0500: Lights On.

In an instant, pitch dark became bright as day in the Red Base barracks dormitory. Nic’s eyes eased open like clockwork. Eight days was more than enough time to acclimate to a new routine.

Perri’s feet hit the carpeted floor with catlike grace. She peered down into Nic’s bunk, waving good morning to him. “Morning,” he muttered with a grogginess that was already dissipating.

“Another day in paradise, eh?” Perri murmured with a fake cheesy smile.

“Stop talking like an old person,” Nic replied, but he smiled.

Jarek and Maqsud rose from the bunks beside them and they made their way toward the bathrooms. Thumbprints to open the lockers, toothbrush, chalky toothpaste, rinse, quick once-over in the mirror. Those look like bags under my eyes, Nic thought. I feel like I’m a little young to be getting those. Need a haircut soon.

0530: Breakfast.

Nic led the way to the mess hall, ready to choke down an unappetizing but technically nutritious meal to start his day. He actually missed the rehydrated eggs and meat-protein sheets that used to be part of his rations in the Wargame days. Remember the hunger, he thought, recalling how it felt when he skipped meals on a day-long exercise. It was only slightly worse than the food itself.

They were never told exactly what the food on base was exactly, as each food was labeled by its main macronutrient. A pile of rubbery grayish-brown crumble had a card that said “PROTEIN” next to the tray. A flavorless beige slop was “CARB.” Last but not least, there were fluorescent orange sheets that were probably meant to resemble cheese—this was “FAT.” Some of the more jaded soldiers and officers joked that it was all made from ground up Hexadian carcasses or WGSF recruits who didn’t pass basic training, and Nic wasn’t sure which version of the joke disgusted him more.

If anyone complained, they were always met with some variation of the same retort: “You want a five-star meal, you better earn some credits! That’s what the commissary’s for!”

It was his second mission when Nic discovered the commissary wasn’t much better, and offered little bang for exorbitant buck. He stopped asking those questions after that.

Every meal, Nic saw Danny somewhere in the mess hall.

Every time, Nic tried to approach Danny, promising that as soon as he was able to strike up a conversation, get his attention—even just meet his gaze—Nic would apologize for what he’d done.

Danny never looked him in the eye again.

0700: Field Training Exercise.

“Dude, I hate all-dayers so much,” Jarek muttered. “Sorry for bringin’ the mood down, y’all. Just had to say somethin’.”

“Personally, I love them,” said Maqsud. “The more time we get to spend out in the field, the better.”

“You serious?”

“Jarek.” Max snorted at him through their private Team Scarlet chat. “You know me better than that by now.”

“Nobody likes FTX,” said Nic. “But it’s gotta get done. Just like the real deal. I’d say it’s better to find a way to enjoy it, or at least grin and bear it.”

“No, you... you got a point, man,” Jarek agreed. “My bad.”

“Is that pep talk aimed at us, Nic?” Maqsud asked. “Or yourself?”

Nic didn’t answer.

They flew out to the day’s training field in Gryphons, ten-seater, tandem-rotor aerial vehicles built specially for the Contact War. They always had human pilots—in the case of field training, usually an NCO—and they were designed with sliding side doors for easy midair dispersal of Achilles-armored soldiers. When the door slid open, Nic was the first one to make the jump.

“Team Scarlet, Jetpack function,” said Nic. “We want a smooth landing.” Ever since the start of the war, every armorsuit came equipped with many of the functions of the old Wargame Upgrade Paks, minus the performance enhancers that were automatically rolled into the suit’s baseline functionality. “Engage on my mark.”

“Really?” Perri joked with him. “Because I was going to let the foam take care of the landing. Tuck and roll once we hit the ground. It’ll make a nice crater, and then the Hexes will—”

“Scarlet,” Lieutenant Welch interrupted, “cut that chatter or you’ll be scrubbing toilets by hand until lights out. Scarlet 1, keep a lid on your squad or that goes double for you. Understood?”

