Pela grabbed the bag with her name on it, not sure whether she should take it.
“These are now your items. Now that you have received your package, we can head to your quarters.” A new bouncing ball appeared, steering her away.
“You here for Hydroponics Systems as well?” a tanned young man with a bright smile asked with her as he noticed that they were on the same way to their quarters.
“Nope. Engineering Practical,” she said.
His clothes showed that he was from one of the southern tribes. It was normal for the different groups on Tricticus to fight one another to try to gain more resources if they weren’t able to support themselves. Pela couldn’t help but distance herself from this savage who might attack her at any time.
“Oh, I thought that they might make us live together with people from the same job. Didn’t realize it was mixed,” the boy said. He didn’t have the bearing of a noble or the son of someone in power.
“What clan do you come from?”
“I don’t have one. My family was killed when we were trying to escape the Maraukians.” The boy looked away.
“Sorry.” Her clan had told her the need for her to complete this training. She had thought that it would only be the wealthiest or most powerful groups that would send their people out. This boy who didn’t seem to have any backing was right there with her.
The whole concept and idea made her frown.
“Don’t have anything here, so thought that I might as well give this a shot—get warm food, work, and I can learn something from it as well.” The boy smiled. “I’m Ashaeed. What’s your name?” He offered her his hand, a gesture that the people outside of Emarl used.
“Pela,” she said, not wanting to be rude even as she remembered all of the etiquette lessons she had been taught by her clan.
“Nice name. Welcome to the Skill School. I hope that we can both become people of the Victor Corporation,” he said as they reached a large building. It still looked like a worksite that had been halfway finished. The squat four-story building made from cermite, glass, and steel was still impressive to the people of Tricticus.
There were people from all over moving to the place or away from it.
Pela stared at the building as she walked in the front doors. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts, as she moved through people and passing cafeterias.
Ashaeed, who was still with her, was in his own world as he took in everything as well.
It wasn’t until they both stopped at a door that opened to reveal a dormitory did they realize that they were living together.
“Who knew I would be so lucky to talk to someone in my room!” Ashaeed laughed and walked in the dormitory.
It was closer to a barracks than a dormitory with basic beds, closet, and then a bathroom at the end.
She moved to an area of the barracks that was separated from the men. It seemed that although they were in the same area, there was still a wall to separate the men and the women.
They also had their own bathrooms and could close a wall to their sleeping area to get some privacy.
She set down her two bags on her bed as she looked around.
“Hey!” A tanned blonde girl jumped up from where she was lying on her bed opposite Pela’s bed.
“Hi!” Pela said. By the person’s features, she should be from the western wastes, which were infamous for fighting among their own cities as the other cities and towns were too far away for them to reach with a powerful fighting force.
“I’m Aileen, Refiner wannabe. What you aiming for?”
“I’m here for anything, Engineering Practical to start,” Pela said.
“Oh, don’t know what area you want to work in yet—good idea, taking a general course.” Aileen nodded, as if she understood Pela’s thought process.
“Umm, yeah,” Pela said.
Aileen seemed to look off in the distance. “Ah, crap. Need to get over to the refinery project. Looks like the person who was supposed to work my shift bailed!” Aileen turned and ran away. “Nice to meet you!”
Aileen disappeared off through the building as Pela was left in confusion.
She started to unpack her things as Gondi put a bunch of information in front of her.
“Your meal times are for the next forty minutes. You have a mandatory meeting with your teacher and the rest of your class tomorrow at fourteen hundred hours. Till then, I can help you in getting to know the campus and help you to study up on different items that will be useful for you. As you are taking Engineering Practical, the campus has given you access to a selection of sleeping modules that you can use when sleeping to increase your knowledge over different areas. Many call this sleep training, as you learn things while sleeping. Would you like me to run the preset sleep training files? This is advised. Or do you want to pick them yourself?”
“Do the preset?” Pela asked, confused.
“Very well,” Gondi said. “Your closet and different storage compartments and items that you were given are similar to the items given to new troopers. I can show you where to put them all and how to use them, if you desire?” Gondi asked as Pela was looking at the brand-new items that filled the bag she had picked up.
“Please.” Pela knew that it would be a sharp learning curve, but she hadn’t expected she wouldn’t know what the different kinds of clothes she had were, or what Gondi meant by fourteen hundred hours.
She felt nervous but seeing that Aileen and Ashaeed had applied for the skill school as well, bolstered her. How could she let down her clan? Their hopes were riding on her. If she was able to succeed, she might be able to escape the future she had before. Marriage was what tied families together and made them stronger; if she had the strength to determine her future, she wouldn’t need to rely on marriage anymore.
She might be able to determine her own future. It was why she had pushed herself so much to prove her abilities to the clan elders and gain this position.
