Arun scowled at Serge Rhenolotte. Zug to his friends. He was about to remonstrate that Xin Lee was not a fantasy, but a real woman, when he realized that just then, Xin was a little too real for comfort. She was sitting only a few meters away.
“You can do it,” said Zug. “Like I’ve done my whole life.”
If the stories were true — and one thing you learned early on Tranquility was never to trust what you were told — then when the first humans had been brought to Tranquility, they had come in a variety of shades and shapes, reflecting the regions of Earth that had originally offered up their children to the White Knights. But that had been many generations ago. United in common service to their unseen masters, and with the distinctions between nationalities reduced to misremembered fables, the Earth races had churned and averaged, to a norm of mid-brown skin and black hair. Except for the occasional individual, such as Zug.
“Say something,” Osman insisted.
“Shut up!” Arun hissed. “I’m thinking.”
Zug possessed by far the darkest skin color in his year, and that had made him stand out his entire life. He’d grown up being picked on and mocked for looking different, but he had never been cowed. He’d never been in with the popular crowd, but neither had Zug ever been isolated, never been singled out as a loser. Zug had even shaved his head bald to emphasize skin that was the color of the void.
If Zug could survive being different, Arun could too.
And so Arun put his trust in his friend and laughed. A brittle sound at first — obviously fake — he eased into the act and slowly the sound grew more natural. Soon, the crowd’s interest waned. It was working!
Just when Arun began to imagine his ordeal was over, Xin Lee limbered her toned body out of her seat and sauntered his way.
Arun stood his ground, but his smile cracked.
Osman whispered: “Whatever she says, keep grinning.”
Easy for you to say.
The girl who frequently turned his dreams feverish stopped in front of the little group of friends. She put her hands on her hips and gave Arun an appraising look.
“Well then, McEwan,” she said. No, not said: announced. The class G-1 cadet — one year older than Arun — was addressing everyone there. Everyone listened. “I hear that you’re an alien-faggot. Is that true?”
Arun felt his legs wobble. This was the first time that Xin had ever spoken to him in real life, and she had just invented a new term of derision. Just for his benefit. His heart sank. Speech was beyond him.
“Shame, really,” she said. “After seeing your attempt at an erotic vid, it seems like a waste of good equipment.”
Xin’s gaze met his and taunted, those lovely dark eyes set into her smooth face, with the snubby little nose that he adored.
His heart accelerated up his spinal column and crashed into his brain, preventing him from saying anything beyond a plaintive grunt.
Xin decided his audience was ended, and marched out of the hall, flanked by a pair of girlfriends. Her every step was accompanied by catcalls and wolf whistles. She loved it.
In a way, she had saved him. By taking so much of the room’s attention on herself, the excitement dissipated the moment she left the hall.
Arun fled to the nearest table, and hunkered down.
“Tough luck, pal,” said Zug. “Your reaction to the combat drug was unfortunate, but hardly the most extreme on record. Some cadets die, you know, the first time they take combat-meds under life-threatening conditions. It’s rotten luck, I know, but Xin was always a far from realistic proposition for you.”
Arun frowned at him. “Eh? Didn’t you just hear what she said?”
“Yes,” said Zug. “Apparently, you’re an alien-faggot.”
Osman leaned over. “I think, Zug, that our friend was referring to Xin’s second comment. Something about good equipment.”
“Your friend is bang on correct,” said Arun, feeling cheerful, “’I’m well in there.”
Osman snorted.
Zug scratched his bald pate, trying to make sense. “It’s hardly like she gave you her dorm code and invited you over to make icers with her.”
“Oh, I think that it was,” said Arun, slapping Zug on the shoulder.
Osman face-palmed.
“Combat drugs are still addling his brain,” Zug told Osman. “It’s the only possible explanation.”
“You’re just jealous,” said Arun, grinning.
Zug and Osman buried their heads in their hands and groaned.
Arun shrugged off his friends’ disbelief. Newly entered into class G-1, Xin had nearly two years to go until she either graduated as a Marine, or was cast out of the Corps.
