The Amazon Legion-ARC

by Tom Kratman

Good news! I’ve been picked for a leadership track. I don’t know yet whether it will be centurion or officer (centurion, I think). Of course I won’t know until after Cazador School. Will you come to my graduation, Cazadora?

  Sister, I want to thank you for your advice. This was the right thing to do.

  Love,

  Emilio

  Maria folded the letter and pressed it to her breast. She was very proud that Emilio had done the right thing.

  * * *

  Dodging cars and fighting their way through the crowds, Marta, Cat and Maria went shopping one Saturday, on Via Hispanica. Porras was watching the children, even though she had no obligation to.

  The girls weren’t looking for anything in particular, or even paying much attention to where they were going. Mostly they were just out enjoying each other’s company. That, and Marta’s jokes.

  “…So one of the talking male trixies turned to the other and said, ‘Put away the Bible; our prayers have been answered.’ ”

  Cat bellied over with a loud guffaw. Maria just shook her head, saying, “You are such a dirty bitch, Marta.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Marta answered, with heavy tone of false self-righteousness.

  “True, true,” Maria agreed, good-naturedly.

  “I’m hungry,” Cat announced.

  Marta sniffed and agreed, “Ahhh. Sumeri food. Yum.”

  Maria shook her head, doubtfully. “You two might be up for something composed of a mix of Holy Shit peppers, some Joan of Arc peppers, and a small admixture of Satan Triumphant. But I think I’ve suffered enough with the legion.”

  “Ah, don’t be such a baby,” Marta said. “It only hurts for a while. Like, say, taking it up the ass.”

  “You are a dirty bitch,” Cat said, smiling.

  “Oh, come on,” Marta chided. “You don’t mean to tell me you never…”

  “Not even once,” Cat said.

  Marta’s face grew serious. She said, “Good for you.”

  Maria stopped suddenly and went ghastly pale. Her eyes were fixed on the second floor windows of an office building on the other side of the street. Every wretched moment came back to her in a flash. She felt anew every humiliation Piedras had inflicted on her. She began to shake and before she knew it, she was throwing up on the street.

  Marta asked, “Maria, what’s wrong with you?”

  “Nothing,” she answered, shakily. “I’m all right.” But then she started to cry; unable to help herself. She felt like a helpless, stupid, eighteen-year-old thing again.

  They were nearly at the Sumeri restaurant by then; the overpowering smell of hot spiced lamb and chicken said as much, as did the scent of freshly baked chorley tortillas (the grain made a lousy pita). Cat and Marta pulled Maria upright, then led her into the small café.

  “What is wrong?” Cat demanded. Maria just shook her head.

  Marta signaled to a waiter and ordered a bottle of sipping rum, some ice, and three glasses. The first one she poured herself, neat, then force-fed it to a sputtering Maria. She poured another, dropped in a couple of cubes of ice, and stuck the glass into Maria’s hand.

  “Tell us what is wrong, dammit!”

  It took half the bottle, not all of which went into Maria, before they got the truth out of her.

  * * *

  One of the university courses Maria signed up for was given by Centurion—or, rather—Professor Franco. It was billed as a history course but turned out to have heavy elements of social and political philosophy. The main text was written by a legionary, Warrant Officer Jorge Mendoza, and his wife, Marqueli. They also studied Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, along with Orwell’s 1984. The students read all of Machiavelli’s major works, as well as some by Aristotle and Xenophon. Franco even took the time to peruse some of the sillier social philosophies of more modern times.

  If asked why she took the course Maria would probably have answered that it was half out of curiosity about what a civilian Franco would be like. He turned out to be quite…civilized, actually. Then again, compared to some others, he always had been.

  Much of the course was concerned with the subject of societal change and reform.

  * * *

  Franco began one class quoting Machiavelli, “ ‘There is nothing so difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.’ ”

  Franco turned and pointed casually at Maria. “Why does reform of human society fail, Miss Fuentes?”

