Marine Cadet (The Human Legion Book 1)

by Tim C. Taylor

  ==INTERROGATION FRAGMENT BEGINS==

  HUMAN McEWAN: Don’t you think it’s an overreaction? All I did was switch teams. I mean, I could understand them getting frakked off, but that was three weeks ago now. That’s all! Three frakking weeks and they still act as if… Well, it’s as if you’d bitten off your queen’s legs and danced on her head.

  SCRIBE: You mean the Great Leader.

  HUMAN McEWAN: That guy, yeah.

  SCRIBE: I understand. You feel your offense is minor but your human nest comrades judge you and your acts as repugnant. Are there other examples where the value that you place on things is very different from your comrades?

  HUMAN McEWAN: [Pauses to think while consulting wetware memories. He nods his head. Interpretation: (93% certainty): indicates agreement.] No one has fun anymore. Goofing around, joking – it’s an important part of human bonding but the only time I’ve seen my buddies loosen up recently was for Scendence Day. [Shakes head, looking at floor (91% certainty): indicates sadness] Even that didn’t last long. I asked to keep playing for Moscow Express but Madge wouldn’t let me. Last match day, they were knocked out of the competition but I won for Xin’s bunch: Team Ultimate Victory. Team Ultimate Disaster, more like. Other than Springer, my friends hate me more than ever now.

  SCRIBE: Has this been a slow and steady change or a sudden one?

  HUMAN MCEWAN: It’s grown, but real fast. Everything changed about the same time we made cadet. Maybe a little before.

  SCRIBE: And you feel unaffected?

  HUMAN McEWAN: [Rolls eyes. Interpretation: meaning unclear]. No, it’s doing my head in too. I get wildly angry sometimes or feel so low that I whimper in my sleep. I think I’m cracking up. Oh, frakk! Frakk, frakk, frakk! I’m so flekked.

  SCRIBE: Is something wrong?

  HUMAN McEWAN: Wrong? I’ve just told you I’m cracking up. That’s practically an admission that I’m not fit to be a Marine. I’ll be working the mines this time tomorrow.

  SCRIBE: You need not fear. The internal security systems monitor for signs of insurrection, not individual performance. We have tested this extensively. You may speak freely to me about your medical concerns.

  HUMAN McEWAN: Even if you’re wrong about the security stuff… [Sighs. Interpretation: (97% certainty): indicates acceptance of an unwanted situation]. I guess I can’t make things worse.

  SCRIBE: Correct. If I am wrong about the drenting security systems, then you are utterly vulleyed whatever you do.

  HUMAN McEWAN: [Sets mouth into ‘brittle smile’. Interpretation: (86% certainty): acknowledgement of humor, comradeship, reasserting anxious state.]. Good one, Pedro. A little more work on the accent and we’ll be able to sneak you into the chow hall and no one will realize you aren’t one of us.

  SCRIBE: [spirals antennae, indicating acknowledgement of humor] Why don’t you tell your medical staff or your human leaders about your concerns?

  HUMAN McEWAN: [Shakes head. Interpretation: (96% certainty) disagreement. Possibly (32% certainty) mild contempt too.] You don’t know much about humans, do you?

  SCRIBE: Correct.

  HUMAN McEWAN: I know. I know. It’s why you want us to have these little chats. I’ll try to explain. When your squad goes into danger, knowing your buddies around you are strong helps to keep you strong too. A Marine who wobbles under pressure has the opposite effect. The Corps has no use for a Marine who’s going to sit down and start crying because someone is shooting at him. I can’t admit my weakness. Majanita and Del-Marie already think I don’t fit in anymore.

  SCRIBE: If you are truly different, can you really keep this deception for three years until graduation? And beyond, as a Marine?

  HUMAN McEWAN: [Shrugs. Interpretation: (96% certainty) showing disdain for challenges faced.]. That’s something I’ll have to find out the hard way. I’m not quitting. Never. That’s not an option. Not me at all.

  SCRIBE: Is that why you originally agreed to join your comrades’ Scendence team, Moscow Express? Did you do this to regain the respect of your comrades?

