As I walked out of the LCs office my head was buzzing with the implications of the meeting. I had petitioned to transfer to the U.S.S.F. but what had happened was that our whole platoon had been reassigned to the Gia project. We were going to another world!

While the LC was rightfully infuriated about her command being uprooted and her entire way of doing things being thrown out the window, I couldn’t help but be thrilled. I wasn’t going to be in the U.S.S.F. but the main reason I had tried to transfer in the first place was to get to an alien planet. If I had to go there as a Marine, so be it!

I was so lost in my thoughts I didn’t even realize when my friend, Sargent Jones, fell in beside me. He had a none-too-subtle way of getting my attention. “Damn nigga, I heard that bitch put a cap in yo ass all out in tha hall an shit. Wha’chu do homie?”

I was instantly snapped out of my thoughts; my mood souring in the process. “Jones! Shut the hell up. I don’t talk that shit and neither do you. When was the last time you were, in the hood? You’re no gangsta hoodrat and neither am I so shove it!”

The tall, lanky, brown-haired, blue-eyed man walking next to me was as Caucasian as the Lieutenant Colonel but he liked to pretend he was a hoodrat. He did come from Queens, New York but his parents were upper middle class and he lived in a much better fringe neighborhood. I knew that his street persona was contrived and fake but he would often use it just to annoy me, like now. “Iaght, Homie. No need ta go all postal an shit. So, what did you do to piss the old lady off this time?”

I just had to roll my eyes at his sudden reversion to proper English. “She’s more pissed off at the higher ups but I guess I did earn a bit of it. I applied to the U.S.S.F.”

Jones did a doubletake. “She’s pissed off at you about that? I mean, sure, it does seem a little… You know, now that I think about it, that is actually very disloyal. But seriously, is that all?”

I shrugged. “Not really. I might have gotten a bunch of other meatheads to actually think about the possibilities of seeing an alien planet and they might also have applied for transfers.”

He whistled at that. “Still, I would think that would earn you a sock party, not a trip to see the CO.”

I grinned at that. “You really think they still do that stuff? Really? These days they just bust you a rank or drum you out of the service.”

It was Jones’s turn to roll his eyes. “Man, stop deflecting. What’d you do that got the old lady so riled up? I’m not gonna let it drop without orders, sir.”

Looking sideways with a scowl, I came to a stop. “Fine. I know you’ll just keep pestering the ever-loving shit out of me unless I tell you and I doubt it’ll matter for long. Me and a few of the other guys that applied to transfer got reassigned to a unit that’s going to go on the Gia mission. I’m ordering you to keep your big mouth shut until the news hits the rest of the platoon.”

“I think they intend to move the whole platoon but for now, it’s just a squad. I’m going to pack now because I deploy for the new training grounds at oh four-hundred. Now, would you kindly go do whatever it was you were doing before you decided to annoy me before I find something to keep you busy?”

Jones threw up a sloppy salute that would have gotten his ass chewed out by anybody else and turned around with a grin. He was probably going to spread the news all over base before chow but that wasn’t my problem. I had packing to do and a truck to meet.

It didn’t take a genius to realize that the line of big black SUVs pulling up in front of me and the other guys from the platoon were for us. I had talked to several of the guys standing with me personally about the idea of transferring and I guessed that the rest were people that one of them or the other guys I’d inadvertently convinced had talked to. So, still my fault, I guess.

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The convoy of SUVs pulled up and popped the back hatch. A moment later, a brick house of a brunette bombshell got out of the driver's seat dressed in a sleek black suit with no identifying patches or emblems of any kind, which served to identify what branch she belonged to all by itself. She was holding a clipboard and began checking us off the list one by one. As she called our names, she would point to one of the vehicles and we would put our bags in the back and get in.

When she got to my name, she pointed to the back of the van she had gotten out of. I tossed my duffel into the back of the SUV and went to the side to get in. There was a suited guy in the passenger seat already so I got into the seat behind him. when I closed the door, I saw that the windows were blacked on the inside and there was a divider between the two rows of passenger seats and the front seats.

The back two bench seats filled up quickly and then we heard the woman get into the driver’s seat. The moment that the vehicle dropped into gear, all the door locks locked and there was no way to unlock them from the inside. The only light we had was what was peaking around the seals of the doors and one overhead lamp between the two benches.

I asked but nobody could recall the woman ever saying anything about talking but we mostly rode in silence anyway. I had a lot of things on my mind but one of the things I was most worried about was that I wasn’t going to be able to tell my family or friends where I was. It was in the paperwork of our orders. We weren’t allowed to communicate with anybody about our whereabouts or our assignment.

After what seemed like a decent chunk of eternity, the vehicle finally stopped and the door locks disengaged. After being in the dark confines of the SUV, the overly lit hangar we were in was blindingly bright. The inside of the base was nondescript and there were no identifying signs or placards anywhere. We were given the mushroom treatment for six weeks!

During those six weeks, the guys from our platoon and a number of others went through what was almost like a second boot camp. There was one big difference between the two. The training on various tech tools and mechanical aptitude training was way above the pay grade of a usual marine. Once in a while, usually after a practical test, one or two guys would disappear from the groups.

The trainers also wouldn’t talk to us about anything but the curriculum and the rest of the drill instructors only yelled at us and drove us mercilessly.

After six weeks of intense training and schooling in shit, I personally felt I was way underqualified in, we were finally lined up in the hangar again. Another long trip in blacked-out SUVs and we arrived at another facility. This one was, surprisingly, an open base of normal construction, just, with a huge cyclone fence around it. It was out in the desert too.

I would have immediately thought we were at Area 51 except that even between the two trips we hadn’t been traveling long enough to be in the Nevada desert. We were originally on the reserve station in Missouri and between the two trips, I estimated we might have traveled eight to ten hours. That meant we were probably in Texas or Oklahoma. It all clicked when I turned around and saw the rocket launch facility. This was definitely in Texas.

The next few weeks were oddly surreal but oh so exhilarating! The base was practically brand new and the launch field next to it was brand new. On the base was a very eclectic mix of personnel. I was able to meet back up with the rest of our platoon but I wasn’t under the Lieutenant Colonel’s command anymore. The rest of the platoon was at the base as the guard detail while those of us who were pulled for the special training were housed in a completely different part of the base.

I might not have even known that it was my old platoon except that Jones called out to me one day. He was on his way back from logistics and spotted me and a couple of the guys from our platoon talking. We caught up a bit and he told me how the entire platoon had to pull out of the Missouri reserve post and move all their supplies to this base in the middle of nowhere while riding in the back of covered cargo trucks. Apparently, they got about the same treatment that we did.

Other than the rest of the marines on guard duty and our own squads, there were guys on the base belonging to the U.S.S.F., NASA, the secret service or CIA people, and some civvies too. It was a very mixed bag but I was mostly too busy to appreciate how mixed up all that really was. The guys from the U.S.S.F. were the ones training us on all the equipment we were using and there were a lot of overly complicated tools. I only figured out after the second week that the clips on the back of everything were due to them being made for use in zero G. I may not be cut out for this after all!