by J E Loddon
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Thrall State - Book One: Restitution Excerpt
GALACTIC DIVISION - BOOK TWO: INITIATION
J E Loddon
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First Edition March 2017
www.jeloddon.com
www.twitter.com/MRJELoddon
Cover Art by J E Loddon
GALACTIC DIVISION - BOOK TWO: INITIATION
Copyright © 2017 J E Loddon
All rights reserved.
For Jack.
My first and best creation.
CHAPTER ONE
“What do you think of these pancake things?” Chris asked, pointing at them with a fork. “I mean, I’ve had pancakes before, but they didn’t taste anything this.” It was weird. It felt so much like being at home, such casual conversation.
“Yeah, that’s ‘cos your pancakes were made from mud and dust, right?” OK. So not exactly like being at home. The voice belonged to Denn, a member of the squad Chris had been assigned to, and who was cackling a weird, grating laugh. I sighed. It had been like that all week, since the day after the Evaluation.
It was great… No, it was amazing that Chris was there. I still couldn’t fathom how exactly he’d made the decision to essentially follow me to certain death. It was proving to be impossible, though, to have a proper conversation with him. I was sure the guys in Chris’s squad were perfectly nice people, but I found them intensely irritating. Especially Denn.
It had taken me a few days to discover that Denn was not, in fact, the squad leader. That role had been allocated to Brett, a tall, slender guy, who seemed to be the quietest of all of them. Silence didn’t seem to me to be the best strategy a leader could use, and it apparently hadn’t worked for him during the evaluation exercises. They had obviously beaten us, but, despite being a team consisting of three volunteers, had only won a couple of other face-offs. From what I could gather, having not been able to discuss the matter with Chris directly, the team was made up of total mavericks.
Brett himself seemed pretty stable, though maybe a little out of his depth. And Chris, I knew, was perfectly capable of following orders. The other three, though, had very strong personalities, and clearly thought they were hot stuff. I didn’t really like the idea of Chris being out in the field with a bunch of loose cannons.
Chris shot me a sheepish grin. He didn’t seem all that bothered by the boorish behaviour of his unit, which concerned me a bit too. The alternative, I guess though, was to let it make him miserable.
“I don’t mind any of the breakfast stuff, really,” I said to him, ignoring Denn’s oafishness. “The other meals tend to be very hit or miss, though.” Making small talk was very frustrating when I wanted to ask him some serious questions about the whole situation, but I felt a bit self-conscious sharing feelings in front of the other guys, who would undoubtedly just laugh at me.
I sat quietly for a bit whilst Chris ate, the two of us listening to Denn and Saed, his team’s tech guy, larking about. They were the loudest guys in the room, which was no small going, now that everyone in the ship had loosened up a bit. The initial uncertainty and fear of the majority of new recruits had given way to a more relaxed, accepting attitude. The evaluation exercises had given everyone a chance to use what they’d learnt, which had retroactively made all we’d done before seem less of a waste of time. More than that, though, they’d given everyone a chance to run around. Having been cooped up on the ship for several weeks, that had been a real blessing. My Wrist-Link buzzed. I was late for a squad meeting. I said my goodbyes to one group of annoyances, then made my way to meet up with another.
Things had been strained in our squad since the Evaluation. We’d done badly. It had hit Liberty the hardest. As the Squad Leader, obviously, it had reflected negatively on her abilities. She also had a pretty strong competitive streak. Losing so many bouts had shaken her confidence, both in herself, and in her team. I knew she blamed me for it mostly, too. As did Antonia, who had played her part perfectly, by all accounts. It seemed to me that she’d had the easiest job, mind you. Well out of harm’s way, picking off targets in a very specific space. She was obviously a very skilled sniper, but that was innate talent, which as far as I was concerned, hadn’t required much work from her to attain. I entered the room we’d been assigned to for the meeting, and prepared to sustain the barrage of complaints with regards to my tardiness. What I was met with, though, was a full-scale row.
“…some sort of intelligence, then yes, I could have given some kind of direction. Without that? What do you want me to do? Six weeks of clicking through screens isn’t gonna make me the repository of knowledge. What do I know about war? I’m a mathematician!” Ugh. It had been brewing all week, and it had finally come to the surface. In my absence, though, they’d obviously started in on Tasia instead.
“It’s not really her fault, Toni,” Liberty yelled. “She shouldn’t even be a Strategist.” I couldn’t tell from her tone if this was a burn on Tasia, or genuine sympathy. I looked over at Tasia, who did appear stung by the assertion, despite having said herself on several occasions that it shouldn’t be her job.
