Chapter 48: Bootcamp, Part Three
Author's note: With 30% of the people responding to my most recent poll being male, 100% of them finding my males convincing, and only one female respondent out of the other 70% finding my males unconvincing (and I know this because I saw the response when there were only female responses up there ;-) ), I feel really good, again, and thank you all very sincerely for the feedback. I've always been told I do pretty well with the male perspective, but it's better to take that kind of feedback from anonymous people, rather than the people you're DMing for. Removes the "what side is my bread buttered on" issue from the equation. ;-)
In other comments. . . yeah. Siara is hard to write, because she's an antagonist for Dara, and a love interest for Eli, and a foil for Jack, not a protagonist. That means she gets waltzed back and forth over the line of sympathy and non-sympathy a lot. On the one hand, she started off life as a name and a bitchy attitude; after Kella died, I had to come up with reasons for her to be hateful, but they had to be real reasons, and a belly full of jealousy and rage has to come from somewhere. . . but for her to be a love interest for Eli/someone who could provoke more depth out of him, she had to be accessible and emotional as well. Both she and Jack are, and are meant to be, both slightly sympathetic and slightly unlikeable by turns.
Certainly, Dara doesn't like her, and would really appreciate it if she'd grow the hell up. Eli pretty much wishes the same thing. Siara is, however, caught in the trap of her own lifespan and developmental pace. She can't move or change at anything the rate of the humans or turians around her. Hence why they're growing and changing quickly, and she's. . . moving at approximately the same pace as a glacier as it marches towards the sea. Which is reasonable, given that at 33 or so, out of a lifespan of 1,000 years, she's at, um, 3.3% of her total potential age.
Can she change? That's the fundamental question I've been asking about the asari throughout all these stories. The answer is: maybe. We won't see the results till she's 38 or so, though, and the other characters are 29. By which point, they'll all be nice and settled and doing what they're doing, and it might not even matter to them that she has changed. Which is sad, in its own way, isn't it?
Rellus
Week 5 had been less physically brutal, in some respects, but it had also been debilitating, in its own special way. Biohazard training, identification of nerve agents and other such chemicals with their omnitools. Training in using breathing equipment, both for underwater environments and on the ground, gas masks, and the first training sessions on spacesuits. The final exam for that week had been to go into a gas chamber with the other nineteen people now in Squad 417. They'd been given one minute to look around and get nervous. Then the sharp alert had echoed through the cement-walled room, "Gas! Prepare!"
Rel had figured they'd be exposed to some sort of anti-riot agent. Tear gas, maybe. Some of the squads that had stumbled back to their barracks after this exercise had looked like that had been the chemical of choice—their eyes had been swollen half-shut, and oozing. Turians didn't have tear-ducts, but they could secrete a sort of gummy protective substance when needed, and his fellow recruits had certainly had been rubbing at their eyes as they'd headed straight to the showers.
He got his mask over his eyes and mouth quickly, pulling the tabs taut. The smoke that came out of the pipes around the room, however, was light blue. Great. They're rotating through the various chemicals we might face in the field, from the debilitating to the dangerous. Nothing that would kill us outright, no nerve gas. Tear gas. Red sand. And yeah. Azure dust. Great. It made sense. Letting recruits have a minor exposure to what they'd see in the field, so that they wouldn't freeze up in fear at the sight, wouldn't forget their training.
"Squad Leader!" came the bark of one of the centurions, standing in the center of the room, in a full breather unit, damn him.
"Yes, drill centurion?"
"Remove your breather and recite Regulation 1.1.1."
Oh, spirits. They always have the squad leader go first, to set an example. And if I don't take it off, I may as well walk out the door now, since I'd be done with boot camp. Rel took a deep breath, pulled off his breather, and began to recite, "A soldier's life belongs to the Hierarchy. A soldier may be ordered to live, a soldier may be ordered to die. A soldier may be ordered to kill. A soldier who abandons his or her unit or his or her uniform is a deserter, and a deserter is dead to the Hierarchy."
He'd just about run out of air.
"Inhale."
S'kak. Rel closed his eyes and inhaled.
"Put your breather back on."
Numbly, Rel obeyed, and exhaled the instant his rapidly numbing fingers pulled the straps back in place. He was grateful for the week of practice; dimly, he realized that without that muscle memory, he might not have gotten everything back in place and re-sealed correctly. He was already light-headed, but there was a burning core of anger down deep inside of him. Not again. Keep focused. Think of something, hold to it. Mindoir. Too abstract. Fleeting visions of the future, black armor, red badge at the throat? Too dim, too distant now. The face of his mate, covered in his paint, sleeping in his arms in the gray light of the morning before he left? That he could hang onto. That was real. That gave him stability, grounding, let him fight the panic with the realization that it had only been one breath of the damnable aerosolized powder.
Beside him, each person in turn was reciting regulations, in varying tones of wary concern to absolute panic. Didamus was very slow to remove his breather; it made sense. The male liked to be in control, particularly of himself. Septima apparently hadn't quite gotten her seal right. When she started reciting her regulation, the words didn't make sense, and it wasn't entirely because his own head was filled with fluff. Rel sighed, and thought, a bit muzzily, that she'd be repeating this exercise. Hopefully next time with tear gas, instead.
"Squad 417, exit the chamber. Remove your breathers in the corridor and put them on the racks. Proceed to the shower facilities and put your uniforms in the gray hampers for decontamination. Then return to your barracks."
Rel had one clear thought as he headed from the shower, naked, to his own barracks room. Dara was probably going to have a hell of a time with this. Stripping naked and walking through the barracks was definitely not going to be fun for her. About twenty minutes later, when his body finished metabolizing the compound, and he stopped feeling so distant and drunk, he muttered, out loud, "S'kak!" The various people in the barracks turned to look at him—Didamus, Cambysus, Amphion, and the new guy, Palinarus, from 420, who'd replaced Nicus, who'd gone to the 420 as its squad leader. "Sorry," Rellus told them. "Just a bad thought, that's all."
It was, too. Human modesty being affronted, he'd realized abruptly, was the least of Dara's potential problems. If she were in one of the squads exposed to azure dust when her time came. . . last time, she hadn't been as affected as those around her, because of an abnormal hormonal flow. Her menses, the polar opposite in a human from estrus. The effects of the dust on her would be. . . inhibition-loosening, at the least. Just one lungful, he reminded himself. Not weapons-grade, not like the s'kak we both inhaled the night of the cave. I shouldn't be worried. Chances are, she'll get the tear gas rotation, anyway. He still figured he'd drop her a note about it, anyway. Just so she could remind the instructors, when the time came, that azure dust didn't affect humans and turians in remotely the same fashion.
