by Mark Wandrey
"Well, is that what we're going to do?" Christian stared her down for a moment then looked away. She cast her laser like stare round the cells and saw a collection of downcast stares, frowns and outright embarrassed looks. "No one likes that idea? I'm glad to hear it, because you are all Chosen. More importantly we are all humans! I might have understood it if a fight broke out between the Rasa soldiers and the humans, but you have accepted them better than you did each other!
"Okay, you've had your fun, and you better have gotten it out of your system, because that's it. The next Chosen assigned to this fort that takes a poke at another will be reassigned, and I will make it my personal duty to see that it is the end of your useful career wherever they assign you. As far as I'm concerned you can serve out the next twenty years carrying sacks of grain for Logistics, or cleaning up after bugs for Training. I hope I've made myself perfectly clear."
Minu didn't wait to hear if any of them agreed or disagreed with her decree. She spun on her heels and went back out of the detention center, slamming the heavy dualloy door with a resounding bang of metal. Aaron nearly lost a finger trying to keep up with her. "What do you want me to do with them?"
"Let them spend the rest of the day in those cells, but I want them mixed up, scout and soldier, as evenly as possible."
"Damn, are you sure?"
"Absolutely. If they are too stupid to understand what I said and that I mean business then we don't want them here. More importantly, they are of no use to the Chosen or the Tog." She stopped and punched the wall with her right fist, the cybernetic limb whined with power as she deformed the dualloy panel. She looked down at the torn light gray skin over her metal knuckles and cursed. "I'm trying to build a cohesive fighting force here, the core of our future, and these fucking morons are out slapping each other around after a few drinks!"
"What about Christian? I have a couple reports that indicate he might have started it." Aaron was still walking quickly to keep up.
"I was afraid of that." She thought for a moment, examining the damage to her synthetic skin, then sighed in resignation. She couldn't show him any favoritism. Then again, maybe there was a tactic she could try. "Release him, right away."
"Just him?"
"Yep." Minu headed for her office leaving Aaron staring after her in surprise. In her office she called Dram. The big man smiled at her through the video phone.
"What's the occasion this early?" Minu reported what had happened. As her commander she needed to report anyway, but she wanted to get his input on how to best deal with Christian. "An eventful night, but not surprising."
"I'm glad you weren't surprised."
"You mean you didn't expect this?" She said she hadn't. "Minu, you have a classic example of too many roosters in the hen house."
"I've never seen a chicken. They only live in specially prepared habitats, because of the howlers."
"You know what I mean. You have about half the scouts assigned to Fort Jovich along with thousands of new, cocky, young soldiers. While those new soldiers may never rise above the honorary rank of five stars, they are still Chosen. And they are being trained to be a true fighting force. Until now the scouts were the fighters, and that is probably the biggest reason everyone wanted to be a scout. Even you, and even your father. It's worse than if we just disbanded the scouts. Now they're just part of another branch."
"We talked about that. We need the scouts to perform the function they were originally intended for, scouting. They aren't a military force, and that's why we lost so many during the Vendetta."
"Right, they are part of the soldier branch now. Even the lowest ranking scout outranks the highest ranking soldier, but they're not the bad asses anymore. I've led the scouts for ten years, ever since Chriso assigned me there, and it gets under my skin from time to time thinking about it. Those black stars were the best, you wanted to wear them too, remember? Now along comes the red stars. Little doubt in the meaning there; fire, blood, and glory. The scouts still get to wear their black stars, but they have bright red outlines. The symbolism wasn't intentional, but it's still there.”
"Okay, so what do we do? Give up and integrate the scouts?"
"No, it won't solve the problem. And if we reassign or demote Christian you'll make a martyr out of him. No, I think we need to give him a vested interest in the results."
"And how do we do that?"
