by Rod Carstens
“That’s what I was, Hu. You know that. My wonderful aunt and uncle sold me to the brothel when I thirteen. They always tattoo the girls. I was a whore for close to ten years. I don’t care who knows it and you know that. So what was that all about?”
Hu hesitated then looked up at her. “You know what Von Fleet is doing. They claimed my DNA was theirs so they’re suing the Confederation because I was engineered to be a miner on one of their planets. In the meantime my wages are garnished.”
“I also know that everyone in the battalion is kicking in so you have your regular pay until this thing gets straightened out. That’s not where all of this came from. It was your excuse.”
Hu looked up at her hard, beautiful face. She knew him too well. His face changed. Real pain contorted his features as he said, “No, I guess it was about the children.”
Mala knelt in front of him. “You think? You haven’t talked about 703 since we got back. Now talk.”
Hu stood and began pacing. “You saw what they did to those children. The Xotoli experimented on them. They were…they were…God, what they did to them.”
“Yes, baby, and.…”
Hu paused and looked at her. Mala put her hand gently against his face.
“You know the Xotoli occupied my old home planet. A Von Fleet planet no less, just like 703. They have my parents.…” Hu had to take a breath before he could go on. “They have my little sisters. All I could think of was my little sisters on Von Fleet 69. Maybe if those big fucks had been out there doing their job, the Xotoli wouldn’t have been able to occupy it.”
Hu paused, his face a mask of fear. “I have dreams. My sisters’ faces are on those poor children. The Xotoli have them. They're doing the same to my sisters.” He struggled to say the words. “They have my sisters.”
He stood and walked a few steps, then slowly dropped to his knees and began to pound his fists on his thighs in frustration. Mala went to him and knelt beside him. She took him in her arms and held him.
“What can I do? I can’t do anything. I want to hurt someone, something. I want to protect my sisters. I’m their big brother.”
Mala took his face in her hands. There were tears of frustration and rage in his eyes.
“Baby, you are doing the only thing you can. You are a Marine. We will go back. We will save them.”
“It’s too late. You know it,” Hu said.
“I don’t know it. I do know that lots of strange happens in this universe of ours and you never know what the deal is until you see it. If someone had told me I would end up in a Marine uniform on Rift when I was back in that brothel, I would’ve thought they had dipped a little too much. No, all I know is what I see and nothing else.”
Mala held him close. She unbuttoned her blouse and held him against her naked breasts. Slowly the tension left him. When she felt him relax, she began to make love to him. She wanted to give him a safe place to forget those terrible visions in his head. She decided to use all of the old tricks she had learned in her years in the brothel to make their lovemaking as intense as she could. He needed the release. As he responded to her manipulations, Mala thought maybe those years were worth something after all.
Rigel Kent System
Intina
Penal Training Camp 12
1st Battalion
Alpha Company
Platoon Thirteen
Boot camp was coming to an end. They only had two weeks until they were assigned to a unit. Dieter, with the rest of the platoon, was in the chow hall cramming down as much food as he could before returning to the barracks for the night. Sergeant Mati stood at the end of the table, her arms crossed as she watched the platoon eat. Two huge Von Fleet security guards dressed in their black uniforms walked into the chow hall and approached Mati. They towered over her and carried themselves with the arrogance of the power the Von Fleet uniform gave them. Mati looked up at them and scowled, then said, “What do you want?”
“We are here for Ardan.”
The guard handed Mati his pad. Mati looked down at the display carefully. When Ardan heard his name, he looked up. His face went white when he saw the two guards. While Mati’s attention was on the pad, one of the guards turned and found Ardan. He smirked. Ardan stopped eating. Dieter saw Ardan’s reaction and leaned close enough to whisper.
“Those are the two,” Ardan said.
“What?”
“Those are the two guards who raped me that night before our trial,” Ardan whispered.
