Caliphate полностью

Much like the empire it supported and defended, the school had grown considerably from its rather humble beginnings. For example, while its first class, that of 1806, had graduated and commissioned fifteen cadets, the current class, that of 2106, was more than one hundred times greater. The Class of 2106 was expected to send forth some fifteen hundred and twenty-seven newly commissioned second lieutenants, or roughly one-fortieth of all new officers accessed by the Army in this year.

* * *

Or, thought the gray-clad Cadet John Hamilton, as he paced off his four hundred and seventy-seventh hour of punishment tours, One- thousand, five hundred and twenty-six if I get too many more demerits. I must be a shoo-in for the Martinez Award by now. If, that is, I don't get found—booted from the Academy—on demerits.

As West Point traditions went, the Martinez Award was, at about one hundred years since founding, relatively new. Like being the goat—the last ranking man or woman of the class—it was a distinction not avidly sought. Still, there had been a fair number of general officers who had, in their time, been recipients of the award, just as there had been through history a fair number of goats who rose to stars, George Edward Pickett (1849) and George Armstrong Custer (1861) being neither the least significant nor the most successful among them.

Hamilton, though, wasn't interested in stars. He wasn't really all that interested in the Army, certainly not as a career. If he ever had been, the Imperial Military Academy had knocked such ambition out of him. Instead, he saw it as a way to pay for school and to serve out his mandatory service obligation. Whether that service would see him on the coasts of the Empire's British allies, more or less comfortably, if chillily, watching the Moslem janissaries across the Channel, or hunting Luminosos or Bolivanos in the mountains or jungles of the South American Territories, or policing the Philippine Islands, or any of the dozens of other places across the globe where the Empire held or fought for sway, he couldn't predict.

Anything, Lord, anything but freezing my balls off hunting Canadians in northern Quebec or Ontario, please. I'm too tall and skinny for the cold. Even Chechnya on the exchange program would be better.

"Ooodddiiinnn!" sounded again from out the barracks windows.

Hamilton already had his branch assignment, infantry. Yet he lacked for a unit assignment yet, and that must depend on the latest casualty figures and some schooling. As a matter of fact, he wouldn't find out his first assignment until he graduated Ranger School— assuming he did, of course; many did not—just before reporting in for the Basic Course at either Fort Benning (Light Infantry and Suited Heavy Infantry Officers Basic Course) or Fort Bliss (Mechanized Infantry Officer Basic Course) or Fort Stewart (Constabulary Infantry Officers Basic Course). And even then it might change if casualties in, say, Mindanao suddenly soared.

And the casualty lists are never short, Hamilton mused. They never have been; not in my lifetime, anyway. He stopped, again facing a stone wall, then transferred his rifle and executed an about face. Then again, when you've got a population of your own in excess of five hundred million, and control more than another billion, what's a few thousand a month? Except that one of them, sometime in the next five years, might be me. Oh, well . . . buy your ticket and take your chances. And it isn't as if we've a lot of choice about fighting. Maybe once we had that kind of choice. Not anymore.

Hamilton took a surreptitious glance overhead. Yes, clouds were gathering. The prayers were working. Perhaps no parade tomorrow.

"OOODDDIIINNN!"

One of the nice things about walking hours in the Area was that it gave one time to think, though the weather could sometimes be all that one was able to think about. Weather permitting though, and today was merely brisk rather than outright miserable, one could really do some interior soul searching and reflection. Hamilton wondered, sometimes, if he didn't court demerits just so he could have that time alone.