Shattered Stars

Training 2.0

The sparring session stopped when Griff vanished due to entering non-dreaming sleep. After waiting a few minutes, I transitioned between dream cycles as well. The room blinked out of existence, replaced only by a stern Colonel.

"You had a productive set of matches, I assume?" he asked, staring down his muzzle at me.

I shrugged, struggling to meet his gaze. "Kinda. He kept kicking my ass in the beginning, but near the end I was starting to hold my own. Sir."

"It seems you are a quick learner," he stated, giving a small nod. "So I will make this quick."

He proceeded to lecture me on how to address my superiors, when to speak and when not to speak, and the basics on standing at attention. The next of his lessons included target practice. He gave me the basics on how to hold the weapons properly, and we did shooting drills for two hours of dream-time.

Just when I thought we were going to get a break, Latrobe announced to everyone we were going to practice flying to get the feel for our wings. Vatria took this transition to introduce us to our supersonic jetpacks. They were too bulky to be integrated into our bodies, so they were attached to our battle armor instead.

I was scared at first, and I was right to be scared. The jetpacks had a top speed of Mach three in regular Earth atmosphere, and it would go faster the thinner the air. Cruising at those speeds just above the ground was nothing short of terrifying. I crashed several times, and though it didn't hurt much, tumbling on the ground for half a minute straight was never fun. With Chester's help, I got comfortable flying low to the ground over time. This section of the training highlighted the enormous gap between the Marines' skills and my own. Part of the flight training required us to race through an obstacle course with our supersonic jetpacks, and had it not been in a dream server I would have died several times.

We woke up after that session, but we were only to use waking hours as a break from training. I was fine with that, because I seemed to have better peace of mind while I was in the dream server. Skylar was supposedly making progress with his skills, but he still refused to talk to me, so I couldn't really tell.

Our training tasks got more complex over the next few days. I continued to improve on my decision-making skills, but I never got as good as any of the Marines. We played different variations of Capture the Flag to diversify the team training aspect. It started as fireteam-vs-fireteam, then the matches grew in size until it was platoon-vs-platoon, then company-vs-company, then finally half of the regiment versus the other half of the regiment.

Each arena grew in size and complexity. The first ones were simple mazes similar to those of laser tag. The bigger arenas incorporated more complex obstacles, including aerial structures to help in flight. The final arena comprised everything featured in the previous arenas, from the bottomless pits and timed plasma windows to the swiss cheese-like aerial structures and columns. All of this was enclosed in an area of four square kilometers.

The rules had changed as well. We were allowed temporary invisibility the previous matches, but we were to remain completely visible this time. Our ammo was still limited, though each of us had two antimatter bullets instead of one. The most notable change was "virtual death" was required to eliminate enemies, as opposed to the single-to-triple hit elimination thus far. This was meant to make the match more realistic. Nobody on my side complained about the rules, and everyone was fiercely competitive even though pride was the only thing riding on these matches.

The final battle started as usual with a period of meticulous planning. My squad was to be aerial this time around and we were to conserve our limited jetpack fuel for emergencies.