Rhidi laid against her pillow and slowly let her eyes course down her golden chain of duty, all while her thumb played along the surface of the fist holding the broken dagger.
After she and the rest of the Kafya had received their chains, it meant that none of her training Company had shirked the responsibility. The Pwah had stayed due to their rogue noble, the Kafya due to her, and the Lilgara stayed just so they wouldn’t bear the shameful mark of being the only off-world race to refuse.
A great, crackling bonfire had been lit behind the sword and spear, casting warm light and deepening the shadows around them. The firelight danced along the broken shards of old weapons and metal within the sword and spear statues, glimmering in the flickering blades of flame. Rhidi and all the other troopers reaffirmed their creeds in the glow of the bonfire, as well as their newer oath.
The moment had been nearly ethereal, a surreal, feverish dream as her energy supplements were going offline. She barely remembered getting back to the barracks, having gotten transport on a cattle car with the rest of the successful recruits… but the oath she remembered quite clearly.
She spoke quietly to herself as the words of Senior Drill Sergeant Fairymoss came back to her mind, still as crisp as the first time she heard them. “To the cries of the innocent, I will always answer.”
Rhidi ran the large pad of her thumb down the golden fist of the emblem, tilting her head slightly as she kept whispering. “From the heavens I blaze a trail to their salvation.”
“With blade and bullet, I will carve away the taint of the wicked.” Rhidi said breathily, running her thumb pad down the broken dagger. “With open hands and compassion, I uplift the worthy wounded.”
Rhidi slowly put the chain over her ears and back around her neck, swinging her legs over the side of her bed. “My body is my honor, my armor my virtue, my weapon my redemption. I am a guardian to the righteous, and remembrancer of the twenty turned to ashes.”
Every time she repeated the oath, it always sounded so much like an apology, or a declaration of purpose. She knew full well it was not the fault of Humanity for failing to save those twenty races of the stars; Humans couldn’t be that fast, that direct, yet they still took the shame upon themselves as a whole.
Rhidi stood and opened her locker as everyone else buzzed around her, enjoying the Sunday after their graduation ceremony. Within her locker was her very own UAA service uniform, still as perfect as they day she wore it. The Humans, ever doting on their history, still used the service uniform from their second “world war”, a uniform nicknamed “pinks and greens”. The uniform had a smart looking dress hat made from leather and wool, cut at the sides and tailored to fit her ears.
The Humans had even gone as far as to make dress paw-shoes for the Kafya, enlisting their moon-based AI to craft paw-boots made with scaled leather plating to look the part.
Rhidi had felt extremely smart in the uniform, both her and the other Kafya looking at themselves in the mirror with broad smiles on their faces. It was odd for them all to be wearing such old fashioned clothes, and both Rhidi and the other yellow Kafya kept getting asked by the Humans to “cat walk”.
Rhidi most certainly did not, instead enjoying how her hat looked with a jaunty little tilt to it.
The ceremony was brief, since they still had more schooling to do, and was recorded for their families back home. It was a hard ask for the off-worlders to ship their families to Earth for a simple ceremony, so they would instead have to make do with the recording.
For some odd reason, a lot of Kafya were now arriving on Earth for schooling, and Rhidi had not received an answer from her parents after sending them her graduation video.
This was not uncommon, as it turned out, as many of the other Kafya were getting a lot of radio silence from their own families. They had already braced for it, though, as they figured they would get cut off from the other Kafya as soon as the elder councils found out about them not returning.
Some of the Kafya with mates back home had already put in packets to get them to Earth, which was causing quite the kerfuffle in the Inner Dolcir Coalition and kept the Human officials quite busy. There were even rumors of wives and husbands being kept in ransom as the elder councils demanded more answers.
Rhidi was mulling over that little tidbit as she closed her locker, turning to see Private Morris rolling something around in his hand, and her tail gave a light swish; She had seen him doing that ever since graduation, and he had been acting cold to his family when they came to visit him.
She had nothing better to do, so she slowly padded her way across the tile towards his rack. Rhidi had been trying to come up behind him as quietly as possible in order to get a peek at his hands, but he closed them before she was even within ten feet. Humans had excellent senses about them, better than any creature she had ever seen, actually.
“Morris?” Rhidi asked politely, instead stepping up beside him and leaning against his rack. “Are you okay?”
Morris drew in a deep breath, his left fist clenched around the thing she had been trying to get a peek at. He blinked a few times, then leaned backwards as he cleared his throat. “I’m alright, Rhidi.”
“You say that, but you haven’t been looking very… happy, since graduation.” Rhidi said, rolling her shoulder along his rack so she was fully facing him. “And you have been quite… in your own head, if you would. You’ve been quieter than usual.”
Morris let a small smile break along his clearly pensive face. “Watch me a lot, do you?”
“No.” Rhidi answered quickly, blood instantly flowing into her ears and face. “It’s just, I know how you normally are and it isn’t this.”
“All I’m hearing is more evidence for the watching thing.” Morris teased, though his face couldn’t hold the smile for very long. The smile faded, and Morris sighed out through his nose. “I just got some bad news, that’s all.”
Rhidi’s tail gave a deceitful wag; Morris was confiding in her, and this pleased her. It meant he trusted her a little bit, and that made her rather happy.
“Bad news?” Rhidi asked, coming around from the side of the rack and instead squatting down in front of him, resting her elbows on her thighs; Kafya could rest in this position for quite awhile if their knees were together, like they were now.
“Yeah.” Morris said with a twitch of his lips. “Turns out my plans didn’t align with someone else’s.”
Rhidi tilted her head, confused, and Morris opened his clenched hand; Resting on his palm was a simple silver band.
“... I don’t understand.” Rhidi said, reaching up with a hand and taking the, very warm at this point, silver ring. “Did someone give you this as a warning?” Rhidi’s neck and arm fur rose up sharply as another thought crossed her mind. “A threat?”
“No, it’s not a threat.” Morris said with a chuckle, smiling as Rhidi’s yellow fur slowly relaxed. “It means I am being refused.”
Rhidi’s eyes widened, though her tail did give another ominous wag. “You were married?!”
Morris laughed, a natural laugh that dragged the sadness away from his face, and he reached over to take the ring back. “No, merely in the opening phases. I had, stupidly, asked her to marry me before I left. We had been dating for nearly three years, and I thought the action would solidify my devotion to her.”
“And she…?” Rhidi asked, and she reached back to actually grab her tail to stop it from trying to wag.
“Apparently, did not agree. I should have known something was up when the e-letters stopped, and she had given my family the ring an hour before they left to come here.” Morris said, a bitter edge to his voice. “My poor mother was bawling the entire way here, and my sisters are furious. It put a huge damper on their visit.”
