by Tom Kratman
Inez disagreed. “No. My brother—he’s a centurion candidate—told me. The legion wants fighters, not ass-kissers. They want people who will do their duty. They want people who, even if they’re not sure what their duty is, will at least be thinking about what it might be. I think we’ll get out of these tents when Garcia decides we can and will do that.”
Gloria retorted, “You’re giving them too much credit for brains, Trujillo. They’re doing this because they think they can. It’s just spiteful meanness and envy. I might even call it abuse of power,” she finished sullenly.
Inez answered, “I’ll admit, it seems like a pretty far leap from tents to training. And maybe I can’t quite see the connection either. But these men have been at this sort of thing for a long time. Maybe they really do know what they’re doing.
“Then, too, you know, we women tend to be forgiven our little transgressions in polite society. You must admit, this is a pretty good indication that we will not be lightly forgiven by the legion, which is no kind of ‘polite’ society.”
Marta said, “I heard we are going to have to carry everything they gave us on our backs from now on. We don’t have any lockers here like we did in the barracks.”
“My brother warned me about this,” Inez commented. “When they did this to his basic training maniple, he said, ‘All the time we lived in the tents we had to lug everything we owned on our backs wherever we went. I got to where I hated my rucksack and everything in it.’ ”
* * *
Beyond harassment, that first week and a half of Basic were pretty much taken up with close order drill, customs and courtesies of the service, military law, uniform and equipment wear and care, and—of course—physical training.
The women had about two and a half hours of physical training every day. In the morning they had an hour and a half of calisthenics and a run that usually left them puking. If at least a few girls didn’t throw up then the next day’s run would be longer, faster, or both. For evenings there was another hour of combatives. As training progressed they didn’t always do the morning sessions. They rarely missed the evening ones.
The men taught them to hit, gouge eyes, crush gonads…bite. They were also trained to a pretty fair standard with a knife. They learned to strangle, smash, break noses, and twist tendons…stab, jab, and slice.
Still, they weren’t men. They could never have learned to use the simple male techniques used in bayonet fighting. That took too much weight and strength. Instead, they were taught the older, more intricate, fencing variety of bayonet fighting. That, as with many things for the women, took up a lot more time than was available to the men going through Basic.
* * *
“Thrust! Twist! Draw! Thrust! Twist! Draw!”
The swaying bag to Maria’s front seemed to mock her. For half an hour or more she had been trying to sink her bayonet solidly into one of the bull’s-eyes painted on the side. To her left, Marta was having equal problems. To her right, Inez Trujillo was awkwardly trying to strike from below.
Corporal Salazar literally picked Inez up by her combat harness and shook her. The man had biceps thicker than Inez’s legs. “You worthless little midget! Do you think the enemy will all be runts like you? If you can’t go in low for the kill, go in high!” He shook her again before dropping her back to her feet.
Salazar then turned and slapped Maria across the face. “Put your heart into it, you stupid cunt. Hate that thing!” She nodded and tried again: Thrust, twist, draw.
Garcia’s whistle called a moment’s rest. He shook his head, perplexed. Those old bayonet fencing drills we’re using were meant for men. They depend on having a center of gravity a lot higher than a woman’s, more height and muscular strength, too. Ah, well, they’ll have to figure some of this out on their own. If they don’t, I just might let Salazar carry through on his threat to kill one of ’em on the spot.
Again the whistle blew, signaling, “Break’s over.”
“Gonzalez, you dumb twat. Picture that sack as a man, coming for your kids. Kill ’im!” Cat lunged…and missed.
Salazar turned back to Maria. “Idiot child! Try again.” She missed the bag completely.
Gloria, standing opposite, laughed out loud, right up until Salazar, with a fencing master’s grace, took two steps across the sawdust and laid her out with a single punch. He’d pulled his punch, too.
* * *
After that, Maria had a lot of trouble with Gloria, who seemed determined to make her into the platoon goat. Why this was so, Maria didn’t know. That it was so was patent.
