by Scott Moon
“Who is hiding the buildings from the workers?” he asked. “The only way to see it all is to leave the city. Everything else is too close to really get it — too close to see all at once.”
“I think it’s just coincidence,” she said. “Trees for the forest.”
Kevin looked at her, wanting to ask what she meant, but hesitated a moment too long.
Joii moved into the next seat for a better view. “I don’t need a boyfriend.”
“Okay.” Kevin wanted to curse. Awkward silence resonated around them.
The two of them watched the mechanized landscape underneath the fast moving train. Kevin thought of Grandfather Brandon and wondered if this was the sight he saw as a young man.
Kevin longed to see the twins. All of this would make sense — seem less daunting with Ace and Amanda by his side. The nameless nightmare headaches always receded after enough time and distance or a good beating from his brother. The promise of Starship Marine Corps was good medicine. Ace never got this lucky. Sometimes it seemed his little brother lived in the pain and fear with no way out.
The tattoo on Joii’s neck, small and faded as it was despite her young age, reminded him of Ace’s monsters, but he decided not to say anything. He barely knew her.
“Why are you signing your life away?” she asked.
The question would have annoyed Kevin if she were not on the way to in-processing and basic training right beside him. “My brother’s an asshole.”
This didn’t seem to surprise her. It was as though she had this conversation every day. Something about Joii suggested she possessed an enhanced understanding of the universe. A lot of girls gave him that impression.
He tried to remember the conversation from the beginning and think it through.
“You should sleep,” Joii said despite the rings around her eyes that he only noticed when he really looked at her. Exhaustion was common around Building 595 and he thought little of it, yet when he noticed her tiredness, guilt surged for not seeing it earlier.
He curled up in the uncomfortable train chair — cracked and faded and worn by previous travelers — crossed his arms, and slept facing Joii. He wasn’t sure how he felt about her. In that moment, she was like the big sister he never had.
Small for a big sister, he thought as consciousness faded.
The headache and the nightmares came hard and dark, but he kept his eyes closed and lost consciousness.
10
Through These Portals
SLEEP came in a variety of moods. Most, although he rarely remembered the details, were full of dark colors and panoramic action sequences. He spent most days wondering about voices speaking words he couldn’t understand. Colors and sounds lingered after the details faded. This time, he had heard a public service announcement that often flooded the airwaves around TB 595.
“… Any nation using the mercenary service of Void Trolls and their allies must be considered an enemy of all humanity…”
Something interrupted the broadcast, a planetary assault, perhaps, or an explosion on the horizon. People panicked. Military police shouted orders at swarms of fleeing civilians.
“Wake up,” Joii said. The sound of her low, urgent voice startled Kevin.
“Where are we?” he asked.
“I think it must be the training facility. No light. Hard to see,” she said.
Kevin switched places, unbalancing her as he pushed between the narrow rows of seats. Now she was his little sister, a dark-haired version of Amanda with a cheap neck tattoo. Instinct put him between her and whatever was coming onto the train. He didn’t ask permission to defend her.
An image of Ruby cursing caused him to smile. For an instant, he wondered about her and his big brother.
A noncommissioned officer from one of the combat branches of the military climbed into the bus. Kevin expected to see the silhouette of a broad campaign hat, but there was only a tight ball cap with a logo he couldn’t read in the low light.
“Get off the train. Line up as straight as you can. Don’t get all worked up; you’re not there yet and no one is going to yell at you,” the noncom said. He made a puzzled face — shadows under the bill of the hat, moonlight straining through the windows sketching his features. “Not one of you is going to ask where we are? Where we might be going? Holy Christ, this must not be the officer’s train.”
Kevin followed the others and shivered in mild but pervasive cold. The train station seemed to be in the middle of an abandoned planet. A single road bisected the ground-level train track at a ninety-degree angle. There was one light in the small station house and a dome light in the bus where the driver checked a screen next to the steering wheel.
“I am Gunnery Sergeant Robert Priest, Starship Marine Corps, 343rd Marauders. You might think to ask what I am doing here, why I am wasting my time in-processing applicants who won’t even make it through Basic. See what I did there? Snatched your hope and burned it down. Get used to it and get over it. You should be having second thoughts — the right kind of second thoughts, the kind suggesting you have a brain and pay attention,” the man said from under his tight ball cap. In the peculiar darkness of night this far from a city superstructure, his uniform was a collection of well-placed shadows.
“Get on the bus. Find a seat. That is all,” he said. “Move out.”
One young man stepped out of line and proffered his hand to the noncom. “I’m Peter Foster. Good to meet you, sir. Thank you for your service.”
Gunnery Sergeant Robert Priest shook Foster’s hand — without facing him — as though it had been part of the script and ignored the energetic applicant less than one second after the social transaction was complete.
Kevin and Joii found a seat near the middle of the bus. “I don’t think Foster will get away with that stunt twice.”
Before Joii could respond, Peter Foster plopped down in a seat behind them. “Want to bet on it?” He waved a reluctant boy — a Native North American who looked out of place — to sit in his row. “What’s your name, chief? Can I call you that?”
“I would rather you did not. My name is Richard Chafalote. Call me Chaf.”
