by Jean Johnson
Mendez accepted the patch, then hesitated and looked at Ia, who had dropped to the floor. Over her steady counting of her demerits, she heard him ask, “Sergeant . . . does this new squad leader have to do the same forty push-ups of Recruit Ia’s demerits, Sergeant?”
It was a fair question; all of the current squad leaders had undergone similar extended punishments.
“No. Not this time. From now on, fancy-pants Recruit Ia rises or falls on her own. But you will still have to undergo the same punishments as anyone else in your squad in the future, should they be so foolish as to earn demerit punishments, too. You will learn how to evoke discipline and obedience in your fellow recruits. One way or another. Speaking of which, it’s about time for the rest of you squad leaders to have a change in status . . . though you don’t have to do any push-ups.”
By the time Ia finished counting firmly to forty, all of the squad leader boot chevrons had been reassigned. The thunderstorm in the distance was drifting closer, too, though it was still many kilometers off. Only the occasional flash of lightning let them know a storm was taking place at all; the clouds were still too far away for the accompanying thunder to be heard.
Righting herself, she rubbed at her sore arms around the bulk of the tile-weighted straps webbing her limbs, then accepted the stunner rifle Kumanei passed her way. It didn’t take her long to walk to the far end of A Squad. Without immersing herself quite so deeply in the timestreams, Ia probed the near future as she walked. She didn’t want to be caught off guard by whatever Kaimong was about to do.
A stunner rifle clattered to the ground. Tae rounded on the fumble-fingered Kaimong, berating him for dropping his weapon and assigning him fifteen push-ups. Ia caught Kaimong’s glare only because she was watching carefully. It was aimed at Tae’s back as the Drill Instructor moved on to the next recruit in the line, making sure she could name all the parts of the rifle in her hands.
I hate this part, Ia thought, checking over her own rifle to re-familiarize herself with the things she had learned precognitively over the last three years. I hate the waiting, and I hate the fact that I cannot tell anyone what’s about to happen. That would expose me. And if I tried to ask Tae to go easy on Kaimong, he’ll go even harder on both of us.
I have no control over how much hatred is building up inside of my fellow recruit . . . and I hate that. I hate that I won’t be able to stop him. Not without drawing too many questions.
Her life was a damned tightrope walk. Damned if she didn’t walk it, and damned if she did and then slipped. It didn’t matter to which side; the fall would be deadly to far too many for her conscience to bear.
Fall away, Kaimong, she thought, wincing a little as Tae heaped more abuse on him for being too slow. My only comfort is, all of this is for a good cause. I’m sorry I can’t tell you that it is worthwhile, or how, or why.
They practiced ratcheting the nozzle wider and narrower, dialing up the settings and dialing them back down, adjusting the positions of their hands for the grips and the fit of the stocks to their shoulders. They practiced field-stripping it for cleaning and maintenance, spreading out and sitting on the ground “to simulate real-world conditions” and putting it back together again. Some of the recruits were berated and assigned demerit exercises for doing things wrong, then shown how to do them the right way. Then they all stood up again and spread out to practice dry-firing the weapons.
The supply sergeant, introduced as Buck Sergeant Johannez, went from recruit to recruit, the same as Tae, offering tips and adjusting stances as they lined up along the firing range, with its holographic targeting arches, and practiced aiming down the barrels. Since the 40-MA had a limited range and a wide firing range, the rifles didn’t have targeting scopes, but they were told to practice sighting down the somewhat bulky weapons anyway. The wind had gone back to gusting, making it a little harder to sight along the barrels in the face of the occasional speck of grit, but they persevered.
Ia spent slightly more than half of her attention on matching her actions to her memories of future stunner rifle use, and on pre-echoing her movements by skimming the timestreams just a few seconds ahead of what she was actually doing. She kept an eye and an ear out for the sergeants, not wanting to get caught timeplains woolgathering again, but practiced dipping into the waters of the near future all the same.
