“If by interesting you mean completely insane, then sure, it was interesting. Again, I respect him, and I’m sure we’re getting the best training possible, but if we were anyone else we’d be dead by now.” I said as I looked at the small digital display on the side of the gun’s magazine that read a full 31 bullets were loaded.
“Maybe that’s why we’re with him though,” Xario said as he looked down his holographic scope through the doorway, “maybe the reason we’re doing all this crazy stuff is because we’re us, and that’s how he’s gonna best train us. You good to move?”
My eyes were locked down the hall, my gun raised and waiting to spray metal on anyone who decided to round the corner, “Yeah, stay low and slow,” I said as I started moving backwards in my crouched position, “and I’m glad you think so highly of us, but I still think it’s a bit unreasonable to pull this kind of-” I stopped as I felt Xario’s hand on my back and lightly pushing.
“Movement,” he whispered, “they’ve got Jurol and Juno’s surrendering.”
I got back to my corner, my heart pounding out of my chest, “How many?” I asked as Xario shuffled into his corner, but still kept his sights on the targets.
“I count eight, but I think the others are just out of sight, what should we do?”
As much as I wished that was enough to go on, I needed my eyes on the situation. With the speed of hospital waiting room, I turned around and looked around the corner through my sight.
“You can’t kill, right?”
I didn’t see Xario nod, but I assumed he did.
I turned my attention back to him and smiled, “You’re good with kneecaps though, right?”
He let out an amused breath and nodded, “My religion’s a bit fuzzier on the subject of kneecaps.”
I switched back to my sight and turned the firing mode over to semi automatic, “You go for the legs, I’ll hit the arms. On my mark… Mark!”
As they spun to face the source of the sound we opened fire, Xario successfully hitting pretty much every single knee that he passed over, while I managed to get four of the soldiers in various places near and on their arms before ducking back behind cover, but not before seeing Juno kicking up her weapon.
A few seconds passed by and the shooting stopped, the groans of the soldiers who survived paled in comparison to the loud screeching of the flock of birds we’d woken up.
“You could’ve killed me!” I heard Jurol scream, making me feel comfortable to leave my cover.
“Puh-lease,” Juno said while watching Xario and I come out of the doorway, “I waited until you were well and truly on the ground before I opened fire.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that you could’ve killed m-ah!” he yelled, jumping away from one of the soldiers who’d grabbed his ankle.
“P-please help me.”
I looked around at my team who’d apparently just noticed the six survivors on the ground, “This is a kill op,” I said coldly, “no room for baggage.” I said before putting a bullet in the pleading soldier’s skull, which was quickly followed up by Juno doing the same.
I felt bad for doing it, evil even, but it wasn’t like I hadn’t taken a life before. That was different though, I’d been putting down people who’d have put me down too if they had the chance, there was no such guarantee from the bodies that stained the grass around the facility.
Juno and I shared a knowing look before she stalked passed me and went into the facility with me close behind.
We all grabbed a fresh weapon, and Jurol and Xario refused to look at either of us, not in anger or disappointment, but mostly just shock.
“Still think this is a sim?” Juno asked coldly, “Because I sure as Hell don’t.”
An Educational Game
“I’m just saying that there’s absolutely no way I tripped that alarm.” Jurol clarified for the fifth time, “I’d barely even touched the thing and suddenly everything went off.”
The silence had ended up lingering over my team for a good long while, but after ten minutes of complete silence and not a single soul trying to kill us we’d forced ourselves to communicate.
“Then someone spotted you,” Juno said judgingly, “now shut up, you’re gonna give away our position.”
“To who?” Xario asked as we cleared yet another empty room, “I’m starting to think we got them all.”
I shook my head, “No way, Garrett would’ve shown up by now.”
“And another point to Kurla!”
We instinctively snapped around with our guns aiming for the target down the hall, “Gods Garrett!” I shouted as I lowered my weapon, not realising that I’d used his first name and not his title, “We could’ve shot you.”
“No you couldn’t’ve, I’m too quick. How’s everyone doin’?” he asked before taking a big bite of his apple and shifting the satchel he had slung over his shoulder.
“Good sir.” Jurol and Xario said in unison.
“And you two?” he asked, turning his attention to Juno and I.
We both shrugged and gave an equally low, “Eh.”
“So what’re you doing here Field Master, did we complete the mission?” I asked, remembering to use his proper address.
“Gods’ no, still got a whole lotta trouble dug in deep. Good news is they’re all together.”
I didn’t like the way he said that, but Xario had decided he wanted a turn to speak, “What’s in the bag sir?”
Garrett smiled broadly, “I’m so glad you asked. These here are clips,” he said, tapping on the satchel, “and we’re gonna have a little guessing game. Every answer you get right earns you a clip.”
“Is this game compulsory?” Juno asked bitterly, and making me squirm.
Sometimes people being disrespectful makes me really uncomfortable, other times I’m fine with it. That was not one of the other times.
“Not at all, you don’t wanna play, you don’t have to. I totally understand wanting to focus on the mission at hand, however…”
I waited for as long as I thought was deemed reasonable then had to ask “However?”
