Human Legion: Marine Cadet Part 7

"Ma'am. Yes, ma'am."

"I believe you do. To be sure of that, I intend to extend your punishment. All members of your squad will suffer the same penalty I had intended for you. Furthermore I will make sure they know that you are the cause of their misery, and why."

Even if he were executed, they would curse his name. Springer too, he realized with a jolt.

"Most people would say I've just wasted the past ten minutes of my life by talking to you. By this time tomorrow, you will probably be dead. But the Jotuns possess an infinite capacity to surprise us, and so there remains a chance that you will live. That is why you and I are discussing this matter. Attention to detail. In warfare, administration, even romance, drama, literature yes, I am familiar with those activities attention to detail is frequently what separates success from failure. And, if you are to die, I want you to know why, and I want you to die well. Can you do that, McEwan? Can you die well?"

"Ma'am. Yes, ma'am."

Nhlappo judged him with a look. "Perhaps," she said grudgingly. She activated a control on the surface of her desk. "Let's find out, shall we?"

The door opened. Rekka entered, accompanied by two cadets: Hortez who had led Blue Squad in the tunnel exercise, and LaSalle who had been put in charge of Charlie Company in its entirety. The cadets looked deathly pale. Even Rekka looked troubled.

Nhlappo addressed Arun. "The reason I told you of punishments you would have had is because events are now out of my control. We've all been summoned by Colonel Little Scar to explain why everyone on the planet is laughing at his regiment."

She got out from her desk, leading her little group into the transit corridor outside.

Running was Arun's first instinct. Everything was stacked against him. Where could he run to? The one place he might find sanctuary was in the Troggie nest, but he would never make it that far. The forces of inevitability crushed any resistance from him and rooted his feet to the floor. All he could do was attempt some semblance of dignity.

He felt a shove in his back from the veteran sergeant Arun still didn't know his name. It was enough to get Arun's legs working.

"Move!" he ordered. "The colonel will not expect to be kept waiting any longer."

Arun marched to his fate.

* Chapter 10 *

Senior Instructor Nhlappo led Arun and the doomed group through Gate Three and out into the eddying breeze on the planet's surface. Arun looked back at the heavily fortified entrance that bristled with gun emplacements manned by Marines.

"Eyes front, McEwan!" barked Instructor Rekka from the rear.

Arun reluctantly obeyed. Wrenching his gaze away from his home filled his gut with an aching sense of loss. The colonel hadn't invited them over for coffee and biscuits, that was for sure. Arun didn't expect to ever see his home again. Never see Springer's warm smile. And his plans for Xin were exposed as nothing more than a joke.

Look on the bright side, he thought, you always enjoy any chance to come up to the surface.

In Arun's experience there were four main reasons why cadets were allowed on the surface. A visit to the colonel was definitely not one of them.

A Marine was expected to fight in any environment: in the airless void of s.p.a.ce, racing through endless hive tunnels deep underground, defending snowy mountain redoubts, or flushing insurgents from sweltering jungle thick with vegetation. Simulating these combat conditions was not an easy task, but the Human Marine Corps on Tranquility had access to an entire planet to provide as many training environments as required.

His use of the topside training grounds was the first reason why Arun was no stranger to the planet's surface.

Marines had to be in superb physical condition. Arun had climbed the endless Gjende Mountains that shadowed the Detroit base and had run, marched, and slept many times on the adjoining plateau, ignoring roads and crude paths to cut through fields of wheat, maize and more exotic crops, to the consternation of the Agri-Aux and the insistence of the instructors.

That was reason number two.

The third reason was to endure the mutual incomprehension of inter-species encounter sessions, where Jotuns and young humans would meet and attempt to get to know one another. In theory, the result would be human Marines who weren't so terrified of their officers that they were unable to function properly in combat. Arun saw no signs of that working, but the Jotuns had such an extreme phobia about being underground that the only way to move them beneath the surface was to render them unconscious first.

Arun's mind refused to think openly of the fourth reason why he might be summoned to the surface, pushing that cruel knowledge deep into his mind so that it only surfaced in his everyday thoughts as a persistent feeling of dread.

They pressed on in silence through service buildings, storage depots, and vehicle parks, and onward to Jotunville.

There was no official t.i.tle for the complex of palaces topped with soaring spires and connected by gla.s.s walkways at obscene heights. Whatever it was called, to be summoned here was an ordeal few cadets ever experienced, and fewer returned to their underground holes to tell the tale.

As defense against orbital bombardment, Jotunville and the underground Marine complex nestled at the bottom of a narrow valley that meandered beneath towering mountain peaks. The transparent building material favored by the Jotuns would have generated a sense of s.p.a.ce and warmth if their city had been situated out on the plateau, but most days inky shadow blanketed the valley floor, shrouding Jotunville with a chill aura of doom. Only once had Arun seen this phalanx of crystal spires at midday, when the illumination from the overhead sun caused it to gleam like a polished jewel.

