Marine Cadet (The Human Legion Book 1) (45 page)

Springer rolled her eyes. “Actually, there is one more thing to think on.”

“What’s that?”

“This…” Springer raised herself on tiptoes, leaned in, and kissed Arun on the lips.

It was no more than a chaste peck, but Arun couldn’t help but touch the spot where Springer’s lips had brushed against his.

That was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever done for him.

——

Arun hurried after Springer and into a dorm filling with unhurried activity as the section prepared to spend for a stint of unknown duration practicing void combat.

Suit AIs were checked, the head visited, silent words spoken by the more spiritual. Umarov was helped through the modern drills, grumbling at all the stupid changes and venting his frustration at everyone around him in a stream of unfamiliar curses.

All that ceased dead on 07:00 when, unexpectedly, a tone sounded through the speakers recessed into the walls, followed a moment later by a woman’s voice. It was not a voice Arun recognized, but it was one that was used to being obeyed.

“Attention! All cadet units report to the main parade ground immediately. I say again. All cadet units report to the main parade ground immediately. That is all.”

The entire force of Detroit cadets were only assembled for graduation day, the Cull, or executions too serious to be handled at battalion level. But none of those were due.

Arun’s fellow cadets weren’t unresponsive robots now: they looked stunned, turning to each other for explanations.

But there was one person who didn’t look surprised.

“Sorry, kids,” said Umarov. He was sincere too, his grouchiness replaced by hollowed-out sadness. “I guess you’re gonna grow up even quicker than I feared.”

Detroit nestled in a valley floor beneath the dusty red peaks of the Gjende Mountains. So deep were the shadows, it was said, that a natural-born Earth human would need a torch to pick their way around the valley floor. Arun was not a normal human. The wide avenue meandering toward the parade ground was clear to see, as were the obelisks at either side that displayed bas-relief carvings of fantastic martial creatures. Or possibly they were portraits in sculpture of the previous residents of the base. It was not a species that Arun recognized. Although his eyes could see the path, the colors of the valley floor had been leeched out. Arun saw everything in monochrome shades of malevolent red.

If it weren’t for the ominous circumstances it would be a pleasant walk. The air was thin up on the surface, but the winds were light for a change and the temperature comfortable.

At one point the avenue had been crushed under a fallen mountain top. A fresh and unadorned path detoured around the obstruction.

“What caused that?” he asked Majanita, pointing to the rock fall that blocked the path.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s no landslide or natural erosion.”

“A meteor strike perhaps,” suggested Arun.

“More likely a kinetic torpedo.”

Suddenly Arun felt exposed out here on the planet’s surface. That made him the opposite of the Jotuns who could not bear to be underground. At least Arun’s fear was rational. A ship in orbit above the valley floor could do some serious damage. Being underground with a few hundred meters of dirt above your head was much safer.

At 07:36 they reached the parade ground, an oval cut into the side of the mountain. The gouge went back 800 meters and was 100 meters high, the roof being the smooth, flat underside of the mountain above. It was as if an impossibly large stonemason’s chisel had cut a groove into the side of the mountain.

“Look!” said Brandt. He pointed to the densest concentration of cadets at the center of the oval. “Look for our battalion flag.”

He must have good eyesight, thought Arun, because he couldn’t see any flags himself. But as they made their way toward the center and saw that at regular intervals there were indeed square banners mounted on five-meter poles

There it was! The gold circle on a black background of the 412th Marines with a silver number 8 in the lower left corner. It was a simple design but enough to swell Arun’s heart with pride.

Sergeant Gupta was waiting for them. He marshalled them into ranks and files to his satisfaction, repositioning cadets until he was happy.

Then he marched in and out of the lines saying: “Keep your dignity at all times. Never forget. Keep your dignity!”

The cadets came to attention in perfect parade ground posture and waited. They had been bred and trained for waiting, which was just as well. The parade deck was huge, but there were around 130,000 cadets across all four regiments. Assembling them took a while.

“Welcome, cadets,” came a woman’s voice once all the cadets were assembled. “My name is Sergeant Bissinger.”