Rhidi narrowed her eyes; Who the hell wouldn’t take Morris as a mate? There was nothing wrong with him, no diseases, he was strong, handsome, what was this other Human’s deal?
Morris saw Rhidi narrow her eyes, and leaned forward onto his own knees. “It’s alright. If anything, I may have dodged a bullet. Besides, I cheered mom up when we went out to dinner.”
“How did you cheer her up?” Rhidi asked. “I always had trouble cheering my mom up, all she wanted to do was dress me in clothes and have me look at possible suitors with her.”
Morris exhaled a laugh through his nose at that, then flexed his fingers in a shrug. “The restaurant we went to had a little dance floor, so I bribed the manager to put on some music and I danced with her in my uniform.”
The word was, oddly enough, foreign to Rhidi, and it took her a minute to remember what the hell “dance” ment. She thought hard, and could only remember that the image correlated to the word had two Humans moving awkwardly, as if frozen in time.
“What is dance?” Rhidi asked, then shook her head. “Dancing, what is it?”
It was Morris’s turn to narrow his eyes. “What is dancing? You’ve got to be shitting me, Rhidi.”
“What?” Rhidi asked, holding out her own hands.
Morris let out an incredulous scoff. “Dancing! You know, moving the body in certain ways with a partner or by yourself, following a pattern of movements to replicate… you know, a dance!”
Rhidi, for the life of her, could not understand what the hell the Human was talking about.
“Kafya don’t dance?” Morris asked, then snorted. “And here I thought it was only cats...”
“Anfilid!” Rhidi called out, spotting the brown female Kafya walking by, and waved a hand over. “Come here!”
Anfilid obeyed, striding through the racks and lockers until she was beside Morris’s rack.
“What’s up, Rhidi?” Anfilid asked, tucking her hands in her pockets and giving her brown, patterned tail a few swishing wags.
Rhidi pointed a finger gun at Morris while looking up at Anfilid. “Do we dance?”
“Dance…” Anfilid murmured, closing her eyes as she too tried to find the word in her memory. “Had the image of the uh… two Humans standing all weird?”
Morris was astounded, crossing his arms as he looked around. “Cyril!”
“Whaaat?” Cyril drawled out, as the yellow haired, yellow eyed Pwah was deep into his data-slate.
“Pwah dance, right?” Morris called out to him.
Cyril snorted. “Of course we dance, we still have a monarchy for fucks’s sakes.”
“Dancing is a form of submission and domination in Pwah culture.” Rhodil said, being a prince in Pwah culture, but a mere Private now. “Some forms of dance are even forbidden to non-royals, you know.”
“We Lilgara alssso dance.” A passing Lilgara said, her arms full of her dirty laundry. “But it isss only for finding a mate, or wooing the opposite sssex.”
Rhidi and Anfilid glanced at each other; Both of them knew that they had never known a Kafya to dance, let alone indulge in random bursts of movement. The closest thing to dancing was maybe melee combat, but that was not really something a Kafya did for pleasure. Such things were judged as a waste of time by the elder councils, as why bother learning a useless pattern of the feet when there was knowledge to be obtained, and breakthroughs to be broken.
Now that Rhidi thought about it, she had never seen a single program or recording of dancing on her Kafyan deltad device.
“Here, I’ll show you.” Morris said, standing up and moving past Rhidi. “Shorsey!”
Shorsey’s freckled face popped out from around her locker, her eyebrows drawn together and face in a light snarl. “What?!”
“Come dance with me for a moment, the Kafya have no idea what it is.” Morris said, kicking off his boots and setting them next to his rack.
Shorsey grimaced. “Oh c’mon man, I told you that in confidence!”
“Come on Shorsey, you’re the only one in here who I know can waltz.” Morris said, coming to an open area between the walkways and the racks. “Just do a simple box-step for me.”
Shorsey growled in her throat, looking murderous, but slammed her locker shut and stomped over towards Morris. She kicked off her boots, took off her uniform top, then came before him.
“Are we doing an underground waltz or a slow?” Shorsey asked, tossing her uniform top onto a nearby rack rail.
“Let’s go with a slow waltz.” Morris said, and he held out his arms. “No need to make the Kafya wonder too much.”
Rhidi watched the angry, red-orange haired, freckled female Human change; Her back arched slightly, and her face composed itself as she took Morris’s hand. Her other hand draped along his shoulder, while his came to the small of her back.
“Hey, Kubrick, give us something we can dance to.” Shorsey said, looking over her shoulder to another Human trooper who had skin the color of milk… when he wasn’t sunburned to hell.
Kubrick sniffed, then started to whistle out the Vampire’s Waltz.
The two began to… move, with slow, deliberate, elegant steps.
Blood began to slowly flow into Rhidi’s ears as she watched Shorsey and Morris make a lot of eye contact, as well as twirl, flow, and step around this little empty space in the barracks. They went through several moves, showing the Kafya underarm turns, open rolls, slowly turning in place with their arms pressed to each other…
Rhidi and a lot of the other Kafya had to swallow and look away; There was a lot of intimate touching in dancing, it seemed, and the body language was easy enough to understand. Even the waltz was getting Rhidi a little hot in the neck, though Anfilid looked on with perked ears and a dreamy smile.
“He makes her look so pretty…” Anfilid said, leaning back against Morris’s rack. “Treating her like she’s special… as if terrified of letting go completely.”
Morris spun Shorsey a few times before they came back together, and the woman gave Morris a playful shot to the stomach; She had been smiling the entire time they had been dancing, but the old Shorsey quickly came back when she had enough of being treated like a piece of glass.
“Alright, enough of that.” Shorsey barked out as Morris deeply laughed, though she did not stop smiling. “I won’t be having anymore of you making me look like a dainty flower.”
Morris drew down his laughter, then looked towards Rhidi as Shorsey sauntered off to retrieve her uniform top.
Rhidi was staring straight at him, and when he smiled at her, her tail gave a mutinous wag.
“Must be too sexy for the Kafya.” Alias said from his own little seat on someone’s top bunk. “Kafyan society has been trying to streamline themselves forever now. After all, why bother with getting hot and heavy while dancing when you can just do the dirty and get to the end point.”
Rhidi and Anfilid glared at Alias, though he wasn’t wrong; Marriages in their culture were little more than contractual, and children were born with a kindred efficiency. Everything had been fine before the Humans came into contact with the Kafya, but now there were rumors that the younger Kafya are stressing the elder councils.