Then it was Week 6. With most of them having probably finished bulking out, they were fitted for their armor—all currently sprayed in boot camp gray, to match their uniforms. "You will put your armor on and take it off in exactly the same way, every time," one of the centurions bellowed. "You will store it in precisely the same order every time you put it away. Doing so saves lives. If you ever have to put your armor on in total darkness, or in the middle of a fight, you will be able to do so without thinking and in under ninety seconds."
So, once all the buckles on each recruit had been minutely adjusted for fit, they all stood in a vast field, assembled by squad. 100,000 recruits, each with their equipment in a neat line in front of them. "Thermal layer." They stepped into the skin-tight elasticized pressure suit, which went all the way down to the toes, and all the way up to the throat; like a human pair of longjohns, it had an opening at the front, but since it was designed to protect against depressurization in space, it had an adhesive strip along its opening that actually helped seal against vacuum. The heavy elastic was almost painful at first, but Rel quickly began to adjust to it.
"Left greaves. Right greaves." They locked the plates into place. "Left boot, right boot." The boots each had to be custom-fitted, to account for differences in spur-length, and sealed up against the backs of the greaves. Then they stepped into each boot, crouching to lock the boots into the greaves, and heard the seals hiss closed. "Left cuisses, right cuisses." The thigh pieces locked into place now.
"Loinguard!" This piece had multiple flexible plates at the top, giving range of motion, and extended from the lower abdomen to the thighs, wrapped between the legs, and sealed there, too. It was the only piece of torso armor designed to be removable while the rest of the armor was in place; allowing for waste elimination. This had gotten it the nickname of the futtari guard, as well as its official name of loinguard; theoretically, other bodily functions could be taken care of with just this piece removed. Rel wasn't sure how comfortable that would be, however. Another set of seals hissed into place. "Underpack."
This was a slim backpack, worn under the armor. It could hold up to a day's supply of water, mixed with salts, electrolytes, sugars, and proteins, and it also contained a re-breather with a twelve-hour capacity of air. Both had hoses that would connect into the helmet; the rebreather from there, would supply the rest of the armor positive air pressure; redundant, with the elasticized undersuit, but helpful for thermal regulation. In the event of a suit breach, the various seals at the suit's joints would lock in place, and only the air in the breached section would evacuate, and then Rel would be dependent on the undersuit to protect his body from vacuum or toxic atmospheres.
"Breastplate!" The breastplate, of course, already had a frame for weapons attached to it. At the moment, all anyone had was their standard issue assault rifle, but Rel knew in his bones that his armor was only going to get heavier as time went on, as more weapons were added. "Left brace. Right brace." Upper arm armor, locked into place at the shoulder, had lamellar-and-gasket connective pieces for both the shoulder and the elbow; like similar structures at the knee, these connective elements permitted range of motion while remaining thoroughly protective. "Left vambrace, right vambrace!" Lower arms now, more seals hissing. "Get your omnitools locked in place before you lose finger dexterity."
Rel had already adjusted the straps of his omnitool and knife sheath so that they were wide enough to accommodate the armor. Strapping that in place took only a few seconds. "Left gauntlet. Right gauntlet. Pull up the coif of the pressure suit over your heads." That part was uncomfortable, as the elasticized material compressed his crest. "Attach helmet connectors, and seal up."
And then he was completely encased in ceramic polyresin. Could feel the suit adjusting, minutely, equalizing pressure all the way through. The heating elements hadn't kicked on; it was 110º F/43.3º C in the long assembly field, and it was only the Quinus twenty-fifth, on the Palaven calendar—and their training center was fairly far north, at that. Rel flexed his arms and legs, testing the fit. Nothing seemed to be chafing or binding, which was good. The weight was evenly distributed; at a guess, about fifteen, twenty kilos. Not bad, considering all the things that this suit was. Armor. Spacesuit. Radiation barrier. Pressure suit. A self-contained environment and defense system.
"Time, two minutes, fifteen seconds. You're a lazy bunch of cuderae!" bawled a centurion. "Strip and start again. Squad leaders, anyone unable to completely arm themselves inside of ninety seconds by the end of the day will face punishment drills and you will be held responsible for their inability to protect themselves. Is that clear?"
"Yes, drill centurion!" rang out across the field.
It took two hours, but eventually everyone in squad 417 was able to do it, though Cambysus, Septima, and a couple of the people from 420 just barely squeaked by. Now their lockers were being inspected in addition to the barracks; anyone who deviated, even by an inch, from the proper placement of armor pieces was issued a demerit, and any demerit now affected squad standing. This put the burden on everyone to do well, to watch out for one another. In theory, it was meant to encourage the spirit of each squad to grow and form bonds between each member.
It was a great theory, except when you had squad troublemakers. Rel told each of his under-squad leaders to check all lockers every night after dinner but before the drill centurions could come through. Every night, Kassa had a grim look on her face, as if she'd been forced to tie a toddler's shoes, for the hundredth time.
After being issued their armor, this week took a decidedly different turn. The first half of each day that week was dedicated to working with new weapons. Mortars. Grenade launchers. Shoulder-mounted missiles designed to take down small aircraft. Rel loved this. He probably could have talked the range master at the Spectre base into letting him learn these weapons, but had never quite dared. "Squad Leader, if you keep looking like you're enjoying yourself so much, the centurions are going to find some way of making this week much less fun," Nicus told him one evening, before the silence of dinner began.
Rel nodded, suppressing his grin. "Fair enough. Can't help but wish I'd been trained on these before, though."
"For repelling batarian raids on Mindoir?" That was Kassa, in a slightly teasing tone. He had all his squad leaders basically clustered around him at the moment, a way of keeping tabs on everything that was going on in their rooms, at least once a day. The other meals, he had them sit with their own people.
"There is a history of them," Rellus agreed, mildly. In fact, that's how Aunt Lilu wound up leaving Mindoir the first time. But even mentioning the commander of the Spectres didn't seem a great idea.
