Working The Trenches: Rediscovery, #4

Chapter One

The Next Step

You don’t have to do this.

It was our last night together for a while.  We were in the sleep field in our apartment in the family residence, twenty kilometers above the surface of Sumabad, on Indra Prime.  The family dinner was behind us; our dogs Lady and More were in their beds.  We had already made love and were just basking in the glow of each other’s touch.  We watched the wakes from the pleasure craft in the strait in the soft glow from the new habitat overhead.  The glow was about equal to ‘a couple minutes after sunset’-level twilight on Earth; the wide ribbon of habitat overhead went all the way around the system’s star and reflected a lot more light.  One of the major planned cities was visible, a bit ahead of our orbit.  Hard to believe there were already hundreds of times more people on the habitat that had been finished only a few years before than on this planet that had seen a hundred thousand years of civilization.

The plan was we were both going to start military training the next day, and Asto was telling me that he would understand if I didn’t want to.

How many of the spouses in the family haven’t spent time in the military?  It was a rhetorical question.  We both knew the answer was zero.

How many of them were born outside the Empire?  Other than me, that answer was also zero.  He was saying that if I didn’t feel the loyalty yet, it was understandable.

The Empire saved us.  Without the Empire, Earth would be on the way to a new Stone Age.  That’s if there were any humans left on Earth.  The war between China and Russia that went nuclear and killed nearly a billion people had been only the leading edge of the troubles we’d been heading for.  The United States had been in the process of fiscal collapse, the European Union had disintegrated into constituent nations, and world trade had been falling apart when the Empire stepped in.  Even if no other nukes had been detonated – which no one rational believed – the damage done would have snowballed badly if the Empire hadn’t stepped in and cleaned it up.  That was nearly three Imperial years ago; longer on Earth due to the time differential.  The radioactivity had been cleaned up, and Earth’s standard of living was improving every month.  The Primuses and Secunduses assigned to Earth had been doing their job well.

Asto replied, Earth is doing fine, now.  It was the government, not the people, who were screwed up.  And that was kind of the point.  I didn’t know that I wanted to get into the Imperial government ever, but I might.  Asto definitely would; the Great Families might as well have been holding a blaster to each other’s heads on that point.  In fact, the more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed.  To help Asto and the rest of his family if nothing else.  I was part of the Scimtar family now and they would be my children’s family as well, the friends and allies they could count on without reservation.  But no matter who you were related to, nobody got rank in the Empire without earning it themselves.  Not military rank and especially not civilian government.  Even the Guardian’s daughter started at the bottom.  There was no formal requirement for military service in order to be appointed a Primus-in-fact, but in reality, the people running the Empire wanted to see evidence you were willing and able to serve; take orders and take your chances and put the interests of the Empire above your own.  It was more likely they’d let an office go vacant rather than appoint a non-veteran.  Coming from a United States where service had been increasingly rare for fifty years, I understood why.

The result was that if I ever wanted to get into the government, I had to have military service.  And looking ahead, I didn’t see a better time to do it.  For one thing, Asto was joining for his first period of service.  Waiting for any other time would double the time apart for initial training.  Well, not apart exactly, as our rapport went on constantly, but while we could communicate on levels no inoperant knew existed, there was still no substitute for kissing your husband.  If we have to be separated once, I don’t want to be separated twice.  And you know I do feel grateful and indebted for what the Empire did.  I’ve also seen how the Empire treats its citizens. The Empire earned my loyalty.  It continues to earn my loyalty. 

