Chapter 9
Worthless. Not one of these recruits was even passable on the lowest level of expectations.
Did no one in the Protectorate Stations take their training seriously?
Had they all thought that war was a thing of the past?
Not even a decade and a half had passed since the last conflict, and the wounds were still raw and wide open between Mictlan and Gehenna.
Peace treaty or not, cease fire or not, there was absolutely no reason to have believed we were in the clear.
If simple diplomacy and promises were enough to stop a territory grab, we would never have gone to war in the first place.
Though to the draftees’ credit, I had to acknowledge that many of these recruits in their twenties and thirties likely hadn’t trained in combat until their stations were acquired, and Mictlan law altered their way of life.
Bitterness and petulance was a predictable reaction in the face of a new regime that rewrote their customs and forced them into social programs they never asked for.
I couldn’t expect civilians from Entertainment or Medical sectors to have given battle training their all.
But what now?
Our population was still recovering and what was left was going to take a miracle to whip into shape.
It was by grace of the stars that we had the Shinkas, but who here would even qualify to pilot one?
I’d not seen a single tactical mind in the bunch.
It didn’t matter how advanced your battle unit if you couldn’t predict the enemy’s movements.
Not after what I’d seen in Protectorate 005.
Ghuls, they’d called them. Gehenna’s new combat units weren’t inferior in the slightest. If not for the fact that I’d personally upgraded and modified Vetala in my free time, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Though our engineers were always working to improve the Shinkas, a majority of our units would have been barely more than moving targets against Gehenna’s new technology.
For them to have an answer to the Shinkas was only a matter of time, and it would have been ridiculous to think we were the only ones who could conceptualize such a weapon.
They’d matched us, surpassed us, and struck while we were still recovering, with no mind for the politics.
I couldn’t see any way this could end well. There were no true consequences for a jackal that chose to ignore the pleading of an injured fawn.
Trying not to let the weight of this predicament press on me, I turned in my evaluation to Major Blume, who would be distributing the new recruits among us to accelerate their training. We didn’t have three years to train these soldiers like the rest of us had gotten by signing up voluntarily.
It was hard to say if I should expect to be assigned the best or the worst of these men, considering my rank, but it would be typical if I ended up with the absolute bottom of the barrel.
Despite my achievements, Headmaster Farid hated me, and he would easily find a way to turn this into a subtle punishment.
If I was killed in battle because of an inferior team, he would revel in it.
Just another fun little consequence of being the son of General Hideki Takeyama. One might think having a father who was both a diplomat and widely regarded as a hero might merit respect, but that assumed that you weren’t enrolled in a school run by that father’s former election rival.
Pettiness was an epidemic.
“If you keep frowning like that, your face will get stuck that way.” Breaker threw an arm round my shoulders before I’d even noticed his presence.
He pulled me into a half hug that was more like a stranglehold than anything that might resemble affection.
He was the only one who had found a way through my guard, and I didn’t know how he always did it.
Perhaps the last two years as roommates had given him entirely too much time to observe my mannerisms, considering he was barely a middle of the road ranking soldier otherwise.
He was clearly far more capable than his scores and three-digit ranking implied, but while I tried to convince him to apply himself more, he was stubborn and lackadaisical on his best days.
“Frowning engages more muscles than smiling, so my expressions should actually retain more dynamic movement by visibly exercising my range of emotions,” I corrected him. He had a number of odd sayings in his personal vernacular that made little logical or practical sense to me.
“That’s the most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.” He shook his head, though he was smiling even when he should be displeased.
“Reality often is.” I shrugged in his hold.
He dismissed the notion with a wave of his hand. “How’d your matches go?”
“Abysmal.” I shook my head. I was entirely too comfortable with Breaker’s arm lingering on my shoulder, and I didn’t know when that had happened either. “Yours?”