In the second half of the week, a thousand recruits were taken to one of each of ten 'cold weather' locations scattered in the northern and southern polar regions of Palaven. In the polar regions, snow actually fell, and right now, the southern hemisphere was locked in perpetual daylight, courtesy of the planet's seasonal axial tilt. Rel and the rest of Squad 419 actually were sent there, and they spent two days learning snow-survival, how to build structures that would retain the most heat, how to eat in such a way that it preserved their energy while still stoking their metabolisms, and so on.
"I've never even seen snow before," Amphion muttered one 'night,' as they struggled to keep a fire lit. Technically, their armor should have been all that they needed, but in case the thermal units failed, or they ran out of energy, they were supposed to practice even these most basic skills. Not that a fire could even be lit on a world with a carbon dioxide or ammonia atmosphere, Rel's mind nudged him. But of course, that wasn't the point of the exercise. "Macedyn's a bunch of deserts, small oceans, and did I mention, nice, warm, dry deserts?"
The rest of the squad laughed. It was -22º F/-30º C at the moment, with a cold wind, and they were all feeling it, even through the suits. Warm, by the standards of, say, Earth's southern pole, but frigid for Palaven.
"My home on Galatana gets snow once in a while," Cambysus mentioned, after a moment. "Helps fill the water reservoirs."
Didamus snorted. "I assume you have snow on Mindoir, Squad Leader?" It wasn't a sneer, for a change. A bit of a challenge, maybe, but not a sneer. As if he figured that Rel would chime in with a cheer up, I've done worse, sort of comment, and wanted to call attention to the fact that Rel, in fact, often did say words that were similar.
Rel ignored the challenge, and just chuckled. "Yeah. My mate wrote last week that they had about twenty-two unica in the mountains. I'm just as glad not to be there. She'd probably get it in her head to teach me how to ski or go snowshoeing." Assuming she's well. No mail out here in the field, and I have no idea how she's doing. He kept his worry off his face, though. It was no one's business but his own, and the others respected stoicism.
There was a pause. "Ski?" Nicus asked, holding his gauntleted hands to the fire. "Snowshoeing?"
Rel shook his head. "Skiing's a human sport, developed in their mountainous regions. Apparently, they strap long, straight boards, sharp-edged, to their feet and slide on them, standing, down the face of a snowy, icy mountain at high speeds. She's only done it once or twice herself, but thinks it's fun. Snowshoes, like skis, keep their feet above the surface of the snow, by weight displacement. Slower. Less of a straight downhill thing."
"Can't be that high of speed. . . ." Someone, he didn't know whom, piped up from the circle of bodies around the fire.
"Faster than a rlata." Rel grimaced. "When I looked it up, they actually have events where, on land, they actually hit speeds faster than the terminal velocity of someone who's jumped from a drop-ship in the lower atmosphere. She says most people don't do that, though."
That got him wide-eyed looks from all around the campfire, and many comments on how insane humans had to be, to go out in this kind of weather for enjoyment's sake. They were all well and truly distracted, and Rel figured his job was done.
The next day, they traveled north, mostly at a run, to an area north of the permafrost zone. Here, mudpits and bogs awaited them, and they spent all afternoon, having run all morning to get there, slogging through cold mud-pits and chest-deep bogs and learning to belly-crawl under wire and other obstructions in spite of the cold and the wet and the misery.
The final two days of the week were spent at a base with exactly the opposite conditions. Punishing heat, even by Palaven's standards, a dry, barren salt-flat desert, with baking temperatures of up to 150º F/ 65º C. Again, survival training was the focus. Learning to rely on their armor for thermoregulation, but how to compensate for it if the armor failed. How to find shade, how to extract water out of the atmosphere using desert stills, plastic-lined pits with a bit of vegetation in them to help the minimal ambient humidity to condense overnight.
And at the end of the week, when they'd all flown back to their official training center, there was another sparring match. Rel was exhausted after a week in the field, but after everyone else was done, he still had to fight the leader of 424, another twenty-man squad. The male was larger than he was, and very strong. Fortunately, he was also just as tired as Rel was. It was a long, slow, painfully-drawn out match, and one very bad kick that Rel was slow to dodge, he was pretty sure had cracked a couple of his ribs. That woke him up in a hurry. Have to finish this quick, he thought, and took the other male to the ground, grappling, twisting, going for locks now. The other male made a mistake, and Rel locked his arms around the other male's neck, pressing on the arteries there.
When he stood up, he tired and he hurt and only realized dimly, that he now had a forty-man squad. The drill centurions announced, loudly, "In the morning, we will meet with all main squad leaders, to begin initial evaluations. We will be starting to move people into groups based on their likely specializations. The rest of you cuderae will report for calisthenics as usual. Dismissed."
Rel got permission to head to the med bay, confirmed that yes, his ribs were cracked, and no, there wasn't much that could be done, except not let them be hit again, and then dragged himself back to the barracks. He put his armor neatly in his locker, and examined everyone else's gear placement carefully. There was no drill centurion lecture tonight, so he walked up the hall to the door of 424, and knocked there. "All right," Rel told Rasmus Cadius, the squad leader he'd just defeated, a little wearily. "We've got about an hour here. Talk to me about your people. Strengths, weaknesses, and problems."
Rasmus grinned at him ferally. "You've got a reputation, Squad Leader. Something of a disciplinarian."
"Only for those who require it," Rel told him, leaning against the wall for a moment.
"Scuttlebutt also has it that you've got an alien for a mate."
Rel looked at him steadily. "Yeah. That going to be a problem, Cadius?"
Rasmus snorted. "No. I grew up on the Citadel. Family got transferred to Bastion. Saw a lot of that going on. What is she, asari?"
"No. Human." Rel grinned suddenly. "I've got a friend back home who lived on Citadel and Bastion. Name of Elijah Sidonis. You know him?"
Rasmus blinked. "Elijah Sidonis. . . wait. Elijah Stockton. . . but that's right, his stepfather adopted him." He shook his head. "I was a grade ahead of him on the Citadel. His family transferred to Bastion before mine did. Never saw him there. My parents were both in ship-traffic control. Not really the same group of people." Rasmus paused. "His step-dad is a scary son of an acrocanth, though, isn't he? Never met anyone else with eyes that dead."
Rel grinned. "I like Lantar just fine. He's my uncle's oldest friend."
Rasmus blinked, and let it pass without comment. "So, how the hell is Eli?"
