“It went that well?” Farmer sneered. He was half leaning on the wall right next to the door. Miranda started.
“Did I scare you?” he smiled. If only she was better in combat training.
“You know they all think this is your fault. Getting called in for all these interrogations.” He kept throwing his accusations at her. She squared her shoulders and gritted her teeth. “We all know you killed them. The whole platoon thinks you did it. We are just wondering when they’ll fry you.” He ran a hand across his neck in the place where the shock collar would be placed and shook his body like he was being executed.
“I’ve been dismissed,” she said. She turned on her heels and headed down the hall. She didn’t look back to see if he’d moved. She didn’t care. She’d take the pit if she had to. Farmer was one soldier she didn’t mind leaving behind.
“Someday,” Miranda muttered. “Someday I’ll wipe that grin off his face.” Oscar wheeled up beside her, beeping his approval. If only she’d known then what would happen next. She wouldn’t have been so eager to leave him in her dust.
Chapter 14
Drill Sergeant Striker greeted them at the base of the training hill.
“It’s time for your range lessons,” she informed them. “Understand?”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant!”
“Good. Get out your holo.”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant!” They pulled out their holos in one swift motion. Holding the weapons firmly in front of them, they marched to the firing range. It wasn’t long until they caught up with the rest of the platoon. A and B squads had already gone through and were waiting for movement to their afternoon lessons with Sergeant Wing. Squad C was joining D and F for the exercise.
The firing range was less than Miranda expected. She’d hoped for a high-level holo experience with moving targets that looked like real combatants. Before them stretched a field. On one side was a long trench. The trench was deep enough that you could lay or kneel in it, depending on your height. Directly across from the trench was a berm. It looked to be maybe a few feet taller than a human, but not much more. Against the berm stood circular targets. They had alternating red and white strips in concentric circles, starting with a red circle at the middle and moving outward for no more than a few feet. Each target was maybe six feet from the next, making a nice row of them.
“Welcome to the firing range,” Drill Sergeant Striker said. “You have been training with your holos for a while now. This field exercise will simulate real battle. Understand.”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant!”
Inwardly Miranda rolled her eyes. There was no way that a hole in the ground and a bullseye target would ever feel like a real life battle. Ors would skip planets first.
“To make this more authentic, each of your groups will be considered teams. C squad is already in position. They will be the defending team. Their goal is to hold that line. Understand.” Striker ran her hand down the length of the ditch.
“Yes, Drill Sergeant!”
“Squad D and F, you will be attacking. Your goal is to advance from there,” she pointed to the top of the berm, “to there.” She swung her hand around until it was pointing a little ways past the ditch.
“You may use the cover of the berm to coordinate your attack. Farmer.” She nodded Farmer over to her side.
“I appoint you captain of the attacking forces. Squad C already has their captain. You have five minutes to group up before the simulation starts. Move!”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant!”
They moved at once, diving from the little cover provided by the berm. Farmer centered himself so that he could have the best view over the top and still be heard by most of the team. The rest of them took up positions up and down the line.
This was their first time doing anything like this. Sure, they’d had classroom instruction, but desk work and numbers was nothing like a simulator.
“It seems simple enough,” Miner commented. Miranda stood back, not wanting to be too close to her battle buddy. She had an odd feeling in her gut, like it was waiting for something to happen. After everything that had been going on she trusted her gut more than her eyes.
“There isn’t much cover, so we will have to put down a line of suppressive fire,” Farmer said. “Each squad, pair up with your battle buddy. One covers, the other moves. Try to cover as much ground as you can. You three,” Farmer pointed to a group on his left and a woman on the far right. “You stay in your positions to provide elevated cover fire. I don’t want us getting out there and then having them get the better of us at our backs. Otherwise, you have your orders.”
A loud buzzing sound like the crackle of electricity in a live wire came from the field. Miranda stuck her head above the berm.
Large rays of electric light shot out of each of the bullseye, lighting up the field in arches of white lightning. They cracked and split when they hit the ground. Rainbows of colors shot from the splits, painting images in the air. Slowly the images took on shape until the squads were staring at a lush jungle. Trees with large stretching leaves created shade against the ground. Vines and flowers blocked out any view of the ditch. There would be no advantage by using the height of the berm.
Miranda felt the foliage brush against her as she entered the darkness. For the first time since coming here, she couldn't see the two suns. She didn’t think it was possible.
She made her way carefully, signaling back and forth. A shot went off above her head. She ducked down into the nearest bush for cover.
“Sims!” someone cried. So not only did they have to overcome the foliage and stay out of range of Squad C’s guns, now they had to fight hard light holo sims? The scenario was getting more complicated by the minute. It was as if they were being tested on every likely possibility they studied in class.
A body that looked an awful lot like Drill Sergeant Wing in a rebel uniform broke through the foliage. Holo Wing fired at a person she couldn’t see on her left. A body crashed to the ground. The frozen eyes of a Squad D member she didn’t know looked unblinking up at her.
‘Run!’ they said. Miranda was frozen in place. Her heart was pounding. She didn’t know what to do. Wing was an instructor. Even if this was a sim of him, she couldn’t make her traitorous body fire on an instructor.