Nic gulped. “Yes, sir.”

“We’re at war, soldiers. Act like it.”

I forgot they can just spy on our private comms channels now, he thought. Hard-ass. Perri didn’t say anything, but he could only imagine what she was thinking.

They landed on the grayish-white, dusty surface of Telum softly thanks to their jetpacks. The terrain was flat in all directions, and the area was dotted with small pockmarks and shallow craters, the signatures of meteorite impacts in the planet’s distant past. The local sun was an F-type main sequence star, yellow-white in color; its intense radiation meant that generating a suitable atmosphere, and especially a magnetosphere, would take at least a couple of centuries. It was no Ayrus. There would certainly not be a single green thing growing here in his lifetime.

This planet will probably never be anything other than a weapons plant, he thought cynically. It was always hard to scrape together the motivation to defend something that wasn’t even a human habitat colony—Telum especially so. He could only go back to his one tried and true motivator. Just think of Shanti. Remember what they did. Remember how she suffered.

RTIFIS fed them the mission details as usual.

said the AI. I wish they didn’t call it that, Nic thought. This grouping referred to the standard, squad-based formation of one Commander, one Sharpshooter, and four Fodders all working as one unit.

Holographic overlays appeared in Nic’s HUD. They were far from realistic. Transparent, approximate outlines of gray-colored Commanders, bright yellow Fodders, and neon blue Sharpshooters materialized before his eyes. They flickered every now and then like an unstable holo would.

At the same time, his Achilles armorsuit automatically drew the SMG strapped to his back. All of the weapon safeties were on—FTX bullets were all holographic as well—but the gun felt just as heavy in his hands.

“Tagging hostiles,” said Nic. “Engaging marked targets. Triage priority. Team Scarlet, open fire!”

These holos are real enough for me. I’ll show Welch how seriously I take this job. I’m getting the high score today!

And he did.

***

1800: Dinner. Automated dispensers fed Red Battalion chow that was similar in quality to breakfast but with a slightly different presentation, making it fit for dinnertime. Nic sat down with his squad at the end of a long bench and dug in out of pure animal hunger.

“Good work out there today, son,” said the voice of Lieutenant Welch behind him. Nic kneed the underside of the table, his instinct to stand up and salute—WGSF officers almost never showed their faces in the mess hall at the same time as Red Battalion—but he was excused. “At ease, soldier, at ease. Just came to congratulate you on a great performance today.” Welch patted his shoulder entirely too roughly. “You took home 308 kills in the exercise all by yourself. Team Scarlet took home 530 as a whole. By far, you had the best score of any squad out there today. Fine work! You really turned the day around!”

“I bet it comes with the territory,” said Lieutenant Reeve, smiling. The two officers stood with their hands on their hips at the end of the bench where Team Scarlet was eating. “I mean, you four are some of the oldest veterans of the entire war, after all. You set a proud example for the rest of Red Battalion.”

Don’t remind me, Nic thought. But what he said was, “Thank you, sir.”

“We have good intel to suggest the Hexadian invasion force will be here any day now,” Welch went on. “I’m sure you’ll bring that same passion, or even better, to the battlefield. And when you do...” It was the first time Nic had seen Welch so much as smirk. “Well, this bastion of human liberty will be just fine when the dust settles! Carry on with your meals, soldiers. Enjoy.” He and Reeve each gave them a curt nod and stomped off to wherever the officers ate their meals, some other part of the hab adjacent to the main mess hall.

“Good job,” Perri whispered to him, elbowing him gently. She gave him a smile that betrayed genuine pride in his accomplishments, a playful arch of her eyebrow. “You earned it.”

“You really did, boss,” said Jarek, poking at his protein chunks with a fork. “I was gunnin’ for that top score, too. There’s always the real battle, though. I’m comin’ for that score next time!”

Nic smiled at his squadmates politely. Then Maqsud offered, “Praise from Caesar is praise indeed. With glowing remarks like that, you might have a future as a commissioned officer, Nic. Is that an aspiration of yours?” Max winced after a sip of the nondescript “fruit juice” from concentrate.

