No sooner had the squad returned to our quarters than our holographic handler appeared in the room's center. His unblinking eyes looked blankly over us, not focussing on anyone.

“Greetings Squad 304. Your training mission has been adjudicated as successful. You achieved a 99.4% xeno extermination rate without any losses. The squad’s status has been raised from ‘Potential Trainees’ to ‘Active Trainees.’ Praise the emperor for this success and he will provide sustenance for you.”

The hologram froze in place. Waiting expectantly as we looked at each other in confusion. After a minute I shrugged and muttered, “Praise the emperor?”

Robinson mouthed ‘What the fuck’ and heat rose in my cheeks as the others stared at me. I was certain they were also questioning my sanity.

Fortunately Sarge followed my lead, “Praise the emperor!” he shouted with more gusto than I’d managed. The others had now apparently fully bought into the farce and raised their voices also.

As silence fell once more, doors in the wall opened with a faint swishing noise. Two small robotic trolleys entered the room, bringing with them the smoky aroma of roasted meat. Trays of food rested on top of the carts, buffet style. The meals looked normal enough, french fries and sliced meats along with various greens.

Robinson didn’t ask any questions. He simply fell upon the cart, shoveling his mouth full of food. Cutlery and plates were apparently purely optional items to him.

Westcott was, however, apparently a pickier eater. Circling the cart like a predator, he scrutinized its selection carefully. Eventually taking a few leaves of what looked like lettuce and some brightly colored berries. No wonder the kid was so scrawny. He ate like a field mouse.

My stomach also growled in hunger, however my eyes were locked onto the corridor beyond the opened door. A myriad of entryways and hallways were visible, each looked immaculately clean and clinical. The long white walls had large pipes running along some sections and the scene reminded me of photographs I’d seen of submarine interiors. There was so much I didn’t know about where we were. Without a conscious thought, I started sidling quietly towards the opening.

A meaningful cough from Sarge brought me up short before I’d proceeded more than a handful of steps. The man's brow furrowed in consternation as we locked eyes briefly. He didn’t even need to say anything, my shoulders slumped as I stopped and looked back towards our overseer who had resumed speaking.

“The next mission will begin in twenty four hours time. Details can be found on your console.”

Without another word the alien shimmered and vanished. Leaving me alone once again with my thoughts. The creature treated the next mission as if it were a math quiz. Today's mission had forced me to kill creatures, living breathing creatures. My mouth twitched into a frown as I silently cursed the expressionless dickhead.

Sarge’s voice quickly took me back to reality, “You’ve all got thirty minutes downtime. Finish eating, take a shit, smoke up a storm. I don’t care so long as in thirty minutes, you've read the mission briefing and are ready to discuss a plan of attack.”

A series of affirmatives echoed out as each of us acknowledged him. Most of them squeezed out from mouths crammed full of food.

Having decided to wait until the herd had finished grazing to eat my share, I sat down and logged into a console. The display quickly consumed my attention as my nanites replaced my sight with a panoramic view of the computer display. Text scrolled into view.

Welcome back, Tom Peters. You have surplus skills awaiting assignment. In addition to this, one mission briefing is available.

It knew my name. This small fact stunned me for several seconds. Although considering the nanobots were literally inside me manipulating my brainwaves I really shouldn’t have been surprised.

Shaking off my shock, I got down to work. This time around my upgrades at least were relatively straightforward. Sarge had indicated a need to know what capabilities the enemy weapons had so I selected Identify Weapon I (Common) as my skill upgrade. My single attribute point was slightly more problematic, but in the end I threw it into Psychic with a devil may care attitude. I figured that at some point I should see an effect from the increased psychic pool that my mind was theoretically unlocking and frankly I doubted assigning the point elsewhere would make as big a difference as working towards unlocking my psychic potential.

The system confirmed my upgrades and after enduring the agony of information being thrown into my consciousness, a prompt confirmed the ‘new me.’

Tom Peters, Researcher 2nd Grade

Strength 10

Intellect 15

Agility 10

Psychic 2

Skills - Identify Species I, Identify Weapon I

That done I requested the mission details. Data scrolled into view.

Mission 1 - Base Defense (Completed: Assessment - 100/100)

Mission 2 - Retrieval (Completed: Assessment - 75/100)

Mission 3 - Skirmish (Completed: Assessment - 98/100)

Mission 4 - Behind Enemy Lines (Scheduled: 08:00 March 22nd 1966)

Interesting, it was like seeing behind the scenes as a high school student. I was almost certain that there were other missions planned that weren’t available. Thinking of the gladiator comparison I’d written in my diary earlier, I wondered how long we needed to survive in order to ‘graduate’ from this training course. Framing my musing into a formal system request didn’t return the response I would have liked.

Information on the Marine training course is restricted. Repeated attempts to access this information will be logged.

Thanks for nothing. I berated the tattling computer. After my examination of the robot earlier, this was my second offense. Fortunately, it seemed that this minor transgression wasn’t enough to trigger a serious reprimand.

No point feeling sorry for myself, what was done was done - I summoned the details on mission four and began reading.

Mission 4 - Behind Enemy Lines (Scheduled to run March 22nd 1966)

An advance party of Arachnia has established a hardened base camp in your sector. To complete the mission you must infiltrate the enemy area of control and destroy their communications array.

A series of diagrams and aerial photographs laid out a comprehensive view of the mission area.

The perimeter wall of the base was arranged in a hexagonal pattern, and constructed of thick webs hung between large metallic pylons. The internals of the camp weren’t so easy to determine. The same webbing provided a patchworked ceiling over the camp making it difficult to determine exactly what was held within it.

