The Initiation

I

Cadet Wren Yorick entered the last phase of the Venus trust exercise when his bio-skin beeped online again. The flurry of bright holographs created vibrant geometry inside his helmet. A piercing wind left his ears buzzing after it died down. For a second, he thought there was something human-sounding about the wind, almost like it had addressed him.

The visor de-shading program kicked in, and his helmet-shield began its gradual change from pitch black to gray. It would take a few moments more before it reached its final blueish tint. Through his helmet's changing hue, Wren watched large swathes of reds and oranges slowly materialize as the sky; the patchwork of heat intermingled with the sheets of dark, balsatic plains in front of him. From a distant starship, Command still controlled his repowering suit, which maintained his two-foot hover above the planet's surface. He didn't mind. He was unable to move anyway; the planetary landscape continued to mesmerize Wren into stillness, as did confronting the infamous planet firsthand, after hearing all the stories and myths about the millions that had died there.

The trust exercise was designed to keep him in the literal dark until he arrived at the abandoned Hesti Corporation colony on Venus located in the Ishtar Terra region. It was one of many mass colonial gravesites on the planet that resulted from widespread corporate negligence decades ago. Venus had become synonymous with death in the Sol System and beyond, spurring tales about "the melting people," who drifted from colony to colony. Moreover, reports from various quarters of glowing apparitions, empty bio-skins roaming the planet, as well as strange voices in the vacant settlements continued to reinforce the narrative that the planet was haunted, which made Venus a popular thrill-seeker destination, as well as a prime location for dares and initiations.

The 12 other cadets from Wren's platoon had already performed the exercise successfully. One a day, for 12 straight days, a cadet completed the operation and subsequently was isolated from the others who had yet to embark on the mission. As the last to tackle the exercise, Wren was ignorant of the obstacles that yet awaited him. When he completed the mission, Wren would rejoin his closest friends and secure his platoon's position as members of the storied Phalanx Force, the best and brightest infantryman in the United Colonies of Earth Military.

An unknown voice crackled over the com-link, which startled Wren, breaking the hold the stark landscape had on him.

"OK, Cadet Yorick. You're doing great. With your bio-skin powered down, you allowed Command to remotely steer your vessel through an asteroid field en route to Venus's atmosphere, at which point we governed your craft through systems of violent winds. Terran-side, you've allowed Command to access your bio-skin's magnetic-gravitational hovering capabilities to guide you to the vestiges of the colony with your helmet's communication lines blacked out and your visibility reduced to zero. This is where you take over. Confirm that your bio-skin is functioning at 100%."

"Bio-skin is 100% operational," he answered with a raspy voice that had not been utilized for some time. His body touched ground feet first with a soft thud. As Wren's eyes adjusted to the array of shimmering reds and oranges animating the sky, his heart rate increased, a jump that registered on the holographic monitor in his helmet with a sequence of high-pitched beeps and a jittery green bar. He stretched his right arm above his head and then behind his back, working out the tightness in his shoulder, stiff from inactivity.

The bio-skin, though a snug fit, still felt like inhabiting the body of another person to Wren, or was it that the skin of another grafted onto his own? He was never quite sure. It seemed at times, though, that it controlled him more than he was able to control it, humming with a techno life able to put extreme weather conditions in abeyance, as well as allowing others to direct the movements of his limbs.

With wide eyes that had adjusted to the ochre world, Wren now differentiated the barren charcoal desert from the surrounding hills, which reached into a vicious sky twisting with clouds. This wasn't a place for humans, live or dead. No living thing from Earth could survive here. Why did anyone ever think otherwise? He turned around in place, his body equally as awed into stasis as was his mind at the bleak geography engulfing him, which seemingly expanded into eternity at all directions.

He noticed for the first time the small crate magnetically attached to his hand with a thin chain that yet hovered behind him. It was the least of his concerns: Wren was more a bundle of emotion and intuition at this point, which alerted him continuously to the hell into which he had been dropped: the shorter breaths, the sweaty palms, and that oiliness that plagued his gut. He tried to focus on the task at hand, not the way it was making him feel.

Wren took a couple of steps forward onto the smooth but scalding surface. It crunched beneath him, as he re-activated his legs back into action after their forced hibernation. He noted with irony that much of the ground looked like black ice, frozen into thick sheets cracked in a million places. What appeared to be mini natural smokestacks protruded from the ground near the hills in the distance, emitting thin smoke into the heavy air. They reminded him of his extended family's plot of land in Pennsylvania, back on Earth.

A distant cousin, who "wouldn't leave Earth if three more World Wars erupted on my front porch," still maintained the decaying property. Just last week she had sent Wren an image of the farm that accompanied congratulatory wishes for graduating the academy with honors. The picture captured a bleak life. The withering barn and disintegrating silos had not changed in a century and neither had the smokestacks looming overhead behind them, still breathing dark coal-streams into the hazy sky. But he couldn't dream about visiting Earth now, on which he had never set foot. Venus was much too busy with him.

Bio readings as well as atmospheric conditions continued to flash to life in his helmet. Wren's low-orbiting vessel was nowhere in sight, not even on his radar. Probably cloaked and already retrieved, he thought. He had no idea how far his superiors had guided him over the terrain from the safety of the distant UCE starship 40 miles above the planet in Venus's "Earth zone," a nitrogen and oxygen-rich region hidden deep in the thick clouds above the CO2- heavy atmosphere near the surface.

He figured that his suit had been dormant for at least an hour. But he couldn't know for sure. His bio-skin's history application had been disabled prior to the exercise, and he guessed that he had been administered a relaxant on the starship, which helped him drift into a state of twilight consciousness - not quite awake and not quite asleep - as his future comrades had controlled his passage to and on the planet up to this point. It wasn't that he was groggy. No. It was his current hyper-awake state that seemed to come out of nowhere, which made him think that he somehow had been drugged.