I arrived at the logistics center and in no time at all, I was being taught how to wear grey-blotted fatigues and getting a fully loaded duffel bag shoved into my arms alongside nearly 300 other recruits. Dozens of us couldn't seem to get the uniforms on just right, and a balding quartermaster with his assistants prowled through our numbers to make sure we all knew it. Within the hour, we were broken into five training platoons of 60 or so recruits. Over the following week each platoon got sent around the logistics center for administration, remedial education and rapid-fire lessons on the bare-bones-basics of soldiering.
I didn't want to stand out, so I kept checking myself off an average-looking guy in my platoon. He was my age with short-trimmed brown hair tinted by shades of dull red, much like my own. He was a few inches taller than me and the uniform hung off his slight build. I held my breath as the instructor Corporal glowered over us but he kept walking by without comment.
"I guess we passed." The auburn-haired youth said under his breath.
"If not, at least we failed together." I replied, "I'm Reginald Reid."
"Sidney Murphy." He extended a hand and I shook it. "I think you're the sixth Reid in our platoon. You fine with just being called Regi?"
"If it keeps me separate from the rest of them, that's fine. Is just Sid-"
"Yes and yes, there are way too many people named Murphy already. I'd swear this who army is nothing but Murphys and Reids."
It was the second week of training when they broke us into squads and started reinforcing the concept of collective success/failure. We would win or lose as a team. Mostly, this just made every squad find their weak link and do everything they could to shape them up or drive them off. And that was how Sid and I got tied at the hip. Day after day they hammered it into us that 'one soldier alone was nothing'. Apparently two soldiers was the minimum for anything. We ate, slept, trained, fought and even bathed as if we'd been raised together our whole lives. One time I even got bawled over because Sid went to make some fertilizer and I hadn't gone into the head with him to catch it.
By the third week we could all march together without looking like a herd of cats (whatever a cat was), so we went for a walk beyond the city walls. I let my gaze drift skyward and for the first time in my life, I could see a few distant specks of light above me as I walked away from the city I'd grown up in. I'd considered just walking away from Primgrofaine more than once but I'd never had anywhere to go. There was nothing beyond the city walls but unending fields of produce as far as the eye could see. The light had nearly left the sky, yet I saw the horizon stretch out before me on all sides but one. In the distance, less than ten man-made structures dared to interrupt the sheer vast openness of it all. The raw flatness was oppressive in the same—albeit inverse—way the towering Stacks were. I knew the word, but I'd never really understood what it meant until now. I felt exposed and I didn't like it. We kept marching through the night and that sense of nakedness got a little better in the dark.
Hours passed as we marched for miles and miles down the dirt roads from the recruitment center to a barren patch of packed dirt surrounded by the flat fields of growing plant life. The sun was just starting to come up when we finally arrived at our training depot— nothing more than an odd collection of tents and sheds with a few water wells scattered about. Our camp was an empty field surrounded by potatoes to the west, corn to the north, rutabagas to the east and barren dead earth to the south. Just looking at it, I could tell there was something wrong with the soil but I was too tired to really care. We all hit the dirt and caught what little sleep we could before the sun came back up.
The weeks passed by slowly at the time but in a flash looking back; physical training, academic lectures, military drill and basic fieldcraft were our initial focuses. We didn't go out of our way to exercise for its own sake, but between lugging gear around and all the grunt work of playing soldier, none of us were growing much fat regardless of how much we ate. I'd never known I could eat so much or work so hard, and day after day the labour and the food helped me shape up without really noticing. I think it was around week seven when they flew an aircar out to give us all physicals (nowhere near as detailed as my first one, thankfully) and I learned I'd gained over thirty pounds since enlistment. I'm sure if we kept at it long enough, everyone in the platoon would have been able to lift twice their weight and drag a friend to boot.
New equipment gradually trickled in as we learned how to use it. Most of it was useful, other gear seemed less so but we still had to use it long enough to be familiar. Working in the middle of a clear sunny day in black void suits was one such part of training we all came to hate with a passion. Then came the weapons; they started us off with knives and sticks before they trusted us with rifles and grenades. Sid picked everything up like a natural. I didn't.
