The Regiment-A Trilogy

by John Dalmas

  Jerym nodded. "I know. But maybe the captain doesn't. And anyway you didn't shoot me. And when I—hit you—you had your gun."

  Esenrok stopped walking, stared at nothing. "Huh! I guess I did, didn't I. Well." He turned to Jerym and grinned ruefully. "I'm not as bad as I thought I was!"

  He put out his hand and they shook, making it a contest of strength. When, after half a minute, neither had won, they both laughed, let go, and went on to the barracks.

  * * *

  Dao had paused beside a tree and watched the scenario between the two trainees. When he went on, it was not to the rows of neat huts that comprised non-coms' country. Instead he went to officers' country, a hutment scarcely different from that of the noncoms. (For they all were T'swa.) Lieutenant Dzo-Tar would be interested in the reconciliation of Alsnor and Esenrok, and what it said about the young men.

  These Iryalans still surprised him from time to time, refining his knowledge of them.

  17

  Youths in field uniforms hustled out the door to form ranks in the freezing gray morning. Briefly Sergeant Dao regarded his watch, then looked up. "Attention!" he called, and the ranks stiffened. "Report!"

  The T'swa squad sergeants didn't need to take roll. A glance had served. "First squad all present, Sir!" snapped Sergeant Bahn, and the sergeants of the second, third, and fourth squads followed suit. Dao about-faced easily but crisply, and saluted Lieutenant Dzo-Tar. "Second Platoon all present, Sir!"

  For the purpose of training these Confederatswa, the T'swa had adopted army-style protocol, a major but easy adjustment for them. In T'swa units, roll call might be taken if there'd been casualties or if personnel had been dispersed, but otherwise never. "Sir" was seldom used except in the presence of foreigners who expected it. And when they did salute, it was in the Confederation style, because they lacked a salute of their own.

  Similarly, in most situations, Sergeant Dao spoke for Lieutenant Dzo-Tar because Voker considered it good tactics with these trainees. Let the platoon sergeants be the immediate authority; let the platoon leaders, the lieutenants, be a step remote, each ruling through his sergeant, with whom the trainees would then feel more rapport.

  The T'swa had no problem with this; they accepted Voker's experience and judgement.

  But at morning roll call, the platoon got its day's orders from on high, from Lieutenant Dzo-Tar. They'd come to expect this. During the day, Sergeant Dao would enforce, interpret, and modify those orders as circumstances required.

  "Men," Dzo-Tar said, "the uniform of the day will be winter field. The following men will remain in barracks after breakfast and receive specific orders later. Alsnor, Bressnik, Carrmak, Darrmiker . . ." He read off a dozen names including Romlar's. Then Dao dismissed the platoon, and they went in and washed up for breakfast. Jerym was optimistic that whatever this special duty was, it would prove to be good. Because the others named were all trainees in good standing with the cadre. He was the only one of them currently on a shit-list.

  * * *

  After breakfast, the rest of the platoon went off on their morning run. According to Markooris, who'd passed by the drill field where the company had been forming up, it looked as if 2nd Platoon was the only one with men held out. None of the twelve waiting in the barracks even speculated out loud what this might be about, but they remembered what Dao had said the day before about visitors and interviews. They hung around, read, played cards, practiced walking on their hands, even managed not to scuffle or get into other trouble. After a little, Carrmak and Jerym got into a situps contest, but they'd only gotten up to 517, with the others loudly chanting the count, when a T'swa corporal came in and called six names, including theirs. It was cold out, about ten or fifteen degrees, Jerym thought, with a breeze, so they put on field jackets before they left.

  The six of them were led to the Main Building, the administration building. There'd been a lot going on there lately, buses pulling up with civilian workers, trucks with building supplies, and Jerym wondered now if that had anything to do with them. The corporal left them in a room with chairs and sofas, and a bunch of books spread on a table. All the books seemed to be about the planet Oven—Tyss—or the T'swa or the T'sel, and there was a big Matrix of T'sel on a wall, with a lot more writing in the boxes than there'd been in the version he was familiar with. Jerym went over to look at it, but was too fidgety to do more than scan.

