Marine Cadet (The Human Legion Book 1) (17 page)

“I expect that is correct.”

Arun thought about that. He’d been joking, but he didn’t think Pedro was. “So that’s Second Sleep,” he continued, “where they fill our brains with something. Then at 05:00, there’s a buzzer sounds in our dorm. Doesn’t give you any option but to be awake. I mean, if there were any corpses interred beneath the floor of our dorm then we’d know about it, because they would rise from the dead to complain about the noise.”

“And who do you sleep with?”

“Hey! I thought I told you to keep off that topic.”

“I have not gone
on
that topic. You have a dormitory, which I understand to be a separate room inside a habitation disk. Your hab-disk is designated 6/14 and houses Charlie Company and Dog Company from 8th battalion, 412th Marines. Is it always the same individuals who sleep in that dorm?”

“Oh, I see. Yeah. Now that we’ve graduated from the crèche to be full cadets, we get to live in a hab-disk and the dorm members are fixed, far as I know. Two fire teams make a section and it’s one section per dorm. That’s eight cadets. Me, Springer, Zug, Brandt, Majanita, Osman, Del-Marie and Cristina.”

Pedro seemed satisfied, so Arun carried on: “It’s quite relaxed first thing. The hab-disk has its own gym and firing range. So we stretch and work out – enough to get fit but not to tire us out before the day has started. Then we wash dress and clean ourselves ready for inspection between 07:00 and 07:30.”

“You clean yourselves with water?”

“Sure we do. Why? What do you use to clean yourselves with?”

“Dirt. We sweat out toxins and scrub away by burying through dirt.”

“Lovely. Don’t you still smell?”

“We like to smell. We are our smell.”

“O-kay. Anyway. Yeah, we have showers dotted around the disk. There’s five of them. You can fit about ten people in each shower, twelve if you squeeze together. Sometimes you have to. It can get real busy at peak times.”

“And these showers, males and females share the same facilities?”

“What is it with you? You’re sex-obsessed.”

“Possibly. Remember, my species has no genders. If smell defines my people, I think gender defines yours. This gender distinction is so fundamental to your species and yet completely absent from mine. How can we be so different? I do not understand this yet.”

The insect made a good point. But how could Arun explain to someone who has no gender the horseplay that went on at the top and tail of a cadet’s day? About how they were given license to let off a little steam? How dorm mates might vacate their dorm to give a couple ten minutes of privacy?

“It’s different,” Arun said. “In the showers, I mean. At other times, taking clothes off can be a big deal, but everyone has to get clean first thing and have their protective spray. It’s mandatory. You get on with it. It’s no big deal.” That wasn’t always strictly true, but it would do for an explanation. “Anyway, your idea of gender and sexual attraction is too simplistic. It isn’t just a question of males liking girls and vice versa.”

“What? You have more genders? Fascinating. Please elaborate… No, on second thoughts, leave that for another session. Please continue with your typical day.”

Arun shrugged. “Like I said, inspection is 07:00 to 07:30. We stand by our racks – which I guess you could call single-occupancy sleep pods. Our kit cabins are open. Everything is stripped clean, assembled, washed. Absolutely perfect. Of course on most days an instructor doesn’t come to inspect us. There aren’t enough of them to go around. But we have to be ready just in case. Same goes for evening inspection between 21:00 and 21:30.”

“Thank you,” said Pedro. “I have two more questions. Firstly how much time do you have to yourselves in the evening?”

“Well, depends what we got to do. Inspection ends 21:30. We’re supposed to in bed by 25:00 hours and sleep all the way through the remaining five hours until midnight at 30:00 hours. That’s three and a half hours to ourselves. We don’t just goof around, though. Some of us practice for Scendence. Sometimes we meet up with seniors from our battalion who will help teach and train us. Our merit points help determine their Cull status, you see?”

“I do. Thank you. Final question. Who prepares food for you?”

“Well, the Aux of course. They do all the cooking and cleaning. Maintenance too. That sort of stuff.”

“And these auxiliaries are lower caste humans, yes?”

Arun was about to deny that humans were so primitive as to have castes or a class system. The words caught in his throat when he thought of how he treated the Aux. He always tried to be polite, he supposed, but there was never any doubt in his attitude that he knew he was better than any Aux.

