by J. N. Chaney
“What do you think’s going to happen to them?” Ten asked.
No one answered. Whatever it was, Rev didn’t think it would be good. If they were volunteers, maybe they’d be released if they couldn’t hack it, but they were all conscripts here. There would be no release for conscripts until their obligation was fulfilled . . . or they were killed in the war.
“Alright, leeches, listen up,” the head DI yelled as he and the other DIs strode over to them. “The major’s got a few words for you, so you all sit tight while I get him. No jaw-jacking, hear me?”
There were a few “yeses” and one “aye-aye,” but most of the poolees remained silent. Cricket nudged Yancey to sit up. Rev just looked around and wondered what was next as the remaining DIs stood off to the side.
The major must have been close because it couldn’t have been two minutes before he marched up with the head DI. The DIs had been wearing black sweatshirts and camouflaged trousers tucked into black boots, but the major was in full uniform. Not the dress blues in the recruiting posters, but a dark green jacket with a chest full of medals and matching pants. His right hand was a metallic silver, gleaming like a polished coin.
Rev didn’t understand why many vets seemed to tend to the obvious prosthetics. It wasn’t that hard to graft on a new limb. It was a lengthy process, though not a difficult one. But even with prosthetics, there were far more lifelike ones that were difficult to detect. Yet, like this major, Mr. Oliva had two of the same silver-colored legs, in his case, and he had a habit of thumping them for emphasis when he was talking.
“Poolees, welcome to Camp Nguyen and the first step in fulfilling your obligation to humanity.”
“At least he didn’t call us leeches,” Yancey muttered, earning him another elbow shot in the ribs from Cricket.
“I realize that none of you are volunteers,” the major continued. “But that doesn’t matter. Once you complete recruit training, you will all be Marines, the equal of everyone else.”
If the slight sneer taking over the head DI’s lip was any indication, Rev rather doubted that. It didn’t matter, though. This was just something to be endured before he could go back home and hopefully get back into the guild channel.
The major went on, spouting patriotism and duty, about the Centaur threat and what it meant. Rev tuned him out, and took a moment to look over the rest of his fellow poolees. Most were guys, which probably made sense as each of them was there for committing a crime.
Crime? Shit. What I did wasn’t a crime. It was a freaking traffic ticket.
He wondered what the rest of them had done. For that matter, he wondered what Ten had done to get a Class Two. He turned to look at him when something the major said caught his full attention.
“Now, to the question you’ve all been wondering. How long are you going to serve?”
Every single poolee sat up straight, eyes locked on the man.
“The quick answer is that I can’t tell you.”
Groans rose into the night.
“It’s been . . .” the major said, pausing to choose his words. “. . . a moving target. And then there’s your combat class. What you choose will affect that as well.”
Combat class? Is that the “options” the website mentioned?
Rev focused on the major. Whatever was going to get him home the soonest was what he was going to do.
“But I can tell you this. Before you’re sworn in, you’re going to know exactly what your path will be in the Marines.”
The drill instructors let out a loud “ooh-rah” in unison.
“And that’s about all I have for you now. You’ve got a busy three days before you officially become recruits, but as of zero-zero-zero-one this morning, you belong to the Corps. Listen to your DIs, go where you have to be, and do what you’re told to do.”
He turned to the head DI and said, “Senior Drill Instructor Howland, get these poolees to gear issue. I want every one of them in their singlets before morning chow at zero-five-hundred.”
The senior DI (“senior,” not “head” as Rev had been thinking of him) came to a position of attention, facing the major, and yelled out, “Aye-aye, sir!”
He didn’t salute, which struck Rev as odd, but then again, Rev didn’t know much about the military at all.
The senior DI—Howland, the major had called him—waited until the officer was out of sight before he turned back to the poolees. “Get your asses out of the bleachers, leeches. You heard the major. DIs, take over. I want all of your leeches standing tall outside of the chow hall at zero-four-fifty.”