Briefly considering the webbing and the implications of the race's name, I enquired for details of the enemy race itself. I wished I hadn’t, it was unlikely I’d sleep for a week after seeing them. Resembling giant black spiders, their torsos were dwarfed by six huge trunk-like legs. Two smaller legs were directly under their jaws and seemed to be used as prehensile arms. Their faces were alien and incomprehensible to me, large eyes sat above a cruelly fanged mouth. I knew I would see these creatures in nightmares for years to come.

Attempting to distract myself from the images, I read more about the species itself.

Species: Arachnia

As their name implies, the Arachnia are an arachnid species. Four feet long, they have an unsegmented body consisting of a fused head and thorax and a rounded abdomen. Unlike smaller spiders their fangs lack poison. The species has however retained the ability to spin webs, which they use to construct a number of things including temporary dwellings.

The Arachnia are taught the importance of honor and loyalty at an early age. Their society has little crime and the idea of vandalism or wanton destruction is alien to them.

First giant bugs, now spiders - I’m starting to wonder if we aren’t basically being trained in pest control.

Yeah I’m not going to be sleeping soundly tonight. Still at least they’re not cockroaches. I figure, you’ve always got to look on the bright side in these things.

Besides, they still make their nests out of webs. We’re United States Marines, we can most certainly squish a few spiders. I doubt they’re that advanced … are they?

Arachnia while fragile physically are technologically adept. They utilise their multifaceted eyesight and eight limbs to allow them to manipulate tools with incredible agility. It is expected that within a few generations the Arachnia will leave their home planet and become an active part of galactic civilisation.

Well that isn’t good, they sound at least as advanced as humankind. I continued to make queries for several minutes, but the system would only respond to general queries about the race itself. It seemed that ‘Identify Weapon’ didn’t extend as far as asking generalised questions about what weapons a culture might have created.

Feeling frustrated I logged out of the system, finding the others waiting patiently for me.

“About time,” Robinson grunted, “Thought you’d got stuck in there.”

“At least I can read.” I retorted.

The man instantly bristled, but this time I didn’t flinch away. Crouching slightly I rested on the balls of my feet - waiting to see what he’d do.

“Enough already.” Sarge growled as he intervened, “We’ve aliens aplenty out there more than ready to kill us, I don’t need you two jackasses doing their job for them!”

“Yes, Sarge. Sorry, Sarge.” We both recited automatically, inclining our heads apologetically like naughty schoolboys caught in the girls locker room. He was right though, we needed to save our anger for the enemy.

“Sit down,” Sarge paced in front of us collecting his thoughts before he began. “The enemy are giant spiders. Their base has been constructed from webbing and that appears to be the extent of our knowledge about them.” He looked over us as we nodded in assent. “Anyone have anything else to add?”

Feeling awkward I put my hand up, “Yes, Peters. You’re not in a classroom, just spit it out.”

Blushing, I fumbled for words, “The Arachnia aren’t poisonous, so we’ve got that going for us. Outside of that, I learnt very little about them apart from the fact that they’re as tech savvy as we are, in fact possibly more advanced.”

“Great,” Sarge said with a hint of sarcasm. “Any ideas on how to achieve our objective?”

It always amazed me that the military was always so obtuse, for all of the badassery in the Marines the officers used a lot of euphemisms to avoid simply saying ‘How are we going to kill these guys?’

Blank looks reflected back at Sarge as he locked his gaze on each person in turn. Robinson glared back insolently in defiance, he wasn’t an ideas man and felt insulted that he’d even been asked. Westcott looked intently at the floor. It was impossible to know if the kid had any constructive thoughts, he definitely wasn’t brave enough to share them. Schmidt shrugged and muttered “Fuck em up real bad?” then held his hand up for a high five from Robinson.

Sarge didn’t look impressed. “Peters?” He finally asked. I’d been considering the problem since I’d first read the file and thought I had a possible approach. It was one which had been popular with the brass in ‘nam.

“Fire.” I indicated nervously, then as Sarge nodded in encouragement I explained further. “Most spider webbing is coated in a sticky substance which is flammable. They build using theirs which tends to indicate it must be adhesive, hopefully it has similar properties?”

“Not a bad idea, what munitions do we have on hand?” Sarge mused.

Robinson beamed, this was his chance to shine. The man had hauled half of the munitions dump into the new digs when he moved in. “Well we’ve all got our M16’s, but I also picked up a few toys from the armory before we left.” Gesturing to a small organised pile in the corner of the room, he rattled off his selection, like a waiter describing an expensive wine list, “There is a limited stock of C4 explosives. One box of Mark 2 fragmentation grenades. As Sarge demonstrated earlier on the knight these can seriously ruin someone's day. Two boxes of M14 anti-personnel mines and one box of M15 anti-tank grenades.” Beaming, he paused. “The things which I think will be of most interest however are this box of AN/M14 TH3 thermite grenades and most especially this little baby here.” He paused flourishing his arm at what looked like a gas canister with straps and a hose attached to it. “This gentlemen is the M2A1-7 flamethrower. It’s the Rolls-Royce of choice for pyromaniacs.”

The passion with which Robinson described the weaponry scared me. It was almost fanatical. I'd thought he might actually reach orgasm when he talked about the flamethrower.

Sarge seemed unconcerned though, “Any chance you have some more subtle ordinance in there, something we could use for taking down sentries quietly?”

He waved at a box, “There are a bunch of M16 suppressors here. I’ve never used one though.”

Sarge's normally dour countenance had cracked into a smile, showing a missing tooth. “Excellent, we have a plan then, people. Evac is at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow morning. Sorry, Robinson, no flamethrower tomorrow, but everyone should be carrying a silenced M16 and at least two of the thermite grenades. We get in, hit the camp and get out. I want this to run quickly and efficiently.” He looked at Robinson meaningfully, “I don’t want any dead heroes.”