by Jean Johnson
“General, yes, sir,” she acknowledged.
“You will not discuss anything of what happened regarding the incident involving Recruit Kaimong with your fellow Recruits until given leave to do so by your lawfully designated superiors,” he warned her. “You will not be given leave to do so until after the tribunal has been arranged for Recruit Wong Ta Kaimong, its verdict signed, sealed, and sustained, and his corporal punishments, if any, have been administered. Until such time as he has been brought before the tribunal, he is still entitled to the rights of a presumption of innocence until proven otherwise in a court of law.
“Additionally, you may be called before the tribunal to testify as to what exactly happened. If you are summoned, you will do so with the understanding that perjury—lying while under oath in a court of law, civilian or military—is Fatality Number Forty-Three, and that you can and will be subject to prosecution and the potential for corporal discipline yourself, should you make that particular fatal error. Now, return to your Class and continue with your lessons in basic instruction. Do you understand these orders, Recruit?”
“General, yes, sir!” Ia agreed crisply. “This recruit understands her orders, sir!”
“Good. Carry them out, Recruit Ia. Dismissed.”
Saluting him, she held the angle of her hand over her brow until he returned it, then spun on her heel and strode out of his office. Outwardly, Ia kept her face neutral and calm. Inwardly, however, she felt like grinning.
This little episode just gave me a really nice shortcut to my plans—I don’t dare let myself get careless, she admonished herself, struggling to dampen her humor so that it wouldn’t be noticed by the staff manning the front offices of the administration building. There’s far too much for me to pay attention to, which gloating might distract me from. But . . . it feels good to know I’m one step closer to my ultimate goals.
One step out of what feels like one million to go, yes, but it’s still one step closer.
“Now, the reason why the Space Force still uses ground cars as well as various hover vehicles, hexapod walkers, and other forms of conveyance, is that different terrain can and will demand different methods of transportation,” Lieutenant Billingsley lectured them as she paced at the front of the classroom. “Take the colonyworld Proxima Gamma. Some of its more exotic hybrid fruit trees are so sensitive to thruster technology emanations, yet so important to their agriculture, that hovercraft have been banned from use on the planet, particularly in its rural areas. Most people therefore still drive ground cars.
“The domeworld of Dante’s Refuge is slowly being terra-formed so that its atmosphere can be rendered acceptable for M-class habitation; most hover vehicles are designed more for M-class operation and lack self-contained atmospheres. Ground cars are useless outside the domes, given the coarse quality of the terrain, so self-contained hexapod walkers are the preferred mode of travel on Dante’s.” The lieutenant lifted her chin. “For this reason, and for the reason that the Marines are frequently sent in first as shock troops, each of you will be required to become adequately competent at guiding each of these various methods of transport. In addition, you will each learn the basics of vehicular maintenance for each type. There may come a day where you are stranded nowhere near a motor pool, and it will therefore be up to you to get your vehicle moving again.
“Anyone who does not know how to operate at least one of these vehicles . . . well, you must have lived on a resource-strapped, backwater colonyworld to not be familiar with at least one of them. If you were too poor to pay for the operational exams and licensing fees, well, congratulations; the military is about to train you in all of them. If you show a particular aptitude for a method of transport, or for effecting repairs, this may influence your post-training placement in the Corps . . . but I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
“First up, we will study the . . .” She paused as her wrist-unit beeped. Flipping up the lid, she read whatever the screen said, then looked up. “Recruit Ia.”
Ia quickly rose from her combination chair and desk, standing at Attention. “Lieutenant, yes, sir!”
“You are to report immediately to Major Kunaiasvatt in Building C, Room 303, Recruit.”
“Lieutenant, yes, sir.” Saluting, Ia left the room the moment she was dismissed.
