Steel World

by Larson, B. V.

  A moment later, my silver disk dropped out into a tray. I picked it up and pocketed it. Carlos did the same, and we went our separate ways.

  I marched straight up the ramps out of the testing pits to the encircling recruitment stations. I saw Victrix was close, and I’d always liked the look of their dragon-head emblem. I stepped up and stared seriously at the attendant.

  “I’d like to be considered for recruitment, sir,” I said. This time I got it right, as the guy was a centurion. You were supposed to call them “sir”.

  He didn’t say anything. He reached out his hand and made a grabbing gesture. I almost shook his hand—it was a close thing. Then I wised up and put my silver chip into his palm.

  He dropped it into a slot and stared into a screen for about five seconds.

  “No. Next!”

  I was stunned.

  “Excuse me, sir?” I asked. “Could you tell me if there’s a problem?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “There’s a problem. It’s you. Now move along. There’s plenty more where you came from.”

  I headed to Germanica next, then the Iron Eagles. It was much the same. They took one look at my data and passed…rudely.

  I walked away in shock. This wasn’t going the way I’d expected. Here I was, an able-bodied man with an education, unable to get the time of day from these people.

  I figured, okay, so I wasn’t the best of the best. I could understand that. There were hundreds—maybe even thousands—of recruits in this hall, and only so many could be given a slot. It was time to leave the picky units behind and look for a less demanding group.

  I moved down to the second tier legions. These were good, reputable outfits, but something less than famous.

  They didn’t want me either.

  After a dozen tries, I stopped and stared at the silver disk in my hand. I felt lost. I’d staked everything on this working out. I’d left home, sold all my stuff…

  What was on this disk that they didn’t like? Was it the man who ran the robot who’d screwed me? Had he given me an “F” for effort? Or was it that psych test? Had that little bastard Carlos been right? Could they really want a mindless killer?

  I looked up at the big skylight overhead. The sky was orange up there. I knew the sun was setting. I’d been here all day and gotten nothing for my troubles but a swift kick in the pants from everyone.

  Disgusted, I made my way back up to the door where I’d entered many hours earlier. I found Specialist Ville still there. He appeared to be very interested in his tapper, a screen imprinted on his forearm. He was tapping at it, but as I approached he pulled up his sleeve and straightened his spine.

  He looked me up and down for a second, then I saw a flicker of recognition.

  “Washed out, didn’t you?” he asked me.

  “No luck today,” I said, adopting a determined expression.

  He held out his hand. “I need your data.”

  “What for?”

  “They get recycled.”

  My face fell. “But what if I come back tomorrow? Where’s all that data stored?”

  “They keep the bad stuff on the cloud. But you get a new disk and you get to run all the tests again. I’ll warn you right now, though, the odds are bad if you fail on the first day. You’ll never erase whatever it was that screwed you.”

  I thought about what Carlos had said. Could he have been right? Could I have screwed myself by answering questions the wrong way? If I changed all my answers tomorrow, I doubt the test results would instantly become positive. Computers had a way of remembering bad things.

  “I am who I am,” I said. “If they don’t want me, it’s their loss.”

  Ville frowned and nodded. I gave him my chip and he flipped it in his hand. I stepped to the door, and he called after me.

  “You walking again?” he asked.

  “Looks like it,” I said over my shoulder.

  “It’s gonna be dark soon. You don’t want to be out there then, kid.”

  “I’ve got nowhere better to go.”

  I pressed my hand against the door pad. It brought up my data faster this time. I guess it knew me by now.

  “Wait a sec,” Ville said. “I’ve got a suggestion for you.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for suggestions. This guy had been as snotty to me as all the rest of them. I was angry and defeated.

  The door bolt unlocked itself. I knew if I walked out, that would be it for today. I hesitated.

  Finally, I turned around.

  “What?” I asked him.

  “Go downstairs. Go try the shit outfits—the ones under the main floor. It’s worth a shot, anyway.”

  I blinked at him. I hadn’t known there were more legions with booths under the main floor.

  “How do I get down there?”

  He aimed a finger toward a dark archway. “Take the escalator over there. Here’s your disk.”

  He flipped the silver coin-like object in my direction. I caught it and looked at it. I wasn’t really in the mood for more rejections. Especially not from legions so lovingly referred to as “shit outfits”.

  “What’s wrong with the legions down there?” I asked.

  Ville chuckled. “The same things that are wrong with you. Nothing and everything.”

  I nodded. “All right, thanks,” I said.

  “You might want to hold your thanks even if they do take you. They work the contracts no one else wants.”

  I peered at him for a second. It wasn’t a stellar recommendation. But I really had nowhere else to go and no options. My parents’ couch was still open, but that would be humiliating at this point. Jobs? That was a laugh. Even if I landed one, at my age and skill level I wouldn’t make enough for rent and food. I’d bet everything on coming here and getting myself signed up for space. If I couldn’t even do that…

  “I’m going to try it,” I said, and I walked away from him.

  Behind me, the specialist went back to watching the tiny screen on his arm. I was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to do that while on duty, but his secret was safe with me.

