We finally were marched in the incredibly low gravity over to several other lines of shackled ‘recruits’, and boarded the brick-like transport docked to the teardrop.
They separated the two low-gee city dwellers from the rest of us. There were about two hundred of us, in total, and I had no idea how many had died in transit. The brick, or company troop transport, was barely better than the dipper’s cargo container had been. There were benches and straps, but the entire thing was propelled by a simple electronic brain, a generator with another atmospheric containment field, and a hydrogen fission engine.
Of the two hundred men aboard, the vast majority were orcs. There were a dozen charlottes, about forty morans, and then… well… me. The idea that I’d been the only one that had been close enough to the surface for them to catch was not too unusual, since, technically, I was still a child. One of the reasons we fought so hard against the draft was because their age range, eighteen to thirty, while more than mature among the orcs, reasonable for the morans, and only a bit on the young side for charlottes, was considered barely young adult among my sort… Hell, I was technically still in puberty, which started at seventeen for my people.
I was still a good ten years away from my age of majority. That didn’t mean I was a child, but it DID mean that I was expected to get away by my family… and when I had activated my drones, I thought I had.
The Irony was that if the fleet had asked for volunteers from among the fifty to two-hundred-year-olds from my people, they probably would have gotten swamped. But the fleets didn’t understand some of the more unusual modified humans. To them, one hundred years old was far past the age of a soldier’s usefulness, and they didn’t understand that at one hundred years, we were finally coming into our own as warriors and technicians, and would probably be at the top of our game until we were almost three hundred and fifty years old.
The orcs were modified to handle my world’s heavy gravity, but as first gens, it still hit them hard… they usually had heart and age problems starting at about fifty. At thirteen years old, most orcs were ready to start working in earnest and raising their own families.
The charlottes and morans were built to adapt better and had a more reasonable lifespan of two to three hundred years in this gravity, which was unusually short by charlotte standards but strictly normal for a Moran, but my mod had been built to SETTLE any non-poisonous world to make it our own and live comfortably. It was irony and agony that made us the rarest species on the world we had been designed to fill.
I wiggled a little uncomfortably. The gravity was alright, the hydrogen fission engines accelerating us at an uncomfortable three gees, and it only took us three hours, with ten minutes of even more uncomfortable zero gee as the entire brick turned to accelerate to a stop at the nexus.
It was extremely low-tech. No guards on us, as no guards were really needed. If we altered the ship in any way we’d probably kill ourselves. There was limited fuel and no way of getting more, and if we tried to change the ship’s course we had no instruments or ways of figuring out where to go. It was basically a rocket-powered baseball.
Modern ships generally were far more advanced, and I suspected that ‘the brick’ was used sheerly for its cheapness. It was basically a big hollow rectangle of composite metal, and any weapon would instantly turn it into scrap, and us along with it.
The best part? We were still in restraints. No food, a single oubliette in the middle for the two stories of benches to relieve themselves, and a pre-set drive core that we couldn’t monkey with without killing ourselves. It wasn’t a complicated system, no better than a simple drone, but if I took it over, where could I send us? Nowhere, that’s where. I didn’t even dare unlock the restraints, since, if we arrived at our destination comfortably, the fleet might decide to shoot first and ask questions of the bodies.
Was I depressed? Absolutely, but not enough to end myself. I WOULD get out of this and get home somehow, eventually, it might just take some time and attending whatever silly training the fleet thought we would need.
And I wouldn’t cry. Crying was for babies. I had convinced that petty officer I was mature and kept the orc from escalating an insult into a massacre, I could keep acting like an adult until I could finally get home, and see my family again. I stifled a sob.
***
I did a quick check on my status again when I felt the gravity lighten to almost nothing as our acceleration finally stopped and we were caught by the guides on the system node. There were no windows or anything in the brick, obviously, and several of the orcs whined in protest as the lack of gees made their stomachs rebel. Eventually, the doors were opened, again, and the exits were flanked by more baseline humans. The fleet had been smart at this end of the line, because the soldiers were dressed in full space armor, with plasma weaponry, and not one of them identified as less than full bronze to me, which meant immediate suicide should we attack them.
We were lined up again, tallest at the rear and shortest in front, which meant I was right out in front, standing next to the morans, with the charlottes at the rear. At three foot six, I was entering a growth spurt for my age, which was probably why they had assumed I was a young adult instead of a child. We were split into four lines very professionally.
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It wasn’t like we were actually joining the fleet. We were kidnapped to fight the Chaos Lords directly. The fleet was made entirely of those that had come out of the ‘forge’ of fighting directly over tin, and at our average level of only wood, even our innate toughness and heavy-world strength probably wouldn’t help much if things turned violent. All of us were hungry, which made sense after eight hours in a capsule, another three hours in a brick, and then waiting in line.
Another petty officer, who looked a lot like a bigger, older orc yelled loudly, “Okay, you worms. Welcome to penal Battalion one-three-two. I know most of you aren’t impressed from prisons or penal colonies, the majority of you just tried to run away like cowards when the call came.”
We were assembled in what looked like some kind of loading bay, with lots of heavy metal strutwork overhead. Some kind of huge, armored, and wheeled vehicles were off to one side, and over a thousand recruits under the guns of the heavily armored troopers, most of them orcs.
