“Individuality breeds corruption and perversion—at least that’s what they told me during my arrest. Of course, most of the intellectual elite, such as me, were arrested almost immediately, and the youth of appropriate age were immediately drafted into the military.”
Petor was about to continue when Roman interrupted, his voice rose in irritation. “Anybody ever tell you that you talk too damn much?” Just about everyone in the chow hall, including the corporals, turned to look at the seated pair.
Petor sat back in his chair, a defeated look on his face. “Sorry,” he muttered. He looked down at his food and began to eat in silence.
Roman looked at his companion for a moment. He looked around and saw that they already had lost the crowd’s attention. “Look, man. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. It’s been a long month.”
Petor looked up, a small smile on his face. “It’s OK. I do have a tendency to talk too much. I apologize.” He resumed eating.
Roman felt a little better. It wasn’t his goal to upset anybody, but some people just don’t get it. “Well, sometimes the less you talk, the longer you live. It’s a pleasure to meet you, 711.” Roman extended his hand, which Petor readily accepted.
Petor turned his gaze to the ceiling for a moment, thinking hard about Roman’s statement. He looked Roman square in the eye. “Perhaps you’re right, 769. I’d like to live for a good long time, so maybe I should be quiet from time to time.”
Roman nodded. The two resumed their bland meal in silence.
The rest of the evening passed calmly as the recruits settled into their new life. Petor remained next to Roman most of the time, by his choice and by circumstance; they even were assigned spaces next to each other in the rows of cots laid out inside another old hangar. Roman didn’t mind Petor’s company, now that the man talked more quietly, chose his words a little better, and didn’t ramble on about things Roman did not care to hear. Roman actually started taking to the odd man.
After chow the battalion replaced their orange jumpsuits with military fatigues. Roman was surprised to see a rather attractive woman during uniform issue; he had thought all the prisoners were men. He tried to talk to her because everyone else seemed to ignore her for some reason. She had looked back at him with profound sorrow in her eyes and said nothing.
“Lights out in five!” a muscular corporal Roman overheard was named Henri shouted across the hangar bay. “Get your rest; tomorrow will be a lot worse for you!” Corporal Henri exited, leaving the hangar bay devoid of any training staff. Roman scanned the exits, looking for any sign of Henri or anyone else in authority. Petor sensed what he was doing.
“Don’t even think about escape. There is nowhere for you to go.”
Roman looked at Petor for a moment. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I don’t even know where we are,” Roman said.
Roman changed the subject and asked “What’s the deal with that girl over there?” He rose up from his bunk and subtly indicated with a nod of his head towards the end of the row of bunks the female he had tried to talk to earlier. She lay curled up in the fetal position, on a cot set off by itself.
Petor looked up and sighed as a hint of recognition washed over his face. He answered with a tinge of sadness in his voice. “I don’t know her name. She doesn’t speak. She came from a camp close by mine, for females only. I think she used to be in the military, but she deserted. They cut the tongues out of deserters. I cringe to think what else they may have done to her.” Petor looked away and began to polish his newly issued combat boots.
Roman noticed that he was doing a pretty bad job of it. “Look. Like this,” he said. He grabbed Petor’s boot and placed it between his legs. He wrapped a large strip of his old T-shirt around his index finger. He dipped it in a container of water and in the polish, so that wet polish covered his fingertip. He rubbed that fingertip in circles on the surface of the boot. As he demonstrated, he continued the conversation. “She may be useful to us if she was ex-military. We can use people around us who have fired weapons before.”
Seeing the boot begin to shine, Roman handed it back to Petor, along with the polish and strip of cloth. Petor nodded appreciatively, and tried his best to duplicate what he had just observed. “I think very few here are ex- military. Military men usually were executed on the spot for infractions, except for certain circumstances. You may not be able to rely on too many people here knowing what they’re doing.”
Roman grunted. “You’re probably right.”
