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.)

When I came to, I heard a comforting voice.

"…u know, when I heard a recruit with cybernetics had been injured by a krogan in a training accident, I had such high hopes. Maybe it wouldn't be some suicidal spacer I knew."

Or at least a familiar one.

"But then I told myself: 'Steve, don't be an idiot. Of course it's him.' And lo and behold…"

I opened my eyes to see the annoyed figure of Cmd. (Surgeon) Steven Dewey. "This is an achingly familiar scenario. Emphasis on 'aching'," I said.

He shook his head. "What do they teach you in boot camp these days?"

I looked myself over. All of my limbs were present, even if some of them were bandaged, along with an impressive collection of bruises. My Gilgamesh looked to be in good shape, though I spotted places where tears in the synthskin were patched with omni-gel that the prosthetic's on-board systems were converting to fresh synthskin. Dewey hadn't even strapped me down this time. "Of course, this time I can see." I sat up, both of my arms responding to my commands. "How am I not dead?" I shook my head. "More important, how are the others?"

"No deaths or maiming," said Dewey, which was not nearly as reassuring as 'just fine', but had the virtue of likely being true. "And just because a krogan has stopped feeling pain doesn't change physics."

"Not going to lie, that really doesn't clear things up much."

Dewey frowned, then shrugged. "I suppose it's not that surprising. Even for someone as hard-headed as you, that was a pretty good knock." He flashed a copy of what had to be my brain imaging directly to my Heimdalls. "Doesn't look like there's been any permanent damage. Only…wait, have you decided that joining the military was a suicidal idea?"

This was about the moment that I realized that Dewey stood umpteen grades above me on the military ladder now, no matter what blackmail I may have had on him. "Sir, no sir," I said in my best recruit cadence.

Dewey did a double take. "Now that's just creepy. Valentine, you are to talk like a normal person to me. Consider that a standing order if you like."

"Sir, it would be inappropriate for the recruit to speak to the commander as a person. The recruit is a recruit, sir."

Dewey shook his head. "There's something not right with this place…" He trailed off as he caught my raised eyebrow. "Son of a bitch. Was that snark?"

"Sir, never sir." I gave him a very deliberate smirk.

"Well, apparently you are the same worthless carcass I attached my cutting-edge technology to. Nice to know that the universe hasn't completely gone tits up in the two months since I last saw you."

"What are you doing here, anyway?" I asked. "And am I clear to get out of the rack, sir?"

He nodded, looking somewhat aggrieved at the last 'sir'. "Just doc. And you should be fine to resume training. You're gelled, bandaged, and virused. You're likely to be stiff and have some pain, but nothing debilitating."

I swung my legs out of bed, and confirmed for myself that yes, I was in pain. "Ow."

"As for your first question, I came to Earth to speak at a UNAS symposium on cybernetic enhancement of soldiers." He half-smiled. "I must admit, your little incident will make for good material."

I frowned. "You might want to keep the krogan's name out of it. He's a professional fighter who was volunteering time to the Corps."

Dewey laughed. "Oh, Raik has already gone on the news talking about his accident training with Alliance Marines. The Bureau of Personnel is already expecting a bump in recruitment. It's you that can't be named. As a recruit, policy says your name is not to be used."

"Really? How long has it been?" I rolled my shoulder, wincing at the stiffness.

"You've only missed a day." He leaned in and stage whispered. "We took care of the haircut here."

"So," I said, "No broke-dick platoon stay for me?"

"No, we just amputated that."

I blanched. "The fuck?"

Dewey tsked. "I have no idea how the doctors could have missed it on intake. Don't you know better than to indulge with other loose souls on starliners? It's an excellent way to gain any number of horrifying infections."

"I refuse to dignify this joke with checking to see if you've castrated me." I crossed my arms. "Besides, the last action I got was on Arcturus, so if anyone missed anything, it was you, Doc."

He chuckled. "I think you may be discounting the…what was it? Ah, right. The Blue Weenie."

I rolled my eyes. "POG. The Blue Weenie doesn't give reacharounds. You should have amputated my ass."

Dewey smiled. "This coming from a recruit on aerospace officer track. You're just as POGgy as me."

I cocked my head to the side. "Well, I'm a POG at least. Where is my uniform?"

