“You think that the damn pirates are gonna wait for you to stop huffing and puffing and get your ass into gear to board their ship? You think that just cause you watched some trumped up fantasy holovids of TSTs that you’ve got what it takes to capture and kill some of the biggest, meanest, and baddest bitches in the galaxy?” The drill sergeant paused for a second as if waiting for a response. Nothing came but the sound of retching.

“Well, you better think that through again, fatass! If you can’t even beat this track, you sure as hell can’t beat the damn space pirates that took my arm and my leg! If you can’t run here, slug, you might as well crawl your way back to your damn dormitory as there’s no place for you in Trooper training.” The drill sergeant cut off, waiting for a decision.

On shaky legs, the plump kid shuffled to his feet and took a shaky step forward, and then another one, and yet another, until he was moving at what could only just barely qualify as a jog. The drill sergeant crept up behind the kid until he was standing just behind him.

“You call that running?” the drill Sergeant shouted the words. “I don’t even walk this slow when I’m coming to see you lot of ungrateful pieces of shit in the morning. Wet Street whores don't even walk home this slowly after a full day of work.” The drill Sergeant waved out across the room, almost making eye contact with Rune, who made sure to look away. “Do you even see one other trainee running half as slow? Hell no! That’s because they all know that if you’re gonna run down a pirate, you’re gonna have to be fast. Fast enough to outrun a strumpet, that's for damn sure!”

The fat kid sobbed and did his best to speed up. His bouncing walk upgraded to a very shaky run, and breath heaved in and out of his chest, the kid barely able to keep going. Rune frowned. He’d seen similar scenes in movies before, but watching it live was more… visceral than he’d expected. He glanced away from the scene as the drill Sergeant, seemingly satisfied with the fat kid’s efforts, scanned the room for any slackers.

A second later, the drill Sergeant’s voice boomed out through the room. “Each of you will keep running laps until slug here has finished his first ten. You will win as a team or lose as a team, and you will only be as strong as your weakest link. Remember! The weakest link is the link that will snap first.” The drill Sergeant leaned forward and snarled. “Do not be that person!”

The group continued running for nearly another five minutes as the chubby kid completed his last two runs. He just barely made it over the finish line before he dropped down on all fours, panting. The rest of the group slowly trickled in behind him. Most of them had lapped him once or twice, and several of the more haggard looking ones shot the kid an angry glare. Rune noticed the drill Sergeant standing off to the side, taking careful note of each and every one of these kids.

Once about half the kids had come to rest at the end of the track, the drill Sergeant pointed to a strange looking device on the wall. “For all you rookies wondering how you might be able to get food or a drink when in between classes or after drills, this thing is how. There’s a store that sells some real food on each level, but you gotta pay out of your own pocket for that. You can get multibars and water from these for free, all the time. Like now.” The drill Sergeant glared around at the assembling students when only a couple moved. “That’s an order! Stay hydrated, all the time. Get some damn water!” The pack of students rushed over to the station, some of them tripping over themselves in their haste. All but the fat kid at the back.

After a brief minute, the majority of the students were sipping water and standing around or sitting down as they waited for the drill Sergeant to tell them what to do next. The last kid ran in, finishing their run, and the drill Sergeant waited for that kid to run over to the station and grab a water. The drill Sergeant nodded and then glanced around, scanning the crowd until his eyes lit upon the chubby kid who was now sitting down curled up into a ball, most importantly without a water in his hand.

The Drill Sergeant’s eyes narrowed as he marched over and spoke to the chubby kid in a dangerously low tone. “Trainee Keens. Did I not give you and this squadron an order to get water?”

Trainee Keens looked up at the Drill Sergeant, regret obvious in his eyes and facial expression. “Uh, yeah, you did that, sir.”

The Drill Sergeant’s eye’s narrowed and he shouted, “Then where is. Your. Damn. WATER?”

Keens flinched. “I, uh, I don’t, uh—”

Rune spoke up, keeping his voice as neutral as possible. “Sorry Sergeant, trainee Keens told me he was tired and asked me to hold his water for him.” He brandished a second bottle of water, before throwing it at Keens who looked for all the world like a million dollars had just landed in his lap. Meanwhile, the drill Sergeant glanced with narrowed eyes between trainee Keens and Rune.

