Caliphate

Imperial Military Academy, West Point, New York, 26 March, 2106

"Knock it off on the Area!" the corporal bellowed. Immediately, some fifty-odd stamping cadets took themselves out of step and ceased their illicit, cadenced marching on the asphalt. Hours were punishment, to be walked alone and not marched as a group.

Fun while it lasted, for some constrained values of "fun," thought the gray-clad, overcoated, white-crossbelted, biochemistry major and Cadet First Classman John Hamilton. (Hamilton, despite being a first classman, was also Cadet Private, but that was a different story, an altogether sadder story, involving an illicit tryst in a little-used alcove down in the Sinks.)

Hamilton was a native of Maine. He'd had an ancestor, as a matter of fact, in the famous 20th Maine, during the Civil War—a Canadian who'd come south from New Brunswick to enlist and decided to stay on after the war. (Though one couldn't tell from his color or his eyes, he'd also had an ancestor from Toronto who'd enlisted in Company G of the equally famous 54th Massachusetts. That might have accounted for the wave in his hair.) For more than four centuries, in every generation that was called, Hamilton's generations had answered. He'd answered, too.

Coming to a halt a few yards from the stone wall of Bradley Barracks, Hamilton transferred his rifle—now, in an exercise in deliberate anachronism, a reproduction Model 1861 Springfield— from one shoulder to the other, turned about, and began walking in the other direction.

Already, Hamilton could hear the plaintive cries of "Odinnn!" arising from the surrounding barracks to echo off the stone walls.

Much like the empire it supported and defended, the school had grown considerably from its rather humble beginnings. For example, while its first class, that of 1806, had graduated and commissioned fifteen cadets, the current class, that of 2106, was more than one hundred times greater. The Class of 2106 was expected to send forth some fifteen hundred and twenty-seven newly commissioned second lieutenants, or roughly one-fortieth of all new officers accessed by the Army in this year.

* * *

Or, thought the gray-clad Cadet John Hamilton, as he paced off his four hundred and seventy-seventh hour of punishment tours, One- thousand, five hundred and twenty-six if I get too many more demerits. I must be a shoo-in for the Martinez Award by now. If, that is, I don't get found—booted from the Academy—on demerits.

As West Point traditions went, the Martinez Award was, at about one hundred years since founding, relatively new. Like being the goat—the last ranking man or woman of the class—it was a distinction not avidly sought. Still, there had been a fair number of general officers who had, in their time, been recipients of the award, just as there had been through history a fair number of goats who rose to stars, George Edward Pickett (1849) and George Armstrong Custer (1861) being neither the least significant nor the most successful among them.

Hamilton, though, wasn't interested in stars. He wasn't really all that interested in the Army, certainly not as a career. If he ever had been, the Imperial Military Academy had knocked such ambition out of him. Instead, he saw it as a way to pay for school and to serve out his mandatory service obligation. Whether that service would see him on the coasts of the Empire's British allies, more or less comfortably, if chillily, watching the Moslem janissaries across the Channel, or hunting Luminosos or Bolivanos in the mountains or jungles of the South American Territories, or policing the Philippine Islands, or any of the dozens of other places across the globe where the Empire held or fought for sway, he couldn't predict.

Anything, Lord, anything but freezing my balls off hunting Canadians in northern Quebec or Ontario, please. I'm too tall and skinny for the cold. Even Chechnya on the exchange program would be better.

"Ooodddiiinnn!" sounded again from out the barracks windows.

Hamilton already had his branch assignment, infantry. Yet he lacked for a unit assignment yet, and that must depend on the latest casualty figures and some schooling. As a matter of fact, he wouldn't find out his first assignment until he graduated Ranger School— assuming he did, of course; many did not—just before reporting in for the Basic Course at either Fort Benning (Light Infantry and Suited Heavy Infantry Officers Basic Course) or Fort Bliss (Mechanized Infantry Officer Basic Course) or Fort Stewart (Constabulary Infantry Officers Basic Course). And even then it might change if casualties in, say, Mindanao suddenly soared.

And the casualty lists are never short, Hamilton mused. They never have been; not in my lifetime, anyway. He stopped, again facing a stone wall, then transferred his rifle and executed an about face. Then again, when you've got a population of your own in excess of five hundred million, and control more than another billion, what's a few thousand a month? Except that one of them, sometime in the next five years, might be me. Oh, well . . . buy your ticket and take your chances. And it isn't as if we've a lot of choice about fighting. Maybe once we had that kind of choice. Not anymore.

Hamilton took a surreptitious glance overhead. Yes, clouds were gathering. The prayers were working. Perhaps no parade tomorrow.

"OOODDDIIINNN!"

One of the nice things about walking hours in the Area was that it gave one time to think, though the weather could sometimes be all that one was able to think about. Weather permitting though, and today was merely brisk rather than outright miserable, one could really do some interior soul searching and reflection. Hamilton wondered, sometimes, if he didn't court demerits just so he could have that time alone.

