“Environmental hazards,” suggested someone from the back. “Radiation zones, toxic atmospheres, extreme temperatures. That kind of thing works wonders.”

  “Too slow,” Graves objected. “We need fast, efficient killing. Something that teaches lessons while it’s happening.”

  “Predator scenarios?” offered another voice. “We could release hostile creatures, even hologram some up from a nearby planet.”

  “Where are we going to get a thousand hostile creatures?”

  “We’ve got some left over from our Rage World exercises in giant stasis pods. We could thaw them out and have those bear-faced bastards fight our men.”

  “Nah, too unpredictable. We need controlled lethality.”

  The brainstorming continued for perhaps another twenty minutes, with increasingly creative suggestions on how we might manage to murder our own troops in the name of training.

  Poison gas, explosive booby traps, orbital bombardment scenarios—apparently, there was no limit to the imagination of professional soldiers when it came to finding new ways to die.

  “McGill?” Graves said suddenly, and I realized he’d been watching me. “You’ve been awfully quiet today. Any thoughts on how we should be killing our boys?”

  All eyes turned to me.

  Oh shit…

  I hadn’t been paying close attention—more like no attention at all—but I’d caught enough to understand what they wanted. What kind of training exercise could efficiently slaughter a large number of troops while teaching valuable lessons about combat survival?

  “Well…” I said, buying a few seconds time while my brain shifted out of snail mode and into tortoise gear. “The problem with most of these ideas is that they’re either too random or too artificial.”

  “Explain yourself, McGill.”

  Thinking of myself as invited, I stood up and moved to the holographic display. I made a quick study of Green Deck’s terrain features.

  An idea was already forming, inspired by some of the nastier scenarios I’d lived through over the years.

  “The men will naturally know they’re on a training exercise,” I said. “Even if we use live ammo, even if we make it dangerous—they’ll still think it’s training.”

  “So?” someone prompted.

  “So, they’ll take risks they wouldn’t take in real combat.”

  Winslade scoffed. “What can be done about that?”

  “We could make them think it’s real.” I highlighted several areas of the hologram. “We’ve got captured alien prisoners from previous operations—like the Crystals, maybe. We could set up a scenario where these prisoners have escaped during transit and have taken over sections of Green Deck.”

  “But we don’t actually have any aliens,” Cherish pointed out.

  “No? Too bad…” I grinned, warming to my topic. “Then instead, we—the officer corps—will be the aliens. We’ll use every dirty trick we know to hunt down and kill the troops.”

  The room went quiet as they processed this. Graves was leaning forward, his eyes bright with interest.

  “Go on.”

  “We’ll divide Green Deck into zones,” I said, manipulating the display to show different colored sections. “We’ll wear illusion boxes, so we can look like whatever aliens we want to look like. Each zone will represent different territorial areas controlled by various alien species. The troops will have to fight their way through all of them to reach extraction points—and we’ll be trying to kill them the whole time.”

  “Hmm…” Winslade mused. “Why make things so elaborate, McGill?”

  “Because, right from the start, the men are going to know that it’s a training exercise,” I said. “Even if we use live ammo, even if we make it dangerous, they’ll think we’re fooling around, that it’s just a training. They’ll take risks they wouldn’t in real combat—we need to convince them the fight is for real.”

  “I don’t know about this. They’ll be dying for real,” Winslade prompted. “Any thinking man would fight his hardest.”

  “No,” Manfred countered. “McGill’s right, Winslade. They’ll fool around. I know my men well enough to know that.”

  I pointed a finger at him.

  “Very well…” Winslade sighed. “Is that it? Or do you have more details?”

  My brain, once fully engaged, was a highly creative thing. Just ask any girlfriend who’s interrogated me concerning my Saturday night whereabouts. But in this case, I was at the end of my stroke of genius.

  “I don’t know… We use illusion-boxes on ourselves, tell the troops we’re aliens, and we mow them down. What other details do you want?”

