"Archetypes," mused Commander Hume. He glanced at Washington's monument and wondered what George would have made of all of this. Probably not much; he would have foisted such underhanded shenanigans off on Benjamin Franklin.
"Any of several apparently innate images in the psyche, found throughout human . . ."
"I know what a damn archetype is, Mark," David interrupted, angrily, drawn from his reverie. "That was `Archetypes,' with an unspoken `Damn' attached in the subjunctive case. Not `Archetypes? What the hell are archetypes?' It happened to fit in with my data. Okay, it's time to see if we really do have presidential access," he continued, standing up. "You would not believe what I found in a Sanskrit translation . . ."
"Hey, man, you got a light?" One of the ubiquitous street people of the Washington Mall stumbled blearily towards them, fumbling a dog-end.
"Sorry, soldier," said Commander Hume, noting the field jacket and scars, respectful to even this fallen soldier at the last. "Don't smoke."
"It don' matter, man," the unshaven bum muttered, "Don' matter." Four rapid huffs from a silenced .45 caliber Colt followed and the pair of scientists slumped into the reflecting pool staining the pure waters red. "Don' matter," the bum muttered again, as the screams began.
15
Camp McCall, NC Sol III
1123 May 6th, 2002 AD
"Move it! Move it! Get out! Off the bus! Move it!"
The young men in gray piled off the Greyhound bus, some in their haste tumbling to the ground. These unfortunates were unceremoniously yanked to their feet and hurled towards the group now milling into a half-assed formation. The three brawny young men and one brawny young woman doing the shouting had, four months before, gotten off the same kind of bus. Despite the corporal's chevrons on their sleeves they were recently graduated privates chosen for their size, strength or fierceness as much as their motivated attitude. They broke the formation into four ragged groups and moved them, overloaded with duffel bags, to their respective assembly areas. The new recruits were chivvied into rough lines comprising three sides of a quad and then they got their first experience of a real drill sergeant. In second platoon's unfortunate case it was Gunnery Sergeant Pappas. He was standing at parade rest in the center of the formation, apparently doing nothing but rocking backwards and forwards contemplating the pleasant spring day. What he was actually doing was applying his personal philosophy of life to a situation he found totally out of control.
He and the group recalled with him had been told that, thank you, we have all the senior NCOs we need for the Line and Strike formations. They were instead parceled out to Guard and training units as a leavening of experienced personnel. This was intended to "stiffen up" the units to which they were assigned. Gunny Pappas often considered the old adage that you cannot stiffen a bucket of spit with a handful of buckshot.
But he was a Marine (or whatever they wanted to call him this week) and when given an order said "aye, aye, sir," or "yes, sir," or whatever, and performed it to the best of his ability. So when told he was going to be a DI, he naturally requested Pendleton, since that was right by his home of record. Ground Force Personnel naturally sent him to Camp McCall, North Carolina, three thousand miles away.
Being in McCall might have been for the best. The Galactics had started to come through on one of their promises and he was one of the first group offered rejuvenation. The rejuv program was being run on a matrix of age, rank and seniority. Since the military ran on a framework of both an officer Corp and an equivalent NCO Corp, senior NCOs were prioritized with "equivalent" officers. As one of the oldest NCOs in the second layer of enlisted rank, he had received rejuvenation ahead of many sergeant majors that were younger. Thus, after a month of truly unpleasant reaction and growth, he found himself a physical twenty-year-old with a sixty-year-old's mind. He had forgotten what it was really like, the physical feeling of invincibility and energy, a coursing drive to do something, anything, all the time. Regular heavy-duty workouts were returning the musculature of his prime. They also served to occupy his other energies.
He had been a Marine for thirty years, twenty-seven of those married. During those twenty-seven years he had never strayed from the marriage bed. Not for him the phrase "I'm not divorced, just TDY." He never thought less of the other NCOs, or officers, who took advantage of deployments to pick up some action; as long as it did not affect their performance he could care less. But he had made a wedding vow to "cleave unto no other" and he believed in keeping a promise. It was the same as " 'til death do us part." Now, however, he had a twenty-year-old's body, and drives, and was married to a fifty-something wife. He was experiencing some difficulties with the situation. Fortunately or unfortunately, the pace of training the recalls and then using the recalls to train the new enlistees was so fierce he had not been able to get back to San Diego. The rejuv program was eventually supposed to be distributed to dependents of the military but he would believe it when he saw it. There were already rumors that the rejuv materials were running low, so who knew what to expect long term. He was really sweating his first meeting with Prissy.
Heaping insult on injury, since the most senior NCOs, like himself, were recalled first, there was currently a glut of E-8s and E-9s, the two most senior enlisted ranks. In the Navy they were referring to it as "too many Chiefs." In addition, because the emphasis was on training, most of the senior NCOs and officers were being assigned to basic and advanced training facilities. Therefore, instead of being assigned as the senior NCO in a company, he was assigned a mere platoon of recruits.
Thus he was not in the best of moods when he greeted the group of forty-five young men he was to make into Marines (or Strike troopers or soldiers or hoplites or whatever the FUCK you wanted to call them). Characteristically this made him smile at them. The less perceptive, seeing that the drill sergeant was not the sadistic cretin they had been warned of but a kindly smiling fellow, tentatively smiled back. The more perceptive suspected, correctly, that they were in serious trouble.
"Good morning, ladies," he said in a low, friendly tone. "My name is Gunnery Sergeant Pappas." The tone forced them to strain to hear. "For the next four months I will, I am sorry to say, be your drill sergeant. This fine, fit young fellow," he gestured at the attending drill corporal, "is Drill Corporal Adams. Think of us as your personal Marquis de Sade. Sort of an aerobics instructor gone horribly wrong.
"To begin learning that thing called military courtesy you will refer to me as if I were an officer. You will call me `sir' and salute when greeting me. Is that clear?"
"Yeah." "Okay." "No problem." "Yes, sir!"
"Oh, I am sorry. I didn't hear that. The correct response is `Clear, sir.' "
"Clear, sir."
He inserted a finger in one ear and dug around. "Sorry. I'm a bit hard of hearing. All the screams of dying recruits. A bit louder if you please."
"Clear, sir!" they yelled.
"I am apparently not making myself clear," he said very slowly and distinctly. "Front leaning rest position, move. For those cretins, meaning all of you of course that are unfamiliar with the term, that command means turn slightly to the right and assume the pushup position." A few of the recruits quickly dropped, some began, hesitantly, to follow the quietly given order but most continued to stand uncomprehending.