  She started to stand to attention, then remembered that this wasn’t the legion. Her posterior had barely lifted from her seat before she forced it down again.

  Paraphrasing the text, she answered, “The problem is just too complex, Professor Franco. The interrelationships among the people of the society that a reformer wants to change are unknowably complex. You can’t change the society without knowing how it exists as is, and no mere human can hope to know all that. Many, too, refuse even to try to see it as it is.”

  He agreed, “That’s true enough, as far as it goes. But it isn’t quite enough, Maria. Let’s narrow our inquiry down to one particular aspect of attempting reform, using the armed forces as your agent of change. It’s a very popular technique, in some circles.

  “Tell me, why use armed forces to effect societal change? You, there in the back. Tell me why?”

  The woman he called on was a non-Amazon reservist, a private first class who had taken out a legion-backed loan to pay for college on her own ticket.

  “The armed forces can make people change, Professor. They do it all the time. Naturally, when someone wants to change society, they go to those who know how to make changes to do it. That’s the armed forces.”

  Franco let a small smile form. “Is it really? An interesting supposition. They changed you then, so you claim?”

  “Well, of course. I’m stronger, healthier, more self-disciplined. I take more care with my appearance. I’m a lot different than I used to be.”

  “Are you more honest, forthright, and truthful than you used to be? Or are you less?” Franco asked.

  The woman thought about it, then said, “I’d have to say I’m the same, as far as those things go.”

  “And you are perfect in these areas?”

  “Nobody’s perfect, Professor. I’m pretty good.”

  “Are you ninety percent perfect? Ninety-nine? Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and say you’re ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent pure…and—as you say—always were. That’s fair, even generous, isn’t it?”

  Franco continued, “That being the case, isn’t it pitiful that the legion couldn’t give you a lousy half a percent and change more to make you perfect? By God, what are they to do with someone who comes to the colors ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent rotten? A hopeless task, is it not?”

  Franco called on someone else, a civilian boy. “What if you did know all of the complex relationships among people? Never mind that you can’t, exactly, it is possible to know a useful amount; maybe even enough to get started.”

  The boy—Ishmael was his name; he was a foreign student, in Balboa under some exchange program set up between Carrera and Sumer’s ruler, Adnan Sada—thought for a few moments before answering. “Well, Professor, you run into the problem of active resistance or damnation by faint support. The very people you’re trying to change will resent it and—depending on their level of courage—either openly resist or pretend to go along while privately resisting. I think something like that happened to Tsarist Marxism, though it took years for the failure to become obvious.”

  “ ‘Something like that,’ ” Franco echoed. “The Volgans are, in fact, an interesting case. Think about it: Using powers of compulsion and persuasion far beyond our apparent ability, even beyond our wildest dreams, with three full generations to make the change in, and with the decided advantage of having a series of external enemies to focus people away from their pet
ty domestic concerns, still, the Tsarists failed miserably. Tell me why,” he demanded of another boy, this one a reservist.

  “It’s similar to what Ishmael said. They tried to change the inner nature of the mass of the people, and very profoundly. They couldn’t do that; nobody and nothing can actively do that. But they did succeed in driving it underground, for a while. Then human nature came back with a vengeance.”

  There was a Volgan in the class, a senior tribune named Chapeyev who had once fought with Carrera in Santander and now taught at one of the junior military academies. He still wore decorations from the old Volgan Empire, along with a bronze-colored cross for valor on his chest.

  “Professor,” he began when he had been recognized. “I remember when I was boy, back in old Folgan Empire. It was never ending, the propaganda: Life of Great Red Tsar, marfels of Folgan industry, efils of capitalism, efils of birth control, marfels of Imperial agriculture. Then more Life of Red Tsar and more efils of birth control.

  “They had complete control; you got no other official messages.”