“Sounds like chief, almost,” Foster said with a genuine smile. “You and me are going to be buddies.”
“Call me Chaf,” Richard Chafalote repeated.
“Listen, Foster,” Kevin said. “You seem all right. Don’t piss off the sergeant around us. We’re not that good of friends yet.”
“But once we are, then you’ve got my back,” Foster said.
Kevin stared him down. “Yeah. Sure. 595 rules.”
“What the hell are 595 rules?” Foster asked.
“It means he is from the tenements, dummy,” Chaf said.
“I knew that. Just testing him,” Foster said.
“My people have a name for dummies like you.”
“I’m all ears,” Foster said.
Chaf shook his head. “I made that up. Do I sound like I speak something other than English?”
Kevin looked at Joii, guessing she had come to the same conclusion. Chaf spoke another language but didn’t want to talk about it with Foster.
“What happened to your face?” Foster asked.
Kevin turned to the window of the old bus and tried to sleep.
Kevin wondered about the location of Basic Training Facility 029. His body ached and he wasn’t sure he’d ever been this hungry. The thought of city rations made his mouth water and his gut tighten. After so many hours of fitful sleep, the sound of the old diesel engine and the stink of fumes were familiar. It seemed as though he’d never been anyplace else.
The baritone rhythm of the engine changed. The bus worked down through the gears until it stopped. Kevin sat up, looked around the passenger compartment, and realized few of his fellow applicants were awake. Tangled hair, open mouths, slouched bodies gave his future classmates a motley appearance — like the day after some bad alcohol hit the market back home.
Leaning over, he shook
Joii’s shoulder. As she groaned her complaints, he twisted toward the next row to wake up Peter Foster. At the last second, he hesitated. When he began the action, he had imagined waking up Chaf because the big young man seemed steady and trustworthy. His hand woke up the smart-mouth Peter Foster instead.
Unlike the others, Foster’s eyes were clear and alert the moment they opened. “Are we here?”
Kevin nodded, then returned to his seat. He watched the driver, who did something with this computer screen for several minutes — completing a log, perhaps. The man was nearly as careful as Kevin and Arthur trying not to wake up the twins.
“There he goes,” Foster said.
Chaf straightened, alert now and appearing as large and formidable as someone about to get his life changed. “The driver didn’t say anything?” he asked.
“No,” Kevin said. “Everyone better get their stuff ready. Pass the word back to the others.”
When four noncommissioned officers swarmed the bus, three of them in the distinctive campaign hats, Kevin smiled, unworried that the ever present image of his grandfather was absent. Maybe his mentor and hero thought Kevin had to do this on his own. Or maybe Kevin was just busy dealing with three men and one woman yelling instructions and demanding his total compliance.
He wasn’t sure, but he thought the drill instructors felt cheated of their shock and awe. Most of the new applicants for military service were awake and had their bags in hand. Most had brought too many items, a problem he never contemplated because he had nothing but the clothing on his back and mended shoes on his feet.
Shouts drove them from the bus. There was no pushing or prodding. It was dark, and it felt like they were in the middle of nowhere. He sensed more than saw a large facility just beyond the parking lot.
From the moment the noncommissioned officers boarded the bus, movement and instant obedience became the law of the land.
Kevin and the others passed under a sign. He glanced up as an angry cabal of drill instructors drove them under it. Words burned into his memory. An image of Grandfather Brandon passing this way confused his attention to the here and now. He wouldn’t have been able to read the silver words in the time granted to appreciate the threshold to Basic Training Facility 029, but he already knew what they said.
Through these Portals Pass Prospects for the Western Hemisphere’s Finest Fighting Force.
In his grandfather’s day, the words had been different — America instead of Western Hemisphere. The benevolent shade of his family icon was starting to look like Gunnery Sergeant Priest. At the thought, the young vision of Brandon O’Donnell Connelly smiled.
“You will stand on these footprints and look straight ahead. No! Leave those bags right there,” the dark-skinned man with tight black hair said. Short silver wings peeked out on one side where his barber must have forgotten to color the chopped down curls. “Did I say stand? Did I say slouch? Gunnery Sergeant Priest, did I say anything that implied these new hopefuls should slouch, bend, or otherwise look like they are not squared away?”
“No, Master Sergeant,” Priest said from beneath his ball-cap.
Kevin knew how to watch somebody without looking at them. It was a skill everyone understood from a young age in 595. He wouldn’t have been able to draw a portrait of the master sergeant if asked, but he could read the man’s expression and watch for danger signs. A dark current spread among the noncommissioned officers and Kevin expected a real ass chewing. This was where things would get bad. Every so often, a generation of instructors replaced enthusiasm with brutality. For as long as there had been military institutions, there had been this dangerous variation of the training cycle.
For reasons he didn’t understand, Kevin was merely wary. Saying he didn’t fear the coming onslaught wasn’t accurate. He had just never felt this way before and wasn’t sure what to think.
The noncommissioned officers glared as cold rain drizzled down from the sky.