  HUMAN McEWAN: [Shakes head and sighs (resignation)] Am I that transparent? Even to an overgrown ant? [Shrugs (resignation)] Yes, that’s why I agreed to join in. I’m pretty good at playing Deception. Gunnery too, though Madge always wants to take that – I mean, Cadet Corporal Majanita. If I did well, then everyone sees me winning for the team. It worked too, for about ten minutes after I won my first Moscow Express match. Then the madness took me and I joined Xin’s team.

  SCRIBE: I am concerned for you, friend McEwan. Your wild mood swings are still unexplained. Are you worried that they will affect your Scendence performance?

  HUMAN McEWAN: Not enough to stop me playing.

  SCRIBE: [Pauses. Scent signal indicates exasperation that human is failing to connect the probable causes of mental state]. When I first met you, you were singing. Was that an example of your strange mental state?

  HUMAN McEWAN: No, that was the… the combat drugs. [Words slowed temporarily during previous sentence. Interpretation: (82% certainty) intense mental activity limiting speech capability. Conclusion: human has linked combat drugs with continuing mood changes.] Combat drugs! That’s it! They’ve been pumping combat drugs into us continuously. Low dose. They’re meant to keep you focused on fighting, a robot killer. Heightens your sense of loyalty. Everything else in your head is put on standby. That would explain everything. Why I’ve gone wild and everyone else is a robot. And… [Makes stabbing motion with finger at scribe. Interpretation: (81% certainty) threat display]. You knew, didn’t you? Go on, deny it!

  SCRIBE: I cannot answer that.

  HUMAN McEWAN: [Shakes head.] That’s not good enough. If you want our talks to continue, it’s got to be a two-way thing. I share. You share. We both learn from each other. The colonel will skin me alive if I don’t learn anything from you.

  SCRIBE: What do you wish to learn, Arun?

  HUMAN McEWAN: Did you know I was being drugged?

  SCRIBE: [Hesitates. Emits deliberate falsehood scent.] No.

  HUMAN McEWAN: [Tenses jaw muscles. Narrows eyes. Adopts aggressive stance. Interpretation: (92% certainty): dominance challenge. Scribe shows no reaction. Human soon abandons challenge.] Answer me this, then: do you think I’m being drugged by the Corps?

  SCRIBE: This topic cannot be discussed.

  HUMAN McEWAN: Figures. Thanks, pal. Okay, try this. Suppose, hypothetically, the Corps were giving us combat drugs. Speculate why they might do that.

  SCRIBE: This topic cannot be discussed.

  HUMAN McEWAN: [Growls. Interpretation: (99% certainty): threat display.] Forget everything I’ve just said. Let’s play pretend instead. Suppose traitors wanted to disable the human Marines defending the base through a non-lethal drug. As a cadet faithful to my White Knight masters and their officers, I would want to know how to protect against such an attack. How would I protect myself from being drugged without arousing the suspicions of the traitors?

  SCRIBE: You humans have extremely weak natural defenses. I cannot see what you could do. A drug or toxin could be administered through the air, drink, skin contact, food, nanobots. You could be hypnotized to self-administer every night and then forget what you had done.

  HUMAN McEWAN: How about you take my blood sample and use what you find to develop an antidote?

  SCRIBE: [Twists antennae to indicate moral conflict.] Although I cannot discuss this topic, Arun, I make a solemn vow on the sanctity of the nest – may I be cast beyond the boundary if I break my word. I shall do whatever is in my power to aid you. Even though you might not understand nor like what I shall do, yet shall I aid you.

  ==INTERROGATION FRAGMENT ENDS==

  [Archivist note: Subsequent events tell us that the scribe was faithful to its promise, and correct in its prediction that the human would hate the scribe for what it would do.]

  —— Chapter 21 ——

  “This afternoon you’re going to learn a little history.”

  Arun groaned i
nwardly. With his recent frontline experience, Blue Squad had expected their new veteran sergeant to give an insight to their future as Marines, not backward to someone else’s past. Gold Squad were at the lecture too – the two squads often trained together – and looked like they felt the same. What was it to be? Famous battles of the Seventh Frontier War? Dropboat development over the centuries? Camo pants stitching patterns of the ancients?