He finally spoke. “Hmmm, then, I see. You were just holding his water for him.” The drill Sergeant gave Rune a serious look. “The next time, you let him hold his own water. You can’t be weak and make it through trooper training. And if trainee Keens can’t even hold his own water, he sure as hell won’t be able to hold his own on the battlefield! If you want entrance to Combat, trainee Keens, you’ll have to step it the hell up.”

Trainee Keens nodded meekly before the drill Sergeant stormed off.

Rune shook his head before giving trainee Keens a look. “He may be an asshole, but he’s right about one thing. If your goal is to make it into combat, you’re gonna have to step it up.” He then turned and walked off into the crowd, which was currently in the midst of following the Sergeant out of the room.

Rune was walking with the other students when all of a sudden, an elbow came out of the crowd, hitting him in the side. “What’d you help the fat kid for, Rune.”

Rune glanced over to see Jamis, one of the kids he’d met the tech orientation day, walking next to him. He was short, skinny, and white with an immaculate wave of blonde hair running down one side of his face. Rune had thought he was a rich kid, but Jamis had declared himself as from the Deep Side, which as far as Rune could tell from his research were effectively the slums of Terrassis. Rune shrugged. “Why not? For all you know, the kid could be amazing at Attunement or Harmonics. Could be useful to know someone like that in the future.”

Jamis frowned and then shrugged. “I guess, man. I guess. What’re you planning to go into, anyway? Probably not tech from what I saw, but you seem like the Combat type. Am I wrong?”

Rune frowned and shrugged. “I’m still not sure. Probably not tech. I like combat but… I think I might go for Harmonics if I can. I want to be a pilot of some sort. When I was still, you know, human, that was one of my plans.”

Jamis arched an eyebrow, an impressed look on his face. “Harmonics, is it? Damn. Yeah, if you can go into Harmonics, you go into Harmonics. Don’t know why anyone who could do anything different. So then how many neural linkages you got?”

Rune frowned, it being his turn to arch an eyebrow. “Why does it even matter how many neural linkages I have? And I have four.”

Jamis, who had paused to take a drink out of his water bottle, choked and nearly spat it all over the floor, his eyes flaring in surprise. He leaned in a little closer to Rune, now speaking in a whisper. “The earthsoul above, you have four neural linkages? How many were implanted? I thought you said you were a synth. Didn’t you like, just get integrated? Did those people you met from BFS give you one or something?”

Rune frowned, not quite understanding why Jamis was so surprised. “Yeah I have four, and no, I haven’t gotten any implanted. I didn’t even know you could do that.”

Jamis looked at him like he was insane. “I thought you talked to a bunch of other synths. How the fuck did they not tell you about neural linkages? Everybody knows what neural fucking linkages are. And you naturally have four? Earthsoul.” Jamis shook his head.

Rune frowned. “What’s the big deal? Doesn’t everybody have one? I have four, they can’t be that rare.”

Jamis shot him another incredulous look. “Dude, only approximately one in ten people even has one. And that’s just one neural linkage. One. For every single one after that, it a hundred times more rare for someone to have one.

Rune frowned and crunched the number in his head. Ten to a thousand, to a hundred thousand, to… His eyes widened. Holy fucking shit. That was a lot of people. Rune was just about to ask Jamis what use neural linkages had when the drill Sergeant marched through a door. Focusing back on the class, Rune and Jamis followed the drill Sergeant through the door to stand in front of him with the rest of the students.

The drill Sergeant started off shouting, “It’s time for another exercise you lot of good for nothing steel-slinkers. Luckily though, especially for you slug, this exercise will not be an effort to gauge your physical fitness.” The drill Sergeant paced back and forth in front of the group, leaving them in suspense. “No, this next exercise will evaluate your capabilities as a marksman.”

The drill Sergeant pointed at the wall, where a rack of gun looking instruments was on display for the students. “Each and every one of you is to take an EMR-27. Do not adjust any knobs or switches on the weapon. Do not attempt to fire the weapon. Keep the weapon pointed at the ground at all times during use. Do you understand me, trainees?”

