Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty (24 page)

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Authors: Jean Johnson

BOOK: Theirs Not To Reason Why: A Soldier's Duty
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Ia squatted.
“You know you
can
quit.”
“I know, Sergeant.”
“Feet!—Push-up!”
“It’s okay, nobody’s going to fault you if you quit.”
Ia rose halfway onto her feet, then dropped onto fingers and toes, following the commands she and her fellow recruits were being given. Her attention was mostly on Sergeant Linley, who was shouting orders for various positions and regimen exercises. But it was hard to hear her, thanks to Sergeant Takna, who was being overly helpful. To the point of being obnoxious.
“Bellies up!”
Ia flipped onto her back.
“You’ve already survived over two days,” Takna reminded her, stepping over her as Ia followed the next order to roll left. The sergeant’s voice rose loud enough, it threatened to drown out Linley’s commands. “You’ve got a good, solid career track already laid! You don’t want to jeopardize that!”
Ia struggled to hear the next position command, but couldn’t. She reacted instead to the movements of the front-most squad, who were scrambling to their feet. Dipping onto the timeplains wasn’t feasible anymore. She was now within that grey fog inside her mind, like a heavy mist obscuring the little valley her own timestream occupied. Too many possibilities, too many complications, not enough strength to penetrate the mist.
Plus, there was that other risk. Takna wasn’t just talking loudly, she was also occasionally touching Ia on the shoulder. They were friendly touches, nothing untoward about them . . . except they were confining Ia’s movements and reactions since she didn’t want to hit the other woman. Aside from the whole Fifty Fatalities thing, which included attacking a superior officer, the last thing Ia wanted to do was fall victim to an accidental, deeper plunge into the timestreams. That ran the risk of dragging whoever was touching her into those waters as well. The longer she stayed away from Sanctuary, the fewer uncontrolled visions she was having, but fewer wasn’t the same as none.
She tried doing jumping jacks, following orders, but Takna was being overly helpful by standing right by her side. “I think you would be
perfect
in the motor pool. Why, with those reflexes, you could easily make a great career for yourself as a shuttle pilot!”
“Sit-ups!” Linley ordered.
Ia was slow in getting down into position, because Takna was now behind her.
“Just think of it—Yeoman First Class Ia!”
“Feet! Parade Rest!” Linley snapped. Ia gave up trying to get down fully and pushed herself back up again.
“Oh, that has the most
lovely
ring to it!”
Ia shuddered. Not because it was outside the career path she needed to take—which it was—but because the sound of a Marine Corps sergeant
gushing
with enthusiasm offended her. In the next moment, she shuddered again, grunting under the impact of Sergeant Takna wrapping her arms around Ia’s chest in a hug.
Enough!
Grabbing and twisting, Ia flung the other woman to the ground. Takna
oofed
at the thudding impact.
“
Hold!
Recruit Ia!” Linley snapped, outrage sharpening her already hard voice. “Did you just
attack
a superior officer?”
Ignoring the recruits and soldiers twisting to look her way, Ia locked Takna’s arm with her own and planted her knee on the other woman’s thigh, using an Afaso hold that ensured the sergeant couldn’t get up without hurting herself. It was also a hold that brought the two of their heads close together. Aware of the hovercameras orienting on her position, closing in to record everything in greater detail, she addressed the woman on the ground in a murmur meant just for the two of them. The scanners on the cameras would pick up her words, of course, but hopefully the other recruits would not.
“
You
just touched me in a manner which
could
be misconstrued as Fatality Number Fifty, Sergeant. My
reaction
may not have been unprovoked.” The other woman blinked, eyes wide. Ia released her, shifting off her thigh. She even offered the other woman her hand. Takna accepted it, letting Ia haul her back to her feet. Ia pulled the other woman close as she did so, speaking just enough for the stunned sergeant’s ears alone. “If you
value
your career . . .”
“Recruit Ia! I asked you a question!” Striding through the other squads, Linley stopped in front of the two of them. “Sergeant Takna, do you wish to press charges against—”
“No, Sergeant,” Takna quickly denied. “Nothing happened, Sergeant Linley. On
either
side.”
Linley frowned, but backed off. She turned and strode back to the front of the clearing they were exercising in, passing the rows of idle, curious recruits. “Fall in!”
Ia snapped her shoulders back, eyes forward and limbs straight, At Attention along with the rest.
“Now, as I was saying about your future career,” Takna stated as her colleague ordered everyone back into doing jumping jacks.
Ia snapped her gaze to the other woman even as she jumped, swinging her arms and legs open and closed. “As
I
was about to say regarding
your
career, Sergeant . . . since your time and effort are so valuable, perhaps you should go help
someone else
?”
“Windmills!—Right Face! Left Face!”
It took the sergeant a moment to catch her meaning.
If you
value
your career . . .
“Jog in place—get those knees up!”
Without another word, Takna turned away and made her way through the recruits jogging in place.
Ia jogged right along with them, returning her attention to their Regimen Trainer.
Off to the side, she watched a panting, flush-faced Kumanei stumble, stagger, then stop. Heaving breaths, the other woman rested her palms on her knees. Takna reversed course, approaching from her right side, while another of the sergeant-observers approached from the left. Kumanei answered their quiet inquiries while Ia dropped to the ground and did unassisted sit-ups, before being ordered to flip over.
As she did so, she caught a glimpse of Kumanei, hands atop her head, making her way off to the side. Fifteen down. Twenty-nine to go. Everyone had made it through the first day, but after less than three hours of sleep, some had faltered late on the second. More had dropped out today.
“Squad D! Start off the sound-off of the Fifty Fatalities, counting backwards from Fifty!” Linley ordered. “Bellies up! Stomach-crunches!”
Ia flopped onto her tile-wrapped back and brought her knees and elbows together in alternating efforts. She listened absently to the Fatalities being recited in reverse by those who were left in Squad D, which would be followed by Squad E, and then her own.
Twenty-nine more to go. And the near future is so foggy right now . . . not yet from lack of sleep, just from too many possibilities. I think. I can’t really tell.
Lackland flubbed his Fatality. He wasn’t just one off, he was three off, and mangled even that one, in his attempt to recite it. Muttering to himself, he climbed to his feet, placed his hands on his head, and staggered off where the sergeants had taken Kumanei to await a ride to the next camp. The next recruit in his squad quickly recited his assigned number correctly, moving the impromptu quiz further down the line.
Twenty-eight more to go. All I can do is my best. I must not fail.
 
