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  After integrating with the females our division trotted in formation to the mess hall. We ate breakfast in ten minutes, then ran 5K around the base in a tight, square formation. We were getting pretty good at that. The first week Bowden had berated us at almost every turn. These days I don't think there were any stragglers among us, and he didn't have to say a word. I guess it helped that we had our running cadence song down pat.

  "Everywhere we go-o."

  "Everywhere we go-o."

  "People wanna know-o."

  "People wanna know-o..."

  When the run was done, it was time for a three or four hour classroom or hands-on session. Classroom sessions covered everything from ethics to MilNet familiarization to starship basics, while the hands-on sessions ran the gamut from firefighting to weapons training to first aid, and also included specialized Physical Training such as navigating the 'confidence' course (an obstacle course where you carried heavy spacebags/sandbags through scuttles and whatnot).

  After that we jogged back to the mess hall for lunch, then off to more classroom and hands-on sessions, then to the mess hall once more for dinner, then to the quarterdeck for group PT, then to our berth, where we washed our clothes and shined our shoes, then taps sounded and we went to bed.

  And so it went.

  RDC Bowden rushed us through each day, keeping up the sense of urgency that was perhaps false, but felt real to me and the other recruits. As astronaut soldiers stationed aboard a ship traveling between star systems, we always had to be on high alert. Space wasn't the safest place in the world. Sure there was the threat from privateers funded by the Sino-Koreans, but a far greater threat came from the starship itself—more vessels were lost due to structural and engine problems than anything else. Running out of fuel was apparently also an issue. A radioactive element known as 'Geronium' provided the main fissile fuel. If you ran out of Geronium when you were a billion kilometers from pickup, you had a very big problem.

  Anyway, Bowden promised that while the training might let up once we graduated into our respective ratings, it would never cease. The life of a soldier was a life of training and constant readiness.

  After the first few weeks we basically got into the rhythm of it all. I was closest with Shaw, Tahoe, Alejandro and Ace of course, but everyone else was like extended family. After lights out, the recruits assigned as RPOs—Religious Petty Officers—led us in prayer, and sometimes we cracked jokes with our bunkmates. Some used their aReals to browse the Net or catch up on reading for a few minutes before going to sleep. A few people were probably watching porn, though Ricky Boxing (masturbating) in your bunk or the head was frowned upon. Most people were too tired to try anyway. A few people claimed they fed us something that prevented erections. I don't know if that was true or not, but all I know is that whenever I thought of Shaw while lying in bed at night, I had no problems in that department.

  Speaking of Shaw, the sexual tension between the two of us was growing by the day.

  One time at lunch when she and I were eating alone—Ace and Alejandro had been delayed doing extra PT on the confidence course while Tahoe was off doing some other duty—things got a little out of hand. Our conversation started out innocently enough...

  "So where'd you grow up?" I asked her.

  "On a cider farm," she said. "In the Normandy district of France. My grandparents owned it. Mom's side. Though I spent a lot of summers visiting relatives in Bangalore, India, where my dad was from. Quite the contrast, going from the calm farms of France to the hustle and bustle of India. Anyway, my family eventually moved to the UC when I was sixteen, and here I am five years later."

  "How about that. Sweet sixteen and a new country to boot. So your brothers came too?"

  "Yup," Shaw said. "My grandparents sold the farm, so my two brothers really had nowhere else to go. They came, and got drafted. One's in the Navy, the other's a Marine. But what about you? You lived south of the border your whole life?"

  "I did. My parents owned the biggest orange plantation in the whole country."

  "Wow. That sounds like fun. And not so different from my own upbringing."

  I sighed. "Yeah. It didn't last too long though. When we lost the plantation, things kind of spiraled out of control and I found myself on the streets. I was six. Let's just say, I wasn't very street smart. If it weren't for Alejandro, I wouldn't be here today."

  Shaw reached out, and touched my hand. "He means a lot to you, doesn't he?"