She took a slow deep breath.
“You can do this,” she told herself. The Wing sim passed her, her body obscured by the bush’s large glossy leaves. Miranda sprang, gun at the ready, and fired. The fake Wing turned and got hit right in his face, his head blown clean off. The body slumped down to the ground and lay there.
Miranda continued ducking and hiding as she weaved her way to what she hoped was the forward line. Sometimes she would run into other groups, but they were always Squad D members. She had yet to run into any of Squad F.
Another round of blasts went off to her right.
Miranda ducked down. She was close to the ditch, could see some of Squad C in the ditch. They were fighting vines while also trying to fight back Squad D and F. Miranda looked around, hoping to find an ally or two that could help her take the ditch.
A vine snaked out from the foliage. It wrapped itself around her leg, pulling her to the ground. Miranda let out an involuntary scream as it pulled her over roots. Her back cried out in pain as she bounced across the ground. Locking her holo to her chest, she used her freed hands to try and grab onto trunks of passing trees. She slammed into Farmer.
“Help me,” she cried. He didn’t move. Didn’t reach out. Didn’t blink. His body was rigid.
‘He must have been hit,’ Miranda thought. She tried to grab onto him, use him as a weight. Together they were dragged a couple of feet until Miranda couldn’t hold onto him anymore. Not that he was a help. The foliage cleared, the two suns came into focus. The sight blinded Miranda for a moment.
The vining plant’s main body loomed above her. It was nearly as tall as the surrounding trees, with a bulbous top the size of two fat ors. Its petals had teeth
-like edges.
“The better to eat me with,” Miranda said, gaping at the thing. Ichor oozed from the teeth. Miranda made one last ditch effort to hold onto a nearby tree. She instinctively knew that if those teeth touched her she’d be paralyzed; then, it would chew her up limb by limb.
Her hand found purchase. She held on for dear life. She heard another scream. Miner had been caught up in the plant's vines, but unlike her he wasn’t fighting to hold onto anything. With one hand still holding the tree root, she unstrapped her holo, aimed, and fired. She hit the vine trapping Miner just below his ankle. The plant roared. Its vines pulled taunt. Miranda was yanked into the air, but Miner got away, back to the safety of the tree line.
As she dangled there mid air, Miranda could see four other victims of the plant. One was clearly paralyzed. His limb had a bite mark on it. The other two were struggling to get shots off, just like her. They were aiming for the petal teeth with no real effect.
Miranda did her best to steady herself. Then she fired at the vines holding her fellow soldiers. Just like with Miner, the vines gave way when hit. Eventually Miranda turned her weapon on the vines wrapped around her own leg and fired. She felt the singe of the laser blast. But it stayed true, taking out the plant and not her. It roared again before cocooning itself up, its outer petals clearly immune to blaster fire.
Miranda made her way back, weaving in and out of the trees.
“We won! We Won!” someone shouted. Miranda took a quick glance towards the sound and stopped. It was a second too many. The Striker holo pounced. Miranda caught a gold glint in her eye before the other woman pushed her to the ground. Miranda’s holo remained squashed between them. Both women struggled for it.
Striker was strong. Her muscles were much better trained than Miranda’s, but Miranda was high on adrenaline from the fight with the bush. She pushed the exhaustion and pain to the edges of her mind giving her the strength to match the drill sergeant.
The two of them rolled, vines snapping and hissing as they ripped through the foliage. It began to melt around them, sinking back into its programming banks. Thankfully, the overhead gun fire had stopped. It couldn’t have been longer than a few seconds that it stopped before she was struggling.
Bang.
Miranda’s holo gun went off. The fake drill sergeant’s body went limp with paralysis. The smell of burnt green meat met Miranda’s nose.
‘Wow,’ she thought, ‘this simulation is amazing. They even pumped in scents with the hard light. How else could I be smelling the jungle around me, and not just feeling it?’ She rolled the body away from her and ran for the cover of the ditch.
The forest was nearly returned to sand as she cleared the top of their prize. Squad D had trained weapons on Squad C while most of Squad F danced around. Miranda counted. There were only ten of them that had made it out of forty. Fourteen members of Squad C had their hands raised. Their guns were separated into a pile to the side. Farmer wasn’t among the “living,” but Miranda didn’t mind that all that much.
Another buzz sounded.
Six members of Squad C rose, their paralysis after being shot lifting. They stretched and wiggled their toes, happy to be “alive.” Miranda turned back to the field. The sand was visible once again. The members of their team that had been struck down were rising and coming into formation at the ditch.
“Good job, team,” Farmer said, shaking off his paralysis. He’d been shot down somewhere on the field.
As the remaining downed members of Squad D and F rose, one body remained still. Being the closest, Sneezy Farmer went over and shook it. He screamed.
“Medic!” he cried. “Medic!” Miranda didn’t know he had that much voice left in him. Then it hit her why. The person at the center of the field was dead.
It took a while for a medic to arrive. While they waited, Sneezy Farmer examined the body. It had been her shot that had killed the thing. She needed to know that it was in fact a malfunctioning hologram and not another dead person.
