No one answered.
"Everywhere we go-o!" I tried again.
Alejandro answered it. "Everywhere we go-o!"
"People wanna know-o."
Three or four others picked it up in addition to Alejandro. "People wanna know-o."
"Who we are-r."
"
Who we are-r!
" More people.
"So we tell them."
"
So we tell them!
" the whole class.
"You're going to get beaten real good if you keep that up!" Chief Adams said through the megaphone.
I didn't care. "We are the Navy!"
No one else seemed to care either. "
We are the Navy!
"
"The motherfucking Navy!"
"
The motherfucking Navy...
"
* * *
"It's time for your next evolution," Chief Adams said. "ATLAS PT."
Turned out I had been right about the shock and awe. Tuesday morning we had PT for only forty-five minutes, compared to the three and a half hours of the day before, and after breakfast we had classroom sessions until 1000. The instructors
had
been trying to scare us off, and they'd achieved their goal admirably: Thirty guys had quit yesterday. We were down to sixty-eight.
We'd just come from lunch and had mustered at the top of the sand berm. Looking down, I saw several flatbed pickups backing up onto the beach with man-sized robots in the truck beds. The robots were humanoid in shape, with metallic arms and legs and yellow visors lowered over their dented heads. Red chest scars indicated where the
power packs had been yanked.
"Some of you native citizens, or fans of old movies, might recognize these," the Chief said. "Old-style ATLAS 1s, relatively ancient precursors to the ATLAS 5s in use today."
I did a double take on the robots in the truck beds again. Yes, I could see the resemblance now. They were miniature versions of the ATLAS 5 mechs I'd seen on the Net.
"These models are obsolete to the extreme of course. Little more than fancy powered exoskeletons. Basically forerunners to the modern jumpsuits. But they make good practice for spec-ops trainees. Don't get all excited on me. You're not actually going to pilot these, or
wear a jumpsuit. Not until you've proven that you have at least half a brain. Besides, any parts of value have long since been salvaged. Hell, there's not even a CPU, let alone a battery pack. So what are you geniuses going to do with them?" He grinned widely. "Why, you're going to carry them. ATLAS mechs have one of the highest availability ratios in the fleet, second only to starships. Unfortunately, they do break down on occasion, due to mechanical failure or battery discharge or, heaven forbid, being shot down in combat. So we do have to portage them from time to time. Look heavy, don't they? Well, they're not that bad, not these ones at least. See, the ATLAS combat mechs are made of some of the most lightweight metallics available, so these ATLAS 1 will set you back only around ninety kilos, or two hundred pounds for you metrically-challenged. If these were ATLAS 5s on the other hand, well, then you'd be in trouble. Just be happy you're not qualified to touch an ATLAS 5, because when you have to carry a mech that weighs three tonnes for twenty miles without a jumpsuit, let's just say you gain an appreciation for these early models."
We divvied up into crews, and after turning ourselves into "Gingerbread Men" we hurried over to the trucks. I jumped into the bed of the nearest truck, and wrapped one arm firmly around the left knee of the ATLAS 1. Alejandro took the right knee. Haywire took the head, Tahoe took the right shoulder, another guy took the left shoulder, and two others jammed under each hip. Our crew lifted.
The thing was a bitch to carry. The seven of us banged it up pretty good while jumping down from the truck bed.
"You just dented a piece of equipment worth half a billion digicoins, dumbasses!" Instructor Piker said. "Your whole crew, sea immersion. Now!"
A bunch of other crews soon joined us, which didn't really make me feel any better.
When the seven of us were called back from the freezing ocean, we tried again. Eventually we realized that it was all about teamwork. You had to work together if you wanted to move that ATLAS without dropping it. Alejandro started calling out a cadence, and we marched in tempo, taking even steps.
Piker made us dress the suits like "gingerbread men" soon thereafter, which was a
very
gentle process that involved lowering the ATLAS into the ocean, struggling back to the high tide mark and chucking a ton of sand over the metal. Once that was done, the crews did various PT evolutions while holding up the sandy ATLAS 1s, including squats, lunges, jumping jacks, situps and overhead tosses.
"So, how do you like ATLAS PT?" Instructor Piker said. He had a big sarcastic grin on his face. "Beats sitting at home with your feet up on the couch, munching a bag of chips and watching the latest gay porn on your aReal don't it?"
"
Wooyah!
