Chương 22: 11.Warm Welcome with a Fist 11-2

The wind outside the transport was like a dull saw that still very much wanted to kill something, working back and forth across my mask. I'd barely steadied my knees when someone up ahead bellowed.

"All personnel, off the pad! Form up! Move!" Not loud. Hard. Like striking one iron bar against another—what came out wasn't an order so much as a warning in pure military register: move now, or you won't get the chance to move later. I shouldered my bag and walked forward. Every boot-strike on the landing pad dropped me another increment. This planet's gravity had excellent manners—no, it had excellent contempt.

Each step felt like two invisible creditors had been strapped to my shoulders, pressing down while whispering: welcome to the Federal Special Operations Training Center, where standing counts as training. Two lines had already formed on the pad. Not just me. Some looked like hardened veterans transferred from marine units, shoulders locked like they'd been bolted on with a wrench. A few faces weren't much older than mine—the bewildered did I get tricked into this look visible even through their masks.

Everyone was carrying standard-issue gear, doing their best to nail themselves to the ground under this planet's high gravity, like a row of reasonably dignified coffin nails. When I stepped into formation, the large man to my left visibly staggered—knees threatening to give. Good. Not just me who almost dropped. My self-respect warmed approximately half a degree. At the front of the landing pad: the base's outer ring entrance. Not a gate.

More like the entrance to an underground fortress built from military funding and paranoia, poured together and left to set. Black alloy walls embedded directly into dark basalt cliff faces, surfaces layered with blast reinforcement and wind-scoured fine scratches. Above, a row of anti-air turrets sat half-buried in armored housings, barrels aimed skyward like metal beasts that never quite managed to sleep. Flanking them: signal towers, cable arrays, and pressurized tunnel access points.

The whole base looked less like something built on a planet and more like someone had first detonated the mountain, then stuffed a military factory into the cavity. The black storm wall on the distant horizon was still pushing closer. Occasional arcs of electricity flashed at the cloud base, illuminating the basalt wasteland below like a mortuary's metal trays catching overhead light. Beautiful. Beautiful the way the Federation gets when it's carefully selected a personal burial plot for each recruit.

At the head of the formation stood a grey-uniformed NCO—respirator, goggles, not particularly tall, but carrying the specific atmosphere of someone fully capable of verbally burying thirty people simultaneously. He held a datapad and swept his gaze across the line.

"Welcome to the Federal Special Operations Training Center, Outer Ring Base Three," he said.

"From this point forward, there are no front-line heroes here, no letters of recommendation, no combat record packaging, and no protected talents." I translated that quietly. Whatever you killed before doesn't matter. You're all dogs now. The NCO stepped forward two paces. His boots hit the alloy surface with a short, crisp sound.

"Basic base rules. What you can't memorize, you'll learn through fractures." Right. Federation-style orientation. I know this format. He raised one finger.

"First: in the outer ring and open training areas, your respirator does not leave your face. You're not here to prove how tough your lungs are. You're here to graduate breathing. First violation: formal reprimand. Second violation: your place in the medical queue moves back." Second finger.

"Second: when the metallic storm warning sounds, stop all movement immediately. Low posture, silence, get to cover. In that order. Screaming first and running second is also an option—we'll keep a sample of you on the wall." Third.

"Third: unauthorized entry to the deep simulation zones, hangar sections, hydraulic training shafts, and low-pressure breach wells is prohibited." Fourth.

"Fourth: personal communications inside the base are restricted. You're not here to make pen pals. You're here to become something that can be thrown out and come back." Fifth.

"Fifth: there is no surplus sympathy here. You fall, you get yourself up. You spit blood, you secure your mask first. You pass out, you continue when you wake up. Medical only repairs things worth repairing." I rolled my eyes behind my mask. This base's educational philosophy is admirably uncluttered. In summary: Don't die. And if you do, try not to inconvenience anyone. The NCO lowered his hand.

