And now we’d be dealing with each other for fourteen Earth weeks.
Whether I liked it or not.
Morning wakeup was the usual shuffle for sinks and toilets, and since only a handful of the men in the male bay knew each other from their first bay in reception, people had to work out a system all over again. Which didn’t always go smoothly. There was bumping and jostling and a few harsh words between particularly stubborn recruits. But with so little time, nobody could spare more than a curse and a hard glance before moving on to the next hurried task.
We missed the time hack for accountability, of course.
Three men were still in the head when the drill sergeants—a PT-uniformed trio composed of two males and one female—popped on the lights.
Those of us who’d managed to toe the line around the Dead Zone groaned audibly as one of the drill sergeants—the woman, named Schmetkin—looked at her chronometer and began to tsk-tsk-tsk in a tell-tale way that made it clear we were all in for some early-morning hurt. I was just glad we were already in our PT uniforms, because the sweat we worked out in the bay would simply be added to the sweat we worked out on the PT field.
By the time the three offending recruits had rushed to their lockers, thrown their hygiene supplies into drawers and slammed their lockers closed, the drill sergeants were smiling evilly.
“Don’t hurry on our account,” said one of the male drill sergeants—a black-skinned sergeant named Davis.
“They’re on their own schedule,” said Drill Sergeant Malvino, the only staff sergeant of the three. “Looks like we’re gonna get the PT started a little early today.”
Myself and the other males spent ten minutes on our backs and faces, alternating between push-ups and flutter kicks. By the time we’d actually collected our rolled foam PT mats and were shuffling down the stairs to the open-air expanse of concrete beneath the bay, half the male recruits’ PT tops had been soaked dark with perspiration.
Waiting on the concrete—and also showing signs of having had some early PT of their own—were the rest of Charlie Company. Already lined up, according to platoon. All of us from my bay broke off and ran to our respective platoons and squads. For me, that meant second squad of second platoon, or 2/2. Thukhan was in fourth squad of second platoon—known as 4/2—and I could feel Thukhan’s eyes on me as I fell in at the position of parade rest, feet shoulder-width apart, eyes forward, hands overlapped at the small of my back.
Drill Sergeant Malvino—the nominal senior drill sergeant for second—took his place at the center head position, facing the recruits. His face was blank while his head slowly turned back and forth, eyes swiveling. Me and the others had learned previously that any movement on our part—even accidental—would earn us a huge ass-chewing from the drill sergeants, so we remained as still as we could, our rolled PT mats aligned uniformly next to our right legs.
Behind second platoon was fourth, and behind fourth was sixth, and to the left were first, third and fifth platoons, respectively.
Together we made up Charlie Company, Four-Fourteenth IST Battalion.
The double doors in the brick wall in front of Charlie Company’s common area slammed open, and Charlie’s first sergeant stalked out. Her name tape read CHAU, and she was all of five feet tall, and looked like she could bench-press a grown man. Her brownish hair was shaved close to the head and hidden beneath her soft cap—she did not wear a black campaign hat like the drill sergeants—and her face seemed permanently frozen in a sour scowl.
All six platoons’ posted DSs spun smoothly on their heels to face the Top, while the remaining DSs fell into a line at the back of the company.
“Companeeeee,” Chau yelled in a piercing soprano, failing to draw out the ayyy sound as had been the custom of the first sergeant from Reception.
Each of the six posted DSs went to the position of attention and swiveled their heads to the right, shouting, “Platoon!”
Chau finished: “Ahh-ten-SHIN!”
All six platoons—composed of roughly two hundred recruits—went rigid.
“Drill sah-jeens,” Chau barked in an accent I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard before, “take accountability of your platoons and prepare to deliver report!”
Malvino spun back around and, head turned towards the rightmost man in first squad, ordered, “Report.”