He nodded at the bedside table. "Fresh set of BDUs right there."

"Thanks." I stripped off the hospital gown and started changing into the uniform. Dewey had also thoughtfully provided a bottle of Biotic Spark.

"Well, if nothing else, the bruises should help in any camouflage tests."

"Yer hysterical, has anyone ever told you that?" I shrugged on the undershirt.

"No," said Dewey.

"Yeah, there's a reason for that." I cracked the Paragade and started chugging.

"Ouch. I may never recover." Dewey shook his head and pulled out a pad. "Have you been getting any trouble from the implants?"

I lowered the empty bottle from my lips. "Other than getting some shit for having an omni-tool in my arm, no. The implants have been working great. Either I don't notice them, or I'm thankful for the advantage they give me."

He typed a bit. "No inflammation or strange sensations?"

"None. So how much am I missing? With the krogan incident?" I looked at the empty Paragade. As nice as it was for Dewey to provide one, I could have gone for a second as well.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

I thought back. "I had blocked his right arm, but went flying through the air. There's a bit of discontinuity, but I remember lying on Johnson and thinking you were going to kill me for damaging the Gilgamesh."

Dewey had a disgusted look on his face. "I really could have, too. It ended up needing a partial disassembly and a number of replacement parts. You're on your fourth lung now. On the other hand, that's the beauty of cybernetics. We design them to be serviced."

I looked down at the arm, concerned. "Am I going to need recalibration?"

"You shouldn't. The onboard systems should be up to the task of keeping things consistent. But you should keep an eye on it. I don't expect troubles, but better safe than sorry." He pulled up a file on his omnitool and sent it to my Bluewire. "Here's the security video we have of the session. You're not missing much, but feel free to fill yourself in. I'll also want a quick write-up on your impressions of using the Gilgamesh for ACES and on the range."

I bit my lip. "Do you also want my impressions from the bar fight back on Arcturus?"

He winced. "If you can make it sound like an ACES training session, sure. I really don't think either of us needs it known that a civilian used a military combat chassis in a bar fight."

"Sure thing Doc." I checked around me to make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. "Is there anything else you need, or should I get back to my platoon?"

"Stick around and watch that video." Dewey looked to the door. "There's a couple of other patients who will be returning to the platoon as well. I'll be back." Then he walked out the door, leaving me to watch myself.

It is surreal watching yourself doing something you don't remember. Hell, it was surreal watching the parts that I did remember. Dewey had neglected to edit down the footage, which made some sense. Of course he would want footage of me sparring against Cassia as well. The camera covered the entire Pit, letting me see for the first time what Tarr had been doing to the other recruits while my group worked with Cassia. Let's just say it wasn't pretty. My fellow recruits and I had a long way to go before we could match Master Sergeant Solomon in skill.

I skipped forward. There were probably valuable lessons to be found in the footage, but I was more concerned with filling in the gap in my memory.

And there it was. I watched myself deliver a beauty of a left straight, right to the krogan's crest. Which was a doubly stupid move, I realized, watching the video. If I hadn't had the Gilgamesh, I probably would have shattered my fist trying to do that, and Tarr probably could have just run me over. What had I been thinking?

Well, I knew the answer to that: OhcrapohfuckhurtithurtitKILLKILLKILL!

Like I remembered, my image snapped up his synthetic arm to protect his rather more fragile head. Even on camera, the motion was almost fast enough to blur. Then Tarr's arm hit.

I didn't remember spinning on my long axis as I went flying into Jollete, caroming off the dark-skinned man and into Johnson, who crumpled under me.

That must have been when I came to and thought Dewey was going to kill me. I bit my lip. Then what?

Well, apparently, as Tarr built up a head of steam for a charge, Ulvi decided he wasn't going to let his friend be mashed into jelly. I smiled as I watched Ulvi shoulder check Tarr's injured side in the middle of his charge, glowing brightly enough to lose definition the camera. Incredibly, this didn't knock the raging krogan over. Tarr's attention snapped over to Ulvi, and his left hand came around for an off-balance blow.