"Last rule. Most important rule. You're not here to learn how to be brave." He paused, gaze cutting across the entire line like a blade.

"You're here to learn how to complete the mission in the worst possible conditions." Wind came in from the side, driving particulate against the goggles in a fine, continuous scrape. I stood in formation and felt a strange urge to laugh. Back on Dunan, they package war as glory, duty, civic obligation. This place doesn't bother. It doesn't even wrap it. It just tells you: we want durable. The NCO began calling names and assigning groups. I was placed in A-7.

Next to my name: a string of red marker codes—almost certainly the First Special Operations Division's internal notation for this sample is expensive, file a report before breaking it. After roll call, we weren't dragged to a training ground or issued weapons. Instead, we were herded through a pressurized door and walked down a sloping corridor into the base's interior for nearly ten minutes. That surprised me.

I'd assumed a special operations training center would open with dumping people face-first in mud and making them crawl out to prove residual utility. Instead, when the corridor ended and the door opened, what I found was a full row of tiered classroom seating. … What? The front wall carried a cold-white light screen with a title large enough to read from orbit: Phase One Theory: Unit Formation and Fleet Management Fundamentals I stood in the doorway for two seconds. Right.

So I was sent to a planet that could sand down your lungs and has wind like a knife convention—and the first lesson isn't combat, marksmanship, or survival. It's management theory. The Federation truly understands how to eliminate the last trace of optimism from a person's life. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. When we were filed in and seated, the room was already half full. The air smelled of antiseptic, filter particulate, and equipment oil.

The overhead lights were very white—white enough to suggest that your brain was also on the training schedule. I'd barely sat down—hadn't even started mourning the low-stakes happiness of Warehouse 6A, where at least nobody made you study fleet management—when the heavy side door at the front of the room opened. Not slid. Pushed open. By something that was clearly heavier than a standard human being. Thud. First step. Thud. Second step. The entire room went quiet. Not because of discipline.

Because the sound was close enough to heavy machinery entering a space that instinct told everyone to shut up first and ask questions later. Then he walked in. Roughly two meters tall—his frame made the doorway look narrow. Shoulders wide enough to serve as a small barricade. His right side still approximated human; his left had stopped pretending entirely.

Military-grade titanium alloy prosthetics ran from the neck down through the arm, deep grey armor plating over the joints, fingers like five metal clamps engineered to crush a face. The left half of his face was covered by a fitted metal plate conforming to cheekbone and jaw, the voice module inside casting a cold blue glow. His presence wasn't imposing. It was heavy. Like someone had taught a battering ram to walk, then crammed it into a uniform.

The moment those eyes swept the classroom, I was fairly certain two people forgot to breathe. He walked to the lectern without introducing himself. Without greeting anyone. Just reached over and picked up the basalt terrain model sitting on the desk beside it. The thing weighed roughly half my upper body. He held it in one hand. Crack. No wind-up. No visible exertion. No warning of any kind. Five fingers closed. The black rock broke apart like a cheap biscuit. Fragments hit the desk surface; dust scattered.

The classroom went silent the way a room does when someone's just been grabbed by the throat. The electronic voice that followed was low, flat, and completely absent of anything living.

"Fleet management is for the people who survive." He dropped the fragments back onto the desk.

"Before that, you learn not to get killed." His cold gaze moved across the room and stopped on me. Precise. Deliberate. Not a single sliver of maybe he didn't notice me.

"Hoshino Shimo." The moment that synthetic voice said my name, I knew today wasn't going to end well.

"Step forward." I stood up slowly. The chair scraped the floor. A few people nearby instinctively shifted back slightly—like they were pre-positioning to avoid splash damage. Reasonable. I respect that kind of basic survival judgment in a classmate. I walked out from my seat, boots hitting the floor with a sound that felt heavier than usual. Not because my mood was particularly dark—this planet was just dragging everyone's bones toward the ground, making every step feel like paying gravity rent.