"Wearing his father's paint, has a half-and-half sister, and is the best handball goalie I've played with. He was one of my best men at my wedding. I've got pictures, if you want to see them." Rel's tiredness was falling away by the minute. "When I write my wife, I'll tell her to pass along greetings to him from you, if you like."
The other members of Cadius' squad were staring at them now.
Rasmus smiled. "Please do. Now, about my people. . . " And they were off. Rasmus had run his people tightly, and only had a couple of disciplinary problems. A couple of people content to scrape by, like Cambysus. No major problems.
Back to his own barracks now, tired as can be. As he walked in the door, Amphion was asking, quietly, "What do they mean by squad reorganization?"
Didamus shrugged. "They'll be asking each of the squad leaders who they think will make good clerks, good techs, good pilots, or good cooks. It's just as much a test of the squad leader's management abilities as it is an assessment of us." He sounded glum. He still had a sharp tongue, and clearly didn't like Rel, but had mostly toed the line, once it had been made clear to him who was in charge. A good turian, in other words. Not the most amiable of companions, but capable. Competent. "Then they'll reorganize the barracks based on that."
Hazily, Rel looked at the clock. "It's 21:00," he said. "Personal time, everyone."
He opened his mail at last, after five days of not being able to read it, and found a series of little notes from Dara and his parents. And one long letter, which made him smile. More good news: I'm back on solid foods. I've had about enough applesauce and oatmeal and talashae paste to last me a lifetime. More on that when we can talk properly, and no more of this letter in a bottle talas'kak. Well, that was good news. He hadn't fully realized that she hadn't been able to eat real food until the problem was already past.
Rel had to repress a grin at the idea of visiting Earth for his pada'amu's upcoming wedding. He knew next to nothing about Kasumi's culture, but understood that it was very different from Dara and Sam's. So much damn diversity, so many different ways of living, all on the same planet. His eyes went wide at the news about Dr. Solus. . . he was back, and was due to have a child? What did that mean? Salarian males barely had anything to do with their own offspring. Perhaps she meant that he had engineered a new hybrid for someone on base? No. . . that didn't make sense, either. He dismissed it, and read on. There, at the end, maybe the best news of all: All the paperwork was done. She was committed to coming here now. No turning back, no last-second nerves. He'd been afraid she might flinch, if he wasn't there to reassure her, but she hadn't.
A quick note back. Sweetness, glad to hear you're feeling better. This is important. Get Dr. S.—his background will help with this—to send the Hierarchy military a note stating that during breather training, you are to be excused from azure dust exposure. I got that this week, instead of tear gas or red sand, and it was bad enough for me. And, when it comes right down to it, if you're ever exposed to that s'kak again, I'd prefer to be there for the experience, if you take my meaning. Are you blushing yet? Wish I could see all that pink under my paint.
Hazardous conditions training this week. Cold weather, hot weather. Heavy weapons training was fun. Got my damn ribs broken tonight—just two of them, so don't worry—but still beat the leader of 424. Gives me forty people under me, and seven subordinate squad leaders. I don't even know all their names yet, but their leader is Rasmus Cadius. He apparently knows Elijah from the Citadel. He asks to pass along greetings. If you wouldn't mind, that is. Love you, amatra. I'm too tired to do the math, but we're past the halfway mark. See you soon.
He suppressed a yawn, sent the message, and turned out the lights.
Squad reorganization was trying. The centurions and instructional officers met with every squad leader in charge of forty people; that made for a lot of meetings. Of course, each squad of forty was a part of a manciple, or four groups of forty; each manciple was part of a cohort, or four manciples. Each cohort was, therefore, 640 people. A legion was four cohorts, or 2560 or so; it didn't add up evenly to 100,000 recruits, so some legions were short a few squads. Each legion's instructional officer, therefore, had sixty-four squad leaders to go through, and relied heavily on what the centurions had already recommended for each recruit. The squad leader's input was minimal, but served as a part of a checks-and-balances system; it ensured that discipline problems that the centurions might not have seen would come to light now, and tested the squad leader's acumen, as well.
Rel was mostly nervous about representing the twenty people new to his squad, and was still damned tired, even after a full night's sleep. He only had Rasmus' words about all of them, late last night, to pass along. To his relief, the leader of the 424 hadn't seemed to lead him wrong. "All right. Talk to us about your people," the drill instructor, an officer, invited him. "Your opinion of Didamus Lavium?"
"Strictly by the book, sir. Exceptional skills. Likes authority, sir." He didn't necessarily want to add little flexibility and doesn't like colonials to that list. He didn't want to sabotage Didamus. . . not when the male had seemed to be doing better of late.
"What uses have you found for him in your squad?"
How do I phrase this carefully? "I've utilized him for correctional discipline and remedial purposes, sir. He has good teaching capabilities."
A note on the datapad in front of the officer. "Amphion Makadian?"
"He lacked confidence to command at first, sir. Good skills. Intelligent. Loyal."
"What uses have you found for him in your squad?"
"Initially, I made him my second, sir. He's not comfortable being the voice of authority, though, so he's been helping others with training more recently."
"Cambysus Cagrarian?"
Rel wanted to sigh, but kept his face impassive. "Works well when properly motivated, sir."
"The same can be said of a talashae with a sharp stick up its cloaca, but I wouldn't want that talashae at my back."
Rellus decided that one didn't really need to be answered. "Sir?"
"Nevermind. Nicus Abendian?"
"Excellent leadership, sir. He's been very good with squad 420, and with squad 418 before it. A little aggressive, maybe, but is willing to be open to the spirit of the squad."
Another note. "Kassa Vilinius?"
"She's taken on a number of discipline issues and dealt with them handily, sir. Always has a good attitude."
"Septima Scortorian?"
Rel had been careful so far to give mostly positive comments about people. At the moment, he couldn't come up with anything to say. "Squad Leader Velnaran?"
"She's been a problem, sir. She's qualified at everything, at least. However, her interpersonal relations are poor. I've attempted to deal with her in many different ways. Integrating her to the spirit of the squad has been difficult. Being unable to do so is my personal failure, sir."
The officer looked through a record. "At the moment, I see she has been, so far, assigned punishment drills by the drill centurions at least twice a week, and has actually been flogged for sexual harassment of one of her squad mates. I also see that she's been assigned to an all-female barracks under the command of Kassa Vilinius. I assume this was to prevent a repetition of the offense?"
"Yes, sir."
The instructing officer made a note. "What uses have you found for her in your squad?"