  I nodded. "He's like a brother to me. More than a brother."

  I noticed that her hand lingered on top of mine. I could almost feel the electricity passing back and forth between us. When she took her hand away, it really felt like something was missing.

  "So you're half Desi, and half French," I said.

  "Oui." Shaw smiled coyly. "Comment ca va?" Her fingers twirled the air beside her neck, right where her long locks used to be. The roots of her short hair were dark, but the tips maintained their dyed blonde color.

  "Tres bien. That's all I know." I didn't break eye contact. I couldn't.

  "Well, you have to start somewhere." Her voice seemed a little husky to me.

  "I do. I don't suppose you know how to cook French food?"

  "Mais oui. I can stir up a mean banana crepe."

  I leaned forward, just slightly. "Crepes aren't even real French food. That's like a dessert."

  "Not so." She smiled that cute-as-pie smile of hers, dimpling her cheeks. "Ever heard of savory crepes?"

  "All right. When Basic is over, you're going to make me a savory crepe."

  Her eyes hadn't left mine the whole time. "Deal."

  "So which half of you is French?"

  "The good half," she said.

  "And which half is Desi?"

  She edged subtly closer. "Guess."

  A tray suddenly plunked down between the two of us.

  We both sat back, stunned and embarrassed.

  It was Ace.

  I'd forgotten about everything else. The mess hall. The other recruits.

  A dangerous thing to do. If that had been RDC Bowden...

  "You guys over your little staring contest?" Ace said.

  Shaw and I couldn't meet his eyes, or each others'.

  I caught a recruit watching us from the far side of the mess hall. Nathan Filberg, aka Dirtbag Nathan. He was one of those lazy dudes who always complained about everything, shirking his duties and doing the least amount of work possible to get by. The kind of guy who you thought wouldn't ever make it through Basic, yet here he was in week six.

  He didn't like me very much. The feeling was mutual.

  He was smirking.

  * * *

  Bowden took me and Shaw aside that night. "Nothing is going on between you two, yes?"

  I shook my head, maybe a little too fast. "No sir!"

  "No sir!" Shaw echoed.

  Bowden's scowl deepened. "If I catch you two copulating, well, I'm sure you know the meaning of the phrase Big Chicken Dinner?"

  I exchanged a glance with Shaw. "Excuse me, sir?"

  "Bad Conduct Discharge," Bowden growled. "You get me?"

  "We get you sir!" I said. "But respectfully, it's impossible for Shaw and I to... well, copulate. There's cameras everywhere, and recruits stand watch every night."

  Bowden studied me through slitted eyes. "Have you ever heard of the Sacred Band of Thebes?"

  "No sir," I said.

  "They were a band of gay lovers, put together by the ancient Spartans. The theory was, you'd fight better, harder, if not only your life was on the line, but the life of your lover. Good theory, right? And even seemed to hold some water, for a little while at least. The Sacred Band became the most elite unite in all of Sparta. For a whole three battles. Then they were annihilated by Philip the Second of Macedon. Do you know why?"

  Again I shook my head.

  "The love bond worked too well," Bowden said. "When one of the two lovers died, the second man went down soon after. When Philip II at
tacked, he had his soldiers concentrate on the older, weaker man in each pair. When they killed that man, his lover, maddened by revenge or fraught with sadness, invariably fell. Thanks to this strategy, the ranks of the Sacred Band fell apart and Philip II's soldiers slaughtered them to the last man." He gave me an appraising look. "This is why we don't allow lovers in the same division. Gay or straight. It's too distracting. How can you concentrate on the battle at hand when all you can think about is the great sex you'll be having with your partner afterward, who just so happens to be crouching beside you, her thigh touching your thigh? How can you focus on your target when your eyes keep drifting toward your lover, out of lust or some need to protect and nurture her? How can you hope to complete the damn mission, let alone retain the will to live, when your partner dies on the battlefield? Do you understand now, recruit? Sex and war don't mix."

