Matias used his arm to wipe away sticky cryo slime from his face and looked at Arun with something approaching alertness.
Arun wore his warmest smile. “Welcome aboard Beowulf, Marine.”
“¿Dónde estoy?” groaned Matias.
What the hell is he saying?
The thawed man blinked comically and seemed to notice for the first time the wall of expectant faces, human faces all of them, and in uniforms that told him he had not been revived by the Human Marine Corps.
Arun gave him time. He knew from experience that cryo thawing could be a brutal process.
Matias turned back to Arun and frowned. “¿Vosotros quiénes sois?”
“You’re safe,” said Arun, trying to enunciate clearly. “Among friends. Do you understand how to speak Human?”
“Ay, joder, estos hablan inglés. ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto?”
Arun glanced across at the others, hoping they could make sense, but saw only shrugs and frowns. Umarov was there, on the basis that he was one of the earliest born. Not even he understood. This ancient soldier had to be speaking a distant relative of the Human tongue. Shit, Arun hadn’t reckoned on having to program translator systems. This revival of the hidden Antilles Legion was supposed to be a triumph.
He tried one more time: “Do… you… understand… Human… words?”
The ancient soldier rolled his eyes. “Of… course… I… understand… English… words.” He shrugged. “Ni que pudiera elegir. What I don’t understand is who you are, and why you have revived me, ah… sir? Sir? Are you really an officer? A human officer?”
“That’s right, Marine. I’m an officer. Major McEwan. There’s a lot that’s changed. Others in your unit are still in cryo. We think they’re safe, but to make sure we could wake them safely we picked just one for a trial run. You’re first to be revived. Your name and rank, if you please.”
“Corporal Matias, sir. Number 142 335 43. Of 117th Field Battalion.”
“Field? You’ve combat experience?” asked Xin.
“Two tours, sir,” he replied. His jaw dropped slightly and he added in an awed whisper: “Preciosa giganta…”
“It’s…” started Xin, but stopped herself. Protocol for addressing female officers was a topic for another day. “Never mind,” she said. “Good for you.”
“How many years have I been asleep?” Matias asked.
“Records were lost,” said Indiya. “We don’t know. Tell us, in what year did you enter cryo?”
“I don’t know either… sir.” Indiya sparked wonder in Matias’ eyes. Indiya and the other ship’s crew must seem like graceful elves. “I was born in Year 91. I estimate I was last frozen in Year… 140? Maybe 150? No one told us the year, and it was impossible to keep track. We woke up. Fought. Went back under. Fought again. Are we about to deploy?”
“No,” Arun replied.
“You said Year 91,” said Umarov. “Do you mean Crop 91?”
“No, he doesn’t,” said Arun. “Pedro’s been explaining our history to me. By ‘Year 91’, Corporal Matias means 91 years since the first human children were woken from sleep.”
“The first children?” said Xin. “You mean the Vancouver Accord kids?”
To feel in such close proximity to their ancestors of Earth shocked even Arun, and it was Nhlappo who spoke next: “You must have been one of the earliest generations of Human Marines, Corporal Matias.”
“I don’t know about that, sir. My great-grandfather was born on Earth. I know that much. A town called Logroño in a region called España.”
“We shared your adopted home planet,” said Nhlappo, “but centuries after you. The base where you were trained is now in ruins. Records lost with it. As a rough estimate, you were born around 2190AD. The year is now 2568AD.”
Matias took a moment to take that in. Arun couldn’t blame him. “Thank you, sir. What is my new unit?”
“Alpha Company, 1st battalion, 1st Void Marine Regiment.” Arun spread his hands. “Welcome to the Human Legion, Corporal.”
“Thank you, sir. We will not disappoint. The poisoned tips of my unit’s blades will carve fear into the hearts of our enemies… after we have cut them, still beating, from their bodies.” Matias gave a wolfish grin, as if taking sensual pleasure by imagining holding his enemies’ dismembered body parts.
