Welcome to the Marines (Corporate Marines Book 2) (6 page)

There is a guy with blond hair that sticks out everywhere, with a face that maybe a mother could love. He looks up at us from his cards and he calls out, “Welcome! Maybe we can start classes now that the last few of you are here, finally!”

Those of us who had come walk over to the group as they are putting down their cards.

Our vocal blonde speaks up and I picture her as the mouth of our group. “How many of us are there here? And where can we get a drink?”

The blond guy and his friends chuckle and relax a bit more. One of the girls points over to some machines on the serving line. “Pop and cold drinks are over there. Alcoholic beverages are not allowed at entry level because of the assessments we have to go through for the next few weeks.”

The blond guy laughs at our expressions. “Sorry guys, we have been here longer than you have and already had the ‘welcome to this experiment’ lecture. No worries, they aren’t torturing us much, aside from using boredom.”

Everyone laughs at that and we start to relax. The card players look over to the clock on the wall and start to stand up. Blond guy collects the cards and sticks them into a pack. “Well, guys, that’s it for us for tonight. You may want to go turn in as well. We are up, dressed and ready to go, standing in the cafeteria for five-fifteen a.m. for breakfast. Standard rules apply. Don’t be late! We can chat tomorrow after classes. Later, kids!”

He waves at us and they all leave.

That was weird. I would expect someone to stay here playing games or whatever until almost four a.m. and then just get ready fast for breakfast and then class. I guess that every rule here must be obeyed or there were serious consequences.

The only thing keeping me from a lifetime in a cell is doing well, so I was going to bed. I start walking back to our hall and the rest of our group starts following me, except for our blonde mouthpiece. She calls out, “Hey, spoilsports! You could at least let me finish my drink!” But then she puts it down and comes after us.

I brush my teeth twice as they feel really grungy after all the snacking on food that I had done on the trip here. Then I strip down and climb into bed. I thought I was pretty wired and would not be able to get to sleep in this new enclosed underground bunker, but all I would remember later was putting my head on my pillow with the lights down then I was out.

T
he room is not that large, and both people are sitting at a small table eyeing each other. There’s a man and a woman. He is of normal height and is wearing a suit that screams “government bureaucrat,” with short brown hair just starting to grey at the edges and brown eyes that are hard. He does not look like the sort of person that would smile often or for many people.

The woman is scarred physically and mentally, but only the physical shows on her body. If you look at her eyes, though, you can tell that this is a killer who will do anything to win. Even with all that, she is an attractive woman. She is fit in a way that few truly ever attain outside of professional sports. Then again, she is a soldier — and a very good one.

They have been sitting at a table in a small conference room for several hours now. This is the third day in a row they’ve done this. The decisions they have to make are too important to be done in one long rally with coffee and energy drinks to power the brain. A brain that is fatigued may make an incorrect decision that will cost the Corporation millions at this point. If that mistake happens and, by a fluke, it carries all the way through to the end of the training cycle and full deployment, it could cost billions, lives, and the edge that Earth and its humans are desperately trying to find and hold on to.

The first day was a simple evaluation of all the files and a quick sorting into those who would clearly not make it through the early stages of training and those who might.

The next day is a simple refinement with faster review of those who are not expected to make it.

These two are a team that has worked together well on several training cycles. It is rare where an expected failure is moved back to the other stack of files. More often, a few more files leave the possible success stack and head over to failure.

The rest of the day is spent evaluating the hopeful candidate’s files. They’re trying to figure out who has a chance of passing and, more importantly, who has what it takes to pass.

Those candidates will be more heavily scrutinized as they go through their early training. The extra work now increases the chances of finding better candidates that will do better throughout the course and then become better Marines.

The afternoon of the third day is usually when the last few “difficult” files are evaluated and sorted. There is rarely more than one, if any. This time, though, the file is more of a problem than usual. Making it even worse, each member has a completely different view on that candidate.

The discussion has been going on for over an hour.

