Going In For Guns: A Memoir of the Reaper Wars

Book 1: Intercept Course

Maj. Christopher "Nice Boots" Z. Valentine

Systems Alliance Marines Tactical Aerospace Command (ret.)

Systems Alliance Naval Intelligence (aux./ret.)

Citadel Office of Special Tactics and Reconnaissance (aux.)

Cassia broke at the beginning of the third week.

I won't say why.

She was folded into Squad 4, and Idela was elevated to platoon guide. Eklund took over as squad leader for him.

Idela lasted four days. Tamberlane lasted two. Ulvi spent an uncomfortable three days as platoon guide.

Throughout the rotation I had kept myself busy with advanced ACES, making sure my study was up to speed, and keeping my squad as on point as possible. In my spare time, I did my best to keep up with my friends, lending them what support I could. Somehow, I found time to sleep.

But now it was my turn. On the second day of the fourth week of boot, I was moved to the solo rack just before square-away time. I was platoon guide.

"I warned you," said Milque after the DIs left us alone. "You don't want to stand out, old man. Now it's going to be your ass for every screwup."

"Yeah," I said, drumming my fingers on my shoulder. I had seen what this position brought, and no matter that I knew everyone was broken at boot, I wasn't looking forward to it. "How's it feel to be right?"

"Pretty crappy, Fearless Leader," he said, turning away. "Do you think I liked seeing Cass and Ulvi go through that?"

"No," I said, then paused, a ghost of a memory from my previous life flitting across my brain. "Milque. Do me a favor?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, sure. What is it? Do you want me to take over your ACES slot?"

I smiled. "No, but thanks for asking. Grab the squad leaders for me, would you?"

He stood there for long seconds before a smile started to spread across his face. "You've got a plan, don't you?"

I showed teeth. "Plan might be stretching it, but I've got an idea."

"Why'd you want to see us?" asked Idela. He stood alongside Cassia, Eklund, and Tamberlane. The four of them were the current squad leaders.

"Because," I said, "I think we can get gigged on inspection less."

The four of them looked at me like I had sprouted an extra head.

"Look," I said, "I'm not saying that we can stop it entirely, but I really think we can slow it down. A lot."

"Not saying I'm not interested," said Tamberlane, "But how?"

"Simple," I said. "Has anyone gotten gigged for anything they didn't screw up?"

The squad leaders looked at each other. "No," said Eklund. "But there's so much to do, and never enough time to do it right."

"Where are you going with this?" asked Cassia.

"It'll become clear," I said. "Look, no one is the best at everything. I do good boots, but I'm always catching it for my creases being lousy, right? Tamberlane, you keep on getting quarterdecked for your beret."

He shuddered. "Thank god it's blue. Imagine what it'd be like if it were white."

"Ah!" said Cassia. "I think I get it. We do the stuff we're good at for someone else and they do what they're good at."

"Exactly," I said, pointing at her. "Give the lady a prize."

"Okay," said Eklund. "So why aren't you bringing in Tereshkov and Milque on this scheme? I thought you," she pointed at Cassia and I, "were thick as thieves with them."

I shook my head. "You misunderstand, Eklund."

"Oh?" She folded her arms across her chest.

"Yeah. I want to figure out a list of all of the things we need to do during square-away time. Then I want the four of you to figure out who's best at what in your squads. That includes each of you as well." I let a little wolf slip into my grin. "Why stop with the five of us? I want the whole platoon in on this."

We didn't get everything set in time for the next inspection. Harrison got his pound of flesh from the platoon. But the one after that?

That one we were ready for.

Some of the platoon may have accused me of timing it to coincide with Abbott's turn to run inspections. By the end of the second week, it was well known in the platoon that I did not like the platinum blonde DI. To be fair, the prevailing opinion among the trainees in Platoon 3124 was that Abbott was a sadistic witch who went into training Marines because any combat unit would have contrived a way to frag her by now. The platoon might not have known my reasons for my hatred, but they did know it existed.

I'd like to take credit for that much forethought. But it was coincidence. Beautiful, beautiful coincidence.

The building rage in Abbott's eyes as she stalked up and down the squad bay, searching for mistakes were just not there, was one of the best things I had seen in boot up to that point. It took real discipline to keep from smiling as she stewed in fury, before turning and stalking towards me.