Wherever Sid led, I followed after just like an adopted pet, doing everything I could to stay out of his way but seemingly always underfoot. He tolerated my bumbling in that first month, answered my questions and helped me shape up into a soldier who wouldn't be a burden. It was a close thing, but I managed to avoid being dead weight, even if the only thing I had going my way was that I'd grown up under worse hardship than our instructors could dish out. I tried hard and I'd die before I quit. It happened slowly but eventually that started paying off.
The platoon had a handful of soldiers who excelled: naturally charismatic leaders, geniuses who soaked up info like dry earth like water and crack shots who could open bottles with bullets at 500-meters. Try though I might, I wasn't one of them. Every time a talented soldier was pulled from our platoon, I had to smile and congratulate them along with everyone else as they moved on to bigger and better things beyond the Colonial Infantry. I'd come a ways from where I'd started, but I wasn't talented. I hadn't been head of the debate team or gotten a top-tier education from a private school or had a father who shot competitively. I was a no one kid from the Stacks. I wasn't special.
Lucky for me, neither was Sid. He was a Stack kid just like me, he'd just had better luck early on compared to me. We learned to shoot as a team, to fight as one with knives and fists and rifles, we stood sentry together and went on day-long patrols side by side. We spent just about every waking moment together and one day, something finally clicked. I couldn't say when exactly, but we had become brothers in arms. When I realized that, I knew that no matter what he would have my back and if he needed to he'd die for me. I knew he would because I'd do the same for him. The knowledge struck me like a blow, and I thought I understood a small part of what it meant to be a soldier.
Looking back on those three months of miserably grueling training, I never wanted it to end. But like all good things, it was over too soon and we were certified with the minimum competence to move on to the next stage of our basic training. I had marched onto that patch of dirt a scrawny youth, and now I was some half-formed chrysalid that changed daily as I transitioned into a grown soldier. I could place some ways that I'd changed but most others were beyond my knowing as I pressed onward, my eyes fixed over the horizon with the city at my back.
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After a long day of hard marching the 180 of us remaining in the training company arrived at Primgrofaine's earthwork redoubt. Calling it a camp or even a fortress wouldn't have been quite right. Everything seemed to go on for kilometers in every direction except the rear, where Primgrofaine towered above all. As far as the eye could see it was; trenches, bunkers, barracks, gun pits, drill squares and firing ranges. It was like a skyscraper made of dirt laid on its side and the rooms within had been opened to the sky. It could have been the preparations for a planetary invasion and final defense from the scale of it all.
The earthworks wasn't exactly flat (though it certainly looked it, there wasn't a single thing taller than ten feet out here) I could see the subtle play of the land as we marched closer. The city to the rear was on a slight rise compared to the rearmost parts of the camp. Beyond the camp proper, the forward trenches and squares were lower still. What few rises and falls there were I wouldn't exactly call rolling hills but compared to everything else, they might as well have been.
Looming above the horizon was a hazy outline of Primgrofaine's rival city-state, Doidau Cuoi some seventy-odd kilometers away… at least that's what I was told it was, at this distance that blackish smudge on the horizon could have been anything to the naked eye. In a rare turn of events, when someone asked why we were being moved here, we actually got a straight answer instead of just being trained in a more aggravating fashion.
"It's just some sabre rattling for the neighbours. Gotta show that the company means business. Make 'em think twice about pushing us around. There's a war in case you haven't heard!"
As we descended into the reinforced earthworks, no one paid us much mind at all. Wherever we went, there were soldiers on all sides and none bothered looking at us any longer than they had to. Everyone had somewhere to be and something to do. For the first time I did too and I walked with a purpose. Once we'd gotten settled and had a night's rest plus a chance to wash the elements off of ourselves, training only got harder.
Day in and day out it was trench routine, open square charges both as sections and a platoon, then rotating turns as attackers and defenders in mock raids or skirmishing attacks. We practiced for days on rifle ranges until we could all passably hit slow-moving targets at 200-meters and still targets out to 300. If I was going to be an assassin it was clear I'd never be a sniper, at least not without a lot of practice. I would have liked to spend entire weeks at the rifle range but there wasn't enough ammo and it wasn't in the schedule, so I made every training opportunity count.
Mallory wouldn't have anyone but the best at her side, and that wasn't me. Not yet. I had five years to change that and every day I got passed over was like a slap in the face pushing me onward. I moved with a single purpose, every pull of the trigger, every swing of a knife, every step I took and every punch I threw. I would find my limits and surpass them. I'd become the best and I'd rather die than fail that perfect woman waiting for me at the top.
