"Needed to talk over a few things, Major," she said. "Readiness, and potential assignments."
He nodded stiffly, feeling a rush of excitement like a hand squeezing at his diaphragm. Assignments. Hot damn! Real work? He didn't like combat, not being a lunatic or an Alban charioteer, but peacetime soldiering could get monumentally dull.
"Ma'am!" he said. "Would you care to inspect the troops, ma'am?"
"I'll observe briefly, Captain. I don't want to interrupt training schedules, and we have some matters to discuss."
"Ma'am."
The blocks of troops on the parade ground flowed together into a column. Another series of commands, and the formation split and moved forward, opening out like a fan until there was a two-deep line stretching across the parade ground. Another, and they halted in place, the first rank going to one knee and the second rank standing. Another, and each left hand flashed down to that hip, drawing a long sword-bayonet. A rattling click and the knife-edged blades shone in precise alignment, pointing toward an earth-and-log berm along the far side of the parade ground.
Each right hand went to the knob on the back of the rifle's stock, and a lever came up like a monkey's tail to expose the breech. Another movement of the right hand, to the cartridge box at their belts. The nitrated-paper cartridges dropped into the open breeches of the rifles, to be pushed home with a thumb.
Slap. The levers went down again. Click, and the hammers were pulled back to half cock. Hands dropped to the belts again, this time to bring up the spring-loaded priming flasks. Those rattled against the frizzens, knocking them forward to expose the pan and drop in a measured amount of fine-grain powder. Snick, and the frizzens snapped closed, the sparking surface in position to meet the flint in the hammer's jaws.
"Ready…"
Three hundred and sixty thumbs pulled back the hammers to full cock, a ratcheting metallic sound.
"Aim…"
The rifles came up; there was a slight ripple as each muzzle pointed at one of the man-shaped timber outlines staked to the berm. That had been one of Alston's ideas; better to make the targets as close as possible to what the troops would actually be shooting at.
"In volley… front rank…fire."
BAAAMMMM. A small fogbank of dirty beige smoke drifted sideways, smelling of fireworks and rotten eggs… smelling of death, he thought. The thought of what these breech-loading rifles would do was satisfying in a technical sense, but the pictures in his mind's eye were best put aside.
Both ranks came to their feet, grounded the butts of their rifles with a rattle, and stood braced. Alston walked down the files, her face an unreadable mask, her eyes appraising; he followed at her right hand, the courtesy position.
The uniforms were gray-khaki-brown linsey-woolsey four-pocket tunic and trousers with deerskin patches on elbows and knees, flared samurai-style helmet, rifle, utility knife and twenty-inch bayonet, webbing harness and pack. The faces were less uniform. Few of the rankers were Island-born; many more of the noncoms and nearly all the officers, of course. A scattering of Indians, they made wonderful scouts, but most were from Alba, about evenly divided between Fiernan Bohulugi and Sun People.
"Interesting," Alston said to him sotto voce. "I can't always tell which are which."
He nodded, pleased. You weren't supposed to have a past, in the Corps.
She stopped in front of one. "What's your name, Recruit?"
"Ma'am, this recruit is Winnifred Smith, ma'am!" The voice carried a harsh, choppy accent that had never been bred on the Island.
Must be an Immigration Office name, he thought. Replacing something a Sun People tribes woman on the run from her kinfolk didn't want remembered. Probably on the run from something that got a woman pinned facedown in a bog with her head shaved and her throat cut.
"What's your tribe and clan?" Marian Alston asked.
"Ma'am, this recruit's tribe is the Republic of Nantucket and her clan is the Corps!"
Alston gave a small crisp nod and walked on; Hollard hid his gratified smile. The Republic of Nantucket had found them one way or another, from its bases in Alba or the docksides on this side of the Atlantic; adventurous youths, runaway slaves, absconding wives, taboo-breakers, the ambitious attracted to the promise of Islander citizenship and a land grant for six years' service. Many were simply uprooted from home and folk and custom. The Alban War and the flood of Islander trade and tools and ideas after it had left growing upheaval in their wake.
They smelled of dust, sweat, leather, gun oil, burnt powder, and healthy well-washed young bodies. Kenneth Hollard kept his face impassive, but he felt a glow of pride; this was his work, built from small beginnings-the Marines had started out as landing parties for Guard ships.
Following along behind the Commodore, he could see eyes flicking toward Alston reflexively as she passed. To the Fiernan Bohulugi she was the warrior who'd come from beyond the world to take the Spear Mark, rescue and court a priestess of the Kurlelo line, lead Moon Woman's people to victory and crush their ancient enemies. There was a star named for her now, folded into the endless chants that they sang at the Great Wisdom, what would have been called Stonehenge. To the Sun People she was more of an ogre, word spread by the few who'd gotten back alive to their homes from the Battle of the Downs. Her race heightened things in both cases; the Sun People had a tradition of dark-skinned demons they called Night Ones, and almost none of these Bronze Agers had seen a non-Caucasian before.
Not that there are many in Nantucket, either, he thought. Memories of the enormous variety of peoples on the mainland pre-Event seemed distant and dreamlike now.
"Very good, Major. Dismiss to duties, if you please."
The battalion scattered, trotting to their barracks and then to classrooms and workshops around the parade square. They were first and foremost fighters, but doctrine held that every rifleman should learn a craft or trade as well, so that the Regiment could be as nearly self-sufficient as possible abroad. And the teaching included the three R's and the rights and duties of a citizen.
He took a deep breath. "The next thing you should see concerns more recent recruits, ma'am. Punishment drill."
"What's the offense and sentence?" Alston asked.
"Article seven: sexual harassment; punishment gauntlet, defendant's choice."
With the alternative choice being dishonorable discharge and five years' penal servitude on Inagua in the Bahamas, digging salt from the lagoons. Not many chose that; he'd rather have a few weeks of pain himself.
"Ah," she nodded. "What were the circumstances?"
"Section seven, basically," he said.
Hollard had read the old Uniform Code of Military Justice, as well as the stripped-down version Commodore Alston-Kurlelo had drafted for the Republic of Nantucket's armed forces. The UCMJ looked incredibly complex and far too focused on procedure at the expense of results. The new code was quite simple on sexual matters, as on much else-no fornication on duty; none up and down the chain of command in the same unit, except between married couples and registered domestic partners; no unauthorized pregnancies; and a catchall clause allowing administrative penalties for actions or speech prejudicial to discipline and good order. Apart from that, what consenting adults did on their own time was their own business.
"This was the usual thing," Hollard went on. "Sun People man and Earth Folk woman. She decided she didn't like him anymore, and he couldn't get it through his head she could tell him to get lost. Thought it was just a fight, until it came out at the Mast."
He thought he heard Alston's aide mutter "Scumbags" under her breath, but it wasn't loud enough to hear. His inner smile was wry; having Fiernan and clansmen from the charioteer tribes in the same unit was murder sometimes; they just didn't like each other and their customs were about as distinct as you could get… and neither always meshed with Americans, either, to put it mildly. A complete set of national stock-figures had grown up already, with the same underlying element of truth that most stereotypes had-to the Americans, the Fiernan seemed like good-natured, happy-go-lucky slobs, and to the Fiernan the American Eagle People were detail-obsessed control freaks with a serious pickle up their butts. And both thought the Sun People were homicidal maniacs with hair-trigger tempers-and lazy, to boot.