Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty

by Jean Johnson

  I knew the whole universe needed to be saved. One more body placed between zones of peace and danger doesn’t seem like a lot, it’s true, but when it’s one million and one . . . you can get a lot of things done. A soldier’s duty is to place his or her skills, weapons, body, and life between all that could harm and all that could be harmed. That was always the core of what I knew I needed to do . . . and I knew I needed to do a lot of it.

  ~Ia

  MARCH 6, 2490 T.S.

  It was easy to tell the natives from the recruits.

  The natives on the flight from Melbourne to Darwin either had briefcases for business or luggage for vacation. They also headed straight for the luggage carousel with the ease and speed of familiarity. The recruits spread out, milled around, and craned their necks, checking signs and peering at the caf’ shop, no doubt wondering if they had time for one more taste of civilized life before being subjected to a military diet.

  “Ey. Like th’ ’do.”

  Caught off guard, Ia blinked and looked at the young man who had moved up on her left. He sported three nose rings, grass green hair, and was dressed in skintight green fabric. Every centimeter of him was lean and muscular. He ran a tanned hand over his green locks and grinned at her.

  “Like th’ ’do, I do. Howja ge’ it white?”

  His accent was so thick, it took her a moment to understand what he meant. Lifting her hand, she touched her hair, which she had pulled back into a braid that morning. “My hair? It was already white when I was born.”

  “Swaggin’ ey!” Rocking back on his heels, the nose-ringed youth perused her from head to toe. “Choo ain’ albino. Choo got a tan, ’n neffrythin’. Born wi’ it, ey?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ey, Kumanei!” Turning, he waved at a young woman with purple and black hair, and a glitter of silver rings along the curve of each ear. “She says she was born wi’ it!”

  “That’s locosh’ta.” Sauntering over, the black-clad girl eyed Ia from head to toe. “You waitin’ for the Marines?”

  “Yes. Are you?” The moment she asked it, Ia saw this same young woman clad in battle camouflage, squirming her way through the underbrush of the Northern Territories. Her hair was cropped short, her light tan darkened with exposure to the sun, and she looked far more fierce than sultry, as she did right now. Ia didn’t want to see any more than that. If it wasn’t important to her task, she didn’t want to know. She knew too much as it was.

  “Tcha. It’s easier ’n diggin’ potatoes on some farm.” She whapped the green-clad man lightly on the arm with the back of her hand. “We’re stuck on th’ rehab bus.”

  “Perfect profile for militaristic rehabilitation,” he enunciated, then grinned again. “In other words, we got into one too many spots a’ trouble as kids, but we’s good sorts, so rather’n chain us t’ some ’tato patch, they gave us th’ choice a’ signin’ up . . . an’ th’ MAT innits infinite wisdom placed us ’ere. How ’bout choo?”

  “I volunteered.”

  “Ah. Nutcase. Them’s three types wha’ join up. Nutcases, poorboys, ’n rehabbers. Choo volunteered, ’n that makes fer a nutcase. Poorboys wanna get an education, onna Education Bill . . . an’ a’course you know ’bout th’ rehabbers like us.” He flicked his hand at the purple and black haired woman, then held it out. Ia shook it briefly while he introduced himself. “Glen Spyder, from New Lunnon. That’s one a’ th’ stations orbitin’ Jupiter. Born an’ bred there, but I been planet-side a few times. Got smacked down last time f’ high spirits, ’n they shipped me ’ere. This’s Akira Kumanei—we actually knew t’other, on th’ Nets.”

  She offered her hand as well. “Surprise, surprise. ’M from Tokyo Underside.”

  “Oh, man . . . you grew up in Tokyo Underside?” one of the others hanging around the luggage area asked. He was a tall, lanky, muscular blond. “I hear that’s a crazy place to live.”

  Kumanei shrugged. “It’s not so bad, since they put in the new atmo-processors. Well, nobody’s come down with Tuberc-73 in a while. You?”

  “Casey. Jason Casey, Adelaide.” He shook hands with the other two, then offered his hand to Ia. “You? Name and hometown?”

