(Lasky Pov)
By the time I made it back to my dorm from General Black's office, it was already time for me to get dressed and make my way to the training field. I put on my green combat uniform, the corresponding green armor, and grabbed my MA5. I made sure to make sure everything was right. I had magazines filled with paint rounds, my uniform was perfect, but all I did was go through the motions.
Even as I walked across the campus, I wasn't really there. My mind had walked away, thinking about what I'd been told to consider.
'To act or to not?' That was the question, but that question wasn't the root of the issue. It was merely a fruit, a byproduct of this disease that has been ailing me. Just as a rotten leg is a consequence of cancer, my inaction is the result of my own illness, an illness of the mind.
'Is it worth acting?' That was the true question that cut to the heart of the matter. Was it worth doing anything at all?
I closed my eyes as I looked up toward the sky, continuing to walk. I felt the weak rays of the sun against the skin on my face. How I wish I could get some form of divine revelation or a message, or anything. Just something to take away the bite of this hopelessness I feel, like an antivenom to this neurotoxin that has been breaking me down.
"Cadet Lasky?" My feet on autopilot had successfully brought me to my destination, and an instructor called out to me.
"Yes," I simply responded with the same dead tone I carried.
"Get inside," he said, stepping away from the doorway to a mock staging ground, "The rest of your squad is already inside."
I climbed up the metal-grated stairs, a small rattle as my boots struck each step. The door slid open, and I stepped onto the threshold, seeing the rest of my squad.
The room was quiet. When I appeared, everyone's eyes seemed to lock onto me. I expected to be met with quiet hatred, rage maybe, but not this time. This time, all anyone gave was a tired expression, as if they were worn out from watching the same play again and again. I couldn't help but resonate with them.
'I wish I wasn't the way I was,'
"Then don't be," a voice I had not heard in person long ago said. I quickly jerked my head as I heard it just over my shoulder, but nothing was there…. Only the automatic door I had entered from.
I looked back around. No one. I shrugged it off and headed over to a seat near one of the open bay doors. The staging area was like a big garage with multiple shipping bay doors that were open, looking to the outside at the forest training ground.
I took a seat on a crate and turned to stare out into the woods. My eyes looked out until I drifted away into my thoughts.
"Are you going to let their hard work be for nothing?" I turned again. A different voice spoke to me. I glanced around. This voice, I recognized it was General Black's. I looked around the way it was said was so clear, there had to be a speaker… Or maybe I really am insane.
I sat back down after nothing came up, but now I was alert. I would be on guard for any other hallucinations of sound, and now I wasn't able to run. I couldn't keep away from my thoughts that seemed to churn in my head, and General Black's words were at the forefront.
My head ached, and I wanted it all just to go away. I turned away from the door, my eyes looking around the room, trying to find something to focus on. Eventually, they stopped being attracted to Chyler sitting on a crate across from me.
She seemed to nervously fiddle with her rifle, consciously checking her gear as if something had changed in the last minute. It was funny, her scores on written tests were second only to mine, in other words, they were near perfect, and she was just a bit better than me physically, at least for individual exercises. Yet, she was always anxious, probably due to the fact that we were always compared throughout grade school; thankfully, she never let the "competition" turn into resentment.
'I don't know what I would have done if it did,' I told myself before I frowned with a realization.
I gritted my teeth, looking down as two conflicting sides of me warred, 'Just one last fight?' I offered, as a compromise between the sides, a promise of a ceasefire. 'Then after the semester, I will put in for a transfer to a regular university and be done with it all,'
I felt a bit better after thinking up the plan, and so I prepared myself, beginning to think of a battle strategy.
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(3rd Pov)
"Hastati! ON ME!" Orenski called out minutes later, marking the beginning of the exercise.
The five members moved with urgency, circling around their mentor, "This is our last chance," she said seriously, "So this is what we'll do. Vickers, you take lead and-"
"Permission to lead this exercise, sir?" Everyone turned with clear surprise, hearing those words from Lasky that they doubted they'd ever hear again. Even Orenski was taken aback in surprise and paused studying him, but with his face that seemed almost desensitized to life, there was nothing that could be gleaned.
She sighed thinking for a moment before giving him a pointed look, "Are you sure? You're not going to fuck us are you?" she asked, "Because I swear if you're doing this to just tank everyone else's grade then the last thing you have to worry about is General Black," she said with a tone of ice and warning in equal parts.
"Negative. We'll win. I promise," he said with a tone as if he was saying something obvious.
