Poor Man's Fight (11 page)

Eyes widened, jaws dropped and no small amount of shocked profanity fell from the mouths of the recruits. The most common refrain was only three words: “Six fucking
months
?”

“Drop!” Janeka and
Everett snapped simultaneously. The company quickly and collectively fell on its face in the dirty road. Janeka kept yelling. “Fifty! Begin now! You weren’t given permission to speak!”

Satisfied that the interruptions were quashed,
Everett continued. “You are the first to go through this experimental new curriculum, designed in no small part by Gunnery Sergeant Janeka and myself. These changes provide Fort Stalwart with unique logistical challenges. One of these has been the question of recruit housing. Yet we are more than up to this challenge.

“
You will find that the militia requires frequent improvisation. As a case in point, Gunnery Sergeant Janeka and I volunteered Oscar Company for non-standard housing arrangements for the good of the service.

“The Militia thanks you for your sacrifice,”
Everett finished. His face bore no smile, but his voice carried an audible grin. Everett turned and pushed open the door. He ordered them to their feet when they hit fifty push-ups—a serious trial for most by now—and then directed them to file inside.

The entrance involved three
sets of thick, armored doors. Inside, recruits found nothing on but single-mattress bunk beds, old-fashioned standing plastic storage units, and an unpleasant, musty stench. There were absolutely no windows. Toward the rear, they saw signs of staircases and lifts, but many of the lights were out. The shelter seemed like it hadn’t been cleaned in years… which became Oscar Company’s first mission.

Sergeant Janeka doled out tasks as if she
read them from an invisible checklist. Mops, brooms, rags, buckets and soap waited in the entrance passageways, apparently left by some unseen welcoming committee before the company arrived. Young men and women used to automated room sweepers, sonic cleansing wands and computerized dust filtration systems took up the old-fashioned tools with trepidation and distaste.

“Ahmed, Gonzalez, Huang, Ravenell,” Janeka called out, “you get the vents. Get up there and start cleaning. Take off the grills and reach inside. Don’t let me catch you just wiping off the faceplates. Start with the ventilation terminals and access ports on this floor tonight. You’ll get a chance to crawl all the way into the atmospheric recycling tanks down below before the week is out. If you’re claustrophobic, congratulations. You’re about to get over it.

“Espinoza, Perelli, Whittier, Gomez and
other
Gomez,” Janeka said with a roll of her eyes, “you’re on inventory duty. Sweep through this entire floor and mark down literally every piece of equipment, every tool, every rag, everything that is not mounted or bolted down into a bulkhead, the overhead or the deck. That means walls, ceiling or floor for those of you who never bothered to read your orientation manuals. You record everything and you will bring your manifests to me. You will also
collect
everything that
might
be garbage of some sort into a central point. There hasn’t been an internal inventory on this facility in a long time, so we will double-check every previous record and we will do so immediately.

“Ramos,
Matuskey, Malone, and Einstein,” she continued, “you chatterboxes get to clean the head.”

Silence followed. It wasn’t the first time the trainers at Fort Stalwart used some odd word for something completely mundane. They had heard this one before, but nobody remembered it. Tanner bit his lip, wanting to translate in the painfully awkward silence, but he worried he’d be speaking out of turn again. Finally, Ramos spoke up. “Sergeant Janeka!” he called out, “What is the ‘head?’”

Janeka just snorted. “It’s what you kiddies used to call the potty. From now on, you call it the head. You get to scrub out the toilets and the showers. There should be hand tools and chemicals in the cleaning closet inside. Don’t put any of it in your mouths.”

Chemicals?
Tanner thought with surprise.
Who the hell even
makes
chemical cleaning agents anymore?

Matuskey
blanched. “Uh, Sergeant Janeka?” he asked. “Are there protective gloves?”

“There’s nothing in that head that can’t be cured,” Janeka asserted. “You already got your basic inoculations. There’ll be more comprehensive immunizations later if you don’t wash out of basic training, but those cost money. We don’t want to invest too much in you ‘til you’ve earned it. Now stop sandbagging! Fall out!”

The four recruits all stepped out of line and headed for the back of the squad bay. What they found shocked them. The shelter had been designed to accommodate two hundred people for an extended period, with sanitary facilities to match. Not one of the recruits had ever seen such a foul mess. Even in the most impoverished, multi-family dwellings of Archangel, bathrooms were built with the ability to self-disinfect and eliminate foul odors in mere seconds.

After countless dissections and other less-pleasant tasks in his advanced biology classes, Tanner could endure rather nasty smells. Even so, the head disgusted him.
“Jesus,” Tanner muttered, “how’s a bathroom still stink when nobody’s used it in years?”

Einstein slapped him on the back hard enough to push him forward a step. “You get the toilets,” he said. Tanner looked up to find a challenging glare.
Galling as it was, he saw nothing to be gained in arguing. Someone had to do it, and Janeka or Everett could turn up at any minute. Tanner scowled and turned to the stalls.

“Oh my god,” Ramos said, covering his mouth and nose. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

“Did they purposely mess this place up for us?” Matuskey wondered.

Einstein walked to a sink, stopped it up with his rag and ran the water. “Might as well get to it,” he said. “You guys get the showers, I’ve got the sinks.”

“Who put you in charge?” asked Ramos.

“Oh, what, you got a better plan?”

At that, Ramos and Matuskey just looked to one another, frowned, and got to work.

It became obvious after half an hour that Einstein worked
the slowest and grumbled the most. He complained of stains in the sinks that just wouldn’t scrub out. He took frequent breaks to stretch and look around and talked to every fellow recruit who came in to use the facilities.

