The Amazon Legion-ARC
Page 24
“What’s so hard about it?” Cat asked, from her post by the grill.
“Cazador School?” the younger warrant asked. “Imagine going for about three months on a ration that the World League High Commissioner for Refugees would sneer at. Then add to that a tremendous load of hard physical work and fairly continuous pain. Almost no sleep. And you’re always uncomfortable.”
The older one gestured at Marta’s breasts and said, “Kiss those goodbye, honey. Everyone’s going to lose about twenty to thirty percent of body weight. You won’t have an ounce of fat left.”
“And the sleep deprivation,” said the younger. “You’re going to be zombies, the walking dead.” He looked up at Catarina, hopefully. She, nodded, smiled, and then deposited another lobster on his plate.
“You can expect,” he added, “to have under two hours per night. That’s average; it’s possible to get none at all for two or three days at a time.”
One of the other crew, one without a Cazador tab, said, “That’s what got me. I washed out; I just couldn’t take the lack of sleep.”
“No shame there,” the younger warrant said. “Only about half the men who go make it. And they’re already a pretty select lot.”
“Did they send you guys here to discourage us?” Marta asked suspiciously. She remembered the “sickener.”
“You girls asked us for the unvarnished truth,” the senior hovercraft driver said. “Since you’re feeding us, we’re not going to lie to you. It’s hard, hardest goddamned thing I ever did in my life, bar none.
“And throw in, for good measure, danger. Sometimes it’s only apparent and you won’t know it is. But sometimes it’s real, too. You can get killed or crippled there. Happens all the time.”
“And you’re going to be afraid of failing,” said the younger. “I think that’s the worst fear of all.”
Trujillo already had an answer from her brother, but she wanted a second opinion. “If it’s that bad, why do it? Why make it such a choke point in leader selection?”
“Will you settle for a personal opinion?” the senior warrant asked. “Okay, then. Mostly, because it works. Part of that is that only the tough, smart, dedicated, and competent make it through. But that’s only a part. The school builds character; the tough became tougher still.
“It will also tend to teach you a lot about yourself, about your personal weaknesses and limitations.
“An ancient Zhong general, on Old Earth, said, ‘Know your enemy and know yourself and in a hundred battles you will never be in danger.’ You will know yourself when you’re done, to include a lot of things you would probably rather not know.”
Inez went silent for a moment to contemplate that.
“But you’ll learn some good things, too,” the younger warrant said. “Up to a point, the more you face danger the easier it becomes to face. You’ll face a lot of danger and you’ll learn to deal with it, to make yourself go on despite it.”
The elder warrant then said, “It isn’t about the learning or the training though. I went to the school with people who said, ‘I’m only here for the training.’ None of them made it. After the first month or so there really isn’t any new training; it’s all an endurance test. So they dropped out. See, Cazador School isn’t about skill. Oh, sure; it will teach a little of small unit tactics, but it isn’t all that important. Then, too, what it teaches tends to be pretty simplistic.”
“Okay,” Inez asked, “if it isn’t the people who are there for the training who make it through, then who does make it?”
The warrant chuckled, “Mostly the last people you would expect; the people who are there for the sheer bloody glory of the thing. When all else fails, girl, when you think you can’t keep your eyes open another minute, can’t walk another step, and can’t take another second of your stomach’s complaining…remember the glory of the thing.”
* * *
All thing pass. Good things just seem to pass more quickly. That final party on the beach passed more quickly than most.
With the sun setting to the west, two of the moons, Bellona and Eris, arose in their quarters. The hovercraft crew disappeared up the ramp, with many thanks to the women for a free feed. A line of Amazons formed and, with strained grunts, began moving the baggage across the sand, up the ramp, and onto the hovercraft’s deck. No one had to tell them to do it; they knew teamwork now. Others among those staying behind plopped small metal covers onto tacky tiki lights (“Hey, they’re tacky but they keep the bugs off.”) to smother the flames. A few grabbed buckets and began hauling water from the sea to dump on the fires.
