Rhidi was brought back to reality quite quickly, the deft shakes from Drill Sergeant Almoore working better than any smelling salt.

  In due time, the flags changed from white, to blue, marking their final phase of basic training. The months had dragged by, and Alias had done a count for the remaining recruits; Only three hundred and twenty seven remained of the original four hundred. The bulk of the injuries and “weak heart syndrome” did in fact come from the off-worlders, but there were still Humans that gained injuries themselves as they finished out the rest of White Phase.

  Rhidi’s chest swelled with pride when she saw the blue flags get pushed into place on their display rack, the Georgian wind playing along the flags and making them flutter merrily. They were on their final phase, the final month before they could all be called soldiers in the eyes of the UAA military.

  It was still a shock to Rhidi that each phase took an entire month and change. For most militaries beyond the stars, these phases could have been done and dusted within just a month or two, but the UAA Army truly drilled their recruits into proper soldiers. It dawned on Rhidi that most Humans out of basic had more actual training than most seasoned Kafya or Pwah soldiers, and she flicked her ears as she mulled over it.

  There was a short speech by Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss, urging them all to finish strong into Blue Phase, and they were released to evening chow.

  Rhidi smelled familiar, tantalizing scents within the DFAC, and was delighted to see that it was another enchilada night. She had been craving the little tubes of deliciousness for a while now, and was nearly vibrating as she stood in line. She stepped before the massive Human cook from last time, and he hit her with a bright, sweaty smile.

  “Well! Whaddya’know! You’re still here.” He said happily, plopping three piping hot enchiladas onto her plate. “I was rotated to a different DFAC and wasn’t sure if I’d see you again when I came back.”

  Rhidi leaned down and deeply breathed in the tangy, vibrant red sauce that was smothering the enchiladas, the little pieces of spiced beef barely contained by melted cheese. She then stood up, smiling at the man; She was still shocked Humans could be that tall... or wide, for that matter.

  “It was a close one.” Rhidi chirped, sliding down the line to get her rice but still maintaining eye contact with the man. “I ended up running off the tower!”

  The Human guffawed with a large belly laugh, scooping up a portion of enchiladas for Shasta. “You ran off the platform?! Thank goodness they lengthened the pools…”

  Rhidi giggled, but had to keep sliding down the line, getting her beans and the rest of that day’s meal.

  “You need to be careful with that eye contact stuff.” Alias murmured from the other side of her, offering up his tray for some kind of corn dish. “Humans communicate a lot by their eyes.”

  Shasta tilted his head, though he was smiling down at his quickly filling tray. “Eye contact? How ssso?”

  “Prolonged eye contact can mean all kinds of things.” Alias said with a shrug, and both he and Rhidi were happy to see the dessert was a sticky bread pudding. “Lingering on the eyes of a female, as a male, can be flirtatious, or inviting. Same gender stares can mean a challenge, but even then there’s the whole eyelid language.”

  Rhidi snorted, taking her bread pudding with a happy smile to the woman serving her. “I think you Pwah only believe you know everything. How in the stars can someone communicate with their eyelids?”

  “You haven’t been paying attention.” Alias murmured, making a quick salad. “Watch how the Humans talk to each other, and watch how the Drill Sergeants look at the other Humans. They have entire conversations around us without anyone even knowing.”

  Shasta let out a hissing laugh, loading his salad up with egg slices since they now had the time. “I think you are going mad, Aliasss, hearing conversations where there are none. By the way Rhidi, do you know what isss coming up for us on this training phase?”

  Rhidi’s ears perked up, and she cocked her head at Shasta. “Are you trying to hiss less when you speak? You are going ‘ssss’ a lot less than usual.”

  “Well, yes.” Shasta murmured, flaring his hood in embarrassment for being caught out so easily. “Sssince a lot of us Lilgara are making it through, we are all trying to sssound a little more in line with how everyone else sssounds.”

  Rhidi pouted playfully. “Aw, but I like it when you space lizards hiss.”

  “Shut up.” Shasta chuckled, both of them following Alias to a nearby table that was filling up.

  They had already been told by Drill Sergeant McPhiston that they had thirty minutes to eat once a table filled up, so Rhidi, Alias, and Shasta took their time as they ate.

  Rhidi took a lot of time savoring the enchiladas, slowly chewing the spiced beef and letting the taste of the peppers linger on her tongue. Peppers were an Earth only type of plant, and could be lethal in the doses that Humans normally flavored their food with. However, when carefully calculated, they were nearly a spiritual experience on the tongues of an off-worlder.

  That didn’t stop Humans from plopping small servings of raw peppers and hot sauces on their food, though, and the pickled jalapenos had a “Xeno Beware” label on it.

  Earth spices in general were entirely unknown to the stars; Some planets, curiously enough, shared some spices, the plants, buds, or dried berries having a common ancestor. Some planets lacked… spices entirely, only having salt to work with.

