Unit 37: Rescue at Kilter Field

Unit 37: Rescue at Kilter Field

  By William Laws

  This novel is a work of fiction and a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016

  All rights reserved.

  Cover illustration from. 123rf.com

  Chapter 1

  The young lady in front of Bri’s capsule smiled. “Take a deep breath,” she looked down at the data tablet in her hand and made some adjustments to the holographic mechanism.

  Bri closed her eyes and sucked in a chest full of the tinny-tasting air. She tried to focus. Tried to relax. She felt her shoulders relax anyway, but it seemed impossible. It’s not easy to relax when you’re about to be sealed into a glass cylinder, put to sleep, and then launched past light speed to...somewhere she had never heard of.

  “Is this your first time?”

  Bri wanted to speak but the mask that covered her nose and mouth didn’t allow it. She nodded.

  “Alright, well, it’s going to feel odd for a moment, then the next thing you know you’ll be waking up.” She touched the tablet and a clear panel swiveled into place, sealing the cylinder closed with a quiet hiss.

  Bri’s heart jumped when she heard the pneumatic seal. A little streak of panic ran through her. But it wasn’t like her to be afraid. This was scary but there was still a sense of adventure. After all, she was about to be launched across a star system while she took a nap. But something deep inside of her, something evolutionary, was afraid. She wanted to scream. She wanted to yank the emergency handle and run, but she got a grip.

  She had already watched one conscript try. It took less than a minute for two much bigger soldiers to grab him. Then the doctor sedated him and they sealed him in his hypersleep chamber anyway. She took another deep breath and tried to think of anything except where she was and what was happening. The taste of the air was like she had been working in the yards, digging through the piles of metal scrap before it went to the smelter.

  She closed her eyes and thought of her mom’s face, the look in her eyes. Her little sister’s hug, the way her arms squeezed around her, like if she could hold on tight enough, maybe none of this would happen. Then she thought of her last kiss. The dress she had worn to dinner, red, long and slender. She thought of the way his eyes…she opened her eyes and the doctor was staring at her through the glass. There was a gentle hiss, this one closer, somewhere around her feet maybe. And everything went dark.

  When she opened her eyes, the hypersleep chamber door had already swiveled open. She looked around. Her head felt like it was full of water, sloshing around. Not everything was clear. But there were other chambers, maybe twenty or thirty all neatly lined up along the walls in curving rows. Two were open and empty.

  There was no one in them. Her thoughts slowly came together. The people were gone. She realized she could get out, her cylinder was open. She looked around just as the room’s door opened and a NewT soldier walked in.

  He was taller than Bri by almost three inches and stronger, a lot stronger. She thought of the gentle curve her body had now. Would they chisel her the same way, turn her into something strong and lithe? But then she saw the adjunct, the exoskeletal augmentation. She had seen the tech on the video feeds, the new bio-mechanical extension the New Terran scientists had come up with, but it was the first time she had ever seen one up close.

  Her eyes moved along the black metal that ran along his forearm. It was thin, maybe half the width of your little finger, connected to a circular joint of some sort, and then on up to his shoulder. She met the marine’s eyes and realized that he had caught her staring at him.

  “Lladron,” he looked over at the chamber she had just stepped out of.

  “Yes?” Bri stared at his fingers, the way the black metal ran along each appendage, like a fustidiam vine. But why was it on just one arm?

  “You’re to report to shuttle A42.” He glanced at his wristcall - a data tablet that wrapped around his forearm. “This way.” He turned on his heel and Bri followed him down one corridor and then another, passing sailors in light armor, a few engineers, and a small group of marines, none outfitted with exo’s. It was like the ship they were on was not a military vessel, but something else, a regular transport maybe, but being manned by soldiers and civilians?

  “Chenfel?” Bri looked at her wristcall and saw that the date and sector had changed. Instead of Ley-Fen, it read: Sector 9A7, Chenfel orbit.

  All at once it hit her; the tiny planet she had grown up on was light years away. Everything she had known, her family, the house she had grown up in, her friends – everything was so far away. She wondered when she would see it again, if she would see it again.

  “One of Sedris’ experiments, huh?” the soldier gave her a wry smile and arched his eyebrows.

  But Bri had never heard the name. She would have asked what the smile was about except the corridor they were in passed a data screen filled with images of a space battle. The soldier stopped to watch so Bri did too. On the projection two NewT ships were firing on a line of Earther vessels. From the view of the feed, it was easy to count - two Newt ships against seven Earther vessels. She looked away as the first NewT ship became a ball of blue and orange light.

