I was in another intake area, but the vibe was completely different. Instead of a sea of hulking orcs, the room was filled with a low murmur of conversation from a much more varied crowd. I stood by the issue desks, feeling profoundly stupid and exposed.

  There were dwarves—lots of them—their stout frames and magnificent beards marking them as craftsmen and engineers. There were goblins—actual goblins—in all their green, bandy-legged, sharp-toothed glory. And there were duergar, a good dozen of them, clustered in a corner as far from the dwarves as possible. The two groups exchanged glares that could curdle milk.

  The duergar were like negative-image dwarves. Pale, almost gray skin, hair, and beards the color of bleached bone.

  They were heavyworlders, like me, but adapted for a life sealed away from suns, in high-pressure, toxic environments. The dwarves, from more forgiving worlds, were ruddy and tan. The animosity between them was a living thing in the room. I’d heard stories. Something about a failed colony, a Romeo and Juliet scenario that ended not in tragedy but in a multi-generational blood feud. Dwarves could be the friendliest, most affable people in the galaxy, but cross them on a point of honor, especially against their pale cousins, and they’d hold a grudge until the stars burned out.

  And the goblins… well, they were goblins. At a glance, I could see why I’d been dumped here. At this age, I shared a superficial resemblance. Slightly taller, not as squat, and lacking their carnivorous dental work and broad, powerful limbs, but close enough for government work. They were a brilliant piece of bio-engineering, designed to settle hell-worlds and drag them kicking and screaming into the galactic community.

  They could survive toxins that would melt other species, their creative, unorthodox minds perfect for jury-rigging repairs in impossible situations. The saying went: a ship with goblins aboard might come back from battle looking like a flying junk pile, but it would come back. There was that story last year about the cruiser that used a repurposed gravity simulator as a makeshift transit array. Took them two years to get home, and the crew was reportedly on the verge of eating each other, but they made it. Goblin work.

  They usually had tech affinities, like me, but often with weird, wonderful twists—‘Sorcerous Jury-Rigging,’ ‘Superior Scrounging,’ ‘Uncanny Salvage.’ If I was lucky, my own evolution might grant me something similar. Of course, my ‘Forces’ affinity offered a more direct, if riskier, solution to problems. Why fix the engine when you can convince reality it was never broken in the first place?

  After two hours of standing and trying to look inconspicuous, a human civilian—a young woman with blonde hair tied back in a severe bun—noticed me. “Is there a reason you are standing there, recruit?” Her voice was curious, not accusatory.

  I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I was transferred from the 132nd Penal to the 128th Supply. The corporal told me to stand here and then left.”

  She blinked, then started typing rapidly on her tablet. “Yes, it says here that you were transferred and were supposed to get your UI scanned an hour ago. You are late, recruit. Why didn’t the corporal send you to get scanned?”

  I offered a helpless shrug. “I have no idea, ma’am. He told me to wait here and left. I cannot speculate on his motivations.”

  She grimaced, her lips pressing into a thin line. She tapped a comms button. A moment later, a goblin corporal—a real one, with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve and a look of perpetual exhaustion on his green face—ambled over.

  “You are late,” he stated, his voice a dry rasp.

  “Yes, Corporal. I was standing here as ordered for the last two hours.”

  He let out a long-suffering sigh. “Mancy, go ahead and get his UI scanned. I can’t block the blot, but hopefully his performance review won’t get trashed for it.” He turned back to the woman. “Also, find out whoever dropped him off and send a trace to Chief Wiggins about it. Whoever it was also dropped the ball. The Chief’s probably already pissed about a transfer being late.”

  Chief Wiggins, I filed the name away. Potentially an ally. Or a monster. Probably a monster.

  The company they put me in was a different world. Literally. The group of eighteen goblins—and me, the imposter—were walked to our barracks. Not marched. Not run. Walked. It was disorienting. The barracks themselves were smaller, quieter, and smelled… different. Less like a locker room, more like ozone, solder, and the faint, sweet smell of lubricating gel. We were told to “find a bed,” a shockingly casual instruction after the micro-managed hell of the 132nd.

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  After we’d all staked a claim on one of the twenty racks, we were ushered into a meeting hall—a prefab steel shelter with acoustics that turned every sound into a metallic echo. We stood, waiting. The murmuring died as a goblin lieutenant stepped onto a small crate to see over us. He didn’t yell.

  “Okay, folks.” His voice was quiet, conversational, and it commanded attention far more effectively than any orcish bellow. “I am Lieutenant Frazbin. Your company commander is Petty Officer Brinbex, and you will meet him in the morning.”

