"I'll see your five and raise you a bill."

If I could name one thing that I truly enjoyed at the Com Guard training academy, it would most definitely be the single social hour we were allowed each night. It God's pathetic attempt at a silver lining for a poor situation. We could throw darts at an old target strung up near my bunk, or we might get a few hours of sleep, or just sit by the calendar and recount the number of days until graduation. But doing those brought back reminders that I'd done them all years ago, before the pirates (whose names I can't even remember anymore) picked me up and dropped me back here.

A floor might suffice, and a bed could do it justice. But no, to appreciate a game of poker, you had to have a fucking table. And you would sit there, marveling at the novices of such a game, but similarly lamenting the lack of value C-bills had in a place where everything was ration stamps, whipping and commodities.

"Y'all ready?" said Joseph, the jock. The big, dumb jock.

"Hmm," started Gabriel. "I've got crap. I fold." Gabriel always folded.

"I'm about right," I said.

"Okay, no one says no then. Four sixes, read 'em and weep," said Joseph. It was like a child bragging about a lucky penny.

"Sorry, Joey, guys. Full house." I set down my hand, which had two Demi Precentors and three Adepts. This would be the rough equivalent of two kings and three queens.

"Well," said Louis, "I think I might've beat you. What's a straight worth?" Louis was a total newbie to fighting. He was only seventeen.

"Straight flush?"

"Nah, just two to six."

"Sorry, man. I win. Winner takes." I took the twenty folded, ruffled C- bills out from the center plate.

Com Guard poker was interesting, since the only decks you could get at the academy were based off the Com Guard's military. Two's were an infantry squadron, which was about where we were. Three's and four's were fancy inner sphere battle armor-type units that I'd never seen fight. Fours and fives were hovercrafts, a Pegasus and Condor, respectively. Sixes were a Bulldog, sevens were a PO. Eight was a Padilla artillery tank, a rude thing with gigantic artillery rockets. Nine and ten were Typhoons (which we never saw around hear because wheeled units couldn't move diddily in the marshes) and Alcorns, which were so rare and expensive, they were used sparingly.

The face cards were different rankings portrayed in different battlemechs, which I couldn't name. I knew nothing about battlemechs. A Jack was an Acolyte, or warrior. Queens and Kings were Adepts and Demi Precentors. Adepts commanded six-unit squadrons. Demi-Precentors commanded a battalion. And aces, of course, were Precentors, commanders of a division.

"You play this often, then," said Joseph. "I ain't see people play so well around where I was from."

"Poker is one of those things where practice doesn't make perfect. It's either you're born with it, or you're not," I told him. "Another round?"

Before they could refuse, the alarm went off. A loudspeaker sounded with the sergeant's voice.

"All comrades, alert! Get your asses in gear! Strong Point Defense Fortress Watchdog Two is being attacked!"

We were quick to shoot to our feet. This was what we had been trained to do for months. React quickly and in deadly efficiency. We grabbed up our rifles, snapped on our helmets, then slipped into our flak jackets and backpacks. Our boots and everything were already made up, the sergeant insisted we have the fastest possible response time without having to look like a dork 24-7.

"All comrades, alert! Strong Point Defense Watchdog Two is being attacked! Battlemech and vehicular advances sighted! Support defense column immediately!"

We ran down the corridor, single file so we didn't trip over each other. It looked pretty cool, just a straight stream of soldiers shooting out into the night. We met a large group of armored personnel carriers and battle tanks outside.

"What squad are we?" asked Joseph.

"Thirty two!" I yelled. "We're in APC number thirty two!"

I spotted the dingy marking of '32' on one of the APCs and jogged toward it. It was a Badger Tracked Transport. I packed myself inside to make room for the eleven other people, making twelve, or two points of infantry. We were the cesspool, the dirty workers. We stood stiff as the Badger lurched foreword, reaching its top speed in seconds. Treads ground on the dirt that soon became the smooth pavement of city streets.

"I'm freaked, man," said Louis.

"Yeah, well, you're not the only one," I reassured him.

"Why should you be freaked? You've done this a million times."

"And it just gets scarier and scarier to know you've tweaked statistics so often."

"Who are we fighting, anyway?"

"Well, the sergeant said legs and treads. So it's gonna be hard."

