THE LIGHTS CAME ON IN THE BARRACKS AT 0515 hours Monday morning—thirty minutes earlier than I had expected, fifteen before my alarm clock was due to sound—and the alarm buzzers started their raucous call at the same time. You’d have to be half dead to sleep through that and the stream of cussing that erupted within seconds. As a sergeant, I rated a private room just off the end of the dormitory room that housed the rest of my squad, and I could hear some of the cussing through the wall. I got into my clothes as quickly as I could, then hurried into the squad bay to make sure there were no slackers there.
“Let’s go! Reveille! Reveille!” I shouted as I made my way from one end of the squad bay to the other. No one was asleep, but Nuyi and Jaibie weren’t up off their bunks. “Move it!” I yelled again. “Vacation is over. Today we go back to work.” I ignored the protests and the rest, turning to head back toward my room at the other end. The latrine is just across the corridor from my room, and I had things to do in there.
Reveille formation was at 0530 hours. We fell out in exercise gear. Since it was summer, that meant shorts, t-shirts, and sneakers for humans. The other species had their own variations. For porracci, it meant stark naked.
We lined up by squad and platoon. It doesn’t take long for soldiers to get so used to the routine of “falling in” that they can do it while half asleep—and, nearly every day, some do. Squad leaders checked to make sure everyone was present who was supposed to be and passed the news to the platoon sergeants, who passed it to the platoon leaders, who officially reported it to the company commanders: all present or accounted for.
I was a little surprised to see Colonel Hansen and all the battalion staff officers and clerks fall out for reveille. It’s rare to see the senior officers at reveille—almost unheard of on a Monday morning. Usually, the brass doesn’t show up until time for the work formation at 0800 hours, if then, and the headquarters clerks usually manage to escape nearly all formations. I was sure this exception didn’t bode well. I was right. After the manning reports were completed—relayed to the colonel—we went through a full hour and twenty minutes of rigorous calisthenics, topped off by a two-mile run.
Since the colonel and his staff did it with us, there were fewer complaints than there would have been otherwise, but a lot of us had been skimping on exercise since coming back from Dintsen. There had been no formal calisthenics there, not in a combat zone. I was sweating and winded in minutes, and there were times when I wondered if I could make it until the colonel took pity—if not on us, then on himself and the desk jockeys. In time, I got to thinking, I can make it as long as he can. The colonel was a dozen years older than me and, I was sure, not as physically fit as I was even after a month without regular exercise. But Hansen stayed where he was and kept right with it, by the numbers.
When the torture finally ended, we had an hour to get cleaned up, eat breakfast, and make beds and so forth before work call at 0800.
“Looks like we’re back in the army,” I told Tonio as I passed him heading back to the barracks. He didn’t bother replying. He was still catching his breath.
• • •
AFTER THE WORK FORMATION, B COMPANY DREW weapons, marched out to one of the firing ranges, and spent the morning practicing marksmanship. The normal routine is to get everyone on the range at least once a week in garrison. C Company went to hand-to-hand combat training; D Company was split into platoons for exercises in small unit tactics. A Company drew new uniforms. The announcement of that came as a surprise to me. New uniforms: for the first time, all of the species in the 1st Combined Regiment would have uniform uniforms … allowing for the anatomical differences among us. When the unit was formed, the members of each species had come wearing the uniforms of their own armies—different styles, different camouflage patterns, and so forth. Now we would all look as nearly alike as possible. Biraunta uniforms had to have arrangements for their prehensile tails to stick out. Divotect units were tailored to cover the remnants of tails they still had. And so forth.
C Company drew its new uniforms before lunch. B and D companies drew the new issue Monday afternoon. As soon as the men in each company had their new clothing they were told to return to barracks and change. We had just enough time to get insignia switched and to make whatever minor alterations were necessary to get the uniforms looking right.
AFTER MY PEOPLE GOT INTO THE NEW UNIFORMS we went to the pits for hand-to-hand combat training. The pits are engineered to minimize the possibility of serious injury. Holes are scooped out. A thick layer of coarse sand—the sort that doesn’t completely compact when it gets wet—is spread across the bottom, nearly a foot deep. On top of that, a layer of sawdust and wood shavings is spread. The whole mess is compacted just enough to allow reliable footing, but this “flooring” has enough resilience to help avoid too many broken bones in training.