There was little sun now, in the mid-morning. The lack of light made transparent walkways suddenly materialize overhead, making Arun fight hard against the instinct to duck. Distant palaces became ethereal phantoms that defied his attempts to grasp their shape. Jotunville was ghostly and threatening, as if its existence were only partially in the material plane. As they penetrated deeper into the city of gla.s.s spires, and the confrontation with the colonel grew closer, Arun's nerves began to shred.

How were the others coping? He hoped the two instructors were wetting themselves with fear, but they both had hearts of granite: they wouldn't be worried. The unknown sergeant following Nhlappo was no different. Maybe it was only Arun who was so scared that placing every foot forward took a supreme effort of courage. His fellow cadets were showing no signs of nerves. Hortez would be singing in his head to clear his mind of darkness, as he put it. As for Alistair LaSalle, he adapted to anything life threw at him, which was presumably why the instructors had tried him in the role of senior company sergeant for the tunnel exercise.

Mastering fear was about deflecting the antic.i.p.ation of danger. The instructors had drilled that into him all his life. So he tried occupying himself by deploying an imaginary Marine company to defend Jotunville. Two squads up on either end of the overhead walkway would catch an enemy below in flanking fire, pinning them down while another squad, ready to launch flechette grenades, would sneak around and catch the invader from the rear. Then the command squad would fire a quick suppressing frag barrage before the remaining three squads charged the confused survivors.

But he was only replaying standard cla.s.sroom tactics. The mental trick crumbled almost before he'd begun because they were in such deep shadow that he had to invent the layout of the surrounding buildings.

What made the fear so difficult to deflect was that this whole stupid business was so pointless. Arun didn't believe there was ever any glory in dying, no matter how you had to go, but there were deaths that at least counted for something.

To be executed for an embarra.s.sing accident that would mean his life had been utterly pointless.

He couldn't prevent his hands clenching into fists, his muscles readying to release explosive power. To fight injustice, to fall in a struggle for freedom. Now that would be worth dying for...

"Loosen those hands, McEwan," thundered Rekka. "You will march like a Marine, not an ill-disciplined brute."

Arun tried for his best parade ground form as they began to ascend a spiraling loop of transparent stairs, sheathed in a twisting tube. A quarter of the tube was open, exposing them to a bl.u.s.tering wind and a sheer drop that grew rapidly more lethal until he soon realized that he could end it all on his own terms by throwing himself off.

Suicidal thoughts haunted him, teasing fingers plucking at him through the opening in the tube. A few seconds of falling and then it would all be over. The colonel's revenge would be cheated.

Arun flung his arms out against the walls of the tube, bracing himself against the seductive thoughts in his head.

Jump...

No!

He wouldn't! Not while there was hope. And there was a slender hope. Nhlappo had said so.

Or had she planted false hope, in case of just such a moment as this?

"Keep moving, McEwan! Have you no dignity?"

Arun felt his jaw tighten. No I haven't, you stupid veck! For days, Arun had struggled to keep wild mood swings in check, and now Rekka's admonishment was like a flamethrower, coating Arun with incandescent fury.

He fantasized about grabbing the skangat of an instructor and throwing them both off the stairway tube. But there was still hope. He had to believe that. So instead Arun launched his final mental defense, the one marked: 'Do not use except in case of emergency'. He folded his conscious mind away and relinquished control to the unconscious parts of his brain. He had been engineered to do this during sentry duty, or when deployed for ambushes, waiting for hours or days with his finger on the trigger, waiting for an enemy to appear.

But this wasn't sentry duty. Would he wake up when he needed to?

That sense of unease stretched, infusing his mind for an eternity until Rekka slapped him... "That was a coward's escape," she sneered. "But at least it got you here."

Arun found he'd arrived on a transparent walkway, about to follow the rest of the group through a gla.s.s door that was sliding open. Of the journey here he had no memory.

He glanced down, but the ground was too far away to see.

Then he pa.s.sed through the door and into the colonel's domain.

The humans were in the lower of two circular rooms built with the same transparent material as the walkway. They looked like two identical gla.s.s bowls stacked one atop the other but offset by a quarter of their diameter.

On the upper level, sitting at a double-banked work station, was the colonel of the 412th Tactical Marine Regiment. His name translated as Little Scar.

Only his head was showing over the back of his chair, but the nick in his left ear was enough for Arun to recognize the colonel from parade ground inspections.

From the tilt of his head, Little Scar was staring up at the clouds gamboling across the gleaming blue sky, his dangling bronze earrings in the shape of hammers brushing the back of his neck.

Sky?

The only view through these windows should have been shadowed mountainside. But that had been replaced by a sunny vista. Arun could even hear imaginary birds calling to each other as they flew through the spiraling walkway that led up through the roof.

