Chapter 24: Wisdom is Foolishness

“Wisdom is foolishness but in her tongue

Beauty a slander but in her fair face.”

- King Edward, Edward III, Act II, Scene I

William Whitefeather had taken Kerri Hopson’s request for military training with a seriousness that impressed the young girl. His problem with her request was a severe lack of resources. He was running everything on a shoestring.

However, there was one resource available to Whitefeather: concubines. Unlike many other citizens at that time in the Diaspora, he felt neither guilt nor disdain in exploiting their services for something other than procreational and recreational sex. And he had one specific concubine that was (a) bored witless waiting for her birthday to retest and (b) almost as fully trained as his own company of Marines: Callie Whitefeather.

His grin was evil as he subvocally asked the AI to connect him to his alpha concubine.

Callie was currently in a sleep-trainer pod, taking a course in the care and feeding of the AS-23 standard issue armoured suit. If she managed to get a positive CAP score, she figured she’d need to know this.

Suddenly, the simulacrum changed, and instead of being empty, the suit was filled with the form of her sponsor and lover, William.

“Bill?” she blinked. “What are you doing in my dream?”

“I know, I know, this is supposed to be a training session, but I have an important opportunity for you, and I need to discuss it in some privacy.” He smiled disarmingly. “It’ll be good for your CAP score!”

“You have my rapt attention, my good master.”

“You have a bad master as well?” William joked. Then he turned serious. “We need a military-type training program for the little kadiddles. Drill, weapons, self-defence, basic small unit tactics, leadership skills. Anyone over eight is welcome to attend, with the permission of their sponsor, and anyone not yet nine with their sponsor’s and my joint permission.”

“Okaaay ... And how does that affect me? Do you want me to run this?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” William advised his dark-haired concubine. “You had some of this training before leaving Earth, and you’ve kept it up since then with sleep training and practises with me and the Company. You’re perfect for the role of Commandant of Cadets.”

Callie cocked an eyebrow and smiled with anticipation.

“So,” she asked after a couple of beats, “when do I start?”

William smiled back with fondness. “As soon as you’re finished this sleep-training session.”

“All right!” She threw him a mock salute. “Sir, I won’t let you down, Sir!”

“I know you won’t,” William responded warmly. “Until later!”

And with that, the simulation of William Whitefeather disappeared from the data stream being fed into her visual cortex.

Lieutenant Stuart Lacey stumbled into the wardroom, staggered over to the food replicator and happily accepted the steaming hot mug of coffee it held.

Lieutenant Henry Cho stared at his sleep-deprived compatriot. “Um, good morning. It IS a good morning?”

“Oh God.” Lacey took another swig of boiler compound. “Was up all night with one of Whitefeather’s exercises,” he explained.

Cho put every ounce of sympathy into his voice that he could. “Did it go well?”

Lacey winced, leaning against his desk for support. “Let’s just say he’s forgotten more about small-unit tactics than I’ll ever learn.”

“Oh?”

“I led my men into an ambush ... and then ran them into a bigger ambush trying to extricate ourselves from that.” He gulped down more of the bitter black rocket fuel. “There were NO survivors.” Another swallow drained the cup, and Lacey turned back to the food replicator. “Then he made us go back another five fucking times. He used different ambush techniques each time. Trip wires, toe poppers, shots from ridges, spider holes, you name it.”

Cho’s eyebrows raised in surprise. He didn’t know what half of those words even meant. He subvocally scheduled a sleep trainer session for the afternoon.

“Enjoy tonight,” Lacey suggested to him with exquisite irony.

“I shall.” Cho gulped. “I hope.”

Lacey was convinced otherwise. “You won’t. You’ll learn, and learn lots, but you won’t enjoy it.” He returned with a second mug of wake-up juice. “Just watch out for the kiddie ninja.”

Cho stared at his compatriot. What could he possibly mean by that?