"You think ours have held theirs off?"

"Somehow I doubt it." I did doubt it. Why should we be blessed with such luck?

After a short bolt through the city, the Badger came out into the field behind the Watchdog fortress. We came closer, when we felt a shuddering impact. The driver turned to us.

"All right, we're seen! Let's move, move, move! This chicken's about to fry!"

I never knew the driver, and I never would. For as soon as all of the soldiers were out, a powerful blast rocked the Badger, which kicked up a small shock wave of dust and metal. That kind of blast usually meant a magnetic rail gun of some sort. It didn't concern me, as that kind of thing would rarely be used on infantry.

Basically, it was my 11 comrades and I, charging foreword into withering gunfire. A hairy situation, typical to be heard of in war-related films and such. In fact, bum rushes to this simplicity hadn't been ruled out by a thousand years of technology, not since the old 'great' world war conflicts on earth, where the density of men and guns was so high, casualties were ridiculous.

I would say the base was about a half kilometer from where I was now. I could make out vehicles and battlemechs, none of whom seemed to be fighting each other anymore. It seemed the conflict had already been lost, since the Com Guards hadn't any battlemechs except for a couple of old Hunchback types.

Suddenly, a large shell of some sort hit the ground nearby, causing a shower of dirt to erupt into the air. It briefly obscured the group of enemy soldiers that were running toward us. I quickly stopped, sank to my knees and aimed. I could barely make out their forms in the dark. I began to fire quite rapidly, not worried about expending ammunition. My squadron seemed to do the same. They began firing back. I couldn't remember how long it took, but I know that eventually, it scattered, leaving minor injuries to our group. It was at this point that the larger scale fighting began to escalate. I looked back to see our tanks, a few of which were already destroyed, firing their main weapons. Looking foreword again, I saw the enemy tanks doing the same, although their weapons seemed to be mainly lasers.

I ran foreword again, and didn't stop until I could see clearly the wrecked turrets of the fortress. As lightning flashed, I several large, fast- walking shapes that looked back towards us while firing arrays of weapons. They were the battlemechs, which seemed to not have been hit at all, except for a couple near the fortress, which didn't move. I'd always heard that unless they were completely obliterated, battlemechs stood silently when they were destroyed.

My group had now successfully reached the back of the fortress, where a large, gaping hole waited. We snuck around the building, where we met an awful surprise. An enemy battlemech loomed frighteningly over us. It wasn't a Hunchback, but a thinner model with an arm that fired what looked like some sort of powerful laser beam. After a couple seconds of letting my blood thaw out, I realized that it wasn't paying attention to us. Its beam shot out at our vehicles and hit something I couldn't quite make out.

Several soldiers were scattered about, mostly ignoring us. I fell prone and fired on them behind their barricades, while my comrades did the same, since they and I knew that small arms would be near useless and only draw attention. Joseph, however, had happened to bring along a large short- range missile launcher. He aimed it up at the battlemech, waited, then squeezed the trigger. The missile hit the mech in the upper thigh area. I couldn't see its reaction, since I had to keep my eyes trained on the enemy soldiers. I saw Louis fall to the ground after a burst of gunfire from a heavy mounted machine gun traced our location. I heard Joseph fire another missile, then aimed and fired at the person manning the machine gun. He ran back behind the barricade, leaving it vacant. A third missile was fired.

The battlemech shifted its legs. I looked up again to see two black pits in its upper chest. I saw it lower its laser arm to our position. My only instinct was to jump. I saw a blinding flash of light, and felt searing heat boil the skin along my back. I turned back and saw a steaming crater in the dirt where Joseph had stood. I couldn't remorse, my train of though was interrupted. Three Bulldog battle tanks closed in on the battlemech and started a triple-jointed assault. All I saw were flashes of light from their turrets and white streaks of missiles from their sides. A moment later, the battlemech was teetering over, and it fell back into the ditch to join its crippled partner.

Hours seemed to go by as I lay there, firing at the shadows of enemy soldiers and watching battlemechs and tanks fight it out. It seemed almost surreal, considering that I was just practically underneath a giant walking robot with weapons imbedded inside of it. I had realized that the enemy force was much larger to begin with, mainly because of their extra tanks. The battlemechs fought consistently and deadly, not a single other one falling, and drawing plenty of missed fire. At last, our tanks stopped moving. White flags appeared out of their hatches.