Arun recognized Bissinger’s voice as the woman who had ordered all cadets to parade. There were no obvious speakers to carry her voice, but her words reached Arun’s ears with crystal clarity.

“I shall not say good morning,” she added. Arun knew Sergeant Bissinger was as senior a veteran as they came. Although it was always tricky to determine the rank seniority of the human commanders due to the rule that no human could take a rank above senior squad NCO. Seniority was pretty much a word of mouth thing, but Arun’s guess was that Bissinger was the de facto human base commander.

“Today,” said Bissinger, “is a tragedy and a necessity.”

Arun heard himself groan.

“Today you cadets face the reality of your lives. That we all of us have won freedom for our home world but that it is we who must pay the price.”

If only he were in his suit. Barney would fire him the drugs to make this much easier.

“We are all of us soldiers of the White Knights, our ultimate leaders who glory in change, mutation and experimentation. They believe the elimination of failed experiments is indivisible from growth and renewal. Creative destruction is not merely an ideal that they cherish, but has been incorporated deep within their biology and planetary engineering. We humans do not mutate with the rapidity that our masters are blessed by, but the White Knights demand that all servant species perform their own emulation of our masters’ ideal of creative destruction.”

Arun found his eyes blinking uncontrollably. Was he crying?

“Our human way of handling this tradition – one sanctified by our masters – is called the Cull.”

Frakk! He
was
crying. For years he’d dreaded this moment. It shouldn’t be happening now. It was too early in the year. But off schedule or not there was a deathly inevitability about the events that would roll out over the coming minutes. All that talk of winning more points to escape the danger zone was too late now for graduation year cadets in the bottom-ranked battalions. One tenth of them were about to die, and there was nothing anyone could do to change their fate.

Eyes front, watching the officer who wasn’t an officer address them from a platform almost directly in front of him, Arun was nearly surprised by Sergeant Gupta when he walked behind his rank of cadets.

“Keep your dignity. Do not disobey.”

Sergeant Gupta kept repeating his litany. But what was dignified about people murdering each other? And all this pain only to ape the freakish beliefs of a bunch of faraway alien vecks?

Once Gupta had passed him, Arun’s eyes drilled holes in the sergeant’s back as he marched away.

Easy for you
, thought Arun.
You’re not up for execution duty
.

Then Arun turned his head and looked around him. Only then did he understand the layout of this grotesque exercise. The three battalions in the Cull Zone were lined up in front of Bissinger’s platform. The other 29 battalions were arranged in a semicircle around their doomed comrades.
Observers to what was about to unfold.

There was a blur of movement and then Gupta was in Arun’s face, glowering. The sergeant’s breath came in short, rasping gasps. It sounded as if he was a raging bull, raring to tear Arun apart, but restraining himself from violence only by a titanic battle of will.

Snapped back to attention, Arun kept his eyes forward, which was filled by a view of his NCO’s forehead. Sweat was beginning to bead in the craggy furrows of Gupta’s frown.

The NCO’s battle for control went on. His breath quickened. Arun tensed, ready for Gupta’s attack. To fight with a superior would mean immediate execution. So he readied himself to leap for the ground, where he would curl up and hope his injuries would not kill him or, worse, render him unfit for service, which would mean being dumped back into the Aux.

“You dishonor them, boy.” It had taken nearly two minutes before Gupta had gained enough control to spit those words. “We are fighting a war here. A war for survival. Today is one battle. There will be casualties.”

Gupta stepped back half a pace, close enough to still intimidate Arun, but far enough away that he could fix him with his glare. “Are you a coward, Cadet McEwan?”

“No, sergeant.”

“Really? Only a coward would be so frightened by the thought of battle casualties that they hate their commander.”

Arun’s heart lurched. Had Gupta read his thoughts?

“It’s good to be scared in battle,” Gupta growled. “It gives you an edge. But real Marines don’t stare at their commander’s back, blaming them for the war. I ask you again. Are you a coward?”

“No, sergeant.”

“Then what are you?”