  “Thank you, McGill,” Primus Winslade said in a bored tone. “Anyone else have a bright idea?”

  I sat back down, pleased with the horrified expressions I’d left around the table. A few more losers proposed lame ideas—the kind of thing we’d done before, or which sounded about as dangerous as sending the men bungee-jumping with loose cords.

  Graves finally rose again. He pointed at me. “I like McGill’s idea. Nothing builds character like being murdered by your own leadership. How many do you think we could kill with this kind of scenario?”

  I shrugged. “Depends on how creative we get. With proper preparation, we could probably take out seventy percent of each group that goes through. Maybe more, if we’re really committed to the role-playing.”

  “Give us better weapons, and we’ll slaughter them all,” Winslade suggested.

  “Seventy percent!” Graves repeated those words with great satisfaction. “In a single exercise… I love it.”

  “The psychological impact will be significant,” Cherish said, speaking out of turn yet again. “We’ll have a pack of paranoids with us by the time we reach Kepler-62.”

  “That’s fine with me,” Graves declared, slamming his big paws together. “Absolutely brilliant, McGill. We’ll start preparations immediately. We’ll have to get the illusion boxes from back home at Central. Hope we have enough of them. The first wave will go into the grinder tomorrow morning, if we can get everything ready in time. Don’t dally, people. Get your tails moving!”

  As Graves began assigning responsibilities, timelines, specific aliens to be represented by various groups, I noticed the looks I was getting from the other officers. Winslade looked impressed despite himself—but Cherish and several others of the wimpy variety seemed disgusted.

  “Meeting dismissed,” Graves announced at last. “Begin selecting your alien personas, gentlemen. We’re going to give our troops an education they’ll not soon forget.”

  The room emptied out quickly, with officers heading away to prepare for what was probably going to be the most elaborate mass murder in Legion Varus history.

  I was gathering my things when Winslade approached me.

  “That was genuinely disturbing, McGill,” he said, but there was admiration in his eyes all the same. “I didn’t think you had such a vicious imagination.”

  “I’ve been studying under your tutelage for a tall stack of decades, Primus.”

  When Winslade left, Cherish joined me a moment later. She looked troubled. “Don’t you think this is going to be a bit extreme? Seventy percent casualties?”

  “It’s a training,” I said with a shrug. “The revival machines will put them all back together quickly enough. Better they die here a couple of times than on Kepler when it’s for real.”

  “But the trauma…” she said.

  “That’s what will keep them alive when it matters.”

  “These people are soldiers, not children,” Harris said as he stepped up to admonish Cherish, who glared back at him. When it came to slaughtering underlings, Harris was well-known to be the most ambitious and eager among us to see blood.

  “There’s a strict line between dangerous and suicidal,” Cherish pointed out, looking at me for support.

  She found none of that in my camp. I stood up, tired of the moral handwringing of my lower-level adjuncts.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said, heading for the exit. “The difference is whether you’re smart enough to not die permanently.”

  Cherish caught my arm as I passed her by. “James, sometimes I wonder if you actually enjoy all this.”

  I looked down at her hand on my arm, then back into her face. “Enjoy what? Keeping our people alive, making them better soldiers, or just being honest about what we do for a living?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t. Explain it to me.”

  She let go of my arm, frustrated. “The casualness of it all. The way you can talk about killing hundreds of your own people like you’re discussing the weather.”

  “Because that’s exactly what it is,” I said. “Weather. An occupational hazard. Something that happens whether we like it or not.”

  The girl was clearly pouting, so I softened my tone slightly. “Look, Cherish, I don’t enjoy watching good people die—not like Harris does, at least. But I’ve learned that pretending death isn’t part of this job doesn’t make anyone safer. It just makes you unprepared when it happens.”

  She still looked unconvinced, but she didn’t argue any further. She left the conference room.

