by Tom Kratman
“Which wouldn’t matter but for one thing. They’re going to have a government of soldiers, and—with all respects to the general—propaganda aside, soldiers are not by nature peaceful men. Maybe peace is their profession but, if so, war is an all-consuming hobby. Worse, Balboa is set up to have a government that will have no moderating influences in it. Few women, few or no pacifists, probably very few genuine intellectuals. If it has anyone who believes in the rule of law—our kind of law—over the rule of power it will be a fluke. There will be few lawyers in the electorate, I imagine.”
Janier smiled again, still without mirth, adding, “And it will appeal to all those everywhere who wield the real power, the soldiers.
“But you’re…” Wiglan stopped.
“I’m a soldier, yes,” Janier said. “But I’m also, like you, Commissioner, a member in good standing of the growing and solidifying aristocracy of this planet. We want what he”—the Gaul’s head inclined toward Earth’s ambassador—“and his people have. Rule by us and ours, in perpetuity, an end to rule by the mob, good living, security, culture.”
“For us, and ours,” added the ambassador, “democracy is just a means to an end. The masses of people don’t reason. We drive them like animals through a mixture of fanaticism and hysteria. Balboa has found possibly the only way to avoid that, to have popular government that doesn’t ultimately end up handing all the real power to us and people like us. And they have the means and the will to expand.
“They have to go,” the ambassador finished. “Please get your government to give the general whatever he asks for.”
Chapter Ten
“Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity,
And all the Virtues of Man, without his Vices.”
—Byron
A dog is a good citizen.
—Plato
Maria:
They gave us six whole weeks to recover (eat, sleep, and heal) from Cazador School before we went to the next course. For that time they sent us back to our little beach caserne on the island. It wasn’t the same, though.
Again Porras brought Alma out to stay with me. Though full to bursting, the place seemed awfully empty to me as most of it was filled with girls from the second class. The ones from my class who had finished their initial training were back home, many of them learning new jobs for the civilian market.
It was lonely, being mostly among strangers. On the other hand, the look of amazement on the other girls’ faces when they saw my Cazador tab was priceless. I missed Marta and the others of my class very much. When Marta wrote me, she said that the legion had her in a civilian school to learn computer programming. She said she would be going to the primary noncommissioned officers’ course sometime after that.
When the six weeks was up, seven of us, including Inez Trujillo, went to OCS, Officer Candidate School. The remaining Cazadoras, which included me, went to CCS, Centurion Candidate School.
What was the difference among those so selected? I truly don’t know. Some of the difference had to have been our relative performance in our training so far. Then, too, I’m sure they looked at IQ to a degree. I was pretty smart, but so were we all. Only the very brightest went to OCS, and then only if they’d done exceptionally well in training.
I might have refused OCS if I had been picked; centurion looked to be responsibility enough to me and maybe more fun, too. Besides, I had hardly ever seen an officer so far. As near as I could tell, centurions were the gods of the legion.
In any case, I was pleased enough. There is a lot of prestige that comes with making the centurionate, true, but that wasn’t what pleased me. The difference in benefits and pay between an officer and a centurion is minimal, at least up to field grade officer ranks (legates and such). Being a centurion would help me provide for Alma almost as well as being a signifer or tribune would have. Not that I’d start as a centurion, of course. Just as officers get a probationary period as signifers, we have to spend a time as optios.
What is a centurion or optio? He—or she—is the strong right arm of the officers. They plan, they coordinate. They lead, too. However, the real push behind the force, the force behind the officers, are the centurions.
We’re trained differently, officers and centurions. They worry about tactics, grand tactics and operations, logistics, administration, intelligence, and, at higher ranks, strategy and grand strategy. We worry about combat leadership at the worm’s eye level. We take care of day-to-day training, operations, and discipline. Without us, the soldiers would be rabble. Without us, the officers couldn’t command.
We listen to the officers, obey and—especially—enforce their orders. Those are the rules. Besides, they’re generally smarter than we are. Morally, however, we are at least their equals. They know it; we know it.
The officers in a maniple come in three different types. You typically have a commanding officer, Christ’s vicar on Terra Nova or near enough. He or she is usually a middle ranking tribune. Then you have an executive officer, a junior tribune with enough experience and talent to be worth listening to. Lastly there’ll be a signifer serving as a platoon leader, having the finishing touches put on her by the CO and XO, by her very experienced platoon centurion, and with added touching up from the maniple’s first centurion.
* * *
Centurion Candidate School is at Camp Spurius Ligustinus, a picturesque little spot in a high valley in the mountainous eastern part of the country. It’s not all that far from the Mountain Cazador Camp, Camp Bernardo O’Higgins. Being up in the mountains, CSL enjoys a relatively cool climate, one which I came to appreciate during our twice weekly “death runs.” They called them fun runs. It was a lie; there was no fun in them.