Dieter glanced over at the guards. Ardan was right. They were the guards from the prison on Chava. Dieter felt a knot of fear in his stomach. What were they doing here? What could they possibly want?
“The company commander has to sign this. I won’t give you the recruit until you have that signature,” Sergeant Mati said, looking up at the two.
“Listen—” one of the guards began.
Mati cut him off with a sharp look and barked, “Leave! When you come back with a signature, I will hand him over to you, and only then. Now leave.”
Mati’s gaze followed the two guards until they had left the chow hall. Then she turned and said, “Ardan, report.”
Ardan jumped up and reported to Mati. He stood at attention in front of her. Dieter could not hear what she was saying to him. He glanced across the table at Minga. Their eyes met and Dieter motioned with his head toward Mati and Ardan. They stood and marched up to the pair.
“What the fuck is going on?” Mati growled.
“Permission to speak,” Dieter said.
“Speak.”
“Those are the guards who raped Ardan while we were awaiting trial.”
Mati’s hard eyes actually looked surprised. She turned to Ardan. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Ardan could only blush. Mati’s hard eyes swept over the three recruits.
“Listen, the orders look trumped up. It doesn’t smell right to me. Don’t worry, I am not going to let those kaks take you.”
Mati paused and looked from one to the other of them before she said quietly, so only they could hear her, “Unless you want some payback, Ardan.”
Dieter watched as Ardan’s face changed. He was the best hand-to-hand fighter in the platoon.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ardan said.
“You two want in?” Mati said.
Dieter remembered Ardan’s screams that night and how he had realized it was only luck they had not come for him. He glanced at Minga. She had put on thirty pounds of muscle in the last months. This was the first time in her life she’d had three meals a day. The other platoon members had begun calling her Amazon and she'd adopted it as her nickname. She nodded to Dieter.
“Yes, ma’am,” Dieter and Minga said as one.
“Good. Never let a squad mate down. Always have their back. Now the three of you return to your meals. I will take care of the rest.”
They finished evening chow in silence. Dieter’s stomach was knotted in fear or excitement—he could not tell which. He and the rest of the platoon were sitting on their footlockers cleaning their weapons when the two guards returned. They both had big smirks on their faces. Sergeant Mati had been slowly walking up and down the squad bay watching each recruit carefully. She glanced up and saw the two guards. She sauntered up them.
“Here you go, Sergeant. All the authorizations you need.”
Sergeant Mati took the pad and looked at it carefully. “Looks like everything is correct. Ardan, Fenes, Minga, here on the double,” Mati snapped.
One of the guards looked puzzled. “We don’t need the other two.”
“Orders. Only we can escort a prisoner to the gate. I’ll turn him over to you when we get out of the company area.”
Ardan, Dieter, and Minga reported to Mati. In unison they yelled, “Reporting as ordered, ma’am!”
Mati looked at Ardan and said, “Looks like they have orders to return you to Chava for a new trial. You two will escort him out of the company area.”
One of the big guards le
aned over and whispered something to Ardan. He did not flinch and stared straight ahead. His face seemed to harden with each word.
“All right, enough of that shit,” Mati growled at the guard.
Mati turned and led them out of the barracks into the cold black night. There were few lights illuminating the sidewalk as they marched along, just pools of light in the darkness. It was an almost theatrical setting for what was about to happen, Dieter thought. When they reached the mess hall, Mati turned to her right down another sidewalk that led behind the mess hall. The three recruits followed her. The two guards stopped and looked at one another in puzzlement.
“Where are we going? This isn’t the way we came,” the tallest of the two said.
“Shortcut,” Mati replied.
The two guards fell in behind the three recruits and Mati. The sidewalk led down the side of the mess hall then turned left behind it. Once they were in back of the mess hall, Sergeants Ura and Chucha stepped out of the darkness into the glare of the single flood light behind the mess hall.
“What is the meaning of this, Sergeant Mati?” Ura snapped.