  After five or ten minutes a civilian came in with the T'swa corporal and took the six of them on a tour, showing them where they'd be going, describing briefly what to expect. They'd be led individually to one of a number of small rooms along a hall—a hall that smelled like fresh lumber—where someone would interview each of them privately. The civilian used the terms interview and interviewer, instead of the unfamiliar session and operator which might worry the trainees.

  Even so, Jerym wasn't sure he liked the sound of this. He'd been interviewed by psychologists at school and before going to court, and while nothing bad had happened, he'd felt exposed, endangered by their questions.

  The civilian told them that when they came back out of the interview rooms, someone would lead them to a room where they'd be given a snack. The snack room seemed small to Jerym, with six tiny tables, each having a single chair. If, their civilian guide said, there was more than one of them in the snack room at the same time, they were not to talk about what had happened in the interview. From the snack room they'd be led to a room with a bunk in it, where they were to lie down and rest—sleep if they felt like it. Afterward they could go back to their barracks. They were to say nothing about any of this to the others. They could say they'd been to the administration building and been interviewed, but that was all.

  That was the end of the tour. They went back to the waiting room curious and apprehensive. They didn't wait long though, any of them. The civilian came back to lead them, one by one, to the hall with the fresh lumber smell, where he'd knock at the assigned door, then leave them there.

  * * *

  After Carrmak, Jerym, and the other four had been led from the barracks, Romlar napped in his bunk. He hadn't even watched out the window in hopes of seeing where they were being taken; he'd know soon enough. That had been 0730; it was 0930 when the corporal came in again and took the rest of them. They saw the same waiting room as the earlier six, the same everything. Bressnik was in the snack room when they passed, with a glass of something and a sandwich.

  Romlar felt good about it. It wasn't anything he could put his finger on; he just felt good. He didn't even feel restless about not being out training, though he, like the others, had developed a strong appetite for it. (Physically he was a very different Romlar than had fallen out on the run and on the sandbag hike, that first night at Blue Forest.)

  The civilian made sure he knew not to talk about what happened to him. He wondered what that would be. He wasn't nervous about it though, or not much anyway. He was pretty sure he could wad the civilian up in a ball, if it came to that. Or just about anyone except the T'swa and Carrmak. And that gray-haired little colonel!

  Back in the waiting room he browsed a book by Varlik Lormagen, about the T'swa. He remembered the name, Varlik Lormagen. The White T'swi. Alsnor's sister knew Varlik Lormagen. It occurred to him that he'd never written to her, never even gotten her address from Alsnor.

  The book was mostly about T'swa warriors on Kettle, in the war, but there was also stuff about their home world, Tyss, and what it was like. There were lots of pictures to help make it seem real. While he was looking at it, the civilian came in and led Lonsalek away, and Markooris, and then Presnola. The next time he came in, he called: "Romlar!"

  Romlar got up, and now his stomach was nervous after all. He wished he'd had a chance to talk to Carrmak and find out what they did to you here. But Carrmak wouldn't have told him, because they made such a big deal out of not telling.

  The civilian led him down the hall to one of the doors, and knocked firmly.

  "Send him in," a voice an
swered. It sounded like a female voice, and came from a little grill. The civilian opened the door and motioned Romlar through. Romlar stepped in, ducking his head a bit as if he thought he was too large, too tall for it, and the door closed behind him with a firm click. Romlar didn't notice the thickness of the door, or of the carpet, and couldn't know about the sound insulation between the wall panels. What he did notice was—the girl. Just a young girl! Fourteen or fifteen, he thought, on the skinny side, with red hair and a pretty face. And green eyes! He had a sudden impulse to turn and leave, run out. He'd always been afraid of girls. At school, girls had made fun of him, and if you ever hit one of them, forget it! You'd be put away.

  She smiled at him. "Artus Romlar?"

  "Uh, yeah." Even at home, not many people called him Artus: his mom and dad, his teachers— That was all. Here the guys didn't even know that was his name; here people called you by the name above your pocket, your last name.

