Atlas (7 page)

Though she was quite the girl, I had to admit.

A few days into the seventh week, I awoke to a high-pitched whistle in the middle of the night.

"General Quarters!" came the voice over the main circuit. "General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations. Up and forward to starboard, down and aft to port. General Quarters, general Quarters. Incoming rockets, starboard side! Incoming rockets!" The klaxon sounded five times and the message repeated.

My heart was beating fast. It had finally come. Battle Stations. The culmination of Basic training.

Two Petty Officers rushed into our berth.

"RPOC!" one of them said. "Integrate your division and get your soldiers into full battle dress!
You have five minutes
!"

Ace was our RPOC (Recruit Petty Officer in Charge) tonight. He saluted, then turned to us. "You heard the man! Dress and grab the spacebags!"

We dressed and mustered with the women in the compartment outside. I grabbed one of the heavily-laden spacebags on the way out. There was one bag for every three recruits. It didn't feel too heavy, but I knew it would feel like an anchor as the evening wore on. I wouldn't have to worry about that, though. Someone would relieve me, right?

Bowden separated us into two teams, Red and Yellow, and assigned two petty officers to each team as facilitators. Alejandro, Tahoe and I were in Red team. Shaw and Ace ended up in Yellow.

PO1 (Petty Officer First Class) Rao explained the rules. "Everything you've learned in Basic has been building to this. You've been called to arms and it's time to perform! Though the majority of you will move on to your rating schools, in less than a month some of you may be stationed on starships. So while this is a practice run, I want you to treat it like a
real
mission. And you'll be graded as if it were. This is serious business.

"Every tiny mistake you make, that's one strike against you. Three strikes and you're out—you get rolled back to a junior division and have to repeat Battle Stations. If you make any major mistakes, you're rolled back on the spot, regardless of how many previous strikes you have. Stop during any of the runs, or otherwise refuse to train, you're out. Same goes for any gundecking or 'gaming the system' type strategies, which won't be tolerated. You do what's asked of you in the given time allotted, no more, no less. Understood?"

"
Yes sir!
"

He nodded. "Good. Luckily for you, passing is more a matter of avoiding strikes than accumulating any sort of score. Survive the night unscathed, and you're in the Navy."

Ace gave the order to proceed to the first event and we began the half-mile jog to Building 1312. The snow was just blowing around us. Blizzard conditions.

"It's times like this that I really hate you," Alejandro said beside me. "
Caramba
. Why did I ever let you talk me into leaving my sunny country?"

"Who's speaking?" PO1 Rao shouted.

Alejandro quickly clammed up.

Once we reached 1312, Rao explained the first objective. "Sino-Koreans have ambushed your destroyer class starship and taken out your engines. A boarding party is trying to seize your ship. You're unarmed, so your orders are to extract your injured shipmates and move them to a secure area for treatment. The BEARs are offline." BEAR stood for Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot. "So it's up to you to perform the extraction of your shipmates. Provide first aid and bring the injured to the designated area as quickly as you can. You are a team, first and foremost, an individual, second. How you function as a cohesive team in times of danger will mean the difference between life and death. Live by the rules of honor, courage and commitment and you will do well, not just here in training but in life itself." He picked out three of the taller recruits, including Tahoe. "You, you and you, you're going to be the casualties."

The 'casualties' were led away. The assistant RPOC on our team assigned corpsmen, scouts and defenders, and then divided the remainder of us into four-person parties. I was teamed up with Jason and Tisha, two recruits I knew peripherally. Unfortunately I also had Dirtbag Nathan in my party.

"Hey Chico," Nathan said to me as we moved toward the stretcher. "Think you're up to being a man?"

I lifted up my end of the stretcher. "That should be easy enough next to a woman like you."

Tisha made a face. "Can we just complete the mission without comparing dick size?" she said.

The four of us were the first go in after the scouts. We heaved the stretcher past the line of defenders, making our way toward a darkened doorway. Before we went inside I saw the party from Yellow team enter an alternate doorway nearby.

We ended up in a maze of black-painted walls and metallic floors that echoed our every boot step. Strobe lights flashed from all sides, simulating weapons fire. Screams, gunfire, and explosions echoed from various parts of the maze. I glanced up and caught a glimpse of two petty officers patrolling the catwalks above, observing our every movement. That kind of grounded me, and reminded me that all this was a simulation, which made things a little easier psychologically.

We could barely hear above the simulated screams as the scout from Red team shouted us forward. We crawled through a scuttle, over pipe barriers, and with difficulty carried the stretcher up a ladder. It was hard enough climbing those ladders with an empty stretcher—I could only imagine how difficult it was going to be when we carried an actual casualty back with us.

We came to a sealed hatch. It wouldn't open.

"What now?" Nathan said. "How the hell are we going to get through?"

Two other stretcher parties from Red team piled up behind us.

"Tim and I will check the other routes," one of the scouts we'd been following said. "Wait here." The two scouts hurried back and went down the leftmost passage we'd passed on the way.

There was another passage back there, on the right.

"I'll scope out the rightmost passage. Save us some time." I wanted to show my initiative to the watching petty officers. Plus the fire of competition had been lit inside me, and I dearly wanted to beat Yellow team.

No one said anything as I turned back.

I shoved past the other two Red parties, but before I made it three meters, I heard a voice call down from the observation walkway. "Recruit Galaal," the petty officer said. "Strike one for separating from your extraction party."

Damn it.

I returned to my party.

"Well done, you douche," Nathan said.

