Vignettes of a Civilized Zentradi #4

2026

"Fall in!"

And Neqel was the first into formation. The Tactical Corp recruit duty uniform she wore was nondescript, but not much different than the flight suit she'd worn when piloting her Queadluun-Rau. It was stiff, though, possibly due to disuse. It was still new after all.

"You know where you are, larva?"

She tilted her head up as the other eleven just-graduated recruits fell into formation at her sides. "Sergeant, I'm in Third Force Recon Company, 3rd Platoon, Alpha Squad."

"Damn right you are, larva. You know why I call you larva?" The Sergeant's attention had shifted to the young man next to her. All twelve of them were graduates of Basic, Infantry AIT and Airborne, with a year of supplemental training poising them for the Tactical Corp's Recon Patrol. It was a two year program, though, with the second delivered at Fort Benning, Georgia, where they'd be learning on one of the three Recon Patrol bases in North America. They'd handled the tests, physical and mental. But passing the exacting standards of a serving TA-RP Sergeant was something new.

"No, Sergeant!"

"Because you ain't hatched yet. You're all little, helpless, nothing but a bunch of goo that might learn to fly someday." The Sergeant's fierce, unrelenting eye swept over them before finally settling on her again. "Larva, why in God's good name is your hair blue? Did you read the SC Code of Military Conduct or do you delight in wasting my goddamn time?"

"Sergeant, per SC Regulation 670-1, my hair is required to be a natural color."

"Are you a goddamn Zeek, larva?"

"No Sergeant!"

"Are you going to give me some bullshit about not being a Zeek because you're actually Zentraedi?"

Neqel repressed a sigh, even as she silently gave the Sergeant a mark for more intelligence than most of the Sergeants she'd had in the last year. "I am Zentraedi, Sergeant."

"Jesus, who let you into Tac Corp?"

"That would be the UEG Immigration Expansion Act of 2014, Sergeant."

"Are you being smart with me, Larva?"

"No, Sergeant. I'm-"

"Give me a hundred, let me see for myself."

Obligingly, Neqel dropped and knocked out a hundred pushups. Her arms were warm by the end but she'd been bred for high-gravity environments up to ten times Earth's gravity. Micronian women might struggle but she'd need to have a few of her fellow squad standing on her back to experience the same.

She leaped to her feet when done and immediately fell back into formation. To their credit, none of the other eleven of her squad so much as whistled; a feat rarely accomplished with her Basic cohort.

The Sergeant for his part simply smiled. "Quack like a duck."

She obliged him again without thought.

"Woowee, you Zeeks really are that conditioned. You see this Zeek, larvae? This is your role model. This is the standard you must not only meet but exceed. In this outfit, we hunt Zeeks and you'd better be damn well better at it than them or they'll hunt you right back. What's your name, Zeek?"

"Amherst, Sergeant."

"Ain't no Zeek name."

"It was my late husband's, Sergeant."

"Ah."

A glimmer of compassion there? Had he picked up on the past tense? More surprisingly, had he chosen to not press an issue still sore and raw? Tactical Corp Recon Patrol's Sergeants might be a cut above the rest after all.

"Here's how this is going to go, larvae," he continued, walking the line. "You four are Fireteam Alpha, you four are Fireteam Bravo, and you three with the Zeek are Fireteam Charlie. Base tradition assigns the TL based on a run through Bolton and Malvesti, back to back. Fall in and let's see how you do."

Neqel glanced at Fireteam Charlie's members as they followed the Sergeant at a brisk trot across the green fields of Fort Benning. Nickens, Glasshouse and Chang, all men. If they minded having a woman or a Zentraedi in their midst, they didn't show it but neither did they make eye contact.

A minute later, no one had time for eye contact. They hauled themselves over ladder courses, across log rolls and free-climbed platforms in rapid order. Minutes later, everyone was breathing hard but concentration was total. They lacked her condition but were in better shape than the other Micronians she'd trained with over the past year.

It was tempting to pull ahead of them, out distance them with her superior musculature and high-gravity bred stamina. But the Army of the Southern Cross emphasized teamwork, cooperation. And whoever became the Team Leader, this Fireteam would be her operating unit for the forseeable. Their victory was her victory.

So when she reached the next climbing platforms first, Neqel bent a knee and offered her cupped palms. Chang seemed surprised but each didn't hesitate to put a foot in and accept a boost upwards. Much to her surprise, she was rewarded with a return hand up.

"Why?" Chang asked, too out of breath and in too much of a hurry to ask a longer question.

"We're a team," Neqel answered with a smile.

Fireteam Charlie was the first to finish. To her surprise, the Sergeant appointed her Team Leader. Given his earlier antagonism, maybe it was meant to make her life harder, directing peers unused to taking orders from a Zentraedi. After the course together, though, these peers showed no signs of bucking those orders.

Maybe she'd make it through the next year after all.