Rage & Fury

by Darryl Hadfield

  “Sergeant Ballard, how may I be of service?”

  “You can smile when you say that. Wouldn’t want people thinking you’re some sort of disgruntled raff off the streets, now, would we? After all, we’re going to be bestest of buddies for a long time.”

  I struggled to maintain control over my face; wouldn’t do to have Sergeant Bastard – I mean, Sergeant Ballard – know how much I didn’t like him. “I don’t understand, Sergeant.”

  “Of course you don’t, kid, but that’s why you have sergeants like me.” He handed me a piece of paper, and I read quickly:

  04 AUG 2090

  In Re:Private Wolf

  S/N 20690401142857

  Pursuant to general orders of the Commander, subject soldier transferred effective 11 August 2130 from the Advanced Training division of Logistics Command, to Infantry Command, 148th Infantry regiment, 1st Battalion, D Company, Toledo, Ohio, subsequent placement determined by unit commander.

  …

  That was no big deal, I knew I was probably going to an infantry unit, no reason not to think so.

  Ballard’s face grew a shit-eating grin as he held up another piece of paper..

  04 AUG 2090

  In Re:MSgt Ballard

  S/N 20471225857142

  Pursuant to general orders of the Commander, subject soldier promoted from E7 rank to E8 rank, effective 11 August 2130.

  Subject soldier transferred effective 11 August 2130 from the Advanced Training division of Logistics Command, to Infantry Command, 148th Infantry regiment, Toledo, Ohio, to assume Regimental Sergeant Major’s position.

  …

  Oh fuck.

  Not only was this guy who’d been riding my ass since day one going to be transferred to my unit, he was going to be the senior enlisted guy – the Sergeant Major - in the whole fucking regiment.

  If you think that meant I figured it was going to suck, you would be right.

  If you think that I was being unrealistic and that it wasn’t going to be that bad, you would be wrong.

  The following week, I had my meager possessions packed into a barracks box and duffle bag and hit the flight line, to catch a ride on a transport aircraft. The rest of you get to ride in nice comfy Hyperloops, but those of us in uniform have to accommodate ourselves to less pleasant transportation. Something about acclimatization.

  I got there, and Ballard was waiting – no grin on his face at the time. “Okay kid, game time is over. Bradburry wanted you in, and he’s not someone I’m about to cross. He also expected me to watch over you, so I will.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  He looked down at his chest. “Jesus Christ kid, this is not the way to start off your first unit assignment, especially in front of your regimental sergeant major.”

  I looked at his chest and saw the closed my eyes, sighing inwardly. Fuck me, this was going to get worse. “Sorry Sergeant Major, my head’s not in the game. How many?” I dropped my gear and prepared to assume the ‘upward resting position’.

  “Shit, Bradburry said you were a bright kid, but goddamn you’re stupid. You don’t get dropped for pushups when you’re done in training systems, kid – not unless you’ve fucked up so royally that frankly, the pushups won’t matter anyway.”

  Hm. That was… unexpected.

  “We will, however, embarrass the fuck out of you. You just earned yourself the role of ‘coffee bitch’ in the headquarters.

  “Yes Sergeant Major.” Fuckity fuck double fuck fuck me.

  I won’t bore you with the details, just leave it at… When we arrived, Ballard, the new Regimental Sergeant Major, talked to Colonel Watts (the regimental CO) who in turn “suggested” to Lieutenant Colonel Bentley that he should have a word with Captain Kannegut about me.

  I figured I’d get reassigned since Ballard seemed to want to fuck with me some more, but I didn’t get bumped anywhere, so I figured I was in the clear.

  Then, D Company’s third platoon leader, Lieutenant Bloggins, sent for me.

  “Wolf, report to Regimental headquarters. You’re still 1st platoon, but you’ll be detached to Colonel Watts to serve as his driver and general errand boy. Sounds like you did something to impress the Sergeant Major, I heard he recommended you to the Regimental Commander.”

  “Yes sir, right on it sir!”

  Fuck. Now I was doubly worried; it sounded like Ballard was working to screw with my military career.

  As it turns out, I was probably just worrying too much. Ballard brought me in to meet Colonel Watts, who looked me up and down and barked a short laugh. “Okay Sean, we’ll give him a try.” Ballard was the only person in the room besides the Colonel and I, so I figured that was his first name.

  “As you were, Private; head to the motor pool; they’ll have the Colonel’s vehicle ready for you; that will be your primary responsibility, and you’ll need to familiarize yourself with it.” Ballard turned back to the Colonel, and I saluted and left.

  Turns out it was actually a pretty easy gig. I continued with the training structure of field exercises, with my unit, and the Colonel would get the duty driver to handle his transport needs.

  I still ran for his coffee, though, Ballard wasn’t bullshitting me about that.

  I was in a new place, new city – Toledo, Ohio, was the headquarters of the 148th, and it was actually pretty close to both Detroit and Cleveland.