Pela also remembered their hints that if she wasn’t able to pass the tests and become a person of the Victor Corporation, she should charm someone who was able to take her clan’s side.
She would pass the tests she had to without trying to lure a man. Ava Desialias might be from another city-state that her clan had fought with before, but to Pela she was a beacon—an idol of what she wanted to do in the future.
She listened to Gondi and started to ask questions. “What does fourteen hundred mean?”
“It is a unit of time measurement, specifically the twenty-four-hour clock, though this has been modified to meet the longer days of Tricticus…” And so Gondi went on. Pela asked questions and went through information as she wandered through the dormitory, finding out places to work out, cafeterias that left her in surprise with the bounty of food that they had, and learning about the allowance she had from the Victor Corporation to get food. There was enough of an allowance that she didn’t think it would be possible to go hungry.
There were even stores that sold snacks and different supplies like soap and toothpaste. The goods and services she found were the kinds of things that would be seen as a high-class luxury by her clan members. Here it was seen as a norm.
She didn’t know what to expect for her first lesson the next day.
***
Pela woke up late the next day. She hadn’t slept that well, waking up at different points as people had entered and left the barracks. People were constantly moving around.
She even smelled that some of the older people had been drinking. There was even a group of four who stank of alcohol when they entered the room, talking under their breaths about new boots, the whole new universe and so on.
Gondi had informed her that they were ex-troopers and warned her to not antagonize them.
One of the men and women went off to a bunk. The noises coming from there didn’t leave much to the imagination. The other snored on her bunk, not even taking off her clothes.
When she woke up, she didn’t fe
el as though she had learned something. As she recalled what happened in the night, she remembered the basic safety protocols of working on a job site, as well as health and safety.
It outlined the abilities of her work gear that was vacuum rated, as well as able to deal with different kinds of wounds.
She headed off to the cafeteria that she had learned about the other day. It wasn’t hard for her to get used to the NIAI as she spent most of her time interacting with it so that she could try to understand the place she was living in and what would be needed from her.
She quickly ate as the nerves filled up in her gut. The tasty food from yesterday lost its appeal as it became nothing more than fuel for the day.
She had no idea what would be asked of her, what her teacher or the other students would be like. It was all nerve-racking and she didn’t know anyone here.
Ashaeed’s class was this morning and he had headed out before her. Aileen had come back from work late in the night and was still fast asleep on her bed.
Pela pulled on her work gear and wasted the remaining hours, watching TV or trying to read. None of it was able to take her mind off the coming lesson.
It seemed to pass over days but also minutes as Gondi informed her that she should head to her very first class.
She followed the bouncing ball through the building. Once again being greeted by the blinding sunlight of Tricticus, she started to pull her helmet on.
“Wait! Before you secure it, you might want to get your hair out of the ring, unless you want a haircut!” Gondi said.
“Thank you.” Pela worked her hair into a ponytail and looped it up into a bun before she pulled the helmet on.
The helmet adjusted its pads so her hair fit in without pressing it to her skull.
The cooling systems in her clothes activated. She had never been this comfortable in the heat before. Not even with the long dresses that allowed the breeze to move freely and cool one down.
She had much more mobility and she could see more as well.
An information layout appeared around her vision. Her HUD had activated as soon as she put the helmet on. It told her how much power she had, as well as a mini-map in the bottom corner to guide her.
Otherwise, the screen was clear.
She had seen all of the symbols but it was just too much information for her. Gondi told her that she would get used to it over time, that she would probably even use the HUD when she wasn’t in her work gear.
She doubted it. It felt weird knowing that something was being projected through her optic nerves, augmenting her eyes.
She didn’t put too much thought into it as she followed the bouncing ball. She moved along the different streets, some that had been laid down and others that were under construction. Right now, there were just walkways in most places.
“Malazar’s grounds were made according to similar plans for the different colonies that are part of Earth and Her Colonies.
“In the center is the main administration building; then, spiraling outward, there are different towers being built. Then the towers will be built in concentric circles for defensive reasons.
“The center-most tower will be completed first, with the other buildings being built in stages afterward. Each of the buildings is built based on the same design but their interiors are modular and can be changed as needed.
“When completed, each of the buildings will be three hundred stories tall.” With Gondi’s words, he showed a visual representation of one building growing, then another after it. Like dominoes in a circle, more buildings appeared and grew at different stages until the middle building was completed and the other buildings continued to spiral around and grow afterward. Then a circle of towers appeared and started growing up; another circle appeared as they were completed and then it, too, started to grow.
There were buildings filled with plants, others with technology, even towers that had acceleration ramps on them to shoot ships off into space.
“For size comparison.” Gondi put a model of her home city in the middle of the Malazar grounds, where the administration building was.