Mati had instructed them after chow that this was the signal. The two guards’ attention was turned toward Ura and Chucha when Ardan, Dieter, and Minga struck. Mati had told them to go for crippling blows immediately. They were too muscled up for a normal fight. She said, “Remember how I took the other two down.”
Ardan landed the first blow. He used the momentum of his turn to face the guards to jump and land a perfect roundhouse kick to the jaw of the tallest guard. Dieter could hear his jaw break with a loud crack. He dropped to the ground.
Minga simply leaned forward and went for the knee of the other guard with a straight back kick. He screamed and bent over to grab his knee. When he did, Dieter’s roundhouse only grazed his head, but it knocked him to the ground.
Dieter and Minga stepped back to let Ardan have his revenge. Ardan walked over to the guard who was groaning and clutching his knee. The three drill instructors stood watching the scene with their hands on their hips, their faces hard and expressionless. Ardan kicked the groaning guard in the head and knocked him out. Then he stepped between the guard’s legs and very carefully stomped the heel of his boot down. Once, twice, and he had raised it for a third time when he realized he had accomplished what he wanted to. He walked to the other guard and did the same. When he was finished between his legs, he moved to his head and raised his foot for a killing blow.
“Stop,” Sergeant Ura ordered.
Ardan froze in mid-movement.
“Enough.”
Ardan was breathing hard when he stepped back from the prone figure. Dieter glanced over at Sergeant Mati. She had a small, satisfied smile on her face.
“Sergeant Mati, take them back to the barracks. We will take care of these two.”
As Sergeant Mati marched them back to the barracks, she told them how it would go. “You will tell the other members of the platoon that it was a mistake and we straightened it out.”
“But what about—” Ardan blurted out.
“Halt,” Mati snapped.
The three stopped and stood at attention. Sergeant Mati came around and stood in front of them.
“What you don’t know can’t hurt you. So don’t ask any more questions about our visitors unless you want to go to the brig for a long time. You three will keep your mouths shut about what just happened. You three are in a very tough spot. The penal battalions are no picnic. You may have to do something similar one day just to survive. We have trained you to survive, and that is what you will do. Do not give up. There is a chance for you to escape all of this, but I cannot explain it now.”
Sergeant Mati returned to her position next to the three and said, “Forward march.”
Dieter, for the first time since he had started boot camp, could not sleep that night. What had happened and what Sergeant Mati had said kept rolling around in his head, keeping him awake.
#
The last days were much like the days before, only they were polishing their skills instead of learning them. One day after evening chow, Sergeant Ura called for school circle in the barracks. All three drill instructors were in the barracks that night, which was not normal. When the platoon was seated in front of Ura, he nodded to the other drill instructors. They each went to a door and began to look out, as if to keep watch. Ura waited until they both nodded before he started to speak.
“Some of you might have figured out that our reason for becoming part of the penal battalions seemed lame. You were right. We were not sent here to help a few random prisoners survive the coming combat. We are part of the Legion’s underground, as we call it. Many of us, as we told you, had a choice of prison or the Legion. The Legion saved us. All three of us had that choice, but you had no choice. You were sent here for no reason other than that you were poor and some rich corporate type wanted to get out of serving the Confederation. Each of you was chosen carefully before you were assigned to our platoon. Your crime was being poor and being able-bodied. You see, if someone washes out of boot camp, all the corporate type has to do is pay for another body. So you were carefully vetted according to age and physical abilities before you were charged. Your only crime was being poor and in shape.”
Ura stopped as he let what he had just said sink in to each and every one of them. Dieter looked at Ardan and Minga. He wondered if he wore as surprised a look as they did.
“Well, as veterans we are voting citizens of the Confederation. Given we are so few compared to the rich, we are unable to change the laws. So we are doing what all good Legionnaires do. We adapt. There are members of this underground spread throughout the penal battalion system. There are other platoons like this one. Not as many as we would like, but it is a start. We have trained you as if you had entered the Legion. Those of you who sit in front of me are Legionnaires. You would have passed selection had you enlisted. Never forget that.”