  Detroit was pretty much a wasteland – no, not from the 8-day war, it was just a shithole and had been for the last century or longer. Toledo had seen a lot of destruction due to riots, not to mention arkscraper construction meant a lot of other buildings just ended up falling into disrepair. It hadn’t built up to the full size it had been previously, but Cleveland had stretched out and picked up a lot of the businesses – and people – that would otherwise have re-settled in the Toledo Arkscraper. I lucked out, in that a student of Sensei Marshall’s was actually living in a small town about halfway to Cleveland, and I was able to resume my studies there. Sensei Vinden was also ex-infantry, but had left long before and now taught Karate – although not at all like Sensei Marshall did.

  He taught to pay his bills – and it showed. Oh, don’t get me wrong, he was a good teacher, and he was instrumental for helping me to continue my training and progression, but he had the commercial side down pat and could run a line on visitors to the dojo in his silky smooth Irish accent that never failed to hook a new student. He generally had a lot of students, and I rarely got much concentrated time with him – whenever I did, though, I did my damndest to make the most of it. I was determined to continue my training; I was still quite self-conscious about my ability (or, rather, my perceived lack thereof) to defend myself against someone who wanted to slap me around.

  At 6’2 and 220 pounds, you’d figure I’d have a bit more self-confidence than that.

  Meh. I studied, I trained, I learned – I had found a routine that was far less dangerous, but also far more boring than what I’d had in the Bronx.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was not much more than an animal in a zoo, fed, kept mildly entertained, and expected to show off for people who paid admission to watch me do my thing.

  Chapter 15: Staycation.

  I found myself increasingly bored – I had no challenge, I didn’t seem to have any purpose or goal to work towards. I had aced every PT test I’d taken, thanks to the training that I was doing with Sensei Vinden – a holdover to what Sensei Marshall had taught me. I aced every eval that Lt. Bloggins threw at me, hell, I even started LOOKING for other stuff to do, and actually caught shit from some of my squad mates.

  I’d been with the First of the 148th for nearly three years at this point, and wondering how long I was going to have to continue this routine. That should have been the warning to myself that I needed to clamp down even harder, but you know the old

  Chinese backhanded blessing of, “May you live in Interesting Times”… I should have enjoyed what I had.

  Interesting times, however,
were coming up.

  Since the start of 2133, there’d been increasing problems in Chicago. It got pasted in the Eight Day War 60 years prior, and the last decade or so, the United States Government had used it as a test case for the new arkscraper that was being built. I’d grown in up NYC, in Manhattan, where several arkscrapers were well into the advanced stages of construction, having been in the works for several decades already. Chicago? Chicago’s first arkscraper was barely at ground level after having prepped the foundation work and automation systems that were necessary for the ‘scraper, and mostly because of the terrorism and crime that city had been plagued by for… well, forever.

  Then some asshole decided he’d play martyr, crawled up a crane that was mounted at the center of the arkscraper construction site, and took a swan-dive into the core ventilation shaft. Normally, not a problem – send some automated scrubbers in afterward to wipe the grease stain off the bottom of the column, and no-one even misses a shift.

  This time, however, he’d decided to have a small snack first – he had a bellyful of binary explosive, and had apparently had the other half of the binary mixture injected into his system before he started his climb. Net result? Time to order a new ventilation shaft, and all of the components that used it as a conduit for communication and control. Poof, one decade of work, up in smoke – literally.

  That set a lot of people to rioting, since they were expecting to start occupation of the new arkscraper later in the year, as the first few levels were finished and made ready for occupancy to both private citizens, as well as businesses who were supporting the intendancy concept.

  The 148th Infantry Regiment was chosen to deploy for security – since the local infantry units had too many ties to the area, knew too many people, and frankly, were a security risk for the security detail itself – you never deploy troops in the area where they live. (I later heard it said as, “You never shit where you eat” and thought that much more appropriate, myself.)

  That meant… fuckin’ A, I get to start seeing how this training works!

  Not quite. I ended up being detached to the Regimental Commander’s security detail. I figured that wasn’t so bad, watching the leader’s back, right?

  Wrong. Colonel Watts was more of a manager than a leader. He was managing shit from a nice comfy office in a building near the arkscraper that we’d cleared out – while the troops in the regiment locked down the city. First Battalion had the downtown area – so my squadmates were still relatively close. I half wondered if I was expected to report back to Lt. Bloggins about shit I saw or did, but then again, this wasn’t like when I ran the Bronx empire, so… no. Second Batt had the north west area, Third Batt was Southwest, and Fourth Batt had the south. First Batt doing downtown duty wasn’t so bad, especially since we had supply coming in from Logistics, brought in by NavOps to a place called “Navy Pier” – probably some former navy thing in the Chicago area.

  In any case, the “security detail” ended up being… securing the Colonel’s coffee mug and assuring adequate supply of coffee in it on a daily basis.

  I was bored out of my fucking mind, AGAIN. It was getting worse, now, though, and I started playing with Rage… Nothing serious, just flipping it up and catching it by the hilt after a single spin, then after two spins… then after three spins…

  Sergeant Major Ballard’s voice came from behind me. “Bored, hunh?”