With many a tear, the girls remaining, temporarily, at Camp Penthesileia bade farewell to those who were leaving now, the sixty-three slated for Cazador School. Over the next week, others would be going to different places, ranging from the field medical course to the mortar course.
Cat was going to a short machine gunner’s course and then home. She didn’t mind that, in itself. She was already in charge of a family. That was personal responsibility enough, she had told the ones moving on and possibly up. But she wept over little Inez like it was her own baby being torn from her.
Inez took it very hard, too, being split up from her best friend in the course, her substitute mother. They’d been best friends all through Basic. Now Inez would be alone.
“I’ll write, I promise,” Cat told her.
“It won’t be the same,” Inez answered, in a voice breaking with sorrow.
Spontaneously, Cat took out a picture of herself and her family. “This is all I have to give you, little one. Take it. Maybe it will help. And remember, I’ll be thinking of you…of all of you.”
* * *
Sometimes the mountain must come to Muhammad, when, say, Muhammad is up to his chin in a sea of paperwork. Thus, while Carrera had made time to visit the Tercio Amazona several times in the course of their training, he just couldn’t make time now. So the girls got off the hovercraft on the same landing platform from which they’d left for the island, unloaded their crap, then promptly reloaded it on the buses designated to take them to Escuela de Cazadores.
An officer—Maria recognized him as the aide de camp Carrera had sent her to—boarded and said, “Ladies, you have one stop to make on the way. I’ll be leaving you there and someone else will be giving you a little talk.”
The buses took off with screeching airbrakes…
* * *
…to pull through well-guarded metal gates that fronted on the main highway leading east along the coast road.
Inez, sleeping in the back and startled awake by the turn, glanced at her watch. Hmmm…ninety minutes, give or take. I wonder what’s ninety minutes west of…oh, shit.
Even as Trujillo thought it, a whisper went down the bus from front to rear, “They’ve brought us to the Duque’s house.”
* * *
Lourdes, Carrera’s wife, had both taste and the money to indulge it. The legion’s birthplace, the Casa Linda, a huge old stone mansion overlooking the coastal highway on one side and the sea on the other, had long since been transformed, at least in its family areas, from a barracks cum headquarters into something resembling a real home. Oh, sure, it had its military attributes, still; some trophies, a certain amount of statuary, weapons on some of the walls, and such. And there were some barracks and offices on the grounds, as well.
Wearing her senatorially awarded Cruz de Coraje en Acero pinned above her left breast, she met the girls at the buses, thanked the aide who had brought them here, and said, “I’ll take it from here, Ricardo.”
“The Duque wanted me to pick up some paperwork from him,” the aide said. Lourdes shrugged. Your business and his. Not mine.
Lourdes de Carrera was tall, as tall as Cristina Zamora. Small breasted, she had a well-shaped rear end over very long legs. The thing that really caught people’s attention, though, were her eyes, as large as a deer’s, shaped like a Bedouin girl’s, and a warm brown. All on their own, those eyes smiled.
&nb
sp; From the paved area where the buses had stopped, her eyes joining her lips in a friendly smile, Lourdes led them around to the front of the house, through the wide doors there, and into the central hallway. The hallway was paneled in rare, iridescent silverwood, a native species. The wood was more bronze than silver in color, though a pattern of silver rings ran through it.
Holy crap, Trujillo thought, this crap is expensive.
“I’d offer you the grand tour,” Lourdes said, “but Patricio is waiting downstairs and he told me there’s no time. If you’re ever in the area, though, just knock. Rather, just tell the guards on the gate I said you could knock. You’ll always be welcome, any of you. If I were younger…but who am I kidding? I’m too soft.”
Inez looked at the medal and, knowing some of Lourdes’ history, said, “Maybe not, ma’am.”
