The initial recruiting interview was completely automated. The interview booths worked up a complete physical profile on the prospective recruit while also checking, through other computer databases, every facet of the individual's life. Even before Dean stepped out of the booth, the Marine Corps knew he'd been kicked out of school at age eight and why, as well as the state of enzyme function in his stomach. Within five minutes, as he calmly answered innocuous personal questions, he had been found fully qualified and a highly desirable prospect for enlistment. Also, the first entries in his service record had been completed.
"Elly, terminate," Riley-Kwami said. "Elly's our pet name for the recruiting program," he explained. "I wanna shut her down for a few seconds so we can talk off the record. I'll turn her back on when we get back to the official stuff. She might know how to spell your name, Mr. Dean, but you gotta speak up to make sure. Funniest things happen to you when you rely too much on all this razzle-dazzle technology. Goddamn thing should've caught that during the interview and asked you to spell out your middle name." The big master sergeant shook his head. "Gotta get a tech man down here to fix that. Gawdamn army and navy's got the money to run all this crap, but what we got is real crap. Was it mine or the Bulldog's image on the computer screen in the interview booth?" he asked suddenly.
"Not you, sir. A heavyset man with two stripes over a gold star."
"Corporal Bildong, known affectionately throughout the Corps as 'Bulldog,' for obvious reasons." The recruiter nodded. "And Mr. Dean, don't call me 'sir,' for two reasons: first, I'm not an officer—I work for a living. Sorry," he added quickly as a look of bewilderment passed over Dean's face. "Old service joke, Joseph. You'll catch on. And second, because I'm a master sergeant and that's how I like to be addressed—as Master Sergeant."
Joe Dean smiled broadly, feeling comfortable and natural in Riley-Kwami's presence. He wanted to be like him.
"Finucane?" Riley-Kwami mused. There was something about this Joseph Dean that made the older man want to sit back and relax, tell a few war stories. He sensed they would not be wasted on this prospect. "A Gaelic name, isn't it," he said, a statement, not a question. "Ethnology is sort of a hobby of mine. You can get curious about that sort of thing in the Corps, because we get to so many places downstream where you gotta know such stuff. I mean way downstream, places the army never gets to unless there's a serious war on. So I always wonder where people come from. Languages you get to know too. You should hear me cuss in Sino-Hindi. I picked that up on Carheart's, when we were training the constabulary there, oh, twenty years ago now. Bulldog was my fire team leader then and he's still a two-striper." Riley-Kwami laughed shortly. "But a damn fine Marine, Bulldog. Carheart's," he sighed, an indication that there was more to duty there than training the constabulary. "Hell of a tour, Carheart's. The kwangduks come up and shit right in your mess kit, you don't watch real careful. But the girls..." He let his voice trail off. " 'Finucane,' huh? A beautiful sound that name has to it, Mr. Joseph Dean."
"My mother's maiden name, si—uh... Master Sergeant."
"You're learning, kid, you're learning," Riley-Kwami said, shaking his forefinger at Dean. He looked at the young man's red hair and freckles and decided he was probably Irish through and through. "We don't see too many pure Anglo-Irish anymore. We don't see many pure anybodies anymore. Look at me: Most of my ancestors came from West Africa back before the Second American Civil War. But some on my father's side came from the Auld Sod during the Potato Famine. So my family name's Riley-Kwami. You gawdamn Irish jumped all kinds of fences these past five hundred years!" Master Sergeant Riley-Kwami slapped his palm on his desk and roared with laughter. "Okay, Elly," he said to the computer, "we're on again." Then to Dean, all business now, "Mr. Joseph Finucane Dean, do you hereby honestly and freely express the intention to enlist into the Confederation Marine Corps for a period of not less than eight years? And do you also acknowledge that if you are enlisted into this Corps, you receive no guarantees of training, schooling, or assignment beyond those stipulated by the Corps as in the best interests of the Corps?"
"Yes, I do."