  She wondered how many people had been aboard. “How long have you been a soldier?”

  “Since before all this,” the marine stared at the feed; the friendliness in his voice was gone. “You know, I would give the other kidney to stand where you are.” He looked Bri over like he wanted to switch places with her. And Bri realized why he had the exo. Under the uniform was some injury, probably something heinous, and that’s why he was here instead of out there.

  Bri looked at the floor. A flood of feelings clouded her thoughts. She wanted to ask him why, what had made him want to become a soldier in the first place? And why was he jealous of her? What was so important about Chenfel? Why had he said experiments? A deep, nagging fear slipped through her veins.

  It was the same fear she had been living with since the notice came, a heavy fear, like a fog that seems like it’s never going to lift. Every time she thought of the war, the images and video she had seen of the battles on the ground and in space. It was death, angry, fiery, and painful death.

  She thought about the man beside her, the people she had passed, the engineers and sailors. The crew of the transport tasked with delivering draftees to various training camps throughout the sector. The war was reaching everywhere. The Earther forces were adopting NewT tech faster than anyone thought possible.

  The soldier delivered her to the shuttle door and looked her over. “Good luck, Lladron. Do us proud.” He put on a plastic smile and walked away before Bri could think of anything to say.

  She stepped inside the shuttle and found two other draftees on board, a young woman with dark, curly hair, and chocolate-colored skin; and a tall, square-headed man with blue eyes and a goofy, almost slanted smile.

  “Bri Lladron,” she offered her hand to the woman first.

  “Katy but everyone calls me Kat,” the woman’s eyes rolled over Bri in a slow, appreciating way and she held onto Bri’s hand a half a breath longer than was comfortable.

  Bri smiled and then offered her hand to the man; she had been the focus of a few women over the last twenty-five years. “Bri,” she met his eyes and instantly knew the kind of man he was - friendly, honest, and maybe a little clumsy.

  “Cooper. Jacob Cooper,” his hand swallowed Bri’s and his grip was firm, just short of painful, but careful. “Pleased to meet you,”

  It never ceased to amaze Bri how many people lived in Len-Fey that she didn’t know. She always
thought of the city itself as small, too small. But it really hadn’t been. It might not have been a tiered city like Revelation or even Corokep, with its massive island-like structures that floated in the sky, but it had a ten or fifteen thousand people, just enough where you didn’t actually know everyone.

  The shuttle slipped from the transport and plowed through Chenfel’s atmosphere. It took a few minutes, but the viewports changed from a dramatic orange and red fury to the gentle curve of browns and greens. It looked like a varied planet. The greens were dark and rich which meant there were forests although there were large swaths of desert off to the west.

  Bri glanced at Kat and Cooper. They were doing the same thing she was, wondering what the next few months would hold, trying to figure out their new home. Both Cooper and Kat had an almost anxious gleam in their eyes, the hint of grin. You could see that as strange and different as everything was, it was an adventure too. Everyone seemed fearless and excited at the same time.

  Bri caught sight of a swath of clouds. Lightning flash below them, a storm was raging somewhere. She thought of the battle, the two ships against seven Earthers. Whatever they were about to face was supposed to prepare them for war, the war the NewTs were losing, the war that was killing millions on both sides.

  There was a strange mix of anger and fear. She had never once thought about being a soldier. Stuck in the faraway backwaters of Ley-Fen, soldiering was the last thing anyone thought about. But the war had changed that. The news feeds brought images of soldiers defending against Earther invasions. Planets she had never heard of joined the Assemblage. But now she was a part of it, a piece of it, and she wasn’t sure exactly how she felt.

  She focused on the world below them, staring across the vast horizon. There were clouds and in the distance and blue sky out beyond the storm. The planet rose and fell into deep canyons to the west and to the north she could make out the outline of mountains. She glanced at her wrist call and opened a data file on Chenfel - one star, temperate climate, small military training outpost under the current leadership of a Commander Dominque Sedris. Support personnel, military and non-military were scattered across a few nearby settlements and towns.

  “I don’t see much,” Kat said, “this place ain’t got no cities?”

  “No big cities,” Bri watched as the shuttle changed attitude and dropped toward the storm, “a few settlements, but there’s not much out here really.”

  “The base is the biggest compound,” Cooper sounded sad, like he was just beginning to realize how much he missed his home. “Look at that storm.” The top of the clouds looked like they were boiling. Dark clouds seemed to grow from the center and flash with lightning.

