Old Man's War Page 11

  Alas, there was.

  “Christ on a Popsicle stick,” Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz declared after he had glared at the sixty of us in his recruit platoon, standing (we hoped) more or less at attention on the tarmac of Delta Base’s shuttleport. “We have clearly just lost the battle for the goddamn universe. I look at you people and the words ‘tremendously fucked’ leap right out of my goddamned skull. If you’re the best that the Earth has got to offer, it’s time we bend over and get a tentacle right up the ass.”

  This got an involuntary chuckle from several recruits. Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz could have come from central casting. He was exactly what you expected from a drill instructor—large, angry and colorfully abusive right from the get-go. No doubt in the next few seconds, he would get into one of the amused recruit’s faces, hurl obscenities and demand one hundred push-ups. This is what you get from watching seventy-five years’ worth of war dramas.

  “Ha, ha, ha,” Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz said, back at us. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking, you dumb shits. I know you’re enjoying my performance at the moment. How delightful! I’m just like all those drill instructors you’ve seen in the movies! Aren’t I just the fucking quaint one!”

  The amused chuckles had come to a stop. That last bit was not in the script.

  “You don’t understand,” Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz said. “You’re under the impression that I’m talking like this because this is just something drill instructors are supposed to do. You’re under the impression that after a few weeks of training, my gruff but fair façade will begin to slip and I will show some inkling of being impressed with the lot of you, and that at the end of your training, you’ll have earned my grudging respect. You’re under the impression I’ll think fondly of you while you’re off making the universe safe for humanity, secure in the knowledge I’ve made you better fighting men and women. Your impression, ladies and gentlemen, is completely and irrevocably fucked.”

  Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz stepped forward and paced down the line. “Your impression is fucked, because unlike you, I have actually been out in the universe. I have seen what we’re up against. I have seen men and women that I knew personally turned into hot fucking chunks of meat that could still manage to scream. On my first tour of duty, my commanding officer was turned into a goddamn alien lunch buffet. I watched as the fuckers grabbed him, pinned him to the ground, sliced out his internal organs, passed them out and gobbled them down—and slid back under the ground before any of us could do a goddamned thing.”

  A stifled giggle from somewhere behind me. Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz stopped and cocked his head. “Oh. One of you thinks I’m kidding. One of you dumb motherfuckers always does. That’s why I keep this around. Activate now,” he said, and suddenly in front of each of us a video screen appeared; it took me a disorienting second before I realized Ruiz had somehow managed to activate my BrainPal remotely, switching on a video feed. The feed appeared to be taken from a small helmet camera. We saw several soldiers hunkered down in a foxhole, discussing plans for the next day’s travel. Then one of the soldiers stopped talking for a second and slammed a palm down onto the dirt. He glanced up fearfully and yelled “incoming” a split second before the ground erupted beneath him.

  What happened next happened so quickly that not even the instinctive, panicked turn of the camera’s owner was fast enough to miss it all. It was not pleasant. In the real world, someone was vomiting, ironically matching the action of the camera’s owner. Blessedly, the video feed switched off right after that.

  “I’m not so funny now, am I?” Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz said, mockingly. “I’m not that happy fucking stereotypical drill instructor anymore, am I? You’re not in a military comedy anymore, are you? Welcome to the fucking universe! The universe is a fucked-up place, my friends. And I’m not talking to you like this because I’m putting on some amusing little drill instructor routine. That man who was sliced and diced was among the best fighting men I have ever had the privilege of knowing. None of you are his equal. And yet you see what happened to him. Think what will happen to you. I’m talking to you like this because I sincerely believe, from the bottom of my heart, that if you’re the best humanity can do, we are magnificently and totally fucked. Do you believe me?”

  Some of our number managed to mumble a “Yes, sir” or something close to it. The rest of us were still replaying the evisceration in our heads, without the benefit of the BrainPal.

  “Sir? Sir?!? I am a fucking master sergeant, you shitheads. I work for a living! You will answer with ‘Yes, Master Sergeant’ when you need to answer in the affirmative, and ‘No, Master Sergeant’ when you answer in the negative. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Master Sergeant!” we replied.

