by D. P. Oberon
“Go ahead,” said Instructor Ali.
The man stood in front of Saradi and read out from a holo-display that appeared in front of him. “I, Constable Peter Saxonbury, charge you, Saradi Anantadevi, recruit sub-class, of battery with intent to kill. You will be presented by Instructor Ali to the court. Do you have any questions?”
Saradi wanted to cry. She cringed, bowed her head. What have I done? I’ve destroyed my chances at getting Bheem. She didn’t want to leave, not after eight weeks of busting her ovaries. She wanted nothing more than to pass Selection. And then she remembered Novalie’s condition and she tried to stand but the chains stopped her.
“Get these off me!” Saradi screamed. “I have to get to my daughter!”
“Sara, calm down,” Instructor Ali said. “I’ve spoken to your mom. Novalie is in good hands at the hospital. There isn’t anything you can do there. I need you focused on the here and now. Do you get me?” Instructor Ali bent to her knees so that they were eye to eye.
“Yes, Instructor, I get you.”
They trudged out of the room into a hallway. It looked the same gray. Down the hallway they entered a swishing door on the left.
Three senior officials sat on air-seats. In front of them floated a holo-display that showed two soldiers fighting. That’s me, Saradi realized, pausing mid-step. She stood over Buckingarra, pummelling him. He went limp but Saradi kept going until Instructor Ali appeared behind her and las-beamed her at the back of the neck.
Warrant Officer Christian Trisdale sat on the leftmost chair, the rightmost chairs occupied by Field Marshall Jindalee Jarrah, and General Rangi Topeora in the middle.
Saradi swallowed as she was led to the center of the room. Instructor Ali to her front right and that pompous popinjay Constable Peter Saxonbury of the disciplinary committee to her left.
“Let’s get right to it then,” General Topeora said. “What is the SDC suggesting, Saxonbury?”
This seemed to throw off Mister Saxonbury, but he gathered himself and said, “A jail term of five years, stripped of Selection status, and then expulsion from AAEDEF. No course of return.”
“He’s not dead is he?” said the general, raising an eyebrow.
“No Ma’am, he’s not dead. But she tried to kill—”
“And he’ll recover?”
“Yes, but—”
“You answered my question, thank you.” The general turned to look at Instructor Ali. “Okay, now you Penelope, what do you have to say?”
Instructor Ali cleared her throat. “Anantadevi has been a solid recruit since the start of Selection. Just before her fight with Recruit Freeman her mother opened an ultra-priority call from a hospital showing Saradi her dying daughter—”
“How is your daughter, Anantadevi?” the general asked her.
Saradi looked up. “She’s in hospital. Intensive care. The doctors have given her two years to live.” Two years to live? Maybe it was a blessing this blow up happened. She could go back to the hospital and be by Novalie’s side.
Instructor Ali continued, “This, combined with the fact I was slightly over zealous in carrying out chocolate pie—”
“How many times did you chocolate pie them?” asked the general.
“Twenty,” replied Instructor Ali.
Twenty? She’s lying to protect me, Saradi realized. They’d only been chocolate pied five times. Though getting shit wiped all over your face and neck five times was more than enough.
“Penelope, you know you’re not meant to take out your post stress on the recruits?” asked the general.
“It’s inexcusable Ma’am, I apologize. I’m happy to hand myself over to SDC for a disciplinary hearing.”
“Penelope, you’re getting very lippy ever since we put you in that Instructor role,” said the general.
“Yes, Ma’am, I will henceforth curtail lippiness.”
Saradi definitely caught a soft chuckle from the general.
The constable didn’t appear to enjoy the levity between the instructor and the general. He cleared his throat. “As per SDC procedure we are required to provide an instant response for a level five offense.”
General Rangi Topeora narrowed her eyes. “I’m well aware of that, Saxonbury, considering it was I who wrote the SDC charter. Give us a minute.” Shield bubbles descended over the general, warrant officer, and field marshal. They talked animatedly and Saradi wished she could hear. Their bubbles soon vanished.