Even the push-ups she assigned me after planting a loose thread on my uniform felt like victory. It had worked.

"So what's the next plan?" asked Cassia as we watched other members of the platoon finishing their water qualifications. We were wearing full hardsuits with our rifles and tactical harnesses, along with a ruck and other assorted gear that we'd be likely to have in the field. All of it was soaking wet, as we had just finished our quals.

Some people say that a Systems Alliance Marine is as likely to participate in an amphibious assault as to sleep with Sha'ira. Both are technically possible, but extremely unlikely. The DIs at the Island acknowledge this view, but counter that it is a possible requirement for a Marine, and after all, tradition dies really fucking hard, thankyouverymuch.

Which means if you're an Island Marine, you're going to learn how to swim in full battle rattle, along with some basic rescue swimming. And no, you don't get to seal your helmet. Why would you ever do things the easy way?

"No real plan," I said, looking at Shusett struggling to 'rescue' Ulvi. "But maybe we should expand the concept."

"What do you mean?" asked Idela, water still sluicing off his hardsuit as he walked up.

"Well," I said, as Shusett's head dipped below water, "We've proved that we can do better at inspection…"

"That was bullshit," hissed Idela. "Just because she couldn't find anything to gig!"

"She found a thread," I said in a mild tone.

"We saw her plant it, Valentine," said Idela.

I raised an eyebrow. "So the guy with a combat model cybernetic arm had to do some push-ups. Big deal." Idela opened his mouth to argue before I cut him off with a shake of my head. "Drop it. I'm thinking that we see about trying to set up something similar for skills people are lagging behind in."

"Like Shusett and his swimming?" asked Cassia. "Is Ulvi doing that on purpose?" Ulvi was now floating limp over Shusett, making it awfully hard for the guy to take a breath.

"Do you care?" I asked. Shusett was easily the worst member of the platoon, and one I could have done without. The little shit was a blue falcon through and through, and though I never proved it, I was damn sure he intentionally screwed up during the first weeks when Abbott was watching to ensure maximum sugar cookie density on Cassia's head.

"About Ulvi?" she asked. "Sure."

I smiled a bit. "But yeah, like that. Drill, ACES, first aid…"

"There's still a couple of the platoon who can't write a decent SEMAC," offered Idela.

I winced, knowing that it was more than a couple. "Exactly. Figure out who's having trouble with what in your squad, and we'll figure out how to assign tutors."

"Want me to pass it on to the other squad leaders?" asked Idela.

I nodded. "Yeah. Thanks Idela."

"No problem, Valentine." He headed off to where Tamberlane was pulling himself out of the water. I started making a mental list of the most outstanding training problems in the platoon.

Cassia looked over at me. "You're planning to do some of that tutoring, aren't you, Chris?"

"I am," I said as Shusett finally dragged Ulvi through the course. I simply wasn't having much trouble with the academics or drill, and I was practically already doing the job for ACES. And I wasn't about to ask the platoon to do something I wouldn't. "Why?"

"You're stretching yourself thin, Chris," she said. "How long are you going to be able to keep this up?"

I blinked. "I don't know. But it doesn't matter."

"Yes it does," she said, with an insistent talon jab.

I kept myself from shrugging by an act of will. "I've got to do this. Sure, the plan worked for inspection, but unless I'm an active part of the plan, it could all go up in smoke." I looked directly at her. "Let's face it, any authority I have is somewhere between ephemeral and imaginary. I can have all the clever ideas I want, but they won't be worth a damn unless the platoon supports them." I looked back to where the next swimmers were entering the tank.

"We'd support them," she said.

"Indeed we would," said Ulvi as he walked up. "You are expanding the teamwork agenda, yes?"

I nodded. "I know you guys would. But that could split the platoon. And we really don't need that." I gestured towards the other trainees. "It'd be a disaster. Not to mention, the more people we have onboard, the better my ideas work."

"True," said Ulvi.

"And it's not like I'm doing this all alone," I said, smiling. "Teamwork, right?"

Cassia clenched her talons. "We'll make them work for it."