Anyway, it’s cool up there. Sometimes, at night, one even needs a sweater. Yes, we were each issued a sweater that we could either return or buy when the course ended. Since none of us were issued used ones, I suspect that, like us, every centurion candidate bought theirs as a momento.
It is also a very well appointed camp, given the size. There is a small movie theater, post office, exchange (read: store), commissary (read: grocery store), library, gym with pool, chapel; in short, every amenity to include the beauty salon that was more than a little useless to us. In comparison with Cazador School, or even Basic, it is nearly Heaven on Terra Nova.
I’ve wondered if that’s part of why the legion gives us even more miserable living conditions in Basic than really necessary; so we’ll appreciate what it can afford to give us later on.
Instead of barracks, we had bachelor(ette) centurion quarters, BCQs. No, they weren’t private rooms. We each shared small apartments with three other women. Within close walking distance we had two centurion clubs. One of these was for the newer candidates. That was pretty Spartan. But about halfway through the course, candidates were invited and required to join the real—and might I add, quite plush—centurions’ club. I suspect that half the reason for this was to allow the real centurions, the cadre who ran the place, to teach us a bit of decorum, informally. We took all our meals, when we weren’t training in the field, at one of the clubs.
We could drink if we wanted to, whatever we wanted to, duty status permitting, once we were allowed into the real centurions’ club. We could also drink as much as we wanted to; no one would say a word. I never lost the feeling though, that they allowed this to see if we could handle our liquor. At the vote taken by the cadre on whether a candidate would or would not be allowed to join the hallowed ranks of the centurionate at graduation, I do not doubt for a minute that one’s habits with alcohol were taken into account. Not everyone who meets all course requirements is awarded his or her stick, the centurion’s sole badge of office.
There was only a single officer at Camp Spurius Ligustinus, the poor bastard. He was there merely for administration, legal discipline and so forth, and, though he bore the title “Commanding Officer,” the real boss was the Camp and School sergeant major, Sergeant Major
Martinez. I wouldn’t even know the CO’s name, Cherensa, if it hadn’t appeared on my final orders.
There were two sergeants-major in the Force that were hand-picked by Duque Carrera. The first of these is the Sarjento-Major de la Legion del Cid. When I joined we didn’t have one of those, the old one having been assassinated and not yet replaced. It was whispered that the time lag was Carrera’s way of mourning.
Martinez was the other one.
He was an unusual character; a stocky little fireplug of a man, or maybe better said a brick with arms and legs. In all my months there, and even after, I never saw, never even heard of, him raising his voice. He was never emotional; though there was a sort of very subdued enthusiasm about him that was frankly…engaging. The man clearly loved his work. Even when he whacked you with his baton he did it impersonally, with no hard feelings on either side.
On parade he was splendid; robotic precision meshed with style and grace. Under stress—occasionally under fire, we did a lot of training with live ammunition—he was unflappable. If he ever hesitated about a decision, it was for about as long as it takes in our country for the driver behind you to beep his horn once the light ahead turns green. That, in case you didn’t know, in the shortest measure of time in the known universe.
He had short little legs—even shorter than mine—that still seemed able to run any of the candidates and most of the cadre into the ground.
SGM Martinez seemed to know everything; not just what was in the books. I mean, I have never known someone who had so much military knowledge crammed into his or her head.
It wasn’t any great leap for me, my sister Amazons, too, to want to be like Martinez.
* * *
A casual observer might assume that discipline in the legion is entirely imposed from above. That observation would not be remotely correct. Certainly, a centurion or sergeant won’t hesitate to flatten an insubordinate troop. (Officers do not sully their hands; that’s our job). Curiously, a leader almost never has to do so.
Why? Oh, partly they don’t have to because it’s manifest that they probably can. But that’s only part of it. There are always a few soldiers who are just naturally talented scrappers. But even these will rarely challenge a centurion’s authority.
The law, of course, authorizes the death penalty—immediate and summary—for assaulting a centurion or officer. But I can’t remember the last time that particular provision was used. The law is a fragile thing, you see. It’s never there to help you in combat. That’s why we try not to rely on it overmuch.
Sure, we’re trained to fight. Still, as I mentioned, there are naturals who could take any centurion on. And they know it as well as we do. And they don’t do it anyway.
They don’t do it because, unlike them, we don’t care much anymore if we get hurt. That makes us far too dangerous to scrap with.
* * *
We’d already had the more or less administrative training in hand-to-hand combat, the punching, the tossing, the rolling and landing. We knew all the places to strike to hurt or kill. Just knowing how to do it, however, the legion didn’t think was quite enough. They wanted to be sure we would do it. There’s a world of difference between the two, a difference usually lost on civilians.
All the hand-to-hand training took place in a sawdust pit on the north side of the camp, overlooked by what the cadre called, “Mount Motherfucker.” That’s because we ran to the top of the thing at least once a week.
