The rest of the day headed as expected, with a more laid back tone to it. We first reach Corporal Raven's assessment session on the track. The scar below her right eye was a lot more impressive up close, but what struck me the most was the way she handled herself. Opposite to what you'd expect from a military personnel from her level, she felt a lot more like a child. Her features reminded me she was not, but her attitude could be compared to the little I saw of Vicky. Whenever someone tripped over a hurdle you could hear her holding in her chuckles, when someone got a bad result you could also feel the hints of sarcasm in her remarks. Overall though this alleviated the tension from the obstacle course, and everyone let the tension go a bit, Including myself and Mayla. The latter performed a lot better in the exercises than she did in the obstacle course.
The exercises in question were a 100m sprint, a 60 meter hurdle run, which was a way of saying running while jumping over equal height obstacles, long and high jumps and what the corporal called shotput which was effectively throwing a weighted round ball as far as possible. The privates behind her noting down every score. We were also allowed long breaks between the exercises so that was a nice touch. Honestly I didn't consider myself much of a speedster, I was better at using the environment, but when that was removed I wasn't a lot quicker than your average recruit. In fact, I was bang on the average from my estimates of what I saw, on almost every exercise except for the jumps, where I set the 3rd longest jump of the assessment group, and fifth highest height overall including the group previous to us.
Frankly, I was worried that the other two assessment blocks would've been as stressful as the obstacle course, but at least with this one, I was glad to find out this wasn't the case. After a good two hours we finished with the track, and looked at the obstacle course which, like for our turn, was the last to finish. This group looked a bit more impressive, 10 people making the final round and the winning time ended up being faster.
"Guess you got lucky with our group, would've made a lot less of an impression with those monsters"
Mayla made that comment while approaching me from behind, and I nodded in agreement.
"Lucky indeed, well, here in the track you were the real star. Best female result in all categories, and in the top 5 when mixing the genders of our assessment group. I'd say that's more impressive"
“Had to make up for my earlier disaster.”
While her tone was a bit dry when saying that, her face betrayed a hint of happiness. She was clearly pleased with what she had accomplished, and rightfully so. It was now our turn to attend the gym section with Corporal Ali. Yet again, his character was pretty different. He was quiet for the most part, never shouting anything and simply dividing us in further groups assigning us to the different privates helping him out. Occasionally he'd pass by a group doing an exercise and correct them or give them recommendations on it. This was much appreciated since few of us actually ever had access to the gym, and at least for myself, almost everything here was foreign to me. While I still performed fine on some machines, overall it took me a long time to feel comfortable with the proper positions for specific weight related workouts. I particularly had problems with the deadlifts, my back killing me by the end of it. I had stopped early on that one because the Corporal had approached me, given me a few recommendations for better posture, and then asked me to stop, citing that he didn't want me to hurt my back this early on.
I had also gotten to know a bit better the people in my further restricted group. One of them was Mayla, whom I already knew and had teamed up with. The groups in fact weren't fully casual, the Corporal had assigned them based on who was standing next to each other, so we had positioned ourselves to make sure we'd be in the same group. The other two were Leo, the first kid to go in the second round of the obstacle course, and Nora, a girl who's eyes felt a bit more stretched then the average person present here, she also had black hair and black eyes. Traits common of planets who were colonised by the more oriental inhabitants of Terra according to Riccardo's stories. She was a lot more reserved at first, not really talking much with us, but due to Leo's positive and outwardly nature she had opened up a bit. At present we were at the bench press exercise, trying to see what our maximums were for the private present to note down. However our topic of conversation had shifted back to the obstacle course.
“Your upper body strength will quickly improve here in the camp, it will likely be needed down the line so I'm sure we will have a lot of workouts around it. I imagine that's also why the obstacle course focused on it…”
Leo was at present consoling Nora for not making it past the spider walk in the obstacle course. She was from a rural family in the only agricultural planet in the frontier region of the human controlled land. It resided in the Augusta system, the middle child of the 3 system pack that formed humanities’ frontier. It was the main source of food for many of the colonies in the area as few were actually able to produce food. Most of our supply packs came from there as well. However, except for the leading partisans of the planet, the average worker was either a criminal or a descendent of one, and had almost no way out except for joining said military. Quite a few of the people here originated from this planet.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“The most I've done has been riding the machines that we use to collect the harvest in my families’ assigned region, I wasn’t allowed to do much more so I never really had to carry heavy weights.”
