“The next two decles will give you a taste of the grueling physical challenges you will encounter as a Special Ops Force. Your goal for now is simple: make your way to the main hatch on the opposite wall of the chamber in order to exit. Anyone who doesn’t, washes out.”
Without warning or preamble, the hatches popped open and all twenty-four of them plunged into the darkness. An overwhelming odor battened against Blazer’s nose, but he did his best to ignore it. In the Stygian darkness, he forced himself to keep upright with his knees bent beneath him. He had no other means to cushion his impact and no way of knowing how far he would fall.
Sooner than expected, he splashed in the sewage below. Fighting to retain the contents of his stomach, he sloshed about while trying to gain his footing. Blazer scanned the room, not sure if he should be thankful for the limited light filtering in through the iris hatches just a couple metra out of his reach. What appeared to be the ribbed body of one of the twenty metra long, wormlike, methane breathing Kall-Itra slithered along in the distance before the hatches snapped shut, plunging them all into pitch blackness. The splashing of his companions in the filthy miasma filling one of the Academy’s waste reclamation vats echoed around him. The sounds of retching soon joined it.
Knee deep in effluent, he possessed only partial footing on the solid mass of fetid waste below. He tried not to wonder how deep it went before reaching the bottom of the tank. The darkness seemed almost a mercy, but even breathing through his mouth didn’t defeat the odor permeating the air.
“Sound off!” he ordered. When no one replied, Blazer checked his ears to make sure they weren’t plugged and called out again. “Sound off, now!”
Everyone began reporting in. Blazer counted off replies, but two never came. Samtriss, a member of their sister team, the Explosions, and Treb, from his own team, remained silent.
“Find Samtriss and Treb,” Blazer ordered. “Now!” Who would be near them? Datt was near Treb before we fell, but Samstriss?
The squadron fanned out, wading through the muck. They dropped down to probe the filth. Blazer looked about in the hopes that his eyes might adapt, and that the silent pair lay face up.
“I found Samtriss,” Bichard called out, hefting the soldier’s unconscious form out of the slop. “He was puking pretty heavily and passed out,” Bichard explained. “I’ll carry him out.”
“No, Bichard,” Trevis called out, splashing towards Bichard’s voice. “The Explosions be taking care of their own, I carry him.” Within moments, Trevis reached Bichard. With Bichard’s help, he secured Samtriss to his back with a line made from Bichard’s own resin. “Damn, I thought he be making it though this,” he commented in his Tomeris dialect.
“I found Treb,” Datt screamed and, with a sickening plop, he hauled Treb out of the liquid waste. “Over here,” he continued, bringing everyone towards him. “He was submerged, and I can’t tell if he’s breathing!” he called out with more urgency.
“Make a hole,” Marda yelled, tromping towards Datt’s voice. A grunt and a splash told Blazer that she’d almost tripped over Treb in the dark. “Move,” she cried out, pushing Datt aside.
The only sound was sloshing mire, as Marda assessed Treb’s condition. “Hold up his head,” Marda ordered, and Datt complied, keeping Treb’s head above the filth. A moment later Marda made an announcement that froze Blazer to the spot. “He’s not breathing and I barely found a pulse.”
Blazer rushed to assist, and felt his way to Marda. Taking a knee opposite her, he helped Datt to keep Treb’s head above the surface.
He felt Marda’s hands move up Treb’s body to his face. She forced his mouth open and felt inside. “Frag me sideways, he’s got it in his mouth!” She dug her finger between his teeth to pull out a handful of waste. It splashed in the effluent beside Blazer before she probed his mouth again. “There’s something I can’t reach in his throat. Hold him tight.”
Marda slid around to face Treb, sloshing in excrement, then slammed both hands into his gut. It took three hard thrusts before Treb coughed up the chunk clogging his throat.
Wasting no time, Marda dived forward and commenced rescue breathing. Everyone waited tensely until, a pulse later, they heard labored, wheezing breaths escape Treb’s lips, each one stronger than the last. Despite her training, Marda crawled away, leaving Treb with Datt. She didn’t make it far before vomiting into the darkness, adding what little she had in her stomach to the filth they were standing in.