  She thought of home, of watching the storms move across the desert.

  When the shuttle punched through the storm, the base came into view. It was smaller than a city, smaller than most towns really. Bri counted ten buildings built in a rough square of land bordered by thick forest. She couldn’t believe how small it was, how simple – ten buildings and one of them was obviously a hangar.

  She didn’t know why but she had expected something much more dramatic. The Assemblage bases that were shown in the news were huge swaths of land covered in artillery, air support, and usually thousands of soldiers. But here there were no battle tanks, no fighter or bomber craft, no artillery. Where were they? The place looked more like an administrative compound, a bunch of offices. She wondered if that was the answer. Had she somehow been assigned, not as a fighting marine, but as something else, some unit that didn’t fight? She remembered the marine’s words back on board the transport, experiment.

  The light blue force field of the hangar came into view and the shuttle maneuvered to land. She could see a few people through some of the windows but the base looked almost deserted, blanketed by the storm. But when the shuttle door finally opened, the three of them stood facing a group of nine men and women, loosely stacked in a line and obviously fresh from a similar situation – just arrived. In front of the soldiers stood two officers, a man and a woman, each in Assemblage gray with a blue stripe, each with their officer designation pins on their chest - a gold star with a blue halo for the woman and a silver Vesper with a red flame for him.

  Bri glanced at Kat and Cooper. Whatever was about to happen to them was beginning.

  “Cooper, Lladron, and Chaul,” the man looked at each of them respectively, “welcome to the team, please stand with your peers,” he turned halfway and made a gesture with his hands toward the other nine. A few nodded, a few others continued to stare at their shoes. A couple of them gave the newcomers little more than a cursory glance.

  Bri turned and faced the officers as soon as she reached the group. Cooper and Kat did as well. The motion quieted everyone and the woman stepped forward.

  “I am commander Sedris and this is my base.” She gave the room a quick glance. “This will be your home until Anderson is done with you. Follow his instructions and these next months will be easy.” For some reason as she looked across the twelve of them, she paused when she got to Cooper, it was quick, just a tick really, but Bri caught it.

  “I honestly wish you the best of luck,” the commander’s voice softened a bit, like she was remembering something, maybe her days as a recruit, maybe something else darker and sadder. “Anderson, let’s see what you can do with them.” She turned and left the hangar without another word.

  Anderson waited until the door closed behind the commander before he turned back to the twelve of them. He looked like he was probably in his mid to late seventies, still strong and fast but midlife. His eyes looked like they had seen a million days.

  He looked them over for a minute and everyone seemed to straighten naturally, like just the idea that they knew he was rating them was enough to make them give him their undivided attention. He moved his hands behind his back and kicked his feet apart a bit. “My name is Major William Anderson. For the next few months, your lives are going to be difficult,” his voice echoed around them, loud and raspy, like he had been shouting at soldiers most of his life. “Chenfel is your home. You are now soldiers. You are my soldiers.” He looked across the twelve of them and Bri noticed a thin scar that ran along his chin. It was old but still there; he had chosen not to get it mended. “As of this moment, you are Unit 37 and there’s a war on.” He stopped and looked at Kat. “You may have heard, it’s a war we’re losing, but you’re here to fix that.”

  Bri tried to place Anderson’s accent. It was formal and clipped, like he was one of the people on the feeds or a politician from one of the capital planets. He didn’t pull at the words and drag them or talk so fast that they sounded like they were layered on top of each other. No, Anderson was slow and deliberate. It was striking and seemed to drill his message home.

  Bri glanced around at the others in 37, curious to see what they were thinking.

  “Do you have a question, Lladron?” Anderson’s eyes found hers and held them.

  Ice ran through her veins for a second and her brain seemed to freeze. “No?”

  “Are you asking me or telling me?” There was no amusement in his voice.

  “Telling.”

  “Telling, sir.” Anderson raised an eyebrow and looked across the rest of the unit like he wanted to make sure everyone understood that the teaching had begun.

  “Telling, sir.” Bri straightened her back desperately trying to hide the self-conscious fear that filled her.

  Anderson looked over the unit again. “Your color is orange.” He touched his wristcall, a much newer, thinner interface than anything Bri had seen before, and an orange line appeared on the floor, a highlighted path that led out of the hangar. “Follow the path, team.”