"
As usual, teamwork was essential here. We motivated each other as best we could, but someone inevitably would tire and make a mistake, causing the ATLAS to drop to the sand. The crews were being beat up left and right by the instructors because of that. Some individuals were singled out and forced to become Gingerbread Men while the crews struggled on with one man less. Others just washed out—in fact, one guy on my crew quit while we were doing pushups with the ATLAS balanced on our backs. Not fun.
"You all look like studs," Instructor Piker said while we were struggling through the pushups, one man short. "Especially you, Mr. Galaal. Do you have any tips on getting pussy?"
I was used to this sort of abuse by now and it didn't bother me. "That's a negative, sir!"
"Come on, a stud like you, and you have no tips on getting pussy? Oh. I get it. You're gay. The only tips you can give me are for getting a piece of ass."
"Wooyah, sir!"
He focused on Alejandro next. "Mr. Mondego! You are flagging. You're the weakest person in this class. Are you going to make me punish your classmates because you can't keep up? Are you?"
"Wooyah Instructor!" Alejandro said.
He wasn't flagging. He
was
keeping up. He was one of the hardest workers here. But like I said, I was used to comments like that by now.
Except, for some reason it got to me today.
"Leave him alone," I said.
I don't know why I said it. I should have kept my mouth shut.
Instructor Piker spun toward me like a shark sensing blood. "Why, hello again Mr. Galaal."
He smashed a handful of sand into my face while I did my pushups. Then another handful. And another. I'd scrunched up my face, but my nostrils were full of sand, and my whole nose was throbbing—he'd hit pretty hard. My cheeks were burning where the grit had dug in. I kept my eyes shut tight, and worked through the pain.
"You really are gay, aren't you Mr. Galaal?" Piker said.
"Negative, Instructor!" I managed, breath heaving.
"Are you and Mr. Mondego playing with each other's buttholes at night?"
"Negative, Instructor!"
"You're lucky I don't send your whole crew to sea immersion for being gay. In fact, that's an excellent idea. The six of you go cool down in the ocean for a while. For being gay."
And so it went.
The days began to blur together. Morning PT, sea immersion, soft sand runs, swimming and deep dive practice, bay swims, more PT, Gingerbread Men, O-Course, inflatable boat races, ATLAS PT, pipeline crawls (where we had to crawl in these super-tight, super-claustrophobic pipes that had been laid at the bottom of the bay). There were random room inspections, which was really just an excuse for the instructors to ransack our barracks. We were expected to find time at the end of the exhausting day to clean up our rooms again. One time there were two inspections in the same day, before anyone had time to clean up after the previous one. The instructors gave us an epic beating for that, involving repeated sea immersion and O-Course runs. I tell you there's nothing worse than climbing the cargo net in the O-Course when you can barely move or feel your cold-numbed fingers.
Sometime during the second week I developed pneumonia, but one of the Weavers fixed me up. Not before I was given a chance to quit, of course.
Speaking of quitting, guys washed out left and right, and not just because of the beatings. You have to understand, there were pass-fail qualifications constantly along the way. The instructors thought up all these devious little trials for us. Drown avoidance, where they tied you up and tossed you into the tank and expected you not to panic while you swam and retrieved objects with your teeth. Lifesaving, where you rescued a "drowning" instructor who in actuality tried to drown
you
. Timed O-Course runs. Timed surface swim runs. Timed pipeline crawls. Timed soft sand sprints. Timed ATLAS portage. And on and on. You were given two chances to past each test, and if you failed both times you were rolled back on the spot—you moved to barracks 618 and waited for the next class up. A lot of people just quit when they were rolled back. Some stayed. Thing is, you could only be rolled back once. If you failed to make the cut a second time you'd never be back.
Other than the trials, there were four more legendary, three-hour PT beatings like we had the very first day, so that by the time Trial Week rolled around, we were down to forty-five students.
Trial Week. What can I say. The students had been talking about it every day since we started Orientation. The training that would separate the men from the boys. Ninety-eight percent of the students who made it past Trial Week would go on to become MOTHs. But making it through, that was the trick, wasn't it?
Friday night we mustered in the classroom. Chief Adams stood at the front with a bunch of the other instructors, including Reed, Brown, Piker, and Peterson. Basically everyone who had beaten us these past few weeks.
The Chief took the podium. "Excited about Trial Week, children?"