The man looks at her, sitting there looking cool and collected as always, and sighs. The last hour had not been productive. They completely disagree on this candidate. He is going to try to clear the air this one last time. “Look, he doesn’t belong here. He is a killer and appears to be as cold as they come. I think he’ll hit a break point and shatter like glass. He won’t be able to take it and may cost lives here. I think we should kick him out now and save the money that he’ll waste taking courses he won’t understand and fail out of anyway He is not who we are looking for.”

She listens to the same points as before and dismisses them in her mind. He isn’t getting it. “It is a complete fluke that the Corporation was able to get its hands on this one. The standardized testing identified him almost immediately as an excellent match. A better match than most of the candidates that we currently have enrolled here. If the system says he is that good, then we keep him for now and watch him. As for his shattering. I believe you are mistaken. He will hit his break point and either kill himself or work through it. I think that he will work through it and become stronger. I know where he came from and what happened to him.” She stops here and makes sure that she has eye contact with the man. “More, I understand what he went through. We keep him, and if he does not make it, then he does not make it. But right now I believe he is in the top 20 percent of his class.”

The man sighs and stands up, collecting the paper files. “Good enough for me for now.”

They both put all the files in a wheeled case that the man has. The chance that this facility could be hacked, with all its protection, is almost impossible to believe. But it could happen, so all important files are on paper and kept in a special lock-up that has an old-fashioned mechanical detonator, just in case.

The two exit the meeting room, nod politely at each other, and head back to their respective work areas: the control centre for him, the candidate section for herself.

There is training to be done and candidates to be tested.

I
was wrong, as usual. All my lights were off except for a very slight glow coming from the monitor. The room was dark. I felt like I had just blinked and then, BAM! Every light in the room is on and the monitor is playing a cheerful Asian pop tune that is popular everywhere. I hate it.

Thankfully, I am able to turn it off when I get up and smack the monitor. It’s tough enough to take the abuse. I’m not that tough, though, as I staggered when I was leaping up and smacked my head against the closet door. I’m going to have to reset that to something better if I can figure it out later. Now, I need to get up, get dressed and get ready for the day.

A concussion and not enough sleep — a great start to the day. I start sorting out what I need and head for the bathrooms.

After a really great breakfast that everyone else seems to complain about, I head for the classroom with the rest of the people I had met.

Our vocal blonde appears to have hit it off with the card players and some of our original group as they are already in a clique. She laughs when she sees me and her new friends wince. Blond guy asks first, “Dude, what happened, man?”

I shrug and feel myself heating up. I hadn’t realized that my head-butting the closet would leave such a visible mark. “When that pop tune came on I leapt up to turn it off and ended up head-butting the closet.”

Everyone winces and a couple of them chuckle. Vocal blonde, as I was now thinking of her, giggled. Blond guy snorted. “I changed that tune the first day that we got here. You can also change that timer so that the music starts a bit earlier. But the rest of the show at four-thirty is programmed in by the Corporation and, well, none of us want to try to change it, you know?”

Everyone nods and I went along.

Great — at least I can change the music to something better, like some Rammstein, or maybe some later death metal?

We keep moving down the hall and enter the classroom, which is really a lot more like a smaller auditorium from my old school. The difference here is that everything is in much better shape.

As we finish sitting down, all the lights dim except the lights on the stage. Everyone else is silent, which is strange. I had never been in an auditorium where no one was whispering or giggling.

Vocal blonde, the loudest of us all, tries to start a conversation with the people around her and they just shush her. She gets the hint.

A crew of older people walk out onto the stage and move into different positions. There are the university teachers in lab coats who look like they know too much, then there are the tough guys who probably teach gym class and would do all the bullying. There are only three in the last group. I have no clue who or what they are, other than the fact that they look dangerous and scary.

They move together as a team. It is like they are a synchronized swim team on land. The lead is a woman with a shaved head. The men with her are the same way. The one smaller man has a tattoo running up his neck and onto the back of his head. I can’ really make it out.

Even though there must be over three hundred of us in the room and a stage full of people, those three draw the eye and they’re who we are all paying attention to. They ignore us and just take a position off to the side with the woman as the point of the triangle.

The guy who steps up to the microphone looks like your standard messed-up mad scientist. His hair is not combed and he looks grungy. Of course, he has to be in charge.

