Recreant

Prologue - The Storm Before the Calm

Even though there was a closeness between them that stretched beyond mere friendship, beyond family even, they may as well have been strangers now. They sat there in two lines facing each other, crammed into the tiny hold of the dropship, none of them daring to make eye contact.

They'd been told repeatedly by each and every Sergeant Instructor who'd trained them that the realities of the war would be infinitely different than the simulations and that that wouldn't become apparent until this very moment, but they'd laughed it off. Until now it simply hadn't seemed real.

Pod distracted himself by focussing on the differences between the hold they were in now and the one from the simulations. The explosions that sounded outside the ship - muffled into dull whoomphs by thick armour and noise-dampening shields – were all different, each having a unique sound of their own. Unlike the ones in the simulations, each explosion here – the real explosions - had a unique pitch and duration. The explosions that Pod was used to all sounded identical, all clearly derived from an identical audio sample. Pod had been through the dropship simulation so many times that he could identify every individual sound, every carefully cued resultant motion.

The interior of the hold itself was much dirtier, he noted, years of genuine wear and tear having taken its toll. Initials, emblems and nicknames had been crudely scratched into the faded green paint on the walls, exposed metal silver legends that had probably outlived their owners. In the simulation, the paint was fresh and barely tarnished. How many soldiers had leapt into battle from this metal bullet? And how many of those to their deaths?

The dropship jerked violently from an airborne explosion outside the ship, worryingly loud to the occupants despite the layers of armour and physical and energy-based shielding. The troops inside flinched and steadied themselves, all still focussing on anything but each other.

Pod concentrated, closing his eyes as he listened to the hum of the ship and the drone of the engines. He could hear the quiet whispers of one of his colleagues sat opposite him as they muttered a battlefield inventory to themselves, silently listing the complete contents of their backpack and ammunition pouches. Another voice – a female voice, touched by tell-tale fear - began to utter low murmured words.

Pod opened his eyes and turned to look at Deacon, his comrade-in-arms. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut, and her gloveless hands were holding a small trinket on a leather cord, kneading it, moving it from palm to palm. It was a thin wooden triangle, the prism emblem of the One True Name – The faith to which Deacon was a recent convert. He recognised the words she muttered as those of prayer.

Pod was probably guiltier than any single soul in that dropship of mocking Deacon for her unusual beliefs. It was only ever meant in jest, never to hurt, but he found something quite profound about her actions now.

Religion was frowned upon in the military. Not forbidden as such, but it certainly wasn't encouraged. The program wanted its soldiers to be terrified of failure and death – those with faith had that glimmer of hope that something lay beyond, something better. The program told them that this mortal existence was all that there was; It was something to cling onto, something to fight for.

For the first time in his admittedly brief existence, the young soldier found himself envious. He was rather fond of existing, and wanted that state of affairs to continue as long as possible. Yet here he was, here they all were, about to throw themselves into a situation about which very little was known. But what was certain from past experience was that very few of them, if any, would return. Everything up until now had been relatively safe – a mere simulation of what they could expect – but this was an unusual war where the rules remained in a constant state of flux against an unknown enemy that was full of surprises.