by Tom Kratman
With some difficulty, she did.
Perhaps Garcia was being kind. Perhaps he was trying to keep her from being needlessly humiliated. On the other hand, maybe he also wanted people to move faster on the range. Certainly nobody else dawdled there, that Cat could see, the rest of the day. Indeed, the women pushed themselves to finish the job as quickly as possible. This may not have been such a good thing.
* * *
Marta waited nervously for her turn to throw the grenades. Ahead of her, another woman from a different platoon was shaking pretty badly as she picked up the first grenade. Her instructor went through much the same “very special fools” speech that Gonzalez had heard from Garcia. (The speech went way back to the very beginnings of the legion.) The instructor was very calm, but this did not stop the woman’s tremors. Still, she took her grenade, flicked away the safety clip, pulled the pin, and released the spoon. The instructor held her wrist while she counted “One thousand…two thousand” with a breaking voice. He released the wrist to let her throw; which she did. Right into the wall of the bunker.
The instructor’s eyes followed the grenade as it bounced off the front of the pit, to the back of the pit, and then to the front again before settling on the floor. Perhaps he’d been counting the seconds automatically. Whatever the case, he didn’t hesitate a moment. Pushing the woman towards the entrance, he threw himself down atop the bomb. It exploded, sending blood and flesh and bone out of his back to spatter pit and woman, both.
Marta screamed. The blood- and flesh-spattered woman stood, frozen, her face ghastly white where it hadn’t been speckled with bits of red.
Within moments another instructor, the dead man’s pair bond, entered the pit and fell, weeping, to his knees. He verbally flailed the woman, “You fucking stupid moron. You goddamned fucking incompetent murdering bitch. What makes you so goddamned important that my partner had to die for you? What?”
The woman had no answer.
Franco came and led the crushed man away.
* * *
Late that night, they marched the women back to their bivouac area (not Camp Botchkareva, with its icy showers). They sang, as they’d been taught to sing on their “slack time.” Given the events of the day, they sang mostly downbeat things:
“Come by the hills to the land where glory remains,
Where stories of old fill the heart and may yet come again,
Where the past has been lost
And the future has still to be won.
And the cares of tomorrow must wait
’Til this day is done.”
The women sang much of the time, and nearly all the time they were marching, scores of songs from the legionary songbook, plus a few of their own. In happier moments, they were particularly fond of the children’s song, “Guillermo Hinchese” (“With the razor’s gash he had settled her hash. Oh, never was crime so quick!”) and the more adult “Sacred War.” At first they were made to sing, but—after a while—they came to love singing together for its own sake. It was fun. Never mind that with every song they were being indoctrinated. Indoctrinating through song was so old a trick it was almost passé.
Marching away from the grenade range, between songs, Gloria fumed at length about all the explicit and implicit insults. She thought they should be considered innocent until proven guilty.
Sick of her bitching, Inez asked her, “Why? If we fail, we might cost them their lives. It strikes me as a lot to ask of someone, to take an extra risk for something that will do them no good at all.”
“Let them prove there’s a risk,” Gloria retorted, “before dumping on us.”
“They just did,” Inez answered.
* * *
First aid training came next, almost a whole week of it, and the Amazons were good at that; Centurion Garcia even said so. Although when he had them carry the instructors around on stretchers for a couple of hours they found that was much harder than carrying each other.
Resting her weary arms afterwards, Inez said, “I’m told that women in tercio medical companies have a lot of trouble with that. Enough trouble, says my brother, that it’s an open question whether they’ll continue to let women into male tercios as medics. I guess that’s one advantage of having a females-only combat unit. We won’t waste men’s time by having them carry light little burdens like us. Neither will we be overtaxing ourselves, maybe even killing our own wounded, trying to carry men who are just too damned heavy.”
* * *
At last, after not quite four weeks in the jungle, Phase One was over. The aspirant Amazons marched back to camp. As a reward, Garcia even let the girls use the barracks for a few days. The water in the showers was still icy.
Interlude
“Up yours, cueco,” the archaeopteryx said from his perch in one corner as it worried with its beak a Terra Novan olive held clasped in one claw.
“Fucking bird,” Franco muttered, as he looked out of the tiny shack he shared with Garcia. From the window he saw a squad of women running in a circle, their rifles held over their heads. Their tramping feet raised a cloud of dust that had them all coughing and gagging. Above the suffering girls, in the background, high over the island, the continuous cloud around the mouth of the solar chimney loomed.
“God, I hate this shit,” he told his partner and boss.
“I know. Me, too.”
“Would you have volunteered us for this horror if you had known what we would have to do to them?”
“I did know. So did you. Deep down, you knew.”
“Maybe so,” Franco half-admitted. “Christ, why us?”
Garcia didn’t answer immediately. When he did, he said, “Because we can. And no one else could. Now stop your bleeding and tell me about third squad.”
Franco pulled his gaze from the suffering women. “Mostly, they’re coming along. The ones who have me worried are Bugatti, Santiago and Fuentes; our resident sociopath, feminist and wimp, respectively.”
Garcia chuckled low. “You know, for a really smart, book learned, university professor, you can be awfully dense sometimes.”
