The captain made a slow round past the guards and recruits to inspect them. A sergeant, also in black uniform, followed right behind him. It was odd. There really wasn’t anything about the captain that made him stand out. He was of average height for a citizen. Average build too. He didn't look particularly handsome, nor was he ugly. His face lacked any defining features. If you stuck him into a crowd, the only thing you’d notice about him would be his immaculate, shiny uniform. And yet, Voss could tell the guards and even the sergeant were on edge with the captain around.
The captain spoke. ‘Status report, sergeant Reiniger’. His voice was powerful. A deep baritone voice that radiated confidence and competence. The captain hadn’t turned to the sergeant when he had asked. He kept up his leisurely paced walk past the recruits. He didn’t stop in front of any of them. He didn’t need to. The few seconds he had in passing were enough for him to thoroughly analyze each recruit. He was getting closer to Voss, who was standing at the back of the line. Only three recruits now stood between Voss and the captain.
‘Thirty one recruits aboard the Minoutar, captain. We filtered it down to seventeen.’
‘That’s problematic, sergeant; because I only count sixteen bunk beds in here. I want you to do something about that.’
‘Yes captain, we already signaled training bay to ready the course.’
The captain finally arrived to where Voss was standing. His eyes were rapidly scanning each part of Voss’ face and body with calculated intensity. Voss tried to avoid eye contact. These bozos never liked it when you looked at them. Gave them the idea you were challenging their authority or something. It was to no avail though. The captain stared at his eyes and as if they contained a hypnotic force that rendered Voss powerless, made him feel compelled to stare back at the captain.
Voss understood why the guards and even the sergeant were afraid of this man. The captain’s eyes were deep blue with a purplish hue around the edges of his irises. He used them to peer at you with such an intensity that it felt as if he was piercing your soul. Time itself seemed to slow down when he looked at you. Seconds felt like hours. It was as if within those few seconds, the captain could read you like a book. Eliciting all your secrets from you. The weirdest part was it didn’t feel like the captain stole information from you. It felt like he seduced you into giving up whatever he wanted to know from you willingly. The captain’s eyes enticed you to do his bidding. Voss would later learn that many called the captain “Tiger Eyes” behind his back.
The captain let out a miniscule smirk at Voss. Barely visible even to him and something that has surely gone unnoticed to anyone else in the room. The captain turned around and walked back to the sergeant at a brisk pace. Leaving Voss to wonder what that smirk had meant.
‘Take it from here, sergeant.’
‘Yes captain, we’ll weed them down some further for you.’ The sergeant turned around to the recruits. Alright you heard the captain. Get a move on you cretins. Time to feel some pain!’
The recruits, all of them still filthy from the flight to the space port, were huddled through another set of narrow passageways. Pipes and vents were hissing overhead as they were marched over more steel grated floors. Beneath them were more pipes. The space station felt like it had been left unfinished. Every machine, pipe and duct was left bare. In an odd sense, it felt familiar though. The space port resembled the slums they had grown up in. A disorienting, seemingly unstructured whole that felt more like it had grown organically than a carefully planned out station. Rust was everywhere and the cold, humid conditions reminded Voss of winter days back home. A slow war of attrition was being fought out everywhere they passed. Rust, oil and grime were slowly advancing everywhere, trying to become master of the space port. At some point in one of the many nameless hallways they passed through, they came across two mechanics that were replacing some of the old pipes. Warriors who stoically tried to stave off the inevitable deterioration of the space port.
Finally they arrived at a big steel door. The sergeant placed his card key against a sensor. The door came to life. It slid open with a tantalizingly slow pace, shrieking loudly as it did. It was as if the door complained about still having to work at such an old age. A complaint many parts of the space port seemed to have.
Behind the door was a reception and class room in one. No space was wasted on this rust bucket. Every room was used optimally. The recruits were pointed towards the classroom half of the room. Once all of them were seated, a beamer started playing health and safety instructions. Voss didn’t pay attention. He’d seen those types of videos a hundred times already. Part and parcel of every big assignment he ever did. They all started with a similar instruction video. Nobody was ever able to tell him why exactly. The best explanation he ever got was that some dusty department of some irrelevant ministry high up in government tower had once passed a law requiring regular health and safety training to prevent workplace accidents.
After the video, they were sent into a hallway that was so narrow that only one man could pass it at a time. At the end of the hallway was a closed door with a light and a timer next to it. The men were placed in line waiting for the door to open. The door behind them closed and they were trapped in that hallway, awaiting whatever was to come.
The sergeant’s voice sounded over the intercom: ‘Alright, now we’ll see which one of you weaklings has got what it takes. I’m going to set the timer to thirty seconds. When it reaches zero, the light goes on and the door will open. When it does, the first one in line goes through. Behind that door is an obstacle course. Each one of you has three hours to complete it. If you fail, you’re in deep shit. It is forbidden to work together in any way. Even communicating can lead to disqualification. You can pass the recruit in front of you, but you have to do so without helping or hindering them.’. The light began to flash. The door opened. The first man in line, Hiyo, ran through the door. The door closed again and the thirty second countdown began. This process repeated a few times until Voss found himself in the front of the line, staring at the countdown timer. It hit zero and he was off. He didn’t know what to expect but it probably wouldn’t be pleasant.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
He ran through a short, dark corridor and reached an engine room that looked like one of the engines had exploded. There was debris everywhere. Sprung pipes burst out steam. Red emergency floor lights lit up an otherwise dark room. In front of him he could see Wago try to climb over a pile of debris. He wasted no time and followed suit.
