by David Ryker
“Good afternoon, Airman...” It trailed off. “My apologies, I don’t seem to recognize your data signature.” It stiffened suddenly, a red light coming to life on its forehead. “Identify yourself,” it demanded.
I stopped in my tracks. House droids weren’t usually the confrontational sort. Must be a militarized version — and I wasn’t keen to find out what that meant. “My name is James Alfred Maddox. I’m a recruit. Here for Basic?”
It narrowed its apertures on me. “Do not move.” Its brain whirred in its skull for a few seconds, and then the red light disappeared. “Welcome, Probationary Airman Maddox. You’re late.”
“Late?” I stepped forward. “How can I be late?”
“Your induction began twenty two minutes ago.”
“I didn’t know anything about an induction.”
“Being late is an infractionable offense. This will go on your record.”
“My record?”
“Speaking freely to a ranking officer without express permission is an infractionable offense. This will go on your record.”
I ground my teeth and took a breath. “Permission to speak, sir?” I didn’t know how the hell a house-droid could be a ranking officer, but I didn’t like the look of that seven percent.
“Granted.”
“Can you direct me to the induction room?”
“Your induction is being conducted by Major Meyers. His office is on my left. Thank you.” He gestured to a door behind him and I nodded as politely as I could before I breezed toward it, knuckles ready to knock. I watched them shake as I raised them. Nerves. Hunger. Fatigue. Trepidation. They all swirled like some horrid cocktail, gnawing at my guts, coming out on my skin in a thin sheen of cool sweat.
I stopped at the threshold and listened. I could hear voices inside.
“—all due respect, sir, this is bullshit!” It was a woman’s voice.
“Airman Kepler!” a guy boomed back. “This is not up for discussion. I don’t like it any more than you do, but these are orders, this is what is happening, and this is your mandate. Do you understand?”
I heard her grumble.
“You’re to babysit this whoever the hell he is until he bombs out of Mech Corps, is that clear? There’s no way that some colony tuber is going to—”
I knocked, hard, and both voices halted immediately.
“Enter,” the guy said.
I did and found myself in an office, modest and square, paneled white like every other square inch of the level sixteen. The guy, who I assumed was Major Meyers, was a big brute with round shoulders and a receding hairline. His chest was pinned up with medals and I could see scars snaking up from his collar over the side of his face. Reconstructive surgery had been kind to him, but it must have been a bad tangle. I could see the same scars on the back of his left hand as it clasped the right on the wooden top in front of him. His jaw was set and he looked pissed off.
The girl must have been my age, maybe a year older. She was tall, athletic, with muscular legs hugged by her pilot’s trousers, and a crop of short brown hair that was swept up and back, and shaved on the sides. She was sucking her cheek and glaring at me. “Nice of you to finally join us,” she snorted.
Meyers scowled for a second. “Kepler, wait outside.”
“But —”
“Now, Kepler.”
She huffed and then stormed past me, closing the door harder than was necessary. When we were alone, Meyers gestured to the seat in front of his chair. “Mr. Maddox, sit.”
I did. The chair squeaked.
“You’re late, Maddox.”
“I—”
“That wasn’t a question.” He sighed. “Look, I’m going to be straight with you here. This isn’t exactly—”
“Protocol?”
He narrowed his eyes at me.
“Sorry.”
He ignored it, but I had a feeling I’d only get the one. “All of our pilots here have transitioned from Federation academies. Do you understand that? They’ve been trained their whole lives for this, taught tactics, history, strategy. They’ve been taught hand-to-hand combat, weapons training. They’ve been conditioned for what’s in store. Simply speaking, they’re the best of the best. And you think you can just waltz in here and take control of a mech, and what, be a hero or something?” He shook his head in disbelief and I already knew this entire thing was going to suck.
