Osman folded his arms. “You’ll have to wait,” he said. “Springer’s in there.”
Arun shrugged. “So?”
“So you wait till she’s dressed. The tactical order chart says you’re a member of our squad, but you aren’t part of our team. You’ll need to give our women their privacy.”
“Your women? You’re crazy, Osman. What, you think you own Springer? That she’s stripping off for your pleasure? She’s just getting clean, man. Stop being such a… chump.”
“Yeah, I’m with Bryant’s blue-eyed boy,” said a voice from behind: Lance Corporal Yoshioka from Gold Squad. She threw her gym clothes in the bin. “I don’t care about your lovers’ tiff. Stupid Blue Squad guffoons. I do care about whether I stink. Get out the frakking way!”
Osman stepped aside.
Yoshioka strode into the shower tunnel, giving Osman a shove for good measure on her way in. She still blamed Blue Squad for letting the combat bots shoot her from behind in that frakked-up boarding exercise on Fort Douaumont.
Arun dove for the gap she had opened between Zug and Osman, but they were waiting for him. Osman pushed him back so sharply that Arun slipped on the wet floor and fell onto his backside.
“It would be best for you,” said Zug, “that you make an effort to be polite, whether or not you believe our request for privacy is justified.”
Arun felt the anger boil over inside him. Anger directed at Zug. It was Osman who’d pushed him, but Osman had always lived life to binary extremes. You were his mortal enemy or greatest friend, sometimes both on the same day. Back before he became a cadet, any unresolved disagreements would torment Osman such that he couldn’t sleep, but the next day, Osman would shrug and forget whatever had troubled him so badly the day before
That was what made Osman such fun to be around, or used to. It also made him the exact opposite of Zug. Calm, considered, consistent, it was Zug’s disapproval that had really turned the squad against Arun.
He couldn’t get his revenge on Zug here. But he would. Oh, yes. Zug — Zhoog as he insisted it was pronounced — would get his just deserts soon enough. But for now…
“Fine,” said Arun, still sitting on his butt. “I’ll wait.”
“Make sure you do,” said Osman, his anger burning so hot that he could barely speak.
Osman and Zug threw their clothes in the bin and followed Yoshioka into the shower tunnel. Arun hovered just outside, feeling increasingly uncomfortable as a steady stream of cadets entered the shower room, or emerged naked at the other end.
The F7 shower room wasn’t reserved for Blue and Gold Squads, but it was nearest to their dorm rooms, and so Arun knew most of the cadets coming into the room and giving him some hard stares.
No one said anything. They didn’t have to. He was acting like some kind of deviant, lurking in the shower to steal glimpses of nude flesh.
Arun shut his eyes and clenched his fists. How had it come to this? Only moments ago he’d been buzzing.
Now Zug and Osman had ruined his morning.
Skangat lizards!
Arun stripped off and walked into the shower tunnel.
As he lifted his arms to accept the spray of foaming detergent, Arun felt eyes watching him warily. One of the girls from Gold Squad turned her back on him.
This was getting ridiculous.
Arun yelled through the spattering noise of the shower jets. “Hey! Hey, Zug!”
The big guy turned around.
“This is all your fault, man.”
“No, my friend,” said Zug. “It is your own doing.”
“I’m not your friend.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You’re wrong. And I’ll tell you one thing, Zug the Perfect – Zug the Frakking Aloof. You’ll know what it feels like one day. Maybe right now the universe is stacking the deck to deal you a frakked-up hand. Sooner or later you’ll have a run of bad luck”
“I am certain you are right. One day.”
“One day? Nuts to that. I don’t want bad luck to happen to you one day. I want it now. Do you hear, Zug? I hope today is the worst frakking day of your life.”
But the cadet who still called himself Arun’s friend had already turned away and was lost behind the steam and spray of water.
Arun was on his own.
——
On his way back to the dorm room, someone leaped out of a side passageway and grabbed him by the shoulders.
