Chapter 16: Day of Firsts

The General sat behind his desk, grumbling to Chaz, who was ensconced in one of Michael's Shanghai Art Deco guest chairs. Chaz carefully hid his growing amusement.

Bâtisse himself was now quartered in a pen out in the main dome near the base fire hall, with a replicator that pumped out carefully measured quantities of weed and shrubbery clippings every few hours. He was a source of endless fascination for everyone on base, young and old, and did not lack for visitors.

"Only fucking goat in the entire fucking Diaspora," Michael was muttering to himself. "What that fucking idiot was thinking, I don't even want to know." He then started. "My god. He's going to ship me a pod of goats. I can see it coming. I need grunts, he's gonna give me goats."

The desk in front of him beeped. "Sir," reported his concubine at the secretary's desk in his office's reception area, "the cadets you requested have arrived."

"Very well. Show them into the meeting room, please."

Chaz and Michael stood up and put their wedge caps on. Michael then ordered, "Open the meeting room bulkhead, AI."

As the bulkhead separating the meeting room from the General's office silently retreated into its pocket, one of the cadet sergeants noticed and called out, "Room!" The two dozen nervous young occupants, all twelve to thirteen years old, came to disciplined, Marine-like attention, slamming their down as if one.

"At ease, gentlemen," Michael ordered the boys and girls. "Find a seat."

As the clatter of twenty-four chairs quietened down, their General addressed them.

"As you know, we have expanded quite rapidly. We really have only a single brigade of trained troops, with one third of those at any one time away on garrison duty on Hesperus. We need to get the two brigades' worth of new recruits trained up, and quickly. I've made the executive decision to include senior members of Thule's Corps of Cadets in training. Specifically, that means yourselves. Now, if you were already fourteen, you would likely be sergeants." He harrumphed. "We're going to take advantage of the skills and training you've already acquired. You will be brevetted sergeants, and given command of a platoon of recruits. You'll still wear the same uniform as you are now – the men serving under you will be under no illusions that you're anything but thirteen years of age. You will all work under Brigade Sergeant Major Kowalski and Divisional Sergeant Major Blondell. You will be expected to keep your studies up. But we think you will rise to this challenge."

He nodded at the last remaining Cadet Sergeant from the three who had commanded defence lines in the Thule Children's Crusade, Cadet Sergeant Bachelor. The other two cadet sergeants had reached their fourteenth birthdays and were now full-fledged Marine sergeants, with platoons of raw recruits of their own. Michael didn't want to send them on garrison duty to Thule until they'd had a chance for some more seasoning, and preferably a pregnancy or two. "Some of you have even seen combat. That should be enough to impress the socks off some of the men. Who knows, they may even listen to you. Any who prove unwilling to listen to 'mere kids' will be transferred out and may find themselves regretting that attitude."

He quickly wrapped up the meeting. "Gentlemen, one final thing." He then read out the names of three of them, including Cadet Sergeant Daniel Bachelor.

"Sir?" asked Danny, standing up.

"Congratulations, Sergeants Major." Michael gestured to Chaz, who walked around the table and gave the three young men the chevrons befitting their new ranks.

The three boys' friends gave them a thunderous round of applause. Those closest to him patted the stunned Danny as he sat down, staring at the badge in happy disbelief. He was one of the Corps of Cadets' elite.

"Now, men, let's meet your adoring public." With that, the room came to attention and marched out to meet the first of the new draft of troops.

Kowalski met with the newly brevetted sergeants in the Sergeants' Mess. He was clearly less than impressed with the talent he had to work with.

"The good news is before we send these idiots into potential harm's way, we'll have three months to train them. The bad news is that the non-commissioned officers who would be training these louts are all three days' travel that-a-way. For one month, we are all we've got to try to whip some 3,400 raw recruits into something that knows how to salute, dress, drill, eat, fuck and shit like something approaching a Confederacy Marine." His face took on a sour look as he rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "God help us all."

A few smiled, but even they realized just what massive kind of task they'd taken on.

