T. McCarthy - The Legionnaires

A few women broke ranks and the corporal told them to return to the barracks. The rest of us waited.

“I have only pity for you who stay,” he said. “Four hours to complete the task. Move out.”

One second I was standing there, the next I found myself in the middle of a group of women struggling against Nimes’s gravity. Each step was more difficult than the last. The mud made loud sucking sounds as we pulled one foot out, then the other, and I soon felt as though the planet were alive, doing its best to grab hold. Before long a group of women, the faster ones, had pulled ahead and distanced themselves, leaving me in the middle of a long orange line, alone. How appropriate, I thought. None of us had had time to talk, and while the rain poured over my helmet I struggled not only against the gravity and the mud, but also against the realization that if anything happened to me there would be no rescue. There were no friends here, and my home was light-years away. I wasn’t just alone; it was as if I had never existed. Insignificant.

I saw a commotion ahead of me. The lightning gave momentary glimpses of our destination so that every few seconds we could check to make sure we were on course. In the next flash I saw a group of women—the ones who had moved ahead—clustered, looking at something. By the time I got there several had broken off and moved to the side, and it took a few minutes for me to get close enough to see why they had changed direction.

Three women stood thigh-high in mud, sinking fast. I couldn’t hear anything over the rain until I switched on the radio.

“Help me!”

A girl next to me turned. “Any ideas?”

“No.” I stood for a moment, watching as they sank farther, and then moved to follow the others.

“Aren’t you going to help them?” the girl called after me.

“Why? They’re done.”

“Asshole,” she muttered.

I didn’t even think of responding—exhaustion, that had to be it. At first it disgusted me, that I had just left three women to die without trying to help, but the fight against Nimes’s gravity, and the effort to just lift my feet from the mud and slap them down, had drained me of everything. Even feelings. I knew there wouldn’t be any way to help, that the corporal had been right, because in this place you barely managed to help yourself. Sweat streamed down my face now, and the suit’s internal temperature indicator climbed, its numbers shifting from green (nominal) to yellow (struggling, but still OK).

The other thing that vanished was a sense of time. One minute the chronometer froze and the tower stood there as if it would never get any closer, and a couple of times I had a sensation as though my feet were sliding in place, not actually moving forward. Or time flew. I’d glance at the clock, think about something else, and then look back to find that twenty minutes had elapsed when I swore it had just been a second. By the time I reached the tower I had passed at least fifteen more girls captured by the planet’s mud, and decided to switch off communications altogether.

Two hours to make it back. It was easier on the return. Maybe there was a gentle downslope—imperceptible to the eye—or it might have been that the base lights winked in the distance, a reminder that whether or not you made the time it would all be over soon. The patches to avoid were obvious now. Some still had helmets sticking out, orange warning beacons. Even without the reminders our boots had carved a path that hadn’t yet filled in with mud so I didn’t have to be as careful where I put my feet. The chronometer had fogged over by the time I stumbled back onto the parade ground, and it took a moment to figure out how to wipe it with my chin.

Two minutes to spare. The corporal waited with us, and as soon as the four-hour mark hit he screamed at the remainder of the women who straggled in, many of whom crawled for the last few hundred meters. They didn’t even get to enter the base. A shuttle waited with its hatch open, and the women had to remove their suits, stack them neatly by the gate, and then run, naked, into the craft. By the time it was done those of us on the field barely stood, fatigue threatening to finally claim us as the corporal walked between our ranks.

He stopped in front of me, and I thought I heard surprise in his voice. “They gave you a new name when you signed up. Marianne. Do you know the significance of this name?”

“It was my grandmother’s, corporal.”

“It’s more than that. This is a very important name to the French, a symbol of liberty and reason. It’s a very good name.” He strode through the mud and back onto his podium, addressing the smaller group that now faced him. “Twenty. We started with one hundred fifty, and now we have twenty. At the end there will probably only be ten. Stow your suits, bathe, and get some sleep. Your first day of training begins tomorrow.”

I barely made it to the barracks, out of my suit, and onto my rack before passing out.

The mantes came for us after nightfall.

“Bots activated,” said Toly.

I peered out of my firing port and watched as the slope in front of me filled with greenish-white tracers, crisscrossing in overlapping fields of fire. It looked beautiful. Occasional grenade blasts overloaded my night vision, making me blink until I could see again, mantes dancing in the field, noiselessly. I sensed their surprise, as if the colonists had been easy pickings but this, their first real fight, scared the crap out of them. Some skittered toward us on twelve legs, then ten, then seven, and finally collapsed to the ground when they couldn’t propel themselves forward. Others lowered themselves and advanced as far as possible behind their friends’ bodies until they broke into the open. Those got it too, in the end. After a few minutes an eerie screech sounded over the battlefield, making me wish I could cover my ears, and the things slunk back into the darkness.

Toly punched the keys on her forearm controls. “Sentries at half ammo. We can withstand another assault before they break through.”

“There’s always the minefield,” someone said.

“You’re an idiot.”

I thought hard as Toly worked things out and wondered what Buttons, the section leader, would have done. As luck would have it she had been called to the orbital station with our lieutenant the day before the attack and it hurt—not that we didn’t like Toly. But Buttons wasn’t just a Legionnaire, she always had the answers, and to not have her felt like trying to fight with one hand tied. Toly, I decided finally, might not be ready for this.

One of the children crept over to me. “Are you winning?” he asked.

“Yes.” I picked him up, trying to place him on my lap, but the ceramic armor was slick and he slid to the floor. “We’re winning, don’t worry about a thing.”

“You aren’t French,” he said. “What are you?”

“I’m American. Toly over there is Russian. In fact most of us are Russian but there are a few Americans, some British, Chinese, and my friend Buttons, if she were here, well she’s French.”

“ I’m going to be a Legionnaire when I grow up.”

I wanted to cry. Except for the fact that we were speaking French, he reminded me of my son, all innocence and totally clueless—in a kid kind of way. The thought occurred to me that it was highly unlikely he or any of us would make it out, that he wouldn’t get a chance to grow up, but I told him something different. “Well then, think of this as your first lesson. Watch us. Learn from what we do. Your Legion training starts right now.”

When the corporal said “training” he must have meant something else. Slavery maybe. Servitude. We never touched a weapon, didn’t study two hundred ways to kill with a spoon, didn’t even spend one minute marching; the corporal explained that before a Legionnaire learned to destroy, she had to build. So our group spent the first week constructing a new storage facility for the base armored personnel carriers. We woke, barely, from our first reveille and lined up, after which the corporal interviewed us to find out if we had any construction experience. I didn’t. As a result he assigned me to the general labor pool, something that I would have done better to avoid.