XIX
I could not believe the shocking reality present itself before me. My childhood bully, returned only mere weeks before, was now going to be my unit’s boss. I was riveted to the spot. “Dogo?” I asked with trepidation.
“THAT IS ‘SYORO’ TO YOU!” Dogo bellowed.
I was shaken. “Yes…syoro,” I murmured.
I couldn’t believe it. He was my superior. I had to kowtow to him – and it always wasn’t metaphorically.
You see, the fact that I was in the Pandoran Army is no big secret. However, if someone asks me what happened in it and what I did, I usually give quite a sparse answer. Probably the only two good things I took out of my entire experience were my issued night-vision horizon scanner, and the weapons training, particularly with guns. I surprised myself by how good I was at it – again, it was the same reason as my ability with the rapier.
However, the rest of my army experience is something that I don’t like to talk about. Still, I have bitten the proverbial bullet and expanded on what I tell people, below, though it may be summarised in places.
After Dogo explained the various proceedings (he ignored me, thankfully), he told us to stand still at attention until our group was called for Personal Inspection. The day was hot, and we were sweating out in the sun. Of course, he had stationed himself under a nearby tree during it.
It seemed like ages before our unit was called. While the rest of the units casually (yet smartly) made their way over to the inspection tent, we marched. There were people in our group who had not got a rhythm of marching, and Dogo accused me of being the one who messed them up, even though I was at the back. We lined up single-file and stood at attention. One of the conscripts fainted from heatstroke. Dogo blamed me and stood nearby.
All the while, I was still bemused and frustrated by how this all could be happening to me. I retreated to my thoughts. It took Dogo screaming in my ear to return me to the present to go inside the tent once it was my turn.
There I found out how come they were not concerned about Storage – they had someone who is known in Pandora as a teminopos, a “taker”, which is short for the actual job description of a “Mana Storage Item Inspector and Remover”. They’re called takers because it is their job to remove anything from the Mana Storage of people who have died. It takes years of university training to become one – at least twelve Fa’Dieli years. The students go in while young and come out middle-aged. What takes so long in training is that it is risky to remove items from other people’s Storage if the taker is unprepared, both to the taker and to the person, especially if they are alive.
Fortunately, they had an Inspection machine. It performed something like a CAT scan, and all the items in the person’s Storage would be displayed on a monitor for the taker. I had it done to me; it gives you a splitting headache.
Dogo’s behaviour was always dulled down around superior officers – a major was watching the proceedings, and he was talking to him.
“I see you have a troublesome recruit already,” the major noted.
“Yes, syoro,” he answered.
“Keep him in check, sergeant.”
“Yes, syoro, I will.”
“Sergeant, this…person…is carrying a screwdriver,” the taker reported as the machine stopped and I winced from my headache.
“Spit it up, Yoshi,” Dogo commanded.
The screwdriver
in question was
Dogo swiped it from my hand and put it in a bin labelled “waste”. I gulped back tears. “Move on!”
I did, and waited outside. There, I broke down.
Being at the back, it was not long before he came out. He screamed at me to get a hold of myself and to stand up straight. I was immediately rostered for latrine duty of our unit’s quarters.
I was never relieved of it.
We were then
issued with our uniform and equipment. There were two uniforms – dress and
general. The general was pretty much like camouflage gear, however, it was the
dress uniform that stood out. It had not changed in over two hundred years,
consisting of a steel helmet with a cap-like brim and protection around the
ears and neck, steel breastplate, torso and shoulder armour with a gold collar,
blue trousers and shirt, and brown boots. My trousers were special issue, due
to my tail. After we got our gear, we were sent off to the Togavos
Barracks, northeast of
That night, like every night following, I cried into my pillow. I never received any support from my fellow conscripts – they either sided with Dogo, were just too scared to act, or were Pandoran.
So it was no wonder, that after our initial two weeks of drill (Dogo relishing any mistakes I made), the first humiliation came.
Being an army, naturally, we had to use weapons, and the weapons of choice were guns. Hand to hand weapons are quite fashionable on Fa’Diel, though, so there was some training in that, but guns came first.
The way the Pandoran Army started off its new soldiers was with aim. If you can’t aim a gun, you’re useless. So, they gave us “friendly” paintball guns, and sacks filled with straw tied to poles. First time at the range, I got a pretty good score, even though Dogo forcibly corrected my grip on the gun every few minutes, because I could not hold it “properly” due to my non-existent fourth fingers. He viewed a list of my unit’s achievements when we were finished, and when he got to the place on the roll where my name was, he frowned and gave me a very quick glare.
It was late in the day, and after dinner in the mess hall, we were sent to bed since we would be waking up early the next one. We had no idea how early it was going to be, though, yet Dogo was up before everyone else. How do I know this? The sun was hours from rising when I was woken up by a cloth rammed into my mouth and Dogo’s hoarse whisper, “If you make one noise, lizard, you will be cleaning the latrines with that usefully long tongue of yours. You know I will see to it. Now get up.”
I did.
“Undress.”
I looked at him, shocked.
“I know your species don’t show their genitals. It’s in protocol. Do it.”
What else could I do?
He got behind me and tied the cloth tightly around the back of my head.
“On the double, conscript Yoshi, quick march!”