This was something that precognitive psis in the Special Forces did not do; accurate precogs were considered too important to risk in a combat situation. Unfortunately, that left very few of them capable of concentrating in chaotic conditions, where split-second choices could mean the difference between life or death for dozens, even thousands of lives. It was something she herself had tried to simulate with her brothers, but which she knew had to be tested and practiced under actual combat conditions. In the future, too many lives would depend on her ability to concentrate, and . . .
And anticipate problems. Tae ordered them to gather around the supply sled and accept the e-clips being handed out. She sensed Kaimong’s decision just three seconds before he actually decided it. Though she couldn’t see him palming the e-clip as he helpfully assisted Sergeant Johannez, she knew it was done. She didn’t hear him slotting it in place, and the faint whine of the weapon charging wasn’t audible over the chatter of the others cracking jokes and making comments about finally getting the chance to shoot at something.
From warning to theft to loading and charging was at most maybe ten seconds. Just enough time for her to step behind some of the others, placing several bodies between her and the angriest member of E Squad.
With the cone of his rifle ratcheted wide and the dial turned to maximum, Kaimong whirled and shot Sergeant Tae, then spun back and shot Sergeant Johannez and half of his fellow recruits. He fired again, zzzzzt-spraying men and women who were only just that moment realizing something was happening.
Ia dropped to the ground, rolling her spine as a good Sanctuarian should. Not that the lightworld gravity was a problem, but the tiles of her weight suit did leave bruises. Eyes closed, body slumped as limply as she could fake, she listened to the sound-sting of the stunner rifle firing a few times more. Dangling her mental fingers in his timestream, she looked for the coming impulse in his thoughts.
V’shakk this . . . I’m going to blow their slagging heads off!
Now. Straining her mind, since this was not one of her strongest gifts, Ia inserted a thought into his head.
Wait—no, if I did that, Ia coaxed, matching her thought-tone to his, they’d never stop hunting me. Just stun ’em a few more times at max power. That’ll keep ’em off my back long enough to get away . . .
. . . Heh. Yeah, he thought next on his own, I’ll just pretend this is one of those fancy High Explosive bullets.
Relieved that it worked, Ia relaxed further, though she kept part of her attention on the pre-echoes of his impending thoughts.
Zzzzzzt! . . . Zzzzt . . . Methodically, she heard him zapping the whole group several times over, including herself before he finally stopped. Even when he fired at her point-blank, all she felt was a tickle of energy and a lingering little buzz. Like chugging a cooled mug of caf’ in one go.
“Shakk this,” she heard Kaimong mutter out loud. She also heard something small but hard hitting the ground, and knew he had removed his military wrist unit. Removing the easiest thing pursuers could use to track him. “Shakk all of this! Aloha, you wastetards!”
His boots crunched across the trampled ground. Ia stayed where she was, as motionless on the outside as the others. Inside, she dipped deeper into the timestreams, looking for the possible outcomes of his AWOL attempt, and the most probable results if she just let him go, or tried any of several things to stop him.
One of the possibilities caught her attention. Not because it was the right thing to do—it was—but because of the consequences it would have on the near future. This . . . I need to do this. This is what makes the right path run deeper and stronger for me.
Cracking o
pen her eyes, she cautiously checked what she could see of her surroundings, and permitted herself a tiny smile. Drawing in a deep breath, Ia sat up, worked a kink out of her neck from the fall, then started unsnapping her weight suit. Given the direction Kaimong had chosen versus the angle she had placed herself, if he tried looking back this way through the scope of one of his stolen rifles, he would only see the range targets, the fallen bodies, and the sled, the bulk of which hid her position.
Still, she took her time, readying herself for pursuit. She borrowed some of the water from Mendez’s canteen since he, too, was close enough to be hidden by the bulk of the hover sled, filling hers to the brim, then carefully checked the timeplains to make sure it was safe for her to move away from her source of cover.
Yes . . . he’s deep enough in the bush now, he’s no longer looking back through the scope on his laser rifle to see if he’s being pursued. Good. Now I can hunt him down.