  Rhidi felt kind of bad for those planets as she spooned another portion of steaming enchiladas into her mouth, smacking her lips as she found a pocket of melted cheese.

  Dinner had bolstered her mood until Monday came, and they started off with hand grenades of all things. Grenades were well known, a little handheld explosive that, when armed, explodes after a certain amount of time. Nothing new, nothing groundbreaking, but Humans couldn’t make up their minds on what they wanted the damned things to be.

  In the past, Humans had all a smattering of grenades, ranging from oblong ones, sphere-like ones, and even grenades mounted on sticks. The stick mounted grenades seemed to be the current favored winner, and it was here on the range that she was holding two of them in her hands, both fists pressed to her chest.

  It felt a little like she was getting her water cups for chow, but that would be a ridiculous comparison.

  The SG69 was a modernized stick grenade, complete with a whiplash-plastic handle and a kite-prism warhead that looked an awful lot like a diamond. The warhead of the grenade was layered in little plates, extra fragmentation for the explosion, as well as allowing it to be used as both a hammer and melee weapon.

  As far as being stable, the SG69 could be run over by a tank and not explode, and it required a distinct number of things to happen: First the pin at the bottom of the grenade had to be pulled loose, allowing the cap at the end of the grenade to be pulled free. The grenade made a loud, hard to miss “crack!” when the fuse went off, and this started the four to five second fuse countdown. Unlike most grenade fuses, this was not a burning fuse that came towards the igniting compound, but a much more stable spring delayed burn based around a packed cake of ignition material. The fuse would ignite and burn, until there was no more pressure holding back the spring-loaded detonating rod within the upper length of the whiplash-plastic handle.

  This rod would then be launched into the detonator, causing the grenade to explode and shower the unlucky sods around it with a painful, metal filled death.

  The stick and diamond like shape of the warhead kept the grenade from rolling around, and certain parts of body armor were magnetized, allowing the grenade to be stuck in place on shoulder pads for example.

  Everyone else seemed rather nervous, but Rhidi had studied the grenades already, and knew they were by far the safest explosive on the market. The light flex to the handle allowed the grenade to be flung farther than any other grenade Rhidi had used, including the talon grenades used by the Lilgara.

  When it was her turn to throw them, she was as calm as a cucumber. She pulled the pin free, ripped off the end cap with a loud “crack!”, then reared back, throwing the grenade over the safety wall.

  It may have been the easiest thing she had been asked to do so far.

  She followed the same procedure with her second one, and damn near skipped out of the range while everyone else shakily pulled their pins free.

  The following weeks were more explosives training, such as knowing how to work and fire anti-tank weapons at poor, battered, old tanks on the range, but those were apparently “expensive” and they only got to fire trainers the entire time. They spent a few days learning how to identify enemy units, a physical fitness test followed by a short weekend break to clean all of their gear, another annoying ruck march, numerous inspections, multiple trips to the rifle range, and their final evaluations.

  Rhidi had been a little worried about the evaluations, but passed all her requirements with a glowing review. Shasta had been told “he lacked enough soda tabs”, and now had a chain of over a hundred soda tabs hanging on a long string of paracord. Alias had been scolded as an “insufferable know-it-all”, but still passed his inspections.

  This left their final ruck march, a grueling journey twenty miles into the woods, starting as soon as the sun began to set. This direct assault onto their sleeping schedule required them all to take a handful of energy supplements, and even the Human recruits took a little bumper to keep them alert. Rhidi was ready for this, and all the Kafya had steeled themselves for this moment, along with all the other races.

  The Georgia sun may have gone down, but her heat still lingered well into the night, throwing a gloomy fog all over the road. For some stretches, Rhidi only knew where she was due to the side of the road where dirt and grass met, struggling to keep her eyes locked on a dangling glowstick light attached to the guidon. Miles stretched on within the gloom, the dark trees above them partially obscured by the lingering mist and fog. The long, hazy tendrils brushed at Rhidi’s face, and she felt a distinct chill in the air; It was getting closer to “Fall” now, and this place was turning creepy the further away they got from Summer.

  A grand construction began to loom out of the dark gloom, its presence only detected by the fact the stars were slowly winking out of sight.

  It was pitch black when the call to halt came out from the night, and Rhidi had her eyes open as wide as she could; Kafya had pretty good vision at night, but the fog was making seeing anything a real bear.

  “Rucksacks stay on!” Drill Sergeant McPhiston bellowed out from the night. “Weapons stay on you, everything stays on you! Follow the bouncing fairy light, my little sand puppies.”

  “What are we doing?” Alias asked, his own eyes wide as he looked around. “I don’t recognize where we are.”

  Shasta rattled from behind Rhidi, his long cord of can tabs shaking as he turned around on the spot. “I sssmell… explosivesss… and fire.”

  The column began to move out again as the guidon was relit with multiple glowsticks, and they all began to march along a winding road. Rhidi could hear… something, from the big shadowy thing, which she assumed was some kind of multi-level bunker. She heard commands being called out, as well as the rattle of ammunition belts echoing out into the trees.

