by Aer-ki Jyr
Rio popped his head up and saw the backside of a familiar red ponytail. Gathering his voice, which had gone hiding along with his body, he tried to make as low level a noise as he could.
“Psst, psst,” he said in a whispery mouth noise.
Julie immediately spun around, holding a small pistol in her left hand while her right hung limp beside her…much as Rio’s right forearm had been doing before, though his nervous jitters had seemed to bring it back to life sometime during the past minute or so.
“Kid?” she whispered as Rio sat up enough for her to see his face and torso.
“Yeah,” he whispered back.
“What happened to you?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the hallway, in both directions, as she walked back underneath the doorway so she could talk to him in as quiet a voice as possible.
“I don’t know. I got shot…and ran…then hid here.”
“Have you seen any of the enemy?”
“I heard two come by, but didn’t look up.”
“Did you hear which way they were going?” she asked, not expecting him to have the skill to differentiate the sounds but asking anyway.
“Underneath,” he said confidently.
Julie glued her eyes in that direction and held her pistol ready. “Get down from there. You’re coming with me.”
“Where?” Rio said, climbing quickly.
“Beats me. Stay quiet and two meters behind me at all times. I’ve only got a few shots left, and I don’t want to trip over you if we need to run.”
“Where did you get that?” Rio whispered, not knowing if she’d get mad at him for talking. She was a good inch taller than him and looked like she could snap him in two at will, despite being jaw-droppingly attractive.
“Knocked out the guy trying to shoot me. They’re wearing armor, but the stingers soak through. Let’s go.”
Julie walked under the ledge that Rio had been hiding on, with him locking his mouth shut and trying to stay exactly 2 meters behind her, just as she’d said, happy to have someone else to follow. Otherwise he would have stayed up in his hiding place for who knows how long.
3
May 29, 2458
Solar System
Mars
Rio woke with a start, finding a fingernail poking in the side of his neck as Julie woke him up as he had apparently dozed off in the lounge chair he’d been inhabiting for the hour or so since they’d finished with their last training session of the day…a short, but intense stair climbing run.
“What?” he asked groggily.
“Time to go to sleep,” she said with a grin, then pointed across the lounge to the exit that led to their individual quarters.
“What?” he asked again. They didn’t have curfew until 9 pm.
Rio glanced down at his watch and did a double take. He’d come into the lounge a little after 5 pm, and was dead sure he couldn’t have been in here more than 2 hours, tops, but his watch read 8:57.
“What the hell?” he asked, prying his body up out of the chair and finding himself quite stiff.
“Long nap?” she asked, nudging him on like a bossy sister.
“I guess so,” he said, still not sure how he could have lost track of that much time. He’d been watching the news vids with a lot of the other recruits after their official day was over, which was to be spent either in their quarters, the cafeteria, or the huge and well-furnished lounge that he was in now…which virtually everyone had been in, all 200 or so of them in Rio’s residential group. Now there was only a handful of people left.
“Next time sleep in your bunk,” Julie told him as they both headed for the distant door on the other end of a narrow, hard walkway that separated the vid screens/games half of the lounge from the assortment of other equipment and activities that made up the other half, beyond which was the staircase that led down four levels to the cafeteria that they shared with 7 other residential groups.
“I can’t believe I was out for that long,” Rio said honestly.
“Star Force training might use short workouts, but if it’s not something you’re used to it’ll suck the energy out of you just the same. Until you adapt, I suggest you try and get a few extra hours of sleep. The standard 8 won’t be enough.”
“I’ll remember that,” he promised, rubbing a crick in his neck. Maybe his bunk was a better place to rest than the chair, no matter how comfortable it had felt at the outset.
“Make sure your alarm is set loud, kid,” she said as they came to the doors and started to head different ways…her to the left and him to the right. “Don’t want to get penalized for oversleeping.”
“What’s the penalty?”
“I…don’t know. If you’re smart you won’t find out the hard way.”
“Ok, thanks…” he said as she walked off. He turned down his hallway and counted side hallways until he came to his section, then found door number 118. He typed in his access code, then had to do it a second time as his sleepy finger mishit one of the 8 digits. A bit slower and he got the code right, with the door sliding into the wall to reveal his tiny quarters.
Rio walked in and closed the door with a touch of the control panel set just inside the door jamb, then he locked it with another button an inch higher before pulling off his shirt and tossing it on the bit of floor the hexagonal room contained. The two angled walls on his right contained a single bunk built under an overhanging set of storage bins, with the opposite 3 walls containing a personal vid screen, pullout desk, and a very compact restroom/shower also set into the wall.
His ceiling was a geodesic dome with back lighting, taking away a bit of claustrophobia with programmable lights, which he had set on a slow, oscillating flicker of blue and green, but the floor was only a few square meters, meaning he could stretch out from his bunk and touch the restroom door, making him feel like his quarters were more like a containment pod…but at least they were exclusively his and he didn’t have to suffer through a roommate.