Voss spent the next who knows how long, jumping and crawling through the dimly lit, claustrophobic, obstacle course. It had been divided in several sections. Each one mimicking scenarios one might find themselves in aboard a space station or ship. Narrow passageways with low, pipe covered ceilings and walls; rusty air ducts, barely big enough to fit someone through. Control and engine rooms filled with debris hidden dangers. Other rooms had critically low levels of oxygen, making it difficult to breathe. The course had been designed to throw every conceivable horror scenario at them. Still, when the final recruit crossed the finish line, it turned out the sergeant had been wrong. At the end of the day (or night, hard to tell such things apart when one is locked inside a metal box with no windows), there were still seventeen of them left standing.
'I'll be damned, you monkeys are more resilient than I'd give you. Now back to the barracks with you filthy lot. It smells like dead rat in here.'
The captain was awaiting them when they returned to the barrack. He looked unimpressed. ‘Either my eyes are playing tricks on me, or my drill instructors have become soft. I still see seventeen recruits where I was promised fewer. Sergeant, are my eyes playing tricks on me?’
‘No, captain.’
‘Am I going to have to replace you with someone who’s actually competent at weeding out the weak then?’
‘No captain. It seems, against all odds, that these filthy swamp cretins actually have some potential.’
‘Well would you look at that. It's a space miracle. I have more important and less smelly affairs to attend to. Take it from here, sergeant. I expect a full report within an hour.’
‘Yes, captain.’
The captain walked out. Voss was impressed at how clean the captain's uniform was. Even his black, leather boots were spotless when everything else in this space station was so oily and grimy.
The sergeant turned around. ‘Which one of you cretins doesn’t have a bed?’
‘Me, sergeant.’
The sergeant walked over to the short, balding recruit with the oversized nose. Stopping mere centimeters away from his face. ‘What is your name, recruit?’.
‘It’s Hoog, sergeant.’
‘Hoog? What kind of inbred name is that? Hoog sounds like something a dog would spit out on the floor after he finished eating another dog’s shit.’
‘It’s my name, sergeant. My parents gave it to me.’
The sergeant eyes shot fire over this perceived smartassery. He raised his raspy voice and yelled with consumption at Hoog. ‘Well your parents must be even more retarded than you are then. Give me their home address and I’ll write them a nice letter telling them to flush their next big turd down the toilet instead of raising it as their son.’
Hoog tried to retract his face away from the sergeant. The sergeant’s tirade and the spit flying into his face made him visibly uncomfortable. The sergeant gave him no quarter though. He grabbed Hoog by the shirt and pulled him back into him. ‘You filthy spit bucket. I’d die of embarrassment too if you were my son, Hoog.’. The sergeant turned his face to the rest of the recruits, Hoog’s shirt still firmly clasped inside his hand, and he spat on the floor. ‘Let Hoog’s predicament be an example for all you filthy low lives. There is no mercy in space. You’re the last one in the barrack? You sleep on the floor. You’re one second too late for chow? You don’t eat. You injure yourself during training or on assignment? You finish what you’re told to do or die trying. Do I make myself clear?’
An universal ‘Yes sergeant.’ echoed through the room.
‘Good, because if I ever have to repeat myself, you’ll find yourself in such deep shit that you’d wish your parents had aborted you when they had the chance. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Yes sergeant!’
The sergeant pushed Hoog away from him with the hand that had been holding his shirt, causing Hoog to fall backwards onto the floor. He took a slow look through the barrack, letting his eyes linger on each single recruit. ‘Lights out in twenty minutes. Make sure you clean your filthy overalls and have a shower before then.’
With that final announcement, the sergeant walked out of the barrack with the guardsmen in tow. The recruits were alone together again. A silence ensued. This was the first time they had room to move freely without armed guards present to tell them what to do. Voss’s senses heightened. Would any of the recruits do something foolish? Would gangs form and vie for power? Perhaps one of the bigger recruits would try to take over and force the others to do his bidding. Making the right alliances was crucial in moments like these. He couldn’t be seen picking the wrong side here.
Wago, a towering figure with a roaring voice, the same Wago that had gotten him into trouble back in sergeant Radklif’s class, broke the silence. ‘You heard the sergeant, lads. Hurry up into the showers. Now which one of you dog spit cretins is going to wash my cock for me?’
Jabs, the smallest and scrawniest of the lot, was quick to retort. ‘I would, but I don't have a microscope.’
The others held their breath, tensely awaiting how Wago would respond to such a open display of defiance to him. Wago turned around to face Jabs and walked over to him with his eyes pinched. He stopped right in front of Jabs and seemed ready to smack the living daylights out of him.
Jabs looked back defiantly. Whatever it was that was about to happen to him, he was ready to take it like a man.
Wago burst out in laughter. His laugh was so loud, the entire room seemed to shake with it. ‘Good to see that at least one of you ladies had got a set of balls on him.’. The ice was broken. Conversations soon erupted all around the room. A friendship was born. Wago and Jabs became inseparable after that moment.
For the first time in months, despite the fatigue and the filth, Voss felt human again. Judging by the relaxed faces around him, he was certain he wasn’t the only one. The men had withstood the trials of isolation, mental pressure, filth and pain. Now they were allowed to be human again for twenty minutes. Voss didn’t even know he had missed humanity so much until now. The shower, even though it was only lukewarm, felt like a well deserved luxury. Perhaps life in the Fifth wouldn't be so bad after all. It was only a matter of making it through the next few weeks until he'd graduate and go explore the universe as part of the lieutenant's crew. The slums had never felt so far away before. Like they were no more than a distant memory. Perhaps he could leave that life behind and start anew after all...