The Amazon Legion-ARC

by Tom Kratman

  He continued on, taking a seat on a chair opposite the one where Garcia sat. Though no one would say that Garcia was much to look at, a hairy fireplug in approximately human form, Franco still felt his heart warm to see him.

  “Weather too rough for fishing?” Franco asked.

  “You just wouldn’t fucking believe it,” Garcia answered, with a shake of his head. After taking accession into the Tercio Gorgidas, and converting to reservist status from regular, Garcia had gone into the family business, running a forty-foot yawl out in the waters between the capital and the Isla Real.

  Garcia looked at Franco’s soaked form and corrected, “Well…maybe you would. How was class?”

  Franco shrugged eloquently, then elaborated, “ ‘One can lead a child to knowledge…’ ”

  “ ‘…But one cannot make him think.’ I know,” Garcia finished. He went silent for a bit, searching Franco’s face. Finally, he asked, “Would you miss teaching so very much if you stopped for a while, maybe took a sabbatical?”

  “Probably. Why?”

  Garcia sighed. “Tribune de Silva called here today. He wanted to know if you and I might be available for the next eight or ten months to run two or three basic training courses.”

  “It would be a pay cut from my salary at the university.”

  Garcia answered, “I know…for me, too. But I think we should consider it.”

  Franco nodded. “All right. Let’s consider it. First, why are you interested? I can see that you are.”

  “You always could,” Garcia chided, with a smile. More seriously, he continued, “I was thinking about obligations, actually. No…not the ones the law or custom lay upon you…more the ones you feel.”

  Franco sighed. When Garcia spoke of obligations—or worse still, of duty—there was really no reasoning with him. Mule-headed. Franco half resigned himself to eight or ten very uncomfortable months in a tent or shack. Still, he tried. “What obligations are you talking about? Something more than the two and a half months a year we already spend in uniform? Why? Who do you think we have to pay back?”

  Garcia looked down at the ring on his left hand. Its mate graced Franco’s. “I really wasn’t thinking about paying anyone back…more of paying forward. Carrera and the legion have given us a lot. You know they have: Marriage, legitimacy, a degree of acceptance we didn’t have before.”

  “He gave us an opportunity not to be put against a wall and shot, you mean,” Franco retorted. “I don’t see where that makes us particularly obligated to him.”

  Garcia smiled. “He’d have been right to have shot us, back when you were an adorable young corporal and I was your platoon optio who couldn’t keep his mind straight from thinking about you. It was hard, you know?”

  Franco laughed. “Yes, I seem to remember that it was.”

  “Asshole,” Garcia said with real affection. “You know perfectly well what I mean. Anyway, Carrera saved us from that, gave us the chance to be together in the Tercio Gorgidas. I think we owe him.”

  Resignedly, Franco looked at the wall upon which hung his and Garcia’s helmets, body armor, weapons and centurion’s insignia. He asked, “What do you—and he—want?”

  Garcia knew he’d won at that point, and more easily than he’d expected. Looking down at the floor, biting his lower lip contemplatively, he answered, “I’ll want you to start studying the problem. He needs us to train some women.”

  Chapter Three

  Pity not! The Army gave

  Freedom to a timid slave.

  In which freedom did [s]he find

  Strength of body, will and mind.

  —Kipling, “Epitaphs of the War”

  Lydia Porras’s van pulled up beside a large sign painted with the number seven and lit by a small spotlight. She showed her pass to one of the sergeants who directed her to a parking space not far away. Already more than two hundred—that was Porras’s guess—prospective Amazons milled about in confusion, their voices raising a sound much like a swarm of insects. Lydia saw a few kindly-faced, older noncoms trying to sort the mob into some semblance of order. She, herself, with a few folders tucked under one arm, went to stand very near the number-painted sign. More young women arrived in a steady stream, a very few of them already in uniform. She thought, Must be some girls who wanted a step up in life. Given the world as it is, I hope they can lift their feet that high.

  A loudspeaker began to blare out names and instructions. Suddenly all talk from the women ceased. The noncoms continued to direct and sort them as best they could, being as gentle as they were.

