The recruits walked to the void suit stations. The instructors joined them. There was one instructor for every two recruits. The instructors all carried a stopwatch and a wooden stick. Voss didn’t like the look of those sticks.
Voss and the others all pushed the red buttons next to their respective stations. The stations hatches rolled up with a loud bang. Each station had 3 shelves on the right side and two, slightly larger shelves on the left. In between the two halves was the metal handlebar they could attach themselves to, in case of loss of air pressure, that lieutenant Ida had told them about. The stations were organized in a clockwise fashion. Inner suit on the top right, outer suit in the middle right, boots on the bottom right. Then there was the helmet on the bottom left and the gloves and the oxygen tank on the top left.
Putting on a void suit was more difficult than the sergeant had made it look. You had to put the inner suit on in a certain way, or it would unroll itself too far and get in the way of the outer suit. A similar thing was true for the outer suit. If you unrolled it too far, your hands and feet could slip out of a glove or boot and you’d end up looking like a rubber band man. Overstretched pieces of suit flopping about ath the end of your arms or legs. The boots had to be put on first and then clicked in onto the metal rings at the end of the outer suit’s legs. The helmet had to be put on by placing it at a 45 degree angle, feel it drop, turn it to the correct position and then feel it drop again. Then the gloves had to be put on and clicked in. This process was made more difficult by the suit's extremely effective insulation. You started sweating as soon as you put on the suit. Voss could tell the suits were made for the icy cold of the void and not for the hot, humid conditions of the cargo bay they were in.
They were given ten minutes to complete the entire process. There were also time limits for each step of the process. Failure to reach a cut off time was punished by a whack of the stick. Any mistake made during the process also resulted in a whack of the stick. It took less than four minutes before each recruit had earned their first whack. Voss got his first one for overstretching his outer suit and then two more for failing to meet time limits after losing time on refolding his overstretched suit. He found his experience with fire fighting suits helped somewhat, but the benefit that it gave him was offset by the hindrance that the pain in his back gave him.
None of the recruits managed to put their suits on within the allotted ten minutes. Hiyo had been the fastest in just under twelve minutes. Hoog was dead last in just over fifteen minutes. The sergeant rewarded his negative record by personally whacking him right down the middle of his back. After Hoog was done howling in pain, the sergeant gave a short demonstration on how to take the suit off again, store it properly, and mark the station for cleaning. The recruits were given ten minutes to go through the entire process of suiting down. Again every recruit was met with at least one rather painful whack at some point during the process. Again none of the recruits managed to complete the process within the allotted ten minutes.
The process of suiting up and suiting down was repeated over and over. Each time the sergeant would give them a cut off time and each time they’d start the next step of the process as soon as the final recruit was done. This meant that the fastest recruits were rewarded with short breaks, whilst the slowest ones got no rest. After about five cycles, a new rule was introduced. If any of the recruits failed to make the cut off time, all recruits were punished by a whack of the stick.
Each cycle felt more cumbersome than the last. The toxic combination of heat, dehydration, pain and fatigue pushed every recruit to their limits. Somewhere between the fifteenth and the twentieth cycle, Voss’ bandages started to come loose. Fresh wounds chafed back open and left the back of his overall soaking in blood. He knew he had to hold on though. All of them were suffering and the sergeant would show no mercy to the first man who broke. Besides, he could tell some of them were even worse off than him. Hoog, having been the slowest on several occasions, and was dealt the most blows out of all of them. Voss could read the pain on his face and saw a small stream of blood seeping from underneath Hoog’s left arm. Remarkably enough, Hoog showed no signs of giving up. He was biting through the pain and doing everything he could to look strong and ready for another round of suiting up. Hiyo on the other hand looked like he was doing relatively well. He had been the fastest on most runs. This meant that he had had more rest, and fewer whacks than any other recruit. There was no blood visible and Hiyo’s face showed a victorious pride. The other recruits were somewhere between Hoog and Hiyo when it came to how sorry of a state they were in.