  The twelve looked at each other, gathered whatever belongings they had brought, and shuffled out of the hangar. It was strange seeing them altogether, everyone seemed to be from somewhere far away. A guy bigger than Cooper wore clothes were made of a fabric Bri had never seen before and
a blonde-haired woman a few inches taller than Bri wore a long tunic-style garment of black with a red band, nothing like the black pants and red shirt Bri had on. But even though they were obviously from all over the place, everyone seemed to share one trait, they were tired.

  As they made their way along the corridors, following the orange band that glowed along the floor, only a few people felt the need to talk.

  It was weird being there. Although she hated the war and had never wanted to be a soldier, there was something equally exciting about being at Chenfel. Suddenly there was something bigger than her. Maybe it was the way Anderson had addressed them, maybe it was the NewT tech she kept spotting, she couldn’t really say. For whatever reason, she was as excited as she was angry.

  Two marines in black, form-fitting uniforms passed them in the hallway. It was a man and woman, about the same age as Bri (and everyone else in the unit). They gave 37 a cursory glance, but little else.

  Kat nodded her head and laughed. “I like those uniforms,” she said as they passed, “tight.”

  A few laughed quietly, but Bri wasn’t interested in the uniforms, or the way the marines had fit into them. What Bri saw were soldiers, the result of whatever Chenfel existed to do. Each had a pistol and a rifle, and she had spotted connection ports on each them. The man’s was along the back of his wrist, and she saw the woman’s when she looked back over her shoulder, a finger-sized black hole in the center of her neck. Exos. A little thrill went through her.

  There was just something about the idea of being augmented, enhanced. She wondered what if felt like, how it worked.

  “Oh, records!” A tall guy with wild, yellow hair laughed and looked around mischievously. “What do you guys want to know? Seriously, ask me anything and I can tell you.” He touched his wristcall and grinned again. “Katy Chaul, prefers Kat…”

  “What did you say?” Kat stopped and the rest of the unit kind of pooled around her until she was standing right next to the guy with the wild hair. Except Kat didn’t look happy. She didn’t look angry; maybe skeptical would be a better word. Whatever it was, it had the desired effect.

  “I...uh…” the man hadn’t expected the look on Kat’s face, “you know, I can hack, the systems…it’s what I’m good at, like really good at. Like, I mean, I can’t help it.” he put his hands up in front of his chest and took a step back, honestly afraid of Kat. “I was just goofing, I’m sorry. Hey, my name’s Pauly,” he looked around at a few of the others desperately trying to find support.

  Kat gave Pauly another look and then chuckled. “What’s it say about Cooper?” She looked over at the giant of a man and waggled her eyebrows playfully.

  The orange line wandered from the hangar through a storage facility and then down a long corridor to the base’s housing complex. All of the buildings were interconnected by long hallways and sets of doors. Each doorway was guarded by two marines in light gray, armed men and women who stood silently and watched. The line stopped at the top of a stairway on the fourth floor and the group kind of bunched up on the stairs.

  Mason, a tall, thin kid with dark black hair and a red tattoo on the back of his hand looked like he was afraid to open the door. “Is this it?” He looked back at everyone behind him for some kind of assurance.

  “Open the door.” The blonde-haired woman (who stood head and shoulders over everyone) gave the order and Mason touched the control panel.

  The doorway opened onto a long, rectangular room, wide open with twelve single bunks down each wall. Every bed had a small lamp mounted on the wall beside a slender glass interface. The rest was bare. A door at the back of the room led to a large bathroom and shower facility. And that was it. No frills. Sterile.

  Bri glanced down and noticed that her wristcall had turned off. She tried to turn it on, but it wouldn’t. Then Pauly noticed his doing the same thing and there was a look of panic crossed his face. “Hey, anyone else notice…”

  “Unit 37,” a female voice, obviously synthetic (it was too smooth and calming not to be), filled the room. “Please pick one of the bunks in this room and touch the interface beside the bed.”

  Everyone waited for a second. Some weren’t sure if the voice had finished what it was saying or not while others were a little creeped-out by the idea of a voice at all. One of guys was actually looking around the room like someone he hadn’t noticed had walked in and he just hadn’t seen them yet. Bri almost laughed. But eventually, someone started toward a bed and everyone else did the same.

  Bri touched the long, slender screen beside her bed and her name immediately displayed across the top, along with the time, a long alpha-numeric code, and a short inventory of items she didn’t recognize – D89A Non-integrated Uniform, four pairs of Y23B uniform undergarments, etc.. She glanced around and watched a guy named Biloxi stare down at the tiny interface like it was the most fascinating and terrifying piece of equipment he had ever seen. But it was obvious; they hadn’t picked Biloxi because he was tech savvy, they picked him because he was big, really big. While Bri was watching Biloxi’s bed slowly lengthened and widened to accommodate the man’s size.

