The first surprise was the composition of the class itself. We assembled in a lecture hall with tiered seating that looked down on a central holotank. I did a quick, surreptitious scan of the two dozen other students. Every single person there except me was a veteran. Their uniforms bore the insignia of at least an E4, Third Class Petty Officer. Several were E5s. And there was even an E6, a First Class Petty Officer—a base human named Monk, according to his nametag, who lived up to the name with a round, shiny head as bald and smooth as a polished river stone. I was the only wood-rank in the room. The rest were all tin or, in Monk’s case, copper. And not one of them was wearing a conscript UI. They were all here by choice, or at least by ordered reassignment.
We sat through an introductory speech from a Fleet Commander who was clearly a professional talker. He spoke of valor, righteous honor, and holding the line against the scourge of Chaos. It was full of stirring phrases and patriotic music that piped softly from the room’s speakers. I saw a few of the veterans shift uncomfortably in their seats. They’d seen the line. It was usually made of blood and broken machinery, not honorable heroes waving flags.
Then the real instructor showed up.
The man who walked to the center of the holotank moved with a predator’s grace that was at odds with the slight hitch in his step. He was a warrant officer, and he looked like he’d personally fought his way through every one of the hell-worlds he mentioned. Scars, some clean and surgical, others ragged and brutal, mapped a history of violence across his face and the visible skin of his hands. His aura… his aura was a physical pressure in the room. It wasn’t hostile, just dense with lived experience and hard-won power. He was at least silver-rank, maybe higher, a level of advancement that made my own nascent energies feel like a guttering candle next to a bonfire.
And he was, by the design of my very DNA, incredibly appealing.
This was the other side of the genemod ban. My people were created with the instinct to submit to strong personalities with powerful auras. It was the intended function of our design. Real human auras were a totally different creature from the hostile, oppressive auras of Chaos Lords. I would never be swayed by one of those monsters, but the fight would be a constant, internal struggle to avoid instinctively submitting to someone like this. A fight against my own biology.
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To the other students, he probably just looked like a scarred, base-human burnout, his body a patchwork of system mods—most of which were Tech Six or below, I noted with a technician’s disdain—that kept him functioning. But to me, he looked like a shining beacon in the darkness. Dangerous. Compelling. I’d have to work incredibly hard not to catch his direct attention for the next three months. Bonds didn’t have to be sexual—they often weren’t—but I didn’t want my future and my will subsumed by the needs of a stronger personality, no matter how much he looked like he could find the holy grail singlehandedly.
His first act was to jerk a thumb over his shoulder, back towards the entrance. “I want each of you to head out of the school’s primary lock, at some point, and survey the beautiful artwork some of our former graduates decorated the passageway with.” His voice was a gravelly rasp, the kind earned by breathing toxic atmospheres and screaming orders over gunfire. “Look at it. Study it. And if possible, enjoy it. Why?” He paused, letting his gaze sweep over us. “Because it’s scrot. Every last line of it. If you ever see something like that in reality, you are looking at a bunch of dead people just before they get eaten.”
A few chuckles rippled through the room, mostly from the veterans who knew he was right.
He chuckled himself, a dry, humorless sound. “My name is Warrant Officer Wasserman. My friends call me Warrant Officer Wasserman. I have been part of the invasion of six hell-worlds, and done over two thousand rift dives. I have never been a drop pilot, and I never will be… but I have been sent here because my primary rating is Paladin, and I have seen more mistakes, deaths, and poorly executed drops that resulted in wasted metal, dead troopers, and pilots getting digested than any three decorated pilots put together. I am also a sworn scion of the church, which makes the fleet uncomfortable to keep me around when I’m not on a drop.”
That explained the aura. A Paladin. A holy warrior. Their power came from conviction, from faith, and it was a potent, tangible force. It also explained why he was here and not commanding his own ship. The Fleet and the Church had an… uneasy alliance.
“I am not one of your teachers,” he continued, “but I am one of your instructors. I KNOW how the enemy thinks, and in simulated drops I WILL be hand-guiding them to give you as realistic an experience as possible. And I will also be evaluating your performance. We are not looking for fleet commanders, heroes, or young geniuses.” He leaned forward, his intense gaze pinning each of us in turn. “What we ARE looking for is cowards… cowards that are just brave enough to make their drop under enemy fire, complete their mission, and then run like hell until we call you back to fetch any people or hardware that survives.”