The crowd of trainees shouted in unison, “Sir, yes sir.”

The drill Sergeant waved towards the rack. “Well then, get to it! Once you’re done, stand in front of me, in formation. Finish within sixty-seconds. Anyone who doesn’t have a weapon or isn’t in formation by then is going back to the pit to run more laps!”

All the students hustled to get the weapons and were back in front of the drill Sergeant standing in the more or less organized fashion that they’d been instructed to earlier in the day. As soon as the last trainee had gotten back in formation, the drill Sergeant nodded and continued speaking. “49 seconds! Not bad.” He nodded. “Next time you’ll have thirty!”

He then held up the EMR-27. “This is the Electromagnetic Mechanized Rifle, version twenty-seven.” He turned the weapon upside down, holding it so that they could see the bottom. “This is the trigger.” The drill Sergeant pointed at the trigger, before turning the weapon on its side and pointing to a switch. “This is the safety.” He glared around at the trainees. “Do not switch off the safety at any time without my explicit instruction. Do you understand, trainees?”

“Sir, yes sir!” The voices of the boomed the response back loudly and clearly.

Mollified, the drill Sergeant nodded and went on. He pointed towards one of the three dials on the weapon. “This is here the power regulator.” Once again, the drill Sergeant glared around the class. “Do not, under any circumstances, mess with the power regulator.” He then pointed two fingers at each of the last two knobs, which were right next to each other. “These two here are the wave adjusters. You are allowed to mess with them, but know that if you do you will definitely fail this next marksmanship exercise.”

Suddenly pointing at one of the female trainees, the drill Sergeant shouted, “Trainee Yun, point to the safety on your EMR-27.”

The trainee glanced down at her weapon, back up at the Drill Sergeant, before pointing towards the corresponding switch. “This one, sir.”

The drill Sergeant nodded, before pointing at another trainee and scream a similar question. This happened a few times until one kid messed up. After berating the trainee for being an idiot, the drill Sergeant went over what parts of the weapon did what again, and then went back to quizzing the students. This time, he made it through the entire crowd without anyone making a mistake.

The drill Sergeant gave a nod. “Alright, that’s good enough for now. By now, you lot of steel-slinkers should at least be able to tell the business end of the weapon from the stock. Each and every one of you, through that door, into that corridor over there!” The drill Sergeant pointed at a section of the wall marked wall further down in the room, which slid open to reveal an opening.

Rune, who was somewhere near halfway in the crowd, entered the room towards the back of the crowd. It seemed to be a firing range of some sort, with a long double series of booths for individuals to shoot from. The drill Sergeant gestured to the booths. “What in the Earthsoul are you idiots waiting for? Each of you, into a booth!” The trainees rushed into the booths, each of them filling up a single space.

Rune heard rather than saw that one of the trainees switched his safety off early. “Damn it trainee Marone, were you listening to me at all earlier? What did I tell you?”

The trainee’s words came out confused with a hint of annoyance. “Uh, sir, I’m not really, sir, it’s a firing range so I just thought—”

“YOU THOUGHT WRONG.” The drill Sergeant screamed the words at the trainee. “When I give you an order, I expect you to follow that order! On the battlefield, you follow orders or put the whole damn unit at risk! And if you can’t do that now, you won’t be able to do that later! You will eat only when I say so! You will shit only when I say so! You will think only when I say so! And you will turn off your safety only when I say so! Is that clear, trainee?”

The trainee must’ve nodded because the next thing Rune head was the drill Sergeant shouting again. “Good, then you will run back to the Pit and run another lap! Meanwhile, we’re going to start the marksmanship evaluation without you! Every target missed in the time that you’re missing will be counted against you.”

There was a brief pause before the drill Sergeant’s voice came again. “Well, trainee? What will it be? Are you gonna drop here, or are you gonna run?” There was a brief pause before the sound of pounding feet provided the answer. Rune got a brief glimpse of the kid as he ran by. A shock of red hair, braided back in a ponytail, Rune might’ve imagined that he was Native American except for the fact that his skin was as pale as could be. He had an angry look on his face, but Rune just shook his head as he ran by. What an idiot, to turn off his safety early.

