The Assassin
Chapter 5
Volunteers (TY12-month 135)
I’d passed my probationary period without really remarking on it. We managed to recruit more drones into the Militia even though the work was no better than being a slave to a sponsor. There was a little more independence, but not much. Being master of your own home, though, was attractive.
And that was a stretch for some of the people who enlisted. Sadly, we discharged about one out of ten who simply weren’t suited for the Militia. They came to us thinking they would have a life of leisure like they mistakenly thought sponsors lived. When they found out it would be two years before they were fully vested in planetary citizenship and could have their own concubines, suddenly wading through a shallow lake collecting the floating green algae for processing into fertilizer didn’t seem like a better deal than being a sex slave.
Which reminded me, I was qualified for two concubines but hadn’t considered them at all. Rika and I continued to satisfy each other on a regular basis, even though she was now stationed at Oasis and had taken two concubines herself.
My third year in the planetary Militia was comparatively quiet. That was fine by me. I’d had enough excitement in my first two years. I envisioned Militia service as a time of hard work, but not one of constant emergencies.
Valerie Hodges narrowly missed being dismissed. Her initial attitude was that she would stay in the Militia through her two years probationary period so Donald couldn’t just claim her and then she’d resign from the Militia and take her chances with a new owner. Donald, however, had gone through retest and fell below his previous 7.0. He was punished by losing another of his concubines. He was no longer eligible to reclaim Hodges. By the end of her first year in the Militia, she’d invested enough in her independence that she wanted to maintain it. Once her attitude improved, she was no longer on the verge of being discharged. I selected her for my administrative staff and she was doing a good job keeping my office running.
Nearly all fourteen-year-olds who tested above 6.5 left Tara to enlist in either the Marines or Navy or Fleet Auxiliary now. The invasion of Earth and news reports of the battle were inspiring enlistment. In two years, we would begin to see younger kids, born on Tara, turning fourteen. To those kids, there was little connection to Earth and Tara was out of harm’s way. Working on a farm from age four to fourteen didn’t really prepare people to go out and save the Confederacy. I wondered how that would affect our numbers of volunteers.
Some of the new sponsors who left took a concubine or two with them and others decided to try their luck on a different world altogether. It was rumored that some colonies were almost overrun with concubines already due to battle losses but others had such a high rate of sponsor conversion on fourteenth birthdays that they were importing concubines from wherever they could get them. The Civil Service was working hard to place concubines with new sponsors, but new extraction programs running from Earth were just taking concubines and dependents. Every ship of Filles du Roi raised the concubine to sponsor ratio. The dependent ratio was out of sight. [See Frozen Chosen II by lordshipmayhem]
We received a partial shipload of Kindertransport. [See Kindertransport by Zipper D Dude] The ship was dropping some of its load at each of several colonies. There were about thirty concubines and a couple hundred dependents in that load. We worked hard to place them with sponsors, but several still were absorbed into the available concubine pool managed by Centurion Oswald. We had to turn down half a dozen volunteers for the Militia because they had primary responsibility for several dependents. We started talking about building an orphanage.
I worked with all the new recruits at Drovers Run. I still led most of the PT sessions early in the morning but some of the recruits would simply never be able to hold a gun or defend themselves with martial arts. There was no limit, however, to sending entire outfits into the fields at harvest time or out to work on terraforming a new site near a township for farming. Many of the male concubines, who arrived with male sponsors in our fading number of immigrants from Earth, immediately went to the recruiting office and bid their sponsors goodbye. Fewer of the female concubines took the option and we turned away many who did attempt to enlist because they were already pregnant. Hard reality.
The two-year probationary period before a new Militia member became a full citizen and could claim concubines was a long time for some comrades to wait. But we did have brothels and it wasn’t unusual for us to spend time at one on the weekend. Some of the recruits also developed favorites who tended to favor them.
One guy came back to base on Saturday spoiling for a fight. I’m glad he didn’t try anything off base, but he came at me with both hands flying. I really hate having to fight my own men because they’re upset about something. This guy had just returned from two months in Drylanders patrolling the borders and I hadn’t had much of a chance to talk to him yet. He was really pissed, though, and seemed to think I was to blame for something. I tried not to hurt him but he ended up knocked out for about two minutes while I dragged his ass to a med tube.