Nic shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Well, you’re the most adept at what we do. I think you have the most passion for it. You always have. Even since the Wargame days, you’ve always loved a good fight, haven’t you?”

“Dude,” Perri said gently. “You’ve both been getting along so well. Can you not?”

Scarlet 4 shrugged back, resting an arm behind his head. “Just an observation.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” said Nic, meeting his gaze. His fork clattered against his tray. “I don’t know how else you’re supposed to make it through a day of this without passion. And it’s more than that now... I have Shanti in my heart every day. Every day, I remember the last time she looked at me before we put on our vac-armor. Every day, I hear...” He suddenly looked around the mess hall to confirm no one was eavesdropping. He lowered his voice. “I hear the sound she made when she was scared. When she knew she wouldn’t make it.” This gave his squadmates pause. Even Maqsud’s cynical façade faltered momentarily. “So, yeah. I guess you could say I have a passion for getting back at the monsters responsible. I’m guessing you think you’re better than me for not feeling that way.”

Max smirked. Some part of what Nic said must have hit home. “Nic, I was there, too. We all were. No one can blame you for holding onto that trauma. I do, too. But have you ever given any thought as to the healthiness of your coping mechanisms? I’m not sure if this is the kind of job we should be relishing.”

“If you hate it so much, just go AWOL.”

“Nic,” Perri whispered pleadingly, glancing around the room. “I’m already on Welch’s radar for having a personality of my own. Be careful with talk like that...”

“I’m serious,” the Squad Leader persisted. “Instead of just picking at these things and making your little observations about how I get through the day, just put your money where your mouth is. Just desert. Or become a conscientious objector or something.”

“Surely you understand why that’s not possible, Nic,” Max answered with a confident, worldly grin. “There’s no way to escape a war of this magnitude. There is service or there is prison. And not ‘sit in this cell and think about what you’ve done’ prison—we’re talking a private prison, a mining colony on an asteroid somewhere, where I’d be sent until my body breaks down in ten years.” He smiled wistfully and glanced at the viewscreen on the wall that displayed a view of Telum outside; locally, it was still bright daytime. “I do think about prison sometimes. I do... but to be raw and vulnerable with you all, I think I’d miss you all too much.”

Nic scoffed at first. “Now you’re just screwing with us.”

Max shook his head. “No, I’m dead serious. I know I can be a bit of a prick sometimes. Who among us could say they never were?”

“Shanti,” the other three answered in unison.

Max nodded with a sad, reminiscent chuckle. “Shanti. Yes. The rest of us, I know we all have a dozen proverbial screws loose upstairs since this all started, but... I’ve grown quite fond of our squad. I’ve already lost one of you. I won’t volunteer to lose the other three. Even if I do like to play devil’s advocate with you sometimes.”

He’s not totally insufferable all the time, Nic thought. I know this. He just puts up a convincing front most of the time. That’s nothing new. “So,” he said, feeling unexpectedly warmer and fuzzier internally, “you’re stuck with us. That’s what you’re saying.”

“Until diplomats on either side make a breakthrough with each other. Until something gives, like it always does. Then maybe one day we can actually take that retirement we’ve earned a thousandfold now. And one day, if I’m granted the privilege of old age, I can learn to fall asleep without seeing their faces when I close my eyes. I might take up booze now that WorldGov has lowered the drinking age to 18 for servicemembers.”

Nic grimaced. And he ruined it.

2100: Lights Out.

Perri’s muffled voice reached him through the thin bunk bed overhead. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he whispered back.

The holoclock read 21:02. Nic’s eyes eased shut like clockwork. He’d be dreaming by the time it read 21:04.

***

Nic’s eyes snapped open. The holoclock read 03:03. The lights in the barracks dormitory were all red and flashing, and the air filled with an earsplitting klaxon.

said RTIFIS.