Paladin of Shadows 2 - Kildar

by John Ringo

"Oh, what a bunch of sorry looking sons of bitches." Adams chuckled, walking down the blocks of recruits who were stumbling through their first class in calisthenics. Jumping jacks did not require a high degree of physical coordination, but from some of the green faces most of the Keldara didn't have a high degree of physical coordination this morning.

  "Teach them they can push through a hangover, anyway," Mike said, trying not to smile. "I'll probably cut back on the run this morning, though."

  "About time for that," Adams said, considering the series the Keldara were supposed to go through this morning.

  "Call it when you're ready," Mike said.

  Adams looked over at Sergeant Heard, who had the nearest set of Keldara. They were deliberately going to let some of the female trainers work with the militia so they could see that women could "hang." The female Keldara were going to be their heavy weapons support, not to mention positional defense. They were going to have to learn that they could depend upon females for support in combat. Showing them the examples of the trainers would work to that end.

  Heard nodded over at Adams and turned back to her group.

  " . . . Two-three-twenty-nine," she called. "One-two-three and HALT! Attention in the ranks!" she shouted as one of the Keldara bent over, gasping. "You think that was hard! You don't know what hard means, boys!" The last word was said with such a note of bitter contempt even Mike flinched.

  As the other five teams halted their jumping jacks, Adams took a center position on the formation.

  "Company, ten-shut!" he called. "Platoon guides. Post!"

  The trainers waved the team leaders over to take their places in front of the team formations and trotted to the rear. The team leaders had hastily snatched their guidons from their holders. Each was a field of blue with the name of the team on it. When they were in position, Adams spun in place.

  "Kildar! The company is formed."

  Mike walked over and saluted Adams who, in turn, trotted to the rear of the formation.

  "Good morning, boyos," Mike called to the Keldara. "I think some of us drank a bit too much last night. The traditional method for dealing with that in the military is to sweat the liquor out. Which we're now going to accomplish. A soldier has to learn to deal with discomfort. Fatigue, pain, cold, lack of food and sleep. That is what we're going to teach you to do, to keep going even when you think you can't. Because when you're in mission mode, there's no excuse. You either do the job or you die and your squad mates die with you. So when you think you can't go any farther, you'd better find it inside or you're not going to be any damned good to anyone except as pig-slops. Company! Left-FACE! Quick-time, march . . . double time . . . MARCH!"

  * * *

  "What's wrong, Oleg?" Mike asked, sympathetically, trotting over to the team leader, who was looking pretty shaky.

  The run was light from the point of view of the U.S. military: only going on three miles and no more than a seven- or eight-minute mile. Of course, the Keldara weren't trained runners. They did, however, have the basic soldierly trait of being able to handle pain and fatigue. What he wasn't sure was that they had the right "drive on" mentality that had to accompany those.

  "Not . . . used . . . to . . . running . . . Kildar," the team leader gasped.

  "You can fall out, you know," Mike purred suggestively. A few, not many, of the Keldara had done so. Most of them puking by the side of the road and then trying to catch up. "Of course, I'll have to find someone else that can actually lead your team . . ."

  "I will stay, Kildar," Oleg said, firmly.

  "But you don't even know how far we're going," Mike pointed out. "I can keep going, faster than this, for kilometers and kilometers. You Keldara watch me, you've seen it. We could be running all day."

  "I'll . . . run all . . . day . . . Kildar," Oleg said, weaving a bit.

  "Okay," Mike said. "We'll just run all day. Nothing important on the training schedule, anyway." He trotted back to the side of the formation, which was turning off the road and down the slope to the Keldara compound, then sped up and headed to the front where Adams was leading the formation.

  "I've got it," Mike said. The formation area for the militia was down on the flats near the houses and Mike turned the Keldara towards it. He headed into the formation area, where most of the Keldara expected the, to them brutal, run would end, then continued through it to one of the graveled roads that led to the training areas.

  He didn't look back as he passed through the formation area but he heard Adams grunt.

  "How many'd we lose?" Mike asked as they crossed the nearest bridge.

  " 'Bout a third," Adams growled.

