Part II
“ONE!” boomed thirty voices, followed by thirty boots slamming on the polished metal floor as the thirty cadets snapped to attention.
“Pathetic!” roared the Lieutenant’s voice throughout the gymnasium-sized room. He was dressed in a black Imperial flight suit like the rest of them, but he had a silver bar with two small blue squares drawn on it.
He started walking, taking slow, measured, heel-toe, heel-toe steps that made every one of the thirty cadets more nervous with each step.
“Cadets,” he began, his voice raised just enough to be heard and feared, his black-gloved hands folded behind his back. He said the word as if it tasted like bad medicine, “You cadets, may think you are something special. You all signed up for the Imperial Navy six standard months ago, thinking you’d get the easy lives of pilots that you saw in the holovid advertisements. Didn’t you?”
He paused and looked at the thirty cadets arranged in three neat ranks of ten. No one dared make eye contact. “Well,” he continued, walking slowly around them, “I’ve got a surprise for all of you, children! Every single thing you saw on the vids was a lie! Remember the better food they talked about? Remember the softer beds, and the lower death rates? All of that was a lie! Those are only for the cadets who are better than you!”
“To get this far, you only had to score well on tests. Tests completed on a datapad. And that puts you only one step up from troopers. Understand? For every other factor- education, familial line, fighting experience, everything else, you people are only one step away from being thrown into a meat grinder like the rest of the infantry.”
He paused, watched to see that no one’s eyes were straying from looking straight to the front, and continued.
“You, people, and I use that term loosely, are now on the Adeptus, a decommissioned, Venator class Star Destroyer. Normally, this ship would be scrapped or turned into a museum in dry-dock. But the Emperor needs pilots, and the regular academies are full. As such, the Adeptus has been refitted to serve as a training academy for pilots in the Imperial Navy.
“This ship at full capacity had a crew of over seven thousand. This ship and its crew distinguished itself in combat against pirates, separatists, and even assisted in the purge of the Jedi, once they were rooted out as the traitors they were.
“And now, you are all here. A total of one hundred twenty cadets, and another hundred staff who have to wipe your noses and change your diapers, are here too. You will occupy the area that has been cordoned off for you; in effect, you live here in one neighborhood of an abandoned city floating in space. And if you are so foolish as to go wandering, you’ll be like the idiot in my last group who opened a door in the restricted area and got himself sucked into space.”
“Before you get any ideas that you have been awarded some form of special privilege, let me redirect you on that as well. This is a ship that was already old when the Clone Wars began! It cannot serve in war, so it will serve in peace in the only way it still can: As a glorified nursemaid and bunkhouse for spoiled, worthless, lazy, useless piles of skin and idiocy who’ll train on this outdated piece of junk!
“The top three percent of all recruits were assigned to the Imperial flight academies, and one-hundred twenty of you are here, four groups, or flights of thirty cadets each, aboard the Adeptus, the only Star Destroyer in the Imperial fleet dedicated to the education of pilots. You are here, in the 180th Black Sword Squadron, a proud squadron with a long heritage of unquestioning service to the Emperor.
“The best of our best go to One Flight. However you are members of Four flight. You were the lowest scorers, the bottom thirty placed in this squadron. If you have dreams of flying a TIE fighter, pack them up and send them home to whatever filthy creatures bore you on your dungheaps of a homeworld. Your goal right now is just to escape from Four Flight. If you’re still here at the end of your training, I’ll personally see to it that you wash out and trade in your black helmets for white ones. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir!” said thirty voices.
“I asked a question! Do I make myself CLEAR?”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“YES, SIR!”
“Good! Now that the preliminaries are done, I can introduce myself. I am First Lieutenant Shea Hublin. And I am the meanest, cruelest, most unreasonable son-of-a-gundar you people will ever know! Over there, behind you- don’t look around, idiot! Everyone, Cadet Idiot just got you all twenty pushups, on your knuckles! Move and count them off!”
Thirty cadets dropped to the ground and began doing pushups in unison. They rose and dropped at the same time, their counts of One! Two! Three! Four! sounding out through the drill room and echoing down the hallways to where the other flights were making shouts of their own.
