Three months later into the training…

Derran ran to the barrack as he heard an explosion, then painful shrieks and screams of horror, confusion, and chaos.

"What is going on here?" he yelled, asking for the explanation, seeing many of the candidates piled up in front of his office door. It was the room right next to the entrance he didn't only use for doing a file work but also to sleep in it even though he had every right for a more comfortable sleeping arrangement in the main building. Keep it close to the troops, you are their leader, not their boss, was the philosophy of his own drill commander, the philosophy he considered adopting on a few occasions.

"Somebody answer, what is going on?" He asked again and started to move candidates out of his way. They all appeared paralyzed, looked like they took a zombie pill.

"He is dead..." someone whispered through the silence.

"Who is dead?" Derran asked loud enough to turn all their heads around. "Let me through, let me see."

"Make room!" he asked again as the candidates were just not moving out of the way fast enough.

As the line opened up to his office, he saw the blood-covered floor and body parts splattered in the middle of the room. His closet was blown off and below it, the lower part of the dead body was lying there, the blood still sipping out.

"Everybody out!” he yelled at them, pushing them out of his way "Everyone, except three of you! You three, closest to the body, you do not even move - not even an inch!"

"It's Virkle..." Siya, one of the two who stood with their backs to the sergeant, said. She could not stop starring at the blood that ran down the floor, reaching the edge of her shoes.

"Siya, Fkiss! Yes, two of you! Walk! Slowly! Backward, toward the door. Do not touch anything, okay? And everything is going to be fine. Just get out."

As two of them started to leave the office, he turned to the other boy. "You know why I left you here, Rich?”

"What the high hell is happening here?" Derran heard behind him two of other commanders rushing in the barrack.

"Give me a minute, Sill. One of the boys is dead. Give me a minute here.” He answered in a single breath, thinking of the best way to proceed.

"What can we do? Can we help?" asked Virrana, the only female instructor whose barrack was the one next to his.

"Take the kids out. I will stay here. I first need to talk to Rich, then I will see you all."

Derran swooped like a praying cat around the room, seeing if anything else was out of place. "So, Rich, you know why I left you here, right?" He repeated the question to the boy who seemed completely lost, whose white-washed face seemed not to have any blood left in it.

"We, we were just..." he seemed to have lost ability to talk. He tried, he kept opening his mouth, but words would not come out.

"Wait," Derran said, all cool and relaxed, like it was just a breakfast ritual, "Let me just wipe off that brain and guts from your face, and then, then you can tell me exactly what happened."

"We..." Tears rolled down his face, leaving the trail of the cleanest part of his cheek.

"I know, I know that, but if you do not tell me something after that, I will really slap you really hard...Would you like that?"

"Looking for the files, looking for the scores...someone said that you were already grading us...we just wanted to see." Derran could hardly make sense of half pronounced words he started to utter.

"And you thought that I would keep your scorecards in the locker?"

Rich’s tears didn't stop coming down.

"Now, this is very important, and I would like for you to think hard about it before you say 'I don't know'. I want you to take a deep breath. Yes, that is good. Now exhale it, let it go, let it all go. Now do it again. Breath! That’s better. Now, remember what I said. I do not want to hear you say “I don’t know’. I want you to tell me who told you such a thing, about you being graded right now, and about me having the grades in here?”

"Mirinlo... Mirinlo did. It was his idea," he said at once. Derran sighed, put a hand on his shoulder and helped the boy out of the horror room. He instructed Siya to take him to an infirmary and went to talk to Mirinlo.

He was ready to bring him in and make him clean the mess as he talked to him about what was said and done. But the boy locked himself in the bathroom, and even after it took an hour to get him out, Derran could see that he was still locked in.

There is so much you can do to push some… He thought as he looked at his uncommunicative and not responding face. These kids, most of they were raised to have everything. They were taken cared of to the point of never having to feel pain, any pain. And now, they are exposed to the cruelest of life endings… All this might be too sudden for them, too much.

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So, in the end, he just took the boy by the hand and led him to the infirmary. In less than four hours, he, together with Mirinlo were flown out.

Less than an hour later, Derran from one level of anger to another.

"Are we to think you had nothing to do with this?" he stood in front of the huge screen where three members of the commission he didn’t know stared back at him. Their question was pissing him off, and he didn’t mind showing it on his face.