  "Go back and round 'em up," Mike said, chuckling. "And there'd better not be any team leaders."

  "Doesn't look like it," Adams said, peeling away.

  Mike led the group about fifty meters past the bridge, enough room to turn around, then trotted in a curve onto the verge and back. The trainers chivvied the group into the turn and headed back to the barracks.

  Mike passed the barracks again, though, heading back towards the road and turning around again. The Keldara were fixated on the run ending and expected it to end at the barracks. He wanted them to get their hopes up and then lose them as the expected stopping point didn't occur.

  Finally he brought them to a "quick-time" march up on the road and walked them back to the barracks for a cool-down. When they were back in formation in front of the barracks, he brought them to at-ease and faced them.

  "You're used to looking forward to the end of work," Mike said, looking over the formation of blowing Keldara. "For the beer at the end of the day of picking rocks. For the sun to fall on the harvesting or the last stand of wheat cut and the party to follow. But a soldier cannot be looking for the end of work, for the end of pain. Your mind starts to focus on that and it will betray you. As you return from a mission, anticipating a beer and rest, you could be ambushed. You might be sent on to another mission, and another and another. You cannot focus on rest, on peace, until you are at peace. You have to exist in a state of mind without a goal of the end of pain. You must learn to accept the pain, to revel in it, to make a brother of pain. To be a soldier is pain! It is suffering and loss and sacrifice. You must learn to pray for chaos and pain! This is one of the many things you're going to have to learn if you want to be soldiers. And if you turn out to be lousy soldiers, which it looks like this morning, then I'll just get some people that know how to do the damned job, to revel in the pain, and you can till the damned fields if that's all you're good for! Sergeant Major! Post!"

  * * *

  "They're looking pretty good," Mike said, walking past one of the barracks as a footlocker sailed out the window. He spoke quietly, his face stern and contemptuous of the nervous troopers standing at attention outside the barracks.

  "Gotta agree," Adams said, raising his voice slightly to overcome McKenzie's trained bellow as an armful of uniforms followed the footlocker. "The trainers say they're having to look God damned hard to find defects. Much better than standard recruit material. These guys are neat, thoughtful, strong and they've got stamina from hell. It's scary."

  "I think I should have gotten some Gurkha trainers," Mike mused. "They're used to top-notch entry material."

  "Well, we're not being as choosy as they are," Adams pointed out. "There are a few that aren't quite up to standard. One of 'em's Gurun. You know, the guy who got the bean or whatever. Killjoy says it's not that he's not trying, it's that the rest don't want to have a damned thing to do with him."

  "In some societies, the guy who's in his position gets referred to as dead," Mike replied. "We might have to pull him out. It'd be hell on him, though."

  "Does that mean we lose one guy per year?" Adams asked, frowning. "That's going to play hell with manning. We don't have all that many guys as it is."

  "Think of it as a casualty," Mike said. "We also need to be looking for replacements for the team leaders. We are going to be engaging in combat at some point
and the guy with the shortest life expectancy is the team leader. So make damned sure we have the right guys in the assistant team leader slots."

  "Will do," Adams said, frowning. "What are you going to do if they won't accept Gurun?"

  "Find another job for him," Mike said, musingly. "I don't know him from Adam. If he can't fit in, though, send him to me and I'll look him over."

  Mike spent most of the day watching the "training." It really was training, but what it seemed to be was purest abuse. The trainees weren't being taught to shoot or blow things up or even kill people, although many of them probably wanted to kill the trainers. They were being taught a series of skills, all of which could be lumped under the heading "soldierly conduct." The idea was to break their normal methods of doing things, of thinking, of living, and teach them new ones.

  The way this was being done was the "abuse." The troops were made to fall into the square in front of the barracks while the instructors went through and inspected their gear. They'd been given a class in how it was to be prepared, how it was to be laid out, how it was to be cleaned. Most of it was brand new, but "military" clean was different from "civilian" clean. If there was lint or a bit of thread in the crease of an ammunition pouch, it wasn't "clean." The point here was attention to detail, absolutely zero defect. There were many tasks that soldiers performed where the slightest mistake would lead to death. Learning to do things perfectly was the point. If they could learn to make their beds perfectly, to clean their gear perfectly, to lay out their gear perfectly, then when they had to lay in a charge of explosives perfectly or clear a mine perfectly they might actually survive.