  I approached the archway and noticed very few people were moving through it. Those that did weren’t the same as the rest of the crowd. They wore uniforms, but they were rumpled and imperfect. The men had stubble on their faces and the women had hair that looked like it had been in a windstorm. Everyone had a scowl on their face.

  Great, I thought as I rode the escalator downward. I get to serve with a unit of losers.

  I tried to perk myself up. I needed to at least look like a winner. If I could shine down here, I was sure to get my contract picked up.

  I looked around at the legion emblems. There were only six legions recruiting down here and I didn’t recognize any of them. With nothing else to go on, I looked for a short line. There was no line at all in front of a legion that went by the name of “Varus”. Their emblem was the head of a hungry-looking wolf. I like the symbol, so I walked up and slapped my disk on the counter.

  The man behind the counter was a muscular black guy. He looked me up and down. His manner wasn’t sneering, but definitely appraising. He nodded, as if he liked what he saw. He picked up my disk and lifted it up between us.

  “You know what this is?” he asked me.

  I checked his rank and nametag. I frowned for a second, because I hadn’t seen the emblem on his shoulder often. He held the rank of “veteran”, a rank that was only given for valor in combat. Veterans were higher on the chart than any specialist, one step below the officer ranks.

  “Yes, Veteran Harris,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I took a deep breath. I knew I was being tested, but I didn’t really know how to respond. I decided to go with my gut and give him an honest answer.

  “It’s horseshit, Veteran. Total horseshit.”

  He laughed roughly and slapped it down on the counter. “That’s a damned good answer! Might be the best I’ve ever heard.”


  I gave him a slight smile. This place wasn’t like the chamber above. These people were different. I wasn’t entirely sure if that was good thing or not—but I was certain it was true.

  “So,” he said, eyeing me. “Forget the disk and the tests. What’s your name, kid?”

  “James McGill.”

  “Why you down here? You lost?”

  “No. The rest of them up there don’t want me.”

  He nodded sagely. I got the impression this might be something he’d heard a thousand times before.

  “You know what you’re getting yourself into if you join up with Varus?” he asked, looking me in the eye.

  “I’m going to see wonders my mind has never imagined,” I said, quoting the Mustering Hall ads. “I’ll become a man, a babe-magnet, rich and get a tan all at once.”

  “Ha! Right you are, boy. Sign here.”

  I looked at the doc tablet. It had a glowing region of the screen, which he’d swiftly spun around and aimed in my direction. My name was there, as was all my data. All I had to do was apply my fingers. We called it “signing”, but really it was the storage of my biometric information that would lock me into a contract.

  “That’s it?” I asked. “No tests, no questions?”

  “I looked you up before you made it to the bottom of the escalator. You want to know what your profile says? Why Victrix and all the rest won’t touch you?”

  I nodded.

  “It says you’re a troublemaker. A rule-breaker. A man who thinks for himself. They all hate that, you know. But we don’t in my legion. Most legions have tribunes that powder their asses before breakfast and think war is a tea-party. Maybe it is for them, with their fancy-pants patrons. But not for Varus. Not for the legions that sit down here huddled around the train station. Any more questions?”

  His tone indicated he didn’t like questions, but I had one more for him anyway.

  “Do you know a tech specialist named Ville?”

  Harris frowned for a second, then brightened. “Yeah. He was part of Teutoburg, a couple of doors down. He chickened after they wiped a few years back and went Hegemony. He’s all right, I guess.”

  Everything he said made sense to me, except for his use of the term “wiped”. I decided it wasn’t worth another question.

  I looked over the contract briefly. It didn’t have any tricky clauses to worry about. These were pretty tightly controlled agreements, regulated by the Hegemony. They all said about the same thing: I was to serve and obey for a period of not less than six years. At that point, I could reenlist if they wanted me.

  The trick, of course, was that although the terms of enlistment were all nearly identical, the type of missions each legion took was not. One legion might hire out as bodyguards to an alien prince, for example. That was about as cushy as it got. The food was good, the barracks were plush and keeping your boots shiny was about all there was to it unless there was an assassination attempt or a serious rebellion. Most legions didn’t get it that good, of course. They took missions that required actual combat.

  Long ago, when the Galactics first met up with Earth, they’d decided we didn’t have much going for us. But they’d soon figured out we liked to fight, and that trait turned into a worthwhile trade good: mercenary troops. It was a beneficial deal all the way around. The local alien worlds got us to do their dirty work for them as legions for hire, and humanity was allowed to continue breathing.

  “You going to sign it or not?” Veteran Harris roared at me suddenly.

  I pressed all five of my fingers onto the glass. I felt my stomach do a little hop in my guts as I did so.

  “Excellent!” he said. “Here’s your disk back.”

  He slid the tiny sliver disk across to me, and I pocketed it.

  “You keep that handy. That’s your ID.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What do I do now?”

  “Whatever you want. We don’t ship out until morning.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Yeah. That’s why Ville sent you to Varus, isn’t it? We’ve got a hot contract, and we’re short a few men.”