That's when a fast-moving turian lady bounded over my body, hooking her talons into the crack I had made in Tarr's crest on the fly. Still airborne, Cassia whipcracked her body to get as much mass out behind the krogan, and in a maneuver that owed more to lucha libre than HCCS, slammed Tarr right onto his back.

"Wow," I said out loud.

But of course it wasn't over. After all, Tarr was a krogan.

Tarr shook his head wildly, torqueing Cassia's fingers back and forth. She was able to dislodge one set of talons, but the other hand was stuck firm. Ulvi got his attention back with a jab to the throat, and paid for it as Tarr finally tagged him with a blow, sending him staggering back into Jollete as the other man moved to help. Tarr started to rock himself back onto his feet, dragging Cassia up by her trapped hand.

And that's when I rolled off of Johnson and whipped my cybernetic fist directly between Tarr's legs. I winced, and was very glad that there was no sound on the video. From the Concise History of Citadel Biotics, I knew that I owed Tarr a heartfelt apology. I couldn't even begrudge him kicking my image hard enough to stove in the left side of my chest.

Cassia didn't seem to agree, as she proceeded to try and hook his uninjured eye with her free talons, only for Tarr to knock her away, dislocating her fingers as they finally came loose. He roared, and prepared to smash my prone form with his injured crest, even as I tried to kick his base out from under him.

That's when Solomon's concussive shot caught Tarr square on the chin, rocking him backwards, and exposing his neck to a brace of darts the Master Sergeant fired from an omni-tool. Whatever they were supposed to do, it didn't seem to work. Tarr fixated on Solomon, beginning to prepare a charge. Solomon produced a long knife and moved over to an area free of recruits.

What followed was a master's dissertation in ACES knife work. Tarr couldn't even touch her. For every charge, he lost tendons and vessels in his secondary nervous system, had muscles precisely compromised. Soon, both of his arms were limp, not from pain, but from precisely applied damage. Next, his legs were shaking under him, almost unable to support his own mass. Sheathing the knife in the face of the next charge, Solomon flashfabbed an omnishield, and used it to divert Tarr into the sand, where he stayed as Solomon struck pressure points with a kubotan. When she finished, he was unconscious.

I wasn't kidding when I said I'd put Solomon up against a Compact assassin. If she wasn't trying to keep Tarr alive and without serious injury, it would have been over much faster and been much more final. That orgy of stabs and slashes was calculated to deliver disabling but easily healable wounds.

I didn't know that at the time. "Fuck's sake," I breathed. "He was up a day after that?"

"Well," said Ulvi, from the door, "he is a krogan, my friend."

I looked up to see Ulvi and Cassia coming through the door. Cassia smiled. "And he did get medical attention."

I jabbed a finger at them. "You two are insane."

They looked at each other, then back at me.

"No, really," I continued. "Who in their right mind attacks a blood raging krogan? That's a quick way to commit suicide!" I sputtered, trying to collect my thoughts.

"This coming from the guy who punched the same krogan in the quad," said Cassia, sitting down on the end of the rack. Ulvi walked over, nodding with a big grin on his face.

"But…that…" I slumped. "Thank you. Just, thank you." I looked up to see Cassia smiling at me.

Ulvi slapped my synthetic shoulder. "It is what friends are for, no?"

I nodded.

"Besides," continued Ulvi, throwing an arm around my shoulders, "Now we definitively can say that I have the more lovable personality. After all, it was you who provoked him into the blood rage. And you who went for the low blow." He tsked, shaking his head. "Most poor sportsmanship."

I groaned. "Is it too late to withdraw my thanks?" I appealed to Cassia.

"Yes." She laughed. "Yes it is."

We returned to the platoon just in time for Phase 3, and thank God for that. It would have been hell to miss the deadline and be rotated into another platoon. We might have lost our slots and been relegated to the rank and file but who cared? 3124 was a cohesive unit, and we were a part of it. Thank God for modern medical science.

Not that our return wasn't a surprise.

"Wait, you're alive?" asked Eklund, as we reentered the squad bay. Eyes flew up from various tasks as we marched in.

"Why wouldn't we be?" I asked, settling my footlocker at the base of one of the open racks.

"You had your chest stomped flat, Valentine," said Eklund.

I thumped the left side of my chest. "Flesh is weak, but this ain't flesh."