Another black mark against me. I haven't been able to find any. "Sir, at the risk of sounding cheeky, she has been a unifying force in the squad. No one has wanted to sound like her or act like her in any way. I haven't done so deliberately, sir, but she has made herself a. . . if you'll pardon the human term. . . scapegoat."
That got him a look, and the officer's VI chimed, bringing up a translation. "A repository for the evil of a community. Interesting."
They finished going through the rest of his squad, and Rel was dismissed.
New postings were on the board in each barracks the next morning, and everyone crowded near to see who had gotten what, and who had been reassigned to new units.
Rel retained a squad of forty, much to his surprise; he'd thought he was going to be downgraded a rank. Preliminary operational specialties had been assigned. Not ranks; who would be going into officer candidacy would be determined by the end of bootcamp, however. And with five weeks left to go, these preliminary assignments could still be tweaked.
Cambysus, for example, along with three members of the 421th and one member of the 418th were all slated for supply-chain positions; they would now all be grouped together in one squad. Cambysus looked delighted with his potential job description. "I couldn't have asked for better," the male from the agricultural colony exulted.
Didamus looked at his prospective specialty, posted on the board, and blinked. "Force management?" He shook his head. "Sounds like a logistics position, but I suppose they know what they need."
Amphion smiled in quiet pleasure at his own assignment. "Corps of Engineers. Nice. Get to see all the colonies that way."
"Abendian, you got flight school! If you make officer, you'll be a fighter pilot or a frigate helmsman!" Kassa called excitedly, from where the female had worked her way up to the front.
Everyone crowded around, patting Nicus on the back. "What did you get?" he called back up to Kassa.
"Flight school, too, but. . . different branch. Marines. Looks like I'm going to be handling drop-ships or other landing craft." She sounded a little disappointed, but not too much so. Rel couldn't really imagine anyone he'd trust more to drop and retrieve troops from hot landing areas.
He'd been hanging back, waiting for everyone else to take their turns. But Nicus beat him to it. "What did our squad leader get?"
A pause, while Kassa looked over the list, and the hallway, so full of excited voices a moment ago, went oddly quiet. Rel held his breath.
"Special forces," she replied, her voice loud in the silence, and Rel grinned as everyone around him whistled softly through their teeth. It was a very prestigious listing. His uncle Garrus had gotten that posting, and officer's candidate school. Each a one in a thousand chance. And had been offered Spectre training under the old system, which was no longer in existence, of course. One down, one to go, Rel thought. It doesn't tally with the simulation, which had me as a line officer on the Estallus, but the simulation only could go with the information we provided it, after all. Then he made his way up to the front to look down the rest of the board, out of curiosity, mainly.
Glancing down, he discovered that Septima had gotten quartermaster corps. . . specifically, food service specialist. Unfortunately, they'd left her in his squad. Assigned to a group with clerks, fuel supply specialist, and a future accountant. All female, however, so that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Still means she's my problem to deal with, but she's over in Rasmus' half for now, which is a relief. As it was, it was fortunate that he'd been heavily indoctrinated lately with turian stoicism. Otherwise, he'd have been tempted to laugh.
The rest of Week 7, they were, one thousand recruits at a time, lifted to one of the training space stations that were a part of the shipyard complex in orbit. Here, they refined their spacesuit skills and began at least an introduction to zero-g combat and ship combat. It was important, for instance, not to shoot holes in bulkheads. It was important not to blow holes in the tubes that carried refrigerant through a ship.
In terms of melee, it was very important to realize that every action really did have an equal and opposite reaction, and that grappling and fighting could send you spinning forever into the abyss of space. Even inside an enclosed area, like the shipyard bay they were using for training, combat became more about three dimensions than about two. They learned about magnetic boots and maneuvering packs, and how and went to use both.
They were in barracks in the shipyards, usually used for shipyard workers, from welders to technicians, and Rel could just make out, in the distance, what looked like the curving frame of new Normandy class ships, from his barracks' window. Little more than the keel had been laid, of course, but he wondered if this was the rumored second generation of ships. And he also wondered if the Luna shipyards near Earth were building counterparts.
In the shipyards, mail privileges were scarcer; he only got a chance to read a few quick notes from Dara, as a result.
September 20, 2191
Amatus—
My dad and K. are doing lots of research lately. Lots of comm calls. Eli said he remembered your Rasmus Cadius guy as a pretty good person. Said he wished he'd known he was on Bastion. Would've been nice to have had a turian friend there, as opposed to all the black eyes he wound up with. I had Dr. S write that note, as you suggested, and your father helped me get it added to my forms as a late addendum. Allardus commented that something like that will make me look like I'm weak, but, in the end, they can't put me in a position where I'm likely to wind up breaking my wedding contract with you. Comforting, huh?
I got the initial reply back from the Hierarchy this week. More paperwork in tal'mae. They've been asking for human recruits, but only through the existing Alliance military. They seem to regard me as a, ah, candidate being sent by our family business, somehow, and they're asking that I provide my own armor. No idea where I'm going to come up with that, but they're going to provide uniforms (hah, I wish their tailors luck) and ship in a couple of crates of levo MREs. There will, apparently, be at least one or two other humans, both out of Alliance services, part of a prototype exchange program, going through at the same time as I will. We'll see how that goes.
Your dad's my new xenobiology supervisor, by the way. I didn't like to have to tell Azala that I had to stop having her as my mentor because of Siara, but there it is. You might remember that I managed to get us a room alone a while ago? Siara agreed to stay away, so long as I let her see my memories of Kella. Well, she called in her debt. And then went rummaging through my mind. Stuff about Eli. Stuff about the, well, doors and windows incident. And the other one, the series of really bad days? The kicker was when she tried to get into private, personal stuff about you and me. Have no idea how I blocked her, but that's neither here not there.
Rel stopped reading, and could feel himself starting to flush with justice-anger and territorial-anger. That went far beyond Septima reading his damn mail. Siara's actions came dangerously near violation. Certainly theft and invasion of privacy, pale words though those were. He breathed a couple of times through his nose to calm himself. Nothing I can do about it here. And then he went on reading.
The result is, I'm discovering how smart your dad is. Explains a lot about you, I guess. If nothing else, I know that whoever winds up designing our kids for us, down the line, will have great genes to work with on the turian side. At any rate, your dad's a much more demanding teacher than Azala, and I'm really glad he's working with me. I think I'm learning a lot more, especially now that Dr. S. is back.