Arun was about to deck his assailant when he recognized something in that touch. That scent.
He turned and stared wide-eyed into Springer’s face.
Her eyes glowed violet with emotion.
Well, Arun was emotional too. He was furious at Zug and disappointed at Osman. But his anger was all jumbled up with regret and loneliness, and he’d never been angry with Springer. Everything inside churned into such a confused mess that his jaw moved up and down but he didn’t know what to say.
He didn’t think he needed to. Springer looked into his face and seemed to understand what he was feeling better than Arun did himself.
“Help me?” he whispered.
“I heard what happened in the shower,” she said. “You need to sort this.”
Arun bellowed in rage. His pulse raced, his limbs shook. “How the frakk can I do that?” Arun couldn’t keep the anger out of his voice. His shoulders slumped. He hadn’t wanted to bark at Springer.
Springer didn’t scream back; she laughed as if this were all a game. “You’re not alone, Arun.” She shook her head in mock pity. Which was weird. Arun had never seen her act like that before. “It’s you boys. It’s your testosterone making you into idiots. I was talking this over with Majanita last night. She said she thought they give you Marine boys added testosterone to bulk you up, make you fight better. But they give you too high a dose. If not testosterone, then they must be giving you something similar.”
Arun nearly missed Springer’s emphasis. She wasn’t talking about testosterone. “I’m surprised Madge bought into your theory,” he said, a flash of understanding connecting them as he looked into her eyes.
“I’ve been working on her for a while,” Springer replied. “She’s finally on board.”
“You’re amazing. I ever tell you that?”
“Not nearly enough, Arun.”
“Guilty as charged.” He just about managed a grin. “But I still don’t see how that helps me.”
Springer shook her head. “That’s because you’re a guy. You’re no different from Zug, Osman and the others. You boys are acting as if all you understand is confrontation. Instead of a frontal assault, switch the direction of your attack. Try empathy instead.”
“You mean, see it from a girl’s perspective?”
“Frakk it, Arun! You’ve got a lot to learn. No, not at all, but if it helps you to think of it that way then, yes, try thinking like a girl.”
Arun started by taking in deep breaths through his nose, holding and then blowing out a smooth stream of spent air through his mouth.
“Not now, sweetie,” Springer teased. “Have you forgotten? Gupta switched schedule to put us up in orbit. Again! We move out in fifteen.”
“I know. It’s like he’s deliberately keeping us off planet.”
“That’s not important now. Just think on something Madge said to me. It might help with Zug and the rest. She said we’re all gene-modified, brainwashed, drugged-up combat kids. But deep down we’re still the same species as our Earth ancestors. They evolved a set of social behaviors to cope with the challenges of life on Earth. Sometimes our minds decide they recognize the problems we face on Tranquility and reach for the bag of coping behaviors we brought with from Earth. We act a certain way even though we don’t always know why.”
“So you’re saying that Zug is acting like a pre-tech savage and doesn’t even know it?”
Springer frowned. “Majanita sees it like this. The boys in the squad are treating me like I’m their little sister. They’re closing ranks to protect me
, a female, against the unwanted attention of the outsider male who wronged me, who dishonored the clan. That’s you, in case your brain hasn’t woken up yet. If you reason or fight them you will only make it worse. The one way to resolve this is to earn the right to rejoin the clan. Do something dramatic that proves your loyalty. Does that make sense?”
Arin nodded. “Is that all?”
Springer rolled her eyes. “Actually, there is one more thing to think on.”
“What’s that?”
“This…” Springer raised herself on tiptoes, leaned in, and kissed Arun on the lips.
It was no more than a chaste peck, but Arun couldn’t help but touch the spot where Springer’s lips had brushed against his.
That was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever done for him.
——
Arun hurried after Springer and into a dorm filling with unhurried activity as the section prepared to spend for a stint of unknown duration practicing void combat.