  Harris edged up to me, grinning. “Collins is still on your radar, huh?”

  “Have you got a worthwhile suggestion to make, Adjunct?”

  “Just that you’re shooting at everything, McGill. Maybe you should give it a rest—before your pecker falls off, or something.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for your next performance review.”

  He wandered off after that, while I headed for the relative safety of the corridor.

  Tomorrow was going to be interesting. Several thousand Legion Varus troops were about to learn what it felt like to be hunted down by their own officers in illusion guises.

  Some of them would probably thank us afterwards. The rest would be grateful if they survived at all, despite the odds.

  Either way, they’d be better soldiers by the time we reached Kepler-62. At least, that was the hope.

  -11-

  When I met Galina on Lavender Deck, we had a pretty good time. She chattered and fretted about our mission, Kepler-62 in general, and the disposition of the Galactics. I mumbled around my fork as I hoovered up all the good eats I could get my hands on—including most of her plate.

  After dinner, she played her usual games about being tired, disinterested and distracted. I bided my time, then weaseled my way into her quarters. There, I plied her with a single nightcap that turned into three.

  Before I knew it, I was getting kicked out of her place in the morning. I was still half asleep, trying to process the fact that I’d just been firmly ejected from the Imperator’s bed.

  “This can’t become a habit again, James,” she said, while pulling her tight pants up over her impressively muscular ass. “People talk, and I have a reputation to maintain.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What about my reputation?” I had asked, actually managing to sound offended.

  Galina snorted. “Your reputation is intact. Everyone knows you’ll sleep with anything that moves. Mine is considerably more valuable.”

  It was hard to argue with her logic. Soon thereafter, I found myself shunted out into the hallway. I yawned and started the long walk back to my unit’s module.

  I was already expecting the looks that I was going to get from my people. Word traveled fast aboard any ship, and spending yet another night with a top officer wasn’t the most discreet move a man like me could make.

  3rd Unit, 3rd Cohort. That’s what the sign said. After a brief and heartfelt prayer, I pushed my way inside. I found my module buzzing with early morning activity when I arrived.

  My soldiers were cleaning gear, checking weapons, going through the usual pre-deployment routines. The conversation died when I walked in, replaced by a bit of snickering and more than a few whispers. Some people even pointed behind their hands—like I wasn’t able to notice that. Everybody knew exactly where I’d been.

  I didn’t even bother to shrug but instead strode toward my office and my adjoining quarters. At the doorway, Adjunct Cherish Collins appeared. She looked up from her tapper with a cold expression. Her eyes were kind of slitty, and she reminded me of a cat with a pulled tail.

  Oh yeah… I recalled I’d made some promises along the way, perhaps a week or so ago, about spending a lot of time with her on this voyage out to the Kepler system. Ah well, sometimes plans changed.

  “Nice of you to join us, Centurion,” she said frostily.

  “Morning, Cherish. You sleep well?”

  “My assigned quarters were more than comfortable, if that’s what you mean, sir.”

  “That wouldn’t work for me,” I said. “My mattress has a big dip in it, see? I must have spent too many nights sleeping on my side.”

  She folded up her lips in disgust.

  Specialist Kivi, who’d been pretending to work on some electronic doodads at a nearby table, couldn’t hold back a snort of her own.

  “You could at least try to look ashamed, McGill.”

  “Ashamed of what? Having a social life?”

  “Isn’t that what we’re calling it now?” This came from Adjunct Harris. He was cleaning a snap-rifle with vigor. He grinned at me. He wasn’t disapproving, just amused.

  I ignored all their commentary and headed for my locker to grab fresh gear. Today was going to be interesting enough without starting off with a lecture about my personal choices from my underlings.

  “Attention, officers of 3rd Cohort.” The ship’s intercom crackled to life. It was Winslade’s voice. The man could make a grocery list sound snooty. “Report to the Observation Deck for a training exercise briefing. All non-enlisted personnel, immediately report to the Observation Deck.”

