The Regiment-A Trilogy

by John Dalmas

  He had no idea how much damage he'd done to the alien ship. It seemed possible he'd destroyed it. Hopefully he'd at least prevented it from pursuing him.

  "DAAS," he said to the computer, "what was the nature of the data being scanned?"

  "Sir, it first found my vocabulary. Then it began to read verbal data files indiscriminately."

  Another thought occurred to Tarimenloku, a thought that left a moment of bleakness in its wake: After the alien's failed attempt to speak to him, it might have been taking data for a linguistic analysis, for communication. If so, his action might have made a dangerous enemy for the empire and humankind, of beings who initially had not been hostile. He hoped he'd destroyed them, and that their government would never know who'd done it.

  One more thought occurred to him; he wasn't sure whether it was trivial or important: Who had they thought he was when they tried talking to him in that unfamiliar speech?

  One thing was certain. He wouldn't return to real space for three imperial months at least—best make that four or five—regardless of any interesting-looking nodi that said "system."

  2

  Solstice Eve, Y.P. 743

  The day of graduation was clear but not hot. A breeze ruffled the flags, of Iryala and the Confederation, that flanked the temporary platform where the dignitaries sat.

  There was a sizeable grandstand facing south—away from the sun in this southern hemisphere. On it sat more than two thousand people—mostly relatives of the cadets plus press representatives from their home districts. Photographers occupied the uppermost row. The broadcast media had not been invited, so of course had not come; the Crown wanted the event known but not to seem particularly important.

  A sound began from the other side of the nearby classroom building, high-pitched voices calling cadence. In the grandstand, the susurrus of conversations thinned, almost stilled. The cadets began to appear, nearly six hundred preadolescent boys in parade uniforms marching around the corner of the building in a tight brisk column of sixes, all straight edges and sharp corners, to enter and bisect the exercise field. Approaching the platform, alternating companies peeled off left and right, diverging. Their cadet major's boy-alto voice called a command. They halted, and crisply, in perfect unison, turned to face the dignitaries. Six columns had become six rows, aligned so precisely they didn't need to dress ranks. Another command and they semi-relaxed at parade rest.

  Now attention went to the platform.

  The dignitaries numbered eight. In the center sat Emry Wanslo, Lord Kristal, who was personal aide to His Majesty, Marcus XXVIII, King of Iryala and Administrator General of the Confederation of Worlds; and Colonel Jil-Zat, a uniformed T'swi who could almost have been carved from obsidian. To Jil-Zat's left sat his three principal training officers, T'swa like himself. On Kristal's right were Varlik Lormagen and two officials from the Office of Special Projects.

  With the boys at parade rest, Jil-Zat got to his feet and stepped to the microphone. "Cadets!" he said. His voice was a resonant bass. "Congratulations! You have my respect and joyous admiration, which is not news to you. We know and understand each other well, and we will be together for your advanced training on the other worlds.

  "More than that I need not tell you." The black face, the large T'swa eyes, shifted to the grandstands. "So I shall direct my words to our guests. This ceremony is to honor 594 young warriors on the completion of their basic training. A very special training. For five and a half years they have been learning to live and fight in a very famous tradition, the tradition of Kootosh-Lan. A tradition which is the gift of Tyss to the Crown of Iryala, expressing our thanks for the Crown's recognition, thirty-one years ago, of Tyss as a trade world under royal protection."

  Jil-Zat paused, shifting to another theme.

  "What are these young warriors about? What are we about, their cadre? Why this training? This school? Any of the cadets could tell you, but I am on the program and hold the microphone, so I will.

  "Every person is born with a purpose. These young men were born to be warriors. And they have had the good fortune to find a special place, a home, a small society of warriors. As warriors, their training is very unlike that of soldiers. Their basic training has taken far longer, been much broader, much deeper. They have learned to be a very special kind of human being."

  While Jil-Zat talked, Varlik Lormagen's eyes had been examining the front rank, the mostly twelve-year-old faces. Boy faces, most of them tanned, a few fair and freckled. Very different from the black, combat-seasoned faces of his old Red Scorpion Regiment, long dead. But they were cousins now in philosophy.

