The line inched forward with the grim, shuffling inevitability of a chain gang. The air, thick with the scent of unwashed orc and the sharp, metallic tang of the station’s recycled atmosphere, was a physical weight in my lungs. Just breathe, I told myself. In. Out. Don’t attract attention. It was my personal mantra, a fragile shield against the constant, low-grade terror of being the smallest, weakest thing in a room full of predators.
Finally, it was my turn. The petty officer behind the laser-measuring station looked up from his dataslate, his face a roadmap of displeasure. His eyes, small and piggish in a broad, human face, raked over me from my too-large boots to my oversized coveralls. His scowl deepened into a crevice of pure contempt.
“What the hell are we supposed to do with him? Scrawny doesn’t even cover it.”
I kept my expression neutral, a blank slate. Scrawny is good. Scrawny is forgettable. You can’t hate a piece of furniture. Internally, my mind was anything but still. The air here was a puzzle. It wasn't the flat, dead taste of fully recycled shipboard atmosphere. Every few minutes, a faint, almost ghostly whisper of something green and living would trickle through the vents—the smell of damp soil and growing things. It was subtle, but to senses honed on a high-gravity rock, it was a shout.
Hydroponics, my brain supplied, cross-referencing the energy signature I’d passively scanned when we’d been herded off the transport. We weren’t on a ship. We were planet-side, or more likely, buried under a planet’s surface in a self-contained bunker. A repurposed prison or factory, perhaps. The surface was probably a lovely vacation spot—if you enjoyed boiling acids, crushing pressure, or a charming lack of breathable air. The robust hydroponics section was a necessity, then, not a luxury. It explained why the air didn’t have that final, metallic aftertaste of air that’s been breathed a few hundred thousand times too often.
The issuing station itself was a study in utilitarian grimness. It looked less like a military depot and more like a machine shop that had lost a fight with a bureaucrat. Gray-green walls, scuffed and stained, reeked of harsh chemical cleaners that fought a losing battle against the pervasive scent of ozone, lubricants, and male sweat. Conveyor belts rattled, carrying stacks of drab uniforms, while laser calipers whirred and clicked, taking measurements with impersonal efficiency.
Our processing had been… surprisingly perfunctory. A few cursory questions about current health, a basic strength test. We were genemods, after all. The Unified Planets Fleet invested in durable stock. Allergies and genetic recessives were largely bred out of us. Well, except for chocolate, I mused with a private, inward sigh. The one true weakness in a universe of hardened killers. I could probably be felled by a well-aimed truffle.
After a “meal” that could charitably be described as nutrient paste with noodle-like textural aspirations and a meat-flavored sauce that tasted profoundly apologetic, we were here to get kitted out. The gear was standard issue for penal scum: heavy-duty, thread-sealed gray coveralls that would likely chafe in fascinating new places, pressure gloves that swam on my hands, custom-fitted boots that were the one piece of equipment that almost fit, and a helmet that felt like wearing a small moon, pre-designed with emergency oxygen fittings for those moments when a ship or station decided to stop being a ship and start being a colander.
The supply petty officer’s scowl didn’t waver. He was waiting for an answer I hadn’t given. Fortunately, he wasn’t waiting for me.
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“He’s as strong as most heavyworlder baselines. Kit him out like a goblin.”
I didn’t flinch, but it was a near thing. Petty Officer Kratz’s voice was a gravelly rumble from behind me. I hadn’t heard him approach. The man moved with a disconcerting silence for someone his size.
Kratz glared at me, his gaze feeling like a physical pressure. “He says he has tech, but he was sold by bounty hunters as a dodger. He’s stuck with the penal battalion unless the brass notices.” He leaned in slightly, and his next words were layered with unspoken threat and a sliver of… what? Advice? “You WILL be pushing until you can keep up. With tech, you might be able to weasel your way into transport or mechanized. Just don’t run your mouth. Maybe we can send you over to the goblins.”
I nodded, a short, sharp motion. Secrets are armor, I thought. Keeping them might be a physical challenge in this company, but intellectually, I know the price of dropping them. The cost of exposure would be far higher than any beating. Orcs were natural bullies, their social hierarchy built on displays of dominance. I’d already accepted the inevitable calculus: I was going to have to break at least one of them, make an example, and then immediately offer a pragmatic incentive—a share of my rations, maybe, or tech favors—to make leaving me alone the more profitable option. It was a brutal, simple economy of violence.
They broke us up into thirty-man companies, and I learned the first and most important lesson of the 132nd: until they trained us to march, “marching” meant “running.” Everywhere. We ran from the mess hall to the barracks—a cavernous, echoing bay filled with rows of triple-tiered bunks that smelled of stale sweat and despair. The barracks presented its own unique challenge. I had to stay up a full hour after the last of the orcs had succumbed to thunderous snoring, then fast-talk the fire watch, a hulking brute who seemed suspicious of anyone not actively sleeping or committing violence.
“Gremlin thing,” I’d muttered, shrugging with a nonchalance I didn’t feel. “Circadian rhythm’s shot. Four hours is a full night’s sleep.” It was mostly true. Four hours of good, solid sleep was all I needed to function. The six hours the brass mandated for the others was a luxury. It meant I was already awake, cleaned up, and dressed by the time our cheerful morning wake-up call arrived: a pair of bronze-tier corporals banging on metal trash cans and physically tossing the bigger recruits out of their racks onto the cold deck plating.
Honestly, even the constant running was low energy expenditure for me. We were all bred for heavy worlds, but my small size and light weight were an advantage here. I wasn’t as fast as some of the orcs with their long, ground-eating strides, but I was a damn sight more efficient. During our four-hour “warmup” run, I managed to lope along near the front, just ahead of the corporals who were pacing the group, while some of the faster bruisers quickly learned the difference between a sprint and endurance.
They’d charge ahead, chests puffed out, only to hit a wall and be left gasping, earning them a boot and a torrent of abuse. They were heavyworlders, yes, but most were young, untrained clan boys not yet used to sustained, disciplined effort. I, on the other hand, had a lifetime of navigating the treacherous, high-gravity canyons of Korse. This was a stroll.
The PRT—Portable Resilience Targeting, I deduced, though no one bothered to explain the acronyms; we were supposed to absorb them through osmosis or pain—was more of the same. Exercises designed to challenge and break down orcs. For me, holding a push-up position at less than half my home gravity wasn’t a challenge; it was a rest pose. A couple of times, the monotony and the low-gee ease nearly lulled me to sleep mid-rep, and I had to jerk myself awake before a watching corporal noticed. The lack of sleep wasn’t the issue; the boredom was.
The abuse, the exhaustion, the constant, grinding physical effort—it was all theater. A psychological play. The classic “break down and build up” method didn’t work on orcs like it did on humans. You couldn’t break their spirit; it was too stubborn. Instead, this was about channeling that raw, natural aggression, about sandblasting off individual thought and replacing it with instinctive obedience to authority. It was about building exploitable habits. To me, it was mostly just boring. But then, survival often is. It’s not about glorious last stands; it’s about enduring the endless, tedious, soul-crushing grind that comes before them.