"Besides," said Ulvi, taking over the rack above me, "his chest was hardly flat. Merely dented." This was true. Dented in the shape of a krogan foot some four inches deep, but dented.

"You are insane," she said.

"We're all insane," I countered. "We all signed up for this." I gestured to the Island at large, before starting to make the rack.

"Some of us more than others," said Eklund, shaking her head as she walked off.

I looked over at Ulvi. "I just punched the guy."

He smiled. "A shoulder charge is nothing to get excited over." We both looked at Cassia.

The skin around her eyes flushed blue. "Well, I had to knock him over somehow!"

Ulvi and I looked at each other and nodded. "Cassia is the craziest," we said in unison.

"Agreed," said Milque, walking up. "So how's sickbay chow?"

"Pretty much the same," said Cassia.

"Worse," said Ulvi. "After all, they must provide incentive to leave, no?"

"I just wish I got some," I said. "I'm hungry."

"Hungry for responsibility, Recruit Valentine?"

I froze. Penlan had snuck up behind me and I had just used first person right in front of her. Shit. "Ma'am, yes, ma'am!" Better to go through with whatever the DI had in mind.

"Excellent! I believe there's a single rack with your name on it."

So much for rank and file. And I had just made the rack too. "Ma'am, yes ma'am."

Basic Warrior Training, as the DIs referred to it, was just that: basic. But it was also the first taste we really got of fighting like Marines. During Grass Week and the Table One course, we learned the fundamentals of marksmanship and weapon handling. All throughout training, we had become accustomed to wearing hardsuits. But in BWT, we would learn how to use these core skills in a combat environment, as well as picking up a few new tricks.

Mind you, this was really only training for garden worlds. We learned how to set up a camp, how to patrol, some survival rules. We also learned the fine and noble art of facepainting, or 'camouflage', as the military calls it. There might not be much of a call for it when wearing a hardsuit, but tradition reigns strong, and the principles apply across your entire body. We learned combat movement, obstacle negotiation, and the difference between day and night operations.

We also learned how to use the HISTD. The Hardsuit Integrated Situation and Threat Display is the Corps's name for what people persist in calling a HUD. Most people think of hardsuits as a combination pressure suit and last resort body armor that may or may not mount kinetic barriers. This is true enough, but it's not all a good hardsuit is.

The Aldrin Labs MHS-L Mark 5 Mod 0 Onyx was not state of the art, or even the best general issue military hardsuit. It however, was a good hardsuit. The Onyx had a standard automated first-aid suite, combat sensor package, communication systems, storage for rations, air, and water, environmental controls, kinetic barrier, weapons stowage, datalink, and an expert on-board VI to run the lot. It was also modifiable and easily brought up to the –M or –H specs.

Needless to say, the Onyx collects a lot of data, some of which can be very useful to its wearer. The HISTD was the Alliance's attempt to present the needed information without overwhelming the end-user, fatally distracting them in the middle of a firefight. The standard elements are a status monitor for datalinked fireteam members in the lower left corner of your field of view. This provides information on shield strength as well as simple color-coded status updates on the health of the fireteam member. Green for OK, yellow for wounded, red for critical, and black for dead. A flashing name denoted that the Marine was under fire. Above this was an estimated heat capacity of a held weapon, which would be divided by shots. In the lower right corner of your vision, a small two dimensional display showed your top-down relationship to friendly, neutral, unidentified, and hostile contacts, as well as waypoints and the like. By default, the display was blank of any terrain features, but a map overlay could be added, providing that the data was available.

Hostile targets were highlighted in red-orange, unidentified in yellow, neutral in green, and friendlies in blue. When a hostile target was judged to be the Marine's target by the onboard VI, it would attempt to assess the target's shield strength. Targets could also be tagged over datalink, to assist with coordination and target prioritization.

Placed near the top of you field of vision were comms, datalink, consumables, and other controls. The whole thing was controlled by a combination of eye gestures, a chin switch, omnitool commands, and the whims of the suit VI. Personally, I found it easy enough to navigate, but then, I had some practice. The mist that my Heimdalls could put up was much more obtrusive, and I had made myself very familiar with the HMDs of Alliance small craft with my NerveStim Pro practice. The symbology for a Mantis is far more complex than for an infantryman.

