by Jean Johnson
“You will line up in these exact rows, in these exact orders, once you are through at the barbershop—you will find five marks on the plexcrete road outside, A through E. Use them, and toe the line, filling out your ranks from left to right. That’s your left to right, not mine. As A Squad will be at the front, I will not tell you which direction to face. I will tell you, however,” she warned all of them, “that I have a photographic memory. For every person I find out of place, that entire Squad will earn an extra ten push-ups before the end of this day.
“Go on. Take a good, long look at your squad mates,” she repeated, and paused to give them time to do so.
This time, Ia glanced behind herself to double-check the faces of the people she had precognitively foreseen in her line. They looked at each other and her, in turn.
The staff sergeant continued briskly after a moment. “Some activities, you will be praised or punished based on what the whole of your Class does. Some, you will be praised or punished on what the whole of your Squad does. The rest, you’re on your own . . . until such time as you learn how to be a real soldier. Move out!”
Spinning on her heel, Staff Sergeant Linley strode down the hallway. Ia followed, shoulders squared and chin level. Deep inside, a part of her dreaded this last step. For as long as she had been alive, her hair had been a distinct part of her self-identity. With locks whiter than even the most towheaded of children, her mothers had always been able to spot her in a crowd. Letting it grow long had allowed her to indulge in her feminine side even after her life had changed so abruptly three years ago.
Removing it would make this moment feel irrevocable. Irreversible. Fatal. No, don’t think about that. You have too much to do to get distracted. It wasn’t as if she could avoid it, anyway.
As the first in line of her squad, she was the first in line for the barber chair. Not that there was much to it. The barber whipped her cape over Ia’s shoulders as soon as she set down her kitbag and settled into the chair. The clippers hummed over her head in steady, almost stately passes, starting by her right ear and continuing all the way over to her left. Damp locks fell away from her face, most of them still constrained by her braid. The barber pulled it away and tossed it in the recycling bin, then ran the clippers over a few last, stray spots. The swift-moving woman set down her tool and whipped off the apron-cape almost before Ia knew it was over.
Her head felt weird. Cold, off-balance, and just weird. Grabbing her kitbag, Ia headed for the sinks by the door. Unlike some of the others, who were emerging from their chairs with bemused looks, she didn’t reach up and run her hand over her fuzzy, prickly scalp. If she did that, she knew she’d cry.
I don’t have time for tears. I have to get my squad into shape . . . which is why I lined up when I did, where I did.
Mendez was still rubbing his fingers over his dark-stubbled skull when he reached her side. “V’damn, that’s gonna take some getting used to . . .”
“Hand me your canteen,” Ia ordered. “Let’s get it filled up. Where’s your cap?”
“In my kitbag.” He handed over his canteen and crouched to fish it out. Ia leaned over, peeled off one of his patches, and reapplied it more carefully. He glanced up at her, frowning. “I know how to apply a flash patch, meioa.”
“While I could do push-ups all day long in this gravity, not everyone in our Squad can, Mendez. Check the patches for the others as they come out.” Filling up his canteen, she handed it to him, then held out her hand for Spyder’s. His fancifully dyed hair—what was left of it—looked like a skimming of mottled green and brown moss on his skull. He looked about as happy to lose it as she was to lose hers. “. . . Sorry about the hair, meioa. I know how you feel.”
“S’not so bad. S’worse,” he half joked, moving out of the way as a pair from C Squad filled their canteens at the sink. “But I’ll live. Erm . . . ‘this recruit’ll live,’ ey?”
At least he was trying to fit in. In half the scenarios she had surveyed through the timestreams, she hadn’t ended up with him in her training squad. Ia handed him his canteen, then swung her kitbag around so she could fish out her own hat. Her scalp itched and prickled from weightlessness, giving her the urge to cover it. “Don’t forget your cap. The sun’s brutal in the afternoon. Get out there, find the spot, and line up. You, too, Mendez.”
