Captain Cosette

by R. Bruce Sundrud

  Laser lights shimmered from the two arms of the device and swept from the crown of her head to the floor and back again. “Let the string go and turn sideways. Hold still.” Again the laser shimmered over her, and then he repeated the process with her back to him. “Done.” The string slid back into the device; he closed the two arms, tucked the instrument back into his pouch and left the room without comment.

  “Didn’t your home have hot water?” asked Rasora, as Cosette looked into the cavernous closet.

  “Warm water, sometimes. Our water storage was solar blanketed, but in winter I usually…no, we didn’t have hot water.”

  Raimy cleared his throat. “There aren’t many people stationed here at the moment. They’re mostly out dealing with the rebellion. The mess hall has food, but don’t expect much. I’ll let the training officer know you’re coming tomorrow morning at ten. If it were up to me you’d start training at seven, but he’s a bit…eccentric…and won’t take anyone before ten.”

  “What kind of training?” asked Cosette, trying not to appear nervous.

  “For you? Probably maintenance and clerking. They won’t put you in any action.”

  “I’ll be in school, then?”

  “No, it's a teaching machine. Technology we captured from the Alliance. Cap on your head, a few sessions, you’re an expert if all goes well. You’ll be working right away. We don’t waste time.”

  A teaching machine!

  She had read about one of those in a novel once, about how some forsaken woman at the last moment learned how to translate alien languages and joined her beloved in the expedition to some exotic planet. If she remembered right, the woman’s beloved got eaten by a plant or something.

  In the dark moments of the night before, she had pictured herself marching in ranks, doing pushups, getting beaten by the drill sergeant just like her stepfather had whipped her when she hadn’t pruned the vines properly.

  They won’t put you in any action.

  What a relief! She had heard the gunfire and the explosions. She might actually survive her stint in the military. She might eventually get to return home.

  “Here you go” Harn bustled back into the room, his arms full. “One dress uniform, two work uniforms, one casual outfit, one nightclothes, and five sets of underclothing. One new set of shoes, indoor grade, and five sets of socks.” He tossed the pile on the bunk beside her cloth bag. “Now, young lady, you throw all the clothes you brought with you into one of the disposable bags in the showers, tie it off, and leave it outside of your door. Use the yellow soap in the shower and scrub, and I mean scrub, every square inch of you. It will kill anything you brought in with you.”

  “Throw away everything?”

  “Underclothing and everything.”

  Rasora coughed politely. “Excuse me; I happen to be wearing some of her underclothing. Should I throw it away also?”

  Harn gaped, started to speak, turned red, and fled the room.

  Raimy snorted. “Don’t upset the staff like that! Good help is hard to find.”

  “I was being sincere,” said Rasora self-righteously.

  Cosette picked up one of the uniforms and held it against herself, impressed by the accuracy of the tailoring. “How did he get these so fast? Do they carry that many sizes of uniforms in stock?”

  “Robotic sewing machines,” snapped Raimy. “They probably had them sewn and folded by the time he walked back to his shop. Any more questions?”

  Cosette shook her head.

  “Good.” Raimy stalked out of the room.

  Rasora took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Cosette, if you’re okay, I’m going to take your van and go to a small sanctuary not far from the base. Imsami wasn’t religious, but I need to pray for him. I’ll check on you tonight.”

  “Don’t you consider me safe yet?”

  “Not with these imbeciles. When you’re trained up, when you’re working at your job, then maybe. Unless you want me to go away?”

  “No! Please. I’m grateful. Honest.”

  “You want your underwear back?”

  She laughed. “No, it’s yours.”

  “No, it isn’t. I own nothing. But I’ll take care of it. Now, go shower up like he asked. They don’t want anything from the highlands loose down here.” He left the room.

  She marveled at the lovely material of the uniforms, not coarse and tough like her work dresses. She carefully and neatly put everything away, set out the casual outfit, and then went into the shower room to throw away her country clothes and for the first time in her life took a shower with actual hot water.

  Chapter Four

  Cosette enjoyed a hot shower before going to bed, a hot shower when she woke up, and a hot shower after breakfast. Breakfast in the mess hall was dry cereal from a bin and milk and purple juice from a machine. According to the label, the pulpy juice was from a tropical tree on Sorine. She helped herself to a second glass. She was wearing her tan and gold dress uniform, which fit perfectly. She felt good, and she wasn’t going to have to go into battle. She was not happy with how short the barber had trimmed her hair, but it was the military and she had expected no less.

  When she arrived at the Training Center, the door was already open. She stepped inside. “Hello?”

  “You’re late!” someone snapped. She looked to her left and saw a tall thin man in a green work coat with large white buttons. His hair was wild and gray, and he wore the thickest glasses she had ever seen. His face was covered with gray stubble, and his long spidery hands seemed constantly busy.

  Is he an offworlder or just weird?

  “Are you the trainer?” she asked.

  “What do you think I am, the janitor? Get in here! You were supposed to be here at ten.”

  “It is ten,” she said, looking at the clock.

