We Are The Wolf Read online

  Chapter 3

  The flight to Fort Gibson was simple. Included with the airline voucher Dean received were instructions for his trip. He was told not to bring anything other than his state-issued ID and the instructions bearing his name and the seal of the Extra Solar Defense Force. Everything he needed would be provided by the service, so after a tearful goodbye hug from his mother, Dean boarded an airplane that took him to a secluded base deep in the Rocky Mountains.

  Most of EsDef was contained in an elaborate underground bunker. Humans weren't alone in the universe, and while none of the other species man had encountered and engaged in battle had attempted to invade Earth, everyone knew that was a real possibility. So the Extra Solar Defense Force was housed in deep bunkers, with not only the technology used to command the drone armies in case of an invasion, but also with survival supplies and some of Earth's most treasured artifacts.

  No one but EsDef personnel was allowed into the base, and that included new recruits. Dean and a dozen other young men and women were taken to an intake facility just outside the base. The building was large, with both housing and training facilities in the single structure. Dean and the other boys were taken to a room, stripped naked, and then subjected to a rigorous physical. Once the medical staff were certain the boys had no defects, diseases, or hidden medical conditions, they were allowed to bathe and then given clothes, toiletries, and rucksacks to keep everything in.

  They met up with the girls again in a classroom where they were lectured on the rules of their training. EsDef did not allow hazing, practical jokes, or bullying. There were no alcoholic beverages or drugs of any kind in the training facilities, or the base. And fraternization among recruits, either of the opposite sex or the same, was strictly forbidden. The man giving the lecture was thin, with vision implants that were obviously not done by someone who believed in maintaining an individual's aesthetics.

  After the rules lecture they were each given a tablet and a wrist link. The link was to be worn at all times and would not only connect to their tablet, but would measure their vital statistics and keep track of their location. It was not to be lost or removed by anyone other than EsDef personnel. They would, the recruits learned, receive a permanent link device after their training period.

  On their tablets were their training schedules, which started with basic physical training at 0500 hours the following morning. After the lecture they were fed then instructed to write their parents or guardians a letter, which they were to do on their tablets. Then they were sent off to bed.

  The intake facility had several dormitories, which were basically long rooms with rows of cots, and bathrooms. Dean sat on his bunk, writing to his parents and trying not to feel nervous. The other boys, seven of them all together, each looked much bigger than Dean. They stared at him with pity, as if he stood no chance of surviving Recon training. There were five girls, none as pretty as Mercedes Alton, but none were outright ugly either. As Dean sat in his boxers and tee shirt, he was acutely aware that there were girls nearby in similar states of undress.

  He had trouble falling asleep his first night. He lay in the darkness of their dorm, dreading the early wake-up call the next morning, but also listening to the other recruits. Some were snoring, blissfully unaware of the noise rumbling from their quaking airways. Others tossed and turned nervously, just like Dean. He didn't know what time he finally fell asleep, but he was shocked when the lights flashed on and a clanging alarm woke them the next morning. Up to that point their basic training had been stressful, but not extreme. All that changed when Staff Sergeant Dillon walked into the room. One look through Dean's bleary eyes told him the massive man screaming at them from the end of the room was not to be taken lightly. His training had truly begun.

  "On your feet!" The sergeant shouted. "Now! Move your asses! Sleepy time is over, you little shits. You're my playthings now and you will obey every order I give with a thousand percent effort and flawless performance. Get dressed and line up for inspection!"

  They scrambled to pull on the nondescript sweatpants and sweatshirts. Socks snagged on toes and shoelaces were nearly impossible to tie with stiff fingers as the staff sergeant screamed at them.

  "You are the slowest lot of shit-eating recruits I ever saw. I'm not babysitting a preschool class here. Move your asses or I'll stick my boot so far up them you'll taste leather."

  Dean wasn't the first to get dressed, but he wasn't last. The girls with long hair had the most trouble. They were screamed at for even thinking of running a brush through the mass of tangles. One girl had wisely pinned her hair up the night before, and had no trouble getting dressed for inspection. The largest boy was a hulking giant. Dean guessed he was six and a half feet tall, and he looked like a body builder. He struggled to get his socks and shoes on and was the last one to join the squad of recruits.

  The staff sergeant stood nose to nose with the huge recruit. Both men had massive muscles, but the sergeant's were covered with tattoos and scars. Not that Dean could see much of their instructor, who wore a short-sleeved compression shirt and baggy pants that fed down into the tops of well-polished boots that laced halfway up his shin.

  "Now follow me down to the training ground!" the staff sergeant shouted.

  The recruits obeyed without complaint, although several were forcing back yawns. The fatigue was quickly forgotten and replaced with sweat-drenched gasps for air. They ran around and around a track until Dean thought he was going to throw up. Then they were forced to do push-ups, sit-ups, lunges, pull-ups, jumping jacks, and squats. They weren't given breakfast, which Dean wouldn't have been able to eat anyway. Instead they were given fruit flavored drinks that seemed to replenish their failing strength. Dean couldn't keep up with most of the other boys, and half the girls, but no matter what their level of fitness, the staff sergeant criticized them all in loud, cursing admonishments that made them feel like failures.