  "Each of them," Jil-Zat was saying, "has mastered all his lessons, and all the skills so far addressed—mastered them very thoroughly. There are no marginal graduates. You can be proud of every one of them, as I am.

  "Those of you whose sons these are, I congratulate for agreeing to their enlistment. Many of you, I am sure, felt misgivings at all this. Misgivings which I trust have long since been relieved by your occasional visits here to witness your sons' physical and spiritual growth."

  Misgivings, yes, thought Varlik Lormagen. But relief, too. In the conformist culture of Iryala and the Confederation worlds, there'd never been a decent niche for the would-be warrior, nor any good way of dealing with a warrior child whose innate drives had been aberrated by life there. These parents had been given a respectable, an honorable way of dealing with their intentive warrior by allowing him to enter early a subculture of his own.

  ". . . Their training on Iryala," Jil-Zat went on, "is over now. But they have six more years elsewhere. Three on Terfreya—"

  Good, Lormagen thought. I'm glad he didn't use its nickname.

  "—and three on my own world, Tyss." The black face flashed teeth. "Where, I might add, they will live in the only cooled barracks ever built there. We value these young men, and will not waste them. We require a great deal of them, but we treat them well.

  "I consider it a privilege to be their commanding officer. . . ."

  * * *

  When Jil-Zat had finished, Lord Kristal spoke to the boys, beginning with a message from the King. It was neither rhetorical nor in the least hortatory; these boys, Lormagen told himself, didn't need rhetoric or exhortation. The speech was shorter than the guests might have expected, but long enough.

  When it was over, the cadet major threw back his head and yelled, "Dismissed!" The boys didn't break ranks as they usually did, like an air burst. Instead they turned toward the stands and sort of spread out, waving at parents and siblings, waiting for them to come down rather than storming the stands themselves. Lormagen wondered if that was per instructions or grew out of the boys' own wisdom. Increasingly, these boys had been living the T'sel since they'd come here, and it was counter-productive to instruct needlessly; let wisdom function.

  Together, the dignitaries walked toward the central building, led by Jil-Zat. In the Kettle War, Lormagen remembered, Jil-Zat had been a nineteen-year-old commanding officer of mercenaries, of a virgin T'swa regiment, the Ice Tigers. He wondered what rough trade world or resource world that regiment had finally died on, and how Jil-Zat had come to survive its destruction.

  Ice Tigers! An interesting name for a regiment from Tyss, nicknamed "Oven," where few had ever seen even artificial ice.

  At the building, most of the dignitaries dispersed to rooms or duties. A courier had been waiting for Lord Kristal, and handed him a package presumably containing a message cube. Lormagen and Jil-Zat waited while His Majesty's representative opened it.

  "Colonel, may I use your computer?" Kristal asked. "Privately? This is from His Majesty's staff chief."

  Jil-Zat gestured at his office. "Be my guest."

  Even in the T'sel, courtesy oils human relations, Lormagen thought to himself. As Marcus's representative, Lord Kristal hadn't needed to ask. Kristal closed the door behind him, and Lormagen turned to Jil-Zat. "I hadn't thought to ask before," he said. "What exactly became of the Ice Tigers
?"

  Jil-Zat smiled. "We took considerable casualties around Beregesh, as you will recall. From there we went to the planet Ice—appropriately enough, considering our name. We'd been hired by its government, which was dominated by the fur ranchers' cooperative. In effect, the co-op was the government. They had been trying to suppress the free trappers, whose response had escalated from lobbying to sabotage to guerrilla warfare.

  "It became a very interesting and enjoyable campaign. The trappers had scraped enough money together to hire what was left of the Ba-Tok Regiment, a short battalion actually—we were two somewhat short battalions ourselves—and we had some very good combat before the trappers faced reality and agreed to bargain. By that time we'd cut the Ba-Tok down to barely company size, and the locals themselves, both sides, had taken severe casualties."