It all seemed terribly exciting and important at the time but in hindsight, training rushed by in a blink. On my last day of training, our entire company of recruits made ready for a mock charge. A short span of 80-meters separated our attacking platoons from the entrenched defending squads. That was one of the realities of trench warfare, those in the trenches always had the advantage over those outside of them. We were crouched in our dummy trench, blunted blades attached to rifles loaded with hard rubber pellets, waiting for the signal to attack. The poppers made their iconic yet subtle sound and well over 150 recruits sprung up onto the open plain we'd be storming.
The defenders spat a paltry volley of fire before we'd even started running. At this range, the pellets stung but I could shrug them off. Sid took an early lead on me, those of us in the assault section bounding ahead while the other half of the company provided what futile covering fire they could.
Ten meters at a time, we pushed forward in a leapfrog advance before dropping prone to allow the other assaulters to catch up— getting pelted all the while, powerless to return any meaningful injury against the defenders.
Bound by bound, we closed until long-fused concussion grenades could be thrown back and forth like volatile potatoes. The game ended with explosions on both sides knocking soldiers out of the fight. I didn't both looking back to see how many of us had fallen, it was just me and Sid racing towards the enemy. The last of the grenades exploded and the only thing left to do was cross the final gap, no more than twenty meters. We charged.
Sid and I burst upright at the same time. Pellets hammered into my knees, nearly tripping me up while Sid pressed on. Something burned inside me at the thought of following after Sid again, at being forever trapped in his shadow, and I tapped into a spiteful well of resolve.
We were neck and neck, less than five meters away from trading blows with the jerks who even now pooled their fire unto us desperately. Sid caught the worst of it, he stumbled and fell as I blew past, jumping high to clear the sandbag parapets that the defenders hid behind.
Usually jumping was a terrible idea. After all, if something went up, the only place it could go was down. I don't know what the poor sod I landed on was thinking when instead of raising his rifle to impale me, he lowered it. Like an idiot.
My boots connected with his shoulders first. My speed and gravity forced him to the ground where my blunted bayonet found his guts. Instead of holding back or trying to lessen the blow, I leaned in, balancing my weight on that single point of metal as we fell. He stopped when we hit the ground. My blade didn't.
A wall of close-range fire hammered my head from the left a second later, knocking me out of the fight and nearly blinding me for good in that eye. A splash of lukewarm water brought me around just in time to see the medics carrying off the wounded defender— my blunt bayonet still embedded in his stomach.
"Do you know what you just did, Recruit Reid?" Sargent Murphy demanded.
It was the first time our company non-commissioned officer had ever spoke to me. I shook my muddled head to clear it, but that only made things worse.
"Did we take the trench?" I slurred. "Did we win?"
"Yes, you did. Of the whole company you were the only one who did it, and you would have gotten yourself killed doing it in a real battle. Have a bit more caution next time. Dead heroes may turn battles, but they don't win wars."
"Yes, Sargent." I mumbled.
He stood, and only then did I notice that I was lying in the middle of the square we'd just fought over. The entire company was looking at me; a clear line showed between those who approved of my actions and those who didn't. I couldn't help but beam under their gaze while I waited for the world to stop spinning. For one reason or another, no one would be forgetting that scrap any time soon.
"Listen up recruits! I've got orders from command." We all shuffled in and Sargent Murphy briefed us.
"The UCHS was the target of a formal declaration of open hostility from the AISF over dominion of three cities on planet, as well as the Greys corporate spaceport. The Director of Corporate Security, Miss Brennan, has received this declaration and offered one of her own. For all AISF holdings on this planet! At this time, the terms of active conflict are still being discussed, as well as possible mediation to prevent excess loss of life through armed conflict.
"This company will continue training under the assumption that total war could break at any moment but we will not, I repeat WILL NOT, be the ones to fire the first shot. If the green-bellied bastards over at Ace want to start a war, a real shooting war, then we'll kick them back to the rat's nest shitehole they crawled out of and we'll do it with a smile. This company will be moving to the forward edges of our defensive perimeter and acting as an auxiliary reserve unit until you have completed your training and can be rotated into established formations."
It might have been the head injury but just like that, my exceptional stunt was entirely forgotten.
"Now on your feet, Company! We've got twelve miles to cross before nightfall."