Around the two, the faces of the rest of the team had changed. Dimah and Sullivan had a hopeful expression, hearing that Lasky's active participation and leadership would lead to the improvement of their grades. Vickers, though a bit bitter at losing his position, had to admit that he would rather be the tail of a dragon than the head of a snake. Similarly, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Finally, Chyler had a thankful expression, her eyes staring with genuine gratitude into Lasky's. Thomas began to sweat, unsure whether he was uncomfortable or not.
"Fine, you've got the wheel. Good luck," she said, walking away knowing that he did not need her help when it came to strategy.
Lasky turned and began filling them in. The plan was simple, relying on the rules and equipment that were used to conduct the test.
It wasn't some grand genius stratagem, not a ground-breaking advance in warfare, no it was none of that. If anything, it was a shortcut, a cheat. They would exploit a loophole for victory, something that would most certainly be patched out in the next iteration. As what amounted to a one-time strategy, it was a perfect final plan to end Thomas Lasky's military career, or at least that's what he thought.
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"Ahead," one of the opfor members spoke through their comms.
They moved as a group in a spearhead formation. This was their opponent's last chance to pass, which made them desperate and unpredictable. Caution needed to be exercised to the utmost; otherwise, something stupid would happen.
The members, after clearing most of the forest, stopped ahead of a small outbuilding. It was maybe 5 x 5 x 10 feet, but it was the landmark that marked they had nearly reached the opponent's start point.
But something was off.
"They're all behind that shitter?" another asked, confusedly staring at the compass that indicated 5 clear red dots in front of him behind the outdoor restroom.
He glanced over, only getting a shrug from his teammate, "Approach slowly and quietly," he said as the five of them moved forward.
One of them stepped on a twig, immediately stopping as his head snapped around, wondering if he'd given away his position. Nothing stirred, still in the clear.
They proceeded forward as if nothing had happened, through the brush they crept until they finally reached the corner.
Slowly, they moved until- finally they jerked around to see the other side, only to find…
"Nothing?"
Not a soul was there. A sense of dread flowed in, and the soldiers' extincts screamed at him as he looked down, finding a pile of helmets. The explanation for the bunch of red dots in his HUD.
SNAP
"AMBUSH!"
Shots from the direction they had come and from the direction west of the bathroom leaked out in staggered, accurate fire. This wasn't a flood of suppressing rounds, but a steady, precise drizzle.
The first soldier dropped being hit twice in the collarbone. Red paint mixed with strong anaesthetics knocked him out. He fell over into the dirt as his teammates scrambled to find cover and concealment.
Another fell while running to cover, now it was OPFOR's turn to be desperate, "RUSH EM IT'S OUR ONLY CHANCE," one shouted over the nearby rhythmic snaps of rifles.
But that was a half-baked plan at best. The men and women of the opposing team were caught in an L ambush. It was a battle plan learnt early in officer strategy courses; it was devised in order to contain the enemy as well as avoid crossfire casualties. Opfor would have recognized this if not for the sheer panic.
And so as they sprinted north from the out house, the members of Hastati to their west picked them off as they tried to cross the clearings. The remaining three dropped red paint, akin to blood splattered on various parts of their uniforms.
For a moment, all was quiet from Vickers to Sullivan; the entirety of Hastati had their eyes peeled, ready for any movement. Sweat dripped down their faces until the sound of an air horn rang out, signalling the end of the test.
"Test Complete. Winner: Hastati," a robotic voice announced
"Yes!" Vickers, along with the other members of Hastati, cheered. They rushed to hug, the fear and threat of losing. Even April, who'd been watching through the cameras back at an observation room, couldn't help but smile.
Joy was in the air, but not for everyone.
Lasky thought silently, pondering to himself why something that should have been an achievement felt so empty. He looked up, seeing his team happy, and sighed, turning around and heading back to the barracks. He doubted he'd be punished for cutting out early, after all, he'd done exactly as the General asked. His team passed. What more could they want?
He returned his gear and equipment to the proper place before heading back out for his perch near the space elevator. Jumping up, he found his seat on the stone outcropping and sat in silence, finding a small solace in the solitude. Here at this place in the academy, it actually seemed peaceful.
To Lasky, it was his island, an oasis. Land where fire nor rain could reach. A true paradise.
In the distance, the enormous shaft shook briefly as the elevator rocketed upward toward the sky. The pneumatic and hydraulic pieces sizzled and whirred, audible even from his seat. The air was humid, almost sticking to his skin as if it were a blanket. The sun, even as it set, stared down with a cruel scowl as it felt far hotter now than it did hours ago in the morning.
But before he could settle back into his thoughts, a voice he hadn't expected filled the air behind him, "I wondered where you were."
