Screwing the canteen lid onto her water vessel, Rhidi placed it back into the pouch on her belt. Another odd, archaic aspect of the Human military was the metal canteen. There was an industrial, anti-microbial wax liner on the inside of it, but most modern militaries amongst the stars simply used hydration bladders within their uniforms or armor, or wore a hydration pack on their chests.

  Rhidi ran her pawed hands through her hair, letting out a long exhale as the sun beat down on her from on high. Alias, draining his entire canteen, let out a wet cough and wiped at his face. He then pulled out his data-slate, numbly tapping at it while breathing through his mouth.

  “Are you kidding me? Six hundred and ten pelqi?!” Alias growled out, shaking his data-slate. “How does anything even live on this planet?!”

  “Sssix hundred and ten.” Shasta said, running his fingers along a string of soda can tabs the Drill Sergeants started making him wear on his belt. “That’sss… eighty four UAA degreesss. Quite mild, really.”

  Alias gave a tired, strained laugh. “Mild? Mild he says. Feels like my skin is about to melt off of my bones. Not to mention how moist the air is…”

  “At least we can sweat despite all this fur. I don’t know how the animals here do it just by panting…” Rhidi muttered, looking around to all the other suffering Kafya around her.

  Their fur was damp, slicked, frayed, and fluffed out to the extreme, allowing more air to course along the fur and cool the sweat that attached to the strands. Kafya fur had evolved to do some rather neat things with water, and one of those things was using sweat to cool down their bodies. She had described it to the other Human recruits in the manner of their fur acting like a “funnel”, carrying sweat to their pawed hands and feet to cool down faster, as well as their ears helping them radiate a little more heat from their blood. Kafya ears became quite stiff when they were overheated, as more blood flowed through the veins, and their eyes became quite dark due to their purple blood trying to cool through that area as well.

  Humans, frankly, had it easy; All they did was just get wet and drink water.

  It didn’t even seem fair, not at all.

  The Lilgara loved heat, becoming lethargic and snackish when it was too cool. This was a common trait in most races such as them, creatures of scale and tail. The Pwah were struggling far more than anyone else; While they could sweat, they just rarely had to, their planets being quite cool all year round during their growing seasons, and deeply cold during the others.

  Earth may as well have been an oven for them, the gravity not helping at all either.

  Their respite was not as long as they’d hoped, as Drill Sergeant McPhiston clapped his hands together. “Alright, enough lollygagging for you lot, on your feet.”

  Drill Sergeant McPhiston was a shorter Human, but his expertise was second to none. He was the exact opposite of Drill Sergeant Almoore, who seemed to be pure aggression wrapped in a slightly marred, cute candy coating. Rhidi had seen Drill Sergeant Almoore talking to some “Regs”, or normal, fully honored infantry, and she looked almost pleasant, smiling and joking with the men and women as they asked her about the war.

  That veneer dropped as soon as she was facing Rhidi and the other recruits, as if the ground had cracked apart to spew forth rageful magma to swallow them whole.

  “Only four more miles to the training site. Come on Charlie Company, let’s go then, back into route step!” Drill Sergeant McPhiston bellowed out, clapping his hands. “Don’t make me get mean now!”

  Route step. Rhidi thought to herself, falling into place along the sides of the road while slinging her rucksack back onto her shoulders. Only Humans could make walking along a road into different styles…

  Their first true training week, also known as “Red Phase” according to the UAA data-catalogues, was a play upon their flag colors, and had been a part of the doctrine for over a hundred years. Red Phase was when the chaff was beaten from the berries, and they were drilled in how to “move like a soldier”. Such training only lasted a couple days in the Kafya military, but here it lasted for weeks. This very training alone had caused more to quit, marching and manoeuvring around in the grass with the roaring Sol sun burning down upon them.

  Besides breaking down their weapons over and over again, and practicing some light hand to hand combatives, this bit of training was at least supposed to be a change of pace from the usual. Rhidi did not understand why they were walking there, and it was a sentiment that Alias seemed to share.

  “They bus us to the barracks, but make us walk all the way to the training site?” Alias groused behind her, panting lightly under the weight of his own rucksack. “And it’s all the way in the middle of the damn woods?! I’ve seen their aircraft and armored personnel carriers, why couldn’t we just take one of those?”

  Rhidi looked up at the odd, needled trees that were now thick around them, and blinked. She had been so tired that she didn’t even realize they had walked into a forest, the tall, towering trees looming over them only barely keeping the sun at bay. Trees were nothing new or special; Most planets had trees, though the colors varied, and was considered one of the three “Constants” for a planet to be worth taking. If a planet had trees, water, and warmth, it was nearly always habitable and worthy of becoming absorbed into whatever empire got its hands on it.

