by J E Loddon
“Er, can I have the box?” he asked me quietly, walking over to me. Now, I was frowning, and handed it over to him. He opened it up, and started rooting through it, whilst we all watched him, bemused. He shut the box, then looked over at Liberty. He started circling her, and for a moment I thought he was trying to check out her butt. He suddenly stopped, and turned a little pale.
“OK, slight issue,” he said. We all looked at him puzzled. Then Liberty’s eyes widened, and she started checking her equipment belt.
“No way?” Antonia said suddenly, her shoulders slumping.
“What in the stars is going on?” I demanded, not having a clue what was happening.
“Well, it looks like we’re gonna have to walk back to the pod again,” Antonia said, voice rising. “It looks like someone has forgotten a pretty major piece of equipment,” she continued, shouting now, and she started walking over to Casper. “Tell me, tell me, the communication rockets are in the pod, at least?” she asked him. My stomach dropped, and Tasia gasped. Antonia looked like she was ready to pounce on Casper, and Liberty moved to step between them.
“They’re in the pod,” Liberty said. “Right, Casper?” she asked, her eyes not leaving Antonia, standing between the two of them.
“Yeah, yeah, they’re in the pod,” he responded, shaking his head.
“What the Hell, Casper?” Antonia shouted at him. Liberty held her hands up, trying to placate her.
“It’s not just his fault,” she said. “We’re both supposed to equip one when we leave the pod. Let’s just get going.” Casper was already walking off, and Liberty turned to join him. Antonia stared after them, shaking her head. I started to make a move, but my legs felt like jelly. The atmosphere was frightening, but so was the possibility that the rockets might not actually be in the pod, and that we’d have no way to contact the transport. Tasia gave me a concerned look, and I returned it. She was obviously thinking the exact same thing as I was.
We made our way in the direction of the pod. It was tough going, and although we were all walking as fast as we could, we were all pretty tired and emotionally drained by that point. It had been a very tense mission so far, despite the complete lack of anything actually happening, and there was still the possibility of things going south. After nearly an hour, we stopped for a break.
“OK, protein bars everyone, before we all collapse,” Liberty ordered. “We can eat them on the move.”
We got going again. I’d been feeling weak and light-headed, but had just put it down to fear and stress. It hadn’t occurred to me that we hadn’t eaten for many hours by that point. I took out one of my protein bars, and joined everyone else eating hungrily. All, except Antonia. As I wolfed my bar down, I wondered at her. Was she that annoyed that she was going to martyr herself by going the whole walk back to the pod without food? I looked closer at her, though, and she didn’t look angry. She just looked tired and upset. I continued to keep an eye on her as we walked, expecting her to sneak a bite of a bar at some point. After 10 minutes, though, I figured something must have been up. She had to be hungry, and there was no way she was going to let her anger, or whatever she was feeling, lead her into not keeping herself in optimal condition should we actually encounter a threat.
I altered my pace, and fell in step beside her. She didn’t notice me at first, or pretended not to at least. Then, eventually, she turned to me with a scowl. I held out my second protein bar to her, keeping my body between it and the others. She narrowed her eyes at me, and I eased away a little, still holding it out. Just when I thought she was gonna whack me in the head, she reached for the bar.
“Thanks, Milo,” she whispered, and started unwrapping it. She’d obviously forgotten to pack hers. Feeling pleased with myself, and more than a little smug that I was now one of only two people that hadn’t made a blunder so far, I dropped back to my position at the back left of our marching formation. I call it a marching formation, but with the uneven ground, and the fatigue that was setting in for everyone, it was more of a stumbling formation. Eventually, though, we made it back to the pod. Casper went aboard, and I held my breath, waiting for him to emerge. Everyone looked worried, and when he walked back out, a small rocket cylinder in each hand, we were all visibly relieved.
“OK, let’s go find some flat ground,” Liberty called out.
“You’re a lucky guy, Casper,” Antonia called over at him. He shrugged, blowing it off. I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t sure the group could cope with another row, though I felt mightily relieved that again, I wasn’t a part of it. “Is there anything else you need to get out of the pod before we carry on?” she goaded him. He sighed, and turned to face her.
“Look, can you just ease off, Toni?” he asked her. “It’s gonna be a long journey back if you’re gonna keep this up.” Antonia took a step towards him.
“It would have been an even longer wait here for someone to come and get us if anything had happened to those rockets you left behind,” she spat back at him.
“Toni, please, it’s been a hard day,” Liberty interjected.
“Right, and whose fault is that?” Antonia muttered under her breath.
“Hey, it’s easy not to get anything wrong when you don’t have to do anything, isn’t it?” Casper shouted back at her, the most rattled I’d ever seen him. Antonia looked like she was about to say something, but bit it back. Casper was right, and my own smug feeling faded away. It was all very well feeling superior about not making any mistakes, but when you hadn’t been called on to use your own expertise, it was pretty meaningless. If we had run into trouble, and Antonia’s aim had been off, or my repeatedly checked guns had failed for some reason, it would have been much worse than what had occurred up ‘til then.