“Lights out!” Corporal Henri yelled and hit a switch. The hangar bay lights slowly dimmed until total blackness enveloped the area.
Roman dreamed he was on a beach somewhere, perhaps one of the Philippine islands. While awake, he often fondly remembered the island of Bohol and the time he spent there with a beautiful Filipina while he was on leave during the war in Afghanistan. Now he dreamed he was lying in the sand on an island much like that one, in the sun, drinking an ice cold beer. Ah, ice cold beer …
“Get up, 769,” a voice hissed in his ear.
Roman slowly opened his eyes, his dream quickly fading into memory. He squinted as a bright flashlight shined in his eyes. Two soldiers stood over him, their faces invisible to him.
“Let’s go. Sarge wants to see you,” he heard from one of them. They each grabbed an arm and dragged him forcibly out of his cot. He struggled to keep his footing under the rough handling. It seemed to Roman that they were taking him toward a side door leading out of the hangar bay.
“Can I at least grab my pants?” he asked, still wearing his boxers.
Both soldiers laughed quietly. The one on the left snickered, “You may not need them for very long.”
They exited the hangar bay and walked through a serious of metal walled, brightly lit corridors. The air was humid, some the walls were slick with moisture. It reminded Roman of the time he stayed at the academy barracks when he first arrived on the planet. The soldiers finally released Roman, allowing him to stand up straight. The three of them stood in front of an unmarked door. One of the soldiers hit the call button next to a speaker by the frame of the door. A voice from the intercom responded, “You may go. Your presence is no longer required.”
“As you wish,” one of the soldiers responded. Both of them took a step back, turned, and went back around the corner of the nondescript, poorly lit hallway.
The slightly rusted metallic door slid open silently. Roman instantly recognized the sergeant he had met earlier in the day and winced slightly as he remembered the sting from her shock whip. “It’s OK, 769,” the sergeant said as she grabbed his I.D. tag, which hung on a chain around his neck. “I won’t bite.” Pulling at the tag, she led him by its chain into her quarters. The door closed silently behind them.
Roman tried not to stare, but he couldn’t avert his eyes. She still hadn’t made any attempt to hide any of her bionics. She had her boots off, and he could see that part of her right foot and three its toes were bionic. She wore a skin-tight black sleeveless shirt and shorts with the UCP logo visible. She had a very muscular body, albeit scarred and half machine.
“I can see that my appearance disturbs you,” she said. “Please, sit and have a drink.” She gestured toward a simple table and two chairs. A decanter of clear liquid sat in the middle of the table. She returned with two shot-sized glasses “It’s on the tip of your tongue. You may speak freely.”
Roman looked at her square in her good eye, avoiding the bionic eye. “OK. I want to know—just what the hell happened to you?”
She threw her head back, and her blonde hair, still damp from a recent washing, flew back and settled on the backs of her shoulders. She met his gaze. “I’m a by-product of war, I suppose. I stepped on a land mine and was shot several times during a battle in the early stages of the war. They patched me up and sent me back in. I was so lucky to be the beneficiary of modern medicine, don’t you think?” She threw her head back again and laughed. “I wished I was dead. I am an abomination hooked on pain
killers and rotgut.” She slowed down, thinking back to that day that destroyed her. “You should have seen me. I was quite a mess.” She watched Roman’s face to see that he caught the sarcasm. Her own face hardened for a moment. “Perhaps that moment of agony was my rebirth.”
“Perhaps.” Roman threw back a shot of the strong alcohol and winced as it burned the back of his throat. Instantly, a warm feeling washed over him. “So what can I do for you, Sergeant? Why was I brought here?”
The sergeant threw back her own shot and placed the glass on the table, rotating it in her fingers. “Off duty, you can call me Rima, on duty you will call me Sergeant,” she said. “I know who you are. You were a lieutenant with the police. And I know you are not of this world.”
“OK. You got me. So what?”
