The squad had entered the building to find it was a huge warehouse full of pill-shaped capsules and the sergeant screaming from behind us to find our assigned capsule that was highlighted on our huds. My hud led Me to a capsule in the middle of the room with a big black 7 on the back of its white shell. As I moved around to the front, I noticed team leader Silvertree was standing in front of the capsule next to mine. She was seven feet tall and radiated beauty. I blinked a few times in shock when I noticed her pointed ears. She stepped forward and entered the pod as it closed around her. ‘Elf?’ I asked myself as I stared at the pod. I was still standing there staring at her pod a minute later when the sergeant walked past and pushed me roughly into my own pod, snapping me out of my daze as the pod closed around me, encasing me in darkness.
*******
Sergeant Eloana Twiddles. Was sitting at her desk in the NCO office watching the alpha squads’ holographic monitors. As the recruits were loading into the virtual hangar filled with a few different types of ships. She did not notice the man standing behind her watching the screens over her shoulder. But she had noticed a human recruit stare with her mouth open at an elf as she stepped into her pod before the human was pushed into hers by the sergeant, and was now watching her load into the hangar next to a spitfire void plane.
“Bumpkin from the outer rims, bet you don't even know that boot camp is on a time dilation, and you will be completing all four weeks in one day. I bet you haven't even seen an elf before… Ya know what, let’s just turn her training from basic to realistic.” she chuckled to herself as she reached up and tapped the holo screen before continuing.“Go on, little bumpkin recruit, get into the spitfire and know the pain of failure! Then I'm going to bleed your little account dry until you're too poor to afford life in the military. I hope you get drummed out fast, little bumpkin!”
The man standing behind her was listening to her mutter to herself and slowly shook his head, knowing an elitist attitude like this kept many promising NCO's from making officer rank. He turned and walked over to stand behind another Sergeant watching the Beta team. He knew there was nothing he could do to save that recruit as the NCO's in this room were not under his command and he was just sticky beaking into the training program hoping to find a promising potential recruit for his platoon. But he was already filling out a complaint form against the sergeant to her Commanding officer on his hud. A few seconds later it was complete and sent. His eyes dropped to the holo screens showing the beta squad. He watched them walking towards a hangar full of ship parts while a sergeant was yelling at them about what they were about to do. ‘Void engineers, useful, but I already have a squad of them that doesn't need new members.’ he thought as he watched the team leaders start directing their teams towards a pile of parts cordoned off from the rest. He turned, losing interest in them quickly, and moved over to the last Sergeant in the room watching Charlie squad.
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Who were already running through an obstacle course wearing heavy packs and carrying various types of rifles and heavy weaponry. They were working on their endurance. He let out a long sigh as he turned away, heading back to watch Alpha Squad. ‘Marines, not part of my command. Looks like alpha squad is the only pool I will be able to choose from, but they are controlled by an elitist That will only support those from or closest to the core worlds.’ Stopping behind Sergeant Twiddles, he watched her for a while before looking at the screens. He silently watched the human that the sergeant was currently trying to throw obstacles at to make her look bad, but the plucky human seemed to be weathering them with ease. He couldn't help but snicker inside his head when he heard the human scream ‘It is just like flying a plane back home, only faster and more terrifying’ watching her move in and out of the other pilots as she dodged them pulling off stunts that the instructors had yet to teach the class he knew at that moment he had to have her.
*******
“Aaaahh, haha, this is amazing!” I couldn't stop myself from screaming in joy as I sat in the ship's cockpit, which looked like the front end was a needle and the back end a teardrop. The controls were amazingly sensitive, the slightest touch could send the ship hurtling in another direction. I couldn't keep the big smile off my face as I moved the ship between the other pilots' fighter ships, quickly learning how to fly in space. For some reason, it looked like their ships were flying like kids' push-bikes with training wheels or something, while mine was a top-of-the-line sports car. I glanced at the objective listed on the bottom left of my hud telling me I had completed My objective to fly in an S-shaped pattern between at least five other recruits' fighter ships. I chuckled as I saw it update to ‘fly at least two metres apart canopy to canopy with another fighter ship for thirty seconds’. I glanced at the nearest fighter ship and shifted my own around to fly with them. I rolled my ship, slid over the top of them, and slowed myself down to fly with him. I looked up into his canopy, watching him freak out at how close I was before finishing the thirty seconds and rolling to the left, flying away. I slowly began to circle back around towards the carrier, enjoying the view of a ship that was supposedly the size of a city. But to me, it kinda looked like a giant beetle in space without any legs.
I was trying to spot the hangers that housed the ships, knowing I was about to learn how to fly the drop-ships. The objective had been updated to ‘return to carrier’. I continued to smile happily, finding these objectives easy. I had grown up flying planes with my dad and uncles. We had been up almost every weekend. When I turned sixteen, my uncle Bruce had purchased a Cessna Skyhawk and stored it in a hangar near my university. I was allowed to take it up whenever I wanted. I had my private pilot's licence, so I could use it to fly three of my friends to Vegas for the weekend. As I got closer to the carrier, I noticed green squares in front of my fighter ship slowly getting smaller as they led me into an open hangar. I slid the fighter ship out of them, only for them to turn orange as I got closer to their edge, then red as I crossed out of them. I laughed and slid back into the middle and headed into the hangar to land in the green-lit square on the deck and started running through my power-down checklist.