She coughed on her own saliva as she looked at the size difference. They couldn’t even really be compared. The base was a fifth the size of the city; the tallest building had five floors, but this had reached three hundred.
She pushed forward as the information disappeared and she took in the sights on her way to the administration building where her first lesson would take place. The closer she got to the building, the more developed the ground was.
The streets that had been cut out, gained pipes and electrical lines. Cermite was being laid down by different crews, then cut and smoothed by those behind them.
She entered an area where the cermite streets were complete.
Still, people moved all over the place, working to lay down the power and water lines in the space that had been left out for it.
Walking down the street, she could see the people who had just started the classes commencing to dig out where the road would be with heavy earth-moving equipment, then others leveling it off, cermite pouring, then finally electricians and water mains engineers.
Each and every person learned the general parts of the job, down to the specifics that they were interested in, with their teachers watching over them. They even let them take turns at being site managers so that they could focus on the students instead of the overall job.
The pressure with being the job manager was much higher. If they messed up, then not only would they be reprimanded, they would have let down their work crew and they would need to fix their mistake.
Pela entered the area of the administration building where people were doing all kinds of jobs. Teachers were doing on-the-job training with them and others were supervising their work. There were a lot less students per teacher but by the way they worked, these students had been here much longer than those working on the simpler projects that were needed to build the infrastructure of the growing school grounds.
She passed others who were talking to one another about their lessons and concepts that she couldn’t understand, like air lock safety procedures and the like.
She finally reached where her class was supposed to be. She walked in through a set of doors and found that she was in a large auditorium. The noise within the room was enough to drown out normal conversation.
Pela looked for a seat in the large area. She had never seen so many people in one area.
In the stands, there were people wearing camouflage body armor. They didn’t wear armbands identifying them; instead, they had different-shaped symbols.
A group of people started fighting. It looked as though they came from cities that had a prior conflict with one another.
The military types moved through the crowd. Anyone in their way got pushed to the side. The sheer strength of these large people wasn’t to be underestimated.
They didn’t say anything to the people who were fighting, instead using stun guns that locked up their armor or dropped them, screaming, to the ground.
Everyone stopped to watch as the legionnaires grabbed the offenders and dragged them off.
“Looks like six more idiots.” A girl shook her head and tapped her fingers on the half desk attached to her seat.
“They were fighting for the honor of their city,” another girl said.
“Us trooper types don’t give a fuck. You got an opportunity just like we did when joining the EMF. At least you get three chances—we got one. We fuck up, they’d probably space us, or use us as cannon fodder,” the woman said in a bored tone.
“What do you know of fight—” Before the second woman could finish, there was a blade in her seat back, right next to her head.
“Wanna see what three hundred years of killing looks like?” The woman, still typing, looked over to the second girl, who had a pale face.
A chill ran down Pela’s back. The lack of care in this woman’s eyes—she didn’t care whether the other died; s
he wouldn’t take a slight easily.
A passing trooper pulled the knife out of the seat and passed it to the woman.
“Sergeant,” the trooper said with respect.
“Cheers. My hand twitched,” the woman who’d been addressed as Sergeant said.
“Ah, I see. If there are any more mishaps, please let us know. Can’t have that happening again.” The man’s voice hinted to the sergeant.
“Understood.” The woman treated the trooper as an equal.
The trooper smiled and headed off, standing at his post again, ready to deal with any more fights.
Ten more people were ejected before someone walked onto the stage.
“Shut up!” The man’s voice boomed through the hall, making many jump.
“Get a seat, sit down, or else get out of my school. You have five seconds!”
With that, people rushed to take seats. He clearly wasn’t lying. Not everyone got a seat by the time five seconds were up.
“In five seconds of sucking vacuum, you’re as dead as a nitro smoothie! Do you lot need to find your brains still or can you find a seat!” The man’s patience was wearing thin as the last people found seats.
All of them looked at this man, many of them confused, others holding their anger in.
“Seconds count here! Many of you will be working with machines and items that will as easily kill you as they will allow you to carry out your job. Many of you will be part of the station, mining efforts, or the Yard. You think it’s hard down here in the dirt? Think again! In space, you have threats from every direction. You don’t secure your line, you’ll be spinning off into the black, screaming your head off until you pass out.
“Didn’t secure a seal, you’re dead. Not watching what you’re doing, you’ve just killed your friend. There is no time to waste and there are no second chances. You have all enrolled in the Malazar school, but few of you understand what is going to happen. You are no longer people of Tricticus—you are people of the Malazar school. This means that you have three chances here. If you are caught fighting, you will lose at least one of those chances. I will not let any one of you graduate this school if you are a threat to your work crew.
An Empire is Born (Maraukian War Book 3) Page 12