She choked down food to keep her strength up, and started to drink a bottle of liquid loaded with protein and muscle-building nanos. These were issued to all the women and some of the smaller men. The physical standards of the FMF were very high and were not adjusted for gender or disability as the UNPF's were. There were few women recruits, she noted, only about fifteen percent, and most of them on the tall and rangy side, and even then they needed the extra muscle builders to keep up with the men. It had seemed degrading, but Carpender's quick, pointed comment about the difference between men's and women's Olympic records drove the point home. Men average bigger and stronger than women, and the FMF took only the best physical specimens. Women and small men started with a physical disadvantage and had to work that much harder to meet the standards.
The glop was slimy and cold and she slurped it with distaste. Finishing, she dismally followed the others. As they were marched out to one of the many huge open fields, she pondered the next three years, drinking protein goo and working out at the gym daily to meet standards. It kept her morose as she stood in formation and waited. The usual confusing orders did little to shift her thoughts.
"Today, we begin unarmed combat training," Carpender said in his near-bellow. Kendra and her platoon mates stared across the grass at a more advanced class. They had disconcerting leers and grimaces on their faces. She shifted imperceptibly and uncomfortably. She was standing in what was called "horse riding stance," legs wide, body squatting low, until her thighs and calves burned with exertion. In seconds, Carpender was in front of her. "What's the matter, Pacelli? Too hot for you?"
"Weather is fine today, sir!" she shouted back. If "fine" was identified as somewhere north of 30 degrees, calm and dry at 3.5 divs, Io still with half the morning to rise and get hotter. The weather here in the Dragontooth Mountains was bizarre, frigid one day, scorching the next. The thinner atmosphere probably had something to do with it, but understanding it didn't make it enjoyable. Her clothes had dried from the morning run through a stream and the "confidence" course and were itching. Her breakfast was a greasy weight in her stomach.
Carpender turned and continued, "You will learn how to strike with hands and feet, how to grapple, how to avoid blows.
"Fingers locked behind your heads. Tense your abdominal muscles. Harder." Kendra stiffened as he ordered. "This is the basic position from which you will learn the first lesson today and every day.
"That lesson is how to take blows. Platoon two-seven-one-three, advance and strike."
With whoops and cheers, the other class charged them. One short kid who'd had his eye on Kendra the entire time closed and drew back. He punched her hard in the midriff.
The air wooshed out of her and she bent double. His second blow landed his knuckles in her ribs, the third squashed her right breast. Three more blows buffeted her shoulder, her jaw and her temple. As he retreated, she stood, fuming, stinging and gasping for breath. That was uncalled for and she intended to take it back with interest.
Then she recovered and steadied herself. It wasn't the kid's fault; he was just taking orders. Perhaps a bit too zealously, but anger wouldn't help the situation. Carpender's voice interrupted her thoughts.
"Do you feel that? Do you? Good! Controlled anger can be a useful tool. Uncontrolled anger will get you killed. So let us learn control. Attack again!"
Twice more she got thumped by upper students. The minor bruises on her face stung, but the blows to the guts and ribs were definitely debilitating. Just as she thought this, Carpender said, "Body blows cause injury. Face wounds are ugly and can be a psychological advantage, but body blows will take them out. Remember that." She made note of that. That phrase was hint they would see it on a test.
The first week was spent as a target for upper students' pent-up resentfulness. They began learning to block the second day and had great incentive to learn to block well. She learned to block inside or outside with either hand, then her legs and gradually, to twist her body around the blows without losing her balance.
They added punches to their daily drill, then kicks. Sweeps, parries, counters, grapples, throws, headbutts and gymnastic contortions that bent an opponent's attack back on himself. They practiced with restrictions: hands only, feet only, blindfolded, shackled, doused with incapacitating agents, then combinations thereof. The drills increased her respect for Rob's and Marta's skill. She was beginning to realize how tremendously learned they were.
When it came their time to initiate recruits, Kendra had no trouble doing so. They needed incentive to learn and it was her duty to do it well. She hit them hard and reliably. The murderous glares in response only made her smile. She'd pulled her punches enough to avoid actual injury, but her victims looked at her with hatred.
Four weeks in, they began adding weapons. So-called "unarmed" combat made use of everything in the soldier's inventory except projectiles, from boots, sticks, entrenching tools and wire, to climbing spikes, helmets and even the rifle as a club. The simulators and dummies were revolting. Blood splashed, jaws and limbs separated, guts spilled and horrible screams brought home just how deadly a human can be when properly trained. More important than the physical skills, Kendra learned, was that it encouraged a willingness to engage the enemy and an attitude of capability. It required closing with an opponent and getting hurt and in that regard, she agreed it made for better troops than those who trained in sterile rooms with electronic aids. She slept poorly, bothered by the violence involved, but realized that it could be necessary to save her life. The sparring with dummy weapons was painful in blows taken and she could mark her progress in bruises from fresh bloodred to stale yellow. She had a tooth regenerated after one vigorous bout with a man twice her mass, all muscle. The lesson she learned from that was to never try to outbrute a larger, stronger opponent. Stealth and careful grappling were the tools of the small against the large, sheer force only for use against a smaller opponent.