“We have come to a decision,” said the general. “Recruit Anantadevi is to be expunged from Selection. We’re dropping the jail term. As for the AAEDEF employment ban, that is beyond your jurisdiction.”
Saxonbury sputtered. Saradi thought he would say something but the general just stared at him and he nodded.
“I can take care of this from here,” Instructor Ali said to Saxonbury.
“Thank you, General,” Saradi said. Her face tightened as she thought of her daughter.
“Go and visit your daughter, Anantadevi,” the general said.
Saradi felt like she’d failed Bheemasena. How could she have lost it when his life was on the line? Her last memory of him played itself over and over, their conversation in the kitchen, and her promise to come and get him if he got stuck. A promise she’d failed to keep. Just like the implicit promise of being a good mom to her daughter and of being a good wife to her husband. Failed those too.
The memories of that last meeting with her CEO and the humiliating way they’d kicked her out. It was all happening again.
Saradi entered her barracks with apprehension. She felt worse when Yoriko walked up to Saradi with her arms outstretched and pressed her into a hug. Peng came beside Yoriko and spread out his hands in an embrace. Lastly, even Ganmi hovered near, spreading out her small cube shaped hands that encircled everyone. For a single moment they all stood there in one large hug.
When did I begin to care for these people? Saradi wondered. But care for them she did, and the sorrow she felt at failing them felt equal to that of failing Bheemasena. They had all been counting on Saradi and she had failed them.
Eventually Saradi had to step away.
“Team,” she said, glad her voice didn’t waver. “I’ve been expunged from Selection.”
“What?” Peng said.
“SOHIC Disciplinary Committee have been butting heads with SOHIC Selection Committee for a while now. I guess my actions were the last straw.”
Yoriko’s jaw dropped. Her neck leaned forward as if going to fall from her torso. She shook her head, “Sara, we aren’t a squad without you. Who’s going to be our squad leader?”
Always the logical one, Saradi thought, even in her despair. Saradi had never thought about who would replace her.
“I’m sure Instructor Ali can answer that,” she said, feeling like a politician.
Ganmi hovered overhead with big digital tears falling out of her eyes and an audio recording of some child crying playing loudly out of her speaker system.
Saradi looked about and realized she didn’t really have any belongings to take. My helmet, she thought. She would need to deposit it at the head of the courtyard with all the others.
“Novalie is sick. I should be there for her. Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing,” she said. She held back the anger and the tears that threatened to pour out. She was sorry for so many damn things. How could somebody screw up so much? There had been a point in Saradi’s life when everything she touched turned to gold. Now, everything she touched turned to shit.
“We’ll follow you out,” Yoriko said. “What happens now?”
“I’ll put my helmet on the pile and then get on an octocopter that’ll take me back to High Melbourne Spaceport.”
“Okay,” Yoriko said, though her pallid complexion said otherwise.
The journey to the courtyard from the barracks went by in a fog of hurt and pain. She thought she even glimpsed Chengmedu staring from one of the barrack windows as she trudged forward with her head down. In her head their
faces rotated: Bheemasena laughing, Novalie crying, and Claas smiling. She’d joined AAEDEF to make things right. Bring back Novalie’s real father, she thought. Give Novalie a real full time mom after her mission. It had all been so clear cut in her head, and now …
The pile of helmets stared back at her as she swallowed. The clatter of feet told her others had gathered to look but she didn’t dare turn around and face them. The shame itself would kill her.
Gently, she bent down and placed her helmet on the pile of helmets. Never, even after the first week when they’d received negative scores, had she ever visualized herself doing this. The visualization had always been of her and her squad riding in a megabat, heading towards the mission that would save Bheemasena.
How dreams and realities clash, she thought. She boarded the aero-kart in a daze. Peng, Yoriko, and Ganmi took the other seats but no one spoke. Another aero-kart followed close behind but Saradi only saw a darkness that threatened to push out any light.
Back at the Fort Windradyne Spaceport, Saradi reflected they’d landed there only eight weeks ago, but now that felt like a lifetime ago. When she’d arrived octocopters had filled the landing strip with their noisy presence, now only one perched there, its rotors moving lazily.