  The Volgan shook his head. “When I was boy, was easy to believe. But you would catch, sometimes, your elders smirking about it when propaganda was on TV. And you wondered. Smirks didn’t mean anything, of course, even in Folgan Empire smirking wasn’t against law. But you grew up and saw: Corruption, decay, bad management, hypocrisy, shoddy goods.

  “I was soldier. In my case…saw many shoddy weapons. Then the smirks of olden times came back with full power. Of course the adults had smirked. It was all lies, lies suitable for children only.”

  Franco asked the question, “But what about using the army? Didn’t the Volgans try to use the army for reforms?”

  Chapeyev snorted in derision. “Army is good for many things, in change of society. You can teach skills: Reading, writing, mathematics, some use of machines. You can get dirty Trypillian peasants to wash regularly, though it not as easy. All this you can do, because army can focus attention on other things, the efil enemy and the dangers of battle, need for teamwork, soldierly ideals. All make sense, even to dumb Trypillian peasant. But that limit of army’s power. You talk to recruit of social systems, justice, proper political falues? Army lose power to persuade. Those things are not of army.”

  “I think that’s right, Tribune.” (First names in the classroom unless you outranked Franco, apparently.) “But what if you change the army’s values, make it more political an instrument, less military?”

  “Worse. Convince soldiers to be political, soldiers take over government very quick. Quick, quick. They hafe guns and tanks. What are fotes, compared to that? Even if not, army gets power over troops only from foreign enemy, outside threat. Maybe better to say, army gets only power troops willingly give it, and troops only give willingly because of outside threat. Make army less military, make army more socially…conscious—is right term?—good…eliminate outside threat, and army can do nothing, loses power over troops’ beliefs. It can still affect open behavior, but only while troops are being watched.”

  “Are you saying, Tribune, that an army can only be used to make a society more military, and then only if the army is more military than civilian oriented, but that if you make the army less military and more civilian, then it can do no good in any way?”

  “Da,” Chapeyev answered, then concluded, “But can do much harm.”

  Maria asked, seeing that Franco agreed with Chapeyev, “But we are using the legion for social, nonmilitary change, aren’t we…Professor?”

  Franco smiled and agreed, “Yes, we are, Maria. But look at the details. Sure, the view of your regiment, by the legion, is changing. And, since the legion has become by far the most important element in society, one could say that it has therefore changed society’s view. In a way. I haven’t noticed that that’s done anything much for women at large.

  “The legion is being used to identify those people who are worth spending some money and effort on to raise up, economically and socially. And this matching of opportunity to ability and worth is plainly helping our economy despite foreign efforts to sabotage us. But few in the world approve of the legion being the center of our society. You might also have noticed that democracy—old style democracy, which in our case was just a corrupt oligarchy with the forms of the thing—died in the process.

  “And were the legion to be anything but what it is—an illiberal, nonegalitarian, undemocratic, harsh, brutal, vicious and almost conscienceless machine—whose sole direct purpose is killing people and breaking things, it could not do even so much as it does.

  “But societal change outside of the legion? As far as society’s values are concerned? No, that hasn’t happened in any way that the legion is directing. Nor will it, because there is no military utility in social change that cannot be directly related to the ability to wage war.

  “One could try—and it’s been tried elsewhere, though without any noticeable success—to convince soldiers that acceptance of nonmilitary values is a military plus because we need all those different people mixed in, happy and accepted. And it’s true, we do, but only if there’s a real threat. Maybe if it were equally true in both stable peace and in war it would work. But militaries don’t usually need the really tiny minorities at all in peace, so they certainly don’t need them happy. The militaries would be much better off without them, actually. Since the reverse isn’t true, the message doesn’t get accepted. Note here that war in the offing is effectively the same as war being conducted for this purpose.”

  “Then why does anyone try?” Maria asked.

