5

The hopper rattled and shook as it flew us over the American East Coast. I sat on a plain bench with Anais on one side of me, and on the other side an unshaven, older Colonial Protection Forces soldier who looked supremely bored.

I twisted my wrists. The zip ties cut into my skin, but neither of them had cared about my complaints. Right now, I was still technically a prisoner. A recruit who’d gotten in the way of the Accordance military doing their job.

The soldier propped up two prosthetic legs against the bench on the other side, leaned back with crossed arms, and closed his eyes.

“Anais, what about my parents?” I asked.

“What about them?”

“Are they going to be executed, now that everything is changing? What’s going to happen?” I was scared that a split-second decision was going to ruin it all. All the sacrifices I’d made. “Anais, please help. If everything I’ve done is for nothing—”

“Help? Help?” Anais groaned. “I’ve done nothing but help you and you’ve blown it. Who helped coach you to sell your story better? Who shepherded you kids around the world? Who ran into the fucking fire to drag your ass out to safety? I did. I did that. Now you’re whining about more help. You know what you haven’t done? Have you thanked me? Once? Have you ever thought about the fact that all of this isn’t just about you?”

I pulled back from his anger. “It’s your job,” I protested.

“My job is to take willing recruits and parade them around the world for PR purposes. If I really gave a shit about nothing but my job, I’d only take recruits from families that worked closely with the Accordance. I wouldn’t have helped you save your parents’ lives by letting you into the program. To be honest, I may not be making that mistake again.”

I resisted Anais’s words. I couldn’t find it in my heart to give him credit for doing the good thing. It was the minimum.

And yet. He was right. He could make things simpler. And he hadn’t. And that said . . . something.

“As for your parents,” Anais said, “I don’t see the point in sending a recruit to training knowing his parents are about to die. That shit isn’t going to make a good soldier. No, the deal stands. The deal stands because you were on live TV, standing in front of a child. You risked your life to protect, and we’re spinning that. You’re about to get the promotion that you’ve been begging for, because you want to protect more than just a child in a riot.”

“A promotion?” I was zip-tied and locked to a bench in an Accordance vehicle. There were no portholes, just turbulence and whining motors. I didn’t feel like I was getting a promotion.

“Promotion to combat. Real action.”

The old soldier on my other side spoke up. “Congratulations, boot. You’re about to become cannon fodder. You could have spent your whole enlistment being an actor in uniform. Simple exercises, safe on Earth. Now, no more TV appearances. No champagne with politicians. No handshakes. No jogging along nice boulevards with security.”

Anais smiled sadly. “He’s right.”

The hopper pitched up and shook, the engines whined as we suddenly dumped velocity. The CPF soldier staggered up and slid the side door open with a grunt.

“Your home for the next couple days,” he shouted back over the wind.

We glided through the air over the Hamptons. Obstacles littered the beach. The remains of bombed-out mansions used for target practice slumped over into sandy grasses. Bunkers pocked the landscape like inside-out barnacles, hoppers lined up on landing pads around them. Barracks clustered around bulldozed pits, and I saw several squads of humans running in formation.

The hopper slid over it all and dropped the last hundred feet down to the beach, kicking up a maelstrom of sand and water.

Anais cut the zip ties loose and pointed at the door. “If you make it back, look me up,” he said, not unkindly. “I’ll buy you your first drink.”

The soldier grabbed my collar. “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your war,” he shouted into my ear.

Then he threw me out of the hopper and into the storm.

+  +  +  +

I choked and tried to cover my face as wet sand blasted my exposed skin. The hopper eased back into the sky, and the flurry stilled. I wiped caked sand away from my face and stood up.

Four other hoppers slapped down onto the beach. Three or four recruits tumbled out the doors of each hopper, landing awkwardly in the sand and staggering in the blast of air as the vehicles rose back into the sky.

We milled around, pulling closer together as we watched the insectile aircraft skim out over the ocean, then bank south together in formation.

“Anyone know where we’re supposed to go next?” a girl nervously asked. She hugged herself, and her wide-eyed fear created a sort of boundary around her. Everyone stepped back, as if worried they might catch it.

