Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska - October 14th, 2054 - Cinder
To say that my basic training started abruptly would be a gross understatement. No sooner had 0400 rolled around then an air horn was set off in my room. The wielder of the foul instrument was a Japanese-American Drill Sergeant whose uniform looked tattooed on with how tightly it clung to his toned form.
“Rise and shine, cupcake!” he shouted as the bed covers went flying and I nearly hit the ceiling with how high I jumped. “We’ve got 8 weeks of training ahead of us and you’re already behind!”
“What do you mean I’m behind?” I gasped as I scrambled to my feet before him.
The Drill Sergeant got in closer to the point that he could have throttled my neck should he wished to. “Understand this, cupcake: I am the one who will be asking questions here. Your responses will come in the form of ‘Yes, Sir’ or ‘No, Sir’ unless I require a further explanation. Is that clear?”
“Yes… Sir. But what am I supposed to call you–”
Now he was uncomfortably close, his voice louder than the air horn. “If I cannot trust you to follow simple instructions then I sure as hell cannot trust you to get behind the wheel of that shiny Air-Core that has no right being yours! Am. I. Clear?”
Gulping, I nodded and replied with just the two words I’d been told to use. I guess he found that funny somehow because he smiled, stepped back, lowered his voice, and said, “You may refer to me as Sergeant Mukai. Now come with me. We have to get your ass through medical and then make up for what I’m sure is going to be one hell of a pathetic PT baseline.”
The manner in which Mukai spun and walked out of the room made it abundantly clear that he was going to keep marching regardless of whether I followed him or not. My guess was that, by the end of the day, it wouldn’t be so much a matter of following as it was keeping up to his standards. I quickly laced my shoes and ran after him before he got too far down the hallway.
When Mukai had said medical I had envisioned some form of physical. And I was half-right. What I was not expecting were what seemed like endless needle pokes as I was given every applicable vaccine under the sun. I desperately wanted to question whether giving them to me all at once was a good idea, but that idea went out the window when I looked at Mukai’s face. He wanted me to ask, just so he could dress me down again.
Somehow I emerged from the iron maiden mostly intact. I was given no chance to breathe before Mukai took me out of the clinic and to the depths of hell. Okay, I may be exaggerating. But can you blame me? Most of my exercise came from working on tractors before this. I hadn’t been to a proper track and field since college. And the one that Mukai dragged me to was to become a place I’d loathe, especially when he began to assess my overall fitness.
Boy, was he not happy with me.
“I’ve seen a snail fleeing salt move faster than that!” Mukai shouted as I doubled over, panting after running a mile and a half around the track. “And my grandmother could do more pushups than your pathetic display earlier! I can see we have even less time than I thought!”
As much as I wanted to complain about being thrown into the deep end and being held to standards meant for willing adults who knew what to expect and train for, my lungs were having none of it. The best I could manage in way of witty repertoire was a grimace and a glare. That suited him just fine. He wasn’t there to be my friend. He was there to hold my ass to the fire until I either burned or ended up properly cooked.
The good news was the morning’s torture only lasted until the sun had crept above the horizon. At that point Mukai led me to a classroom on base where I was given some food to eat while being tested on my mental fitness. I absolutely flunked all the questions about the Air Force’s rules, regulations, and principles, but I scored extremely high in other areas.
“Well would you look at that,” Mukai said as he scanned the printout with my scores on it. “You might not know a damn fucking thing about the service, but you’ve got enough tech know-how to make up for it. Good thing too. I’ve needed a new IT help desk to call since my nephew stopped taking my calls. So congrats, Cupcake, you’re my new on-call technician!”
A thousand and twelve different ways I could fry his devices while making it look like an accident came to me at that moment. Then I realized that this was yet another way of putting pressure on me. A part of an ongoing test to see if or when I would snap or break at him.
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The joke was on Mukai. I was a female Computer Engineering graduate of decent attractiveness. I had dealt with far, far worse from my fellow students during my time at college. If anything, this was just another would-be suitor trying to neg me into liking him. Once I framed the experience like that, things didn’t seem so bad.
***
I was a fool. Mukai might not have been winning the mental war, but he knew damn well how to make me lose the physical one. By the time we left the field and he brought me to my new quarters that were smaller than a New York studio apartment I winced with every movement. A bag of toiletries plus a set of new clothes was set on the end of the prison-sized bed.