"
Wooyah Chief
!"
The Chief was just beaming, his yellow eyes glittering in the light. Never a good sign. "I'm glad to hear it. Because next week we're separating the chaff from the wheat. Despite the bone-crushing fatigue, the unending stress and hardship, you'll be expected to demonstrate the core values of the UC Navy: Honor, courage and commitment. We're also expecting a few Team qualities to show through as well, namely self-sacrifice, leadership, and resilience. We expect a winner's attitude from you at all times, no matter how adverse the conditions become. Because you know what? Only the very best of you will prevail. The very best."
He paused, letting his words sink in. "You're all going to have to do a whole lot of soul searching next week. Who are you, deep inside? What do you really want? What are you doing here? How badly do you really want this? That last question is the most important. Every second of every moment you'll be asking yourself that question: How badly do I really want this? Is it worth the sleep deprivation, the pain, the cold? It's all up to you. You've conquered all the timed trials, and every qualification we've thrown at you so far. At this point we're not the ones who decides who passes and who fails. It's all up to you now. Do you want to be ordinary men, and live ordinary lives, or do you want to become more than men? Do you want to become MOTHs?"
"
Wooyah Chief
!" we roared.
In the barracks, I took Alejandro to see Tahoe and his swim buddy, Haywire, and the four of us made a pact.
"We aren't going to quit," I said. "Not now, not after everything we've been through. We're going to make it through to the end."
I held out my fist, and Tahoe and Alejandro piled their fists on top of mine.
"To the end," Tahoe said.
"To the end," Alejandro said.
Haywire clasped our hands. "To the end," he said.
The forty-five remaining members of Class 1108 spent the weekend psyching up for Trial Week. We cleaned our rooms and ironed our clothes (minimally of course—enough to pass a real inspection, not enough to feel bad if the instructors tore the place apart). We did PT. We watched movies. We talked about girls, and what we were going to do when we became MOTHs.
Sunday afternoon Instructor Piker ordered us to the classroom and instructed us to bring our gear and a change of clothes for when we quit. I piled everything into my spacebag, hefted it over my shoulder, and when I got to the classroom I saw the usual instructors present plus another ten I didn't recognize, for a total of thirty—almost one instructor for every student. Interesting.
There were five Weavers present, their spiderlike, telescoping fingers sinister reminders that this was going to be a difficult day. Though I wasn't sure why the instructors wanted the medical robots in the classroom environment. Eventually I decided they'd done it just to scare us.
Chief Adams gave the class permission to sit. "Lockdown, children," he said, scratching at his thick beard. "No one goes in or out of the classroom as of now. We're going to get all chummy and watch some movies together. You know, eat some pizza, have some laughs. A good ol' fashioned slumber party. Without the slumber."
The instructors sat down at their desks, which were cordoned off at the front of the room, and put up their legs.
Everyone donned aReals, and we all watched classic movies, instructors and students alike. There was
From The Sino-Koreans, with Love. Superman Vs Vampires
.
Star Wars XXVII
. We were only half-paying attention to the movies though. Too much on our minds.
I ate a whole large pizza that afternoon, and I wasn't the only one. The instructors had ordered boxes and boxes of the stuff. The Amazon drones were busy dropping them off all afternoon. I had a sneaking suspicion we wouldn't be eating for a long while after this.
As the day wore on, and nothing happened, the tension in the air became almost palpable. I dimmed the movie soundtrack with my aReal, and browsed my personal music archive instead. I tried listening to some soothing tunes. Didn't help. I was too high-strung.
Then finally, when we least expected it, Chief Adams stood up from his desk.
Still facing away from us, he started laughing. Maniacally. "It's time to pay the piper children! It's time to pay the piper!"
The Chief knelt, then hoisted something up. When he turned around, I saw he was holding an M134 Gatling machine gun in both hands.
He sprayed the classroom with it.
I ducked, frantically kicking down my desk for cover. Others were doing the same around me. There were yelps as people got fingers caught under falling desks. Empty pizza boxes fanned across the floor.
I looked to the exit, searching for an escape route. Two other instructors guarded it. They also carried M134s.
They also opened fire.
I forced myself even lower, and slid my spacebag into one of the gaps between me and the other desks, hoping for at least some protection from the bullets. But who was I kidding? The rounds from an M134 could tear right through desks, spacebags and students alike.
We were all dead.