They spent time on the weapons range every day, with their rifle/grenade launcher combination weapons and the school's machineguns, mortars, rockets and other ranged weapons. They practiced stripping and rebuilding weapons in the dark, while restrained and even behind their backs. She learned to separate actual components from bogus parts tossed in to confuse her and even to separate parts from unnamed weapons out, and assemble all the pieces into their appropriate forms. She could identify a weapon, strip it, clean it, assemble it, shoot it and clear malfunctions, whether it was Freeholder, UN, Ramadanian, Caledonian or from one of the smaller colonies.
The M-5 Weapon, Personal, Rifle/Grenade Launcher Combination, was a nasty piece of hardware. At five kilos plus, it wasn't very light, but it did everything. It fed the rifle from a solid clip of fifty rounds of ammunition, breaking off individual rounds at stressed seams. The cartridge was consumed in use for excellent thermal efficiency, leaving no empty case. It was suppressed to a loud coughing noise and had a two-stage trigger. Squeezing the trigger changed it to fire single shots, gripping the trigger back fired the weapon automatically. The grenade launcher fed from its own fifteen-round clip and the charges were programmable for proximity, impact, delay or delay-on-impact fusing. The optical sight could see in infrared, low light, adjust for different gravity and instantaneous wind conditions and had a graduated reticle for range. The construction was solid and easy to maintain. The fit and finish was flawless to Kendra's eyes. She knew good machine work when she saw it.
They trained with the heavier support weapons, vehicles and comm gear. Everyone was given at least a passing familiarity with every ground combat weapon and most vehicle- and aircraft-mounted support weapons. The files of the training manual's text were in the tens of megabytes. She hadn't realized there was that much involved with basic military training.
Military training indeed. She now knew how woefully inadequate UN training was. The UN forces trained to oppress unarmed insurgents and civilians. The Freehold forces trained to fight any enemy, known or not, no matter how well ar
med. She was surprised when an alert was called on base and the instructors armed them with live ammunition, placed them in positions, then prepared themselves to engage an intruder. It was merely an exercise and over in segs, but they treated every one as if it were real, every time.
Orienteering, battlefield first aid, field sanitation, nutrition, military law and the laws of war, dealing with prisoners, riot control, firefighting, reconnaissance for unexploded ordnance, building emplacements and fighting positions, laying traps and explosives, more shooting—one hundred rounds a day, every day—swimming, climbing. The list went on. They rose with Io, started at "can," ate field rations, worked through twilight and stopped at "can't."
They had lessons in "space physics," the workings of the human body when away from gravity, the oxygen cycle and respiration and all the other text details of survival in space. Carpender and the others hammered into them that any mistakes in this block of instruction would cause them to wind up dead. They paid strict attention. Ship profiles and internal maps were provided for the twelve hull types and twenty-four variants currently in use in the Freehold, and various foreign military vessels they would be likely to encounter. Daily quizzes and drills were thrown at them and Kendra struggled to absorb the reams of data. She fell asleep at night to a mantra of "fleet carrier, cruiser, destroyer, stealth cruiser, gunboat, assault boat, factory ship, logistics ship, fighter, ELINT boat, missile frigate, rescue cutter, shuttle, ASP, ASP carrier, drop pod, satellite boat, fuel boat, yard boat, mine boat, intercept boat, cargo boat, jump point station, orbital intercept station, command and control station . . ."
The morning of the fifty-first day, they lined up to board a shuttle. Kendra had assumed they'd go to the starport for space training, but there was a strip at the base. They did a rough-field launch and were bound for orbit. The gees pressed them back into their cushions as the sky changed from brilliant blue to purple, then to black.
They would be in microgravity for nine days, with no breaks. As soon as they docked, they were rushed into the training ship, a cruiser. They were crammed into wartime troop quarters, six people bunked in a small cube, with three shifts on rotation. Their meager gear was stowed and they were immediately ordered to suit up for EVA.
There was a knot of total confusion at the airlock. Few of them had spaced, fewer been exposed to microgravity for any length of time. Some were sick. Kendra was thankful to not be bothered by it. Once outside, they snapped long tethers to the side of the ship and flopped around like fish, attempting to learn how to control their movements. The instructors let them play to acclimate for half a div, then shoved them into a formation and showed them the basics. They stayed out for another two divs, rehearsing basic maneuvers, eating and drinking from their helmet rations and getting exhausted.
Kendra would never have thought of microgravity as tiring, but it required constant attention to every muscle in the body, with no gravity to reference to. She swam in afterward feeling somewhat competent and decided she'd shower and sleep as soon as possible. She had a slight headache from excess blood flow to the brain and reminded herself to drink, even though she didn't feel thirsty.
No luck getting a shower. They stowed their gear after performing field maintenance on them, then ate a cold snack. They were given antiseptic wipes to help kill surface bacteria and wipe away grime, but no showers were available to them.
They rose early and were back outside practicing small arms in vacuum. They worked with basic shipboard repair gear, started learning first aid for vacuum, rescue procedures and survival. They spent all day practicing again. Suit maintenance again. No shower, again.