Rio laid down on his bunk and quickly began to fall asleep. Ever since that first day when they’d been deposited into the fake city to be hunted down by the trainers, he’d been barraged with workout sessions divided up between information dumps. Today the morning session had been focused on the various types of armor Star Force used, with commandos having 3 distinct varieties that differed from what the Archons, Knights, and others wore…carapace, vacuum, and jump.
Commando armor was designed to be quick and agile like the Archons’, but the one notable difference was the squarish design of the plates. Archon armor had smooth edges, while commando armor had rounded lines. Rio didn’t know what the significance of that was, but it gave them the ability to differentiate between a commando and an Archon set, despite the color IDs.
Commando armor could come in all kinds of colors, but mainline units either came in a dull grey or dirty white. Clan commandos had their armor appropriately customized to their Clan colors, while Star Force security armor usually had some gold coloration worked in. Knight armor was always pure white, like it was stating their superiority over the Regulars, and Rio couldn’t hold it against them. They were brutes, far larger in size than he or even the American Ranger trio, and though he hadn’t seen any of them here, Rio had gotten a combat demonstration vid in the afternoon information session that showed several in action, both in armor and out.
Then, as insanely humbling as that was, they showed him and the others in his ‘class’ an Archon adept, who despite her smaller size managed to fight toe to toe with a Knight, after taking apart a quartet of Regulars. Then a higher ranking Regular was brought in and somehow managed to take down the Archon.
But the demonstration didn’t stop there. A higher level adept came in and picked the Regular apart, then a Knight came in and did the same to the Archon. One after another, progressively higher ranked Regulars, Knights, and Archons were brought forth on the vid, clearly demonstrating the stratified nature of Star Force combat soldiers. One class wasn’t defaultly better than
another, it was all determined by the skill level of the individual…though the Knights definitely had a size advantage.
By the time the vid worked up to an Archon ranger Rio’s jaw had dropped and stayed down for the remainder of the vid. Nothing he had ever seen even came close to the speed and strength he was witnessing, not even the most wild movie characterization of the Archons ever made. Reality, somehow, was lightyears beyond the fiction, making Rio wonder just how many awesome secrets Star Force had that they hadn’t felt like sharing with the public.
When Rio finally drifted off to sleep again, despite the long nap he’d already taken, his dreams started to repeat parts of the stunning combat he’d witnessed, via vid, earlier…along with the trainer’s words after Rio and Julie had been revived from their stun-induced defeat the first day, despite the fact that they’d lasted the longest out of the group.
“If you want to survive, you have to upgrade your individual skills…or hope to have some very powerful allies covering your ass.”
That sentiment took on new meaning after watching the skill levels displayed in the vid, and Rio’s subconscious mind agreed with his earlier sentiment that he had a very, very long way to go before he was going to fit in around here, but if what they’d told him about having no time limits was true, then what he had to do was live in the moment, one day, one workout at a time, and slowly, gradually climb the ranks.
Then maybe one day, very far down the road, he’d become a superhuman like them.
One month later his assessment hadn’t changed, but his understanding of the challenge did as he learned the fundamentals of training and just how badass the Star Force troops were. His body was sore, stiff, and fat-deprived now, with him sucking down platefuls of food at every opportunity in between workout sessions and during his off hours at the end of the day, most of which he spent in his bunk getting extra hours of sleep…that never seemed to be enough.
He woke up each day wanting to stay in bed, but after the first week he’d finally convinced his sleepy mind that he needed to get up in order to become superhuman, so despite the want to stay under the covers and soak up more of the bliss, he’d pull himself out of bed at the sound of his alarm and quickly dress in what he thought of as his ‘pajamas’. With his casual uniform on he’d report to the doors that exited the residential area, then get passed through by security that would otherwise not permit anyone to leave. New as they were, they didn’t have roaming privileges yet. Those they’d have to earn later.
Once through, Rio headed to the equipment room where he and the others got dressed in their training gear, which in this case was merely shorts, shirt, and running shoes. He and the other recruits hit a nearby track and got their pace laps in, of which Rio’s were 7:00 miles. He’d worked up to 2.5 miles, or 10 laps on the track, and even though the pace was now well within his wheelhouse, it was still an effort to get the laps in. Thankfully all he had to do was live in the moment and keep up with his holographic tracking icon, all the while the other recruits did the same thing, running at their individual paces and lap totals.
With his workout taking less than 20 minutes, he was back in the equipment room within a half hour to shower and dress in a fresh casual uniform. Then it was off to the cafeteria for breakfast, which for Rio was a stack of pancakes, two donuts, and several glasses of ‘red,’ which was one of several drink flavors/concoctions, each of which had different nutritional values. Red was full of electrolytes and other things needed to replace workout losses, while blue, green, white, purple, black, and clear all had different supplements. Some were vitamins, others were sugars, and all had their purpose, with ‘clear’ being pure water.