  “Arrogance, just arrogance. A lot of fairly unintelligent people, who obtain degrees that convince them they are in fact intelligent; no brilliant, they must be brilliant to have these wonderful degrees from such wonderful schools. They see the basic problems usually; that’s not too hard. And since they don’t see all the subtle problems, and since brilliant people like them couldn’t possibly miss anything important, then those subtle little problems must not exist or are, at least, unimportant. Then these brilliant people barrel ahead, foolishly. They tear down all that went before. And, when their reforms fall flat on their foolish faces, they must find scapegoats, since their solutions are too brilliant to have failed without active sabotage. That way, by the way, leads to the reeducation camps. Ask Tribune Chapeyev.”

  Franco glanced at his watch. “Okay. That’s it for today. For your study assignment I want you to read about Sedgwick-Green. It’s a South Columbian low-income housing development, and you’ll find it covered beginning on page two-thirteen of your text. When you come back to class on Wednesday be prepared to discuss how it is that this drug- and crime-ridden horror, unsightly, unsanitary and unsafe—in every way worse than what it replaced—could ever have come to pass. Pay particular attention to the breakdown in human relations, the knowledge and esteem of one’s peers and neighbors, that took place when the old neighborhoods were destroyed and people moved willy-nilly into new ‘homes.’ Be prepared to discuss this in relation to declining property values. Note, too, how the people of that place are willing now to give up dignity and liberty for a little safety. And ask yourselves who is to blame, and why.”

  * * *

  While waiting at the bus stop to go back to her neighborhood, and hopefully to be on time to pick up Alma from preschool so the child didn’t have to wait inside, Maria paid to download a newspaper to her legion-issued electronic slate. She opened the folder up and scanned the international news first—Bastard Tauran Union!—then scrolled to more city-specific things.

  She was on page three by the time the bus came. She dropped her tenth of a drachma into the box and went to find a seat. She ended up sitting next to a middle-aged man who was also reading from his own, civilian, slate. The man tsked and said, “I don’t know what the city’s coming to. Poor man.”

  Maria looked over and saw something about a street crime near Via Hispanica. She couldn’t see more than that. She tapped in a query and searched her own “
paper.” When the query was answered she began to read.

  It seemed that someone named Piedras, Arnulfo Piedras, had been assaulted and brutally beaten the previous night while on foot between his office near Via Hispanica and his auto.

  The simple fact of there being a street crime in the city would have been newsworthy. What really made this particularly newsworthy, implied the column, was that Piedras claimed to have been attacked by four people, at least one of whom (possibly more) had been a woman.

  These four, all their faces covered, had, he claimed, struck out of nowhere, knocking him to the ground, then beaten him with short clubs. Two had held him down while a third, very tiny one had carefully and deliberately smashed in most of his teeth with the butt of a dagger, leaving just two ragged lines of broken, bloody stumps in his mouth.

  Not content with that, one of them—this was the one he was certain, based on her shape, had been female—had kicked his crotch so repeatedly and viciously that it was doubted he would ever be able to perform as a man again.

  Then that one, accompanied by a really tall person, had swung Piedras back and forth by his arms until those had been dislocated. They’d dropped him to the ground and broken his collar bone and several of his ribs. Two of the attackers had then taken their clubs to his fingers and thumbs. Somewhere in that process the poor man had passed out.

  Based on where and how he’d been found, apparently before leaving him the attackers had dragged his semi-conscious form to the street, put his feet on the sidewalks, then jumped on his knees.

  The police were stumped. The viciousness of the attack, without Piedras’ wallet being touched, left little obvious motivation, few clues.

  Wonderingly, Maria closed the file and turned to look out the window at the passing scenes.

  You don’t suppose?

  * * *

  Towards the end of the school term, the Tercio Amazona held its first Centurions’ Ball. This was traditionally a major event, a high point of any tercio’s social season. (Officers had a ball, too, but there just weren’t enough officers in the Tercio Amazona to make a good party. The centurions invited them, specially, to theirs.)