You learn to have a love/hate relationship with any military group, and DropTacs're no different. Conscription is supposed to be violent; the whole point is to put up resistance. Scratch, bite, aim for the groin and kick. Hard.

If being ripped from your family doesn't activate some fight or flight responses...then they don't want you. They want tenacity. They don't want complacency and assent. They've got andies for that.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just old school. But I've seen the shit they pass off for recruits these days and it's sickening. You sit in the flight hold with 'em and you can smell the fear. You can see uncertainty on their faces. They look around at each other for assurance. Don't look around. What are you doing? That fuck is going to be dead in fifteen minutes. Don't get to know his name.




Our carrier breaks through turbulence and evens out. I stand up, gripping one of the rollhooks along the top of our hold. With only the underpowered emergency lights to see by, i'm surrounded by a dozen attentive silhouettes, awaiting my order. I open my mouth and

The first shell hits the carrier, somewhere along the left flank. Port, I guess you'd call it. From somewhere deep in the craft, a high pitched whirring slows to a low hum, and the whole flight hold dips hard to the left. I'm thrown into T. Murran, who lets out a muffled "hmph" as my weight crushes him against the bulkhead.


Three more blasts go off, sending the carrier into a tailspin that pins me against Murran again. A tailspin in a craft with no tail leads me to believe the whole left side is fucked.



Nine hours later, T. Murran is slapping me awake while another survivor is whipping my legs with his thermal gear.




Apparently I was on fire.