The scouts reappeared and led us back to an open hatch. The three Red parties split up in the compartment beyond. My group found the first casualty lying beside some smoking machinery.

It was Tahoe. I was shocked when I saw his face covered in blood.

Then he smiled. "Hey Rade. What do you think of my new look?"

Tisha went through the process of medically stabilizing him, just like we were supposed to.

Then we loaded him onto the stretcher. Man, Tahoe was heavy.

"This way!" a scout said through the dry-ice fog. Tim.

We followed Tim's voice, and hurried down the scuttle until we came upon the dreaded ladder.

This was going to be tricky. The ladders were wide enough for one person only. I took charge of the front of the stretcher, while Jason gripped the back.

I paused right at the top of the ladder. "Nathan, go down the ladder! We'll need your help at the bottom."

Nathan crossed his arms. "No way Chico. Who made you leader?"

I glanced at Tisha imploringly. She slid down the ladder before I could say a word.

I ignored Nathan and started down the ladder, carrying the front handles of the stretcher. I took each rung one at a time, constantly worried that my knees were going to give out, or that I'd miss a step. Tahoe slid precariously against the straps, but the
buckles held.

I felt the solid deck below my feet. Tisha joined my side and grabbed the other handle. Together we lifted the stretcher away from the ladder while Jason
climbed down, slowly lowering the opposite side. We could've used another hand holding up the middle of the stretcher from here though, bearing some of the weight. Damn it, Nathan.

When Jason reached the deck he lost his grip on one handle and the stretcher tilted to the side. Tahoe banged his side on the bulkhead.

"Gah!" Tahoe said. "Careful, bitches!"

I saw one of the petty officers watching from the catwalk above, and I cringed, expecting to get another strike.

But it wasn't me who got the penalty.

"Recruit Filberg!" the petty officer's voice floated down from above. "Strike for failing to observe proper safety protocols."

"
What?
" Nathan slid down the ladder. "This sucks! I didn't do anything!"

"That's exactly right, you didn't do anything," the petty officer said. "You should have gone down when Astronaut Recruit Galaal asked. They needed you down there."

"Yeah whatever." Nathan shoved a shoulder under the stretcher, finally taking up his share of the burden. "Let's go before that asswipe throws some other stupid citation at me." He said that loud enough for the petty officer to hear. Probably not the best idea to insult the officers who were grading you.

When we finally got back, the test was reset—different people were assigned as rescuers, scouts, casualties, corpsmen and defenders. We repeated the test four times, and at the end of it I'd played nearly every role. The total cumulative extraction times of each team were tallied, and Yellow team edged us out by about three minutes. As reward, no member of Yellow had to carry a spacebag to the next evolution.

I ended up being saddled with one of the spacebags again, and it was all I could do to concentrate on the man in front of me and listen to the cadence to ensure I kept formation.

"Everywhere we go-o."

"
Everywhere we go-o.
"

"People wanna know-o."

"People wanna know-o."

By the time we arrived at our destination through the blizzard, my vision was filled with floaters and I just wanted to collapse. I staggered inside the building and tossed the spacebag into the pile beside the door.

"Jeez, Rade, you look terrible." Alejandro tossed aside his own spacebag. He had icicles on his eye-brows.

"You know it." I gave him a fist bump.

I paused to take in my surroundings, and I realized where we were: the Weapons Simulator building.

The rangemaster came forward, the stock of a simulated rifle slung over his shoulder. We mustered immediately, and he paced among our front rank. "So. Those darn Sino-Koreans have struck again. Tore a hole in your hull during a surprise attack, they did. And guess what? The goshdarn varmints have boarded. You'll have to wear your SCBAs. Not safe with a hull breach on the ship, it ain't. Artificial gravity is still active though, and the radiation shielding is still up, so you don't need full hazmat suits. Lucky you. I know, it don't make sense, because if there were an actual hull breach you'd need the full suits. But hey, this is Battle Stations, and they don't want you to use the full suits till later tonight. Shooting with an SCBA on will be tricky enough as it is, don't you worry.

"Anyhoo, you're going to shoot twenty simulated rounds at the target, while observing full safety precautions, you hear? I don't want any mistakes. I'm not in the greatest of moods tonight, so I might just give out three strikes for a minor infraction. Anyway, you've all fired rifles before so this should be a cakewalk: Don't be letting down your teammates by missing targets or failing to observe safety protocols. And don't be letting the sights and sounds of the battle distract you. Show us what you're made of! Show us your mettle! I want you to prove to me that you know what honor, courage, and commitment mean. Red team shoots first. Go!"

We were given one minute each to don a SCBA (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus). Miss any step, or fail to complete all steps within the allocated sixty seconds, and we got a strike. We went forward in groups of fifteen.

I was in the group that went first. I approached the SCBA bracket, placed my arms through the shoulder straps, released the SCBA from the bracket, cinched the waist belt, tightened the shoulder straps, opened the main cylinder valve, donned the face plate, slid my protective hood up, pulled on a helmet, secured the chin strap, connected the regulator to my face piece, and finally activated the air flow and Personal Alert Safety System. 

The rangemaster and his assistant moved down the line, checking us. A lot of other recruits got strikes for missing a step. Not me. Surprisingly, Nathan completed all the steps perfectly and on time as well.

I grabbed a simulated rifle from the weapons case. These utilized a laser light pointer instead of live rounds, but we still had to observe full safety precautions.

Nathan apparently missed the part about observing safety precautions, because when he grabbed his simulated rifle, three recruits, including myself, were in his line of fire before he lowered it.

"Recruit Filberg!" the rangemaster roared.

Nathan actually jumped.