“I had one who was slightly more coordinated than a three legged baby deer wearing ice skates.” He also was one to paint a number of very odd, confusing pictures that l often envisioned with unsettling clarity. “You had Vann Callan on your mat, right? What did you think of him?”
“Vann Callan? The medic from 005?” I scrunched my nose, recalling the intensity of his gaze, negated by the complete lack of fighting prowess. The other recruits had some degree of discipline, but he was about as unrefined as Elio used to be, just with none of the brute strength to back it up.
“Yeah, was he any good?”
“He was exactly what I would expect from a medic who didn’t take his training seriously on the assumption that he’d never see combat.
” I thought back to the way he’d watched me so carefully, and how long we’d remained in stale mate before he’d attempted to attack.
I might have praised the attempt at combat analysis before he rushed in, but his hesitance to act also meant I, the enemy, had gotten all the time I needed to read him.
The only credit I could give him was that he was the only one who seemed to understand immediately how difficult my guard was to penetrate.
He spent the most time looking for an opening, while not being obvious that he was doing so.
Though he also had the weakest and least noteworthy blows.
Every win was balanced by a loss. “Protectorate 005 was the last territory we acquired, so I can’t speak to the culture they have over there.
The instructors may be more lax than others being they’re training medics who typically would be exempt from a draft if not for the situation being what it is.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d wrongly assumed they were above front line deployment. ”
Breaker pursed his lips. “Did you meet him in 005 when you were there for the demo?” Why was he so curious about him?
“No, I didn’t meet anyone there, really. But he thanked me for saving him, so he must have been at the University during the attack.” I turned toward Breaker, whose face was entirely too close to mine. “Why? Is there something interesting about him that I’m missing?”
“Not that I know of.” Breaker glanced up at the apex of Mictlan’s atmospheric dome in thought. “I was assigned to mentor him, and he’s bunking with Elio, so I was thinking there must be something special about him that I don’t know of though.”
I stopped walking, causing Breaker to stumble from the sudden cease of momentum.
“A first year draftee is bunking with Elio?” That didn’t make any sense. Elio was ranked second in the entire academy, and this new recruit was… well… Not that. Even if Vann had been noteworthy, he was still just a first year new recruit.
Breaker just shrugged. “Maybe the admins know something we don’t.
” He said it casually, but the whole idea was actually rather concerning.
As far as I was aware, none of the new recruits were assigned to rooms outside the basement area.
Several older recruits had been moved up to make room though.
“Don’t be so freaked out about it. I was just curious. ”
“I’m only disturbed by the idea that an admin would throw anyone in with Elio.
” He’d scared off all of his past roommates to the point he was one of the only people in the entirety of Astaroth with his own room.
Granted, he had his reasons for needing his own room that extended beyond simply being a difficult person, and there had always been more than enough space to allow it.
But we weren’t in a draft before, and the military was horribly understaffed, so maybe they legitimately didn’t have any other place to put him.
Prior to the draft, we had more rooms than we had people, with the declining popularity and presumed need for soldiers.
I’d joined as a matter of course, being my father’s son, but no matter how many perks the government offered or how many ridiculous Shinka Shows they had me perform, nothing moved the needle on sign ups.
If Gehenna has already built enough of these comparable—possibly superior—weapons, in addition to having the mining resources of Earth and Mars on their side, we didn’t stand much of a chance.
The Territories were an imperfect nation, but they were still better than the oppressive regime of the Empire.
Though I was sure civilians would take the draft personally, but they might take it even more personally if we all ended up under the control of a single, unchecked power in the entirety of the known universe.
“Well, I was just curious.” Breaker tried to dismiss the conversation, though I’d known him long enough to know he was never ‘just curious’ about anything without good reason. “I’ve got class in ten, but I’ll let you know if I find anything out.”
Breaker disappeared down the Sigma hall, and I was left scratching my head, already dreading the new drama that would surely come of this predicament.
They seriously put him in with Elio? It was hard to say which of them was in the worse position.