  Rhidi had never seen trees with spears though, and still found them extremely odd. Trees should have leaves; Soft, fluttering things that caused the shadows to dance and wind to gain a voice for song. Some of Earth’s trees were that way, with their green leaves, but these… these trees looked as if they were wary. They held thousands of tiny green spears as leaves, with bark that was thick and blocky, like hundreds of shields. Rhidi wondered if these were “warrior trees”, trees that fought back against anything that dared trifle with their growth.

  Leave it to Earth to make a tree that wanted to fight you, she supposed.

  They continued on the road until they came to a small clearing within the trees, and there stood a few wooden benches, bleachers… and a solitary building made of concrete blocks.

  “What the fuck isss even that?” Shasta murmured, his eyes widening. “I sssmell… I don’t know what I sssmell.”

  Rhidi cocked a brow at the Lilgara. “Fuck? Been diving hard into the slang, have you?”

  “Alias wasss. I ssstill don’t know what ssskibidi means.” Shasta said with a sniff, and unshouldered his pack. “I think it hasss’omething to do with plumbing.”

  The Drill Sergeants called them all to form up, gather their rucks, and then stage their rifles in triangular stacks, barrels to the sky. The next order, after the chaos of trying to get the rifles to lean and stay leaned together, was to grab their gas masks.

  “Gas masks?” Rhidi asked aloud, pulling out the canvas bag that held the odd little, face sucking device. “What are we going to need these for? Is there a fuel leak somewhere?”

  The Human gas mask was an odd little creature; Made of rubber, silicon, and other polymers, there was also a smart device that had a small motor and vacuum inside of the breathing apparatus. With a half-face visor and a bulky, radiator type breathing vent on the front, it made a normal Human look like a monster that haunted the dreams of the living.

  The mask had even caused a few off-worlders to have panic attacks when first seeing them on others, as they had the same shocking appearance as Ur Cull-Squad infantry. Highly advanced, the mask locked onto whatever face it was pressed against, inflating a thick rubber gasket and then suctioning the mask to the head. It even kept a perfect seal onto fur, making it quite handy for the Kafya as a whole; If the nose fit, the mask would sit. When the seal was obtained, a single, thick elastic band wrapped around the head, taking some of the weight off of the face itself.

  Rhidi tilted her mask back and forth in her hands as she looked around at the confused faces of everyone else, then the hissing-“clisssck” sound of masks sealing caught her attention.

  All the Human recruits were putting on their masks, as well as the Drill Sergeants.

  “It’s time to take a stroll in the gas chamber, my little darlings.” Drill Sergeant Almoore said, her voice slightly muffled despite the mask’s microphone and small speaker. “Don’t worry, none of you are likely to die.”

  “Gas chamber?” Rhidi whispered to herself as she absorbed the words, then slowly turned, looking towards the, now highly alarming, concrete block building. “Gas chamber…”

  Shasta sniffed again, then turned to Alias who was standing nearby, looking at the gas chamber with skin as pale as star light. “What gasss’mells like…” He sniffed again, then snapped his clawed fingers. “Like fresh cut applesss!”

  “Johnny-3.” Alias said in the same tone of voice one may use when they feel a snake slither across their naked foot. “I had completely… we’re in Heavy Onslaught Infantry school, we drop in pods, and Humans are famous for slamming the pods into enemy lines. They release gas when they land because Humans wear their dagger-helms, they completely seal-”

  “Today.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston began, his voice muffled as well. “You will be subjected to Johnny-3, an aggro-gas that is designed to stun and disrupt the enemy should we be landing amongst them. This is to make you aware of what it does to the enemy, as well as build your confidence in your equipment. In the event you lose your helmet, you can use this mask as a back-up to keep yourself safe from gas, poisons, toxins, and other nerve agents you may get ambushed with. This is not normally a problem we deal with, as we are usually wearing or nearby our helmets, but it is still a precaution you need to learn to master.”

  Drill Sergeant McPhiston and Drill Sergeant Almoore then began to show everyone how to properly apply their masks, the shoulder touching signal for a gas attack, all while the other Drill Sergeants prepared “the room” inside the concrete block building. After twenty minutes of practicing clearing the masks, purging, and other steps of use, they all formed lines.

  Or “sticks”, as the Humans called them.

  Rhidi made sure Shasta and Alias were in the same stick as her, the third one in sequence.

  “First stick, get in there!” Drill Sergeant Almoore called out, clapping her hands together. “Take a deep breath fishies, because you are going to drown inside! Do not drop your mask, or we’ll make you go back in and get it!”

  Rhidi pinned her ears back, grimacing as she turned and spoke to Alias. “Why would she say that? What would ever possess her to say that?”

  The sound of three masks hitting the ground and pounding feet were her answer, and Rhidi spun around to see a Kafya and a pair of Pwah making a run for the road.

  “What?!” Rhidi shouted, stepping out from her stick and raising her fists as her mask bag wiggled back and forth on her thigh. “Get back here you fucking cowards!”