Blazer waded towards her and laid a hand on her shoulders. “Are you all right?” he asked. concern in his voice.
Marda spat away from him in what was sure to be a vain effort to get the taste of stomach acid and shit out of her mouth. “I’ll be fine, Datt. How’s Treb?”
“He’s breathing, but still unconscious,” Datt replied. “I’ll carry him out,” he answered with a grunt and hefted his friend up.
“No, you won’t,” Bichard commented, the clicking of his mandibles subdued by the filth coating them. “I will,” he continued and pulled Treb from Datt’s arms. “I am, after all, less likely to drop him.”
Doesn’t matter, Treb is done, they’ll drum him out of the program for this. I never thought we’d lose someone so fast.
“Good, now would somebody please remind me what this is supposed to teach us?” Marda asked, regaining her feet in the mire. Blazer kept a hand on her elbow to steady her as her footing faltered.
“Well,” Gok replied, Arion grunting as he helped him up. “Whenever most beings die they release all of their bodily waste in one final rush. So I assume we’re doing this because these are smells we’ll have to get used to.”
“Rat Shit,” Porc, one of the Explosions, a rodent-faced Nerzain, called out. “They dropped us in the shit, literally. We’re Spec Ops, and if we can’t take a shock like this, we don’t deserve to continue. They’ll push us ‘til we break and then go that much further. This is just to get us nice and uncomfortable. Why else would they maintain this sewage plant like this instead of just freezing drying it?”
“I be hating to say it, but Porc be right,” Trevis interjected. “Tadeh Qudas be telling us that the next two decles determine whether or not we be staying in the Special Ops program. If we not be able make it through this, there be no way we ever survive a mission in hostile territory.”
“What was their plan if we all lost it in here?” Chris asked, her voice incredulous.
“There’s a Kall-Itra in here, maybe others deeper,” Blazer replied. I spotted it before the hatches closed.”
“Assuming it doesn’t eat us,” Chris snapped.
Blazer shook his head. We need to get out of here, he thought. “Can anyone see, feel, or just get a good vibe on a wall, or anything but a steaming pile of shit?” he asked, following Chris’ voice. He held one hand out in front of him as a feeler, keeping Marda’s hand in the other as he walked. If there was any light in here at all I bet they’d have done this to use individually.
“Hey, I think I see something,” Porc cried out. “Yeah, there’s a faint red light ahead of me, I’d say about 250 to 300 Metra.”
“I don’t see anything,” Zithe replied.
“Nerzain vision extends further into the IR and UV bands than yours,” Porc snapped. “I don’t see Blazer’s Kall-Itra though, must have burrowed down, bet it’s loving it in here. Look, everybody just follow me, Bichard, and the elf. We’ll get out of here okay.”
“How’d you know Bichard and I could see beyond normal Anulian ranges,” Rudjick piped in. “Frag it all, I see it too!”
“Don’t question it, just press. It’s our only lead on a way out of here, at this point,” Porc snapped.
“I see it as well, but I got something in one of my eyes, so it’s blurry,” Bichard commented, his hands too filled with Treb to try and remove the obstruction sticking to one of his multi-faceted eyes.
“Porc, don’t make us regret this,” Blazer called. “Everyone stick close and follow the sound of Porc’s voice.�
��
Porc sloshed away, and everyone followed. He whistled a tune from his homeworld, one Blazer felt sure belonged to some dirty song or another. There was no other option, so he trudged along with the rest.
Porc’s estimate of the distance didn’t jive with how long it took them, and Blazer began to feel lightheaded. He knew he wasn’t the only one. The troop had to stop twice, gasping and fighting for air in the foul mess. When they reached the hatchway under the light they’d been following, better than half of them tottered on the brink of passing out. Blazer’s second lungs burned as they filtered the putrid air. As the effluent around them softened enough that he sank to mid-thigh, he found himself breathing even harder just to keep going and had to fight an urge to sit down.
