Still debating on the title - but we do have a clear winner! Thank you to everyone who voted. There won't be a formal number of chapters per time period or anything like that but I will be keeping four chapters ahead on Patreon. IE so when I get to Chapter 6, I'll be posting Chapter 2 on the public facing forums (SB/AO3/ETC).
Chapter 3
John was unused to losing at anything. He always won. Winning is what he did. When his team had lost the bell test, it was confusing, until they explained it. He had to win as a team. Not as a single person. Winning was what John did, so he tackled the problem and made sure he worked together with Kelly and Sam.
He did have to get used to losing sometimes. It didn’t sit right with him, but there were so many different contests and he was almost always one of the better performers, but some of the other trainees could beat him in some individual events. Kelly, for example, was the fastest sprinter. John hated that he would only get second or sometimes even third when the whole group raced.
On the other hand, he was learning that having someone fast who he was partnered with regularly also helped the team do well. He would just need to try harder to win in the races. The first few weeks had gone by with lots of exercise, class time, and contests. The contests were what John lived for, and he soon found himself excited for what the next day would bring.
This time it was sparring, and John proved himself to be very good at it. He had fought other children before in ‘King of the hill’ games and he always proved to be the best. That was who he was, a winner. He always won games, up until this place.
John won his first few rounds easily enough, but then he fought a girl shorter than him. Tanya-118, and to his shock, he realized she had gone to the same school as he had! She never played ‘King of the hill’ with him so he wasn’t sure what to expect.
A few seconds later his arm was in a painful hold and he couldn’t do anything. It hurt really badly, like fire in his elbow, even as he tried to push against it. If she pulled any harder something was going to break, but he was going to fight through the pain anyway. He was going to win, but one of the trainers declared her the winner.
“You didn’t even try to hit me. How did you do that?”
“You outweigh me and you’re physically stronger than me. You’re also faster too.”
“No, you got my arm trapped so quick. You’re like Kelly.”
Instead of going back to his seat with his new friends he followed Tanya.
“No, she’s also faster than me. Your problem was that you didn’t know I could do that, and that you telegraph your moves.”
“Telegraph?”
“You make it obvious what you are going to do. It isn’t a bad thing at this stage, you’ll get better.”
“Show me.”
She gave him a look of annoyance. “We are supposed to be paying attention to the other fights, and I’ll be up again soon, so you can watch then. Our days are very structured, so while I normally wouldn’t mind someone eager to learn and improve themselves, it isn’t practical.”
The way Tanya spoke was weird, but John understood what she was saying. They didn’t have time to themselves other than chow time. When they weren’t eating, showering, or sleeping, everything they did was what Mendez told them to do.
He sat down next to Tanya as the next sparring matches finished and waited until it was her turn again so he could see what she did. He tried to remember where she had put her hands and how she had avoided his punch. He would learn, and then he would win.
***
Catherine Halsey was keeping a close watch on Tanya. So far, she had stayed true to her word and did not disrupt the training. At times, it seemed she wished to add something to the classroom historical lessons, but she stopped herself. Catherine wouldn’t have known if not for the footage that zoomed in on her facial features for micromovements, allowing her team to map what she might be thinking of as the lectures by Déjà.
From a physical standpoint, her metrics in terms of muscular size, height, density of bone and ligaments indicated her to be toward the bottom of the pack compared to the other children. But her performance in exercise put her solidly in the upper half, though not as dominant as John or Kurt. She had the AI study Tanya, and the conclusions were a combination of her sleep and her precise form when completing exercises.
Unlike many of the other children who sometimes, despite their exhaustion, had difficulty getting to sleep, if they happened to wake during the middle of the night, they sometimes had difficulty getting to sleep right away. Tanya seemed to have no trouble immediately falling asleep.
If only I could do the same.
There were all sorts of drugs to help get her to sleep, but they created dependencies and other issues, and given how critical her mind was, she needed to avoid any chemical issues with it. Catherine knew what she was doing was evil, but it was a necessary evil. Were the lives of seventy-five children, the suffering of their parents, and all the resources used for this program justified?
When she considered the terrorist attack six years ago on Mamore, she knew it was necessary. Two million people had died when the Freedom and Liberation Party terrorists had detonated a nuclear weapon in the Haven arcology. Doctor Elias Carver’s predictions, ones she had improved in her own modeling, were coming true.
Catherine had greatly respected Doctor Carver’s initial work, but his matrix mechanics were too limited. Twice as many variables had to be considered to fully understand the situation humanity had found itself in and model what would happen. After adding her variables, using ONI’s best ‘Smart AI’ programs, and then running fourteen hundred massive simulations, the results all pointed to one inescapable conclusion.
Rebellion and war. The Outer Colonies would no longer tolerate the excessive exploitation by the Inner Colonies and the UEG. The Inner Colonies could no longer survive without drastic loss of life and maintain the standard of living if the resource flow stopped. There was no political will to fix the issue; her models factored in the complex political and social attitudes of both the government and the people. When the Outer Colonies inevitably rebelled, the total cost in lives would not be in millions; it would be billions as a best-case scenario. Most simulations resulted in a UEG victory, but some suggested a permanent new dark age of a fully fractured humanity.
