Mercenary (8 page)

“Thanks, Sergeant,” I said sincerely.

“Just you be a credit to my platoon.”

My squad was already doing well; in due course it would be recognized as the sharpest in the company.

As it happened, the officer did not contact me during Basic Training, but Smith assured me that the man intended to when he deemed the moment propitious, and I believed him. I had to wait, but I knew this was my best chance, and meanwhile there was plenty to keep me occupied. I was discovering that despite the hard work and dehumanization of training, I liked the military life. It was another kind of family, and once its ways were understood, it was a good family. The decent food and thorough exercise filled me out physically, so that I became an unimpressive but extremely fit individual, fast and strong and confident. I was, indeed, becoming a good soldier, and I was learning a lot.

The weeks passed, and the months. The concluding exercise of Basic came in our tenth week. This was the Challenge Course. If we were true soldiers, we would make it successfully through; if not, we would be recycled for further training.

There were other inducements. Our full cycle—the entire training battalion, three hundred recruits—would run the course together. There were many more people in the battalion, of course, but the rest were cadre, training personnel, officers, and staff. The recruits were the ones that counted. The nine platoons of the three companies would vie with each other for points, and the leading platoon would be granted an immediate three-day pass. That meant free time, and free time was the Navy's most precious commodity. The leading individuals would be granted a jump promotion from El to E3, for performance in the Challenge Course was considered to be the measure of competence and potential.

There would be nine such promotions—theoretically, one per platoon, but if all the top scorers were in one platoon, they'd get it. Sergeant Smith wanted our platoon to get the victory, for it would mean a commendation for him and facilitate his own promotion. Promotion was another great Navy lure.

The course was through the special Challenge Dome, which was made up like an Earth wilderness.

There was supposed to be jungle, desert, mountains, lakes, and snow. Also wild creatures of a number of types, ranging from gnats to crocodiles. And a tribe of headhunters, who would be out to get us. They wouldn't really take our heads, of course, but anyone captured and ritually decapitated—stripes of red paint would serve to show the cuts—would be considered dead and out of the challenge. The headhunters, too, had passes and promotions to earn, so they would be alert, but they had to follow the rules and could not capture any recruit unless he made some sort of error. There would be about a hundred referees in there, personnel in distinctive black garb, who would mark individual injuries and deaths along the way and feed the information into the Casualty Computer. They would neither help nor hinder us; they merely observed, until the occasion came to mark the dead and pull them from the course.

We were supposed to ignore them; to ask one for help or information was to forfeit the course immediately.

Supplies would be issued when we entered the Challenge Dome: bug repellent, croc repellent, machetes, maps, and so on. The wild animals were real, but we were not supposed to hurt them; avoidance was the key. “Getting chomped by a croc is line-of-duty-no,” Sergeant Smith explained with a smile.

Line-of-duty-yes was okay; sometimes legitimate accidents occurred, for which a recruit was not penalized. Line-of-duty-no mishaps were subject to reprimand. The course was supposed to take about three hours, but anyone who got through “alive” within six hours passed. Those who made it in two-and-a-half hours got a higher rating, and chances were that anyone who made it in under two hours would be among the winners of promotions. Last cycle's winner had done it in one hour and fifty minutes, with his buddy right behind.

For we were to use the “buddy” system. We would travel in pairs, with each one looking out for the other. Loss of partner was line-of-duty-no unless there was good reason, such as the death of the buddy under honorable conditions. If two people lost their buddies, they were supposed to buddy up with each other.

I intended to score well in the challenge, for three reasons. First, I was really getting into the training and wanted to prove myself in the field. Second, I wanted to help Sergeant Smith's platoon make the best showing. And third, I had discovered that though E2's were not marched in formation to the Tail, they weren't permitted heterosexual roommates; that was a privilege reserved for E3 and up. E2's could use the Tail, or make private liaisons and clear them with their units. It was catch as catch can, not an ideal situation; most of them wound up at the Tail, anyway. I had had enough of that; I wanted to room with Juana. I was not emotionally involved with her in the sense of being in love, but I did like her, and the rooming arrangement would be more comfortable for both of us for any number of reasons. So I wanted us both to make E3 so we could do it.