The rest of the day went by smoothly, though Morris was too busy getting poked at and made fun of by his fellow male troopers to have any more time with Rhidi.
With graduation out of the way and them all being proper, bonafide UAA infantry, their true training came the following Monday: Heavy Onslaught Infantry and drop pod training. They had to first earn their armor, then learn to fit themselves and get used to the forces of a drop pod.
Monday started off with an entire day of physical fitness, one that the Kafya and Pwah would call “wet day” since they never stopped sweating the entire time.
Heavy Onslaught Infantry required more muscle than regular infantry, their bodies needing to be bulky and thickly corded with strong muscle. Rhidi and the other troopers were subjected to a number of exercises designed to make them solid racks of muscle, and Humans used only loose weights. There were no grav rooms, no torsion arrays…
… just bars, benches, and steel.
Drill Sergeants coached every trooper in the ways of strength, from elevated squatting to the humble arm curl, and the training would always happen three times per week. Rhidi had thought they were joking, but the next four days were further study in mastering the workout regime.
Rhidi had thought herself plenty strong after all the normal physical training in basic, but she quickly learned that she could, in fact, have muscles she had never known about get sore.
Then there was the weird issue with the food; Rhidi felt like she was getting way, way more meat and other proteins than normal.
The DFAC workers now kept an eye on her, even holding up lines to make sure they weighed her tray.
Rhidi had the same problem one day at breakfast, her tail fuzzing out in a fray as the very tall and wide Human called out to the line.
“Hold up there.” He said politely, holding up a massive hand as he took Rhidi’s tray. He looked over at her as he placed her tray onto a scale. “Good morning missus Rhidi! How is your fifth day of Black Phase?”
Rhidi yawned, her muscles screeching at her with every movement. “I thought we already learned how to work out, but it appears we have all been led to believe lies.”
“Ha!” He guffawed, placing various meats on her tray along with eggs and pancakes, all weighed by the gram for accuracy. “Well I’m sure you know, those big ole suits of armor can get quite heavy! Gotta make sure you poor little troopers can handle the weight in case something goes wrong.”
Rhidi sniffed, lightly wobbling back and forth with a deep desire to drink an entire gallon of orange juice.
With her heavy tray in straining hands, attached to tired muscles, Rhidi teetered herself over towards a table. She slowly started eating her massive tray of food as Alias dropped a glass of orange juice down for her. Shasta then set a small cup of hot, steaming coffee on her other side, then wiggled Rhidi’s ear.
Rhidi muttered a thanks through her mouthful of food, even though it sounded more like a lyrical groan.
“Poor little Rhidi, being forced to eat.” Shasta said in a sing-song voice, setting down to his own tray of food with a clink of his soda tab string. “Not that you have any issuesss putting all of that away.”
Rhidi sleepily slurped on her coffee, her eye twitching as the acrid, bitter fluid hit her tongue like hawthorn hitting the grill of a scout skimmer. Human coffee was a horrible, awful drink, but it had more stimulants in it than what were ever allowed in Kafya space. To Rhidi, she may have well licked a lump of charcoal and tried to drink a mouthful of battery acid.
She smacked her lips, pulling a pained face as the mouthy liquid grumbled its way into her system. “I’m always starving now. If my mother saw me eat like this, she would try to put me in a control jacket.”
“Your body is just reacting to the sudden change in requirements.” Alias said matter of factly, happily cutting into his waffles. “Kafya eat gels and bars while staying lithe. The Humans are feeding you high nutrient food and making you lift heavy things, it’s gonna change some stuff in you.”
“Lilgara and Pwah are major meat eatersss.” Shasta said, his uniform jangling lightly as he reached over to grab a pepper shaker. “Meatsss, vegetables, bread, we share a very sssimilar diet to the Humansss, but their food isss just… different.”
Alias nodded, watching as Rhidi popped an entire fried egg into her mouth with worried eyebrows. “You guys have had an extremely controlled diet, so, who knows what’s going to happen. Earth produces nutrients in food like we’ve never seen before, so, I guess we’re all going to change a little.”
“Why are some of your ears different colors?” Rhidi asked plainly, groggily stabbing at another egg on her tray. “I’ve been too tired to really notice, but some of the Pwah’s ear tips are… yellow, or blue.”
Alias pointed to a nearby male with red ear tips. “They’re just a mod, adds a little flair. We can’t really remove them once they’re installed, but we agreed to keep them all off during basic training. Now that we’re in our job training, they were allowed to turn them back on.”
“Why don’t you have them?” Rhidi asked while leaning in close to Alias, then slipped the whole egg into her mouth to elicit a spine crawl from Alias.
Rhidi knew he hated how she ate eggs, and it was always fun to her.
Alias put a finger on her nose and pushed her away with a growl. “Because, dear Kafya, they can’t come out. And since they can’t come out, I don’t want them in me.”
Rhidi chewed open mouthed for a moment since Alias was looking at her, bursting the yolk messily. She then snortled in early morning glee when Alias erupted into disgusted noises. Shasta laughed as well, all while stealing one of Rhidi’s extra bacon slices.
—
Rhidi was about sick of working out by the end of the week, and her muscles were creaking as much as her joints. Worst yet, something had happened to her appetite and she was constantly ravenous, as if someone had flicked a switch inside of her biology.
Rhidi experienced multiple Drill Sergeants suddenly walk up beside her, shove a protein bar into her hand, and then walk off, all because her stomach gave an audible growl. They even plied her with protein rich snacks like dried jerky and dates, turning her weekly range visits into impromptu picnics.
The other Kafya were eating heavier as well, but the focus all seemed to be on her, and she just could not figure out why.
The second week of Black Phase, they were finally put in front of a display screen in order to learn more about the armor they would wear; Human armor was an odd thing, a mix of powerful electronics, drives, micro-skeletons, and power-relays tucked into the visage of medieval armor. This aesthetic was due to Humans raiding museums and private collections for armor, as pure steel was proving more effective than the more “modern” armors of the time. Human warriors wearing ancient plate armor while wielding all a manner of weapons became an icon of their war against the Pactless, and that tradition was carried over into their future armors.
The Infantry Battle Plate was the most common, a lighter version that was worn by standard infantry that were brought down on personnel transport ships once a landing zone was made. It was mostly forward facing, with a lot of the armor on the front of the body and very little on the rear to provide better mobility.
The iconic pauldrons and dagger-helms were there of course, along with the standard chest plate assembly, but they did not have nearly as much cybernetics and motor assisting actuators. This meant that the IBP only weighed a third of the Onslaught Battle Plate, but the OBP offered far more protection.