It was a good thing that we set up the platoon tutor system when we did. Because fourth week was BCT. And we kicked off with MEDS training.

That whole 'kick' thing was more literal for some than others.

For those of you not familiar with MEDS, here's a quick rundown. Most military ships in Citadel space have a MEDS. That stands for Mass Effect Deployment System. Essentially, the ship projects a column of extremely lowered mass that you jump into, and fall to the ground. Because of the field, you can jump safely, needing little more than a tuck-and-roll to avoid injury. That's if you're good. In actual practice, knee injuries and chronic conditions make up a significant proportion of the complaints military docs deal with. That's the concept behind this turian invention.

The reality involves hurling yourself into a fall that your brain is totally convinced will kill you, and then trying to have the presence of mind to tuck and roll over the shoulder you don't have your longarm on. In case I'm being unclear, this is the kind of thing that requires some practice before you get it even close to right. There's a reason we only do it in hardsuits.

As the platoon guide, I had the lovely opportunity to do this first.

I'd like to say that I didn't hesitate in the slightest in my jump, but that would be a lie. I did have a little stutter-step in there. You'd think after throwing myself out into the void, a piddling little atmospheric jump would be peanuts, but you'd be wrong. Seeing the ground you're about to hit makes a difference. After all, it's not the fall that kills you.

Speaking of the fall, I remember it as the thought 'oh shit, oh shit' repeating in my head for long enough that when I regained my senses, it was too late to make a proper landing. Since I couldn't manage a tuck and roll, I did the next best thing and took it on my left shoulder.

Worked like a charm. The Gilgamesh was more than ready to live up to the punishment of a botched MEDS landing, and the network of reinforcements through my spine and torso spread the force across me nicely. As soon as I stopped skidding, I sprang to my feet and drew my rifle before darting out of the drop zone. Reduced mass or not, I didn't want another recruit to land on me.

As I ran out from under falling trainees, I flicked a switch on my rifle's foreguard. A tungsten carbide spike shot out from just below the concussion blast barrel.

With a yell of "Kill!", I drove the bayonet into a dummy that someone had painted to suggest a Hegemony regular. The dummy swayed back on its flex mounting, making it easy to recover my rifle, and meet it on the return with a buttstroke to its caricature of a face.

With that, my part in the drill was over, no matter how much I wanted to continue laying into the dummy. I trotted off to the recovery area, stowing the bayonet and refolding the rifle.

I hadn't really expected to see the bayonet on the Lancer, but I suppose the SAMC designers saw the bayonet as a necessary capability of any Marine longarm. I could understand the thinking. You might never need the thing, but if you did, you'd really, really want it. Add the training benefits, and it definitely becomes worth it.

I stowed my rifle, turning back just in time to see Shusett catch Carter's boot to the small of his back for refusing to leap off the MEDS tower. Shusett's scream and ensuing bellyflop threatened to bring a big old grin to my face, which I very dutifully suppressed. As Shusett moaned on the ground, Milque made a picture perfect MEDS jump. He didn't so much fall into a tuck-and-roll as flow through it with a grace most people associate with Compact assassins or particularly good asari strippers. Rather less scales and tits, though.

He punished his dummy even as Shusett struggled to his feet, blood pouring from his nose. Milque had a twin to my ruthlessly strangled big old grin on his face as he moved over to join me in the recovery area. Obviously, he had enjoyed showing up Shusettt, and me, come to think of it.

"Tutor," I said.

The grin drained off his face. "You suck, Fearless Leader." A corner of his mouth turned up with a wry expression as he considered it. "Fair, though. I did kind of show off there."

"Maybe a bit," I said. "Were you into urban exploration on Terra Nova?"

"That's one way to put it," he said, "But that's not why I'm good at that."

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah. When I was a kid, Old Man Paisley ran a junkyard. And he loved having kids around. So he set up one of the rustiest, nastiest playgrounds you ever saw." Milque smiled. "But we had the best kind of toys there. You could do anything with the stuff there. One year, I knew this kid was dressing up as a quarian for Halloween, so I asked Old Man Paisley to help me make a killer robot costume. It was awesome. Looked like something out of a horror film, and had a voice modulator in the helmet. Little bastard wet himself when he saw me coming." He lost himself in the memory for a second.

