Markov made it to lunch. Then he tossed his pack aside and told Beauchene he’d had enough.
Beauchene grabbed him by the chin and stared into his eyes with a madman’s gaze, but Markov just shrugged. “Better years in jail than years of this shit.”
Beauchene took Markov’s rifle himself, and directed him to the nearest village to wait to be picked up. And reminded him that the drones would be watching him all the way.
“Any more of you don’t think you’re cut out to be in my Legion,” he said to the survivors, “you might as well follow him right now. I’m not stopping again.”
Desoto took a step forward, but Logan grabbed his arm.
“I’m done,” Desoto said to him. “I can’t take any more.”
“We’ve only got a few hours left. We got this far. We can finish it, can’t we?”
Desoto stared at him for a few seconds, then nodded.
They marched on, down from the hills, legs moving easily as gravity pulled them on, back toward something resembling civilization. With houses nestled between the green fields, it was certainly more civilized than anything Logan had seen since leaving Paris.
As they passed through the small villages, the girls pouted and stared at the marching men. The old men sitting at tables outside the bars looked up from their wine glasses. Some raised their glasses, or shouted encouragement. Others just scowled.
All the recruits, no matter how much they might have wanted to quit a few moments before, pushed their shoulders back, pushed out their chests, and marched through the villages like they’d never marched before.
The pain no longer mattered. They might be willing to quit in the woods where no-one else could see them, but they sure as hell weren’t going to show weakness in front of civilians.
The sun was sinking toward the Pyrenees when Beauchene raised his hand and told them to halt.
Logan and Desoto were taking turns to lean on each other for support, and Logan slumped down on a rock at the side of the track. He gasped for air, thankful for a break at last. The soles of his feet pounded almost as rapidly as his heart, sweat had soaked through his fatigues, and the blisters and cracked skin on his feet sent pain stabbing through them whenever he moved. A rest was nice, but would he ever be able to get going again?
He lay back against the rock, and closed his eyes. He could go to sleep here. Maybe he’d never wake up.
“C’est fini,” Beauchene said.
Yes, Logan was finished. Just send him back to prison. Wake him up when it was time to die.
No, wait. Pain and exhaustion had become his entire world, and Beauchene’s words took a moment to sink into his mind.
It was finished.
Not him.
The march was over.
He’d done it.
“You are now Legionnaires,” Beauchene said. “You have joined a proud tradition, centuries-old. And you will make me proud of you.” He leaned toward Logan. “Because, if you don’t, I will hunt you down, drink your blood, and eat your liver. Then I will kill you. Do you understand?”
Logan remembered yelling in response, but he could barely believe he’d have found enough reserves of energy in his body to do so. The “Yes, sir,” that emerged from his lips must have been little more than a whisper.
He did stand proudly at that moment, even though his body was shaking from the cold and exertion, he could barely lift the weight of his pack and rifles, and his feet were raw from marching.
Desoto leaned on Logan’s shoulder and laughed.
They’d succeeded where so many other men had failed, and that white cap would be their reward. They were now officially Legionnaires, and no-one could take that away.
Moments later, the trucks arrived to drive them back to The Farm. The men laughed as they shook hands, helped each other into the trucks, then slumped down on the hard, wooden benches inside.
Half of them were snoring by the time Logan fell asleep. The rest were by the time Beauchene’s shouts woke back at The Farm’s gates.
Beauchene led the new Legionnaires out to line up on the parade ground under the bright glow of the floodlights, finally wearing their prized caps. Beauchene gave another inspiring speech which Logan was too tired to remember or care much about, then they collapsed into their bunks.
For once, they weren’t disturbed before morning.
Two days later, they marched from The Farm to the train that carried the new Legionnaires to the DeGaulle Spaceport, to climb about Legion shuttles that carried them to an assault ship orbiting high above the Earth. Like the shuttles that landed them on New Strasbourg, there were no windows to watch the world of his youth shrink beneath him as he rose into the sky on a trail of flame, leaving all of that behind.
He barely had time to unpack and glance out of one of the few portholes in the assault ship before it was blasting away from the only planet he’d ever known, and toward the first wormhole he would travel through in his life, a strange freak of physics which would allow them to cross dozens of light-years from planet to planet in a few days of their time.
And, so, a week later, he landed on LeBrun’s World, the French military’s training world, and the second he had ever felt beneath his slowly-healing feet. An otherwise uninhabited world of varied climates where the French forces could train as hard as they wanted, with no natives or colonists to complain about the noise or the mess.
The first work was spent in Medical, being prodded and studied, and connected to machines he barely understood even when they were explained to him. The doctors and engineers examined and processed every new recruit, enhancing their bodies, making them stronger and faster, and increasing their endurance. That would all have been useful back in France, but the Legion didn’t invest the time and effort in enhancing the bodies of those who might drop out afterwards. Only those who’d earned their cap qualified for treatment.
The next week began combat training. On the first day, six recruits went to the hospital, some with life-threatening wounds. On the second day, two went to the morgue.
Legion training was as realistic as as the instructors could make it, including using live ammo in the instructors’ weapons. One screwup, and it could well be your last day in the Legion.
And, most likely, the last day of your life.
Two more recruits were burned alive during assault drop training. The shuttles had carried the new Legionnaires back up to the assault ship, just so they could make their way back down in assault pods, as they would when landing on an occupied planet. The dead recruits’ assault pod heatshield failed because they hadn’t completed the pre-drop checks properly. The next day, the instructors played the recording of the mens’ screaming calls for help to the assembled Legionnaires, to encourage them not to make the same mistake.
Logan checked his pod four times before the next landing practise. Those screams were something he would never forget.
Only one more died in the remaining six months, though half the new Legionnaires spent some time in the hospital.
They fought each other and the instructors across the barren plains, in the mountains, and through derelict towns built just for the Legion to destroy in their training.
They practised jungle combat, arctic combat, underwater combat. They went back up into space, for zero-gravity and vacuum combat.
And they marched.
Not just on foot this time, but hundreds of kilometres in their suits, with the instructors leading other groups in attacks on their patrols as they struggled to reach their destinations. They studied tactics, military history, and every weapon in the Legion’s arsenal, including the assault ships’ heavy artillery and nukes. And practised with all of them, except the nukes.