A Learning Experience

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Montana, USA

“Earth’s 1^st Interstellar Regiment,” Romford said. “Reporting for duty, sir!”

Steve had to smile. Seven thousand men, most of them former American military officers and personnel, had passed through the training camp; five thousand, six hundred had graduated. Romford’s reports made interesting reading — there had been soldiers who had been unable to face the aliens, officers who thought they should automatically be given command positions — but in the end the really bad ones had been weeded out. Future officers, he’d quietly promised himself, would follow the Marine concept of rising from the ranks, having served as riflemen first. It helped ensure they knew what they were doing.

“Good,” he said. He stepped forward and up onto the podium. He’d never reviewed troops before, but he’d taken time to cut the ceremony down to the bare minimum. It was always irritating to have to stand for hours while some politician pontificated on a subject dear to their hearts. Most of the time, it consisted of meaningless words and phrases. Bracing himself, Steve keyed the mike. “I won’t waste your time.”

A thin ripple of amusement ran through the assembled ranks of soldiers. Steve concealed his own amusement and continued.

“Many have said that you are mercenaries,” he said. “Many have accused you of going off to shed alien blood in alien wars. Many have accused you of being nothing more than guns-for-hire, men and women who are paid to fight whoever the paymaster wants you to fight. But those people do not understand the true situation. You are going to fight beside aliens we desperately need as allies. And you are going to fight for Earth.

“Make no mistake. Barely a year ago, we knew nothing of affairs out beyond the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. Now, we know that great interstellar powers wage war constantly, with human slaves serving in their armies. Now, we know we need to prepare for the coming struggle for a place in the universe, for independence, for survival itself. You are the ones who will learn about the universe and bring your lessons back to us, to help us prepare for the oncoming storm.

“I wish I could promise that it would be easy. I wish I could promise that each and every one of you will return, one day, to Earth. I can make no such promises. But what I can promise is that Earth will never forget you. History will enshrine your names for the rest of time — and Earth’s survival will be your legacy.”

He paused. “I’m not very good at making speeches, am I?

“I want you to know that you have my gratitude for volunteering and that, one day, you will have the eternal gratitude of Earth. And that’s enough speechifying from me. See you at the spaceport in a week.”

There was a brief cheer, then the soldiers started to scatter. Most of them, Steve knew, would head for the nearest town for food, drink and women, the last they would see of anything remotely human for several months at the very least. A handful would head home, if they were willing to use the teleporter, or stay on the base and write their wills. Some of them simply didn’t have anywhere to go.

“No,” Romford agreed, breaking into his thoughts. “You’re not a very good speechwriter.”

Steve flushed, then shook his head. “At least it wasn’t faked,” he said. “Not like a political verbal orgasm.”

“True,” Romford agreed. “I assume you have a shipping plan?”

“Yes,” Steve said. “Two of the freighters will carry you and your men to Ying, where you will meet up with our allies. At that point, you should receive the supplies they promised; if you don’t, or there are problems with the supplies, work with them to fix it.”

He sighed. The aliens had promised everything from cybernetic enhancement to suits of powered combat armour. Given the sheer productive might of their fabricators, they could afford to fabricate literally millions upon millions of battlesuits — or anything else the human race might need to arm its soldiers. And, if there were problems with the first batch, they could easily put together another set of equipment within the first few days.

“And if they turn out to be a real problem,” he added. “Use your own best judgement.”

“I will,” Romford said. “These men, Steve, will not be wasted.”

Steve nodded. The soldiers were a diverse lot; soldiers, sailors and airmen from America, joined by a relative handful of retired soldiers from other English-speaking countries. Some of them had been old, on the verge of death, or badly crippled like Romford before they’d been recruited. Most of the ancient veterans would have signed away their souls for a chance to return to the battlefield one last time. Retraining them on Galactic-standard equipment had been one hell of a mission. But it had been done.

“Good,” Steve said. “Have there been any major problems?”

“Had a few thousand protestors at the fence for a week or two,” Romford said, “and caught a number trying to sneak into the base. They stopped doing that after we put them to hard labour for a few days before releasing them. Oh, and we’re being sued by their families.”

Steve snorted. The agreement between Heinlein Colony and the United States agreed that the training camp wasn’t — legally — part of the United States, just like an embassy. Anyone who crossed the fence was entering a territory where the laws were different — and, if they crossed the fence in any case, they were breaking and entering. There were no legal grounds to sue Steve and his people for arresting intruders, or for giving them a small punishment before they were released.

“Not much of a problem,” he said. “And the men themselves?”

“We weeded out most of the idiots and glory-seekers within the first week,” Romford assured him. “Most of our discipline problems were handled at the same time. Right now, I have faith in both the selected officers and NCOs. If there’s one advantage of giving our allies more soldiers than they asked for, it’s that we can rotate officers and NCOs back to Earth to give lessons to newer recruits.”