“No, it’s not just her fault,” Antonio retorted, eyeing me as I snuck in. I rolled my eyes at her. We’d been through all this. We’d had three activity sessions this week geared towards analysing our performance. Led by Liberty, they’d been very structured and civilised. We’d shared what we thought went well, what didn’t go so well, what we’d do differently in future, all that kind of fluffy nonsense. Clearly, one or more of Liberty’s activities over the last month or so had covered this form of debriefing. There had, though, been a very clear undercurrent of hostility throughout the post-mortems.
The current discussion was a lot more free-form to say the least. I had no idea what the purpose of the meeting was supposed to be; this information hadn’t been stated on the C-Terminal screen entry. Whereas the first few weeks’ activities had not had descriptions, they had recently started coming with one or two-word titles that gave a vague description of what we’d be doing. All the exercises that week had been titled ‘Evaluation Debriefing’, and it had been pretty obvious what the purpose was. This meeting, though, was merely titled ‘Squad Meeting’.
“We all have strengths and weaknesses. Some more than others,” Liberty was saying. “That just means that it’s up to the stronger members of the team to lift the others
,” she continued. “We’ve been over the Evaluation, now we need to put together a plan of action. An improvement plan. Right?” she asked, though I think it was a rhetorical question.
“Well… maybe we should discuss exchanging roles?” asked Tasia, though without much conviction.
“We have the roles we’ve been given. We don’t get to question them, we don’t get to change them,” Liberty announced firmly.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t all pitch in from time to time, though,” Casper pointed out. “We can all discuss strategy and tactics, we don’t have to just abandon Tasia with it.” He was trying to be very diplomatic and not upset anyone. That seemed to be his attitude to everything. It wasn’t a bad attitude. Far from it, in fact. I had a similar one, though without any semblance of the confidence or cool that he displayed.
“Well, you can’t all weigh in on the lone sniper role,” Antonia exclaimed. “The ‘lone’ part of the title pretty much rules that out.” She leant back against a wall, arms crossed.
“I have to be honest, Toni,” Tasia interjected, “I don’t remember there even being a ‘lone sniper’ role. Isn’t it ‘Sharpshooter’, or something?”
“Same thing,” Antonia said, bristling.
“In fact,” Tasia continued, voice rising, “I seem to remember being the one that gave you the sniper role in the evaluation. It was my crummy plan, remember?”
Antonia’s arms unfolded, and her eyes narrowed as she started stalking towards Tasia. Tasia didn’t give an inch, and they met face to face in the centre of the room, the Sharpshooter a head taller than the Strategist. They both began yelling at each other, too loud and high-pitched to make out most of the words. I took a few steps back away from the aggression, whilst Casper put his hands on his hips, shaking his head slowly.
Liberty stepped in to try to calm the situation, but that just resulted in three raised voices instead of two. It carried on like that for a minute of two, then I became aware of an unmarked door sliding open to my right. The sound didn’t disturb the girls immediately, but after a moment, they all suddenly stopped. Hung appeared in the opening, and they all stared at him, with looks of nervous shame. Hung just stood there wordlessly, for nearly a full minute. When he did speak, he didn’t sound angry or disappointed. He just had his usual wise, patient tone.
“Are you done?” he asked, finally. The three girls all nodded. “And you?” Hung asked, looking over at me and Casper. “You just stand there and do nothing when your squad is in this state?” I held my hands up in defence, feeling a little aggrieved that I’d been tarnished with the same brush as the squabblers. Casper just shrugged.
“Liberty’s the boss,” he said breezily. “I have to trust her to make the right decision, is my understanding.” He met Hung’s gaze steadily.
Hung took a step into the room, offering his own shrug. “Maybe,” he conceded. “Or maybe you should shoulder some of the responsibility, for once, and help calm a flare-up amongst teammates?” Hung stared right back at Casper. Casper’s face reddened slightly, and for a moment he looked as though he might snap back. Calmness, though, returned to his posture almost immediately.
“I apologise,” he said to Hung. “You’re right. We’re a team, we should get through tough situations as one.” There was no tone of sarcasm or irony in his voice, and I had to wonder if he was completely masking it, or if he really had just had an earnest epiphany. I decided he was probably just a really good actor. Hung was now staring at me expectantly.
“Oh, uh,” I stammered. “Yeah. You know, what he said,” I replied, immediately cursing myself for my poor eloquence. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Liberty glaring at me. Hung, by some miracle, seemed satisfied with my response. He turned to address the full group.
“So, what exactly is this all about?” he asked, stroking his chin. Tasia and Antonia both went to speak but, thankfully, realised this wouldn’t be a good idea.
“We’re all still hurting from our failure at the Evaluation, sir,” Liberty replied quickly, composed and professional once again. “It was a tough experience for all of us.” Hung looked taken aback by this.