Every day, I saw how the way the Empire worked treated its people better than the United States ever had.  People respected the government; they didn’t live in fear of it.  Back home, EPA and IRS and FBI were words to conjure fear, along with Child Protective Services and DEA and dozens of others.  Here, most of them didn’t even have analogs, and anyone abusing official authority was dealt with quickly and very thoroughly.  As a result, people lived far more comfortably and with far fewer problems.  You didn’t have to worry about used raw tea leaves in your garbage causing a massive armed invasion by government agents because someone thought it might be marijuana.  There might have been a dozen police on duty in Sumabad; they were only dispatched if a situation was violent or had the clear potential to become so.  In a population of several hundred million – the arcologies were huge – they rarely did.  People expected the Empire to sort it out correctly, they expected the consequences – and that’s if they were lucky enough to survive that long.  Less than half of attempted criminals survived the attempt.  Rough odds, if you were that criminal.  Pretty nice, if you were anyone else.  People stupid enough to commit crimes didn’t last long, so there weren’t very many of them, and people who might have been willing to try a life of crime if the odds were better instead steered clear.  You could count the actual criminal statutes in the Empire on your fingers with some left over.  If you did something non-criminal your neighbors didn’t like, the recourse they had was a lawsuit and their own actions were scrutinized as heavily as yours.  You got a polite visit from an Imperial investigator, and a chance to tell your side and present your evidence in front of your Primus or a mutually agreed private arbitrator.  Getting justice didn’t require spending more money than most people made in ten years.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do this.  It was one way of doing something concrete to pull my weight as an adult.  I was enjoying the ride.  As an adult citizen, I should spend some of my time helping to pull the sled.  It wasn’t a requirement, but it was something most Imperial citizens did because it was something adults did.  Also, the military could be a wedge into a way to learn some skills that were valuable in commercial concerns, it was a way for citizens from newly acquired planets to earn hard currency, and it was essentially required if you eventually wanted to become a Primus (or higher)–in-fact.  Finally, it would be another point of bonding with Asto and his family.  There was a very strong tradition of service, from Scimtar himself on down.  Everyone in the family spent time in the military and went back periodically for more.  It wasn’t unique to the Scimtars, either – all of the other Great Families had the same tradition in varying forms.  The more important a family was, the more likely periodic stints of military service were expected.

Promise me you’ll be as careful as you can?  There was an undercurrent of fear to the question.  My husband didn’t want to lose me.

I promise.  Will you?  I sure as hell didn’t want to lose him.  Four fertilized eggs in storage and the help of his family was no substitute for my Asto.  Combat actions were rare as far as individual troops were concerned, and most saw light casualties if any.  But the exceptions were pure nightmare – Imperial units were designed and expected to keep functioning in the face of losses that would break any military unit back on Earth.  Casualties among trained Guardians like us were also generally lower than natural state humans.  But we were rolling the dice.

I promise, Grace.  I want to come back to you.  I also want you to be there to come back to.

Even if I’m not, come back for our children.  Growing up without either of us would be bad.

I will.  But having you to come back to is all the motivation anyone could want.  In Concept, the operant language of pure thought, a thought followed that could be abbreviated as I love you, but it was so much more.  It was desire and need and completion – a statement that without me, a piece of him would be forever missing.  There aren’t words in English, Traditional, Technical, or any language of humanity to express it.  I returned the thought, with interest, and we each grabbed for the other.  This time our lovemaking had an undercurrent of desperation, and making it last.  When it was over and we were spent, we made love a third time, gently and tenderly, then subsided back into a satisfied mutual embrace and put ourselves into a sleep, setting ourselves to waken at thirtythree thirty.

*******

Contract.  Study it.  We begin when you agree to the terms.

Yeriala was Primus for the district that included the residence.  She looked like a nineteen year old Goth girl; in fact she was probably a couple thousand years old.  I pulled the contract into my datalink and cross-checked against what we’d gone over with Asto’s uncle Parnit.  Before becoming a stay-at-home dad with a consulting practice a couple years before, he’d been a First General, commanding a sub-prefect.  He had more time currently available than any other member of the family, and an almost eager willingness to help us understand out of a desire for more adult conversation.  The text matched what we had studied and discussed; the military contract hadn’t changed since the Restoration, and in its essentials was older than Scimtar himself.

We could have just arrived at any military facility and signed up.  But we had decided we wanted to use graycodes, at least to start.  A graycode was a transactional pseudonym, used to prevent identity theft, provide commercial expense accounts, and allow people whom the public might be interested in to appear in public without getting mobbed.  Most graycodes were simply a repository for a certain amount of money, but others were more complex records for more complex undertakings.  In order to use a graycode for military service we had to have that graycode agreed to by a Primus or other government official.  Several family members could have done it, but their approval on the deal would have told anyone with a fraction of a clue most of what we wanted obscured.  House Scimtar was famous; Yeriala was obscure.  Scimtar’s powerful opponents could look her up as easily as anyone else and that would tell them what they needed to know, but people that rich and powerful would find us if they wanted us, no matter what precautions we took.  It was the casual bullies and wannabes we were discouraging.  Graycodes were everywhere in the Empire.  Using a graycode wasn’t mandatory, and in the case of military service they were frowned upon.  But for those closely associated with a Great Family, they were a good idea.  They minimized gratuitous trouble, training in an environment where the less mature and disciplined might manufacture excuses to play giant-slayer, and Scimtar was one of the seven who had brought about the Restoration.  Asto’s elder sister Anri had served under her own name from the beginning.  But even she admitted that if she had it to do over again, she’d start with a graycode, and not switch over to her own name at least until she made Staff Private (her current grade), and probably not for several grades thereafter.