It was raining outside Building E, the result of another tropical storm sweeping across the coast. Raining heavily at that, along with hints of lightning in the distance, though at least without the gusting winds of the last storm. She swung by one of the latrines as soon as she reached Building C, pausing at the sink to shake the excess water from the crown of her hat into the drain. Settling it on its neck-string so that it hung down over her shoulder blades, she used the facilities, unsure how long her presence at the tribunal would take. All her precognition could tell her—without immersing herself in the streams—was that it was necessary, and that she wasn’t missing anything overly important in their current instructor’s lecture series.
She could settle her hat behind her back, since wearing hats—particularly broad-brimmed bush hats—was prohibited indoors. However, there was nothing she could do about the rainwater soaking most of the rest of her clothes. Ia did her best to wipe her face, hands, weight suit tiles, and boots as dry as possible. Once reasonably presentable, she headed for Room 303 and knocked on the door. Ushered inside by the corporal who answered the door, Ia was quietly directed to sit in one of the benches and await the court’s leisure.
There she waited, sneaking the occasional glance at the neatly uniformed, restraint-cuffed Kaimong, slouching in one of the chairs beyond the low wooden railing, looking utterly bored by his own court-martial proceedings. He wasn’t on the stand at that moment, however; Buck Sergeant Johannez was. One of the two JAG officers in the room, both clad in the grey uniform of the Special Forces, stood up at a gesture from one of the three brown-clad ranking officers seated at the judging desk. The woman started, or rather, restarted an audio recording, and paused it, asking Sergeant Johannez questions about certain points along the way.
Ia listened to the recorded sounds of Kaimong stunning everyone, of him stealing the rifles, of him choosing to shoot everyone several times more with his 40-MA, and his final out-loud comment dismissing his place in Class 7157 and the Space Force Marines. She hadn’t realized all of that had been recorded—it hadn’t seemed important to check for such things. As the JAG officer outlined her points regarding Kaimong’s repeated firing of the stunner rifle on his classmates and superiors alike, Ia heard faint snapping sounds, and winced.
Damn. It caught me sitting up early and unsnapping my weight suit. And there, in the timestreams just ahead, these lovely Judge Advocate General officers will question me as to why I didn’t fall down and stay unconscious. If I lie, I’ll run up against Fatality Forty-Three. If I tell the full truth, and not just the half-asteroided version I’ve told everyone so far, I get tossed out of the Marines and straight into the Special Forces, which would destroy everything.
One of these days, I’d love to be free to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Of course, with my luck . . . most of it will still end up being censored down into nothing more than a bland, scientific discourse on frogs . . .
The other JAG officer emphasized the point that his silent, sulking client had been under the impression that multiple stunner shots were accumulative, when in fact they did nothing more than “reset” the starting point of how long the hour-long effect would last. His intent may have been to delay pursuit as long as possible, but he had not used the more lethal projectile weapon at that point in time. The first military lawyer argued that while stunner fire wasn’t lethal, excessive exposure to the weather, both excessive sunlight and the approaching storm, could have caused problems for Kaimong’s stunned classmates, if they had indeed been left unconscious and exposed to the elements for that long.
The argument went back and forth for several minutes longer, before the JAG offi
cers were bidden by the major heading up the tribunal to sit down again. When Ia’s name was called, she almost missed it. Rising belatedly, she moved over to the witness stand, saluted, and swore her oaths of truthfulness on a copy of The Witan: The Book of the Wise, the holy book of the Unigalactan movement and a staple of the Space Force, both for chaplaincy and courtroom needs.
Both JAG officers questioned her thoroughly. When asked why she hadn’t moved immediately if stunner fire had no effect on her, and why she had started unsnapping her weight suit once she had sat up, but hadn’t called for backup until after it was fully off, Ia replied with part of the truth: that she hadn’t wanted to draw Kaimong’s attention back to the others by moving too soon.
