4 days, then ride military transport to the next base which was down in … Georgia? I had no idea where that was, but the orders specified a flight number and time, and I knew I had a few days to iron out the details.
I started thinking about Master Corporal Hotez again, too. She was smaller, not necessarily weaker, but damn fast. She’d taken less than 5 minutes to get me off – and knock me out. Sure, I was distracted, but she’d made it clear from my first day in basic that she was easily capable of knocking me out cold – not to mention, she did it without weapons, without anything other than just her bare hands. I needed to fix that; I was done being thrown around, knocked down, and knocked out by her, by Colonel Bradburry, by Pip… by anyone. Never again. I used my implant to see if it was possible to do advanced hand-to-hand combat – I had the basics of kicking and punching and blocking, but as had been clearly demonstrated to me, that was just not sufficient. I couldn’t find anything in the military’s databases of course offerings – and I wasn’t aware that such a thing existed in the civilian side. Yet, anyway.
I hit the enlisted mess to get some chow, already feeling the bruises growing all over my face – not to mention the black eye that Hotez (Never ever EVER Hotass!) hung on my face. I’d been ready to hit the tail end of breakfast when she’d shown up, and missed it entirely. Of course, I won’t say I didn’t still get something out of it, but … you know. I was hungry, and decided I wanted some lunch.
John, Private Smith, had been one of the other recruits from the streets. As I sat down at the table he and I – among others – always frequented as recruits, he asked me, “Damn Wolf, who fucked you up? You get in a fight?”
Smartass. “No, fuckhead. Ran into a brick wall a couple of times for fun. Yes, I got in a fight – someone decided they didn’t like me.” Well, she sure didn’t act like she liked me – despite fucking – and slapping – me stupid.
It actually hurt a bit to talk. Nothing quite so bad as that damned headache that was still a dull pain, even eight months after they rammed that damn implant into my skull.
“You get orders? Hotez dropped mine off earlier today. Infantry.”
Smith whistled. “Damn. Hella crazy CAS rates man. I’m Armor.” Yeah, I knew about the heavy casualty rates – but I also knew I was lucky, and also important, I knew I was GOOD. Those casualty rates might be high, but I didn’t plan on contributing to them. That mistake nearly cost me everything when I finally found myself in a position to risk it, but that’s a story for later.
As we sat filling out faces, others from our recruit class – mostly the kids who’d come from arkscrapers – filtered in. Despite us all passing the same training, they still had something of an attitude against “those riff raff from the streets.”
Oddly enough, listening to the conversation, most of them were going to Logistics, Intelligence, Aviation, and NavOps. Only a few were destined for Artillery, and only one other girl mentioned that she’d also been selected for Infantry, and one other guy was headed to Armor. I didn’t know that that was necessarily consistent across the rest of the training, but I do know that I saw no more than a couple dozen recruits from my entire basic training company (of 120 initial recruits, and only 4 failed out due to medical issues) on the plane with me on the way to Fort Mcclellan, Georgia. Turns out the AIT Armor school was there as well, so John and I at least knew someone else on the way down there. It apparently used to have a different name, but the general was a part of the ”racist secessionists” of the south, unlike General George Mcclellan, who led the US Army of the Potomac – and ran (unsuccessfully, apparently) against Abraham Lincoln, who freed the slaves. It didn’t all make sense to me, but hey, it’s only a name.
In-processing was neither as violent, nor as colorful as basic had been. We arrived at the air station, and walked to the headquarters where the orderly room was. That might sound simple, and for us at that point, it was – but carrying nearly my own body weight on my back and on my vest, not to mention my issued M34 (HA! I get Fury’s hot baby sister!), is no slouch move. I found myself thinking about the difference between a fighter in my Bronx empire, and myself as a soldier in the Army, now. Colonel Bradburry’s words echoed in my head – “…troops will roll over your guys like kicking a baby out of the way.” He was right, and now I knew it with absolute certainty. I sure hope my guys back there never try to do what I was going to push them into.
We checked in and were officially ‘rostered’ into our AIT courses – myself and several others from my recruit group into Infantry, James and others into Armored, and the others got other transport to another base not too far away for Intelligence and Logistics. I got another message as soon as in-processing was done, with details about where to report, when, equipment to bring, etc…
AIT was… interesting. We’d gotten past the basic training stage, and all of us promoted to Private, so we’d already shown that we had at least a little bit of military ability. The teachers weren’t quite as rough on us as Hotez and Ballard had been, but they still expected you learn the material, no exceptions, and be able to actually use it.
Basic Training was just that – basic. How to dress and handle personal hygiene was a bit strange, but it made sense when they explained the ‘why’ of how I should wash myself, shave, and get my hair cut.
Nuclear/Biological/Chemical warfare basics, marching, rappelling… all simple enough.
Basic Marksmanship (which I’d never heard about or considered previously – apparently, I was a “natural shot”), weapons training (where I got to shoot a bit, and freaked out the instructor since I’d already known the M34 intimately), and of course, the combat lifesaver stuff.
Advanced Individual Training was, as you’d probably expect, advanced. We did a lot of weapons operations and maintenance, but we went much further than we had previously. I learned not only how to fix minor things, but to also do depot-level weapons maintenance – swapping out whole components. I’d seen it somewhat, before, when Fathead started teaching my fighters in the Bronx empire how the weapons worked, but this was beyond even what he’d been teaching.
Vehicle Operation and Maintenance would
be a breeze, I thought – but then I found out there was a lot more to handling tanks, Medium Weight Armored Vehicles (MWAVs), Lightweight Armored Vehicles (LAVs), and Scout buggies. The scout buggies were similar in concept to the jeeps we’d restored, what now seemed like forever ago, but they had more flexibility – and were more complicated as well, as a result. I loved the tanks, and took to them like a fish to water; the idea of having that much armor wrapped around me just appealed to me, especially when coupled with the firepower that came with it. I mean, come on, the MWAVs were cool, and were designed for transport of infantry units to battle, but the Tanks? My god… It was like someone took Infantry, Artillery, and Armor, and put it all together.
Map reading and land navigation was interesting, since I’d done the urban version of that already – hell, I damn near could have taught the instructors a thing or two. Rural land nav was another story entirely, however, because things weren’t quite so well established in the middle of nowhere. You couldn’t get away with “go two blocks north” (well, you could do pace counts, which I learned in the course) when there were just trees and bushes in every direction.
Rage & Fury Page 12