Checking her stunner rifle to make sure her fall hadn’t damaged it, she grabbed one of the e-clips which hadn’t made it to her end of the group before Kaimong had made his move. As ready as she could be, Ia flipped up the panel hiding the comm unit on her ident and punched in the code for the emergency channel.
“This is Recruit Ia, Class 7157, out on the basic targeting range. Recruit Wong Ta Kaimong has stunned the rest of my class and taken himself and several weapons into the bush. I repeat, Recruit Wong Ta Kaimong, Class 7157 is AWOL, armed, and in the bush.”
The screen on the inside of the lid flicked to light, showing a frowning man in camouflage Browns, the black and white lettered badge of the MPs, Military Peacekeepers, visible above the brim of his cap. “Repeat that, Recruit . . . Ia, is it?”
“This is Recruit Ia, Sergeant. Recruit Wong Ta Kaimong, Class 7157, loaded an unrestricted e-clip into his 40-MA without orders, and fired it at everyone out here on the basic firing range. He stunned the entire training class, Sergeant, the instructors included,” Ia explained. She grabbed at the brim of her hat with her free hand as another gust of wind whipped across the range. “From what I can tell, he took the HK-70 and the JL-39. I don’t know if he took his 40-MA, but I do know at least those two weapons are missing, along with what looks like a couple of the c- and e-clips, though I can’t tell for sure which ones, just yet.”
The sergeant on the other end of the comm link glanced to the side. “The security grid is showing his location is at the training grounds, Recruit. If this is a crank call . . .”
“Sergeant, he took off his ident unit.” Crossing the ground, she picked up the abandoned curve of brown plexi and held it up to her screen pickups long enough to show the serial number stamped along the outer edge by the hinge. “Recruit Kaimong discarded his unit, the Heck and the Jelly are missing, and according to my chrono, he’s been gone for at least twenty minutes now, Sergeant.”
“You say he stunned your Class. Why isn’t your DI reporting this incident, if you’re awake?”
She didn’t bother to explain about her Sanctuarian resistance. They didn’t need to waste time arguing about it right now. “I was behind several others when he attacked, and I only got a partial shot. Sergeant Tae and the rest are still out cold. I think Recruit Kaimong gave them a full dose. Look, the storm is kicking up, but it’s still hot enough to mask his heat signature from easy spotting, if you don’t know which way he went. The wind will also blow over all the traces he’s making in the bush if we don’t hurry, and any rainfall will wash out the rest. I’m a second-gen firstworlder, Sergeant. I can track him, and you can track me.
“By now, he’s probably a klick and a half into the bush,” she added. “I can at least get you a head start on narrowing down which way he went, Sergeant. Requesting permission to track Recruit Kaimong on foot.”
“Second-gen firstworlder, you said?” the sergeant asked her.
“Sergeant, yes, Sergeant. Third best in my survival classes.”
He leaned out of range of the pickups for a moment, then came back. “Permission granted, Recruit. Just make sure you don’t go AWOL. We’ll follow with air support as soon as we can get a team lifted—and keep your comm active!”
“Understood, Sergeant. I’m on my way.”
Dropping the discarded plexi bracelet, Ia launched herself in the direction Kaimong had fled. Heavyworlder muscles flexing freely, no longer burdened by the mass of her weight suit, she cleared the west half of the firing range in a scant handful of seconds. The bare grass bordering the firing range passed by as a green blur in just a few seconds more.
Eyes fixed firmly on both the terrain and the future, Ia dove into the rough, tangled foliage of the Australian bush.
CHAPTER 6
Prior to the reform movements, which took place shortly before the inception of the Terran Space Force, discipline in the various military structures scattered across the preunification nations had slowly deteriorated to the point of being inadequate at best, and counterproductive at worst. After the TUPSF’s inception, in order to meet the pressing need for massive enlistments which the Salik War required, it was reluctantly decided to instigate corporal punishments as a means of keeping so many recruits carefully in line. There literally were times where there weren’t enough cadre to properly oversee discipline among the new recruits by using just the usual methods from the previous military systems.