We've got some new neighbors in the valley. Turian guy with a three-month-old is taking over K's house. His wife just passed away around the same time I got sick, and the kid is like your cousins. The medical issues are keeping all of us at the clinic hopping. The little boy's younger than Caelia was when I first saw her. Still has all his baby feathers. Cute as a bug, even if my dad shakes his head every time he comes into the nursery at the clinic and sees me holding him.
Rel had more questions at the end of that letter than he knew what to do with, but didn't have time to respond immediately, because now he was into Week 8, and this one really was a new level of hell. They were taken from the shipyards to Telavin, Palaven's nearest neighbor around their mutual star. It was twice the size of Palaven, and had an iron core, which meant that it had both the radiation shielding in its atmosphere that Palaven lacked. . . and about twice the gravity.
For a full week, the recruits lived and worked on the surface of Telavin, using exoskeletons to compensate for the worst of the gravity and spacesuits and breathing apparatuses to avoid exposure to the toxic atmosphere, but they were always able to feel crushing them, making it hard to breathe, hard to think. Live fire drills showed how bullets and missiles curved noticeably downward from their usual trajectories. Sleeping in the high gravity environment, in particular, was uncomfortable. No amount of exoskeleton could protect them from that, from the horrible reality of their own mass.
And at the end of Week 8, they returned to Palaven and the light, beautiful embrace of its normal gravity, and the squads had to compete again. Rel had had two weeks for his ribs to heal, and wasn't nearly as tired this time. He also wanted to prove the instructors and the centurions correct in their assessment of him; he really didn't want to lose. The resulting match between him and the leader of squad 480 was vicious. "Hear you've got a human mate, Velnaran," the other male, Scaevus Lintorum, taunted him, halfway through. They were both already cut on the face; Rel could sense that the drill centurions were watching very closely at the moment. "You probably don't even have scales under your uniform anymore. Have to cut 'em off for the little skinbag, huh?" Rel dodged another kick, circling carefully, watching the other male. "Think she's gonna let you keep your spurs, or are you going to have to cut those off, too?"
Save your breath to fight with, idiot. Rel ducked under a kick, passed it, got a grip on the underside of the male's knee, and threw him to the ground, where any variety of human-taught grappling skills could be applied. The male actually bit him on the forearm, which, while valid in real combat, was not allowed in sparring. Rel snarled and jabbed him in the eyes until the jaws released, and then, bleeding freely, broke the male's arm in three places. Shoulder, elbow, and wrist. As the other male writhed on the ground, Rel stood up and glared at the other thirty-nine members of 480, blue blood pouring down his arm and hand, dripping down onto the floor. "Anyone else from the 480th who wants to make it personal, come down here right now, and we'll clear the damn air right now."
There weren't any takers. Since the other male had drawn blood first, rather than keeping it friendly, Rel wasn't up for disciplinary action for the retaliation. He did, however, get a long lecture from a centurion, while a doctor in the med bay applied sutures, on the topic of keeping his squad in battle-ready condition, which was, apparently, difficult to do if he sent his own people in for surgery. Rel couldn't, of course, ask any questions, but he really wanted to know was this: if he hadn't retaliated as strongly as he had, would he still have been able to lead effectively? He couldn't make a personal connection with eighty different people, half of them new; if he hadn't made an example of the new half of the squad's former leader when he'd taken sparring and made it a personal attack, how would he ever have recovered from having his authority undercut? A question for Rinus, his father, for Uncle Garrus. Not for the drill centurion looming over him as the doctor tied off the last stitch and applied bandages.
When he walked back into the barracks after that fight, sixty stitches later and slathered with medigel, Nicus, who, with Kassa, now occupied the 417 barracks with him and two other males, all with front-line specializations, stood up, and said, dryly, "You've been holding back, Squad Leader."
"Because until today, I was having fun." Rel could hear a growl in his own voice. "He decided to make it a real fight, and personal, instead of sparring. I hope he enjoys reality."
Kassa looked up. "I'm sure he will. Once he gets done having pins and screws inserted into three places in his arm." She grinned, slyly. "He'll be finishing bootcamp next session."
Oh, spirits. Don't let him meet Dara. Rel winced and said, "Hopefully, the session after next."
"You have kin coming through, with your clan name?"
"Yes."
"If they're all as good as you are, he'll steer away, if he has a brain," Nicus said, pragmatically. That's the problem. She's good for a beginner, but she hasn't had six years of practice. "Makadian says you learned all this from your family?"
"Yeah."
Kassa leaned over in her hammock, looking down. "I'd hate to see how your family argues."
Rel just grinned, tightly.
Now he had eighty people to deal with, and was relying mostly on sixteen squad leaders to tell him what was going on. If I recognize a face out of the crowd, I'm doing really well, amatra, he wrote Dara on September 30. We're in Week 9 now, sweetness. This isn't a bad week. Lots of close-order drill, for precision and team-work and to make the final graduation parade look pretty, I guess. Lots of competitions between squads. Final bookwork exams, mostly regarding regulations. At the end of this week, one more squad consolidation; hopefully, my squad will go through undefeated, which would be a good mark to have. Yeah, I know. Turians and our marks. I can hear you saying that from here. Here's a good one for you—the squad leader of 480, Scaevus Lintorum, decided to bite me in the middle of sparring. That's fine—even expected—if it's trial-by-combat or real melee, but in sparring? Not so much. Broke his arm for him, using a move your dad showed me. He might be here during your session, sweetness, so look out for him, all right.
Before you ask, and I know you will, my little healer, sixty stitches, and yes, I'm applying medigel every day. If anyone leaves marks on me, I'd much rather they come from your mouth, sweetness. I know the human bite is more crushing than piercing, but how about we work on that, when I finally get to see you again?
At any rate, once we've consolidated for the last time, regardless of who wins, we'll be a full manciple of 160 people, which is important for Week 10, which involves the Trial. So, yeah, next week, I won't be able to read any mail or send you anything. Ten days in the field for the Trial. Simulated combat, manciple against manciple. There are 625 manciples here. Half will be on offense, and half will be on defense. None of us know ahead of time who will be on which side. There's a big fortress in the jungle near here, used exclusively for training exercises like this. The centurions will be giving the orders, largely, directing us, and we're told that there will be simulated casualties and that's really all they're saying. After that, Week 11 should be mostly administrative stuff. Surgery for anyone who needs it, new uniforms issued, repairs or adjustments to armor.