As he did, Cassia froze in midair, plunging feet-first towards the ground. It was an ugly MEDS drop, one that could get you dropped to the broke-dick platoon if conditions were unfavorable and your knees gave out. Luckily for Cassia, turian knees are more shock-absorbent, on average, than human knees. She didn't quite spring up from the landing, but she was able to run up and give the dummy a passable bayoneting.

"…of course, that was before the cops learned he had sold a scrapped Kodiak to some blinks," said Milque. Apparently he was done remembering scaring the piss out of some kid. "They kinda dragged him away for that."

"Did this story have a point?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "Old Man Paisley had a tower with a MEDS on it, obviously."

"Obviously," said Cassia as she joined us, then turned to me. "Was it? Obvious, I mean?"

"Not in the slightest," I said, then turned back to Milque. "Right. No way are they going to let us off with one jump. Get to work, you MEDS master, you."

"Aye aye, Fearless Leader."

I groaned.

I was also right. We ended up doing five cycles on the MEDS tower that day, before grabbing chow. With Milque's help we were able to get at least one passable tuck and roll each.

Later that day we practiced rappelling. This struck me as somewhat backwards, but what did I know? I was just a recruit.

After what Idela dubbed "let's throw ourselves off of tall things day", I was more than ready to just lie down in what was now my solo rack and sleep like the dead.

Of course, it would never be that easy. No rest for the wicked, and all that.

"So what's the problem?" I asked.

"Shusett, of course," said Tamberlane, who had the unenviable job of being 3rd squad's leader. Really, it wouldn't have been so bad, or at least not worse than being any other squad leader in Platoon 3124. If it wasn't for everyone's least favorite blue falcon, that was.

"Of course," I said in a tone that had a lot in common with the Sahara. "What is it this time?"

"He's bringing down our performance," said Tamberlane. "A lot."

I nodded. Between intentionally fucking up early on, sabotage from members of the platoon who were sick to death of the little weasel, and some truly staggering, if genuine, personal incompetence, Shusett was bringing down the average performance rating of Squad 3 in specific, and the platoon in general. "Agreed," I said. "Is he not getting help from the tutors?"

Tamberlane shook his head. "No, it's all there."

"Is he not taking help?" I asked.

"Only grudgingly," admitted Tamberlane. "And he's not making progress worth a damn." He looked around. "I'm worried, Valentine."

"Why?" I asked. "Either he shapes up, or they ship him out."

"He isn't gone yet," he muttered, in a dark tone. "Look, it's the gas test."

"Oh," I said, as if that explained everything. And in some ways it did. "Oh. Been reading ahead, have you?"

"You're a bad influence," said Tamberlane.

I pondered the issue. Gas exposure was an absolutely critical lesson for a Marine, and they weren't going to skip it for us any more than they'd skip rifle qualification. Not only was it training for chem/bio weapons, but it did duty as the initial training for shipboard emergencies. When you have an engineering casualty, it's all too common to have some kind of unbreathable atmosphere, whether due to caustic particulate, toxic gasses, or the good old fashioned terminally low pressure that accompanies every vid's favorite spaceborne disaster, the hull breach.

One thing which I knew was that back in my day, a group wasn't allowed to leave the gas chamber until the last person calmed down. And I saw no reason that there would be any difference in 2180 from how it was in 2012. Training was still about working as a team.

But that meant that one recruit's freak-out could keep his entire group in there for quite some time. And the running odds said it was going to be Shusett.

"Of course I am," I said. Tamberlane wasn't the brightest member in the platoon, but he had the excellent quality of being worried for the recruits under his authority, limited though it was. But he, like I did, considered Shusett to be dead weight rather than one of us. It was a common failing in Platoon 3124. "Look, stop dancing around it."

Tamberlane looked side to side, then leaned in. "I want to get him busted down to broke-dick platoon. We've got those pugil bouts coming up…"

My eyes went wide. The medical 'platoon', or 'broke-dick platoon', as we called it, would get Shusett out of our…well, scalps for a while. But what Tamberlane was suggesting? "Whoa," I said. "That's a real dangerous place to be going." Tamberlane looked to the side. "You're talking about giving him a major concussion at the least. That's nothing to mess with."