* * *
Maria stood in line outside the mess, right behind Cat and ahead of Marta. The line stood at parade rest, the women coming to attention to take single steps forward as one of those ahead cleared the chow line and went to the tables. For those standing outside, there was no shade and the sun beat down on them. Worse, really, it reflected up from the gravel to ensure they were not just thoroughly but evenly roasted. Or perhaps there was another culinary term that would have suited better, given the near one hundred percent humidity.
The mess hall was air conditioned, not for the women but for the benefit of the cooks. Still, whatever the reason for it, it was blessedly cool. Usually, it was as silent as death. Today, the women in line could hear sounds that seemed almost happy. True, they’d done well enough not to be punished much today, but what changed the tone inside the mess Maria couldn’t guess.
She discovered why, when she finished passing her tray through the line. The very last thing slapped onto it was a small tub of ice cream.
“I haven’t had…” she started to mumble, before Sergeant Castro, standing at the end of the line, ordered, “Seat, woman.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” she said, then hurried to the dining area to find a place to sit. Unfortunately, the only open seat at the moment was beside Gloria. The latter took one look at Maria, another at the tub of ice cream.
Then Gloria said, “You’re fat; you don’t need this.” She took the ice cream and passed it to someone else, then crossed her arms as if daring Maria to do something about it.
Maria didn’t. She just took it.
* * *
“Oh…yes, love…yes…oh, please…harder, harder…oh, oh, oh!”
“Goddamned fucking sluts,” muttered Marta from the other side of the tent she shared with nineteen other women. “Don’t they know people have to fucking sleep? Will you two please SHUT UP!”
The lesbians ignored her. These two apparently had very little sense of shame, though if there were others they were more discreet.
The next morning, one of those two, Sonia, walked up to Marta and suggested that she was just jealous because she wasn’t “getting any.”
“What is it, Bugatti; do you want to join us? Well, maybe if you’re nice. Then again, maybe you already have a little something. Maybe…” Sonia looked at Maria and, then reached out a hand to clasp her breast.
Marta went for her like a berserker. Before anyone could stop it, Sonia was on the ground with Marta sitting on her, pummeling away with clenched fists. Maria felt a little ashamed—all right, more than a little ashamed—that she just stood there with her head lowered when the second lesbian, Trudi, jumped Marta from behind. Marta went down under flailing feet and fists.
It was another one of the girls who went to Marta’s aid. Cristina Zamora was easily the biggest woman in the platoon. Zamora was pretty enough, in a strong featured way, and with her shining coppery hair. She picked up Trudi and punched her four or five times in the face before dropping her to the dirt. Then she separated Sonia and Marta, slapping both of them senseless with fine impartiality.
“Freeze, bitches!” Garcia’s stone face gazed upon them. A few quick questions and he pronounced sentence. Marta, Zamora, Sonia and Trudi were given six hours extra duty each for disorderly conduct.
Then Garcia turned to Maria and asked, “Is this woman your bunk buddy?”
“Yes, Centurion,” Maria answered, sham
efaced.
“And is it true that you failed to go to her aid when she was attacked and outnumbered?”
Maria’s eyes lowered. She hesitantly answered, “Yes, Centurion.”
Garcia’s voice dripped with contempt as he said, sneering, “For you, eighteen hours extra duty, to be accomplished in three-hour increments during and in place of the evening meal. Six days’ bread and water for breakfast and lunch. Six days’ restriction to your tent when not at meals, extra duty, or training.”
* * *
“Maria. Maria, wake up.”
“What? Who?”
“Shush. Shush. It’s Marta. Here, eat this.” She handed over a leg of chicken she had stolen from the mess hall.
“Marta?” Maria took the chicken, then stopped. She couldn’t eat it, no matter that she was famished.
“I’m sorry, Marta. You know, for…”
“I know. It’s my own fault for letting my temper get the better of me. I never think things through first. Now eat!”