“Who died and made you an officer?” Mendez asked, wrinkling his nose. “You don’t give me orders, you know.”
“I speak with the authority of common sense. That should be enough reason for anyone to follow through. Unless you want more push-ups?” she asked pointedly. “I won’t stop you if you do.”
Sighing roughly, Mendez left. Spyder followed him, still gingerly touching his nearly nude scalp. Ia held out her hand for Forenze’s canteen. The other woman didn’t look too traumatized to lose her hair, but then hers had been only a few centimeters long to begin with. Stylishly cut, but already short.
The trill of a whistle cut through the noise of the last few recruits waiting in line, getting their hair shaved off, and filling their canteens. Sgt. Linley strode across the room, opened the door, and yelled at both groups of trainees. “Half an hour, Recruits! Drop and give me ten, loud and clear, and count ’em from eleven to twenty! Right here, right now, let’s go, let’s go!”
There wasn’t much space inside the barbershop area, even with most of her classmates outside. Ia dropped and counted off anyway, ten fast, firm push-ups. Her kitbag bounced on her back with each stroke, since there wasn’t enough room to set it down. Climbing back to her feet while the others were still only halfway through, she finished filling Sung’s bottle, then bent and unclipped ZeeZee’s from his belt, since he was still working on his push-ups. When both were back on their feet, she handed over their canteens.
Sergeant Linley was staring at her as she left the building. Ia could guess why, but didn’t react. She just settled her hat on her head, pulled the chin cord to tighten it in place, and followed the others out to the line marked with a painted A. Sergeant Tae was back, patiently waiting a few meters away as he watched his freshly shaved charges file into place.
Ia didn’t join the others in toeing the line immediately. Instead, she walked the line, first behind her teammates, then in front of them, checking their outfits. Sung’s hat was perched a little far back on her head. The thin woman accepted her suggestion to correct it with a silent tug on the brim. Next to her, Arstoll deliberately pushed his back, tilting it up. His green eyes bored defiantly into hers. Ia quirked a brow, but said nothing. Moving to Crosp, she muttered a suggestion for him to tighten his belt, since the weight of his filled canteen was making it sag.
“Recruit Ia!”
Turning, she faced First Sergeant Tae. “Sergeant, yes, Sergeant!”
“What are you doing?” he asked, his tone crisp and hard. Just like she knew he would. Just as she knew Arstoll would do what he did, which was to quickly reach up and tug his hat back to level.
“Sergeant, this recruit is helping ready her fellow soldiers for inspection, Sergeant!”
He strolled up to her. “So. You think you can be a soldier, is that it? You think you can be a leader, maybe?” He paused, no doubt waiting for her to answer. When she didn’t—she knew better than to walk into that trap—he snapped, “Fall in!”
Turning crisply to her left, she strode to the end of the line and took her place next to Mendez. Tae followed her, looked her over from heat to toe, then walked down the line from her at the left to ZeeZee at the right. He grunted and shifted around to walk along their backs, inspecting them from that side as well.
“. . . Well. It seems you did get something right. Congratulations, Recruit Ia,” he added, drawing something out of one of his shirt pockets. “You just got the first boot chevrons of Class 7157.” Slapping the patch on her left shoulder, he grinned. It was not a pleasant grin. “Be advised that your temporary rank as A Squad leader comes with an obligation as well as a tiny modicum of power.
“For
every punishment the rest of your Squad undertakes while you have those boot stripes, you will undertake them, too.” His grin widened. “Consider it motivational training for a wannabe leader.”
“Sergeant, yes, Sergeant!” Ia snapped.
He blinked a little, then moved to B Squad and started inspecting them. He found three things wrong with those recruits, and demanded that the whole line undergo three more push-ups as punishment for their sloppy dress, posture, and attitudes. Sgt. Tae then promoted “the best of a sorry lot” to B Squad leader, as he had her. C and D Squads had to do four push-ups . . . and Kaimong made his squad mates very happy—in the sarcastic sense—earning them six extra push-ups, on top of the two earned by two of his teammates. Three of his were for having his shirt untucked and two of his patches mixed up, and three more were earned for his attitude.