At that moment, Lieutenant Whitefeather and Sergeant Hopson were putting their company through foot drill on the main parade square. The men and women of the 3rd Company of the 3rd Marine Brigade looked every millimetre the well-trained, well-disciplined troops they were.

A knot of 1st Company concubines were gathered at the edge of the parade square as Lieutenant Christopher Janke marched smartly by on his way to the Brigade wardroom. His blond hair and rugged good looks, enhanced by the standard Marine body modification, set some of the women to drooling, both from the mouth and from their nether regions.

“I’d hit that like the fist of an angry god!” one was heard to moan lustily.

Whitefeather and Hopson exchanged looks. Their shared opinion of this boy-child playing dress-up in a man’s uniform was not a favourable one.

“Lieutenant Whitefeather!” the aforementioned boy-child called, to Whitefeather’s distaste using the American pronunciation of the rank. “May I have a word, if you please!”

“He can have two words,” Hopson subvocally suggested to his superior. “The second is ‘off’.”

“Coming, Leftenant Janke!” Whitefeather called. “Undoubtedly this is extremely important, Sergeant Hopson.” Subvocally he added, ‘For certain definitions of the word “important”.’ “Continue the drill for another twenty minutes, then break them into squads for their classes.”

Hopson responded with a sharp salute. “Sir!” He then turned around to the company and resumed the foot drill.

Whitefeather marched over to Janke and saluted – this little infant might have all the training and experience of a dedicated player of Tetris, but by dint of his vastly greater time as a lieutenant – four whole months – he was technically Lieutenant Whitefeather’s superior officer, and second in command of the Brigade. “Sir?” he asked as he saluted.

“I can’t spare the company for tomorrow night’s little fun and games,” Janke replied after hauling off the most negligent salute Whitefeather had seen from an infantry officer.

“That is a shame, Sir. The entire Brigade desperately needs more training. The First Company is getting into more advanced topics, and the Fourth and Fifth are catching up to the Marine standard quickly.”

“Oh, my men are ready – I’ll put them up against yours any time!”

Whitefeather reflected on the bald-faced lie the Lieutenant had just uttered. His company had managed to duck its way out of even the limited field training that Whitefeather had managed to talk his fellow lieutenants into.

Part of the problem, he realized, was that the teacher who was running this show was a better bureaucrat than soldier. As a result, so long as the Colonel received his reports on time and in sufficient detail the man was happy enough. With the pressures that Colonel Robert Palmer had placed on his engineering chief, Lieutenant Kirk Boland had essentially seconded his 1st Company to Whitefeather. The result was to turn a rag-tag group of tyros into something approaching Whitefeather’s exacting standards of an “adequately trained and disciplined” unit.

But the 2nd was the Brigade’s problem child. Every unit seemed to have one. The soldiers, being commanded by the Brigade second-in-command, had an exaggerated sense of their capabilities. They felt themselves the elite unit within the still-battalion-sized Brigade, and no observation of the readiness of the 3rd Company would disabuse them of the notion.

Whitefeather was convinced that the moment they met the enemy, those still capable of conscious thought would be running for the hills. The rest would be too terrified to move, or too busy uselessly discharging every round in their laser rifles’ magazines into no target whatsoever.

“One of these days we’ll have to do that,” was all Whitefeather calmly said. “So, Sir, what is the Second up to today?”

“They were on picquet duty all night,” Janke said sourly. It was one of the few concessions to military training and discipline that Whitefeather had managed to talk Palmer into, mostly by appealing to his need to keep idle hands busy. “They have the day off.”

Whitefeather struggled to contain his contempt. His own men had been out of their pods all night with the exercises conducted against the 5th, and yet every man and woman was present and correct after just a couple of hours’ sleep. They’d pull sentry duty tonight as well, although it would be in four-hour shifts – and one squad would be training Cho’s 4th Company. “I see. Of course you know your men’s needs best.”

“Of course,” Janke agreed happily. Whitefeather was eager to wipe that happy look off the kid’s face. “Oh, one other thing,” Janke added. “What’s this about a cadet unit?”