Maria did as she was told. She always did as she was told. Juan, Piedras, Gloria…
She thanked Marta, over and over. She apologized, over and over, between bites.
“Look, skip it. You can’t help being what you are…any more than I can.” Marta patted a wet cheek, took the gnawed bone, and crawled back to her own pallet.
* * *
“It isn’t just Garcia’s platoon, sir. We’ve all had problems to some extent.” The speaker, Ernesto del Valle, was a tall, distinguished-looking senior centurion. He rubbed the fingers on one hand across graying temples as he continued. “It’s true, the lesbians aren’t as naturally promiscuous as, say, we would be. But there are problems. They’re human enough. They do develop interests that not only are not requited, but can’t be requited. Fights, sir, lots of fights.”
“Frankly, I can live with lesbians, sir,” Garcia said. “What’s driving me crazy is the number of women who are just certain, deep down, that they can get to one of us. We’re having to be twice as shitty to all of ’em as we should have to be to any of ’em just to drive home the futility of the whole thing.”
De Silva—Tribune de Silva and a “shoo-in” to be Legate de Silva someday—placed his thumbs in the hollows of his temples and tapped his fingers on his brow.
“Tell me, Garcia…del Valle, are these women human?”
Only Garcia answered, “Extremely human, sir.”
“As human as we are?”
Del Valle answered, “Yes, sir.”
De Silva raised his gaze to the three other officers, sixteen assembled centurions and sixty-two junior NCOs. “Anybody here ever have a crush on a straight? Hmmm? Raise your hands.”
About two thirds of the men present did.
“Right. They’re human, just like us. Our gender orientation doesn’t change theirs. And from their point of view we are the right gender. The same basic thing holds true for the lesbians. All the other women are the right gender from their point of view.”
Franco observed, “But, sir, you can’t separate them from us. Who would train them?”
“No, I can’t,” de Silva agreed. “You’re just going to have to be shitty to the women. But we can separate out the lesbians from the rest. And we will. Sergeant Major?”
“Sir.”
“Put out the call. I need a centurion pair and four NCO pairs for an eighth platoon.”
“Sir.”
* * *
On the tenth day of training the women trudged to the ranges, everything they owned on their backs, nothing to be left behind in the tents. At seven miles, the walk to the range wasn’t nearly as far—or done nearly as fast—as some of the later marches. Still, it was no walk in the woods. To their usual forty-five pounds was added another three in food, another nine in water. That was more, in Maria’s case, than half her body weight. Some girls had it rougher. Inez Trujillo, all four feet eleven inches of her, had it particularly bad.
By this time, of course, the women had spent a good part of every day with their rucks on their backs. But this was different. Women walked funny. Women sling their hips differently from men when they walk. They’re made that way. And the rucksacks were made for men, even though the women had small-sized ones. There was no really adequate solution to the problem. Carrying a ruck simply hurt them more.
“Tough luck,” as Centurion Garcia said. “Builds character.”
Perhaps it did.
When they reached the bivouac area, they were given a chance to strip and clean themselves before pitching the tents. All were ecstatic at being able to remove the rucksacks. The straps had just killed their tits.
Marta was leaning against a tree, resting, when she looked at Inez and exclaimed,“Oh, damn!”
Maria followed her gaze and saw Inez, cupping a breast in each hand, rocking back and forth, quietly moaning. Through the spaces between her fingers the others could see two spots, bright red against the dull green of Inez’s T-shirt. Cat sat beside her, wringing her hands.
Marta and Maria stood up and went to her. They pulled her hands away and removed her T-shirt, then her bra. Marta said “I haven’t seen anything like this since…” Whatever she’d been about to say was lost as she didn’t continue.
Inez’s nipples were oozing blood where the straps must have rubbed her. They were just raw.
“I’m all right,” Inez said, through clenched teeth.
“Like hell,” Marta answered. “I’m going for a medic.”
