The Recruitment: Rise of the Free Fleet

by Michael Chatfield

  They were bigger than anything I could imagine I knew. Though it didn’t matter, I would rip it down, with sheer will if I had to.

  I nodded to my squad mates, trying to look confident and energetic even though I didn’t feel.

  Taleel marched in, seeing me his eyes seemed to squint in annoyance. He punched me in the gut, I was too drained to do anything as he kicked me.

  “Get up! You owe me eight hundred laps.” He yelled as I fought to get up. He hit me in the face.

  “Move it!” He barked as I started running for the track. Bile rising in my throat. I was barely walking when I got to eight hundred laps. My body had given me better endurance, but it had also added a lot of weight.

  “armoury.” Taleel said, behind me as I blindly walked to the armoury.

  I hid the anger welling up inside of me as I continuing through a full maintenance schedule.

  The rest of my squad gave me looks as if to say it was alright, but there was no hiding the fear in their eyes as I focused entirely on my Mecha.

  “Feel big Salchar?” Yasu said in a light tone as I gripped my wrench harder.

  “Go away Yasu.” I said calmly as I could.

  “Why? You are going to kill me if I don’t.”

  “Stop acting like a petulant child! Yes back on Earth we played a game, a game that at least to me was my life. Now we’re being trained to die. That’s it. They’re showing us how to use these Mechas so that we might do something useful before we die for them. It doesn’t matter if we die, they can just pluck another person from Earth, train them and replace us.” I hit my Mecha, she was for once thankfully silent.

  “We’re parts Yasu, just parts in the planetary defences’ machine. You want to keep on threatening me, sure go ahead. But think about this. If you threaten us and isolate yourself who’s going to help you when you need it?”

  “I don’t need help.” She barked, turning away and stomping back to her Mecha with her fists so tight her fingers turned white. Yet there was no mistaking the fear or loneliness that were in those eyes. Maybe she wasn’t trying to not be one of us, maybe I was driving her away.

  “Everyone needs help.” My voice soft, filled with my exhaustion and anguish. I saw her flinch as all of the squad looked at me, none of them cried anymore I realized, they’d figured out how useless it was.

  “We all have to adapt to our new reality.” I continued, not liking my own words, but believing them nonetheless. I got a bit of energy as I talked to them.

  “Stop slacking, we need to learn as much as possible, the more we do the better chance we have surviving.” I saw acknowledgement in the older squad members eyes, the younger ones still upset. I was still surprised that when they were straight up told about their situation they couldn’t handle it. It was still a game to them.

  I finished the maintenance schedule and I began helping Shrift with the movement calibrations for the Mechas. The rest of the squad were doing hand to hand combat with their Mechas under the guidance of Yasu. I knew I should be too but I didn’t trust myself to stay calm making excuses to stay in the armouries.

  “It wasn’t your fault James.” Rick said as I was staring at a data pad blankly. Breaking me out of my reverie by using my name for the first time without being prompted to by me. As he put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

  “I know. It’s the fault of the damned free planets defence force that put us in this position. If it wasn’t for them then Wiry would’ve never tried to kill me. It still doesn’t make it any easier.” I said as I fought down the need to throw up as the image of his headless Mecha appeared in my mind, instead focusing on the data pad.

  I studied Yasu.

  “She’s better than me.” I said as she worked to adjust her students, she truly was a master of her trade. She was respected by all; she was as fast as I was in sleep training I bet she even knew how to use her Mecha better than me.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “She should be squad leader; they need someone strong and good at this stuff to lead them.”

  “James you are too.”

  “Yes, and I’m also the person that just killed one of them. I’m soft; they need someone that will force them through training.”

  Rick didn’t say anything as we silently watched Yasu. After a few minutes he looked back down at me.

  “What’re you up to?” He asked as if he could read my thoughts looking at the lines of code before me.

  “Making a Mecha builder.”

  “Mecha builder?”

  “Instead of having to put a Mecha together and then testing how it works, this’ll allow us to see what modifications will do without having to build the thing first, just having to input the data.”

  “I think your time would be better spent reassuring them. After your outburst they’re scared.”

  “I should talk to the others.” I said getting the idea as he kept looking at me expectantly.

  “Something like that.”

  “Alright, get the leaders.” I said as I got up.

  Quickly the others grouped around making me think that Rick had been planning on having the meeting whether I wanted to or not. “Alright enough moping around on my part—how is the hand to hand training going?”

  “It’s going really well, Yasu is a great teacher, but she’s only one person. We need someone else with hand to hand experience to help her out.” Hoi said looking at me expectantly.

  “Anything else?”