He clears his throat and then starts speaking. The microphone is not on so most of us cannot make out what he is saying. Then, one of the female professors goes over to the control box and switches some dials around. There is a quick squeal of feedback and then a voice as loud as thunder comes out, making us all jump.

The mad scientist starts again. “Good day, everyone. I am Director Smith of the training institute. These are my associated colleagues.” He waves his hand in the air and I guess that he means the other white-coated people. Now he points over his shoulder with his thumb at the back wall where no one is standing and carries on. “These are the physical fitness instructors that will help break you into the new super-soldiers you will become. And this,” he carefully looks for and finds the three scary people and gestures at them with a gently waving hand while smiling carefully as if this will stop the woman from coming over and pulling his arm off his body and beating him to death with it, “is the instructor cadre for the final phase: armour candidates.”

A quiet murmur runs through the hall at that announcement. I guess that most of those here had thought that it was automatic that they would carry on right through into the armour part. I know a bit more than they do, thanks to some comments I overheard back when we first left. I don’t think many of us will make it all the way at all.

I just have to work harder than anyone here and hope that I make it through. I’m hopeful that if I do well enough and they invest enough time and money in training me, they might ship me off-planet to work on one of the new colonies where they are desperate for people. All our training would help set us up for that. A lifetime there would be much better than being killed or locked in a cage for the rest of my life.

The madman continues. “Your first course of study will be beginning shortly. You will each be put into a ten-candidate section. You will eat, go to class and work together with those candidates in all things.”

He starts walking up and down the stage, gesturing at an audience only he can see. “You are likely not used to the routine of real learning that you will be carrying out here. You will start off with a physical fitness class every day to tone you up and get the nannite packages working to maximum effectiveness. You will then eat and head to class. You will be in class one day and then tested the next. You will be constantly tested every day that you are here. There will be big and small tests. Tests are the most important thing that you can have during this phase of training. Of course, the results are there as well. But you will all deal with that to the best of your ability. Or you’ll fail.”

He turns back and wanders over to the podium. No one is talking; we are all processing what he had said. Constant testing and lots of schoolwork. I was bad at schoolwork.

We are directed to stand as the staff leaves the auditorium and then we’re told to break up into groups of ten that are labelled on the overhead screen.

The disembodied voice is very nasal and annoying with its directions. I first think it’s an AI but it has too much of a personality. I find my group after some looking and we head off to the room we were directed to. We are off and moving.

It’s strange how they have broken us up into our group, but they must have had a reason for it. As we went off to our different lectures, we formed into larger groups, but we were never in the same larger group. It changed almost every class and we did not see all the rest of the candidates as we moved through our training day. In any class there were fifty of us. For physical fitness classes we were in groups of a hundred.

The class groupings never make sense. Every section is a ten-candidate grouping. Now when five sections show up, they are five different sections every time. We rarely have the same sections together more than once or twice in a training week.

Classes are hours long, with short breaks to keep us from falling asleep.

The physical fitness instructors expect very high standards of fitness and push us more than I have ever been pushed at school or by friends. Running for cardio, circuit training that leaves everyone breathless and most of us end up throwing up, and weight-training until we feel like we have been pushed to the limits.

Our schedules show us in class seven days a week. On Sunday we finish two hours earlier but Monday shows on the schedules as a testing day so that time ends up being used for studying.

Every spare minute was going to be used for studying. This is going to be hard.

Everyone is on edge after some of the announcements, especially after we learn the fail rates. Curiosity is curbed for most of us as we hope not to draw attention to ourselves. The rules appear strict, and they are. Break them and you’re out. But there are also expectations and gaping holes in the way things are organized.

The example that I see of this is fraternization. The message is that friendships are frowned on. Cooperation? Encouraged, but don’t think that anyone else is your friend or you are in trouble. But we are all young and healthy. It only makes sense that some of the people here will be hooking up, even if it is only in a storage locker for five minutes at two in the morning.

There are no consequences listed for that. I wasn’t allowed to make friends, but I could bang a different partner every night of the week and that was ignored.