  I grabbed the hilt, sheathed Rage back into her sheath on my belt, and stood to attention. “Yes Sergeant Major!”

  “oh for fuck’s sake kid, sit down. We’re deployed, and even if we weren’t, you don’t have to get all gung-ho on my old ass.”

  “Uhh… yes Sergeant Major. Is there… anything else I can do? Anything at all??”

  “Nah kid, just sit tight for now… I know you’re bored, *I’m* bored, and I’ll bet the the Colonel is, too. We’re not meant to sit around with our thumbs up our asses.”

  He stepped away into the Colonel’s office and I swore at myself. You really gotta learn to shut the fuck up, James, or you are gonna get your ass handed to you.

  Ballard came back out, grinning… “well, there’s a few brownie points for ya, kid, the old man has decreed that the education and enlightenment of junior enlisted are sorely lacking, solid leadership from the officer types. Come with me, young man, we have a patrol to plan.”

  Okay, THAT was not at all expected, and honestly, was something of a relief.

  Ballard, two steps away from maxing out his rank, took me – barely two steps up from NOTHING, when it came to rank – through the process of planning a patrol. This was, believe it or not, not something that we learned in basic, or AIT – all of that was individual skills. As we walked through it, he kept asking me about what else I thought we should track – yeah, Ballard, I get it, you want to see how much I know.

  Did this guy not remember that I’d already seen him teach this shit?

  It was simple – in fact, it was something I’d already read through, since I was so goddamned bored.

  Situation (Us, Them, extras), Mission (who, what, when, where, why), Execution (HOW), Support, and Command & Sigs.

  What it boiled down to was, tell the story.

  What’s the situation? 1st of the 148th was stuck in Shitcago to restore and maintain civil order. Friendlies were anyone in uniform with an implant that was ping-able (Yeah, believe it or not, civilians figured that they could just dress like us and we’d assume they were military. Dumbasses.), and the enemy was anyone that posed a threat to civil order. There weren’t any extras; it was just “us” and “them”.

  What was the mission? The Commander and his protective detail were going to do an ‘eyes and ears’ patrol tomorrow during the early evening hours, in and about the core area of protection (the arkscraper) to get a feel for what was occurring on the ground. Did you catch all that? Who, What, When, Where, Why.

  How were we going to do it?

  We were going to start at the building we were currently using, and depart on foot at time “T” (1820 hours) in staggered column formation (which basically meant that from above, we looked like a zigzagging line of troops) with 5 meters of separation between troops. We’d proceed to the northeast corner of the arkscraper (northwest from our command center), and progress in a counter-clockwise fashion until we returned to our command area, just outside the perimeter of the arkscraper itself, until we completed the circuit, no later than T+2 hours. Each troop will maintain visual command of his or her zone of fire, alert to any disturbance, and communicating any such disturbance to the patrol leader before engaging.

  Support was a non-issue as far as beans and bullets were concerned – we would each be carrying a standard combat load, no food necessary, and as per SOP, we’d all be carrying at least a liter (if not more) of water in our hydration packs.

  Command included several different things: First, authorization to engage any enemy would remain with the patrol leader. Second, in-patrol circumstances might require deviation from the scheduled patrol plan; that was at the patrol leader’s discretion. Third, en route recording of events would be handled by the patrol leader as well as the patrol leader’s alternate.

  Last – sigs, which was short for “signals”. Communication would be via the individual combat communications systems (“CCS”) that we carried, and our implants controlled.

  Ballard’s face went from amused to slightly impressed. “Not bad, kid. Of course, you probably cheated and were reading out of the field manual.”

  “Yes, Sergeant Major. Isn’t that what you taught us? Use all resources at your disposal?”

  “So I did, so I did… well done. Didn’t I also teach you about properly using those resources, too?”

  “Uhh.. Yes, Sergeant Major, did I miss something?”

  “Nah, you didn’t kid, but… you’re flipping that knife around like it’s some kinda toy.”

  He’d caught me bored again; I’d pulled Rage out and was flipping it this time in a circular patt
ern, twiddling it like the little ‘fidget spinners’ we’d heard about parents using as pacifiers for children once they moved from ‘toddler’ to ‘child’. I was bored, and it gave me a sense of comfort, so sue me!

  “I don’t understand, Sergeant Major?”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake. Call me Smaj, you sound like some fucking noob lieutenant. Come with me.”

  I followed him to an empty room in the building, where he ripped the door off of it’s hinges and put it against the wall on the other side of the room – maybe 30 feet away.

  He drew a blade from a sheath on his load bearing vest – it was the Gerber fighting knife, the ancient LMF III we all were issued. I had one on my vest as well, I just didn’t use it for much of anything – it was too bulky and felt like a brick in my hand compared to Rage. He handed it to me. “Here, feel the edge on this.” I did, and easily cut the upper layer of the skin on my thumb, it was so sharp.