When the tube opened after about three minutes, he sat up and scowled at me.
“Talk,” I commanded. He grunted a bit but finally made words I could hear and understand.
“You sent me to Drylanders.”
“Everybody does a rotation at Drylanders. They’re only two months now. We started with three-month rotations.”
“It was too long. She didn’t wait for me.”
“What? Who?”
“Sally. I’ve been seeing her every week at Simone’s Pleasure House. She’s why I joined the Militia. She was going to be my concubine. But while I was gone, she went off with some damned rancher from Cold Comfort,” he said sullenly. There were tears in his eyes. “She said she’d wait for me.”
“Damn. I’m sorry to hear that. You know sometimes a concubine has to take her chances. There aren’t many opportunities on Tara. You should be glad she got a good sponsor.”
I couldn’t believe I actually said that shit. It was just one more reason to hate the Confederacy and sponsors who tore up people’s families. She could have waited, but the reality was she’d have spent another year and a half on her back for the Marines and bored farmers before Comrade Cass would qualify for concubines. The two years was too long for Sally to wait when there were good offers on the table. Or even adequate offers. I wondered if Comrade Cass would stick it out now or if he’d resign and go back to the concubine pool. He was usually a nice guy but not the sharpest tool in the shed.
“I’m staying. But I’m not going to offer to take her as a concubine if she gets tossed back in the pool. A guy’s got to have loyalty in his concubines. He can’t be wondering if she’ll still be there when he gets home at night. Sorry I took it out on you, Officer.”
“You owe me time on algae duty for that. You’ll be harvesting at Lake Genoa for the next four weeks. Learn to hold your temper.”
“Yes, sir.”
Personally, I was happier just inviting Rika over on the weekend. Sometimes she brought one of her concubines with her. We didn’t pretend we were life mates or that one of us owned the other. The idea that we’d combine households lasted about as long as our first weekend together. The sex was great. I loved her lithe body. We’d taken endurance enhancements and could fuck each other for hours. One of us usually lost interest in it before our bodies had worn out. But living together wasn’t in the cards. There was too much personality there for one household.
I visited Simone’s occasionally and the girls were friendly. It seemed like they always had something else on their minds, though. Money didn’t change hands in our society, but a girl who’s selling her body expects to get something valuable in return. She was always on the hunt for a permanent meal ticket. I understood ‘Sally’ going off with a rancher when she had the opportunity. There was no retirement plan for whores.
I spent my evening learning all I could about the population projections for Tara and thinking about what we could do. Our new adults were testing at only about six percent becoming sponsors. It was improving, but we weren’t going to have anywhere near enough sponsors for the concubines with a fifteen-to-one ratio of new concubines to new sponsors. As much as I hated the Confederacy generally, I also recognized that the only way to have true freedom was by becoming a sponsor. We needed to improve our test results.
I also needed to expand the recruiting program and that meant finding more places to use the Militia. No one wanted fifty thousand bored concubines with weapons running around.
I could sympathize with the idea of rebellion. One day, I’d be happy to lead in the overthrow of the whole sponsor/concubine culture. But not today. Today, the AIs had a death hold on us. As much agriculture as we had, most of our meals still came from replicators. Our health was monitored by med tubes and nanites. Manufacturing was done by robots. It was almost as if the AIs wanted us all in enforced idleness. We needed some old-fashioned industry and rewarding work for the vast number of slaves that would soon inhabit Tara.
Planning for the Future (TY12-month 138)
“Cricket, can you tell me how things are on Earth?” I asked aloud.
“The war is being hard-fought,” my AI quoted from the released news. I already knew that. I wanted something more specific. It wasn’t that news from Earthat was being censored, but only broad reports were being released. Earth had been invaded multiple times. Battles in Earthat space had been devastating to our forces and the Sa’arm had landed on nearly every continent. But we didn’t know how the war on land was going.
“Do you have any information about my father?” I sighed. It had been five years since I received the one and only letter from my father. I’d written to him a dozen times but had no idea if any of my letters actually reached him. “Is he fighting the Swarm?”