Oh, and Family Day! That should be October 21, sweetness, the last day before the graduation parade. Septus 13, by the calendar here. I'm really hoping to see you and my parents here that day. You'd be able to come on base and get a feel for where everything is. . . and of course, I'd get to see you before I drag you off to a nest in some hotel somewhere. Which, actually, reminds me. I know I'm entitled to a hotel room somewhere close to base, but the recruit hotels are not likely to have radiation barriers in the walls or ceilings. And wherever you decide to stay, make damned sure you don't have a window. Even at night, you can get a lot more radiation here than is good for you, mellis. . . and I want to make sure our kids have nice healthy genes on the human side, too.
On almost the last night of Week 9, October 3, he got one reply from her, and it made his mandibles flex a little. Amatus, I know you're heading out into the field. I'll be thinking of you all week. Finishing up finals here. Should be all As and an honors degree. Your dad thinks my final xenobiology project is great; Dr. S. had me submit my quarian/turian paper to a medical journal. His name's on it, too, of course, as well as Dr. C.'s, since they advised me on it, but it would be quite a feather in my cap if it happens to get published. Probably won't, though. Anyhow, just thought I should let you know. . . everyone went off for work earlier this week. I think the issues that led to me getting so sick might be resolved now. At least, for a while. When everyone gets back, I'll be heading to Palaven. Depending on who's home, I might have to take a commercial flight; if so, I'll be touching down on October 20th/Septus 12. See you when I see you, amatus, and stop getting so damned banged up when I'm not there to put you back together again, all right?
No time to respond, and the next night, sparring went from afternoon to late evening. Eighty people against eighty people, elimination tournament style, takes a long time. And in the end, it was Rel against the squad leader of the 530th. Surprisingly, she was female. Very quick, very strong, and making up for her height disadvantage with flexibility and speed. When he finally got her on the ground and pinned her, she whispered, before the centurions broke the fight up, "A pity I've heard you don't like to be bitten, Velnaran. Otherwise, I could arrange it, for a male like you."
That was a flirt. Not as over the top as Septima, but the kind of overture a male tended to expect to hear after a well-fought sparring session. At the moment, though, Rel had to wonder if she'd been put up to it. "No, I like biting," he managed, getting his brain in working order in record speed. "Fortunately, so does my wife." He stood up, offered the female a hand to get back to her own, and walked away. He took a shower afterwards, as much to give himself time to calm down as to wash the female's scent off his skin, and put his head against the cold tile in the shower area. He ached for his mate. Ninety days of living on adrenaline and testosterone and exertion and exhaustion were taking their toll. Twenty more days, and then, mellis, I'll have you for seven days. Sweet prey-sounds, touch of hands, smell of skin. Just being together, talking together, will be a relief. Then I'll be wherever they send me—anyplace, will be easier than here—and you'll be in this hell. Worse for you in some ways. Easier in others. Not so many needs.
A hand touched his shoulder, and he jerked upright. Physical contact in the showers was forbidden by custom and courtesy, and he turned and glared. It was the female squad leader of the 530th—nowhere near her own barracks, which were in a different building entirely. "Are you all right?" she asked.
Rel grabbed his knife sheath, and strapped it on his left arm. "Fine. Thanks. Go back to your barracks." His voice was harsh, even to his own ears. "I'll want to meet with you and all your squad leaders in twenty minutes." And then he walked past her and put on his gray uniform, trying very hard not to smell her, and left the area. Twenty days. Nineteen tomorrow. Spirits, let it all pass by quickly.
It did. The Trial was brutal. Over the course of ten days, or 240 hours, they were permitted thirty-five hours of sleep, or about 3.5 hours each day. They were given five days' rations each, to be spread out over the course of those ten days. Rel's 160 recruits, all now called Manciple 417, were on one of the offensive squads, and the sub-squads of clerks and cooks and whatever still had to prove themselves and show themselves part of the team. Just because you were slated for office duty didn't mean that you didn't know how to use a gun or defend yourself or your squad, after all. They had to conduct reconnaissance missions, night infiltration missions, use vehicles to by-pass hazardous terrain, and rescue casualties from other squads. Everything they'd trained in, other than the zero-g and heavy-g combat, came into play.
Initially, there was the forty-kilometer run in full gear through the heavy jungle to get to their staging area. Rel was weighed down with an assault rifle, a grenade launcher, and a sidearm at this point, as well as his rations and waterpack. Then they had to cross bridges that were heavily defended by recruits from opposition manciples. Past that obstruction, they had to swim, in teams, through a dachae-infested river, with some of them standing on the banks as lookouts, rifles in hand, ready to shoot any of the long-jawed ambush predators if they showed themselves. Dachae were similar to Terran crocodiles, but as with much of Palaven's wildlife, much, much larger.
By this point, it was day five, and they were all tired, hungry, and at each others' throats. Their next task was to crawl, undetected, through a bog and marsh zone, coming up on the western side of the fortress, and when night came, Rel got the word for them to infiltrate. That involved, for his team, scaling an eighty-foot brick wall; he broke his manciple in half, and had the best climbers go first, tapping in pitons for those who followed. It made the climb much easier for the people climbing up after the first person, but ran the risk of someone inside hearing the sound.
Once they were in place, they had to start securing the area. Rel didn't want to alert the entire fortress by starting everything off, guns blazing. "Here's what we're going to do," he told his people, quietly. "Abendian, Vilinius, Lavium, Cadius, you're with me. We're going to move ahead a bit and try to do this quietly." It was a risk. A big one. Standard military doctrine suggested going in, in force, and simply 'killing' everything that moved. But that would, Rel figured, get more of his people killed, as the entire fortress turned on them, first. Their objective here was to secure the area for subsequent manciples, not to be a distraction for another attack.
"Let me come, too," Septima offered. "I can work a stealth generator."
It was, in ten weeks, the singlemost helpful statement she'd made. S'kak. I'd say yes if it were anyone else. I should say yes, in the spirit of squad unity. "We all can," Rel said, quietly. "But right now, your job is to help hold this area, so the manciple behind us can come up the wall safely."
Then he, Nicus, Kassa, Rasmus, and Didamus moved up, checking their omnitools to see how many people were in the first guardhouse, and then they jerked open the door and were on the people inside, vicious hand-to-hand. Much quieter than rifles or pistols. "You admit you're down?" Rel hissed at one of their opponents.