Each of second platoon’s squads had been given a squad leader the day before, and each of those squad leaders had supposedly been instructed during Reception on how to take accountability—before it came time to report to the platoon sergeant. First squad’s squad leader suddenly blushed and leaned his head forward, looking to his left so that he could see down the rank. His mouth moved silently as he counted, and Malvino’s face darkened with frustration.
“First Squad Leader,” Malvino said angrily, “do you have accountability of your squad or not?”
“Hold on a sec—” first squad’s squad leader began.
“Shut up,” Malvino said. “First Squad Leader, front-leaning rest. Second Squad Leader, report!”
When the second squad leader failed to promptly give accountability, she was in the front-leaning rest.
Swiveling my eyes, I could see peripherally that a similar scenario was being played out across the common area, with multiple recruits going down to their hands and their toes.
Second’s fourth squad leader had fair warning, so he got it right. But that left the squad leaders for first, second, and third on the cement, with Malvino looking like he was going to explode.
The tirade from Malvino began.
“First of all, this is not gawtdamned lollygagging Reception anymore, recruits. You should know this already. We shouldn’t have to be reminding you of how this works. We have more important things to do than to dick around with you at morning formation, to say nothing of getting your stupid asses out of the head on time to toe the line up in those bays. It’s a bad start to the day, recruits. A very bad start. I’m already in a very bad mood, and it’s not even breakfast yet. In IST we hit the ground running every single gawtdamned day. No excuses. No time to relax. You get up out of that bunk and you vacate your bowels, scrub your grills, scrape your necks and your pink little cheeks, and you report on-time and ready to train. We’re already well behind schedule, and do you know what that means? Less time for you. Less time for hygiene after PT, less time to take care of all the little crap I know you didn’t take care of before the lights went on.”
Malvino stopped, though it seemed he had a lot more on his mind that he wanted to say. He extended his palm like a meat-cleaver and rapidly “chopped” his way down the platoon, counting columns of heads. When he was satisfied he had a number, he ordered, “Recover, squad leaders,” then spun around and faced to the front. First, second and third’s squad leaders quickly got back to their feet, and I waited silently, glad that I hadn’t been stuck with any kind of recruit “authority,” as had happened in Reception.
First platoon’s platoon sergeant sounded off with their accountability, saluted the first sergeant, and then the first sergeant’s head turned towards Malvino, who shouted while saluting, “Second platoon, thirty-four recruits assigned, thirty-four recruits present for training,” then dropped the salute after the first sergeant had dropped hers.
When all of the platoons had performed this ritual, the first sergeant looked at her chronometer and gave Charlie Company an at-ease.
“Oh-kay, Chah-lee,” Chau said, “let’s rub sleepee sand from eyes and wake up. Yesterday was day zee-roh, and today it’s gonna be on. You know what I mean?”
As a company, Charlie weakly sounded, “YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
Boos and hisses from the line of drill sergeants in the back.
“Wow,” Chau said, taken aback, “that was really half-ass, Chah-lee. Makes me think I should have gone on sick call, not come out here to be with you. ’Cause if you no wanna be here, I no wanna be here. You wanna be here?”
Company: “YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“You mean it?”
“YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“’Cause I don’t believe you, recruits. We are soooo fah behin’ schedule today. So fah. So fah I don’ even wanna talk about it. You gonna learn, recruits, the longer you in my company, the tighter I expect you to be. Time hacks especially. You gotta be on time every time, because as some of my drill sah-jeens already say, we have a lot to do, and if we get behind schedule, we gonna take it out of your time, recruits. Not ours. And not mine. Is that understood?”
“YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“Oh-kay . . . Companeeeee!”
“—Platoon!”
“Ah-ten-SHIN! Drill sah-jeens, take charge of da platoons and move ’em out for physical fitness training.”
The six platoon sergeants saluted, while the Top saluted back, then she dropped her salute, spun, and marched back through the double doors.