  I nodded stiffly. "I understand, sir."

  "Good. Dismissed."

  * * *

  After that, Shaw and I let things cool off between us. I avoided her, and she avoided me. We still sat with the same group in the mess hall, but I was always careful to sit as many places away from her as possible. She was a distraction, one that could ruin my dreams, and I wasn't ready to give up everything for a girl.

  Though she was quite the girl, I had to admit.

  A few days into the seventh week, I awoke to a high-pitched whistle in the middle of the night.

  "General Quarters!" came the voice over the main circuit. "General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations. Up and forward to starboard, down and aft to port. General Quarters, general Quarters. Incoming rockets, starboard side! Incoming rockets!" The klaxon sounded five times and the message repeated.

  My heart was beating fast. It had finally come. Battle Stations. The culmination of Basic training.

  Two Petty Officers rushed into our berth.

  "RPOC!" one of them said. "Integrate your division and get your soldiers into full battle dress! You have five minutes!"

  Ace was our RPOC (Recruit Petty Officer in Charge) tonight. He saluted, then turned to us. "You heard the man! Dress and grab the spacebags!"

  We dressed and mustered with the women in the compartment outside. I grabbed one of the heavily-laden spacebags on the way out. There was one bag for every three recruits. It didn't feel too heavy, but I knew it would feel like an anchor as the evening wore on. I wouldn't have to worry about that, though. Someone would relieve me, right?

  Bowden separated us into two teams, Red and Yellow, and assigned two petty officers to each team as facilitators. Alejandro, Tahoe and I were in Red team. Shaw and Ace ended up in Yellow.

  PO1 (Petty Officer First Class) Rao explained the rules. "Everything you've learned in Basic has been building to this. You've been called to arms and it's time to perform! Though the majority of you will move on to your rating schools, in less than a month some of you may be stationed on starships. So while this is a practice run, I want you to treat it like a real mission. And you'll be graded as if it were. This is serious business.

  "Every tiny mistake you make, that's one strike against you. Three strikes and you're out—you get rolled back to a junior division and have to repeat Battle Stations. If you make any major mistakes, you're rolled back on the spot, regardless of how many previous strikes you have. Stop during any of the runs, or otherwise refuse to train, you're out. Same goes for any gundecking or 'gaming the system' type strategies, which won't be tolerated. You do what's asked of you in the given time allotted, no more, no less. Understood?"

  "Yes sir!"

  He nodded. "Good. Luckily for you, passing is more a matter of avoiding strikes than accumulating any sort of score. Survive the night unscathed, and you're in the Navy."

  Ace gave the order to proceed to the first event and we began the half-mile jog to Building 1312. The snow was just blowing around us. Blizzard conditions.

  "It's times like this that I really hate you," Alejandro said beside me. "Caramba. Why did I ever let you talk me into leaving my sunny country?"

  "Who's speaking?" PO1 Rao shouted.

  Alejandro quickly clammed up.

  Once we reached 1312, Rao explained the first objective. "Sino-Koreans have ambushed your destroyer class starship and taken out your engines. A boarding party is trying to seize your ship. You're unarmed, so your orders are to extract your injured shipmates and move them to a secure area for treatment. The BEARs are offline." BEAR stood for Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot. "So it's up to you to perform the extraction of your shipmates. Provide first aid and bring the injured to the designated area as quickly as you can. You are a team, first and foremost, an individual, second. How you function as a cohesive team in times of danger will mean the difference between life and death. Live by the rules of honor, courage and commitment and you will do well, not just here in training but in life itself." He picked out three of the taller recruits, including Tahoe. "You, you and you, you're going to be the casualties."

  The 'casualties' were led away. The assistant RPOC on our team assigned corpsmen, scouts and defenders, and then divided the remainder of us into four-person parties. I was teamed up with Jason and Tisha, two recruits I knew peripherally. Unfortunately I also had Dirtbag Nathan in my party.

  "Hey Chico," Nathan said to me as we moved toward the stretcher. "Think you're up to being a man?"