It happens with some of the candidates. Me? I looked at the number of people here and the failure rates. Then I looked at the holes in their logical rules. Aside from talking to others when I have to, I’ve decided to keep as far away from everyone else as I can. I have a feeling that those who take some time with a ‘friend’ for a few minutes are likely off the course.

The one person that this does not affect is our friendly, outspoken blonde. In one of the early classes in the auditorium when we were getting a pre-lecture chat by the mad professor, everyone saw an arm pop up right at the front. I knew who it had to be and I was amazed by how brave she was. The “mad prof,” as most of us think of him, has breath that would burn through steel and he has a nasty habit of spitting when he talks. The first two rows of seats are always almost completely empty when he lectures and we have consigned them to never be used again as they are covered in a layer of toxic spit that is likely being used as a tool to kill off the weakest of us. I just stay back in the third row because half the time he can’t figure out how to turn on the microphone. This way, I’m able to hear most of what he says on those days. A few brave or stupid people accept being covered in saliva for the chance to hear everything he says.

Of course, he was completely thrown off by someone asking a question. Given some of his mad ramblings that went off on tangents that had no purpose, none of us ever asked anything. Anyone who did was running the risk of an answer that made less than no sense.

But she had her hand up and he stopped his ramblings and addressed her. “Yes, candidate? You have a question?”

She piped up nice and loud. “Thank you, sir. I was curious about the purpose of having us in a section of ten that is always together but then none of the sections are ever together very much during all these classes. It does not make a lot of sense. Can you shed some light on this, sir?”

She had done a great job stroking his ego and I knew that we would get a nice pat answer that made no sense. I was wrong.

The professor grinned like a mad monkey and chuckled. “That is an excellent question. I was wondering how long it was going to take for one of you to show the brainpower to ask a question similar to that. Honestly, I didn’t think any of you were smart enough to ask it!”

He started striding back and forth across the stage, waving his hands and muttering before he continued. Thankfully, he had his microphone on for once. “Yes, yes! You see, this is all about the section and the life that a few successful candidates will enjoy for as long as it lasts.” He stopped and stared at us. It was hard enough with all the studying and trying to stay focussed. His ramblings were driving some of us insane. I had a feeling this was deliberate. The more of us that snapped now, the less money the Corporation would have to spend on those of us that would probably have washed out later.

He started again and for once, seemed focused and in control of himself. He spoke clearly and concisely. “For those of you who move on into the hierarchy of the Corporation, you must understand this: Attachments are a weakness. At the highest levels you may aspire to, you can only get there if you are willing to give up marriage and true love. The Corporation needs men and women that can give their all, which, in some cases, may include your lives, with no hesitation. Now we all realize that sex is necessary as an outlet for most people. We are not talking about no physical attachments. But at your young age, sex leads to emotional attachments and the overwhelming desire in many to have children. The Corporation needs some people to give their all. Go, have sex with whoever you need to. But don’t fall in love with them as that can be a weakness that can be exploited.” We could all see that he was deadly serious now and we were all perched on the edge our seats for once as he went on. “For those of you who end up in the Corporate Marines, the section is your all. The highest levels in the Corporation also have command and support teams. But the Marines, they live, fight and die together. They must be closer than lovers, but they cannot be attached. If they have that attachment and it develops, then that will hinder the section’s effectiveness. The third most common reason for Marines being removed from active duty is treatment for emotional attachments.”

The blonde had her hand up again. Her name was Kelly, but it was easier just calling her the Mouth. I tried to ignore how good the uniform that was so baggy on all of us looked on her. She continued in her loud, clear voice. “Sir, wouldn’t that make us sociopaths?”

Someone giggled in the back rows. It sounded like a girl. The professor looked in that direction with an irritated look on his face. Then he focussed on the blonde again. “No, not at all. We are making you slightly psychotic. The difference here is that you will have a strongly ingrained sense of right and wrong as well as a survival instinct. Because you are all aware of what is going on, you will work to counter any extremes that would normally occur. Is that clear enough?” His eyebrows had gone up at the end.

But Mouth wasn’t done yet. “But sir, what happens if that training doesn’t work and someone goes fully nuts?”

He stopped smiling. “Candidate. The Corporation looks after its own.” He turned and went back to the podium, where he checked his notes before starting the class.