I looked for Gabriel or another member of squadron 32. They were scattered around where I was. Only a handful of them rose up to their feet. I waited, exhausted, for our tank crew to leave their vehicles and get hurried off by their captors.

"Guys, let's get together, I think we're POW. Or bondsman, or whatever the hell these people do."

We regrouped. I counted five of the twelve in my group, and only one poker buddy, Gabriel. The only one who had ever done any good. When he didn't fold.

"I think we better go with them," said Gabriel.

We walked down the narrow onramp that lined the inside of the ditch. Pirate guards surrounded us.

"Don't move," they said. "Put your hands on your head." A bit cliché, even for guards.

"We surrendered," I said.

"Yeah, damn right you guys did. Little bastards," one of them replied. "Get moving. Come on, in here."

We were herded on single-file, like cattle into a slaughterhouse. The fortress didn't look like it had taken much interior damage. It had the same duty, under-kept look about it, except now a new insignia was draped over the walls in prominent places, and the place was buzzing with technicians repairing turrets from the inside and fixing minor structural fractures in the walls. It seemed a lot smaller than from the outside, it really was only about four stories up, crowded and connected by simple metal stairwells. In addition, the back quarter of the fortress had been knocked through to repair the large hole made in it before.

The guards led us up the stairs to the office of the Demi Precentor, who wasn't there at the moment-he'd probably been executed. Instead, there waited a crowded room full of others-mostly other Com Guard POW's who were caught up by pirate guards.

"What are we doing for?" asked Gabriel.

"Shut up, soldier!" said a guard. It shut him up.

After what seemed like thirty minutes, a tall woman, flanked by four more pirate guards, stepped into the room and stood at the Demi Precentors chair. The pirate guards urged everyone to move back a few feet to make room, and windows were shot open when they were too lazy to open them manually.

"I am Janis Osiers of the Storm Vanguard pirate group."

No one spoke.

"You are all prisoners of war now, having lost due to a mix of improper response time and poor combat skills. You've failed to manage yourselves properly. And now you are being offered a chance to redeem yourselves."

This woman had a deep, clear, fake voice about her that reminded me of our drill sergeants.

"You will all now serve our group, and our cause, whether you like it or not. Failure to comply will mean death, of course."

Murmurs flittered throughout the room.

"Well, what did you all expect? We're what you people have once deemed the scum of the universe, but will deem that way no more. You're under my command."

I smiled, then laughed quietly. The weak outer shell of me was dreading this outcome, but something inside me couldn't be happier. I disliked the Com Guards, and was finally glad to be a part of something a bit more exciting, rollicking if you will, than the still-necked simplicity of the fake boot camp that was the Com Guards.

"You will meet new people, and embark on more frequent, exciting sorties. You're all more likely to die this way, of course. But since you've all undergone training at the facility from which you've come, I'll assume you won't need too much personal counseling."

I kept smiling. The woman looked at me. I got a more clear view of her now. She seemed to be in her mid to late twenties, with tied back black hair and careless, 'Jewish' eyebrows that looked bored and surprised at the same time. The rest of her face seemed rock-hard, stern.

"You right there," she said, pointing in my direction. "What is your name?"

"Franklin Rouse," I replied. Why lie in such a situation?

"You seem to be eager for this change. Are you ready to accept a new and more fruitful order, one that will fulfill you in a way not done yet?"

"Certainly."

"Well, I have a feeling I have something more suitable for such an enthusiastic soldier. The rest of you can rest a while, before we start up the more advanced training programs. Franklin, you follow me."

I followed her. I followed her past workers and engineers, who were ordered to rebuild the facility back to fighting condition. I followed her past diplomatic-looking fellows, who were ordered to contact the rest of Belsen and tell them that they're citizens of the Storm Vanguard Commonwealth. I followed her past technicians, who were ordered to repair and refit all salvage tanks and battlemechs. I followed her back to her office, which was now devoid of freshly captured POW's.

"Franklin. Would you like to take part in a bit of battlemech simulation?"

I smiled again. "In all gladness," I replied.