Voss had no idea how many runs they went through, but by the end of it, every recruit was able to complete the entire suiting up process within three minutes and the suiting down process within two. No mean feat considering the state they were in. The sergeant had a different opinion on that of course. He spent several minutes cursing them out whilst the recruits scrambled around the big bucket of drinking water that one of lieutenant Ida’s men had brought in. Voss could tell the lieutenant pitied them. In a sense this comforted him, because it showed that their training was probably amongst the toughest out there. There had been several moments during the exercises where Voss had worried the pain and heat may have become too much for him to bear. It had caused him to question himself. Was he too weak to make it? Would his shortcomings prove to be insurmountable? Seeing Ida’s response gave him the reassurance he needed that it wasn’t just him. Their training was intense and very few would have been able to make it through the trials and tribulations that they were being put through. The fact that every recruit was still standing despite this, made him feel proud. It was odd. He barely knew these men, yet he could already feel his trust in them grow. Trust that had been severely damaged after last night's murder.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
The sergeant was still raging on. ‘You’re all slow, you’re all dead. There is no mercy in the void. One minute is already stretching it. If this had been a real life emergency, all you sacks of lard would have choked and frozen to death.’
Voss tried to ignore the sergeant. Life in the Fifth was sometimes obnoxiously predictable. Everyone knew it was impossible to get all the recruits to adhere to the one minute standard after just one training session. Especially not considering the sorry state they were in. The sergeant probably didn’t even mean half of what he was accusing them of. He just scolded them because it was his job. It was a kayfabe that they all participated in. The sergeant was pretending to be mad at them and the recruits were pretending to be impressed by his anger. They’d all get there though. There was no doubt in Voss’ mind about that. All they needed was another couple of hours of training. Preferably on a day when their backs weren’t bleeding from lashes.
After the sergeant had finally finished his tirade, the recruits were led back to their barrack through the maze of narrow corridors, elevators and overhead passes. Lieutenant Ida’s explanation helped make the space port feel less disorienting. Voss and the others now knew that the yellow lines meant that, that side of whatever room or corridor they were in, was furthest away from the void; and by extension that the red lines meant that, that side of the room was closest to the void. There were also green and blue lines that he couldn’t quite place yet. Not until they passed the cylindrical midpoint of the spaceport. They passed a corridor where halfway through, the yellow and red stripes switched sides. The blue and green lines made no such switch and remained on the sides of the corridor they were at before. Voss deducted from this that green meant you were moving clockwise and blue meant you were moving counter clockwise. Or the other way around depending on your perspective. A small piece of knowledge that did nothing to immediately affect their lives, but that did assuage the permanent state of disorientation that they were in. Simply being able to tell that their barrack was near the cylindrical midpoint of the space port and that it was in the green direction from where they were right now, made walking through the endless corridors feel less stressful. At least now they sort of knew where they were going. They now had an indication of where they were, making time the sole disorienting factor. Voss and the others still had no idea what time of day it was, or even what day it was for that matter.
The only food that awaited them in the mess were tasteless, grey slabs of minced food with a lasagnaesque substance to them. Voss didn’t care; none of them did. They were all too hungry to care about what they were eating. Everyone tried to shove as much food down their throats as they possibly could in the ten minutes they were allotted for dinner.
After dinner they were escorted straight back to their barrack. There, the first positive surprise since leaving Fosfat awaited them. Five full tubes of accelerated wound recovery cream. Very expensive stuff that was normally only reserved for citizens. Voss had never seen the cream in real life, but he knew that it sped up the recovery process of open wounds twentyfold. Voss and the others wasted no time cleaning each others’ wounds and applying the cream on each others’ backs. It stung a little when it was applied to your wounds, but the pain was nothing compared to what they had already been through today.
The barrack was eerily quiet. None of the recruits were in a talking mood. A stark contrast to the previous night. Their spirits had been broken. Understandable considering that in the span of less than one day, they had gone through the emotional strain of witnessing a gruesome murder; the pain and humiliation of being lashed in public; the arduous marches through endless, dark, rusty corridors; and the strain of pain, heat and blood laden void suit drills. The recruits had been pushed to the very brink. If it hadn’t been for the strategically placed recovery cream, most of them wouldn’t have lasted another day. 'Glorious life in the Fifth.' Voss thought to himself.
Someone shouted ‘light outs in five minutes’. Voss couldn’t tell who it was. He didn’t care. Nor did he care to wait five more minutes. He fell down, stomach first, on the cold, steel coils of his bed frame. The harshness of the steel coils felt like a fluff mattress to him. So tired were he and the others, that very few were still awake by the time the lights went out mere minutes later. It had been a day to remember and never repeat. Hopefully, the worst was now behind them...