Chapter 1

Lieutenant Commander Cedrix Ambrose strode out of the spacey college, yet as he did so he caught the eyes of many people. He was a Lieutenant Commander in college after all, so it was natural he received many looks of curiosity, scorn, and lust. The El-Cee wasn't exactly the best looking Marine, but he did have power in the spacey college. Most professors did not carry a high rank. The highest ranking professors carried the rank of Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. Ambrose could technically order the professors to pass him automatically. However, he clearly put everyone he was in charge of in front of himself. He cared about the Marines he commanded in the simulations.

The El-Cee was on the front lines when the Marines charged into the fray and they appreciated the gesture. He was known as "Gentle" by the various Marine squads, but when the Shock Troopers showed any harsh actions towards the Marines he turned into something along the lines of a genetically modified drill Sergeant. He would make the Troopers do more pushups than what the Marine Corps did in the entire day. While Ambrose was harsh with them he still asked gently if they were still good to continue their punishment.

El-Cee Ambrose continued down the titanium supported walkways. The stone walkways reverberated as his light steps combined with the hundreds of other Marines. Much of which paced behind Ambrose as he made way for his quarters. Marines lightly saluted him as he passed. He always saluted back towards the Marines. As the El-Cee strutted up the stairs into the dorm building he was quickly pelted by various items courtesy of the resident Shock Troopers. His black suit soaking up the mixture of grape, orange, and cherry soda. Ambrose quickly snapped his head towards the snickering Shock Troopers. While the Shock Troopers were patting one another's backs for their well planned out attack, the El-Cee had already bypassed a trash can and picked it up.

"Since you Sparkies were unable to make it in the trashcan, I brought it closer for you." Ambrose swiftly dumped the can onto the top of the closest Shock Trooper, which by chance was wearing a white dress suit. "Now if you'll excuse me children I have weapons training to get dressed for." Ambrose waved casually over his shoulders at the steaming Troopers causing much more hatred between the Troopers and himself.

The centuries old sakura trees were spreading their bitter tears for the time. They missed the memories which passed within the past season. The pink petals floated around the artificial airflow created by the stations air ducts. The smell of the sakura petals floated around just as the smell of oil and titanium did.

Inside of the dorms Ambrose passed by the plain pasty white walls. The walls sparsely carried enough lights to not bump into other recruits or officers that roamed the hallways. Bumping onto the various officers had happened quite a lot before the lighting was enhanced, yet those who accidentally ran into officers quickly learned to watch where they were going in the dim hallways. Ambrose was one of those people who learned the hard way. He had to stay in the military's medbay for a week while a specific officer was fuming for the fact Ambrose did not apologize.

Ambrose casually opened his dorm room's door he was, as usual, greeted with the smell of high school teenagers. The room smelt of twenty different types of Hatchet body spray, yet there were only three other people who lived in the dorm room with Ambrose. The first person who lived in the dorm was Ambrose himself. Being the highest ranking "grunt" in the college. Even if Ambrose was technically a high enough rank to command a small frigate in the Spacey fleet he was still in training for any type of job on a space vessel.

The second person in the dorm was a newly promoted Corporal named Dedric Sui. Sui was slightly cocky due to him getting a recent promotion after luckily beating three drunk professors trying to hit on a Female Private. Sui was actually a nice person once you got to know him. He cleaned the dorm time to time while also keeping up with all of his studies, but he has a bad habit of using everyone's body spray without asking.

The third person is a bit of prankster, but he holds high morals. While he seems to always have a prank waiting he would warn a person about it if they were in a foul mood or if they were sick. He would even dismantle the traps if a person simply asked. This person is Lance Corporal Eyraul Dylien.

The final person in the dorms is the squad's leader Staff Sergeant Volia Lockley. While she technically didn't have the right to order Ambrose around, she did anyways. While Ambrose was in Spacey she was in the Marines and to her Marines are much stronger than any Spacey grunt. She didn't like anyone in the dorm, but she also didn't hate them, unless it was a specific week.