  “You can do better than that! Say it again!”

  “Yes, Master Sergeant!” we screamed. Some of us were clearly on the verge of tears by the sound of that last bellow.

  “For the next twelve weeks, my job is to attempt to train you to be soldiers, and by God, I am going to do it, and I’m going to do it despite the fact that I can already tell that none of you motherfuckers is up to the challenge. I want each of you to think about what I’m saying here. This isn’t the old-time Earth military, where drill sergeants had to tone up the fat, bulk up the weak, or educate the stupid—each of you comes with a lifetime of experience and a new body that is in peak physical condition. You would think that would make my job easier. It. Does. Not.

  “Each of you has seventy-five years of bad habits and personal feelings of entitlement that I have to purge in three goddamn months. And each of you thinks your new body is some kind of shiny new toy. Yeah, I know what you’ve been doing for the last week. You’ve been fucking like rabid monkeys. Guess what? Playtime is over. For the next twelve weeks, you’ll be lucky if you have time to jerk off in the shower. Your shiny new toy is going to be put to work, my pretties. Because I have to make you into soldiers. And that is going to be a full-time job.”

  Ruiz resumed his pacing in front of the recruits. “I want to make one thing clear. I do not like, nor will I ever like, any one of you. Why? Because I know that despite the fine work of myself and my staff, you will inevitably make all of us look bad. It pains me. It keeps me awake at night knowing that no matter how much I teach you, you will inevitably fail those who fight with you. The best I can do is make sure that when you go, you don’t take your whole fucking platoon down with you. That’s right—if you only get yourself killed, I count that as a success!

  “Now, you may think that this is some sort of generalized hatred that I will carry for the lot of you. Let me assure you that this is not the case. Each of you will fail, but you will fail in your own unique way, and therefore I will dislike each of you on an individual basis. Why, even now, each of you has qualities that irritate the living fuck out of me. Do you believe me?”

  “Yes, Master Sergeant!”

  “Bullshit! Some of you are still thinking that I’m just going to hate the other guy.” Ruiz shot out an arm and pointed out toward the plain and the rising sun. “Use your pretty new eyes to focus on that transmission tower out there; you can just barely see it. It is ten klicks away, ladies and gentlemen. I’m going to find something about each of you that will piss me off, and when I do, you will sprint to that fucking tower. If you are not back in an hour, this entire platoon will run it again tomorrow morning. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Master Sergeant!” I could see people trying to do the math in their heads; he was telling us to run five-minute miles all the way there and all the way back. I strongly suspected we’d be running it again tomorrow.

  “Which of you was in the military back on Earth? Step up, now,” Ruiz asked. Seven recruits stepped forward.

  “God damn it,” Ruiz said. “There is nothing I hate more in the entire fucking universe than a veteran recruit. We have to spend extra time and effort on you bastards, making you unlearn every single fucking thin
g you learned back home. All you sons of bitches had to do was fight humans! And even that you did badly! Oh, yes, we saw that whole Subcontinental War of yours. Shit. Six fucking years to beat an enemy that barely had firearms, and you had to cheat to win. Nukes are for pussies. Pussies. If the CDF fought like the U.S. forces fought, you know where humanity would be today? On an asteroid, scraping algae off the fucking tunnel walls. And which ones of you assholes are Marines?”

  Two recruits stepped forward. “You fuckers are the worst,” Ruiz said, getting right in their faces. “You smug bastards have killed more CDF soldiers than any alien species—doing things that Marine fucking way instead of the way they’re supposed to be done. You probably had ‘Semper Fi’ tattoos somewhere on your old body, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  “Yes, Master Sergeant!” they both replied.

