Chapter Eleven

The Legion is a moral paradise but a physical hell.

—attributed to an unknown colonel of the French Foreign Legion

“All I’m saying is that some of these guys are pretty damned free with their stun batons, that’s all,” Wolf said.

The recruits had finished their evening meal and were back in barracks, enjoying their last night of comparative freedom. Everything they’d heard since arriving on Devereaux suggested that Basic was going to be tough, but at least they had one more evening of calm before the storm.

Wolf was sitting at the table in the common area with Kern and Lisa Scott. Myaighee had closed himself off in his cubicle with an adchip on leadership principles, while Antonelli was perched on his bunk watching the others and absently shuffling a deck of cards.

The conversation had started after Sergeant Konrad had finished up his inspection. He hadn’t found any faults with Delta Lance, but there had been some excitement a few minutes later after he handed out extra duty to everyone in Echo Lance as punishment for one recruit’s sloppy locker. When the sergeant left, Volunteer Lauriston had taken it on himself to chastise the offender, a small recruit with features like an Indomay, named Kochu Burundai. The resulting fight had been quickly broken up by Konrad and Corporal Vanyek, but not without some heavy-handed use of stun batons.

Hauser had seen a lot of that sort of thing, both here at Fort Hunter and back aboard the two transports, and it still grated. On Laut Besar even Indomays didn’t get that sort of treatment, yet in the “enlightened” Commonwealth no one could make a move without worrying about being subjected to a stun-lashing.

Tom Kern didn’t seem particularly shocked, though. “It’s rough, I’ll give you that. But they’ve got their reasons. You’ll find the military always has a pretty good motive for whatever it does, even if it doesn’t look that way to an outsider.”

Volunteer Scott laughed. “I can’t buy that one, Kern,” she said, raising an eyebrow at the big ex-Marine. “You can’t tell me that anybody in his right mind would have put together this lance.”

“She’s got you there, Tom,” Wolf chimed in. “Look what they decided would make a compatible unit. We’re not exactly a typical bunch, are we?”

Kern shrugged. “I’ve seen stranger.”

“Sure. A deserter from the Marines—”

“I never told you that!” Kern shot back, sounding more amused than annoyed. During the time they’d spent together in the transients’ barracks waiting for the company to form, Wolf had picked up plenty of clues about the backgrounds of some of the other recruits, including Kern and Antonelli.

“Okay, okay, a Marine veteran, then,” he amended. “Then there’s a street kid who was sentenced to the Legion against his will.” He darted a glance at Antonelli, who flashed a cocky grin. “An ale that doesn’t know what sex it is. I’m the token aristocrat with the shady past, I guess … and of course there’s our mystery guest here.”

Lisa Scott looked away, blushing faintly. She was close-lipped about her past, and so far no one had breached Legion tradition to interrogate her. That didn’t stop her new lancemates from speculating, though.

“Not exactly the ideal outfit,” he concluded. “How in hell did anybody come up with a team like us? Somebody program the master computer to pull practical jokes?”

“They’re supposed to match psych profiles,” Kern said. “And yes, scoff if you will, the pair of you, but they really do know what they want. You’ve had military experience, haven’t you, Wolf?” At his nod, Kern went on. “Well, so have Myaighee and I. I’d guess you haven’t, Scott … and I know Antonelli there hasn’t. They try to pair up novices with people who’ve had some kind of training. And mixing social background is supposed to get us used to interacting without thinking about status and all that shit.”

“They sure don’t take background into account in the training, do they?” Wolf commented. “Hell, that guy they nailed for a messy locker never even saw running water until he went on board Kolwezi…!”

“Yeah, I know,” Kern replied. “I heard that Burundai was a herder on Ulan-Tala before he signed up. They reverted to a nomad culture during the Shadow Centuries, but they weren’t as lucky as your bunch. They never had anything worthwhile to attract new settlers to yank them back into a modern frame of mind. That’s the whole problem with the Legion. Regular outfits have the glamour and get the best recruits, while the Colonials are mostly drawn from common backgrounds. But in the Legion they’re getting recruits in from everywhere, from Terra to Ulan-Tala and anything in between. That’s the reason for the tough physical discipline.”

“Come again?” Lisa Scott asked.