“Recruit applicants, consider yourself blessed. This type of misery on the first day is considered a good omen,” the dark-complected master sergeant said. “I am Gunnery Sergeant Owen Milarns. You might be confused right now. I would be shocked to the soles of my Starship Marine Corps boots if you weren’t.”
Low laughter spread among the noncommissioned officers. Kevin didn’t think it malicious, but in his keen sense of awareness, he realized many of his classmates were trembling. A growing sense of unease crept up the back of his neck. He ignored it like an insect that wasn’t really there.
“Corporal Yang, why should these fine young men and women be confused about my name or more specifically — and here is a hint — my rank?”
A crisp uniform beneath a stern Asian face and Starship Marine Corps Drill Instructor’s hat appeared. The young man stepped forward and stood smartly in a posture Kevin guessed was either attention or parade rest. He did not salute but rather answered the question in a martial manner. There was no pause. The encounter had the feel of a well-rehearsed program.
“Sir, I would say that is because you are a gunnery sergeant. As is Priest.”
“I imagine you’re right,” Milarns said, hands at his side but ready for violence — self-defense in the unlikely event that any sentient creature in the universe attacked him — or to correct a recruit applicant. “Listen up. I will say this one time. I am, thanks to God and the Starship Marine Corps, the rank of gunnery sergeant. That means the paperwork jocks call me an E7. Don’t even ask what they call you. What we did here was borrow something from our sister service for the express intention of clarity.”
The noncommissioned officers patrolled up and down the line of the applicants, making them stand straighter, removing contraband items and throwing them on the ground, and sometimes yelling. Most admonitions were firm, delivered in low voices more intimidating than if they had thrown tantrums or screamed like the movie DIs everyone had seen a hundred times.
“You may or may not know that on a naval vessel, and that includes everything in space, there can only be one captain. So a captain of the Starship Marine Corps becomes, by the tradition of our sister service, a major. Now I bet some of you know a little more about the Starship Marine Corps than you’re letting on and that’s good. I think you should try to be smart. Work smarter not harder. Use your intelligence. Depend on your team. Don’t pretend to know everything.”
Milarns paused until he saw his noncommissioned officers finish their work up and down the line. He stopped right in front of Kevin but did not look at him. “So here is how it will be in my unit. Gunnery Sergeant Priest has been assigned to assist with training. If you get on really good terms with him — meaning that you’re not a complete screw up — he might share some of his stories of the 343rd Marauders. Until the end of this training cycle, he will be the gunnery sergeant and I will be the master sergeant so long as we are in the field or on the training ground. Should we encounter anything resembling an officer or a very important civilian, then each and every one of you will call us by our correct ranks and God help the person who forgets.”
The four noncommissioned officers lined up in front of the applicants out of arm’s reach and glared like spit and polished killers.
Cold drizzle turned a pleasant morning into miserable darkness.
“Well?” Milarns said. “Why are you still standing there? Get out of the rain. By the time this training cycle is done, you will have learned that lesson and many other useful life skills. Corporal Yang, take them inside.”
11
Monster Tattoo
KEVIN quickly learned Yang was fluent in about six languages, including New York Bronx, South-central Texan, and California Surfer, although the last was the least frequently used. Kevin hadn’t heard of these specific English dialects and only identified them because Yang made it clear that was what he was speaking whenever he made the switch.
“That right there is South-central Texan. Don’t you speak English, compadre? What kind of slowpoke can’t hustle down ran
ge when politely directed to do so by his eternally patient and caring drill instructor? Get a move on it.”
He also fell into a very strong Asian accent belonging to a language that was possibly a complete fabrication built on ancient language tropes. The corporal danced up-and-down and across social and racial stereotypes without changing the position of his drill instructor campaign hat.
Milarns impressed Kevin as serious and competent. Each member of the drill instructor team radiated discipline. That wasn’t what made Kevin and the rest of the applicants nervous. The problem was that none of the instructors missed anything. There were rituals no applicants could understand regardless of how many times a family member or friend had explained what it was like to go through basic training.
The first several hours had been nothing but moving around, standing in line, listening to rambling diatribes from various noncommissioned officers, and searching for meaning in the entire process.
“They’re trying to make us tired,” Joii muttered when no one was looking.
Kevin didn’t answer. He was tired. His face hurt and his stitches itched. Hair shorn off by a machine-like barber went into his shirt, causing him to itch in places far down from his collar. He was surprised there hadn’t been food. Grandfather Brandon had described regular, if not delicious, meals from his first day of basic training.
“Move in good order to the barracks, then showers,” Yang said. He stormed down the line, herding everyone toward the objective. Only Yang and Milarns remained from the original group. Other nameless military noncoms rotated through the scene as though scouting for talent.
Kevin stared at the doors to the barracks, then realized there were separate entrances for men and women. Much of the confusion was the somewhat disorganized method Yang used to separate the male and female lines. “I said good order. What the hell are you doing? Boys on the right, ladies on the left. Do it now.”
Kevin looked across the space between the two lines and realized Joii would not meet his eyes. Among the young women hopeful to join the military, she seemed small and vulnerable. He searched for the strength he had seen earlier, but she wouldn’t look up. His chance to connect evaporated as drill instructors shouted the lines into place.