I knew that it was important, in any competitive situation, to plan ahead. So I researched the Challenge Dome, learning what prior layouts had been. It changed each time, but there was a certain broad pattern, since lakes and mountains weren't easy to move. What they tended to do was use different segments of the dome, so as to include patterns with minimal effort. I found out what the pattern of patterns was, and so had a pretty good notion what to anticipate for ours.

I consulted with Juana. We had not met in the Tail again, for the Navy policy was to change combinations each time, to prevent exactly such emotional attachments as we were forming, but we met in our free time. After the first month we were permitted to wear civvies during off time, so I saw Juana in a dress and a feminine hairdo. She was lovely! She, like I, had filled out in a beneficial manner, and she had been well endowed to begin with. No one could ever match my lost fiancée, Helse, in my heart, but I realized that as a sexual partner of convenience, Juana was all that I could ask. She could easily have paired with another man, but she had fixed on me because of the difficult contact we had shared that first time. We understood each other in a special way.

She was smart, too. She had had a good education, as I had; her family had been reasonably well-to-do. That was one reason she had had such a problem in the Tail; she had expected to be a virgin at her marriage. The brutality of her rape and loss of her family had shocked her fundamentally but had not made it easier for her to indulge in casual sex; the opposite was the case. I understood this all too well, so in this sense I was right for her. I was almost sorry I could not love her, for she was worthy of love, but neither Navy policy nor my private emotional makeup permitted that. From the outset we had our understanding: we would be friends and sexual partners, but not lovers. That may seem like a strange distinction, but it was valid. Sex can be separated from love, and love from friendship, and only by recognizing this separation could I believe I was not being false to Helse.

Juana shared my eagerness to score well in the Challenge. We agreed to be buddies there, trading off our assigned partners so we could be together. That way we would succeed or fail together, and that was as it should be. Buddies were to be chosen ahead of time, since the Navy knew that strangers did not make the best buddies, but for convenience they had to be in-platoon at the start. So I paired with a handsome Saxon youth, and Juana took a voluptuous Saxon girl; then we introduced them to each other and asked if they would like to make the exchange in the Challenge. They were more than happy to oblige; they had not thought of this particular device.

Then we got down to serious planning. I showed Juana the maps of prior layouts, and she made suggestions on how to proceed. She came up with one notion that appalled me, but she showed me her research and finally convinced me she was correct. The more I considered her proposal, the more I liked it. It was risky; we could be genuinely hurt if we miscalculated. But it offered a chance to complete the probable course in well under two hours—perhaps even record time. As far as we could tell, no one else had ever tried this ploy, and it required courage for us to decide on it. But we did; it was basically double or nothing.

It took some preparation. We were allowed to bring no props to the Challenge Dome, but we could develop whatever skills we wished and had time for. So we researched and found out how to make a paddleboard from natural materials. We went swimming at one of the Base pools—Juana looked great in a suit!—where paddleboards were allowed, and learned how to use them. It took some effort, and we weren't expert, but we could make do. We also practiced our straight swimming, especially the breast-stroke-frog-kick combination.

All too soon, the day came. We were marched into the Challenge Dome. We stripped and stepped naked into the supply section. We had to choose our equipment from what was available and use it to run the course. Anyone who chose foolishly would pay the consequences soon enough. The Dome personnel quickly provided what was ordered but made no suggestions or remarks. Some trainees evidently hadn't thought about it ahead and wasted precious time making up their minds. I had memorized my list and was one of the first on my way.