"Yeah…" said Tamberlane.

"Not to mention what the drill instructors are likely to do to whoever would actually..." I stopped. "No. No way."

"But!" said Tamberlane.

I cut him off. "No. I don't care that we don't like him. I don't care that he's a liability. He's still, as of this moment, a member of our platoon. We don't plan against our own." I ignored the fact that Shusett probably did.

Tamberlane didn't. "He does."

"Do you have proof?" I asked.

He looked away from my glowing gaze. "No."

"Then we work with what we've got."

Easy to say then. But with Shusett on the other side of the Pit from me, still strapping on the smartgel pads in preparation for our bout, I was tempted.

Why else were my knuckles whitening under my gloves as my right hand attempted to strangle my pugil stick of its own accord? What else could it be?

A muscle along my jaw jumped as I settled the training helmet over my head, looking anywhere but at Shusett. Why did Master Sergeant Solomon set up this bout?

Test, my mind supplied in response to my self-pitying. You make it sound like a mystery. I frowned. The better question is, what kind of test is it?

I considered that as two trainees ahead of us started their bout. It could be a question of aggression vs timidity. Would I hold back against an inferior opponent? Make no mistake, Shusett was not half the fighter I was, not when you considered my cybernetics and much more advanced grasp of personal combat. The only way I would lose was to cede the initiative and leave it in his hands. I knew without a trace of self-deception that I could kill him barehanded at any moment. Quickly, too.

It could be a test of looking past my own wishes for the good of the platoon. Looking around, I was shocked. Most of the platoon's eyes were on me, where they could help it. And they looked like they wanted me to hurt him. Had Tamberlane done an end run around what I said? Would it be better for the platoon and my position as guide to drop Shusett? Was I imagining it? After all, I wanted to hurt Shusett. Who's to say a pleading look wasn't pleading for Shusett?

Or was it a test of teachership? I was one of the advanced ACES students, and Shusett was terrible. I could teach him lessons through how I beat hi…

"Valentine, Shusett! You're up!" yelled Carter. I jumped to it, racing to a spot on his side of the ring. Shusett jogged over to the other side, where Abbott stood. She started to yell at him, but Carter eclipsed my vision of them. "Upon command, you will charge across the ring at your opponent!" he bellowed. "You will then engage him with your pugil stick until commanded to cease."

"Sir, yes sir!" I yelled back.

Carter pitched his voice down, leaning in towards my face. "Full intensity, Valentine. If you bust his nose, it's worth a comm call out. Just don't kill him."

Fuck, I'd bust his nose for free! Do I get more time for more bloodshed? I thought before I could catch myself. Before training, I probably would have said it out loud too. Instead, I said: "Sir, yes sir." Test or not, Marines followed orders. I had, and still have a tendency to overthink things. Maybe that was the lesson for me.

I couldn't quite keep the hungry tone from my voice. That wasn't going to be the lesson that Shusett got. I was going to enjoy the hell out of following this order. Carter stepped out of the way, letting me see my opponent.

"Recruits!" yelled Solomon. "Hold your sticks above your heads!" We did. "Give me a war cry!" Shusett managed a passable imitation of a war cry. I drowned him out with a yell that threatened to empty my lungs. "Fight!"

Credit where credit's due, Shusett didn't hesitate to run at me, pugil held in front of him.

It didn't do him a whole hell of a lot of good. Just before impact, I sunk my weight and hammered my pugil into his, center to center. I timed the blow just as he was starting to take his next step, and drove upwards. Shusett squawked as his own pugil smashed back against his chest and he left the ground. Pads or no, that wasn't a pleasant shot.

I didn't hear a command to stop, so I capitalized, closing the gap as he fell. I hooked my red tip in above his pugil, between his hands. Thrusting it against his chest, I stepped to the side, sweeping down towards his legs with my red tip, ripping the pugil stick from his hands and simulating a bayonet tear from sternum to groin. Just to add insult to injury, as I sent his weapon flying, I dropped to one knee, smashing the black tip of my pugil into his face.