“Well, it’s just that I really wanna play this game, and I know you all probably have full clips right now, but what happens when all those guys I led here show up?”
See, if Juno was disrespectful then, I wouldn’t have given a damn.
My face dropped and I spun on the spot and raised my gun, seeing more or less exactly what I’d expected, a good dozen Feddie soldiers trying to open a hard-glass door that separated the hall from the rest of facility.
“Why can’t they get through?” Xario asked, having just followed my lead and seeing how every few seconds the light above the door would turn red and the Feddies would groan.
“That’d be ‘cause I got the override right here,” Garrett said, stealing my attention and revealing the crude frequency jammer he’d pulled from his pocket, “and if I were you, I’d start runnin’, my thumbs gettin’ tired. If I remember there’s a pile o’ crates somewhere around that corner behind me, see you there.”
Before I could say anything he’d bolted, taken his thumb off the button, and let the doors slide open, “Fall back!” I shouted as I held in my trigger and sprayed the hall with bullets, something that everyone there had taken to.
Luckily the Feddies had grabbed the laser weapons that were all but busted, meaning me and my team had enough time to get around the corner before they could start firing again.
“This is very not good!” Jurol shouted as we ran toward the crates at the end of the hall.
We slid over them at the same time and took cover, “Ya think!?” Juno snapped.
“Leave him alone,” I said as I peeked over the crate and felt a wave of heat zoom over my head as a laser bolt exploded against the wall behind me, “Ten, at least. Who’s got ammo?” I asked the three beside me.
They all shook their heads right as Garrett shouted from the corner he was behind to our right, “I do!”
For a second I got e
xcited, then I remembered what we were doing there, “Let me guess-”
“Answer a question correctly and get a mag. Answer incorrectly and the Feddies do.”
“You can’t be serious!” Juno cried out as bolts continued to fly over our heads.
“Deadly. First question, this is an easy one, are we on a Feddie or a Commonwealth world?”
I desperately tried to recall the terrain, but Juno didn’t have that kind of patience, “Federation!”
“Incorrect, ’ere you go boys!” he yelled chummily as he threw a clip toward the shooters without leaving his cover, “Next question. Without checking, who can tell me how many shooters are there?”
Without skipping a beat Jurol blurted out, “F-f-fourteen!”
I went to snap at him about keeping quiet but stopped as a mag clattered in front of him, “Good counting son!” Garrett chuckled.
“How did you do that?” Xario asked.
Jurol shrugged without ceasing his shaking, “I’m g-g-good at that sor-sort of t-th-th-”
“Thing!” Juno shouted, “Come on! Next question!”
Garrett smiled, “Well someone’s eager, question numero tres! What’s my last name?”
Juno growled, “Arsehole!?”
“Incorrect, and mean.” he said without the slightest trace of offense, “Can I see your weapon?”
“No!”
“See, you’re just a wrong answer machine, aren’t you? Give me your weapon, Private.” he ordered sternly.
She held onto her gun a while longer before tossing it angrily at him.
“Thanks, you’ll get this back when you answer a question correctly,” he ignored her insulted scoff and continued on, “how long have- hold on.” he loaded a clip into Juno’s carbine and, while dropping to his knee, leant around the corner and fired a few bursts on the approaching soldiers before pushing himself back up against the wall, “I’m trying to teach here!” he bellowed over the gunfire.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered to us, “I just spooked ‘em. Anyway, how long have you all been here? Keep in mind you get points for accuracy.”
All of us stayed quiet for a second, trying to figure out how many hours we’d been there before, after less than seconds, Jurol shouted “An hour and thirteen minutes, I’m hazy on the seconds!”
“Look at mister stopwatch over here!” Garrett yelled proudly before tossing Jurol Juno’s rifle, “Feel free to share with the class!”
Jurol looked between all of us before handing me the almost fully loaded weapon, “She’s a better shot.” he muttered at Juno as she glared at him.
“Thank you.” I said as I dropped my weapon and changed Juno’s to semi auto.
I took a deep breath and tried to visualise my targets before springing up to my feet and, in three seconds, dropped five of the targets.
I checked the mag and saw that it still had twenty rounds left and handed it to Juno, “Skirt around Xario and take a few shots on my mark.” she, after a few seconds of looking confusedly at my ‘gift’, followed my orders, “Jurol, I’m going to need you to load your weapon.”
He was still staring at the mag by his feet and shaking his head, “I can’t, why not Xario?”
I shook my head, “Xario won’t take kill shots. I need you here,” I grabbed up the clip and forced it into his shaky hands, “all you’re going to do is hip fire, alright? Suppress them so Juno can take her shots.”
“Why can’t she just do what you did?” he said while he stuffed the mag into his rifle.
“Because they’re expecting it, they’re waiting for another one of us to shoot up, take a few seconds and then pop.”
“Go up firing so they don’t have the chance to see me before Juno shoots.” he said, his voice losing some of its pitch.
“Exactly.”
He didn’t wait another second, or try to convince me of some other plan, instead he popped up and, in between laser bolts, layered the opposite end of the hall with tungsten.
“Mark!” I bellowed.