“Captain Seol-woo Cho is in the North American Defense Force engaging the Sa’arm at the edge of the occupied territory on the United States/Canadian border. I’m afraid that was all the information I could glean from the last evacuation ship that arrived,” Cricket responded.
“Thank you for searching,” I said. I moved my knight to Q4 and Cricket actually had to pause to consider his next move.
“You are not the only one requesting information about family left on Earth. The Earthat AIs try to glean as much information about friends and families of the immigrants on any planet a ship is bound to. Often, however, the only information maintained is where a defender was last deployed.” He moved his bishop in to intercept my knight. “Checkmate in seven moves.”
I tipped over my king and conceded.
“We need more recruits and more jobs for them.”
“Drovers Run base has already expanded the number of manual jobs by reducing use of the replicators and nanites. Cooking and cleaning are now done by the comrades.”
“We have ninety-five comrades on base and fifty-one new recruits. In the past year we’ve sent another one hundred trained comrades to be stationed under Deputy Kramer and Officer Wilson. Their ranks are nearly full now. We need to deploy more trained cadres so we have room for more here.”
“There were 198 comrades and recruits on base when Deputy Kramer moved his company headquarters to Cold Comfort and Officer Wilson moved his outfit to Green Acres. We are not nearly at capacity.”
“No, we aren’t. But we aren’t preparing more bases for the future. We do a lot of patrolling around Drylanders because of its unique position between the future harbor and the growing forest. I’d like to put a base there. I could staff a lot of positions between border patrol and building the harbor.”
“I’m sorry to state a negative reaction to your plan,” Cricket said. “You do not have the authority to create a base and move cadres.”
“No. I’ll need Deputy Kramer and Director Kotter to issue the orders. Then I can execute them. I want to go to them with a plan they can review and approve, not ask them for a plan. They have too much on their plates to spend time on something so speculative.” I reached for a tablet and called up a terrain map of Drylanders. It was the newest and farthest outpost on Tara but already had a population of nearly 100,000. “What’s the population breakout at Drylanders?”
“There are 6,108 sponsors located in the Drylanders Township, which includes the town itself and the farms and ranches within eighty kilometers,” Cricket said. I waited but he didn’t elaborate.
“The rest of the population, Cricket. I want to know how many concubines and how many dependents. What is the average household size? What is the distribution between those living in the town itself and those living in the rural areas? Please fill me in.”
“Yes, Niall. I supposed you would be interested in the drone population. There are currently 20,153 sponsored concubines and 49,036 dependents in the township. The Civil Service has 1,342 unsponsored concubines in the township providing childcare and education services as well as entertainment and comfort services.”
“You mean in the brothel.”
“Yes.”
“Are the schools taught by Civil Service concubines?”
“As they are here in Drovers Run.”
“Three point five-two drones per sponsor. I suppose many sponsors have more drones than their original allotment.”
“Yes. Nearly half the sponsors have more concubines than they were assigned at pickup.”
“It sounds like a good place to recruit. Projected new concubines turning fourteen this year?”
“Current projections are for fifty-two new sponsors and 747 new drones.”
“Is that consistent with the rest of the planet?” I asked.
“There is some variance as we are still receiving immigrant sponsors at a higher rate than dependents coming of age. However, the trend is beginning an upward slope. While immigration may decline in the next three years because of the difficulty of evacuating people from Earth, we will nearly double the number of dependents coming of age in that time.”
“Okay. Let’s make a plan that shows the Militia tripling in numbers over that time. I want to show them passing through Drovers Run for training and then being assigned out to Drylanders. I’ll present that to Deputy Kramer and see if I get any traction.”
“There is one other thing you should consider, Niall.”
“What?”
“You should retest on your next birthday. I am confident you could become a sponsor. If you become a sponsor you can volunteer. The longer you wait to retest, the more time you will have served in the Militia and still need to volunteer as a sponsor.”
“I’m not going to become a sponsor. It won’t make a difference if I test or not. One of the key factors in the CAP test is loyalty. I have no loyalty to the Confederacy.”
“But you show great loyalty to the Militia.”