Dieter was stunned to think of himself as being as tough and competent as a Legionnaire. He had never thought of himself as tough. Now he was being told that not only was he tough, but tough enough to be considered part of one of the most elite military organizations ever to take the field.
“We did not spend our time and effort and risk prison just to make sure you were well trained. Tomorrow you will receive your Von Fleet tracking tattoo, but tonight you will receive a tattoo that will mark you as one of us. This tattoo will let every other former Legionnaire know that you are one of us. When it is scanned, it will show our Legion names, ranks, and serial numbers. It is our stamp of approval. The reason for the tattoo is that the word has gone out that you are worthy and should be taken care of by other Legionnaires. What does this mean? Under certain conditions your sentence can be commuted and you will be allowed to join the Marines. You would then have your record expunged and you would be serving with the best new organization. What are these conditions? They are simple. Excel in combat. You will excel in combat because you are trained to do so, unlike the other penal platoons. So your jobs are simple. Survive and show the tattoo you are about to receive to the first Legionnaire you can find. Neither of those tasks will necessarily be easy, but you will do them. Do you understand?”
The barracks windows vibrated with the volume of their, “Aye, aye sir!”
Ura paused, then looked at Mati and Chucha. They both nodded yes.
“First squad, line up to my left.”
Dieter was the first-squad leader, and he was first in line. Ura took a tattoo gun out of draw of drill instructors desk in the squad bay.
“Uncover your right arm.”
Dieter rolled up his sleeve and presented his arm to Ura. Ura pressed the tattoo gun against his skin.
“The small gold circle represents a grenade, and the gold leaves above it represent the flames when the grenade explodes. The square with red and green separated by a diagonal slash shows the colors of an ancient and storied French Foreign Legion. No one will know what thi
s means unless they are another Legionnaire. If they ask what it is, they are not one of us. Say anything you like. Do not explain it to anyone but another Legionnaire. The word has gone out to all the former Legionnaires who are now serving. They will know what to do once they have seen the emblem.”
Ura pressed the tattoo gun against Dieter’s arm near his shoulder. It hurt like hell for a few seconds, then it was over. Dieter returned to his seat on the floor, staring at the tattoo, trying to absorb all that he had just been told. He had a chance. He had a way out of all of this. Ura finished the rest of the platoon. Once they were all seated, Ura said, “Understand you will be fighting next to platoons that have little or none of the type of training you have had. The only way you will survive long enough to get out of the penal battalions is to watch each other’s backs. You will fight together as a platoon. You can and will survive long enough to transfer to the normal service. If you do not, you will have wasted our time. Understand?”
“Aye, aye sir!”
“Very well. You are dismissed except for Fenes, Ardan, and Minga. You three are to report to the drill instructors’ office immediately.”
Dieter, with the other two, followed Ura to the drill instructors’ office. They stood at attention by the door before entering. Dieter pounded as hard as he could on the doorjamb three times.
“Sir, Prisoner Recruits Fenes, Ardan, and Minga reporting as ordered.”
“Come.”
Ura was seated behind a simple desk. The other two drill instructors stood on either side of him.
“Minga, close the hatch.”
Minga closed the door and returned to attention in front of the desk. Ura stared at the three for a long moment before he spoke.
“We have not brought you three in here because of what happened the other night. That is over and done. It has been taken care of. Do not ask questions. Legionnaires do this for one another. Now the three of us have watched you from day one, and you are the natural leaders in this platoon. The other members look up to you. You will take that leadership role on. You will look after the platoon members as if you were noncommissioned officers. You will take the lead during combat. You will not let them die, or everything the three of us and all the others have risked will be in vain. Have no doubt some will die no matter what you do, but do not let this platoon be put into a position that gets you all killed. We have taught you well. You three have exceeded our expectations. Now it is time to live up to your potential. Understood?”