  Worryingly, their line of sight was blocked by a ten foot high concrete wall, their bootfalls bouncing off of it as if they were walking in a cave.

  “Burning metal.” Shasta whispered, his head craning back and forth. “Sssomething has died…”

  Rhidi pinned her ears back as she turned and looked up at Shasta, her voice strained. “The fuck do you mean something has died?”

  “I sssmell an animal.” Shasta said, his tongue flicking into the air along with all the other Lilgara. “Blood.”

  Rhidi let a whine escape her throat; The mood and weather was already creepy enough, but the giant, hooded lizard was not helping in the least.

  The concrete wall seemed to stretch on forever into the dark, but it finally came to an end, braced by a ten foot wooden wall with climbing steps sunk into its face.

  The column stretched out along this wall, forming to the space they were supposed to sit, nestled in between two concrete walls. Drill Sergeant McPhiston stood above them all, a wraith standing amongst the stars.

  “As you all know, we checked all of your weapons before you left the barracks.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston began, slowly walking along the wall as he spoke. “All of your weapons have barrel adaptors on them, locked into place via the DS-Key. You are going to crawl, on your stomach, the entire length of this training obstacle. You will pass under, over, and around wire, beam, and broken vehicle. When a flare fills the sky with light, you will lie still on the ground like the little humpbacked baby turtles you are. You will crawl until you reach the grave stones, and you will never stand up. If you stand up, you run the risk of dying on this training field, understand?”

  There was a pause from all the recruits, Humans included, but they were more afraid for what they did know what was going to happen.

  “Am I understood!?” Drill Sergeant McPhiston barked out, and it shook the formation from its mental holdings.

  The reply of “Yes Drill Sergeant!” split the night air, and Drill Sergeant McPhiston held up a single red glowstick.

  The air warbled as speakers turned on, and then filled the night sky with the sounds of an Ur war hymn.

  Rhidi’s fur, as well as the hair of any other veteran of the conflict against the Ur, stood on end. The Lilgaras flared their hoods in alarm, while all the eyes of the Pwah darkened with purpose.

  Ur war hymns were a guttural, coded binary sung through the throats of those who really should not have had their vocal cords; It was truly horrendous to the ears and mind, the siren song of a monster singing with a mouthful of blood and not a shred of humanity left within their bodies. The song, recorded from who knows where, thrummed within the hidden speakers like the pressure of death, pushing its warning down onto all those who dared hear it.

  “Mount the wall!” Drill Sergeant McPhiston called out, then blew a whistle. “Remember my warnings, remember your training!”

  The first line of troopers went over the wall, and the machine guns opened up overhead. Rhidi shrank back against Shasta in a panic, and his arms wrapped around her as he darted his head back and forth, trying to see where the rounds were coming from.

  “They’re insane!” A female Pwah cried out, fear tight on her voice like morning frost on grass. “They’re out of their minds!”

  A barking growl rumbled out from the ranks, and there were the sounds of someone being shoved. “Get the fuck off of me, Enflia!”

  “Go!” Drill Sergeant McPhiston bellowed, pointing down to those who had yet to climb up the steps. “Go, now!”

  Line by line, recruits began their low journey across the NIC training area.

  Rhidi could hear the difference in sound as the M260 and the MG111 poured lead overhead, battering a far away target, and she shuddered. The M260 rounds thrummed with warning, but the MG111 buzzed with malice as it stitched lines of death above her, the tracers burning red in the black night.

  When it came Rhidi’s turn, she scrambled up the rough wooden steps and came down chest first onto the wet sand of the training site. The rounds felt closer, sounded louder overhead, snapping and cracking by so loudly it made her ears ring. There were vehicles on fire, burning and casting an orange pale over the sand, illuminating figures desperately trying to low crawl as fast as they could.

  Rhidi let out a puff of breath into the sand, then started to crawl how they were taught; She went for the off hand barrel drag, leaving her right hand to dig into the sand and propel her forward.

  Every movement forward felt like a ruck march, her giant, stupid rucksack wobbling on her back and throwing her off balance. She had to crab-crawl right to avoid hanging barbed wire, losing some distance and time, but she grunted through the curving sand to gain time back.

  Her ears perked as she heard three, rapid “thoom thoom thooms!” punch the air, and she knew the sounds to be mortars

  “There’s no way!” Rhidi shouted in a ragged gasp, looking up and spotting the three smoke trails. “There’s no fucking way!”

  —

  As simulated hell rained down in between the troopers, throwing debris all over Rhidi and causing her to rapidly spit bloody sand out of her mouth, things were far more calm inside the training bunker.

  “I like the inclusion of the mortars.” Drill Sergeant Almoore mused, tapping at her chin. “It’s one hundred percent safe?”