Most of the rest of the recruits had trouble with acclimatizing to the HISTD at first, and performance suffered a bit, but by the time that we were ready to start our Table Two practice, most of us could at least bear it. Those that couldn't I, and the other quick adopters, worked with, sharing mental tricks and going over proper eye-flick technique. When that didn't work for a few, we delved into the basic settings of the HISTD and figured out how to make the display less prominent. It was a stopgap, but they'd need it for Table Two.

Table Two was not like Table One. You used the same rifle in both, but where Table One was essentially a marksmanship challenge, Table Two focused on practical combat situations, both in and out of hardsuits.

The basic unit of fire was the controlled pair, which is pretty much what it sounds like. We also practiced single headshots, as well as the failure to stop drill, which is summed up by the pithy 'two in the chest, one in the head'. We practiced these on single targets, on multiple targets, with position changes, and shot at moving targets.

Once we got comfortable with that, we started doing emergency vent drills, where we would have to fire a controlled pair, trigger a manual vent to drop enough heat for another pair, then reengage with a second controlled pair. This was followed by a shield-popping drill. A kinetic barrier would be projected over our target, forcing us to put rapid repeated shots on target until the shield popped. We were to then follow up with the prescribed drill. Finally, we had the 'krogan drill', both with and without shields. Should a 'krogan' target pop up, we were to put as many shots into it in the allotted time as we could.

Again, we did this both in and out of hardsuits, getting used to the threat tagging, shield estimation, and weapon monitoring features of the HISTD, as well as doing without them. Emergency vent drills could also get quite toasty in BDUs, which was just one more reason to love the hardsuit.

I actually much preferred Table Two to Table One. The range was shorter, and the execution of the drills felt similar enough to martial arts techniques for me to be in a comfortable headspace. Which is not to say that I was the best in the platoon. Milque remained as frustratingly proficient with a rifle as ever, breezing through the drills with little more instruction than what was expected of him.

And of course, Idela outshot me…and so did Cassia…and Ulvi…look, I never claimed to be the best shot. But I was at least in the top quarter of the platoon on Table Two, compared to my poor showing on Table One. And no one did better than me on krogan drills. Having a synthetic arm allows you to keep the muzzle of your rifle on target through a full-capacity automatic burst. And the regs for a krogan drill allowed any and all techniques for getting rounds on target. According to one of the rangemasters, that led to one particularly clever recruit at the Fuji training center hammer tossing an ammo block through her target on a shieldless drill. This apparently got Recruit Kobayashi a commendation for lateral thinking as well as a truly epic quarterdecking. We were informed in no uncertain terms that Kobayashi's solution was only clever once.

My choice of going cyclic wasn't recommended, but it was allowed, especially given my results. My forearm's synthskin might have gotten a little singed from my emergency vent on the unshielded krogan drill, but I had been in the path of a bloodraging krogan now. A little singe was an easy price to pay for a few more tungsten needles downrange. In the end, I ended up missing out on the Expert qualification, but I couldn't complain too much about picking up my Sharpshooter. I wasn't even jealous of my platoonmates who did make Expert. Not much, anyway.

Following Table 2, we had a quick section on policing. Now, if you ask me, tasking your combat troops to provide police services is an excellent way to end up with corpses that were previously suspicious innocents. History even bears me out on this. Militaries acting as police tend to have body counts far in excess of dedicated police forces. This is bad for morale and for public relations.

But the Alliance really didn't have a choice. While built-up colonies like Shanxi or Eden Prime would have police forces, that wasn't the case for the newer wave of colonies. And out in the black, when coming across suspicious shipping? It was the Alliance Navy and Marines or nothing. Frankly, the local Marine deployment was the closest thing to municipal services that many Traverse colonies had.

So we sat through the bones of a police academy compressed into two days of instruction. And if you think that's enough time to learn the subject, you're crazier than the vorcha stripper show on Illium.

Concussive blast training was fun, though. The Alliance equips all of its assault rifles with an underslung concussive blast generator as standard, both for their ability to shake up people through kinetic barriers and for their policing utility. If you have to make your military double as police, it helps to give them a less-than-lethal option. And if that less-than-lethal weapon is perfect for knocking biotics right out of their barrier techniques, so much the better.