“‘So what is that the ISSB, or better yet the Shadow, thinks you are on an ore mine off world somewhere.” Seeing Roman flinch at that comment, she smiled. “Relax. Your friend Sebastian is a good friend of mine. He had you assigned here, and I agreed to watch over you until you ship back to your planet.”
Roman sat back in his metal chair. “I feel so much better now,” he noted sarcastically. “You know, my chest still burns from that damned whip of yours.”
Rima laughed again. “I had to make it look good, you know.” She poured another shot, and quickly downed it. She stood up, directly in front of Roman. “There are still certain parts of me that are human. Perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement while you are here in training.”
Roman smelled the strong odor of rubbing alcohol, or maybe it was the liquor. He wasn’t sure.
“Maybe you could throw the eye patch back on or something,” he suggested.
Rima smiled widely as she put her muscular arms around Roman’s neck. “You know, if I had my way, I would keep you around and not let you ship out.
Petor woke up at the sound of the corporals walking up and down the aisles, yelling and flipping random sleeping bodies out of their cots and onto the floor. Petor rubbed his eyes and glanced at his neighbor’s cot, relieved to see Roman back in it. He shook his head, feeling sorry for his new friend. Seeing Roman stir, he talked softly, in case Roman had a headache. “Are you OK?
“Uh.” Roman grunted as he raised himself to one elbow on the cot. His chest displayed several bruise marks in addition to the marks from the whip. “It appears they worked you over good last night,” he said. “I told you to keep quiet. They have ears everywhere. You talking about escape all the time, you had it coming.”
Roman attempted to sit up, but grabbed his back in wincing pain. He answered Petor, his tongue mildly thick from his hang over. “Yeah, you told me.” Thinking back to his time in sergeant Rima’s quarters earlier in the morning, he continued, “You would think I would keep my mouth shut.”
CHAPTER 39
“OK, lock and load, you maggots!” the sergeant yelled to the eight recruits under his command. The steady rain that had begun three days ago showed no sign of letting up. Roman, Petor, and Chana stood at the rear of the eight-man assault team. Chana was the lone woman in Roman and Petor’s platoon. Over the course of the last four weeks, Roman and Petor had tried to get better acquainted with her, and it seemed to have worked. Although she still did not talk, she displayed a thorough understanding of small unit tactics and unarmed combat. After the first week of training, she had stuck with Roman and Petor as much as she could. Recognizing natural team cohesion, their superiors often grouped them as a three person fire team. Today was no exception. It had helped that Roman suggested to Sergeant Rima, during one of their early morning “meetings,” that putting the three of them together would be beneficial for the battalion as a whole.
Each member of the assault team was armed with a standard-issue automatic rifle, ammunition, and frag grenades. The military administrators chose not to provide more technical and powerful equipment, such as EMRs, to a penal battalion. Its members presented potential danger, and they were expendable.
Sergeant Rima walked up to the assault team leader, a large, bald man named Lon, otherwise known as 800. The other two assault teams in the company separated and marched out of sight under their own leaders. Roman noticed out of the corner of his eye the captain who initially had taken charge on the first day of training. He appeared to be keeping his distance from the recruits and made no attempt to interfere with their training; Sergeant Rima and her staff of corporals had been left in charge. Roman also noticed that all of the regular military wore pistols, and the assault ranges used for training were ringed with automated gun turrets around the perimeter, no doubt to encourage discipline and discourage escape attempts. Their obvious placement needed no explanation from the training staff. The company had spent the past week learning the ins and outs of urban combat. With the exception of the steady rainfall and mud, Roman had found the training not unpleasant and fairly well done. It appeared to him that the penal battalion was being trained to defend itself and be a truly effective force, rather than just a bunch of expendable bodies to throw at the enemy. He found more evidence for that opinion when, beginning in the third week of training, the penal companies sometimes were intermingled with conscript companies.