“This is bullshit,” Einstein declared. “There have to be rules against this. It must be cheaper to buy automated cleaners than to have us
clean by hand. And those two assholes? They don’t have to lay it on this thick. How does any of this make us good crewmen? Bullshit. We’re all citizens. Who the hell do they think they are?”

“Combat veterans,” answered Tanner. He
didn’t bother looking up from scrubbing his toilet.

“What?” Einstein sneered.

“You saw the red stripe down the side of their pants, didn’t you?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Those are bloodstripes. It means they’re both combat veterans. Archangel’s been at peace for thirty years, and the Union hasn’t been to war in sixty, but somehow both of them wound up in actual battles.”

“So? Are you saying they’re mentally damaged or something?”

“No, I’m saying they might actually know a thing or two, and… forget it,” Tanner sighed, shaking his head.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Einstein huffed.

“Malone!” called a recruit from outside the head. “Everett wants to see you in his office outside the squad bay.” The cleaning crew all looked at one another blankly for a moment before Tanner answered the summons.

“Hey,” said one recruit as he passed other cleaning crews. She was a petite girl whose nametag read “Wong.” “When you go up there, slap the bulkhead once, stand at attention next to the doorway—but not in it—and say, ‘Recruit Malone reporting as ordered.’”

Tanner blinked.  “How did you know that?”

She smirked. “I just saw two other guys wind up doing fifty push-ups each for getting it wrong.”

“Gotcha. Thanks.”

“No problem. Good luck.”

Outside the squad bay, Tanner found an office with Everett and Janeka’s names outside the doorway. He caught a glimpse of decent, modern desks and carpeting, and while the construction was still the same concrete as the rest of the squad bay it was at least painted. He wasn’t sure if anyone was inside, though. Tanner slapped the wall and stood at attention. “Recruit Malone reporting as ordered!”

Silence. He waited, and heard nothing. Eventually, he called out again, “Recruit Malone, rep—!“

“I heard you the first time!” Everett snarled from inside. “Get on your face! Fifty push-ups! Count ‘em out!”

Wincing, Tanner obeyed immediately. Exhausted as he was already, the task took him a while, but
Everett didn’t complain or criticize. When Tanner finally got to his fiftieth push-up, he stayed down on his face and waited. It turned out to be the right move.

“Recover,”
Everett called out.  “Step inside.”

Tanner came to attention as best he could.
His whole upper body trembled from all the calisthenics he performed today. It took effort to keep his eyes focused on the wall directly across from him, a difficult trick to master even when well-rested.

Everett
sat at his desk with a pair of holo screens open before him. “Who told you how to report properly?”

“Recruit Wong, Chief
Everett.”

“Glad to see some of you looking out for one another. You owe her one for trying,”
Everett murmured. “Not her fault you fucked it up.” He looked up from the holo screen. “Recruit Malone, are you an honest man?”

Tanner blinked.  “Yes, Chief
Everett.”

“What in the hell are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry, Chief Everett?”

“I didn’t ask you if you were a sorry person. I assume that much of every recruit. I asked you what the hell you’re doing here.”

“Er… Recruit Jun told me to report to you, Chief Everett.”

“Stupid! I mean what are you doing joining the Archangel navy?”

“I want to serve and protect the Archangel system, Chief Everett!”

“See, now you’re not being honest with me, Malone. That’s the bullshit answer from the recruit manual, which nobody else even bothers to read before they get here. And that’s just my point. I’ve got your enlistment records and transcripts right here. I could’ve bet a month’s salary that you read the manual. You did, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Chief Everett.”

“How many times?”

“I lost count, Chief Everett.”

“And how many other books about basic training did you read?”

“Only eight, Chief Everett.” The chief let out some sort of noise between a snort and a choke. Tanner added in a slightly apologetic tone, “I only had a couple of weeks between deciding to join and shipping out, and I had a lot to tie up before I left home.”

The chief openly laughed. “Why in the hell aren’t you partying it up for the next
two months before going off to some university?”

Tanner didn’t answer immediately. He wondered if this was some test of his zeal. Neither
Everett nor Janeka seemed like the type to appreciate being told their militia was anyone’s second choice. He tried not to frown.

“I crashed on The Test,” Tanner answered. “That kind of screwed up my original plans. The navy seemed like an excellent way to recover
. Maybe grow up some more.”

Everett
grinned. “Well, that’s just goddamn tactful.” He turned his attention back to one holo screen and dragged his finger down its length to change the display, then whistled appreciatively. “Holy shit. You sure did crash. Debt like that doesn’t match with grades like yours. What the hell happened? Did you pass out?”

Tanner felt himself turn red with embarrassment. “Family stuff happened the night before the test. Screwed up all my plans. Couldn’t sleep at all the night before, couldn’t concentrate...
I couldn’t get my mind off of it.”

That earned him a grunt of acknowledgement. “
Most of your fellow recruits probably owe at least as much. A lot of kids your age would just suck it up and take out more loans. Why didn’t you?”

“The more I thought about it, the more I thought this could be good for me. My mother served a term in the
Union fleet at my age and always spoke well of her experience. And like I said, it seemed like a good way to pay down some of that debt. Serve the state. All that stuff.”

Everett
thought about it and nodded. “Fair enough. But back to you crashing that test. You can’t go worrying about personal stuff when you’re on duty. This isn’t like working in retail where you can bitch and moan and gossip with your friends. People like to think that the Archangel militia just sits around on its ass and writes safety citations on freighters, but this stuff is for real. Can you learn to handle that?”

“Yes, Chief
Everett.”

“Alright. Well, only a handful of people in this company can read and write worth a damn. I’ve already got Wong and Sinclair assigned to other jobs, so… You know what a yeoman is, Malone?”