Platoon wide alert:

Debriefing in 2:04

***Warning, if you are late you will be fined***

Freya had dismissed the notification and started walking towards the barracks building when she noticed that her platoon leader wasn’t going the same way. She turned to watch him open the mission lobby door and step into the light. Not sure if she missed something she sent a message to Toast asking where the debriefing was taking place. He replied that it was going to be in the same room as last time. Biting her lip nervously she turned towards the barracks building.

Freya was the last one to enter and as she passed her fellow platoon mates she got a few nods and smiles. She smiled and nodded back. Tike waved her over to the only empty seat. She gave Freya a big smile as she sat down.

“Sergeant Torres can’t make the meeting as he has a meeting with the rest of the Company headquarters about the tournament tomorrow. I would like to start the debriefing with…” Corporal Leni started to say, but Corporal Wilson interrupted her.

“May I say a few words before we get started?” Corporal Wilson asked her.

“Go ahead.” Corporal Leni said, nodding. Freya noticed she didn’t look happy with him interrupting her.

“Attention on deck!” The Corporal shouted suddenly. The platoon scrambled to stand to attention.

“It's with great sadness that I must report the death of one of our platoon members.” Corporal Wilson said, sounding sad.

“What!” Freya thought to herself, shocked.

“She was a great leader and will be missed. Luckily we were able to replace her. With regret, I say goodbye to Corporal Leni and I hope you will join me in welcoming Sergeant Leni!” Corporal Wilson said, with a huge smile. “Hooah, Sergeant Leni!”

“Hooah, Sergeant Leni!” The platoon roared back. Freya smiled and joined with the rest of the platoon.

“Drinks are on her.” Corporal Wilson said, smiling and turning to the new Sergeant.

“No! The drinks are not on me!” Sergeant Leni yelled, waving her arms while trying to shout louder than the platoon as they screamed their approval.

It took a few minutes for the cheering to die down and the new Sergeant waited. When it was quite enough she turned to Corporal Wilson and asked. “Can we get on with the debriefing or is there anything else you would like to share?” She asked him, smiling.

“Sorry Sergeant. I just thought the news had to be shared.” He said, smiling back.

“The highest mission score goes to Magic. She reached the second positive standard deviation even though she spent a third of the mission dead. Good job Magic.” Sergeant Wilson said nodding to her. “No one fell below the MP threshold, so good job everyone else.”

“Tike, Magic - hell of a good job securing the captives with non lethals. I also would like to thank Ed and Tater’s squads for a good job clearing the bank with no civilian casualties.” Sergeant Leni said as she started clapping.

“This mission had several layers.” Sergeant Leni explained. “The first layer was the terrorists kidnapping a bunch of people in the building. What we did not know was that the people they kidnapped were board members of a popular bank. What was really happening, during the mission, was a bank robbery. The terrorists were trying to get the CEO to transfer money to an Outer Rim account. What made this mission so much harder was that the local members of the police and military were in on the robbery. Sergeant Torres figured it out but was killed after he ordered Magic to destroy the only tablet that had access to the funds. The local police commander got a little mad and shot him in the back.” Sergeant Leni told them.

“I took command and had Private Netty arrest the commander. Since the bank robbery was a bust, the locals went with plan B: Blame the Federation. The first part of their plan was to get us to kill some of the civilians. With this in mind, they went after Tike and Magic. Unluckily for them, Tike only used non lethal munitions. Because of this we were able to capture four of their number for interrogation. Now, with their plans in complete disarray, all we had to do to complete our mission was to free the civilians with minimal loss of life. Which Third and Fourth squads did with excellence.” Sergeant Leni told them, with a big smile.

“Now, onto the bonehead awards. This is not really a bonehead move because she was unconscious but it’s still funny as hell.” Sergeant Leni said and with a press of a button she activated the 3D hologram.

The feed showed Tike, dangling upside down, slowly being lowered to Done in his mech. The whole debriefing room started laughing. Freya felt someone hit her in the arm. Rubbing her arm she looked at Tike and mouthed sorry.

“Now the real bonehead award goes to Tater.” Sergeant Leni said, after the laughter died down. The hologram showed Third squad running towards the front of the building. It showed Tater trying to lead his squad through a bush. He ran into the bush only to get caught up in it. He raised his hands and tried to, what looked like, dance his way through. The entire squad that was following him also had problems going through the bush but at least they just bulldozed through it. For a third time that morning the platoon laughed.