  I stared, opened my mouth, then closed it again. This wasn’t what I’d been expecting. In movies about joining up with a legion, there was always a lengthy training session on Earth before any new recruit’s first mission.

  “What should I do until morning?” I managed to ask.

  “You got a place to stay tonight?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Here,” he said, slapping a token down on the counter.

  I picked it up. “What’s this?”

  “A sky-train token, yokel,” he barked. When I didn’t move away, he glared at me. “Well? I’m not going to carry your bags for you!”

  There was no handshake, no orientation, nothing. I had a thousand questions in my head, but I didn’t want to antagonize a veteran on my first day.

  “Thank you,” I said evenly. “I have a lot to learn. Is there any kind of brochure or website I can—”

  “No. There’s no faq, either. You can’t access anything like that until you’re on the ship. You can sleep on the lifter—we prefer that actually, because you can’t be late that way. It will leave for orbit at 0600 hours. You’ll get your training en route to our next mission. Use that token by ten pm, the sky-train to the spaceport closes down after that.”

  I stared at the token for a second.

  He glared at me. “Anything else?” he growled, his tone daring me to ask another question.

  “Uh, no.”

  “Then get out of here, McGill!”

  I left. I walked to the tracks, but the sky-train was absent. I checked the time and realized I had a few hours before I had to head for the transport.

  I felt a little strange. Things had all moved along so quickly in the end. I wondered if I was in some kind of shock. One minute, I’d been wandering around thinking I had no future, and the next I had one—six years of service with a unit I knew nothing about.

  An odd feeling grew over me. I thought now that I should have read up on every legion, not just the famous ones. It had simply never occurred to me that something like this was going to happen. I guess every guy assumed he was going to join up with an outfit that was on the nightly news streams doing cool things.

  I thought about getting out my tablet and researching Varus, but I didn’t quite have the heart. I’d already signed, after all. There was no point in making myself ill with the details now.

  Recalling a refreshment stand that sold beer up on the first floor, I changed directions and headed for the escalators. I hadn’t touched alcohol since I’d decided to sign up. That sort of thing always showed up in bio tests. But now that I had signed, there was no reason to hold back. And I needed a drink immediately.

  On the way up, I came face to face with one of the few people I recognized. It was none other than Carlos, the guy who’d annoyed me since I’d first met him.

  He was standing at the top of the escalators, looking downward. He looked worried, like he didn’t know if he should go down or not. I released a snort of amusement. I knew in an instant what his story was. No one had wanted his sorry ass any more than they’d wanted mine. I could only imagine what kind of grim analysis the psychs had stamped on his records. The word “asshole” had no doubt been prominent in the write-up.

  “Hey! Carlos!” I boomed, greeting him.

  He looked startled. I could tell he hadn’t even noticed me as I came up the escalator toward him. He stared at me, then his face lit up with recognition.

  “Hey look!” he said. “It’s tall, dark and stupid! What’s up, man?”

  I forced a grin and clapped him on the back. He grunted slightly and looked up at me in irritation.

  “Having trouble getting adopted, eh?” I said. “Let me guess what they said: ‘Not even your own grandma would take a loser like you.’”

  “No, that’s not—”

  “Listen,” I said, pointing down the escalator toward the Varus booth.
“You want a tip? Varus is hard-up. They’re signing right and left.”

  “For what?”

  “They didn’t want to say, so it might be some kind of dignitary escort mission. They always keep them quiet for security reasons.”

  “Those are sweet deals.”

  “Right. And they’re taking me up in a lifter tonight.”

  Carlos’s eyes widened. “You signed?”

  I nodded. “On the spot. They’re taking me right in and straight up to space. No boot camp. No bullshit.”

  “All right,” he said, straightening his spine and tugging at his collar. “If you can get in, they’re sure to take me.”

  “I bet you’re right about that.”

  He glided downward, and I chuckled all the way to a mug of beer on the main floor. I figured that I might have screwed myself by joining Varus, but at least I’d be bringing along a friend.

  -3-

  Several hours later, I found myself being shaken awake. An angry Carlos glared at me.

  “What’s wrong with you, McGill?” he demanded.

  “I was sleeping, actually.”

  We were on the sky-train to the transport lifter. I looked outside, bleary-eyed. It was raining, and huge ships sat hulking in their blast-pans all over the field. I stretched and blinked at them. They were dark, unpainted and ugly.

  “Those must be the transports.”

  “No shit,” Carlos said. He seemed agitated. He was standing, despite all the flashing signs telling him to sit down and buckle in.

  “I’ve been researching this Varus outfit. It’s a loser. Do you know what? Varus has wiped twice.”

  I didn’t want admit I didn’t know what wiped meant, so I played it cool. “Yeah, so?”

  “You can’t be this big of a moron! What’s wrong with you? Do you have some kind of death-wish? Maybe you’re so tall that you need two brains to drive that body of yours, is that it? Well, please stop talking to me with the hindbrain!”

  I was beginning to get mad. I don’t get angry quickly, but bad things happen when I finally reach the point of no return.

  I unbuckled and stood up, towering over him.