  A technician nodded. “Absolutely. We ran a test with dogs and tennis balls, the AI knows exactly where to fire, and knows to hold fire when it is too dangerous. I believe we have…” He leaned to the left, looking at the screen. “Oballen Bindribblin and Sparkle Otter from Moonbase 331.”

  Drill Sergeant Curahee let out a long, rising giggle. “Oballen. Bindribblin. I love the AI so much man.”

  —

  Laughter may have been filling the training bunker, but Rhidi was far from laughing. The vehicles were burning hot with flames, old ruined APCs, burning armor, it all felt too… real.

  Another mortar round landed nearby, but this was aimed with deliberate precision. A pre-laid barrel of pig organs, pig blood, and prosthetic body parts was hit directly, setting off the spray charge and shooting a tight plume of gore through the air. The long spray of blood, organs, and fake body parts slapped across dozens of recruits as the machine guns roared overhead, and Rhidi was one such unlucky recipient.

  A stomach had bounced off of her shoulder, smearing her in bloody… who knows what, really.

  Rhidi heard a shriek of horror, and turned her head with a disgusted look to see Inthur was right behind her, but had a long tangle of large intestine draped over her head and back.

  The Humans had… not been so kind as to clean the insides of said intestine.

  “Shit!” Rhidi shrieked, wiggling backwards as Inthur made to stand and run. “Stay down you moron!”

  “It’s all over me!” Inthur wailed, her hands wiggling back and forth at the wrists uselessly.

  Rhidi growled and ripped the intestine off of the blue Kafya’s head. “Don’t stand up! Get crawling!”

  Inthur didn’t make to move, so Rhidi kicked her in the shoulder.

  “Move damn you!” Rhidi screamed, trying to be heard over the wail of incoming mortars and the machine guns. “Move!”

  Inthur started to finally crawl just as the flare went up.

  Rhidi froze; She had no idea what the Humans would do if she moved, so she made damn sure she didn’t.

  The lull in all the noise was… disconcerting as the flare hung overhead, hissing quietly across the sky.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Don’t move!” Rhidi hissed as she pinned her ears back.

  “B-b-but you t-t-told me to crawl!” Inthur cried out, her eyes filling with tears and hair full of shit.

  “Don’t. Move!” Rhidi growled, and Inthur let out a whine in response.

  The flare hung in the sky for three more seconds, then guttered out, casting darkness back down upon the field.

  As soon as the light went out, the machine guns came on, and noise filled the air again.

  “Crawl!” Rhidi screeched, urging Inthur forward. “Crawl fast or we’re going to get covered in fucking blood again!”

  Rhidi had hoped that it would be blood again, anyway, but her hopes turned to folly. The first flare was less of a training object, and more of a countdown. The first flare arrived, so the more advanced pyrotechnics came online. Two large bore artillery cannons slowly protruded from the training site, and hummed to life as the AI leash powered up.

  Naturally these were being tightly monitored by the AI Sparkle Otter, as Oballen Bindribblin was having more fun with the mortars. Sparkle Otter looked for a nice, large open space, and fired out a single noise maker.

  The boom was, of course, terrifying to those trying to crawl along the sand, and Rhidi nearly lept out of her skin when the round went whistling by her. The round impacted harmlessly in a pre-designated fire lane, heavily wired up so recruits couldn’t even get in there.

  Plus the AIs had highly advanced thermal, night, and biomass pulse sights; This was all just fancy theater, really.

  Rhidi, despite how harmless it all may have been, was lightly deafened as the artillery noise maker went off, tossing a plume of sand into the air and raining it down on nearly everyone within eyesight of it. They may have had access to the Human medical-tech, but it still didn’t help the ringing her ears were currently producing.

  She didn’t really care about Inthul much anymore, even though the blue had been keeping up, and focused all of her power into two things; Holding onto her rifle, and crawling.

  The second flare went up, and Rhidi froze, just as she did with the other one. Terror trailed its cold finger along her spine, while her mind flooded with thoughts of what may be coming next.

  The answer came all too quickly as the machine guns let out swift bursts of fire into the sand.

  An MG111 stirred the ground ten feet from her, the rounds punching down like fists and throwing a trail of sand into the air. Rhidi’s eyes snapped open as she watched the tracers of other guns dig into the ground, as well as her fellow recruits hug the ground as tightly as they could.

  Rhidi nearly reverted back to a four legged ancestor as she zipped across the ground, her rucksack wobbling stupidly along her spine.

  Oddly, Rhidi could still hear Inthur behind her.

  “No! No no no!” Inthur wailed in desperate puffs of breath, crawling after Rhidi like she were a life preserver attempting to float away on the waves. “Wait! W-Wait!”

  Rhidi did not wait. Nor did she really crawl, it was more of an aggressive alligator-walk more than a proper crawl. In her mind, Rhidi wanted to exit this field of simulated madness as fast as possible.

  —

  “We’ve had a few signal breaks, but nothing too major.” A female technician murmured, watching multiple screens with squinted eyes. “Appears to just be rucksacks, no one is standing up.”

