Team Scarlet was the third-to-last squad to arrive at Red Base on Planet Telum. They disembarked their Zeta-Class Patrol ship to check in with officers at the military spaceport. Despite the fact that Telum had yet to be terraformed completely, with full spacesuits required outside of ships and habs, the human presence on the planet was substantial. The spaceport alone was easily the size of those Nic had encountered on densely-populated, terraformed worlds; it housed a small fleet of comparatively tiny Patrol ships with taller Epsilon-Class Corvettes parked in the back, the gray spaceport ceiling looming high overhead.

“Red Base RTIFIS has you cleared,” said one of the nameless NCOs in spacesuits milling around the spaceport. “Right this way. Please keep your armorsuits on until otherwise instructed.”

Team Scarlet was directed through Red Base’s front airlock. One brief disinfection later, the interior door of the airlock opened. They were then ushered into a small white atrium with a handful of officers milling around a little less hastily. These officers carried clear briefcases full of translucent tablets with them and spoke to each other in curt, hushed tones, nodding sharply.

One such officer approached Team Scarlet from across the room, the only one moving with clear purpose. He was dressed in non-Red Battalion apparel, the more official speckled gray denoting someone enlisted with the WorldGov Space Force proper. “Team Scarlet,” he addressed them, and Nic and his comrades saluted in response. The man looked to be in his early 30s with a high and tight haircut. “I’m Lieutenant Reeve. Welcome.” He opened his briefcase and dispensed four translucent tablets to them out of his stack. “You have some tabwork to fill out and then you’re needed inside right away. Instructions will follow.”

“Yes sir,” each member of Team Scarlet answered, Nic and Jarek at an appropriate volume, Perri and Maqsud muttering as always. They both have their own issues with authority, Nic thought, but she doesn’t usually cause problems about it. Or maybe I’m biased...

Nic accessed the tablet with this thumbprint and began typing information manually. Most of it seemed unnecessarily bureaucratic, like his educational history, total missions served in the Contact War, previous Wargames experience, chronic injuries or illnesses, allergies—information that he thought should have already been on a file somewhere. He wouldn’t dare to question it openly, though, and filled it out dutifully as his squadmates were doing.

“Teams Scarlet, Cinnabar, and Ruby are our last arrivals,” said Lieutenant Reeve. “One just arrived. Last two are now entering Telum’s atmosphere. We should all be able to make the next round of field training exercises. You’re needed—move up front, please.”

“Yes sir,” said Nic. He went to set down his tab.

“Not you, son. You four, stay where you are until you fill out this tabwork. Make it quick. Welch, do you have the last two up front?”

“Affirmative,” said a voice through a small speaker on Lieutenant Reeve’s lapel. “On my way.”

Lieutenant Reeve stood with his hands folded in front of him, one wrapped around his briefcase handle, staring straight ahead with discipline. He was unusually tan for someone with his job description; Nic could tell that it wasn’t his natural skin tone, that he had to have acquired it from radiation. Lieutenant Reeve must have seen duty on a terraformed planet. Based on the Hexadians’ proclivity for attacking remote colonies and weapons facilities—military installations that usually were not fully terraformed yet—Nic guessed that Lieutenant Reeve must have seen some easier assignments recently, and probably wasn’t thrilled about this mission to an airless rock at the edge of human space.

“Squad Leader, we’re burning starlight,” said another lieutenant, hands folded behind his back. He approached at a solid pace from across the atrium. He was chewing on something small but sturdy—gum, a stimulant, or maybe it was nothing at all and he just chewed out of habit. “You missed lunch, but I won’t let you miss FTX. Where’s your fifth?”

Nic looked up. He was too taken aback to answer right away, even to an authority figure. By the time he collected himself, opened his mouth, the conversation continued without him. “Uh,” said their lieutenant, “Lieutenant Welch, this is Team Scarlet. They were the ones who just arrived. Should have clarified.”

“Oh, Team Scarlet,” said the lieutenant, as if reacting to a mildly interesting bit of news. “Didn’t see your faces through the visors.” There was an almost imperceptible twitch of his brow, but he otherwise maintained his stoic expression. “Honored to have you four here. Now, hurry with that tabwork. Field training starts in 20.” He scanned the atrium, chewing on something again, and stomped away importantly to the front of the atrium as his colleague had requested.

I already hate it here, Nic thought. “This has got to be the most state-of-the-art Red Base I’ve seen,” Nic lied to his squad with a tone of sincerity. “Can’t wait to check it out! I think we’re going to be well taken care of here, Team Scarlet.”

“The WGSF wouldn’t have it any other way,” Lieutenant Reeve answered with a cordial smile. He collected their tabs and then pointed them through the next doorway into the base. “You’ll want to take a Centaur to the field. RTIFIS will direct you to the garage. Welcome to Telum, Team Scarlet.”

Nic led the way out of the atrium through an automatic door. They stepped through an expansive, empty room, dimly lit in its disuse, into a narrow hallway that fed into another section of the base. It opened into a garage filled with vehicles, the vast majority Centaurs.