“Count yourself lucky, Cupcake! You get a little bit of luxury on account that we’re not really set up for the full BMT experience here at Offutt,” Mukai said as he held the door open for me. “But don’t think you’re getting off easy! You will be awake and ready at 0400 every morning from now on. You will have lights out at 1900. You will keep these quarters spotless and ready to pass muster at any moment. You will not complain to your Air-Core to weasel out of any training. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Sir…” I grumbled. I half-expected him to yell that he couldn’t hear me and that clearly I needed another 10 laps to open up my airways some more. But in that one, shining moment, Mukai showed mercy. Hell, he seemed almost friendly when he spoke next:
“Lotta folks have their eye on you right now thanks to your stunt with fixing and bonding to your Air-Core. And by extension that means they’re gonna ride my ass just as hard. But you’re lucky, kid. I’m the ‘good cop’ in this scenario. You could have ended up with a drill sergeant who was much, much worse.”
“Thanks… I guess…” I said, hoping that his change of cadence and candor signaled I could talk freely once more. When he didn’t yell at me I pressed my luck further. “Am I on a restricted diet of some sort? The last time I told Vedr I was hungry she ordered me a pizza that lasted for two whole days.”
Mukai laughed back, “Yeah the mech boys told me about the pizza party you sent ‘em. If nothing else, you’re gonna leave here with more than a few friendly contacts capable of getting you whatever you need to fix your Air-Core. But to answer your question: Yes. Don’t splurge on junk food or empty calories. You want a balanced diet with plenty of protein and liquids. Otherwise you’re going to feel like you do now at the end of every day.”
“Got it. I assume most things in the cafeteria we passed on the way in aren’t off limits?” I asked.
“More or less. You get one more freebie from me for today.” Mukai looked up and down the hallway, then leaned in and whispered, “Never ever get a donut. You’ll have the runs for days.”
I was unsure whether he was fucking with me or being serious. “Why do they offer them for purchase, then?”
“So young enlisted and trainees like you buy one thinking they’re treating themselves only to learn a valuable lesson about proper eating habits. Or maybe our cooks just can’t make a goddamn donut to save their lives. I never cared to find out which.”
By then my tiny bed was beckoning to me with promises sweeter than any siren could have ever offered. “Right, thanks. If it’s alright with you, Sir, I’d like to pass out now.”
“Permission granted.”
The moment my head made contact with the sheets I was out. I remained that way for a good while before the beeping from my phone woke me up. Through weary eyes I saw that Vedr was trying to check in on me. At 1:45 AM.
“Do you know what time it is?” I mumbled barely above a whisper.
[ No. In all the design iterations that led to my construction, no engineer ever thought to include a time-keeping device or program, ] joked Vedr.
“You laugh but I’ve lived through seeing similar things happen to my classmates during projects in college. Though that’s besides the point. Is it really urgent we talk now when I’m losing precious sleep hours?”
[ Considering we won’t have much time to chat between our respective training programs, yes, ] she replied.
I was intrigued at hearing she was going through something similar to me. “What’ve they got you doing? It’s not like an Air-Core has to pass PT tests.”
[ Air Force Protocol and Weapons Management. Most of the latter is helping me hone in my TLS at range with each sub-arm. I was told I could also request any weapon within reason and they would consider letting me consume its data. ]
“Any weapon, huh?” I said, my mind beginning to consider the possibilities despite being dead tired. “I guess the TLS covers most use cases, but we should probably account for times where it won’t be usable or otherwise isn’t an option. How about one of those machine guns they have on most fighters these days?”
[ You mean the M61A2 Vulcan? That should be trivial to acquire. As would AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles. ]
“Sounds like you’ve already thought of what we need then. It’s not like I have knowledge of some uber weapon that you wouldn’t already know about, much less get access to.”
[ True. However I find it important to let you select an appropriate loadout rather than make the call entirely on my own. We are a team, after all. ]
She wasn’t wrong. I said as much, adding, “...maybe that’s why they let us keep our phone connection like this. Somehow I doubt they’d let anyone going through Basic have phone access.”
Vedr was quiet for an extra second or two, which I was learning meant she was hesitating. [ I may have made it clear on our arrival that if they took your phone away that I would do something drastic. ]
“Do I really want to know?”
[ Probably not. ]