  “Ia. Our Blessed Mother.” At their blank looks, she allowed herself a small smile. “It’s the capital city of Sanctuary, which is an I.C. on the edge of Terran space.”

  More blank looks. Before they could ask what she was doing all the way out here on Earth, a voice cracked through the terminal. “Camp Nallibong Recruits, Class 7157! Front and center!”

  And so it begins. Nodding to the others, Ia headed for the source of that command, a somewhat short, heavily tanned man with grey-salted, fuzzy black hair and dark brown eyes. He looked like he was from somewhere in southeast Asia. She could have uncovered more, probed into his past via the timestreams, even discovered things about his family and his friends, but hadn’t bothered to. All that mattered was that she knew his name, his rank, and that he would be a very tough, demanding Drill Instructor for her training platoon. A good instructor. Ia didn’t want to know anything more, and didn’t have enough time to look.

  Stopping a few meters from him, she squared her shoulders and gave him her full attention. Step one. Survive Basic Training with distinction and honor.

  He quirked a brow at her, then scowled at the others. “I said front and center! That means line up you sorry slags of rejected refuse! My name is First Sergeant Tae. You will refer to me as Sergeant, or Sergeant Tae. You will not address me as ‘Sarge.’ I am a Drill Instructor, selected from the best of the best in the Marine Corps, and I am here to make you sorry civilians into soldiers, so get your heads out of your asteroids, and line up!”

  The others straggled into place, including one woman Ia would have sworn was a native civilian, since she was pulling an actual suitcase behind her, bumping it over the tiled floor on its caster wheels. She listened patiently while the sergeant berated the woman for “hauling so much junk” with her, and waited patiently some more while he nagged and commanded everyone to literally toe the line in the tiles, the same line she had stopped at.

  “. . . Now, when I tell you to, you will turn right, and march out that set of doors. There is a ground bus parked outside, and as I call out your names, you will stow yourselves and your gear on board in a fast and orderly fashion, filing from front to back. Right Face!”

  Ia snapped to her right. The others followed more or less on command. She was near the end of the line, with Kumanei in front of her and Casey behind. Once they had filed out the doors and lined up again in the shaded heat of afternoon, she waited patiently while he went through his list of forty-five names alphabetically. Even though they were in the shade, her long-sleeved blouse, lightweight but more suitable for the cool climate of a sub-orbital flight, added uncomfortably to the warmth of the day.

  Occasionally, Tae snapped orders for whomever it was to speak up louder when answering his roll call, otherwise he spoke crisply, but not loudly. When he got to her name, he hesitated.

  “. . . Ia?”

  “Here, Sergeant.” A step to her left put her outside the half-sized line. She made sure to speak just loudly enough to qualify as obeying orders as she turned to face him. No sense in shouting needlessly.

  “Ia. Just Ia? Where the slag is the rest of your name, Recruit?” he ordered, stepping up to her. He was seven centimeters shorter, and lifted his chin belligerently to look up at her. The brim of his camouflage brown hat almost brushed her forehead with the move.

  She didn’t flinch. “That is my entire name, Sergeant.”

  “What did you do with the rest of it, Recruit?” Sergeant Tae demanded. “Nobody has just one name.”

  “When I turned sixteen, I emancipated and legally changed it. My name, therefore, is Ia. Nothing less, and nothing more. Sergeant,” she added, doing her best not to flinch as he swayed a little closer.

  Studying her for a moment, he grunted and drew back. “You got any luggage, Recruit Ia?”

  �
��No, Sergeant. Just the clothes on my back.”

  “Good. Get on the bus. Kaimong, Wong Ta!”

  “Here, Sergeant!”

  Once inside the bus, Ia claimed the next empty seat, not wanting to sit right next to anyone. It was old, a relic that had seen better days, but the bucket seats still had their cushioning, even if the overlying fabric was worn and faded with age. It also smelled of dust, heat, and bodies beginning to sweat, given the door was open to the sun-broiled air.

  Kaimong took the seat across from her, rather than joining her. Ia didn’t mind. What she knew of him from her trips onto the timeplains, well, she didn’t see a point in making friends with him.