  “I...um…” he scratched his head and squinted at the interface.

  Bri wondered if he knew how to read. She had heard there were places in the system, dark places where NewTs lived and worked underground, buried deep inside asteroids or in the farthest reaches of some gas cloud or spit-sized planetoids stuck in some asteroid belt where the sun never shined.

  “Please retrieve the small device from the compartment beside your bed.” The smooth voice filled the room again. “Lie down, place the device in your ear, and take a deep breath.”

  “What?” Biloxi held his device between his thumb and his forefinger. “In my ear?”

  “Yes, Mister Sherman, in your ear.” The voice was still calm and even.

  Bri laughed and lay back on her bunk. She stared at the tiny device, the size of a pea, or a pebble, the tip of her small finger. It was round and smooth, featureless, and she couldn’t help but wonder what it did and how it did it. And why did they want her to put it in her ear.

  It was a little scary. Len-Fey wasn’t exactly a capital planet. It took time for tech to get that far and even though she felt like she kept up with the feeds and knew what was going on in bio and nano tech – she had never seen or heard of anything like what she was looking at.

  But then, not much else was making any sense either. She took a breath and carefully tucked it into the opening of her ear.

  As soon as she felt it enter her ear, it dissolved and disappeared, like she had been holding onto a pinch of sand and it had slipped away. It didn’t make a sound, but suddenly her hearing changed. There was a whoosh and then a sharp stabbing instant, but it was over before she could even really focus on it. Then she felt something moving through her head, like it was swimming in her blood, a tingle, or the edge of a feather somewhere inside of her brain. And then it disappeared.

  She took a breath and held it. The inside of her ear itched and she desperately wanted to scratch it, but before she could move, it felt like someone was jamming an ice pick into her left eye. A wave of pain rolled across every nerve in her body. Her fingers dug into the sheets, but again it was only a split-second, half a breath, and then it was gone. She opened her eyes and felt a tear roll down her cheek. But then she realized everything was sharper, crisper, like her vision had doubled. Colors were deeper; she could see a shadow in three-dimensional space. It took a second to really understand how much different it was.

  She turned her head and saw Kat was sitting on the edge of her bed rubbing her eye, like she had something in it.

  “Please do not rub your eyes, Miss Chaul.” The female voice said.

  “She’s right,” the tall woman walked over and laid a hand on Kat’s shoulder, “try to look around, just take it slow, open and closed.” She knelt in front of Kat and tried to look into her left eye.

  “The sensation should diminish in a minute
or so. All systems are optimal.” The female computer said.

  Kat opened and closed her eye. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Arles,” the tall woman offered her hand, “Lin Arles.”

  Bri blinked once and suddenly there was a display over her vision, like it was laid over the floor she was staring at, an interface between what she was seeing and her eyeball. Her name was in the upper left hand and then a detailed drawing of her eye along with a nano-structure. It was the computer that controlled the visual interface, created it really.

  She glanced at a small red square and the interface closed. She heard a guy behind her talking to his view. “System check. Close. Vanish.”

  Kat apparently thought it was a good idea as well. “Turn off. Power down.”

  Bri grinned. “Look at the red square,” she looked over at Biloxi.

  “Please sit on your bed and follow the onscreen instructions.” It was the female voice again but this time it was in their heads instead of the room around them. Everyone moved to their bunk and sat down.

  The integrated visual and auditory enhancements ran 37 through a series of exercises to familiarize themselves with the tech. Bri couldn’t believe the way it worked. How, in a blink, they had been changed, enhanced, and suddenly capable of more than they had been. But how was this supposed to help against the Earther marines, the heavy armor suits that tripled their size? The massive projectile weapons they carried? And the way they thundered across a battlefield like thousands of giants. What kind of tech did they use? How did they power the over-sized armor that surrounded them?

  After everyone had finished the exercises, a sound was transmitted and their new overlays flashed a new set of instructions along with an easy to follow map.

  “I don’t know if I like this thing in my head,” Biloxi looked frustrated, like just the idea of nano-tech didn’t sit right with him.

  “No, you don’t,” Pauly stood on his tiptoes and laid his arm over Biloxi’s shoulder in a friendly way. “Seriously, big guy, you’ve got to calm down. Your stats are off the chart, take a breath.”

