Free The Last Legion: Book One of the Last Legion Series by Chris Bunch Page A

said. “Group … ten-hup!”
    Garvin, without willing it, slammed to rigid erectness, his hands at his side, slightly curled, his feet together, and his head tucked firmly into his chin.
    “ ‘Bout … hace!”
    Garvin lifted his right foot, put his toe behind his left heel, and pivoted through 180 degrees.
    “I could march you back and forth and up and down,” the
dec
said. “Make you do squads right about, flanking movements, and all that swaddle.
    “You’d do it like you’d spent ten years on a parade ground. No muss, no fuss, one hypno-conditioning and three hours in the chair, and you’ve got it, without even one lousy little bead of sweat or blister.”
    Garvin felt his skin crawl. “That conditioning could’ve trained me to do anything?”
    “Yep,” Dill said. “That’s why the injection can only be given by an officer, and a responsible medical team must be present during the application.” He laughed. “See how careful the army is about your rights?”
    Dill’s laugh cut off as he saw Garvin’s expression.
    “Sorry. Guess it isn’t funny the first time. The real answer is no … this kind of conditioning, a one-shot program, only takes because you don’t have any objection to it. If I’d wanted you to go murder your mother, say, it would take a whole bunch more time. A year, maybe. That’s why conditioning takes so long.”
    “What’s that?”
    “You must’ve come from a pretty decent world,” Dill said. “A lot of Confederation planets use that as a last resort for crooks. Three times, and they put a little voice in your head telling you what you can and can’t do. Nasty shit.”
    “Where I was,” Garvin said, “when I enlisted, they didn’t do anything like that. Just shot you for any serious offense.”
    “Humanitarians, every one,” Dill agreed. “Now quit lazin’ about and get your ass out on detail. We’re gonna do some
real
soldiering and give the
caud’s
lawn a haircut.”
    • • •
    “Recruit Yoshitaro,” Monique Lir shouted an inch from Njangu’s ear, “that log isn’t heavy, is it?”
    “NO, DEC.”
    “It’s your favorite toy, isn’t it, Recruit Yoshitaro?”
    “YES,
DEC
!”
    “Thought so. Squad … on the count of three, switch shoulders … one, two, THREE!”
    In unison the five trainees lifted the eight foot long chunk of wood from their left shoulder to the right.
    “Sloppy, very sloppy,” Lir shouted. “Prepare to ground log, on the count of three … one, two, THREE.”
    The chunk of wood thudded to the ground.
    “Squad, ten-hut! Three deep breaths, in unison …”
    Yoshitaro sucked air, tried to blink sweat from his eyes. He’d never hurt so bad in his entire life, not from his father’s beatings, not from anything from the police. Why he didn’t tell Lir to shove it and go find a place in a rifle company was beyond him.
    Possibly
, he thought,
pure terror from what the drill instructor would do to me if I even thought of quitting.
    He might’ve considered Lir beautiful on meeting, but now she was a slavering demon from the worst pits of a hell he hadn’t believed in until recently. As for bee-kissed, he hoped the mythical bee was about the size of a Grierson, and would come back for a return bout soon.
    “Are we happy, squad?” Lir bellowed.
    “YES, DEC.”
    Njangu wondered how the other four in the team had managed to survive two weeks of torment before he got there. D-Cumbre natives must be tougher than they looked. Three days into this degradation, he knew little more about them than their names and what they’d done before. By the time Lir allowed them to crawl into the tents they slept in, across the street from the barracks Njangu now thought more palatial than any luxury hotel he’d ever burgled, there wasn’t much inclination for idle chitchat.
    Hank Faull was a former ’Raum, one of the miner/cultists Petr had told him about, seventeen, eighteen hundred years ago on the
Malvern
, when he didn’t hurt all the time