Suit AIs were checked, the head visited, silent words spoken by the more spiritual. Umarov was helped through the modern drills, grumbling at all the stupid changes and venting his frustration at everyone around him in a stream of unfamiliar curses.
All that ceased dead on 07:00 when, unexpectedly, a tone sounded through the speakers recessed into the walls, followed a moment later by a woman’s voice. It was not a voice Arun recognized, but it was one that was used to being obeyed.
“Attention! All cadet units report to the main parade ground immediately. I say again. All cadet units report to the main parade ground immediately. That is all.”
The entire force of Detroit cadets were only assembled for graduation day, the Cull, or executions too serious to be handled at battalion level. But none of those were due.
Arun’s fellow cadets weren’t unresponsive robots now: they looked stunned, turning to each other for explanations.
But there was one person who didn’t look surprised.
“Sorry, kids,” said Umarov. He was sincere too, his grouchiness replaced by hollowed-out sadness. “I guess you’re gonna grow up even quicker than I feared.”
—— Chapter 55 ——
Detroit nestled in a valley floor beneath the dusty red peaks of the Gjende Mountains. So deep were the shadows, it was said, that a natural-born Earth human would need a torch to pick their way around the valley floor. Arun was not a normal human. The wide avenue meandering toward the parade ground was clear to see, as were the obelisks at either side that displayed bas-relief carvings of fantastic martial creatures. Or possibly they were portraits in sculpture of the previous residents of the base. It was not a species that Arun recognized. Although his eyes could see the path, the colors of the valley floor had been leeched out. Arun saw everything in monochrome shades of malevolent red.
If it weren’t for the ominous circumstances it would be a pleasant walk. The air was thin up on the surface, but the winds were light for a change and the temperature comfortable.
At one point the avenue had been crushed under a fallen mountain top. A fresh and unadorned path detoured around the obstruction.
“What caused that?” he asked Majanita, pointing to the rock fall that blocked the path.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s no landslide or natural erosion.”
“A meteor strike perhaps,” suggested Arun.
“More likely a kinetic torpedo.”
Suddenly Arun felt exposed out here on the planet’s surface. That made him the opposite of the Jotuns who could not bear to be underground. At least Arun’s fear was rational. A ship in orbit above the valley floor could do some serious damage. Being underground with a few hundred meters of dirt above your head was much safer.
At 07:36 they reached the parade ground, an oval cut into the side of the mountain. The gouge went back 800 meters and was 100 meters high, the roof being the smooth, flat underside of the mountain above. It was as if an impossibly large stonemason’s chisel had cut a groove into the side of the mountain.
“Look!” said Brandt. He pointed to the densest concentration of cadets at the center of the oval. “Look for our battalion flag.”
He must have good eyesight, thought Arun, because he couldn’t see any flags himself. But as they made their way toward the center and saw that at regular intervals there were indeed square banners mounted on five-meter poles
There it was! The gold circle on a black background of the 412th Marines with a silver number 8 in the lower left corner. It was a simple design but enough to swell Arun’s heart with pride.
Sergeant Gupta was waiting for them. He marshalled them into ranks and files to his satisfaction, repositioning cadets until he was happy.
Then he marched in and out of the lines saying: “Keep your dignity at all times. Never forget. Keep your dignity!”
The cadets came to attention in perfect parade ground posture and waited. They had been bred and trained for waiting, which was just as well. The parade deck was huge, but there were around 130,000 cadets across all four regiments. Assembling them took a while.
“Welcome, cadets,” came a woman’s voice once all the cadets were assembled. “My name is Sergeant Bissinger.”
Arun recognized Bissinger’s voice as the woman who had ordered all cadets to parade. There were no obvious speakers to carry her voice, but her words reached Arun’s ears with crystal clarity.
“I shall not say good morning,” she added. Arun knew Sergeant Bissinger was as senior a veteran as they came. Although it was always tricky to determine the rank seniority of the human commanders due to the rule that no human could take a rank above senior squad NCO. Seniority was pretty much a word of mouth thing, but Arun’s guess was that Bissinger was the de facto human base commander.