  Biloxi gave him an exasperated look. “What?”

  “I was flipping through the files,” Pauly waved his thin arm out into the air in front of him, like Biloxi could see what he was seeing. “I can see your vitals - bp, heart rate, brain activity, all that stuff.”

  “Man, you have got to stop doing that.” Everyone was thinking it but Kat spoke up first.

  “He’s a hacker.” Arles, gave Pauly a look of disapproval. “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” She shook her head.

  Pauly stepped away from Biloxi. “Hey, it’s, you know,” he threw his hands up in surrender. “I can’t help it, it’s like an addiction. I see a locked system, I gotta get in there, gotta mess with it.”

  Before the sun rose the next morning, the room’s lighting came up to full and the female voice, which the unit dubbed Mary woke the unit. “Unit 37, your field uniforms are located in your footlockers. Please shower, dress, and report to the parade grounds in thirty minutes, zero four thirty.”

  The room filled with moans and groans as the unit slowly woke but after four or five minutes only Cooper and Biloxi were still lying in bed, doing their best to ignore the hustle and bustle of the other recruits moving around them.

  Every foot locker in the room held a black, one piece uniform made out of a surprisingly thick, yet elastic, material. Bri touched her locker’s control and pulled out the strange one-piece suit. She pulled the opening along the front of the suit wide and put her legs in first. Immediately, the suit began to modify its measurements like it was somehow programmed to fit the wearer. She pushed an arm through the sleeve and, when her hand emerged along the cuff, the fabric shrank in length and then tightened until it was snug against her. She couldn’t see exactly what was moving, but the material was definitely conforming to her. She had never experienced anything like it. She pulled it off her skin and let it go and it shifted back into place.

  When Biloxi picked up his outfit, he held up in front of him and it was a third of his size, it looked like it was made for a child, but as soon as he opened it up and put his legs in, the fabric molded itself to his physique as well. “Will you look at that?” He stared at his reflection in the interface beside his bed.

  “Nice!” Pauly sat on the edge of his bed obviously reading his overlay. “It’s a smart material. Fabricated on Revelation. The Jilsen Corporation created the material. It’s brand new. It doesn’t even have a name yet.”

  The sky was still dark but the rain had stopped at some point in the night. The eastern horizon was a pale purple, the first shift from night to day. The entire unit whispered as they walked down the stairwell and out of the dormitory, like they were afraid they might wake the other units, but when they stepped outside, the base was a hive of activity.

  Everywhere they looked, there were soldiers in various stages of training. A large unit with a bright yellow patch on every sleeve ran past the dormitory in neat rows, six abreast. A few tossed their heads in greeting while others made quiet comments. Newb and babies was heard more than once, and Kat almost lit into one runner when he looked her over and called her pint-sized, but Arles held her back.

  As 37 moved off toward the parade ground, they passed another unit in the same black uniform as theirs. “Defensive perimeter!” The unit’s leader shouted and the unit that had been standing in neat rows fell into a new shape, a circle within a circle bristling with rifles. They didn’t say a word as 37 passed. Instead, they stared straight ahead, their weapons at the ready until their leader shouted for them to form up again.

  “We’ve got a lot to learn,” Cooper nudged Bri as they walked.

  But Bri was barely paying attention. There was a unit of soldiers lined up at the hangar. They wore a different type of uniform, and armor. They had packs that fit on their back beside their rifles and headgear that Bri had never seen before, but you could still see the traces of their exo’s peeking out from the cuffs and collar.

  They looked like all the soldiers on the feeds, and she wondered if they were heading off to join some battle somewhere.

  She thought of home and the war and where she was and it kind of jumbled inside of her. She looked away. It didn’t make sense, war, two sides flinging bodies at each other until a powerful person somewhere decided that they’d had enough.

  Anderson stood on the far side of the parade ground, his hands behind his back, watching as 37 walked across. When they got closer, without a word from him, 37 did their best to line up which turned out to look more like a sack full of cats than a respectable roll call. But he waited patiently looking over the group as they shifted and switched places quietly whispering to each other and embarrassed. It took a minute.

  “Good morning,” Anderson looked over the unit with a smile.

  A few muttered hello or good morning but not with any real enthusiasm and Anderson let it slide.

  “Stand at attention,” Anderson barked the word and snapped into the classic stance. 37 responded, straightening their backs and raising their chins. It was close, but Anderson still walked down the row and made adjustments to almost everyone’s stance. Only Arles had seemed to get it right.

