by Jake Elwood
"Well," Carpenter said. "How does it look?"
"Not good," said a cool feminine voice from behind Tom. He knew better than to turn his head. "I found dust under the beds."
"Dust?" Carpenter sounded as disgusted as if she'd found cockroaches. "You expect to become serving military officers, and you can't even manage the dust in your own barrack room? On the ground! Everybody give me fifteen push-ups." Tom dropped to his stomach, waiting for the other shoe to fall. He started doing push-ups, and Carpenter said, "Anything else?"
"There were a couple of spots on one of the mirrors. That's it."
That's it? Tom kept doing push-ups, losing count as confusion washed over him. Could she have somehow overlooked the flag?
Impossible.
The other recruits were rising, so Tom stopped doing push-ups and stood. He stared straight ahead, mystified, while Carpenter told them how disappointed he was in their housekeeping and reminded them they would be getting up early the next morning so there would be time for a run before their leadership training began.
And then he dismissed them.
Tom looked around at the other recruits, wondering who had saved his neck. Oscar met his gaze and shrugged. The rest of the recruits turned away, heading in different directions. Tom looked at their retreating heads, baffled.
Then one head turned. It was Lily. She'd had a rough time on the hike back, but the smile she gave him now was full of triumph. She winked, then headed toward the barrack room.
Chapter 4
Six more weeks of training passed in an intense blur. Tom hiked and marched and stood in parades. He rolled out of his bunk in the middle of the night for endless drills. He sat in classrooms, fighting to stay awake, learning about leadership and command structures and the history of the Armed Forces. He did endless push-ups, filled with resentment until he realized the "punishments" were arbitrary. The point was not to punish him; the point was to get him to do plenty of push-ups. After that he no longer minded when a cadre trainer would single him out for having his shirt untucked after a strenuous drill. Push-ups were simply part of his day.
Light weapons training was fun, and he wished he could have done more of it. After graduation the weapons training would become more specialized, he knew. He would move on to ship weapon systems, while the army recruits learned about artillery and mechs, the marines practiced boarding spaceships in vacuum, and the cavalry learned about fighters.
In the meantime, the platoon was one big dysfunctional family all learning the same things.
Tom grumbled to anyone who would listen. He grumbled about the pointless, repetitive exercise. He griped about the endless hikes. He pointed out the absurdity of making them sit in classrooms when they were chronically short of sleep. Training and sleep deprivation should be mutually exclusive things, shouldn't they?
All of them complained. They complained bitterly and enthusiastically, and it was a form of bragging. When you listed all the pointless hardships you had to put up with, you were listing all the things you were capable of enduring. Beneath the bitching was a growing pride, an awareness that they coped every day with more than a civilian had to handle in a month.
For a few people, the complaining was a little more serious. There was no way to tell who was complaining as part of their daily routine and who was actually distressed until a recruit would suddenly disappear. Each time someone quit it was a shock to the others. They would look at one another, silently wondering who would be next. In an insidious way, though, it added to the pride of the survivors. This training is too tough for a lot of people, they would think, but we are still here.
Bruce refused to quit, earning the respect of the rest of the platoon not by achieving any sort of excellence but by grimly persevering. He was last in every hike, last to finish push-ups, last to rise from his bunk in the morning. He reached a point where he didn't even complain anymore, just faced every challenge with a bleak grimness.
And it wasn't enough. One day in morning parade a cadre trainer took him out of the line and led him toward the headquarters building.
Tom never saw Bruce again.
One recruit washed out in a more dramatic way. Valdes was a quiet, intense young man who reminded Tom of a younger version of Bruce. He would be cheerful one day, sullen the next. Sometimes he would be grim and silent, as if saving his breath and attention for the ordeal of his training. Other times he would join in the complaining, becoming more and more passionate as he spoke, as if he was giving vent to all the stress he'd been bottling up. His voice would rise until the others exchanged uncomfortable glances. Once Carpenter came into the barrack room and sent Valdes out to run laps in punishment for creating a disturbance.
It was clear Valdes was under a lot of stress, but so was everyone. Tom didn't give it a lot of thought until one evening, as the platoon stood shoulder to shoulder for the usual inspection. Carpenter paced up and down the line, peering at the recruits one at a time, and singled out Valdes for having untidy hair. "Drop and give me ten push-ups."
"It's just hair, Cadre Trainer."
The look of shock on Carpenter's face was almost comical. "What did you say to me, recruit?"
This exchange was so unprecedented, so astonishing, that Tom forgot himself and actually turned his head to watch. Valdes opened and closed his mouth several times, a muscle in his cheek jumping. Then he screamed, "Get off my back, you bloody martinet! I've had it with you!"
Carpenter started shouting at him. He was a good shouter – all the CTs were – but Valdes matched him decibel for decibel. For ten seconds or so they screamed into each other's faces. Then Carpenter, in a quick movement, yanked Valdes forward, tripped him, and dropped him on his stomach on the ground. "You will give me my ten push-ups, recruit!"
Valdes leaped up. His hands were clenched in fists, and there was murder in his eyes. But Carpenter, not having been born yesterday, stepped aside, twisted his hips, and somehow threw Valdes forward while barely seeming to touch him. Valdes landed on the ground one more time.