"Then, Mr. Dean, be here tomorrow morning at eight hours for your formal enlistment and swearing in. When you come down here tomorrow, bring only the items of personal hygiene you can carry in a small bag. Dress casually for the weather, but wear only those clothes you do not want to keep. Do not even bring money, is that clear? You will sign some papers and then be formally sworn into the Corps by the Skipper. You will then be transported directly from here to a port of embarkation to be determined in the morning. Your next stop after that will be Boot Camp. Is all this clear to you, Mr. Dean? You will be given a full briefing before you depart tomorrow. Tell your family that by midday we will contact them with information on how they can get in touch with you. Mr. Dean, you will be leaving this world for a very long time. Your training will be very hard and very long and you will most likely be assigned to duty in some of the most disagreeable places in space. You may very well die there. Do you still intend to be here tomorrow at the appointed time?"
"Yes, Master Sergeant."
"Elly, take a break." Master Sergeant Riley-Kwami reached his big paw out to Dean. Joe Dean stood and shook it firmly. "You have made the right decision, Mr. Dean." Riley-Kwami smiled. "It's a hell of a tough life, but you'll love it, Mr. Dean, you'll love it!" He grinned fiercely. Behind Master Sergeant Riley-Kwami's glittering eyes Dean thought he saw something, a wild spirit called up from the souls of long-dead tribal warriors or Gaelic clansmen that thrilled and frightened him at the same time. And then he knew: it was the thing that won you the midnight-blue ribbon with the silver diamonds.
Back at work, Joe Dean announced to his shift leader, Mr. Buczkowski, that he was quitting. "Butch" Buczkowski was a powerful man, physically hardened after nearly seventy years working out-of-doors on the lake. At eighty-two he was still a decade away from the mandatory retirement age. He shifted the cigar stub from one side of his mouth to the other before he spoke. "What the devil are you telling me, Joe?" Buczkowski squinted hard at the young man. His cigar shifted one more time.
"I went down to the government building and enlisted in the Marines, Butch."
Butch took the cigar stub out of his mouth and spat leaf fragments onto the ground before he stuck it back in. "Joe," he said patiently, "do you have any idea what the devil you're getting yourself into?"
"I have some idea," Dean answered almost defiantly.
"The devil you do!" Butch exploded. "Joe, you ever been on an interstellar ship, 'specially a goddamned troopship? You'll be cooped up in there thirty days before you get to that training world, whatever they're calling it these days—it was known as Arsenault in my time, after the guy who first settled it—but we recruits called it Asshole, because that's what the Confederation turned it into when they bought it from Arsenault's descendants a hundred years ago and made a planetary training center outta it. Yeah. Those Arsenaults were some smart people, unloading all that worthless real estate on the Confederation. Yeah. I was there during the First Silvasian War, the one where your daddy got his medal."
Butch was silent for a moment, regarding Dean. "When ya leaving?"
"Tomorrow morning."
"Jesus." Butch sighed. "I'd give you some money, kid, but you know, there won't be anywhere to spend it until you get your first liberty, and that probably won't be for another year. Hell, they might not even give you any pay until you're through with your basic training."
Butch took the cigar from his mouth and removed more masticated leaf with a stubby index finger, which he wiped on his coveralls. "I was in the army, Joe, and our depot was in the temperate region of the planet. The Marines' depot was in the tropics. We trained there for two months, and Joe, I was never so glad to see snow again! The dumb-ass Marines took most of their training in the tropical zone, except for the mandatory month on one of Asshole's airless moons—we called it the Turd—where we learned to live in near zero gravity and
all that shit." Butch stuck the cigar back into the corner of his mouth.
"Hey!" Butch exclaimed suddenly. "Why the Marines? I thought you were settled on the army?"
Dean shrugged and his face reddened. "I don't know, Butch, I just changed my mind." He didn't want to explain what had happened—he didn't know if he could explain it.
Butch reflected for a moment. Dean had been working for him for five years, all through college. The young man would have quit to join the army much earlier, but when he'd finished high school, his mother wouldn't sign the papers to waive college. "Ah, well, Joe, you'll make a good Marine!" Butch stuck his hand out. He remembered the time a drunken deckhand on a Canadian hydrofoil had threatened to throw some passengers overboard. When he began roughing one of them up, Dean, only sixteen at the time, had stepped up and knocked the man unconscious with one blow. "Ah, shit, kid, I'll miss you! You'll make a damn fine Marine. Good luck to you!" They shook hands.