  He looked us over, his gaze weary and knowing. “Now, I know that a good chunk of you were press-ganged.” He paused. “Excuse me, I mean ‘recruited.’ And the rest of you were probably sent here by the courts in exchange for early release or as an alternative to prison. I need to be straight with you on a few things.”

  “First off, this is a dry base.” A low groan rippled through the recruits. The lieutenant nodded. “Yeah. This is going to be as hard on you as it is on the dwarves. I know every single one of you is capable of building a hidden still out of a broken comms unit and a handful of spit, but don’t. Just tough it out for the next couple of months. There are at least three seekers on the command staff, and they will sniff it out. Then you get to spend the next two years breaking big rocks into smaller rocks before you wind up right back here. If you don’t believe me, ask recruit Bantan over there.” He gestured to a goblin who snickered, a sound like grinding gravel.

  “Seriously, they will find it. I promise. Goblins stink when they drink, and a seeker will sniff out the still and have you marching into the brig before you even realize you got caught. They do that, actually—surprise marches—because they are not stupid enough to let us know when we’re in trouble before they deal with it. No one who knows goblins makes that mistake.” This was met with a few chuckles of rueful agreement.

  “Secondly, this is still a penal battalion. You didn’t volunteer, so everything we do will be watched. If you want to, you are welcome to strike for any of the engineering schools you think you can get into. If you don’t, you are going to get sent to primary mechanized units. They need what we can offer, but it also means regularly risking getting your head blown off. You know what they call mechanized goblins, right?”

  The recruit who’d done time, Bantan, replied, “Bullet magnets.”

  The Lieutenant nodded grimly. “Exactly. Mech techs get light armor in the same situations where the big boys get heavy. We stay at the back in a raid or field battle, but sweeping up the supports is one of the favorite tactics of both the Chaos Lords and the rebel factions, for good reasons. Without techs, heavy armor cannot be repaired, and you might find yourself stuck clearing rifts all the way down to tech two, which is not any fun.”

  He shrugged, a gesture of profound resignation. “If you can survive more than a few months, you might get promoted to a shipboard unit, but the average lifespan for a goblin mech tech is about three missions. There are a lot of us, so do anything you can to prove you are indispensable for higher-end jobs. Right now, the big push is for drone and transfer techs, but unless you have or can earn at least an apprentice in tech, you might as well not even try. We also have a couple of physical types here too…” His eyes flicked to me and a couple of other outliers. “You guys, I am sorry to say, are almost guaranteed to be mech techs, since your odds of survival are much higher.” He said it like a death sentence.

  “The rest of you, leave field tech for the brutes. Build your tech to at least a master rank, and get the hell out of the field. Some of you love the idea of quick rewards from directly challenging rifts, but remember: every stupid orc warrior, self-righteous human knight, stinky ogre anchor, and fruity elven scout considers us expendable leeches, even if we just spent ten hours repairing the shield or gauss rifle they just tried to stick down a dweller’s throat.”

  One of the goblins, a bigger one with a pair of spectacles perched on his broad nose, asked, “What about drone specialists?”

  The lieutenant nodded. “Drone specialists are always in high demand, but unless you have something that lets you work a remote node or run a full interface, your lifespan will suck just as much as mech techs, if not worse. Ten feet of control range per rank means that you’ll be right up there with the brutes, either piggybacked or trying to hide behind them when a fireball goes up your ass. Again, only get saddled into drone field tech if you have high resistances or some affinity that allows you to remote.”

  “That being said, the fleet has a bad history with goblins. Follow orders, never get caught building a homemade sex drone or a still, do your time, and get the hell out. Half the officer corps hates us and considers us barely better than chaos beasts, so always be on your guard against suicide mission types and martinets. The MGC, Military Goblin Collective, has a list of names you can compare once you finally get your assignments.

  If your command’s name comes up, talk to them about getting reassigned away from someone with a bad record with goblins, because every mark means a dead goblin through incompetence or intention. Don’t volunteer to become another mark.”

  He took a final, deep breath. “Last but not least, if any of you do not have tech affinity, well, there’s a lot of planets out there that are unfriendly with UPF extradition. And to be honest, if the UPF tried to track down every goblin deserter, they’d never have time to fight the Chaos Lords. I am not telling you to desert, but unless you are a sorcerer, enchanter, or healer, your first mission will also most likely be your last mission. I’m sorry. Good luck with your training.”

  He stepped down, and the meeting broke up. His words settled over me like a shroud.