(part 2).
6: Chapter 6- That’s not what you want.
(part 2).
“I look at all this Brownian motion around me, and my soul rejoices.
The usual mess, everyone running, marching in formation, drilling.
Beautiful,” is what I’d like to say by the middle of the day.
And to anyone unimpressed by it, I’d love to shut their mouth with a line straight out of a grizzled veteran: “What would you know about the beauty of correct form and movement, when every drilled step, every command given to the ranks, hides the killing power of our entire army.” That’s what I’d “like” to say, because by the middle of the day all I actually wanted to say was something along the lines of, “Why would anyone die for this, you rotten sack of nerf droppings, Master Sergeant, sir.” I didn’t have the strength left for words.
Any words.
And I was desperately thirsty and hungry, because nobody had fed us breakfast.
And our Sergeant just stood there, tearing into our shapeless, collapsed heap of a formation, under looks from the other squads that ranged from mildly amused to almost sympathetic.
“@#$%&*#$%&, and I didn’t get clones out of this batch, I got—!” Now that was a phrase to remember.
I nearly said it out loud, wondered for a second if he’d take it better in binary.
“What did you say, one thirty four?” Guess I did say it out loud.
Damn it.
I squinted over at the Mandalorian.
Ever seen a helmet manage to look furious with absolutely no face behind it?
I can’t say the drill itself was exhausting- well, fine, it was exhausting, but it was the endless “get down, get up” that was going to finish all of us off.
Especially bodies as frail as ours when it comes to actual endurance.
Still, better to stand and take the punishment with some dignity than to try and dodge it, since there’s an old saying that a soldier’s supposed to endure every hardship the job throws at him.
Something about that was gnawing at me.
I’d forgotten how mind numbing the same repeated motion can get.
But underneath the misery, a clean, healthy kind of anger had started waking up in me.
Watching me try to get up, the others stirred too.
Groaning like an old man, I hauled myself upright, snapped into something resembling attention, and said: “Sir, Master Sergeant, sir.
You used a phrase we don’t recognize, sir.
I didn’t understand your last command, sir.” Gods, what am I even saying right now?
Someone knock me out, please, immediately.
For half a second I could have sworn the T-shaped visor on his helmet actually widened.
Still, it’d be strange to expect real emotion, or instant compliance, from a dog of war like him.
“You, one thirty four, aren’t meant to understand the command.
You’re meant to execute it.
No questions asked.
And if you don’t understand something, you drop and give me push ups.
Are we clear, you nerf-herding waste of a designation?” “Sir, yes, sir!” “Now, form up, listen for my command!
To my right, three ranks, fooorm—up!
One thirty four, Hutt, take your ear, what exactly are you doing?” “Push ups, sir!” …Roughly half an hour later, buried under an endless stream of commands and curses, our instructor still couldn’t get half of us upright even with the help of well placed kicks.
I genuinely held on longer than most, running purely on stubbornness, but a starved, overclocked body can only take so much no matter how hard you push it, so eventually, later than the others but not by much, I went down too, dropping like a felled tree.
The gray ceiling and its bland little light fixtures stared back at me in contemplative silence, broken only by loud, unhurried clapping.
Our sergeant stood over us, applauding with obvious sarcasm.
“What fine soldiers you all make today.” His voice practically dripped with contempt.
“Sir, really, sir?” someone groaned from the pile.
“Yes, CT-0124,” so he really had memorized all our numbers, “and that’s exactly why you’ve all earned a reward.” Right.
Some grand medal, no doubt.
At the mention of a reward, our sorry little group actually perked up and started stirring with interest.
From behind the Master Sergeant, two grown clones hauled out an enormous tank.
“Here’s your reward,” he said, and kicked the tank over, dumping the contents in our direction.
“Find your own way back to it.” Then he simply turned and walked off.
Out of the tank came sliding the same paste we’d been calling food, spreading across the floor.
Seeing nothing in front of me but that longed for slop, the color of a sick child’s diaper, I just crawled toward it and, nearly faceplanting straight in, started licking it off the floor.
Around me, my bunkmates were doing the same, slipping and sliding in similar states of ruin.
At some point, I just passed out, face down in the mess.