Lourdes blushed and asked, “Now if you’ll follow me?”
She led them past the stairs, then through a door that led to another set leading down to the basement.
“I wanted to have this area finished,” she said, “but Patricio said, no, it reminds him of our, of the legion’s, rather rough and humble roots.” She shrugged, “I suppose he’s got a point.”
From the foot of the stairs she led them through the basement to a conference room, built into one side. This had been expanded since the early days, but there was still only just enough seating for about two thirds of the Amazons. The rest would have to stand.
Carrera sat at the head of a long table, scrawling his name across a document and muttering imprecations. Inez, last out of the bus but first into the conference room, thought she heard him say, “I never really imagined that when I gave them the money they’d actually make me account for spending it. Shit. I hate paperwork.”
He looked up as the girls assembled and said, “Give me a minute, please, ladies. Some things just won’t wait.”
After perhaps two minutes, he closed the folder he’d been working on and looked up again. All the women were still standing. He lifted the folder in the direction of the aide and said, “Take this to Kuralski, in the City, please, Ricardo.”
The aide took it, nodded, and without another word turned and left.
Once he was gone, Carrera waved a hand and said, “Please, girls, take seats if you can find them. If not, don’t be formal; the floor and the table both work for my purposes.”
Lourdes, who’d come in last, giggled, covering the lower half of her face with one hand. This earned more giggles from the other women and a dirty look from her husband. That caused more giggling, though it had a nervous quality to it.
“Okay, okay,” Carrera agreed, rolling his eyes and rocking his head from side to side. “I suppose it was funny. Now if only I could learn to be funny when I intend to be funny. Sadly…
“All right; to business.”
As he spoke he looked around from face to face, seeking eye contact. He smiled broadly at seeing Maria Fuentes, but that was the only special recognition he gave anyone.
“It’s an article of faith, among us,” Carrera said, “that there is no better group of combat leaders—officers, centurions, and noncoms alike—anywhere in the world than ours. Sure, maybe the Zionis and Sachsen can claim to be as good. But nobody is better.
“ It is also—and absolutely—true that no group of leaders pays as uniformly high a price to earn that status.”
Carrera reached under the table and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a stack of paper cups. He poured himself one, a pretty stiff one, then passed bottle and cups on to the woman on his left, saying, “Share the wealth.”
While those were making the rounds, he continued to speak, stopping occasionally to sip from his own. “There are a couple of ways to become entrusted with a position of authority in the legion. The regulations permit a tercio commander or higher to promote someone to brevet—if you’re not familiar with the term, that means ‘temporary’—signifer and even junior tribune, or brevet optio or junior centurion during war.”
Sip.
“This has happened, too, a few times. However, as soon as the campaign was over, the brevets had to go through the same qualification procedures as did anyone else in peace. If they made it through that, their brevet promotions became permanent, with the permanent date of rank of their original brevet promotions. If they did not succeed, however, they went back to their previous ranks.
“Some think it’s silly to send to a selection course someone who has proven they have the ability to lead in combat. But the philosophy has this much going for it: That within the leadership corps, the officers’ corps and the centurionate, there are no outsiders, no second-class citizens. Rather, there will be none once the last of the holdovers from the old Civic Force leave or retire.”
Sip.
“The procedure is, of course, the tough part.
“Ordinarily, the road to a commission as a signifer or being awarded a centurion’s baton begins in basic training. There the recruits are, by graduation time, lumped into one of two sets: Leader or follower. This is confirmed or rejected during a not-too-long, six or eight months, period of service with their tercios. If the soldier has shown leadership ability and good character in Basic, and has that status confirmed by the tercio, the new private gets assigned to the reserve echelon of the tercio. Otherwise, he goes into the militia.”
The militia was machine gun fodder, though it was well-cared-for machine gun fodder, for all that. They were also fairly well trained in their technical duties, as much as lengthy basic and advanced courses could teach them reinforced by twenty-five full days a year of refresher training.