Karl stood at the front and watched me approach. Up close, he was worse. Not just large—the kind of large that makes you wonder if the Federation had split open an assault breaching machine, installed half a brain, and issued it an instructor's certification. The alloy left arm hung at his side, faint blue light at the joint seams, like an industrial furnace core in the process of cooling.

The metal plate covered half his face; the remaining half was as hard as a trench sculpture that had been dug up and never quite cleaned. He looked down at me. I looked up at him. Great. The height difference was large enough to anchor a public service announcement about bullying.

"You're Hoshino Shimo," his synthetic voice came from behind the plate—flat, cold, and unpleasant with professional precision.

"Unless there's a second unlucky silver-haired person on this base, probably yes." The classroom went briefly silent. Not because anyone missed the point. Because everyone was waiting—waiting to see what would happen to the new arrival who'd been here less than thirty minutes and whose brain had apparently not yet been fully compressed by the gravity. Karl looked at me for two seconds.

"Your record states that after bridge penetration, you refused evacuation, completed secondary fire-control corrections, and participated in close-range bow ramming."

"The record has a talent for making things sound better than they were," I said.

"Plain version: I had bad timing and hadn't died yet." He didn't take the joke. That was irritating. People who engage with your sarcasm are annoying. People who don't are worse. Because you can't tell if they're about to nod, or use you to demonstrate human ballistics.

"I don't care what you've done before," Karl said.

"When you arrive here, past combat results mean exactly one thing." He stepped forward. Thud. That single step hit the floor hard enough that the metal table beside the lectern seemed to shiver slightly.

"They mean you're more likely than most to overestimate yourself." …Oh. So today's theme is personality correction. I nodded.

"Funny coincidence—I'm not particularly interested in how many people you've trained either." I looked at that half-metal, half-human face.

"And for what it's worth, the one in this room who looks most in need of correction isn't me." Several people in the front row visibly inhaled. Good. My social integration was proceeding at a very consistent pace. Karl didn't get angry. At least not visibly. That was the most dangerous kind. People who are genuinely dangerous rarely need to go red in the face to prove it. He just tilted his neck slightly—the metal joint at his collar producing a small, inauspicious click.

"Good," he said.

"Mouth still works."

"Thanks for noticing. I'm also surprised."

"Hope your ribs are equally functional when they meet the wall." … Oh. Right then. Apparently we're skipping the warm-up entirely. Karl raised his right hand and pointed toward the training area along the side of the classroom. A heavy dark-grey blast curtain had been covering it; now it drew back on both sides, revealing a full basalt impact wall.

The surface wasn't flat—covered in old fracture lines, blunted impact craters, and several radiating collapse patterns that could only have been left by something human-shaped hitting it at speed. I stared at the wall for half a second. Calm. So calm that only one thought remained. Please tell me that's not specifically for throwing students into.

"First lesson," Karl said, "is not combat."

"Oh? That's almost civilized."

"It's a reality check." …Yeah. Called it. He tilted his chin toward the yellow marker zone in front of the wall. I walked over. Every step, I felt the entire class's attention sticking to my back like wet paper. Once I was in position, I turned and looked at him.

"Just so we're clear, Instructor—if this is just a dramatic way to welcome new students, a handshake would also work." Karl walked toward me. Each step landed like a load-bearing test.

"No handshakes here," he said.

"That's unfortunate, I was going to say the Federation at least maintains surface-level—" I didn't finish the sentence. Because he was already there. No preparatory movement. No start signal. No courtesy warning of any kind. One moment he was standing a step away. The next, the alloy left hand had closed around the junction of my shoulder and upper arm—fast enough that the intervening frames seemed to have been edited out entirely. My brain produced exactly one word. Shit. Then the world went sideways.

Not metaphorically. Literally sideways. My vision flipped hard, my stomach dropped—no, there was no dropping in this gravity, only a more educational acceleration. Karl lifted me with that prosthetic arm like picking up a tool bag and threw me sideways with full force. I could feel exactly when my feet left the ground, the 1. 5G still helpfully pulling me downward, making the weight and velocity of that throw carry a particularly instructive amount of momentum. The next instant, my back met the basalt wall. CRACK.