Turning around, he found Chyler as she approached before sitting down beside him on the stone.
"Didn't feel like celebrating the win?" she asked with a calm smile on her face.
'She knows me too well,' Lasky couldn't help admit, watching her, "No, what about you?"
She half snorted, "I figured, as for me, I'm not much of the party type. Vickers and Dimah talked about celebrating, and April even said that she'd break open her stash of contraband beer. They invited me, but I obviously turned them down," she paused, "They also told me to tell you to come and 'Not be a stick in the mud',"
Lassky nodded his head, slowly turning to look back at the space elevator, "Figures," he simply said as a calm silence set.
Chyler turned to look at the moving machinery as well. A minute then two passed before a thoughtful expression appeared on her face, and she spoke up again.
"Tom, I want to ask you something."
"Hmm?"
"What was your brother like?"
Thomas's eyes widened, hearing her question. He looked over at her, seeing a serious expression, "For him dying to leave you like this, he must have been a good man," she clarified, "And I want to know what you thought of him,"
Lasky swallowed hard as he processed the request. He gathered the courage to do something immensely uncomfortable, as is the case when someone shows their own vulnerabilities. He took a single deep breath and began.
"Cadmon was a strange creature," he started getting a raised eyebrow, "He always made the weirdest jokes and at the worst times. He was immature and would take pranks to far," he paused before slightly smiling remembering a story, "One time he changed all the clocks in the house to three hours early my first day of high school. Then he woke me up, telling me I was late for school. I got ready, making so much noise that mom, who was on leave, woke up thinking there was an intruder and swept the house with her magnum before finding me getting ready. She nearly shot me, and when I told her it was Cadmon, we went and found him asleep in his room," he finished the memory in reminiscence
"He was physically the most talented person I knew. Did four sports all year round, one for each season, and was easily a planetary-level athlete in each one. He was doing handstand walks at five, according to my mom, and could lob a baseball at 100 mph by the time he was fifteen." he looked down at the stone, thinking on his memories before his expression turned sour.
"But he was an idiot at times. There were times he'd pay classmates to write essays for him, not because he couldn't do them, but because he didn't want to. One time, he even forgot to rewrite it, and the teacher could obviously tell that his handwriting didn't match. And he was stubborn, so stubborn, mom told him not to join the infantry, but what did he do? He joined to be a boot, an officer boot to be worse. She told him not to enlist in B.O.I.S., and what did he do? He joined to be an ODST."
Lasky's voice seemed to stretch and strain as he struggled to speak. A faint hoarse sound like old wood scraping carried the undertone of his words, "Then to top it all off, he went out and got himself killed like a dumb fucking jackas and-and-and-," Lasky stuttered before stopping as he felt something warm begin to stream down from his eyes.
Lasky was silent for a moment as he took his hands and wiped away his tears before continuing in a sullen tone, "He was my brother, my one and only, and I loved him like one."
"When I was told he died, something inside me broke, like a car missing an engine. I feel… empty. For what reason should I just keep going? When someone you love can be stolen from you and replaced with nothing, is that life? Do we just fill the person-sized holes in us only for those holes to be reopened? And above all, is that even worth living for?"
He stopped again, feeling arms wrap around his sides, pulling him into a tight embrace. He didn't fight it and reciprocated, hugging Chyler back. Neither said anything as the unspoken message was received.
A moment later, Lasky looked down into Chyler's eyes as she looked back into his. They leaned in close, and just before their lips touched, a loud CRACK, the tell-tale sign of a slip space rupture, boomed overhead.
Both of their attention was directed upward as in the distance the image of a group of purple curved ships floated in the air near the horizon. A moment later and a purple light flared as a large globule of plasma was flung in their direction. It approached too fast for them to react and smashed into the space tether.
The groan of over-stressed metal could be heard for the entire academy until finally the structure, which had buckled only for an instant, broke and collapsed. The metal skeleton fell shrapnel rained down like meteors as both Lasky and Chyler took cover in nearby shipping containers. The various steel and metal pieces carved jagged spikes into the soil and even through some buildings. The carbon nanotube that was the true backbone of the space elevator fell, drawing a black line through campus that stretched on into the distance.
When the initial danger passed, the two left the container cautiously, looking around. Lasky's eyes darted around until his eyes settled on a dark dot in the distance that seemed to only grow as time passed.
"Oh, no"
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I am backish. Gonna try and return back to mostly regular uploads so huzzah.
I don't think I have much else to say I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and that everyone will have a happy new year.
See you in the next one leave any questions or concerns.