Over my career, I've seen an incredible variety of tricks and applications for the lowly 'conker', from curving it around a corner to knock a squint autorifleman out of cover, to freefall maneuvering tool, and even to a bioweapon delivery system. Hell, come to think of it, I've seen it used to counter a bioweapon too.

We didn't do anything near so complex at the Island. After instruction in the conker's controls I was presented with a target range with a numbered series of dummies both in and out of cover. Orange-red triangles marked the location you were supposed to hit with the conker. Personally, I thought that the DIs should have chosen Milque for the demonstrator, but you don't argue about these things. I stood with my rifle at the low ready as Penlan lectured the platoon.

"Recruits, this course is designed to familiarize you with the effects of the concussive blast generator. Recruit Valentine, engage the targets as I give the command!"

"Ma'am yes ma'am!" I took a breath to center myself.

"Remember, recruits, the concussive blast generator projects its symbology into the integrated magnified optic. While you can use the reflex optic for a hasty blast, the magnified optic will provide superior control. Valentine, engage target one!"

"Aye aye, ma'am!" I drilled the dummy batarian in the chest with a blast. He went flying back.

"As you have seen, the generator allows you excellent stopping power, enough to even send targets flying. Valentine, target two!"

This time I placed the blast at the feet of the target, popping it up into the air.

"This is extremely effective when combined with biotic support. Target three!"

This time I shot at the ground just by a dummy's cover, smashing it back behind the wall.

"As you can see, you can disrupt an enemy in this manner. However, you have just put them in a position of safety. Target four!"

My next blast burst against a backstop that was just to the side and above the dummy. This time it tumbled out into the open. Things went on like this for a while, covering easily movable cover elements, environmental exploitation such as landslides, small rooms, close range, long range, so on and so forth. It really seemed like there wasn't much the conker couldn't do.

That's when they sprung the charging krogan target on me. I sighted in instantly on the red-orange triangle on its chest, launching the blast a fraction of a second after Penlan called out "Target twenty-five!"

Oh, it hit dead on, but it only slowed the dummy. Remembering Solomon's principles for dealing with a charging krogan, I shifted point of aim to its legs, only to run into the conker's big limitation. It took a few seconds to reset for another blast. After two quick pulls of the trigger got me nothing, my body went on autopilot, deploying my bayonet and shifting right. I drove the carbide spike right into the back corner of the dummy's crest, attempting to lever the dummy to the ground with as loud of a war cry as I could manage. The flex bar it was mounted to kept it from going all the way down, but my rifle was enough leverage to keep it down as I hammered left-handed punches into its gel-padded crest. "RAAAGH!"

"Cease!"

I froze, letting my brain catch up with my body. The dummy was scuffed, but not destroyed. The gel-padding might not have been as hard as a real krogan crest, but it did snap back to normal much faster. "Ma'am, yes ma'am." As I withdrew my bayonet, I realized that the dummy was probably supposed to strike a recruit as they froze in surprise after the conker failed to perform. It would make an excellent object lesson in its limitations, made safe by the dummy's thick padding.

Of course, having been through the real thing not a week ago, my reflexes were somewhat different.

Penlan shook her head. "Shame you don't have any eezo in you, recruit," she whispered to me as she took the rifle from my hands. "You'd make a decent vanguard." She inspected the spike bayonet. "Careful with that, though. These bayonets don't like shearing stress." She handed my rifle back to me.

"Ma'am, yes ma'am." I'd need to look over it during free time.

"Good work," she pointed to a hut nearby. "proceed inside for further training."

"Ma'am, yes ma'am." I collapsed my rifle and stowed it on my back.

The hut was padded inside, which struck me as a poor sign. Sergeant Harrison's presence was a wash. Sergeant Abbott standing there with a stand-alone conker just made my heart plummet.

Sergeant Harrison picked up a k-barrier generator and mouthguard, handing them to me. "Recruit, you are to remove your rifle, affix this barrier to your belt, power it on, and stand on the blue circle on the floor."

"Sir, yes, sir." I did so, knowing exactly what was coming.

"Sergeant Abbott will now fire one concussive blast at your chest. Does the recruit understand?"

"Sir, yes sir."