I waited to see if he’d talk more or if he genuinely wanted an explanation. “I didn’t think anything — sir.” I added the last part quickly. I took a breath and looked him dead in the eye. “To be perfectly honest, less than twelve hours ago, I thought I was going to die. When that dropship came in over Genesis, it scooped me and my Blower —”
“Blower?”
“The Blower 400, a mid-sized terraforming unit equipped with —”
He silenced me with a raised hand and I cleared my throat.
“Sorry. It picked us up in its wake and tossed us like ragdolls. When I came to, my oxygen was spent, and I couldn’t see my unit anywhere. I almost died. Had to dig my way back into it. After that, well, it wasn’t any easier. I had to decouple —”
The hand again. “Get to the point.”
“It took me hours to get back to the settlement, at which point I was detained, frogmarched to the dropship and strapped in. They shot us into orbit, and then put us in line. By the time I got to the SimPod, I didn’t know which way was up. I was just trying to survive. I didn’t know what I was doing, and I wasn’t trying to be clever or brave.” I hung my head, a little ashamed of that. I was supposed to be putting on a show. “When I saw those soldiers coming for me, I assumed the worst. Next thing I know, I’m being dragged out of the brig and sent here. I got kicked off a train out there and then found my way here. So, like I said, sir, and with all due respect — I don’t think anything, because I don’t know anything.”
He drummed on the desk.
“But if you’re asking me if I’d like a chance to be here — well, you know better than me whether those Ground Corps survival rates for new recruits are accurate. And if you were me, sitting where I am, and someone said to you — you can either stay down there with those guys, or you can try your luck upstairs… Well, what would you do?”
“I’d be inclined to say that if you think what we do here hinges in any way, shape or form on luck, as you put it,” he huffed, “then you’re in for a very rude awakening.”
I blinked hard, pissed that I’d used that word. In fact, I probably should have kept my mouth shut altogether and just nodded and apologized. Maybe I thought there’d be some humanity in him, like with Everett, or that this might actually not be so bad. I’m not quite sure how I managed to delude myself into thinking mandatory military conscription would be anything other than prison, but I’d done it.
“Kepler,” he called, beckoning her from the door.
She stepped in and closed it behind her, putting her hands behind her back and standing to attention.
“This is Airman Maddox. He is in your charge.”
“Yessir,” she replied.
“I don’t really think I need a babysitter,” I started, though the remark wasn’t even acknowledged.
“Make sure he knows where he’s sleeping, what our schedule is, and where he can find the things he needs. Uniform. Books.”
“Books?” I cut in.
“Your first Mechanized Corps Basic Training Written Test is in three days. If you fail, you’ll—”
“Be kicked out. Yeah, I get it.”
Kepler snorted. “Keep cutting off an officer and you’ll be kicked out,” she mumbled.
Either Meyers didn’t catch it, or he ignored it. He shifted in his chair. “If you’re here, then you’re a pilot in training. I don’t give two shits what your Sim scores were — if you’re here, you’re living under MC rules. Kepler will make sure you find your quarters and get settled, and I’ve asked her to keep an eye on you, too — show you how things work.”
&nb
sp; She grunted with indignation at the thought.
“Thank you.”
“Oh, it’s not for your benefit. You’ve got no idea how anything works, and I don’t want anything here disrupted because you don’t know where to put your boots. Incidentally, at the foot of your bed.”
I chuckled in as friendly a way as I could. He scowled. It wasn’t a joke.
“Now, get out.”
I nodded slowly and then stood up. Kepler was already in the hallway, staring at me with as hard a look at Meyers was from behind. Seven percent was starting to sound pretty good.
7
“So, it’s Kepler right?”