  "My name is Lotta," the girl said. "Sit down please, Artus." Across the desk from her was a chair with a cushioned seat. He sat down on it.

  She was still smiling. Her teeth were pretty—small and even. "Do you like it here at the Blue Forest Reservation?" she asked.

  "Yeah."

  Her green eyes were direct, steady, comfortable. "Good. What do you like best about it?"

  "Uh, I don't know . . . I like the T'swa pretty good. They work our tails off. And they never get mad at us."

  "Okay. Is there anything else here you like a lot?"

  "Uh, yeah, I guess so. I like the guys really good. And the training. I really like the training."

  "Sounds good. How do you feel about yourself these days?"

  The question startled him, and for several seconds he didn't know what to answer. "Uh— Oh, pretty good I guess." It seemed to him that that was true. And that it hadn't been true before he'd come to Blue Forest.

  "All right." She paused, drawing his attention out of himself, to her next words. "Now if you could change one thing about yourself," she said, "what would you most like to change?"

  The question snapped his attention back inward. He couldn't think, couldn't possibly answer. Then he heard his own voice saying, "I'd like to not be stupid."

  "All right," she answered. "Tell me about a time you felt stupid."

  Romlar nodded slowly. "My first night here. A T'swi told me to dig a big hole. Because I fell out on the run, and then I quit on the sandbagger—the sandbag march—and told them they could go F theirself. And after I dug awhile, I quit digging and told him that again. And the T'swi was going to chain me to a post until I would dig some more, so I tried to fight him but he was so strong I could hardly believe it, and he knew just what to do. And it was cold and I was sweaty, and all I could do was lay on the ground and shiver, because I was cold. And I—I cried. And I felt so damn stupid, because all I needed to do was run a little farther, or hike a little farther, or dig a little farther, and I wouldn't have been laying there on the cold ground, chained to a post."

  A six-inch-high shield sat on the desk, and behind it from time to time her fingers moved on a flat keypad, silently and unobtrusively. Her gaze, however, never left Romlar's face. It was as if her hand operated on an independent circuit from her eyes and tongue. "Okay," she said. "Was there an earlier time when you felt stupid?"

  It came to him at once, but he wasn't sure he ought to tell her. Then he heard himself saying: "I was— I asked this girl in school to go to a music program with me. I asked her because she'd always talked nice to me and she wasn't too pretty. She said she couldn't because she was supposed to go somewhere with her family that night. But somebody told me later that he'd heard her laugh about my asking her. She said she wouldn't go out with somebody as stupid as me; that I'd probably try to rape her."

  Romlar looked at the redheaded girl to see what she thought. She was just gazing at him, quietly and steadily. "I got that," she said. "What's the earliest time you can remember feeling stupid?"

  The question stopped him. The earliest time. He sat dumbly, shaking his head. Nothing came to him. "The time with your father," she prompted. "When he held you up by the ankles."

  Her words were like an unexpected blow. His buttocks began to burn, and the back of his legs, to sting, to hurt. He didn't want to remember, wanted to get up and run out of the room, but his body wouldn't move. "I was . . ." he heard himself start. "I was—just a little kid. Maybe two." He had no idea what this was going to be, but a feeling of dread had crept through him. "And—" He paused. The images were slow to form, the events conceptual at first. "I guess I must have broke something. Something valuable. My father came in and he was really mad. And I was scared. Scared! He grabbed me by my feet, my ankles, and held me up with one hand and started beating on my ass and legs as hard as he could."

  Romlar had begun weeping, tears overflowing, spilling down his cheeks. "And he yelled at me and he yelled at me and yelled, 'You damn stupid little animal! You stupid little animal! Look what you did! Look what you did! You stupid little animal!' And he kept on hitting me and hitting me and yelling like that, a big strong man, and I was just a little tiny kid and he kept hitting me and hitting me!"

  By the time he'd finished the account, Romlar was blubbering the words brokenly, and when he was done, lapsed into violent, bitter sobs. Not only were tears rivering down his cheeks; his nose was running, and he was slobbering. The girl sat there and didn't say anything till he tapered off and looked across at her. Her gaze was as steady as before, and she handed him a box of tissues. "Thanks for telling me about it," she said quietly. "And it's all right for you to cry in here. We kind of expect it, and it's all right. This is all just between you and me."