At that point in time, she pointed out carefully, her own weapon had no e-clip, not to mention a much shorter range than the Heck laser rifle, and she hadn’t wanted to run the risk of him firing a non-stunner weapon at her. The risk of him hitting her was superseded further, Ia asserted, by the risk that he might miss her and thus hit one of the others instead. A risk she had judged to be too high to chance, in her carefully considered opinion. The same as she had considered it too risky that Kaimong would successfully lose himself in the bush, make it all the way to some civilian household, and perhaps threaten or even harm those civilians in his efforts to get away from Camp Nallibong.
The questioning went on and on. Yes, she was aware prior to facing him in direct confrontation that he had loaded the High Explosives clip into his gun, as evidenced by the sounds and visible signs of explosives in the destruction of the first hovercamera. No, she no longer had her boot chevron rank when she pursued him. Yes, she was reasonably sure he knew she didn’t have that rank during the pursuit. No, she wasn’t sure if he had recognized her identity and rank when he had shot at her when she had been on the higher ground.
Thankfully, she had just enough time in the pacing of each question to consider each of her possible answers against the flow of the proper future. It saved her from saying too much, or saying it in the wrong way. When she was finally dismissed, if she had been anyone else, Ia would have been hard-pressed to say what the tribunal’s verdict on his sentence and punishment would be. Other than that he would be punished, since the evidence was undeniable, of course.
As it was, she didn’t bother to speculate. Her part was done. This section of the dominoes was lined up, poised to give her a small shortcut to her intended future as soon as they fell. All she had to do right now was catch up with the rest of Class 7157 and wait for tomorrow, when the verdict would be read and the corporal part of his punishment carried out.
MARCH 23, 2490 T.S.
The rain had stopped, but the lingering moisture combined with the returning summer heat left the next morning feeling oppressive and sticky. After their morning regimen training and breakfast were over, Ia and the others were marched out to the parade ground. On one side of the grassy field were the reviewing stands, where visitors were supposed to sit when each Class graduated. Those were filled once a week as each Class completed its training. On the other side of the damp, slightly steaming field sat the announcements platform, where the Camp commander could address everyone in times of assembly.
It also served as the punishment platform.
Packed into tightly spaced rows so that all twelve Classes currently stationed at Camp Nallibong could see—the other four Classes were currently training in space at Battle Platform Wellington, which orbited Mars—Ia and the others watched as the projection sheets were raised on either side of the platform.
The only relief she had in the face of the muggy, rising heat of the morning and the grim exhibition they were about to witness was that she had been granted permission to leave her weight suit back at the barrack. But that was the only thing that had been left behind. Every single Class currently in progress had been assembled, even the one training group currently undergoing Hell Week, though from the looks on their exhausted faces, at least their Hell Week was almost over.
The recruits weren’t the only ones being assembled for this moment. Nonessential personnel, the cooks, clerical staff, and other enlisted, noncommissioned, and commissioned personnel who worked on the base finished filing into the grandstand behind them. Only those who monitored vital tasks, had medical leave severe enough to remain behind, or currently maintained the security of the military base were allowed to be excused from this assembly.
Larger than life-sized, General Tackett strode onto those screens even as he strode onto the stage. His all-black uniform, the mark of ultimate formality in the Space Force, was warning enough of the seriousness of this moment, as was the full complement of glittery pinned to his chest, all of the ribbons and medals he had earned during the years of his military service.
Turning crisply to face the assembled recruits, he waited as the sergeants barked the command to salute, and returned it as soon as the men and women waiting on the grass had raised their arms.
“Greetings, Recruits. Assume Parade Rest,” he told them, pausing just long enough for the assembled bodies to take a half step to the side and tuck their hands behind their backs. His voice, amplified by the projection system, rolled across the mist-strewn field. “This assembly is a solemn occasion. It is a reminder that with power comes responsibility. With destruction comes restitution. With crime comes punishment.
