Terms of Enlistment (6 page)

“Most of you are out of shape,” Sergeant Burke announces. “You have been sitting on your asses at home, watching the Networks and eating garbage. I have no clue how you can get fat from eating the shit they dole out to you people, but I see way too much flab in this room.”

Sergeant Burke speaks in the same cadence as Sergeant Gau before him. Except for his slight Southern accent, he sounds just like the Master Sergeant. I wonder whether they teach a special drill instructor voice.

“We are going to run you through some physical exercises now. We need to find out which ones of you are in sufficient condition to even begin getting into shape.”

He takes a step back, and the red-headed woman sergeant steps forward and takes his place. She gives us a glare that’s hard as flint.

“Pla-
toon
!” she barks. “In front of the building, in double row,
fall in
!”

We rush out and file past the drill instructors, but I have a good idea that any speed at this point will be deemed insufficient by our drill instructors, even if we managed to teleport downstairs instantly.

“That means
now
, boys and girls!” she shouts. “You’re not getting paid by the hour.”

We trample down the stairs like a herd of panicked mountain goats. Outside, we reform the platoon in double line as ordered.

Our drill sergeants emerge from the building at a walk. Sergeant Burke once again steps in front of the platoon, while the red-haired female sergeant takes up position on the left end of our double row. The bald-headed black sergeant mirrors her position on our right side.

“We’re going to play a game called ‘Follow the Leader.’ Sergeant Riley over there is the Leader.”

He nods towards the red-haired sergeant to our left.

“Sergeant Riley will lead the platoon on a little run. Your job is to stick with her. Sergeant Harris will bring up the rear. It is in your best interest to stay in front of Sergeant Harris, and behind Sergeant Riley at all times.”

Sergeant Riley looks like she could run a marathon, but I’m reasonably confident about my ability to keep pace with her. She’s wearing fatigues and combat boots, we’re wearing exercise clothes and running shoes, and I’ve been running the staircases back at our residence cluster for the last three months in preparation for military training.

We turn left to align the column as instructed, Sergeant Riley starts running, and the platoon follows.

After an hour, I’m not so confident about my stamina anymore.

I’m in the middle of the platoon, and Sergeant Riley is twenty yards in front of me. As far as I can tell, she’s not even breathing hard. We’ve been running in one direction since we started, and I still can’t see an end to this military base. Other platoons pass us in both directions, and all the recruits in those platoons run in perfect synchronicity. Platoon 1066, on the other hand, is a loose formation of coughing, wheezing, and gasping recruits in various states of misery. Sergeant Riley does not slow down. So far, nobody has dared to fall behind Sergeant Harris at the rear.

Finally, Sergeant Riley departs from the straight line she has been running for the last hour. There is a large vehicle park by the side of the road, and she veers onto it, skipping over the curb in a sickeningly light-footed fashion. The platoon follows, some of us only barely managing not to trip on the curb. Sergeant Riley slows down to a trot and comes to a halt when the bulk of the platoon is in the center of the square.

“Two rows, boys and girls. This is the military, not recess at school. Fall in!”

We shuffle around to line up as ordered.

“Leave plenty of space between yourself and the recruit in front of you,” she instructs the back row, and I know what’s coming next.

“Push-ups,” she announces. “I count, you follow. Don’t anyone work ahead of me, or we’ll start back at One.”

She drops into position on her hands, and looks at the platoon as we follow suit.

“One.”

She lowers herself until her chin almost touches the ground. I take a glance sideways and notice that Sergeants Harris and Burke are doing push-ups as well, and both of them are watching the platoon as they follow Sergeant Riley’s lead.

“I want to see good form here,” Sergeant Riley shouts. “Noses touching the ground with every count.”

“One,” she starts again. “Two. Three. Four. Five.”

We get to the mid-twenties before the first recruits start wavering. As soon as it is obvious that some of us have begun to struggle, the two Sergeants on either side of the platoon rise from their push-up positions and move in.

“If you can’t do thirty little push-ups, there’s really no point in sticking it out for the rest of the training,” Sergeant Burke shouts at one of the recruits as he tries to keep up with Sergeant Riley on quivering arms. “Do yourself a favor and just drop on that gut of yours.”

The recruit struggles through one more push-up on shaking arms, and lowers himself onto the ground with a groan. Sergeant Fallon just snorts with disgust and moves on.

After a while, very few of us are still keeping pace with Sergeant Riley. She keeps doing push-ups and watches as the still-active part of the platoon shrinks to four, then three, then two. The last recruit to remain on her hands and toes is Hamilton, the trim and lean girl from my mess table.

“Well,” Sergeant Riley says as she stops mid-pushup, and hops to her feet. “We’re going to have to work on that. Only one of you is in decent shape.”

She eyes Hamilton, who has remained in push-up position.

“Back on your feet,” she orders, and Hamilton obeys.

“Platoon 1066, meet your platoon leader,” Sergeant Burke says. “Recruit Hamilton here will lead our run back to the company building.”

The smile that had briefly started to form on Hamilton’s lips disappears again.

In the afternoon, we learn the basics of moving like soldiers. It’s called drill, and it involves our three instructors trying to get us to move in unison and respond to their movement commands at precisely the same moment. It’s something the more advanced platoons have mastered to perfection, but it doesn’t look so impressive when we try it for the first time.

“That sounds like shit,” Sergeant Harris opines when we march across the space in front of the building, trying to maintain unison. “You people march like a herd of spastic goats. I want to hear every left heel hit the ground at once.”