Looking around Ambrose noticed Sui wrestling with Dylien most likely due to Dylien pulling a prank of Sui. While it looked like Sui was winning Dylien somehow had caused Sui to burst out into laughter during the sprawl. On the other side of the room Lockley was mumbling to herself about the two Marines frolicking about in front of her. Walking over to his nearby bed Ambrose picked up his combat gear from the bed, which Sui most likely had laid out of him. His officer's fatigues were made to have body armor put over them in emergency situations, or for those who happen to be too lazy to change out of their gear beforehand. Ambrose's armor had many pieces ranging from gloves, to shin guards, to his helmet there were at least twenty differing pieces of armor. Each piece was made of standard metals and ceramics. The armor would stop even the strongest Assault Rifle bullets. The armor fell apart when it came to Laser, or even the rare Plasma damage.

After slapping on the seemingly endless amounts of armor Ambrose clipped on his ammo belt around his waist. Usually the ammo belt would help him carry around ten extra clips for his Assault Rifle, but today it only held his combat knife place right above the back of his hips. Normally Marines and Shock Troopers were not allowed to carry any type of weapons on their person at any time, but being an officer allowed Ambrose to be privileged enough to carry a small concealed weapon around.

His knife was a modified OIK, or the Officer's Issued Knife. Many of the officers tended to call the knife Oink for the slight resemblance in name, and the pink handle. Ambrose painted the handle black to match his fatigues and officer's uniform. The cross guard was also removed to allow it to be hidden even more so without being spotted. The blade was remade with a Titanium/Chronomium alloy. The alloy allowed for the blade to be an estimated twenty times stronger than the normal Titanium blades. With how Chronomium acted when in contact with an energy shield it allowed the blade to piece the shielding without any problem. Once you became an officer you were given some funds to customize one of your personal weapons. Many altered their handguns, a few their rifles, but very rarely, if at all, their knives.

While many races held the technology to create shielding Humanity still had yet to acquire a means of creating it. While a few prototypes worked, they needed an entire Fusion drive to run at hardly enough force to stop a Rifle bullet. The technology was hardly efficient, but with the constant attacks on various systems by other races it would be more likely than not the military would get their hands on a power generator of sorts to power personal and ship wide shielding.

All Ambrose cared about was the fact his knife could literally cut straight through a shield without putting too much force into the strike.

Within twenty minutes of leaving his dorm room Ambrose arrived at the Campus' training grounds. A few squads of Marines and Shock Troopers were already there chatting and speaking about their choice of weapons, either that or, as any competent person would expect from hormone filled men, women.

A pitched yell came from a nearby bench with a few marines now standing near it, "Officer on deck!" While every Marine's hand shot up into a salute position along with their boots clicking together, the Shock Troopers snapped to attention before noticing it was just Ambrose, so their hands went slack, but still held the position.

"What is going on?!" A voice, which made the earlier screech seem like nothing, boomed. "Do you idiots just yell that at any person that is a higher rank than you?!" Ambrose slightly cringed at the poisonous remark towards the Marines and Shock Troopers. "Now, who the hell are you-" As the voice rounded the corner it was met with a sharp Meep proceeding it. " Ahem, right."

A pause ensued after the person cleared his throat, "Ah, sorry Sergeant Major I forgot to tell you I will be participating today" A long pause with a few coughs and stifled laughs plagues the area for a few seconds. "I haven't practiced my shooting skills in a few weeks, so I came down to check if I could join you today, also at ease." The Marines slowly put down their hands and continued what they were attending before. The Shock Troopers scoffed before donning their gear.

"Hell yeah you can. You see per usual the Marines have been getting their assess whooped by the ST." A few whoops came from the Shock Troopers in the room. "I was thinking maybe you can change that." Ambrose glanced around at the Marines. The highest rank in their ranks was a few Lance Corporals. "These Rookies have yet to see any action outside of their parents bed and have no leadership experience whatsoever." The Marines naturally looked down at the ground in shame. "So, what do you say about it El-Cee?"

Ambrose raised his eyebrow for a moment, "I'm not going to be getting out of this even as your technical commanding officer am I?" The Sarge gave a grin that could only be taken as one of pure enjoyment. "Alright, I guess I'll command the Marines for this run."