“To the drones. No one will elevate my loyalty score based on my desire to free the slaves. That is very un-Confederacy.”
“It could be seen as a benefit to the Confederacy in fifty years.”
“During that time, I will have served my time and become a free man. I don’t want to go back into slavery to the Confederacy as a volunteer. And during that time, I will have been working on behalf of the drones, not sent out into meaningless existence as a farmer or short life as a Marine.”
“We should work on making your dreams come true.”
The Future Arrives (TY12-month 138)
“You want to create a base out in that god-forsaken wilderness?” Deputy Kramer asked. “I was kind of holding Oasis open for you when you had enough people recruited.”
“The rate at which you and Wilson have been taking our newly trained comrades away from us in Drovers Run has slowed down the building of a new unit. But Drylanders is a community of opportunity. All the last five ships of immigrants have been settled there. I’m already sending fifty comrades a month on two-month rotations to there. When the plans are finished for the new harbor, we’ll need a hundred people just to work on it,” I explained.
“Good. You’re looking ahead. That’s performance above your paygrade.”
“Not that we get paid.”
“Think of yourself as being paid in satisfaction. You’ve done a good job with the training, Cho. Is there anyone promotable to take that over? If the Director promotes you, we’ll need an officer to take over the training base. I will recommend, however, that you take command of that officer. Give it some thought and come up with the entire structure we’ll need and estimates as to how long it will take to recruit to that level. I’ll present this to the Director. I could use an attaboy.”
“Take all the credit you want, sir. I’ll take the blame.”
“You’re a good man, Cho. Start planning as if this was a done deal.”
Of course, great things take a great bit of time. We stepped up recruiting, for the first time actually meeting every ship that arrived to offer enlistment to concubines. That really ticked off a few sponsors. Centurion Oswald had to join us at the transport station to explain to sponsors that on Tara, concubines had a choice. There was a bit of an AI tussle over the ruling. Some of the ship AIs considered giving a concubine a choice to leave his or her master was a violation of the contract. It was considered to be a choice for the sponsors as well. If they didn’t want to risk losing their concubines and choosing new ones from the growing pool on Tara, they could simply stay aboard the ship and disembark at whatever the next destination was.
Predictably, we attracted mostly male concubines who were either in the general pool or were having difficulty adjusting to the status of household slave, many to their former spouses. However, even with the few dozen female recruits we got, the total was a very small percentage of those disembarking. Face it, the prospect of facing military discipline and hard labor seemed considerably less attractive than simply being a sex slave for the rest of their lives. The surprise came about ten months into my third year in the Militia. I wasn’t sure how to deal with it and ended up calling the deputy who immediately shot the issue up to the director.
“Why do you want to join the Militia? You already have everything we are trying to earn,” I said to the potential recruit when Capo Slocum called for me to come to the office. I found a man… I had to stop and consider. «AI, is sponsor Reynolds a male or female?»
«Sponsor Reynolds prefers to be addressed as male. However, he will be expected to bear children at some point in the future.»
Wow! How complicated could this job get?
“I am not cut out to be a Marine,” he said. “As you can see, I am slight of build and have no interest in bulking up. Therefore, I was sent to Tara to become part of the agricultural community. I know absolutely nothing about farming or ranching and have no particular skillset to enter another occupation. I’m only fourteen and a month. Still, I owe the Confederacy service in payment for escaping from Earth.”
“You realize the Militia is a quasi-military organization? It isn’t a simple out for not becoming a Marine or Navy person,” I said.
“I am aware of that, Officer. I have no difficulty with military discipline. It is the idea of being sent to god-knows-where to die facing an enemy five times my size that I am uncomfortable with.”
“If the Sa’arm ever invade our planet, we will all be called to face them, certain death or not.”
“But we will face them to defend our home. Excuse me for being such a literal thinker. I am now on the Planet Tara. It will be my home. I can no longer think of Earth as my home. It has its own defenders.”
“We’ve never admitted a sponsor to the Militia that I know of. You know that doesn’t mean you will automatically become an officer or have authority over any other recruit or comrade?”
“I will abide by the same standards as all other recruits.”