Shusett's helmet kept me from spreading his nose across his cheek, but I hammered his head into the ground more than hard enough to dim his lights. In fact, as I recovered back to a guard, I wondered if that hadn't been too much force. Shusett wasn't moving, and I could see blood under his mask. It had been my left arm that had control over the black tip. The Gilgamesh.

"Recruit! You were not commanded to cease!" yelled Carter.

I froze for a split-second. How much more did Carter want from me? I had humiliated Shusett. If I had a rifle and bayonet instead of a pugil, he would have been dead. The fucker was semi-conscious at best, and didn't have a weapon. Why beat him while he was down?

But I had my orders. Shusett's eyes cleared just in time to widen in fear as I drove a shot into his gut and pinned one of his arms with my knee before looping the other end of the pugil down on his forehead. He tried to ball up, but with his arm pinned, it wasn't going to work out. I slammed his hip with a knee to open him up before pivoting on his trapped arm and moving into a mount.

Here I could see his face clearly, terror evident in each line of his weaselly face. I could see the blood pouring from a broken nose, painting his lips and chin scarlet. His lips parted to show bloody teeth, perhaps to beg for mercy. I smiled.

"Kill!" I smashed his face to the side with a pugil shot to the side of his head.

Only then did he start to fight back, punching at my head with his free arm while he tried to get enough leverage with his knees to punish my kidneys. Pinning his trapped hand with my foot, I allowed him to rise up a bit as I wove my body back, twisting him onto his side with my other leg to torque his shoulder under him. As the punch passed, I pressed in with the pugil, pinning it across his body, and exposing the back of his head.

Don't kill him, I thought, then slammed the strike home.

"CEASE!"

Shusett ended up in the broke-dick platoon. I kept my place as platoon guide and advanced ACES student.

It didn't seem right. I didn't say it, but anyone with half an eye could see the difference in how I moved from when I climbed off of Shusett's unconscious body and how I buffed boots for the next day's inspection. From victory to penance.

Tamberlane, of course, didn't see it that way. "Goddamn, Valentine, I thought you said we were working with what we had. That was fucking beautiful."

"Orders," I said as I looked at the toe of Ulvi's boot with a critical eye. Not quite, I decided, and continued working the rag. "The instructor wanted full intensity."

"I guess the shit's lucky you didn't kill him," said Tamberlane.

I opened my mouth to tell him that was also part of the orders, then shut it. "I suppose so," I said instead.

"Recruit Valentine!" snapped Penlan.

I dropped the boot and rag as I shot to attention. "Ma'am, yes ma'am!" Tamberlane did likewise.

"At ease. I understand you have earned a comm call, recruit," she said, looking at me.

Tamberlane and I relaxed from attention. "This is the recruit's understanding as well, Senior Drill Instructor."

"Well, let's take care of that, recruit," said Penlan, turning towards her office.

"The recruit has no one to call, Senior Drill Instructor," I said.

Penlan turned back to me with narrowed eyes, then nodded fractionally. "Recruit Tamberlane, take care of those boots. Recruit Valentine, follow me." She turned and headed into her office.

I could almost hear Tamberlane's mental cursing. He was passable at boots, but he hated doing them. I couldn't spare much thought for his misery, though. The door to Penlan's office shut behind me. She sat down at her desk, a surprisingly nice wooden piece, and motioned to a chair in front of it. "Sit."

I did, keeping my back erect.

"What am I going to do with you?" she asked. When I didn't answer her, she scowled at me. "That was a question, recruit."

"The recruit does not understand the question, Senior Drill Instructor," I said.

"Horseshit." Penlan gave me a most unamused glare. "You understand plenty."

"As the Senior Drill Instructor says." I focused my gaze on the wall above her head.

"Knock it off, Valentine," spat Penlan. "Speak freely."

I blinked. "Ma'am?" I asked, honestly confused.

She arched an eyebrow. "Ah. Valentine, I won't mince words. You're too damn smart." As I stiffened, I thought I caught the most incremental smile on her lips. "You and I both know that you already know the point of most of what we do here." I opened my mouth to object, only for her to cut me off. "Or were you lying to Recruit Hartwell?"

I swallowed. "You knew about that?"

"Of course."

I bit back the question of why she had let it go on, because of course, I knew the answer. "Then you know the recruit said he only knew the broad outlines."

"But?" Penlan prompted.

