“You’ll be doing that again and again too,” I said, at the end. “If you don’t learn that quickly, you’re going to get us all killed.”
Afterwards, I laughed, even though it wasn’t funny. God help me, but I was growing to like them. How had Lieutenant Hatchet coped with it?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Outside observers have often wondered at the discrepancies between the United Nations Infantry, the United Nations Specials, and the United Nations Marines. The first is a blunt instrument used for the violent suppression and occupation of enemy worlds, the second is a covert/special forces operations unit and the third is used mainly in space. The discrepancies are explained by differences in their training methods. The UN invests a great deal in its Marines, while Infantrymen are regarded as expendable. This goes a long way towards explaining the treatment of civilians by the infantry. They know that their masters regard them as worthless.
I hit the deck hard enough to hurt, even though the padding.
“Uncle?” Master Sergeant Erwin Herzog asked sweetly. “You’ve not been keeping up with your practice, have you?”
I rubbed my jaw slowly, knowing that it could have been a great deal worse. I was almost certain that he’d pulled that punch, and yet it felt as if someone had smashed the entire starship into me. The contest bout had been my idea, but I hadn’t had the time to keep up with training on the Devastator and I had slipped, badly. He’d knocked me down in just under a minute.
“Uncle,” I agreed, thoughtfully. I ached in several places and I hadn’t landed a single punch. I’d treated him as I’d treated Jase and his friends down on Earth…and that had been a mistake. When he’d dared me to challenge him, I had accepted…and realised, too late, that it was a trap. He’d knocked me down with ease. “That was sore.”
“Hard training, easy mission,” Erwin said. It was a Marine saying that had never made its way into the Infantry, or, for that matter, the Academy. “Easy training, hard mission.”
“Touché,” I agreed, sourly. “How are the new Ensigns coming along?”
“Three of them will make…adequate martial arts artists in a few months if they work at it,” Erwin said, helping me to my feet. “The other two won’t make anything other than journeymen at best, I’m afraid. Too much reluctance to try to land the killing blow, or perhaps too much fear of pain. We could beat that out of them if they went to Camp Currie, but here…well, there are limits to what we can teach them.” He shrugged. “I trust you’re not thinking of challenging one of them to regain your pride?”
I started to sputter before realising that I was being teased. It wasn’t as if I were short on possible sparring partners. There were the other Lieutenants, Sally herself — although that would have bent regulations almost to breaking point — and, of course, Andrew’s infantrymen. I could see several of them gathered around a Marine and an Infantryman, watching them pushing at each other. It looked more like a hazing rite than an actual bout, but Andrew and a pair of Marines were watching them carefully. We had already had one bloody fistfight and didn’t need a second one.
The relationship between the Marines and the Infantrymen was an interesting one, I’d decided. The Infantrymen were determined not to be outdone by a bunch of overpaid pretty boys — their words — while the Marines were equally determined to rub the Infantry’s collective nose in their own inferiority. I would have bet on Erwin’s twenty-one Marines against all of the Infantry Company if it were a normal under-trained Company, but Andrew was apparently a good officer. Their stats, according to Erwin, were better than anyone had a right to expect.
It had also led to an interesting series of encounters. Some had challenged others to grudge matches, while others had produced illegal decks of playing cards and engaged in cross-unit fraternisation. The joint training had broken down into several fistfights before their respective leaders restored order, but an hour later Andrew and Erwin had been arm-wrestling for superiority, or a point of order. Neither of them knew how to quit and they’d managed to sprain each other’s wrists. The Doctor had made a number of sarcastic comments about how many small injuries she was being called upon to treat, but after a few days, they seemed to come to a halt — mostly. The two leaders were also very inventive when it came to punishment duty.
I smiled, thinly. If nothing else, the starship was cleaner than it had been in years.
“No,” I assured him, as I staggered over to the dressing bench and pulled off the tunic I’d been wearing. Being naked in front of men and women had bothered me when I’d gone to the Academy, but I was used to it by now and wasn’t particularly surprised when Erwin joined me. I was glad I hadn’t seen him naked before I’d been volunteered for fight training. I would never have dared raise a hand to him. “They’re not ready for that, are they?”
“Be glad of it,” Erwin said, as we stepped into the showers. The warm water sluiced off the sweat and drained away down towards the recycler. Cleaning that was yet another punishment duty. “I’ve served on ships where the Captain used force to keep his people in line. It never ended well.”
I nodded as I washed away the dirt and stepped out of the shower. Water is always at a premium on a starship and while we could, in theory, mine an asteroid or a comet for water ice, it wasn’t something the Captain would want to do if it could be avoided. It was against regulations to remain in the showers for more than two minutes, unless you had special permission, but I wasn’t surprised when Erwin stepped out of the shower just after me. We’d all learned to time it properly, although the shower in the Ensigns’ Wardroom was configured to only give them two minutes and nothing more.
“So,” Erwin said, afterwards. We were alone in the changing room. “I understand that you have something to talk to me about?”
“Not here,” I said, quickly. I’d broached the issue with the Senior Chief and he had insisted on approaching Erwin personally. I hadn’t attempted to prevent him. They’d been friends for years. The Master Sergeant might not listen to me, but he’d listen to the Senior Chief. “Can we talk in your quarters?”
“I don’t have any fancy quarters,” the Master Sergeant said, dryly. I flushed, remembering that all of the Marines shared a single wardroom. The Infantry had had to be spread out, but the Marines practically lived in each other’s pockets. They shared a closeness that even the best Ensigns never achieved. “Your cabin, John?”
I nodded and led him through the corridors, before we turned and entered my cabin. I took a moment to wave him to a chair and turn on my music player, accessing a file of heavy metal music. Midgard Metal, the singer and songwriter, wasn’t entirely to my taste, but anyone trying to listen in to our conversation — I was almost sure that the cabins were probably bugged — would have some problems. It was one of the ideas I’d learned from the Heinlein files. They even included instructions on how to subvert and overthrow the government, something that had convinced me that the system worked better than Earth. I couldn’t have hoped to find information like that on Earth.
“All right,” I said, as the strains of Darkness Falls Upon Her Heart echoed through the cabin. “Listen carefully.”
I outlined everything that had happened at Heinlein, from the deaths of innocent civilians to Ensign Gomez’s rape and my determination to overthrow the system before it killed us all, or led the Earth to ruin. I knew I was taking a chance, but I trusted the Senior Chief…and we’d need the Marines to help us. Without them, it would be much harder to seize the fleet. Without the fleet, the entire plan was dead in the water.