He led me to the range where we had used the paintball guns. I was starting to get an idea what was going on in that sick and twisted little mind of his. As I was half-expecting, he took me out to one of the poles and tied my hands behind it, followed by my waist. I struggled, but just like at school, he was too strong.
“I promised, lizard, that I would be back,” he snarled, his face right up in mine. “I know that when you get down, your marks go down; it’s what happened in Syoro Yarapren’s classes. When I heard you were going to face me in the Championships, I decided to seize my chance. And how did you get to be in my unit? Well, a simple suggestion was all it took – we knew each other, therefore, I could be helpful. And helpful I am right now; helpful in teaching you never to cross me, and helpful in teaching you that your kind are not welcome in my country.”
He spat in my face, blindfolded me, and left.
There I was, tied to a post, out in the cold, naked, Dogo’s globule of saliva trickling down one side of my nose. All that had happened to me was never malicious like this. It just seemed so surreal. I was getting cold when Dogo returned with the rest of my unit.
“Part of training in the Pandoran Army requires that you are ready should there be any invaders in our country. I present one to you right now. Unit, take up arms.”
Yes, it was as I had predicted, but worse. It was not just Dogo’s paintballs, but the rest of my unit’s, as well. I writhed and yelled muffledly through the gag.
“Don’t hold back, men! The enemy has a mind, just like you do! Fire when ready!”
They stung. It went on for about ten minutes before Dogo commanded them to stop. If there was any orange or white showing on my body, it was not my skin.
After sending the unit back to the barracks, Dogo returned to me.
“Conscript Yoshi, you are a disgrace to the Army of Pandora!” he snarled as he undid my blindfold and ties. “Look at yourself! Once you return to the barracks, clean up immediately! Do not emerge from the showers until there is not one speck of paint!” I knew why he wanted it all off: it was so he wouldn’t be caught.
I turned to him and held up a fist.
“You would not want to be striking a senior officer, would you?” he cooed.
I lowered it.
“On the double, quick march!”
But that was not the end of it. I endured five more nights of being humiliated and pelted with paintballs. And every time I saw Dogo during the ordeal, he was smiling.
On the last night, however, he told me, “Don’t think this is over, lizard. There’s more to come.”
I began to lose sleep. Therefore, I was naturally tired during the day, and came under Dogo’s glare and shouting for showing signs of this.
Our first “home” weekend occurred six weeks after we began, where we could leave the barracks and visit our families and friends. I was looking forward to it, but, much to my expectant dismay, Dogo forbade me from having it for “poor discipline”. He decided to keep me “out of harm’s way” by placing me in the holding cells. It was much like a prison for soldiers at the barracks who needed solitary confinement. That was what I got over that weekend. And who should have been running it?
Lieutenant Tenovos was surprised at first to see me, but that quickly turned to an attitude of disdain. “Yes, I thought this…creature…would be of the sort,” he told Dogo, glaring at me.
He did not speak to me over the weekend until my time was up the following Luna’s Day – a simple “Get out”.
At least I got some sleep, with nothing better to do.
We began to spend time in classes, rather than going out and doing practical activities. True, we did have shooting practice, and the occasional fling with a sword, but most of the time, we were shut up in rooms – probably to let the other soldiers use the facilities. We learnt about the history of the Pandoran Army – taught in primary schools, so it goes to show the calibre of some, if not most, of those conscripted – and theoretical things, like battle formations and the like. Of course, Dogo would ask me questions where I would have to embarrass myself because I didn’t know, and would ask me at least twice per class, “Did you get that, Yoshi?”
By the end of the third month, the second home weekend rolled around. Yet again, I was thrown into detention. Lieutenant Tenovos made no comment at all.
The second night was dark, with only the smallest moon, Barlen, showing his face. In my thoughts, I had sunk into the deepest pits of despair. Sergeant Tyrope was cruel and relentless in his pursuit to have me driven into the ground. I believed there and then he had achieved it and, once more, I set about killing myself; this time, with a barrage of Freeze spells. The racket had woken Tenovos, and so he sent me off to the barracks hospital, for close supervision and to heal myself.
Even there, I had no peace, for Dogo came in and growled at me, so that no others could hear, “Don’t you kill yourself on me, lizard. You will not spoil me of my victory.”
A psychiatric assessment put me off as not only depressed, but delirious – why would the sergeant of his unit command it to fire at one of its members? There were interviews with other members – of course, they were all chosen by Dogo, those people he could trust to say that it did not happen on his behalf. I was put onto anti-depressant medication. Fortunately, Dogo did not take it away from me. He wanted to keep me alive, and the first thing it was for, was the second humiliation.
Partway through the fourth month, we were to receive a visit from General Tigolatu, to see how we were doing. It was relatively early in the morning, enough so that as soon as we were clothed in our dress uniform, we would present ourselves on the parade ground. This was crucial timing for Dogo, for either he or someone loyal to him had loosened the stitches between the top of the tail hole and the waist. They fell down as I stood out there. Dogo thought it was suitable grounds for a week of detention, blaming “disrespect of superior officers” and “tardiness” and “failure of uniform upkeep” on me.
This time, my cell was warded to prevent any spells from being used.
When I came out, we would be preparing ourselves for the first “hike” – we would be spending a week out in the open, doing military exercises, playing skirmish-like games with paintball guns, as well as some live firing. And, as I discovered the day it began, this was why Dogo wanted me kept alive.
It was going to be the third, and utter, humiliation.