Our primary instructor was a large, very light-skinned type named Quiroz. Even his muscles had muscles. Like Marta, he was an immigrant from La Plata and had the odd Tuscan accent. I’d heard, but never had it proved to me, that he’d been an officer in the Army of La Plata before shifting over to us. I also heard some other things about Quiroz, in Pashtia, that were a mix of admirable and scary. I mean, really, dumping mines on someone to hold them in position so you can shoot them one at a time and they can’t get away? That’s just cruel. Then again, I’ve heard than a man from La Plata was just a Tuscan, who spoke Spanish, thought he was an Anglian gentleman, and acted like a Sachsen.
“Two ranks, candidates,” Quiroz said, that first day of serious hand-to-hand. In the pit, the twenty of us formed up in two lines of ten, facing the instructor.
“First rank…about…face.” I put my right foot behind and to the left of my left heel, then twisted on my left heel and the ball of my right foot to change the direction I was facing by one hundred and eighty degrees. Doing this on sawdust is tricky, by the way. The instructor then extended the formation to double arm intervals, about six feet between each of us.
“Very often, ladies,” he said, “leadership boils down to no more than the ability to inflict a beating…or take one. You’re going to learn to do that. You’ll practice on each other. At my command, you and the person in front of you will fight. There are no rules except that you may not gouge eyes. You may bite and scratch. The last one of a fighting pair left standing is the winner. Losers will be matched again against each other and will fight again. This will continue until there is only one woman left in the pit standing…and one lying down, hopefully comatose.”
“Unfortunately—for you—you are both a small number, compared to a male class, and an odd number for me to use straight line elimination. So, of your ten pairs, only the first four winners will be released. The remaining sixteen of you will form eight pairs, who will fight again. The eight winners of those bouts will be released. Then four pairs will fight. Then two. Then one.”
The self-satisfied swine chuckled out loud. “That means that the worst of you will be beaten five times this afternoon. Tough shit.”
“However, the legion loves you all. Losers of the first set of matches get an additional one and a half hours remedial hand-to-hand combat training this evening, in lieu of dinner.
“You are lucky in another way, too. Men only do this two or three times a week, and we wear them out first with physical training to cut down on the damage they do each other. However, because there are fewer of you, and therefore less fighting and beating to take on any given day, you—unlike the men—will do this every day until further notice. Moreover, because you are not as strong as men in your upper bodies, you will not be worn out with exercise before you fight.”
He looked pointedly at Zamora, probably because she was the biggest. “If I catch you throwing a match to save the others some pain, girl, you are history.”
Zamora’s eyes widened at being singled out. “I understand, Centurion.” The other girl, her partner, gulped. Cristina gave the other girl a look that was, more than anything, a deep and profound apology, in advance.
Cristina was such a nice girl, really. She never hurt anyone for her own sake that I ever saw.
“Now fight!”
They only gave us nose protectors after our noses were broken, and then only so long as it took for them to heal. Mine was broken nine times throughout the course, counting multiple and repetitive breaks. After a while, I stopped being afraid of being hit. I’m still not, as one ex-boyfriend discovered to his dismay. Once he woke up. But that’s another story.
* * *
We studied and practiced small unit tactical operations a great deal. We could not make a full platoon in the field ourselves, so they supplemented our ranks with about twenty-five more Amazons who had finished Basic successfully, but had not been picked for Cazador School. Those sisters did scut work around the camp when we weren’t using them as training aids. This was a big training advantage for us. The male candidates had to use each other, which limited their opportunity to learn to lead by leading. We had just over twice as much time leading as they were given.
This was, by the way, a very good thing.
Ever think about geometry as a vital aspect of combat leadership? Probably not; I hadn’t. It is, though. Every battle, every skirmish, ever fought hinged, in part at least, on the question of shape. Shape affects everything in war. (That’s why the legion has added Shape, along with Attrit
ion and Annihilation, to its list of the Principles of War.) Sometimes the shape concerns a time and space relationship: “Will I be able to achieve a decision at X, in order to move to Y, quickly enough to ensure the enemy can’t either get in position to block me at W or successfully attack me himself at Z?”
Sometimes it’s as simple as whether or not the slope of a hill is shaped in such a way that a machine gun can get grazing fire (that means the bullets never get above waist level and therefore “graze” the planet’s surface).
For whatever reason—genetic, environmental, or simply because they spend so much time watching our shapes—men seem to have a better innate understanding of the irregular shapes and time-space relationships found on the battlefield than we do. They think that way and we—most of us, anyway—do not. (And if someone says a word about that being because men lie to us all our lives; telling us that something is eight inches when it’s really six, I will paste them. Though, I admit, it could be true.)
So the extra practice leading troops came in very handy; learning to understand and use that for which we, generally, had less innate…feel.
I learned something else from using those sisters as training aids: knowledge is also power. By the time they came to us, we had far more knowledge than they did. They obeyed us without demur.
* * *
Managing training is a big part of a centurion’s job. Martinez taught most of those classes himself, in a classroom that was way too big, about five times too big, for the twenty of us. I remember listening carefully to one such, while holding a rag under my nose to catch blood from that morning’s slugfest.