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Have you ever become so good at something it becomes more of a reflex than a subconscious effort?

That’s exactly what happened to me on the 3 week voyage to Arcturus Station during the first portion of basic training with being able to field strip my M7-T Lancer and suiting up in combat rig after being woken up from sleep late at night or early in the morning (relatively speaking for a starship) by our instructors, who constantly kept us on our toes. The two weeks, which were nerve wracking, paled to the weeks to come. I thought I had a pretty good handle of what it meant to become a member of the armed forces, given my family pedigree, but I never expected to have been pushed so hard to the limits. I’m not sure what kept me going through training other than one simple thing; the women in my family are notoriously stubborn.

The first two weeks were spent familiarizing ourselves with Systems Alliance Marine Corps culture, the history, ethos, and military law, as well as learning the time honoured tradition of keeping a uniform pressed and ready, as well as the immortal art of bouncing credit chits off of expertly folded beds. If you ever had the idea that being stuck aboard a ship would be a pass from physical training, and you would be wrong. The physical training section of the SSV Ottawa would put most land-bound gymnasiums to shame; a 500 meter track complimented by a full-sized obstacle course, a sparring arena, free weights, tread mills, a boxing ring, and the like. Needless to say, every morning at 0600h ship time, all 36 trainees of 3 Platoon plus our six section commanders. I was in 2 Section with 11 other recruits, most of whom were absolute shitheads. 
However, compared to Service Chief Jansen, they were saints.

I have had some pretty shitty alarm clocks in my life, but none of them compare to the absolute bullshit that is an area denial riot grenade. One minute, you’re dreaming of the hundreds of things you’d rather be doing than getting up at 6 in the fucking morning and suddenly you’re assaulted by this god forsaken banshee screech is filling the barracks and a pulsing light more blinding than a pulsar is doing a dandy job ensuring you’ll never see again. Ten minutes later, we’re beginning our hour of PT before breakfast. Every day for a solid two weeks was like this.

Not to say it was all bad, but they certainly have a way of drilling that shit into you. You learn to get your shit ready the night before and you’re out of the bunk getting dressed before you even know what’s going on, anything to get away from the grenade. The various injuries sustained during PT, including one time where I tripped up a set of stairs during a run to get to the gym and gouged my arm so badly I needed sixteen stitches was a more pleasant experience than our wake-up call. I wasn’t the only person to get the shit kicked out of them during PT, and I’m pretty sure our Platoon alone probably created a rust-brown camouflage pattern on our deck of the ship from our blood by the time we got off the SSV Ottawa. Remarkably, none of the recruits dropped out during this time period, and we all collectively sighed in relief when Service Chief Jansen congratulated us on making it through the first two weeks, and that the area denial grenades would no longer be used outside of combat exercises. 

That relief was short lived, as we were promptly introduced to the next phase of training in the last week aboard the Ottawa in the form of the training Lancers being shot into the barracks and various platoon members getting stitched by training rounds. Needless to say, we learned quickly to sleep facing away from the door and with hearing protection in.

As fucked up as that must seem on the outside looking in, it really did get us not only used to the sound of gunfire and how to react to getting shot at. Whoever got shot any particular morning was anyone’s guess; some days, it was even the same poor bastard twice in a row, other days, it was an entire half of the barracks. The girl’s section wasn’t exempt, either. I even managed to take a round in the same area as my stitches. It’s quite remarkable that you can still manage to say ‘sir’ at the end of a profanity-filled tirade when you are in agonizing pain.

On the plus side, even though PT was getting increasingly more taxing and we were dealing with randomized daily gunshot wounds, we started learning about actual marine shit that a lot of people signed up for. We were issued our uniforms and were familiarized with the weapons that we were getting all too exposed to. Some of the larger Alliance ships actually do have firing ranges in place, partially to keep the naval personnel that call the ships home’s skills sharp. I shot guns back home on Terra Nova, but nothing was like the first time I was put down onto a shooting mat with the M7-T and squeezed that trigger. Not many civilians get the opportunity to play with military hardware, and even with the targeting computers and other idiot-proof systems in modern day military arms, I still was not ready for how insane automatic fire was. Clearly, it wasn’t just me who felt that way; most of the platoon was as giddy as a school girl who just got asked to prom, only instead of a cute boy it’s a mean looking bastard with biceps the size of our ration packs, and instead of a carnation it’s a heavy barreled composite of alloys and polymers that fires millimetre thick rounds at a fraction of the speed of light near indefinitely. You can probably guess which one I prefer. I wasn’t the best shot in our Platoon, not by a long shot (don’t tell the crew, but I placed bottom third; there’s a reason I like shotguns). Meanwhile, my friend Arnold Lewis, a former farm hand from Eden Prime topped the glass in every marksman category. If you asked him to, I’m pretty sure he could write your name in cursive from 200 plus meters with an Avenger. Needless to say, it came as no surprise when Lewis was nominated to be one of the six designated marksmen of the platoon.