Saradi got out of the aero-kart and walked to the side ramp that led into the cabin as if on auto-pilot. She turned at the foot of the ramp and realized Chengmedu and Bravo Two Six squad members had come along to bid her farewell.
She hugged and kissed Yoriko and Peng and even Ganmi. If Buckingarra would’ve been there they would’ve shared a handshake but no more. Even now, there was something about him that reminded her of Alyona — that snake — and she felt the same of Warrant Officer Trisdale.
“Going so soon?” said Chengmedu, a somewhat odd and open expression on his face.
“Yeah, I was going to kick your ass so they’re expunging me from Selection. They don’t want civvies to make super-marines look like dumbass noobs,” she said. The words came out by themselves without little thought; there wasn’t anything behind them. Words behind a tiny wooden fence that Chengmedu could sweep away with a wave of his hand.
Behind him, Yasmie Lasi, Karavat Tsing, Eyra Alvarez, and even their engineer-bot, BCR-03, came forward and shook her hands. Never in a million years did she think she’d ever gain Bravo Two Six’s respect or friendship but here they were. These military lifers who’d outscored her civvy squad.
“We all heard what happened,” Chengmedu said, as his squad grouped around him. “It’s bullshit. We’re two weeks away from Inferno Week. There was no way Bravo Two Zero was going be squashed. We’ve all asked to talk to Instructor Ali.” The heads behind him nodded.
Saradi said, ” This place was like a new beginning for me.” She knuckled at the wetness edging her eyes and sniffed. She could go crazy later, she knew. She would go absolutely mental. Already the cognac’s soft seductive voice whispered in her ear.
She swallowed, took a deep breath, and saluted all the members of the two squads she respected the most. “Oorah!” she shouted.
Instantly they returned the crisp salute bellowing back oorahs.
“Thank you, for everything, every single one of you. I wish you the best,” she said. The last thing she did was to hug Yoriko and tell her to look after Peng.
Saradi ascended the octocopter’s ramp and descended into the blackness of Hell.
PART THREE – INFERNO
Chapter 25 – WikiPeeks Leak
–WikiPeeks Article “The Iordite Dagger”–/start
CLEARANCE LEVEL: GLOBAL GOVERNING BODY TOP SECRET
FROM: Sanatani Kalki
TO: Global Governing Body
I sat in a six hour meeting today that resulted in no concrete decisions. I could have been working with the Dedicated in refining the wormhole internal generator so that we don’t send a seed-ship into the middle of an asteroid.
Politicking, diplomacy, rung grabbing.
Cut. This. Shit.
Difficult decisions are your prerogative, that’s why there are fifteen of you. If you do not give me an accept or deny vote I will disband the Global Governing Body.
Let me be clear, in case the thousand other reports and presentations were not clear enough.
Q1) Who is stonewalling our iordite gathering efforts?
Tell these complicit empires if they do not cooperate they will be banned from the seed-ships. There are an estimated ten million tons of iordite worldwide.
I have yet to get a single ton.
Q2) Who will the lottery be distributed to?
Tickets should only be distributed to empires who comply with our iordite requests.
Do whatever it takes.
Regards,
Sanatani
end/–WikiPeeks Article
Chapter 26 – Welcome to Inferno
“Inferno Week is one hundred sixty hours of straight hell. No rests. No stopping. You will be pushed beyond breaking, you will break, and those of you who dare will come out the other side, battered but with your spirits intact.” Instructor Ali stood at the head of the courtyard with the four remaining squads: Bravo Two Six, Bravo Two Zero, Bravo Two Eight, and Bravo Two Three.
Silence reigned in the night and a somberness thick as smog lay on the recruits. The AAEDEF flag lay limp on the lone thin flagpole. The helmets now removed. The holo-display that showed the ‘events of the day’ all blank now.