  Shasta gave a light, hissing titter of laughter. “Language, language.”

  “Stand firm, Recruit.” Drill Sergeant Almoore called out, though the Human’s smile was riding on her words as she tapped her middle finger twice to pad of her thumb. “Three runners heading South along the 9th Infantry Loop.”

  With that business finished, Drill Sergeant Almoore turned to the troopers standing in their tidy rows and pointed to the first line. “Alright second stick, you’re going in the chute next. Third stick, get yourselves ready.”

  Rhidi stood there as quietly as she could, but her fine ears could easily pick up the sounds of chaos and suffering going on inside the building. Each stick was thirty troopers; Thirty people howling, screaming, and hacking up their lungs was not easy to miss. When the back doors of the building flung open, the sounds of vomiting and roars of pain were even harder to ignore.

  The second stick went in, more rather… distressing noises echoed out to her, and soon it was Rhidi’s turn. They had already placed their masks on, and went running into the dark building in an orderly line.

  Rhidi was breathing heavily as she entered the building, looking around at the interior; It was stark, nothing more than concrete walls, concrete floor, rinsing hoses, and a drain that ran along the back wall where they all stood. The floor was freshly wet, their boots splashing along a thin layer of still draining water that carried… substances towards the drain. In front of them were their other Drill Sergeants, all wearing their masks and watching the gauges on tanks of gas.

  “We’re sealed.” Came a voice over an intercom, and Rhidi saw that in the corner of the room was a small glass booth in which a CBRN specialist sat in, monitoring oxygen levels and how much gas was in the room. “Bringing gas levels to Delta 3-1.”

  The sound of a light hiss began to fill the room, and Rhidi’s heart hammered ever harder; She could feel the gas pressing against her fur and skin, as if sniffing around her and wondering where her nose was.

  “Recruits, you are currently sealed in properly. If you weren’t, you would likely be puking at the current moment.” Drill Sergeant Curahee said, pointing at them. “Breath in and out of your masks, feel how they react to the gas.”

  Drill Sergeant Curahee was a massive man of tanned skin and blonde hair, and there was a rumor that he could strip an entire roasted chicken of all its flesh in just minutes. He also had a massive blonde mustache, which usually bore the remnants of the poor chicken.

  Rhidi breathed in, and out, of her mask, feeling the mask pull her flesh as well as give a few soft, interesting clicks as it figured out what compound she had breathed in. On the visor, a few words began to crawl across her vision in calming green text: “Compound identified: Johnny-3. Use: Crowd control and enemy formation disruption. Death risk: Low. Filter: 99%.”

  “Well that is rather handy.” Rhidi said, turning to Alias and tapping him on the visor of his mask. “It even tells you what the gas is!”

  “Charming.” Alias muttered, though he was wondering why his said his filter was at 43%... and rapidly dropping.

  “Recruits!” Drill Sergeant Curahee shouted, his bushy blonde mustache bristling and glittering with sweat. “At my command, you will break the seal on your masks, lift them completely off of your face, then place them back on. You will then purge your masks, and continue breathing as normal. If you fuck this up, we will know. Execute!”

  Rhidi, along with everyone else, squeezed their eyes shut, pulled their masks away, lifting them up from their heads, then placed them back against their faces again. Rhidi quickly jammed her thumb into the emergency purge valve, blocked her filter grill, then exhaled as hard as she could. Her breath coursed along her face fur, both breaking the seal and pushing all the air out of the mask and filter.

  “Manual purge detected.” Scrolled across the visor of her gas mask, which then displayed a “...” as it waited for her to finish breathing in.

  When she had no more breath to give, she pressed the mask against her face, removed her hand from the filter and purge valve, and breathed in.

  The mask resealed to her face seamlessly, gave a soft hiss, and the mask confirmed she had successfully purged it. The scent of ripe apples filled the mask, and it was starting to make her eyes water. It felt as if the smell alone was politely poking at her eyes, wiggling its fingers into the flesh in some kind of half-hearted torture.

  A few of the other recruits in her stick had, apparently, not done it correctly, and were now clutching at their chests while coughing roughly. The Drill Sergeants didn’t even move to help them, just turning their heads and narrowing their eyes as they wrote down names. To Rhidi’s relief some of them were Human, so the shame didn’t fully rest on the offworlders.

  “Drill Sergeant!” A female Pwah called out, raising her hand and pointing to the stricken recruits with the other. “They’re choking!”

  “Sucks to be them, then.” Drill Sergeant Curahee said briskly, and ignored the hoarsely choking recruits. “Recruits, at my command you will remove your masks once again, and recite the Onslaught Creed.”

  Alias growled out, staring inwardly at his visor. “Ten percent?! What the hell is wrong with this thing?!”

  “Execute!” Drill Sergeant Curahee bellowed, and Rhidi ripped off her mask while closing her eyes, lurching into the Onslaught Creed.

