The iron whitens in the heat.
With plangent strokes of pain and loss
The hammers on the iron beat.
Searched by the fire, through death and dole
We feel the iron in our soul.
They’d been forged in fire and death, but now the fire was quenched in laughter, just as the white-hot sword is quenched in water. They were stronger for the quenching and there was, indeed, iron in their souls.
Soon the puppies each carried a baby monkey, a true kindred spirit riding gleefully upon their backs. The inspired naughtiness and boundless energy of the puppies seemed to be reflected perfectly in the monkeys. Together they persistently went about the serious business of play, attacking the toes of the barefooted sailors, chewing at the railing, and mounting combined-arms offensives on the mops that flogged the decks each morning. Like the cats, the puppies needed to be taught to use the heads, dropping their urine and feces into interstellar space. This batch of puppies seemed to be learning particularly quickly, apparently helped along by their monkeys.
Every day the great guns fired and, like the monkeys and puppies, they too were learning how to integrate themselves as full-fledged members of the team. And each day the crew members were drilled extensively in combat craft. For the sailors, that meant rifle practice and bayonet drill. For the midshipmen, it meant extensive pistol training.
Petreckski was in charge of most aspects of the midshipmen’s training. He was their schoolmaster, teaching them in the classics and many other areas, but he took particular delight at training them in pistolcraft. With a battle pending he saw this as a priority task.
“Gentlemen,” said the monk to his students as they began pistol practice on targets hanging from the yardarms, “I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to focus your eyes on the front sight of your pistol. You want to look at the target, but even though you look with all your might, it will accomplish nothing. You cannot influence the target one little bit by looking at it, but you can influence your pistol by focusing on the front sight.” He looked at Hezikiah Jubal and shook his head sadly. Jubal was an excellent sailor but he was adjusting poorly to using a pistol.
The middies stood facing the targets suspended over the dark blue plain of Flatland. The targets were chunks of wood and canvas carefully shaped and painted to look like human beings. In front of them was a rack of pistols. Petreckski stood to the left of the line, facing them. “Each of you pick up a pistol from the rack and face the target in the low ready position. The pistols have been loaded.
“Now, think of yourselves as artists. Your pistol is your brush. The artist uses the brush to paint with. He moves the brush, not the painting. He focuses on the tip of the brush to get the stroke right. What you are painting, my friends, is literally a masterpiece of life and death. Life for you and your friends, death for the enemy who is trying to kill you. All painted on a canvas of flesh with your little front sight. Do you understand?”
“Aye, sir,” they answered in chorus. The new middies had all acquired monkeys. Now each middy had a monkey on his back, nodding in unison with its master. Petreckski also had a new monkey. It had quickly acquired a comical air of dignity and grave wisdom. It looked like a little Buddha sitting on his shoulder, folding its hands on its thorax, and comically mimicking the monk’s gravity.
“Gentlemen, today I have a special drill to be sure you focus on your front sight. A number has been painted on each of your front sights. No, don’t look! It’s very small, and the only way you can read it is to focus very carefully on the front sight. So now, one by one, you will raise your pistols and place the front sight on the target. Then focus on the number, calling it off as you fire. Do you understand?”
“Aye, sir . . .” they said, with some uncertainly.
“Starting from the right. Mr. Jubal, ready, fire.”
Jubal raised the weapon up to point at the chunk of scrap wood that was his target. Beneath them were the floorboards, before them the railing, behind them stood the mainmast, above them hung the mainyard. All were coated with Moss and glowing like vast florescent bulbs. By this ample light he brought his pistol up onto the target and read the number painted on the sight as he slipped his thumb over the Keel charge. “Three.” <
“Good! Did you see how that worked?”
“Yes sir! That was amazing! Now I understand what you meant about focusing on the front sight.”
“Good,” replied the monk with a pleased smile, folding his hands on his ample belly. “We will all do that, reload, switch pistols, and do it again and again.”
Later, as the excited and pleased middies took a break after their drill, Tung asked, “Sir, why do we fire at targets shaped like people? Why not Guldur, since that’s what we are likely to face?”
“Ah, grasshopper,” replied the monk with a smile. “That’s because anyone can kill a member of another species. That’s easy. But inside the midbrain of most healthy members of most species is a hardwired resistance to killing your own kind. Animals with horns fight each other head-to-head in their territorial and mating battles, while they try to gut and gore any other species. Piranha, a breed of fish that is essentially teeth with fins attached, fight each other with flicks of the tail, but they will devour anything else that hits the water. Rattlesnakes will sink their fangs into anything and everything, except each other . . . and lawyers,” he added with a blissful smile. “Any species that didn’t have this resistance would soon be driven extinct by their own territorial and mating battles.”
The midshipmen sat on the deck, leaning back against the railing and listening intently as the monk continued. They were sore from days of pistol practice. Their arm and shoulder muscles ached. Their hands were rubbed raw from the recoil of thousands of rounds of ammunition, and they were happy to take a break and exercise their ears and their minds for a change as their teacher leaned against the mainmast and continued. “In the twentieth century, mankind became aware of this resistance when research showed that the vast majority of soldiers in combat wouldn’t fire their weapons at an exposed enemy, even to save their own lives.
“Now, my friends, the question you should ask yourself at this point is . . . what?” Then he waited, and the tension built as the midshipmen looked at each other.
“Well, sir,” said Tung, frowning with concentration, “If it’s so hard for humans to kill each other, how did we fill so many military cemeteries over the centuries?”
“Excellent, Mr. Tung! You win the big ‘no prize’ for today. Consider, gentlemen, that we weren’t born with the ability to fly, yet we have this brain that permits us to overcome that limitation. And although we may have some innate difficulty in bringing ourselves to kill members of our own species, the entire evolution of military history has been a process of ever better mechanisms to enable us to kill. Groups, leaders, distance, all these things are effective and useful at enabling killing, but nothing beats training.
“Remember, you might have to shoot in an ambush, gunning down your enemy in cold blood before they even know you’re there. Anyone can understand shooting to protect themselves. You give me five minutes and I’ll make any sentient being in the galaxy mad enough to shoot me. The real question is, will they have that much time in a fight? The time to decide whether or not you can calmly gun down an enemy soldier, before they have a chance to kill you, is now, before the battle. Your life, and the lives of your comrades depend on it.
“Thus you must always practice on the most realistic simulator possible. A simulator of the thing that is hardest to kill. Perhaps we will face human pirates, or some species so similar to ourselves that our brain is tricked. We must prepare for these eventualities, but mostly it’s the principle of the matter. Anyone can kill a member of another species, but only a well trained warrior can kill members of his own species in cold blood.”
“But, sir, isn’t that dangerous?” asked Aquinar. His monkey, sitting wide-eyed on his shoulder seemed to nod in agreement.
“Yes, it can be dangerous, but failing to prepare your warriors to kill in combat is far, far more dangerous. Ultimately the safeguard is discipline. Every warrior has two values pounded into his skull from the very earliest days. Violence, and discipline.” The midshipmen nodded and many of the sailors were finding nearby tasks to complete so they could listen. The whole ship felt honored to have such a “learned cove” as their purser, and this was a subject that interested them greatly.