His eyes swept across their ranks. “You are under military discipline now,” he thundered. “You can be punished under the Code of Military Justice” — we’d borrowed Heinlein’s code with a few additions and modifications — “and if necessary sentenced to death by field court-martial. There is no point in whining about lawyers and due process. You’re in the army now. In order that you know what you should not do, we will list the offences against military order every day. You will learn them off by heart. You will not commit them. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” they shouted, a ragged chorus of words.
“What did I tell you about calling me sir?” Russell demanded. “All of you; drop and give me twenty push-ups, now!”
I watched as they struggled through them and finally stumbled back into line. None of them looked cocky now and a few looked downright scared. That was good too; hopefully, they wouldn’t try to push Russell too far. I didn’t want to have to condemn any of them for striking a superior officer. That carried the death sentence under martial law.
“Now,” Russell said, once they’d finished. “Offences against military order, listed as follows; Insubordination, use of drugs, tobacco and alcohol, possession and/or consumption of food outside designated eating periods, possession of any contraband, failure to perform duties as assigned to you by lawful authority, being absent without leave and, last, but not least, fraternisation. To repeat; any of those offences will get you a punishment that may range from heavy exercise to being summarily discharged from the army. You will have those offences read to you every day, along with the definition of each offence. You will have no excuse for committing any of them!”
He paused long enough to size them up. “Many of you will have brought drugs, or alcohol, or even food onto this base,” he said, coldly. “When you are taken to be assigned your uniform and regulation-issue underclothes, get rid of them. This is your one warning. You may think that the police wouldn’t charge you with a crime if you are in possession of illegal drugs, but this is the army. If I catch any of you possessing or using drugs on this base, that person will wish that he had never been born!”
“Each class of recruits needs to be shocked out of their complacency,” I muttered to Suki, who had been watching the proceedings with a faintly stunned look on her face. “They also need to know exactly what they cannot do under any circumstances. Back on Earth, the recruits often had to be searched and drugs and shit still got into the bases. Here, we get a little more control.”
Russell was still thundering at his cowed audience. “Insubordination; wilfully disobeying, insulting, or striking a senior officer. Absent without leave; leaving the base or your unit without permission, or failing to report back to your unit at the end of a leave period without permission. Fraternisation; sexual relationships with any of your fellow recruits, or senior officers, or anyone within your military unit. The remainder should require no explaining. If they do, you’re in the wrong line of work.”
His gaze swept across them again. “That building there holds the medical personnel and the outfitters,” he said. “Form a line and march into the building, two by two!”
I pulled Suki away as, behind us, the recruits started to realise that they were going to get a haircut. They’d all have their hair trimmed right back to their bones when the barbers were finished with them, leaving them all looking like proper military cadets rather than louts we’d pulled off the streets. The medical staff would check each and every one of them afterwards and confirm that they were fit for duty. If they weren’t… well, if they were lucky, they wouldn’t have had their haircut by then.
“You’re not going to have them killed, are you?” Suki asked. “Not for…”
“It depends,” I said, vaguely. “Military discipline has to be maintained in the harshest of conditions. Just you wait until they get to the spit test.” She lifted an eyebrow. “The recruits will line up and spit into each others’ faces. The ones who learn not to flinch will pass.”
“I didn’t want to know that,” Suki said. “Why are you so down on… fraternisation?”
“The UN used to allow couples to form among military personnel,” I explained, more openly. “When those units were attacked, they ended up breaking up as the lovers tried to protect each other at the expense of the rest of the unit. They also had problems with jealousy and sexual rivalries that tore unit cohesion apart. There are some planets that bar women from combat altogether, but I’ve always preferred to have a strict law that forbids fraternisation within the ranks.
“I’m sure that those boys and girls will have lovers on the outside and I can’t stop that,” I added. “I wouldn’t even if I could. I can stop them from having sex within the unit and I won’t hesitate to bust someone out of the force for doing it.” I smiled at the vague pun. “It doesn’t matter who, or why. I drew the line and if anyone crosses it, they’re out.”
We reached a massive building, guarded by a pair of soldiers from B Company, who checked our IDs before allowing us to enter. The UN Supply Deport was large enough to take several starships — or so I thought — and utterly packed with supplies. I couldn’t understand how it had remained untouched until I remembered the Fleet garrison, who had kept it in trust for the planetary government. The circumstances of the pull-back hadn’t allowed for the return of all the supplies.
Muna emerged from one of the stacks and waved at us. Her dark face was lit with a sly smile. “You won’t believe how much stuff they abandoned here,” she said, cheerfully. I hadn’t seen her in such a good mood for years, but I suppose that being drenched in enough supplies to make her job easier would please even Muna. “We could operate several divisions on this and never notice the loss.”
I stepped further into the building and wondered if she might be right. There were spare parts for every vehicle in the UN’s inventory and enough weapons to outfit several fighting units. I passed a stack of machine guns and paused to examine a set of assault rifles, before studying a pile of gold coins and various stacks of currency. I couldn’t imagine why the UN General in command of the base had thought he’d need currency from a dozen different worlds. Perhaps it was the bribes he’d accepted — I never met a UN General who wasn’t corrupt — or maybe he’d planned to retire one day. It didn’t matter anyway. We would put the money to good use.
“There are several billion rounds of ammunition here and in the other bunkers,” Muna informed me, seriously. I could believe it. The UN sent out thousands upon thousands of boxes of ammunition, but there was so much paperwork involved with using it — every round had to be accounted for — that training sergeants tended to avoid using ammunition. Heinlein had taught us how foolish that was, but it had come too late. Earth’s civil war was still raging away back on the mother planet. “If the other supply bases have this much…”
I followed her logic. “The Mountain Men have enough to fight and win a civil war,” I concluded. It wasn’t a reassuring thought. The UN’s records of what had actually been in those supply bases were incomplete. They could have much more, or much less. “Have you established a distribution network yet?”
Muna nodded. “I can have it sent anywhere, sir,” she said. “Where do you want it?”
“Make as much as the trainers need available to them,” I ordered, shortly. We were not going to repeat the UN’s error and train our people on simulations only. They’d all have a chance to fire weapons before war broke out. “Get the Company Commanders to go through the listings and see what they want before we come to any other decisions. If we can equip a tank regiment… well, why not?”