by Jean Johnson
“It is my sorry duty to get you sons of slags and daughters of dreks fit enough to be called Recruits, never mind Marines!” Sgt. Linley’s voice snapped out, capturing their attention. “You will now space out on the lines by extending both arms to either side. You should be far enough apart that you can just barely touch the recruit next to you! Each and every morning, you will assume these positions, with each squad rotating forward one row each week.
“This week, A Squad is in front and E Squad is at the rear. Next week B Squad will move up to the front and A Squad will fill in the rear—and do not make any jokes about that,” she added sharply, sweeping her baton slowly in front of her, aiming it at each of the recruits like it was a weapon. “The SF-MC has a zero tolerance policy, and we are here to get your bodies into shape and your minds out of the gutter! First Recruit Ia, A Squad, front and center!”
Puzzled, Ia broke formation and strode forward. Halting in front of the taller woman, she kept her chin level. “Sergeant, yes, Sergeant!”
“Just in case you thought your time here in the SF-Marines was going to be easy,” Linley told her, voice pitched to carry over the shouts of the other platoons of recruits counting off their exercise movements, “I wanted you to know that I have personally gone over your physiology profile.”
Holding out the hand wielding the baton, she pointed at a hover sled a few meters away. A hover sled which Ia had forgotten would be waiting for her this morning. Ia glanced back at the Regimen Trainer as the other woman continued briskly.
“On that cart is your new best friend: your very own gravity-gauged weight suit . . . or as close as we can get it without making it too bulky for you to use. You will strap it on every single morning and not take it off until lights-out each and every night, save only during your daily bathing needs, and when given the command to take it off for the duration of specific training exercises. You will also drink three extra liters of water every day to compensate, one at each mealtime, for a total of ten. You are not allowed to pass out from dehydration.
“You were born with all the advantages of a heavyworlder,” Linley reminded Ia, “and you will train to the physical standards of a heavyworlder. Just because this is the Motherworld doesn’t mean you’re gonna have it easy. Recruit Ia, weight up!”
“Sergeant, yes, Sergeant!” Turning crisply, Ia headed for the hover sled. As she did so, Linley forged on with the explanations of how Class 7157 was expected to perform their regimen of exercises.
Listening with half an ear, Ia sorted out the web-work of lead-weighted straps. There was a sort of long-sleeved jacket thing for her upper half which snapped across the front of her chest and down her arms once she shrugged into it—the arms of which were detachable, she knew—plus, a pair of plaid-like leggings which snapped down the outsides of her legs from waist to ankles, and a headband thing which was meant to fit around her forehead. The last four items were a set of weights for her feet, which would fit over her boots something like spats with spurs, and a pair of somewhat padded gloves, each finger individually weighted so that anything requiring fine dexterity would also be affected by the pull of gravity, not just her larger muscles.
By the time she finished fastening everything into place, her fellow recruits had already gone through one round of jumping jacks and were being instructed on the proper way to do windmill toe touches. Hurrying to join them, Ia picked up what her fellow recruits were doing. The drag of the weighted straps was fairly evenly distributed across her body, but fairly wasn’t perfectly. It didn’t feel like a real heavy-gravitied world would have felt. Certainly not like home.
It did make a palpable difference in her performance, though. She had known she was out of shape, compared to back home. Two whole months of living and exercising mostly in light gravity had weakened her muscles. By the end of their exercise session, including her having to do twenty extra jumping jacks “. . . to catch up with the others,” Ia felt just as sweaty and just as tired as everyone else. It was a distinct relief to be ordered back into the barracks for a shower and a change of clothes.
At least she’d had the foresight to claim a bottom bunk. That made it easier to shed her weights onto the mattress, though it did disturb the tight fit of the covers. Grabbing another change of clothes and her toiletry gear, she made her way toward the showers. Rather than being first as she had hoped, she ended up in the middle of the lot, forced to wait her turn. At least being weight-free for a few minutes helped recover some of her energy.