“Failure?” he asked thoughtfully. “It’s an evaluation, not a test. I’ve never heard of anyone actually failing it before. In fact, if I recall, I was the one who told you that you couldn’t fail it?” He raised his eyebrows questioningly at Liberty. She looked uncomfortable for a moment, and actually took a few seconds to think before she spoke.
“Well, when I say fail, I mean we all felt like we’d failed,” she supplied. “We tried to plan for it but, uh, we didn’t perform up to the level that we would have liked,” she finished off. She may have emphasised ‘we’, but I wasn’t sure for whose benefit. We all knew who blamed who. It may have been, I realised, for her own benefit. Maybe she was reaffirming for herself that no one person was to blame, and we all could have done better. Well, at least that’s what I hoped she was doing. I knew that I was the weak link on the team, but I was losing even more confidence with every accusing look shot my way.
“I think it’s important you all put thoughts like that out of your heads,” Hung suggested. “It’s important to remember the things that you could have done better, of course. Just don’t dwell on the negatives.”
“We’ll try not to,” Liberty assured him. I wasn’t convinced she meant it.
“Now that your squad has been assigned a role, you need to step up your team training,” Hung continued. I felt my stomach drop. Just what I wanted. More team exercises that I could be humiliated in. “We want you working like clockwork as soon as possible.”
“Given enough time, I’m sure we can turn ourselves into a functioning unit,” Liberty assured him. “With enough training, we can all reach the necessary level.”
“Well, time may be in short supply as far as that goes,” Hung informed us with a frown.
“Why?” Liberty asked, the concern in her voice echoing my own.
“Well, you’re active Scouts now,” he reminded us. “The Evaluation is finished with, and you are all officially soldiers.”
“Right,” Liberty agreed.
“And in two day’s time,” Hung continued, “you’re going out on your first mission.”
CHAPTER TWO
For the first time all week, the six of us ate together. There was no conversation. There was no argument, either, so that was a start at least. We all looked glum. Even Casper, who never seemed to outwardly show any real emotion, seemed at his lowest ebb. We weren’t a unit. No kind of team. We barely even knew each other. Yet, in two days’ time, we’d all be putting our lives in each other’s hands. It was very sobering. Whilst the atmosphere between us all had been pretty frosty, and hadn’t been great at any time, it had all been brewing in a bubble. Despite the Evaluation, despite all the training, I don’t think any of us had felt like we were really soldiers. We’d grown accustomed to the safety of the ship. Now, we were entering the real world.
I wasn’t sure how I felt. I wasn’t actually concerned for my life. At least, not at that moment. What I was most concerned about was having no idea what I was doing. Those four people, who had no real faith in me, had to try to rely on me to watch their backs. And I had no idea how to do that. I’d never been in a real life or death situation. Even when in a simulation of one, I’d failed pretty badly, despite what Hung might say.
I kept wanting to speak. I wanted to break the silence, to spark a conversation. I felt the need to try to put the others’ minds at ease. To tell them that they could count on me. Except, I really didn’t think they could. I’d had a job back home, and my own place to live. I had not, though, been an adult, in any sense of the word. Though I’d been relatively young when my parents had left, they’d done everything for me up to that point, and all I had left to do was fall into a job, and keep myself fed. I looked around at the other cadets in the dining hall. I wondered how many of them had been given their first orders. I searched faces, but though some weren’t exactly
happy, none seemed to echo the abject misery I was feeling in the pit of my stomach.
I looked over at Liberty. Of anyone, she should actually be the happiest. She was a volunteer, and going out into the field was what she was there to do. Granted, she had probably envisioned doing it with a much more able squad. A squad who she could trust. Still, though. She must have known that an overwhelming majority of recruits she might be paired with would be completely inexperienced, and scared to death. I wondered if, maybe, she would fit in well on Chris’s squad. They had a few volunteers, although Chris didn’t really count. They were, from what I could tell, suffering under a weak, unenthused leader. Maybe Liberty would be just what they needed.
“Look…” Liberty suddenly broke the silence. “So, it hasn’t gone well up to this point. That’s fine. We’re not all designed to be soldiers. Unfortunately, that’s what we all now must become.” She wasn’t looking any of us in the eye, and I wondered if actually she was talking to herself as much as she was to anyone else. Then, she did look up.
“We’ve been put together as a team for a reason,” she continued. “I can’t say exactly what that reason is. Only the computer knows. And maybe there is a hint of randomness about it.” She paused. The whole squad was watching her expectantly. “We all have different skills to lend, and they must all complement each other somehow. We also all have other skills we’ve yet to discover. That’s what we’re gonna do. Together. We are going to raise each other up, and become the best squad we can be.” She looked around at us, looking for some kind of response. For some reason, we all looked to Antonia.