Platoon sergeants spun—Malvino looking particularly murderous—and began snapping commands. Before long I was trailing off in-file with the other recruits, out from underneath the overhead cover afforded by the stacked-block structure of the bays—each of which radiated out from the battalion’s administrative core building, like spokes on a bicycle wheel. Off in the distance Charlie Company could see several of the other companies already arrayed on the massive expanse of grass—acres upon acres—that fell back from Charlie’s east side. Beyond that were the towers, cranes, and skyscraperlike hangars and buildings of Armstrong Field’s tremendous aerospace works. All of which appeared as black silhouettes against the early morning sky, which was now beginning to color.
Sweat came instantly. I gritted my teeth.
Technically, this was the Midwestern portion of North America. Not the Mississippi Delta. But the air was already uncomfortably moist, as well as warm. Despite the early hour. I suspected there would be no relief in store for me, as the sky continued to brighten towards actual daybreak. Once the sun was fully up, things would get even more hot, and more humid.
Charlie eventually arrayed itself around a cement platform in the middle of the gargantuan grass field—Alpha and Bravo companies already sounding off as they entered their warm-ups—with all six platoons in a circle facing inwards towards the platform. Several of Charlie’s DSs—Malvino among them—mounted the platform and began to call off additional commands. As in Reception, you couldn’t just blow right into PT, they thought someone might get hurt that way. So once each platoon had been broadened and extended—to give each recruit some real-estate on which to ponder his or her own personal physical suffering—the drill sergeants ran us through stretches, followed by in-place calisthenics.
The grass was mildly damp, and our shoes had become wet. The cloying air smelled of lawn clippings.
We unrolled our mats next. Each recruit’s mat had to remain on his or her right, and each recruit’s mat had to line up more or less with the mat of the person on his or her right. Canteens—large, pliable, liter-sized squares with shoulder straps on them—came off and were placed in the upper right corner of each mat, stenciled name tape facing up. Before the drill sergeants on the platform went any further, the other drill sergeants quickly made their way down each rank, picking up and hefting each canteen.
“Where is the rest of your water, Recruit Gerome?” said Drill Sergeant Schmetkin as she picked up the canteen of the male directly to my front. “Were you not instructed to completely fill your canteen prior to morning accountability?”
“Drill Sergeant,” Gerome sputtered, “I wanted to fill my canteen, but—”
“But nothing, Recruit Gerome.”
Schmetkin stepped up to Gerome’s face and, one-handedly unscrewing the cap on the canteen, used the other hand to up-end the canteen over Gerome’s head. His mouth hung open in shock as the water flooded across his face and down his chest and back. She slapped the dripping canteen to his chest and said, “You have sixty seconds to run back to the company common area and fill your canteen, then be right back here. Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight . . .”
I resisted the urge to watch as Gerome fled, though I could see many other recruits from the other platoons doing the same. I stood still while the platform and the drill sergeants on the ground waited. And waited.
There wasn’t enough time. There never was enough time.
When all of the now-wet and terribly flustered recruits returned to the PT formation, the drill sergeant leading from the platform ordered everyone into the front-leaving rest, and our PT session for the day officially began.
I couldn’t really tell the difference between morning PT and a good smoking. The commands were the same, some of the exercises were the same, and everyone felt brutalized by the time it was over. Whatever comfort the PT mat was supposed to provide was quickly lost to the fact that centimeter-thick foam could not prevent lumps in the grass from inevitably sticking into a recruit’s butt and back. When it was over, we were each drenched from head to toe, our canteens drained to within a gulp, and the sun was obscured by gathering clouds—the first threat of rain I had seen since arriving at Armstrong Field.
Warm-down was a repeat of warm-up, then we rolled our mats and trooped in-file back up to the company common area, where we again formed by platoons, again took accountability, and then were dismissed up the stairs for what should have been twenty minutes of shower time—now reduced to five, because of all that morning’s screw-ups.
CHAPTER 23
WE WALKED.
On rock, when we could find it. The sand and pebbles proving to be a lot of work despite our best efforts. I envied the Professor with his disc, floating effortlessly above the ground. Occasionally I dropped back to talk to him as he kept the Queen Mother securely held.