When she got back to her bunk, still scrubbing water from her skin, she found Spyder trying to lift the leggings part of her weight suit harness. He did have some muscle on him, but the weighted straps weren’t easy to hoist. Giving up, he let it drop back down.
“Whachoo got ’ere? Weighs a slaggin’ ton!”
Stepping around him, Ia opened her locker and fetched out a pair of long brown pants and a shirt. Crosp came by, tossing her T-shirt and underpants onto her bed as he passed, fetched out of the sonic cleaner along with the clothes of the others.
“How much choo think it weighs, Ia?” Spyder asked. “Kinda looks like archaic armor, too.”
“The legs weigh about ninety-five kilos, the chest and arms another sixty-three, the headband and gloves two kilos each, and the feet three, which makes for about one hundred seventy kilos.” She nodded at the tile-shaped weights. “I counted the tiles for a rough estimate.”
“Shova v’shakk . . .” He breathed the V’Dan epithet, staring at the web-work garments and the tile-like segments of weights attached to each and every strap. “That’s gotta be, what, twice yer weight?”
She slipped into her trousers and reached for a fresh shirt. “I weigh one hundred and two kilos, so no, it’s not quite twice my weight.”
Crosp, on his way back from delivering laundry, stopped and stared at her, watching her sit on the edge of the bed so she could don her boots again. “You’re shakkin’ us. A hundred and two kilos? At your height? You’re only, what, a hundred and seventy-four, maybe a hundred and seventy-five centimeters tall? No way you weigh that much. Not and look that thin! Muscular, but thin.”
Mendez joined them. “I’m almost two meters tall, and I barely top a hundred kilos. How can a little thing like you weigh more than me?”
“I’m a heavyworlder. Thicker bones and denser flesh. Technically, if I’m supposed to be working out in the equivalent of my home gravity,” Ia said, picking up and shrugging into the jacket portion, “there should be another fifty-five kilos spread out over this thing. But the SF-MC manufactories aren’t programmed to make weight suits that heavy, because there aren’t more than a handful of recruits coming into the Space Force from Sanctuary just yet. Or even from Parker’s World, which is the next-heaviest colony spawned out of I.C. Eiaven. The Space Force would have to custom-make a suit just for me to wear, and they’re not going to bother.”
“Ten-hut! Fall in for Inspection!”
Caught off guard, Ia and her fellow recruits scrambled to get into position. Her top bunkmate, Sung, dropped down to stand at the end of their double bunks, while Ia moved out to stand between her and Babaga, the next top bunk dweller to her left. Sgt. Tae strolled into the bunkhouse for their morning inspection. Naturally, given this was their first day, he found several things wrong with each person. The bunkhouse quickly filled with the sounds of push-ups being counted off.
Reaching Ia, he opened up and inspected her locker, glanced at her half-webbed body, peered at the weights still bowing the springs of her bed, and grunted. “You are supposed to wear that weight suit at all times, outside of showering, sleeping, and whenever I or my fellow sergeants let you out of it, Recruit. Weight up, drop, and give me twenty!”
“Sergeant, yes, Sergeant!” Picking up the leggings, Ia snapped herself into them. The elastic sections of webbing clung to her limbs, making them feel like they were being forced to wade through mud once the weights were attached. I am not going to have an easy time of it, until I acclimate. And
even then . . .
She strapped the weights onto her boots, tugged on the gloves, then fitted the headband and its smaller span of dense metal tiles into place. Dropping to the floor as soon as she was weighted in full by her harness, Ia started counting out her assigned demerits. She was hungry, she was tired, and she didn’t want to be here. But she needed to be here, and she needed to play along with her superior’s demands. Whether or not it was fun.
Pity.
Three days later, the members of Class 7157 were ordered into the training gym for their first day of basic combat instruction. Their bodies still ached from the constant rounds of physical exercise, long marches, and demerit punishments, but not quite as much as they had at the start. The large, fan-cooled hall, with its padded mats and mirrored walls, was half-filled with other training classes. Sergeant Tae led them to one of the large, blue mats, marked with five white circles reminiscent of a wrestling mat, and turned over control of the class to Sergeant Linley with a flick of his baton.