  The colonel chuckled. "Actually, I claim some credit for the peace agreement coming as soon as it did. I had exerted such influence as I could on the co-op's executive board, and they decided it was time to ease their unreasonable position. While Major Tengu of the Ba-Tok was influencing the Union to modify their more extreme demands.

  "To directly influence our employer's political positions is not our contractual function of course, but it's the sort of thing we often do, where it seems likely to shorten a conflict to an ethical result."

  Lormagen nodded, remembering Kettle.

  "From there, the lodge contracted us both out to a mercantile consortium on Carjath, that had joined forces with a dukedom in revolt against a king. Operating combined, we comprised an overstrength battalion. It turned out that the consortium had seriously underestimated the king's support and overestimated the duke's." Jil-Zat chuckled again. "Intelligence organizations are as apt to mislead as they are to enlighten, and that was an extreme example."

  His office door opened, and Jil-Zat cut short his account as Lord Kristal stepped out. "Thank you, Colonel," Kristal said. "Varlik, we need to talk."

  They excused themselves, and the two Iryalans went to Kristal's room.

  "The T'swa ambassador carried a report to His Majesty from Tyss," Kristal said. "From the Order of Ka-Shok. One of their monks has been studying a world in the Karghanik Empire, an ambitious world called Klestron. Not long ago, Klestron's sultan sent an expedition out of the imperial sector. Not to explore immediately neighboring space, but to scout far inward for habitable worlds. An unprecedented act." Kristal paused meaningfully. "Recently they reached Garthid space, which means they may be headed more or less in our direction. The expedition consists of a flagship—a cruiser, well armed of course—plus a survey ship presumably heavily instrumented, and a troopship carrying a brigade of 8,000 Klestronu marines. The lodge master thought we'd want to know."

  Lormagen pursed his lips thoughtfully. "The Garthids may send them home. They might not grant passage to a naval flotilla."

  "They've already met, and the Klestronu flagship attacked the Garthid patrol vessel without warning; attacked, then fled into hyperspace. And its commodore doesn't plan to come out until hopefully he's beyond retaliation."

  "The Garthids may have gotten message pods off," Lormagen pointed out.

  "True. In which case the entire Garthid Sector could be waiting for the Klestroni8 to come out of hyperspace.

  "Meanwhile the Klestronu commodore doesn't realize how vast Garthid space is. At the time, he was thinking of staying in hyperspace for deks. It will have to be a lot of deks—probably more than a year. So he'll probably emerge still in Garthid space. If he does, he may well encounter another patrol ship, or several of them, and could be destroyed."

  Beneath black brows out of sync with his white hair, Kristal's eyes were calm and steady. "But if—if he continues long enough, it's possible he'll reach our sector. Should that happen, it's hard to say what the result might be."

  Lormagen nodded. He could think of several unfavorable scenarios. The Crown Council assumed that outside forces would discover the Confederation Sector sooner or later, perhaps posing a threat to the independence, even the safety, of the Confederation and its people. But large-scale upgrading of military technology required first that the Confederation be led out of the millennia-long "hypnotism" imposed on it by the deep psycho-conditioning of the Sacrament. A process which wouldn't be completed for at least another couple of generations and couldn't safely be rushed.

  Neither man commented on that; it was understood.

  "I'm going to recommend to His Majesty that should the Klestronu expedition actually land their marines on a Sector world, we rush elite troops there, troops whose quality they're unlikely to match, and hit them on the ground. We have no prospect of defeating them in space."

  "We'll need to call on the T'swa then," Lormagen said. "They have the only troops that fit the requirement."

  "True. And we won't hesitate to. But their regiments are scattered, engaged on various trade and resource worlds, on contracts they'll feel bound by. That is, after all, how Tyss gets almost all its exchange. And we don't know if, let alone where or when, we'll need them. The T'swa seer will be able to tell us if the Klestronu flotilla is destroyed or turns back. Or when they emerge from hyperspace safely away from the Garthids. But he can't tell us where. He hasn't the technical knowledge.