  “Hail the Iron Victory!” Rhidi called out with the rest of the non-stricken recruits, and she did her best to not breathe for as long as possible. “With the weight of our duty we howl through the skies!”

  The Creed was always shouted, or yelled, and that left very little air in the lungs after “skies” was said. Rhidi, out of reflex, opened her eyes and inhaled, and it was like her lungs had suddenly been filled with needles of ice.

  “Huah!” Rhidi coughed out, clutching at her throat and chest as the Johnny-3 shredded her lungs and flayed her mind; It was as if the gas was attacking her very thoughts, causing her vision to swim and sound to distort around her. Her knees buckled nearly as soon as she breathed in, snot instantly dripping down her mouth, and her single, strangled exhale blew ribbons of mucus down the front of her uniform.

  “Augh!” Rhidi cried out, her fingers now lacquered with sticky strands of snot and lungs burning like fire. The Johnny-3 gas also made her ears hurt, as well as her teeth, and she was starting to think it may have actually been a partial nerve-agent. It took everything in her to not curl up into a little ball and cry, so she casted her tearing eyes about; At least everyone was suffering in some way, though the Humans seemed to be having a better time of it. The Kafya on the other hand were getting the worst of it, and snot bubbles were being blown everywhere.

  Rhidi’s ears were buzzing so hard that she didn’t even realize the Drill Sergeants were yelling, and she was jerked up onto her feet by rough hands.

  “Outside Recruits! Outside! Flap your arms!” A Drill Sergeant was yelling, pulling Recruits to their feet and shoving them towards the open door. “Flap flap flap! Fly away little birdies!”

  Rhidi tried to snort in anger, picking up the slightly distorted words, but all that did was shoot another load of mucus down the front of her uniform. The sunlight burning through the haze of the gas was blinding as Rhidi bounced off the door frame, but was plowed forward by the wheezing form of Alias with Shasta hot on his heels.

  Rhidi drew in a huge, rasping gasp of fresh air and blew out, shredding the long strands of slime out onto the grass. Alias gave up the goat and bent over double, gurgling out a spray of vomit while Shasta danced away, trying to pull his own sheet of snot away with shaking hands.

  Alias spat, mumbled out a curse in his mother tongue, then bent up with a sigh of anger. “My mask wasn’t working.”

  “That’s because you were fucking with it, Pwah.” A Human Technical Sergeant called out, snatching up the mask and opening the vent enough to peek inside. He then opened it fully, pulling out a small wad of applique-sealant. He flicked the gray goo away, shaking his head. “Worried, were you? You clogged up the damn filter, Frodo, and we need to draw a new one now. Drill Sergeant!”

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Alias didn’t even look at the man, instead spitting out another cheekful of slobber and sniffing.

  “Mine worked.” Rhidi said with hard cough, turning to look back at the door as she placed the mask back in its pouch. She had remembered Drill Sergeant’s Almoore’s warning, and had had a death grip on the thing the entire time.

  Shasta groaned, wiggling a claw in his nose. “Why would they gasss’us? It’sss’o cruel…”

  “It lets you know your mask works, of course.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston said as he materialized out of the pained haze, smiling to the three recruits as the others recovered. “And, you’ll know what the poor bastards around you are feeling as you land. You will know they can neither see, hear, or even smell you properly. Seconds of time to butcher them with free reign. After that, that’s where the real fun begins.”

  Rhidi, Alias, and Shasta stared at the Human with silent, disheveled, wary regard as he walked away, and they all slowly looked to each other as Drill Sergeant McPhiston called at them all to gather up.

  —

  There were a few who had to go back into the chamber and grab their masks, as well as Alias being sent back in to build confidence in both his mask and Human manufacturing practices. They were not, however, allowed to change their clothes, only being allowed to swap their uniform blouse for a clean one. The ruck back to their barracks was miserable, but Rhidi found her nasal passages clearer than she had ever known them to be.

  Her wide open nasal passages did not help with trying to ignore the ever-present wafts of vomit that arose off of their ranks, along with the raw stench of chemical-ridden sweat and snot.

  By the time they arrived at their barracks, they only smelled of sweat and sun, and were commanded to hit the showers. For the first time since their arrival, there was no Drill Sergeant waiting to command them into the fully tiled racks of shower heads; Since their arrival in Red Phase, a Drill Sergeant had always been there, commanding them to shower, bellowing at them to “rotate” and change shower heads, all while they stared on in fury. Getting used to the co-ed barracks had been weird enough, but co-ed showers had caused many to buckle.

  It was not funny, per say, but watching a Pwah panic and run screaming, naked, from the shower had been a rather funny moment Rhidi would likely remember forever. While there were breasts, chests, and butts aplenty, all of the recruits were either too exhausted or too harried to really look around. Rhidi had usually just stared up into the water from the shower heads, wondering if getting married was still on the table back home…

  But now?