  “It’s showtime,” I announced, strapping on another equipment harness.

  A pack of officers all crammed onto the Observation Deck some minutes later. Winslade had replaced the usual dome of the heavens, looking down upon us like some Greek God—and nasty-faced, sharp featured one.

  The hologram overhead made us all squint and blink in dismay. Everyone present was an officer from 3rd Cohort, including Winslade himself. There were about fifty of us all told, and everyone looked eager for the entertainment to begin.

  Tribune Graves soon replaced Winslade, looming over us like an angry father.

  “Those nostrils are hard to take,” Harris whispered next to me.

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Graves’ armor was different than everyone else’s. He was wearing the most elaborate powered armored suit that any regular in the Legion ever did. A massive metallic monstrosity that looked like a walking tank. This was a weaponeer’s gear, typically the heaviest. I realized right then and there that if he was going to participate in any of these battles, he was going to be the hardest one to take out.

  “Smart…” I said to myself.

  “Attention, officers,” Graves’ boomed. “Today, we begin the first phase of our enhanced combat training program. As outlined yesterday, we’ll be conducting live-fire exercises with heavy casualty expectations.”

  The wall displays lit up, showing Green Deck from multiple angles. The artificial environment looked peaceful enough. Rolling hills, dense forests, a few rocky outcroppings, and one lagoon with a waterfall and a beach right in the center of it. The peaceful looks didn’t deceive any of us. We were about to turn Green Deck into a slaughterhouse.

  “1st Cohort will go first, naturally,” Graves continued. “They’re already in position. I’ve given basic survival gear, shock-rods, and molecularly edged combat knives to the enlisted. Their mission is simple: survive for one hour. During that time, they’ll be hunted by their own officers for sport.”

  “What about the officers?” asked someone from the back.

  The gigantic Graves seemed to hear the question. “They get snap-rifles, armor appropriate to their rank, and the satisfaction of teaching troops what it feels like to be prey.”

  I found seats with Harris and Manfred near the main display. Stretched out around us in every direction, the depiction of Green Deck looked as real as real could be. There was none of that blue cast that you got from older screens. The fake daylight even made you squint. It was golden, and it glared into your eyes like the real thing.

  Green Deck was already crawling with activity as nearly a thousand 1st Cohort losers spread out across the terrain. They moved cautiously, already sensing that something was wrong with this exercise. Although in great number, they were not expected to win the day.

  “Hey! Look over there—at Door Three,” Manfred pointed toward one of the feeds.

  Officers were moving into position. Sneaky bastards. I counted them: there were fifty-one in total. They were equipped exactly as Graves described. Adjuncts wore standard combat gear with no armor. Centurions had chest plates, at least. The single Primus wore a full suit of shining armor that could at least hope to turn a blade, I figured. Every man carried a snap-rifle and his own combat knife. The edge of those things could cut through steel.

  “This is going to be good,” Harris said, sounding kind of turned on.

  The timer on the main display started counting down from one hour. For the first few minutes, nothing much happened. The enlisted troops spread out. They were setting up defensive positions and trying to get a feel for the terrain. The officers were doing the same, but with the confidence of hunters who knew their prey was unarmed.

  Then the shooting started. The first contact came when a squad of enlisted men tried to rush an officer’s position near the eastern hill. It was a classic frontal assault, exactly the kind of aggressive, straightforward attack that worked in training scenarios but could oftentimes get you killed in real combat, especially when the enemy had superior firepower.

  Snap-rifle fire tore through the charging soldiers, running right into the guns.

  “Look at those freaking idiots,” Harris laughed. “This is great!” He slapped his knees, hooted, and seemed unable to contain his mirth.

  Molecularly aligned edges on a knife could be deadly enough if you got in close, but to close the distance, you had to outrun automatic weapons fire. When you weren’t armored and didn’t have much cover, that was a difficult task indeed.