On Dancer, when the 1st Combined Regiment was doing its initial unit training, hand-to-hand had been put off as long as possible … and then a little longer, because of the way biraunta were terrified by the much larger porracci. The porracci resembled prehistoric predators from the biraunta’s homeworld. But we needed that training. Soldiers of each species had to learn how to fight soldiers of all the other species. The only species we couldn’t train against was tonatin. There were none in the Grand Alliance—the grandiose name given to the combined armies of the Alliance of Light. For want of any better solution, our porracci served as “stand-ins” for the tonatin. They were as close as we could come, but not nearly a perfect match. Tonatin look somewhat like Neanderthals from Earth’s past, but larger, smarter, and very aggressive.
There were new biraunta in our company, if not in my squad, and there were a few tense moments during our first hand-to-hand training session, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been on Dancer. What was as bad was the intensity of the sparring between porracci and ghuroh. Both of them came from societies where individual physical prowess set the pecking order. The difference, which I had been slow to recognize, was that dominance-submission among porracci was solely a matter of individual fighting ability, while among ghuroh it was more a cooperative thing, making the “hunting pack” as strong as possible. It was less combative among ghuroh. But porracci and ghuroh were fairly evenly matched, and both were anxious to demonstrate their own superiority over the other.
The basic anatomical differences among the various peoples of the army meant that there were some pairings that offered little hope in unarmed combat. Biraunta could not hope to defeat either porracci or ghuroh one-on-one and were hard-pressed to hold their own against humans, abarand, or divotect. Few humans could stand, alone, against a porracci or ghuroh, and so forth. So, apart from the one-on-one matches, we did some experimenting with combinations, looking for workable routines, and hoping that we would be able to stay out of the least-favorable situations when the real thing came along.
IYI AND OYO, THE TWO BIRAUNTA IN MY SQUAD, were brothers, identical twins—in a race that offered little physical difference among adult males at best. The only visible distinction between Iyi and Oyo was a slight variation in the coloring of the fur that rimmed their faces. They were almost exactly five feet tall and each weighed about seventy-five pounds. I could have lifted one of them over my head and thrown him without much difficulty. But in combat that would not have been so easily done. They were almost my equal in hand-to-hand combat, their smaller size offset by longer arms, the ability to grip with feet as well as hands, greater speed and agility, and their prehensile tails. I wasn’t careful enough in my first match with Oyo that day. He managed to throw me almost with ease.
Pound for pound, humans don’t match up well against most of the other species. It works out about even between humans and divotect because we’re about the same size and have fairly equal strength, on average, though the divotect probably do have a little the better of it. We have a slight advantage over biraunta because they’re only half our size—but that advantage is very slight. The only species in the alliance that humans have a definite advantage over is the abarand. They derive from flying mammals and retain rudimentary wings that are no longer sufficient for real flying, but their bone structure is delicate and their musculature not as finely honed for fighting.
UNIFORMS WEREN’T THE ONLY NEW ITEM WE RECEIVED that first week of training. Wednesday, we all received new electronics packages for our helmets. For the first time I would have the same level of communications with all my people that I had with other human members of the company. We could share full telemetry instead of just voice—map overlays, video relay, and physical vital signs. Thursday, we received new rifles for the ghuroh, porracci, abarand, and divotect—slug throwers that used the same ammunition as the primary human rifle. The weapons were still somewhat different, tailored for the anatomical differences among the species, but being able to use the same ammunition would make resupply in combat easier by orders of magnitude. Only the biraunta were going to continue using their original weapons—short-term, at least. Biraunta were so much lighter than the rest of us that there was still hesitation about giving them heavier weapons and ammunition.
“Maybe it’ll all help,” I told Tonio when we met for lunch in the mess hall Thursday, just after the company had drawn its new weapons. “We’re all wearing the same basic uniform now. We’ll be firing the same ammunition, mostly. Maybe it’ll rub off and we’ll start acting more like we’re part of the same … team.” I shook my head a little, mostly to myself. I had almost said family instead of team, and we were a long way from being that close.
