Chương 57: 25.Heavy Armored CQB 25-1

If electronic warfare class was about teaching you how to tell which cluster of data was more likely to get you killed, then heavy assault entry class simply made the doors thicker and taught you: if you absolutely must crash through one, at least crash through it with some manners. The Federation's idea of manners tends to be fairly violent. The heavy training ground was on the outermost ring of the NCO Division, practically backed up against the heavy equipment storage and obstacle zone.

The sky hadn't fully brightened yet; gray-white morning light spilled down from above the high walls and fell across rows of interchangeable hatch modules, angled cover blocks, low barriers, and semi-enclosed breach corridors. The whole place looked like an industrial sample exhibition specifically designed to train human beings in the art of feeding themselves into a meat grinder. The floor was covered in white lines, red zones, sprint markers, blast points, and withdrawal vectors. Very considerate.

They'd even marked out where you were supposed to get blown up. Jess stood beside me, hands shoved in her training vest pockets, staring at the row of very opinionated simulated hatches ahead.

"I hate today." I glanced at her.

"Because of the running?"

"No," she said.

"Because today I have to watch other people cheerfully use themselves as battering rams." The words had barely left her mouth when a sound came from somewhere across the ground. Bang. Not a gunshot. The sound of something very large colliding with something even larger, and both of them being unhappy about it. For a moment, even the wind seemed to stop from the impact. I turned. At the far end of the training ground, a group was running a warm-up demonstration.

More accurately: one person and a shield large enough to apply for regional independence. The shield was tall. Not the kind of tall that reads as equipment—more like someone had unbolted a blast door, trimmed the edges slightly, and named it personal armor with great creative confidence. And the person behind the shield— Roughly two meters tall, conservatively around a hundred and twenty kilograms.

Skin dark as a coal seam pulled from a high-gravity mining shaft, shoulders wide enough to have no interest in human aesthetic standards, arms unreasonably thick. He hoisted that three-meter polarized tower shield, compressed his whole body behind it, and the moment the instructor's command dropped, he drove forward like an armored train with a personal grievance against existence, straight into the hatch module. Boom. Love what you're reading?

Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. The simulated door folded inward in one piece. The debris, anti-blast strips, and impact dust exploded outward together—spectacular in exactly the way a Federation recruitment poster would want to capture for the next enrollment cycle. Then he set the shield down, and his face appeared. A full row of white teeth. Grinning like he meant it. Not a victory smile.

The particular, genuine joy of someone who had finally found a legal place to take things apart. Jess drew a quiet breath beside me.

"Oh. We're done." I was still watching.

"That's—""Yes," she said.

"Dwight 'D' Barkley." … Oh. The battering ram that smiles. When he hoisted the shield back onto his shoulder, the students around him seemed to shrink by two sizes. A person like that standing among a group of students didn't register as a comparison between individuals—it registered as construction material accidentally included in a census. The training instructor was a woman whose voice had roughly the same texture as a grinding wheel.

She stood on the platform at the front, hands clasped behind her back, expression like a metal door that had never received a complaint.

"Today's content: heavy assault entry and breach coordination. What you're learning isn't simply how to charge forward—it's how to go through the door without taking your own people down with you." Her gaze moved across the ground.

"Heavy assault is not an honorary position. It's a responsibility. A shield is not decoration—it's a weight that will drag you down with it. If you can't carry it, don't touch it. If you can carry it, don't get too pleased about it. Because the battlefield loves letting confident people hit the wrong door first." Good. I liked this one. At least he spoke plainly. D was still adjusting his gear. The polarized tower shield stood beside him, nearly taller than Jess entire.

The shield face was deep gray, edges wrapped in anti-fragmentation layering, with several polarization ridges pressed into the center—like someone had forced a few lines of very unreasonable intent into the metal surface. I looked down at my course assignment. Heavy assault coordination: observation group. Good. Not my turn to carry the blast door today. The Federation occasionally shows a small measure of respect for skeletal anatomy. Our group was assigned to perimeter observation and breach documentation.

Which meant today's task was watching, up close, how other people managed to make a door, a shield, and their own joints simultaneously educational. Jess, me, a few NCO Division students, and two white-uniform theoretical observers took up positions at the edge of the ground. Aida was one of the two, data board held against her chest, posture so composed she looked like she'd come to observe an academic demonstration rather than watch people lodge formal objections against metal using their bodies.

he glanced toward me briefly. Said nothing. I didn't plan on greeting her either. Some people's existence is like a walking standard answer. Say good morning to them and it feels like signing for an invisible exam paper. The first round of groups began. D was assigned to the front demonstration group, paired with a secondary carrying a cutting tool, a rear breach operator, and a comms operator.

The configuration was standard enough—until the instructor gave the order and D charged forward, at which point everything stopped resembling anything a training manual would want to claim responsibility for. That wasn't advancing. That was rolling over something. He folded himself behind the tower shield, knees low, shoulders pitched forward, and when he broke into a sprint the shield face formed something close to a moving wall.

Impact point, door breach, cut in, lock position, press forward—the mechanics were fine. More than fine, even. The problem was that they were too fine. After the first door went inward, the instructor had clearly called hold position—and D moved like he hadn't heard it at all, pushing the shield one more step into the second corner. The secondary behind him nearly got pinned into the wall; the comms operator was forced to accelerate to keep up.

"Barkley! Hold position!" The instructor's voice came down like a dropped weight. D finally braked hard. The shield scraped across the floor with a sharp, unpleasant sound. The simulated corridor went quiet for half a second. D's face appeared from behind the shield—forehead damp, but the same excessively pleased grin still on his mouth.