But there were no screams above the gunfire. No one begging for morphine, or calling for mother. I hesitantly glanced up. Other than a few sore fingers, none of the students seemed injured. They were damn scared, though.
"Blanks!" someone called above the mayhem. "They're firing blanks!"
The lights abruptly went off. An air raid siren sounded. The bright flashes of the machine guns lit the room like a strobe light, making everything seem to happen in slow motion. The air hung with the smell of cordite.
"Incoming attack! Hit the deck!"
I heard the distant whistle of a dropping bomb. The sound grew in pitch until I heard a tremendous
bang
.
The room shook and I felt my heart and lungs vibrate from the shockwave.
More bombs fell. The classroom was being shelled.
One shell struck not far from me. Body parts flew into the air. A fine red mist sprayed my upper body.
Alejandro had been beside me. I couldn't see him. I crawled through the carnage, slid his desk aside, and found him.
I felt like I was going to die.
Alejandro was on his back, staring up into space with wide, unblinking eyes. His belly was opened right up like some cadaver straight out of med-school, his viscera glistening with cement dust.
I just stared at him.
I couldn't move.
Couldn't look away.
Shells continued to explode all around me.
All I could think was that Alejandro was the closest thing to a brother I ever had.
And now he was gone.
Because of me.
He wouldn't have come here, to the UC, if it hadn't been for me.
He wouldn't have taken spec-ops training, if it hadn't been for me.
What had I done?
I felt like I was going mad.
A part of my mind was still functioning, through the sadness, the guilt. And that part told me that the law of averages wouldn't allow me to survive much longer. I couldn't live, not when the men around me were dying left and right. I was going to get hit by a shell any second, whether I moved or not. I felt utterly helpless and desolate in that moment.
I just stayed where I was, motionless, waiting for the inevitable. The shells dropped. And dropped.
Incredibly, they all missed me.
The classroom didn't fare so well. It was quite literally bombed to hell. The machine gunners had long since stopped firing—they no longer existed. There was no overhead, and through a gaping hole in one bulkhead I saw the beach. It was lit up in the dark by scattered fires, and covered in fresh, sandy craters. Beyond the beach other buildings were destroyed. Plumes of smoke rose from New Coronado in the distance.
How could this be happening? Why were we being attacked?
Who were the attackers?
The air raid siren didn't stop. The shelling didn't cease.
I ducked my head, and covered my ears, just wishing the sound would stop. That the shelling would stop. I was too frightened to move.
Time ticked past.
Still I didn
't get hit.
Alejandro was dead, but I lived. And if I wanted to continue living, then I had to overcome this debilitating fear, and push his death from my thoughts. There was nothing I could do for him except grieve, and I could do that later, when I was safe.
Otherwise his death was for nothing.
My mind started going through a dozen different scenarios. I considered making a run for it. If I could somehow
escape the shelling, cross the beach, and dive into the ocean... or maybe, if I could find out where the ATLAS 5 mechs were stored, I could make a stand. But even if I could find the mechs, I didn't know how to pilot them.
And then I realized something else.
Something that could change everything.
I was still wearing my aReal.
Could it be...
I pulled the glasses off.
Sure enough, the classroom remained intact around me. There was no blood. There were no body parts. The students were ducked behind their overturned desks, locked inside the hellish world generated by their aReals.
Beside me Alejandro was alive, lying there, still wearing his aReal. He held his face in both hands and wept.
Scattered about the room were ten other students who had torn off their aReals, including Tahoe. They were doing PT under the guidance of the instructors.
Piker stepped forward and angrily pointed at me. "Drop and push 'em where you lie, Mr. Galaal!"
And so I did.
"Better strap yourself in for a long ride!" Piker said. "You buddy screwers are going to keep pushing them until every last one of your dumbass friends realizes the truth and yanks off his aReal! Given the Intelligence Quotient of the average member of Class 1108, that is going to be one very long time. We're going to be here all night."
After about ten minutes of pushups, lying kicks, crunches, and lunges, roughly half the class had unplugged. I finally got sick of waiting and, with a quick glance at the instructors to make sure they weren't watching, I reached over and ripped off Alejandro's aReal.
"I saw that Galaal!" Instructor Brown came rushing at me. "You think you're pretty smart don't you?"
"Wooyah Instructor!"
Alejandro had this confused look on his face. "Rade, you're alive..."