  Drill Sergeant Curahee grunted. “Good, I remember back when we used to do most of these by eye. We still had a pretty good record though, only three deaths in five years.”

  “Yes, well, the chances of death in the modern era are behind a decimal point and multiple zeroes.” The technician murmured, then cracked a smile. “That’s a new one.”

  Drill Sergeant Curahee leaned in from her right, unwrapping a snack cake with a crackle of wax paper as the screens caused his blonde mustache to glow blue. “What is?”

  “Her.” The technician replied, pointing to a Kafya gator walking across the sand with another one hot on her heels.

  Drill Sergeant Curahee squinted, then grinned. “Well, we can’t be having that! Safetybelt is gonna clear the course before we even get to the fifth flare! Ask Sparkle Otter to lob one of those noisemakers ahead of her, there’s a wide open spot.”

  —

  Rhidi saw the bright flash from the artillery barrel, and had enough time to flatten herself to the wet sand before the ground erupted twenty feet ahead of her. Inthur screamed, latching onto Rhidi’s paw-boots as the hushing cascade of sand poured down onto them.

  Rhidi spat the sand from her lips and cracked open her eyes, spotting the small crater that was quickly filling with water.

  “Fantastic…” Rhidi growled, then continued her rapid crawling towards the crater.

  She rolled into it with practiced agility, quickly jogging over the puddle of water to the opposite wall of the crater. Inthur was less successful, letting out a keening, panicked cry as she fell face first into the puddle with a splash.

  Rhidi was over her, ignoring the blue Kafya’s spluttering and spitting, and surged over the edge of the crater with another roll.

  —

  “She’s a tough one.” Drill Sergeant Curahee said, more to himself than the technician, and she nodded in agreement.

  “Her record says she is Kafya special forces, fought on a few planets during the late, late stages of the war. Father works in accounting for a Kafya weapon’s firm, mother and sister are fashion models that work for the Shimishimi clothing company.” The technician said, shrugging her lips in surprise. “Family of number crunchers and models produced… a warrior?”

  Drill Sergeant Curahee didn’t pay any mind to that, just slowly chewing on his snack cake as he thought. He mulled over it for a long moment as Rhidi crawled her way towards the grave stones, and he turned towards Drill Sergeant Almoore. “Battle.”

  “Yeah?” Drill Sergeant Almoore replied, cracking the tab on a can of cola.

  Drill Sergeant Curahee nodded towards Rhidi. “Safetybelt is the one who managed the MG111, right?”

  “One of the only aliens who could.” Drill Sergeant Almoore replied with a nod, walking up beside Drill Sergeant Curahee. “The browns, blacks, and reds were pretty miffed about it. From what I heard through the microphones, yellows are normally socialites, upper crust of society that look down on all the others.”

  Drill Sergeant Curahee raised a brow at that as he watched Rhidi, then gave his last snake cake a wiggle. “Think she could manage the next step? As she is?”

  Drill Sergeant Almoore was quiet as she thought, slowly sipping her can of cola before smacking her lips. “We would need to get her into some strength training before they enter drop phase, double her protein rations. If anyone has a chance, it might be her, and she is the only one who qualified anyway.”

  —

  Rhidi blinked up at the graves stones, the chaos still erupting behind her as other recruits crawled by. The walls had been canted inwards towards the tip of the training ground, funneling recruits into this oddly… calm area, in comparison to everything else around them. The haze of fog and powder smoke hung heavily here, adding on to the graveyard aura.

  The grave stones were not marked with the names of Humans, nor off-worlders for that matter, but planets.

  “Dinjarum.” Rhidi hissed out quietly, remembering back to where she had heard that name before.

  It came to her as the far closer barrels of the machine guns roared overhead, still seeking targets to torture along the crawling lanes. Dinjarum was a planet the Humans failed to rescue in time, and was now a lifeless rock where the Ur had wiped the planet clean. She looked to another headstone, squinting through the darkness and using the guttering flames of faux-burned out vehicles to read.

  “Peroi.” Rhidi read on another stone, and knew that one as well.

  It was an agricultural planet that was the home of the Bolorem, a kind hearted, easy going race that were known for their deeply cragged faces and four, keen eyes. They had been eradicated by the Ur four days before the Humans arrived within their space, turning the once lush planet to ash, and littering it with mounds of decaying bodies that stained the sky red.

  Why would the Humans take these planets personally? Rhidi thought to herself as she crawled forward, planet after planet etched onto the gravestones around her.

  She kept crawling, her muscles aching and lungs burning with the effort of it all, but came to a stop with the others as the last gravestone loomed from the murk.

  Rhidi had to raise up to read it over the other rucksacks and boots, her patrol cap knocked askew on her head, but her eyes widened as the flashes and crackling flames danced along the surface of the stone.

  Along the center of the stone were English words, carved deep into the rock: “For all those whom we failed to save, we shall cleave the void with our might and earn our redemption. Our duty ends only when the stars cease to shine, and no voice carries their cry for aid. We of Earth will drown the heavens in blood, whether it the blood of our enemies, or our own.”