Blazer sighed along with the others when he saw the hatch under the red light, with a platform jutting out from the wall beneath it. The platform stood at his shoulder height; a ladder extending up to the platform and also down further than he cared to guess. The dim red light seemed to shine like the sun in that moment, a beacon of hope in the darkness.
“Hold on everybody,” Porc called out. He climbed up the ladder and onto the platform, then reached up and struck the light emitting panel. Layers of caked on feces fell away in response. More light shone through as a result.
Blazer regretted Porc’s action. The additional light served only to accentuate the shadows and allow all of them to make out the disgusting consistency of the sludge they were standing in.
“That ought to help out the next group, at least,” Porc commented as he turned back to the others.
Breaking away from Deniv, Gavit approached the hatch. “So what do we do now, knock?”
“Worth a shot,” Rudjick replied as he went to the back of the group.
Shrugging, Porc turned and rapped on the door twice. The hollow reverberations echoed back though the chamber. An uncomfortable silence followed, interrupted only by the sound of someone peeing behind them. Everyone turned to look and found Rudjick, his shorts pulled down as he added his own urine to the soup. When he finished, he turned to find everyone staring at him in disbelief.
“Well, it’s not like we aren’t already in a toilet,” he shrugged.
Blazer considered chewing Rudjick out, but before he could, the hatch disappeared into the wall and a brilliant shaft of light burned its way through the chamber. Porc stumbled back from the light and fell in the mire. Blazer thought he would welcome the light, but instead he cowered from it. The intensity of the beam seared his eyes. This must be how the ancient Valu felt when they saw lights, Blazer mused in regards to the all but extinct race of darkness-bound undead.
"Everybody out," an unfamiliar harsh, chirping voice barked from beyond the hatch.
Blazer shielded his eyes as he made his way up the ladder, Arion giving him a gentle nudge to help him along. The light in the passage stung his eyes worse than the smell in the chamber but he was glad of it until he had to look around. The sight nauseated him, but he swallowed back the bile while looking upon the others. Effluent covered them from head to toe. Then he looked over his shoulder at the owner of the chirping voice; I should have stayed in the vat.
“Put the washouts in the corner,” Drill Sergeant Korto barked, his wicked double jaw accentuating the order with a harsh chirp.
Blazer swallowed hard. The Pendrick Drill Sergeant was infamous at the academy; the sound of his centipede-like legs had sent more than a few cadets into panics. The insectoid had the highest washout rate for new recruits at the academy. Everyone considered his drill and PT sessions to be the harshest and cruellest.
Blazer helped cut Treb and Samtriss free of Bichard’s sinewy lines. The whole time he could almost feel the sergeant’s four eyes focus on him from the tips of his eyestalks, while his massive claws clicked together, counting off the centipulses.
“Grab your field packs from against the wall, MOVE!”
Blazer slumped and grabbed his pack along with the others. He read the fear in several faces. No one wanted to face Drill Sergeant Korto.
“Get your filthy selves moving, double time!” Korto screamed, his voice echoing through the small corridor and the chamber.
Blazer hefted his pack onto his back. It was heavy, at least 4 kilobar;a fifth of his own mass. He hesitated to consider what they would have to do next. The hike through the sewage tank had left him winded and starved of oxygen. His second set of lungs felt heavy from filtering the methane-laced air and he knew that soon his second heart would also strain to process the toxins.
“Squadron, FALL IN!” Sergeant Korto hollered.
The squadron did as ordered, with Treb and Samtriss beginning to stir.
“At rest!”
The squadron obeyed, Blazer cringing at the sound of the waste sloughing onto the floor.
“I am sure you all know who I am. I have been assigned as your drill sergeant for this little exercise in washing you out. When Commander Tadeh Qudas isn't beating you lazy lumps into shape, I will be kicking your collective remnants and sending most of you down washout lane. All of you who survive the next two decles will come to hate me; some may plot my demise. But hear this; the skills I teach you, and the punishment you endure, will save your lives some cycle.”
The sergeant paused and Blazer considered his words. Special Operations would not be easy for any of them. SpecOps Command would task them with things bordering on criminal, besides. But the Confederation needed them.