  “That clock’s slow. They’re all slow. Every one. If you’d gotten here ten minutes ago you would have been on time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He adjusted levers and switches on an elaborate chair as he spoke. A multitude of wires stretched from the chair to the wall and from the wall to a helmet suspended above the chair. To Cosette, it looked like the throne of a king, one who was obsessed with wires and brass.

  The room, like every other room on the base, was painted in yellow and gray. The chair and helmet were black metal, brass, and polished wood. Cabinets, desks with keyboards and monitors, and odd pieces of equipment of unknown function filled the rest of the room.

  He thrust out his hand. “Give me your papers!”

  “I don’t have any papers.”

  “What? Why didn’t you bring your papers?”

  “I wasn’t given any. The man at the counter didn’t give me any.”

  “In your room. On the clipboard. You should have brought the clipboard. And why are you wearing your dress uniform?”

  What a rude man.

  “I thought…”

  “Don’t think. Run, don’t walk, back to your room. Change to a work uniform, grab your clipboard, and be back here in five minutes.”

  “But…”

  “Go!”

  She ran, muttering under her breath. She had had too many whippings from Auguste to consider what would happen if she dawdled.

  Once in her room, she kicked off her new shoes, threw off her dress uniform – now I’ll probably get yelled at for not keeping a neat room – pulled on her work uniform, put back on her new shoes – so comfortable! – ran out the door, turned around, ran back in the door, grabbed the clipboard, and ran back to the training room.

  Had she made it back in five minutes? The trainer didn’t seem to care. He was busy adjusting the devices attached to the chair.

  “Here,” she said, extending the clipboard to him.

  “Eh?” He peered at her as though seeing her for the first time. “Good heavens, you’re hyperventilating. Sit down and equilibrate.”

  She glanced from the elaborate chair – the teaching machine – to the stool b
y the door. “Do you want me to sit in the chair or on…”

  “Yes!”

  “…the stool?”

  “I said yes.”

  “Yes to the chair, or yes to the stool?”

  “Listen, recruit…,” he took the clipboard and peered at it, “Recruit Cosette, don’t go giving me dichotomous questions.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t say this OR that, just say, should I do this? And I’ll answer yes or no. You waste my time tossing out dichotomous choices when you need only give me one. It took me forever to break my last assistant of that habit, and then he got himself hauled off to the front lines, so here I am again, being asked dichotomous choices by a new recruit when I could be doing my research. What are you still standing there for? Sit in the chair!”

  Cosette sat. It was comfortable, nicely padded, with wooden armrests. Only the leather straps gave her pause.

  The name tag on the trainer’s shirt said PROFESSOR ROLAND PPHD/PP/LD, whatever that meant. Professor Roland was obviously unhappy about doing his assistant’s job. He muttered to himself as he scrutinized the pages on the clipboard. “Maintenance. Assembly. Hm.” He reached up to a large screen and tapped it, bringing up a menu. After a couple of taps on the screen, he had a program highlighted: E7 Field Rifle Assembly, Testing, Maintenance, and Logging.

  “I could train a juvenile anthropoid to do what I’m doing,” he grumbled, sliding the cap over the top of Cosette’s head. “You have annoying hair. They would shave recruits bald if I had my way.” Grabbing a thick tube, he squirted some gel on a pad and tied it on her forehead. “Don’t fidget.”

  He tied straps on her ankles and wrists, binding them in place.

  “What’s that for?” asked Cosette, her anxiety rising.

  “To prevent random movements. The machine downloads the packet of knowledge onto the neural network of your cerebral cortex and it lands where there is a receptive region.” The technical subject seemed to calm him, and as he adjusted her headband he spoke like a teacher. “It’s second-hand Alliance technology. The human brain is not a computer, you know, it’s a chaotic network based on multiple firing probabilities. This teaching machine feeds a coherent packet of knowledge into your brain, and then your consciousness has to find the beginning of that packet and integrate it with the rest of stored knowledge. It’s a snap. Literally. You’ll see.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  He laughed maniacally. “Does it hurt? I don’t know. I don’t care. No one complains. You tell me.” He lowered the wired helmet onto her head. “Ready?”

  “For what?”

  “Bite down on this.” He folded a piece of sterile gauze over a disk of metal connected to a wire which was connected to the machine, and handed it to her.

  “What’s this?”

  “Don’t question me. I know what I’m doing. It’s just a feedback sensor, like a, um, flywheel on a motor. Don’t worry, it’s not going to electrocute you.”

  Reluctantly she put the gauzed disk into her mouth and held it with her teeth.

  “Here we go.” He pressed a key.

  Cosette held her breath.

  Nothing happened.

  Professor Roland clucked and turned some pages in a well-worn manual. “Hmmm… Ah, I see. Of course. I knew that.” He pulled a cable from under her chair, unplugged a cable from the wall panel, and inserted the cable from her chair.

  “There. Now let’s try this again.”

  He doesn’t know what he’s doing. I AM going to get electrocuted.

  Once more he pressed the key.

  She had the odd sensation of someone laying a lace doily onto her brain, like a soft fabric gently resting on her mind. The room dimmed slightly, and sound softened.

  A bell dinged.

  “Done.” He peeled off the head band and began loosening the leather straps. She hadn’t felt any need to twitch, no random movements.