The first letter hadn’t even left my lips and Juno was already shooting faster than I’d ever seen her.
It felt like ten minutes had passed, though I was acutely aware that it had been more like ten seconds by the time the last of Jurol’s casings hit the ground.
Garrett rounded the corner and sighed, “Well… that’s a shame.”
I slowly rose to my feet and looked over the bodies, all of the targets were eliminated, “What do you mean ‘that’s a shame’, sir?”
He sighed again and turned to face me, “I thought I’d be able to teach you guys some more. Oh, and Jurol,” he said with a sorry face, “you did well Private, I was the one who tripped the alarm, I’m sure you could’ve done it without tripping the system, thought it’d be a learning experience, but it turns out that you all are just too damn good at what you do.” he said seriously but proudly before getting back his real smile, “Anyway, great work everyone! You all passed your first real lesson!”
Like everyone else, I smiled politely, but the little voice inside me could only just barely muster a weak and apathetic ‘Hurray.’
It had not been a good morning.
Learning
The entire trip back was, in a word, awkward. None of us wanted to say a thing, but I still had one burning question, “Was that a sim or not?” I asked Garrett, who was sitting next to me, and making no attempt to hide my bitterness.
“What?” Garrett asked, clearly stunned.
“That, back there, was it a simulation?”
Garrett seethed for a few seconds before finally resigning to the fact that he had to answer, “No. That was a genuine op.”
At first I wanted to have a screaming fit about how irresponsible that was, but luckily I was far too tired to do anything that exhausting, “Alright then,” I said bitterly, “how did they get to that facility?”
“Pretty easily actually, came in when you all did. Didn’t pick up on it until we realised we hadn’t heard from the place since you arrived, and it only took that long ‘cause it was run with a skeleton crew.”
It took me a bit longer than it should’ve to put the pieces together, “We’re on Seros?”
Garrett nodded and gave a goofy smile, “Had you all goin’ for a while. Yeah, figured it’d be interestin’ to see how you’d act in an almost entirely unknown environment. Proud to say you did well.”
Again, the urge to scream was present, but I was holding it in, “Alright then. What’re we doing for the rest of the day?” I asked, dreading the idea of doing another mission.
“Up to you,” Garrett said with a little smile, “I like to train my students as I would treat a real unit. You have a great deal of responsibility, but you’re also as close to adults as you’re gonna get in my eyes.”
Jurol started glowing, a smile that went from ear to ear appearing out of nowhere, “So you’re telling us that we can do whatever we want whenever we want?”
Garrett half nodded, half shrugged, “Yeah, as long as it follows the Academy’s rules I don’t mind. You’ll be doin’ some stuff with the other students, and I’ll definitely drag your arses out of bed every mornin’ if I have to, but what I really want to see is you taking initiative. Sign up for aviation courses, advanced training, Hells, if there’s a talent show I want to you in it.”
And there it was, the respect for his method and the realisation that he was definitely the best teacher I’d ever had.
I felt like I had bipolar.
To be honest, I didn’t expect the group to be nearly as proactive as they were, after a two hour nap we’d all gotten right into our own new training regimen.
We took every class we could, hand-to-hand combat, advanced weapons and marksman training, aviation and aeronautics classes, which Jurol absolutely aced, as well as more than a few competitions.
For six intense weeks we trained to the point that we were breaking records and making a real name for ourselves around the Academy and, after a few cycles thro
ugh the group, I was unanimously voted the official team leader. Juno really wanted it, which she made no small show of, but for some reason she was more than happy to see all the responsibility on my shoulders.
I didn’t mind though, I felt confident that I could do the job, and do it well. Not trying to sound cocky or anything, but the fact was that Jurol was too sheepish, Xario too kind, and Juno far too argumentative and emotional.
It’s funny, even though we were learning something new almost every day things had started to sort of stagnate. In fact, it wasn’t until the day where we finally had our first mission where all of the students went out for group survival training that things… changed.
Things Change
I was the fifth from the end of the long line of privates that were marching through the forest. The twenty kilo pack on my back may as well have been made of air as far as my body was concerned, and the helmet on my head as comfortable as my own hair.
“This is taking forever,” I heard Jurol groan from behind me, “where are we even going?”
“Probably nowhere,” Juno said flatly, “just keep marching, I’m sure we’ll be done soon enough.”
“You’re oddly nice today,” Xario laughed, “are you ill?”
“Ha-ha, and no, I just haven’t got the strength to formulate a halfway decent insult.”
And that’s when they fell silent and, before I could look around, I’d been punched in the back of the head.
Suddenly I was on the ground and there was a bug in my mouth. I spat it out and slowly got to my feet, my head feeling like it’d been attached to a free rolling gyroscope. The other students were nowhere to be seen, my pack was gone, and I was in a completely different part of the forest.
I took a few deep breaths, looked at the placement of the sun and deduced I’d been out for at least an hour. There were no tracks and no other sign that I’d been touched other than the missing pack.
That’s when I realised something slightly odd, my helmet was still on, and in the right place as well. I took it off and gave it a bit of a look over.
Spectres (Æthyrium Rising - Spectres Book 1) Page 10