The sound was dense and solid, like someone swinging a bag of bones into a mine shaft wall. On impact, my vision went completely white. Not an exaggeration. White. My spine took what felt like an iron rod driven through the center of it. The muscles across my back detonated in a full sheet of burning pain. The air was hammered out of my lungs; my throat produced an involuntary, deeply unflattering sound. Small fragments of stone broke from the wall and fell along my shoulders and hair, pattering to the floor.

I slid halfway down the wall, knees buckling, nearly going all the way to the ground. No. Don't kneel. The whole class is watching. That iron bastard is watching. If my first lesson ends with instructor throws new recruit into wall, recruit kneels and stays there, this story might as well rename itself Silver-Haired Cannon Fodder's High-Gravity Humiliation Diary. I clenched my jaw and shoved my elbow into the wall, using it to arrest my slide. My shoulder hit the surface again and my eye twitched.

When my breath came back, the first inhale felt like swallowing broken glass. … Right. Good. Federal Special Operations Training Center. Reputation entirely deserved. The classroom was vacuum-silent. I looked up. Karl stood two steps away, looking down at me the way you look at equipment that's been dropped but hasn't fully cracked. He spoke in that damnable synthetic voice.

"This is reality." I pushed against the wall and worked myself upright. The impact zone on my back was hot enough to feel like someone had pressed a brand iron to my spine. There was blood in my mouth—not much, but enough to be annoying. I raised a hand, wiped the corner of my lip. Red. Of course. First day of school. Drawing blood. Very auspicious. I spat out the iron-tasting saliva, looked up at him, and pulled my mouth into something that wasn't quite a smile.

"You tin-plated piece of scrap," my voice came out hoarse but functional, "the day I pull every bolt out of your frame with my teeth, you'd better still be standing that straight." This time someone in the classroom actually gasped. Probably hadn't expected me to come up swinging instead of staying down. Karl looked at me. Then that half-metal face didn't smile, but his voice dropped slightly lower than before.

"Good." He stepped forward, looking down at me.

"Put away that gutter-dog look." The alloy fingers rose and tapped my chest—not hard, but with exactly enough contempt to make the point.

"Biting doesn't work here." He raised his left arm. The metal joints shifted slightly, like a small execution mechanism running a pre-check.

"What I'm going to teach you is how to use the tungsten alloy exoskeleton of a specialized powered armor frame to collapse a two-meter enemy's trachea in under zero-point-eight seconds." He paused. A faint static sound moved through his voice module.

"And how to do it without getting his blood on your visor." … Oh. Right then. So the throw just now was his version of a handshake. I looked at that face—half human, half accident report—my back still pulsing with every heartbeat, and felt the corner of my mouth pull up despite itself. Not because I was happy. Because at this point, certain things had become very clear. This planet gives no cushion. This base gives no face. This instructor gives no gradual progression. He doesn't need me to learn.

He needs me to survive the learning. I straightened up. My back immediately delivered a full editorial on the Federation's ancestral lineage. Good—at least I was still standing. Karl turned and walked back to the lectern, his voice hitting the entire room.

"Remember."

"Fleet management, unit formation, tactical command—all of it matters." He looked across the class.

"But if you can't survive the first hit, you don't get to manage anything." He raised a hand and pointed at the wall behind me.

"Hoshino Shimo demonstrated that clearly." I almost laughed out loud. Demonstrated. Right. I was a human durability test. That's what happened. I didn't laugh long. Because the next second, he spoke again.

"Everyone, step forward."

"First lesson begins." Whatever small sarcasm had been building in me died by half. Then Karl's eyes—cold and precise as mechanical targeting sights—came back to me.

"As for you, Hoshino."

"Sir."

"Front of the line." …Fuck. Knew it.