Having learned to pay attention over the last three days—and the physically exhausting consequences that came from doing otherwise—the five squads formed their “teaching position.” A and B Squads dropped into cross-legged seats on the ground, C and D Squads knelt, and E Squad stood, allowing all forty-five class members plenty of room to see whatever was about to happen. Surveying the quiet, attentive group, their Regimen Trainer began.
“Today, you will begin your training in the primary job of any military: how to place your bodies, your weapons, and even your lives between the civilians and the government you are here to learn how to protect, and whatever may try to threaten them. This is your number one most important job of anything you may do in the Space Force. In the future, you may find yourself assigned permanently to Kitchen Duty, based on your abilities . . . or lack thereof,” Linley acknowledged wryly, “but if you pass Basic Instruction, you will be expected at any moment to be able to exchange your spatulas for stunner rifles, and defend the Terran United Planets and its lawfully assigned interests, and do so at a moment’s notice.
“If you get really good,” she added, displaying a rare sense of humor for them, “you may even learn how to kill someone with a spatula . . . and not just through food poisoning.”
A handful of the others laughed at that. Ia smiled a little, but the sergeant’s words had triggered the timestreams in the back of her mind. She struggled to suppress the visions of seeing someone actually slaughtering a fellow sentient with the thin, sharp edge of a metal spatula. Not in the military, and not on Earth, but in a mining colony dome several star systems and a couple decades from here.
The images weren’t nearly as funny as their Regimen Trainer had made it sound.
Linley addressed them again, giving Ia something to focus on. Mainly because it involved herself. Lifting her chin a little, the sergeant continued. “Now, some of you already come into the Service thinking they know how to fight. Recruit Ia! Front and center!”
Shoving awkwardly to her feet—weighted down by her tiled straps—Ia positioned herself so that she half faced the others as well as her instructor. “Sergeant, yes, Sergeant!”
“According to your file, you apparently have an Afaso Mastery rank. Is that so?” Linley asked her.
“Sergeant, yes, Sergeant,” Ia agreed. She knew what the other woman wanted from her, and provided it. “This Recruit is an unvowed Full Master of the Afaso martial arts system, Sergeant.”
“Indeed. The Afaso,” Linley informed the others, “are a militant order, as well as a religious one. Having been founded shortly before Terrans reached out into the stars, the Afaso absorbed and amalgamated all known forms of martial arts into a single training system. After the Second Human Empire joined the Alliance, they further expanded and merged their knowledge of weaponless and archaic weaponry based combat systems. They are the finest warriors outside of an actual military organization, and you do not want to take them on in hand-to-hand combat if you yourself are not trained to a comparable level.
“In fact, we will be teaching you certain Afaso techniques for unarmed and edged weapons combat. As archaic as long blades might be in an era of stunners and lasers, you are attempting to become Marines, and in the tradition of Old Earth Marines, you will be learning sword fighting as well as knife fighting, ranged weaponry, personal artillery, and unarmed combat. However . . . as good as the Afaso are, the Marines are more dangerous than the Afaso. Recruit Ia, do you know why the Marines are better?” Linley challenged her.
Ia met her skeptical brown gaze. “Sergeant, yes, Sergeant! This recruit does know why the Marines are more dangerous, Sergeant!”
That took the Regimen Trainer by surprise. Blinking, she quirked one of her brows. “Do you? Well, then, Recruit. Explain to all of us why you think the Marines are more dangerous than the Afaso.”
“Sergeant, while the Afaso are trained thoroughly in how to end a fight, they are not trained in how to start a fight. The Afaso are also trained to avoid killing an opponent whenever possible,” Ia added, projecting her voice so that her fellow recruits could hear. “While it does take more skill to disable rather than destroy, and by that standard the vowed members of the Afaso Order are more skilled than the average Marine . . . they are not more deadly, Sergeant. Marines are trained to kill.”