I wore standard combat boots, jungle fatigues, heavy gloves, and a cap with mosquito netting that tied around my neck, so that no part of me was open to the bugs. Other men simply used insect repellent and traveled lighter and cooler, but I had my reasons to do it my way. I took a standard machete and a small hunting knife and a quadruple ration of reptile repellent. “Going swimming?” the clerk inquired wryly, in violation of the no-comment regulation, but I didn't answer. He thought I was a fool, since land was faster than water for footsoldiers. And, of course, I took one of their little maps.

I smiled as I viewed it. They had set the course just about where I had anticipated. I knew this layout in more detail than the map showed, for it was supposed to be only a general guideline, with a few minor errors to simulate real-life conditions. This was verisimilitude; maps could be out of date or simply wrong, so part of the challenge was to make do despite errors of information.

I focused on a particular area. Sure enough: There was a mismarked quicksand bog. Anyone who trusted this map and tried to swim in clear water could blunder into quicksand instead. Since clear water was infested with crocodiles, few were likely to try, however. Mainly, they would lose time, having to skirt an unexpected bog. Never trust a map too far!

I proceeded to the rendezvous point with my buddy. There were the two girls, as agreed. Juana was shapeless in fatigues and netting, as I was, but her friend was in a fake wool sweater and skirt and looked stunning. The other couple evidently planned to hike through the mountain region where the air was cool, even snowy, so they were warmly dressed. They wore spiked boots and carried coils of fine rope, so they could navigate the high pass. I had studied that route; it was a slow but sure one. They would finish in the middle of the pack—perhaps a little behind, if they dallied during a rest stop for a little romance. It wasn't that either was starved for sex; that was impossible in the Navy! It was that the Challenge Dome was a very special place and this was a special occasion; they were all worked up for it, and love in the wilderness had unique spice.

Now Juana and I were together, and we had no present interest in sex. We forged directly for the quicksand, moving swiftly over the firm ground, then carefully through thickening jungle lowlands. The headhunters were here; we saw one of their snares. But we passed through their territory unmolested, because of our silence and the fact that we wore no strong-smelling bug repellent. Juana had figured that out: The headhunters sniffed the odors and zeroed in on them for the kill.

We came to the edge of the open water by the map, and now the error of the map was plain, for this was perhaps six inches of water topping a quicksand bog. There was no question about the quicksand, because a float carried a sign: QUICKSAND. A real wilderness wouldn't have such a marker, but this was a mock wilderness and the quicksand was simulated; we had to accept it by definition. A Dome observer sat in a shallow-draft boat, ready to pull out any fools who stumbled into it and to ferry them to the morgue.

There was a stand of papyruslike reeds at the edge, as I had known there would be. I began cutting these down with my machete as Juana scouted for suitable vines. Soon we were fashioning two paddleboards: flat bundles of the buoyant reeds. When they were ready, I faced the observer and made my statement: “Quicksand is more dense than water. A person can float in it if he doesn't panic, especially if he is buoyed. There will be no need to consider us mired; we know what we're doing.”

There was no response from the observer. But when we stripped, bundling our fatigues into our boots and hooking the boots to our bodies by their linked laces, and smearing croc repellent over our naked bodies, and flopping on our boards in the water, the observer made no protest. In fact, his rapt attention was on Juana's splendid body; observers seldom got the chance to observe this sort of thing in the Dome! We had a viable program.

We paddled carefully across the quicksand, keeping our arm and leg strokes shallow. This was the second reason we used no bug repellent; it was water soluble and would have been lost here. The reptile repellent was more durable in water, and we had plenty. Even so, I felt a thrill of nervousness, not so much for the actual dangers as for the possible reaction of the observer. The crocs were fangless, but if they came too close, we would be disqualified; our repellent had better work!

We swam slowly across. No crocs came. We climbed out on the far bank and shook ourselves off and got dressed again before the bugs could cluster. Then, with a cheery wave to the observer, we resumed our trek. I had not thought of Juana's body as an asset, but surely if the observer had been in doubt about whether to call a fault, this had helped keep him positive.