Steve smiled. “And are there newer recruits?”

“A surprising number,” Romford said. He shrugged, expressively. “It could be the lust for adventure or the extremely generous benefits, but we have more volunteers than we have space to train. So far, we’re giving priority to men and women with genuine military experience from the Western countries, although we have quite a number of qualified candidates from Russia too. The Chinese, on the other hand, seem quite reluctant to allow any of their personnel to sign up with us.

“Given time, I suspect we will have thousands of potential recruits from poorer parts of the world too,” he added. “But that will cause other problems.”

Steve nodded. Americans and other Westerners were generally well-educated — and they could all speak English. Working with soldiers from other parts of the world had convinced him that the foreigners had their own way of doing things, not all of them remotely compatible with the American Way of War. But there would be no need to humour or tolerate the locals, not now. Those who failed to make it through the training program would have no opportunity to embarrass the human race in front of the Galactics.

“Just make sure you exclude the ones who can’t make it,” Steve said. “What about expanding the camp?”

“I think we will have to lease somewhere else,” Romford said. “Right now, the American Government is cooperating, but that might change. We are, after all, training mercenaries here.”

Steve rolled his eyes. The American Government had been training mercenaries, rebel armies and foreign soldiers for years, although not all of the students had gone home brimming with love for America. There was little point in the political objections, he knew, save for a desire to look good in front of the voters. But politicians rarely changed their spots when confronted with reality.

“Start looking for somewhere else, then,” he said. “It will be years before Mars or Venus is ready to serve as a training camp.”

“I’ve been making enquires,” Romford said. “Panama is a possibility — quite a few of my team have great memories from Panama — but we’d have to pay out a shitload in bribes. I don’t see anywhere in Europe accepting us, at least not without a fairly hefty quid pro quo — maybe additional fusion reactors. Right now, if we are restricting ourselves to democracies, we may be restricted to Australia. They’re quite interested in hosting one of our camps.”

Steve gave him an odd look, so Romford explained.

“They’re nervous about troubles spreading over from Indonesia,” Romford explained. “If we want to put a camp there, they will be quite happy with it in exchange for assistance if they need it. There will be a few basic rules, but no real difference from what we have here.”

“I’ll speak to Komura,” Steve said. “He can open discussions.”

He shrugged. “Have we had any problems that might give them pause?”

“A couple of bar fights,” Romford said. “One of our guys was called a baby-killer, so he hauled off and punched the bastard… and everything went down from there. Another guy was set upon by a group of thugs and defended himself admirably. Other than that, no major problems. I have made it clear that American law runs outside the fence and if anyone gets into trouble with the law we won’t get off our asses to do anything about it if they’re guilty.”

“Good thinking,” Steve said. “We don’t want another rape case.”

His father, he recalled, had ranted about a rape case in Okinawa, where an American serviceman had raped a local girl. The bastard should have been strung up by his testicles, Steve’s father had thundered, or handled over to the locals as soon as his guilt had been established. No matter the outcome, it had discouraged the locals from wanting to keep the American military presence.

And if one of my men do something like that, Steve thought, coldly. He’d damn well pray that the local government gets to him before me.

“Quite,” Romford agreed. “Not that that will be a problem, Steve. There are four new brothels in town.”

Steve snorted. “Why am I not surprised?”

“The men have their new immune boosters,” Romford said. “They can fuck an AIDS-infested whore from Tijuana and they won’t be in any danger of actually catching anything. Or pregnancy, for that matter. We’ve given just about everyone — particularly the women — contraceptive implants, just to make sure there’s no risk of pregnancy. But we may want to set up a brothel on Ying or another alien world.”

“Maybe,” Steve said. “What do the aliens think of it?”

“I went through their contracts,” Romford said. “I don’t believe they would have any objections, as long as it didn’t interfere with military matters. We have quite a lot of freedom to determine how best to handle our affairs.”

Steve nodded. If two different human cultures could have different requirements, how much harder would it be for two alien races to live by the same rules? There were races where one sex was unintelligent, races that had more than two sexes, races that laid eggs and didn’t have sex as humans understood it, races that had sex anywhere and everywhere they could… and that was only one tiny aspect of the whole. What would happen when there were different religious requirements? Or food and drink? At least food professors could produce something edible to humanity, even if it didn’t always taste nice. But that was just a matter of programming.

“Make sure you don’t compromise our combat effectiveness,” he said. “Other than that, make whatever arrangements you like.”

He accepted an invitation to walk through the combat simulator and marvel at just how perfect a simulator it actually was. A combination of holographic images, force fields and gravity wave generators allowed the system to reproduce almost any combat environment, from urban-style warfare to operations in outer space. And the simulator computers tracked the whole system so perfectly that there was no need for proper umpires.

