Once we were in the air Christian tore open his first MRE and I followed suit. Lasagna wasn't something I was particularly fond of but this wasn't the time or place to be picky.

"What did you get?" Christian asked me.

"Lasagna" I told him.

"Gagh" he guffawed. "You're lucky, I got liver and onions." He said with real disappointment.

I couldn't help but chuckle and began to eat. Others on the plane were doing the same and the flight attendant brought around bottles of water for everyone.

The plane was mostly quiet while we ate. The sound of the air on the hull and wings muting much of the plastic wrapped packages everyone was eating from.

Christian suffered through his meal without complaint and once he finished he stood and removed a thick leather bound book from the bag at his feet and began to read. I looked over at the book but couldn't make heads or tails of it. There was no text, instead the entire page was composed of hundreds of interlinked hexagonal shapes. "What's that?" I asked Christian.

"It's the history of James Dalton Malaki." He said without looking up.

"Those are words?" I asked him

He looked over at me briefly like he was considering something then said "yeah. It's written in a language called Trinity. It was devised by James Malaki to beat various types of encryption protocols that were in use during the early 2000s. It's extremely hard to read and has no vocal component. I managed to teach myself how to read it but it's still a struggle. I still have to look at cheat sheets sometimes on complicated stuff and it's easy to lose my place."

He pointed at two hexagons on the page and continued. "There are only ten distinct symbols, each is hexagonal in shape and they represent a number between zero and nine. Combining two hexs creates a two digit number. That number can represent a letter or a punctuation of some type. So a seventy two is the letter S for example and looks like this." He said poking the intersection of two hexs on the page.

"But that's just where it starts, it gets trickier. It's written vertically, without any past or future tense and superfluous text words were removed. But when it's sent by computer it's sent horizontally. That's why there was so much trouble back then trying to decipher Trinity, because as the symbols came through numerically it was across the top of columns and then the next line of the columns etc. They never understood where the column breaks were to figure out that they were columns and not rows of text."

"Wow, that's crazy" I said "just looking at that page makes my eyes hurt." I looked away and rubbed my eyes. James Malaki? The same guy that invented the Olympus Station and the warpdrive right?"

"Oh he did way more than that. He invented space travel really. Before he created his ships humanity had only a couple stations in orbit around Earth and had set foot on the moon a handful of times. We hadn't even sent anybody to Mars yet. He not only invented warp travel, he invented space travel.

"There is so much about him they don't publish anymore. For example, the ships he designed and built back then we're faster than the ships today. They had something called a Star drive which allowed them to make a huge jump from one star system to another over hundreds of light years in a few minutes. His ships had artificial gravity and energy weaponry. And if you believe some of the stuff written about the ships, he even developed A.I.s that functioned as crew backup on the ships." Christian unloaded the information excitedly

"That's crazy, that was what a 1,000 years ago? There is no way his tech was better than what we have today." I scoffed

"Oh it's true, and it was actually somewhere in the ballpark of 780 years ago. He was documented with all kinds of crazy tech. Unfortunately, most of it vanished with him."

"What do you mean vanished?"

"I've been studying about him for years and the general consensus is that he flew off into deep space with one of his ships, never to be heard from again. Took all his tech with him and left humanity with just the bare bones of spaceflight."

"I find it really hard to believe that this guy had technology that was 800 years ahead of its time" I told him

"You're not alone," he told me. "There are lots of conflicting reports and stories about this stuff. But he is the one who brought the seven races together in the original alliance and he is the one who discovered the devastation wrought by the Skree."

I barked a laugh. "The Skree aren't real. That's just a fairy tale the doomsayers preach about and parents tell their kids to make them behave." I leaned back and shook my head at the notion as Christian continued.

"Everyone laughs but James Malaki recorded video footage of an alien race that lived in a starsystem with a unique binary pair of stars that can be seen in that video. Later the planet was ravaged in a way that could never happen naturally. The planet was decimated. Every living thing, drop of water and tiny bit of metal or heavy element was stripped away from the planet, it's two moons and another planet and moon in the system. He found the system like that less than three years after meeting the people from that world." Christian had an intensely serious look on his face as he said this.

"I've heard that story. But what are the Skree?" I asked "As far as I know there has never been a sighting that wasn't later to be proven a hoax, and, we've never encountered another world ravaged in the same way."

"No, there hasn't. and we don't know exactly what they are. But we can see the destruction they unleashed on an entire solar system in less than 3 years. Frankly, the not-knowing scares me more." Christian said with a visible shutter.

I leaned back in my seat and considered his words. He was right. Something that could utterly devastate a solar system to such a degree in as short a time would be horrific to encounter. I could only imagine what the Starforce would do if they came to the Sol system.

Christian spoke up to add more. "There are actually tons and tons of stories about James Malaki having crazy magic powers and leading groups of rebels against the alliance he put together. The number of stories like that are countless and too fantastical to be true, but every myth and legend is based on some kind of truth."

"It's the reason I'm joining the Starforce. I want to discover the tech he had. If I can figure out the physics behind his star drive or artificial gravity, um, well that's why I'm here." He said, chagrined at his own excitement. "What about you? Why are you joining the Starforce?"

I was about to respond but the flight attendant at the front picked up the mic and began to talk. "Please let me have your attention everyone." She said "we're going to dim the lights, you should all try to get some rest. We're still six hours away but it will be morning there when we land and you will all be thrust into the meat grinder right away without another opportunity to rest until late in the evening." She hung up the mic and began to dim the lights.