  From behind his lectern, Gupta grinned wolfishly. “I know what you’re thinking. Why aren’t we sweating in our battlesuits, and shooting the crap out of each other in a training environment? There will be plenty of time for that, but to win, a Marine needs more than equipment and tactics.” Gupta tapped his head. “The ultimate key to victory is up here. And it’s in your mental attitude that you stink the most. Until I’m satisfied with the way you think, I’m going to share examples from our forebears of what it means to be a good Marine. If any of you feels your time would be better spent capturing flags and laying ambushes for your comrades, please feel free to share your opinion with me. I hear the Aux welcomes volunteers to work the fields or clean out the head. Does anyone want to hear my history lesson?”

  All the cadets rose from their desks and came to attention. “Yes, sergeant.”

  Gupta ignored them for several seconds before acknowledging. “Sit down, shut up, and listen good. Location: Earth. Date: Common Era 1917 through 1921. Subject: The Czech Legion.”

  There was a noise, a disturbance in the rigid order of the lecture. Arun followed Gupta’s glare to Springer. She was writhing on her seat and screwing her face as if someone had rammed a stun rod up her backside.

  Gupta ignored her. “Earth was in the grip of a major war,” he said. “World War One. Total combatants approximately 70 million. Casualties: 29 million killed, wounded, and missing – and that’s ignoring the civilians. Major political groupings – countries and empires – would collapse during this conflict. This was not a clash of ideology, culture or religion, but really a civil war that raged throughout the continent of Europe, although the fighting spread around the planet. Soldiers were sucked into the European battlefields from major nations on other continents, such as India and the United States.

  “I’ve mentioned civil wars in an earlier lecture. You might think me obsessed. Well, you could be right.”

  Gupta smiled, which brought hesitant laughter from a few brave cadets. They were still learning the sergeant’s ways. Compared to the instructors, he seemed just as strict but more informal, even outspoken.

  “Brother shoots brother and bombs mother,” continued Gupta. “Civil wars are just about the ugliest episodes in the human story. But that isn’t what fascinates me. Civil war usually ends in the destruction of the old certainties and the emergence of something new. Even if the incumbent political authority wins on the battlefield, it is forever changed by the war.”

  Gupta fixed Arun with a stare. “In your orientation speech I told you Marines sometimes have to suck up the pain and survive for as long as it takes to fight back and win. That wait could last for generations. For those seeking change to the old order, civil wars are that chance to strike back, the one opportunity that must be seized with all six limbs.”

  What was this? Gupta’s gaze still wouldn’t release Arun.

  Gupta spoke slowly and clearly. “The White Knights, for example, are an immensely powerful race, but they are no more a single unified entity than the human race. In fact the opposite is the case. Their fascination with change and mutation makes our masters particularly prone to civil wars.”

  The sergeant’s gaze kept Arun prisoner for another few seconds before turning back to the rest of the cadets.

  “Back in our Earth example, two great empires were about to disintegrate in this European civil war: the Hapsburg and the Russian Empires. Just as we humans are one of the many subservient species in the White Knight Empire, so the Hapsburg emperor ruled many distinct cultural and ethnic groupings. His empire had 27 official languages. One of these groups was called the Czechs.”

  Gupta looked up and stared at the cadets sitting before him. “Let’s find which of you worms was paying attention in my last briefing. What often happens before a civil war battle, especially at the beginning of the war?”

  Arun watched hands shoot up.

  “Yes, Skull?” Gupta nodded at one of the cadets.

  Skull was taken by surprise to hear the sergeant use his nickname. “Sergeant, soldiers lose the will to fight. Desertion rates are high.”

  “Correct. Of course, it depends on the background to the war, and how a soldier came to be recruited in the first place. In many civil wars, not only do individual soldiers desert but entire units go over to the enemy, often murdering their officers in the process.”

  A sense of danger snuck into the briefing hall. “Our Czech soldiers were mostly unwilling conscripts who felt a far closer cultural affinity to the enemy and only resentment to their ruler, the Hapsburg emperor. Egged on by Russian propaganda promising freedom for the Czechs and their own homeland, entire divisions deserted to the Russian side. Czech soldiers captured by the Russians were housed in prisoner of war camps. These were rich recruiting grounds for Czechs who were prepared to fight on the Russian side. These Czechs fought in their own units but under Russian orders. In their minds they fought for freedom. To the Russians, they were plasma fodder.