Today she had spoken to him, and with a dose of optimism, he could stretch those words into a compliment. It wasn’t much to go on, but he had almost two years to win something more from her.
Arun relished a challenge.
He wasn’t a natural leader like Majanita, as brave as Osman, nor as dependable as Springer.
Didn’t need to be. Arun knew his strength: he never gave up.
One day, he’d win Xin Lee. Of that he was certain.
—— Chapter 04 ——
With evening inspection due in fifteen minutes, the atmosphere in Arun’s dorm began to chill with fear.
The cadets in Arun’s battalion had laughed at him mercilessly, but the story of the naked cadet had spread far beyond the 8th battalion… beyond even his regiment. The laughter had dried up in Arun’s hab-disk and the battalion chow halls. Detroit was the home base for two other tactical Marine regiments and one Marine assault regiment, all of whom were now hooting with derision at the 412th.
Arun had brought shame on his regiment, shame on their regimental instructors.
And one of those instructors would be conducting the evening inspection very soon.
“I know what we need,” said Arun, trying to raise the mood, “let’s list our top five fantasy rack buddies.”
The seven other cadets in the dorm groaned, even Cristina who gave an echo of disapproval from the head.
Arun was sitting at the dorm table with Springer and Majanita. He skidded his chair back to give him space to perform his best rendition of the Gallic shrug that Del-Marie had taught him. Del-Marie Sandure was no more French than Arun, but most people who’d survived this far into Marine training had adopted a personality weirdness or two. Everyone understood the need for a coping mechanism. If Del wanted to pretend he was French, his Delta Section mates were happy to indulge him.
“Oh, c’mon. Top fives are always fun,” Arun insisted. His grin faded. “Or were until you all lost your sense of fun. Anyway, it’ll give us something else to think about during inspection. I’ve got a feeling we might need distracting.”
Lying on his bunk – or rack as they were learning to call them now they were cadets — Del-Marie sighed. “Arun, you’re becoming tiresome.”
“Oh, am I?” said Arun cheerfully. “You’re only saying that because everyone already knows your list. Your favorite is Bernard. He’s your number 2, 3, 4, and 5 too.”
“His name is not Bur-nerd. It’s Berr-narr.” Del-Marie rolled his r’s in a way Arun had never managed to imitate.
Madge reached over the dorm table and placed a well-manicured hand over Arun’s. “Darling, Arun,” she said in her breathy voice that some called flirtatious, and others called dumblitted, “I don’t like to generalize but listing one’s top vulley-buddies is such a boy thing. And an obsession strongest in the least mature of your gender.”
Arun smiled, not minding the ribbing from Madge. Her vampish act had all but disappeared in the last few weeks, smothered under a heavy cloak of seriousness.
Springer snorted derisively, flashing her violet eyes at Arun — literally. Scattered through the Marine cadets were many unintended consequences of the genetic manipulations the Jotun scientists had engineered in their ancestors. The vibrant color of Springer’s eyes, and the ability to illuminate them, was on
e of the more obvious. And attractive.
Madge steamed on. “A more useful topic for discussion is whether we’re entering any teams in the Scendence competition this year.”
“You’re getting boring,” Springer told Arun, ignoring Madge. He was shocked to see real anger in her eyes. “All you ever want to do is invent excuses to spout off about that skangat girl. For frakk’s sake, why don’t you ask Xin if she wants you to prong her? Then she’ll shoot you down in a ball of plasma and–” Springer rolled her eyes “– we won’t have to listen to you prattle on about her ever again.”
An impish grin came to Brandt’s face. “Springer’s only saying that because she wants you in her rack all to herself.”
“Shut up, Brandt!” shouted everyone else in the room. He’d been assigned the section leader role in the tunnels, but his temporary rank vanished the moment the exercise ended.
Brandt seethed.
Cristina emerged from the head. “Did I miss something? What’s going on?”
Several pairs of eyes glanced at Brandt and rolled in their sockets.