We found a, relatively flat, area, and thankfully the rocket beacon worked. We sat around in silence waiting for the shuttle, which didn’t take very long to appear. We loaded onto the small transport, which looked lopsided with just the one spare drop pod on its port side. The main body of the ship was, thankfully, nowhere near as basic as the inside of the pods. It made a combat lift-off, despite there being no sign of enemy activity whatsoever, and we had to wait, laying on the floor, until we got out of the planet’s atmosphere to stow our gear and get strapped in. It was pretty difficult in zero gravity, though it would have been fun if we hadn’t been in such delicate condition. I’d only been out of gravity a couple of times, and had been strapped down for both those occasions. We quickly strapped our equipment in, and then spread out around the seating area, which had enough seats for two pods worth of soldiers plus extras. The seats were mercifully comfortable and, at some point, I fell asleep.
When I was awoken by the proximity alarm, I desperately hoped it meant we were back at the ship, and that we hadn’t encountered an enemy ship along the way. Having survived my first mission, something I hadn’t expected to do, it would be just typical to get blown out of the sky at the last hurdle. Thankfully, the pilot announced over the comm system that we were soon to dock home. It was a bumpy procedure, but I was too tired to care. Once the ship had settled, and our restraints were released, we wearily got our gear together. I started to gather up the guns, but everyone insisted on carrying their own for me, and we waited for the exit ramp to open up. No-one spoke, and it was clear we all needed some space away from each other. Slowly, the ramp descended, and Hung stood patiently in the docking area looking at us, as if he hadn’t moved since that morning. We made our way down the ramp.
“How’d it go?” he asked, the hint of a smile on his lips.
“Mission successful,” Liberty reported. “The anomaly was a crystalline form, one of at least two. No enemy presence, no sign of life of any kind. All team members present and unharmed,” she told him. His smile grew bigger.
“Congratulations!” he beamed. “You are all officially Scouts!” My heart lifted a bit at this. It wasn’t a rank or commission that I had asked for, and though I’d really done little to earn it, I still felt a sense
of pride that I’d achieved a title. “So, a couple of things,” he continued. “In a moment, Liberty, you’ll have to come with me for de-briefing.” Liberty visibly wilted. We all just wanted to eat and sleep, but her long day wasn’t over just yet. “At some point, now you’ve successfully completed your first mission, you’ll need to come up with a name for your squad. You are no longer just numbers.” I wasn’t sure how to feel about this. In theory, getting to pick a squad name should be fun, though I knew it most likely would just end in arguments. Casper looked pretty happy about this part though. “Finally,” Hung said, “Who is missing this?” His smile dropped, and he held up a metal cylinder. Everyone just looked at it, puzzled, but I knew I recognised it. It took a moment, but then I was able to place it.
“That’s a firing pin,” I pointed out. Hung nodded, looking intently at me. Everyone else narrowed their eyes to look at it, then started to frantically check their guns. I looked down at my own, convinced there was no way it could be one of ours. Could someone have tampered with them when I’d gone to put my armour on, I wondered suspiciously? Everyone was looking at me, and, sure enough, my firing pin wasn’t there. My face went red, and I started to get hot and flustered. I opened my mouth to protest. Clearly, someone had sabotaged my gun. I’d checked them all several times. Then, it hit me. After I’d put my armour on. When Liberty had emerged from the changing cubicles, I’d been stripping my gun again. Despite being sure they were all fine, whilst waiting for everyone else, I’d checked again. Then, I’d gotten distracted by looking at Liberty. I’d put my gun back together, my mind not fully on that job. I looked back at Hung. He didn’t look angry, but there was definitely disappointment in his eyes.
“You’ve all had a long day. We can go over talking points tomorrow,” he said, still looking at me. “Go and get changed in your departure room, and put your gear back in the equipment crates,” he ordered, motioning to the hanger exit. As I walked past him, he handed me the firing pin, and patted me on the shoulder. We all got on with the job, not interacting with each other at all. I stripped my rifle, put the firing pin back in, and stowed it with the rest of the equipment.
It was past my mealtime window, and my sleeping window was already underway. As I’d been on a mission, though, I was able to get a meal in the dining hall. I ate as quickly as I could, determined to get as much use out of my sleeping time as possible. Everyone was fast asleep when I got to my room, so I had to be extra careful to not make any noise, and not step on the guy in the lower bunk. I lay down, with a great deal to think about. Before I could start to deal with my intense shame at having screwed up so badly, though, I fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Morning came far too soon. It felt a lot like the morning after a heavy night back home: Headache. Fatigue. Shame. The only difference being, I had no option to stay in bed. Which seemed a bit harsh after coming back from my first mission, miraculously alive. It’s not as if I even had to be anywhere. There were no exercises scheduled for me for the first half of the morning, not until the debriefing session just before lunch. I was dreading it, though. We’d all made mistakes, sure. Well, Tasia hadn’t, and Antonia’s was known only to me. Mine felt the gravest though. On the face of it, as I’d only left out my own firing pin, I’d only wronged myself. Without being able to fire my rifle, though, I wouldn’t have been able to provide cover to my teammates, which would ultimately have put their lives in real danger. The leaving of the evacuation rockets in the pod was pretty bad too, but that blame was at least shared, and they were still available on the planet, we just had to hike to get them. If we’d been caught in a tricky situation, of course, then we’d have needed the shuttle in a hurry, with no chance of being able to go and get them. Still, to me at least, mine seemed the worst of the offences.