“Now, each of you is carrying a 4 kilobar pack, light by my standards and a few of yours,” he said, walking up to Bichard in particular. “We will now take a quick run around the circumference of the academy before heading down into the deep ruts to Lake Death.”
“Drill Sergeant, does that mean you'll be running with us?” Arion called out, drawing him away from Chris as her hands balled up behind her back.
Drill Sergeant Korto scurried up the wall and onto the ceiling with the strength and lightning speed his species had developed on their high gravity homeworld. “No, cadet,” he replied, a wicked grin on his inner mouth exposing rows of spiked teeth. “Not a one of you would be able to keep up, so I will ride alongside as moral support.”
Blazer shot Arion a quick glance as Korto zipped back down the opposite wall, his tail stinger coming far too close for comfort in the process. Sergeant Korto’s moral support gained him his infamy. It was an exercise in humiliation and demoralization. He berated cadets at every step, describing each and every flaw in eloquent detail. He didn’t use the profanity that turned such exercises, with other drill instructors, into a joke. Instead, he came off like an elder statesman. His words alone forced them to pay attention.
“Take the waiting lift back up to the surface.”
In response, the doors to the freight lift beside them opened.
“Form up on the surface. Fall out! Move! Move! Move!”
Blazer rushed into the lift, needing no more coaxing. As the rest of the team began to pile in, he realized his mistake. Standing at the back wall, the noxious vapors would waft over him longer than anyone else. He cursed his mistake, but stood firm as the lift began to rise. Set the example, stay strong.
He began to get antsy a pulse later. The smell was intolerable, and looking up at the indicator, he saw that they were rising at only a quarter of the lift’s normal speed. He and several others began to cough. The air was thick with their own stink and the remaining effluent on their bodies. Were it not for the number of people it such a small space it might have been tolerable, but the air soon began to reach a similar level of putrification as the sewage vat.
Gavit reached up to check the vent and shook his head. There was no air coming in.
Blazer felt starved for air by the time the lift came to a halt. He held onto the railing for support, all four of his lungs burning as the doors opened at a fraction of their normal speed. At least the sewage vat was large and open by comparison to the lift.
Trevis and Kallie of the Explosions slid the
ir hands between the doors and pulled. The doors could not stand up against the two Tomeris and they slammed open.
Cool air wafted in and the squadron rushed out, gagging for breath. Their reprieve was short-lived with Drill Sergeant Korto awaiting them, coiled up on a hover cart.
Blazer spotted Korto and ran into formation, the others joining him. Blazer couldn’t help but notice the other cadets, officers, and orbs around the mall level looking on in awe and disgust at the scene.
As the last of them fell into ranks, Korto slid his hover cart around towards the doors. “Right Face, For-ward harch!”
The squadron complied and headed towards the doors.
“Squadron, double time, harch!”
UCSBA-13, High Gravity Ring
Each footfall served to remind Marda of the sewage vat. Her shoes squished every step, expelling liquid waste as the squadron ran. She forced herself not to focus on it, listening instead to Trevis’ handclaps as he set the pace at the head of the pack. It was impossible to ignore, though. The worst thing was how the smell wafting off them tainted the more pleasant smells of the academy’s plant life.
The grass track they ran on helped, until Drill Sergeant Korto diverted them. Sadistic bastard that he was, he took them on the gravel track that Marda always avoided in her own runs. Debris littered the trail, making the thought of keeping step a cruel joke. Korto seemed hard pressed to prove that cruelty every time someone had to jump out of formation to avoid the detritus or lost their footing for a moment.
Marda looked up as they ran and saw how close they were to the deep ruts separating the farms from the main campus of the academy. Each level took them further outspin from the center of the spinning space station, and each step down just increased the centrifugal gravity as a result. The pack she carried already added enough mass to make the run uncomfortable, and the ruts would only make it worse. Distracted by those thoughts, she stepped on a rock, lost her footing, and took one more good step before a depression in the gravel met her foot again. She tried to correct, but couldn’t, and fell.
In Death's Shadow Page 3