I would like to say the remaining days aboard the cruisers were uneventful, but then it would be a boring story, wouldn’t it? Dima Yelsin, a diminutive but brash Lusitanian decided that since our time aboard the Ottawa was coming to a close, he was running out of chances to get back on our instructors, and he simply wasn’t going to let that come to pass. I don’t even know how the hell he got his hands on them, but he showed up with a pillow case filled with those damn area denial grenades and the look of a man who was about to do something incredibly stupid. Sure enough, he disappears from the canteen where I was watching some of the guys play a game of pool when we hear the siren of the grenades go off through the vents, and yelling that can be best equated to a den of very pissed off bears. Yelsin comes running back into the room, grinning like a fool, and he shoves the pillow case under one of the chairs and hops over to one of the couches to watch the rugby game like nothing fucking happened. A few minutes later, the entire cadre of instructors barge in the canteen looking furious and the next thing we know, we’re formed up on the parade square with the discharged grenades being shoved in our faces, demands to know who threw them into the instructor’s canteen and locking the door being bellowed in our faces. If we weren’t so terrified of being stuck with a court martial, I’m sure most of us would have laughed. Hell, I almost did. To the Platoon’s credit, nobody ratted Yelsin out, and we spent the next 5 hours on the parade square doing “motivational” PT and other such punishing nonsense in an attempt to lure out the culprit. They couldn’t charge and discharge an entire platoon, especially since almost everyone was innocent, so they had no choice but to let it go, but I’ll tell you now, I couldn’t walk without a limp for the next three days. It was so worth it.

Two days after Yelsin’s terror attack, we docked at Arcturus Station, the Systems Alliance military headquarters and home of Alliance Parliament. The station is an impressive sight; it’s a massive disc with two parallel arms extending outwards that act as docks for the 5th Fleet and any other ship that comes to the station, be it from Earth or Citadel space. It was also around the first time any of us recruits had seen an Alliance Dreadnought in person, it’s hard to believe anybody can leave a dent in one of those behemoths, let alone take one down. If there was a moment where any of us started to feel like we were a part of the military, this was certainly a strong contender for that claim. There wasn’t much time to admire the scenery, because as soon as the SSV Ottawa was docked, all the various boot courses were ushered off the ship and promptly divided into their Method of Combat (military trade for the uninitiated) groups and many of the people I spent the past three weeks suffering with were separated from me to go do anything from learning how to become fighter pilots to cooks while I and the 60 other mechanized marines were sent to our new barracks. On the plus side, I wasn’t alone; I still had Lewis and Yelsin with me, the bad news was our CO was none other than Service Chief Jansen who was only so eager to make up for the incident involving the area denial grenade three nights prior. Ever have a moment where you resign to your fate and accept you’re fucked? It hadn’t quite set in yet, even though it would have been a mercy if it did. Few things in this galaxy were as unsettling as that man’s tight-lipped smile… well, maybe the mess food. I’m a firm believer that eggs shouldn’t come from refrigerated capsules. 

This is around when shit started getting interesting and dare I say, fun? Since everyone at this point in training had, in theory, mastered the art of getting dressed and knowing what to call the person screaming at them without resulting in more push-ups, we were moved onto basic infantry tactics and other such things that are in theory useful for when you’re going to get shot at. I still remember the first day I put on a suit of armour like it was yesterday. Given how robust and well-plated it is, it is shockingly lightweight and flexible. It wasn’t exactly the most pleasant shit to run 10 kilometers in with a Lancer, but it wasn’t cumbersome like you’d think. It took me a long time to get used to the idea of weapons magnetically securing themselves to slots built into the back of the armour, since conventional wisdom says that if you’re attaching kit to your shit, you don’t rely on something that ancient cultures at one point probably considered witchcraft. Still, you learn to love it, and it’s a lot less of a pain in the ass as the slings they used to use in the old days.

The crown jewel of this training as at 8 weeks in, they loaded us onto a transport on the way to Benning for field training, which was the first time we had…
Hold that thought. My omni-too just pinged. It appears Roland has fallen into my trap and is locked in the elevator listening to some leftover audio files from the Fornax vids I procured for the Omega job. I wonder how long he will last before the sensual audio of, ‘Heating up the Front Lines: Men of the Turian Military’ will make him submit. I wonder what he’s willing to bargain for his freedom this time. I do hope it’s more of that Firebrand whiskey I’ve grown rather fond of.

[USER: CLOSE FILE]
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