  There was no one there, just a call out to be ready in forty five minutes for chow.

  Rhidi, after getting back to her rack and shedding her soiled clothes, grabbed a fresh uniform, underwear (which Humans demanded they all wear, and the Kafya were issued mesh units for breathability), a towel, and trudged off for the showers.

  Bathing was nothing new, but the UAA military seemed to view it with some kind of odd contempt; Kafya military bases had lavish bath houses where soldiers could wash and relax, along with gender-separated communal pools to soak. Here? Tile floors, tiled walls, and stainless steel fixtures that spat water.

  It was as if the washroom itself was telling Rhidi to “get washed and fuck off”.

  She was not alone there in the bench-room as she peeled off her well ruined under-clothing, and didn’t even pay the male Pwah beside her a second glance as she trudged into the shower room. There were others here too, but none of them could even muster the energy to care; The Drill Sergeants had made it extremely clear that anyone caught being un-toward or sexual during training would get throttled with Article 15’s, the name alone being akin to a hex cast upon the lowly ranks. While fully seasoned Human soldiers were known to be quite free with their affections, that courtesy did not extend to recruits still in training.

  “I found out why they have us in co-ed showers.” Alias sighed out as he took a shower spot next to Rhidi, Shasta groaning sleepily from another place over as he turned on the hot water. “It’s to desensitize us to nudity.”

  “I’m too tired to care what your zindiho looks like.” Rhidi muttered, quickly washing her face fur with the hot water before she grabbed the soap.

  Alias, despite himself, chuckled. “Well thanks for that, but no, this has been how UAA Humans have done things for nearly a hundred years now, since the Citizen Soldier movement before they joined the war. Both genders train, bathe, eat, fight, and die together. Getting used to their naked bodies helps them during combat, as no one gets bashful when they have to shove their hands down someone’s pants to stop a bleeding shrapnel wound.”

  “That would have been handy with the Kafya.” Rhindi mused, spitting water away from her mouth as she scritched her soapy fingers through her filthy face fur. “We had male and female medical troopers, and it was forbidden for them to work on the opposite gender. Plenty of Kafya bled out on the field for want of the correct medic.”

  “Only ssskistishi can be medical professionalsss in our military.” Shasta said with a happy sigh as the hot water flowed down his flared hood. “Non-producing malesss that failed to meet genetic ssstandards are chemically cassstrated and made into healersss.”

  Both Rhidi and Alias paused in their washing and grimaced at that, while around them other Lilgara were nodding.

  “Well, for us, fighting females are quite new.” Alias said, leaning to the side to look at a naked female Pwah washing her face as hard as she could with a bathing cloth. “It was rough in our armies, a lot of mishaps and cultural conflicts.”

  “Not gonna be a problem here.” A taller female Pwah said from the other side of the showers, though she had chosen a far more private corner area. She had her long lavender hair un-bunned, and was washing the snot out of it. “Human’s don’t seem to give a single damn about nudity.”

  A male Human barked out a laugh, turning off his shower head. “Don’t say that. Our histories are quite comical when it comes to privacy. You should look up ‘ankle scandals’ some time if you want a solid chuckle.”

  “As it is, this is about duty.” A raven haired female Human spoke up, walking through the shower bay brazenly. “All are equal in the eye of the barrel, and bullets do not discriminate.” She shoved the male Human out of the way, as that was apparently her shower head, and turned it on. “In civilian areas, everything is kept separate and private, but not so much in the military. We have to prepare ourselves for weeks before we join.”

  Alias nodded at the logic, then shrugged. “I always thought it was kind of funny, personally. Human medics were feared for their lack of care with nudity.”

  “Feared is putting it lightly.” Rhidi said with a smirk. “I remember when a wounded male Khafya tried to run away from a Human medic, and when the medic caught him, she ripped off his pants and had to fight him to get his bleeding under control.”

  “The Sihiti 2 incident!” An extremely tall female Human called out, turning around fully to look at Rhidi. “I remember that! It almost caused an IDC political war within the Kafya councils.”

  Rhidi, despite herself, had to blink and look somewhere else besides the tanned woman; Humans were quite famous for their… biological oddities, and had some of the largest mammaries for their general height and evolution. This specimen nearly made Rhidi feel self conscious…

  “Well, uh… he survived, and that is what matters.” Rhidi said with a nod, then elbowed Alias in the shoulder because he had been staring nearly as hard as Rhidi. “Quit it.”

  “Right. Sorry.” Alias stammered, then looked up at Rhidi with raised brows that said “Can you believe these people? Who evolves like that?”

  “I know, I know.” Rhidi expressed with her own raised brows, and a slight shake of her head.