“Will you be able to sense it?” I asked. “If we get near any other mantis troops or equipment?”
“Yes,” said the Professor. “Though I must warn you that my connection to my people has been nonexistent since our landing. I am beginning not to trust my own machinery. Perhaps there has been damage I cannot ascertain? Or perhaps your military has devised some way of blanketing or cloaking mantis communications—such a thing would prove very useful against us, in a pitched battle. Our coordination is our greatest strength. Forced to fight singly, we might not be nearly as effective.”
“If we did have such a weapon,” the captain said, overhearing, “I am sure I’d have known about it.”
“I think we’ll have to trust that your readings are accurate,” I said to the Professor. “Meanwhile, we will go south, and hope that both terrain and climate are favorable.”
It seemed like a vain hope. All I could see on the horizon were rocks, more stony, broken bluffs, and sand dunes. Not a tree nor a bush in any direction. Nothing running, flying, squirming, or jumping. It occurred to me that when we’d entered orbit, the seas of the planet had appeared small, and tinted green. Local evolution might not have gotten much beyond the microscopic level, and then only in the shallow oceans. Enough photosynthesis to turn the sky a pale blue.
Which was both good and bad. Stranded for too long without rescue, we’d starve. Or die of thirst. Purgatory suddenly seemed a lot more homey.
We plodded, and I stretched out the distance between myself and our little group. I scanned relentlessly for gullies or creek beds—any sign of fresh water. Adanaho and I only had enough for a few days, even with rationing.
A wind began to whip. The captain jogged to catch up with me.
“I do not like this,” she said. “I feel a sandstorm is coming.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I grew up part of the time in North Africa,” she said. “I can tell.”
“Look!” said the Professor, his speaker grill yelling the word.
We stopped and turned. An ominous, dark wall of billowing dust was moving rapidly upon us from the rear. It seemed to stretch into the sky for a kilometer or more. I swallowed hard, then began to frantically search for shelter. The captain pointed, and we ran for a
nearby hill with a small overhang. When we got there we discovered a water-worn hollow at the hill’s base. We pushed ourselves into it, huddling together, emergency jackets pulled tightly over our heads. The Professor landed his disc and used both the disc and his body to shield the Queen Mother.
If it was possible for a mantis to look more pathetic, I wasn’t sure how. Her limbs were curled tightly against her body and dried blood dribbled away from the fresh scabs where her lower thorax had formerly interfaced with her disc. Her lower limbs were small and feeble looking, compared to the impressive forelimbs, and I wondered just how long it had been since any mantis had walked under its own power.
Without her carriage, the Queen Mother had been made small.
I experienced a moment of unexpected pity. Then the rushing cloud of detritus swept over us. I closed my jacket across my face as tightly as I could make it, listening to the muffled howling of the wind as it broke across the top of the hill.
CHAPTER 24
Earth, 2153 A.D.
BY THE SECOND WEEK OF IST, THE MORNING ROUTINE HAD straightened itself out. Nobody was late getting out of the head anymore, and we’d had enough individual and group smokings over the details of accountability formation that the squad leaders—two of whom had already been fired and replaced—knew their lines. Second platoon’s drill sergeants—Malvino, Davis, and Schmetkin—weren’t bellowing as much as they had the first week, and I and the others were beginning to find the “beat,” as Top had called it, back in Reception.
Training was hard, of course. Week one focused almost entirely on immersive drill and ceremony, where we marched as squads and as a platoon, around and around and around the huge grass field. Column-right, column-left, right-flank, left-flank, rear-march, and so on and so forth, until we’d all begun to respond to the commands with an almost subliminal quickness. Otherwise, the DSs PT’d us to death, and we drew additional training equipment in between numerous and mindlessly boring briefings about military protocol, aspects of Fleet’s complex, internationally-oriented military justice code, and a weekend computer exam on same.
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