Carrera made a sound that was almost a sigh. “The militia are made much more effective by their leaders. All the leadership and real talent are in the reserves and the regulars who draw their numbers from the reserves.
“Mistakes are sometimes made, of course, in selection. Status can change, and occasionally does.
“For men,” he continued, “in the next few months to few years another decision is made for those who are reservists: ‘Do we try to make this soldier an officer, a centurion, or a noncommissioned officer?’ Intellect and character are rated about evenly in this selection process, though there are minimum levels of IQ required for officers and centurions. Education, per se, we count for little and connections we count for nothing at all.
“A lot of the jobs that are done by very senior noncoms, often even by officers, in other armies, are done by centurions in the legions. We also try to turn troops with leadership potential into centurions before age twenty-five, or signifers before age twenty, so they’ll still have some energy when they become senior.
“We couldn’t follow all that process with you ladies,” Carrera explained. “You don’t have an experienced cadre of your own to do the selection. Gorgidas has had to do that job for you. You haven’t had time to get assimilated and evaluated in your own tercio, because you are that tercio.”
Sip. Sip.
“Still, the Tercio Amazona will need combat leaders. When you reached full planned strength, you will need one hundred and sixty-eight officers and two hundred and sixty-five centurions. Yeah, that’s above the normal tercio strength, but the increase was only to allow for maternal leave slots and for some units you’ll have that other regiments don’t, your own light artillery, for example. The extra man power—rather, woman power—you are authorized, to make up for less physical strength, does not allow you any more leadership. You will have the smallest percentage of officers of any military organization since Twentieth Valeria Victrix stepped off the boats at Rutupiae. Wherever that is. Somewhere on Old Earth, I gather.
Sip.
“It will not only be harder to become an Amazon than a regular soldier, it will be harder to become a leader of Amazons than to become a regular, male, leader of male soldiers.
“Unfair? Possibly. But then, can’t the Amazons reasonably expect to have even better leaders by being even more selective than the men are?”
* * *
“Maria. Goddamit, Maria! Wake up.”
Fuentes started to sit bolt upright, heart beating a tattoo inside her chest. She had to stop inches from her position of rest; the straps of her rucksack held her down by the shoulders. Groggily, she said, “I wasn’t sleeping, Centurion.”
“Save it for the instructors. It’s Marta.”
Maria breathed a heavy sigh of relief as her heart began to slow down. Falling asleep on patrol (except in accordance with the appointed leader’s sleep plan) could get one in quite serious trouble. Though lying about it, as she just had, could make things a lot worse.
“Marta…right,” she muttered, almost intelligently.
“Hon, ruck up. We’re moving out again.”
Maria didn’t have to put her rucksack on; she’d fallen asleep lying on it. Tiredly and groggily, she forced herself over to all fours, then, ever so slowly, rose to her feet. Marta put out a hand to steady her tottering form. She was swaying enough to be noticed even in the dark. The women had been marching almost continuously for a day and a half.
Marta patted her shoulder, turned away and followed the girl in front of her. Maria followed Marta or, rather, the two glowing pieces of tape on the back of her hat. A light rain, light for that part of the world at that season, began to fall. They had many hours of marching ahead. They didn’t even know quite how many. The instructors never told. Even when they thought they knew, the mission could change mid-stride and, often enough, did.
* * *
It wasn’t the loss of sleep that got to them. It wasn’t the physical activity. It wasn’t even the starvation or the fear. But all four of those things, working together, were enough to make anyone a wreck. And they were all rapidly becoming wrecks.
It was a slightly different course from what men underwent. Whether it was easier was deliberately made hard to say. Although the school had reduced the lengths of the cross-jungle moves the Amazons had to do in comparison to the men, and lightened the load they had to carry by giving them mules to help and increasing the size of their squads, the school had also chopped their rations below even what the men were given and added several weeks to the course.