That was why the SPARTAN-II program was so critical. The initial efforts to produce the super-soldiers needed to stop the catastrophe had failed because augmenting post-puberty individuals carried too many problems. They needed to alter the bodies during puberty for those efforts to have any hope of success, and what’s more, they needed those individuals to have been molded properly to best make use of the enhancements. The nearly inhumane physical training was brutal and harsh, and that too became a vector of guilt for what they were doing to young children. This was only slightly lessened by the hope that the outcome of that training would improve their survival odds once the improvements to their bodies were made later on.
The list of improvements was extensive. Carbide ceramic ossification would make their bones virtually unbreakable. Muscular enhancement injections would create increased strength, endurance, and reduced recovery time. Catalytic thyroid implants would lead to massive growth improvement, which would hopefully lead already-destined-to-be-tall children to become even larger.
Perhaps the biggest advancement would be the superconducting fibrification of neural dendrites. It would completely rewire their nervous systems, which would boost their reflexes upwards of three-hundred percent. It would also likely improve cognition, memory, and creativity. There were other lesser augmentations that weren’t as critical, such as improving eyesight and replacing some organs with better, more efficient systems, but those were not the dangerous parts.
Even with the best medical science at her disposal, when it came time to augmentation, many would die. Some would be crippled. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but balanced against the lives of billions, it was the right thing to do. It had to be.
For the time being, they were making the trainees stronger through appropriate diet and the most grueling non-damaging exercise regimen they could do. They were also being trained to be disciplined, forward-thinking, able to focus with distractions, focused on teamwork and mission success, as well as building camaraderie between each other. Tanya hadn’t been told to do so, but she was also fitting in with the others. Already, the other trainees looked to her when a new type of contest or game was thrown at them.
Soon it won’t be simple games, but survival skills and teaching them to use weaponry ranging from ballistics, explosives, and the quickest way to kill or incapacitate someone is close quarters.
The trainees’ last residual innocence would be done away with before they were eight. The knowledge of how to kill would destroy it. The ability to treat trauma and understand the magnitude of life and death was something some would already be familiar with. What Catherine couldn’t understand was how Tanya had picked it up. Data was incomplete in the Outer Colonies, but nothing in her history suggested she was capable of such single-minded intensity as to threaten her with such juxtaposed calm fury.
‘But I am not irrational. If you provide proof of life of my parents at least once a year that satisfies me, I will not sabotage this program or attempt to kill you.’
Catherine shivered at the memory of the delivery. So far, the chance she had taken on Tanya was panning out well, but at six, she was capable of threats that had an underlying certainty to them. What would she be able to do at fourteen, given a body that could slaughter trained soldiers in a heartbeat with her bare hands?
***
I missed my parents terribly. They were people who had cared for me and loved me. They were the sort of benevolent people that I found awe-inspiring. I had always admired people who put the betterment of the whole above themselves. Those individuals improved the world around them and were great to be around. I knew I wasn’t one of them, and that was fine; I was a regular person, not some paragon of virtue.
Despite missing them, I found myself enjoying the training. As much as I appreciated benevolent people, what I truly admired was competency. Chief Petty Officer Mendez was an example of a competent soldier. Working with coworkers who knew their shit and got the job done was ideal. Unless a particularly evil person was taking aim at me or those I cared for, I could tolerate an immoral person. But what I can’t tolerate was incompetence. The slacker. The dregs of society who were simply too incompetent to be of value.
And what I found here was next to paradise. Everyone was good. The recruiters of these ‘Spartans’ had done their job well. None of these children were average, or even merely above average. Every single one of them had above-average reflexes, stamina, grit, and intelligence. This was the ideal work environment. Sure, the fact I was here against my will made it intolerable, but once I forced myself past that awful notion, I realized I quite enjoyed working with these peers and improving myself.
I wasn’t really learning anything new, but practical experience was better than theory. Being pushed to work the body till exhaustion did yield better results than the light workouts I did in the mornings back on Eridanus. Sparring was still simple for me to win, but I still had to work at it sometimes. I had even lost to Kurt once, when he suckered me into committing to his feint, a move he hadn’t used even a single time until facing me again.
These kids were scary talented, if I was being honest. I had my doubts about the ability for the UEG to sustain its tyrannical grip on the Outer Colonies, but militarily, these children would grow up to be effective.
Today, we were going to be competing in a game of laser tag. We were being divided into three teams, and each time you were struck, our near-full-body-suits would freeze us in place. From there, we would be stuck for five minutes. The goal wasn’t necessarily to freeze anyone, but to secure the most points from the enemy base. Each soldier who scored on the central cylinder of one of the two opposing bases would earn a point for their team. Each soldier could only score once on each team’s base, and since each team had twenty-five individuals, that meant the maximum points possible were fifty.
