by Jean Johnson
Enough! Grabbing and twisting, Ia flung the other woman to the ground. Takna oofed at the thudding impact.
“Hold! Recruit Ia!” Linley snapped, outrage sharpening her already hard voice. “Did you just attack a superior officer?”
Ignoring the recruits and soldiers twisting to look her way, Ia locked Takna’s arm with her own and planted her knee on the other woman’s thigh, using an Afaso hold that ensured the sergeant couldn’t get up without hurting herself. It was also a hold that brought the two of their heads close together. Aware of the hovercameras orienting on her position, closing in to record everything in greater detail, she addressed the woman on the ground in a murmur meant just for the two of them. The scanners on the cameras would pick up her words, of course, but hopefully the other recruits would not.
“You just touched me in a manner which could be misconstrued as Fatality Number Fifty, Sergeant. My reaction may not have been unprovoked.” The other woman blinked, eyes wide. Ia released her, shifting off her thigh. She even offered the other woman her hand. Takna accepted it, letting Ia haul her back to her feet. Ia pulled the other woman close as she did so, speaking just enough for the stunned sergeant’s ears alone. “If you value your career . . .”
“Recruit Ia! I asked you a question!” Striding through the other squads, Linley stopped in front of the two of them. “Sergeant Takna, do you wish to press charges against—”
“No, Sergeant,” Takna quickly denied. “Nothing happened, Sergeant Linley. On either side.”
Linley frowned, but backed off. She turned and strode back to the front of the clearing they were exercising in, passing the rows of idle, curious recruits. “Fall in!”
Ia snapped her shoulders back, eyes forward and limbs straight, At Attention along with the rest.
“Now, as I was saying about your future career,” Takna stated as her colleague ordered everyone back into doing jumping jacks.
Ia snapped her gaze to the other woman even as she jumped, swinging her arms and legs open and closed. “As I was about to say regarding your career, Sergeant . . . since your time and effort are so valuable, perhaps you should go help someone else?”
“Windmills!—Right Face! Left Face!”
It took the sergeant a moment to catch her meaning. If you value your career . . .
“Jog in place—get those knees up!”
Without another word, Takna turned away and made her way through the recruits jogging in place.
Ia jogged right along with them, returning her attention to their Regimen Trainer.
Off to the side, she watched a panting, flush-faced Kumanei stumble, stagger, then stop. Heaving breaths, the other woman rested her palms on her knees. Takna reversed course, approaching from her right side, while another of the sergeant-observers approached from the left. Kumanei answered their quiet inquiries while Ia dropped to the ground and did unassisted sit-ups, before being ordered to flip over.
As she did so, she caught a glimpse of Kumanei, hands atop her head, making her way off to the side. Fifteen down. Twenty-nine to go. Everyone had made it through the first day, but after less than three hours of sleep, some had faltered late on the second. More had dropped out today.
“Squad D! Start off the sound-off of the Fifty Fatalities, counting backwards from Fifty!” Linley ordered. “Bellies up! Stomach-crunches!”
Ia flopped onto her tile-wrapped back and brought her knees and elbows together in alternating efforts. She listened absently to the Fatalities being recited in reverse by those who were left in Squad D, which would be followed by Squad E, and then her own. Twenty-nine more to go. And the near future is so foggy right now . . . not yet from lack of sleep, just from too many possibilities. I think. I can’t really tell.
Lackland flubbed his Fatality. He wasn’t just one off, he was three off, and mangled even that one, in his attempt to recite it. Muttering to himself, he climbed to his feet, placed his hands on his head, and staggered off where the sergeants had taken Kumanei to await a ride to the next camp. The next recruit in his squad quickly recited his assigned number correctly, moving the impromptu quiz further down the line.
Twenty-eight more to go. All I can do is my best. I must not fail.
“Slag, Ia.” Arstoll slurped at the water in his canteen. “I’m just about ready to quit, and you’re still going?”
“Shhh,” Ia whispered, sweeping her arms slowly in the grand, scooping Wheel of Fire. Twisting, she leaned from one foot to the other, stretching out her legs, elbows arching up into the position the V’Dan martial artists called Yearning Birds. “I’m sleeping . . .”