June 7th, 521 AE
Fort Jovich, Peninsula Tribe Territory
Minu leaned on the railing, watching the squads of soldiers working out below. Even from a hundred meters up it was easy to pick out the dark gray skittering forms of the Rasa where they moved among the humans. She consoled herself that at least that part of her plan had gone without incident, here in the fort anyway. The Rasa had been irreplaceable in teaching her how a Concordian fighting force worked. And once the soldiers finished basic training last year they joined in the second level of training as her integrated combat technique was put to the test. But it wasn't fully integrated yet. At one end of the massive workout field stood several mock ups of transports where the soldiers practiced embarking, disembarking, defending an LZ, and extracting casualties from a downed craft. Only it wasn't a real carrier.
Minu went back into the office and punched up a call. She was taken aback when Bjorn answered the phone. His aged face and always wild hair leaned too close to the camera with a look of urgency. "How much longer for the fire control team-" he stopped when he recognized Minu. "Oh. Good to see you girl! But I'm a little busy just now."
"Bjorn, what the hell happened?"
"Just a little bitty problem..." smoke swirled around his head and Minu heard the unmistakable sound of a small explosion in the background.
"Little problems don't explode, Bjorn," she said. Bjorn tried to smile and then ducked as another larger explosion boomed behind him. The view tilted and spun wildly as the phone was knocked from the desk. Someone picked up the phone and she saw the somewhat less chaotic features of Dr. Ted Hurt fill the view. While smoke smudged and hair was disheveled, there was no sign of panic on his face. Minu breathed easier.
"Hello Ted, got a minute?"
He looked over his shoulder and Minu heard many new voices raised in alarm, quickly followed by the hissing of fire suppression gear. "I do now," he said with a little laugh.
"I guess we should start with asking if that was my prototype bursting into flames?"
"No, that was a small part of it." Minu cursed, almost further damaging her knuckles on the desk. "Now don't get overly worked up, it was not integrated into the complete system yet. Bjorn had a rather unorthodox idea on how to approach power utilization."
"I saw in the last report that the power system was considered operational."
"It was. At least until Bjorn thought he had a better idea. The good news is he dismounted the system from the prototype before experimenting. The bad news is the entire system is now scattered all over the lab."
"Damn it, Ted!" The scientist shrugged helplessly. "I need you to run roughshod over him as much as possible."
"I was, Minu, but I have to sleep sometime. Honestly, I hope I'm half as unstoppable when I'm eighty." Minu sighed. "I've been doing mainly theoretical work for years, Minu. Young Chosen like you had taken over the hard R&D."
"I know, but most of them died or were too seriously injured to continue after the Rasa Vendetta."
"And most of the civilians won't come back to work because a few got killed."
"They were warned."
"I agree, but they're still gone. I hear we have some good prospects in the latest trials graduates just going into service."
"That's good news."
"Yeah." He got a somewhat evasive look on his face. "I've seen some test results and I have to say that a dozen or so of those new soldiers of yours might do nicely too."
"You can't have them."
"Minu, see reason here. We are desperately short on technical and scientific prowess just now. I admire your singu
lar vision and unrelenting zeal, but without tools, you cannot build things. And those missing people are the tools we need."
"Send me the list; I'll see who I can part with." Numbers danced in Minu's mind. While the graduates of the first soldiers’ trials came through in acceptable numbers, attrition from the training was several percentage points higher than expected. They were dangerously close to the minimum number she wanted to put in service. Every week a couple dropped out, or were washed out. "I can't give you all of them."
"I understand."
"How long for that prototype, Ted? We're going to be all dressed up with no place to go without it."
"Bjorn is just too valuable to cut him out, or I would. He makes amazingly innovative breakthroughs that outweigh his foibles, most of the time."
"How long, Ted?"
"Six weeks, but don't quote me on that."
"Okay, do your best."
"We always do." Ted looked sideways as light gray smoke billowed across the view and the sounds of angry conversation drifted through the speaker. "I really miss Pip right now."
"Don't we all?"