“We actually programmed the teleporter to yank anyone out if they’re recorded as dead,” Romford explained. “In high-intensity operations, anything tough enough to burn through a suit will very definitely kill the person inside. Low-intensity operations are probably not going to be part of our work, but we train for them anyway. One major problem is that we have little room to deploy medics. And even if we did…”

Steve winced. Humans were humans under the skin, but aliens could be very alien. Perhaps that explained why the aliens had produced autodoc systems and other automated forms of medical care; there weren’t any doctors who were capable of moving from a patient of one race to a patient from another. The movie where an alien had been dissected by a vet might have been quite realistic after all.

“We should try to avoid such operations,” he said, although — not being a politician — he had no illusions about the prospect of switching from high-intensity combat to low-intensity in a heartbeat. “If we do, try to keep civilians out of the fighting as much as possible.”

Romford gave him a sharp glance, then nodded.

Steve reviewed the rest of the base, then teleported back to the starship to catch up on his briefings. Heinlein had expanded rapidly, to the point where two hotels had been constructed and regular tours were running from the colony to the various tourist attractions on the moon, while other tourists were being lined up for trips to Mars. Each of them was paying a substantial price for their tickets, which was going right back into the economy.

“We may well have solved the economic crisis,” Wilhelm said, after he’d finished talking about the new technology he’d introduced on Earth. “Right now, literally trillions of dollars worth of currency is moving around the world, thanks to us.”

“Good,” Steve said. International finance had always been a closed book to him, but he was prepared to accept Wilhelm’s word that more money moving around was a good thing. “Are there any problems? Or are we causing any problems?”

“It depends,” Wilhelm realised. “You know there’s a shortage of plumbers?”

Steve shook his head, not seeing the point.

“Space habitation involves a lot of plumbing,” Wilhelm said. “So we’ve been hiring plumbers — and other outfitters — at a terrifying rate. The net result is that we have driven down the number of plumbers available elsewhere.”

“Oh,” Steve said.

Wilhelm shrugged. “We’ve got several training camps up and running for newcomers, so I think this problem will eventually restore itself,” he said. “We may also have solved the education bubble.”

He snorted. “We don’t care about professional qualifications,” he explained, when Steve looked puzzled. “So we’ve been taking college-age students, exposing them to some proper training, then selecting the best. Our wages are high, so they can start paying off their debts in good order. Given time, maybe we can defuse that particular problem before it actually explodes. On the other hand, we have quite a few idiots who majored in Women’s Studies trying to learn which end of a screwdriver is the one they shouldn’t stick in an electrical socket.”

Steve frowned. “And are they actually learning something useful?”

“Oh, yes,” Wilhelm said. “We came up with some pretty graphic training videos to make it clear to them that mistakes would be harshly punished by the universe. And we made them all read The Cold Equations and write essays explaining how a series of minor bureaucratic oversights led to tragedy. Quite a few of them quit after reading the story.

“Overall, there will be quite a few bumps, but I think that most Western governments will quietly abandon any opposition to us within the next ten years,” he concluded. “We’re just too damn useful. And we’re taking potential troublemakers away from them. The rest of the world… not so much.”

Steve nodded. “Russia still irked at us?”

“I’m afraid so, even though we’re buying a lot of crude technology from them,” Wilhelm said, dryly. “I think they might well have real problems in the non-too-distant future, between the dongles and the introduction of fusion technology. Their public might start asking too many questions. China, on the other hand, might just adapt once again to the change in the world.”

“We shall see,” Steve said. He had no love for Red China, but he had to admire how the Chinese had adapted and just kept adapting as the world changed around them. And, somehow, the Communist Party had remained in control. Would that change, he asked himself, when their people had total freedom of communication? No matter what the government did, dongles were still slipping into China. “We shall see.”

The communicator buzzed. “Steve,” Mongo said, “we’re picking up a number of starships approaching the solar system. They’re completely unscheduled. Estimated time of arrival is five hours from now.”

Steve shared a long look with Wilhelm. There was no such thing as a schedule, but they weren’t expecting any visitors. It was possible that Friend could be returning to Earth, yet the alien had agreed to meet the human troops at Ying. No, he realised. It was far more likely that the newcomers were unfriendly.

“Deploy the automated defences,” he ordered. It was time to use a precaution he’d hoped never to have to use, at least for quite some time. Even now, if they lost Earth, something of humanity would survive. “And then order the Mayflower to leave orbit.”

“Aye, sir,” Mongo said.

“I’m on my way,” Steve said, straightening up. “And you’d better warn the governments below. The shit is about to hit the fan.”