Now that’s interesting, thought Arun. Umarov’s vintage of Marines had an affinity with close quarter weapons. He appraised Matias with uplifted respect, and a touch of unease.
“Sir, am I permitted to ask a question?” asked the corporal.
“Go ahead,” replied Arun.
The blood lust ebbed from Matias’ face, leaving only a frown. “What is a Marine?”
— Preceding Events —
This, the third book in The Annals of the Human Legion is self-contained, but readers may benefit from a reminder of the event that led to the First Tranquility Campaign.
In the year, 2565AD, Arun McEwan is a 17-year-old freshman cadet raised on Tranquility, a depot planet of the Human Marine Corps, the military organization set up from a portion of the million human children given to the White Knights five centuries earlier in the Vancouver Accords. In this period, human military personnel are kept ignorant, separated, and specialized, a policy enthusiastically followed by the Jotuns, at least officially. These six-legged aliens act as the Marine Corps officers, but are slaves of the White Knights just as much as the humans.
Conspiracies abound in Tranquility’s two depots: Detroit and Beta City. The potential of two cadets, Arun McEwan and Lee Xin, to become pivotal historical figures is seen by the Night Hummers (an allied race who can see into the future). One shadowy faction pins their hopes on these adolescent humans as a means to win freedom from the White Knights. With extreme caution, they nurture and protect the valuable humans, extending their conspiracy to include the nest of social insectoids called Trogs, who live underneath Detroit. Arun McEwan befriends a Trog conspirator whom McEwan names Pedro.
While demoted to the lowest human status — that of the Aux — McEwan uncovers an operation to smuggle military supplies out of Detroit to arm an uprising by a race of miners and technologists: the Hardits. Chief Aux torturer is Tawfiq Woomer-Calix, but McEwan survives her cruel treatment and organizes an act of defiance by the human Aux slaves, although his comrade, Hortez, is left behind, presumed dead.
Fearing their wider conspiracy is about to be uncovered, the Hardits launch their uprising early, to the disgust of their human and Jotun co-conspirators. The plan had been for these rebels to act together to seize the entire star system as an opening act in a wider civil war starting up across the White knight Empire.
The Hardit rebellion is narrowly defeated. McEwan takes part in a military operation on the moon, Antilles, where he is badly wounded, but still manages to save the life of his cadet friend, Tremayne (nicknamed Springer). Tremayne, however, loses a leg and suffers disfiguring burns. The Jotun officer in turn saves McEwan, and this draws the attention of many eyes, not least the remaining rebels still lying hidden as they await the beginning of the civil war.
The pre-cog Night Hummers also have their agenda. They manipulate McEwan into swearing a solemn oath to protect their species and win their freedom from the White Knights, no matter what the cost.
The Tranquility system prepares for war. Marines frozen for decades are thawed, ready to deploy. McEwan and his fellow cadets are hastily reclassified as full Marines and shipped off to the Muryani frontier.
In the last hours before embarking for the troop ships, McEwan and Lee make love in the Antilles base. They reveal to each other that they are both part of the conspiracy to win freedom from the White Knights.
Sister ships Beowulf and Themistocles transport their Marine units to the frontier — a journey of many years. Only six months into the journey they chance across a vessel that they disable and board. The vessel’s position, its crew of vintage Marine-like humans, and the manner in which it soon explodes
are all unexplained mysteries.
Another mystery, spotted by Beowulf spacer, Indiya, is that McEwan is under secret observation, and that the Marines are being drugged into compliance. It is the rebel faction in the civil war who are observing McEwan, hoping he will betray the other members of his group. Unwittingly, McEwan does so. His Jotun contact, human company commander, loyal officers, even Indiya’s uncle — anyone seen as a potential threat — are killed by the mutineers.
With the drugged Marines obeying the order to mutiny, both ships are taken over and turned around to return to Tranquility where they will join the fight to seize the system on behalf of the rebel faction in the civil war.