“Sleeping? That’s a new word for it. You’re standing out here in the hot sun without a shirt!” Mendez protested. “Yet you tell me you’re sleeping. Have you gone past the horizon, meioa-e?”
She didn’t respond. He and Arstoll were the only others to survive this long into Hell Week beside herself. Recruits Q’iang and the surprisingly wiry Spyder had dropped out this morning from the simple fault of not being able to wake up on time. For all she knew, they were still sleeping, hauled bodily onto the bus by their Hell Week instructors so they could be hauled back off again to join their fellow recruits in remedial training.
“I think the sun got to her,” she heard Arstoll mutter.
Hardly. The burning heat of the sun penetrated her skin with less danger than it would have seared Mendez’s darker hide. Her paternal legacy allowed the bright noonday light to energize her, rather than traumatize her. If she chose. Right now, she did. It was the only way to get back more energy than food alone, since rest was in short supply. None of the three of them had enjoyed more than a single hour of continuous sleep, and no more than eight hours total in the last five grueling days.
The slow, stately moves of the Third Air Dance soothed her weary mind. Ia couldn’t see anything of her own future anymore; her own timestream was a great and frightening blank wall. Not as vast nor as terrifying as the wall that would come for their galaxy, but frightening enough on its own.
Moving kept her tired mind busy. It took effort to remember the martial form, effort to push her weight suitless body slowly yet smoothly through each pose. Not busy enough, though. Mendez’s words echoed in her thoughts. Have I gone past the horizon? Have I?
It hurt to move. It hurt to think. It hurt even to feel. Why am I here? Why am I hurting my body? Why am I pushing my self, my soul?
The golden glow of late afternoon turned a sickly amber, pushing bodies up out of the ground. Dead bodies. Seared bodies. Scorched, frozen, bloated, stripped, mutilated bodies. Eyes wide, she saw nothing but bodies and barren, lifeless dirt.
Squeezing her eyelids shut, Ia barricaded herself against the image. I am here to serve. I am here to prevent this massacre. I am here to stop this hell!
I have pledged my life, my sanity . . . to stop this . . .
A thread of a tune came to her, weaving its way through the desolation pressing in around her. It was an old, old melody her mother liked to hum whenever she was doing some necessary chore. Not always an enjoyable chore, but a necessary one. As an innocent little girl, Ia had happily learned the song in its original Old Earth Bulgarian, singing the pretty little melody over and over without a care in the world, until her Grandpa Quentin had taught her the true meaning of the song, how it was about the impermanence of life.
About death, and what that really meant.
She remembered crying herself to sleep, and the dreams that had followed. The melody had followed her into those dreams, too. Upon waking, she had run to her grandfather’s home, still upset, and demanded to know how to stop the bad thing called death. A practical man, Grandpa Quentin had told her that all things would eventually die, but the only way to stop a premature death was to be careful, to be watchful and mindful and aware. And most importantly, be watchful and mindful not only of oneself, but of others and their needs.
The original lyrics had shifted and changed with that, wrapping themselves around her young mind
like a shield. Over and over, the young Iantha had woven the new words around her psyche. She had even whispered them in his native tongue the day her family laid him in his grave after a bad fall had crushed his skull, convinced that if she had only been there, she could have prevented it.
That wish, that belief, had saved her crumbling sanity at the age of fifteen.
Now, as an adult, Ia shielded herself once again with the simple, short, repetitive melody, warding off the nightmares seeping into her mind. A scrap of caution kept her from singing them in Terranglo, but she could sing them in V’Dan, the language of the other Human empire. Since Terranglo was the official trade tongue these days, few people in the Terran United Planets bothered to learn V’Dan.
“Ma gla gieza vu-oul lo ma’a alkul, olnie Eltu ma’a tieh . . . Ma gla gieza vu-oul lo ma’a alkul, olnie Eltu ma’a tieh.” With each repetition, she strengthened her voice, pushing back the sepia-drenched bodies with white mental light and pure, ululating sound. “Ma gla gieza vu-oul lo ma’a alkul, olnie Eltu ma’a tieh! Ma gla gieza vu-oul lo ma’a alkul, olnie Eltu ma’a tieh!”