And from the vast majority of other cadets the best the Aux could hope for was indifference. Petty cruelty was more common because most cadets seemed to have had compassion bred out of them. They felt intense loyalty but struggled with the concept of kindness. And since the Aux were not part of their units, they might as well be aliens. Try as he might, Arun struggled to be so cold hearted. That made him a freak.

Before Arun could form an answer Pedro announced: “I must go now. I apologize for my abrupt departure. I am called away and cannot ignore the summons. I have a request, though. Please learn the name of one of your auxiliaries before our next meeting.”

Pedro leaped from his shelf and raced away as if his life depended on it. Perhaps it did. There could have been a major cave in with thousands dead already, but not the smallest fragment of emotion could ever enter Pedro’s artificial voice.

As he headed back up to the human levels, Arun silently cursed Pedro. How had the alien guessed that Arun didn’t know the name of a single Aux?

384th Detroit Scendence Championships.
Day 2 – Practice Match

Arun was no xeno-linguist, which wasn’t surprising, given there wasn’t much call for that skill. If an alien was on your side then the Jotun officers could communicate with the xeno if necessary. For all other aliens, you didn’t talk to them; all you had to do was aim your SA-71 and squeeze the trigger.

The only thing he knew about alien languages was that Jotuns used bifurcated nouns – a way of describing things from two perspectives. Zug said it came from the hexapeds having two pairs of hands.

Arun thought bifurcated nouns were an example of woolly thinking. Most humans agreed. But the Jotuns were in charge so they got to name the Scendence contests using their fussy nouns anyway. Equally naturally, the humans usually ignored this and simplified to a single noun.

So the contest of Deception-Planning was usually described as ‘Deception’ because most matches involved bluff and trickery. But sometimes – as with Arun’s first match for Moscow Express – the planning side came to the fore.

After Madge had let him join, Arun was desperate to make a good showing – maybe that would raise his reputation off the deck in the eyes of his comrades?

He’d been taken to one of the tech labs in the Level 5 novice school where he’d faced a G-1 cadet from the 420th Marines whose shrapnel scars to her face gave her a grim appearance.

Their challenge was to plan blockade-running logistics to resupply a besieged planet until it grew strong enough to free itself from blockade. A range of ships was available to each player, each with varying characteristics such as troop-carrying capacity, build time, cruising speed, fuel consumption, nimbleness to evade the blockade, and firepower to blast a way through. The game AIs handled all the simulation mechanics – combat, random hazards, the success of crash landings other such factors – letting the Scendence players concentrate on planning the logistical operation.

Arun concentrated everything on massive troop carriers loaded with defensive fighter squadrons to protect the carriers and their main cargo: great clouds of single-use dropboats loaded with troops and supplies.

The carriers took such a long time to build that his opponent had already made two blockade-running missions to her beleaguered planet before Arun’s carriers even reached his. Once there, his boats suffered a brutal 90% casualty rate as they passed through the blockade. And while his Scendence opponent’s ships had degraded her enemy’s defenses, Arun’s had barely touched his, being all about evading rather than blasting a way through.

The 420th supporters watching the Scendence feeds were jubilant, the 412th’s disappointed… except for Blue Squad, Charlie Company, 8th battalion. Some of Arun’s squad had lost confidence in him as a Marine, but as a Scendence player they knew him too well to give up hope.

Blue Squad was right. Arun himself soon grew confident that victory would be his.

Although his troopship carriers took a long time to build, they didn’t need rebuilding – they simply returned home to load the next cargo of cheap-to-build dropboats and the infinite supply of troops, who had no cost or build time. His opponent’s fleets were single use, a replacement having to be built each time from scratch.

The key to victory was to exploit the abundance of his virtual Marines by spending their lives freely. Arun repeatedly flooded the blockade with such swarms of dropboats that enough survivors and their supplies got through to rapidly bolster the planet’s defenders. It didn’t take many waves before the game AI announced that his besieged forces had counter-attacked against the blockade, wiping it from orbit.

He’d won!

Arun allowed himself a smile when his overwhelming victory was announced.