Christian and I exchanged a look and a silent nod before we both tilted our seats back and tried to sleep. It took some effort to slow my thoughts on the information Christian had given me. It was definitely interesting if not particularly useful. Food for thought I suppose.

I tried several positions but just couldn't seem to slip into dream land. Maybe that nap on the bus had been a bad idea. But, just when I was about to give up, I fell asleep.

***

The lights of the cabin rapidly shot to full illumination and I jolted awake. Christian Next to me was blinking red eyed and so were many others as everyone woke up.

"We'll be landing in just over twelve minutes. Everyone please lean your seats forward, lock your food trays in position and stow any luggage that might be loose. Use the restroom now if you need to. In seven minutes I will have you all strap in, make sure you are seated and secure by then." The flight attendant hung up the mic and sat back down. Several passengers moved to the various restrooms, including Christian.

"Hey"

I looked around and after a moment located the guy calling out to me. He was in the same isle but in the center set of seats. He was short with round glasses and had a few acne scars.

"Hey, what the fucks going on? Where are we?" He asked me in rapid fire.

"We are about to land at Forze Armate in Andria Italy." I told him with a confused look on my face

"Italy? Did you just say fucking Italy?" He asked in shock

"Yeah"

"God fucking damnit." And beat his fists into the chair in front of him with a low growl. The girl in the seat he was hitting looked back at him with a frown and he stopped. "Sorry" he said to her.

"Did you get on the wrong transport?" I asked

"Um, hrmm, something like that." Then he got up and ran to the flight attendant up front.

I leaned the chair forward and buckled in so I'd be ready for landing. Christian came back and joined me, putting his book away and shoving his bag under the seat before strapping in.

The guy from before sat back in his chair and called over to me again. Christian and I both looked over and the guy asked "What day is it?"

"Monday" Christian said to him

"No, I mean month and day."

"October 4th" Christian said puzzled

"October 4th? Holy shit, it's October? Oh fuck. That's the last time I let Kimbo talk me into taking pixie dust." The guy said to himself.

The few remaining minutes of the trip were fairly quiet. The plane touched down gently and after coming to a stop everyone stood and began to gather their things.

The guy across from us disappeared and we found him at the bottom of the stairs leading out of the plane talking to a man in military uniform. His wide brim hat instantly identified the man as a drill instructor and he was listening to what he was being told with no expression on his face.

"I'm telling you there was a mistake. I'm not supposed to be here. I don't want to join the ASFC, I never have." He carried on desperately.

Without a word the drill instructor reached down and plucked the bundle of papers from the guy's hands, opened it and began to read. "Michael Smith." He said, then turned the paperwork around and pointed at a line. "Is that your signature?"

Taken aback the guy paused looking at the paper. "Well yeah. But-"

"Then it doesn't matter if you don't want to join the ASFC, you already have. You're mine now Cadet." He raised his voice for everyone to hear. "My name is Staff Sergeant Lyons, I want everyone in a single file line behind yellowbelly Michael Smith here."

"Hey, that's not fair." Michael said as everyone began to move into a line behind him.

Ssgt Lyons got right in his face and yelled "I didn't ask for your opinion on the matter, nor do I care to hear what you have to say about it."

He began moving down the line checking everyone's papers when he overheard Michael say something else that Christian and I couldn't hear. Ssgt Lyons whipped around lightning fast. On the ground now, give me twenty push ups. You",he pointed to the next guy in line, "count them out loud, nice and loud."

Michael was a scrawny kid but had a bit of muscle on him so he was able to complete all twenty even if it wasn't very quickly. As he did the push-ups Ssgt Lyons continued down the line checking everyone's paperwork.

Michael finished first and after checking everyone's papers Ssgt Lyons had us follow him single file with everything we brought to a processing center where we spent at least three hours filling out paperwork. From there we went to the barbershop and everyone had their heads divested of hair. Michael made another scene and after fifty push-ups, even he lost his hair.

I felt bad for him, he was quickly becoming the red herring of our group squad. Several hours later we were shown to the barracks and allowed to unpack. It was a long room with rows of single sized bunk beds. Christian was lighter than me so I asked him "You want to take the top and I'll take the bottom?"

"Sure." He said and we began to unpack.

I was surprised when Michael plopped down on my bed and said, "I am so screwed. What am I going to do?"

Before Christian or I could answer him a voice with a British accent spoke up. "You're going to flunk out of course. Just don't take the rest of us down with you." The kid snickered and I turned to see what I could best describe as a brat. He was my height with blond hair and blue eyes.

I opened my mouth to rebuke him when a big guy stepped up and said. "Awe stuff it Wilks." And put his stuff down on the bed next to mine, "Smith you take the bunk above me." At full height the top of my head came up to his chin and his biceps were nearly a foot thick. Dude was huge and spoke in an Australian accent.

"I'm Sebastian Marx, but everyone just calls me Basher. Pleasure to meet y'all."

"Jonathan Kaine." I said and shook his vice like hand. Christian followed my example and Wilks scoffed, walking away.

Michael thanked Basher for his timely intervention but before anyone could make any further conversation the lights in the room turned off. Ssgt Lyons stood in the door and ordered everyone into bed and into sleep.

I laid there in the dark for what seemed like hours. I'm sure many of us did that night. My thoughts drifted to Jenny, my father and my potential future. I asked myself for the millionth time why I was there. Why I was about to put myself through the hell I was expecting to come from bootcamp. Finally, without finding any answers, I fell asleep.

The next twelve weeks would teach me an understanding of the phrase "Hell on Earth".