She stopped and turned into the balls of her right foot before I had chance to react. Her hand shot out and the heel of it slammed into my chest just below my collarbones. She drove me backwards with strength I hadn’t really considered she might have had, and my head cracked against the paneled wall. She kept me pinned there, side on, leaning into my throat with her fist. “Let’s get one thing straight.” Her eyes narrowed. “We’re not friends. We’re not going to be friends. And I don’t give two shits about your goddamn Sim score, alright? This isn’t some fucking game — not some simulation you can pass and impress everyone in. We all earned our places here, and there’s no way some jumped-up fucking tuber from some spit of dirt in the middle of fucking nowhere is going to make himself into a pilot. You got that?”
I nodded, wanting to rebut, but I figured that making enemies of everyone I came across might be a bad idea.
“Good. Meyers stuck me with this detail for one reason, and one reason only — because he trusts me. He trusts me to make sure you don’t fuck up too badly in the first five minutes. He trusts me because I’m the best. I was the top of my class, and I’m going to graduate Basic in the same place. Got it?”
I nodded. I really didn’t like this big and bad act, but I didn’t have the energy to challenge it, or the inclination to make another enemy before I even got started.
“So shut up, listen, watch, and stay the fuck out of my way. I’ve got too much riding on this to get caught up in whatever pity-party fucking sideshow the Federation brass have cooked up.” She snorted and shook her head, releasing me. “Fucking Sim scores. I’d like to see you pull that sort of shit in a Full-Immi,” she muttered through gritted teeth, turning away.
“Full-Immi?” I asked, rubbing my throat.
She scowled at me but said nothing. I struggled to keep up as she walked, her long powerful legs keeping a steady pace. When we finally reached a splay of hallways labelled with their destinations, she stopped and turned. She was breathing hard and trying not to show it. Beads of sweat were glistening along her neck and I could see her pulse hammering there. She’d tried to make a show of the walk, leave me behind, make it tough for me. Guess she didn’t know that growing up on a colony like Genesis-526 breathing oxygen-poor air and sucking through a breather half the time would do wonders for your lung capacity and muscle oxygenation. I felt fitter all of a sudden. The air quality aboard the carrier was much better than I was used to. For Kepler, though, having come up through the academy, breathing liquid fucking gold, she was accustomed to it, so her fitness level and my sudden oxygenation seemed to be cancelling each other out, much to her dismay. She squeezed her lips into a grimace that didn’t suit her and tried to look like she didn’t give a shit about anything.
“I’ve gotta study. I’ve already lost an hour to your shitty timekeeping skills, and I’ve gotta keep my spot—”
“At the top of the class. Yeah.” I sighed. If she was going to go, I was wishing she’d just leave already and give me some peace instead of just deriding me.
Her fists curled. “You’ve got a habit of interrupting people. It’s kind of fucking annoying.”
“I’ve heard.”
“You consciously trying to be an asshole?”
“Just got a knack for it.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Mess hall is down there.” She pointed down a corridor. “Breakfast at seven. Lunch at one. Dinner at seven. Think you can remember that?”
I nodded.
“Quarters are down there.” She pointed down another corridor. “You’re in room 8B — the only free bed in there. Seems you picked your day to arrive. We just lost a recruit. Couldn’t handle the pressure.” She said it like it was a premonition. I tried to ignore the tone.
“What room are you in?”
She smirked. “Yeah, right.” She shook her head at me and I watched her fists uncurl. “Down there, you’ll find laundry, supply rooms, and the Upper Training Deck. The main hangar is reserved for most of the GC’s stuff. We get our own one. We try to keep the riff raff out when we can. Doesn’t always work.” She looked me up and down and then turned on her heel. “In your dorm by nine. Lights out by ten,” she called, striding toward the Training Deck.
“It was 8C, right?” I yelled as she approached a corner.
She flipped me her middle finger over her shoulder, and then disappeared.
Moving through the hallways was disorienting. It took me fifteen minutes to find room 8B. I’d looped back on myself twice trying to get to it. It turned out the hallways were arranged in grids, which was confusing. When I got to it, I let myself in, found the entire room to be empty, and then left. The room was pristine, and there was nothing out of place. I had no idea how I’d be able to find mine, especially not without anyone in there to say hey, it’s this bed. And I hardly wanted to go opening trunks and drawers to check for underpants before slumping down on my cot.