McEwan and Tremayne are rescued by an alliance between Indiya and her fellow ‘freaks’ — experimental enhanced humans — and the Reserve Captain, an ancient Jotun Navy officer and scientist who has played a role for many years in the development of experimental human forms, an unwitting member of one of the deep conspiracies.
Aided by Xin Lee on the Themistocles, McEwan’s faction retakes Beowulf but the plan goes badly wrong. Themistocles is destroyed. Nearly all the Marines and crew on Beowulf also perish.
The survivors are divided and despondent. It is the one surviving Jotun officer, the Reserve Captain, who uses her authority to rally the human stragglers and appoint a leader: Major Arun McEwan.
Desperate for a purpose, the humans cheer McEwan when he announces they will return to Tranquility and retake their home, not as slaves of the White Knights, but as members of the Human Legion.
But as Beowulf slips back into Tranquility system, Arun’s authority, and the support for the Human Legion, wears thin.
The closer they get to their homeworld, the more unlikely seems the idea of retaking it with only a handful of Marines. If the Human Legion fails in its first campaign, the dreams of freedom will die too…
Return to the start of the book...
Human Legion
— INFOPEDIA —
Category: Military Terminology
— Early Legion Ranks
For centuries our predecessors in the Human Marine Corps had their unit structures and ranks determined by Jotun officers according to local needs, officer whims, and planned experimentation. With the creation of the Human Legion came the opportunity to set new human ranks and structures. The initial rank structures were swiftly overtaken by the actual usage of Marine and Navy personnel, and then complicated further as the Legion grew to absorb new service roles and specialisms, such as: Ground Army, Void Engineers, Cyber War, Artillery, Irregulars, Air Force, Pacification, Diplomacy, Logistics, and many others. Rank and unit structure became even more convoluted when the Legion expanded to include biologically non-human units.
So it proved a good decision right from the beginning of the Legion to follow an earlier Earth pattern of numbering ranks in order of seniority, and further splitting into enlisted and officer ranks, even though the concepts of enlistment, commissioning, and conscription had no practical meaning in the early decades of the Legion. Even when units with mutually incomprehensible rank names were forced to merge, this rank numbering allowed commanders to quickly make sense of seniority.
Here are the very first Legion rank lists. In the First Tranquility Campaign, several of these ranks and their roles were theoretical, with no one actually in those posts. There were no warrant officer ranks at this time.
SERVICE: VOID MARINE
E1: Marine — Sometimes called ‘carabiniers’ after principle weapon, the SA-71 assault carbine.
E2: Lance Corporal — Typically would lead a fire team or specialist small unit, such as a gun crew.
E3: Corporal — Typically would lead a fire team or specialist small unit, such as a gun crew.
E4: Lance Sergeant — Typically would lead a section or specialist small unit, such as a gun crew.
E5: Sergeant — Typically would be the senior NCO in a squad or taskforce.
E6: Senior Sergeant
E7: Master Sergeant
E8: Sergeant Major
O1: Ensign/ 2nd Lieutenant — The initial rank name for the most junior Marine officer rank was ‘Ensign’, as it had been with the Human Marine Corps. However, this proved deeply unpopular because the rank was associated with the notorious traitor, Marine Ensign Fraser McEwan. After a brief, informal use of ‘Subaltern’, the Legion had settled on ‘2nd Lieutenant’ by the time of the First Tranquility Campaign. Other services, notably the Navy, continue to use ‘Ensign’ as the O1 rank name.
O2: Lieutenant
O3: Captain
O4: Major — Officer ranks above O4 were not added until later. This caused some friction in the First Tranquility Campaign because the Marine O4-ranked Major McEwan was in overall command of the Legion, despite the presence of Navy O5-ranked Captain Indiya.