  Rhidi stared at those words, glittering in the guttering flames and flashes of barrels, then pinned her ears back, crawling forward as everyone else started to. She kept crawling, all the way until a gentle hand grabbed onto her shoulder.

  “Up you come, recruit.” A male Human said, bearing no uniform nor nametape. “Follow the path.”

  Rhidi nodded, coming up onto her knees and then her paw-boots. She looked beyond the man to see a tunnel leading them onwards out of the training site, back out into the foggy night. She resettled her rucksack, shook the sand from her rifle, and started to walk.

  All of her muscles ached, asking her to rest, but she instead slowly walked on into the darkness, following the sounds of other boots and the bobbing shadows ahead of her. Rhidi and several other sand covered recruits came out of the tunnel and back into the cool Georgia air, following a dirt path that threaded through the pine trees.

  Rhidi kept walking, too tired to look around, and shook sand from her fur when she felt a patch building up, and itching. The Moon had fully risen above the trees, shining down against the fog, bleeding rays of moonlight through the branches of the pines and casting odd shadows along the road.

  Two Humans ahead of her were quietly talking to themselves, wondering if “Brill” was ahead of them along the road.

  Rhidi sniffed; She was bloody, and many of those around her were bloody as well. It was animal blood, Rhidi knew that much, but she could smell Human blood as well, and assumed someone may have gotten cut, or injured on their journey along the course.

  The fog slowly peeled away as they started gaining elevation, and moonlight coursed along a great sword and spear dug into the ground, statues of carved stone inlaid with broken pieces of weapons used during the invasion of the Pactless. The sword had a great, broad blade that glittered in the moonlight, reflected on who knew how many weapons embedded into it. The guard was long and flourished, providing the cross required for the Templars of the Cold Ashes. The spear was tall and proud, its tip glittering with the same broken pieces of iron and steel, while all down the shaft were the runes of the Odinic Shieldwall of Ragnar?k, a language that Rhidi still did not fully understand.

  Slowly, little by little, recruits trickled in down the road, even as the training bunker finally went silent. They all came together in a half circle around these two monolith statues, the night quiet with the renewed chirps of insects, and the quiet calls of night birds. Rhidi lost track of time, honestly, looking at those statues.

  It took a little while, but she recognized this was not a random planting of two statues, but a shrine. Along the base of the weapon statues were headstones, but these bore the names of races, people of the stars who were simply no more.

  The Ur had wiped them clean from the paths of life, only leaving them behind as threads of data in the Inner Dolcir Coalition archives.

  The Bolorem, Veideduh, Aklahams, Thomun’s Children… the list continued on, twenty headstones for the children of the stars that were no more.

  “After the gunfire,” Drill Sergeant McPhiston called out, coming out from behind the spear statue as other Drill Sergeants glided out from the fog, “The stars were quiet.”

  Drill Sergeant McPhiston sat down on a nearby stone, as if that was the stone’s only purpose for being there. He looked out to the recruits around him, covered in sand, mud, and pig’s blood as he laced his fingers together. “We had eradicated the Ur, but we had been found too late. The Kojynn, Kafya, Pwah, and Lilgara gave us everything we asked for, allowed us access to their coveted skip-engines, and we were set loose through space.”

  “But, time was against us. The first planet we arrived on was barren of friendly life, the only thing to greet us being the guns of the Ur. We landed in seven locations around that first planet, the second time Humanity would take blade and lead to an enemy from the stars. The planet Veideduh was sandy, and wet, and the Ur took a heavy toll on us that day. We crushed those Ur still, killed them to the man, taking what revenge we could for the Veidedin peoples. We did our best to take care of their death mounds, huge mountains of flesh and bone where the Ur had stacked the billions of civilians and war dead.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston sounded tired as he said this, as if he could still feel the weight of those hills of bodies. “We burned them, purified them to ash, and moved on from that planet with a conviction matched by very few.”

  Drill Sergeant Almoore stepped up, touching the scars on her face. “Then we landed on Peroi, home of the Bolorem, and we were once again too late. An entire planet scoured of life, ready to be ripped apart and turned into war materials for the Ur machines. These people were quiet, wholesome farmers who only wanted to till the earth of their planet, yet they had been killed to the last man, woman, and child.”

  “The Ur war, as many of our off-world friends will know, raged for years, just a few days short of an entire decade. Even then, we failed to protect twenty races of the stars, and their people died along with their planets.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston said, his voice echoing with true, unbridled disappointment. “Humanity had pledged to do our best, and we did, but we believe as an entire race that we still owe the IDC revenge, payment and tribute for their loss of life and blood. Human soldiers took it upon themselves to cleanse those worlds, either burying or burning the dead, and it is a Human belief that the ashes of those planets stain our hands.”