Yeriala’s dog Bones had greeted us.  Once upon a time, we’d been intending to adopt the big white lab-akita mix because he was such a good pal of More.  But Yeriala had taken him in lieu of her fee for writing an Official Opinion approving dogs.  It hadn’t been necessary, but getting that Official Opinion had seemed prudent to me.  He remembered us, but his manners were good and he was restrained in his greeting.  I regretted having to drop off Lady and More before the appointment, as once the contract was signed we were subject to orders and couldn’t plan on doing so afterward.  Ononi and Imre would take good care of them.

Contract matches, Asto said, and I agreed.  For both of us, he said, We are prepared to agree.

Good for you.  Didn’t expect trouble with your family, but the last one of these I had was the daughter of a Tertius who didn’t bother to learn the contract ahead of time, and she ended up not enlisting.  Better for everyone, I thought.  What changes did you want to make for your graycodes?

We’d thought about this carefully.  I was going back to being plain Graciela Juarez (no di Scimtar), and Asto would become Asto di Juarez.  In other words, still married, still even using most of my real name, and Asto using an appellative to which he was entitled, without the names of irrelevant but famous ancestors.  My records would show me as Second Order Guardian, but no record of who certified me.  Asto was officially Fifth Order, in reality Seventh, but his proposed graycode also showed him as a Second Order Guardian.  Residence records redacted, showing my dog property on Sharanna as formal home of record.  Three years of work as a pilot with Vector, Interstitial, and Interstitial Vector qualifications were retained, but my weapons and hand to hand combat training was redacted – the military didn’t care and wanted you to requalify anyway.  Lots of minor ratings that weren’t in relevant subjects redacted.  Asto had enough level six ratings to cover walls with diplomas if the Empire used them, but most of them weren’t relevant to a soldier at what would be our levels of the military.  Nobody asked a newly minted private – or even a Platoon Private who led a unit of 400 – to make policy.  The military was a lot more than Hulk smash! but what privates were faced with was more a question of intelligent implementation rather than deciding what the objective should be.  Field level military operations were hard and fast and as overwhelming as practical.  Kill people and break things, or be prepared in case someone else tried.  Winning hearts and minds was something you did when people weren’t getting killed.

Yeriala reviewed the proposals for our new graycodes.  I believe it is needlessly dishonest for you to portray yourself as Second Order, she said to Asto, I understand your preference, but your superiors are entitled to a closer approximation of your real capabilities, and that outweighs the implied testament to the power of your character.  She changed his proposed graycode to read Fifth Order, which meant that, unlike Second Order, he had been born operant and that he was strong enough for the second tier of operancy.  To most Imperials, Fifth Order would indicate someone of his age (thirtythree Imperial years, twenty-three Earth) was a real shooting star in terms of talent, rather than the truth, which was that he had inherited his abilities.  That wasn’t universal, but it was the way the probabilities ran.  There were billions of Fifth Order Guardians, only nineteen families of which were that way for having a Sixth Order forbear.  You’ll just have to live up to it.  Asto would have no problems, there.  Imperial politics being what it was, he’d been faking not being Seventh Order his whole life, along with most of his family.  Nobody had slipped up yet.

One final thing our graycodes did not show was civil service points, used to qualify for government office or bid government contracts.  Each year in the military was worth three points (regardless of rank), and points we earned through the military would show as we earned them.  Asto was already a Primus-in-rank, approaching Secundus, and even I would hit Primus-in-rank before the ten year contract was complete, but that didn’t make a difference to the military.  The military was a completely different chain of command and responsibility.  Having the points meant you were entitled to wear a blue triangle and style yourself a Primus if you wanted, but it wasn’t getting appointed to office, it was only theoretical eligibility.  For most people, it was more important that soldiers could make a good bit of money using their points to back contractors who needed more service points to bid more jobs or bigger jobs, albeit at the risk of losing those points if the contractor failed. 