"Yeah." The male sighed, and he and his cohorts had their weapons taken and were 'tied up' with yellow string—symbol of being dead, looped through the empty weapon racks on their backs. Rel wasn't interested in leaving 'casualties' with blue paint on them, for the enemy to retrieve. He tabbed his radio and told two squads to come down to this guardhouse and hold it. Then, back out on the wall, past the rest of his people, and down to the other guardhouse. Rinse, repeat. Another ten people placed, to hold both positions. "Keep two people at the door, weapons ready, to defend the walkway on top of the wall. Put everyone else at the windows, aiming down into the courtyard," Rel said, then signaled for the next manciple behind them to come up the wall.
By dawn, they'd taken the fortress. "Return your weapons to your captives and the casualties," came the order over the radio. "Attacking team, you're now the defending team. All previous defenders, report to the staging area at once."
Nicus groaned loudly. "I see they get out of the forty-kilometer run," he said, only half-joking.
"Nah. They had to do about twice that to get here in the first place," Amphion supplied. "And then we'll all get to do it again at the end, to go back, I bet."
A chorus of groans went up all around. "Could be worse," Rel offered. "At least we've got time to prepare. Let's get those pitons out of the wall we're supposed to be defending, and see if we can make this a better reception for them, than the one they gave us."
Nicus and Rasmus both looked at him. "Squad Leader?" Nicus said.
"Yeah?"
"Stop having so much fun!"
For a moment, a hundred and sixty people all around him started to laugh.
Rel made sure everyone rotated through and got some sleep, and distributed his people very differently than the previous defenders had. He put watchers on the roofs of the guard towers, for instance, not just inside of them, and set them there with sniper rifles. He himself, and others with heavy weapons and melee experience, he kept on the wall. It was a long and tedious wait of nearly four days, and it was hard to keep everyone focused, especially with rations running low, and no guarantee that the opposing team would even attack their position. "Keep an eye both towards the outside and across the courtyard. We may have to shift to support the far wall."
As it happened, the opposition did get ordered to attack the eastern wall on the last day of the Trial, but not in force. Could be a feint, or just a test.
Sure enough, while the eastern side was occupied, three manciples came at the west, with heavy gear and vehicles, rather than the infiltration effort he'd led. Well, this is going to be interesting. He tabbed his radio. "417 needs reinforcements. Heavy vehicles coming in, three manciples of troops." Then he and the rest of his people began firing down at the incoming attackers, painting them blue, aiming for the medics as they crawled out and tried to reach fallen companions. Rel himself switched to his grenade launcher and started aiming for the open hatches on the vehicles. All these were, were smoke grenades, but if one got inside, everyone in the vehicle would be covered in blue soot, and declared casualties as soon as they'd come out of the vehicles. . . which they'd have to do, if they wanted to breathe.
"No reinforcements?" Rasmus shouted, dropping beside Rel.
"None yet. Guess they're busy other places, too."
"Wish they'd given us damn Hammerheads."
"I bet the eastern teams got them last time." Rel set off another grenade, this one close to a large group of infantry who were trying to set up some sort of a device near the walls, and then ducked back into the cover of the crenellation at the top of the wall.
All they technically needed to do to 'win' this exercise was to keep the opposing force from getting into the fortress and capturing a flag set up inside the main hall, on the north end of the courtyard, until time on the exercise ran out. "Any movement in the courtyard yet?" he asked into the radio.
"None yet, Squad Leader." Only a matter of time.
It wasn't easy. The attackers were very determined, but it was a straight-forward assault. No infiltrators climbing up to wreak havoc in the ranks. The main thing was to keep everyone's heads down, and try to blunt the attack as much as possible. After four hours, Rel's radio chirped in his helmet. "Squad Leader, movement in the courtyard. From the east."
And there's their infiltration team. We've already taken out the heavy machinery and weapons on this side, though. "Sniper teams on roofs, fire down into the courtyard. Heavy weapons, fire into courtyard. Everyone else, stay on the people attacking us." Rel moved across the walkway at the top of the wall, and, crouching, fired down into the courtyard himself, one of his last grenades. All along the walls, he could see people raining blanks down at the recruits who were trying to run for the main hall and its flag.
And so it went, until dawn, when a general cease-fire was ordered. Usually, this exercise went 50-50; this was one of the rare occasions when an attacker successfully held the fortress when it was their turn. In such cases, the squads who'd been on the twice-winning team got a boost to their standings. It didn't count for much, except prestige.
They actually didn't have to run home, much to everyone's surprise and pleasure; they were shuttled back, and the dining hall was open, and they could eat anything they wanted today. And they didn't even have to sit in silence while doing so. Rel leaned back a little on his bench, and, like all the others around him, simply ate and ate and ate, and listened to the conversations and the laughter. They'd made it. Ten days of administrative stuff, time for all the recruits who'd finished the Trial to recover from any injuries, a parade, and he'd be done.
He checked his mail in the barracks, smiled at the quick messages from Dara and his parents there, and slept for the first time in ten days in a proper nest, and not wearing armor, and thought the spirits themselves had cupped their hands around him, so fine did it feel.
Halfway through the administrative week, final specializations were posted, and a list of assignments. Nicus, officer's candidate school as well as flight school. Kassa didn't make OCS, but she'd make a damned fine centurion someday, Rel knew. Rasmus, who was slated for marine duty himself, was another OCS candidate.
And so was Rellus Velnaran. Special forces. Officer's candidate school. Two for two. He didn't write home about it, not yet. He was getting his new uniforms; the last time he'd wear boot camp gray was in the final parade—and then, it would be on his armor, not the uniforms that they were all now turning in for the next batch of recruits to use. After graduation, when he and Rasmus and Nicus reported to OCS, their armor would be painted fresh for them. Black with turquoise piping, color of the sky for Nicus. Black and green for Rasmus, color of the ground he'd be pounding for the next four years. Black and blood-blue piping for Rel to indicate his special forces MOS. Everyone was now entitled to wear their proper work uniform inside the compound.
As such, Rel wanted to see the look of surprise and pride on his parents' faces when they saw him in that uniform. Officer's candidate and special forces. One in ten thousand. And though he knew it wouldn't have quite the same effect on Dara, he definitely hoped she found it at least as sharp as Rinus' centurion dress uniform.