  Now fully clean, Rhidi left the shower and walked up to the body dryer. The Humans, clever as always, knew that the Kafya had fur, or that some of the races may have issues with towels, so they installed additional dryers within the walls of the bench area. These were long, six foot tall air-pushers that could blow a Kafya near dry in just under five minutes. During the earlier weeks, the Drill Sergeants had allowed them to do a quick spin under the blower, and then pushed them away from the next furred recruit. Now, Rhidi could actually fully dry herself, and she stood in front of the blower for as long as she wanted, slowly turning while fluffing out her tail.

  Her first big push of air had accidentally showered a black, male Human recruit in loose water and fur, causing a bit of spitting and cursing while Rhidi apologized in a panic.

  “‘Gotdamn furries!” He shouted, then dipped back into the showers to quickly rinse off the new spackling of yellow fur in his hair.

  When he came back out, he held a towel over himself, as did all the other Humans while darting through the Kafya trying to get dry.

  Rhidi toweled off the rest of the way and put on her clothes, leaving the bathing area just in time to see a female Human pulling a strand of red fur from her lips. She looked at Rhidi with eyes that said “Are you serious?”, while Rhidi just shrugged in a way that said “Well it’s not mine, so”.

  Time was dwindling down quickly at this point, so Rhidi made her way down the stairwell into the mustering area, smoothing down her uniform blouse; Humans were fastidious about appearances, and all the Kafya had learned this the hard way. If you were wrinkled, you were a wrinkle, and Drill Sergeants didn’t hesitate in ironing you out.

  As she came out into the blazing sun, she turned and noticed that the little flag area was missing its usual red banners. Every barracks had this odd little display rack, in which flag-poles were stuck into it, arranging the flags in a kind of crest around the unit guidon. There were red banner bearing flag poles there before, but now there was only the guidon.

  The twin-tailed banner fluttered happily from its pole, bearing the flaming drop-pod symbol on a horizontally bisected field of black and blue. Rhidi eyed the banner with a tilt of the chin, but the clamour of boots coming out of the stairwell made her turn her head away.

  Everyone was forming up, so she fell into her Squad’s line within their Platoon. This had been a lot of their early weeks during this “Red Phase”; Falling into formations correctly, maintaining formations while on the move, marching, manoeuvring, and other mind-numbing exercises. The obstacle courses had at least been fun, in terms of moving around and problem solving, and she would rather do that every day than march around in boredom. The First Aid Course had been just as equally boring as it was alarming; Humans still relied on torsion based devices to stop bleeding, despite their supreme command over nano-medical tech and hemostasis solutions.

  There had also been the whole… “CPR” thing, which bewildered everyone, including Rhidi. She had never gone lip-to-lip with a fake Human before, and there was an odd challenge with their differences in anatomy. It was as if Humans forced fellow Humans to live, even if that meant manually filling their lungs with the breaths of the living.

  Charming, and slightly romantic as Rhidi thought about it again.

  “Company! Atten-shun!” Came a great shout from Drill Sergeant Curahee, and hundreds of boots came together, hands at the seams of their trousers and thumbs pointed towards the ground.

  “Hail the Iron Victory!” Rhidi shouted out, her voice joining the hundreds of others as they shouted their MOS creed. “With fire we fall!”

  All of them went quiet as the heavy boots of Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss came to their ears, the woman pushing open the front doors to the NCO Office attached to the barracks.

  Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss was a massive female Human, standing at six foot three and had more muscle than most Human men. It was the second time Rhidi had seen the woman, and she still took her breath away when she saw her; Missing her left eye, Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss only had one, single blue eye left, the other covered by a leather eye patch. She had fists like hammers, and a body like a rugged cliff-face. She was the only female Human to claim over a hundred melee kills in battle, and still held the record at three hundred and thirteen Ur confirmed to be killed in melee by her own hand.

  Her right arm was completely mechanical, having lost it during a boarding action on an Ur station, and had fought one armed until the medics dragged her away from the battle line. It was crafted and shaped to match her other arm, and it made her all the more terrifying. Her orange hair was cut close on the sides but left longer on top, giving her the appearance of a space pirate. Her ears were mangled by shrapnel fire, nearly looking like creative body piercings or scarification. According to the other Humans, she was considered “quite ugly” in terms of conventional attractiveness, but that didn’t mean the sight of the woman didn’t leave Rhidi staring in open fascination.

  Her last name was from some other land known as “Scotland”, and Rhidi was curious if all women were like her there.

  “Recruits.” Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss called out, and her voice was just as oddly feminine as it was the first time Rhidi heard it. Rhidi had thought she would sound like a bearess, but she sounded like any other mother would. “As of now, after completing the NBC chemical chamber training, you have successfully survived to the White Phase stage of your training.”

  Four Drill Sergeants walked in from the corner of their vision, bearing flag poles that had fluttering white banners upon them. They placed them down into the holder one by one, until the flags all guttered under the guidon.