“What the hell are you singing, Recruit?”
She jolted back to reality. It hurt to wake up fully. Eyes blurring, throat sore from not having sung in months, Ia found herself staring down at Sergeant Tae, who stood just a few inches away.
“What do you mean by singing ‘. . . though hell itself should bar my way,’ huh? You think this is hell?” he demanded. “Do you?”
She hadn’t known he knew enough V’Dan to interpret her words on the spot. “Sergeant, no, Sergeant!”
“You’re supposed to be resting, Recruit, not standing half-naked in the hot sun, singing some silly little mantra! I wanna see you drinking a full liter right now!” he ordered, snapping his baton in the direction of her gear, then followed her when she obediently moved.
She avoided Arstoll’s stunned look, crossing over to where her shirt, weight suit, and backpack lay in a tidy pile on the ground, stripped off and set aside for the duration of their half hour of allotted rest. Picking up her canteen, she drank from it, then dug out a handkerchief and wetted it. Pushing up her sunglasses, she lifted it to her face. A hand blocked her wrist before it reached her cheeks.
The hand belonged to Sgt. Tae. “Are those tears on your face, Recruit?”
Tae gave Ia room to her scrub her face clean of dust, sweat, and other things. He stayed at her side as she moved into the shade, his dark brown eyes fixed on her lighter ones. “I don’t get you, Recruit Ia. We throw enough shova at you to choke a Battle Platform’s lifesupport filters, and you take it without flinching. But a silly little song makes you cry?”
“What I want to know,” Linley offered as she reached his side, “is why she’s here in the Corps with a voice like that. I haven’t heard anything that good since my last trip to Sydney. Why are you really here, Recruit?”
Acutely aware that the DoI observer, Sergeant Chong, was also listening for her answer, that the hovercameras were recording her every word, Ia wiped down her neck and onto her chest, scrubbing at her skin around the straps of her sweat-streaked athletics bra. “I am here, Sergeants, because I am far more useful here than I would be anywhere else. I like being useful. Now, if you have any problems comprehending that . . . I apologize for any tactlessness, given how tired I am, but I respectfully suggest you recheck the reasons behind your own military careers. If you cannot comprehend that. Sergeants.”
Taking her canteen to the water pipe stationed by the latrine building for this designated rest-area, she drank its remaining contents to make sure she stayed hydrated, then filled it to the brim and drank again. The water tasted bitter, but only because it was flavored with her own disappointment.
I will never have the career I wanted as a child. All of my dreams drowned and died in the god-damned timestreams three years ago.
With sparse, tight movements, she refilled the canteen, then marched back to her gear and shrugged back into her shirt. As tired as she was, she had to be ready to move when they ordered her back into action. Her head ached from lack of sleep, her body winced at the thought of strapping on the weight suit, and her eyes burned from her brief bout of useless tears.
All I have left are the nightmares, and the slim chance I can help save the universe. A glance at her trainers showed them conferring among themselves in a huddle. She sensed instinctively that the time to move along was almost here. Sorry, Sergeants. Compared to the destruction of every world, every race, every thing in our galaxy, this Hell Week of yours is nothing. A mosquito-sting to a gaping gut-wound. This is not hell. This is the only road out of hell.
I will not stop.
“Come on, you slagging slackard! Can’t you do one measly push-up right?”
“You can quit any time you want, you know.”
“Next up is the zip line, Recruit Ia. You think those trembling limbs of yours can hold on to the clip as you slide down? Or are you going to land in the bushes, or the water if you’re lucky? Or maybe in the gaping jaws of a saltie—would you like that? Snap-snap?”
“I can’t hear you counting to ten, Recruit! Start over from one!”
“Just put your hands on your heads and surrender; you’ve already gone farther than the rest of your classmates . . .”
“She’s right; you don’t have to go any farther if you don’t want to . . .”
“She’ll quit. She’s weak.”
“Back straight, Recruit!”
“. . . Time!”
“Enough. Enough!” Sgt. Tae barked, cutting through the sudden silence. “Recruit Ia, on your feet! Fall in!”
