Speakers across camp spat the dominion's anthem; drums and trumpets fit to wake the dead, but failing to wake the unconscious recruits of C barracks.

The instructor, a former siege tank driver named Mark Steel, entered the dark building with a scornful grimace. Another batch of mindless meatsacks.

"On your feet, soldiers! I want you maggots out in the courtyard in five!" His voice, used to compete with the thunder of big guns and rumbling of massive engines, carried across the room like a gunshot, causing most of the company to snap at attention. A few days earlier, these men had been civilians and criminals, but hypno-training had taught them the basics of military procedure, how to handle a gun and other little things that could be taught easily and did not require full blown training exercises.

Basic used to take months, it now took weeks. Progress…

One of the meatsacks stayed in bed, however, and Steel applied standard procedure to that maggot: He flipped his mattress over to the floor and roared instructions at the poor bastard's face.

Nothing. A light snoring could be heard from under the mattress. Nobody could fake that… Nobody could possibly remain asleep through getting thrown on the floor and roared at.

Grabbing the limp wrist of the recruit, Mark used a military version of a super-market barcode scanner and read the serial number tattooed to the kid's wrist.

108-300-013

Philip Cole. Volunteer, tracked to be a Marauder, used to work in a Kel-Morian mining world until it was liberated by the Dominion, already an artist with explosives… Twenty-two years old… This kid had worked in mines since his pre-teen.

To that boy, Basic would be a breeze, he was used to being a slave, waking up to death threats and insults, slaving away all day in the dark, loud noises only amplified by confined spaces…

Steel prodded him in the ribs with his electrical baton. That did the trick and the small but bulky recruit leapt to his feet, yelling "I'm up! I'm up! I didn't eat the cooki… Uh… Sir?

-Shut up, maggot! Get on out of here while I'm feeling generous! Go! Gogogogogo! And he escorted the yelping kid with prods of his baton all the way to the courtyard.

How to stand in formation was one of the things the rookies had learned through hypno-training, so they were already in a square formation at arm's length of each other.

Sleeping beauty took his place in the formation and Master Sergeant Steel introduced himself.

"You will call me sir, and I want my name to be the first and last thing I hear from you, that clear?!"

The answer was unanimous, preprogramed in the troops subconscious, "Sir, yes, sir!"

The kids were shivering like virgins in a brothel, still clad in their undies, and Steel took his sweet time inspecting them. One kid actually had taken the time to don his wool overall. Which came as a surprise to the instructor. The things had been tossed under every recruit's bed during the night and they certainly hadn't been given time to dress up before being run out of the barracks.

That boy stuck out as a sore thumb and, the closer Steel got, the weirder it became to the old Sergeant. Kid actually wore fingerless gloves and padded boots, all of which had been issued during the night.

He stepped up to the boy's face, thinking the kid should be grateful Mark had good dental hygiene, and asked, in a strong but neutral voice, "Tell me, why is it you're all dressed up while the others here are freezing their genitals off?" A few female members of the company glanced down with some degree of smugness, but kept quiet otherwise.

"Sir, I woke up early, sir!

-Farm boy?

-Sir, no, sir, light sleeper is all, sir!"

Steel nodded at that explanation. A lot of backwater kids found the Corps to be a breeze compared to life on the farm. Chew was nourishing and plentiful, beds were good, clothes were warm and the job required little to no mental effort. He scanned this kid's wrist and checked his file.

108-300-016

Henry Navarro-Jackson, native from Bacchus moon, twenty-three. A floater. The kid had done a bit of everything in his time, from janitor to butcher and waiter. Most of these job had ended with him being fired over inattention mistakes, sloppy work, complete lack of interest in his job. Laziness aside, that kid seemed promising enough, as evidenced by the fact his balls hadn't retreated back into his throat in the polar cold of the camp.

"So, we've got a sleeper and a thinker, that's a start!" Steel returned to the front of the formation, "But do we have Marines in this outfit?" He looked every last one of them in the eyes. Jackson flinched, Cole returned the look, everyone else just looked straight ahead in a sleepy haze.

"What a bunch of apes! No, you don't even rate that high, you're monkeys, feces tossing, knuckle dragging…" Insulting as it may be, one had to admire the creativity of his rant. Not once, in almost twenty minutes, did he repeat himself nor curse or direct his anger at a soldier in particular.

Jackson showed no sign of anger at the stream of insults, but Cole and a few other volunteers were clearly getting upset, some twitching and clenching their jaws, others openly staring at the instructor.

A shorter training meant harsher exercises and ruling with an iron fist, it meant spotting troublesome elements right of the bat and beating them into submission, which would be this exercise's goal.

"You maggots are a disgrace to the Corps and the Dominion, "He almost said Confederacy. "so, do we have a marine yet? Any of you monkeys thinks he's got what it takes to shut me up?"

Nobody moved, but anger rose amongst the most hot tempered recruits, only a handful were still shivering, the cold drowned in waves of hatred.

"Nobody? C'mon, there won't be trouble for anyone, just show ol' Steel what you've got!"

As predicted, Cole stepped forward before anyone else, the shame and confusion from earlier having been turned to anger in the boy's mind. Easier to just blame everything on the sarge, that's what they're for.

"I reckon I can take you, sir." Though the young miner had no way of knowing, this was, without contest, the stupidest sentence he'd ever uttered in his life.

Steel beckoned him forward and threw his electric baton to an assistant instructor, one of four lined up along the barrack's wall. "Rules?"

The question puzzled Cole, clearly showing he had no martial training whatsoever. "Whatever you want, sir, I'm not fussy."

Stupid answer, but a brave one. Steel found out long ago stupidity made up most acts of bravery. "Alright, start when you're ready, kiddo. Good luck."

Cole was a bulky kid, but two heads smaller than the sarge, who, to be fair, was quite tall himself, and reasonably muscular. The recruit tried to tackle his instructor, roaring like a bull as he went. Steel could have sidestepped, but that would be a bad example. End the fight quick and dirty was the lesson he wished to teach.

He pushed a foot forward, under Cole's center of gravity, and grabbed the boy's wrist, twisting it outward before leaning forward himself. Cole lifted off the ground, rolled over Steel's back and slammed back down in a sickening crunch. The instructor let go of his wrist, the whole arm now twisted in an unnatural fashion. "Broken?

-Ah… Don't think so, sir, dislocated, I reckon…" The defeated recruit kept admirably calm as he walked to the infirmary on his own.

Steel then turned back to the company, "So, we do have a marine in this outfit! Do we have another?"

Sure enough, no one else volunteered, some thought about it, but quickly dismissed the idea. Good, point made. Now, one of many things subliminal training couldn't implant upon soldiers was esprit de corps and discipline. Everything they'd do for that next week would have for sole purpose to harden these boys into marines.

Right, as if...