The orcs started growling, and he glared right back at them. It was obvious he could rip them into pieces if they protested, probably all of them by himself. “Shut up, you aren’t part of my clan yet, but if you don’t scrot up too badly someday you can be. Your clan isn’t out here, and unless you want to be exiled you WILL obey every command from someone higher level than you are, human or orc,” he grinned, showing enlarged lower canines. “And if you want to take it up with me personally later, I promise you will get plenty of chances.”
“All of you are gonna get a basic UI when you hit the scanner,” he said, pointing at one of the four glass machines, manned by humans, that our lines led to. “These are pre-marked as belonging to the 132nd penal battalion faction. All interface upgrades are LOCKED to recruits until you increase your level. All of the upgrades you earn are out of your hands and all of your advancement is OUR choice until you improve your levels.”
“There are only three ways out of the 132nd penal battalion. The first way is to do your time and retire, the second is to be re-assigned to another company, and the third way is on your back with a toe tag.” He paused for a moment to let that sink in. “This battalion is made up of attitude problems, conscripts, and Korse draft dodgers. We are bad, we are mean, Our training is the hardest and the most deadly of any other fleet unit, and our recruits and warriors are the absolute best in existence for that reason. We do not do well with authority, and most of you will never leave this battalion, but if you do get reassigned, remember that you came from hell.”
He growled, “And you scrotting orcs, you had better remember, you feel strong now, but you just had an easy start. After tin, your lucky start becomes less and less relevant, and at copper, an unmodified human is probably going to be just as good at killing things and kicking ass as you are. There is NOTHING more humiliating than getting your ass kicked in a bare-knuckled brawl by an unmodified human that’s a rank below you, so keep that in mind before you start swinging your scrot around like it weighs fifty pounds.”
“Morans! You fellers has been officially pardoned. You are still conscripted, but you can fall out right now and head over to the 128th supply battalion or stay if you prefer to fight. The fleet is not stupid, we know most of you never even knew there was a call, and we won’t hold you responsible for it.”
We watched as the short fellows debated for quite a bit, and then, en masse, headed over in the direction he waved.
After the lines tightened up he shrugged and shook his head, “That’s normally what happens, but the morans are even worse about sticking together than we are. Every once in a while they elect to stay, and the 132nd is all the better for it.”
He looked at the charlottes, and said “Elves! Any of you got physical affinity?”
One of the younger-looking charlottes slowly raised his hand.
“Spirit or nature?”
“Sorcery, sir,” he replied.
“Scrot!” he roared. “I was hoping to get a cleric or druid out of you lot, but without physical, you ain’t gonna survive it. You all go to the front of the line, get your scans, and report to Petty Officer Anderson, over there.” He pointed at what looked like a baseline, but the tall, bald human covered with mystical tattoos was as high-leveled as any of the rest.
He finally looked at the group, noticed me half-hidden by the taller orcs, and glared. “What the Sc… are you a goblin?”
I shook my head, “No sir, I am a gremlin.”
“A what?” he asked curiously, “Are you from Korse?”
I nodded, “Yes sir. We look a bit like goblins while we grow, but obviously, goblins cannot survive on Korse without a system package. We get… bigger.”
“I haven’t heard of your kind before. What’s your affinity? Physical?”
I nodded, “Yes sir. There are few of us left. The local orcs know about us, but outside of Pasqual we are just considered one more odd heavyworld genemod.”
“Stop calling me sir. My parents weren’t siblings. You can call me Petty Officer Kratz. What else do you have?”
“Tech, Petty Officer Kratz.”
“So how the hell did WE get you, then? Most of your sort take the coward’s way out.”
I shrugged, “I didn’t get to the Fae Portals before they were closed, Petty Officer Kratz. I have no problems fighting the Chaos Lords, That’s what my kind were made for, but most of us have a big problem with rewarding the fleet that is destroying our world.”
He chuckled a little, “Well, you are here now. Physical and Tech? That’s it?”
I shrugged again and lied, I was not going to tell them I had spiritual and forces. Or else I’d probably be stuck like those poor men who admitted to having spiritual, raising cyborgs for the war. And forces… well… I wasn’t ready to get spaced yet. “That may be why I wasn’t able to escape your slavers,” I answered.
“Bounty hunters, not slavers,” he corrected. Sure, big difference. “You were being conscripted to fight against the destroyers, not enslaved. Now drop and give me a hundred push-ups.”
I sighed and dropped, and started pushing out a hundred in less than half of the gravity I was used to. I guess he thought I was like an orc, that weighed upwards of one thousand pounds on our world. I didn’t want to explain the biology behind it, but here, I weighed under fifty pounds. Push-ups were not a good exercise, and I could probably do a thousand of them without even waking up.
To be fair, even an unmodded human in decent shape that was my size could have done them out without breaking a sweat. But he made his point while I was pushing them out.
“First rule,” the petty officer said, “You don’t talk scrot about the fleet. We are all fleet. You can talk about the Navy, but remember that they are your ticket off a hell world. If you piss them off, you might not get a ride home.”
“Second rule. You are all cowards and convicts. You tried to escape the call. The drivers of those ships that stunned you and dumped you? They are heroes for bringing in criminals, not slavers. I don’t care about what you think, that’s between you and God, but what you say… That I can punish you for, and I will.”