So we went through the mission with Hung. He already knew the basics of what had happened, having gone through official briefing the night before with Liberty. This was a fairly informal recap, with Hung offering advice about what we could do better next time, including suggestions on how we could have approached the issues that we came across. Realistically, we’d done most everything right. Aside from the things we’d forgotten to do, our tactics for approaching the anomalies were fairly sound, and Hung had no argument with them. This made Tasia the star of the team for that particular mission.
We went over the mistakes that we had made. There were no recriminations. Hung didn’t chew out anyone over them, and seemed pretty understanding. He made it clear that for our first mission, it could have gone a whole lot worse. If the enemy had been waiting for us when we arrived, then I would have agreed with him wholeheartedly, but under the circumstances, I thought he was being overly kind. Because of Hung’s presence, there was no bickering between team members, which I was happy about. Though I knew everyone was pissed off at me for having left the firing pin out of my gun, and that it would probably be thrown back in my face a hundred times in the future, it was nice to put that off until I’d had a little more sleep.
Hung again congratulated us on officially becoming Scouts. He asked if we had any ideas about our squad name, but we had never discussed it, so we had nothing. He assured us that there was no hurry, they could continue referring to us by our alpha-numeric designation until we’d chosen a name, though I couldn’t remember what our designation was at all. He closed out the debriefing by advising us that we should stay well hydrated, and ease back into physical exercise. None of this was news to me, and we were dismissed. We had nothing else to do all day except some light physical work on the cardiovascular equipment in the afternoon, as a kind of warm-down from the mission.
I had lunch, then later went off to find Chris in his dining hall. He was there, with the rest of his team. I sat down next to him, expecting the usual dirty looks from his teammates, who didn’t seem to like me hanging around. They didn’t seem very talkative, though, to me or to each other. They all finished up their meals silently and left, meaning I actually had a chance to talk to Chris alone.
“How you doing, mate?” he asked. “You look pretty tired,” he added, concerned.
“Yeah. Long day yesterday,” I said, and for some reason, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to mention the mission. The wounds were still wide open.
“Oh yeah, what’d you do yesterday?” he asked with interest. I took a deep breath. I needed someone sympathetic to talk to, and I’d have to talk to him about my first mission at some point.
“We went out on an operation yesterday,” I told him. His eyes went wide.
“You mean, like, a practice operation?” he asked tentatively.
“No, a proper mission!” I said. His eyes got even wider.
“Seriously?” he asked. He grabbed both my arms. “You made it! Wait, why didn’t you tell me you were going on a mission?” he asked, looking a little hurt. I shrugged, and thought for a second.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was nervous, and I didn’t know how to say goodbye,” I admitted. “It’s hard, especially with the other guys around, you know?” I continued. He nodded ruefully.
“Yeah, they can be a real pain,” he said, with no hint of a joke.
“Did something happen with you guys?” I asked, frowning.
“Kinda,” he said with a grim smile. “But you have to tell me about the mission first. What happened?”
I started off by giving him the background of the mission, then described the landing on the planet.
“How was it landing in the pod, though?” he asked. “I’ve heard it can be a pretty rough landing?”
“It is definitely rough, but the pod actually held up really well,” I explained. “I don’t know if that’s always the case though. I have heard stories of them collapsing into a pile of sheets, but I don’t know if those stories are actually true or not.”
I went on to tell him about the journey to the anomaly, and the blunders along the way. He listened intently, but started to look a bit disappointed once it became obvious there w
ere no combat encounters to talk about.
“So you didn’t even get to fire your rifle once,” he said in disappointment. “I mean, I know that’s better, cos you’re far less likely to be killed if there’s no-one there to kill you. But still.” I hadn’t decided whether to tell him about the firing pin. I had, after all, just been telling him about the events of the mission itself. His having mentioned me firing my rifle, though, meant that to not tell him then would be pretty close to actually lying. I told him all about it, including why I’d been distracted.
“Wow. So, is she hot?” he asked me. I gave a pained expression.
“No way,” I protested. “She hates me. I’m the bane of her existence at the moment.”
“That doesn’t stop her from being hot,” he pointed out.
“I can’t even think of her that way,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m struggling to keep my head above water as it is.”
He went on to tell me about the issues he was having with his own squad. Three of the other guys had tried to pull off some kind of coup, an attempt to overthrow their team leader from his position. There’d been numerous arguments, with Denn in particular accusing Brett of not being up to the task. Brett had insisted that they should do as he told them, that he was made the leader for good reason.