"I'm begging and borrowing some lance-jacks to give us a hand from the other two brigades, but they need all they can get their mitts on too. We're just going to have to see it as a challenge. For now, they know how to wear their uniforms and even have some idea about standard Confederacy rank structure. What they'll make of a Corps of Cadets should prove entertaining." He stuck his thumb in the general direction of the parade square. "The mob is over there. Calling them a brigade is both premature, and an insult to the Marines."

Subvocally, Sergeant Major Kowalski had the AI assign each of the 3400 or so recruits into twenty-four companies, one for each of his cadet instructors. He had flags placed around the perimeter of the massive parade ground opposite the base headquarters building. He then watched in utter despair as the cat herding began.

"Hey, Danny, good luck!" called a fellow cadet through their bluetooth-style communicators.

"Good luck to us all. I think we're gonna need it."

Danny Batchelor squared his shoulders and joined his company of men and women, clustered haphazardly around the flag indicating the First Company, Third Training Battalion of the 123^rd Brigade. Clearly, the First Company was still a mob of civilians playing at war. Some wore their wedge caps on back-to-front, others pushed way back or way down or too far over to one side or the other. One wore his Sam Browne belt over the wrong shoulder. Boots and belts and brasswork were unshined, uniforms unpressed, random buttons unbuttoned. The only thing uniform about any of them was their physique, all being equally two metres in height with linebacker shoulders, a barrel chest and muscles on muscles. Beside them, Daniel realized, he'd look quite diminutive.

Needless to say, the reaction of these two-metre-tall behemoths when Daniel began shouting at them was comical. Who was this child in a red coat and silly pillbox hat?

"First Company! Fall in! Three ranks! Let's move!" Daniel had the AI amplify his voice to be heard by this wrecking crew.

As the noise settled down and the company fell in to four ranks in a slight arc from the flag onward, Daniel sighed and shook his head. Maybe in a year these would be disciplined troops, but right now it was all new to them.

"Three ranks. You!" The AI supplied the defaulter's name to Daniel's ear-piece. "Sekulovich! Where do you think you're standing? Making your own row? Back half a step. Rest of the rear line shuffle left." Halfway down the line, two recruits obediently shuffled to the right. Daniel pointed to his right with his swagger stick. "Your MARINE left. Are you dyslexic?" With imprecations both muttered and shouted, he soon had three ragged lines where minutes before there had been four. The three lines still gracefully arced forward, but at least now they were in the correct number of lines. "AI, put a grid of dots on the parade square where these turkeys are supposed to be standing. Everyone, look down and see the dot you're supposed to have your boot heels on."

The three ranks shuffled back into something closer to a straight line. Through his headpiece, he asked Kowalski, "Have these men taken the basic foot drill sleep training?"

"Supposedly," was Kowalski's laconic and amused reply.

"You couldn't tell it from here," Daniel responded. "Company," he announced to the mixed-gender mob in front of him, "welcome to Thule. Welcome to the Marines. My name is Company Sergeant Major Daniel Bachelor. You can call me by my first name: 'Company Sergeant Major'. For the next month or so it is my grave misfortune to be trying to turn you barn apes into something resembling Confederacy Marines. God help us all."

Daniel took a big breath in, and shouted, "Company! Ah-ten-SHUN!"

The command is supposed to end with the company's left heels slamming down into the parade square as one. Today, the result was a feu de joi of boot heels, about a quarter of them the right heel.

"And just how many of you have taken the sleep-trainer course on basic foot drill?"

Quite a number put their hands up – thereby immediately providing evidence that belied their claim. The Confederacy Marine drill manual called for coming to attention, raising the right forearm parallel to the ground, palm up and fist closed. The upper arm stays down, rigidly tucked into the body. One was not supposed to wave one's arm around like a yokel – and especially not one's left arm.

Long after the rest had returned to "at ease", one yokel was still waving his left arm. "Yes, Pierson?" Daniel asked, unsure if the recruit in question was asking a question, or merely airing out an armpit.