Stolen Valor Read online

  And we did it over and over again. When we paused, it was often just so that they could reorganize us, splitting us off with different groups or joining us up with others. Sometimes they ran one or two of us as individuals to join with another group, just to pull us out a few minutes later.

  All the time they were watching us. We couldn't talk. We weren't allowed to sleep. The first sunrise of the next day, I caught as the sun crested the clouds, painting the spire in a mix of gold and orange hues that would have been beautiful... if I hadn't been catching blows on my shoulders and the back of my head for looking up at it.

  We didn't really stop. There were no breaks for sleep. We would pause, occasionally, to do this or that painful exercise, to use the buckets, or to fill our water bladders. Entrants were starting to collapse. One or two here and there. We didn't stop for them. One passed out running down a set of stairs, going into a roll and slamming into the wall at the bottom. The instructors just screamed at the rest of us to run faster.

  The next meal, Jerral wasn't in my group and I managed to get a main course again, though I took a number of blows to my ribs from another angry entrant as I pulled out.

  It was truly every individual for themselves. Any attempt to help someone else met in beatings. Any hesitation, any compassion, was rewarded with blows. The instructors reinforced this with their words, “You are nothing, entrants, you are no one and you come from nothing! You have to earn your names!”

  Sometimes they shouted stuff like that as we ran past. Other times, as we paused for a water break, they would get in my face, screaming at me, yelling, their words a distorted blur as exhaustion dulled my senses.

  It went on. I endured. I don't really know how. Probably because I knew that I was either dead or as good as dead if I didn't continue. Possibly because I was just too stubborn to give up. I am William Alexander Armstrong and I don't know how to quit.

  I lost track of meals. Sometimes I would emerge with more food, sometimes less. It didn't matter, it was never enough. I felt hungry all the time. I felt feral, angry, violent. At one point, another entrant grabbed a packet of food out of my hand and I backhanded her hard enough to knock her unconscious before I grabbed it back. The instructors just laughed.

  Eventually the instructors brought us back to our open bay barracks. There were a lot less of us, I could tell, but I wasn't sure how many that was. I couldn't count, not even my own fingers. I was having trouble seeing with my eyes, focusing on anything. Voices were distorted, even the voice of my sister in my head.

  “Alright, entrants. Congratulations, you're through First Screening. You get ten minutes to clean yourselves properly and then you get to sleep,” I thought I heard those words, anyway. I joined the shuffle to the showers. I forgot my towel. I had a bar of soap in my hand but I wasn't sure if it was mine or where it had come from. I stripped and showered under one of the faucets, not caring that my sweat-stained fatigues were soaked, not caring that the water and soap stung my many lacerations and bruises.

  The water was cold, but it felt so good to clean the sweat and grime off me that I didn't care. My body was mottled with bruises and scrapes. My skin was chafed in places I didn't want to think about, rubbed raw from the rough fabric of the uniforms and my feet were a bleeding mess of blisters from running in the ill-fitting boots without socks. I sluiced off, not caring that there were women in the showers with me, not caring about my privacy or anything other than getting somewhat cleaner. Afterward, I mopped at myself with my fatigues and stumbled back into formation, still naked. Our instructors went down the line, inspecting us, sending some back to the showers to clean off more, along with slaps and punches for wasting time. After the inspection, we were allowed to dress in a clean set of fatigues, this time they allowed us to put on underclothes and socks.

  A drill instructor came down the line, then, escorting a young enlisted woman. I recognized the red and white patch on the shoulder of her black uniform. She was a medical nurse or doctor. She injected each of us, one after the other in the neck. As soon as I got my injection, I felt a wave of dizziness sweep over me and one of the drill instructors basically shoved me into my bunk.

  I was asleep before I realized what was going on.

  ***

  I woke up feeling great. My body didn't hurt at all. I felt like I'd had the best sleep in my life.

  Of course, they had to go and ruin that by screaming right in my ear.

  “Get up entrant, what are you waiting for? An invitation? Move, move, move!”

  I rolled out of bed and followed their orders. Others who didn't move fast enough were being slapped and shoved to move faster. How long was I out? I wondered.

  Sixteen hours, they hit you with a quick heal injection and that plus exhaustion kept you asleep, Shadow told me.

  Quick heal explained why I felt so good. My bruises and scrapes were all healed, even my swollen hand where Jerral had hit it. Still, I'd thought that the stuff was very expensive. Like life extension drugs, it was a complicated mix of different stimulants, stem cells, and medications, only it was designed to promote healing far faster than normal.

  This morning, they ran us through gear issue. I gathered that before we had warranted clothing, at least, but now we had earned the expense of equipping us. Only it wasn't normal body armor and weapons.

  The first thing they issued us were two rifles. I'd already read the available manuals on military gear, but those had been focused more on basic capabilities. “Entrants,” our senior drill instructor rasped, his voice harsh, “this is a Tyvek Ballistics Autorifle Mark II, also known as the TBA-2.” He had enlisted rank, I saw, he wasn't an officer or a entrant. In fact, I caught glimpses of the other drill instructors and I realized that all of them were enlisted. Enlisted in charge of officer training, that's... interesting, I thought to myself.