I frowned. "The recruit does analyze our activities, looking for the lesson."

Penlan nodded. "Precisely. That's actually an admirable trait in a leader, but I think it's keeping you from learning an important lesson."

My frown deepened and I forced myself to look at her. "What lesson is that, Senior Drill Instructor?"

"You tell me. Hartwell already told you."

"I need…to not be ashamed of killing," I said, slowly, abandoning a recruit's speech patterns.

"Of violence," she corrected. "You hesitated with Shusett." When I didn't say anything, she went on. "On a battlefield, that can kill you. It's the biggest problem smart guys like you have. It's a fight. You have a target. Just act. Love the violence."

"I did," I admitted.

Her eyes narrowed. "Then what was the problem?"

"He was a platoon mate."

Penlan gaped for a second before burying her face in her hands. "Lord, save me from idealists." She massaged the bridge of her nose. "It never ceases to amaze me how idealism can make a smart person into an idiot."

I kept my mouth firmly shut.

"Shusett was your enemy," she said, looking back at me. "End of story. Let me guess, you wanted to bring him into the platoon and for everyone to work as a solid team?" She went on before I could even think about replying. "Reforming only works if the person to be reformed is onboard. He wasn't."

"Yes ma'am," I whispered.

"That was not your failure. That was his failure." Penlan waved it away. "But your guilt does concern me. You think too much for me to trust the standard model to work, so I want you to read some Marlantes." She brought up her omni-tool and sent me a file. "Feel free to ignore the sexism and Jungian claptrap. He wrote in the early 21st century."

"Yes ma'am."

"Make no mistake, Valentine, in the Marines, we use violence to solve our problems. You need to be on board with this or you will never be one of us. We don't deal with perfect solutions for perfect worlds. We work in reality."

I nodded. "Yes ma'am."

"Don't deprive the Alliance of a good officer, Valentine. Dismissed."

The next day, we faced the gas chamber.

I nearly refused to walk in.

It wasn't the subtle irritation and the sweet smell of CS that got stronger as you got closer to your turn. That didn't help, mind you. CS is no joke. The groups ahead of us proved that, running out of the chamber with tears soaking their faces and mucus spilling from their noses. No, it wasn't that.

The words 'gas chamber' mean something to me that is hard to appreciate for most 22nd century humans. Sure, the events of what we called World War 2 are still studied. But to most of you, they aren't relevant the way they are for me. I shouldn't be surprised. Even back before I ended up on Tiptree, I could see World War 2 meaning less to the next generations. Sure, 'Nazi' was practically a synonym for evil, but it was almost used in the same legendary quality as 'vampire'.

But when I read for my Bar Mitzvah, it was from a Torah that was originally written for a congregation in Warsaw. I gave my speech on the Danish Resistance. I had spoken to survivors. The Holocaust was not an abstraction to me.

"Not showers," I whispered to myself.

"What'd you say?" asked Idela from behind me.

I didn't reply, eyes fixed on the door ahead of us. Could I do this? I hadn't seen this creeping dread rising from my memories. It wasn't anything I could explain to the drill instructors or my friends. Not for the first time, I wished that I didn't have to lie about who I was. This was quickly followed by smothering my self-pity. My choice. My consequences.

The door opened. A nightmare of raining pellets and carbon monoxide fumes yawned ahead of me.

I froze.

"You okay?" asked Idela, as my back went tense.

I took a deep breath...and doubled over coughing as the CS gas caught me. It broke the spell. I ran in, and into phase two.

A/N: Nothing much to say with this one. Took longer than I would have liked, but that's nothing new. Amusingly, it was finished just before Christmas, so if you're of the persuasion, you can call it a Christmas miracle that VDO finished a chapter in only two months or so. *eye roll* Lord, we're slow here. Next time, to no-one's surprise, we'll be seeing the Phase 2 training. Perhaps it won't take two months to see it! But we don't promise like that around here. Because it never seems to go to plan.

Thanks again to Herr Wozzeck for his pre-reading. And of course, thank you to all of you for reading, faving, following, and reviewing. I'm not going to pretend that your responses don't keep me writing more frequently. Cause, you know, they do.

Until next time, readers!

-VDO

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