The IBP could be stripped down further for recon infantry, who wore only the chest plate, an advanced dagger-helm, minimal arm and leg armor, and wrapped themselves in mirror cloaks. Mirror cloaks assisted them in blending in with the environment, twisting light around the cloak to better color match with the foliage or rubble.
When Rhidi saw the total weight of the OBP, she felt her stomach drop; The armor weighed nearly as much as a full grown Human male, while the Skógarskera armor had an additional fifty pounds of armor and battle kit. This was of course compensated by the armor itself, which was put on via a cycling rack of power arms, but that was still a lot of weight.
Power arms were not required, however, as the armor could be put on manually, but it just took a lot longer than stepping into the armory rack and having the power arms quickly get a trooper suited up.
A thought occurred to Rhidi, and she raised her hand as Drill Sergeant McPhiston was explaining just all what the armor did.
“Yes?” Drill Sergeant McPhiston said tersely, pointing to Rhidi.
Rhidi wiggled her lips back and forth as she solidified her question, then nodded. “Drill Sergeant, how does the armor fit on? I mean, not all soldiers are the same size.”
“The actuators and power systems within the armor adjust.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston said fluidly, not even a pause between the end of Rhidi’s question and his answer. “OBP’s come in three sizes, then adjust up and down according to what the inner ballistic suit sends to it in a readout. Before we came into contact with the Drafritti, all combat armor could not be fully powered and we relied on pure muscle to get the job done. With the help of the Drafritti and their technology, the armors are fully powered by a single starlight battery and feed off of the body in order to power the smaller scale electronics.”
Drill Sergeant McPhiston quickly tapped up an image of the pre-Ur war combat armor, worn by Humans for the first few years of the war. “Early battle armor required stem-links to be implanted into the spine and shoulders, allowing the soldier to communicate with their armor. Now this is achieved via metal contacts along the inner suit, and is far less invasive.”
Rhidi grimaced; The images of the Human soldiers seemed to be bristling with wires and insert points, and it did not look very comfortable. Oddly, the armor did not seem to change much in terms of aesthetics, and had aged gracefully thanks to the help of the Drafritti.
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“The armor is completely immune to more subtle outside forces, such as EMPs, but accidents can and do happen. If struck with enough force on the back, the ‘brain’ of the armor and the battery can be knocked out, requiring a reboot and system check. This will leave you bearing the full weight of the armor for up to ten minutes.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston continued on, tapping through videos of Humans surging forward under the full weight of the armor. “You will be partially deaf, your readouts on the visor will be gone, but you can still move and fight. You will be expected to keep moving, and to keep fighting. Laying on the ground and waiting for your reboot does not fly.”
Drill Sergeant McPhiston tapped along on his data-slate, pulling up two helmets onto the screen. “While the Pwah share the same head shape as Humans, you Lilgara and Kafya are not so lucky. Thankfully for you, our Drafritti citizens took to the challenge with their usual keen eye; The Kafyan helmet follows the same protocols as the normal helmet, except that it is slightly long in the nose to account for your snouts, and there are outcroppings for your stupid ass ears. These outcroppings can fully acuate, allowing you to pin them back and have a lower profile when you are not swiveling them to hear. The Lilgara were a little more complicated; You lot have those big ass hoods and snakey heads, so that required a little more thought. Obviously we could not armor the entire neck of the OBP, so instead the inner suit neck was widened, reinforced, and hooks in directly to the helmet, allowing any Lilgara to move their head as they please.”
“Then there is the whole tail situation.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston muttered, bringing up the next image. “Since we are not allowed to cut them off.”
There was a shared chuckle around the classroom… though for some, it was more nervous.
“This meant we needed to think of workarounds for certain situations, such as the vacuum of space. From launch to landing, you will be sealed in via ship and pod, but concessions must be made.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston explained, pointing to a Kafya on the display. “Kafyan troopers will require to have a little haircut around the base of the tail, this way a seal can be made around the armor and prevent them from suffering leaks into the sealed suit. We have already begun formulating funds for waxing, or even hair removal should you wish.”
Drill Sergeant McPhiston then pointed to the Lilgara on the screen. “Lilgara are a little more complicated. Due to the oddly delicate nature of Lilgara tail bones, we have added an armor sleeve that will fit along the tail and protect the top of the tail, allowing the sleeve to lock into place on the armor and sealing everything together. The same can be said for Kafya, as we have a tail sleeve for you to wear if you are going to be exposed to vacuum.”
“Since OBP armor can survive in space for up to ten minutes with emergency oxygen, we are forming the SOPs so that Kafyan troopers always drop with their tail bag, which can be removed if you wish when you land. This is to prevent vacuum damage in case of a pod breach.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston said with a vague wave of his hand, then tapped the data-slate to pull up a picture of said drop pods.
Rhidi leaned forward in her chair, finally getting eyes on her chariot; Onslaught Drop Pods were an engineering marvel, combining the Human love of rotorwing technology and the fine-tuned efficiency of Drafritti ingenuity. Launched from propulsion rails, the pod leaves the mother ship and screeches down towards the planet, hitting the atmosphere like a comet. Magnetic slam-generators spin to life when the heat of reentry is detected, forming a plasma shield and shaping it into a point around the drop pod.
Once the pod is free and in calmer atmosphere, it proceeds to keep falling until three particular altitudes; Angel 1 deploys a metal drag chute, which slows the drop pod enough for the auto-rotation fins to deploy at Angel 2. Angel 2 sees the drag chute detach in order to be recovered later, and the auto-rotation fins deploy. The fins further slow the pod until Angel 3, in which the fins unlock and begin to spin.
The spinning blades build RPMs until they can then be angled by the drop computer, further slowing the drop pod via auto-rotation and priming the landing engine. Within the pod itself lies the Ascender Engine, a massive pulse reductor that is primed via the spinning blades. By the time the engine kicks on, the blades have already slowed the craft and fully primed the Ascender Engine, allowing it to expel a massive jet of energy and slow the drop pod to a gentle slam into the ground.
Shaped much like a Human flanged mace of old, the drop pod would slam into the ground and open its assault doors while spewing gas, allowing four troopers at a time to exit.
“Your pods carry sixteen troopers, four to a door, and g-racks within the pod make sure you are alive and combat able when you land.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston said while pointing to the odd flanges of the drop pod. “While the pod is falling, you will hear multiple functions of the pod around you; The flanges will buzz and hum as they course correct the pod, the thud of the arrestor fins, and the slowly growing whine of the Ascender Engine. All of the interior lights will turn from red to amber, giving you a one minute warning. When the klaxon barks three times, you are about to land. A loud ringing bell will alert you a single second before the rack releases you and the doors slam down.”