“You sixteen,” one of the DIs shouted, pointing at the poolees around Rev. “Get up and form a line.”
The poolees looked at each other hesitantly, then started to stand up.
“Now, leeches!”
Rev vaulted over the bottom bench and pushed past another poolee to stand at the spot the DI was indicating. The other fifteen hurried into position behind him.
A second DI stepped up to Rev and said, “Stay on my ass,” before he shouted out, “Squad, atten . . . HUT! Forward . . .MARCH. Double-time . . . March!”
Rev just kept eyes on the DI, trying to keep close. He ignored the jostling and stumbling of his fellow poolees.
He didn’t know what was going on, but one thing was for sure: it was going to be a long night.
4
Rev had been right. It had been a long night . . . and even longer day.
After getting their heads shaved and their gear issued, they’d been taken to their barracks to change, then it was back to the supply building to drop off their civilian clothes and, for some, jewelry. They’d been told to leave all of that home, but not everyone had complied.
In their gray one-piece singlets, they were back at the chow hall for an uninspired breakfast. After getting their trays, the DI yelled, “Cram it in, poolees. You can taste it later!”
Which meant, in DI-speak, that fifteen minutes after sitting down, they were being kicked out to begin a full day’s worth of tests, only broken by lunch and head calls. It wasn’t the harassment that Rev had expected. It was just that there wasn’t time to catch his breath, they were so tight on time.
The sixteen of them went everywhere together. Rev spotted the other squads as they ran past each other, but not only from his group. There were other gray-uniformed groups, all looking like holovid androids with their shaved heads and formless singlets.
But it wasn’t just the squads in gray. There were three squads in gold singlets running back and forth, intermixed with the rest. The first time one of the gold squads passed Rev’s, several of them yelled out leeches and convicts before being shut up by their DI.
Rev had been tempted to yell back from the position at the front of the squad that he’d essentially called his own but was cut off by Corporal Wesley warning, “Can it.”
“Who are they?” Rev asked, too curious to let it go.
The poolees were not allowed to talk among themselves except while in the chow hall, but evidently that didn’t pertain to the DIs because Wesley turned to him and said, “Patriots, that’s who. Volunteers, not conscripts. Now shut up.”
The disdain in her voice had been clear.
Despite what the major had said the night before, Rev knew that the Corps was not equal. He and his fellow conscripts were at the bottom of the heap.
Don’t care. Screw them.
But he did care, and that awoke a slumbering fire within him.
And then it was in for their next battery of tests. The first one was simple. Each poolee donned a porcupine on their heads, then watched a series of holovids. Some images were of pastoral, some frankly violent, and some were just shapes and lights. The mere fact that they were wearing porcupines, the exact same ones that were used in secondary school psych evals, was proof enough that this was the same thing. But Rev couldn’t figure out what exactly they were trying to evaluate. The holovids were mostly nothing he’d seen before.
The poolees were
run through the massive medscans back at Gate C again. They were placed in booths and asked a series of questions by either AIs or unseen techs. They gave blood and urine samples. By mid-afternoon, all the tests had begun to run together.
It was almost a relief when Corporal Wesley led them to a flat, nondescript building next to the inner gate into the camp proper. She brought the squad to a halt outside the hatch, then said, “Pelletier, head inside and take the first empty seat. The rest of you, fill in the next one. Wait until your name is called, and no talking!”
Rev led the way into a waiting room with about a hundred chairs in rows of about twenty. A line of cubicle doors lined the back wall. One of the other squads from the group was already there, minus a few, it looked like.
“What’s going on?” Rev asked the tall woman in the last filled chair. Grace, he thought her name was but wasn’t sure.
“I think we’re getting our results,” she whispered back before one of the DIs shouted at them to be quiet.
It seemed a little early for all that, but Rev was no expert. His curiosity was riding high, however. He wondered what the tests would indicate about him, and then he turned when a cubicle door opened and a poolee came out, looking so completely shell-shocked, his face was like a mannequin. “Eyes front,” Corporal Wesley shouted.