“Straight into FTX, huh?” Jarek said when they were out of earshot. “That takes at least half a day. So that means our schedule is at least a couple hours behind. It’s gonna be a late night tonight, y’all.”

“Nothing a good night’s sleep tonight won’t fix,” Nic replied optimistically, and he was right. An extremely flexible and adaptable circadian rhythm was one of the many benefits modern humans enjoyed thanks to genetic engineering. It didn’t make the first overnight adjustment enjoyable, but it was doable.

In three weeks tops, this mission will be over, Nic told himself. In three weeks tops, this mission will be over.

***

0500: Lights On.

0530-0630: Breakfast.

1200-1300: Lunch.

1800-1900: Dinner.

2100: Lights Out.

All squads were required to complete at least a four-hour block of sim training per day, along with a four-hour field training exercise, and they had the luxury of choosing the order of those obligations each day. The only exceptions came when there was a day-long or multi-day exercise—those were always mandatory—or when Lieutenants like Welch wanted to be needlessly strict with latecomers. Hard-ass, Nic kept thinking bitterly every time the officer crossed his mind.

Nic knew that his squad usually preferred to get FTX out of the way early, so as not to have it hanging over their head the whole day. That meant they’d be back to it right after breakfast the next morning. After an end-of-the-day shower in the Red Base barracks—it was the only way he was able to sleep comfortably when deployed—Nic set his bag on the bottom bunk below Perri’s.

She always preferred the top bunk. Since there was absolutely no fraternization allowed while on an active mission, they would be sleeping apart again for a while. They would have to subsist on private smiles and whispered goodnights for the short-term future.

When the lights went out at 2100 sharp, the din of soldier activity in the barracks dorm started to peter out like the end of a rainstorm, the sounds of shuffling footsteps, creaking plastic beds, and yawns now mingling with the dying conversations. The room was home to over 130 soldiers and was made intentionally spacious. It wasn’t cozy like the bedrooms on the ship. Surrounded by all these strangers, it made Nic feel strangely vulnerable, almost naked.

He said a full-voiced goodnight to Jarek and Maqsud, followed by a whispered one to Perri, and closed his eyes to go to sleep. The room was dark except for the dim holoclock projecting off the wall. It read 21:02; he knew he’d be dreaming before it hit 21:04.

Or he would have been, if not for the screaming.

Nic jumped out of bed. “This is it,” he said, suppressing his panic. “Team S—”

“Sshhh, keep it down,” said another voice. It sounded female. “Do you wanna get us busted, man?”

“I’m sorry,” said another voice. This one sounded male—and young. His voice cracked like he was crying, or had been recently. “I’m sorry. Can we please just talk to them about this in the morning?”

The conversation came from a pair of bunks in the adjacent corner of the long room, which was only two bunks wide with an aisle between them. Nic shuffled down the aisle to the source of the noise.

“I heard a commotion,” said Nic as he approached. “Came to see if anyone needed help. I’m Nic from Team Scarlet.”

“He’s fine,” said another member of Red Battalion sitting up in her bunk. She looked a little younger than Nic, with dark skin and coarse black hair pulled into tight twin buns. Her counterpart looked even younger still; he was slim, with freckled pale skin, a freshly buzzed scalp of orange hair. “It’s our first mission. He’s a little spooked, that’s all.”

“Shouldn’t be a first,” Nic said, confused. “You’re Red Battalion. We were all grandfathered into service. New recruits are WGSF only.”

“No, I mean... our first combat mission,” the young woman clarified. “We were sorta about to be fired as Wargame players. Then the war happened. We were on lighter missions, security stuff in terraformed colonies. You know how people have been going crazy since this all started? Riots and stuff?” Nic nodded. “Well, yeah. We were assigned to that. Team Brick. This is our first mission with the... you know... them.”

Nic took a deep breath as his tired brain processed this information. “I see.”

“And I still don’t get why we are not using proxybots!” the kid exclaimed loudly, prompting his squadmate to raise a shushing finger to her own lips.

“Danny,” she hissed, “I am begging you, man, please keep it down. Okay? We can talk this out together.”

“I don’t get it, Kincaid!” he answered her more quietly. He sat up in his bunk as well, hugging his knees to his chest, rocking. “Proxybots. That’s how we fought Wargames. That worked for decades, right? Why not use proxies so nobody gets put in harm’s way? I don’t want to go out there and fight them in person!”

“You know, Danny,” said Nic, and the redhead looked straight at him, his eyes bulging with terror, “as backwards as it might seem, we’re actually safer in our Achilles.”

The frightened rookie wiped his tear tracks with the back of his hand. “How does that even make sense? Because that’s what our last lieutenant told us, and it just sounds like total bullshit.”

“One, proxybots are cheaply made compared to an armorsuit,” Nic explained. “Even old-school vac-armor was way stronger. They made them that way on purpose. Break easier in battle. Wouldn’t have to spend as much on ammunition. Achilles armorsuits are incredibly durable, and trust me, WorldGov would make proxybots out of them if they could. That would mean more soldiers and easier gunfights with the Hexadians.” Danny shuddered at the mention of their name. “But those aliens, man, when you throw a robot at them, the weirdest thing happens... They escalate. Hard. And fast.”