Kern spread his hands and looked at the tabletop, but his mind seemed light-years away. “The theory is that the instructors can give lectures until Sol goes nova, but some of them might never understand what we’re telling them. Would you really want to explain to that herdsman why civilized people use a latrine instead of a convenient bush? Multiply that by a hundred and twenty, because every last recruit comes from a different background and culture with different ideas of what conduct to call proper. It’s a hell of a lot easier to get people to accept a single standard of behavior by showing them a good, selfish reason for it—keeping their precious skins intact—than it would be to individually overcome each recruit’s lifetime of social training.”

“And here I thought Vanyek just liked to make people twitch,” Wolf said dryly. “How’d you pick up so much on what makes these people tick, Kern?”

The big redhead looked away for a long moment. “I was a DI in the third … for a while.” He paused. “I’d rather not think about that now, though.”

As the conversation died away, Antonelli rolled out of his bunk and approached the table, still practicing a one-handed shuffle that would have made Robert MacDuff envious. “Hey, let’s knock off the heavy philosophy and have some fun,” he said. “Come on, it’s our first night, and it’s free time. What d’ya say we play some cards, huh?”

“No thanks,” Wolf replied automatically. He stood up. “I think I’ll emulate our great leader and chip something until they call lights out.”

“I just thought maybe you’d like to sit in on a game or something, you know?” Antonelli put the cards on the table and tapped the deck.

“Thanks anyway.” He still wasn’t sure what he thought of Antonelli. The kid tried hard to make others like him, but he had a knack for saying the wrong things. Like his comment on the parade ground, or the way he’d acted the day they’d processed in.

“Just trying to be sociable.” Antonelli turned away. “How ’bout you, Red?”

“Not for me, mate,” Kern said, affably enough.

Antonelli sat down at the table. “Man, what a bunch of killjoys they stuck me with,” he complained. “Come on, just a coupla hands, okay?”

Kern shook his head slowly. “Maybe after we get our first pay slip, all right? I used up my whole advance before we even got off the transport, and gambling’s no good without stakes.”

From his cubicle, Wolf watched Antonelli shrug and look across at Lisa Scott. “You’ll play, won’t you, honey?” Antonelli said loudly. “I’ll bet we can think of some stakes worth playing for, huh?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she crossed to her locker, took out a towel, then headed for the door. A few moments later the sound of running water confirmed her destination.

Antonelli leered again. “Hey, maybe she’s got the right idea. Maybe I’ll just clean up, too.…” He got up and followed her.

Wolf rolled out of his cot. “Maybe we’d better help out Scott.…”

“Better wait and see if the lady needs any help, boyo,” Kern advised. “Could be old Mario’s in for a surprise or two from that one.”

Before he could respond there was a shout from the shower room, then a string of curses in hoarse tones barely recognizable as Antonelli’s. Wolf raced for the door with Kern close behind. Myaighee joined them as they ran down the hall to the showers.

Antonelli was backed against the wall next to the door clutching his left arm. Blood seeped through his fingers and dripped to the tile floor. “She cut me! The bitch cut me!”

Lisa Scott took a step toward the bleeding man. She made no effort to cover her nude body, and the knife in her hand, held at the ready, never wavered. “I’ll cut you worse if you come near me again,” she said in a soft, dangerous voice. “And in some place a lot more painful than your arm. Depend on it.”

“What’s going on in here? Get out of the way!” Corporal Vanyek’s strident tones broke through a babble of voices from the corridor, where members of the other lances were gathering in response to the commotion. “Out of my way, I said!”

The corporal brushed past Wolf and took in the scene with a single glance. “All right, back to your quarters. Now! Mag it!” He halted Wolf and the other members of Delta Lance. “Not you straks.”

He turned away, toward Lisa, then suddenly whirled around and slammed a fist into Antonelli’s stomach. The recruit doubled over, gasping, and Vanyek hit him again, this time in the face.

“You stupid bastard,” Vanyek said, almost in a monotone. “You strak-faced piece of ghoul shit.” For emphasis he struck again, then signaled for Wolf and Kern to pull the injured man to his feet. “The Legion wasn’t set up so you could party with female legionnaires, Antonelli. You got that?”

Antonelli nodded weakly, and Vanyek hit him again. “I don’t think you’re hearing me, nube! I don’t know how it is in whatever sewer you grew up in, but in the Legion there’s no distinctions drawn between men and women. None! That means there’ll be female soldiers in your units, here and out in the field. But they weren’t put there as playthings for the likes of you.” He raised his fist as if to strike again, then seemed to think better of it. The recruit was barely conscious as it was. “Now get this, nube, and get it good. You can screw whoever or whatever you like, whenever you like, on your own time. We’ve got whorehouses to take care of the troops outside the fort. If some legionnaire is crazy enough to want you, that’s fine, too, but you better make sure we’re talking consenting partners here. You get me, nube?”