  When the last recruit—Georgi Zpiczeznenski, whose name gave their Drill Instructor fits of pronunciation until they all heard Georgi saying, “Look, just call me ZeeZee, Sarge, it’ll be easier,” and hearing Sergeant Tae ordering him to do ten push-ups for daring to shorten his title—had made his way onto their transport, the silent, brown-uniformed driver started up the engine.

  The only indication it had started was the slight shiver of the vehicle’s frame; hydrogenerator technology was quiet and efficient, its fuel cheap and ecologically friendly. The air vents made more sound than the engine did, hissing quietly as they worked to cool the ground bus. Sgt. Tae stepped inside, grabbed the handle on the back of the first seat, and nodded at the driver, who closed the door and pulled away from the curb.

  “Welcome aboard, Class 7157! Now that we’re all on board and underway, it is my sorry son of a duty to pound into your civilian heads the rules and regs of the Terran United Planets Space Force, Branch Marine Corps. Here are the very first things you sorry sons and daughters need to know: When I address you and ask you a yes or no question, you will respond by saying ‘Sergeant, yes, Sergeant!’ Or ‘Sergeant, no, Sergeant!’

  “You will preface all other answers to my questions by first saying my rank, which is ‘Sergeant,’ and finishing again with my title, which is ‘Sergeant.’ Not ‘sir.’ If you are asked a question by someone with a command rank, such, you will address them by their rank and title in a similar manner, such as ‘Lieutenant, yes, sir’ or ‘Captain, no, sir.’ Do I make myself clear?”

  “Sergeant, yes, Sergeant!” Ia snapped out. Hers was the strongest among a smattering of responses. Most of the others were neither loud nor clear. Only the voice of one of the recruits seated behind her, Bob Nedder, was as crisp as hers.

  It didn’t satisfy Sergeant Tae. “I cannot hear you! There are forty-five bodies on this bus, and I will hear each and every one of you. I said, is that clear?”

  “Sergeant, yes, Sergeant!”

  “. . . You will work on mastering the appropriate responses during your time in Basic Training. Rest assured, we will pound everything you need to know into your sorry, slagging, asteroidthick heads. You think you want to become soldiers, and your MAT scores suggest you might even make it as Marines . . . but we will see.” Sweeping his gaze across the recruits on the bus, Tae grunted. “Well. You are now on your way to Camp Nallibong. The edge of this particular TUPSF-MC training facility lies twenty kilometers from the nearest point of civilization. It will take us two hours to drive there. During those two hours, you will listen as I explain what will happen. There will be opportunities to ask questions, but I suggest you keep your mouths shut and your ears open.

  “The actual Camp comprises more than one thousand six hundred thirty-three square kilometers of Northern Territory bush,” he continued. “It includes bombing ranges, live combat ranges, and the Camp itself. This is some of the toughest, most inhospitable landscape on the Motherworld. It’s dry in the winter, but down here, it’s now summer, and it’ll be unbelievably hot and muggy, and very, very wet in certain parts of the Camp, particularly if we have a cyclone roll through. If you’re thinking of going walkabout—that is, wandering off without supervision—you can and probably will get into trouble.

  “Some of you are here because your psychological evaluations state that you’re good little boys and girls, but that you just need discipline in your lives to become actual citizens. If you think you’re gonna light out of here and go AWOL when no one’s looking, sentients still die every year when they head out into the bush in this corner of the world. Even if they’re prepared, or think they are. Not only is the terrain against you, but there are plenty of things that will slither, crawl, climb, and fly at you, intending to sting, bite, or otherwise eat you alive.”

  “Ey, ’zat mean somma th’ Salik are down ’ere lurkin’ inna bushes?” Spyder piped up from near the back of the bus.

  His joke fell flat. Sergeant Tae glared at him. Ia tried not to think about what he had just implied. She didn’t want to trigger the wrong future-echo.

  “The Salik,” their Drill Instructor enunciated carefully, his tone colder than the air blowing through the vents of the bus, “have been confined to their planets of origin and colonization for the last two hundred years. It is the job of the TUPSF-Navy and the TUPSF-Marine Corps, in conjunction with the other military forces of the Alliance, to see that they stay confined for at least two hundred more. If you survive being turned into a real Marine, one of these days you won’t find that possibility so funny anymore!