Day three, they began learning "boarder repel." She thought it most unlikely that anyone would actually board a modern ship, rather than just blasting it to shreds, but she learned what they taught her. Unarmed combat was very different with no gravity, requiring awareness of the surroundings to use as leverage. Weapons use called for pinpoint accuracy and the necessity of a suit and helmet, which made aiming awkward, despite the vid sights attached to the weapons. There was a minor casualty as someone misaimed and one kid screamed into his mike. The instructors cut away a section of his skintight suit, slapped a bandage over the wound and rushed him to the infirmary. He was back the next day, looking bedraggled and doped on painkillers, but working earnestly.
They started practice operations, swarming through and over the vessel, responding to an "attack" by instructors. They lost. They attacked the instructors. They lost again. They had no time to rest, but went straight to shipboard basic skills training after each drill. Some of them would be assigned shipboard duty immediately, the rest would almost certainly wind up in a habitat at some point. "As important as ground infantry tactics," the instructors insisted and ran them through more drills. Kendra got a quick shower on the fifth day. She was assigned to suit repair and was last in, so she was alone for four whole segs. Unbelievable luxury!
The sixtieth training day, they stayed aboard at tasks until dinnertime, when they were herded back into the shuttle as an abandon ship exercise and dropped to the surface. Trucks met them as the pods landed, rolled them across the base and delivered them back to their barracks, which had been kept manicured by lower recruits. They gratefully took cold showers and dropped back into their bunks, only to be awakened for a late-night exercise.
That morning, survival training, groundside. Very early, short of sleep, groggy. A heavy transport lifter, a VC-6 Bison, waited on the field. They boarded, along with three recruits recycled from failed exams, strapped in and were whisked north to the tundra of the Hinterlands district. Howling wind and snow awaited them and they clung together for three long days in tiny shelters, two people per for body heat. They built windbreaks of snow reinforced with tough grass, tried with little success to light fires and dug bugs, moss and small rodent analogs out of the matted surface. Kendra felt queasy at the thought of eating any of it, but did so. There was nothing else provided and the cold burned calories at an alarming rate.
The lifter returned, they boarded and were dropped on rafts into the East Sea, right at the iceberg line. They scavenged water from bergs at the instructor's direction, choosing the older and glacial ice that was low in salt, and managed to snag a few slimy fish to eat, raw. The moss from the tundra hit them then, causing screaming diarrhea. The little water they had went to prevent dehydration. Teeth chattering behind cracked lips, Kendra swore under her breath, keeping herself going with thoughts of what she'd like to do to the instructors, who had a heated, roofed raft-shelter to work from. The students weren't allowed within five hundred meters of it.
They gratefully scrambled aboard the vertol again two days later and flew southwest across the continent. They landed again, at 25 degrees latitude, in the middle of the Saltpan Desert. The temperature was over 35 degrees and the wind was their enemy once more. After the rafts, most of them were barely able to walk. They scavenged bitter alkali water from cacti and scrub in their solar stills, wrapped cloth around their faces to minimize the dust, and munched that dust with the meager rations they were issued, supplemented by a few more rodents dried in the scorching heat or cooked on stones that were hot enough to fry. They huddled in the shade of a few rocks and dozed fitfully in the heat.
Once again they were lifted and dragged farther south. Trucks met them at a rough forward base and drove them into the deep jungle. It was fascinating; a riot of green, yellow and orange hues, with multiple canopies and thick growth. Water was readily available, of course, bitter and slimy after decontamination with nanos, and she had no trouble shooting a bird-analog for food. The diarrhea persisted, but at least one could wash in a warm jungle. Biting flies were Freehold pests, not Terran, but the chemistry wasn't precisely compatible. Every bite raised a huge, hard welt that would sting for days.
Once trucked back aboard the lifters after that ordeal, the instructors handed out mugs of hot stew, chocolate and candy. Kendra hadn't thought she could be so hungry. She wolfed dow
n everything offered, then was airsick, as were quite a few others. She wondered if the sadistic bastards planned that, too.
Then they underwent prisoner training, being stripped and searched, herded into cages, screamed at and prodded in a fashion that made their treatment so far seem positively pedestrian. They were blindfolded with stifling hoods for three days, denied food and given little water. They each had a code word the cadre tried to force them to reveal, with the promise of dire consequences if they did. No permanently injurious tactics were allowed, but they were exercised to collapse, forced to sleep on cold, damp floors with no blankets and glaring lights overhead, then woken before they could properly rest. The second day of it, Kendra was made to hold two buckets of sand at arm's length, muscles screaming, being rewarded with a stinging riot prod when her arms slipped. She'd heard rumors of the version of this used by Special Warfare troops, and shuddered. It could be worse, and that terrified her into dealing with it. She gritted her teeth, swore silently and stood it out.
Mercifully, the showers at the barracks were warm when they returned. They were allowed to sleep an extra half div the next morning, also. Once awake, they were told to pack their gear for their final exam. Eight days to go, then two days of processing. It was a tantalizing promise.
Kendra could tell a VC-6 by the sound of its engines, now. They were hauled back past the woods and landed in open, bumpy, rolling scrub. She was handed a compass and a map with destinations marked.
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