  He nodded, mopped his face, blew his nose. This girl wouldn't talk about him to people and say he was stupid, or that he'd cried. He knew that. He was sure of it.

  She had other questions, and there was more weeping. It seemed as if, when she asked about something, it came to him. When she needed to, she prompted him, as if seeing his memories before he was able to. And Romlar didn't think of it as weird, didn't wonder how she knew those things.

  After each time he cried, he felt better, as if he'd never have that grief again. Finally she asked him about a time he'd been happy, and he told her about rassling Carrmak. And the time when Esenrok slapped his shoulder and told him he was okay. And some other times, on the playground, and when he was little. Even a couple of times when his father took care of him and dished them up ice cream, and told him stories about being a boy on the farm.

  By that time Romlar could laugh, not something he did very often, and the girl laughed with him.

  "Well," she said when he was done. "Thanks for coming in. We'll talk together again soon." She must have pushed a button because someone knocked on the door—it didn't sound very loud—and she talked into a little microphone, telling them to come in.

  The civilian at the snack room gave him juice and a sandwich and the first ice cream he'd had at the compound. Then another civilian took him to a little room with a cot—he was starting to feel drowsy already—and when he lay down, he fell right to sleep.

  18

  Eight imperial months previously, Commodore Igsat Tarimenloku had awakened with a decision: to reenter real space. It was a reasonable mistake; so many mistakes are. It happened like this:

  He'd long since convinced himself that his spur-of-the-moment attack on the strange patrol ship had been imperative, the only justifiable action. Still it had no doubt put himself and his flotilla at serious risk, so to be safe, he'd remained in hyperspace for six standard months, long enough to clear any conceivable politically unified sector.

  With this decision in mind, he'd spent a few minutes in his shower, then went to his private dining room. After a disinteresting breakfast, he went to the bridge and informed the crew on watch there of what he was going to do.

  This emergence was not done carelessly. After activating security systems—emergence wave detector, command roo
m alarm, automatic shield and targeting responses—he entered real space at a point where their instruments showed no nodi, no sign of a planetary system. There should be no patrol there.

  When they'd emerged, though, there was a system in the vicinity, if you consider the vicinity to extend more than 85 billion miles, more than five light days, from the primary. Still, it was surely far enough.

  They'd been recording in real-space for less than two minutes (DAAS, the flagship's computer, gave him the figures later: one minute, 29.27 seconds) when the alarm began to beep its response to an emergence wave.

  Instantly, or as close to it as human reflexes allow, Tarimenloku touched the flotilla control and exit keys. And at the moment of disorientation heard/felt the shrieking of what had to be a ruptured matric tap. Not the flagship's, or he'd never have heard it, would have ceased to exist. As it was, his head rang with it.

  The monitor screen showed the hyperspace blip of only one other ship, the troopship. Clearly it was the survey ship that had been destroyed. Fortunately, he told himself, it had been manned by only a handful of maintenance people. Thank Kargh for all blessings! But actually he didn't feel fortunate at all. He felt shock, and loss, and threat. And being a senior commanding officer, did not let any of these interfere markedly with his functioning.

  It was after the ringing in his head had moderated that Tarimenloku conferred with his executive officer, Commander Dimsikaloku, and they'd sorted it out.

  Their reconstruction of the situation, admittedly conjectural, had it that the hostile patrol ship had been stationed in real-space at some distance outside the system, detected them from there, and shifted at once into hyperspace for the "short" jump (in terms of hyperspace "distances" ). That would account for its quick arrival. To have detected the flotilla's emergence wave, the patrol ship had almost surely been on the near side of the system and outside the Oort Belt, which might have been coincidence, or . . . Or maybe the system was ringed with patrol ships! Maybe it was the aliens' home system! That would explain the prompt hostility and the distance from the primary! They wanted strong security at the maximum practical separation from the home world!