The more Drill Sergeant McPhiston spoke, the more Rhidi wanted to crawl inside one and go for a ride.
The classroom course was short after that, mostly going over launching phases and protocols, and they ended the day with another workout session. They had no leave that weekend, instead tasked with eating, working out, and resting for the following Monday; The Human recruits were all set in the face, knowing that they would be facing the greatest test of the training cycle.
The Testing Ten.
Ten feet to be walked, ten feet to weigh and measure.
The day came quicker than Rhidi realized, and she found herself waiting along with the rest of the Company; They had been trucked out to the proving grounds, the armor training center for all units on Fort Benning. It was early in the morning, and Rhidi was blinking blearily at the figures in front of them.
Four Drafritti engineers and two Human armorers were setting up the ten ambo-suits, a simulation body armor suit that was designed to mimic real OBP armor while being able to adapt to any body size.
Rhidi was watching these Drafritti closely, as they were fully aligned with Earth and the UAA; They were, like the ones she had met before, an odd little folk, only about four feet in height with the weirdest ears she had ever laid eyes on. Their ears were tall, broad in the middle but coming to tight tips at their ends. They were fuzzy all around, not really as hairy as the Kafya, but had a definite fuzz about them that caught the morning sun and made them nearly glow with gold. The ears themselves had a lot of folds on the inside, as if designed to catch noise, and never seemed to stop moving or listening.
They didn’t have snouts either, not like the Kafya or Lilgara… but their noses were freaky; Instead of the usual outcropping of nostrils and such, they had a flat, broad, leaf-like nose that the Humans always fawned over.
Humans in general liked the Drafritti, and the Human troopers had been shaking hands with them nearly on contact, only herded away by the Drill Sergeants shooing them into the nearby bleachers.
They were a heavy armed race with a longer reach than most, ending in hands that seemed to be twice the size they should have been. While the hands of the average star-creature came to the hips or just below the waist, Drafritti hands loitered round their lower thigh… if not their knees.
Rhidi was most interested in how they spoke; At times she saw them talking to each other but heard nothing, and Kafya hearing was pretty good, even with their ear drums getting mended by Human nano-healers. Then the Drafritti would switch to English, and be easily audible.
At one point Rhidi saw them laughing soundlessly to each other and heard… something, but she couldn’t really tell what it was.
Their fuzz… fur… whatever it was, colorings were much like the Kafya; One of the Drafritti was purple, another a light gold, while the other two were gray. Their massive hands were soft and fleshy on the underside, much akin to a paw but way more hand-like with their longer fingers.
Rhidi had been focusing on the Drafritti so hard that she didn’t notice what was going on around her until Alias spoke up beside her.
“What the fuck are they doing with it now?” Alias hissed out, while other sudden, alarmed whispers hushed around them.
Rhidi snapped herself back to the current moment and looked around; Alias and the other troopers were pointing to the suits, so Rhidi turned back around to see what was going on.
They were horizontal on the ground, and open.
“Did they fall over?” Rhidi asked, tilting her head in puzzlement as Shasta slowly rubbed at his temples.
“No.” Shasta murmured, eyeballing the suit of combat armor like it was radioactive. “I think thiss’is part of the test.”
Rhidi was confused; What test for walking ten feet would require the suit to be laying on the ground.
“Time ta’go!” A male Drafritti called out eagerly, clapping his massive palms together. “First ‘ap! First ‘ap first ‘ap!”
“You heard him, on your feet!” Drill Sergeant Almoore barked out, slamming her hands together. “Up and at ‘em!”
They all stood and formed sticks; Ten troopers at a time could test their strength on the suits, and Rhidi was behind Alias and Shasta. She was hoping to linger behind, gathering information on the test itself, but Rhidi felt a heavy hand slap onto her shoulder.
“You’re going first, Private.”
Rhidi whipped her head around to see that Drill Sergeant McPhiston had a grip on her shoulder, and was pulling her out of the line.
“O-Okay, Drill Sergeant!” Rhidi stammered out, and her face flushed under her fur; Everyone was looking at her, including a deeply puzzled Inthur and Enflia.
“Where is she going?” Inthur asked, turning around to look at another blue Kafyan male behind her.
He shrugged. “Dunno, is she in trouble?”
“She can’t be in trouble, she hasn’t done anything yet.” Inthur muttered, then crossed her arms under her breasts. “She always gets all the attention now…”
“Can it, Private.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston spat, turning his head so quickly that Inthur took a few steps back.
Inthur bowed her head, looking away at the ground before responding. “Yes, Drill Sergeant…”
Rhidi snorted at her, which caused Inthur to glance back up at Rhidi hotly, but Rhidi just turned her head away as Drill Sergeant McPhiston guided her to the front of her stick.
“Priority.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston called out, and placed Rhidi right in front of the light-gold furred, female Drafritti.
“Pri’arity?” She asked, cocking an eyebrow as her constantly moving ears focussed in on Rhidi. “Al’ryt. Pri’arity.” The Drafritti looked Rhidi up and down, clicking her teeth as she took in her rough measurements and tapped it into a wrist computer. “Sach’ pretty’ far’, but naght’ as pretty as mayn’.”
The Drafritti winked at Rhidi as she grinned, and Rhidi became aware that their fangs looked a lot longer up close…
The suit of armor gave a high pitched whirr as it adjusted to the measurements, then let out a chirp when it had completed the change.
“Hap’on in, pri’arity.” The Drafritti said, waving a very large hand at Rhidi as she spoke soundlessly to a nearby male Drafritti with gray fur.
They both laughed to each other, and it kind of hurt Rhidi’s ears hearing it that close. Their accent was nearly as painful as their laughter, as the Drafritti syntax was blending with the Humans of the Appalachian Mountains, leading their accent to become even more perplexing.
Rhidi shook her head, but slowly got down into the armor, shoving her arms and legs where they should go. The suit was deeply uncomfortable, being simply a working simulation, and something was poking her in the thigh like a thumb. The helmet was attached to the suit of armor, and it was awkward shoving her head into place.
“Clos’an ap!” The golden furred Drafritti chirped, and the suit began to buzz and whizz around Rhidi as the back plate hissed into place.
Rhidi felt immediately claustrophobic as the armor sank down into place and pressed joint pads against her; It was as if she had been eaten, swallowed whole by an Ur machine, and it took everything in her soul to not start screaming.
“Stay calm.” Rhidi panted out quietly, her heart revving to a full roar in her chest. “Stay calm. Stay calm, stay calm, don’t panic.”