  Whatever pride Dean had at being accepted into Recon evaporated that first morning. All he could think about was surviving the training. After their PT they were led back to their dorm and given five minutes to pull off their sweat-saturated clothing. Modesty was the last thing on Dean's mind. They were told to dress in their utility fatigues, which were the same nondescript gray color, but consisted of baggy pants and long-sleeved shirts that buttoned up the front. Dean's mind barely registered the fact that his name was stenciled across the left portion of his chest. They pulled clean socks over damp feet and stuffed them into tall boots that looked like Sergeant Dillon's, only not as shiny.

  They were taken to a room that contained large weighted vests. Some were the same, others were different. Dean guessed the vests corresponded with their physical size, but he couldn't be sure. They were also given heavy backpacks, which strapped across their chest and waist, as well as their shoulders. Then they each carried a heavy rifle with a long barrel. Dean had never seen such a massive gun. On television the Recon officers carried sleek weapons that looked like they were part of the soldiers' armor, almost as if they were an extension of each man and woman who carried them.

  They walked through the intake facility as if they were going on a casual stroll. Dean saw other officers, all in EsDef uniforms, but they paid the group of recruits no heed, as if seeing the heavily armored soldiers was not surprising in the least. Once they got outside, everything changed.

  "Now, boys and girls, we're going on a little hike," Staff Sergeant Dillon announced. "You will keep up or I will kick your ass to the front of the line."

  Dean felt a sense of dread. Several of his compatriots groaned audibly. They hadn't had the time to develop real friendships, but Dean was getting to know each of them. The boys were mostly silent sufferers, and Dean included himself in that group. Two of the boys—one tall, athletic, and almost graceful, the other short and thick, reminding Dean of a bull—laughed and joked throughout the PT as if the grueling exercise was easy. The girls were less predictable. They acted as if they had something to prove, pushing themselves hard, almost to the point of exhaustion, without ever complaining. Three of the girls made grunts and growls as they worked. The other two whispered their complaints and fears, but Dean was never close enough to hear them.

  "Move out!" Sergeant Dillon shouted.

  They began at a brisk walk. They were already nearly two thousand feet above sea level, and Dean could feel the difference in the air. It wasn't just cooler, it was thin. He was soon breathing hard and they had only just begun. Sergeant Dillon followed a well-worn path, up into the hills. They weren't climbing mountains, but the trail did wind up steep hillsides. They trudged up the hills, and jogged down. It took them an hour to reach a long, flat plain with man-made berms at various distances.

  "Take a knee!" Sergeant Dillon shouted.

  The squad dropped to one knee gratefully. Staff Sergeant Dillon showed them how to place the butt of their rifles onto the ground and lean against the upright weapon as if it were a staff. Once everyone was in the proper posture, he began to lecture about why they had come out so far from the intake facility.

  "Force Recon is the tip of the spear," he shouted. "My job is to make sure that spear is sharp. Please do not misunderstand me: you will not be ruthless, unmerciful killers when I'm through with you. This is just the first phase of your training. It is all about physical toughness and an aptitude for taking lives, human or xynode. To that end you will learn to shoot. Not with lasers or rail guns, not with the high tech toys you may eventually be called upon to use in deep space, but good old-fashioned percussion rifles. The kind we've been using in one form or another for centuries."

  The sergeant lifted his arm and muttered a command into the digital link device that was on his forearm. To Dean it looked like a plain leather band and he wondered how it worked, but his attention was quickly pulled back to the lesson at hand. A dozen round targets had risen up from prone positions in front of the nearest berm. The targets were white with black rings in concentric circles.

  For an hour the sergeant lectured them about how their rifles worked. He took his apart and then reassembled it, showing the squad how to do the same to their own weapons. From their backpacks they removed ammo boxes, each with five hundred rounds of ammunition. For two hours they loaded clips, fired their rifles, cleared jams, then cleaned their weapons. Dean was more tired than he'd ever been, but he enjoyed firing the rifle. They wore hearing protectors with electric damping as well as radio receptivity so the recruits could hear Sergeant Dillon's instructions over the thundering crack of the rifles.

  Dean lay on his stomach, holding the long rifle snug against his shoulder. The sight consisted of a V-shaped groove close to Dean's eye and a peg at the end of the long barrel. He did his best to relax his body the way his instructor told him, squeezing the trigger gently when the sights aligned with his target. The result was an explosion inside the weapon, making it buck hard against his shoulder. The first shot slammed the gun hard into his cheekbone, but he quickly adjusted his grip. Hitting the target wasn't difficult, but firing accurately was. Sergeant Dillon didn't seem to care about their aim, focusing more on their form, posture, and the way they handled the rifle than how well they shot.