  Once the unit was acceptable he stepped in front of them again. “First we’re going to make you strong.” He looked up and down the line, catching a few eyes. “It’s hard and you’re not going to like it, but we don’t have much time.” He took off his coat, folded it in half, and set it on the ground beside him.

  Bri stared at Anderson. He was stronger than she had expected and he was wearing the same black suit they had found in their footlockers, but he didn’t have an exo or the connection ports that came with the tech which seemed odd.

  “Pushups,” Anderson fell forward, caught himself in a stiff plank position and glanced up as the unit slowly and stiffly followed his example. He waited and they looked up and down the row. “Pauly, straighten your back. Bri p
ut your arms closer to your chest; stop squeezing into Kat’s space.”

  And then he started.

  For the next two weeks, Anderson put 37 through hell. It was like they never stopped. If they weren’t on the parade ground in rigid formation working through sets of exercises, they were running in formation around the complex or through the obstacle.

  Anderson was relentless. When they were comfortable pushing through a hundred pushups, he started them on handstands, then backflips, then standing jumps and long jumps.

  To say that it was brutal would be an understatement. None of them had ever been through anything like it. And Anderson didn’t just give orders, pushing the unit through the work. No, what 37 did, he did right along with them, like he was one of them. They ran, he ran.

  He had kept his word; they were going to be strong. Everyone struggled and over the space of the two weeks, almost everyone reached their breaking point. Cooper fell from the top of the climbing wall and broke his arm, which thanks to NewT tech was repaired in less than an hour, but Anderson gave him the day to recoup and then lectured 37 on pacing and control.

  In the middle of roll call one morning, Kat had snapped. Anderson had made a comment on the state of her boots, something about a scuff along the heel that she had missed. He had said it in passing; he didn’t call her out, or belittle her. He had simply pointed at her boots and said: “I believe you missed a spot.” But Kat (like everyone else) was sore, and tired, and unsure if her decision to answer the draft had been the right one, and she lost it. He pointed at her boots and she took a swing at him.

  Everyone froze the minute they saw Kat lean back. She had been hot since the day before, grousing about how much Anderson required of them, about the rigors of military requirement and the like. She was close when she had shown up roll call, fiery and willing to fight and argue. But when she leaned back and brought her arm up, everyone held their breath.

  But Anderson was ready. Kat’s big swing came at him hard and heavy, but he simply moved out of reach, grabbed her wrist as it passed, and twisted. In a blink, Kat was on her belly, her arm wrenched painfully behind her, and Anderson stood over her.

  Kat took a breath and grimaced from the pain. “Alright, alright, I get it!” She shouted.

  “Good,” Anderson let go of Kat’s wrist and she got back to her feet. The two made eye contact for a few moments, working whatever it was between them out in silence.

  Over the weeks, some wept, others fainted, and more than a few found themselves with extra duty for lipping off, but Bri didn’t break that same way. Instead of doing something stupid and getting herself injured or losing her patience and flipping out, Bri made a request to visit Commander Sedris.

  She didn’t want to go over Anderson’s head so she talked to him about it and he cleared her for the meeting and entered the appointment with the commander’s office himself.

  But it didn’t go the way Bri expected it to.

  When she arrived at the commander’s office, she was greeted by a young man in a gray and blue uniform devoid of any unit identification or rank. “Can I help you?” He asked.

  “My name is Bri Lladron,” she stood at ease, “I’m here to see Commander Sedris.”

  The man behind the little desk worked a data tablet for a moment and then stared through Bri obviously working his overlay. “Yes sir,” he said without making eye contact, “Lladron is here to see you, sir.” There was a pause and Bri could tell the assistant was listening. “Yes, sir.” The assistant looked at her. “You can go on in.”

  Bri walked through the doorway behind the man’s desk and found the commander seated behind a large, wooden desk. “Sit down, Lladron,” she pointed toward a chair.

  The office was larger than she had expected and, instead of the usual metal and poly everything else seemed made out of, everything in Sedris’ office was constructed of wood, dark, rich wood. The desk was small but cut with a long curve and polished smooth. There were cases behind the desk with shelves made of wood with brilliant yellow grain. The room felt almost luxurious, like she was in the office of some rich politician or businesswoman.

  “Let me get right to the point,” Sedris folded her hands in front of her on the desk and looked Bri in the eye. She was a tall woman, probably five years older than Anderson, a neat woman with hair that she kept in a bun. “You’re not going home.”

