“The last thing you want to do is just flop out sideways,” said the grizzled old Mancunian instructor. His camo uniform didn’t have a name tape on the chest, and he wore the sandy beige beret of the ultra-secretive and extraordinarily efficient Special Air Service—often referred to by the mysterious acronym ‘T.H.E.M’.
“See, you do that and your first reflex is—what? Anyone?”
He leaned out of the open passenger seat of the LCRV, so far that it looked like he would tip right out.
“You reach out with a hand, sir,” said Tahj.
The Warrant Officer pointed to him. “Good. Reflex, y’see.”
He tipped himself right over, slapping out a hand at the last moment to stop his fall.
“Quickest route to a broken arm, that.”
Instead, he turned in the seat and put his heels on the edge of the doorframe, then pushed himself out with his hands, performing a sort of somersault out onto the rubbery mat. “It’s hard to demonstrate from a stationary truck, but when you do it you want to roll in the direction of travel, just like the wheel rolls along the ground, y’see.”
The four trainees nodded. He pointed to one of them, a New Indian named Mistry, and told him to drive. Private Mistry took the wheel, and the WO instructed him where to go. Tahj, Veraa and Private Poliakoff watched the LCRV loop all the way around the parade ground before lining up and heading toward them. The instructor seemed to be pulling on a set of elbow pads. The lumpy jeep cruised past and the sixty-something-year-old WO rolled neatly out onto the mat like he’d been doing it since the day he was born. He sort of tumbled out, tucking his head in and absorbing most of the impact with his shoulder, then rolled on his back and somehow ended up on his knees at the end of it all. Mistry turned the jeep around and came back. The nameless WO was grinning through his grey beard at them.
“Don’t worry about getting it wrong the first few times; that’s what the mat’s there for, y’see.”
Everyone got plenty of practice and coaching, and by the end of it any one of them could execute a perfect ‘emergency dismount’. At the end of the lesson, Mistry drove and the others all piled onto the back of the LCRV, with the WO still in the passenger seat. Veraa stood in the machine gun ring at the top of the rollcage, resting easily against the side as the jeep buzzed through the concrete maze. They dropped the instructor off at an admin hut and continued on to the White Troop workshop. Veraa had noticed a distinct difference between the open and casual—by military standards—atmosphere at School of Armour and the rigid and sternly disapproving atmosphere at RS. Recruits weren’t treated like children, but they weren’t given much responsibility either; at a trade school, the trainees were seen as fully-fledged and fully responsible service members. Nobody shouted at them for being out of step in the corridors. They were often sent on errands, entrusted with important jobs, and given liberties that they hadn’t even dreamt of as recruits. During off-duty hours, they were not only permitted to wander freely about the depot, they were also allowed to leave the site and travel down to the village of Ruthven itself. Sunbathing was a popular pastime among the personnel, who would take lawn chairs and foam mats out into the fields just outside the gate to catch every ray of sunshine they could.
As the only Cavalry Scout in her training class, Veraa often attended lessons alone, as did Poliakoff as the only Battle Tank Crewmember. Tahj and Mistry were both training for Cavalry ACV Crewman, and so had almost all of their classes together. Most lessons were conducted in briefing rooms attached to the White Troop workshop, or in the workshop space itself, so the four of them were never far apart.
During one such solo lesson, which was being held in the back of an MCV-44 Armoured Cavalry Vehicle—a kind of tank-on-wheels which could transport ten or twelve men in the rear compartment—she read about career progression for Cavalry Scouts. A Cav Scout could expect a fairly linear and uncomplicated career path, starting off as a basic scout and working up to Patrol Leader, then on to various administrative and command positions within a Cav or Armoured unit. However, one small paragraph near the very end of the info sheet piqued her interest.
“Corporal?”
Her instructor glanced up from where he was checking a clipboard. “Mm?”
“It says here that Cav Scout is a potential pathway into specialist recon roles. What kind of roles do they mean?”
He shrugged. “Well, we’re pretty well represented in Marine Recon, and even Marine Special Ops. If you pass LRMT you can fast-track into the Marine Scout/Sniper course.”
“LRMT?”
“Long-Range Marksmanship Test. You’ve already got a marksmanship medal, haven’t you?”
“Yes, the Reynolds Award.”
“Thought so. Well, you need to be Corporal or higher to be selected for Sniper School. Is that something you’d be interested in?”
She shrugged slightly. “I was a marksman in my local volunteer milita, back home. I just found it interesting, kinda challenging.”
“How good were you? Or, are, I should say.”
“Once hit an apple at fifteen hundred with a seven-mil bolt.”
The instructor looked impressed, and with good reason; a seven millimetre round was only rated to eight hundred metres, and she’d managed to hit a three-inch target at double the supposed range of her weapon. “That’s… pretty damn impressive.”
“Thank you, Corporal.”
Later that week, she and her three fellow trainees graduated from the School of Armour. Each was awarded with a black beret—the traditional headgear of tankers since the Second Earth War—and then promoted to ‘Trooper’, the Armoured Corps term for Private First Class.
Life on the Fringes 