  Furthermore, the conditions were designed to be stressful. It might actually work to have gunfire and explosions going off, randomly, while they were going through this stage of training and Mike had considered it. Hell, he could do the training any way he wanted. But the instructors screaming at them and having them do the same tasks over and over again, never willing to accept even true perfection, was stressful enough. And they'd be doing it well into the night. By the end of the week the recruits would be so mind numb, they'd be doing the tasks in a haze of unreality. And they'd eventually be doing them perfectly in that state of mind. Which was the point.

  "You've got some training of your own to do," Adams pointed out, grinning.

  "And I'll start tonight," Mike replied. "I've been considering how to do it. Right that is. Gor . . . isn't the right way in my opinion."

  "It's got its attractions, though," Adams said with another grin. The Gor books were still classics of bondage fantasy, emphasis on fantasy.

  "I'm going to go check on the dam," Mike said. "Not much to see here for a while. Call me if there are any problems."

  "Will do, boss," Adams said. "You go . . . check on the dam."

  Mike headed for the Expedition, rolling his eyes as he went.

  * * *

  "Got the pour done," Meller said, gesturing at the weir. The concrete structure was about six feet high and thirty feet long, a rectangular box with rectangular openings in the bottom and a broad, triangular, concrete platform in front of it. "It will take about a week to set enough to start dumping on it, but we're starting with the edges now."

  He spoke over the sound of a truck as it climbed up the grade to the dump point. The broad platform above the dam had been partially dug and partially blasted out and was now wide enough that the truck could make half a three-point turn so its load would dump over the side. As Mike watched, it backed into position and dropped a load of loam over the side. As soon as the dirt was dumped, it dropped the cargo bay and began turning to go back down the hill.

  As the truck drove away, the older Keldara men who were working on the project began spreading the dirt out. Some of that was done with a small bulldozer but mostly it was spade work. As soon as the dirt was spread out evenly, three of the Keldara started pressing it down with hand compactors.

  "As long as the rain holds off we can keep this up," Meller continued.

  "Know anything about microbreweries?" Mike asked, distantly.

  "Not a thing," Meller said, frowning. "Except I like their beer. The Keldara beer is better, though. Why?"

  "I want to build one," Mike said. "I had Genadi plant most of the new fields in barley. I'm not sure if that will give us enough to run a decent microbrewery, but it will be a start."

  "I can build the building," Meller said, definitely. "But I have no idea how it should be laid out and I don't know anything about how they work except that they have big copper vats."

  "Same here," Mike said, sighing. "I guess I'll just have to do some research."

  "Delegate," Meller said. "Vanner's underutilized at the moment. If you get him to find a design, I'll put it together. I suppose the Keldara women can figure out how to increase their output."

  "I'd better go talk to Mother Lenka about that," Mike said. "You got enough people?"

  "For now," Meller said, shrugging. "This is more or less makework until the concrete sets."

  "Okay, see you later," Mike replied.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  "Hello, Mother Lenka," Mike said, finding the Keldara woman in the back of the Devlich house.

  "Kildar," Mother Lenka said. She was seated on a stool in the kitchen, watching the younger women work.

  "I've got a question for you," Mike said. "Care to go for a ride?"

  "Of course, Kildar," Mother Lenka said, getting to her feet. "I can explain to you how to train your women."

  "Pass," Mike said, grinning. The old woman was a terror about "explaining" things.

  "Larissa," Mother Lenka continued, "keep these lazy bones at work; the men will be wanting their food on time."

  "Yes, Mother Lenka," one of the Keldara women, presumably Larissa, replied, nodding at her.

  Mike drove the old woman up to the bench over the Keldara compound.

  "What are we looking at?" the old woman asked as they got out of the SUV.

  "How much beer do you make every year?" Mike asked, walking through the brush covering the bench. Something had been up here within the last fifteen years or so, judging by the size of the saplings that grew on the bench.