  I know this is all new, Lydia thought, but I have never seen the legion let any group—even the rawest—sink to the level of a mob like this.

  The loudspeaker blared, “Fuentes, Maria. Fuentes, Maria. Report to Load Ramp Seven. Fuentes, Maria, report to Load Ramp Seven.” Porras checked the photo on one of the files she carried one last time before beginning to look out for the mother of her new charge.

  Ah, there they are. Lydia caught sight of a young woman, perhaps eighteen, carrying a baby girl on her left hip and a battered suitcase in her right hand. The girl looked…defeated…already, beaten down. Her face? Porras thought it might have been a very pretty one if it had shown the slightest bit of life—or joy in life.

  Lydia walked up and introduced herself. In a warm, grandmotherly voice she said to the baby, “Well, hello, little one. You must be Alma. You and I are going to get along famously, I think. You see, I’m your very own fairy godmother.”

  Alma opened her mouth into an “O” of wide-eyed surprise and asked, “Really?”

  “Yes, indeed. And I bet I know what your first wish is.” Porras produced a huge lollipop. Whether that had been Alma’s first wish or not, one may well doubt. But it immediately became her first wish.

  “Don’t worry about her,” Porras said to Maria as she took Alma in her arms. “She’ll be well cared for. My house has gotten to be too empty since my own children grew up and moved away.” She hesitated, and then said, “You know that the legion doesn’t allow any communication from the outside during the first half of basic training?”

  Before Maria could answer, all other sounds were drowned out by a high-pitched roar. Seven hovercraft approached a long ramp that led up to the land adjacent to the pier. One by one, the hovercraft climbed the ramp from the sea to the land, before settling down at marked spots on the asphalt. As each settled, the sound pouring from it dropped down to a comparatively low whine.

  Maria started to choke up. Porras saw tears begin to form.

  “Why are you doing this?” Porras asked.

  “For her,” Maria sniffled.

  “Then do it; for her.”

  Porras handed Alma back just long enough for Maria to give the baby a last hug. Maria gave the child back, then began to shuffle forward with the other women who—though she did not know it—were to be in the same platoon with her. The suitcase, Alma’s meager things, stayed behind.

  Maria’s tears wet the asphalt where she walked. She wasn’t the only one crying.

  * * *

  A very short—almost tiny, actually—woman of about Maria’s age quietly sobbed onto the shoulder of a young man in uniform. The young man said to her, “Inez, don’t be a fool. I’m in the legion. I know. It’s no place for a woman. Certainly no place for a woman I care for. Please don’t go. They won’t make you, you know. It’s purely voluntary.”

  Unable to speak, the woman, Inez, just shook her head violently “no.” Then, with obviously pained reluctance, she turned and followed the rest of the women, drying her eyes as she went.

  Across the asphalt and up a ramp, then a scurry to find some piece of the deck to stand on and call her own; Inez grasped the metal railing and tried not to think of home.

  A horn sounded three times in warning, then the foot ramp whined its way up to the verticle. The engines of the hovercraft began to whine and strain. Inez gripped the railing tighter—very tight, actually—as the big machine lifted
and began to turn back towards the ramp and the water of the bay past it.

  * * *

  It was late at night and, while one of the moons, Eris, was up and full, there was nothing to see but water and wave and the lights of the city, receding behind them.

  Maria wasn’t alone in staring backwards, at those lights, and implicitly at the life and loved ones being left behind. Once or twice she sniffled. A tiny girl next to her sniffled in what seemed to be an echo. Maria looked to see if she were being made fun of but, no, the tiny girl was, in fact, sniffling.

  “I’m Inez,” the tiny one said, “Inez Trujillo.”

  “Maria Fuentes.”

  A tall, white, spectacularly-built woman noticed the sniffling and introduced herself to Maria and Inez, “Marta Bugatti. And, yes, I’m a bloody foreigner. Moreover, I’ve been in the legion for a while, with the classis.” The classis was the legion’s naval organization and it had seen some hard fighting over the years.