SERVICE: VOID NAVY
E1: Spacer — Void Navy personnel qualified as flight crew take the prefix ‘flying’. For example, ‘Flying Petty Officer’. The Atmospheric Air Force take the same approach but use the prefix ‘flight’, as in ‘Flight Sergeant’.
E2: Leading Spacer — Navy ranks are often officially referred to along with their specialism. For example: ‘Spacer – damage control’. Or ‘Leading Spacer – signals’. The same is true unofficially, of course. Naval signals specialists would be more likely in everyday shipboard life to be called ‘bunting tossers’, though not always to their face.
E3: Petty Officer
E4: Chief Petty Officer — More senior enlisted ranks were added later.
O1: Ensign
O2: Lieutenant
O3: Lieutenant Commander
O4: Commander
O5: Captain — Ranks above O5 were added later.
The rank of Reserve Captain was considered an honorary rank assigned to a unique Jotun individual.
Different services, and even units within those services, have always had an insatiable tendency to foster a sense of distinctiveness. These can manifest as subtle differences in uniform insignia, saluting, protocol in addressing superiors, rituals of remembrance, and of course, rank naming. That distinctiveness helps to build the core belief that your unit is truly the best. A common practice is to reach back in time to Earth history and re-invent ancient rituals and terminology and apply them to the modern era.
For example, the official name of the E0 rank for Army units is ‘Rifleman’ [used equally for both genders]. However, some army units insist on using archaic terms such as ‘Private’, ‘Fusilier’, or ‘Infantryman’. In addition, ‘Rifleman’ and ‘Fusilier’ are sometimes used to refer to all personnel in a unit, even officers (although at other times, junior enlisted ranks only), much as ‘Marine’ or ‘Carabinier’ is used in this way by Void Marines.
Some other common formal and informal terms for junior enlisted ranks by service:
Engineer: Digger, Sapper
Diplomacy: Speaker, Schmooze.
Supply/ Logistics: Trucker, Wagoneer
Artillery: Gunner, Bombardier
Signals: Signaler, Flag waver or bunting tosser (after an ancient form of visual communication), Tapper (after the encoding tool used in ancient electromagnetic telegraphy)
A NOTE ON GENDER IN RANK NAMING
The Human language is a senseless wonder, with such an ability to absorb loan words that alien linguists regard Human speech as a pigeon trading language. The use of gender in addressing service personnel is one example of haphazard convention that has grown up with little logic or consistency.
Several ranks take on a male form, such as Rifleman, but are applied indiscriminately to both male and female, and indeed, non-human personnel. Some say this is a tradition from a past when infantry soldiers were almost always male. Probably the ‘man’ ending has endured because it is a single syllable.
But there are other conventions, equally illogical, that stem from more recent tradition. For many centuries, human combat personnel were led by Jotun officers, and senior Jotuns were predominately female. A
s a result when referring to officers in general, rather than to a specific individual with a known gender, they are always referred to as ‘she’. For example, an officer training guide might have the sentence: ‘For an officer to be effective, she must understand and earn the respect of her senior NCOs.’
A male officer would not find this strange in the slightest, any more than a female E0 infantry soldier would think twice about referring to herself as a rifleman. If questioned on this point, both would readily point to many examples of far more convoluted military logic.
Another gender issue – the protocol for addressing superior female officers – is also inconsistent. Marine and Atmospheric Air Force units tend use the address “ma’am”, while Navy and Army use “sir”.
This infopedia section was extracted from humanlegion.com
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HUMAN EMPIRE
The fourth book in the Annals of the Human Legion. Coming fall 2015…
If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving an online review at Amazon or elsewhere. Even if it’s only a line or two, it would help me enormously and I would be very grateful.
Thank you.
Tim
Table of Contents
— Recon Team —
— Preface —
— Order of Battle —
— PART I — — Chapter 01 —
— Chapter 02 —
— Chapter 03 —
— Chapter 04 —
— Chapter 05 —
Renegade Legion (The Human Legion Book 3) Page 33