  "About three thousand liters," Mother Lenka said, frowning. "And let me tell you, it's not easy. We start after the harvest and work on it most of the winter."

  Mike nodded and continued down a game trail to the end of the bench. There was another of the innumerable streams where the bench curved into the mountainside. He made a note to ensure it was spring fed, but most of them were. They trickled off in high summer, he'd been told, but never quite went away.

  "I'm thinking of trying to make enough to sell," Mike said, coming back out of the brush to where Mother Lenka was standing.

  "We already do," Mother Lenka pointed out, gesturing at the town.

  "More than that," Mike said. "Much more. Enough to export."

  "Never happen," Mother Lenka snapped. "You are talking about . . ."

  "Ten thousand liters, minimum," Mike said. "Over what is usually made."

  "There isn't enough time in the world," the woman protested. "Or enough stoves to bake the barley!"

  "We'll build a brewery," Mike said. "Up here. With water on tap. The barley will be automatically fed to the very large ovens. And the women will work it, which will give them a source of income."

  "Ah," Mother Lenka said, giving him a toothless smile. "Now I understand. But there is a problem."

  "And that is?" Mike asked, raising an eyebrow.

  "There is an undertaste to the brew, yes?" Mother Lenka asked, walking into the brush. "This bush," she said, lifting a low growing bush that looked something like a blueberry bush. "This makes the tiger berries. We put some of them, crushed, in the mix. That is what gives it the slight tang you don't get with true beer. Very old Keldara secret. But we'd have to have . . . very much of these berries. The women gather them in fall, but we could never gather enough. Without the berries, it w
on't be the beer you know so well."

  "For this year," Mike said, musingly, "we'll just have to have an all-hands evolution to gather them. Get as many as we can gathered. I'll talk to Genadi about planting some more. I don't know how fast they grow, but we can have fields planted if we have to."

  "The best come from the wild mountains," Mother Lenka sniffed.

  "But it's not for the Keldara," Mike said, smiling. "It's for barbarians that don't know what real beer tastes like."

  "Well, I suppose barbarians will drink anything," Mother Lenka said with a sniff. "I have tasted a can of something called 'light beer.' It is . . . bad."

  "Love in a small boat beer," Mike said, cryptically.

  Mother Lenka raised an eyebrow then cackled.

  "Yes, Kildar," the old woman replied, still chuckling. "I get it. Fucking close to water, yes? Well, we will give them something that is not close to water. The tiger berry is a . . . what you call it? Aphrodisiac, yes? That will give them some zip in their peckers."

  * * *

  "Vanner?" Mike asked, sticking his head in the commo room.

  "Intel," one of the Keldara women on duty said, pointing to the next room.

  Mike frowned and stepped down the cellar hall. The next door was locked.

  "Vanner?" he asked, tapping on the door.

  "Hi, Kildar," Vanner replied as he opened the portal. "Welcome to the intel room." There were two Keldara women in the room, seated at a table reading something.

  Mike had devoted about sixty grand to general "intel" items. Vanner had apparently been shopping. The room was crowded with electronics gear including scanners, a couple of very large printers and three computers with oversized monitors. One of them displayed a portion of a topographic map that Mike could make out was the northeast end of the valley. It was marked with roads that had just been put in and the new training ranges and their buildings.

  "Very nice," Mike said, dryly. "What's going on?"

  "I'm training Lilia and Stella in the basics of updating maps," Vanner said. "I pulled a couple of satellite shots off the commercial net and we're updating the valley map using a commercial topography program. What we're doing right now is looking over the output and doing an eyeball comparison since the program has a tendency to get details wrong. I also got Prael's survey data and we're using that to double-check the satellite data. After that I'm going to ask Colonel Nielson for funds for a full area satellite sweep. We can use that to get better maps of the Area of Operations. I got two map printers, cheap, so when we have better maps we'll be able to produce them for the Keldara. And I ordered the most comprehensive mapset available from Janes so we'll be set for most potential deployments, even though I know the Keldara aren't designed for deployment."