Sergeant Leni continued on with the debriefing. She gave Freya compliments on choosing the room in the hallway. “They had no idea where you were and had to clear two floors to find your position.” Sergeant Leni told Feya in a serious tone of voice, while nodding her approval.

Sergeant Leni also pointed out some positioning problems with various different squads and told them how to better position themselves for better crowd control situations. Third squad got picked on a bit more than the others by the Sergeant. She ended the debriefing saying “Quarters are canceled for tomorrow. Meet back here at six in the morning. All leave is cancelled from ten tonight, so be back in the Camp before ten.” When the groaning stopped and the Sergeant continued, “That is all. Dismissed,” the world suddenly froze and seemed to vibrate. For a very long second, everyone in the debriefing room was unable to move then...

...Freya was standing in front of a group of very old people. Some were human. Some used to be human but were not anymore and the rest were never human. She was angry and she was giving a speech… no, she was telling these people what she was going to… no, she was telling them what would happen. She could feel the anger and approval radiating from them...

...She was standing in thin air looking down at a world that was burning. Her lover had his naked claws on her stomach, giving her the highest compliment his people could give, but all she felt was profound sadness...

...She was standing in front of a burning city. She had a shovel in her hands and she was digging her own grave as the others around her were doing the same. She knew that if they fell here, on this planet, there would be no respawns. There would only be true death but she knew that even if they lost they had already won. The plan had already worked. It was already over, the enemy just hadn’t realized it. She doubted they would until the end...

...She was flying through space, one with her ship. She could see the enemy ahead of her attacking the troop transport ship. She was leading the others in a desperate attempt to defend it...

...She was standing on a building looking out as the enemy swarmed all around her. She was the last living human on the planet. Above her she could see respawn dropships racing away from the planet in a desperate attempt to escape the enemy. They had left her behind. She felt the sting of their betrayal but she knew they had no choice. If she was in command, she would have given the same orders. She raised her rifle and fired at some of the enemy that were trying to shoot down the escaping ships. She let her active camouflage fall, telling the enemy right where she was...

...She was running through a deck on a ship or maybe a space station. All around her were bodies of dead Marines. She was running towards an enemy machine gun nest. It was a race to see if they could rearm before she got there. She

...She was inside the cockpit of her respawn dropship. She was buried under tons of rock. She was frantically trying to contact the rest of the Battalion...

...She was a spark hovering above a ball of fire that was moving through space. She could see things deep in the sun-like thing. They looked familiar, like a complex knot. The lines that made up the knot were moving and, as they moved, she realized that the sun-like thing was the ship Monarch. Just as the understanding hit her, the knots moved around faster and she realized that somehow the ship was looking at her. It was then she realized, in a profound moment of crystalline amazement, that the sun-like thing in front of her was alive. Like a bomb going off in her mind, she realized that the being called the Monarch, the thing they called a ship, was just as alive as she was. The Monarch was not an AI, it was something completely different. Something that Feya had no words to describe, other than it was alive and looked like a living sun.

She was going though everything she knew about FTL particles and realized just how stupid she had been in not seeing the truth earlier. It was then she felt something vast and incredibly alien pass above her. It was moving so fast that she could not see what it looked like. She only realized it was big because she knew it was going so fast that she could only perceive its movement based on the effects it was having on the space around her. And since the effects were lasting a very long time, it gave her a sense of an object so large that her mind could not comprehend the true size. Then, just as suddenly as it arrived, it passed her by….

Freya found herself sitting in a familiar office. The Monarch was sitting behind her desk watching her. Beside her and slightly behind her was a woman dressed in Federation Marine Officer’s dress uniform. Her rank tab had the bird-like design of Colonel. Both the Monarch and the Colonel were staring at her.

“Are you really a female?” Freya blurted out to the Monarch only to cringe as she realized what a huge mistake she had just made.

“I love you humans. You always ask the same questions when you see me naked.” The Monarch said, with a smile. “To answer your question - no, my people do not have sexual characteristics as you have as a matter-based lifeform.”

Freya nodded her head in amazement. She was blown away at what she had just learned. Then what the Monarch said hit her. She jerked her head upwards, looking at the Monarch to ask her to clarify what she just said when the Colonel spoke, interrupting her thoughts.

“Just how far did you see?” She asked Freya.