  “From here on in, your training only gets harder.” Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss stated, slowly pacing in front of the arranged Company. “You will be trained further in the art of hand to hand combat, harder, more thoroughly. You will now begin your training proper in our many weapon systems, your rifles, and anything else you may get your hands on while in the course of battle. You will take on the advanced confidence course, ascend, and repel from the Glory Towers, suffer The Long March, and finally, your hardest physical fitness test yet.”

  Rhidi felt an odd, fluttering pride in her chest; She had made it all the way to this next phase? Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss wasn’t yelling at them or being mean? This was a good thing, right?

  Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss continued, pointing a bladed, metal hand towards them. “Many of you show promise, especially a few choice individuals from you who came to us from the stars beyond. All of you were rankless, lapel-barren worms when you arrived, but fifty of you will enter White Phase with iron at your necks.”

  Rhidi’s heart skipped an excited beat; Ranks? Now? How important was this?

  Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss called out the name of a male Human, who fell out of the formation and quickly jogged up in front of the Double Dagger Senior Drill Sergeant. Rhidi was quite keen to know if she got one of these ranks, a single chevron of black iron, but her excitement died in her throat when she saw Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss place something on the man’s lapel, then reared back her metal fist.

  Rhidi heard the rank pins impact into bone, and she tucked her tail along with every other Kafya in the formation.

  “Blood pinner…” A male Human to her back right muttered. “Great.”

  “What does that mean, Human?” A female Pwah whispered back, her voice audibly fearful.

  “It means she’s a staunch traditionalist and earned all her ranks on the field.” He whispered as the next name was called. “If a Drill Sergeant earned all their ranks on the field of battle, they carry the duty of blood pinning the recruits they train.”

  “Blood to remember, blood to pay.” A female Human groaned out, shaking her head. “Damn it to hell, I was hoping we got a normal one…”

  “It’s a great honor to be blood pinned by a Double Dagger.” Another Human hissed out. “Do not cast fear onto our privilege!”

  Rhidi, on the other hand, was casting a lot of fear, and she visibly startled when Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss called out her name.

  “Huh?!” Rhidi barked out, looking left and right before placing a pawed hand to her chest. “Me? Why?! What did I do?!”

  To Rhidi’s surprise, Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss actually cracked a smile. “Get up here, Recruit Rhidi, before I change my mind and give it to the purple Kafya behind you.”

  Said Kafya, not wanting to get a rank punched into her collar bone, gave Rhidi a swift boot in the ass, sending her stumbling forward out of the formation. Rhidi quickly made her way in front of Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss, making absolute sandwich meat out of the falling out movement, but came to attention in front of the massive woman, looking up at her with ears pinned back in anxiety.

  “Congratulations, Private Rhidi.” Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss said quietly to Rhidi, setting the rank in place on her lapel. “You have been chosen to receive the rank of Private for your excellent performance in both your Reception and Red Phase. Later on, your other lapel will hold your MOS badge, but we’ll teach you that come Black Phase.”

  More phases… great. Rhidi thought to herself as she turned her head and looked down at the dull, raw iron rank on her lapel.

  “Blood to remember, blood to pay.” Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss stated quietly to Rhidi, then reared back her metal fist.

  The impact of Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss’s fist rattled her bones from neck to toe, and Rhidi actually staggered backwards, letting out a harsh exhale of air as her lungs were forcefully voided.

  She didn’t get far, thanks to the swift grip of Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss’s natural hand, and she was pulled back to standing.

  She smiled at Rhidi, pulling on the lapel to jerk the tines free with a dull noise of metal leaving bone. “Hard to forget, you’ll find.”

  Rhidi could smell her own blood, even as Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss placed the pin-caps over the bloodied iron.

  After that, two more female Kafya’s and five male Kafya’s received promotions, the rest being mostly Humans with a slew of Pwahs and Lilgaras.

  Rhidi’s chest was hurting, more from the punch than the rank, but she felt… proud. She thought it was pride, it felt like pride anyway, but it felt different than her other promotions in her people’s military. She had received the ranks by mail along with a congratulatory letter, and they were just a magnet you stuck to your combat suit. This felt more personal… more real.

  When all fifty three ranks were given, that left three hundred and twelve rankless within the training Company; They had suffered trickling losses, some due to cowardice, others to injury, but it already seemed like so few were left to Rhidi. This was only one of many training Companies, and Rhidi couldn’t help but wonder how the others were doing.

  “Chow time, fuck bags!” Drill Sergeant Almoore bellowed out, and even Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss squinted an eye at the woman in annoyance. “Company! Riiight, face!”

  Boots churned the ground as the entire Company executed their right face, and Drill Sergeant Almoore took her position beside the Company as the guidon banner holders ran to the new front of their Platoons. “For-ward, march! Left, left, left right-o left!”