For the first time since he'd decided to enlist, Joe Dean felt a twinge of sadness. He never thought he'd regret leaving New Rochester, a dreary place on the shores of Lake Ontario, about twenty miles west of the site that had been Rochester, in the state of New York, before the Second American Civil War. The old city had been completely destroyed in the war and then rebuilt farther west about eighty years afterward. But he'd liked Butch Buczkowski, a rough and profane but honest and fair man. Saying good-bye to his mother was much harder. But she had known this was coming for years and had prepared herself for it. He had not been prepared, though, and the next morning as he trudged away from the dingy complex where they lived, his throat was so constricted he could hardly breathe. His mother had refused to go with him because she knew he'd need the long walk to recover from their parting. She hugged him long and hard and silently right at the last. He had almost made it to the government building in the downtown section before the tears in his eyes had dried enough so he could see clearly.
Chapter Two
"Recruits!" Corporal Bulldog Bildong barked. "Stand at-ease!"
The slim officer who had just administered the Oath of Enlistment to the fifty-five men standing before him looked them over before saying anything further. The officer, a captain, Dean thought, looked to be about thirty-five years old. He was wearing a bloodred tunic with an epaulette on each shoulder and a high stock collar bearing the rampant-eagle device; his trousers were a bright gold. On each shoulder board was his insignia of rank, one gold orb. The captain had told them his name was Samson Malimaliumu. He began speaking in a clipped, rapid-fire voice:
"At ten hours you will depart here for the New Rochester spaceport, where you will board a shuttle bound for the starship CNSS Private Thomas Purdom, which is in docking orbit three hundred kilometers above Earth, for transit to the training world Arsenault. Arsenault is nearly two hundred light-years from Earth. The trip, mostly in hyperspace, will take approximately thirty Earth days. The Purdom has a complement of one thousand naval personnel. You will be traveling with approximately three thousand other recruits, most of them army and navy enlistees, all of them from Earth. The other recruits will be rendezvousing at the depot from other ports around the globe. Once all the other Marine recruits are aboard, you'll be formed into your training company en route to Arsenault. You'll train in that company until you graduate—if you live that long. Arsenault is a very tough world and the drill instructors are even tougher. Upon graduation from Boot Camp, you will be assigned to the Fleet. Other training companies are being formed on the other worlds where we recruit and they will arrive at Arsenault at different times during your training cycle, but you won't have much contact with them, or with any Marines other than your drill instructors, until completion of your recruit training. In peacetime, Earth ships out recruits every six months. Your training will commence the moment you board the Purdom. You will be issued all necessary items of clothing and equipment while aboard her. By the time you reach our training base on Arsenault you will be familiar with the organization, history, and traditions of the Marine Corps; the rank structure of the Corps; the Confederation's system of military justice; the basic school of the Marine, including military courtesy, the manual of arms, close-order drill, how to wear the uniform, basic squad formations and the duties of the combat infantryman; you will learn basic weapons assembly and disassembly.
"Any questions? No? Corporal!"
Corporal Bildong came to attention facing the captain. "Sir!" he barked.
"You have command, Corporal."
"Aye aye, sir." He turned back to the recruits. "Detachment, atten-HUT!" Behind him Captain Malimaliumu marched out of the room.
At Bildong's command, the recruits tried with considerable lack of success, and many imaginative variations, to assume the military position of attention.
The corporal rolled his eyes and snorted. "Well, my little dukbirds, at least you got a job for the next eight years!" A few of the recruits laughed at the remark and Bildong silenced them with a ferocious frown. "Okay, stand at ease," he commanded resignedly. "You'll learn all the military stuff when you get aboard the Purdom. Right now, here are meal chits for all of you. There's a cafeteria in the basement of this building. Go on down there, eat breakfast, and wait there for further instructions—that means don't leave the cafeteria, not for any reason. That gives you an hour to eat and get acquainted. Take your personal stuff with you."
"How soon do we get our guns and go and fight?" someone asked abruptly.
