The deal was straightforward; every inhabitant from the outskirts knew it: Complete 10 years of service in the military, retire, and enjoy life as a retired military personnel on an inner planet. The pension was good, and the cost seemed minimal. After all, we lived with bombardments every day. How bad can the actual war be?
Well for one the loud trumpet sound that was ringing in the room was out on a mission to prove me wrong. Not even the sounds of the bombs falling was as loud, and I feel like I wouldn't be able to hide from this one. I opened my tired eyes and looked around, everyone seemed as confused as myself so that meant it hadn't happened the other nights. As we all confusedly looked at each other we heard the noise of a door opening. I concentrated on the figure that walked past it, a short bulky man walked through, he wore a buzzcut similar to that of Major Opal, except his hair was blond. Eyes completely black, contrasting that hair looked at the kids in the room.
“Vermin, I am Sergeant Steve…”
‘What a boring name’ was my first thought…
“What a boring name”
Said Vicky right above me, her voice low, but her disgruntled tone made me chuckle. Deciding that what he might say is important, I refocused on Sergeant Boring's speech.
“I'll be the one responsible for your training division, there are multiple groups like you on this planet right now, but you won't interact with them for most of our 6 months here. You won't be kicked out, but if you stop listening to us, your life will be hell. Your results here will decide your post, we will find something adapted to your abilities, or lack off.”
Boring had the first genuine expression he had shown since entering the room, and it was a smile. Something about that smile threw me a bit off. Regardless, the rest of the explanation was quite simple. We'd have an adaptive schedule with mostly physical training, but also some schoolwork. We're separated based on background so if we're here it is because our background is similar. I assume that means that my pears came from areas equivalent to the outskirts back home. The rules were simple, no killing or incapacitating fellow pears, leaving room for quite a bit of interpretation, any person working for the military, even the janitor was superior to us in position and was allowed to hand us orders, which we should respect unless a superior to the person giving us the orders said otherwise. Major Opal was the top brass on the planet at this moment, and Sergeant something was number 2 for us. He was equal in rank to other sergeants, but for our group, he’s our ‘god’, or at least that’s what he said. Finally, he ushered us outside, today was gonna be an evaluation day, to get a general idea of where everyone starts from.
We moved outside and entered a large open space. I had heard a few in the group get surprised at the lack of a dome above our area. I hadn't connected the dots, but it was true that not all planets held an atmosphere ready to be adapted to humanity's needs. While not the case for most, since a large majority of human-held planets now operated without a dome, and the need for an artificial atmosphere, others were still too brutal for humanity to be able to adapt it properly. Now there were also very few worlds that didn't need readaption, Octavia being one of them, but those were rare, and probably explained why such a planet was so sought after, since it had the necessities to sustain naturally and not artificially human life, and to some that seemed to matter. Having had a nerd like Roberto at my disposal all these years was useful, I do wish he was here, maybe he would've convinced me to go with him.
Leaving that train of thought before it drifted too far into depths I wished not to explore yet, I returned my concentration to my surroundings. We were now in an open field, well calling it a field was a stretch, it had a large red rocky composition at its core, but it was overposed with man-made pavement and machinery. There was a large oval track with 9 lanes in the middle of the area; inside, an area of artificial grass was present. Outside said track, there was an area to the right there was an area with weights, bars, and many elements one could find in one of the abandoned gyms of the outskirts. Finally what looked like an obstacle course was set up to the left-hand side of this track. It was set up on the direct surface of the planet, so it looked painful due to the inherent hard surface that these red rocks represented. As my eyes continued moving around, the group finally stopped. I heard the short, bulky man clear his voice.
“As said earlier, today we’ll be assessing you, well more precisely your physical prowess. You’ll be divided into 3 groups and will rotate between the obstacle course, the track, and the gym area. Today’s exercises are all individual. Each block is supervised by one of the three corporals standing behind me…”
Looking past his figure, 3 persons were lined up. 2 women, one short, but muscular, her dark skin contrasting the other figures around her. Long brown hair reached her shoulders. Next to her was a slightly taller girl with short black hair, black eyes, and even black lips, though she had probably painted them as such. Lipstick wasn’t everywhere in the outskirts, but I knew what it was. Finally, the only male of the trio, was a figure the same height as the previous one, except he had a different expression on his face. While everyone else was stern and serious, he looked relaxed, his green eyes showing a peaceful expression. He had olive-toned skin and brown hair to match, he seemed interesting to say the least. Tuning back into Steve’s words, I learned their names. In order they were Corporals Leya, Raven, and Ali. Respectively they’d cover the obstacle course, the track, and the gym.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“The group division will be casual and simply to allow us to evaluate you better. In addition to the Corporals, some more privates will be joining them, noting down individual results. You are to listen just to the former and ignore the latter.”