Gupta stepped back another half pace and waited for an answer. Arun couldn’t work out whether this was a drill sergeant’s parade ground psycho-trick, or whether his life depended on his next sentence. Perhaps both were true.

But Arun had played this game before at school, even before then at crèche. His entire life since waking from the freezer had been lived under the hawk-like gaze of the instructors.

“I’m stupid, sergeant. Too dumb to realize I was in a battle.”

Gupta rocked back on his heels, as satisfied as he was likely to get any time soon. “That’s the correct answer. And stupid Marines are only one iota better than cowardly ones. Idiots get their squad killed. Today is your first real battle, McEwan. I will be watching you. If you show cowardice or stupidity, I
will
know. Understood?”

“Yes, sergeant.”

Gupta considered Arun for a few moments. “Eyes front,” he snapped. Then in a quieter voice he added: “Remember that no matter what you are called to do, whatever horrors you witness, you do it for the Marines. Most of all, we’re fighting for Earth. Got it?”

“Yes, sergeant.”

In perfect step, Gupta marched off to the front of Blue Squad, turned on his heels and faced his cadets. And waited with the rest of them.

Over the coming minutes, Arun could sense small groups of people from the condemned battalions march to the front and return a little later. He daren’t get a good look after Gupta’s grilling. How had Gupta seen what he was up to? Was it a veteran’s sixth sense? Was he under invisible surveillance? Maybe it was just bad luck and his guilty face had given him away. Until he found out, he decided to act as if Gupta really did have eyes in the back of his head.

Then it was Blue Squad’s turn. At a command barked by Gupta, they filed out in a neat column and followed him up to the platform. He thought back to that bawling out in Little Scar’s office and realized he was being filmed too. He pushed back his shoulders, squared his jaw, and marched with as much dignity as he could muster.

Sergeant Bissinger stood alone on a stone platform raised about fifteen meters above the parade ground floor. It was a hexagon twenty meters across that had been carved out of the rock. Or rather, left behind when the parade ground had been carved. In front of the hexagon was a polished metal drum, and alongside, what appeared to be the kind of armory cabinet that was scattered around the hab-disks.

Sergeant Gupta ordered the squad to halt. Then he separated off ten cadets and told them what to do. Arun wasn’t in that first group. He got to watch first.

The picked cadets each put their hands into a hole cut into one end of the drum. They lined up, gripping something in their palms, but Arun couldn’t see what until Gupta ordered them to open up their hands.

They were pebbles. Smooth round pebbles. Half were colored black and half white. The cadets replaced the pebbles in the drum. Those who’d picked white marched back to their place in the crowd. Those with black lined up in front of the armory cupboard.

Sergeant Gupta opened the cupboard door. Inside was a firearm rack holding five SA-71s. It was just like what Arun was used to, except this cupboard had a feed from underneath. If these were the weapons of execution, they would need more than five. There must be a scores waiting out of sight to replace those taken from the cupboard.

At Gupta’s signal, the five cadets each took a carbine in turn. At his next command, they armed them ready to fire. Four of them immediately returned their carbines to the cupboard, lined up again, and then marched back to the battalion’s place in the crowd.

That left one cadet holding a carbine. Laban Caccamo, his name was, from Hecht’s Alpha Section. Dark hair, thick eyebrows, muscular, popular with the girls. In happier days as a novice, Caccamo joined in with any fun and games going around, especially if it involved playing pranks on his friends. He did what his training instructors told and he did it well, but not exceptionally.

At that moment, Caccamo couldn’t help being exceptional. Every cadet in Detroit was watching him and what he would do.

Caccamo snapped to attention, saluted, and then marched around to the back of the hexagon. He was lost to sight.

Then it was Arun’s turn. His group of ten included all eight cadets from Delta Section plus Lewark and Bizzy from Beta Section.

Gupta gave them instructions, but Arun wasn’t listening. He was hardly going to forget what he had just seen.

By the time his turn came around to put his hand into the drum, he was convinced that it would be him joining Caccamo in the execution squad. He had to reach in deep to find it. The pebble he drew out was warm to the touch. Arun gripped it so tightly that he felt his hand bruise.