  “Freedom is an intoxicating idea. It can drive people to extreme acts. Even I have to take care with my words. I don’t want us all executed for inciting insurrection.”

  Arun joined in the nervous laughter, relieved that the sergeant appeared to realize the danger in his words. Gupta’s near-treason hadn’t gotten them killed yet.

  “These turncoat units were organized into the Czech Legion. With a peak strength of about 60,000 in comparison with the Russian Army’s total wartime strength of 12 million they would have been nothing more than a historical oddity if not for two things. In 1917, the Russian Empire collapsed and turned its attention to its own civil war. A year later, the Hapsburg Empire imploded and the wider war ended.

  “It was as if the sea had suddenly gone out, leaving the Czech Legion stranded inside the largest country in the world. They’d suddenly transformed from a historical footnote to the only large force of disciplined troops in Russia. They were now important. By that time, all sides in the Russian Civil War distrusted the Czechs at best, and in many cases wanted them dead. What did the Czech Legion do?”

  Gupta acknowledged one of the hands. It was Alice Belville, the cadet lance-sergeant from Gold Squad. “The Czechs fought their way back home, sergeant.”

  “They did that, Belville. But their route home lay to the west, through the bulk of the forces hostile to them.”

  Gupta hadn’t invited input from the cadets, but Arun found he had his hand up.

  “McEwan?”

  “They forced a passage to the east, sergeant.”

  Gupta nodded. “The Trans-Siberian Railway was the longest railroad in the world, running nearly 6,000 miles from the west to the east of Russia. Over the next three years, the Czech Legion forced passage along this railroad before being evacuated by sea from Russia’s eastern coast.”

  Another disturbance made Arun glance to his left. It was Springer again. The wisp of steam over her eyes and water dripping from her nose explained what had happened. She’d never had visions so close together before. Her eyelids must be brutally scorched.

  Gupta continued as if nothing was happening. “If they had simply sat in a train carriage and waited to reach their destination they would have been ambushed and wiped out before they’d gone a hundred miles. The Czech Legion became almost a nomadic state, controlling all the stations along the railroad for a hundred miles or so either direction of their force concentration, and the countryside around that stretch. They negotiated with the local people and rival factions in the Russian Civil War for supplies, security and passage. That required great skill, discipline and organizatio
n.

  “Why do I mention the Czech Legion? They weren’t members of the Marine Corps, but I think of them as if they were, because that is exactly how I expect Marines to think and act. So you tell me. What can the Legion teach us about some of the drent you cadets have gotten yourself into recently?”

  “Sergeant,” asked Majanita, “Did you pick that example because of Cadet McEwan?”

  “Interesting. What makes you think I did?”

  “The Czech Legion stuck together under stresses that would have crushed most units. They showed tenacity, initiative, cunning, ruthlessness, all those good things, but most of all they are a lesson in sticking together.”

  Gupta thought for a moment. “I would have chosen the Czech Legion’s story in any case, but I did have McEwan’s situation firmly in mind.”

  Arun almost felt he should wilt with embarrassment from the unwanted attention. He didn’t. Didn’t feel anything at all. For his failings to be dissected and analyzed was becoming an everyday burden.

  “So tell me, cadets,” said Gupta. “McEwan broke his commitment to play Deception for his squad team so he could play with… individuals from elsewhere in the battalion. How does that relate to the Czech Legion?”

  Caccamo from Hecht’s Alpha Section answered first. “Sergeant. Because McEwan let his team down. The Czechs didn’t. By sticking together, the Legion gives us a lesson to counter McEwan’s example.”

  Gupta frowned. “Stand up, Caccamo!” he barked. “Idiot! The White Knights consider us nothing more than cheap plasma fodder. The Jotuns hold us in higher regard. Only a few nanometers higher, but that’s better than nothing. I, on the other hand, expect nothing less than for you to be Marines, the very best of the human race. We are not dumb fodder. The difference between surviving combat and being a casualty statistic is half training, half dumb luck, and half using your initiative to make your own luck.”

  No one dared to speak.