Brown turned his attention on him. "Drop and push 'em dumbass!"
Ignoring the instructor, Alejandro got up and gave me a hug, hopping up and down. "You're alive you're alive!"
Brown stepped in. "I said—"
"
Si
, drop and push 'em!" Alejandro dropped. "Dropping and pushing them, sir!" I don't think I've ever seen him so happy to do pushups.
Around me, other unplugged students got the hint and started tearing off the aReals of those closest to them.
"Stop, you disobedient curs!"
But it was too late—in moments everyone had their aReals off.
"You're all going to pay for that!" Instructor Piker roared into the megaphone he'd produced.
One of the students who'd just had his aReal yanked off suddenly jumped to his feet. I recognized him. Markus, a good kid.
He ran to Instructor Piker and fell to his knees, clasping the instructor's pants imploringly.
"I quit," Markus said. "I quit I quit!"
And so we had the first casualty of Trial Week. It was a little heartbreaking. I knew everyone personally by now. You can't go through three weeks of First Phase and three weeks of Orientation and not make friends with the survivors. But of all of us, Markus was the very definition of a survivor. An Olympic water polo player who'd come back from a terrible injury to win gold at the Games. He knew how to master his inner self. He knew how to beat the odds. I couldn't understand why he quit. I guess he just panicked. Seeing all his friends die, even in a simulation, was just too much for him.
Another instructor led Markus away. The Olympic-medal winner didn't look back.
"On the move recruits!" Instructor Piker yelled into his megaphone. "I've got some payback to give. Move move move move!"
We hauled ass to the infamous plot of black asphalt at the center of the compound. High intensity spotlights randomly roved the dark, the kind you find in prisons. Artillery simulators blasted away in barrels all around the grinder, whistling and exploding and throwing up gray plumes. There was more gunfire, this time from a mix of rifles and pistols. Instructors fired machine guns up into the night sky. Spent shells poured down into the grinder, scalding those of us unfortunate enough to come into contact with them. Some instructors threw smoke grenades from the sides, others launched flares. I noticed that almost every vertical surface was padded with old life vests—probably a good thing, given that half of us were milling about in confusion.
We knew it wasn't real, but I think we were all still shocked from what we'd seen in the aReals. I know I was.
Finally the instructors got us under control, and we did PT while high-pressure hoses sprayed us down. We did combat drills, low crawling back and forth across the grinder. Then we sprinted out to the beach and did sea immersion.
Fifteen minutes later we were told to crawl out.
My hip flexors were so numb I almost couldn't get up. Somehow I and the others managed, and we began a series of lunges in the dark. Industrial fans were setup all along the beach, and between those fans and the instructors spraying us with their hoses, none of us could get warm. At least I couldn't.
We switched to lying kicks with our heads below the high water line, so that the waves splashed over our faces. We were sputtering and half-drowning. Water and sand washed up my nose. I was so cold, my whole body was jackhammering. The people around me weren't doing any better. Alejandro sat on his fists, kicking away, his elbows flapping uncontrollably.
"They're called flutter kicks, not chicken flaps, dumbass!" one of the instructor's yelled at him.
I don't think Alejandro heard.
Finally we switched to pushups. It wasn't much better, but at least we were out of the water.
We continued the PT under those brutally freezing conditions for about thirty minutes, then we were ordered to crawl back into the ocean for more immersion.
As I lay there, hanging on to Alejandro on my right and Tahoe on my left, I tried to imagine myself in a hot tub. It didn't work. I was so cold my neck muscles spasmed involuntarily, sending waves of pain flaring through my neck with each seize-up.
Instructor Brown's voice drifted down from shore.
"Why are you doing this to yourself? Why don't you just quit?" Like Reed (and most instructors actually), he had the unsettling ability to make it sound like he was talking to you and no one else. "Why torture yourself? You don't really want to be a MOTH. You know you don't. It's just not worth it. And you know what? There's no shame in quitting. Come on, we got a nice heater in the truck. And cronuts! Every flavor imaginable. Boston cream. Cherry cheesecake. Orange creamsicle. Vanilla. We also got steak and turkey cooking up too. Hot and juicy. With mashed potatoes and filling so good it'll melt in your mouth. All you gotta do is get up and say the magic words. Come on, we all know this is bull. Just pack her in, and come get your steak and cronuts. You owe it to yourself."