Following that, a list of names was called up, each to form the groups. The process was relatively long, but we ended up finding ourselves in two groups of 33 and one of 34. Vicky, nor Ralf were in mine, but the red-haired girl from my planet was. She was also the only one from my batch present in this group. As we moved to the obstacle course, our first assignment of the day, she approached me.
“Everyone seems to have formed small groups with others from their planets. We seem to be a minority, even including the others. Let’s get to know each other, my anime’s Mayla, what is yours?”
“Pesté “
My reply came half-heartedly. While I was finally able to put a name to the face, sharing my name wasn’t something I enjoyed doing. However, she didn’t show any shift in reaction to hearing my name. I usually got sympathetic looks, but she seemed like she had heard just about any other name.
“A man of a few words I see, if my memory serves me right I’ve seen you close to where I lived back home, but I’ve never actually seen you enter the maze-like complex, you’d usually drop off a kid. He seemed younger than 16 so I assumed he didn’t join.”
Hearing where this conversation was going, I cut this branch off short.
“He’s dead. He was the one that wanted to join, not me, but now that he’s gone, I thought I may as well see what the fuss he made was all about.”
She still kept her same neutral expression, no sympathy in her eyesight, which was a relief more than anything. But I should’ve expected it, all of us had probably lost someone. She picked back up, sensing the sensitive topic and shifting to talking about the obstacle course we were approaching.
It was relatively simple in how it was formed. A straight line of challenges, each testing different parts of the body. Starting off with steps separated at equal distances, placed in slight inclinations alternating right to left. This was followed up by monkey bars, who seemed way higher up than necessary, considering the hard surface. Other obstacles included a steeper and steeper wooden ramp, we’d probably need to run up and climb, a climbing wall with inserts to put your hands and feet in and a long rope reaching into an ending platform. After having properly observed the whole course, I turned to Mayla and asked.
“Do you think you can complete it?”
“I doubt, I or most of us can. I think I can give a few exercises a good shot though. Some look like even going through one will be hard for them.”
She responded as she shook her head. I also wasn’t confident in going through the whole course, but I’ll hope to at least get the first ones done. When we finally reached, Corporal Leya stopped us and started the explanation.
“Today’s gonna be very simple. Each of you will give the course 2 tries, the first time, you’ll be allowed to skip an exercise if you fail it and start the next one until you either finish or fail the last obstacle. Once everyone has gone through once, you’ll each be allowed to attempt it a second time. As a small incentive, the one to get the furthest, or to complete the whole course in the least amount of time, will get a reward for dinner tonight. I will call you up in alphabetical order and you’ll move to the start and go. Wasting time will not be tolerated.”
With this the introductions seemed complete. The first kid to be called up, was, like most of us, 16. He lacked any notable trait that would indicate a well-trained body, and while looked like he wasn’t completely underfed, he definitely had the build of someone that didn’t have easy access to food all his life. Seeing him go through the different obstacles was painful, he failed almost all of them, falling on the hard rocky flour every time. Bruises piled on his skin. The one silver lining was when he easily made it through a slack line placed in the middle part of the course, he did seem to have good balance. Finally reaching the rope, he gave himself one decent pull, before falling back. He didn’t complain through the whole exercise, but did look pretty sad once he had rejoined the group. The next few people fared a bit better, each completing at least two or three of the 10 obstacles, but nothing special.
Finally, a slightly more muscular guy, who looked also a bit older than the rest of us, not 21 like Ralf, but definitely in his late teens, gave the course a run for his money. The steps, the monkey bars, the slackline, the wooden ramp and the climbing wall were all completed with ease. It wasn’t all shining rainbow as he faltered at 2 of the last exercises, one where you held onto a bar and had to push it up to higher and higher inserts, the instructors called it the salmon ladder, and another equally upper body demanding exercise, where you had to hold on onto cylinders. He had looked like at some point he was gonna make it, but he slipped off at the very end and had a hard fall on the concrete. He walked to the rope, stretching his arm, but he had likely hurt himself from that last exercise. The rope posed no real obstacle, and he became the person to complete the most obstacles till now on his first attempt, and an early contender for the promised reward. Having finished, Mayla was now getting called up, I wished her luck, and she walked up towards the course.