Montoya, a lanky boy from Valle de las Lunas, emerged from the headquarters building with all that they would be allowed to possess as Cazador students. A huge pile of sandwiches, cookies, cakes and other goodies fed the ants and birds in the field behind the headquarters.
Camp Gutierrez, 22/3/462 AC
Already Cruz's uniform was beginning to hang on him loosely. The purely technical aspects of Cazador School were behind him- map reading, the steps in troop-leading procedures, radio communications, physical fitness tests, and so on. He could do all those things perfectly well before coming here. But-and this made it special-all of it had been done on under an hour and a half's sleep per night and with a constant pain in the belly.
Almost a fifth of those who had begun the course with Cruz had already dropped out or been dropped. None had yet been killed, though two had been injured badly enough in the hand-to-hand combat pits that they had to be recycled. These did scut work in a separate compound called, none of the students knew quite why, the 'Gulag.'
This was the first patrol. The patrol, really a large squad, was halted in a cigar-shaped perimeter. Men looked out to all sides, fighting to keep their eyes open. The CI took a position in the center, watching Cruz more closely than Cruz knew. Mosquitoes buzzed in ears, taking their part of each student's daily donation of a pint of blood to the jungle pests. Outside the perimeter foul-mouthed antaniae murmured, ' mnnbt… mnnbt… mnnbt.' No one really worried about the antaniae. They were too nasty to eat and, while their mouths were septic, they were a cowardly species which, for the most part, posed danger of infection only to the very young.
'Montoya. Goddammit, Montoya, wake the fuck up!' Cruz whispered as he jostled his assigned buddy.
Montoya snapped up with a start. 'I wasn't sleeping, Centurion.'
'Save the lies for the CI. It's me, Cruz. Pull out your poncho and put it over us.'
Cruz took a red filtered flashlight and his acetated map in his hands and joined Montoya under the cover of the poncho. Unheard by either, the CI crept to within a couple of feet to listen.
'Cazador Cruz, you have failed this patrol.' The CI laid his judgment out without cushioning. Cruz hung his head in shame. The CI then proceeded to explain precisely why Cruz had failed: improper contingency plan so that when the perimeter had been hit, Montoya hadn't known where to take the patrol to link up; inadequate supervision on Montoya's part after Cruz's departure leading to sleeping troops who couldn't detect the approaching enemy, failure to navigate properly so that the patrol had to stop too close to the objective leading, so the CI said, to interception by a random security sweep by the unit at the objective. Of course the security sweep hadn't been random at all, but Cruz couldn't know that.
The rain began to fall once again as Cruz made his miserable way back to his patrol.
Camp 'Greasy' Gomez, 26/3/462 AC
Balboa's climate was hot and wet. Ordinarily, it wasn't possible to become cool there in the outdoors, let alone cold. Still, when deprived of food and sleep, worked too hard, and kept soaking wet for days on end, men would shiver.
Where the swamp water came midway up Cruz's chest, it was closer to neck deep on Dominguez. That was why Cruz never noticed that Dominguez was shivering until his teeth began to chatter.
' 'minguez, are you okay?'
'No, Cruz… cold, getting colder.'
Shit. Cruz told Dominguez to wait in place-the patrol wasn't going anywhere fast-and waded forward to find the CI.
'Centurion, I think one of my men is coming down with hypothermia.' They'd been lectured on that particular danger early on in the course.
The CI waded back with Cruz, both of them sloshing through the darkened water to where Dominguez still stood. None of Terra Nova's three moons were up much so the CI broke out a blue filtered flashlight and played in over the shivering man's face. After a briefest visual inspection, plus a quick feel of the all-too-cooled forehead, he decided Cruz was right.
'We've got to get him out of some of this water. It's not so deep up ahead. You two, pick him up and carry him forward.' Montoya and another man named Saldanas lifted Dominguez bodily out of the water.
At the shallow spot, the CI took his knife out and stuck it perpendicularly into a tree. Then he took a blue fuel tablet out of a metalicized pouch. He laid the fuel tablet on the knife. Reaching into the student's web gear, the CI took out Dominguez's steel canteen cup and filled it with water. He lit the fuel tab, letting it begin to burn over its entire surface, before placing the cup squarely upon it. He pulled both knife and cup away from the tree, holding them together.
The CI looked around and announced, 'I need a crap load of sugar.'
Montoya went around the gathering students. 'C'mon. Give it up, goddammit. Dominguez needs sugar.' The men reached into hidden stores for sugar packets filched from the mess on those rare occasions the students were allowed to eat in the mess.
The CI gently slid the knife out from under the cup. The fuel tablet stayed, magically stuck to the cup's bottom. With its own bottom exposed to the air, it flared into a respectable flame. Soon the water was hot enough for a decent cup of coffee, heavily laden with sugar.
Montoya, standing with his hands cupped around sugar packets, looked with wonder at the CI's method of coffee preparation in a soaking wet environment. 'I believe that is the neatest thing I've ever seen,' he said, mostly to himself.
Lago de Ajuela, Balboa, 28/3/462 AC
Today was a test day of sorts. Its objective was to run out a portion of those students who could not overcome physical fear. All the candidates had already been in combat, of course. This proved little as, in combat, no one was really watching to see how they reacted to danger.
'This is more like what I signed up for when I volunteered for this stinking course,' announced Montoya, looking over the various tests.
Saldanas, standing on the other side of Cruz from Montoya, looked ghastly pale. 'Man, I am terrified of heights.' Saldanas was a sailor with the still growing naval classis. In the legion even sailors and members of the air ala had to demonstrate combat leadership before being allowed leadership of any kind.
Another student-Dominguez, Saldanas' Cazador buddy- answered 'Cheer up, friend. You're a squid. At least you can swim well.'
The class tac, a retired FSA master sergeant working for the FMTG and named Olivetti called the class to attention, then 'at ease.'
'The purpose of today's exercise,' the CI said, 'is to separate from the school those who lack an essential characteristic needed in a combat leader-physical courage.'
At Olivetti's last words twin explosions erupted from the water. The students shuddered from the shock. A Balboan CI, carrying a pulleylike device with a handle attached, ran from the woods toward a steel I-beam set upright in the ground, with a small platform on top and a wire cable running at an angle down to the water. The CI howled as he ran.
Reaching the I beam, the CI rapidly clambered up its seventy-five odd feet until he reached the platform. There he hooked the pulley around the wire cable, grabbed hold of the handle and lifted his feet off the platform. He sped down the cable gathering speed. Another CI, standing on a floating platform near where cable met water, signaled when it was time for the slider to let go of the handle.
Montoya watched, wide-eyed, as the slider's feet struck the water first, causing him to spin head over heels a half dozen times before knifing headfirst below the surface.
That has got to take practice, thought Cruz admiringly.
Fifty times the son of a bitch does it right in rehearsal, thought Olivetti, then he screws it up in practice. Idiot.
The CI surfaced and then swam toward the shore. Olivetti announced 'What you have just seen is called the 'Slide for Life.' The CI is now approaching the Log Walk/Rope Drop.'
Still howling, the demonstrator ran from the shore to the Log Walk. This consisted of three on-line poles set upright into the muck below. At a height of some thirty-five feet-shrewdly calculated to be the most frightening height to be at for a human being-the poles were surmounted by a log, topped by a flat plank, with steps in the middle. The logs swayed as the CI raced upward. At the top the CI bound down the plank, not stopping or slowing even for the steps in the middle. He took a quick seat at the far end.