The foodstuffs had some similarities, with specific items having specific supplements, but Rio hadn’t given much attention to them other than what his nose and taste buds told him…which, ironically, one of his ‘classroom’ sessions had indicated was a good idea, for the body’s biofeedback worked to inform the individual of what it needed at that moment. It was a subtle thing in most cases, and Rio didn’t think he was reading anything subtle into his tastes. He was hungry and craving food, sugars mostly, but that was the extent to which he made it a mental exercise.
Mouth open, food in…then after that, along with a lot of red, he’d either head back to the lounge or, usually, take a slow walk over to the information session he had to report to next and just get there early. Two hours of information about a variety of things, all of which he could then look up in his quarters later for review, given that all information was locked until it was broached in session, and it was back to the equipment room again and out of his casual uniform, which he stowed in a locker before changing into a full body combat suit.
The material was thin, but the knees and elbows were slightly padded, and the whole thing preserved his agility to the point that sometimes he felt like he was naked. It was colored gray with shoes that zipped into the legs, forming a total single piece that went up to his tight neckline, but left his head exposed. Now properly attired he headed over to another area of the training facility, this one a weapons range where he would get in an hour of static shooting practice with a variety of weapons, stun and live rounds, before switching to the obstacle course half.
That was much more difficult, which had him running along a path and engaging holographic enemies as they randomly popped up. He was scored on hits/kills/ammo and had never gotten all the way through to the end without running his weapon dry, including the rifle which carried an insanely large amount of rounds. When he was given that, it usually ended up being a zombie fest…which was what Raven called a particular challenge where there was a holographic chaser moving at a specific speed behind you, keeping you running forward at all times else it make contact and trigger a disqualification.
As it pressed you forward there were hundreds of holographic targets…some Human, most lizard, with a variety of other races thrown in, including some fictitious ones, such as ewoks and Zerg, each with their own movement patterns. They were all his targets, while others were targets/hunters that would actively move towards him, and if they made ‘physical contact,’ which in this case meant the holograph overlapping with his body, it would dock him points. That meant he had to track, shoot, and evade simultaneously in an overly chaotic run to the finish…all of which had to stay ahead of the ‘zombie’ behind him, which preventing him from camping out and putting some order to the chaos.
By the time he was finished at the range his legs were dragging all the way back to the equipment room. He had two hours off for lunch, a significant piece of which he spent in the shower. Some of the others skipped that step and went straight to eat, knowing they were going to have another training session afterward, but with an unlimited supply of uniforms, Rio preferred discarding his sweaty ones whenever he could and getting cleaned up in between sessions.
He got to the cafeteria and chowed down again, this time on breadsticks, pasta, and a huge piece of cake. Hungry for more, he held himself back, not wanting to get sick an hour later when he went through basic hand to hand combat drills, all individual based against practice equipment, developing and strengthening the movements that his body needed to put to muscle memory, upon which later sessions would be built around.
Everything here worked off of prerequisites. Learning one thing led to another that required knowledge of the first, and the physical training was no exception. In his spare time he had a chance to look ahead at some of the challenges he had available to him, seeing what scores he needed to unlock others and additional equipment. So far the sniper rifle, which was his favorite weapon by far, was still out of his reach, requiring mastering the pistol in three versions first…plasma, stinger, and stun…enough to make him competent enough to hit targets rather than friendlies most of the time.
Another thing he learned early on was that ‘mastering’ something didn’t mean you couldn’t improve any further…far from it. There was always another ability level to rise up to, with the
appropriately named ‘trailblazers’ leading the way for the Archons, pushing their skills into unknown territory and giving those that followed benchmarks to train towards or against. The same was true of the Regulars, with their own leaders providing an example of just how much could be accomplished over the centuries if one had the mental fortitude to devote themselves to the task day in and day out without fail.
And they weren’t done yet. They were still rising higher, attaining new skill levels while the trainers wrote the requirements for others. Those men and women fascinated him. What would it be like to go at it completely blind as to what was ahead? Everything Rio was learning and becoming was based off of what others had done before him and codified into the quickest, most efficient means of learning for others to tackle and level up as fast as possible.
Besides their skills, which were nearly god-like already, they had to be true badasses in order to do what they did and cut the trail for the others, like him, to follow on.
In the first few weeks of his training, Rio had occasionally thought back to home and Nadia, with his sentimental feelings quickly being replaced with sober understanding of just how sheltered and stagnant he had been. He could never go back there, be what he had once been, and he felt a mixture of pity and revulsion at those who lived their entire lives in such a state.
By the end of the month all thoughts to that past life were gone, with Rio’s entire being now dedicated to training, training, and more training. This was his life now, and it was more than he had ever dreamed of it being…because it was real, visceral, and a lot of other things he couldn’t put into words.
Bottom line was, it was what he wanted…and from that point forward he never had any regrets concerning his decision to leave. Star Force was legit, and he couldn’t imagine him doing anything else, now that he’d gotten a taste of the real thing.