  She removed the disk from her mouth. “That’s all?”

  “Yes.” He handed her a cloth to wipe the gel from her brow. “Not everyone can integrate these packets. We’ll find out if your brain can handle it.”

  She cleaned her forehead and folded the cloth in her lap. “Should I get up or should I…”

  “Yes!”

  “…stay seated?”

  He glared at her.

  She quickly stood up.

  She looked around, uncertain, and took a few trial steps. She didn’t feel smarter than before. If anything, the room was darker and sounds seemed muffled. “I don’t know anything I didn’t before.”

  “Let me be the judge of that. Would you let me be the judge of that? I still think they should give you people some basic discipline before they send you in here. Always questioning. Dichotomous questions, no less. This way.”

  She followed him down the hallway, through several corridors, and out the door into a large area surrounded by high wire fences.

  Several military vans were parked against the far fence, and other wheeled equipment stood in rows beside them. Crates, piles of steel girders, rusting bins, and stacks of tires seemed placed at random.

  Under a roof, to their right, lay a row of wooden crates. “Here,” said Professor Roland. “A new shipment of field rifles. They need to be assembled, tested, and catalogued. Use the pile of used tires there for a backstop when you test them. After you catalog the rifles, stack them in that room there,” he pointed to a door marked AREA KK-02.

  “But,” Cosette spread her hands helplessly, “I don’t even know how to open the crates.”

  “There’s a crowbar right there. When you’re done, come see me. Quarter-master Raimy will know how to find me.” He turned on his heel and stalked back into the compound.

  Cosette stood and thought, listening to the distant hum of traffic. At the side of the field some workmen with a large machine were digging a trench. A flier soared overhead.

  She sighed, picked up the crowbar, and by trial and error pried the top off the first crate. Inside she found several boxes labeled RIFLE, FIELD, E7 MODEL 2, UNASSEMBLED.

  What was she supposed to do? Put them together? She didn’t even know what they were supposed to look like assembled. What if she put things in backwards and it exploded?

  She lifted one of the boxes onto a table that seemed made for the purpose of assembling things, broke the tape on the box, and lifted the lid.

  Inside was an oily-smelling collection of components. She reached in, picked one up, and examined it.

  Snap.

  She felt a lurch in her head, a sudden fitting as though a piece of a jigsaw had just popped into place. Everything became brighter; the noises around her from the traffic and the workmen became clear and sharp.

  Of course. This is the midbracket that holds the butt stock and the charging handle latch spring.

  She reached into the box, found the butt stock, and snapped it on the midbracket. The charging handle slid in to this particular hole, of course, and she held it in place with her thumb while slipping on the retainer. The core coil plunger went on next, followed by…

  Calmly, confidently, she pulled out the parts of the rifle and fitted them together. A marvel of engineering, the gun required only a couple of hand screws tightened to complete the assembly. She flipped back the lever that pulled the core from the kaeon coil and looked at the charging pins on the coil cover.

  I need a charging port.

  On the wall behind the table were several brackets with ports, and she pressed the E7 into a bracket to let it charge. A small red light under the port indicated that it was charging.

  Then she stepped back and covered her mouth with both hands.

  What in the world did I just do?

  The box was now empty except for packing material and some papers, and there on the wall hung a thoroughly lethal E7 field rifle which she had assembled all by herself.

  “It worked,” she whispered. “The teaching machine worked.”

  She opened the next box, and wa
tched herself assemble the next E7 and hang it up for charging.

  With a feeling of wonder and satisfaction, she assembled one rifle after another until all the charging ports were filled. By that time the first rifle’s charging port was showing green.

  How much more do I know?

  She remembered Professor Roland saying that she should use the pile of old tires as a backstop for testing. Inside each box was a loose paper target, a piece of paper with concentric squares alternating black and white.

  She took a target over to the pile of tires and pressed its adhesive back against a tire in the middle.

  She walked back to the row of rifles and pulled off the first one she had assembled. “Now, how do I make this thing fire?”

  Without thinking, she flipped the lever that pushed the core into the kaeon coil, turned around and blew the target to shreds.

  She shrieked and dropped the rifle.

  Okay, it’s okay, that’s what it was supposed to do!

  She shook her hands, trying to shed her panic.

  It’s supposed to do that, it’s supposed to fire that ball of energy, it’s supposed to destroy what it’s aimed at. It’s supposed to kill people.

  Taking a calming breath, she picked up the rifle and looked it over for damage. Satisfied, she reversed the lever to disarm it, locked it, and laid it on the counter.

  All the assembled rifles in brackets were showing green.

  She took a handful of paper targets and pressed them against the old tires.

  One by one she took down the rifles, armed them, and destroyed their targets. She never missed the center.

  Soon all twenty rifles were assembled, tested, and laid out on the table.

  Now what? He said to catalog them and then to stack them in that room.

  Catalog.

  On the wall was a durable version of a keyboard and a weather-protected monitor.

  She stared at it until she had the uncomfortable feeling it was staring back.

  She had never used a computer. She knew computers existed, and she had watched with fascination when the fruit buyers tapped information into hand-held devices, but in her poor little highland school, education was all book learning.