“The question remains,” said Zug, ever the one to steer a conversation back on course, “how many Scendence teams are we entering?” He paused from cleaning the personal locker at the foot of his rack. “Alistair LaSalle will want to team up with Alice Belville. They’ll take Gunnery and Deception and pick the best players in Charlie Company for the other positions. That’ll probably include Hortez. Del-Marie we can trust to keep our secrets, but will be playing Gunnery in a team with Bernard. Am I correct, Del-Marie?”
Del nodded. “If I play this season, it won’t be with any of you.”
“Forget Alistair,” said Madge. “As for Hortez, if our temporary squad leader thinks he’s too good for the rest of us then let him play with Alistair. I don’t care what they do, I intend to play Gunnery in a Blue Squad team.” Madge’s tone was serious again now. Cadets from other units often used to underestimate Majanita as either a shallow beauty doll or a salacious siren. They were both acts, to be dropped whenever the matter at hand was serious. And Estella Majanita – not many who knew her dared to call her Madge to her face – took the game of Scendence very seriously indeed.
Madge gave Springer an expectant look.
“Me too,” said Springer reluctantly. “I’ll take Obedience. I know what you’re going to say, Zug, and you’re probably right, but what the hell? I enjoy playing, and I enjoy winning. Perhaps we’ll win some points for the battalion.”
“Please understand,” said Zug, “that I speak only for myself when I say that I shall not participate in Scendence this year. We’ve been in this hab-disk nearly three weeks. Three weeks since we ceased to be novices. Our every action now has the potential to win our battalion merit points–”
“Or demerits,” interrupted Del-Marie.
Arun’s gut churned. The fallout from the regimental humiliation in the tunnels had yet to settle, and if demerits were forthcoming he had scapegoat written all over him.
“Yes, my friend,” said Zug. “Or de-merits. Everything we do has the potential to bring our battalion down closer to the Cull Zone if we fail. And if we do well, we put a larger margin of safety away from the Cull. All I’m saying is that if we don’t think the time we put into Scendence training will pay off in merit points, then we should spend that time on something that will. The senior cadet companies seem eager to offer us G-2 noobs extra coaching. If they think that’s a good investment of their time it’s because we’re all part of 8th battalion, and helping us gain merit points keeps them away from the Cull just as much as it does ourselves.”
“And they’re a year or two ahead of us,” added Arun. “We should listen to what they’re telling us.”
“He’s right,” added Brandt who was hovering near the table. “I’ve already taken up every offer of coaching I can handle. I can’t do that if I’m also doing serious Scendence training.”
There was a moment’s tense silence. Arun almost felt sorry for Brandt. He might be a dumb veck, and the way he’d led the section in the tunnels had landed them all in the drent, but Brandt hadn’t volunteered to be a cadet corporal. Maybe, back in the days when there were human armies on Earth, he might have made a good officer one day. But there was no such thing as a human officer in the Corps, only NCOs. And Brandt just wasn’t right to be an NCO.
“Brandt and Zug share an opinion,” snapped Cristina, obviously an opinion she did not share. “That doesn’t make them right. I’ll be in the team too, if you’ll have me.”
If Brandt’s words had been met with a moment of hostility, Cristina’s brought out a silence that was altogether more tense.
Scendence was the hope, the passion, and the closest thing to freedom that would ever be experienced in the Corps. And not just the humans: other races played too on occasion.
While in crèche and then as novices, it had been possible – for some individuals, at least – to compete at Scendence purely for the thrill of doing so. Now that they were cadets, though, Scendence was a game played only to win. Not only were merit points a possibility, but the top 16 teams at the end of the season were granted immunity from the Cull. Cristina was not a good player. In any team she would be a liability. Winning immunity would be inconceivable.
“Of course we’ll have you, darling,” gushed Madge. “I’m playing Gunnery, of course, and Springer’ll take Obedience. What role do you want?”
“Save it for later,” said Brandt. “It’s 20:58. Inspection in two minutes.”
All eight cadets in the dorm scrambled to their positions at the foot of their bunks and stood to attention.
Although cadets had to be ready for inspection once in the morning, and again in the evening, on average each dorm was inspected about twice per week.