As they stood out in the open, waiting for their first inspection to be over and done, the heat of the sun grew unbearable. The plexcrete under their feet was an unrelenting shade of creamy off-white, bouncing the glare of the light back up from below. Off to either side, trees and bushes helped shade the sides of the buildings, and more plants grew on the rooftop gardens dotting everything bigger than a shed as far as the eye could see.
The air was fragrant with greenery, but it was also missing something, the same something it had missed since she had boarded the first ship on her way to the Human Motherworld. There was no ozone in the air, no dusty-prickly smell of an impending daily thunderstorm. There had been too many smells in the cities, and too many things she’d needed to do while among the Afaso, for her to have pinpointed the differences until now.
A day without lightning? The Motherworld is just weird . . . She wrinkled her nose for a moment, then relaxed her expression. She tried to relax her shoulders, too. Weird or not, I’ll have to deal with it.
The water in her canteen was still cool when she sipped from it, but it would be a little while before they would have another chance to fill the stout plexi bottles. She rationed it carefully, doing her best to ignore the trickle of sweat beginning to stain her hairline. It was a relief to more than just Ia when Tae finally told them to start marching.
No sooner did they get moving than their chief Drill Instructor enlightened them as they walked down the road under the hot summer sun. Class 7157 would now march over to the barracks and settle into their assigned “berths,” and be marched off to lunch immediately afterward. Once they were fed, Class 7157 would be marched back to the barracks for lessons on how to make beds, fold clothes, pack kits, clean the latrines—not bathrooms or changing rooms or showering rooms, but latrines, he asserted—and polish everything “. . . from boots to bulwarks, since you will eventually get into space.”
After that would come a tour of the local buildings, more lessons on the rules and regulations of the Space Force, an explanation of the orientation training classes, which would commence the next day, and a final stop in the mess hall for supper. Then would come revision in the barracks on how to fold clothes, pack gear, make beds, polish boots, and clean the place—replete with plenty of hands-on practice—and a final inspection before lights-out.
But it was a relief to be moving, even if it meant not only walking for several kilometers, but knowing those walks would be interspersed with several more sets of push-ups. Including one that came not two minutes after they started walking, with Linley blowing her whistle in between the chunks of information her fellow sergeant was imparting.
Once they were done counting off in ragged groups and back on their feet again, and Sergeant Tae had finished his briefly interrupted lecture, Linley called out a cadence-song from her position at their side as Sergeant Tae once more led the way up the road.
The Space Force is the place to be,
But I am not in its Army.
The Space Force is the place to be,
But I am not in its Navy!
The Space Force is where I am found,
I’m not some civvie on the ground!
The Space Force is where I am found,
I’m not a Special Forces Hound!
The Space Force is my special friend,
I’ll fight until the bitter end!!
The Space Force is my special friend,
My government I will defend!
The Space Force is prepared for war,
Because I’m marching at the fore!
The Space Force is prepared for War,
Because I’m in its Marine Corps!
CHAPTER 4
Going into the military as a heavyworlder, I immediately had a number of natural advantages. Greater strength, faster reflexes, and better stamina. Naturally, the Space Force did what it could to level the playing field. Nowadays, I work out every single day for at least a few hours in a localized, stronger than Standard gravity well. Back then . . . well, you don’t have any artificial gravity weaves lurking under the dirt of the Motherworld, so they had to make up for it somehow. Not that I exercise in my native gravity very often now, since it stresses a starship’s hull awkwardly, but it’s much more comfortable than the “solution” they use on heavyworld recruits attending Basic Training on a light-gravitied planet.
While I didn’t particularly enjoy my weight suit, I did understand why they insisted on it. Born and raised in a heavy gravity, a native child of at least the second generation usually grows up with a naturally adapted body blessed with greater musculature and faster reflexes. But these things atrophy when they’re not used. And, naturally, it’d be stupid to waste those advantages in someone volunteering to fight for you. The modern military is many things, but it is not stupid when it comes to using its greatest resources, the men and women serving in it.