After two hours of loud and repetitive instruction, I find that drill works best when you switch off your brain entirely and just act like a voice-controlled robot. The rest of the platoon seems to have come to the same conclusion. We still suck, but much less than in the beginning.

It’s a strange feeling to be walking in lockstep with a bunch of people dressed exactly alike. I feel like a cog in a machine, but that’s one part of the military I don’t mind. When you do exactly as you’re told, and you’re neither the best nor the worst at any task, you can disappear in the crowd and have a small measure of solitude.

For the rest of the afternoon, we sit in front of our lockers in the platoon bay again, listening to our instructors as they lecture us on subjects like the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the branches of the military, and our chain of command. Most of us are tired from the morning’s exercise and the drill session after lunch, but when the first recruit nods off, we get a demonstration on the necessity of staying alert. Sergeant Burke suddenly stops his recitation of the history and mission of the Territorial Army, straightens up, and folds his hands behind his back.

“
Recruit Olafsson
,” he barks.

Olafsson, who sits right across the center aisle from me, suddenly jerks awake and looks around with a panicked expression.

“You seem to have a problem remaining conscious,” Sergeant Burke says amicably. “I suspect it’s a lack of oxygen. Get on your feet, now.”

Recruit Olafsson obeys, clearly distraught about being the sudden center of attention.

“You will join Sergeant Riley on the quarterdeck,” Sergeant Burke says, indicating the front of the platoon bay, where there’s a generous amount of open space between the first row of bunks and the window to the Senior Drill Instructor’s office. Sergeant Riley is standing in the middle of the quarterdeck already, hands folded behind her back.

If the exercise on the quarterdeck under Sergeant Riley’s tutelage is supposed to restore some oxygen to Olafsson’s system, it seems to have the opposite effect. Fifteen minutes later, Sergeant Burke has finished his lecture on the Territorial Army, and
Recruit Olafsson’s face is a dark shade of red as he works through his sixth cycle of push-ups and sit-ups.

“Your attention is on
me
,” Sergeant Burke barks when he catches a few of us glancing over to the quarterdeck. “I promise you that each and every one of you will have ample opportunity to spend time on the quarterdeck in the next twelve weeks.”

He moves on to the history and mission of the Navy, and Recruit Olafsson continues his efforts on the quarterdeck, with an impassive Sergeant Riley standing over him as he struggles through yet another set of push-ups.

Eleven weeks and five days to go,
I tell myself.
Eighty-two days of running, getting yelled at, and doing punishment workouts on the quarterdeck.

I briefly consider standing up and walking over to Sergeant Burke to announce that I want to quit, before I end up spending weeks sweating my ass off, only to wash out anyway without anything to show for the work. Then I recall the PRC--the smell of piss and puke in the hallways and staircases, the garbage everywhere, the thugs rousting people just out of meanness and boredom?, and I banish the thought. As much as I hate working out and getting bossed around, having to take a shuttle back to that place would be much worse.

Hell,
I think as Sergeant Burke drones on about the structure and organization of the Commonwealth Navy.
At least I’ll be in great shape when I get out of here.

My battle armor is scuffed and beaten to hell, but I love it anyway. I love the rifle in my hands, too, more than a sane individual should love a mere object. Together, the rifle and the armor turn me into something different, something more advanced than the sum of myself and the technology in which I am wrapped.

We’re in our seventh week of training, and squad-level combat training is the first thing I’ve done in the military that I wouldn’t mind doing every day. We have spent the last few weeks getting to know our rifles and our gear, and learning the basics of infantry combat: moving as squads and fire teams, assault, defense, the basic steps in the dance that is modern integrated ground warfare.

The first time we practiced squad movements with the help of the integrated tactical network, I felt like I’ve been myopic all my life without knowing it, and somebody finally slipped a set of prescription glasses in front of my eyes. The helmet has more computing power built into it than all the computers in my old high school classroom put together. On the inside of the eye shield, there’s a sort of monocle over the left eye, and that’s the truly magical part of the suit. It’s the holographic projector linked to the suit’s tactical computer. The computer analyzes everything I see, overlays my field of vision with tactical symbols over every friend or foe in the vicinity, and then transmits the data to the rest of the squad. Whatever I see, the rest of my squad can see as their computers integrate the feed coming in from mine. If one of us spots a new threat, their tactical computer automatically sends the new data to the other squad computers through the encrypted wireless network, and the entire squad is aware of the threat within a few milliseconds. We’ve only been taught the use of the system two weeks ago, but I am already so used to the information feed that I feel blind and dumb when I am out of the battle armor.

The rifle is linked to the computer as well. It doesn’t aim or sight itself, but it does everything else automatically. Whenever I aim the rifle at a target, the computer selects the right burst length and cadence for the threat. My rifle doesn’t spit out any actual flechettes, but there’s a hydraulic feedback system built into the butt end that simulates
the recoil of live firing. To make the illusion complete, there’s a sound module that gives off a report.

Advancing with a squad and engaging other squads on the mock battlefields of the training facility is a strangely intoxicating experience. We’re training for war, and I know that the enemy out in the real world is going to shoot high-density flechettes and explosives at me instead of harmless beams, but so far, it all feels like a very exciting sort of sporting competition. The squads square up against each other in training, and we win or lose matches, just like in high school. There’s even the customary locker room bragging in the showers after the training rounds, with gloating winners and sulking losers. Nobody dies, or gets hurt, except for a few bruises here and there. The battle armor gives off a bit of a zap when you’re “hit” by enemy fire, but it’s not really painful, just unpleasant, like brushing your hand against a stripped low-voltage wire.