“Back to attention, people! You think you’re done? Just because I had you do a few push ups? Now, when you are given permission, look around you. Do it now. You are Four Flight. You’re the worst, the lowest that this class of pilots had to offer. If the stats hold true, ten-percent of you are going to die in training because of your own colossal flup-ups! Half of those left will wash out and become button-pushers on a Star-Destroyer. Those of you who do finish have only flying to look forward to, and there are very, very few old fighter pilots for a reason. Many die in combat. Most who die do so before they finish their first five missions.
“Like you, cadet! Name and where you’re from!” Hublin suddenly turned and snapped, looking right at Dav.
Dav had made the mistake of making eye contact with a superior before. This time, he kept his head and eyes to the front. “Dav Eccles from Coruscant, sir!”
“Coruscant? How lovely! A city boy! The ultimate city boy. Had you ever seen a forest, a real forest before you left your cozy, planned little world, cadet Cityboy?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you will. Did you ever finish school? There’s a million places to get schooled on Coruscant!”
“Yes, Sir! Graduated fourth in my class from the Aurora Academy, the sector’s greatest...”
“See this?” Hublin said suddenly, holding a stick up to Dav’s nose.
“No, sir! I’m looking straight ahead, sir!”
“You’re learning, Cadet Cityboy. I like that. Let’s see if it holds. Look at the stick, Cityboy!”
Dav looked. It was dark steel, and looked like the kind of baton that could extend to the length of up to a yard, and cause truly wicked amounts of pain. Dav had seen security guards holding them at political rallies and other events his father had spoken at.
Hublin’s rod was different, though. It had a number of tally marks etched neatly into it, likely with a mild-strength laser cutter.
“What do you see, Cadet Cityboy?”
“I see tally marks etched on the rod in front of me, Sir,”
“Good, Cadet Cityboy. That’s a mark for every single little book-smart, thumb-sucking, mommy-wanting, city-school graduate who thought they were smarter than me, and who I flushed out of training because they couldn’t measure up. Acknowledged?”
“Acknowledged, Sir!”
“You were schooled on Coruscant, Cadet Cityboy, but this place is my classroom! You’re going to see real forests now, Cityboy! Along with deserts, jungles, and a host of other dangerous places. And you’ll probably die in one too, since you’ve never been in a place that an engineer put together first. Who’s the next ridiculous little fool they’ve saddled me with...” he said, looking at his wrist pad. “Cadet...Sanddancer? Maker on a handtruck, what the...what kind of a name is Sanddancer?”
“My name, sir!” Jada piped up.
“Oh, your name, is it?” Hublin was at her ear, yelling. “And what kind of worthless ball of dirt gives birth to someone with a name like Sanddancer?”
“Tatooine, sir!”
“Dear Maker,” Hublin said, walking away a few feet. “Now they’re giving me sand fleas, and telling me to turn them into pilots!” He whipped around and yelled to her face. “Cadet Sandflea, you will forget everything you ever learned about how to survive in the desert! You may think yourself tougher than Cadet Cityboy over there, but you’re just as pathetic, and just as likely to die out here. If you do not, you’ll die the first time you have to fight someplace that doesn’t look like a beach vacation spot for spoiled, worthless, whiny little rich kids like cadet Cityboy over here! Wouldn’t you agree, Lieutenant Solo?”
“Exactly, Lieutenant Hublin,” said a sneering voice behind them. Dav wondered if he’d ever see an officer approach him from the front before his training was over. It seemed they always snuck up from behind and surprised you with screams and orders for push-ups, sit-ups or laps around the nearest track. Or a hard cuff on the back of the head.
“Cadets,” the new voice said. It was deep and rich, and Jada felt a thrill as he moved closer in spite of herself. “My name is Second Lieutenant Solo, and I am the second worst person you are ever going to meet. Every flight has two commanders assigned to it, one senior and one second-in-command. And it looks like the Lieutenant and I drew the short straws and got you gu-Oh, dear Maker, what the skrog is this?”