Curved sofas covered in emerald green velour ran along the walls of the lower room, the huge size of these sofas making him feel like a small child sent to see the grown-ups, or a mortal approaching the G.o.ds. They could have been built for eight-foot tall humans if not for the additional armrests at shoulder level. Of course! Jotuns were hexapeds.

Zug would love this.

The thought of his alien-obsessed friend gave Arun a pang of loss. He tried smothering himself with numbness. Around him, he could sense fear begin to come off Hortez and Alistair, the mental defenses that had kept up their spirits on the journey had been stormed and breached by the presence of their officer. He couldn't blame them because they had everything to lose. Arun didn't.

However much he tried to believe in Nhlappo's slender thread of hope, Arun was certain he'd already lost.

Arun stared at Little Scar. Whatever you're going to do, get on with it!

As if the Jotun had heard his thoughts, Little Scar finally acknowledged the humans. Still with his back to them, he growled: "Study the softscreens."

Little Scar spoke with his own voice. Most Jotuns used the same voicebox translator technology as the Trogs, but those most skilled in human language could speak in a voice that sounded as if they had swallowed a box of razor blades.

To use his own voice emphasized that Little Scar had issued a critical command to be obeyed instantly.

But what did he mean? What softscreens?

Hortez saw them first, picking up a stack of transparent rectangles. Softscreen material was tough but years of use meant that the ones the cadets normally handled were scuffed enough to be seen even when inactive. These were pristine. Even when Hortez handed him one, Arun could barely see the device until his touch activated it and an image appeared of the Totalizer. He could see every cadet battalion in Detroit listed in merit point order. Arun's 8-412/TAC was two places and a little over seven thousand points clear of the Cull Zone. The image was real-time, with each score flicking up or down slightly, but the gap between each battalion was much too large for the positions to change while he watched.

After about ten seconds, the image changed. It still showed the Totalizer, but this time listing the live killscores for the past month. There he was, Arun McEwan, top of the leader board by a long margin, the result of blasting the insect horde in the tunnels.

The view switched to live plus simulated killscores. Arun was still ranked top, though by a lower margin.

The colonel must consider my killscore rankings to be important, thought Arun, or else why is he showing them? If all Little Scar cares about are results, then I'm winning his heart.

The more Arun considered this, the more it made sense. Zug was always saying it was a mistake to a.s.sign human emotions to aliens. It felt as if everyone on the planet has pointed out that Arun had made the regiment the laughing stock of Detroit, but now he thought of it, he'd only heard the jeers from other humans. Maybe Little Scar didn't care. Arun had won top killscore and a bundle of merit points for one of the Jotun's battalions. Perhaps Arun had been summoned to be personally commended by his commanding officer?

Suck on that, Shlappo!

The softscreen display shifted again and all his hope vaporized. Arun felt as if he were falling, plummeting farther even than if he had jumped off the Jotunville heights. If he'd suspected he was doomed before, he knew it now.

He peered at the screen. It showed a camera shot of Arun naked with the scribe, an image enhanced to simulate a spotlight focused on the source of his humiliation.

Someone had added the caption: 412th Marines. Always ready for ACTION!

Arun willed the display to change again. It did, but he wished it hadn't. What it showed was so bad that the breath froze in his throat.

Cadets were lined up with their backs to the parade ground dais. This was the main parade ground, the one cut into the Gjende Mountains above Detroit. The camera took a close-up view of their faces. Most wore blank expressions, some were angry, a few trembled with fear.

Human text at the bottom identified the footage, as if it needed an explanation. This was the final reason for coming to the planet's surface that Arun had hidden from his mind. This was the fate that haunted every cadet.

This was the Cull.

The display looped around the moment of execution, but changed camera views from wide shots to close ups of individual twenty-year old cadet faces at the moment they were put to death.

The humans in his quarters had no choice but to watch. Little Scar had ordered that they should.

The Culled cadets died again and again, and Little Scar said nothing, sitting there up the steps in his upper room, not even deigning to glance in the humans' direction.

Minutes went past.

An hour.

While his subordinates watched endless variations on the same slaughter, Little Scar sat motionless in his chair, looking up into a sky that wasn't even real.

Then, at last, the time had come.

Little Scar turned and faced them.

* Chapter 11 *

Little Scar levered himself out of his deeply reclined seat and advanced a few paces toward the humans. His s.h.a.ggy white fur, shot through with gray, jounced as he moved.

The size and power of the Jotuns was enough to scare the c.r.a.p out of Arun at the best of times.

And this was not the best of times.

Arun's gaze was fixed on the digits of the alien's upper limbs. At present they were rubbery extrusions through the flat, horn-ridged pads that terminated his arms. But they could be retracted in an instant and replaced by claws like combat knives. With one blow, those claws could decapitate a human.