Part 40 (1/2)
The cadets each raised a hand in front of them, palm up, and opened their fingers.
Arun didn't feel fear as his hand opened to reveal the color of his stone; he just felt numb. Sure enough, his stone was black. He quickly glanced around him. Zug had a black pebble too. Cristina's was white.
The five cadets with white stones wheeled right in readiness to march away. Cristina whispered hurriedly to him. ”If you do it now, you'll not spend the next two years fearing what it might be like.”
Because I will already be dammed? He did not dare to speak the words in his mind. Cristina's words were no comfort but the warmth of sentiment was. He couldn't imagine the males in his squad offering any words of comfort.
The line-up in front of the armory cabinet consisted of Arun, Zug, Springer, Lewark from Blue-4, and Del-Marie.
Sergeant Gupta opened the armory cabinet and Arun picked out a carbine. He was so used to the heft of the SA-71 that it normally felt like an extension of his body, but this gun felt awkward. If the gun was a part of his body, then this was a part that had turned cancerous. It was sickening, alien. He wanted to throw it far away from him, but he steeled himself instead to hold it as if this were an everyday gunnery drill.
And as with a gunnery drill, Arun flicked the switch to arm the carbine and read the ammo supply from the stock display. His gun was charged and an ammo bulb was in place, but the stock display was faulty.
To his astonishment, only Del-Marie replaced his carbine in the cabinet and went back to his place in the crowd, presumably because it had no charge or no ammo. Arun and the other cadets picked for execution detail glanced at each other nervously. Then they gave smart salutes to Sergeant Gupta and marched around the back of the hexagon where the executioners were lined up, marshaled by a veteran Arun didn't recognize.
Every few minutes they were reinforced by blank-faced cadets, arriving in ones and twos, and occasionally in larger groups.
As the selection played out over the next hour, it became clear that there was a strong random element to the selection. Sometimes all the carbines in the cabinet were armed and sometimes none. But over time the numbers began to average out and Arun saw the pattern that was emerging.
There were around 175 cadets in a company, and the battalion had eight depot companies in the graduation year. That made 1,400 due to be Culled.
The G-1 and G-2 years for 412/8 had another eight companies each, which made a pool of 2,800 executioners. The G-year cadets were to be decimated: one in ten would be executed. Arun had a.s.sumed that meant there would be 140 executioners picked, but instead there was to be one executioner for every member of the G-year. Did that mean they were all to be killed?
They heard a hiss. From around the sides and top of the hexagon came clouds of lurid orange. The smell hit them. Arun swallowed hard, fought to keep control. Once he'd gotten over the shock of being ga.s.sed, it didn't smell or taste so bad. And if it was toxic, it wasn't so toxic that he could see anyone keel over. In fact it tasted of burned biscuits and almond flavoring.
Human veterans advanced toward them from out of the billowing orange. For a moment, Arun thought it was his detail behind the hexagon that were to be killed, and the veterans their executioners. But the vets led them back around the hexagon and into the heart of the unfolding spectacle.
Sergeant Bissinger cleared her throat and addressed the parade. ”Every world inhabited by our masters, the White Knights, is blessed by the Sacred Mists of Renewal, more commonly called the Flek. We cannot release the Flek here on Tranquility because it would kill us all. This orange vapor we release in emulation of the Flek as we...” She paused, just briefly but Arun caught it ”...reach the climax of today's ritual.”
The release of the pseudo-Flek gas had been timed so that as Arun and the other executioners came around the hexagon they appeared to the waiting crowd to emerge from the mist at the moment Sergeant Bissinger finished her speech. The veterans led the execution detail to their places. They lined up facing the hexagon in 47 rows of 29 cadets. Each rank had a veteran to either side, veterans from other battalions.
The mist cleared to reveal pale faces staring back at them. Twenty-nine cadets from the year of graduation stood with their backs to the hexagon, each a couple of paces apart. The other cadets due to be Culled awaited their fate a short distance to the left, already organized into ranks of 29.