  When they had finished their marksmanship practice, they cleaned their weapons, packed supplies, including the spent brass casings, and hiked back to the intake center, where they were fed a lunch of baked chicken, rice, fruit in a cup, and more of the fruit flavored energy drink that they had been given for breakfast. After being rushed through the meal by Sergeant Dillon they were taken back to a classroom, where Dean learned that every shot they fired was logged by a computer. The tough-as-nails instructor took his time going over every recruit's results from the firing range. Five hundred rounds gave the staff sergeant plenty of data to sift through. And no one was spared from his scathing assessment of their marksmanship. Dean felt his cheeks flush when his own results flashed on the vid screen, which took up one whole wall of the classroom. The only redeeming feature of his performance was the fact that he improved from his first clip of fifty rounds to his final magazine.

  By the time they were finished it was late afternoon and they were marched back to the training facilities. Each of the recruits was given a personal evaluation of strength and endurance by expert conditioning coaches, including goals they would be expected to reach by the end of the initial two-week intake phase of their training. Dean’s evaluation consisted mainly of finding the maximum weight he could handle on each of the weight training machines. He was so tired he knew he didn’t give his best on the evaluation, but he assumed that their fatigue was factored into the test. By the end of the two weeks, if he wasn’t completely broken down by the daily training, he should enter the tests in better shape and be able to do more.

  When they finally broke for dinner, Dean felt that every muscle in his body was quivering and he hated to think of how he would feel the next day. They had another rushed meal, then the recruits were put in a room and told to take notes on a lecture that droned over the loudspeaker in a hypnotizing monotone. The temperature in the room rose as the lecture stretched on and on, until Dean was covered in a sheen of sweat and could barely keep his eyes open.

  Then they were hurried out into the cold mountain air, the sweat cold on their skin as they jogged through the darkness. Dean’s mind could focus on nothing but the ground in front of him. The group of recruits was spread out in a long line, each one stumbling forward, doing their best to keep the person in front of them in sight. They ended their first day standing watch outside the intake center, the heavy rifles back in their hands. The recruits were paired up and then alternated standing watch and sleeping on the hard, cold ground. Dean was too tired to complain about where he slept. He’d never been so tired in his life and when he was roused after his first hour of sleep, his body hurt so much that he could hardly stand.

  By the time the sun rose he had gotten three hours of sleep. And the entire process started over again. The exercises were the same, the food was the same, even the dull lecture each evening was exactly the same. Dean’s mind dealt with the hardship by focusing on each task as if nothing else existed. It took four days to break through the pain that had wracked his body making each movement painful. On the fifth day he not only moved easier, but the exercises, both in the training facility and on the rifle range, became easier. It wasn’t that the training was less grueling, but his body adapted and he was able to do each exercise from disassembling his rifle to running in step with his companions without struggle. But his fear was that despite his constant effort, the training would only get tougher during the next phase, even though he had no idea what to expect next. All he could do was perform his best no matter what he was asked to do and hope that things got easier somehow.

  Chapter 4

  Two weeks after induction, the first phase of Dean’s training ended with standard tests in PT, strength training, and marksmanship. Dean passed all three, along with the rest of the recruits. Staff Sergeant Dillon sent them to their next phase of training with little fanfare or encouragement. He gave each of them instructions on their tablets. They were scheduled to be picked up from the intake center at different times. Dean was surprised to learn that they weren't all continuing through training together.

  The memos on their tablets didn't reveal why they were being picked up in odd groups, nor where they were going. They were to have their belongings packed up and be at the main entrance at various times. Dean was the last one scheduled to leave. The recruits lingered in their dorm until it was time for them to depart. Dean regretted the fact that he hadn't really made friends with the other recruits, and when the last group left the dorm ahead of him, a feeling of loneliness rose up so strong inside Dean that his eyes stung with tears.

  Fear was a constant part of his training. He didn't fear the rigors involved in becoming a member of the elite Recon Division, but he feared failure. He told himself that he had scored well in all his tests, but the fear lingered, nagging at his mind the way a toothache wore away at a person until it was fixed.

  His wrist link vibrated softly and a single beep issued from the device, alerting Dean that it was his turn to head down to the entrance of the intake facility. He lifted the heavy pack that contained his clothes and toiletries. The pack didn't seem as heavy to him as it had when he arrived. His clothes were all neatly folded and tucked away in the pack. There were discrete pockets for his toiletries. He slung the drab-looking pack across his shoulder and left the dorm he'd called home for two weeks.

  He passed the mess hall, the admin offices, and the training facility. He felt a pang of regret, although he couldn't imagine why he would miss the place where he had been worked to near exhaustion and given hardly any time to rest. Yet there was something about what he'd accomplished in his first two weeks with EsDef, he was proud of how he'd fared in the first phase of his training. He couldn't have imagined anything as hard as the two-week intake process, and that made him fear what the EsDef instructors had planned for him in the future, but he felt he had proven something, not only to the officers and his staff sergeant, but to himself as well.

  At the entrance of the facility, were he'd spent plenty of nights standing watch in shifts, never with the same person twice, he found a transport waiting for him. It was an all-electric glider, a short-range, minimalistic vehicle that was little more than a few seats on a repulsor engine. The man sitting in the driver seat was none other than Sergeant Dillon himself.

  "Hurry up, Blaze, we haven't got all day," he complained.