  Of course, I was sharing my head with someone else. Seems like a good way to make officers hate or distrust their enlisted, Shadow scoffed. In fact, this whole process seems barbaric and wasteful.

  I couldn't argue, but all the same, I wasn't about to dismiss the process. The Drakkus Empire had become a military power and clearly, however much I might loathe my current treatment, they weren't likely to be successful if they did it purely out of cruelty.

  “This rifle is equipped a single drum magazine,” he tapped the magazine as he spoke. “Each magazine contains a smart plastic flux material as a substrate along with depleted uranium and tungsten powders to form the tip and mass of your bullet. A separate chamber contains liquid propellant. Both are form-injected into the firing chamber prior to each shot. The smart plastic reacts to directed electrical impulse, forming the selected munition as directed by your implant and the firearm's software. The maximum rate of fire is seven hundred rounds per minute and each magazine contains enough material to make between two and four hundred rounds. When your magazine is empty, it will blow out and you can reload it with a new one.” The senior drill instructor held up a separate magazine in his other hand.

  “With your TBA-2, you will be able to fire a variety of munitions, ranging from a standard hard-tip armor piercing projectile to armor piercing high explosive rounds to hollow-point expansion rounds for killing unarmored targets. This firearm is the best that the Drakkus Empire can field, it has a street value equivalent to a ground to orbit civilian shuttle. Each of the rounds it fires are worth more than the vasectomies that your fathers should have had.”

  He stared around at all of us. No one made the mistake of laughing at his obvious not-joke.

  “Your instructors will now walk you through how to calibrate your TBA-2. If at any time, they feel you are not paying sufficient attention, you will be disciplined.” He said it in a light voice, but in such a way that we understood that everything until now had been easy compared to what he would level on us if we did not treat this with the utmost respect.

  “First in line, step forward,” he barked. One of the entrants stepped up and the Senior Drill Ins
tructor shoved the rifle into his hands, adjusted his hands on the grips, and shoved him out of the way. “Next!”

  I was somewhat down the line. When I got there, the weight of the rifle surprised me. It was heavy. Far heavier than the M-11 I'd received back at Academy Prep School. This was a heavy, solid weight that threw off my balance. I didn't know how we were expected to carry something like this in normal combat and not while wearing other gear, much less body armor.

  I moved down the line and an instructor immediately pulled me aside and talked me through how to synch up my implant to the weapon, how to calibrate the sight, and a host of other features. The autorifle was more advanced than a skimmer. It seemed to have more features than I really knew what to do with. For all I knew, I could play music and surf the planetary network on the thing, and maybe even order food for delivery.

  I got the basic details down, though, and was very careful to keep my finger away from the trigger and keep the weapon on safe. It had a manual trigger, but it could fire electronically, linked to my implant.

  The process of arming all of us went fairly quickly. Then, the senior drill instructor pulled out another rifle.

  “This is a training version of your TBA-2's. It is a TBA-T, for training. If you are told to bring your TBA-T, do not be stupid and bring your real rifle. It fires a laser pulse that connects with your armor to notify it of a hit. When it fires, it makes a firing noise, similar to the discharge of a real weapon. Do not panic when it goes bang, you are not going to kill your fellow entrants, no matter how much your instructors may wish you would. Your armor, which we will issue you after this, will confirm a hit and angle of hit, and determine if your target has been injured, disabled, or killed.” He gave us a cold smile, “It will then administer a modulated electric shock to simulate the injury or death.”

  Oh, great.

  I heard Shadow laugh in my mind, Ooh, and I thought our training rounds were nasty.

  They issued us all the training weapons, which we slung across our shoulders. Weighted down by both weapons, carrying the real ones at port arms, they lined us up and marched us into the next room.

  When they had said armor, I'd been picturing something like we had on Century. Modular body armor made of synthetics with carbon nanotube and reinforced impact plates. It was fairly lightweight and we could adjust it to our body type, plus hook in all kinds of tech goodies like night vision and sensors on the helmet visor.

  I was not expecting powered armor.

  “This is your Kavacha Mark Five. It is a fifth-generation power armor chassis, with upgrades that no other military force, including the Guard Marine Corps, has yet begun to field. It is faster, stronger, tougher, and more capable than any other set of wide-use powered armor in human space. These armor suits will be custom fit for each of you. You will train in them. You will fight in them. You will eat in them, sleep in them, you will become more comfortable wearing it than you are wearing your skin. You will care for your Kavacha Mark Five and it will care for you. You can interface with your armor's features through your implants, once we have them calibrated.”

  He looked around at all of us. “The armor itself costs more than you want to even contemplate. The matter-antimatter core is rated for eight hours of operation and it costs more than I think any of you are worth. You will use up forty of those cores before you complete, if you complete, your Second Screening. Any misuse of your armor will result in your immediate termination. Misuse involves use of armor for any non-training activities, striking a fellow entrant, striking an instructor, or attempting to leave training areas without permission.”