Twenty-nine executioners would fire their carbines at twenty-nine battalion comrades. Arun understood now why his stock readout wasn't working. It was a cruel trick. All of the executioners would fire on a comrade, but only one in ten of the guns had live rounds. Arun had never fired a gun at another human being. That was just about to change. Whether he would kill his target was something no one would know until a split second after he fired.
Arun was in the third row. At least he wouldn't have to wait long to find out.
The first rank of executioners moved forward a pace and spread out a little so that each faced their victim head on.
Arun stared into the faces of the condemned, who awaited their fate with quiet dignity. In a few seconds, perhaps two or three would die. Maybe more or maybe less if this part of the Cull were as random as everything else. Most, though, would live.
That still didn't make this all right, Gupta had called this a battle. Arun wouldn't flinch at going into battle with the possibility of ten percent casualties. But this wasn't combat whatever Gupta might say. This was humans copying their betters, a foul mockery of an utterly alien ritual. Surely it was going along with killing your comrades that was stupid and cowardly, not questioning the murder?
The front rank raised their guns.
Was Arun prepared to defy orders? Was anyone here?
The front-rank veterans faced in at their cadets, raised their arms... and then threw them downward.
A ragged volley of shots rang out. Three of the condemned slumped to the bare rock of the parade ground, b.l.o.o.d.y chunks blasted out of their bodies.
Dead before they hit the ground, thought Arun. Flenser rounds aimed at the heart. A quick death, but a messy one.
He wondered why he was a.n.a.lyzing the execution in such cold detail, and then realized he was distracting himself from looking into the faces of the front rank of executioners as they filed back to the rear of the execution detail.
He couldn't look upon them because in a few moments he would have become one of them. He knew he wasn't going to rebel. He didn't have the will to disobey orders.
When in doubt, obey orders. It was all he'd ever known. And if that meant he was a coward or stupid then so be it. What he did know for certain in that moment was that he was a slave.
The 26 survivors of the Cull picked up the corpses of their fallen comrades and carried them round to the rear of the hexagon. Without delay they were replaced by the next group of 29 condemned cadets, stepping carefully so as not to slip on the gore-splatter rock.
It felt dreamlike as Arun watched the front rank of executioners spread out to match their victims, raise their carbines and fire!
This time, one cadet from 8-412 fell down dead.
This time Arun did look at the executioners because something was wrong. The whole ritual was wrong, he thought, but now something had disrupted the smooth workings of the execution process.
The veteran on the right of the front rank marched in front of her detail. She halted before one particular cadet. It was Olmer, one of the original members of Xin's Scendence team.
Olmer dropped her carbine. The sound of the ceramalloy-plastic blend striking the rock floor made Arun cringe. He'd never heard the sound of a dropped gun before.
”I can't do it!” Olmer screamed. ”I can't fire. You can't make me.”
If Olmer was panicking, the effect of this disruption on the cadet she had failed to shoot was even more dramatic. The condemned started to cry.
The reason soon became clear.
The veteran drew her sidearm from its holster and shot Olmer in the head. Then she turned to the condemned cadet who by now had slumped down onto her haunches, her head in her hands.
The veteran shot her through the heart.
Of everything he'd seen so far that day, the sight of the cadet slumped against the hexagon waiting her fate was the cruelest by far. If Olmer had obeyed orders, then the older cadet would probably still be alive. Everyone saw that drama unfold. Everyone got the message. Arun had never attended the Cull before, but he'd attended executions. It was always the same.
Disobey orders and you will be killed.
Breathe so much as a word of dissent against the White Knights, and it won't be just you who is killed.
Arun did what he always did. Suck up the anger and humiliation and stored it for the future. Everything on this planet was designed to control the slaves who lived here. But if he survived to graduate as a Marine, one day he would get away from Detroit.
He made a vow. He swore it on the blood of his murdered cadet comrades, and on the h.e.l.lish memories that their murderers would carry for the rest of their lives. Unlike Olmer, he would wait. Over time he would stack the chances in his favor. One day he would revenge all of humanity against the White Knights.