“Today,” said Bissinger, “is a tragedy and a necessity.”
Arun heard himself groan.
“Today you cadets face the reality of your lives. That we all of us have won freedom for our home world but that it is we who must pay the price.”
If only he were in his suit. Barney would fire him the drugs to make this much easier.
“We are all of us soldiers of the White Knights, our ultimate leaders who glory in change, mutation and experimentation. They believe the elimination of failed experiments is indivisible from growth and renewal. Creative destruction is not merely an ideal that they cherish, but has been incorporated deep within their biology and planetary engineering. We humans do not mutate with the rapidity that our masters are blessed by, but the White Knights demand that all servant species perform their own emulation of our masters’ ideal of creative destruction.”
Arun found his eyes blinking uncontrollably. Was he crying?
“Our human way of handling this tradition – one sanctified by our masters – is called the Cull.”
Frakk! He was crying. For years he’d dreaded this moment. It shouldn’t be happening now. It was too early in the year. But off schedule or not there was a deathly inevitability about the events that would roll out over the coming minutes. All that talk of winning more points to escape the danger zone was too late now for graduation year cadets in the bottom-ranked battalions. One tenth of them were about to die, and there was nothing anyone could do to change their fate.
Eyes front, watching the officer who wasn’t an officer address them from a platform almost directly in front of him, Arun was nearly surprised by Sergeant Gupta when he walked behind his rank of cadets.
“Keep your dignity. Do not disobey.”
Sergeant Gupta kept repeating his litany. But what was dignified about people murdering each other? And all this pain only to ape the freakish beliefs of a bunch of faraway alien vecks?
Once Gupta had passed him, Arun’s eyes drilled holes in the sergeant’s back as he marched away.
Easy for you, thought Arun. You’re not up for execution duty.
Then Arun turned his head and looked around him. Only then did he understand the layout of this grotesque exercise.
The three battalions in the Cull Zone were lined up in front of Bissinger’s platform. The other 29 battalions were arranged in a semicircle around their doomed comrades. Observers to what was about to unfold.
There was a blur of movement and then Gupta was in Arun’s face, glowering. The sergeant’s breath came in short, rasping gasps. It sounded as if he was a raging bull, raring to tear Arun apart, but restraining himself from violence only by a titanic battle of will.
Snapped back to attention, Arun kept his eyes forward, which was filled by a view of his NCO’s forehead. Sweat was beginning to bead in the craggy furrows of Gupta’s frown.
The NCO’s battle for control went on. His breath quickened. Arun tensed, ready for Gupta’s attack. To fight with a superior would mean immediate execution. So he readied himself to leap for the ground, where he would curl up and hope his injuries would not kill him or, worse, render him unfit for service, which would mean being dumped back into the Aux.
“You dishonor them, boy.” It had taken nearly two minutes before Gupta had gained enough control to spit those words. “We are fighting a war here. A war for survival. Today is one battle. There will be casualties.”
Gupta stepped back half a pace, close enough to still intimidate Arun, but far enough away that he could fix him with his glare. “Are you a coward, Cadet McEwan?”
“No, sergeant.”
“Really? Only a coward would be so frightened by the thought of battle casualties that they hate their commander.”
Arun’s heart lurched. Had Gupta read his thoughts?
“It’s good to be scared in battle,” Gupta growled. “It gives you an edge. But real Marines don’t stare at their commander’s back, blaming them for the war. I ask you again. Are you a coward?”
“No, sergeant.”
“Then what are you?”
Gupta stepped back another half pace and waited for an answer. Arun couldn’t work out whether this was a drill sergeant’s parade ground psycho-trick, or whether his life depended on his next sentence. Perhaps both were true.
But Arun had played this game before at school, even before then at crèche. His entire life since waking from the freezer had been lived under the hawk-like gaze of the instructors.
Marine Cadet (The Human Legion Book 1) Page 35