The inner helmet earpiece turned on, and the words from Drill Sergeant Prince that came through were brief, to say the least.
“Get up, and walk.”
Rhidi puffed air in and out of her nose and mouth as if she were a steam train preparing to take off from its station, and she moved her arms around to plant them at the armor’s sides.
It was a heavy bastard.
“Damn it!” Rhidi growled as the suit refused to assist her with its weight, and dragging her leg up to get her foot under her felt like she was dragging her body through a pool of pine tar. “It’s like a Human is laying across my spine!”
The suit keened and whirred as she slowly ambled up onto her feet, then let out a set of warning beeps when she nearly toppled over.
“I got it!” Rhidi shouted, her voice carrying over through the helmet thanks to the speaker. “I got it! Wah! I got it!”
The gray furred male Drafritti slowly looked over to the golden furred female, shaking his head, and they both shared a soundless giggle as they watched both Rhidi, and the other troopers, wobble up onto their feet.
Getting up was the easy part, as Rhidi found; Moving still required her full body, and now balance was at play. Lifting the heavy suit boot activated not only her entire leg, but required the opposite leg to flex in order to compensate for the shift in weight, all while her core flexed so hard she was worried an abdominal was going to pop out and ricochet around her suit.
Ten feet sounded easy, but by the third foot, Rhidi was sweating so hard that her uniform was sticking to her and bunching up awkwardly around her hips.
Each movement of the suit was so laboring that Rhidi was starting to think the suit itself was fighting against her, another method devised by her Human torturers to weed her out from the other troopers. This thought fueled her body with a little more anger, and she began forcing the suit to behave, stomping her way down the pre-measured lengths as her chain of duty jingled lightly against her chest fur.
Rhidi stumbled at the nine foot mark, tottering forward with slowly flailing arms as she desperately tried to keep her footing. She stomped by the ten foot mark, going an additional two feet before coming down hard onto her knees in a teeth rattling fall, her helmeted head bouncing off of the soft soil like a bowling ball.
She heard a Drafritti laugh so hard it came out in English, the loud “Hah!” coming to her via the muffled inner helmet earpiece; Her ears were more or less stuffed into the uncomfortable helmet, and things had gotten smooshed around even worse when she fell.
The armor gave a defeated whirr and began slowly opening, allowing Rhidi to rip her head free of the attached helmet and gulp in a fresh lungful of air. Rhidi scrambled free of the armor and fell to the ground in a roll, her arms and legs thrumming in pain.
Rhidi gasped in air and looked to her right, spying Shorsey next to her doing the exact same thing.
“That sucked.” Rhidi panted, arms splayed out and grass tickling her wet palms.
Shorsey drew in a long inhale, then let out an even longer growl before speaking. “That suit was fighting us the entire way, there is no way they weigh that much.”
“Ra’call!” A Drafritti called out, and all the now empty armored suits sprang to their boots, trotting over to the starting area before getting back down into their open starting positions.
“Those little bat-eared bastards.” Shorsey panted, sitting up with a groan as Rhidi rolled over onto her knees, getting up to a wobbly standing position before tottering to the left and impacting the grass again with a trilling Kafyan curse.
—
Rhidi raised a brow as she watched Inthur struggle to fit into the training armor, all while two Drafritti engineers tinkered with their wrist computers to get the armor to facilitate Inthur’s bulk, whether that was to fit the expanse of her chest or ever-wobbling butt cheeks.
As she looked around, she saw a lot of the male Humans were quite happily watching Inthur struggle, and Rhidi tsked in open disdain.
Rhidi had assumed the blue would fail the test, but Rhidi rolled her eyes as Inthur barely made it over the ten foot mark, all after falling twice and struggling to get back up.
Due to the weight of the armor, many struggled, even the Humans, but Rhidi found herself quite pleased to find that everyone had managed to succeed at this small trial. It was taking a little longer than assumed to finish out the trials though, as the Lilgaran tails were girthier than the Drafritti had imagined, and were causing a little bit of fuss with the armor.
When the last trooper, a Pwah, finally crossed over the ten foot mark, he held up his fists and gave them a little shake from within the armor.
“One hundred percent!” He panted out over the speaker in the helmet, and everyone in the bleachers stood up with a cheer.
The Pwah gave one more fist shake before slowly tottering backwards, slapping onto the ground with a rattle of test armor. The cheers turned to laughs, all while the Drafritti engineers ran over to assist the Pwah in getting out of the armor.
Humans, Pwah, Lilgara, and Kafya shook hands and clapped shoulders, while others hugged and hopped up and down on the bleachers lightly; They had earned their right to wear OBP armor, and could now advance to getting their combat suits fully tailored to fit them perfectly.
The celebrating continued for a few more heat beats, Rhidi laughing along with Shorsey about how bullshit the test was with the suits being fully ambulatory the entire time, before a voice cut through the mirth.
“Sit down!”
Three hundred and twenty seven heads snapped around to see Drill Sergeant McPhiston standing with his hands on his hips, and campaign hat tilted to an angry edge on his head.
“Sit down, now!”
Three hundred and twenty seven asses thumped down onto the bleachers, some landing in laps due to the fear of not sitting down fast enough, which caused a little bit of blushing and quiet sterness amongst the troopers.
The Drafritti engineers pulled out another suit of armor from a casket, a hulking machine of Drafritti engineering and Human technology: Skógarskera Onslaught Battle Plate.
Attached to the hulking armor was the control arm that socketed into place along the back, and resting upon the arm was an MG111. A glittering belt of brass dummy ammo ran along an AMTRAM rack, feeding out of a fully loaded ammunition pack that was attached to the armor as well.
It was, of course, still training armor, and slowly rose from the casket as if the Drafritti were mad scientists that had forced this monster to rise from the dead.
The armor stood, walked a few paces to the right, then laid down on the ground, cocked at an angle due to the weapon arm.
“Private Johin.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston bellowed, and a rather nervous looking, thinner Human male stood up from the bleachers, coming down to take his turn with the armor.
When the trooper was inside the armor and fitted into place, Drill Sergeant McPhiston only said one word as he held up his data-slate.
“Stand.”
Rhidi watched, unease building in her stomach, then felt it drop through the floor when the Human failed to rise.
The armor opened after Drill Sergeant McPhiston called out that the trooper’s time was up, and Private Johin spat out a curse, slicked to the skin with sweat as he stomped over towards the bleachers.
One by one, Humans all came down when their name was called and tried to stand in the Skógarskera armor, and Rhidi kept a tight track on how many succeeded in this task. Shorsey and Morris both succeeded in standing in the armor, but in the end, only a hundred and nine managed to stand in the armor.