Instructor Ali said, “Inferno week has been brought forward by one week. The four assembled squads will commence Inferno week on this Sunday, tomorrow. Today you will get rest; do not do anything stupid. Eat well and keep hydrated. Go to the spa and spend time in the therapy pools. In a few days you’ll be dreaming of those steam baths and of Chef Ananda’s food. By now you should have all read and watched the holo-vids from previous Inferno Weeks. I hope you’ve learned from them. Inferno Week was designed to represent what happens at war. Many of our successful recruits have gone on to missions that have resulted in worse experiences and have come back and reinforced what we do in Inferno Week. War slugs your mind through endless negativity without the faintest light of hope. Who Wins Dares — that is our motto. And now I beseech that you all win. And that you all dare.” She gave them a crisp salute. “Oorah!”
“Oorah!” they roared back.
First 24 Hrs of Inferno Week
Day one of Inferno Week started quietly, too quietly.
The squad members of Bravo Two Zero sat in their barracks cleaning their weapons in a rote type of activity. The LR4 rifles and SR2 handguns didn’t require cleaning, their chassis were constructed from repellent grade magmite. Buckingarra occasionally looked up and stared at her out the edge of his eyes. Yoriko looked at her and nodded. Peng just kept glancing at her as if she would disappear.
Saradi sighed feeling a deep heaviness inside of her that made her breathing labored and heavy. She magnet-locked her weapons to her back and sat on the bed with her feet up and hands over her knees. Was this a dream?
She remembered with bright clarity the octocopter launching, feeling all alone in that vast cabin by herself. The journey had barely started, the octocopter had been preparing to initiate the hypersonic drive when the rotors died down and the turbines stilled. She could hear only her own breathing, and, in the silence that followed, the octocopter’s AI voice blared into her ears: “Emergency redirection procedures, activated. Locking in to seat, now.” The U-clamps around her chest pressed her back into the seat, and the T-clamps pressed her thighs down.
She’d been thinking about visiting Novalie in hospital, dreading it too.
The octocopter returned to Fort Windradyne more quickly than it had left. Instructor Ali stood at the disembarkation ramp and told her to get back to her squad, on the double. Saradi asked what happened, and Instructor Ali said, “Someone leaked an email from the Greatest Scientist that has got all sixteen empires fired up. We’re pulling out all stops to get to the iordite.”
Saradi couldn’t believe it. She walked past Instructor Ali in a daze. Ali grabbed her and turned her around. She whispered, “Even if you went to the hospital what could you have done?”
“I don’t know,” Saradi replied. Suddenly glad that she didn’t have to see her daughter that way. Then feeling guilt at being glad. Am I a coward? she thought. She told herself to focus on what was going on in the military. Isn’t that what you always do? Focus on work? But that image of Novalie in hospital kept appearing in her mind.
Many other craft crowded the runway. Troops half-dressed walked out and that’s when Saradi thought something happened. She didn’t know what except there had been a recall and the only thing she could think of was that WikiPeeks newsnet alert about iordite.
“It’s quiet, isn’t it?” Peng said, bringing Saradi back to the present.
A bit too quiet, Saradi thought glancing outside through the transpasteel windows of Bravo Two Zero’s barracks. She sat on the bed dressed in her full SOHIC FlightTech armor. No octocopters filled the air with their whooshing turbos, no giant sized mechs trudged alongside the wide roads, no other squads — even though there were only twelve people left — were visible.
“Quiet before the volcano explodes,” whispered Yoriko, her gauntleted hands rubbing one another. She sported her CommsTech gear.
“This is like a cock tease. Hurry up already, I wanna eat the damn cake!” Buckingarra shouted, stomping in the middle of the room, dressed in his full GunTech armor. His LR4s stood in mount position over his shoulder like the heads of cobras, his two SR2s kept swinging in and out of their magnet-lock position as he grabbed at them and aimed at an imaginary enemy and then holstered them.
Saradi wanted to tell him to stop stomping around as it was just making things worse for the rest of them but she didn’t. The air between them felt murky and she wasn’t going to be the one to apologize. She didn’t like his attitude, simple as that.
“Ganmi, relax. Everything will be fine,” Peng sat on his knees facing the engineer-bot. Ganmi sat on the ground instead of floating in the air, she displayed large eyes with unhappy lips drawn in an upside down U on her cube-shaped chassis. Her eyes flickered to them.