  “Do you really want us to stop slacking?” Abella asked.

  “Yes, we need to learn all we can, I don’t know how long we’re going to spend training, but we need to use it. Once we leave here we’re going to be fighting, I want us to survive.” They were quiet in thought.

  I broke the silence after a few moments.

  “Alright I’ll see if Yasu will allow me to train. The rest of you do confirmations your squads sleep training. Get though the first aid and start on the firearms course—dismissed.” They rose, going about their tasks as I went back in my Mecha, someone had thankfully cleaned off the blood. I fixed the collar and got a replacement helmet checking my work before I got into it. Once inside I powered it up and moved towards the training room.

  It became quiet as people stopped fighting to see what I was doing.

  “What do you think this is a yoga class? Get back to work.” I barked, walking to Yasu.

  “Look over the advanced hand to hand combatants.” She said without looking at me, moving away to fix a beginners positioning.

  I winced internally. I was out but working with the higher level hand to hand groups would mean I would have to show them more of my moves. Thus her too, giving her an advantage in my eyes. I shrugged; she’d seen enough of my fighting skills already. I turned to my group.

  “Alright.” I said getting myself some time as I remembered their previous fights and their different skills categorizing them in my mind.

  “Higher hand to hands here.” They came in a rush grouping around me. They’re afraid I’ll have another outburst I thought sadly.

  “Okay today we’re going to work on hitting vital points in your opponent’s armour to immobilize them.” Someone raised a hand at the back of the group.

  “Yes?”

  “Yasu already showed us how to rapidly hit the nerve points of a person.”

  “That’s a person, seeing as there’s only one planet of humans that we know of we can deem that human nerve endings won’t be universal to every alien race. Mecha’s on the other hand are used by both Sarenmenti and human. Probably quite a few more races than that, with these classes you can learn how to stop any Mecha moving.” Now I had their attention as I had Rick come forward as a test subject.

  “You on test mode?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now everyone pay close attention.”

  “Attack me Rick.”

  He came at me in a controlled flurry of fist. He was damn good. I was on the defence as I rolled from his punches. My l
eg snaked out hitting his knee causing him to buckle. Three punches and his elbows were locked out.

  “First Rick you need to change up just hitting with fists. Second with a Mecha it’s not like your body, you can’t override a joint that doesn’t work like with a human. Nor do you feel it, and when you’re in the black you aren’t going to know a joint is out until it doesn’t work. Always know what joints are working and not.”

  We learned as we went through more fights. We learned the basics of plasma, laser and rail guns; everything seemed to be waiting in my head for the words to unleash the information. We took apart weapons, put them back together, cleaned them and moved on. There was always something else to learn and my squad soaked it up like sponges.

  “Projectile weaponry within the planetary defence force are used for forty percent of engagements. For the other sixty percent we use melee weaponry.” Taleel unsheathed his blue-green glowing daggers displaying them in front of the squad room.

  “All melee weapons are edged in static encapsulated plasmid.” He sheathed one blade grabbing a piece of metal.

  “When the blade comes into physical contact with something the electrostatic field is pushed away allowing the plasmid to come into contact with the object and cut through it.” He lowered the blade, cutting the metal as if it was butter.

  “Now there are also mono-blade weapons within the defence force. They are as expensive as some ships as they are so rare and hard to create. They can also dull with repeated use and fighting when they have gone from hot to cold areas, or vice versa, such as space to ship environments. Plasmid tipped melee weapons are much cheaper and easier to make and maintain. Get used to them.”

  “They are also the only weapon that you will be allowed to have custom made. Shrift has various designs for you to decide upon.” He looked around the room. “You have seven minutes to be in the Mecha sparring arena.” We waited; we had run off before he had told us to before that had gotten us all threes.

  “Go.” He barked as we scrambled to the Mecha room. We pressed the identity chips implanted in our hands to the consoles as our Mechas rotated forward, getting into them in minutes.

  “Come on, move it!” I barked as I was behind George the last person to get into Mecha and into the training area. Whereas before getting in our Mechas in seven minutes would have been unfathomable. Now it seemed as if we were taking our time if we were over four minutes.

  Shrift was waiting with Taleel in front of an array of weaponry. There was everything from daggers, to swords, katanas, hatchets and every kind of bladed weapon I could imagine.

  “These are based off of human weaponry we have found. Your backwards people being the primates they are do not have the refined melee weaponry that Sarenmenti have, though it is to be expected with your low evolutionary level.”

  We had been told and shown in our sleep how humans were so far behind compared to the Sarenmenti and Kuruvians, with technology, medical practices, education and other main factors of a species.

  “Test them out.”