The fact Rhidi watched Humans fail to stand in the armor filled her heart with cold, fluttering dread. She figured she would have time to count all of the off-worlders as they tried to stand in the armor, trying to figure out how heavy it was by watching the male Kafya try, but Drill Sergeant McPhiston tapped on his data-slate before turning towards the bleachers.
“Only one of you off-worlders managed to complete the MG111 station during basic training.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston began, and Rhidi felt an ethereal hand wrap its fingers around her heart. “So only one of you earned the right to attempt this armor. Private Rhidi!”
Rhidi’s ears stuck up into the air immediately after her name was shouted, blood rushing to them like an opened dam spillway. She looked around, confused, as everyone was staring at her again.
Even Inthur was staring at her, if just in a mild glare.
Drill Sergeant McPhiston kept his gaze locked on Rhidi as she slowly stood, and she stepped her way down to the grass once again, her eyes travelling between the armor and Drill Sergeant McPhiston.
The Drafritti looked as surprised as Rhidi, and they turned towards Drill Sergeant McPhiston with questioning looks.
“Eht’s too heavay’.” A gray male Drafritti said, pointing a thick finger towards Rhidi. “She is nat’ evan’ a male.”
Drill Sergeant McPhiston wagged a finger ever so slightly at the Drafritti. “She earned the right, so she has to try.”
The gray and golden Drafritti shared a look, all of them speaking in their near-silent language, but they bowed their heads and stepped away, tapping away at their wrist computers.
Truth be told… Rhidi did not want to get inside that suit of armor. She knew that everyone’s eyes were on her, and that there was a lot of off-worlder pride settling onto her back. She was the only one who could attempt from their side, and there was more than the pride of the Kafya at stake.
Rhidi reached up and touched her chain of duty, the fist grabbing the broken dagger lying just under her uniform top. She ran her thumb along the hidden surface of it, all while staring down into the armor with a tucked tail.
“Private.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston said, stepping up beside Rhidi as he nodded down at the armor lying prone on the ground. “Get in, and do your best. All you have to do is stand.”
Rhidi nodded, let go of the chain of duty, and slowly climbed into the armor. If the first set of armor had felt as if she were being eaten, this one felt like she was being entombed.
The same panic set back into her heart and lungs, and Rhidi’s stomach felt as if it were on fire. The armor whirred and sank down onto her a lot tighter than the other armor did, and this was to make sure she could not jerk and gain momentum within the dead space of the legs or arms.
She would have to move it all on her own.
Rhidi, her heart beating so hard she could feel it in her smashed down ears, puffed out a few rapid breaths and went to lift her arm.
Her breathing quickened further when the arm did not move at all, just resulting in the straining pull of muscle.
“Shit!” Rhidi hissed out past her bared teeth, anxiety fueled alarm bells ringing in her brain like the sirens of bulkhead decompression warnings.
She jerked her body back and forth, trying to at least pull her arms together to push herself off the ground. Each pull on the arms of the armor felt as if her bones and flesh were made of lead, expending sweat and calories by the yard just to gain inches.
By the time she had her armored hands to the ground near her chest, Rhidi felt as if hours had gone by. The armor was hot, sweat pouring down her face and fur with no wind to whisk away the heat. Her ears were full of boiling, thumping, overstrained veins, harshly smashed against her face and not helping the overall insufferable ambience.
With cheeks puffing and body straining, Rhidi willed herself up off the ground, managing to rip one of her knees under herself with a howl of pain-fueled drive. It took a full body effort, but Rhidi managed to get her other knee under her, allowing her to rest on her knees with her hands on the ground.
The armor visually moved as Rhidi tried desperately to pull fresh air into her lungs, her breathing labored as sweat trickled down her hair and out of the armor’s neck. She had seen some of the Human males get to this point and gas out, and her tank’s needle was already slapping against the stop rod under the “E”.
What air she could pull in was hot, wet, and tasted like her, which was less than wanted.
Rhidi slowly raised her head up to try and open the gaps in the armor for more air flow, and the armor felt like it was digging into her at every point it could. Her entire body was tensed, knowing that if she relaxed her core or back muscles, she would crumple to the ground in a heap.
At the same time, she couldn’t just kneel here forever… and she felt a grave aura of shame at the thought of giving up. It would mean that every, single off-worlder so far was not worthy to wear this stupid armor, not strong enough to bear the right and honor. The thought of failing this task was a sudden and living nightmare to Rhidi, but there was nothing she could do about it if her muscles just gave up the climb on their own.
She was just meat and bone, and there was a limit to what those two ingredients could cook.
“Stand up.”
Rhidi strained her neck muscles to turn the helmet, and once again, as it always seemed, she found herself staring at Drill Sergeant McPhiston.
“It’s h-heavy.” Rhidi gasped, more sweat trickling down onto the grass through the neck of the armored suit.
Drill Sergeant McPhiston nodded, the man squatting down on his toes and tapping his data-slate against his shin. “Yep. It’s heavy. Lots of heavy things in life. Doesn’t mean you get to give up.”
Rhidi turned her head, looking back down at the, at this point, very wet grass as she panted out again. “I’m not giving up. I’m just… I’m a Kafya! Humans failed this task so what hope do I have? I managed to get to my knees but I’m spent, Drill Sergeant!”
Drill Sergeant McPhiston slowly tilted his head at the gap in the neck armor, able to see her yellow neck fur and uniform due to her looking back up at him. He reached out with a hand, slowly pulling her chain of duty from the neck of her uniform top with a light rattle of the golden links. He let go of it and let it hang there in the open, swinging back and forth with Rhidi’s struggling inhales of air.
“You seem strong enough to wear that length of gold chain around your neck.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston said quietly, tapping her once on the helmet with his data-slate. “The weight of that chain is twenty times the weight of that tin can you got wrapped around your body.”
Rhidi let out a ragged laugh, her fingers gripping the grass and digging grooves into the soil. “Figurative, moral weight is not trying to tear my muscles apart.”
“But it can tear the soul apart just as easy.” Drill Sergeant McPhiston murmured, then held the chain in his hand so Rhidi could see it through the dummy-visor. “You can have the most powerful, advanced, deadliest armor imaginable, but it don’t mean a damn thing if the person inside of it can’t bear the duty of wielding it. You came a long, long way here to me, and nothing in this ‘verse happens without a good, god damn reason. Timer is running low, Private Rhidi. I need you to stand up.”
Rhidi grimaced, her sweat-burned eyes squinting as she stared at the golden fist holding the broken dagger. She closed them when Drill Sergeant McPhiston let go of it, feeling it dangle down on her neck.
