Chapter 11 - Swords

The Commissioning Parade itself had gone off perfectly. Nobody marched out of step, all the uniforms, medals and regimental regalia shone as if people had been up all night cleaning, preparing and polishing - because they had.

The Twin Monarchs gave their congratulatory speech to the new officers in their now-traditional unison manner. This little quirk of ensuring co-rulership was often used by the nation's enemies to point to some kind of dark supernatural force behind the Kings, or some genetic twin metasensory ability. In fact, it was just the result of good preparation, experience, and of course, some fair smart audio technology. So both voices could be heard but they spoke exactly in time and rhythm, and the words were crisp and clear. It gave the famous grammatical "royal we" a whole new meaning. Now they were on to the special awards and medals.

"And finally, we wish to congratulate the winner of this year's sword of honour, the cadet whom the training staff have judged in totality to best embody the values, skills and attitudes most becoming of a officer of Our Space Force, step forward Lieutenant Tom Morrison."

"Yes! Sir!" The 10 platooner marched forward from his spot in the front rank of the 90 new officers, their ranks three deep.

He stamped to attention in front of the Twin Monarchs, the Camp Colonel and the Camp Sergeant Major. The last time he had been this close to the C.S.M. had been when he up in the flag room 4 weeks ago. Tom stared straight forward, avoiding the gaze of the Royal Twins and the Senior Officer and Senior Soldier on Camp.

One of the Kings stepped forward and took the ceremonial sword from Tom and the other replaced it with the "Sword of Honour", a brand new SIAB short sword, with Tom's name engraved on it.

This old tradition had been updated somewhat since the advent of manned space warfare. For a century at least, British military swords had been purely ceremonial, but the early satellite wars and the use of covert sabotage units had changed all that. In space a projectile was too dangerous and difficult to use. A stray bullet could rupture a friendly soldier or capsule's environmenal containment. The firer would of course be pushed back as much as the bullet would be pushed forward by the explosion inside the gun's chamber meaning that after the first shot, all attempts at deliberate strategic positioning were futile. Projectiles weapons were now the preserve of large military space stations or satellites. In the early days of the 2040s experiments were done with retro-boosters synchronised with firing systems so the stations could maintain their position, or at least return to it. This was soon replaced by a sky-torpedo systems where projectiles were gentlely pushed out into space before starting up their own internal engines and proceeding to deliver their explosive, EM or other disruption mechanism to the target.

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Infantry, however, still needed to fight other infantry. The primary role of the space infanteer was to close stealthily with a target, sabotage it, and escape. And of course, the most flexible and versatile counter to such attacks was defensive infantry. The military's strategists wanted a weapon that didnt require a power source, a magazine of consumables or was able to do significant unintended damage. So, the famous arms and armaments company the Royal Armoury of Kent, RAK produced its now iconic Space Infanteers Assault Blade, the SIAB. It was a scabbarded straight sword of about 1.1 metres in length and it had a one smooth sharp edge for slicing and its back edge was serrated for sawing. It's point was dull and could be grasped comfortably by a gloved hand. As a saw it could sabotage just about any system, and on the slicing side, it was razor sharp so that even a single cut from it would break the environmental containment of an enemy soldier's suit.

Tom took his new personal weapon and stepped back, then marched as commanded back to his platoon. he had been as surprised as anyone else that he had been chosen as the Sword of Honour winner. He knew he had pleased the Lodge Master in the first days of his recruitment to the lodge, but thought he was no longer in favour since he had accidentally struck the C.S.M. while trying to wrestle control for the flag from him. Apparently all had been forgiven?

Camp Sergeant Major smiled to himself as Tom marched back to his platoon.

"Cultist scum" he thought to himself. "He probably even believes he deserved this honour."

C.S.M. Bartain, not Lodge Master Staff Sergeant Bramo had been behind Tom's surprise selection. So what if the cultists thought one of their own had been honoured? Now Bartain would know Tom's even movement as the radio transponder sealed inside the new officer's SIAB shortsword would give his position away to Bartain at all times. Nobody would think to look for such an old-tech device. And Tom's vanity would have him carry the sword everywhere. Now, Bartain would finally be able to start tracking this cabal.