  Bri absorbed the four words and tried to get a grip on the anxiety boiling in the center of her chest.

  Sedris gave her a moment before continuing. “Anderson told me you’re tired and scared and I don’t care. The Assemblage needs soldiers.” She looked at Bri and waited for a response.

  “But…”

  “Nope,” Sedris rolled her eyes, “all I wanted was yes followed by maam.” Sedris pointed to the door. “That fulfills my obligation under Assemblage Article 1276a.”

  “Excuse me?” Bri took a breath and felt the anger fill her chest. She had never been dismissed before, it was a new experience and she didn’t like it.

  Their eyes locked for a moment, a breath.

  “Don’t tell me, Lladron, let me guess.” The commander shifted in her seat and Bri could see the woman was fighting back an evil grin. “You want to talk to me about morality and ethics, and reminded me that New Terrans have an inherent belief structure that violence only begets violence. Or are you the kind of girl that wants to argue against expansion?” Sedris’ eyes narrowed a little, like she was still trying to suss out the kind of woman in front of her. “Or maybe your daddy was one of those frontiersmen, the dying breed that doesn’t trust government and would rather get as far away from civilization as possible. Again, I don’t care. Why do you think the draft had to go all the way to your little planet?”

  Bri swallowed hard.

  She couldn’t hold it back any longer, a grin cracked across Sedris’ lips and Bri suddenly felt cold.

  “But here’s the thing, Lladron. You don’t know a god-damned thing about war.” Her tone was acidic. “You have a few ideas; but here’s what you need to know.” They locked eyes and the commander took a slow breath.

  Bri’s gut was lodged somewhere in her throat.

  “It’s just fear.” Sedris sat back in her chair. “You’ll get over it. Andrews says he has never seen a soldier as sharp as you, that you have a gift.”

  It was like getting punched in the face – first the insult, then a compliment. Bri wanted to cry. The news feeds were horror stories of battles won and lost light years away.

  “Commander,” Bri’s mouth was dry, “What if we can’t win?”

  The Commander leaned back in her chair and touched a holographic display.

  The projection changed and they were watching a New Terran convoy of three ships moving against the darkness of space. The ships were heavy cargo, haulers from the mining stations somewhere. They were huge but still sleek in the way that NewT engineering excelled.

  Bri stared at the ships marking the number and size even trying to guess which system they were moving in before she realized what she was watching, what was about to happen. “Commander?” She uttered the word and, it was like the Earther ship had heard her, a violent purple storm of lightning broke against the black canvas of space and birthed a massive ship.

  Her eyes widened as the thing moved to intercept the mining ships. It was massive, a giant rectangle of gray metal that looked like it had been put together by hand, massive plates of tridium steel hammered into place with a trillion rivets. It had none of the beauty of a newt vessel, but what it lacked in smooth, molded-contour and silhouette it more than made up for size and strength.

  Lights flashed along the side of the Dreadnaught and Bri and the Commander watched the hanger doors open. “Here they come,” the commander whispered.

  Earther fighters, fast movers called Stryker’s, sprang from the Dreadnaught decks and swarmed the three New Terran ships.

  The mining ships broke formation, each taking a different tack. One
started its catapult drive. The massive launch rings released and flew ahead of the ship. And for a moment Bri wondered if it would work, if the drive would be able to spin up before the fighters reached the ship. But the answer came quickly.

  An explosion ripped through the first gate before it could power up and the second and third rings weren’t even in position before the ship itself started to take heavy fire from the fighters.

  The Commander touched a control and the feed vanished.

  Bri looked at Sedris. “How many…”

  “Over two thousand souls aboard.”

  “Where were…”

  “It doesn’t matter where they were. They were cargo ships, they had no military value. It was opportunistic.” She sighed and stared at the little badge on Bri’s chest, the Assemblage badge. “We fight for those people, Lladron.”

  Bri wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Understood, Commander.” She stood and saluted. “I formally withdraw my request.”

  “Good,” Sedris offered her hand across the desk, “Andrews will be happy to hear it. He expects great things from you, Lladron.”

  Have a good day, Lladron.”

  Bri’s mouth was still open as she stood. She wanted desperately to say something. She was sure there was something else to say, some argument she had been thinking about for weeks. But the look on Sedris’ face told her it was time to go.

  The meeting had been so short that even the commander’s assistant was shocked to see Bri walk out so quickly. He gave her a you should have known better smile which only served to irritate Bri but she bit her tongue and went back to the training field to catch up with her unit.