The instructors ordered the girls into evenly spaced lines, telling them to stand up straight, with their arms at their sides, and to look forward without fidgeting. A few tense minutes passed before the group was addressed by a woman wearing a jersey labeled Chief Instructor, who spoke in a thick Scottish accent.

“Welcome ladies, to Camp White,” she said. “I am Chief Instructor McKinnon. My job is to prepare you mentally and physically for life in Valkyrie. Over the course of the next six months, you will be subjected to a demanding training course that will push you to your limits and force you to question your reasons for being here. If you pass, you will be eligible to continue to the Ranger training school, where your infantry skills will be developed.

“There is no passing quota I am required to meet. If I must reject all of you, have no doubt that is what I will do. At any time during this course, you may voluntarily withdraw; simply announce your intention to any of the instructors. A bus will be arranged for you, and you will be taken back to the starport in Tyr city for a shuttle flight home. We perform this process smoothly and quickly because we do it frequently. In fact, within the next month, I fully expect half of you to quit.

“Eventually, most of you will learn what Valkyrie is all about, and that your place is not among us. You should not be ashamed or disheartened by this—it does not make you a bad person, nor diminish from the significant achievements you have made, and certainly will make in your life.

Kayla shifted her feet. That might be true for everyone else, but not for her.

“Over the course of the next six months, we will be evaluating your physical fitness, and overall performance. If we find you are below our standards and are not making the effort required to keep up, you will be escorted out. If you are injured, you will be treated, and medically rolled into another class once you have recovered.

“So, that’s the introduction over with. Now ladies, are there any among you who like horses? Don’t be shy…”

A few hands were hesitantly raised.

“Excellent.” The Chief Instructor gestured to the statue next to her. “This statue commemorates a horse named Sergeant Reckless. She was a member of an old and legendary band of warriors known as the United States Marine Corps. She is our camp mascot, and you would do well to study some of the literature we have about her in the camp library. If you adopt the Sergeant as your role model, you will certainly succeed in your training.”

Kayla heard marching feet approaching, and she looked around. A group of two dozen recruits in hiking gear were approaching from a path in the nearby forest.

“It looks like we have been joined by the recruits of Camp Darzi,” Mckinnon said with a smile. “This class started selection five months ago. They got up early this morning and walked twenty miles along the coast to get here.”

“Quick break girls,” A Darzi instructor called. “Take a moment to drink and grab a snack.”

The group sat down on their packs. They were lean, filthy, and barely exchanged words as they wolfed down snacks. Their faces were blank, jaws set, and there was no life in their eyes. They made slow simple movements, but nothing was done half-heartedly. None of them so much as glanced at the crowd of nervous girls in front of them.

Kayla’s stomach turned. Twenty miles with a full pack? She was fit, but she had never attempted a feat of such endurance.

“That’s long enough, recruits,” the instructor called after a few minutes. “Back on your feet and back to camp.”

The zombie-like girls reacted without hesitation, packing away water bottles and litter, and getting to their feet, though their movements were stiff and slow. One of the recruits struggled to get her pack on when her strap caught behind her back, but another quickly dug it out for her. Then the group moved off down the path from where they had arrived.

For a second, Kayla was certain she would never be able to manage such an unbelievable hike. She reminded herself not to doubt her abilities. All she had to do was stay the course. Thandi, next to her in the formation, looked over and winked. Kayla raised an eyebrow in response.

Mckinnon gave a quiet order to the other instructors, who divided the class into smaller groups. The girls were shown basic physical training exercises, which they then had to repeat. They went through jumping jacks, burpees, pushups and situps, and the instructors scrutinized their form. Lazy posture, or incomplete movement, was met with harsh criticism. Kayla struggled through the PT workout until her lungs burned and acid soaked her muscles.

Once that ordeal was over, the groups were led to the cabins that would be their homes for the next six months. As they left the square, Kayla looked over at Mckinnon’s hut. A long line of recruits had queued up to drop out. Kayla shook her head. How could they want to quit before the end of the first day?

An instructor led her group through a maze of identical wooden structures, stopping off occasionally to assign four girls to each. Kayla breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that she would be grouped with Thandi and two others. At least she didn’t have to start from scratch again.

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Her other cabin mate, a cheerful and muscular girl, introduced herself as Kiki.

“I’m a marathon runner, track athlete and gymnast,” Kiki boasted. “I love sports. I can imagine I’m going to have a great time here. This is my friend Chisom, by the way.”

The other girl smiled politely, but quickly broke eye contact. She didn’t appear to have much to say, which seemed to suit the talkative Kiki just fine.

“Where are you from?” she asked Kayla. “Probably a border world, judging by your accent, right? I have a lot of friends from border worlds. They’re all a bit odd, but don’t let that bother you. Everyone should be a bit odd.”

Kayla wanted to exchange a glance with Thandi, but reminded herself to be polite to her new cabin mate. “What made you decide to stay?”

Kiki laughed. “Oh, I’m an overachiever, I guess. Give me something hard and tell me I won’t succeed, and I just get fired up. You?”

Kayla explained about the attacks on Caldera, then Thandi described her fighting background. They turned to Chisom.

“My family was in the military on Janome for generations,” Chisom said shyly, “and I would probably have joined too, but what changed my mind is that here it’s all female.”