Normally he would leap up and punch the air. But this time he felt dirty. There was a cruel parallel between the cheapness of his virtual soldiers’ lives and those of the flesh and blood slaves bred to fight for the Human Marine Corps.

Still, a victory was a victory. And winning was all that counted.

The moment he entered the battalion mess hall after the game, a ragged cheer went up. Then he was surrounded by cadets wanting to slap him on the back, hug him, ruffle his hair or kiss him. After the mess in the tunnels, being mobbed as a hero felt so damned good.

It only took a few seconds for the mob to thin out and then disappear, revealing the cold truth: Arun had only ever had a handful of well-wishers. Most of 8th battalion was watching him with stony indifference or outright hatred. Gods! He hadn’t seen many cadets outside of Blue and Gold Squads since he’d seen Little Scar – since his battalion had been demoted into the Cull Zone.

It didn’t take a genius to work out whom most people blamed for that.

“Hey, well done on your game,” called a female voice from behind. “I saw it all. An impressive performance.”

Arun was grateful for any sign of support. “Thanks, pal. I do my best to…”
That voice!

He stopped, turned around, and stared into Xin’s face.

“Thing is…” Xin cast her eyes to the ground. She looked really uncomfortable. “Thing is, you’re a whole lot better than the Deception player in my team.”

Arun’s reply was simply to gawp, too stunned to speak.

“Yeah, not too good on the vocabulary. I get that sometimes. But I studied your record. You’ve got good form.”

“Well, yes, thank you. I wouldn’t say I’m better than your teammate, but thanks. I saw you too. I think you’re amazing.”

“Oh, man. Don’t go all twinkle-eyed on me. This is difficult enough as it is.”

Arun chewed over her words, but he still couldn’t make sense of them.

“Yeah. Lack of intelligence noted too, buddy. Still, you’ve got those plus points. And that’s why I want you on my team.”

“You… but… I can’t. I’m already in the Moscow Express team.”

“D’uh! I just saw you, remember?”

“Corporal Majanita has only just cooled down enough to let me on the team. I can’t leave them.”

“Yes you can.
Can’t
is a word only used by losers. Now
, won’t
is a word I’d accept, but can’t is too pathetic for my ears to process.”

Arun tried not to think too hard because he knew he’d hate himself for what he was about to say. “All right, Xin, I
won’t
. I won’t join you, much as I would dearly love to under any other circumstances, because… Well, you gotta see it my way. I can’t let my squadmates down.”

Xin gave a curt nod. “Fair enough. But will you at least do me a favor? Let me get you a drink and you give me five minutes of your time, because I’ve a couple of reasons to change your mind. If you still say no after that, then…” she shrugged sinuously. “No dramas. I won’t ask again. Will you do that for me?”

Arun had the feeling he was getting conned here. Xin was dancing rings around him. Zug would know what to say. So would Springer, but Arun’s usual way out of this sort of situation was to walk away or punch the person leading him a merry dance.

But with Xin, none of those were options.

“Hey, guys!” Xin was waving at some G-1 cadets sitting by the listening station, a zone of comfy chairs where ancient Earth music was beamed into stripped down battlesuit helmets modified for comfort.

A few minutes ago, Arun had felt like a hero in the making. Now, as he sat waiting for Xin, he felt like a child being bossed around by an adult. Or a bullying older child.

It wasn’t long before Xin returned with a couple of drinks in cornboard cups.

Arun took his and drank half in one go. It was a grainer: rich, smooth and cool. He didn’t recognize the flavor Xin had dialed up, but it was spicy enough to give a real kick but not enough to overcome the refreshing smoothness of the malt drink.

“It wasn’t my idea to call ourselves Team Ultimate Victory. Frakking dumb name if you ask me, but do you think we’ll live up to that name, McEwan?”

“Yes.” He nodded. “You’re superb, Xin. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone play as well as you.”

“It’s not all about me, McEwan. Let me put it a simpler way. Do you think we’ll reach the last sixteen and Cull immunity?”

“No,” he said and immediately studied her face for a reaction. He’d given the right answer, he judged. “Too many weak points in the team,” he added. “You’ll come up against a team with no weak players and then you’ll lose.”

Xin grimaced. “You’re right.” Her leg started jerking up and down. Was she nervous?