  He gave us all cold smiles, “Your Kavacha Mark Five is equipped with a shock system designed to simulate hits from weapons fire. That shock system, if it detects you leaving the training area or if triggered by any instructors, will trigger a lethal electrical shock to your body, killing you instantly. All instructors are able to trigger that shock at any time.” His meaning was clear. Don't irritate the instructors. They could literally kill us at any time. “You will now be fitted for your armor.”

  They lined us up again. This time, the process went much, much slower. It wasn't that they didn't have enough armor sets or technicians to adjust them, it was just that the process took a long time. They had us move, five at a time, to racks of armor which they then set to adjusting to our bodies. The armor itself opened from the back and we climbed inside. It wasn't like wearing armor, it was like climbing into a very confining vehicle.

  Calibrating it to my implant went relatively smooth, though I heard Shadow start giggling maniacally as she realized that she could interface not just with my suit, but with any of them. Oh, this is nice. I could walk one of these things around...

  There are safeties, I noted, pulling up the manual. They are designed not to operate without a physical body inside. I assumed that was to prevent just that sort of hacking.

  Yeah, but I bet you I can bypass that...

  Just remember, it's me that gets zapped if you cross the line, I told her. I doubted they'd differentiate between a signal coming from the quicksilver tapped into my implant and me. I really hoped that she didn't get caught and traced back to me.

  Spoilsport, she told me.

  While we were getting calibrated, I reviewed as much data on the armor as I could. It was fascinating stuff. On Century, we couldn't afford something as outrageously expensive as powered armor. Even the legacy suits of it were enormously expensive. The manufacturing equipment capable of building them, not to mention the materials, parts, designs, and even the computer programming that went into making an exosuit work were incredibly complex and therefore, expensive.

  The manual said that I'd have something to the effect of three hundred percent my normal strength. The Kavacha Mark V augmented the ability to jump as well, and apparently it had modular attachments to allow it to fly. It also clipped into something labeled an “descent extra-atmospheric entry pod” which sounded terrifying.

  Shadow helped me to split off my attention to read through my weapon's manuals. That proved to be a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, I finished reading through all of them quickly. On the other, it left me sitting, trapped in my armor as it reconfigured, with not much to do.

  I had to admit, that was a weird feeling. The smart-rubber of the innermost lining aligned to my body, forming to me fairly quickly. The exosuit's armor shifted as well, expanding different joints and then contracting. The manual told me that it was a calibration process which was designed to ensure full mobility while enhancing my protection. To me, it felt oddly like a full-body massage.

  With my helmet on, I could actually look around, the display inside the helmet and sensors mounted on the armor allowing me to look without moving my head. That was a bit of a mixed bag as I found myself looking behind me in a fashion that would have broken my neck if I'd tried it outside the suit.

  I got myself fixed and looked around at my fellow entrants. But that was fairly boring. All I could see were other suits of armor, the entrants inside might as well have been aliens for all I could see of them. None of us were moving and we didn't dare talk. Drill instructors prowled through the room and no one was about to try passing verbal or electronic messages for fear of taking an electrical jolt in punishment if they caught us.

  With my implant and Shadow lurking inside it, I could at least identify other entrants by name, despite them being in suits. Knowing a name, Shadow could pull up a face and often times, a full file. It was kind of scary how much information was available at hand. This was information hung on each entrant's Institute file, so the Drill Instructors all could pull it up just by looking at us or thinking about individual entrants.

  I quickly realized, and Shadow confirmed, that the entrant groups had been shuffled even more than I'd suspected. Most of the faces in this group weren't the ones I'd even fallen asleep with. The only explanation for that was that they'd moved us around while I'd been unconscious. Shadow couldn't confirm that, sin
ce I'd been out and my implant had powered down. She hadn't thought to reconfigure some kind of location-tracking software or positioning hardware into the quicksilver matrix.

  “I don't understand why,” I muttered to her in the confines of my helmet. It had recording software, of course, but she'd overridden that.

  Maybe to keep you all confused? She replied. A way to control entrants, keep them off balance? Maybe to prevent you from building friendships during these screening phases?

  “Maybe,” I answered. “Have you found out anything on them?”

  “Not really,” she admitted. “But many of the entrants who were injured or who gave up, they're no longer in the entrant rosters, not that I can see anyway.”

  I swallowed, “Dead, you think?”

  “Maybe, or flushed out of the system,” she answered.

  “I don't think so,” I told her. “They might give them another chance, but they made it pretty clear that there are only two ways out: finish your commitment or die.”

  “I just can't believe--”

  She didn't finish. My armor completed its calibration and an alarm went off to signal it was ready. A moment later, a drill instructor cracked open the back and had me climb out. I wasn't the first one done, so I was shoved along with another group. From there, they rushed us down a set of corridors and into another room.

  This was almost a classroom and the instructors drove us into neat rows of chairs, where we sat as ordered. The room filled quickly. It wasn't a huge room, just a couple hundred chairs, all facing the far wall. Just as the last entrant filed in, a drill instructor bellowed, “On your feet!”

  We all jumped to our feet, just as a side door opened and a tall, dark-haired man stepped in. He wore a space-black uniform with glittering gold medals and silver pins and buttons. He didn't look particularly old, but he had a weight to his step and lines in his face that suggested he was older than he appeared.