He nodded, gasped out, “Yes, Corporal!”

Vanyek smiled coldly. “Good … because you try a stunt like this again, and I’ll personally make sure that whatever the woman leaves intact gets carved up anyway.”

“Yes, Corporal,” Antonelli repeated weakly.

The corporal turned his angry eyes on Lisa. “You, nube. You made it clear that you didn’t want anything to do with him before you pulled the knife.”

She met his eyes without flinching. “Yes, Corporal. Several times today, and again when he came in here.”

He frowned at her. “And you brought that thing in here with you. You always take a knife into the showers, nube?”

Flushing she gave a grim nod. “Yes, Corporal,” she repeated. “I do. Since I was seventeen. I have a right to defend myself.”

Vanyek was suddenly a blur of motion, his hand snaking out to chop at the wrist of her knife hand as he stepped past her guard. The knife clattered on the wet tile floor as the corporal gave the naked girl a backhanded slap that sent her reeling. “Get this straight, nube,” he roared. “You don’t have any rights while you’re here! None! And you certainly don’t have the right to go carving up members of your own unit! How did you get that knife into the barracks in the first place?”

She rubbed the red spot on her face where he had hit her. “It was in my bag. There’s a hidden compartment.…”

“So you just smuggled yourself a weapon onto the base,” he finished. He spat for emphasis.

“No one said anything about forbidding weapons, Corporal,” she said quietly. “And I never intended to do anything but protect myself.…”

“Shut up!” he bellowed, raising his hand as if to strike her again. Then he dropped it and went on in lower tones. “We’ll go to your quarters and have a look through the rest of your things, just to make sure you haven’t brought in any other little surprises.”

Vanyek bent down and retrieved the fallen knife. “This weapon is confiscated, and if I catch you with another one I just might decide to use it myself.” He tucked it into the top of his boot. “I could have you and Antonelli both on your way out of here, but I’m going to recommend leniency. This time, that is. The Legion doesn’t like to waste recruits in barracks knifings. And there are good reasons why we don’t like our recruits running around with weapons unless we give them to you. Get the picture?”

She nodded tightly, but didn’t answer. Vanyek ignored the silence and went on. “I’m putting you down for twenty hours extra duty in an unarmed combat class, starting tomorrow. Use what you learn to discourage any other rutting straks you run across, and save the cutlery for the enemy.”

Swallowing, she found her voice at last. “Yes, Corporal.”

Vanyek fixed Myaighee with a harsh look. “I don’t want any more trouble out of either of these two again, you hear me? Next time your whole lance draws punishment.”

“Yes, Corporal,” the hannie said, the quills of his neck ruff twitching. Wolf had heard that those spines moved in response to strong emotion.

“Antonelli, you get two hours a night extra duty starting tonight, and until I decide otherwise. You can draw a toothbrush and clean the shithouse after you wrap up your arm. Let’s get going!”

Vanyek slammed the door open and led the way back to their barracks room, with Myaighee following. Kern and Wolf got on either side of Antonelli, supporting his stumbling figure. As they left the shower room, Wolf saw Lisa Scott rub her jaw once before turning to pick up her clothes. She trailed behind them, drying herself with a towel, and stood aside as Vanyek went through her locker.

Finally satisfied that she wasn’t hiding any other weapons, Vanyek favored them with a last savage glare. “All right. That’s enough excitement for one night. Patch up that strak’s arm and send him to my office. The rest of you … lights out in ten minutes!”

Myaighee had already broken open a medical kit hanging on the wall near the door, and with Kern’s help the alien started bandaging Antonelli’s wound. Wolf looked at them for a moment, then headed for his own cubicle. Next door, Lisa Scott started to close the screen, caught his eye, and shrugged.

“Not much point in modesty anymore, is there?” she said with a sardonic smile. But she closed the screen anyway without waiting for Wolf to reply.

He stretched out on his cot, then picked up the adchip he had been about to study before the trouble began. He frowned at it for a moment, then put it down. After everything that had happened, he doubted he could get into a chip lecture before the call for lights out sounded. Reluctantly, he leaned back, listening to Antonelli cursing while Kern and Myaighee applied the bandage.

Wolf wondered, again, what he had gotten himself into by joining the Fifth Foreign Legion.

* * *

It was quiet in the barracks building now, half an hour after the PA order for lights out. Engaged Volunteer Mario Antonelli wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and winced as the motion set his arm to throbbing again. It was all so damned unfair…!