Give me a moment to do a cross check.  We mostly spent the time petting Bones.  It was only a minute or so, but Yeriala was responsible for what she approved.  Scimtar was immensely wealthy; even if Asto wasn’t as well integrated as he was, his family could have used some pretty powerful techniques to make the graycode appear different than it was.  Yeriala had no reason to believe that had happened (it hadn’t), but she didn’t have proof, so she had to double check the proposal herself before approving it.  One of the realities of office in the Empire was that sometimes you were responsible for double checking people who could tie you in knots if they really tried.  The Empire kept actual instances of that to a minimum by keeping to a strict consequences rule.  When (not if!) they caught you, you didn’t expect mercy from an Imperial Primus (or higher judge), what you expected was justice, no matter who you were.  A lot of people talk about justice, but the idea of strict justice is scary once you understand the principles of restitution.  Labor was the Imperial economy’s bottleneck – you could make a decent living for your family with only basic skills and even have money left over.  That set of incentives kept crime of all sorts microscopic by Earth standards.

After a minute or so, Yeriala told us, I am approving these profiles for military enlistment.  We formally agreed to the enlistment contract, and she transmitted both, then gave us our first orders: I have been instructed to inform you that you are both to report to Fulda Training Facility between fortythree and fortyfour.  Complete details are included in messages to your separate datalinks.  Confirm receipt and understanding please.  I had a new message from the local defense command confirming receipt of the contract and providing detailed instructions for initial reporting.  I have received the message and will comply, we chorused together.  We were committed.

Chapter Two

Reporting

Fulda was several thousand kilometers to the north and east.  Where an Earther like me would say Sumabad was about forty-five degrees south latitude, Fulda was just north of the planetary equator.  Sumabad had a warm, wet climate that was sometimes muggy but usually pleasant.  Fulda was roughly ten degrees Celsius hotter, and the humidity was oppressive. It rained even more often, and anything not somehow maintained quickly developed a coating of a lichen-like growth that seemed to be everywhere.  Fulda was also about three time zones worth ahead of Sumabad.  We could have used a public transport, but it was inside our teleportation energy envelopes, so that’s what we decided to do, which left us just under six hours Imperial (ten Earth) before reporting.

Given the choice, we wanted to spend as much time as reasonable in Sumabad.  We’d both been in Fulda before, and there was a public portal at the base entry, only a few meters from where we were to report.  Total transit time would be seconds.  So we returned to the residence and borrowed Lady and More back from our young aunt and uncle.  We took them down to a residence park in the arcology and spent half the time walking around, letting them run free.  These days, there were always a few other dogs in the park, a result of my own labors.  I’d had Lady about four years now, but I was keeping her physical age in the last stages of puppyhood.  Result: the sixty pound black lab mix always had lots of energy and an infectious enthusiasm for everything.  More was chocolate colored and probably close to a purebred lab, bigger and about twenty pounds heavier than Lady.  He’d been about three Earth years old when we took him in, and was a lot mellower than Lady, so it was generally him following her around.  Every few minutes, they’d both come back to us to make sure we were still there, then run again off on a new adventure.  The park occupied roughly half of a double level of the arcology, so they had a lot of room to run, and it was kept comfortably climate controlled.  There were no leash laws in the Empire and we weren’t worried about incidents.  Since telepaths had come into contact with dogs, we’d been discovering dogs were more intelligent than they’d been given credit for on Earth.  Once they understood the rules of the pack, they could be relied upon to abide by them.  They lived in the now, but if we ever decided to bring them up to human sentience, it would be easy.  It was doubtful anyone ever would, but it would be easy if they did.  Watching them frolic in the bushes and short trees of a residence park was invigorating, a simple pleasure we’d both miss.  We let them run and do what they wanted for about four hours, just enjoying our last family time for a while, then took them back up to Ononi and Imre, gave them parting hugs and pets, then left without ceremony.  They knew something was up, but Ononi and Imre would handle it.  Being operant Guardians from birth, they were quite advanced for thirteen years of age (nine Earth).

We decided we wanted real food for once, rather than something that came out of a converter.  If the technician was any good, there wasn’t really a difference, but sometimes you just want to.  It wasn’t like we couldn’t afford it.  Asto and I both had substantial personal assets and income.  There was a restaurant a few levels down from the residence that used real farm grown foodstuffs and had almost as good a view as our apartment.  None of it tasted like anything from Earth, but it was all melt-in-your-mouth good.  Nothing fancy, just basic food prepared by good cooks who got lots of practice.  Picha ribs, from an animal that occupied a niche like pigs on Earth and looked and tasted not too different.  A coarse grain whose ancestors came from Weircol, the planet where the Empire had started over a hundred thousand Imperial years before, and a salad with components whose ancestral plants had originally come from at least three different planets.  It was heavenly.