"Maybe one of your bombs left from the war kept in the closet, maybe one of them exploded..." One on the left insinuated.

"I am sorry, I do not know your name?" Derran asked politely.

"My name is Sulivaro, Senator Sulivaro..."

"Senator, no, I didn't have any bombs in my room closet. Obviously, someone placed it there. I carry no weapons with me, and none, not even a knife, was placed by me inside any of the space of that room. Do you understand that? Did I make that clear? It could have not been me!" he answered with a hefty dose of anger and impatience.

Three people on the commission looked at each other.

"Was your door knocked?"

"No, it was not. It didn't come with a key, but I put in a little sensor so I would know if someone was sneaking in."

"What does that sensor say?"

"I didn't have time to look at it yet, but none has been going to my room since the program started."

"How about the closet, does it have a lock?"

"I do not believe it does, but even if it did, you understand, most likely I would not lock it unless I was to keep some records in there, records that I would want to hide from others. Since I don't, and whatever filing I do, I send in right away, I had nothing to hide there...You understand that locking stuff away sends a bad message to the others. It says you do not trust them, that you are not part of the same team.

"There are only two things that this could have happened. Either Virkle was trying to place a bomb he didn't know how to manage inside my closet, or else someone had placed it there before him, and he has died.”

"Which one do you think that is?"

"I would like to know which one I would like it to be...I certainly would hate to think that one of my own would want to kill me...even though that would mean I have a big problem since then someone else has tried to kill me, someone I do not know. Like they say the old book says, a known threat is always better than an unknown one.

Hours later, when he finally made it back to the barrack, he saw them all grouped together around a few bunks, worried and quiet. The blood and the remains of Virkle in his office had been removed by the cleaning crew and now his office looked like nothing ever happened in it at all.

"I just came from talking to the commission. You have a right to know that it seems someone was targeting me… All the evidence is pointing that way. Virkle was certainly not the target.”

He walked to stand among them, and they all quietly circled around. "I offered my resignation on the account that I may indirectly endanger all of your lives as I did to Virkle, but…the commission turned that down.

"What I can offer you is that currently there are still twenty more assigned drill sergeants here. If any of you want to, you can be transferred to one of them, so you can complete your training with them. You are given an option to do that. And it would be wise to think about it."

“Sir?” Siya interrupted him.

“Yes?”

“Do you have any idea who could have done this?”

"I do know it cannot be any of you… I know you well enough by now." His eyes went over their faces as he spoke. "Besides, I have not even trained you into the use of explosives yet. So, unless one of you had a sideline hobby I did not know about creating a homemade explosive device, you are all in the clear. But… I really do not think any of you could do it. But…"

“Yes, Sir?”

"You have to understand, there were billions of people who lost their lives in the last war. Wounds are still too fresh to heal. Those that were killed… they all had family and friends. The hatred toward the imperial army burns hot and is powerful enough to cloud the rationality of many who suffered. You have to understand. I've been there. Those people… the things we did to them, the suffering they all experienced… It is incalculable. It would not be surprising that one of them decided to ease their pain by killing me. As you all know the army decided to create and market me as one of the symbols of their victory. Why they did that, especially since they perfectly know I was just one of the soldiers, nothing more?" Derran shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe the same reason as to why they fought the war the way they did… because they are that stupid and ignorant. So, they made a mark out of me. I know that. I knew that as soon as I saw the first video bit hit communication lines. And that is probably what this is all about. You deserve to be fully aware of that. So…”

“But who could have known you were here? Isn’t it supposed to be all secretive?” Siya was not ready to quit, was trying to add it all up, find the answer.

"Of course. But, I cannot talk to you about that now. Actually, the commission has ordered me not to look into this matter. They promised to do that, although I trust them not more than I trust my generals. Still, it is not my job. My job is to prepare you, the best I can, so you can pass your initial testing by the end of your first year. Maybe when you become all-powerful investigators, you can look into this… I understand you will be able to do just that sort of thing. Until then, my hands are really tied…"

He could see them starting slowly to relax, the information he gave them slow to process, but still relieving their doubts and fears. They seemed to relax so much and the chatting slowly increased that Derran decided to speak up again. “Please consider what I have told you. I will not bare any ill feelings if you decide to move to another barrack and have a new instructor.”

The next day, or the day after that, to Derran’s sobering surprise, the commission received zero transfer requests.