Bildong quickly fixed him with a steely look. "You want to fight?" he snarled, then continued in a calm but firm voice, "Don't worry, you'll get your chance. You'll get more chances to fight than anybody could want." He walked over to the recruit, a short, skinny, uncommonly black man. "And I guarantee you," he continued, staring into his eyes from inches away, "the first time you get into a fight, you'll wish to whatever god you pray to that you'd never heard of the Confederation Marine Corps. When Marines fight, people die. And some of those people are Marines. Maybe you. If you go into combat with the attitude you seem to have right now, you'll probably die in your first firefight." He stepped back and swivelled his head to look at everyone. "Any of you think you're tough guys? You think you know how to fight? Well, what you know is fun and games. This is no game, people. This is about life and death. A lot of death."
A long silence descended upon the recruits, fifty-five pairs of young eyes glued to the figure of the corporal. A chill had run through the room. These young people had enlisted in the Corps for the usual reasons people had been joining the military since at least the time of the Romans: to test themselves, to get away from home, to travel, to have fun in foreign parts—both geographical and anatomical. Now, dimly, they were beginning to realize that the Confederation Corps of Marines might have its own serious plans for them that had nothing to do with travel and fun, especially not fun.
"Anybody else have a dumb question?" Bildong asked when the silence had stretched long enough to be uncomfortable.
"Uh, Corporal, when will we get the full briefing Sergeant Riley-Kwami mentioned yesterday?" Joe Dean asked innocently.
"Sergeant Riley-Kwami?" Bildong asked. "I don't know any Sergeant Riley-Kwami." Then an expression of surprised realization slowly came over his face. "Or do you mean," he began slowly, "Master Sergeant Riley-Kwami?"
"Uh, yes, uh, aye aye," Dean stammered, uncertain what he'd done wrong.
Bildong shuddered, then looked away and waved a hand at him. "Never mind with the 'aye aye,' you'll learn how to use the word properly later on." He looked back at Dean. "You did mean Master Sergeant Riley-Kwami?"
Not trusting his voice, Dean nodded.
"A sergeant has one more stripe than I do," Bildong explained with exaggerated patience. "A master sergeant has a good many more than that. We're not the army—we make the distinction." He paused to see if his point had gotten across, then continued, "Now, I believe you asked a dumb question?" He waited, and when Dean didn't answer, said, "Repeat your question."
<
br /> "Uh, what about the full briefing Ma-master Sergeant Riley-Kwami said we were going to get before boarding ship?"
Bildong regarded him with wide-eyed amazement for a moment. "Sweet Jesus Muhammad, you a comedian or sumptin'?" Then he shook his head. "Recruit, you just got all the 'briefing' you're gonna get until you step aboard the troopship. Then they'll 'brief' you until it oozes outta your ears. Now go on down and get some slop. Might as well start getting used to Marine Corps food. Take the first ladder—that's what you probably call a stairway—on the left after you exit this room. When you're done, stay in the cafeteria. An NCO will join you there later to escort you to the port."
The cafeteria indeed served something that resembled "slop," and within seconds, with the fifty-five recruits crowding in, it was overfull and noisy. Fortunately, Dean was one of the first recruits in line, so he was able to find an empty table in a corner where he set his loaded tray. He took a taste of the glutinous material dished up as hot cereal and marveled at what they'd managed to do with plastic these days.
"Sit with you?" someone said. It was the skinny black kid who'd asked when would they get to fight. "My name's Frederick Douglass McNeal. But everybody calls me Fred."
"Joe Dean," he replied, and shook McNeal's outstretched hand. He was struck by McNeal's dark complexion. It seemed as out of place in this room full of shades of brown as did his own fair face. He remembered his recruiter saying, "We don't see many pure anybodies anymore." In a way, his almost-pure Irish ancestry and McNeal's evident almost-pure African gave them something in common.
"Guess we're both on Corporal Bildong's shortlist with our dumb questions, huh?" McNeal asked. Before Dean could respond, he said, "Look over there!" Dean glanced in the direction McNeal nodded and saw nothing but other recruits. "Look, look." McNeal pointed with his fork. "That girl." He indicated one of the cafeteria's counterwomen. Dean hadn't taken much notice of the cafeteria workers. This one looked pretty plain to him.
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