  He took off his brown campaign hat, twirling it in his fingers as he thought, the moon shining down onto him. “These planets and their people died due to a lack of Human warriors, and time. We Humans took it upon ourselves to be the beast that the kinder hearted people of space may need, the steel-clad boogymen that will keep the monsters at bay. But our usual ceremony encounters a rather interesting pickle with a few training Companies… including this one.”

  Drill Sergeant McPhiston stood up as Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss stepped out from behind the sword statue, a heavy bag held tightly in her massive left fist.

  “Good morning, recruits.” Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss said, looking at them all proudly. “And Drill Sergeant McPhiston is correct, we do have a little bit of a pickle. I would like all non-Humans recruits to come to the front, take off their rucksacks, and take a knee.”

  Rhidi looked around, along with all the others, and they slowly came forward, dropping to a knee and removing their filthy rucksacks.

  Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss smiled down at them, then began to slowly walk before them, gesturing with her sack-wielding hand. “When you all came here, you came as guests. We had assumed that nearly all of you would fail this training, pouring out like water through a strainer. To be fair, there were four hundred of you at the beginning, and now only three hundred and twenty seven remain with all Humans still on board or having to recycle. I should tell you that of all the aliens that are not with you, right now, none of them are still on Earth.”

  There was a hushing murmur of whispering that grew from the Kafya, Pwah, and Lilgara, but it swelled back down when Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss held up her right hand.

  “They were offered a free ticket home, and all of them took it to get away from Earth. They had their markings of ownership removed, and have fled back to the safety and comfort of your home planets. You are all that’s left in this Company.” Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss said, but she was still smiling despite this news. “I’m sure you have all had an accurate count by now, but in case you didn’t, that means one hundred and twenty seven of you remain. When you arrived, we didn’t trust you to take watch. You did not go on patrols, you did not stand duty, and that was due to us believing you were merely passing through.”

  Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss shook the bag, and it jangled loudly. “Some of you may even leave this place after basic training, but here, and now, I have something to say to you.” She set her hands on her hips, the bag rolling along her massive thigh muscles. “You have suffered during our hottest season. You have breathed our air, tasted our earth, eaten our food, and slaked your thirst with our water. You toiled with us, bled with us, fought with us, and trained with us for all these months. You took our tradition upon your skin, fired our rifles, and have been treated mostly the same as any other Human. We ignored your castes, your creeds, your colors, and your oddities. At this moment, at this time, you are the same color as the rest of us: Grenadier’s green.”

  Drill Sergeant McPhiston was handed the bag, and he opened it slowly as he looked to those before him. “If you accept our offerings of brotherhood, you will no longer be, Kafya. You will no longer be Pwah. You will no longer be Lilgara. You will be considered, for all intents and purposes…”

  “Human.” Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss finished, grinning brightly into the moonlight. “If just a little funny lookin’.”

  The Humans around the recruits all quietly chuckled, but the off-world recruits were all looking at the bag.

  Drill Sergeant McPhiston withdrew his hand, and clasped within his fingers was a length of gold chain, threaded through an emblem of a Human hand holding a broken dagger. “We do not offer these chains of duty lightly. You will take upon your shoulders the mantle of our regret, and our revenge. You will strive to keepsafe all those who cry out into the darkest of the nights for aid, their voice echoing to you through the stars. We came close to being eradicated ourselves, all that time ago, and we now endeavor to make sure the innocent never again have to rest their souls against a ruined world.”

  “Those of you who do not take these chains, your journey ends here” Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss said proudly, crossing her arms. “You have learned enough of how we train to aid your planets, in whatever ways that may be, but you cannot go forward into becoming drop infantry without conforming to our goals and duty. This is why, if you take these chains of duty, you will be considered heir apparent to the title of being one of Earth. Taking the chains shows your dedication not only to those around you, but also to the mission. You take the chains, you are granted immediate citizenship, immediate rights under law, and are immediately protected by the UAA Acquisition Protocols. If you are willing to fight as one of us, we will fight to the death for you. Take a moment to consider.”

  Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss and Drill Sergeant McPhiston all raised their chins slightly, while all the other Drill Sergeants busily messed with something in the shadows.

  Mission… Rhidi thought to herself, her ears slowly coming down in a droop as she thought to herself. … My mission is… done…?

  Or was it? She had already come this far, done this much, but she knew that the elder Kafya councils would go to pure plasma if they found out that any Kafya decided to stay.

  Could she stay?

  Rhidi thought about it as her ears perked back up; She would not be beholden to any Kafya customs, nor would she be bound by the Languilada, the clan system that bound all Kafya to social rules by the colors of their fur, a system that her father deeply hated. She wouldn’t have to follow the government’s orders for procreation, nor have to deal with the arranged marriages…

  “If we decided to leave…” A male Pwah said as he stood up from his kneeling position, the moon causing his lime green hair to nearly glow. “... what all happens?”

  Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss nodded her head towards him. “Then we will thank you for joining us on this training exercise, and send you home. You will turn in all your gear, and if you so wish, have the serial tattoo removed from your skin. After all, you are not Human, and are not bound by our laws and customs.”

  The Pwah looked down at his right forearm, chewing on his lip as he looked back to Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss. “We have families-”

  “You can bring them here, free of charge.” Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss said in a friendly, but assuring, voice. “You’ll just have to fill out the PCS packet.”

  Drill Sergeant McPhiston chuckled to himself. “As Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss said, if you join us, you gain all the rights. Doesn’t matter if bringing your family here will cost thousands of dollars, credits, or shamaks, we’ll get it done.”

  The Pwah smiled brightly, then took a step forward. “Recruit Rhodil Aedir, of House Likirit, finds these terms acceptable. Pwah governments are cowards, and just watched as Thomun’s Children were taken to the blade. I will not sit by and allow it to happen again.”

  “Likirit?” Alias said, his head snapping to Recruit Rhodil. “There was a royal here?!”

  Recruit Rhodil dipped his head in a bow. “My surgeons hid me well before I went rogue. I’m afraid I could not resist seeing what it was like.”

  “You’re a prince!” Alias shouted, coming to his feet. “Do you have any idea how-!?”

  “He is no prince, here.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston said lowly, eyeing Alias with warning. “He is Recruit Rhodil, of the UAA Army. You join us, you forsake all previously held titles.”

  “Gladly.” Recruit Rhodil said, stepping forward towards Drill Sergeant McPhiston. “I can finally rid myself of the coward’s stain, then.”

  Drill Sergeant McPhiston smiled down at the Pwah, pulling out one of the golden chains. “You Pwah may be short, but there is a lot of heart in those chests.”

  With a prince taking up the chain, every single Pwah stood to their feet, including Alias; The impetus of a royal finding truth in the Human mission was more than enough for them, not that many were really waffling on the idea. Once Drill Sergeant McPhiston told them they could bring their families, it was more or less a done deal.

  The Lilgara, seeing a race far shorter than them take up the chain, all came forward together, not a single one of their kind staying back with the Kafya. The Lilgara were entranced by the idea of fighting alongside another honorbound race, and having the tools to broker peace by force was something they all longed for.

  The Pwah and Lilgara all now stood, mingling with the Human recruits who shook their hand, or slapped them on the back with an encouraging word… but the Kafya were all still kneeling in place.

  Rhidi glanced around; She knew, just as all the others, that this was akin to committing suicide. To turn your back on the elder councils and be beholden to another race made you a Kuwai, a renegade that was little more than a pirate in the eyes of the Kafya. To be Kuwai was to forsake family, forsake the Kafya as a whole, and marked you as lesser, as uncolored, nothing.

  … But was that really so bad?

  Rhidi sucked in a little of her top lip, pinning it under a canine as she thought; The Kafya, like the Pwah, stood aside as entire planets bled, focussing on themselves and their own holdings of power. She knew that transmissions of assistance had been muted, scrubbed, or even disregarded completely during the chaos of the war against the Ur.

  Then there was how they treated her; Her family wanted her to just look pretty, have babies, go to parties and build social power. The military wanted her to become a nurse, making her fight tooth and nail the entire way to see what little combat she could. There were places she couldn’t go, things she couldn’t eat, clothes she couldn’t wear…

  But that was not how it was here, on Earth. Sure, they couldn’t wear the fancy clothes yet, but something told her that, with nearly everything on this planet, the right was earned.

  Earned.

  The word slid across her mind like a seductive whisper.

  She was a Private because… she earned it, not because she was yellow. She was here, now, before these statues, because she earned it, not because her mother and father had played the social game properly.

  “Here… we earn.” Rhidi whispered, dozens of ears perking to her words as she shifted her front paw-boot.

  Her body seemed to creak, as if pushing against a massive pressure that was forcing itself down onto her shoulders. If she stood…

  … she would leave everything behind, not just an apartment, or a royal house.

  Any Kafya that stood meant they became dead to their very people, treated as less than lesser, inferior to the soil itself.

  Yet… Rhidi stood.

  Just as she wanted to become a Kafya soldier, she wanted this. She wanted to earn her own keep, to be treated as an equal to all others, for her own merits to shine before her name. She wanted to be one of these odd people, a people who all bore the same color on the inside, no matter if they wore another color, skin, scales, or fur.

  It was hard, harder than anything she had ever done, a weight that bore down onto her soul like a crushing gravity unknown to anything but stars. Rhidi stood, alone, towering above the other Kafya as the Earthen Moon glowed down at her, casting her in the pearly white hue.

  “There she is.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston said with a bright, hunter’s smile, and pulled a chain out from the bag, his arm moving with deliberate, calculated gravitas. “There’s that grenadier’s green I saw in you.”

  Rhidi’s tail gave a slight wag as she smiled back at Drill Sergeant McPhiston, and slowly, head by head, ear tip by ear tip, all the other Kafya began to rise.