“Very good, Recruit. And very astute.” Sweeping her gaze over the others, Linley emphasized that point bluntly. “You are here to learn how to kill. Your psychological evaluations during your MATs suggested that you have the intestinal fortitude to follow through when given the command to ‘shoot to kill,’ without the danger of a predilection for liking it a little too much. The modern military does not have a place for homicidal maniacs.”
Without warning, Linley struck at Ia. She jabbed, swept, and kicked, arms and legs moving swiftly. Ia managed to block the attacks effectively enough, though her weight suit did slow her reactions to the point where it took effort to meet each blow fast enough to deflect it. Despite her heavyworlder reflexes and precognitive forewarnings that it would happen, the Regimen Trainer managed to distract Ia long enough with a vicious jab to her throat with one hand. That allowed Linley to grapple Ia with the other and trip her to the ground.
She landed with a heavy, rolling whump on the mat. No Sanctuarian survived to adulthood without learning how to take a fall with minimum injury. Doing it in less than a third of the gravity gave Ia plenty of time to curve her body in preparation for the impact; however, the grid work of weight suit tiles weren’t normally a part of her practice for such things, making her grunt at the bruises caused by landing on the awkward things.
Linley gave her a few seconds to recover from her fall, then offered her hand. Ia accepted it, though it didn’t make much difference against the inertia of her augmented kilos. She had to twist onto her side just to regain her feet. Once up, she resumed her attentive stance, waiting for either a dismissal back to the rest of the group, or to be used again as an example. The staff sergeant did neither, instead turning back to the others to continue her lecture.
“As you can see, Recruit Ia does have a reasonable amount of training. However, she is not trained to kill, and therefore will not use potentially lethal maneuvers among her opening attacks, such as my attempted throat grab. By the end of her Basic Training, if she doesn’t wash out, this reflex will be retrained. While the majority of attack methods used by the SF-MC involve actual weaponry, you will learn how to kill with your bare hands. Resume your place, Recruit.”
“Sergeant, yes, Sergeant!” Turning, Ia strode back to the others.
“Recruit Ia, weights off,” Sgt. Linley added, pointing with her baton. “Pile them off of the mat, over there.”
“Sergeant, yes, Sergeant!” Swerving around her fellow recruits, Ia did as she was bid.
“Recruits Ia, Arstoll, Shecklin, Tang, and Z’munbe all have high marks in various martial art skills, according to their files. The five of you will eventually assist the others in learni
ng the basics as these lessons progress. You will do so when instructed to do so, and only when instructed to do so,” Linley warned them as Ia continued to unsnap the pieces of her harness. “Until such time as I have personally evaluated your skills, you will all undertake the same basic progression in lessons as the rest. Do not assume that a black belt on your hips or some tattoo on your arm qualifies you as an instructor. Not by SF-MC standards.
“Now, we will begin by demonstrating several methods of escaping from being grabbed or confined by an enemy. Recruit Ia, when you’re ready?”
Ia winced and quickly pulled the last of the weights from her boots. I was hoping she wouldn’t do that. Now I’ll have to carefully navigate the rougher waters just up ahead . . .
“Gods! I can’t believe you messed up that badly, Kaimong!” Stalking over to his locker, the member of E Squad speaking glared at his teammate. “Twenty sit-ups and push-ups, and we had to rerun the rope swing ten times to make sure we all got it right? Now we’ll barely have time to shower before the inspections for lunch!”
“Slag off!” Kaimong retorted, returning his glare. “I’m doing what I can. That damned ‘confidence’ course ain’t fair. So just slag off!”
“No, you slag off!” one of his other squad mates argued, moving up in his face. “Or rather, slack off. How in a K’kattan hell did you pass your MATs for the Marines, anyway? You should’ve been sent to the Army—where the losers go!”
Ia, still wrapped in a towel from her shower, hurried out of the doorway to the latrines. She didn’t get there in time to stop Kaimong from shoving the second man, nor from him shoving back, but she did manage to shoulder herself between the two before their flat, pushing hands could be curled into tight, punching fists.