The drill Sergeant waited for a couple seconds until the kid was gone, and then he shouted at the group. “Alright trainees, now that the idiot is gone, each and every one of you can turn off your safeties.” He paced back and forth behind the trainees as the did so, looking at each and every one of them to make sure nothing was going wrong. “Each and every one of you remember to keep your weapon aimed downwards at all times unless you plan on firing it. You will now see a series of targets appear in front of you. Shoot all the ones colored red. Successful hits on limbs will grant you one point. Body and headshots will grant you two points. Shooting a blue target will lose you a point. Your reaction time, rate of fire, and consistency will be factored into your score. You have a total of fifty shots.” All of a sudden, a holographic desert flickered to life in front of rune. It was pretty much empty aside from some desert shrubbery spotting the area here and there. “You may fire whenever. Begin!”

Rune just waited. There weren’t any red targets that he could see, so he just waited till something changed. Sure enough, a red shaded human being began ran out from one side of the range, close to where Rune was standing in relation to the hologram. Rune gunned him down with ease, and the simulation went on. Some people dropped in from the sky. Other’s ran in from the sides. Some popped up from the ground and ran for it. Rune shot them down indiscriminately. He missed several times, but for never having wielded’ a gun outside of a VR arcade, he thought he did a pretty good job.

Time passed, and after some immeasurable amount of time, Rune heard the drill Sergeant calling for a halt and for the trainees to switch their guns safeties on and then follow him out of the room. Rune immediately did so, and then fell into the crowd of people flowing out of the room and back into the main room where the Drill Sergeant was waiting.

“Fall in line! Formaaaaaation.” The trainees filed into the room, doing their best to line up and get into formation. Eventually, they managed to get in line. Looking up and down the line, Rune saw the red haired kid who’d turned off his safety early standing in the line. He must’ve gotten back sometime during the marksmanship assessment. Rune had been so focussed while shooting that he must not have noticed the kid run past behind him. The kid caught his eye and shot an angry glare at him.

Rune held his gaze for a second, before shrugged and looked back at the Drill Sergeant, who was speaking. “—nothing fucking steel-slinkers! If this was a boarding operation the pirates would’ve blasted off the docking clamps fifteen seconds ago! Back to the track, another three laps.” A collective groan came from the crowd, and the drill Sergeant swept a hard, angry gaze across the crowd before shouting out, “make that six laps!”

With some more restrained grumbling, the trainees filed out of the room before walking back to the track. They ran the six laps this time with the fat kid not falling over before the drill Sergeant rounded them up. “Alright trainees, it’s time for the next section of your assessments, namely the tactical assessment.” He paced up and down the track, glaring down at the trainees arranged in a variety of slouched over, sitting down, and standing positions. “This assessment will take place in the sims room.” He stopped pacing, holding up a finger as if issuing a warning. “There will be other, already admitted trainees using the sims rooms. Do. Not. Disturb. them.” The drill Sergeant shook his fist as he enunciated every word.

“Anyone caught harassing or bothering a trainee in the midst of a simulation or merely walking through the sims room will immediately be removed. Is that clear?” the drill Sergeant looked around dangerously.

“Sir, yes, sir!” The response was loud and near instantaneous. The drill Sergeant turned and strode out of the pit. The rest of the trainees trickled out behind him, Rune somewhere near the back of the group, Jamis hot on his heels.

“I’ve heard this is the hardest section of Combat aptitude testing,” Jamis said. “I’ve heard that only four people ever have managed to score above a fifty on their original trial.”

Rune arched an eyebrow. “A tactical assessment the hardest section of the aptitude test? Isn’t there like VR everywhere now? I’d expect with all the combat games people would know what they’re doing.”

Jamis laughed. “The games are completely different man. They all have magic, or something special. Nobody wants to play real life, man. That shit’s too hardcore. Besides, most of them don’t have pain.” Jamis leaned in, glancing around like he was telling Rune a dirty secret he wasn’t supposed to know. “I’ve heard that the TEF sims lab goes for 100% pain.” He leaned back with a wide grin on his face. “Now that shit’s hardcore.”

Rune frowned and then shrugged. “I guess we’ll see, man. I guess we’ll see.”