“We are the finest fighting force in the entire Alliance . . . but we are the finest because we will maintain discipline in our ranks. The military is not here to be soft-hearted. We trained to maim and to kill, in the defense of all civilians within our jurisdiction and protection. Loss of discipline puts not only our fellow soldiers in jeopardy, but those civilian lives as well.” Grim-faced below the brim of his brown-striped black hat, the general surveyed the assembled recruits from the podium and the two screens to either side. “This is unacceptable. We exist to defend the laws and the lives of these Terran United Planets. Not to destroy them.
“Three days ago, at nine hundred thirty-two local time Terran Standard, Recruit Wong Ta Kaimong, Class 7157, broke that discipline and committed several infractions against the rules, regulations, and laws of the Terran United Planets Space Force, Branch Marine Corps.”
An angled, padded metal frame levered up out of the platform behind him. It rose sideways to the assembled troops and locked into place with a thunk Ia could hear from her position over thirty meters away. Some of the men and women around her flinched at the sound, but she kept still. In the back of her mind, she could see a similar frame rising up out of a different platform. Blinking, she focused firmly on the here and now, not wanting her mind to be clouded by potential-possible future events.
Three figures approached from the side, one of them resisting and the other two pulling along the one struggling between them. Two more followed, one carrying a thick roll of fabric and a long, sealed tube, the other carrying what looked like a medical scanner and a small case. The struggling figure was Kaimong, caught in the grip of two Military Peacekeepers. Ia heard several of her fellow Class members inhale sharply at the sight of him, and saw a few of the backs in front of her flexing in preemptive winces.
When they mounted the stage, Kaimong caught sight of the discipline frame. He cried out, struggling, and was lifted bodily by the MPs escorting him. They lashed him to the padded frame facedown, and the man with the padded roll shook it out and wrapped it around his waist and thighs, adjusting it carefully before tightening the straps that would hold it in place.
Ia’s Class had undergone plenty of instruction in what the act of corporal discipline meant: the padded roll was meant to protect the thighs and the kidneys from accidental misstrokes. The cylindrical case, which the man was now opening, contained the rotan cane, submerged in a mild disinfectant to reduce the risk of infection.
The person carrying both items was the caner, and it was upon his or her shoulders to get the caning right the first time, else they themselves would be subjected to twice the misplaced or jud
ged-excessive strokes. Additionally, men caned men, and women caned women; that was the rule, since it was judged that the strength of each gender’s muscles was calibrated to what their own side could safely take, flesh-wise. Different padding was also used if the caning was to be applied against the offender’s upper back, but that was usually reserved for more severe crimes.
With the caner was the military doctor, who would scan and certify the prisoner as fit for punishment, and count out the strokes, to ensure that no more than the assigned number would be applied.
Strapped in place, Kaimong panted visibly, occasionally testing his bonds, but visibly unable to free himself. In front of him, General Tackett flipped up the screen on his command wrist unit and read aloud the charges.
“After undergoing a military tribunal to investigate the truthfulness and severity of his alleged crimes, Recruit Wong Ta Kaimong was convicted of the following offenses, which were judged severe enough to be sentenced with the following punishments: for the crimes of five counts of theft of Space Force property, which included the theft of two lethal weapons and their ammunition, Recruit Kaimong shall receive two strokes of the cane. For the crime of assaulting thirty-nine of his fellow recruits with a nonlethal weapon, Recruit Kaimong shall receive two strokes of the cane.
“For the crime of assaulting five squad leaders with a nonlethal weapon, Recruit Kaimong shall receive one stroke of the cane. For the crime of assaulting two superior noncommissioned officers with a nonlethal weapon, Recruit Kaimong shall receive one stroke of the cane. For the crime of damaging expensive military surveillance equipment while evading arrest, Recruit Kaimong shall receive one stroke of the cane. For the crime of deliberately attacking and attempting to murder fellow Terran military personnel with a lethal weapon, Fatality Thirteen, Friendly Fire . . . Recruit Kaimong shall receive four strokes of the cane.