“This is a live fire exercise!” Sergeant Rima shouted. “Watch your line of fire and do not kill your teammates! There are other friendly elements in close proximity. Enemy combatants are marked by robotic sentries. They will stun you if you get in their way, so make your shots count!” The sergeant made her way to the observation tower that dominated the vast expanse of the urban training grounds, joining other trainers in the massive tower, all of them watching their corresponding troops through binoculars.
The grounds themselves consisted of several high-rise residential and commercial buildings mocked up to look like the real thing. The robotic sentries randomly placed throughout added to the reality; they had a nasty habit of shooting back. Roman had found that out the hard way yesterday. When his weapon jammed and he was unable to eliminate one, it gave him a nasty shock to simulate a shooting. Corporal Henri had been the first to chime in on the radio inside Roman’s battle helmet. “Make your mistakes here, puke, because when you’re downrange, you don’t get a second chance!”
Roman checked his rifle once more. The digital shot counter read 45 indicating a full magazine. He turned around and checked Petor, who appeared to be OK, although his gear looked a little big on him. Roman checked Chana’s equipment quickly, and she looked squared away. She tugged on a couple of Roman’s ammo pouches, checking his equipment as well. She also slapped Petor on the shoulder after checking him over, both getting her seal of approval.
Roman heard Sergeant Rima’s voice on his helmet radio. “OK. 800, take out your team. Search and locate target. Target is a weapons cache that may be heavily guarded. Recover the cache and get to the extraction point, where you will rendezvous with 1st and 3rd assault teams.”
“Copy,” he replied, audible to everyone. He turned around and, with a quick forward flick of his hand, moved the squad out. His voice crackled over the radio again. “OK, we go silent from here on, since those robots seem to locate us through our helmet transmissions as well as by sight. They got us good yesterday. Watch my hand signals.”
800 led the rest of the squad, moving slowly and carefully watching the environment. Sporadic rifle fire and grenade blasts elsewhere on the training grounds indicated that other teams already had engaged. 800 moved slowly down one block, and dropped to one knee, holding his fist in the air. He turned and raised the face shield of his helmet, allowing the rain to cascade down his face. The others followed suit, raising their own face shields so that they could communicate without the radio.
“711, 769, and 777!” 800 hissed. Roman, Petor, and Chana quickly made their way to the front of the team.
“What?” Roman asked.
“I want you three to go east and conduct a sweep of those buildings,” 800 said. “I’ll send the rest of the team to the west. 1st and 3rd teams are
clearing buildings to our west. Head east one block and clear the buildings facing that street for one block north, from there come back west to this street to regroup. We will clear out this street together, and meet with the other teams.”
“What?” Roman hissed back. “Let’s just clear the buildings in a straight line. We may not last long if we split up.” Chana nodded her approval of Roman’s plan, while Petor nervously looked ahead.
“Damn it, 769, I am in charge! Just do it!” 800 closed his visor and indicated for his portion of the team to follow him. They moved west down the street, leaving Roman silently cursing him. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the man and apparently he had some previous military training, but he just didn’t seem to make the best decisions. The team usually lost more than half its strength when he was in charge of a mission. Only two members had survived the previous day’s exercise.
“OK,” Roman said his face shield still open, like those of his team members. They had anticipated that he would comment on 800’s orders. “We do what he says here. Let’s go. Close face shields, but turn up your external helmet amps and listen for anything out of the ordinary. Petor, watch the rooftops. Chana, you’ve got the rear.” Roman refrained from calling his friends by their numbers when they were alone. Without waiting for a reply, Roman set off to the east, preparing to enter the first building on the left.
Hearing nothing externally except thunder and rainfall, Roman stacked his team again the wall of the building. He tested the door sensor, and it opened the door. He brought his weapon up to face level and activated the holographic sight; a red “x” now was projected forward wherever he aimed. His helmet sensors aided his aim by automatically switching to infrared and night vision. Roman panned around the darkened room, which was mocked up as a diner. Roman activated his thermal sensor. Seeing nothing on any of his sensors, he entered cautiously, followed by Petor and Chana.
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