I was enjoying the feeling of sitting in the pilot's seat of a drop-ship while waiting in the hangar as I ran through my pre-flight checklist. It had been a week since we started boot camp, and yesterday a few team leaders had switched to new people. I had somehow managed to remain a team leader. The sergeant in charge of my squad had also given us a team name and ordered us to come up with an emblem for it. Apparently, every team needed one, even if it was only formed for boot camp. We were the Star Hawks due to our uncanny ability to silently fall out of the sky and land in hot zones while snatching victory by getting back out again with minimal damage to our ships. Personally, I choked it up to the fact my team was eager to follow me into spending every credit we had earned since day one on food and so many training simulators to get our timing and skills up to the level needed to pull it off. At the time I had wondered if there was a skills page that listed what skills we had, but I never found one and when I asked the sergeant he just told me to go away in a very profanity filled way. I had also encouraged my team to keep the initial credits from the running reward as a nest egg in case something went wrong like we failed to complete something and didn’t get paid or worse we received a fine.
Not all of our squad members were still with us at the end of the week. We had completed a promotion exam and were promoted to privates. Our squad leader then threw all of us into a private first-class exam; two of the elves failed it and were washed out. Sergeant Ritz seemed to be determined to have us at the rank of sergeant before graduation.
Team Silvertree had become the Molten hounds and had been assigned the spitfires to fly since their team had unanimously chosen to specialise in them, leaving my team to focus on the drop-ships. Their emblem, according to PFC Silvertree, was a common native hunting dog from her home planet, it had lava dripping from its mouth and the emblem had lightning bolts crossing each other in the background. To me, it looked like a three-headed great dane that was drooling lava.
I turned my head, checking a camera’s holo screen displaying the hanger behind my drop-ship. The people I was waiting for still had not arrived. I quickly glanced at a drawing on my hud that I was slowly building. After I became a private, we had been given access to a military store in our huds and I had purchased an app allowing me to mentally draw pictures. So far I had the outline of a hawk with its wings flared out as it came down, golden talons extended to snatch a marine from the ground, but something about it just wasn't right… like it was missing that little spark that would make it perfect.
A smile slowly crept onto my face as I had an idea. I left the hawk black to indicate space, the outline was a beautiful ultramarine colour. I pulled up some nice bright white stars, carefully placing them onto the chest in the shape of the big dipper to represent the most famous celestial stars in Scotland and to represent the Northern Hemisphere. On the stomach of the hawk, I placed the southern cross to represent the Southern Hemisphere. After that, I placed a bunch of dull small stars around all of them to give it a spacey kind of look. Once I was done I nodded to myself in satisfaction as I whispered “Perfect, a little piece of home to carry with me out here to see the stars.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
I left the marine as he was, charging forward with his rifle raised, and submitted the emblem logo for evaluation. Hoping it would be accepted and not declined for already belonging to some other team or squad. I then closed down the app and glanced at the camera again to see I was still alone.
I was about to whine and complain about my passengers taking forever when a holo screen appeared on my right, out of the way of everything but still prominent enough for me to see the face of my Sergeant on it.
“Sergeant Ritz, good to see you today, what is the special occasion that has you calling?” I asked cheekily.
She smiled softly for a second before it vanished and instead Of replying to me, she made an announcement.
“Greetings, molten hounds and star hawks. Today is a special day. Because a bunch of my old friends have decided to do a training exercise by going back to their basics, and you all get to play a role in their deployment and protection as well as retrieval.”
I saw a flash of light out of the corner of my eye and turned my head to see a man in a hazard vest and camo pants waving a light from a pen over the side of my ship. But before I could voice a concern about it, sergeant Ritz caught my attention again.
“Eyes front! I'm not done talking! Geeze the cheek on these pilots after they get a little rank under their belts. But I suspect you are being distracted by a ground Crewman who is spraying your team's emblem onto the side of your ships. Congratulations On your successful submissions. Team Star Hawks cut it close with their submission, though.” He shook his head in mock dismay before continuing. “Molten hounds emblem is not too exciting in my opinion, I have seen dozens of variations of the Miltdu that seeing it no longer spurs much interest, but the star hawks’ emblem is something new, I have not seen anything like it. Is this creature common on your planet, PFC Mackenzie?”
“Uh, no, it is not-”
“Oh!? So it is a rare beast? Fascinating, you will have to tell me all about it later because we are almost out of time for your explanation. Okay, what is about to happen is molten hounds will get the green light to take off, and then they will follow their mission objectives until the drop-ships launch then molten hounds will form up and follow star hawks to the planet protecting them from any enemies making sure they make it to the atmosphere so they can complete their mission. Once planet side, you will provide cover support and act as the bombing team for any air raids, the marines call in. Star hawks, you will be waiting here in the hanger for the marines to come charging in, they will load up inside your cargo area, strapping into the seats and will wait for you to get them planet side where they will disembark to complete their mission leaving you to either hunker down and hide until they request extraction or fly around out of the way, risking enemy spotting you and attempting to shoot you down, your choice. Okay, that is everything from me, good luck and remember you will be doing a lot of these sorts of missions over the next week, proving you are capable of continuing down the path of your chosen speciality. Sergeant Ritz out!”
The screen vanished, leaving me alone as I heard the three spitfire engines powering up as they left the deck and headed for the hangar exit. Leaving the five drop-ships waiting for our precious cargo to arrive.