“What is your crime?” Sergeant Tsuros demanded.

“I betrayed mankind. I collaborated with the enemy.”

“What is your name?”

“Traitor.”

The drill sergeant turned his back on me. One by one, the other inmates in the training flight followed suit. They did this every self-critique, and it always hurt in a deep way no physical punishment could. I have to hand it to Tsuros, he was a master. Since that first painful day, I had hung on his every word. I believed the sermons. I hated myself for betraying the human race, and I was prepared to die to redeem myself.

The shine wore off. I can remember the exact moment it happened. It was a few days after a struggle session. Sergeant Tsuros screamed in my face, howling at me about a pimple-sized divot of rust he’d discovered on a latrine pipe.

It wasn’t my job to clean this particular latrine. If it were, every millimeter would have been spotless. I was always squared away. The pipe shouldn’t have rusted, either. It was supposed to be stainless steel. But as the war dragged on, it was harder and harder to find real parts.

Not long ago, High Command had outlawed onsite fabricators across the entire Hezo Collective Prosperity Sphere. They were trying to re-establish the old logistical chains, to spin up ancient factories and revert to the old ways. It wasn’t going well at all. Too much had been forgotten.

The trickle of spare parts we received were misshapen and rife with impurities. After a lifetime of molecularly immaculate environs, the shoddy wartime materials felt like a chipped tooth. It must have been worse for the drills. Manifesting obsessive-compulsive behavior was their entire job.

I happened to be standing closest to Sergeant Tsuros when he discovered the rusty latrine pipe, so I took the fall. I knew better than to argue.

I stood at attention as Tsuros screamed into my ear. If I flinched, the next thing I would feel was his fist in my gut. If the punch dropped me, there would be a boot in the ribs to follow it up. That was how Tsuros operated. I’d only caught the follow-up boot once, and that was enough for me. It hurt to breathe for an entire week afterward.

Sergeant Tsuros circled as he berated me. It was unusual to get chewed-out for so long, especially for such a minor infraction. There was an inordinate tension in his voice.

If I were allowed to speak, I could have told Tsuros I felt the same way he did. I hated the incompetence. I hated to see things crumbling that should always be strong. I hated being a prisoner, sealed in this barracks. I hated the other inmates who were always screwing up and pulling me down with them. I hated myself.

Sergeant Tsuros came to a halt with his gray eyes searing me, the tip of his nose a millimeter from mine.

“We are in a war! A war for SURVIVAL! A war for our EXISTENCE! And you can’t keep a toilet clean! A FUCKING TOILET!”

A fleck of spittle struck me in the eye as Tsuros screamed in my face. I winced, turning slightly aside. What an error! I was certain he would clobber me for it.

But Tsuros didn’t hit me. At least not right away. I blinked and struggled to regain my bearing. He looked at me a way no other drill ever had. It froze me in place. It was a look of concern. The man honestly hadn’t meant to spit in my eye.

It was an accident.

In that indelible moment, I realized we were losing the war. The endless drills, the sermons, the self-critique sessions, it was all pointless. It didn’t matter if the latrine was spotless or spewing raw sewage until the barracks were ankle deep. We were losing.

Tsuros knew. He hid it behind his endless scorn, the fixation on cleanliness, the obsession with order. But the mask had slipped. Now, I knew, and I could never forget.

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To break the tension, Tsuros inhaled sharply through his nose and spat fully in my face. He followed up with a slap that whipped my head hard-starboard. I was so stunned I couldn’t even feel it.

Finished with me, Tsuros moved down the line to the next prisoner. He howled about a strand of hair he’d found in the airlock liner. I struggled to stay on my feet.

How could we be losing?

I wasn’t stupid. Even as a prisoner locked in the windowless barracks, I’d suspected the war was going poorly. Our squadron was housed at the very edge of the station’s habitat disc, but I still felt it when a supply ship docked.

The UNESECA freighters were enormous, and their vibrations hummed through the entire station. That feeling always filled me with dread. For days after a docking, the drills became doubly sadistic. The ships always brought bad news.

When they swapped us to vat-grown rations, the drills told us it was a punishment for our last inspection. But I could smell it on their breath as they shouted in my face. They were eating the same swill as us. The supply lines had been cut.

The drills used to have radios, I’m sure of it. They used to chatter with each other incessantly: Coordinating training, calling in injuries, and speculating on what might be for lunch. When an inmate did something especially stupid, they would get on the horn and guffaw about it with the other drills.

That resonated in me. They were laughing at us in a private way, but they did it while we were standing right in front of them. Letting us know we didn’t matter at all. I liked that.

One day, the radios were all gone. Two of the softer drills weren’t seen again afterward. A few members of my training flight were pulled out and permanently reassigned as gofers. We were told it was a reward. But why had they rewarded the most useless lumps in the flight? Why did they pass over me?

It didn’t make sense, but little did. Despite all the signs things were going poorly, until Tsuros spit in my eye, I truly believed we were winning the war. We had to! For three formations a day, the drills barked at us that victory was destiny. It was imperative I do my utmost for the cause.

The barracks had to be spick-and-span, our answers during self-critique had to be instantaneous and impeccable. We had to have perfect faith in the Hezo at all times. Doubters would be disposed of.

The constant drilling, the sleep deprivation, and the isolation had leeched the color out of everything. My memories of my life before I was captured were as thin and insubstantial as soap bubbles. I think I would have even forgotten my crime if the drills hadn’t made it my name.

I believed with all my heart I deserved this, that the punishment was just. This was a war for the survival of the human race! Our sins would be redeemed. Victory was destiny! We simply had to do what we were told.

I could do what I was told. But I couldn’t forget the look on Sergeant Tsuros’ face. In the weeks that followed, I appreciated why he was so vicious. It wasn’t just that we were stupid and incompetent, though we certainly were. Tsuros envied our ignorance. It was a terrible burden to know this was all a farce, that we were losing. I was filled with nostalgia for the faith I could never recapture.

I knew if Tsuros even suspected I had figured him out, he would have me executed. I had to feign the zeal I no longer felt. I worked harder than the others and volunteered for all the worst duties. Whenever a drill singled me out, I was certain my time had come. It was exhausting.

Finally, something inside me broke. I wished the drills would just kill me and get it over with. I started to coast and expected to be dead within a week.

But every time I thought I was done for, some other inmate screwed up worse. They broke the rules, they missed their milestones, they said stupid things during self-critique. We all had to line up outside the airlock to watch their executions. Through the thick porthole window, I watched their mute pleas. I scrutinized their weeping faces for any sign they’d figured it out. I never found it. They hadn’t realized we were losing, they were just weak.

I was a coward and a fraud. I was a traitor. But I was never weak. One by one, the others were given to the void. I had been imprisoned in the rings of Keilu with forty-five other inmates. Forty of us survived the long journey in the wretched prison barge. I was the last passenger still alive. I kept waiting for my turn, but it never came.

For three beautiful months, I was left alone. I haunted the empty barracks, ecstatic there was no one left who could get me in trouble. I ate double rations alone in a cafeteria meant to operate constantly, seating a thousand people per shift. The drills still pretended to find mistakes to berate me for, but their hearts weren’t in it. The beatings stopped. There was no point without an audience.

It was better than freedom, if only because I couldn’t remember what freedom was like. Even in my dreams, I was still trapped in the unchanging gray barracks.

It couldn’t last. Unbeknownst to me, there were other training flights being winnowed down in the other sectors of the station. Mine had been the fastest to eliminate its undesirables, so my barracks became the staging area for the next flight.

One by one, other survivors arrived, and my lovely solitude ebbed away. The drills formed us into a squadron, and the second phase began.