  “You are so fucking lucky they were left behind, because I swear I would have held you down and sliced them off myself. Oh, and you don’t think I wouldn’t? Well, unlike your precious fucking Marines, or any other military branch down there, up here the drill instructor is God. I could turn your fucking intestines into a sausage pie and all that would happen to me is they’d tell me to get one of the other recruits to mop up the mess.” Ruiz stepped back to glare at all the veteran recruits. “This is the real military, ladies and gentlemen. You’re not in the army, navy, air force, or Marines now. You’re one of us. And every time you forget it, I’m going to be there to step on your fucking head. Now start running!”

  They ran.

  “Who’s homosexual?” Ruiz said. Four recruits stepped forward, including Alan, who was standing next to me. I saw his eyebrows arch as he stepped up.

  “Some of the finest soldiers in history were homosexual,” Ruiz said. “Alexander the Great. Richard the Lionhearted. The Spartans had a special platoon of soldiers who were gay lovers, on the idea that a man would fight harder to protect his lover than he would for just another soldier. Some of the best fighters I ever knew personally were as queer as a three-dollar bill. Damn fine soldiers, all of them.

  “But I will tell you the one thing that pisses me off about you all: You pick the wrong fucking moments to get confessional. Three separate times I’ve been fighting alongside a gay man when things have gone sour, and each fucking time he chooses that moment to tell me how he’s always loved me. Goddamn, that’s inappropriate. Some alien is trying to suck out my fucking brains, and my squadmate wants to talk about our relationship! As if I wasn’t already busy. Do your squadmates a fucking favor. You got the hots, deal with it on leave, not when some creature is trying to rip out your goddamn heart. Now run!” Off they went.

  “Who’s a minority?” Ten recruits stepped forward. “Bullshit. Look around you, you assholes. Up here, everyone is green. There are no minorities. You want to be in a fucking minority? Fine. There are twenty billion humans in the universe. There are four trillion members of other sentient species, and they all want to turn you into a midday snack. And those are only the ones we know about! The first one of you who bitches about being a minority up here will get my green Latino foot squarely up your whiny ass. Move!” They heaved out toward the plain.

  On it went. Ruiz had specific complaints against Christians, Jews, Muslims and atheists, government workers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, blue-collar joes, pet owners, gun owners, practitioners of martial arts, wrestling fans and, weirdly (both for the fact it bothered him and the fact that there was someone in the platoon who fit the category), clog dancers. In groups, pairs, and singly, recruits were peeled off and forced to run.

  Eventually, I became aware that Ruiz was looking directly at me. I remained at attention.

  “I will be goddamned,” Ruiz said. “One of you shitheads is left!”

  “Yes, Master Sergeant!” I yelled as loudly as I could.

  “I find it somewhat difficult to believe that you do not fit into any of the categories I have railed against!” Ruiz said. “I suspect that you are attempting to avoid a pleasant morning jog!”

  “No, Master Sergeant!” I bellowed.

  “I simply refuse to acknowledge that there is not something about you I despise,” Ruiz said. “Where are you from?”

  “Ohio, Master Sergeant!”

  Ruiz grimaced. Nothing there. Ohio’s utter inoffensiveness had finally worked to my advantage. “What did you do for a living, recruit?”

  “I was self-employed, Master Sergeant!”

  “As what?”

  “I was a writer, Master Sergeant!”

  Ruiz’s feral grin was back; obviously he had it in for those who worked with words. “Tell me you wrote fiction, recruit,” he said. “I have a bone to pick with novelists.”

  “No, Master Sergeant!”

  “Christ, man! What did you write?”

  “I wrote advertising copy, Master Sergeant!”

  “Advertising! What sort of dumbass things did you advertise?”

  “My most famous advertising work involved Willie Wheelie, Master Sergeant!” Willie Wheelie had been the mascot for Nirvana Tires, who made tires for specialty vehicles. I’d developed the basic idea and his tagline; the company’s graphic artists took it from there. Willie Wheelie’s arrival coincided with the revival of motorcycles; the fad lasted for several years and Willie made a fair amount of money for Nirvana, both as an advertising mascot and through licensing for plush toys, T-shirts, shot glasses and so on. A children’s entertainment show was planned but nothing came of it. It was a silly thing, but on the other hand Willie’s success meant I never ran out of clients. It worked out pretty well. Until this very moment, it seemed.