Shaking with weariness, Ia pushed herself slowly upright. Her weight suit felt as if it weighed four times as much as it should; just balancing herself was difficult. Blinking, she focused on the shorter man waiting patiently in front of her.
Seven days of too much exercise on too little sleep had dulled her wits. She fought to focus on why he had stopped everything. The pattern should have been another . . . twenty or so minutes of regimen training, and then . . . the zip line back down from the upland zone to the salt-flats, a long metal cable strung from the topmost cliff to the depths of a ravine not too unlike the one she had jumped into weeks ago, in her pursuit of Kaimong.
“About Face, Recruit! March yourself to the ground bus!” Tae ordered her.
“The General was right,” she heard one of the other sergeants whisper. “If we had a hundred like her . . .”
Slowly, wearily, the corners of her mouth curved up. Even her facial muscled protested at having to move, but Ia couldn’t resist the urge to smile. That’s what “time” meant . . . It’s the end of the seven days. I won.
I won.
Smug satisfaction gave her a tiny bit of energy. Enough to lift an arm high enough to tug off her front-brimmed cap, allowing the heat of the sun to fall on her white-fuzzed head, restoring her sapped energies just a little bit more. A tiny trickle, barely enough to allow her a deeper breath, but a trickle was enough. For now.
“Stow your kitbag and get on the bus, Recruit,” Tae ordered her.
Grateful to be rid of the pack’s weight, she shrugged out of it, and tucked it under the bus. Above the storage space, at the edge of her tired vision, she could see the faces of her fellow recruits pressed to the plexi windows. She smiled even more. While the timestreams were still closed to her—assuming she had the energy to reach for them—she didn’t have to be psychic to know she had impressed them. Turning to head for the door, she found herself blocked by Tae’s baton.
“Why are you smiling, Recruit?”
Tired but pleased, Ia smirked. It wasn’t much of one, since she didn’t have a lot of strength left, but she let herself smirk. “I won.”
Two seconds later, she finally registered his suddenly fierce scowl. Losing her smile, Ia edged around him, heading for the front door of the bus. The blood draining from her face combined badly with her exhaustion, leaving her dizzy. Oh, shakk. Maybe . . . I sh
ouldn’t have said that?
“Where do you think you’re going, Recruit?”
Confused, she turned back to face him, gesturing over her shoulder. “Onto the bus, Sergeant. As ordered.”
“Well, guess what? I changed my mind. Follow me!” he barked.
Bemused, Ia followed. He didn’t lead her far, just to the front of the ground bus. Unclipping the tow line from the winch frame, Tae played out about two meters, locked it in place, and re-clipped the end to the frame again. Lifting the loop of cable in his hand, he faced her.
“Congratulations, Recruit Ia. For that little piece of sass, you will tow this bus all the way back to the barracks!”
Eyah. I shouldn’t have said that.
Too tired to grimace, Ia looked at the cable in his hands, then reached for the patch pocket on her trousers that contained her rappelling gloves. Even in her exhaustion-numbed state, she knew the cord-twisted metal would tear her skin apart if she tried to haul on it bare-handed.
“Did you not hear me, Recruit?” Tae growled. “I said tow this bus back to the barracks. That’s an order!”
Tugging on the gloves, almost dropping one in her fumble-fingered weariness, she tightened the cinching straps around her wrists. Took the cable from him. Trudged forward two steps, turned, and pulled. The bus didn’t budge. Drawing in a deep breath—fighting against the urge to just sit down and sleep—Ia dug in her boot heels, leaned, and tugged.
Her feet skidded out from under her, landing her on the dust-strewn plexcrete of the road with a surprised oof. Blinking, Ia stared dumbly at the cable, then at the bus. A brown-brimmed hat and a brown-tanned face interposed itself between her and the tan-hued ground vehicle.
“Are you disobeying a direct order? That is Fatality Number Five, you realize!”
Disobeying . . . oh, God . . . For a moment, the grey blankness fogging her mind opened up wide, showing her the timestreams. Not those immersed in the present or the near future, but into the cracked and barren rocks more than three hundred years from now. Oh, God . . .