Then, with an hour still to go, we took a walk, the two of us meandering through the public areas of the level, hand-in-hand, just being alone together in the crowd.  We sat on a planter and watched people go by, then with ten minutes until the reporting window opened, we teleported into the transport terminal in the small city at Fulda, no more than three or four million people.  From there, we took a public portal to the base gate, used our orders to pass the gate and approached the induction center.  Entering, we found that there was no line.  Excuse me, I asked the attendant, We have orders to report between fortythree and fortyfour, but it’s only fortytwo fiftytwo.  Would it be better to formally report now or to wait?

A good start, the woman in the uniform of a Staff Private commended us, We’ll take you now.

The hardest part was cutting off my hair.  I’ve never been a beauty (unless you asked Asto) but I took good care of my hair.  It was very dark brown, almost black, and thick, with just a hint of wave and went down to my shoulders and they simply told me to stand here and cut it all off in about fifteen seconds.  I’d been expecting it, but it was still difficult to accept.  They took our measurements, issued us recruit clothing, subjected us to a quick medical exam despite the fact that as Guardians, we were as qualified to heal as their doctor, told us to get dressed and told us to go wait in a room with two other people, both of whom were obviously operant as well.  There we sat for several hours, waiting.  A couple more people came in, one at a time, all operant.  There was a purpose to everything the military did with recruits, Parnit had informed us.  Part of the purpose was to start off making it obvious that according to the military, nobody was any more or less special than anyone else.  That said, it would be ridiculous to start Guardians and other operants on the same training regimen as natural state recruits, so they didn’t.  They’d be shipping us off to a training unit designed for the fact that we could do things natural state humans couldn’t.  We were stronger, faster, more agile, physically superior in every way because we’d won the operancy lottery and were able to augment ourselves better than healers could augment natural state humans.  But our training was designed to accomplish the same thing theirs was: force us beyond our normal limits and teach us what we needed to know.  Make us understand that to the military, a soldier was a soldier was a soldier.  Nobody was intrinsically more valuable than anyone else, as a soldier or as a human being.

Eventually, they sent an inoperant trained private in to take us to a meal.  He formed us up into a file, and walked us about half a kilometer to a place where they served three different kinds of tasteless glop; protein glop, carb glop, roughage glop.  The glop was nutritious, but about as appetizing as cold baby food.  It was likely mass extruded out of a converter that could just as easily have produced something appealing.  Once again, the military had their reasons for everything.  They wanted you to think of yourself as one more cog, no more important than the one next to you.  Once that pattern of thought was engrained, trained soldiers got better food.  Oh well, I suppose they could have just thrown us a chunk of Life and a cube of water, so it could have been worse.  Come to think of it, as unappealing as the glop was, I’d rather have gnawed a chunk of Life.

Meal concluded, the same private escorted us back to more hours of waiting.  One more operant inductee joined us, and then the same Trained Private came in with an operant Staff Private.  Addressing us, he said, This is Staff Private Ugatu, gesturing at the Staff Private, He will be escorting you to your training facility and turning you over to your unit Instructor.  Follow his instructions.  Why was a lowly Trained Private instructing us to obey a Staff Private, several grades higher?  Because staff ranks were not part of the chain of command.  Yes, a Staff Private was senior to us, but wasn’t normally entitled to give orders, to us or to anyone else.  Technically speaking, if we obeyed an order from a Staff Private without such an instruction, we’d be responsible for the consequences.  There are reasons for everything the Imperial military does, Parnit had explained over and over.  You might not understand or even agree with those reasons.  You might think they are pointless, even counterproductive.  The reasons are never explained, for reasons that won’t be explained to you, either, at least not until you achieve your first staff rank.  But every single one of them has been field tested and cross-checked over thirty square (75,000+ Earth years) of successful operations covering an incredible volume of space and situations too varied for you or even me to imagine.

The Imperial solutions were definitely different than the ones the US military had employed.  My older sister married a Navy Senior Chief, so I thought I understood what sorts of things to expect.  I was wrong.

Grab your clothing bags, he said, Form a single file line starting here.  Follow me.  When we get to the ship, move aft to the cargo section.  First one in, move to the left side of the ship and all the way back, one to a seat, fill that side then fill the right in the same manner.  Place your bag under your seat and strap in.  Asto and I were third and fourth in line; if it was a standard cutter we’d be sitting together in the two front left cargo seats.  If we were headed for a different type of hull, we’d have been given