Fortunately, no one seemed to notice. The orcs were too busy looking green, the elves too disdainful, the city boys too terrified.

  Yeah, the Fleet had technology we could only dream about, but that didn’t mean they wasted it on a bunch of conscripts. Especially conscripts that they could never, ever allow to grow in strength. Everyone knew that no matter how often you went onto the chopping block, if you ever hit steel stage, you were DONE, either through mandatory retirement or... other, more permanent methods. They liked us strong, but not too strong.

  It was plain that whatever stunner or suppressor they had used on us, it apparently hadn’t affected my affinity. One of the reasons I had run was because only a few were born with my particular… depth of affinity each generation, and my grandmother had insisted I do my best to hide from the draft. I would do my best to hide it, to play the simple tech-affinity gremlin, since I didn’t want to do the fleet any favors unless my life were at stake.

  And realistically, I had known there was a good chance I would get caught. Now that I was here, I had a mission, like it or not. My affinity was one of the reasons our gene mod even existed. It was one of the prime reasons that widespread gene modding had been outlawed by the UP. They feared what they couldn’t control.

  The screech of metal on metal announced the opening of the bay doors. Each of the massive locking dogs was unscrewed slowly from the outside. I suspect someone with a hand tool, I thought with a touch of sardonic amusement. Can’t waste power on hydraulic openers for the cargo. We were all staying away from the corpse, which one of the orcs had unceremoniously pushed towards the exit with his foot.

  I wanted to say that the broken seal let in a breath of fresh air, but it was the same canned, recycled air, just a different brand of stale. The atmospheric containment field had almost managed to regularly replace it. I think they had intentionally intended for the twelve of us to be logy from the CO2 buildup, but because one of us was dead and not consuming oxygen, it smelled bad but was just enough to keep us all alert and miserable.

  There was a man standing in the open doorway, silhouetted against the harsh, artificial light of a docking bay. He was wearing a crisp, light brown uniform, a sidearm clearly visible on his hip. He looked like an unmodified human baseline, perfectly average and utterly confident in his authority. The moment he saw that we were standing—more or less—instead of trying to peel ourselves off the deck or unconscious, his hand went to his firearm. In one smooth motion, he pulled it and held it at his shoulder, ready to fire, while letting out a piercing, ear-splitting whistle.

  None of us, not even the orcs, were dumb enough to rush an armed man on a busy loading dock. Yet. Our foresight paid off a few moments later when two men in green-edged white space armor clanked into position beside him, their heavy carbines pointed directly at our center mass instead of thoughtfully at the ready like… the sergeant, I believed. A symbol of a stylized bird of prey over three arcs was on his collar. Maybe some kind of petty officer, I thought, without any rockers or stars over top of it. Below which was a name tag that said “HOLMSBERG”. His face was a mask of bored professionalism.

  “Greetings, recruits!” he began, his voice a booming, artificial baritone that seemed to echo in the metal chamber. He spoke every sentence as if it ended with an exclamation point. “And welcome to the Unified Planets fleet! Your brave sacrifice at volunteering to join the service to protect your world from the Chaos Lords has been noted and respected!”

  I almost snorted. Volunteering? Is that what they’re calling a stunner bolt to the back and a ride in a coffin now?

  He gestured with his free hand toward the motionless body on the floor. “I see that one of the recruits has already given his life to protect humanity! His name will go down in the Fleet Annals as a graduate and honorable recruit. The same is true of anyone who makes the ultimate sacrifice during training, and I can virtually guarantee another one of you will!” He said it with the cheerful certainty of a man predicting rain.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  He pointed to a spot on the deck beside the container. “Now, gentlemen, you need to line up in height order, tallest to shortest. From there, we will join all of the rest of the honorable volunteers to your ship, where you will be personally attending the finest training that the Unified Planets has ever been able to devise to prepare its volunteers for a life of honor and glory on your mission to save the Universe!”

  Didn’t this dipscrub notice the fact that we were all trussed up like festival turkeys? That we stank of stunners and confinement? Volunteers? The cognitive dissonance was staggering.