To the surprise of almost everyone—except for perhaps the most learned and philosophical of military historians, who remembered the ways of the ancient Prussians—corporal discipline was actually instrumental in shaping the Terran United Planets Space Force into the toughest, most highly effective fighting force the Interstellar Alliance had ever seen. To this day, it is mandatory for all new Space Force Recruits to see at least one administration of corporal discipline as punishment for unlawful conduct before their particular Class can officially graduate. Even if the convicted soldier must be shipped all the way across the known galaxy to a particular training Camp, they are required to witness it—but then again, with literally two billion people enlisted in the Space Force, there are unfortunately enough idiots breaking the rules and regs every day, and breaking them badly enough to supply enough examples.
For myself and my Marine classmates, we witnessed an incident which didn’t have to be shipped anywhere. It happened right there at Camp Nallibong, Australia Province, at the start of our third week of training.
~Ia
Kaimong managed to get farther through the bush than Ia would have expected, if she hadn’t had that brush with precognitive knowledge on her side. He had also drifted a bit to the north, and had stumbled upon a ravine sloping down toward the swamp flats to the north and west. And he had discovered the laser rifle had a calorie restrictor on it.
She found the proof of it at the bottom of the ravine, where rainwater seeping through the local limestone rocks had collected into the beginnings of a pool-fed stream. The skin of the saltwater crocodile’s head had been scorched in several hastily applied lines before he had apparently switched weapons and shot it with a HE cartridge, blowing chunks out of the animal’s side.
He hadn’t discarded the rifle, though. That worried her. Unless she wanted to take the time to submerse herself in the past through her somewhat weaker postcognitive gift, she didn’t know if it was because he feared someone finding the gun and realizing they were on the right course to track him down, or if he just wanted to carry it along until he could find and break the restrictor so that he could use the rifle fully—on who or what, she didn’t know, and didn’t want to know.
The uncertainty of just how dangerous he really was warred with her trust in the timestreams. There was a chance she could get shot and injured, particularly since he probably still had the clip of High Explosives loaded in his projectile rifle. She probably could avoid his attacks; Ia had trained in jungles just as thick as this one back home, albeit in a more temperate setting than this near-tropical climate.
A faint humming sound echoed down through the ravine
behind her, barely audible over the rustling of the windblown leaves. In the same moment, her precognition twinged. It didn’t drop her into the timestreams, but it did warn her that the hovercamera now buzzing over the dead saltie, examining its unnatural wounds, had just been spotted by their mutual quarry somewhere up ahead.
A moment later, the humming grew louder. Sinking onto her heels to further hide herself in the bush, Ia waited for the camera. It swooped into view, circled around in front of her, and flicked on its vidscreen. The same sergeant from before appeared on the small rectangle, along with a projection of his voice.
“Good job, Recruit Ia. Looks like you’ve found his work. Other cameras are converging on your coordinates, and hovercars are en route. We’ll take—”
“Shhh!” Snapping her gaze to the side, she peered cautiously around the hovering machine, then pulled back. “Something moved,” she whispered. Lifting two fingers into the camera’s view, she flicked them to the side, then out to the north. “Take it west about twenty meters, then scout ahead to the north.”
The man on the screen eyed her dubiously. She kept her gaze ahead, crouching a little lower and peering more to the side. Lifting the remote-controlled craft, he guided it up over her and to her left, zooming out the requested distance. Waiting just a moment or two more, Ia started crawling through the underbrush, moving as quickly but quietly as she could manage.
Half a minute later, gunfire broke the storm-rustled forest with a pop pop BANG BANG pop BANG. It was followed by the sound of something heavy crashing to the ground. Grinning to herself, she scuttled forward. Two more hovercameras swooped down out of the sky, circling around the wreckage of the first one before darting forward, looking for their quarry.