In Her Name

magnetic field. “This he promised me, and it is a vow he will keep.”

Frowning, Tsingai watched the crowd of inductees as the drill instructors, the DIs, began forming them up. He hoped the two women beside him did not notice the white knuckles of his clenched hands.

Somewhere down below, they heard a DI bellow.

* * *

“Line up on the white lines, NOW!”

Reza stood like an ebony pillar among the crowd of inductees who filled the courtyard outside Quantico’s main in-processing building. The other would-be Marines favored him with wary, sometimes frightened, glances and quiet mutterings. He wore his armor and weapons, and carried his few precious belongings in the hide satchel that had accompanied him as a gift from the Empress, for it contained all the few material things he treasured, besides his weapons. He had politely refused the general’s request to adopt some form of human dress after learning that what little off-duty time he had would be his own; he would proudly wear the uniform of the Corps, but he found the civilian clothing unattractive and ill-fitting. Most difficult for the general to accept, of course, had been Reza’s refusal to surrender his weapons to anyone, for any reason. He was a warrior, and his weapons were a part of his body, his soul. He also refused to cut his hair, but never explained why. General Tsingai had grudgingly agreed to these unusual accommodations, but only after very intense arguments from both Jodi and Nicole.

Reza looked at the men and women around him. They ranged from a youthful seventeen to a trim forty, of all different colors, shapes, and ways of life. They were clothed in a bewildering variety of clothes that Reza found somewhat comical and completely alien to the ways of the Kreela. But the diversity in clothing only underscored the fact that Quantico, and the other installations like it, served as temporary melting pots to even out the gaps inherent in the regimental system.

Apparently, Reza was perhaps more diverse than some of his companions could handle. He met their stares, could sense their unease like the predatory animal he was. These were the same feelings he had encountered from almost everyone he had met so far in the human sphere, most especially from those in the high council chamber in which he had been judged, and apparently found worthy. Part of him wanted to reach out to those around him, to tell them that he bore them no ill will, that he had come to fight for them, with them.

He was jostled from behind, and he reacted instantly and instinctively, whirling about with the claws of one hand ready to slash at the eyes as his other hand went for the blade of the short sword that had been a gift from Tesh-Dar.

“I’m sor–” a young inductee, a gangly boy about the same age as Reza, apologized before his face blanched and his eyes bulged from their sockets with surprise and fear at the whirling apparition before him.

Reza stopped his defense and counterattack, relaxing his body instantly. He regarded the young man quietly, noting the complete lack of threatening feelings from this mere child. He noticed the sniggering that took place in the row of people behind the boy, and understood that they had pushed him into Reza to see what kind of reaction they could get.

“Really really I’m sorry I didn’t mean to bump into you I–” He was babbling in a steady, fearful stream.

“What is your name?” Reza asked quietly of this young human who evidently had volunteered to be a Marine. While military service was compulsory, service in the Marine Corps was rarely enforced by draft placement; the Corps had all the volunteers it could handle. What courage might lay beneath the surface to make this timid creature want to seek his Way in the Marine Corps?

“Uh… Eustus… Eustus Camden. Look, really, they pushed me I didn’t–”

“Be still, Eustus Camden,” Reza said, and the boy instantly quieted. Reza watched and felt the emotion’s of the young man’s tormentors, gauging their reactions. What courage this boy may have, he thought, was ten-fold what they possessed. “I was told that trainees may choose their room-mates,” Reza went on, fighting through the accent that he physically could not suppress from his speech. “I choose you.” Ignoring the stupefied gasp of his new human tresh, Reza turned back around toward the front rank.

Behind him, Eustus Camden turned to the three recruits behind him – his tormentors since childhood – to give them his best version of a withering stare, but they sniggered and made faces at him.

“Looks like you got a new buddy, Eus,” one of them hissed.

“Go to Hell, you bastard!” Eustus spat in reply.

“You there!” a voice burst through the ranks. “I MEAN YOU, BOY!”

Eustus felt like shrinking into a tiny ball and evaporating as a DI that looked like a human fireplug with a built-in PA system instead of vocal chords stormed up to him and began berating him for talking in formation.

Dear Lord, Eustus thought. What have I gotten myself into?

As the DI reviewed some fascinating aspects of Eustus Camden’s heritage, a ripple of excitement went through the crowd. The doors to the in-processing building had been thrown open. It was time.

Things had changed little over the centuries in how new blood was brought into the military. Each rank was filed in with mechanical precision, aided where necessary by the DIs and a liberal application of psychological pressure that would become all too familiar to the recruits over the next sixteen weeks.

The lines filed into the front of the main administration building quickly and in good order. Almost all the trainees had several months of prior training conducted by local training centers. Some, mostly those who were coming from Territorial Army units to join the Corps, had considerably more.

Reza soon was lost in the flurry of questions, computer scans, and the rest of the modern paperwork required to become a Marine. Most of the forms, Reza had to leave blank or nearly so. Nicole and Jodi had anticipated this and had researched what they could to help him fill in the information. He meticulously wrote in the names of his parents, which he had been unable to remember but that Jodi had discovered in his mother’s service records. And then, something that meant a great deal to him, Nicole had thought when she coached him through it, he signed his name, Reza Sarandon Gard.

Next was the physical exam. Every recruit bemoaned it because they had all gone through at least one in the previous months and were tired of being scanned, probed, and poked.

“Strip!” shouted a short Filipino sergeant major with a face like parched leather and a voice that pierced the group’s ears like a squawking parrot. The group of about a dozen recruits, which included Reza, was already undressing. Men and women were examined in the same room at the same time, for the war had left little room for the modesty of earlier periods; it did not take into account race, creed, color, or sex, nor did the Corps.

After seeing what the others were doing, Reza began to unclasp his armor, carefully putting the pieces in the plastic bins provided for the purpose. While he had refused any medical examinations while on the Aboukir, Nicole and Jodi had said this was required to become a Marine, and he had decided to allow it. Only his collar and its pendants remained as he slipped the last of three bins into the wall lockers where they would stay until the in-processing was finished.

“In the name of God,” Eustus uttered from behind him. He was staring at Reza’s back, his mouth hanging agape, as was everyone else’s who could see.

The nearby recruits took a few steps back, shocked speechless by the tendrils of scar tissue that undulated across Reza’s body.

“Looks like he got caught in a tiller,” quipped a dark-skinned woman who appeared to be quite unimpressed.

“Gross,” hissed a woman with blond hair cut nearly down to her skull. She turned away, making a face of disgust.

“C’mon, goddammit,” growled the sergeant major. “None of you are any better looking!”

Putting away their feelings toward Reza in hopes of avoiding any more serious action by the sergeant major, the recruits slowly shuffled to the exam booths set up around the room. The ones who had to stand in line waiting for the medtechs continued to gawk at Reza.

When he came to the head of the line at his station the female medtech carried out the requisite tests with hardly a look at any part of his anatomy other than what happened to be of immediate clinical interest. He watched her intently, intrigued by the compact high technology equipment with which she worked.

His interest made her nervous. The unblinking stare from his sharp green eyes was beginning to upset her, but she did not become really upset until she saw the results of his gene and DNA scans on the computer. This was the first time that Reza had allowed anyone close to him with medical probes, and it appeared that the machine had decided that he was not really human, delivering a message proclaiming “species unidentified.”