“Really?” Kiki cocked an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t mind having some nice buff guys about the place.”

“Well, my elder sister joined the Janomian Army,” Chisom continued in a low, detached tone, “and she was raped by a superior officer.”

“Jesus, that’s awful,” said Kayla.

Thandi nodded. “Yeah, it’s a big problem on a lot of worlds, and you know they do everything they can to downplay it.”

“For years they pretended it hadn’t happened,” Chisom said. “Then the guy got a few months of administrative leave and counseling. They say they’ve improved a lot, and the risk is quite low, but still…”

Kayla nodded sympathetically, glad that she hadn’t had to contemplate such a risk.

The next day began with a morning run around the camp, followed by calisthenics and mobility stretching. Kayla found the exercises easy enough, but the instructors kept the recruits repeating sets until her limbs were shaking, and she wanted to throw up. Then they were split into smaller groups again. Kayla, Christie, and Thandi followed a small line of girls into a classroom, where a Collective researcher introduced herself as Doctor Gilah.

“We have only found the Jotnar’s machines,” said Gilah.

The class watched in fascination as she illuminated a galaxy map on a holo-projector. It showed the milky way galaxy, with a small green smudge in the region of the Orion-Cygnus outer spiral arm.

“The highlighted sector,” Gilah continued, “represents an empire of tens of thousands of star systems, but is relatively tiny compared to the vast size of the galaxy. I find that puts things into perspective.”

“Sure, if you’re God,” Kayla announced. “Doesn’t seem so insignificant if you look up at the night sky.” She paused, then looked around in surprise when nobody scolded her for speaking out of turn like they had at Madam Georgia’s. The more she saw of Valkyrie, the more she liked.

Gilah smiled. “That may be true, but I want you to keep in mind that despite their achievements, the Jotnar were not gods. Perhaps they thought they were, but on a larger scale, they were insignificant.”

“I think my fellow recruit is trying to say,” Christie interjected, “that from the perspective of the fragile human psyche, they may as well have been gods. Why wouldn’t you extend your respect to beings of such power?”

“Her fellow recruit’s perspective,” Kayla said, with a wink at Christie, “is that of the soldier getting shot in the face.” Her tone shifted to heavy sarcasm. “In lieu of more grandiose contemplation.”

Christie flashed her a tight smile, while a wave of gasps and muttering fluttered through the classroom. Kayla saw recruits giving her alarmed looks. Obviously, some of the weak-minded girls did not want to hear about the reality of violence. The faster they dropped out, the better.

“These classroom sessions,” continued the unphased Gilah, “will help you to understand that while you should always respect the power of the enemy, you mustn’t overestimate them, nor underestimate yourself. Neither the power nor sophistication of a civilization enables its infantry to succeed in the field, but rather the ingenuity and determination of the individual soldier.

“‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ This infamous quotation refers to Rameses the second, who expanded the Egyptian empire over Syria, Libya, and the Levant. Less than two generations after his death, Egypt lost all their conquests to a wave of barbarians known as the ‘sea peoples’.

Gilah smiled at Kayla. “To put it another way, your enemy is just as concerned about getting shot in the face as you are. The Red Queen principle—a lesson of evolutionary biology—tells us that an organism must work extremely hard simply to maintain its place in the pecking order. If you are prepared to put in that work, and your enemy chooses to take a day off, then you will be much more likely to defeat them. In Valkyrie’s case, our enemy is long dead. The mindless machines you will face are dangerous, but predictable.”

Gilah tapped a button on her pointer, and a dense starfield replaced the galaxy.

“This map shows a regional display of all the Jotnar sites identified by our organization.”

Red dots were intermixed with the white stars, tracing out spider web networks of clumps and threads. The pattern wasn’t random—two major clusters of networks sat opposite each other, separated by a thick red band where all order broke down.

“All these sites trace the outlines of a vast battlefield amongst the stars. Indeed, in those regions closest to the ‘front’, we tend to find the wrecks of starships and fortifications. Farther back, in the logistical hubs, we find stockpiles of weapons, and sometimes, more advanced, but unused, war machines. We have even begun to get an idea of the Jotnar’s technological development throughout the war.”

“So, just to make sure I understand,” Christie said. “Valkyrie, an organization no larger than a hundred thousand women, has secured and analyzed all of these sites at some point?”

Gilah looked surprised. “Where did you get that number?”

“A rough estimation based on the size of Tyr-city and the apparent population density,” Christie said. “Given the sheer number of sites, this work must have taken thousands of years.”

“That’s an unwarranted assumption.”

“How old is Valkyrie?” Kayla asked.

“That will not be discussed recruits.” The glacially cold voice of Chief Instructor Mckinnon rang out from the back of the classroom. “If it concerns you too greatly, please feel free to drop out.”

Kayla sighed. “Please forgive me, Instructor. I am impertinently curious when strangers work me to exhaustion every day, so I may risk being killed for something I don’t understand.”

Christie chuckled.

Gilah seemed unperturbed. “That’s quite understandable, and I can only reiterate our assurances that those answers will come in time; once you have earned your place in the organization.”

Kayla nodded unenthusiastically. Gilah and Mckinnon obviously knew a lot more than they were letting on, and she didn’t like it.