Chapter 5
Julast 27th, 521 AE
Chosen Headquarters, Steven's Pass
As the week wound down, Minu dabbled with the idea of going home to the island, and ultimately discarded it. Perhaps if she'd been on base when the incident with the scouts occurred on Monday, she could have dealt with it better. Nothing more had happened since then, but the tension was a tangible thing. Even though she’d defused the situation, it didn’t solve the underlying problem.
Thursday, she took a quick trip to the Chosen headquarters at Steven’s Pass. It was the usual meeting of the council where she presented her quarterly report of progress. Fort Jovich was not quite fully operational, and the soldiers were coming along in their training on schedule. The only glaring problem was the conflict between the scouts and the soldiers. First among the Chosen Jacob Bentley was not too concerned by this. “Some friction is to be expected,” was his comment delivered without looking up from his tablet. The others on the council shared his opinion and before long, Minu was back in her car and rocketing away.
A straight course to Ft. Jovich would take four thousand kilometers of travel. She elected for a slightly longer route that took her over her home town of Tranquility, capital of the Plateau tribe. As the car descended through some clouds, she was gifted with a wonderful view of the five kilometer wide plateau from which the tribe derived its name. Here the survivors from the United States arrived five hundred years ago and found themselves on the most defensible real estate on the planet, surrounded by the migration route of the planet’s most deadly predators, the Kloth.
What was once a small village of little more than a hundred was now a thriving city buzzing will three hundred thousand humans, and quite a few aliens. The planet’s public use, off world Portal was located here, along with the planetary council, business center, the largest university, and the best hospital. Minu landed her car in the modern parking facility at the Plateau Mercy Hospital and headed inside. She'd walked the route enough times to know where she was going without consulting the signs. The hoverfield powered lift deposited her on the lowest level of the hospital. Down the hall, she entered the coma wing.
“Good afternoon Chosen,” the elderly nurse smiled as Minu pushed through the doors.
“You too, Helen. Any change in his condition?”
“No, sorry.” Minu nodded and moved on.
It was an open ward, dozens of beds running the length of the room. A year ago the beds were all filled, now only three patients remained. Minu moved to the last occupied bed and found a visitor already there. A slightly overweight girl a year or two younger than Minu's age, acne on her face, and long brown hair, sat in an uncomfortable chair, her head against her chest, large bosom rising and falling in sleep. Cynthia spent most of her free time sitting with Pip, her boyfriend of a few months before he was critically wounded in the Rasa Vendetta. Minu quietly took the other seat and reached out to take her friend’s hand. “I've really been missing you, Pip,” she whispered into his ear. Dozens of machines, human and Concordia made, beeped and displayed a wide range of bio-data on the patient. In the year since he was wounded in the head, nothing at all had changed.
Minu spent an hour holding Pip's hand and talking to him. She talked about the weeks since her visit, how the fort was coming, the problem with her relationship with Christian, and finally of her night with Cherise. She didn’t feel it was a betrayal, Cherise would understand. It was with Pip one night more than a year ago that she'd spent many hours talking about boys and girls, drinking mead, and learning about relationships. Call it the blind leading the blind. At the end of that night she came within a hair’s breadth of sleeping with Pip. It was only his sense of duty to her as his boss and friend that stopped that from happening. In a way, she'd always regretted her decision to make him chose to not sleep with her. And in the year since his brain was irrevocably damaged, Minu came to realize that she loved Pip as more than a brother, and maybe as much as a boyfriend.
Her time up, Minu stood and patted his hand one last time. “Nice to see you again, Minu.” Cynthia was looking up at her, a sad smile on her face. Minu felt a moment of fear as she wondered how much the other girl had just heard. Cynthia rubbed sleep from her eyes and yawned, and Minu decided her sexual peccadilloes were safe for now.
“You too Cynthia.” Minu came around and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “It's late, you should be getting home.”
“You want to spend the night at my apartment? It's small, but I have a comfy couch.”
“Thanks, but no. I have to get back to the fort.” Cynthia nodded and looked back at Pip. His breathing continued regularly as it had for months on end, machines made sure of that. “I'm sure he’s glad you're here, but he might wish you moved on at some point.”