  "The odds are, of course, that the Klestronu expedition will never reach the Confederation Sector. The Garthids will stop them, or they'll emerge from hyperspace somewhere away from us. But we need to prepare. We'll want elite troops on standby, with transport on hand and ready, as a quick response force."

  Kristal's eyes, though calm as usual, held Lormagen's now. "Varlik, several years ago you suggested a test, of the suitability of raw adolescents with warrior profiles for an elite force, and His Majesty decided against it. That's what I'm looking at now. A regiment of teenaged would-be warriors; 'intentive warriors' as the T'swa say. Youths in their mid- and late-teens that we can train intensively for two or three years, or for one if that's all the time we have. Even at hyperspace speeds, it will be quite awhile before the Klestroni can arrive."

  Lormagen frowned slightly, remembering why the Council had earlier recommended against such a regiment: Most of the kids would be misfits, the youthful troublemakers of Iryala. With two or three, seldom more, in a school, they haven't been a serious problem. More in the nature of nuisances. But gather two thousand in one place. . . . He looked at Kristal and nodded. "It can be done. But we'll need to hire T'swa as cadre; some battle-wise veterans, the survivors of retired regiments. There shouldn't be any shortage.

  "And recruits will be a lot easier to identify as teenagers; we can start by winnowing through school and court records for youths with particular behavioral problems, then check their personality profiles. They won't train up to T'swa standards, but they should prove a lot more satisfactory than any army regiment we have. I'd want certain recent equipment designs put into manufacture for them."

  Kristal smiled. "I doubt there'll be any problems with upgrading infantry equipment. I'll tell His Majesty what you've said. Sometime within the next several days you can expect a request to present preliminary plans to the Council. Agreed?"

  "Agreed." Lormagen felt excitement growing in him. He already knew who he wanted as regimental commander.

  Kristal glanced at a wall clock. "Well then, it's time for lunch. Let's go down to the dining room."

  As they left, Lormagen felt ideas stirring not far beneath the surface of his consciousness. He'd stay over tonight, and try them out on Jil-Zat this evening.

  3

  Farmland had ended several minutes back. Now rolling forest passed beneath the troop transport, a patchwork of late summer yellows and reds interrupted by occasional meadows, fens and marshes, lakes and streams. Narrow ribbons of road showed here and there, still summer green and seemingly without traffic.

  Jerym Alsnor sat twisted in his bench seat to watch, feeling uncomfortable at what he saw. It was utterly different from the tailored industrial city of Pelstron where he'd lived all h
is seventeen years, and he felt sure that this unpeopled backwoods was where he'd be unloaded.

  The Blue Forest Military Reservation they'd called it, back at the assembly center. He didn't know about the blue, but forest certainly fitted.

  When he'd signed up, it had seemed the solution to everything, and an opportunity for adventure. But he'd also signed away his options, his freedoms, shaky as they'd already become, and now he was afraid he'd done the wrong thing. Again.

  Ahead, buildings appeared, not of a town. Small buildings, looking somehow institutional. He felt deceleration: This was it—the Blue Forest Reservation.

  Others had been looking too. Until then the floater had been remarkably quiet. Now a murmur began, and the recruits on the middle banks of seats got up, coming over to look out the windows, elbowing each other. Jerym might have felt hostile at the crowding, the encroachment, but his attention was too much on the buildings and their grounds. They weren't a kind of buildings and grounds he understood.

  The transport began settling, sinking faster than his stomach liked. Its crew, in blue-gray uniforms, came down the aisles with batons, ordering the youths back to their seats, those who'd gotten up to see, whacking a few who lingered. The recruits obeyed, much more docile than might have been expected; they were in unfamiliar circumstances, felt exposed and vulnerable, didn't know what to expect.

  Besides that, they didn't know each other. Under the circumstances not many had struck up conversations. Almost all were loners, misfits, had hardly known others like themselves, maybe two or three, excepting those few who'd been in reformatory. Then, at the assembly center, they'd been hurried, crowded, told to shut up, keep the noise down.