"This is your last chance, son." Carpenter's voice was soft now, and it was somehow much worse than the screaming. "You better start doing push-ups. Right now."
Valdes came up, his fist looped around in a wild swing – and he landed on his back in the dirt with his arm splayed wide. He didn't get up.
"Thrush. Parker. Take him to the surgery. If he wakes up along the way, don't let him go. See that he gets to the surgeon."
Tom and Parker took an arm each and set off across the parade ground. They dragged Valdes, his heels leaving tracks in the dust. His head hung for the first few steps. He started to recover after that. By the time they reached the door to the surgery he was looking from one of them to the other. Tom was expecting him to struggle, but what happened was much worse.
He started to cry.
A captain in a surgeon's red uniform came around from behind a desk, took in the situation with a glance, and gestured at a gurney. "Put him there."
Valdes wouldn't lie down on the gurney, so the two recruits got him sitting on it instead. They stepped back, ready to react if he tried anything, though Tom wasn't sure just what he was going to do if Valdes decided to leave.
"I'll handle things from here, boys." The captain made a shooing gesture with his hand. "Run along."
Tom half expected Valdes to go on a rampage and attack the doctor. You didn't argue with officers, though. He took one last glance at Valdes, who had one hand curled protectively around a bruise on his jaw. Valdes looked broken, his momentary passion on the parade field spent. He didn't look at anyone. He just stared at the floor.
"Go," the captain said gently.
Tom and Parker went.
"What do you think will happen?" Parker said as they walked back to rejoin the platoon. "He tried to hit Carpenter. Will they court-martial him?"
Tom shrugged. "I doubt it." What would be the point? "He's done in the military, though."
He never did learn Valdes's fate. T
he barrack room had another empty bunk from that point on, and that was that.
At the end of their fourth week the platoon made its toughest hike yet, a dawn-to-dusk ordeal with packs that had to weigh almost forty kilos. At the midpoint they crossed a stream by balancing on a fallen log. Tom was half way across when he slipped, landing hard on wet rocks. Pain lanced through his knee, and he cried out, struggling to push himself up out of the water. Distantly he heard Carpenter snapping orders to the rest of the platoon. Then recruits splashed into the water on either side of him, taking his pack, then helping him to his feet.
He completed the hike, but he did it with an empty pack. He carried the flag staff, using it for support, and hobbled along as best he could. When the platoon reached the barracks, Carpenter sent him straight to the surgery.
By this time Tom's left knee was swollen to almost twice its normal size. The surgeon clucked over it as he examined the injury, then announced, "You're spending the night here. We'll take another look at this tomorrow." He gave Tom a couple of injections, one in the shoulder and one in the knee itself. Then he wheeled Tom's gurney into a small room. "Don't get up without crutches," he said. "I'll bring you a pair. Try to keep your weight off it." The man gave Tom a thin smile. "I expect you could use the rest, anyhow."
Tom didn't know what was in those injections, but the pain in his knee quickly faded. He lay there, basking in the twin luxuries of privacy and idleness, and wondered why he hadn't gotten himself injured a lot sooner. An orderly brought him a dinner tray, and Tom ate in bed. Then he leaned back against the gurney, astonished to find he had absolutely nothing to do.
I can catch up on my sleep. And after that, I can sleep some more. The idea was tremendously appealing, and he yawned as he thought about it. Maybe I'll follow that up with a nap.
What if I can't continue my training? He supposed they would bump him into another platoon if they had to. There was a new intake every four weeks. He could spend a month recuperating, or two months if necessary, then pick up where he left off.
Maybe I could drop out. Maybe this is my ticket out of the military. He thought of Laycraft and her threats of prison. He'd done everything she'd asked of him. He'd joined the military. If he was injured and couldn't continue, that wasn't his fault.
Would Laycraft care? He thought not. Surely six weeks of boot camp and an injury was enough punishment.
I could be a free man. I could get my life back.
Instead of excitement, though, he felt a strange hollowness in the pit of his stomach. What? You hate this place. Why does the thought of leaving make you ill?
Leaving now would make all that suffering worthless. He would get nothing from it. But what could he hope to gain, besides several more years in a uniform, following orders?
I could be a civilian again. He explored the thought, and felt his upper lip curl. What was a civilian, except a coddled child who had to be protected by someone who was so much more?
Do I really want to be one of them? Instead of one of us?
He could sleep in classrooms. He could sleep on rocky ground in bright sunlight during five stolen minutes on the march. Hell, he could sleep standing up, or even walking.
And now, stretched out on a comfortable gurney, he lay awake and stared at the ceiling. If I leave, Mom will say I she knew it was going to happen. She'll say I always fail. But since when do I listen to her?
If I carry on, she'll just harp at me for failing to become an architect. It's not like there's any pleasing her. So forget about her. What do I want?
He thought about returning to college. He thought about watching his hard-won muscles slowly vanish. He thought about getting plenty of sleep, and facing no greater challenge than his final exams. He thought about going through the rest of his life without doing anything that really mattered.