“I’m sorry, Ma’am. I don’t understand what you are asking.” Freya replied.

“Time means nothing.” The Monarch replied cryptically. “She is asking what you saw. Can you describe everything you witnessed?”

Freya took a few seconds to collect her thoughts. She looked down at her hands and tried to find the words to describe what she saw. It was all chaotically running through her head. It was hard to point to one thing and say this is what she saw first. To Freya, what she had experienced was all out of order yet also happened at the same time. She tried to order them by how old she felt while she was those people. She started with the speech she was giving to the really old beings and ended with seeing the Monarch naked and the leviathan-like thing fly by them.

“Oh, you are going to be a great psychic in a few years.” The Monarch said, sounding pleased.

“Monarch.” The Colonel growled at her.

The Monarch made a zipping motion over her lips and threw away the imaginary key. The Colonel started asking Freya questions, like what color was her uniform and who was she talking to when she was giving her speech. Freya couldn’t give her a lot of answers because she didn’t know who she was talking to and she had never looked down to see her uniform. The colonel kept asking her questions and, for the most part, Freya couldn’t give her what she wanted to know. She just didn’t know.

“Everything you have seen and experienced is now classified. You are not to talk about this to anyone unless they have authorisation from Federation Military Central Command and even then they must show proof that they have Black Alpha clearance.” The Colonel told her.

“This includes the knowledge that FTL ships are energy-based lifeforms when they are traveling faster than the speed of light. If you speak of what you have learned you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. This may include the penalty of deleting your digital avatar and all its backups without allowing you a clone body. In essence, if you talk about this to anyone without the proper clearance, we can delete you. Do you understand?” The Colonel asked her. “This goes beyond your time with the Marines, O’Malley. You can never talk about what you learned here.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Freya replied, terrified.

“Good.” The Colonel told her, before she looked at the Monarch. “Send her back to her platoon. Set the time for right before the tournament.” The Monarch nodded and turned to smile at Freya.

“Next time, Private, please stay closer to me when we are traveling. There are a lot of things out here that are very dangerous. They can and will destroy you without even knowing they did it.” The Monarch said, right before Freya opened her eyes to her alarm going off, telling her it was time to wake up.

She looked around in panic, as she realized that she was not in the Monarch’s office anymore. She was lying in her own bed. She took a deep breath and sat up on the side of her bed. She closed her eyes and held her head. At first she thought it had to be a dream but everything was just too real. When she thought through the logic of traveling faster than the speed of light, she knew what she had experienced had to be true. Feeling mentally tired, she got up and took a shower.

“Magic, where did you go last night?” Netty called out from behind Freya. She was about to turn around when she felt Netty’s weight land on her.

Freya stumbled a few steps forward, carrying Netty on her back, before she slid off. Freya turned towards Netty and stopped. She had no idea what to tell her friend.

“Man, you missed it. Everyone was asking about you. No one could find you when you disappeared after the debriefing.” Freya smiled, but didn’t say anything. She was struggling to come up with a lie that wouldn’t get her in trouble. She was relieved when Netty kept on talking.

“Everyone was buying me beers last night and I got so wasted. It’s not everyday you get to tackle a General and handcuff him. It was so awesome. I never had that much fun in a mission before. Come on let’s get something to eat and I’ll tell you all about it.” Netty said, grabbing Freya’s arm and pulling her towards the cafeteria.

For breakfast, Freya had what looked like chocolate cake with syrup on it, with some red berries on the side. The chocolate cake-looking thing didn’t taste like chocolate cake. It tasted like sausage and pancakes. The berries, she found, were so sour that it hurt to eat them but, after a few bites, the sourness went away Freya thought that they tasted amazing. She considered it the best thing she had eaten since she had joined the Marines.

The cafeteria sounded louder than normal as everyone talked about the tournament. Dog was especially excited as he talked about other tournaments that he was following.

“Seriously, I think the best tournament so far this season has to be from the Paramount. The opening ceremonies started off with a full-on free-for-all, with every platoon for itself. It was so awesome.” Dog told everyone who was listening.

“I hate when they do that.” Dusty said. “I know it’s a thing right now, but I like the old fashioned way they used to do it with all the platoons entering the tournament grounds in a parade.”

“What do you think the tournament ground will look like?” Jacob asked.

“I hope it’s not a water world. I hate water worlds.” Netty said, shivering.

