Cadet: The Academy by Commander James Bondage Page A

barracks. He was ordered to report to the unassigned NCO
barracks, and to remain there until Cadet Lawrence’s condition was
resolved.
    “If she survives, and there’s no permanent
damage,” the Captain concluded grimly, “I may be able to get
you a post to the penguin census in Antarctica instead of the term
in Levenworth you deserve.” They saw the Captain emerge suddenly
and walk out of the barracks without a glance at the cadets,
slamming the door behind him. Ten minutes later, Sergeant Powers
emerged, took one look at the silently staring platoon, and
departed without saying a word. None of them ever saw him
again.
    The assault on Jodie Lawrence had a strange
sequel. Her injuries, a small tear in the wall of her upper colon
and the consequent rupture of an adjacent vein, were repaired by
the Regimental Surgeon that afternoon before the loss of blood
became critical. Two days later, Robin and Steph were summoned from
the barracks and taken to the infirmary by Captain Wagner.
    “Before you go in to see her, you should know
something,” he said. “She doesn’t seem to have any memory of how
she ended in the hospital. You’ll soon find out for yourselves. If
you want to go ahead and tell her what Powers did to her…”
( Powers and you , Robin thought fiercely) “…I can’t stop you.
If you cadets want my head on a platter, you’ll get it. There’s no
way I can keep this story quiet, unless the platoon
cooperates.”
    “Why the fuck should we, Captain?” Robin
snarled. “Why shouldn’t we have your head to pay for what
you did to Jodie?”
    “Two reasons,” he replied, holding up two
fingers. “One, it won’t change what happens to you cadets. Your
training will go forward exactly as before with a new company
commander. Second, you will have to describe the whole incident to
Lawrence, and she will have to live with it for the rest of
her life. How do you think that would affect her? Right now, she
doesn’t remember a thing.”
    They confirmed this with Dr. Perkins, who
speculated that the sedative he had used when he operated on the
cadet (his old favorite, chloral hydrate) was probably responsible
for the amnesia. “Will it come back?” He shrugged in response to a
question by Steph. “There’s no way to know, but it’s likely enough
that if she doesn’t remember in the next few days, she never
will.”
    When they talked to her, Jodie was her old
self, cheerful and confident, if a little confused about how she
ended in the infirmary. Her two friends were greatly relieved, but
perplexed about what they should do. In the end, they told the
platoon the whole story, and they agreed as a group that they would
keep the story a secret from Jodie and the rest of the world
forever.
    When Jodie rejoined the platoon a few days
later, she was surprised, but not displeased, to see that Sergeant
Powers was gone, replaced by Sergeant LeFevre, a huge black man
from Louisiana. She never got a very clear idea of what had put her
in the hospital, and after a while she made a joke of it, flexing
her biceps like a miniature lumberjack, boasting that she had
gotten into a fist fight with Sergeant Powers and had beaten him up
so badly that he ran away rather than face her again. Afterwards,
she would say of some difficult task accomplished that it was
“harder than beating up Sergeant Powers”.
    The disgraced Powers had one other legacy
kept alive by Jodie Lawrence. Sergeant LeFevre had many names for
the cadets in his charge: “dumb pussies”, “dickless wonders” and
“little shitheads” were some of his favorites. But he never used
Sergeant Powers’ pet name for them, “cadet cunts”. The term was
kept in use at first only by Jodie, but later was adopted by the
rest of the First Platoon. When they chose a unit name, it was the
“First Platoon Cadet Cunts”, and they proudly marched under the
pennant designed by their leader which bore a stylized vagina, (the
letter “V’ bisected by a vertical