And he made up his mind. And then, at last, he went to sleep.
In the morning the surgeon looked him over, prescribed three days of light duty, and sent him back to the platoon.
Graduation was a day of surprises. The first surprise for Tom was how proud he felt. It was the end of the most gruelling eight weeks of his life. Six members of the platoon hadn't made it. Those who remained knew they had done something remarkable.
And they had done it together, forging amazingly close bonds for such a short time. To Tom the remaining Geese felt as close as siblings.
The platoon would scatter now. Even those who had chosen the Navy would take their occupation training in different places, then move on to different ships and bases. He would run into the other Geese from time to time, but it would never be the same.
The next surprise came from his parents. They startled him, first by showing up at all, then by beaming with pride. Tom stood before his parents in his dress uniform with a ceremonial sword buckled around his waist, and his mother clasped her hands and gazed up at him, speechless. Finally she clutched his shoulders, cried a bit, then stepped back and smiled like her face was going to split in half. Tom's father hugged him, said, "Well done," then wiped his eyes.
Carpenter gave them one last inspection, then shocked the entire platoon by saying, "You'll do." He even smiled a tiny bit, an expression that looked completely unnatural on his angular face.
The camp commander swore them in as officers, one at a time. Five platoons graduated that day, an endless stream of faces showing the same mix of pride and apprehension that Tom felt. Basic Officer Training was over – but no one thought life was about to get easier.
The platoon returned one last time to their barrack room, where they passed around a bottle and reminisced. They exchanged awkward goodbyes, promising to keep in touch, swearing they would never forget their time together as Goose Platoon. Lily threw her arms around Tom and squeezed him so hard she drove the breath from his lungs. She would be shipping out immediately, taking up her duties as a dentist at a United Worlds base in the heart of the Blue Zone, coreward, near the front lines of the war.
Finally, reluctantly, the platoon dispersed. They weren't recruits any longer. They were officers now. Twenty new recruits would move into their barrack room and carry the Goose flag for another eight weeks.
Tom lingered, looking around at the place where his life had irrevocably changed. When he looked back over all he'd gone through, he could hardly believe he'd made it through. He'd never had such a sense of achievement before.
The only downside was that Oscar wasn't here to enjoy it with him. Oscar had quit, abruptly and without explanation, in the middle of Week Five.
Chapter 5
It was the second month of Battleship School, and Tom hated it.
Even during his first semester of college he'd never felt so thoroughly like a misfit. Somehow the hard-won camaraderie of Basic Officer Training was missing aboard the Dauntless, the obsolete battleship in orbit around Saturn which served as a training ground for battleship crews.
Battleships were all about teamwork. That was a refrain Tom heard again and again. A battleship had close to fifteen hundred personnel aboard, all of them living and working closely together. Chaos was a constant threat. Only strict adherence to rules and a dedication to the principles of teamwork could keep a battleship functioning.
The trainers didn't just talk to him about teamwork. They made it sound like an accusation, like they were telling him something simple, something he was supposed to grasp innately. Like he had to be a halfwit with a love of anarchy to not get it.
But Tom understood teamwork. The Goose platoon had practiced teamwork in formal ways, during exercises with explicit parameters, and in informal ways, like Operation Dead Gopher, as it had come to be known. He knew that teamwork mattered. He understood.
But the word seemed to have a different meaning in Battleship School. It seemed to be less about cooperation than conformity. For some reason, the creases in his trousers were a fundamental part of teamwork. If he didn't lace his boots just so, he was letting the team down.
He was labelled
a poor team player for asking too many questions. For cutting through the munition loading area during a drill, and clambering two decks down through an elevator shaft designed to lift explosive shells to the guns. He'd shaved two minutes or so from his response time, but he hadn't taken the approved route.
He supervised the crew of a laser battery during a mock battle. When a gunner threw himself to the deck and became a simulated casualty, Tom took the controls himself and shot down an incoming simulated missile. He was pretty pleased with himself after that shot, and fully expected to be congratulated.
Instead, he got a lecture about teamwork. There were rules on a battleship. Things had to be done a certain way. He was supposed to report the casualty and wait for a replacement. If he couldn't follow such a simple instruction, well, he couldn't be much good at teamwork, could he?
At first he took it as a challenge. No doubt all the new trainees were being hazed in some fashion. It was the Navy way, heaping stress on everyone during training so they wouldn't be fazed by anything they encountered in active service. So he persevered, dug deep, and tried harder.
But the more he tried, the more lines he inadvertently crossed. By his third week he knew he was a special case. None of the other new officers were so constantly in the doghouse. He caught them giving him pitying looks. He was the ugly duckling of the group, the poor sap who didn't seem to have what it took.
A sour knot of frustration formed in his stomach, and there it stayed, day after day. He tried to conform, but his instincts betrayed him repeatedly. It seemed there was always an easier way to do something, a quicker way, a more effective way. And every time he cut a corner, it was a fresh mark against him.
Physical training was his escape. In the gymnasium he was as good as everyone else, and there was finally a straightforward correlation between how hard he tried and how well he did. Hard physical exercise became the only thing that eased the knot in his belly. One day, though, physical training became his undoing.