We glanced up at the sound of a loud buzz. A carapoid, wings fully extended, finished a ten-foot jump over our heads and landed in the sand near the water.

We all gaped. No one had ever seen one of the beetle-like aliens in armor. It looked like a mobile tank with scuttling feet as it moved toward us, holding a raised baton in one of its knobby hands.

It jammed the stick into a puddle of salt water. The stick sizzled and spat, and the puddle of water exploded from the jolt cast by the mother of all cattle prods.

We all reflexively jumped back. “Jesus,” someone muttered.

“Is that our drill instructor?”

“What are any of you good for?” the carapoid asked in a hiss augmented by the heavy segments of gray armor molded to its mandibles. They creaked as it moved. “Do you have any survival instincts? Or will you be the first to die when it gets really ugly? Do you have any talents to offer me? Because right now you all seem bewildered and scared, and that’s not what I need. But maybe I have trouble interpreting your ugly alien faces and you’re all ready to go. Either way, you are here so that we learn where best you might serve.”

The carapoid moved over the sand, thudding its way around the group, eyeing us through compound eyes protected by scarred blast-proof goggles backlit with heads-up display information.

It tapped the prod against the armored carapace. Tick, tick, tick.

None of us said anything.

“The Accordance sacrifices much to keep an umbrella over your heads, and you’re all cowering on this beach like hatchlings on a mother’s stomach,” the carapoid said. “So let’s shake you loose and see whether you can scuttle on your own, yes?”

We all looked at each other.

Tick. Tick. Tick. “See that pier out there? I’m going to start walking toward it after you. Anyone I catch up with, I’m going to tap to encourage them. Ready? Go.”

For a second we all remained frozen. Then the carapoid reached out with the prod and gently tapped the nearest recruit. The tip sizzled and snapped, and electricity danced across his shoulder.

He screamed and leapt into motion, staggering away from the carapoid drill instructor. I needed no similar convincing. I ran.

I’d been on a hunger strike the last week. This week I’d been drinking punch and flying around the world to parade myself as a new recruit. I was jet-lagged and bewildered. Out of breath.

Smaller, faster recruits than me ran past as I struggled to keep to the middle of the pack, highly aware that just a few people struggled on behind me in the wet sand.

Zap! I glanced behind to see the girl with wide eyes eat sand as the carapoid got within reach and tapped her.

She lay facedown on the beach, quivering, as several of the other girls gave her and the drill instructor a wide berth to pelt for the pier. They passed me by; I’d slowed down as I’d looked behind.

I snapped my attention forward and ran like hell, passing a purple-haired girl wearing a leather jacket and jeans. She glanced over at me, and her eyes glinted silver in the sunlight. A couple years older than me, than most of the recruits, she looked pissed, not scared like the rest of us.

We all made it to the piers. I grabbed one of the weathered pylons and panted, holding myself up.

“This won’t do,” the alien drill instructor said as it trundled up to the heaving, exhausted mess of us scattered around the pylons. It moved around on its many legs to face back down the beach, then turned back to us. “Again!”

It squeezed the prod. Sparks ran threateningly up and down it.

The group took off. But the girl with the silver eyes walked up to the carapoid. “This is stupid,” she said calmly.

I stayed to watch, still catching my breath, ready to run like hell.

“What?”

“You’ve figured out who can run faster,” she said. “But what the fuck does that have to do with who can fight the best? Unless you’re planning on putting us into battles where we run away from the enemy a lot.”

The carapoid rubbed its forehands together, making a cricket-like chirp. “Now, there’s some spit,” it said. “Well done. You’re right. This exercise tells us nothing about you other than who can run the fastest, and that’s not all we’re looking for. There will be more tests, don’t you worry about that. But what it also tells us is—”

It slammed her on the chest with the prod. She fell back against the pylon behind her, but surprisingly kept standing. From her jacket rose a wisp of smoke, and she quickly shucked it off and let it drop to the sand by her feet.

“It also tells us who follows orders! Now follow my damn orders and run!”

We both took off down the beach.