“No! No, please. I’ll be all right.”
“Sure. Right. Okay. Maria, go clean her bra and shirt. They’ll be impossible to wear with dried blood and crud on them. Now…let’s see. Cat, help me…”
When Maria came back with Inez’s things she saw that Marta and Cat had bandaged the raw nipples and were working on the straps to her rucksack.
“The problem,” Marta told them, “is that these packs are made for the width of a man’s shoulders. With us…they push the other straps too far inward.” She meant the suspenders on the combat harnesses. “So…” And she held up the ruck to show them how she had reversed the straps to point out, rather than in. This would put them on Inez’s shoulders, leaving enough room that the suspenders weren’t forced across her tits.
Clever girl, Maria thought.
* * *
The rifle range was fun, even satisfying. And the women had to develop a whole new set of muscles. There was no reason to believe that men were naturally better shots than women as far as most of the factors in marksmanship go. But the women weren’t as strong and even a rifle requires some unusual musculature. The F-26, being heavier than most, required still more.
The girls spent literally hours just holding their rifle and squeezing off dry fires to build up muscle and control of the trigger finger. The technique was simple enough. An instructor would supervise as they took turns in teams of two. One member of the team would place a coin on the end of the rifle of the other, while the other was in firing position. Then the one with the rifle would s-l-o-w-l-y squeeze the trigger until the hammer dropped, or, to be technical, since the F-26 was electrically primed, until the connection was made. If the coin fell off, the woman needed more practice, and got it. They generally also received a large number of pushups, needed or not.
And every day they would march somewhere new. Or back to somewhere old. And they sweated and strained and were generally made miserable. Inez’s new strap arrangement caught on with the smaller girls. Soon all of the “little people” had reversed their rucksack straps. It was better, a little anyway.
Sweated? Among the ninety-five items in their initial kit were two field uniforms and five sets of underwear—boxers—and five pairs of socks. A few buckets were made available for washing their own clothes but the supply of clean clothing never quite kept up with the demand. They stank.
But the instructors had thought of that. Women can get sick, inside, if they get and stay too filthy. No, not always, but the risks were much greater than for
men. About two days after they’d arrived on the ranges a gynecologist showed up. She lectured them on the dangers and on what they could do to keep healthy. Maria’s respect for boxer shorts and sleeping naked under her mosquito net went up immeasurably.
After the gynecologist left, Centurion Franco said, “Good. Now you’ve been told. If you don’t listen and rot from the inside out it’s your own fault.” Most women listened. Some girls didn’t at first, lazy or maybe just tired. They paid the price, too.
Not that getting sick got them out of anything. Sick call was held in the field. If a woman was really hurt the odds were better than even that she would be recycled into the next planned class, doing scutwork in the interim. If one of them was just feeling poorly…tough.
Feeling poorly? It was not widely known, but women who live in close quarters seem to tend to get on the same menstrual cycle. Those were bad days; everybody bitching at everybody. Except the instructors, of course. The woman had learned that one never yelled at an instructor unless one had a burning desire to be beaten senseless.
A lot of the women thought it grossly unfair that they were treated so harshly when they had their periods. Actually, almost all of them thought so. On the other hand, though, not one could pinpoint what was so special about a period. If they could be made to march on blistered and bleeding feet, why not with flowing menses? If a bad head cold or the flu didn’t keep them out of training why should something more predictable and natural?
That, at least, was the way Centurions Garcia and Franco saw it. And their opinions were considerably more important than any woman’s at that point in time.
The women were provided with sanitary napkins, which was something.
* * *
“One thousand, two thousand, three thousand…down, bitch! Now roll. Rifle to shoulder. Suppress! Number two…”
The women were doing short rushes and low crawls interspersed with dry firing. These techniques were used to move forward against the enemy without giving that enemy time or calm to shoot back accurately. Doing the rushes and crawls for a little while isn’t so bad. Doing them for hours upon hours, as they had been, was painful.