“
Slag
, Ia.” Arstoll slurped at the water in his canteen. “
I’m
just about ready to quit, and you’re still going?”
“Shhh,” Ia whispered, sweeping her arms slowly in the grand, scooping Wheel of Fire. Twisting, she leaned from one foot to the other, stretching out her legs, elbows arching up into the position the V’Dan martial artists called Yearning Birds. “I’m sleeping . . .”
“Sleeping? That’s a new word for it. You’re standing out here in the hot sun without a shirt!” Mendez protested. “Yet you tell me you’re
sleeping
. Have you gone past the horizon, meioa-e?”
She didn’t respond. He and Arstoll were the only others to survive this long into Hell Week beside herself. Recruits Q’iang and the surprisingly wiry Spyder had dropped out this morning from the simple fault of not being able to wake up on time. For all she knew, they were still sleeping, hauled bodily onto the bus by their Hell Week instructors so they could be hauled back off again to join their fellow recruits in remedial training.
“I think the sun got to her,” she heard Arstoll mutter.
Hardly.
The burning heat of the sun penetrated her skin with less danger than it would have seared Mendez’s darker hide. Her paternal legacy allowed the bright noonday light to energize her, rather than traumatize her. If she chose. Right now, she did. It was the only way to get back more energy than food alone, since rest was in short supply. None of the three of them had enjoyed more than a single hour of continuous sleep, and no more than eight hours total in the last five grueling days.
The slow, stately moves of the Third Air Dance soothed her weary mind. Ia couldn’t see anything of her own future anymore; her own timestream was a great and frightening blank wall. Not as vast nor as terrifying as the wall that would come for their galaxy, but frightening enough on its own.
Moving kept her tired mind busy. It took effort to remember the martial form, effort to push her weight suitless body slowly yet smoothly through each pose. Not busy enough, though. Mendez’s words echoed in her thoughts.
Have I gone past the horizon? Have I?
It hurt to move. It hurt to think. It hurt even to feel.
Why am I here? Why am I hurting my body? Why am I pushing my self, my soul?
The golden glow of late afternoon turned a sickly amber, pushing bodies up out of the ground. Dead bodies. Seared bodies. Scorched, frozen, bloated, stripped, mutilated bodies. Eyes wide, she saw nothing but bodies and barren, lifeless dirt.
Squeezing her eyelids shut, Ia barricaded herself against the image.
I am here to
serve
. I am here to
prevent
this massacre. I am here to
stop this hell!
I have pledged my life, my sanity . . . to stop this . . .
A thread of a tune came to her, weaving its way through the desolation pressing in around her. It was an old, old melody her mother liked to hum whenever she was doing some necessary chore. Not always an enjoyable chore, but a necessary one. As an innocent little girl, Ia had happily learned the song in its original Old Earth Bulgarian, singing the pretty little melody over and over without a care in the world, until her Grandpa Quentin had taught her the true meaning of the song, how it was about the impermanence of life.
About death, and what that really meant.
She remembered crying herself to sleep, and the dreams that had followed. The melody had followed her into those dreams, too. Upon waking, she had run to her grandfather’s home, still upset, and demanded to know how to stop the bad thing called death. A practical man, Grandpa Quentin had told her that all things would eventually die, but the only way to stop a premature death was to be careful, to be watchful and mindful and aware. And most importantly, be watchful and mindful not only of oneself, but of others and their needs.
The original lyrics had shifted and changed with that, wrapping themselves around her young mind like a shield. Over and over, the young Iantha had woven the new words around her psyche. She had even whispered them in his native tongue the day her family laid him in his grave after a bad fall had crushed his skull, convinced that if she had only
been
there, she could have prevented it.
That wish, that belief, had saved her crumbling sanity at the age of fifteen.
Now, as an adult, Ia shielded herself once again with the simple, short, repetitive melody, warding off the nightmares seeping into her mind. A scrap of caution kept her from singing them in Terranglo, but she could sing them in V’Dan, the language of the other Human empire. Since Terranglo was the official trade tongue these days, few people in the Terran United Planets bothered to learn V’Dan.

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