Freya let the conversation flow around her. She was still processing what had happened. She was a little curious about the tournament though. She hadn’t realized that it would be recorded and watched by the other ships. She was a little nervous about it. She had already made a fool of herself once and she had no desire to do it again, let alone have people from other ships see her do it.

She was spared further nervous thoughts by a message from Toast telling her to head to the debriefing room. She excused herself and tossed the rest of her breakfast away before she headed there. When she arrived, she found everyone waiting on her. Sergeant Torres nodded to her and pushed a button on the holo table.

“Magic, good - you’re here. Since you’re the resident math whizz in the platoon, I need you to plot landing coordinates for everyone but you, One and Done. The rest of the platoon will use OTDSs down to the tournament grounds. I want us to land in formation so that once the OTDS opens we don’t move. Maybe we do poses. What do you guys think?” Sergeant Torres asked.

“That sounds awesome.” Ed, the leader of Fourth squad, said, smiling.

“If we all land at once, then we can all do something like raise up our weapons and maybe fire off a single round as one.” Toast suggested.

“Oh, that’s nice.” Sergeant Leni said, smiling.

“Yeah, that sounds really cool.” Tater, the leader of Third squad, replied.

“Ok Magic, we need to land in formation and far enough apart that when the OTDSs deploy we’re not getting in each other’s way. Here are the environmental conditions on the drop.” Sergeant Torres said, sending the information to her. She sat down near the holo table and started to plot the landing zones.

“Oh, while you guys are here, I need you to paint your armor and the ship with the platoon camo colors and add the platoon emblem. One and Done, you guys need to put the platoon emblem on the left side of the chest of your Mechs. Magic, I need you to put it on the top of your wings and on the inside of the drop ramp. I’ll send you guys the emblem. This needs to be done before we deploy at seven.” Sergeant Torres told them.

“Oh, I have an idea. Why don’t we all fly in with the Dropship and then jump down into formation?” Tater asked.

“Our dropship is going to fly in with the rest of the battalion’s dropships. Magic, I’m sending you the plans of where you’re going to meet up and your place in the formation wing. One and Done, you guys are going in with Magic and she’s going to drop you in the front of the platoon. Magic, I need you to plot their landing as well.” Sergeant Torres said, annoying Freya. She sighed and started in on the calculations.

“Hey Magic, you okay?” Toast asked her. “You seem really quiet.”

Looking up from her tablet, she nodded. “Rough night.” She told them, not really thinking about what she was saying.

“Tell me you didn’t get wasted right before the Tournament?” Wilson asked.

“I can’t talk about it, sir.” Freya replied, cursing herself for the slip. She looked down at her calculation and hoped they would stop asking her.

“Magic, if you did something to effect this platoon we need to know about it.” Sergeant Leni said, stepping towards her.

“It does not affect this platoon, and I have been ordered not to speak about it.” Freya said, not looking up.

“Ordered by who?” Sergeant Torres asked.

“The Colonel sir.” Freya replied.

“Well, I’ll be sending the Colonel a message.” Sergeant Torres told her. He looked off into the distance. Freya ignored them and plotted the landing zones for her platoon members. The rest waited for Sergeant Torres to finish his conversation with his superior.

“We’ve been ordered not to ask Private O’Malley what she did last night under any circumstances. This is straight from the Colonel.” Sergeant Torres said, after a few minutes.

“What the hell did you do?” Tater asked her, and immediately cursed. “I’ve been fined for disobeying orders,” he whined, sounding surprised.

“By Mary’s toes, Tater. That was the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.” Sergeant Leni said, shaking her head at his stupidity.

“Everyone shut up. Tater, I swear if you weren’t such a good soldier I‘d fire you.” Sergeant Torres said, angrily. “As far as Private O’Malley is concerned, last night didn’t happen. There will be no asking questions, nor will we comment on anything that happened last night. If you do, I'll fine you myself, if the Colonel doesn’t.”

“Can we please get back to figuring out what we are going to do for the opening ceremonies?” He continued.

Freya was still finishing plotting the OTDS routes when the rest of the platoon started filing in. The meeting with the command staff broke up soon after. Freya sat down and Toast sat next to her. He patted her shoulder and, when she looked up, he nodded to her and smiled. She gave him a smile back. She just finished her assignment right before Sergeant Torres started talking. She sent her calculations to the command staff just as Sergeant Torres told everybody to quiet down.