Franco looked at Garcia with something between shock and mortal offense.
“Oh, calm down. You’re young. You’re still learning.”
“So teach me, O ancient and mighty one,” Franco answered sarcastically.
Garcia thought briefly of a terrified young girl, holding a grenade in a trembling hand. “Just trust me, Fuentes is not a wimp. There’s steel inside there. Oh, maybe it isn’t Atacamas Mountains solid. Maybe it’s more like a…oh, like a rapier, I suppose. In any case, it keeps springing back. I think she’ll be all right.”
“Maybe you should have a talk with her,” Franco suggested.
“Maybe I will at that. As for Bugatti?” Garcia shook his head with disgust. “That poor creature has some tales to tell. Have you seen her file?”
It was Franco’s turn to show disgust. “I’ve read it. But do you really think she can overcome all that?”
Garcia shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. She’s trying though. And she’s doing better all the time. Why, she’s even learned to hide the fact that she wants to rip our throats out whenever one of us gives her a whack.”
Then it was Garcia’s turn to look worried. “You’re right about Santiago, though. She’s always been out for number one, hiding it behind her concern for ‘all women, everywhere.’ You would think she’d been a charter member of the National Organization for Upper Middle Class White Women. It’s getting worse, too. But I have a trick that might work on her.”
“Or might not.”
“Or might not,” Garcia conceded.
Franco looked back out of the window. “Do you really think this is the best way to get the best out of a group of women?”
“That isn’t the point or the mission. We’re not trying to get the best out a group of women; we’re trying to get the best women out of the group. That’s a very different thing. And for that, this way works perfectly. It will be their jo
b, later on, to figure out how to get the best from a group of women.
“Now…what about third squad’s children?”
Franco answered, “I spoke to Private Porras last night by phone. The Gonzalez children are doing well enough. The Maceira boy has a head cold, but is recovering nicely. Little Alma Fuentes misses her mommy and cries a lot.”
“Should we let Fuentes call home, do you think?” Garcia asked.
Shaking his head, Franco replied, “Leaving aside the fact that it’s against the rules… Yes, yes; I know you can bend the rules for good cause. Leaving that aside; I think it would be a very bad idea to let Fuentes’ mind start wandering to her baby. She has trouble enough being apart from her kid. You know; cries a lot when she thinks no one is looking.”
“Okay, then. Little Alma can cry a little more.” Changing the subject, Garcia asked, “Are you ready to deal with the herstorian we’ve got coming out to lecture the girls?”
Franco smiled then. “Sylvia Torres? She’s mindless,” he snorted. “I not only know everything she ever wrote; I just might know everything she’s ever read. I knew her at the university, after all.”
“Good. Let’s make it memorable. Be nice to the woman, but give the girls what they need to recognize silliness when they hear it.”
Chapter Four
“The song for the soldier is a war song;” it is not “I don’t like spiders and snakes.”
—Patricio Carrera
Maria:
By the end of Phase One our strength was down by about twenty percent. It would probably have been a lot lower except that our cadre simply would not let us quit easily at this point and punished us if we tried. We were also a lot stronger, though the strongest of us still couldn’t have taken on the weakest of our instructors in close combat. Even the three or four strongest probably couldn’t have. But it was an improvement. Besides, we could shoot at least as well as an equivalent group of male recruits, and probably better. We could use the weapons that didn’t require any unusual physical strength as well as the men, even a little better in the case of tripod mounted .34 caliber machine guns. Garcia had said something about “natural rhythm” when he’d announced that. We had more trouble with firing the machine guns from their integral bipods or from the hip. And carrying them and a full ammunition load was always a pure bitch.
We still could not march as far as the men, as fast, while carrying the same weight. Actually, as a group we couldn’t even pick up the same weight to start to carry it.
In Phase Two of training they started messing with our heads even more than they had previously messed with our bodies. We can talk about that later.
We also got fresh haircuts. Yes, they buzzed us again. But, then, they issued us two more field uniforms, more underwear, and another pair of the lightweight boots each. Win a few, lose a few.
(We don’t do that anymore, in Amazon training, by the way. After the first buzz cut we don’t say a word. But we keep the new girls even filthier than the Gorgidas did with us. As their hair grows, it gets and stays rotten. We leave them the shears, though. When they cut their hair on their own, we know we’re training them hard enough. Discipline is always better when it grows from inside.)
* * *
One day they marched us into a sort of tree shaded amphitheater surrounded by bleachers they used for a classroom. A pinch-faced, sort of dumpy woman walked to the lectern and introduced herself as Professor Sylvia Torres. She said she was there to teach us about the history of women in the military. She’d obviously never done a day in uniform herself, nor was her degree in history, let alone military history. And the way she wrinkled her nose at our stench didn’t precisely endear her to us.
It was obvious that this woman only partly approved of our experiment. She plainly disapproved of our being segregated. Though it was funny that she entirely believed in, and seemed to approve of, the original Amazons, who were entirely segregated except at breeding season.