  “Scrotter hogscrot,” one of the orcs muttered, his voice a low, dangerous growl. “I ain’t no volunteer. Where’s the cell for deserters?”

  Petty Officer Holmsberg’s brilliant, plastic smile didn’t slip. He just waved his hand vaguely towards one of the large, reinforced windows that offered a view of the star-dusted blackness of space and the curve of my homeworld, Korse, far below. Finally, he pointed at it. “Right there, recruit! Next to the conscientious objectors, violent protesters, and individuals that choose to wax eloquent on the downfalls of our enlightened volunteer recruitment efforts! Consider this your first, and final, warning.” His voice had lost its false cheer, turning cold and hard. “You gentlemen chose to avoid the call to glory when it was made to your planet, ignoring the social contract that you were bound to by living under the peace and tranquility of the Unified Planets. Yet you chose to finally heed that call. Unfortunately, because you are known to be somewhat pusillanimous, the option to fail basic training and move into a less demanding form of service is now closed to you.”

  The bright smile was finally revealed as a thin sort of sneering contempt. I personally had no problems with the idea of fighting Chaos Lords. Heck, that was the entire raison d'être for my genotype; we were literally made to do so. We simply didn’t choose to do so under the ‘leadership’ of totalitarians like the UP fleet. To be honest, it was probably a good thing he was using words that the orcs were unlikely to understand, because they had a very particular response towards those who called them cowards… a response they might not have survived, but which Holmsberg would be unlikely to survive either.

  I quickly checked the two firearms that were pointed in our direction. Both were M-77 electrically triggered heavy-round multi-role rifles, fully automatic. Powerful, but with a limited charge pack. I did the math instantly. I didn’t think they had enough charge to easily kill an orc at full health, especially not both of them. The orcs may have just met each other a little over an hour ago, but orcs stuck together against a common enemy… That was how they managed to be such incredible pains in the scrot to the elves for so long. A fight here would be messy, bloody, and ultimately pointless. We’d win the battle and lose the war when they vented the bay.

  “Petty Officer Holmsberg?” I asked, pitching my voice to be respectful but clear, cutting through the building tension.

  He blinked, his gaze snapping down to me as if noticing me for the first time. “Yes, and who are you?” he asked, his tone implying I was something he’d scraped off his boot.

  “Potential Recruit Reynard, sir,” I said, layering on the false deference. “If you would be so kind. The orcs are rather traumatized right now, so despite your obvious… censure of our actions, unless you wish to turn teardrop station into an example of why one shouldn’t insult a Korsian orc, it might be best to avoid antagonizing them further. Many of us have reasons for avoiding conscription, from familial obligations to simply not having been in a position to hear the call, considering how frequently our world is smashed by EMP’s.” I kept my voice even, logical, and reasonable. The voice of a helpful, if diminutive, advisor.

  He studied me for a long moment, his eyes narrowed. He saw the sense in it. A dead orc was a useful martyr. A live, furious orc was a tactical problem. He nodded, once, sharply. “Then I expect you to keep them quiet and under control, Recruit Reynard. We need to move quickly to the transport.”

  As I turned back to the group, one of the orcs leaned down, his breath hot and smelling of protein paste. “Did he call me a pussy?”

  I shook my head and made a calming gesture with my manacled hands. “No, no. He was commenting on your heroic musculature. He didn’t understand that you are not interested in homosexual relations. He was… offering. I cleared it up with him, so he shouldn’t invite you again.” One of the elves looked like he wanted to snort, but mercifully restrained himself. They knew better than to mock a near-frenzied orc, at least without heavy weapons available.

  Did I lie to an orc? You bet your ass I did. That was the only way to handle them. It was a gamble that his pride and potential homophobia would override his curiosity about the actual word. Hopefully, by the time he figured out what ‘Pusillanimous’ meant, we’d be far away from this petty officer, and the danger would have passed. They had quick tempers about certain things, but I’d like to assume that at least someone at our final destination would know how to handle them. I didn’t want a bloodbath that I was right in the middle of.