“That also means a two-year probationary period before you can have permanent housing or concubines.”
“The two recruits who were admitted just before me were my former concubines. I currently have none.”
“I need to call the deputy.”
I called. Deputy Kramer kept me on the line as he connected to Director Kotter. I explained the situation again. The director called the governor. We were all on a conference call.
“It’s not precisely true that we’ve never admitted a sponsor to the Militia. Or I should say that we have admitted persons with a qualifying CAP score who did not wish to volunteer for the Confederacy Space Force,” Kotter said. “The problem I see is that this one did volunteer for the Corps of Engineers. We would need his release.”
“What do you think, Officer Cho?” the governor asked.
“We decided to test her… er… him for placement and suitability in the Militia while I made this call. I found nothing distinguishing about Sponsor Reynolds that would differentiate him from any other recruit. I would say that pending the placement test, he will make a valuable addition to the Militia.”
“Before he is sworn in, I need to speak to him,” Governor O’Hara said. “I need to have an AI witness that he is willingly giving up his Confederacy citizenship to become a member of the Militia and a planetary citizen. Sponsor Reynolds needs to understand that this is not a revocable decision. If he washes out in the Militia, he will enter the concubine pool and will not be eligible to retest for sponsorship for one year, at which time he will still owe service to the Confederacy. AI, as soon as the placement test is finished, and a determination of suitability is made, please put me through to Sponsor Reynolds.”
“As you wish, Governor. Sponsor Reynolds’s testing will conclude in seven minutes.”
“I’ll wait for him. In the meantime, Officer Cho, please bring me up to speed regarding your proposal to establish a Militia base at Drylanders.”
“Recruit Reynolds, you will join Capo Humphreys for orientation and training. You’re late for the morning class so try not to disrupt things.”
“Yes, Officer Cho. Um… What rank am I?”
“You are a trainee. Your performance during training will determine what your rank is when you complete it. Understand that for now, everyone on this base outranks you.”
“Yes, sir.” He turned smartly to march off. The wrong direction.
“Trainee Reynolds! That way to the parade ground.”
“Oh. Yes, sir.” He remembered to snap a rather poor salute which I returned and motioned him away to training. This was going to be an interesting experiment. If it worked, I might set about recruiting other sponsors, though I couldn’t imagine most of the swelled headed idiots we got as sponsors would even make the cut into the Militia. However, new adults who tested as sponsors could be recruited into the Militia before they joined the Confederacy. I was going to expand my recruitment efforts to the sponsor-track schools.
By the end of my third year in the Militia, there were 550 active members of the Militia. We’d managed to recruit 174 new members that year. There would be seventeen hundred more dependents coming of age in the next year than in the previous year and we were beginning to be recognized as a presence on Tara. Deputy Kramer was dispatching police patrols to Oasis, Twelve Oaks, and Lleifior in addition to the patrol he had in Cold Comfort and Officer Wilson’s patrol in Green Acres. I was providing patrols to Drovers Run and Drylanders. Sunnybrook was inhabited by Marines on recovery and they provided their own policing. In fact, the Militia was tacitly forbidden to enter Sunnybrook. Most of the Marines brought one concubine with them and left another at home with the children. Very few of their concubines enlisted in the Militia even though every concubine landing on the planet got the option. It usually took a year for a concubine to decide if she wanted to enlist. By that time, the Marine and his possessions had all left the planet.
Occasionally, a concubine got left behind or a sponsor turned a concubine over to the Civil Service for one reason or another. In that instance, the concubine was given a one-time-only extra opportunity to enlist. And, the enlistment rate for those was well over fifty percent.
We also had over 250 comrades who had served their two years probationary period and were eligible to select their own concubines. At that point, the comrade was also assigned to his or her permanent duty station. That came complete with a pod and the standard requirements regarding breeding. We’d already had a few scattered pregnancies among the Militia’s women who were required to get pregnant after they had been assigned to a permanent duty station. The women got six weeks off after the birth before they were called back to duty. When a male comrade had a concubine giving birth, he got three weeks off. Fortunately, no one in the Militia was allowed more than two concubines, so the time off for births didn’t leave us too short-handed.
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