The chain felt nearly as heavy as the armor as it hung in the air, dangling above the grass and catching the late day sun.
Her ears were pounding with the thrums of her heartbeat, her fur felt sopping wet from all the sweat she had lost during the toil of just getting to her knees, and her muscles ached.
“Stand up, Private Rhidi.”
Rhidi tried to calm herself, pulling in breaths through her dripping nose, slowly counting to herself as she timed her breathing. Drill Sergeant McPhiston’s voice was calm, yet commanding in her ears, looming over and casting a shadow upon her form.
“Stand. Up. Rhidi. You did not journey across the stars just to fail within a couple of feet. Stand up!”
Rhidi opened her eyes, and commanded her legs to move.
Her quads and hamstrings keened in outrage as she slowly moved her legs around, leaning from one side to the other as she brought the boots of the armor to the ground. The armor grackled and hummed as she moved, as if protesting against her gall to try and master it. She had to lean back now, to get into a proper squatting position.
Drill Sergeant McPhiston’s voice trickled into her pounding ears, though there was a curious tone of excitement to it. “Up. Stand up. Stand up, Rhidi.”
Rhidi pushed herself off from the ground, coming into a low squat, and grabbed the knees of the armor to avoid spilling over backwards. She could hear her back and arm muscles straining, the noise akin to someone trying to pull apart a wet t-shirt with their hands. A few of her vertebrae popped with sharp, crispy clicks.
Her leg and ass muscles coiled like springs, the muscles bulging to such a degree that Rhidi felt the fabric strain along her thighs and seat of her uniform pants.
Rhidi teetered back and forth a bit, and she let out a breath as her chain tinked along the chest plate of the armor.
“Up!” Drill Sergeant McPhiston said loudly this time, clapping his hands together. “Up Rhidi! All you have to do is stand!”
Rhidi arched her back just a little and raised her head; This was going to be the most difficult squat of her life, but she knew she would fumble this if she cat-backed.
“Up!” Drill Sergeant McPhiston called out, taking off his campaign hat and swinging it up at Rhidi. “Up, damn it! Stand up! All you gotta do is stand up!”
Slowly, voice by voice, Rhidi began to hear others telling her to stand up. She heard Inthur the loudest, oddly enough, then Shasta, Alias, and more voices she could recognize.
Rhidi, unseen, bared her teeth as she snarled, then began to try and stand. Her legs would have quaked if the armor had allowed it, and she slowly gained inches skyward with halting, shuddering movements. Her tail tremored and shook openly though, and the kind of musculature turmoil her body was in was no secret.
For the first time, in perhaps the entire time Rhidi had known her, Drill Sergeant Almoore’s voice entered her ear with no anger in it.
“Halfway there, Safetybelt.” Drill Sergeant Almoore said eagerly, coming around in front of Rhidi to catch her unseen eyes. “Come on now, you just gotta stand up all the way! Stand up all the way and hold it!”
Sweat poured down Rhidi’s face as she fatigued every muscle in her body, pushing and straining through the weight as her body released a chorus of cracks, creaks, snaps, and crackles. Her ass muscles were screaming at her to stop moving, all while her leg muscles felt as if they were going to fray and snap like rope.
Rhidi was trembling from ear tip to toe when her knees locked, and her eyes snapped open in surprise. She turned her head in shock, looking over to see Drill Sergeant McPhiston smiling at her while tapping on his data slate.
Drill Sergeant Almoore’s voice caught her attention, and she slowly swung the helmet the other way. “Co-witness! She’s standing!”
The two Human armorers were watching Rhidi closely, and she had honestly forgotten they were there; Drill Sergeant Almoore was pointing her campaign hat at Rhidi as the two armorers looked on, their faces hidden by their hoods.
“She’s standing!” Drill Sergeant Almoore hollered, waving her hat in front of their faces. “She passed the MG111 qual and she’s standing! Hell, she’s still standing! You have to co-witness it, you lube lickers!”
The older NCO of the pair let out a laugh, then undocked his data-slate from his belt. “Well. You got me there. Alright, alright, let her fall over.”
“Fall’on dahn’.” The gray male Drafritti said with a wave of his hand, and Rhidi felt the suit lock up on her.
“Hey!” Rhidi shouted out, then she felt the suit start to tip forward. “Hey! Mother fu-!”
Rhidi’s words were muffled as the suit came down onto the ground with a rattling face plant, after which it then unlocked and began shifting around to let Rhidi free. She let out a long groan as her back came free, and several pairs of thick hands grabbed her uniform top.
“Ow’cha cahm’!” The golden female Drafritti laughed out, hauling Rhidi out of the suit and into the open air. “At’cha, Ekritidi, stray’tin her ayr’!”
Ekritidi, one of the gray female Drafritti, used her massive hands to perk up Rhidi’s bent ears, then took a moment to smooth down the Kafya’s completely fucked up yellow hair.
The group of Drafritti engineers did a quick checkover of Rhidi, but had to quickly retreat due to the surge of troopers pulling Rhidi away and hoisting her up into the air.
The Humans were singing some kind of odd… chant, Rhidi having absolutely no idea what “ooga chaka” meant, but let out an exhausted string of laughter as she was slowly bopped up and down on a sea of hands. Inthur gave her a hard swat on the ass, which elicited a quick snarl from Rhidi, but the mood was impossible to spoil.
After all was said and done, and qualifications were taken into the armory data system, all recruits were measured via scans for their suits. Rhidi, on the other hand, was sent to a separate scanner with the rest of the chosen Skógarskera bearers, and were measured for a far more different suit than the rest.
Thumbs were pressed against pads to sign off on the armor, paperwork filed, a few more detailed measurements were taken on the Kafya due to their ears, and the day came to a tidy completion after evening chow.
Rhidi, tired down to the very fibers of her being, laid in bed after showering and did not even bother pulling the blanket over herself. She was damn near asleep before her lids slid over her eyes, and she slept deeper than she ever had before.
She slept well into the night, into the next morning, and under orders from Drill Sergeant McPhiston, no one went to wake her. Firewatch went as far as to slap a note onto Rhidi’s rack, reading “let the sleeping dog lie”.
Rhidi slept for eleven hours, and only woke when her stomach rumbled with hunger.
When she opened her eyes and grumbled awake, Rhidi leaned up with a crackle of her spine and saw Shorsey sitting next to her rack with a bag of cheese burgers.
“Lil’ doggy hungry?” Shorsey asked, then let out a laugh when Rhidi whacked her across the head with her pillow.