Danny arched an eyebrow.

Yes, I’m getting through to him, Nic thought.

“L-like how?” Danny asked.

“Acid attacks, for one,” the Scarlet Squad Leader answered. “Doesn’t do much to astrosteel, but it’ll eat clean through the feedback suit like nothing was ever there. Then you have a pile of destroyed circuitry and armor plating that never got close to the enemy.”

Danny scoffed, half-sure of himself. “That’s not real. Is it? There’s no way.”

“No, it is. I’ve seen it happen.” Nic nodded vigorously. “I was part of the first mission that tried to use Gen-1 Achilles proxybots. We were lucky they only used acid on us. Sometimes they use bioweapons. That’s how we lost Planet Stanton and almost half the casualties in the war—I’m sure you’ve heard of that incident. Robots, proxies, drones all set them off for some reason. And unmanned weapons don’t do much, either.

“We’ve tried bombs, but their ships are pretty much impenetrable by anything but a nuke—and we’re obviously not going to use any of those. Shoot a missile at them and they’ll knock it out with a giant spike before it gets close. They don’t seem to care about lasers, either—must be really adapted to radiation. WorldGov experimented with some acoustic weapons, but those are hard to use without affecting human soldiers, and we often fight in vacuums anyway.

“The only way we can touch them is kinetic weapons. Projectiles. Bullets. Frags. But there’s a catch.” Nic held up a didactic index finger. “They only come out of their shell when we’re on the battlefield. Humans. Live bait. It’s like with us there, whether out of some concept of honor or some religious notion, maybe a code of ethics—whatever it is, it’s like they insist on giving us a fair fight. That usually works in our favor.”

“But sometimes it doesn’t,” Danny said mistrustfully.

Nic got down on one knee next to the young man’s bunk. “Danny, tell me your squad leader’s name.”

“I’m squad leader,” said the young woman identified as Kincaid.

“Kincaid. Right. Danny, you just stick with Kincaid, stick with your squad, and this mission is going to turn out fine.”

Danny shook his head. “No. It’s not.” His voice grew steadily louder once more. “It’s not, and I’m tired of you psychopaths trying to tell me—!”

“Danny!” Kincaid hissed.

“—that it is when it’s not! It’s not! Okay? This is insane! Why are we even out here! Why are we doing this?!”

“Danny, you need to calm down.” Kincaid lost her previous soothing tone and got stone cold serious. “If you need to see a shrink in the morning, that’s fine. You can sort it out with them. But right now, you need to keep quiet. You are not going to compromise the safety of our squad and everyone else. Understand?”

“No, I’m not gonna keep quiet!” Danny was in tears again. He jumped out of his bunk; Nic and Kincaid both stood back at a safe distance. “Nobody’s listening to me! I’m not going to put my life on the line with you freaks who think this is okay!”

“Danny,” Nic said patiently, “I know this is scary. None of us really want to be here. But I’m telling you statistically, you’re going to be okay. Stick with your squad, listen to Kincaid, and everything will be okay.”

“Oh yeah?” Danny shot back. “Tell that to Scarlet 5!”

Nic couldn’t stop his jaw from dropping. What happened next was a blur.

There was a sound like a hammer striking meat. Someone gasped. The next second, Danny was on the floor, his mouth open wider than Nic’s, his eyes bulging again, but he was silent save for his quick, shallow breathing.

“Shit,” Nic muttered. “I—”

“Danny, are you okay?” Kincaid asked, kneeling at his side. He nodded hurriedly, short, timid little nods, and he didn’t dare meet Nic’s gaze. “He’ll be fine. Go to bed.” Her dismissal of Nic felt like chastisement and approval all rolled into one so evenly that they canceled out, and now she was just telling him to get lost.

He took his chance and walked back to his bunk.

“Everything okay?” Perri whispered when he returned. “I heard somebody screaming, but I couldn’t hear what was happening. Somebody having nightmares? Jitters?”

He was glad that she couldn’t see his face. Don’t worry her, he told himself. “Yeah, it’s fine. Somebody needed help calming down.” He swallowed the dry lump of guilt in his mouth. “I helped.”

“Oh. Good job.” He heard her roll over in bed above him. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

Nic lay in his bed until 22:06 rubbing his sore knuckles and thinking about what he’d done. He wondered what Shanti would have said. Probably nothing good, if anything.

Mostly, he just wished that if Team Scarlet had to deploy on strange planets to fight hostile aliens, that all five of them could go through it together. He missed Shanti. They’d been without her now longer than she’d been part of the squad, but she left an indelible mark on them just the same. Now her absence was like a hole that would stay forever unfilled.

Or a scar, like the one on his chin. The one whose meaning had changed drastically for him since his Wargame days.

Or maybe it hadn’t changed at all.