~Ia
The sharp glare of the lights being snapped on and a voice snapping out, “On your feet and in your Browns, let’s go, go, go!” jolted Ia out of an unpleasant dream of being eaten alive.
Disoriented, she rolled out of her bottom bunk, yanked open her locker, swapped her worn undergarments for fresh, and headed for the bathrooms—or rather, the latrines—on pure, timestream-guided instinct. It wasn’t until she emerged from one of the stalls, still yawning and squinting at the bright overhead lights, that she realized she was literally the first person on her feet and ready for her very first full day as a Marine. Grabbing a yawning Kumanei as the other woman entered the latrines, she steered her away from the shower stalls.
“Not there, Recruit,” Ia told her. “We don’t get to do that until after our Regimen Training Session—otherwise known as morning exercise from hell. You don’t have time for a shower right now.”
“No shower is locosh’ta,” Kumanei dismissed. She managed to scowl and yawn simultaneously. “Gimme a shower and a caf’, stat, dammit.”
“Shakk that,” Casey muttered. The tall, blond leader for B Squad groaned as he tried lifting his arm up high enough to scratch the top of his head. “Gimme a painkiller for my arms, and another hour of sleep, then a shower . . .”
“Hai, sleeeeeep,” Kumanei agreed, yawning again.
“On your feet, in your Browns, and get moving, Recruits,” Ia warned both of them and the other members of their training platoon making their way toward the facilities. “You might want to make up your bunks now, too, while you have a few seconds to spare. You all heard Tae last night. We wake up, we get dressed, we do two hours of calisthenics and fitness training, we hit the showers, we go through a barracks inspection, and then we get to eat. The worse our barracks looks between now and then, the longer it’ll take for us to get fed.”
“Drop dead, Ia,” Arstoll told her as she headed back toward the bunkroom. He gave her a dirty look. “And what the hell kind of name is ‘Ia’ anyway?”
It was too early in the morning for an argument. Tossing her clothes in one of the three sonic cleaners positioned between the latrines and the bunkroom, Ia left the door open and pointed at it. “Don’t forget to put your dirty clothes in the cleaner. Everyone’s sleepwear is e
nough to fill it, and if we fill and set it now, it’ll be done when we get back from Regimen Torture.”
Her deliberate choice of words made a couple of her fellow recruits snort in humor, and diffused a few retorts. It made her glad for her abrupt awakening. Not that I don’t mind being awoken from any of my nightmares . . . but I feel like I’ve woken up with the shadow of my future self laid over all of my actions. Maybe if I don’t try too hard to be the perfect recruit, I’ll get it right.
Maybe. Just so long as I don’t slack off, either. Returning to her bunk, Ia pulled the sheets and blankets straight, tucking them under as tightly as she could manage. Once her pillow was squared on the thin mattress, she opened her locker and dug out a pair of brown shorts. Since she had grabbed a bra as well as fresh underpants and a T-shirt on her way to the latrines, the only other things she needed to don were her socks and boots, her belt with its canteen, and her narrow cap with its bill-style brim.
Later in the day—when it finally became day—they would need their broad-brimmed hats to shade them from the sun. Right now, it was still dark outside. Dark enough, even she had to stifle a yawn as Sgt. Tae chivied them out of the barracks and onto the lawn. They weren’t the only ones emerging from their white-painted building, either.
Camp Nallibong, as they had been informed yesterday, hosted a brand new Training Class every single week, barring only one week in the local summer and one week in the local winter for celebrating official Terran holidays. Training platoons ranged in size from as few as forty to as many as sixty, depending upon how many would-be soldiers were shipped their way. Given all of that, there were an impressive number of recruits filing out of their barracks and lining up on the thin row of bricks planted in the grass of the barracks lawns, their brown-clad bodies illuminated by the floodlights spaced around the area.