I wonder what it was really like here, before the Empire. The histories don't discuss it much, beyond showing the before and after pictures of Los Angeles, Boston, and Kansas City. I've read the Constitution, all through the Thirty-Sixth Amendment, but the words don't really give me a feel for what it was like back then. Different . . . it must have been different. Did Free Speech really mean people were free to criticize the wars of defense? To protest them in public? Did Freedom of Religion accept even the enemy here? Well, that was before the Three Cities. Was military service really voluntary? For everybody? How the Hell could they maintain the hundred divisions we need that way? Then again, did we need a hundred divisions the old way? But after we were hit here, did we have any choice, really?

Despite being at war, and having been at war—even if it wasn't always recognized as such—for over a century, the emphasis at the IMA was still more on "Academy" than on "Military." Even so, there was a fair amount of military training, some practical, some theoretical. Hamilton had signed up for several practical electives over the last two academic years. One of these was "The Fighting Suit," the basic equipage of the Suited Heavy Infantry. (And, yes, when Hamilton had been the roughly four-millionth to publicly note the convenient acronym that came along with Suited Heavy Infantry Troops, he'd been slugged with a whopping forty hours of walking the Area.)

In any case, the Exo wasn't really a suit, not in the sense that it covered its wearer completely. Rather, it was an exoskeleton to which some considerable degree of armor protection could be added, at a cost in speed, range and supplies carried.

"Remember, it's not a cure-all," the sergeant-instructor, Master Sergeant Webster, had told the cadets the first day of class. Grizzled and old, Webster was the color of strong coffee. He was, so far as Hamilton could tell, the platonic ideal of a noncommissioned officer as such existed in the mind of God: tough, dedicated, no nonsense, and with just enough sense of humor to be, or at least seem, human.

"The suit is a bludgeon, not a rapier. It can get you to the objective," Webster had added. "It can get you there reasonably fresh and well supplied, but without much armor. Or it can get you across the objective, with full armor and reduced supply. Or it can do both if, and only if, something else carries you to near the objective.

"It's also a guarantee that, if you wear it while setting up an ambush somewhere in the Caucasus, the enemy will smell it from a mile away and never come near you. So why bother? And if you think you can use it for a recon patrol, I'll also guarantee you that the enemy will hear it from half a mile away. So why bother?"

"Because with full armor and a winterizing pack it will keep me warm while hunting Canadian rebels in Northern Ontario?" Hamilton had suggested, one inquisitive finger in the air.

"Mister Hamilton," Sergeant Webster had answered, "there is no such thing as a 'Canadian.' There are Americans. Then there are imperial subjects. There are also rebels, allies, and enemies. No Canadians, however. Write yourself up for an eight and four: minor lack of judgment."

Story of my life, Hamilton thought. Ask a question; get some time in the Area. Try to think and—

The thought was interrupted by the Area sergeant. "Attention on the Area. The hour is over. Fall out and fall in on your company areas."

Young Cadet John Hamilton, and many another, hastened to get on with something that passed for a more normal and fruitful life.

Why the fuck didn't I apply to Annapolis? I love boats. I grew up around boats. But nooo. Family tradition was Army and so I just had to follow along. Jackass.

"What will kill or take out an exoskeleton?" Webster asked rhetorically, after the class had taken seats. His finger pointed, "Mr. Hamilton?"

"Kill the man wearing it, Sergeant."

"How? Ms. Hodge."

That cadet, cute, strawberry blonde and—Hamilton reluctantly admitted—probably tougher than he was, answered. "Without armor, Master Sergeant, shooting the wearer in a vital organ is sufficient. Assuming armor is worn, however, the armor can be penetrated by a .41-caliber or better uranium or tungsten discarding sabot projectile. The joints are subject to derangement by large explosive devices or near-impacting heavy artillery or mortar fire. The power pack can similarly be fractured or penetrated. This will also contaminate the exoskeleton such that it cannot again be worn short of depot level decontamination. If the enemy is very clever, and the situation on the ground very bad, it can be worn out of power—"

"At which point," Webster interrupted, "you will have made a present of some very expensive gear to some very bad people. Very good, Cadet Hodge."

Hamilton leaned over and whispered in Hodge's ear, "Ass kisser."

"Better his than yours," Hodge whispered back. "He probably washes."

Webster, more amused than anything, let the byplay go without comment. He continued with the lesson, "The point is, however, that almost anything that will kill you in your bare skin can kill you while wearing the exoskeleton, even with maximum armor. It's just harder to do.

"However, unlike armored personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles, the Exo allows the member of a unit to take maximum advantage of small bits of cover and concealment. It does not, individually, present as tempting and lucrative a target as a tracked vehicle carrying nine to twelve men. This is true even though at half a million IND"—Imperial New Dollars—"each, nine Exos cost slightly more than one infantry fighting vehicle. Men are not potatoes, after all. Their lives matter."

Webster noticed Hodge fidgeting in her chair. "You had a question, Ms. Hodge?"

"Not a question, Master Sergeant, just an observation. Whatever the cost, whatever the risks and whatever the downsides, the Exo makes sense for me because I'm a woman. Nothing else allows me to be a full equal of men in combat."

"Not quite, Ms. Hodge," Webster corrected. "Because you're the bottleneck . . . not you, personally; I mean women are the bottleneck . . . in the production of the next generation, the Exo cannot reduce your overall value to that of a man."

"God knows, I value you, sweetie," Hamilton said, no longer in a whisper but at least sotto voce.

Webster's voice thundered, "Mr. Hamilton, write yourself up for another eight and four: public display of affection."