“Thanks, but I'm where I need to be.” Minu nodded her head and headed out the door.
Julast 30th, 521 AE
Fort Jovich, Peninsula Tribe Territory
Dram’s solution to Christian was not what she would have done. Christian would now be in command of the scouts, but he stayed at three stars. Minu knew Dram didn't give him the full promotion for three reasons. One; he hadn't earned it with his actions. Two; he didn't want a two star in the soldiers branch yet. And three; if promoted, Christian would out rank Minu, and that was reason enough not to do it. She almost wished he had, if only for the later reason. Who could argue that the biggest problem was her promotion in his absence. She outranked him in all but fact. She was in charge of the soldiers, at least during this phase of their training, and as such the scouts under them. She wished it could go back to the way it was. Of course, after her night in the cabin with Cherise, not as much of her wished for it.
The soldiers were ready to go operational. One thousand well trained men and women, along with two thousand integrated Rasa soldiers stood ready to answer the call. They were untested, and that was her biggest worry. If she didn't find a way to grind the green out of them before a real fight, her losses would be twice as big when they saw serious combat. Without the new multi-role fighters, they couldn't do much more in the way of real world training, just more boring static drills. Worse still, another thousand soldiers were in the second stage of their training cycle. Give it another two months and the new kids would be competing for training space. Her plans counted on these men and women being able to help along the new recruits. What would they be able to show them that they didn't already know?
Minu took the drop tube down to the lower level, the hoverfield worked flawlessly as always to let her gently step onto the ceramic concrete floor. A pair of guards came to attention, hands flat along their sides, slapping against their thighs in salute. Minu nodded as she walked onto the wide open level of the primary training field. It was much louder down there, with hundreds of humans and Rasa grunting or hissing with exertion, orders being shouted and ca
dence called out as platoons marched. She liked to come down and quietly observe, but it was not an easy thing to do. There weren't any other young, three star female Chosen around to mistake her for, and certainly none as short or intense of a presence as Minu Alma. Add a slightly gray colored right arm that ended on three fingers and a thumb, and, well never mind. She would stand and watch them work for hours, taking careful note of how her new manuals were being followed, how some things worked or others needed possible changes, and just how the soldiers were shaping up. Every day they looked more like training films from old Earth. United States Navy Seals, Israeli Special Forces, Russian Spetsnaz, and French Foreign Legion, all unknowingly donated training techniques now being used. But, she’d also read about techniques in the Concordian data stolen by Pip. How to effectively employ anti-bot tactics, correct use of shields by a mobile military force and how to take advantage of gravitic impeller technology. Of course the techniques were used by the Rasa to good effect. They also included much of the Concordia training, with their own particular innovations. The troops were getting used to her showing up, and on cue, they began to perform for their boss. She could spend less and less time this close every day. Her vantage point a hundred meters up or the dozens of remote cameras just weren't the same thing. You couldn't feel the intensity through a camera. You couldn't smell the sweat and sense the accomplishments, or the failures.
The biggest reason she got in as close as possible, was one she kept to herself. She'd done all these drills with Dram, Gregg, Aaron and Cherise, over and over. Her excuse was to make sure they were effective, but the truth was she intended to lead these soldiers into battle herself. After the dedication last week she'd suffered a mental setback to that plan, but she hadn't given up. Training branch? It would be a cold day in the Christians’ Hell when an Alma was in the Training branch!
Several teams had now spotted Minu watching and were doing their best to impress her. Decorum was breaking down and it was almost time to head back upstairs, when she spotted Christian. He was working with a couple of scout teams along with several squad sized soldier units. She smiled slyly and nodded in appreciation of Dram's brilliance. Now that he was in charge of the scouts, their failure would be his own. She turned and headed back up the jump tube, which reversed direction for her ascent. Minu worked in her office for a while until an idea suddenly occurred to her. But was it possible? An hour’s work on the fort's network made her decide it was worth the effort, so she put in a call to Cherise.