USD: 16 Days after arrival at Fort Glisson

Location: Van Biesbroeck’s star, Meltisar, Fort Glisson, Company S, 1st Cadre

The hot water poured out of the showerhead in a steamy rush. Alex let the water flow generously on the back of her neck, embracing the heat that was oh so welcome after a morning full of stacking ice blocks from the nearby pond. Her ShipCore hung from the showerhead in one of the rare moments that Alex ever let go of it.

Alex let the hot water run over her for a bit longer before continuing to shower. She had taken to being one of the last ones to take a stall, so she didn’t have anyone else in the Cadre waiting for her to finish. That meant she had to hurry a bit afterword, though, because instruction wasn’t long after.

Over the last week, they’d transitioned more and more into educational time in the classroom. She realized there were a lot of things that she knew about or had prior knowledge of, but didn’t really understand.

Finishing up, Alex turned and grabbed her towel to dry off. The stalls had come with curtains, but at some point in the last two weeks, those had disappeared for various stupid reasons. She heard a bit of laughing as she dried off and as she stepped out of the stall; she saw Rachel and Jessica drying off as well.

A frown creased Alex’s face as she looked at Rachel’s side, remembering the broken rib she had gotten in their spar. The medical care available was top of the line, and the doctor had sent her to sleep the rest of the day with an injection of quick heal after setting it.

Rachel had been fine the next day.

Alex had needed no stitches for her arm, either. The bite wound had already mostly healed by the time she got to the medbay, and she had to defend herself from an accusation of making it seem worse than it was. Thankfully, she had the perfect defense—DI Hills had ordered her to go and so go she went.

“Hey?” Rachel said, a bit of alarm creeping into her voice.

“Uhh.” Alex hesitated, quickly seeing the problem

Their clothes were gone.

“Where are our clothes?” Jessica echoed.

Several moments of panic filled all three of them as they looked around the shower stalls. There were no lockers in the shower room, instead there were shelves for placing your clothes while washing off.

There certainly were no spares, and they were the last ones to finish showering and it wasn’t likely anyone else would come in to rescue them.

“We can’t just… run to our room naked!” Jessica hissed.

“I don’t see anyone coming. If we don’t do something, we’ll be late!” Alex said.

After five minutes of panic, the girls hustled out of the showers and ran toward their bunk room wrapped in their towels.

Some recruits moving through the corridors were startled out of their way. Others couldn’t contain laughs at them. They almost, almost made it to their door when Drill Instructor Riley’s voice blasted down the hall.

“FREEZE RECRUITS!”

Alex, Rachel, and Jessica all skidded to a stop just outside their room. Alex had to hold her towel to keep it from slipping off.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING? WHY ARE YOU RUNNING AROUND MY BARRACKS NAKED?”

Alex was somehow elected spokesperson.

“We... our clothes disappeared, Drill Sergeant!”

“Your clothes disappeared?” Instructor Riley echoed.

All three of them spoke in unison this time, “Yes, Drill Sergeant!”

“I’m impressed. Never before have I seen three recruits lose their clothes AND RUN THROUGH MY FUCKING BARRACKS IN THEIR BIRTHDAY SUITS BEFORE! GET YOUR ASSES INSIDE AND PUT SOMETHING ON AND GET BACK OUT HERE!”

None of them hesitated to scramble for the door, but apparently, it wasn’t fast enough for Riley.

“Move, move, move! You have thirty seconds!”

Suffice to say, they didn’t make it in thirty seconds and then they had to do more PT. When Rachel collapsed, Riley made Alex pick her up and carry her on her shoulders. When Jessica collapsed, she had to carry both of them, one to a shoulder while they held on for dear life, because then Riley made Alex sprint like she was fleeing an enraged bear.

Which she was sort of. Alex decided not to vocalize the comparison in front of Instructor Riley, however, preferring not to be scrubbing toilets all night long.

When the instructor finally got bored, she gave them a week of laundry duty, as well as removing every other recruit from the roster. The work of collecting, cleaning, drying, and returning every single piece of clothing in the barracks on the female side left zero free time for any of them.

Mainly because if Instructor Riley noticed they were getting close to finishing, she had the entire cadre go crawl in the mud.

From then on, Alex showered with her clothes in a waterproof bag hung around the shower head along with her ShipCore.

Alex looked up at the stack of plastic buckets with a sinking stomach.

“You will carry your bucket to the river and then will fill said bucket with exactly 5 gallons of water. You will then bring said bucket back to here, where a DI will measure the amount of water. If you mess up, you will do it again!”

Alex didn’t believe them. They’d be forced to do it again whether they got it right or not. As they were dismissed to haul water, Instructor Hills shouted over the cadre.

“Not you Red Group! Get your asses over here!”

Alex groaned inwardly, once again hating the red armband tied around her arm.

“Because you are the special bunch of the special group, it has been deemed too easy for you to carry buckets of water. Therefore, you will carry something else.”

The evil man pulled off a tarp from a square pallet, revealing blocks of black metal.