Having the bitch pull a knife on him had been bad enough, but then Corporal Vanyek had beaten him until he could hardly move. Now the noncom expected him to spend two hours on his hands and knees cleaning toilets. Vanyek had left little doubt that another beating, worse than before, would follow if the work wasn’t done to the corporal’s satisfaction.

“This shit is crazy,” he muttered aloud. “Pazzo. Goddamned judge …”

Antonelli had never intended to join the military, much less a hard-luck outfit like the Fifth Foreign Legion. But here he was, against his will, with no hope now of escaping.

He had been born in Rome, on Terra, and at the age of fifteen he’d become a full Citizen with all the rights and privileges that went with that simple title. A hundred and fifty nations on Terra and a score or so major world governments extended Commonwealth Citizenship to their entire populace automatically. In theory it meant the right to vote in Commonwealth elections, and the Citizen was supposed to have precedence over Colonials and other non-Citizens in all things, from the chance to own Colonial land to the best seats on shuttles or floatbuses.

In practice, though, most Citizens on Terra didn’t give a damn about any of it. The one thing the vast majority of the beeswarm billions of the Mother World’s overcrowded cities cared about was the Citizen’s dole. With cheap fusion power, artificially intelligent computers, synthetic foods, and the wealth of an interstellar empire to draw on, nobody on Terra had to hold down a job to survive. The dole took care of basic needs. If a Citizen wanted more, there were opportunities he could take advantage of, all the way up to emigration to some frontier world where Citizenship carried real power.

But like so many of his kind, Antonelli had been perfectly willing to accept state-sponsored housing and the minimum dole rather than exerting himself to find some kind of use or meaning to his existence. Instead he’d drifted casually into a life of petty crime and dissipation, mostly out of boredom and because it was the only way to rebel against a cold, impersonal society. He’d run with I Paladini Blanci, the White Knights, a gang of like-minded youths, none of them really violent or dangerous characters, but they acted tough and expected him to do the same.

Then he’d stolen a floatcar and gone on a joyride among the rezplexes outside of Rome on a dare from some of the Knights … and the compols arrested him and the judge sentenced him to a term in the service. And not just any service—the Fifth Foreign Legion. His Citizenship was suspended, and only by completing a five-year term of enlistment would he get it back again. Otherwise he’d be sent to one of the Colonial Army penal battalions, and when his term was up there would be no more dole, no more state housing … nothing.

He hadn’t really thought much about being a Citizen until the judge had taken the title away.

But for a time the idea had seemed exciting, like anything but punishment. A chance to get off Terra, get away from endless mobs of people, find adventure on distant planets … he’d leapt at the chance. The Legion had a murky reputation back home as a haven for all the cast-off scum of a hundred worlds, but at the same time there was a romance about the lonely life of the soldiers who guarded distant frontiers that had made him dream of coming home covered in glory.

He had even told his parents that he had volunteered. His mother had cried, but old Sergeant-Major Enrico Antonelli had beamed with pride. The old man was getting on in years, and the artificial heart they’d put in him after the fighting on Horizon was giving him trouble these days, but when he thought the son of his old age was finally going to follow in his footsteps there had been no doubt of his feelings. Antonelli had shipped off Terra feeling good for the first time in a long, long time.

Now he was in the Legion, and the glory had vanished like a mirage in the desert. Why couldn’t he fit in here? He’d tried to put up the same tough image that had won him respect with the Knights, but he’d been rebuffed at every turn. The corporals and sergeants were worse than compols, and then the girl …

In the crowd he ran with back home, any girl would have understood him. He had been showing his appreciation for a good-looking woman; that was all. Sure, if she’d been interested they could have had some fun, but he hadn’t planned to force her or anything. Antonelli didn’t need to use force to get a girl. It had all been in fun, the kind of macho horseplay all the Paladini Blanci went in for. He’d intended it to break the ice with the legionnaires, nothing else.

Until the bitch had pulled the knife and slashed his arm. Now he was branded a rapist, and the noncoms would come down twice as hard as before. And he was off on the wrong foot with his lance, with the whole outfit in fact. He would have to work twice as hard to be accepted now.

Antonelli bit his lip and leaned forward to start scrubbing again, favoring the bruises where Vanyek had hit him in the stomach. He couldn’t afford to fail with the Legion, not if he wanted to win his Citizenship back. Not if he wanted to see that same look in his father’s eye the next time he went home.

He had to make it work.