  “Team leaders.” I barked as one through five including myself filed through with our groups and picked up what we felt was best. We got into practising with the weapons, moving with them, fighting one another with them. We switched and played with them as we went. Taleel watching us with bored interest as Shrift disappeared into his armoury after a short time.

  “Submit your decisions to Shrift. Food. Five minutes. Every minute you’re over you get a hundred push ups. Go.” We put our weapons back on the rack as we rushed to get out of the Mechas. Julie another ten year old was the last. We were a minute behind.

  “One hundred.” Taleel said as if examining a flea. Me and Julie did push ups as the rest ate. Once we were done we slurped down the food that our teammates had gotten us. So far the teams were working. We were the best squad and we knew it. We absorbed everything that was thrown at us and we won every fight even though we were down an older member. Our young had adapted well, learning how to use their new, larger, bodies quicker than others. We all trained and worked our hardest now. Though it didn’t mean we weren’t without our infighting.

  Thankfully the majority were working together. It seemed that the other squads were also learning. It was good and bad. Good in the fact that people were working together, bad that they had their own leaders and that they were getting better at the fights, again good because it gave us better training—bad because there was a higher chance of losing and getting punishment.

  Once our meals were finished Taleel put us in stress positions for so long our muscles spasmed and went numb, and then ran us so much that our bodies tried to dredge up our meals. Thankfully many of ours stayed down. Then there was the endless push ups and drill, Taleels new favourite past-time.

  Sure it looked good and all, but looking good is one hell of a pain in the ass, The first thing you have to realize when you do drill is to turn off your brain. This sounds counter-intuitive seeing as first of all there’s timings that you have to follow for every coordinated foot, or hand and foot or hand and foot and rifle and head movement or any combination of body part that some sadistic bastard that thought parade was a good idea thought of. I hate drill.

  Now all of this is also thrown off if you’re nervous, and we were all nervous We knew what happened when we failed.

  We’d be on our faces doing push ups or lapping the track, sometimes it was a relief to actually have movement in your limbs and the freedom of movement. I think Taleel caught on, so he started making the others do the physical work while we repeated the movement we messed up until we got it perfect.

  So to combat this, we started doing drill in our downtime. Joy.

  As we started to understand and actually become soldiers we gained more free time, which was spent cleaning our battle suits, squad room, armoury, as well as fixing and maintaining the weaponry we’d been given. We didn’t need much sleep anymore as long as we ate, we only needed a few hours of shut eye. We still didn’t know what time it was, or if it was day or night. The weird lighting was always the same.

  That wasn’t the only thing that had changed. I had gained any mass I was lacking and then some. Without mirrors I couldn’t see myself but I knew I was bigger and stronger than ever before. So much so that two hundred push ups were an easy task for me and the others. The children had grown alarmingly too; they were all at their adult height with the massive muscles that the older squad members had gained early on.

  Our bodies had also become accustomed the extra gravities on them. We moved normally and were even able to run without coughing profusely. The atmosphere was still uncomfortable with it’s density and scratchy attributes. Though we had adapted to it as well.

  The food stopped being disgusting, as we forgot the taste of what real food was. Most of the children were forgetting their parents names and faces, the older ones not that far behind. The nightly talks of what we had done when we lived on Earth helped us feel some connection with Earth, but it mainly cemented our connection to one another more than anything.

  We were becoming soldiers in thought and body, leaving our attachments for Earth behind.

  Honestly I didn’t care. Now hear me out, it’s not that I don’t like Earth-sure it’s a very nice place, been living there for twenty years at this point. Yet there wasn’t anything I really cared for there. Mecha Tail was my family and I was going to do everything in my power to get them free and back to their actual families on Earth. I didn’t care I was forgetting my roots. Honestly forgetting about my past was a nice thought. Also as much as I didn’t want to admit it, I was becoming attached with my squad. We had grown together and gone through shit together we didn’t think it was possible to go through and survive. That creates a special bond that is inexplicable. Instead of them being the tools I wanted to use to get MT free they were my friends. I knew I could trust the majority of them with my life and that they would do the same.

  Now I had an issue, because my squad wasn’t the only one.
There were hundreds of others, and if I thought that my squad was worth saving, then they all were. I was cleaning a rail gun while I argued with myself over what to do.

  “Watch my rifle.” I said as I saw Yasu working on her Mecha. I walked straight over to her, stopping ten feet away from her.

  “What do you want?” She asked as soon as I stopped, obviously she’d know about my approach but that was not the first thing on my mind.

  “Say you have to make a choice; fight to save a few you hold dear, losing many. Or possibly lose those dearest to you and a few of the many for the majority to survive-what would you do?”