With each base being equidistant from each other, and it taking at least five minutes, even at an all-out sprint, to get to one, there were some interesting tactical considerations to make. We were given five minutes to strategize before we exited our base, and the group quickly began talking.
Adriana-111 suggested they split into two groups, offense and defense. Once the offense group scored points, they would switch with the defenders to hopefully maximize their score. Musa-096, one of my first teammates, thought that they should avoid open combat and instead look to infiltrate and let the other teams wear each other out.
“We do a strong defense and don’t let anyone take our base. That limits their points, so we just need to send out infiltrators to score points by stealth instead of wasting time in a big fight that might leave us pinned.”
I was impressed with how they were so quickly picking up military lingo they had learned in the AI-assisted classroom teaching. Their tactics were rudimentary basics, but they had the right idea.
Linda chimed in that she agreed to the plan and then looked at me and asked me what I thought.
“We should abandon the base and rush the blue base. Then we all score points on blue and abduct one of the people we freeze. We carry that person with us, refreeze them, and then rush the green base. From there we do the same thing and abduct one of the green team members. We all score maximum points, and the two other teams will be physically unable to. The training field here is vast, and there’s been nothing listed as out of bounds, so we can even carry them further afield and run down the clock.”
The group looked startled.
“That’s not very fun,” Adriana complained.
“The winning team gets their choice of dessert, and the losing team gets none. We are also being assessed, so I’d prefer to win. But if the group wishes to take their chances on an inferior plan, so be it.”
They didn’t. Kids were pretty damn easy to motivate with food. The plan didn’t go off without any hitch, but twenty-five against the initial ten the blue team approached our base with was easy to dispatch. Numbers mattered, and we managed to only take a few ‘casualties.’ Since they would unfreeze within five minutes, I assigned squads to carry them and shoot them again the moment they could move. A repeat performance against the defenders of the blue base occurred, though we took more losses thanks to certain highly talented individuals with proficient accuracy. John wasn’t among them, so I assumed he had led a group toward the green base.
I waited until everyone unfroze, and then we scored the maximum possible points and took one of the locked trainees. He immediately began to shout loudly about what was happening.
Guess the cat’s out of the bag.
At times we got followed by members of the blue team, but again our numbers as we moved in a ‘doom stack’ proved sufficient to overcome them. Amusingly, we ran into the green base where several green members were still frozen after John had fought fiercely. Kurt was screaming bloody murder at seeing everyone here, and given his own proficiency in games like this, I chose him as the green person we would carry and re-freeze as we began our own hike away from all three bases. I let a few people hang back, like Adriana, who wanted “more fun” to slow any potential pursuit, and we ran out the clock.
Mendez was struggling to keep from laughing as both John and Kurt loudly claimed we had cheated.
“Trainees! You were given a task. The normal rules against delivering serious injury were in effect. You were also told not to damage equipment deliberately. Red team acted with the rules of the designed exercise. Your excuses are just whining. Team blue and team green, you can make a circuit around camp for your bellyaching!”
I felt a similar feeling as I did when Dacia invaded. I had two lifetimes of experience. It really wasn’t anything challenging to defeat children, even talented children. But it was still a lot of fun, just like slaughtering the Dacians had been. While I did abhor the waste of precious human resources that war brought, the actual mechanics of crushing an inferior foe was deeply enjoyable.
No one liked a braggart, so I didn’t lord it over the failed teams, but I did enjoy my confection. Chocolate honestly did make everything better. As I enjoyed my well-earned reward, Adriana passed a small note to me under the table. She had done so circumspectly, so I waited to read it until I was out of sight of where I thought most of the cameras were. I could be wrong, of course, as I wasn’t an expert on all technology, let alone whatever bleeding-edge tools ONI had, but I was reasonably sure I hadn’t been observed.
‘Do you want to work together on a plan to escape?’
While I appreciated her gumption, that wasn’t something I could help with. If I hadn’t formed a connection with my parents, I would have jumped at the chance, but since I had, there wasn’t a point. ONI was ruthless enough to kidnap dozens of children and turn them into child soldiers. They certainly weren’t going to be above harming my parents. I had made my deal, and I believed in honoring my word; it was the basis of civilization. I would gladly break my word if it meant saving my own skin, but absent that final cost, I would do everything I could to preserve it as my bond.
Next time I saw Adriana, I just shook my head. She frowned, but let it go. I was curious to see how she would go about it and when. Mendez and his soldiers ran a tight ship, but Adriana and the other children were talented. Nothing would likely work soon, but as time went on and they were trained on technology and weaponry, they may have a real shot at it.
For now, I would just watch. I had my own plans to one day carry out, but that would be after I became the fully trained soldier they wanted me to be. After they began to trust me. Only then, after a record of loyalty and accomplishment, would I look to find a way to secure my parents and get the hell away from ONI. In the meantime, I would enjoy this rather invigorating experience.