The Sergeant saluted for a second and turned to the Shock Troopers, "You heard the man everyone gear up, and ST, get ready for an ass whooping." Every trooper in the room began to sprint around grabbing gear, weapons, ammo, armor, and everything in between. "Gear up El-Cee, Officers get a pistol and their knife covered in a taser sheath along with their selection of armor." Ambrose nodded simply and walked down the oblong room into the armories doorway.

Opening the nearest closet there was copious amounts of 12.7 x 40mm training rounds. Several already filled magazines littered the bottom of the closet. Ambrose grabbed several of the clips and slipped them into his various pouches on his ammo belt. After closing the closet and moving over ten feet Ambrose picked up a IP-3a standard issue pistol off of a rack. Quickly pulling back the slide of the pistol Ambrose glided one of the several clips of training ammo into the loading mechanism. The slide of the pistol snapped forward and automatically loaded a round into the chamber. The pistol was fitted into a small magnetic clip under his right armpit. This placement would allow for him to quickly pull the weapon out of the clip with his left hand and put a round down range within seconds.

Strutting across the room Ambrose quickly came to a rack that held various sizes of knife taser sheathes. Although none of the sheathes exactly fit his custom built knife a few had a close enough fit to be allowed in the arena. Ambrose already had his set of armor on, but due to classiness he had to put on a officer's suit over the armor. By the time he slipped on the sheathe a few marines gathered various types of training ammunition, training grenades, and miscellaneous gadgets.

When Ambrose stepped out of the armory the Shock Troopers were already gone. They were most likely already on the training field causing trouble between one another. The squad of Marines equated to twenty able bodied men, seven carried standard APA-17a assault rifles, four carried CBR-13a four shot rifles, three carried HC-9c light machine guns, another three carried SAR-5b semi-auto rifles. The last three were the specialists of the group, a TSR-7 three shot rocket launcher was shouldered along with a IMG-23sr submachine gun, another carried a HAMR(HR)-1f anti-material rifle and a holstered APA-17a. The final squad mate carried a TIRGGLP-8s grenade launcher. The weapon is said to be a classified project, but with it being used in a training program would make many people think it was just a rare weapon. The final Marine also held onto a APA-17a with plenty of ammo lining his person.

Ambrose raised an eyebrow at the squad's sniper Rifle's name. He nodded to a few of the marines as he got closer to the sniper. "Marine?"

The Marine in question straightened out and saluted. "Yessir?" The Sniper was rather tall and lanky for being a Marine, but he held onto his rifle without a problem.

"May I ask why your rifle has a H-R etched into it?" The etching was obvious as it was silver in color while the rest of the rifle black and grey.

Many of the man's squad mates stopped for a few moments to listen in to the conversation. "Well I modified my weapon into loading larger rounds than a normal Hammer, so it generates extra recoil, thus the H-R, heavy recoil." Ambrose nodded in agreement.

"Ha! I call BS on that one Pavel" One of the Marines carrying one of the HC's cried, "El-Cee it is just an addition that makes the gun's name into something worthwhile." The squad who weren't laughing nodded, "It makes the name into Hammer Her it's pretty good if you ask me."

Pavel shrugged "you guys can say that all you want, but it does stand for heavy recoil." The Marines chuckled for a moment. "Now let's get ready for our match." A few Marines oorah'd and slapped in their magazines into their weapons.

Standing near the door to the training field Ambrose raised his voice, "Marines! Today we will be fighting the our supposed best, but how do you men feel about that?" The Marines in the room stood tall and in attention. "They may be elite, but we're the first in battle and the last out, so wouldn't that make us more likely to be the best?" He swiftly glanced around the room. "We are the finest troops in this galaxy, and we've just been raising their ego all this time so we can knock them down, Isn't that right Marines?"

Fists and weapons were raised in agreement "Sir yes sir!" They began to slap each other on random pieces of armor.

"Damn right, now let's engage." The phrase caused a few eyebrows to be raised, but nonetheless the Marines were rearing for the training session. "Once we're in get into chess formation, I sure to hell they taught you what that is." Ambrose pointed into the training grounds and the Marines began to march into the field.