“There is plenty of history to support the integration of men and women in the military,” she announced. “To begin, let us take the example of Lucille Brauer, a Federated States Marine who served aboard the FSS Charter during their war of AC 288. She had to keep the fact she was a woman hidden, true. But she did everything the men did, to include fighting in some of the most successful actions in which that ship engaged.”
Franco interrupted to ask, “Professor Torres, how did the Brauer woman manage to keep hidden her sex when it was a regulation of the Federated States Marines at that time for the commander to inspect each of his Marines for their health, buck naked, once a week? I’m just curious, you understand.”
“Professor Franco,” Torres answered, “I’m afraid the record is not specific as to what measures Ms. Brauer had to use.”
“Centurion Franco,” he corrected. “She was successful, though, in hiding her sex, you say. Hmmm. Interesting. Please excuse me for a moment, Professor. Stand up for a moment, Bugatti.”
Marta arose with a suspicious look on her face; her chest prominent, as always.
Franco spoke as if he really were interested in finding a solution to a problem that could be solved if he could only open his mind enough. Rubbing his face contemplatively, he said, “Maybe if we redesigned the body armor a bit…might be hot…but…yes, we could—possibly—do this. Thank you, Professor. Sit down, Bugatti.”
I joined the others in smirking. Trying to make Marta look like a boy was an obvious exercise in futility.
I don’t think Torres quite understood what Franco had just done to her, because she continued, unfazed, “As another example, we have the case of a Volgan tank crew in the Great Global War. This tank crew, composed of two men and two women, successfully held up the advance of an entire Sachsen army of eleven divisions for three days. This was not the Red Tsar’s propaganda, by the way, but came from Sachsen records. After the Sachsens finally succeeded in knocking that tank out, they found that the only survivor of the crew was a woman.” She smiled triumphantly.
Franco raised his hand again. “What were the relationships among those men and women, Professor?”
“They were married, Prof…ah, Centurion Franco.” She consulted her notes, briefly, then said, “They were, in fact, the Political Commissar of the unit, his assistant, and their wives.”
“Ah, then,” Franco said. “So they were married, like us in the Tercio Gorgidas. And the political cell of their unit, you say? That’s very interesting, too. Were they fanatics, do you suppose, Professor?”
“Well,” she answered, “their actions in battle would seem to indicate an unusual degree of commitment.”
“So they didn’t have any of the typical problems you get when you put men and women together. I see.”
Torres did not see, it seemed. “Problems?”
“Oh, you know. Problem Number One: ‘Won’t one of you big strong men help poor little ol’ me?’ Problem Number Two: ‘Private, how grateful would you be if you didn’t have to pull guard tonight.’ Problem Number Three: ‘You’re what! What will my wife say?’ That kind of problem. Tell me, Professor, what kind of tank was it?”
Again she turned to her notes. “It was a very advanced for the time heavy tank, I understand.”
“Ah. So women can crew a heavy tank. Very good. Do you happen to recall how heavy a tank it was?” She didn’t.
“Hmmm. I don’t know either,” Franco said. “I wonder, though, whether there might not be a problem with putting women on tanks today. Even heavy tanks in those days were much lighter affairs than tanks now. Shells were lighter. Tracks were lighter. Parts and engines were lighter. Today, I don’t know that any two women and two men living could adequately fight and maintain a main battle tank which is, at forty to seventy tons, two or three times heavier than its Great Global War counterpart. The tracks are too heavy, the shells are too heavy, everything is too heavy.”
She asked, “But don’t we have tanks that are lighter than that?”
“Well…sort
of,” Franco admitted. “The legions do have Ocelots. They’re pretty light; about nineteen tons. On the other hand, an Ocelot wouldn’t stand a chance against a real tank though it does give pretty good service as an infantry support vehicle. I’m sure women—or men and women mixed—could handle those without any technical problems whatsoever,” Franco concluded enthusiastically.
I guess Torres hadn’t ever given any thought to the technical differences between one type of weapon and another. I didn’t know myself. She seemed happy with Franco’s seeming agreement.
Moving on, Torres said, “Nor is the history of men and women being integrated in combat limited to heavy, high technology, weapons like tanks. Women of Zion, during their wars, gave good service themselves as infantry against the Arabs, mixed in units with men.”
Franco inquired, “How did that work? Were there any problems?”
“Well, there were a few,” Torres conceded. “It was discovered that men simply would not treat women like they would other men. When the women got into trouble there was an unfortunate tendency for the men to abandon the mission to save the women. I wouldn’t blame those boys too much. They couldn’t help it, even if it wasn’t hard-wired in their genes, there was some strong cultural conditioning. Besides, it isn’t like straight young men have any brains.” We, even Franco, joined her in a laugh.
“Unfortunately, the women were soon—after about three weeks—removed from units with men and formed into their own, where they continued to do respectably well. This was still patently unfair. It wasn’t their fault that the men acted like that. Worse, today Zion’s women are not even allowed to drive trucks, because trucks go to the front and women are not allowed at the front.”
“I thought that Zion does still conscript young women,” Franco commiserated.
“They do,” she said, “but only if they haven’t gotten married. The drafted women make a pun of the initials for their service; apparently in Hebrew the letters can also stand for ‘We should have gotten married!’ ”