“That’s what the colonel hopes,” Tonio said. He looked around to make certain that no one was close enough to overhear. Then he whispered, “Lieutenant Fusik even suggested that we might have to find a way to start a few fights—squad against squad—to get our people to bond more closely.”
I couldn’t hold back a chuckle. “You mean set someone up and wait to see if the rest of his squad comes to his aid?”
Tonio shrugged. His grin looked more than a little self-conscious. “Something like that. The lieutenant isn’t sure enough it would work though. He’s worried that things might get a lot worse if we staged something like that and it backfired.”
“Or if somebody figured out that it was phony,” I suggested. “Could get sticky as hell. Damn, I wish you hadn’t mentioned that. I got enough crap to worry about without wasting time trying to figure a way to make something like that work.” I shook my head and picked up my fork again, but before I could get a mouthful of mashed potatoes to my mouth I set the fork down. “There must be a way, Tonio. But …” I felt my face screwing up as if I had just tasted something particularly nasty. “Hell, I’m not sure we’re far enough along. It would work better if it happened while we were off-duty—even better, off base, on pass together in town. And that hasn’t started happening yet.”
COMPANY B SPENT THAT AFTERNOON ON THE FIRING range, giving those of us with new weapons a chance to sight them in and get used to the new ammunition. The rest of us took our turns on the firing line as well, just not as often. Practice might not always make perfect, but lack of practice can get you dead. Those men with new weapons went first to zero in their sights and familiarize themselves with the action and recoil. Then they went through full rotations from every firing position, single and automatic fire, using close to two hundred rounds of ammunition apiece. The humans and biraunta did a lighter routine—about eighty rounds.
“An inferior weapon,” Souvana said after he had finished his last turn at the firing range. “The caliber is too light to be as effective as porracci weapons. We would be better off staying with our traditional rifles.”
“You’re making me feel like a psychic, Souvana,” I told him, working hard not to grin. “I could have predicted your reaction almost to the word, and that has nothing to do with the relative merits of the weapons. You would have said the same thing regardless. You’re being too narrow, and too predictable. Porracci engineers did design your new weapon. The only real difference between the old rifles and the new is the caliber.”
“As I said,” Souvana said after a growl, “the caliber is the problem. It is too small for a proper infantry weapon.”
“A smaller caliber but a higher muzzle velocity. A hit from one of these bullets actually has more energy than a hit from the heavier-caliber bullets your old rifles used. They do more damage and have a slightly greater effective range. Of course, if you can’t see well enough to hit a target at longer range….” I watched his eyes narrow at what I was certain he would take as an insult, but I didn’t give him time to start bitching. “The tool works, if the man using it knows what he is doing. If he doesn’t, he should be doing something more within his abilities, like digging ditches … or cooking for his women.”
Yes, I was baiting Souvana, but I had learned a lot about porracci. You have to find ways to challenge them, channel their aggression, get them angry … but not too angry. I was pushing the limits, since no self-respecting porracci male would be caught dead cooking for females. Even in their army, it is only the lowest-ranking porracci soldiers who get stuck in the kitchen. It is considered a more humiliating punishment than locking them in the stockade.
“I am too good a soldier to rise to your insults, Sergeant,” Souvana said after what was obviously a struggle. “And porracci can do better than anyone else, even with inferior tools. But some of the races in our alliance do not have that advantage.”
“Each of us has something to offer, Souvana,” I said, gentling my voice, almost whispering as I moved closer to him, nearly nose to nose. “Each of us has something we are better at than any of the others. That is why it’s so vital to operate as a team, taking the best each species has to offer. That’s why this unit was formed. And, that is how we will defeat the Ilion Federation.”
If Souvana had been human, his jaw might have dropped about then. His eyes got wide and his head tilted back, just a little, which was more or less the porracci equivalent of a human’s jaw dropping open because an idea has caught him by surprise. That’s it, I thought. Work at it a little. See what I’ve been leading to. I was feeling pretty proud of myself right then. Just maybe I was finally going to break through one of the remaining barricades in the squad—at least with one of the species.