As she got closer she could see that the weapon had made a hole the size of Miranda’s hand. The blast had burned straight through the middle of the body.
“I think I could fit my forearm through that,” Farmer said, coming to stand next to Miranda.
“That’s a horrible thing to say.” She reached down to take a pulse, but of course there was none to be had. If it was a hard light holo, like Farmer thought, then it never had one to begin with. If it was not, the person was clearly dead. No one could live through a shot like that. It would be like living through being impaled on a laser.
“I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just a malfunctioning hard light,” Farmer said, kicking the body. The material gave under his boot, collapsing in a little and wrinkling the edges. Miranda didn’t know a lot about hard light holos outside of what she’d experienced in her training, but this didn’t look like one. Nor did it smell like one. The stench of cooked meat filled the air around the body.
“Have a care. Hard light or not, you should show it some respect.” Miner turned the body over. Everyone gasped. There before them was the face of their teacher: Drill Sergeant Striker.
Miranda gasped. Farmer took a step back. Miner hung his head.
“It’s just a malfunctioning holo,” Farmer repeated. His face was a little green.
“If that’s a holo, where is Drill Sergeant Striker?” Miner asked. No one answered him.
Silence stretched out. Each squad member got lost in their own thoughts. Eventually a medic arrived. After confirming that it was now a dead body and not a hard light projection, the medic loaded Striker onto a stretcher and wheeled her away to wherever they kept them until her time to be spaced. The lunch bugle sounded.
“Time to go to the cook hall,” Farmer ordered. No one complained. Since he’d been put in charge for the exercise, and none of the drill sergeants had come to move them to their next event, it felt natural to listen to what Farmer had to say.
Miranda ate fast, wishing this day done and over. Who cared that the last time they’d been served solid food it had been poisoned? One day on the rifle range and you could be shot by holo guns. No one could figure it out. Their holos were programmed to be human-safe. Sergeant Striker should still be alive.
They were given no time to think. No time to grieve. Just one senseless death after another.
“They think our platoon is cursed.” The voice came from further down the table. It was lower than before. They were trying to whisper, but it came out more of a shout in the cook hall’s clammer. Miranda winced.
“Someone said the ghost of a rebel has come back to kill all the Farmers.”
“You're a Farmer, aren’t you?”
Miranda nodded and took another bite. It moved in her mouth. She swallowed, fighting back a gag reflex.
“So you’re the reason any of us could end up like Striker.”
Miranda lost all interest in her food, but she forced herself to take bite after bite. She knew they thought it was her fault, but it was another thing to hear them tell her to her face.
As soon as her plate was empty she brought it over to the cleaning station. She would rather do pushups than listen to them prattle on about how all of them were going to die. She looked up at the clock. It was barely after noon. She had a full day of training ahead of her.
“How many more people have to die for this day to end?” she thought out loud. She hoped none, but the day was still young.
Chapter 15
“Attention!” Sergeant Dan ordered. Every recruit stood in the now familiar position. All eyes were locked straight ahead; nothing could break their focus.
“Your time has finally come.”
‘To do what?’ Miranda thought. Graduation was still a few weeks away.
“As you well know, all soldiers in the Imperial army are issued one of these.” Sergeant Dan held up a Phase Four Interstellar Exploration Mask, or P4IX, as they were commonly known. It was a level below that of the Ironsides. But
it maintained all the major features such as coms and GAS, or Green Air System; a self-sustaining oxygen generator for space and hostile planet breathing conditions. They were cheaper than those issued to Ironsides, but still withstood the pressure needed to keep troops alive in all possible conditions. But unlike the Ironside masks, which were custom fit to the user, P4IXs were one size fits all.
“This mask has kept millions of soldiers alive across the Empire. Its dedicated system of oxygen creation allows us to go anywhere at any time, without the need for bulky tanks. It makes us leaner, meaner, and more capable than any opposition you will face. And now, just like we’ve been training you on your holos, today you will go through P4IX training. Understand?”
“Yes, Drill Sergeant!” they chorused.
“At the top of this hill is the MAT shack. It stands for Material Acclimatization Training.” Sergeant Dan paused. Miranda made a mental note to remember the acronym. Whenever Sergeant Dan paused like that, it meant that what she was saying would come back on their written test. It was a tell that Miranda had picked up on in their second week. It had saved her from pushups on several occasions.
“The shack is filled with Level Two non-breathable air.” Miranda thought back to their training packet from earlier that week. Level Two non-breathable air was irritating, making it useful for crowd control, but not poisonous, so it wouldn’t kill you from breathing it. But it displaced oxygen, so without a recycler in your mask, you would die from asphyxiation. Which was a fancy word used in their vid to mean lack of air. Why they couldn’t just say suffocation or lack of air was beyond Miranda, but she was used to it. The Empire loved it’s big fancy words.
Level Three air was also survivable, but required an antidote; Level Four air was toxic with no known antidotes.
“Once inside the shack, you will remove your helmet. Then you will recite the Imperial pledge. Once everyone is finished reciting the pledge you will be given a green light to exit the MAT shack. Understand?”
Imperial Hilt (Imperial War Saga Book 2) Page 9