Nora had a soft voice, but a hint of fear always hid behind her takes on her situation. I initially thought she simply regretted her choice, but I realized that wasn't the case, instead whatever awaited at home felt scarier than staying here for some reason.
“They won't send you home this easily, just show you're willing to work and they’ll find a use for you.”
Mayla had joined the attempts to reassure Nora
“What Mayla said is correct, I'd still make sure to try hard and improve to show them your worth, since we don't know how bad it can get with the role they assign us, but just giving your all will be better than some of the slackers here.”
That was actually an interesting point that Leo brought up, after the tension died down past the obstacle course section, some people had effectively reverted to giving the least effort possible to what was left, judging that the reduced tension implied some sort of reduced importance to all of this. They'd likely pay for their mistake in the future.
“Okay… if you say so, I will try here as well, add some weight to the bar”
Seemingly convinced by what Leo and Mayla said, Nora asked for more weight to the bar, she had so far struggled with just the weight of the bar herself when trying to push it up from a lied down position, but now Leo took 2.5 kg cylinders and added them to the bar, Nora breathed heavily, closed her eyes and grabbed the bar. She held it overherslef her whole body already shaking. Leo, who was close to her to spot her, had already extended his arms to place them just below the bar in case she dropped it. After staying a few seconds with the bar above her, she started slowly descending it steadily reaching her torso. So far so good, but now comes the hardest part. For the attempt to count she had to fully extend the bar back up without any intervention from the spotter, in this case Leo. She slowly started raising the bar, but was clearly struggling to push through, shaking more and more. Leo tried to encourage her telling her ‘you got this’, ‘lightwork’ and ‘you're almost there’. I found it a bit cringey, but for Nora it clearly worked, she sharpened her glaze and pushed further and eventually was able to get the bar back up and placed it in its starting point. Breathing a sigh of relief she thanked Leo, but her words were cut off by a surprisingly deep voice coming from behind me.
“Good job, I liked the look in your eyes there.”
I had barely time to look at who said that before he started leaving, but we had all noticed who it was.
“Corporal Ali is my favourite of all military personnel we've met so far, can't imagine Raven or Leya or any of the rats before them complimenting someone directly like this.”
Leo as always was the first to speak up, Nora nodded in agreement to his statement. I felt similarly, but was still unsure. That sort of character was sometimes troubled back in the outskirts, and Mayla seemed similarly unconvinced, opting to voice her uncertainty even if for a different reason than myself.
“He’s still a step above us, well actually quite a few in the hierarchy. His attitude right now might not hold in the long run. I wouldn't drop my guard from a few kind words.”
“Ever the pessimist Mayla, do me a favour and help me load up the bar.”
Leo was next, and wanted to go for quite a bit more weight. He indicated the 20 kg weights hanging by a pole close to the station. I had only been able to get a maximum of 15 kg per side when attempting, and Mayla had gone up to 18 so it looked like he wanted to at least top us. In the end, with the help of Mayla he set up 30 kg per side adding up to a total of 80 kg considering the original 20kg weight of the bar itself. We decided on Mayla spotting him as the second strongest in the bench press out of the three of us and she placed herself right above him. After a deep breath, Leo grabbed the bar with the help of Mayla and moved it above him. He slowly started the descent of the bar, clearly struggling from the weight, yet he didn't let go, instead he calmly lowered the bar until it reached his torso. Now for the hard part, he started pushing up the bar aiming to extend his arms, but as he was about to reach the halfway point a scream rang out.
Both Mayla and Nora turned their heads towards the noise, what the former failed to notice though was that below her Leo had slipped at the scream and had lost strength, the bar now pressing on his neck. I rushed to help him out, noticing Mayla’s distracted look, helping him push the bar away from him.
“What the fuck happened Mayla, he could've almost died”
I screamed at Mayla, who hadn't noticed any of the events that unfolded, but she didn't even flinch at my comment, regardless of how close I was to her face. Instead, she simply raised her hand, pointing towards the obstacle course. My eyes followed her hand, and then I completely understood the reason for the silence that had fallen in the outdoor facility. There, a body lay completely still on the floor of the obstacle course.