  Boots left the ground at the same time, the entire formation jerking forward into motion with smooth, practiced ease. For the first time since they had started these formation marches to the chow hall, Drill Sergeant Almoore began to sing.

  With the voice of smooth honey, Drill Sergeant Almoore began to sing cadence next to them. Rhidi wasn’t the only recruit to lose their step as they jerked their heads around, wondering where the hell the voice of a solar-angel had come from.

  “Among the stars I’ll make my way.” Drill Sergeant Almoore sang out, her marching form perfect and not even short of breath despite the heat. “Bulkheads of steel and iron gray!”

  Thankfully the Humans in the formation appeared to know what to do, repeating “Bulkheads of steel and iron gray!” in a ribcage vibrating yell.

  “Protein meal and bark-head bread.” Drill Sergeant Almoore sang out again, and she seemed to be… smiling. “It’d make you want to eat the dead!”

  Rhidi sang along this time, and it was just another oddity about the Humans stacking up on all the others; Humans usually sang when they were miserable, breaking out into song even when they were melting in the heat or fussing with old mops in the barracks halls. The singing lasted all the way up until the chow hall, and Rhidi wondered to herself if it was some kind of way they also measured distance, or time.

  Chow for the day was something called “creamed turkey”, which was one of the better ones due to how fast someone could eat it. It was hot as fire fresh, and required a fair bit of blowing on so that it didn’t scorch the mouth and flame the stomach. She grabbed her metal tray, fork and “shovel” as the Drill Sergeants called it, and stood in line. There was no “choosing” in a Human DFAC, something they all learned during their first days on Sand Hill, and the cooks scooped or placed food on their trays as they moved down the line; Scoop of mashed potatoes. Scoop of creamed turkey. Scoop of stewed greens. Scoop of spiced apple compote. Fruit placed on tray. Hunk of bread and butter placed on tray. Square of cake placed on tray, and so on.

  Rhidi then followed procedure, speeding down the salad bar and making a quick bowl of greens; They got yelled at if they didn’t eat greens, and Rhidi had learned to stomach the leafy things. She was still terrified of being caught not eating a salad; A male Human recruit had been caught with an empty bowl, and had to shovel leafs of lettuce into his mouth while yelling, “Mmm mmm! Hungry rabbits need their greens!” for nearly an entire minute.

  After finding her place to sit along the benches, she set down her tray and sped off to get her glasses of water.

  Two bright red cups held to the chest, elbows out, and feet moving. She didn’t know why she had to walk in such a stupid way, but she did because getting yelled at wasn’t worth it. She got her water, having to ignore all the other drink options for the fully trained soldiers, and then hurried back to her seat.

  Seconds meant the difference between leaving fed, and leaving hungry, and Rhidi had learned from Alias and Shasta the best way to eat; They always sat next to her too, which was nice. She ate the salad first, shoveling leaves into her maw and chewing as fast as she could. There was spinach again, these deeply green oval things that had a high iron content, and she hated the way they tasted most of all. She finished the bowl, still chewing as she scooped the stewed greens into her mouth as well. These were mustard greens, or at least she thought they were; Alias had figured out what was what, and they all agreed that turnip greens were the better of the choices.

  From the greens, she ate the apples and then the bread with its butter, her teeth gnashing as fast as they could and swallowing only when her breathing allowed. The entire table was nothing but the sounds of teeth and fangs masticating, and trays being scraped with metal utensils. Rhidi chewed through her apple in record speed, and she quite enjoyed the crunchy little fruits. They reminded her of alpfwacka berries, if just bigger and with less seeds. Despite the logic, she left her cake for last; She loved what the Humans did with sweets, and cake was by far the best thing she had ever eaten so far while in training.

  With her spoon she quickly shoveled her mashed potatoes and creamed turkey into her mouth, sniffing and whiping her cheek as a little bit of gravy spacked onto her fur. Eating like this would have been seen as barbaric on any other planet, but here they were, a bunch of little cavemen in training.

  She quaffed an entire cup of water, warm this time after she had learned her lesson on cold water, then took a little bit more time with the cake.

  Chocolate fudge cake, a little slice of the divine amongst all this hell, was worth risking time over.

  With that finished, she dragged her tongue along her teeth, finished her water, then sat up straight, waiting for the command to leave.

  After five minutes, Drill Sergeant McPhiston clapped his hands. “You’re done! Put it away!”

  Recruits spat out food they were chewing; If you were caught chewing as you stood, you were likely going to end up on the table doing push ups until that food came out of you. Rhidi still vividly remembered being surrounded by three Drill Sergeants, bellowing at her to “Spit it out!” when she was caught chewing on a piece of chicken meat.

  They all stood, picked up their trays, and deposited them in the auto-washer, a rather fussy machine that did the duties of dishwasher and food disposal.

  It was another day in the books, the first day of White Phase, and Rhidi was just looking forward to going to sleep after such a shit go of it.