Rev whipped his head back.
“Say nothing, Hrveta,” one of the other DIs said in an almost human voice. “Wait outside.”
“That guy looked ready to cry, or maybe fall over,” Yancey, sitting on the other side of him, whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
He wasn’t the only one who had noticed. Poolees started rumbling.
“No damned talking!” Corporal Wesley shouted, voice shattering the relative quiet.
One by one, poolees left the cubicles to be replaced by others. Rev kept his eyes to the front, even when shifting seats. His nerves were taut, but he kept telling himself he’d find out what was going on soon enough.
The last squad arrived and took their seats.
Finally, he heard, “Pelletier, Reverent, Cubicle Five.”
Rev stood and glanced at the corporal. She tilted her head at the cubicle, and, taking a deep breath, Rev crossed over and stepped inside.
To his surprise, it wasn’t to face a screen but rather a white-frocked woman, her gray hair neatly trimmed around her ears. She was on one side of a table, the center split by a clear panel of some kind. She held out a hand to indicate for him to sit while she looked at a display screen in front of her.
Rev had about a million questions, but he bit his tongue.
She crinkled up her brow, gave a slight harrumph, then looked up and leaned across the table slightly as if to see him better. Rev felt as if he were on a slide under a microscope as she just looked at him silently for ten or twelve seconds before speaking.
“Mr. Pelletier, you present an interesting case. Significant potential, but wasted.”
Reve squirmed in his seat.
“I’m Doctor Tanis, and your future is, quite frankly, in my hands.”
Rev tried to swallow, but his throat was dry.
“I’ve got the results of your in-processing screening here. You’ve got an ASP of ninety-four-point-three, a positive Alberstons, a YYAR of twenty-four . . .”
She rattled off a dozen of more terms and numbers that didn’t register in the least with him. It was as if she was speaking Centaur.
“Do you know what any of that means. Mr. Pelletier?”
“No, ma’am. I mean, Doctor.”
Sweat started to bead on his forehead.
She sighed, then said, “Let me sum it up. You’ve got superb physical potential. An Oakley ratio . . . I mean, you’ve got an almost perfect ratio of fast twitch to slow twitch muscles. Do you know what those are?”
Rev nodded.
“Good. You’ve got excellent balance, nervous reaction, recovery, resistance to disease, minimal genetic drift, good cellular stability. In short, you are quite a specimen, young man, in a physical sense. Except for one thing. Do you know what that is?”
Rev couldn’t speak, so he just shook his head.
“Well, in official medical terms, you’re in shitty shape.”
She smiled as if she expected him to as well. Rev didn’t change his expression at all.
The doctor shook her head slightly and then said, “What that means is that you have wasted potential. Your physical conditioning is well below the mean, and that indicates that you’re lazy and lack drive.”
She waited for Rev to say something, but when he remained silent, she continued.
“And that brings us to what’s up here,” she said, tapping a finger on her forehead. “And here,” she added, shifting the finger to over her heart.
“Aside from that lack of drive, you are arrogant, somewhat resistant to authority, prone to anger, self-centered, confident, and have a lack of empathy. Do you agree with that?”
Anger began to replace nervousness. How dare the woman assume he was all of that. Well, maybe there was some truth to it, but it was impossible for anyone to dissect someone over the course of a day and a dozen tests. He’d been a Youth Corps volunteer. Wasn’t that proof he had empathy?
He wanted to argue, but he knew that would only cement her opinion of him.
“I am who I am,” he said blandly.
She gave him a hard stare, then looked back at her display. Rev couldn’t be sure, but there might have been the slightest tilt of a smile on her mouth.
You’re the arrogant one here, sitting there in judgment of me. You’re not the one getting forced into the Marines.
She said, almost to herself, “Not all of those are that detrimental, and some of these other traits could actually be beneficial.”