  Ruiz suddenly lunged forward, directly into my face, and bellowed. “You are the mastermind behind Willie Wheelie, recruit?”

  “Yes, Master Sergeant!” There was a perverse pleasure in screaming at someone whose face was just millimeters away from your own.

  Ruiz hovered in my face for a few seconds, scanning it with his eyes, daring me to flinch. He actually snarled. Then he stepped back and began to unbutton his shirt. I remained at attention but suddenly I was very, very scared. He whipped off his shirt, turned his right shoulder to me, and stepped forward again. “Recruit, tell me what you see on my shoulder!”

  I glanced down, and thought, No fucking way. “It is a tattoo of Willie Wheelie, Master Sergeant!”

  “Goddamn right,” snapped Ruiz. “I’m going to tell you a story, recruit. Back on Earth, I was married to an evil, vicious woman. A veritable pit viper. Such was her hold on me that even though being married to her was a slow death by paper cuts, I still felt suicidal when she demanded a divorce. At my lowest moment, I stood at a bus stand, contemplating hurling myself in front of the next bus that came along. Then I looked over and saw an advertisement with Willie Wheelie in it. And do you know what it said?”

  “‘Sometimes You Just Gotta Hit the Road,’ Master Sergeant!” That tagline had taken me all of fifteen seconds to write. What a world.

  “Exactly,” he said. “And as I stared at that ad, I had what some would call a Moment of Clarity—I knew that what I needed was to just hit the fucking road. I divorced the evil slug of a wife, sang a song of thanks, packed my belongings into a saddlebag and lit out. Ever since that blessed day, Willie Wheelie has been my avatar, the symbol of my desire for personal freedom and expression. He saved my life, recruit, and I am forever grateful.”

  “You’re welcome, Master Sergeant!” I bellowed.

  “Recruit, I am honored that I have had a chance to meet you; you are additionally the first recruit in the history of my tenure that I have not found immediate grounds to despise. I cannot tell you how much that disturbs and unnerves me. However, I bask in the almost certain knowledge that soon—possibly within the next few hours—you will undoubtedly do something to piss me off. To assure that you do, in fact, I assign to you the role of platoon leader. It is a thankless fucking job that has no upside, since you have to ride these sad-ass recruits twice as hard as I do, because for every
one of the numerous fuckups that they perform, you will also share the blame. They will hate you, despise you, plot your downfall, and I will be there to give you an extra ration of shit when they succeed. What do you think about that, recruit? Speak freely!”

  “It sounds like I’m pretty fucked, Master Sergeant!” I yelled.

  “That you are, recruit,” Ruiz said. “But you were fucked the moment you landed in my platoon. Now get running. Can’t have the leader not run with his ’toon. Move!”

  “I don’t know whether to congratulate you or be scared for you,” Alan said to me as we headed toward the mess hall for breakfast.

  “You can do both,” I said. “Although it probably makes more sense to be scared. I am. Ah, there they are.” I pointed to a group of five recruits, three men, two women, who were milling about in front of the mess hall.

  Earlier in the day, as I was heading toward the communication tower on my run, my BrainPal almost caused me to collide with a tree by flashing a text message directly into my field of view. I managed to swerve, merely clipping a shoulder, and told Asshole to switch to voice navigation before I got myself killed. Asshole complied and started the message over.

  “Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz’s appointment of John Perry as leader of the 63rd Training Platoon has been processed. Congratulations on your advancement. You now have access to personnel files and BrainPal information relating to recruits within the 63rd Training Platoon. Be aware that this information is for official use only; access for nonmilitary use is cause for immediate termination of platoon leader position and a court-martial trial at the base commander’s discretion.”

  “Swell,” I said, leaping a small gully.

  “You will need to present Master Sergeant Ruiz with your selections for squad leaders by the end of your platoon’s breakfast period,” Asshole continued. “Would you like to review your platoon files to aid in your selection process?”