Give your parents and mine my best.
All my love,
Ricardo
Cara put the letter back in the envelope. He didn't even mention sex. That's not the Ricardo I know.
Camp Bernardo O'Higgins, Hephaestus,
Valle de las Lunas, 32/3/462 AC
O'Higgins was the mountain training center for the expanding legion and the second phase of the Cazador School.
In this camp Cruz's class had suffered its first fatality. In front of all four hundred odd Cazador students still with the class, a piton securing a rope snaking up the side of a cliff broke free. The reactions of both climber and safety man were too slowed by fatigue to grab a handhold; the next piton broke free as well. A long scream tore through the air, and those nearby heard a dull thud.
An ambulance came to claim the body. Other than that, none of the school cadre took any special pains over the death. In a few days a new name would be added to the monuments that stood by the entrance to the camp and the concrete plinths in front of the school headquarters at Camp Gutierrez. A memorial service was held at the close of that day's training. No other official notice was taken. That night fifteen men resigned.
Unofficially, and unobtrusively, Olivetti made note of those who had not resigned but who seemed more upset than most. These, in ones and two, as the schedule permitted, he spoke to over the next several days. One reported to him now.
"Cazador Cruz, reporting as ordered, Centurion."
"Sit, Cazador." Olivetti made a show of looking over Cruz's school file. He closed the file. "This is counseling, Cazador Cruz. We counsel each Cazador student several times during the course of the school… to help you learn, to improve. That's all this is. In looking over your file, and it's a short file now, I observe that you have been a somewhat better than average Cazador. True, you failed your first patrol. Most do. Nonetheless, the evaluations of your peers in your squad speak highly of you as a leader. And the CI for your first patrol thought that mostly you were let down by your assistant, Montoya."
Cruz bristled. "Montoya's okay. He just took a little longer than most getting used to the lack of sleep."
Olivetti shrugged. Alone he was a much friendlier sort than the ravening beast he usually put on for the students. "Forget about Montoya for now. You have been acting more listless than short rations and lack of sleep alone account for. What's the problem?"
Cruz hesitated to speak for a moment. When he did finally begin to talk, it came out in a torrent. "I don't understand this place. You starve us. You won't let us sleep. You keep us in constant fear of failure. You work and march us to death. And then, when somebody dies because he's too tired to pay attention and too weak to hang on to something, you act like it's just routine business. What's the point of that? This is supposed to be a leadership school. How can we learn when it's all we can do to stay awake? What does losing twenty pounds have to do with the ability to lead men in battle? Or is this all just some initiation rite at the legion's expense?"
Olivetti answered calmly, "No, it isn't an initiation rite, not entirely. Let me try to answer your questions with other questions. Ask yourself what battle is like. I know you have two awards for valor, the Cruz de Coraje in Steel and Bronze. Was battle stressful? Did it put stress on your leaders? Did they need the ability to cope with stress to deal with it? Is that ability innate, learned, or a combination of both? Can we give you all the stress of battle in the form it takes in battle? What kinds of stress can we put you under without surely killing too many of you? Will you be able to cope better with one kind of stress by learning to cope with another? Is it more likely or less likely that graduates of the Cazador School will have shown more of an innate ability to cope with stress? Do men become brave by doing brave acts?"
Cruz remained as silent and sullen as he thought he could get away with. Even so, Olivetti's logic nagged at him. Maybe he has a point. Maybe.
"You don't have to answer. Just think about the questions for a while.
"As for Cazador Enriquez, he was on the centurion track. He will get every benefit of the doubt and be buried as Optio Carlos Enriquez, of the 6th Mechanized Tercio, with a Cruz de Coraje in Gold; he already had Steel, Bronze And Silver. Very brave trooper, was Enriquez."
Olivetti grew thoughtful. "One of the things I like about how the legion does business is that you"-as part of FMTG Olivetti was not technically or legally a legionary-"don't distinguish between training and battle deaths."
He continued, "What more do you want us to do? Would Enriquez be happier, do you think, if his mates had missed valuable training? In battle would we stop a fight while it was ongoing to mourn a fallen comrade?
"You feel bad about Enriquez. So you should. You're sorry he died. So am I. And the training killed him, no doubt about it. Was Enriquez's life more valuable than the lives of the men he would someday have led? More valuable than yours and the men you will someday lead? Don't those men, and their mothers and fathers, their wives and children, deserve the best leaders we can give them?
"Your main complaint, however, seems directed at the fact that we don't seem to emphasize the… oh… skills a leader needs as much as we do the character. More questions for you to answer for yourself: Are those skills something that can be taught or only learned? Do we give you the opportunity to learn even though no one can necessarily teach them? Don't we coach you to learn them for yourself? And do we not teach them, too, in a way? When, Cazador Cruz, will you in the future forget that men need food and sleep to keep going at top performance? When, in battle, when you're a centurion leading a platoon, will you forget to take care of your troops because if you don't they won't be able to take care of you? When will you forget that fear and fatigue are interchangeable, that frightened men get weak fast? That tired men frighten easily? Enriquez died so you would learn those lessons in a way you will never forget.
"Finally, ask yourself what character a leader in battle must have. I think when you do you may discover that no one who graduates this school can be very deficient in any important aspect of it. But you'll have to find the answers to those questions yourself. Send in Saldanas, please."
Camp O'Higgins, 34/3/462 AC
Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, thought Cruz as he trudged his weary way along the side of the mountain. His legs and back ached mercilessly from the uneven path and off-center walk it required.
The patrol stopped suddenly. Cruz almost walked into the back of the man ahead of him, despite the dim glow of the two florescent strips sewn on the back of that student's hat.
Men took a knee at alternate sides of the patrol's perimeter, forming a rough cigar shape on the ground. Cruz struggled to keep his eyes open. The assistant patrol leader came forward from the rear of the little column to inquire about the halt. As he passed each man he whispered, "Take off your hats."
The students complied without argument. They'd learned that the hat became a little house and they'd fall asleep in a heartbeat if they felt themselves at home. A sleeping Cazador was a Cazador who would be left behind by his patrol. There was no greater shame and no more likely cause for dismissal from the course.
At the point of the column Cruz heard the CI loudly berating the patrol leader, Montoya, for becoming lost. Montoya fumbled verbally, trying to make an excuse. What Montoya didn't do was insist that he did know where the patrol was, even though he did.
The CI gave Montoya a location on the map that seemed plausible but was incorrect. Rising to their feet again, the men took off in a new, and false, direction. They would march all night up and down the side of this one mountain, with no time for sleep or to eat even the wretched amount of food they carried.