But after the company had been shot to pieces in the tunnels, and with images of Cadet Prong plastered all over Detroit, Arun’s wrenching gut told him they would be certain to get a visit tonight. And he bet it would be the toughest of them all who would come: Instructor Rekka.
When, earlier that day, Brandt had dispatched him alone into that narrow tunnel, Arun had been terrified. Isolated.
He felt worse now.
Springer caught his eye. Her anger had vanished, replaced by a smile of support.
At least I’ve one buddy I can always rely upon.
Then the door hissed open and Arun snapped his eyes front.
The inspection had begun.
—— Chapter 05 ——
The dorm for Blue Squad’s Delta Section was a narrow room with eight racks lined up against one wall. At the foot of each, a cadet stood at attention, awaiting the laser-sharp scrutiny of Instructor Rekka.
Arun had the sixth rack down. He kept his eyes front, but with four cadets already dealt with, he could sense Rekka advance to the fifth rack like an approaching storm front, her walking stick thumping aggressively on the deck like the sound of thunder.
Then came the worst part: the silence.
Like many of the instructors, Rekka was a former frontline Marine who had been too broken in combat to fight again, but too experienced to throw away.
The instructors who had trained them through novice school were in the process of handing over to the veterans who would command the cadets in battle after they had graduated as Marines. Although he would rather face an enemy division singlehanded than face an angry Rekka, Arun would miss the instructor’s wardrobe of prosthetic legs, her habit of whistling in her rare carefree moments, and those precious few moments when she awarded hard-won praise.
Rekka was a hard person to like, but wasn’t a sadistic bully, unlike some of the other instructors he’d endured. She was domineering because that was how instructors needed to be, but there was just one thing that made her boil with rage: when she decided the novices in her charge were abusing their precious gift of youth and health.
This evening, Rekka was beyond angry. The madder she got, the quieter and slower she talked. The instruc
tor’s words were barely a whisper.
Rekka had found fault with every cadet in the room. Del-Marie’s bed covers had been creased. Madge’s were folded at the wrong angle, and as for her long, blonde hair, that was a disgrace that needed to be shaved off. Zug had to do fifty one-armed press ups for not standing straight, and Springer a hundred for being caught glancing Arun’s way.
Now it was Osman Koraltan’s turn.
As Rekka built up to Osman’s humiliation, Arun told himself endlessly not to rise to her bait when her attention turned to him. Just suck it up, McEwan.
“What is this… this rag?” Rekka didn’t need to raise her voice. Everyone heard her disdain ringing loud and clear.
“It’s a flag, ma’am,” said Osman.
There was a faint swish, and Arun could picture Osman’s flag picked up on the end of her walking stick and swirled around.
“A flag? Is this the regimental flag, cadet?”
“Ma’am. No, ma’am.”
“Are you planning an insurrection, cadet?”
“Ma’am. No, ma’am. I would kill a traitor on sight, ma’am.”
“Then what is the point of this article?”
“It’s… the country I think I might have come from, ma’am.”
“You think? The country you come from? On Earth. That is nova-frakking amazing. I’d always put you down as an uninspiring irrelevance, Koraltan. Someone I would forget the instant I’d handed you on to your veteran. Only a few days before I get to shake your hand and say good luck and good riddance, with a tear in my eye – you finally surprise me. I had no idea that you were born on Earth, Cadet Koraltan.”
Osman kept silent, but Rekka wasn’t going to let him off so easily. “Well, Koraltan? Did I get that wrong? Are you Earth-born?”
“Ma’am. No, ma’am. I meant the country I think my ancestors came from.”
Rekka snorted. “You credulous imbecile. The very notion of nationality is a fantasy fit only for veck-heads. Do you really think there is any way you can trace your ancestry back to a region of Earth? Let me tell you what really happened. Your grandfather picked an exotic name and backstory out of a history book, and used it to impress your grandmother. You, Osman Koraltan, are one of the disastrous unintended consequences of that unfortunate seduction. What country is this rag meant to represent anyway?”
Marine Cadet (The Human Legion Book 1) Page 4
