Кристофер Банч - Fleet of the Damned

Sten kept a straight face and looked away.

He caught an amused flash from another trainee on the other side of the throng. That man, too, knew better.

Sten eyed the man. He looked like every commando officer's image of the perfect soldier: tall, rangy, battle-scarred. His uniform was the splotched brown of a Guards unit, and he wore three rows of decorations and a Planetary Assault Badge. He was a hard man who had seen his war. But he sure as hell was not the idea most people had of a pilot. Sten wondered what strings the man had pulled to get into training.

A gravsled grounded, and a dignified-looking chief got out, holding a clipboard.

"All right," the chief said. "If you people will form a line, we'll check you off and take you out to join the rest of the class."

Five minutes later, after the sled had lifted and cleared the beautiful city, the chief's next command was phrased differently. "You candidates knock off the chatter! This isn't a sewing circle!"

A basic rule of the military: Your superior's politeness is directly proportional to the proximity and number of potentially shocked civilians.

Sten, who had been through, he sometimes thought, almost all of the Empire's military schools from basic, Mantis, environmental, medical, weapons, et cetera ad ennui, also wasn't surprised that the landscape below them had become pine barrens.

In Eden, the military will build its base next to the sewage dump.

He was slightly surprised that the base, at least from the air, didn't look that bad. Most of it looked to be a standard naval base, with hangars, repair facilities, and various landing fields and hardstands.

To one side of the base was an array of three-story red brick buildings surrounded by gardens: base headquarters.

His second surprise came as the gravsled grounded in front of those buildings.

Sten, at that moment, remembered another basic law of military schooling and swore at himself. All military courses start by grinding the student into the muck and then reforming that being into the desired mold.

The instructors would illustrate this by instantly zapping some poor standout slob on arrival.

And Sten was a potential standout.

Hastily, he unbuttoned his tunic and unpinned his ribbon bar. The decorations were all real, even though a good percentage of them had been awarded for some highly classified Mantis operations, and the citation itself was a tissue. But there were too many of them for any young commander to deserve.

The ribbon bar was jammed into a pocket just as the canopy of the gravsled banged open and a rage-faced master's mate started howling orders.

" Out, out, out ! What are you slime doing just sitting there! I want to see nothing but asses and elbows!"

New blood grabbed duffel bags and dived over the sides of the sled, and the mate kept screaming.

"You! Yes, you! You, too, come to think! Hit that ground! Do push-ups! Do many, many push-ups!"

Oh, Lord, Sten thought as he scrambled out. I'm back in basic training. Even the clottin' words are the same. This master's mate could be, except for sex, the duplicate of… what was her name? Yes. Carruthers.

"I want three ranks yesterday, people! Tall donks on my left, midgets over there."

Not for the first time, Sten was grateful that he was slight, but not so small as to qualify for the feather merchant squad.

Eventually the master's mate got tired of screaming and physical training. Sten thought he was doing all right—in the chaos, he had only had to turn out some fifty knee bends. There were too many other and more obvious victims for the mate to pick on.

"Class… ten-hup! Right hace! For'd harch."

Sten was grateful that at least all of them had been subjected to the barracks-bashing conditioning. He decided that he would not like to see what happened if one of the trainees went out of step.

They were marched into the central quadrangle, brought to a halt in front of a reviewing stand, and turned to face it.

On cue, a tall, thin man came out of one building and paced briskly to the stand. He looked typecast for what he was: a one-star admiral and the school commandant. No doubt a longtime pilot who'd flown every ship the Empire fielded in every circumstance known. Unfortunately, his voice didn't match the part. It would have been more suited to an operatic tenor.

Sten waited until the commandant introduced himself—Admiral Navarre—and then put most of his mind on other topics.

This was The Speech, given to every student at every military course by every commandant, and said the same things:

Welcome. This will be an intense period of training. You may not like how we do things, but we have learned what works. Those of you who learn to adjust to the system will have no troubles, the others… We have strict discipline here, but if any of you feels treated unfairly, my office is always open.

Ratcheta, ratcheta, ratcheta.

Phase One of flight training was Selection. The object of this phase was to determine absolutely that every candidate was in fact qualified to fly.

It was already famous throughout the Imperial military as a washout special.

Admiral Navarre informed them that, due to the unfortunate political situation, Phase One would be accelerated. Clotting wonderful, Sten thought.

Each student was told to remove his or her rank tabs. From that moment on, they would be referred to only as "candidate."

Ho, ho. Sten had a fairly good idea of some of the other titles: clot, drakh, bastard, and many, many other terms expressly forbidden under Imperial regulations.

That was about all that was worthy of note.

The main part of Sten's mind was reminding him that he was now a candidate. Not a hot-rod commander, not the ex-head of the Emperor's Gurkha bodyguards, not a Mantis covert specialist.

In fact, not even an officer.

Think recruit, young Sten. Maybe you can make it that way.

Sten was sort of neutral about becoming a pilot. He was here only because of personal and private suggestions from the Emperor himself. The Emperor had told him that the next stage in Sten's career should be a transfer to the navy—accomplished—and flight school.

Wash out of flight school, however, and Sten would probably be ordered into the logistics section of the navy.

He wondered for the hundredth time how hard it would be, if he did fail, to get back to the army and Mantis Section.

Somewhere during Sten's ponderings Navarre had finished, walked off, and the mate had the trainees doubling around the buildings, their duffels left stacked in front of the reviewing stand.

Now we meet the killers, Sten thought, or whatever flight school calls their drill sergeants, and they shall illustrate to us how worthless we are and how they're going to destroy us for even breathing hard.

That was, more or less, how the scenario went—with some considerable surprises.

The class was stopped in the middle of a huge square that was ankle-deep sand. The mate dropped them once more into push-up position, then disappeared. Minutes passed. A couple of the candidates collapsed into the sand. They would pay.

For Sten, the front-leaning rest position was no more than an annoyance.

A man ambled toward them, not at all the kind of sadist that Sten was expecting. Drill instructors always looked to be better soldiers than any of their student swine could dream of becoming. This man was heavily overweight and wore a rank-tabless, somewhat soiled flight coverall. One of the pockets was torn. The man walked up and down the line of prone candidates. He tsked once when another student went flat, wheezing.

"Good day, beings." The man's voice was a husky drawl. "My name is Ferrari. You will call me Mr. Ferrari or sir, or you shall surely perish.