  “Now. The first thing we’re gonna do is register you. Since you pansy-soft civilians have all had your twenty-four-hour cooling period to reconsider, yet you are still here, it is my sorry son of a duty to make sure you go through with your Oaths of Service. When we arrive at the processing center, you will grab your gear, line up in alphabetical order, and march into building A-101 to be processed. You will divide up into five lines of nine people. You will step into the processing arches one at a time, where you will place your civilian wrist units into the receptacle to verify your identity, undertake the Oath of Service as prompted by the machinery, remove your civilian wrist unit, and replace it with your military-issued ident unit. However. While the Space Force doesn’t care which arm you wear your unit on in your civilian life, in your military life, you will wear it on your left arm at all times.

  “Once you have undertaken the Oath and been issued your military wrist unit, you will continue forward to the dispensary booths, where you will present your unit for scanning, and be issued your gear. The only civilian objects you are allowed to take with you are prescription medications authorized by military medical examinations performed during or directly after your Military Aptitude Tests, education transcripts, marriage, divorce, custody, or child support documentation, a small vidframe with its internal maximum of memory allotment, and no jewelry beyond wedding rings. Be advised that the Marine Corps reserves the right to review and censor inappropriate vidchip materials.

  “Which brings me to my next happy little lecture,” Sgt. Tae drawled, baring his teeth in an approximation of a smile. “This is a mixed-gender Camp. There will be zero sexual fraternization with anyone while you are Recruits here at SF-MC Camp Nallibong. You will be quartered together, train together, eat together, and even shower together, but the closest you will sleep with each other is sharing the same bunkhouse and the same tent when on maneuvers. If you’re lucky enough to get a tent, and when you’re lucky enough to sleep.

  “Each of the meioa-es will undergo a medical evaluation during your Oath of Service to ensure that you are not pregnant, and all of you, meioa-es and meioa-os, will be administered quarterly beecee shots to ensure such things will not happen. Your training will be difficult enough without adding the stress of accidental procreation on top of everything else.

  “The modern military, in its infinite wisdom, has declared rape to be one of its Fifty Fatalities. If you are lucky, you will receive a court-martial, cross-examination under telepathic truth-testing, and fifteen strokes of the cane for raping a fellow soldier. If you are stupid, you may end up facing thirty strokes or more, followed by incarceration in a military penal colony. Particularly if your victim is a superior officer, a civilian, or—God forefend—someone underage. You will
therefore learn and memorize this and the other Forty-Nine Fatalities during the first three days of your instruction. There are plenty of other, lesser rules and regs that you might stumble over and break if you don’t pay attention and keep your slagging noses clean, but you do not ever want to cross one of the Fifty Fatalities.

  “Now. Are there any questions so far?”

  A few hands rose tentatively. Their owners were told sharply, “You’re in the Marines now, Recruit!” and ordered to raise their hands firmly. Ia listened with as much patience as she could muster. These were things she had heard before, skimming through her potential futures over and over while preparing for what she had to do. Now that she was finally here, Ia just wanted the bus to move faster. Not for time to go any faster—time wasn’t something she had in surplus—but for the bus to go faster, the lectures to be shorter, and the events to move quicker.

  So. I get into Camp Nallibong, and become the best soldier I can be. Better than expected of me. Graduate from Basic Training with a good, solid reputation so that I’ll be placed into the right Company. Work my way up the ranks in that Company so that I can be field promoted at the right moment in time. And keep my mouth shut on everything I know, for as long as possible . . .

  By the time they rolled to a stop in front of building A-101, they had been given a brief rundown of all Fifty Fatalities, a list of what penalties and fines would be levied if they chose to quit at any point during their Basic Training and their mandatory three years of service in the military, the information that, once sworn in, they would have to refer to themselves in third person unless and until they were given permission otherwise, “. . . as a means of breaking down any pointless self-centeredness you may think you still need to cling to,” and an outline of how their days would go.