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Authors: Jean Johnson

Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty (9 page)

BOOK: Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty
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Clicking the stopwatch, the tall sergeant marched back outside.
Ia grabbed at the underwear waiting for her on the bench. Her “plain” Browns were indeed a plain, dull, dirt shade of brown, unornamented save for the black stripes down the short sleeves and the long pant legs, denoting them members of the Space Force. All four Branches had their own distinct colors, brown for Marines, blue for Navy, green for Army, and grey for Special Forces, but all four Branches also shared the color black.
Black showed they were all under the aegis of the Space Force together. She knew from both the news Nets and her forays onto the timeplains that the semiformal dress uniform for each Branch was that section’s color, but that full, formal Dress Blacks were what all Branches wore on special occasions. The lattermost wouldn’t be issued until they survived and passed Basic Training, though.
For now, everything she wore would be either brown or mottled shades of brown. One day, her gear would be blue, then grey, but for now, brown. Freshly spun clothes, freshly molded toiletries, freshly minted recruits, all brown. Even her skin would end up browned by the hot Australian sun, protective lotions and all.
A glance to her left showed Lackland still seated on the bench. He had removed his shirt, but was holding it over his chest and still giving the women in the room a wary look. She hadn’t probed deeply into his background since he wasn’t that important to the future, but she vaguely remembered something about him coming from some conservative religious background. A fact which would hinder him, if she didn’t do something now.
Shrugging her bra into place, Ia leaned over him, putting her tan nose almost against his brown one. “Get into the showers, soldier. There’s no longer any room for modesty in Basic Training—now!
Move
it!”
Jumping in his seat, he hastily put his shirt down. Moving away so he had room to stand and strip, Ia finished dressing. She spent a few moments re-braiding her waist-length hair to make it look tidy—not that she’d have it for much longer, but it was one of her few points of childhood vanity—a few more minutes applying the various patches issued by the dispensary, then rolled up and repacked her kitbag. Her civilian clothes she wadded up into a bundle, stacked her shoes on top, and dumped all of it into the recycling bin by the entrance. There was no point in shipping them anywhere for storage when she wasn’t ever going to wear them again.
A survey of the room showed people still chatting with each other, slow to shower and slow to change. “I suggest the rest of you get moving, meioas! You have twelve minutes to be changed, packed, and out in the hall. Get your canteens out, too. We’ll probably be walking all over this place, and that means we’ll need water. Move!”
“Who died and made
you
God?” someone called out from the far side of the room.
There were far too many ways she could have answered that. Picking the safest reply, Ia pointed at the doorway. “Simple logic says, the more we pay attention and the faster we cooperate, the easier it’s gonna be for us. The more we slack off and the less we pay attention, the harder it’ll be. It’s your choice, meioa. Don’t cry up a meteor storm because of the bad choices
you
choose to make, when you could be making smarter ones. Eleven minutes left. Let’s move it!”
“Slag off!” “Yeah, right . . .” “
V’shakk
that!” “What are they gonna do,
spank
us?” Laughter accompanied that last quip. Some of the others moved a little faster, but most of them moved at their own pace.
Rolling her eyes, Ia finished packing her kitbag, remembering to extract her canteen from the rest and clip it onto her belt.
They’ll learn soon enough.
Forenze asked for Ia’s help in rolling up her kit again. Spyder wandered over, saw how she was doing it, and requested help as well. That took up all the time Ia cared to give, though a few others did ask some questions. Exiting with her bag on her shoulder, Ia lined up with a minute to spare, toes of her brown regulation boots just touching the blue paint on the floor, facing their patiently waiting Regimen Trainer. Mendez, Spyder, Forenze, and a couple more joined her, including ZeeZee and a man named Brad Arstoll. Him, she had foreseen in the timestreams.
If she played things right, Arstoll and Mendez would end up helping her career. If she played them wrong, the two could become a hindrance. But that would have to unfold when it happened. Right now, Ia kept her eyes on Sergeant Linley. The neatly uniformed woman checked her stopwatch as a few more bodies came out of the changing room, raised the archaic timepiece over her head, and clicked it.
“Time’s up!” she called out, her voice echoing up and down the hall, pitched loudly enough to carry into the changing room. “I see
thirteen
people out here, on the line and on the time! That’s
thirty-two
of you who can’t be
v’shakked
to follow orders. For each
minute
you slags
waste
in getting out here, that number will be multiplied by thirty-two push-ups, which you will
all
have to do.
On the double! Move!
”
The others twisted their torsos and craned their necks, watching as their classmates scrambled out of the changing room. Ia didn’t look behind her; she could see it clearly enough inside her head. She also didn’t have to see the other woman’s stopwatch to know that Kaimong was the last to amble out—amble, as in to saunter, stroll, walk at a causal pace—and join the rearmost line.
“. . . Three minutes, two seconds.” Sgt. Linley looked up from her watch, her dark eyes gleaming like gun oil. “Congratulations, Class 7157. Looks like Recruit Kaimong is your new best friend. He just earned
all
of you the dubious joy of doing one hundred twenty-eight push-ups.”
Bodies twisted again, this time with their owners glaring rather than glancing behind them.
“Since you soft-bellied sons of slag and daughters of drek can’t
do
one hundred twenty-eight push-ups in a row . . . yet . . . you will do ten now, and ten every half hour, for the next seven hours. Drop and give me ten! Count ’em out!”
Her voice cracked over the assembly like a whip. Ia dropped her kitbag and herself to the floor of the wide corridor, angling her body so she wouldn’t take up too much room. Tightening her stomach, she called out the numbers. “One! Two! Three . . .”
Others copied her, but their voices weren’t nearly as loud. Sergeant Linley walked down the awkward rows. “I can’t
hear
most of you sorry slags counting off. Start again from
one
, and make it
loud
!”
Ia pumped herself off the floor, starting again from one as directed. Her efforts went ignored as Linley lambasted the others, forcing all of them to start over twice more, until Ia figured she personally had done about twenty-five push-ups. Most of the others had done at least thirteen or fourteen, and some as many as eighteen.
When they were all on their feet again, many of them rubbing at their arms and a few grumbling under their breath, their regimen training sergeant resumed her place in front of Ia’s row. “. . . As you can see, you survived ten puny, pathetic little push-ups. Beyond that, most of you are worth less than the spit on a sidewalk. You’re flabby, weak, and undisciplined. On the plus side,
if
you can survive your basic instruction, you just
might
make it as Marines. On the minus side . . . either you’ll wash out, or we’ll ship you off to the Army.
They
don’t mind taking in losers and rejects.
This
, however, is the Marine Corps! Right Face!”
Ia turned crisply to her right, yet another thing she had practiced over and over with her brothers. The others managed to follow the direction without too much trouble, though she could hear a few extra footsteps as someone who turned left hastily turned the other way around. When they were more or less in position, Linley moved to the front of the five lines.
“In a few moments, we will proceed to the barbershop, where you will literally shed the last remnants of your civilian lives. Once you have been given your regulation SF-MC recruit haircuts, you will place your broad-brimmed caps on your heads, fill your canteens with water from the sinks at the far end of the shop, and line up outside the doors beyond.
“You are
required
to drink a minimum of seven liters a day, and that means whenever we stop to fill up your canteens, you will have already drunk them dry, or you will be instructed to do so on the spot,” Linley instructed them. “Right now, I want you sorry slags to take a good look at who all is sharing your line with you. This
first
row will be A Squad. You get that distinction because you
actually
followed orders. Next will be B Squad, followed by C Squad, D Squad, and E Squad.
“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.”
BOOK: Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty
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