"Then put the mouthguard in." I did. "Sergeant Abbott?"

Abbott put the shot right where she was supposed to. My shields lit up in a blue corona, and a sound burst over my body with a sensation that reminded me of nothing so much as being engulfed by a breaking wave. I staggered, dazed. Even through a shield it was disorienting.

"Very good. Recruit Valentine, if you can understand me, come to attention." I did. "Excellent. You will now experience a shieldless blast."

I wanted to wince, but I was in front of DI's and that just wasn't allowed. "Sir, yes sir," I mumbled around the mouthguard.

"Brace, recruit." He nodded to Abbott.

I did brace, not that it mattered in the slightest. The unshielded blast smashed into my chest like a battering ram followed by a thump on God's own timpani. I'm pretty sure I didn't lose consciousness, as I remember hitting the wall behind me, but my memories of the experience are fuzzy and gray. If the drill put a respect for the utility of the conker in me, this hammered a respect for its power into me.

Once I was fully lucid, I was told to suit up in my Onyx. The repeats of the experience in the hardsuit were much more bearable, though I still got a splitting headache from the open faceplate, shieldless repetition as the pressure wave slammed through my sinuses. On the other hand, I wasn't completely useless for a minute or so, which made the point abundantly clear. Your hardsuit is a really good thing to be wearing, even a light one.

After a few days to recover, during which we were lectured on subjects which ranged from opsec to sexual responsibility, we kicked back into gear with the confidence course.

There's a reason it's called that. Believe it or not, though it looks difficult, it's actually made to be very doable for any recruit that made it this far. The platoon swarmed over the course with hardly a hitch, feeling really good about ourselves. Kinda the point, as we had the CFT and our final written test the next day.

Part of me was terrified that we'd have a repeat of the earlier failures, but the platoon had learned from that miserable experience. It wasn't flying colors all around, but no one failed. No one even came close. Tamberlane's confident smile as we left the testing room erased all of my doubts before we even got the scores.

As for the CFT? We didn't slack, we didn't skimp, and we were determined to be the best Marines possible. A sprint to contact, coolant tank lift, and a movement under fire course were just another task in front of us. Interestingly, the CFT was a much better test for some of our slower but stronger recruits than the classic PFT. But no member of 3124 was going to give anything less than their best. I got a wolf grin on my face when I overheard Gunnery Sergeant Teslava telling Penlan that our platoon had the highest average score on the Island. Harrison caught me. He didn't chew me out. He returned it.

"Okay," I said to my squad leaders during free time that night. "We've got the final drill competition and then it's the Crucible. I really don't want to explain to Senior Drill Instructor Penlan why after winning initial drill, we couldn't dominate the final one too."

"Neither do we," said Idela. Cassia, Eklund, and Tamberlane nodded.

"Okay," I said. "Put out the invitation for anyone less than perfect to get in some final drill practice. In the meantime," I held up a rag. "bring me boots. You all know what to do."

"You got it," said Eklund, turning to gather up recruits for one last tutoring in drill.

"Aye aye, Fearless Leader," said Cassia.

"Don't you start. Get going on the rifle checks," I said, applying polish to boot. When I looked up from the first pair of boots, my heart swelled in my chest.

Every single member of the platoon was working on something to help, either practicing their drill or making sure everyone's uniform and gear would be perfect.

The next day, our perfect boots rose and fell in unison, our snaps and pops were crisp and synchronized, and even having a turian among us couldn't break the immaculate concordance of our uniforms' lines.

Of course, we won.

One challenge laid ahead.

A/N: So that was quicker than normal, huh? Well, the end of boot camp beckons, and the enthusiastic response to the last chapter certainly helped. Thank you to all of you who favorited and reviewed. A big thank you also to TheMysticalFett, who is sharing his experiences of the real deal with me, making my version of the future of military training that much better. He also introduced me to Marine Corps Yumi, which I highly recommend. It's an interesting look into the life of female Marines. Herr Wozzeck is back as pre-reader for this chapter, so we're back to blaming him for anything that got past him. (Just kidding, Herr.)

Anyway, next time it's the ever-dreaded Crucible. I hope you'll continue to enjoy, and I'll see you next time. Till then!

-VDO

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