She looked back up at Rev and said, “As you’ve probably surmised, this is where we determine your future in the Marine Corps—what you are going to do, and for how long of a commitment. But you present something of a conundrum.”
Rev sat up straight. He knew this was a pivotal moment in his future. Possibly his very life was at stake.
“The MPT—that’s the Military Placement Test—has been refined over the years, and it can make very accurate assessments of where recruits are best suited to serve. But there are outliers, such as you, who are all over the map.
“When in doubt or when the results are not entirely clear-cut, the military, especially the Marines, likes to give the recruit a choice on their future. If the test indicates that a recruit can likely succeed in two different combat paths, the choice is left to them.”
“And if there aren’t two paths?”
The doctor smiled and said, “Then they have no choice.”
“And where am I?” Rev asked, his voice cold as he expected the worst.
The doctor didn’t seem to notice his tone, or if she did, she ignored it.
“You have tremendous potential on one hand, but the results say you’ll probably fail in most combat paths.”
“And again, where does that leave me?”
“As a MilDes Ninety-Nine.”
That meant nothing to Rev, which she could see.
“Basically, a slave laborer, if I can put it that way. For twenty-five years. A strong back for whatever is needed.”
Rev’s sight narrowed, and he was afraid he was going to pass out.
Twenty-five fucking years?
He couldn’t fathom what she was saying.
“But my potential,” he managed to gasp out, trying for any life ring. “You said I have some.”
“And that’s where I’m in a quandary,” she said matter-of-factly, as if wondering whether to order the hamburger or deep-fried sylsky for lunch.
“Were you briefed on your options?” she asked. “Of course not. They never do to you conscripts.” When Rev looked at her in confusion, she added, “That way they can change it at the drop of a hat. ‘For the good of the service.’ You’ve got three basic choices. Direct combat. MilDes Two throug
h Nine. Those have a three-year commitment.”
Rev felt a rush of hope.
“Combat Support. Ten through Twenty-One. Ten years. And General Support. Twenty-Two through Eighty-Four, I think it is with the new one just added. Twenty years for that.”
Rev tried to digest the information. “The first one. Combat. If I go into that, then I’m done in three years?”
“If you survive, yes.”
“I want—”
“But I have to decide on whether you can make it.”
“I can. I know it.”
“If you fail, you’re a Ninety-Nine. Maybe it’s better for you if I just clear you for General Support. Keep your nose clean, and if you survive, you’ll be out in twenty, not twenty-five.”
That was the second time she’d used the phrase “if you survive.” Caution kicked in.
“Uh . . . if I could, can I ask what the chances of survival are for each of those?”
“I always wonder why more of you don’t ask that,” she said with a smile. “For Direct Combat, the mortality rate for three years is currently seventy-eight percent.”
Rev gulped and then gaped. He stared at her in shock as she watched for his reaction.
The doctor waited for him to digest this, then said, “For Combat Support, the mortality rate for ten years is sixty-two percent. For General Support, we project about the same over twenty years.”
That didn’t sound right to him, and he looked at her with the unspoken question.
“When the Centaurs attack a base or camp, they don’t care what your MilDes is.”
It made sense when she put it that way.
“And the last one, the slave laborers?”
“People like to say the Ninety-Nine is not a designator but their mortality rate.”
It took a moment for Rev to understand what she meant, but as it sunk in, he gulped.
As if taking off her doctor’s hat for a moment, she softened her voice and said, “To be blunt, Mr. Pelletier, you have the physical potential for anything. But if I allow you to opt for Direct Combat, chances are you won’t make it. You’re woefully out of shape, and if you try and fail, well, it’s a Ninety-Nine for you. I’ve got your entire record here in front of me, and you’re not a bad kid for all the test results. Yes, you’re arrogant, but what teenager isn’t? You’ve never been in trouble, and your offense to get you here, well, I don’t think that was warranted. Let me clear you for General Support. Just do your time, and you’ll still be young when you’re released.”