“I’ve specially prepared these bricks of lead. You will fill your bucket with five bricks, you will carry it across the field. Once you have taken five buckets over to the other side, you will bring them back. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Drill Sergeant!”

Alex hurried over to the rest of the class and began filling a bucket with the lead bricks. They were quite heavy but not impossible, and Alex realized the task really wasn’t all that hard.

Like most of the others, she started hauling away her bucket. Although looking at Tia and Tasha, Alex realized she should have filled two buckets and she would have finished faster.

Looking back, Alex spotted Rachel, who was having difficulty loading her bucket. She turned back.

“What are you doing, Recruit?!” Instructor Hills shouted at her and Alex froze.

“Recruit Mackey needs help, Drill Sergeant!”

He said nothing more, and she took that as permission to go help.

“Hey.”

Rachel looked at her with panic written all over her face. The reason was obvious; she couldn’t even handle getting one brick into the bucket. They were easily over 60kg in weight, each.

“Let me help.” Alex said, as she grabbed the bricks and filled Rachel’s bucket. “Let’s lift it at the same time, okay?”

Rachel nodded. “Okay.”

Alex lifted the other bucket with her left arm while Rachel tugged upward on it with both her hands. It would have likely been easier if Alex had just carried it herself, but that would have defeated the purpose of helping her.

The two of them were slowed, and by the time they finished with their first past, everyone else had already finished. The DIs stopped them from bringing anything back until everyone had finished.

Running back as fast as they could to get the next two buckets, they were suddenly joined by Tasha.

“I’ll help too.” Tasha said.

Rachel looked up at the Amazonian woman and nodded, surprise written on her face. “Thanks.”

With the extra help, Rachel could ‘carry’ two buckets at a time and actually finished before Alex. That allowed her to carry two buckets on her own for the last run.

The DIs weren’t impressed. “Myers! For being last, you are re-stacking the buckets tonight!”

That wasn’t enough to dampen her spirits, though. It was much less than what Rachel would have received if she’d failed to manage the job at all.

The second round, everyone took turns helping Rachel, the entire crew counting out buckets in a way that let them all finish at the same time. Instructor Hill was not fooled and came to a stop in front of the entire group.

“You all think you are geniuses now? If there is no last person, you won’t receive correction? Well! Let me correct your thinking! DO IT AGAIN!”

This time, it took them longer. There were quite a few members of the group who were not built for endurance and slowed, still they managed to all finish together after working with each person’s weakness and buddying up with the stronger members. Alex helped both Rachel and Hikari this time.

When they finished, Instructor Hills dismissed them all. “Alright, I’m done with the lot of you for now. Four hours’ free time, then evening instruction.”

The man’s gaze settled on Alex. “Not you, Myers! Don’t think I forgot. You’re carrying all this back to where we found it and re-stacking the bricks.”

Alex groaned, looking at the massive pile. Much to her surprise, the other recruits didn’t run off to go shower or do whatever they needed. Instead, they all helped her to carry them back and then stack them.

The instructors didn’t comment.

“But… why?” Alex mumbled.

Hikari spoke up. “We’re supposed to be a team and fuck, they’d do that to any of us if they get the chance. I’m just sticking it to the bastard.”

Tasha grunted. “It’s called camaraderie or some shizz, and fuck Hills.”

Alex felt a bit of panic, looking around to make sure the instructor wasn’t anywhere nearby. “Don’t say that too loud!”

It didn’t take that long to re-stack everything with the help, and Alex felt grateful.

“Thanks everyone. I appreciate it.”

Everyone that helped split off to go to the mess, or their bunks for a nap, or whatever they needed to get done personally. Rack time was precious and Alex had nothing needing to be done, so she headed toward the barracks.

As she entered the common room from the exterior, she spotted Tia and Rachel. A frown instantly creased Alex’s face. Rachel had her back against the door to their room, and Tia was leaning forward with a hand on the wall and a finger in Rachel’s face as she was saying something hostile that Alex couldn’t hear.

“Hey!” Alex shouted as she approached in a hurry.

Both girls looked over at her and Tia tsked in annoyance and then turned and walked away.

“Hey! Where are you going?” Alex yelled after her, moving to follow.

Rachel stepped in front of her and put a hand on Alex’s shoulder to stop her. “Let it go.”

Alex stopped and looked at Rachel, a frown plastered on her face, not fully understanding what was going on.

“If she’s harassing you, maybe we should go tell Instructor Riley.” Alex offered.

“No! No… Don’t do that. I’ll handle it. Please.”

“Okay?” Alex answered.

It took a while for Alex to fall asleep, still going over the incident in her head. If Tia was going to harass Rachel for being weak, she needed to think of some way to stop her.

That felt nearly impossible, Alex thought. She was barely keeping things afloat under the deluge of everything they were learning and all the draining things the DIs had them do constantly.

Tia never seemed to have issues being the best in class it felt like. The other girl was always topping out in written tests and physical ones.

With those troubling thoughts, Alex fell asleep long enough for her nap.