  Almost uniquely, the woman, Marta, already wore legionary battle dress and had rank and some badges neither Maria nor Inez recognized.

  In that La Plata-accented Spanish that might as well have been Tuscan, Marta, having noticed that Maria and Inez had glanced at her stripes, said, “Those come off as soon as we report in. Except for pay purposes, I’m a private for the duration, just like everyone else.” She then asked, “Are you crazy for being here or just foolish?” Marta smiled as she asked the question. She seemed cocky, somehow, and very self-confident.

  Before either Maria or Inez could answer, all three of them had their attention diverted by a tall and slender, really stunningly gorgeous blond woman who had already gathered about herself an entourage. The three, Maria, Marta, and Inez, walked over to hear better. It was only later that they found out the woman’s name. It was Gloria Santiago.

  “Just listen to me,” Gloria declaimed, over the hovercraft’s whining. “Stop worrying. This is going to be easy. Don’t fall for the men’s lies. We are smarter than they are. We are tougher than they are. Why, if a man had to go through childbirth, he’d cry like a baby. But we can and we do, all the time.” She didn’t look like she’d ever had a baby.

  Inez muttered, “We’re not as strong as they are.”

  Perhaps Gloria had overheard, though given the noise that seemed unlikely. In any case, she said to the crowd, “What difference does it make if men have bigger muscles? They have tinier brains. After all, how much of a brain can you stuff into something about six inches long and usually far, far too thin.” That raised a laugh; even Inez found it funny.

  “And besides,” Gloria continued, “strength is overrated. I’ve seen it on TV; you all have. These days technology is what wins wars. And if men weren’t so stupid, they would realize that, too. Just let us show them.”

  Gloria went on in that vein for some time. Eventually, Maria, Marta, and Inez lost interest and wandered back to where they’d been standing.

  “Amazing,” Marta said with disdain. “Imagine how seldom women would be hit by their husbands or boyfriends if they only knew that muscles don’t matter.”

  * * *

  Ahead loomed the Isla Real, its peak rising out of the sea. Lights beaconed from several places near the summit and one set seemed to stand several hundred meters above that.

  “It’s a solar chimney,” Marta explained. “They saved a bundle by running it up the side of the mountain, but it goes straight up even from there. All the power for the island, enough for two hundred thousand people or more, so I’ve been told, comes from that. They’ve got it marked so that helicopters and airplanes don’t run into it at night or in fog or rain.”

  “That’s right,” Inez observed, “you’ve been out there before, haven’t you?”

  “A few times, yes,” Marta agreed.

  “You were navy?” the tiny girl asked. “Why did you switch?”

  “Bad memories,” Marta answered, then wouldn’t say more about it.

  Their hovercraft began to veer, causing them all to lean to the side away from the turn. Except for the marking lights, there were no others to be seen. Then, suddenly, a battery of overhead lights, powerfully bright, came on to illuminate a large concrete pad. The hovercraft eased itself over a strip of sand, then came to a gradual stop before descending to land on the pad. The engines gave a last whine of protest at being put to rest.

  With a whine of a completely different pitch, the foot ramp went down on one side before settling to the concrete with a jarring clang. Up the ramp trotted a man, close-cropped, uniformed, bemedaled and just flat mean looking. He had a sneer of complete contempt engraved across his face. He carried a small portable loudspeaker in one hand. He pushed aside any women who didn’t clear out of his way quickly enough. Gloria went to her rear end with an outraged shriek.

  The man stepped up to where Gloria had been sitting, then lifted the loudspeaker to his lips. “All right you stupid twats, get your fucking high heels off.” The man waited for all of ten seconds for the women to complete that task. “When I give the order you will have thirty seconds to clear your worthless smelly hides off this hovercraft. When you get off, the men standing below will put you into formation. Then Tribune de Silva, your maniple commander, will speak to you. You will keep your foolish mouths shut. Now GO!”