Each room had eight bunks in it, and with a one in sixteen chance, I didn’t like my odds. I had no idea where anyone would be and no idea where to even start looking. I sighed and leaned my head against the outside of the door. My headache was coming back.
Softly shuffling steps snapped my attention around and I looked up to see another Federation House-Droid moving toward me, carrying an armful of folded uniforms. He saw me and stopped.
“Airmen are supposed to be in afternoon training.” He sounded surprised, or at least as surprised as he could with limited voice fluctuation capabilities.
“And that would be… where?”
“Upper Training Deck. I must report —”
I dashed toward him, hands up. “Hey, hey, hey — there’s no need to report anything.”
He looked at me. “But it is protocol to report infractions committed by airmen and other Federation personnel to a ranking officer.”
I could tell there was no arguing with him. Androids didn’t buy into semantics or context. It was all black and white with them. I smiled instead. The droid in the administration area hadn’t been able to read my identity. I guessed that all Federation personnel would be biometrically scanned for ID purposes, but I hadn’t been brought in for that just yet. “Don’t suppose you can scan my ID, right?”
“Negative. Identify yourself immediately, or I will be forced to restrain you.”
“In that case my name is Airman Kepler.,” I grinned. “And being such a big advocate of the rules around here, I suggest you do report me. Now, which way to the Upper Deck?”
When I got to the Upper Deck, I was immediately pulled aside, reprimanded, and then sent straight to medical, where they gave me more of a thorough going over than I’d ever had before. They were pissed off that I was late. Apparently, Kepler was supposed to take me to Medical, but she’d cut me loose early — to try and screw with me. It was hardly the sort of hazing I was used to. It was almost cute. While the doctor had me bent over the table, he told me that I’d put him behind schedule by near enough an hour, and for that, he was going to have to be quick, which apparently meant rough. I gritted my teeth and tried to think of a happier time. I couldn’t come up with one.
After that, I’d been directed to Psych Eval, where my sense of humor had gone down just wonderfully with a shrink wound up tighter than the droid had been. After that, I was given a crash course on Mechanized Corps etiquette by a Federation droi
d that usually oversaw the Federation history self-study sessions. He was dry and fast, and almost as rough as the doctor had been. He went on explaining saluting, addressing, and everything I could need to know to be a mindless robot in training to pilot a mindless robot. He’d given me my schedule, as well as my bunk assignment, and informed me that my clean changes of clothes would be already in my trunk — the droid I’d passed in the hallway had been carrying them, go figure.
It was seven in the evening and I was shoveling down the first decent meal I’d had in over a day in the mess hall, sitting at a table all of my own, when the shit hit the fan. Or, more accurately, when Kepler hit me.
I was pushing meat-flavored paste into a pile with a plastic spork when she slammed my head forward. It bounced off the back of my hand and rebounded. Pain shot through my forehead and into my skull.
“You think that’s funny, huh?” she snarled, planting her foot next to my knee on the bench.
I blinked the stars from my eyes and pushed my tray away. “Fuck,” I grunted in pain, pressing my hand to my forehead.
She open-handed me on the side of the head. “Huh?” I was aware of two other bodies behind me. Cronies? Muscle? An audience?
“Not especially,” I mumbled.
“You know they pulled me in? Meyers pulled me back in, got me up on misconduct toward a Federation droid and absence from duties without clearance.” She slapped me again. “It took me forty minutes to convince him I wasn’t trying to pull some shit, and get him to look at the security footage to prove it wasn’t me.” She went to slap me again, but I caught her wrist and held fast.
“You fucked with me, I fucked with you,” I said flatly. It wasn’t smart, sure, but it was the only language these kids would understand. I wasn’t about to let myself get pushed around again, not when the Federation already had a chain around my neck.