I watched his eyes and waited. After a moment, he blinked and cleared his throat. “I must see to my fire team,” he said. “We need to clean our rifles and make sure we can disassemble and reassemble them quickly.” Then he spun on his heel and walked away. I shook my head slowly while I watched him leave.
You just can’t face it yet, I thought. Nobody can. Damn. I thought we were getting somewhere. I headed toward the safety tower behind the center of the firing line. That was where Tonio and the other squad leaders were gathering, along with the rest of the sergeants in the company.
WE WERE ACTUALLY DISCUSSING THE BUSINESS AT hand, how the men were doing with their new weapons, when the company’s lead sergeant, Greeley Halsey, stepped into the middle of the group of noncoms. “I’ve got news, gentlemen,” he started, then he looked around to make certain he had everyone’s attention. “We just received a directive from General Ransom.” Brigadier General Wallace Ransom was the regimental commander. “Effective tomorrow morning, there will be new seating arrangements in the mess halls. During breakfast and lunch, on duty days, seating will be by squad. That means no more having everyone break apart by species. For now, at least, this will not extend to the evening meal after the company has been dismissed for the day or for the rare off-duty day. Questions?”
Lead Sergeant Halsey looked around the group again. There were no questions. The directive was clear. I glanced at Tonio. This was something we had both seen coming. I was moderately surprised that the directive did not cover all meals in the mess hall. Tonio gave me a barely noticeable shrug, as if he might have been surprised by the same thing.
“Oh, by the way,” Halsey said, stopping after he had taken a single step. “There is one other piece of news from regiment this afternoon. Our company commander is now Captain George Fusik.” Halsey grinned. “That’s not just recognition of what he did on Dintsen, it’s recognition of what the whole company did. And a measure of what they’ll expect of us next time out. Let’s make sure we don’t disappoint the brass.”
FRIDAY MORNING WE INITIATED THE NEW SEATING plan. The tables in the mess hall were each large enough to seat twelve men, an entire squad in a human infantry unit. With the mixed squads in Ranger Battalion, the tables seated the ten soldiers of one of our squads … I hate to use the word comfortably … but adequately. There had been some discussion among the squad leaders in my platoon about how we should work this and we decided to stay with fire teams within each squad. I sat with my fire team on one side of our table, and Souvana sat with his fire team on the other. Team leader on the right end, assistant team leader on the left. The way my squad was arranged, that split the two humans. Kiervauna, the assistant fire team leader on the other side, was still in the hospital, of course, but when we were back at full strength, the plan would also split the porracci.
We went through the serving line together and got our seats. “We’re a squad, a team,” I reminded everyone. “When it gets down to it, it’s us against them—whoever they are. We saw that on Dintsen. We might find ourselves in even more desperate situations in the future.” I hesitated because I had just remembered something I had seen in an old adventure vid. A line of dialogue, rather. I was afraid I might choke on the cliché, but I forced myself to say it: “‘All for one and one for all.’“
I could feel Souvana staring at me before I glanced his way and confirmed it, but he didn’t say anything. But closer, just across the table from me, I saw Claw nodding—and almost smiling. Ghuroh are pack hunters by ancestry.I guess that “all for one” idea is something they understand, something they’re raised with if it’s not a hardwired instinct with them. Maybe we can get through this after all, I thought—not the first time I had tried to sell myself on that notion. At least no one was too upset by the seating arrangements to eat.
IN THEORY, OUR TRAINING SCHEDULE CALLED FOR a five and a half-day work week with Saturday afternoon and Sunday off. That first week, Colonel Hansen showed us that he knew how to get the most out of us in the allotted time. Friday evening our company was sent on a night exercise in squad tactics, giving everyone a chance to work on the spec ops skills that are supposed to be our bread and butter. We didn’t get back to barracks until just before breakfast time Saturday morning. Even then we weren’t given a chance to sleep. After we ate and showered, we cleaned weapons and other gear, then stood inspection. By the time Captain Fusik released us for the weekend, it was nearly noon.
Not everyone went to the mess hall for lunch, and no one headed to the company orderly room to pick up passes to go into town. Most were content to use their “free” Saturday afternoon to catch up on sleep. Including me. You have to take it when you can get it.