  Pushing each other and scrambling, the women crowded the single ramp. Many tripped and fell, to be trodden on by the others. At the concrete base, a number of noncoms, none of them with a kindly face, slapped and pushed and prodded the women into a single block. To the right, other groups were receiving much the same treatment as they debarked from their hovercraft. Being so far from the center, the men herded the women to their right. At the other end, women were being herded to the left. The end result was a mob of prisoners, surrounded by guards, standing fearfully before a dais that rose about ten feet off of the concrete.

  A very handsome man—he introduced himself as Tribune de Silva, and their commanding officer—walked briskly up the steps of the dais. De Silva made a little welcoming speech—sort of a welcoming speech. Had they been asked, most of the women would likely have confessed that they had been made to feel more welcome. De Silva then departed in a legion vehicle, leaving the women to the none-too-tender care of their senior centurions.

  * * *

  Shocked though she was, Maria’s eyes widened as a huge bear of a man came to a halt in front of her. The man, she could plainly tell, was less than pleased with his charges.

  “I am Senior Centurion Balthazar Garcia. You are shit. Introductions being finished, we will get on with business.”

  Garcia began to walk slowly from one side of the group to the other, distaste shining in his features. He did not smile. He spoke dispassionately as he walked the line, commenting on each of the women. “Too scrawny… You’ll want to see the docs about getting a breast reduction, swabbie; those things are going to get in the way…No arse…Legs too skinny…Nose? Or is that a bus stuck on the end of your face, girl?…Stringy hair…When did you last douche, pigpen?…Bimbos. You! Bitch! Dry your silly fucking eyes. That’s right, sniveler. That’s right, crybaby…”

  It was a ritual that hadn’t changed, couldn’t have changed, since long before the days when some Roman centurion had first taken charge of a group of new recruits. It made a sort of cruel sense, actually, though none of the women understood it at the time. There was only so much time—which is almost the same thing as only so much money, but harder to come by—any army could afford to spend on basic training. The kind of rule that Garcia was establishing cut down on the silly questions and complaints. That saved money and time. Since the time and money thus saved could be spent training soldiers to fight and live, it also saved lives.

  It is often better to be insulted than dead.

  Then, too, the best thing about beating your head against a wall is that it feels so good when you stop. A moderately kind word from someone who mostly tells you that you are animate pond scum means more than the same word
from someone who routinely says that you are God’s gift to the world. It was deflation of the currency of praise.

  Garcia went on in that vein for quite some time. He didn’t offer to fight any of them, as they did with the men and as the Amazons later would do on the first day of training. There wouldn’t have been any point to it, anyway. Not all eighty of Garcia’s girls together could have taken him on at that point. That would have taken training and mutual confidence they didn’t have even a notion of yet.

  Once Garcia had finished engraving their faces on his memory he turned them over to someone else to get them on the buses, stomping away, himself, off into the darkness.

  “I am Centurion, Junior Grade, Rafael Franco,” that someone else announced. Showing a smile neither friendly nor unfriendly, but ripe with anticipation, he continued, “You are going to be seeing a lot more of me than you are going to like over the next several months. Just to be up front with you, I do not like you. I do not care about you. You are just things. Someday, perhaps, unlikely as it seems right now, you may become more. For now, you are using up oxygen that you don’t deserve. Keep your mouths shut and your ears and eyes open and we might—just possibly—learn to get along. Cross me and…well, don’t.”

  “Now, you silly little girls, I know you are far, far too stupid to know your right from your left. Take my word on it; that bus over there is on your right. When I give the command ‘Right, Face,’ I want you to turn those stupid looking things you hang in front of what passes for brains in the direction of the bus. Got it? Right…face.”

  * * *

  Marta ended up sitting next to Maria on the bus, near the window. She saw their destination first and said, simply, “Oh, shit.” They had arrived at Camp Botchkareva.

  Maria looked. It took maybe two seconds after arrival for her to decide that Rio Abajo wasn’t so bad after all. The camp looked more like a prison than a school. It consisted of fourteen large metal huts, some open fields she couldn’t guess the purpose of, and about fifty or sixty tents. At the edge of the camp the perimeter was defined by a fence of triple concertina, rolled barbed wire, with two rolls along the ground and one resting above those two. Guard towers and searchlights were at each corner and the solitary gate.