  I lifted up my end of the stretcher. "That should be easy enough next to a woman like you."

  Tisha made a face. "Can we just complete the mission without comparing dick size?" she said.

  The four of us were the first go in after the scouts. We heaved the stretcher past the line of defenders, making our way toward a darkened doorway. Before we went inside I saw the party from Yellow team enter an alternate doorway nearby.

  We ended up in a maze of black-painted walls and metallic floors that echoed our every boot step. Strobe lights flashed from all sides, simulating weapons fire. Screams, gunfire, and explosions echoed from various parts of the maze. I glanced up and caught a glimpse of two petty officers patrolling the catwalks above, observing our every movement. That kind of grounded me, and reminded me that all this was a simulation, which made things a little easier psychologically.

  We could barely hear above the simulated screams as the scout from Red team shouted us forward. We crawled through a scuttle, over pipe barriers, and with difficulty carried the stretcher up a ladder. It was hard enough climbing those ladders with an empty stretcher—I could only imagine how difficult it was going to be when we carried an actual casualty back with us.

  We came to a sealed hatch. It wouldn't open.

  "What now?" Nathan said. "How the hell are we going to get through?"

  Two other stretcher parties from Red team piled up behind us.

  "Tim and I will check the other routes," one of the scouts we'd been following said. "Wait here." The two scouts hurried back and went down the leftmost passage we'd passed on the way.

  There was another passage back there, on the right.

  "I'll scope out the rightmost passage. Save us some time." I wanted to show my initiative to the watching petty officers. Plus the fire of competition had been lit inside me, and I dearly wanted to beat Yellow team.

  No one said anything as I turned back.

  I shoved past the other two Red parties, but before I made it three meters, I heard a voice call down from the observation walkway. "Recruit Galaal," the petty officer said. "Strike one for separating from your extraction party."

  Damn it.

  I returned to my party.

  "Well done, you douche," Nathan said.

  The scouts reappeared and led us back to an open hatch. The three Red parties split up in the compartment beyond. My group found the first casualty lying beside some smoking machinery.

  It was Tahoe. I was shocked when I saw his face covered in blood.

  Then he smiled. "Hey Rade. What do you think of my new look?"

  Tisha went through the process of
medically stabilizing him, just like we were supposed to.

  Then we loaded him onto the stretcher. Man, Tahoe was heavy.

  "This way!" a scout said through the dry-ice fog. Tim.

  We followed Tim's voice, and hurried down the scuttle until we came upon the dreaded ladder.

  This was going to be tricky. The ladders were wide enough for one person only. I took charge of the front of the stretcher, while Jason gripped the back.

  I paused right at the top of the ladder. "Nathan, go down the ladder! We'll need your help at the bottom."

  Nathan crossed his arms. "No way Chico. Who made you leader?"

  I glanced at Tisha imploringly. She slid down the ladder before I could say a word.

  I ignored Nathan and started down the ladder, carrying the front handles of the stretcher. I took each rung one at a time, constantly worried that my knees were going to give out, or that I'd miss a step. Tahoe slid precariously against the straps, but the buckles held.

  I felt the solid deck below my feet. Tisha joined my side and grabbed the other handle. Together we lifted the stretcher away from the ladder while Jason climbed down, slowly lowering the opposite side. We could've used another hand holding up the middle of the stretcher from here though, bearing some of the weight. Damn it, Nathan.

  When Jason reached the deck he lost his grip on one handle and the stretcher tilted to the side. Tahoe banged his side on the bulkhead.

  "Gah!" Tahoe said. "Careful, bitches!"

  I saw one of the petty officers watching from the catwalk above, and I cringed, expecting to get another strike.

  But it wasn't me who got the penalty.

  "Recruit Filberg!" the petty officer's voice floated down from above. "Strike for failing to observe proper safety protocols."

  "What?" Nathan slid down the ladder. "This sucks! I didn't do anything!"