A stifled giggle from somewhere behind me. Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz stopped and cocked his head. "Oh. One of you thinks I'm kidding. One of you dumb motherfuckers always does. That's why I keep this around. Activate now," he said, and suddenly in front of each of us a video screen appeared; it took me a disorienting second before I realized Ruiz had somehow managed to activate my BrainPal remotely, switching on a video feed. The feed appeared to be taken from a small helmet camera. We saw several soldiers hunkered down in a foxhole, discussing plans for the next day's travel. Then one of the soldiers stopped talking for a second and slammed a palm down onto the dirt. He glanced up fearfully and yelled "incoming" a split second before the ground erupted beneath him.
What happened next happened so quickly that not even the instinctive, panicked turn of the camera's owner was fast enough to miss it all. It was not pleasant. In the real world, someone was vomiting, ironically matching the action of the camera's owner. Blessedly, the video feed switched off right after that.
"I'm not so funny now, am I?" Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz said, mockingly. "I'm not that happy fucking stereotypical drill instructor anymore, am I? You're not in a military comedy anymore, are you? Welcome to the fucking universe! The universe is a fucked-up place, my friends. And I'm not talking to you like this because I'm putting on some amusing little drill instructor routine. That man who was sliced and diced was among the best fighting men I have ever had the privilege of knowing. None of you are his equal. And yet you see what happened to him. Think what will happen to you. I'm talking to you like this because I sincerely believe, from the bottom of my heart, that if you're the best humanity can do, we are magnificently and totally fucked. Do you believe me?"
Some of our number managed to mumble a "Yes, sir" or something close to it. The rest of us were still replaying the evisceration in our heads, without the benefit of the BrainPal.
"Sir? Sir?!? I am a fucking master sergeant, you shitheads. I work for a living! You will answer with 'Yes, Master Sergeant' when you need to answer in the affirmative, and 'No, Master Sergeant' when you answer in the negative. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Master Sergeant!" we replied.
"You can do better than that! Say it again!"
"Yes, Master Sergeant!" we screamed. Some of us were clearly on the verge of tears by the sound of that last bellow.
"For the next twelve weeks, my job is to attempt to train you to be soldiers, and by God, I am going to do it, and I'm going to do it despite the fact that I can already tell that none of you motherfuckers is up to the challenge. I want each of you to think about what I'm saying here. This isn't the old-time Earth military, where drill sergeants had to tone up the fat, bulk up the weak, or educate the stupid—each of you comes with a lifetime of experience and a new body that is in peak physical condition. You would think that would make my job easier. It. Does. Not.
"Each of you has seventy-five years of bad habits and personal feelings of entitlement that I have to purge in three goddamn months. And each of you thinks your new body is some kind of shiny new toy. Yeah, I know what you've been doing for the last week. You've been fucking like rabid monkeys. Guess what? Playtime is over. For the next twelve weeks, you'll be lucky if you have time to jerk off in the shower. Your shiny new toy is going to be put to work, my pretties. Because I have to make you into soldiers. And that is going to be a full-time job."
Ruiz resumed his pacing in front of the recruits. "I want to make one thing clear. I do not like, nor will I ever like, any one of you. Why? Because I know that despite the fine work of myself and my staff, you will inevitably make all of us look bad. It pains me. It keeps me awake at night knowing that no matter how much I teach you, you will inevitably fail those who fight with you. The best I can do is make sure that when you go, you don't take your whole fucking platoon down with you. That's right—if you only get yourself killed, I count that as a success!
"Now, you may think that this is some sort of generalized hatred that I will carry for the lot of you. Let me assure you that this is not the case. Each of you will fail, but you will fail in your own unique way, and therefore I will dislike each of you on an individual basis. Why, even now, each of you has qualities that irritate the living fuck out of me. Do you believe me?"
"Yes, Master Sergeant!"
"Bullshit! Some of you are still thinking that I'm just going to hate the other guy." Ruiz shot out an arm and pointed out toward the plain and the rising sun. "Use your pretty new eyes to focus on that transmission tower out there; you can just barely see it. It is ten klicks away, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to find something about each of you that will piss me off, and when I do, you will sprint to that fucking tower. If you are not back in an hour, this entire platoon will run it again tomorrow morning. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Master Sergeant!" I could see people trying to do the math in their heads; he was telling us to run five-minute miles all the way there and all the way back. I strongly suspected we'd be running it again tomorrow.
"Which of you was in the military back on Earth? Step up, now," Ruiz asked. Seven recruits stepped forward.
"God damn it," Ruiz said. "There is nothing I hate more in the entire fucking universe than a veteran recruit. We have to spend extra time and effort on you bastards, making you unlearn every single fucking thing you learned back home. All you sons of bitches had to do was fight humans! And even that you did badly! Oh, yes, we saw that whole Subcontinental War of yours. Shit. Six fucking years to beat an enemy that barely had firearms, and you had to cheat to win. Nukes are for pussies. Pussies. If the CDF fought like the U.S. forces fought, you know where humanity would be today? On an asteroid, scraping algae off the fucking tunnel walls. And which ones of you assholes are Marines?"
Two recruits stepped forward. "You fuckers are the worst," Ruiz said, getting right in their faces. "You smug bastards have killed more CDF soldiers than any alien species—doing things that Marine fucking way instead of the way they're supposed to be done. You probably had 'Semper Fi' tattoos somewhere on your old body, didn't you? Didn't you?"
"Yes, Master Sergeant!" they both replied.
"You are so fucking lucky they were left behind, because I swear I would have held you down and sliced them off myself. Oh, and you don't think I wouldn't? Well, unlike your precious fucking Marines, or any other military branch down there, up here the drill instructor is God. I could turn your fucking intestines into a sausage pie and all that would happen to me is they'd tell me to get one of the other recruits to mop up the mess." Ruiz stepped back to glare at all the veteran recruits. "This is the real military, ladies and gentlemen. You're not in the army, navy, air force, or Marines now. You're one of us. And every time you forget it, I'm going to be there to step on your fucking head. Now start running!"
They ran.
"Who's homosexual?" Ruiz said. Four recruits stepped forward, including Alan, who was standing next to me. I saw his eyebrows arch as he stepped up.