Twenty-five years earlier
Avery Alvarez gave the candidates a final prep.
“Remember, this program has never been about winning. This exercise isn’t about winning. It’s about leadership. How do you get young men and women to follow you? You have to be their beacon. In their eyes you have to be larger than life.”
The candidates enrolled in the command training program assembled on the line for the final event of their training. A triathlon.
The instructors would watch the event from monitors beamed to them by drones following the participants. He’d been assigned to watch Lieutenant Aaron Tyler Rayne, a promising if troubled command candidate.
The triathlon was grueling. It was more a test of will than physical endurance. Without a will, you couldn’t grind your way through the necessary training to compete, or hope to finish it.
First, they’d swim for eight kilometers. Then they would ride antique pedal cycles forty-four kilometers through hazardous terrain and finally finish with a twelve-kilometer run.
The start signal discharged and off they went. Avery moved inside the mobile monitoring post with the other instructors. He followed his candidate closely.
Nearly four hours later, Rayne and his team of six commenced the ride. Their group was in fifth place. They didn’t have the strongest swimmers. They’d have to make up during the ride and the run.
Avery and the other instructors carefully balanced the teams to give them challenges they’d have to overcome. Swimming just didn’t come naturally for some people. It just wasn’t much of a recreational activity like he’d read about in the history books. Another reason they’d decided to include it in this final exercise.
The candidates spent a lot of time learning to swim. No one was born a fish. And swimming wasn’t exactly an everyday activity for people from a diverse set of worlds.
Pedal cycles had once been a form of transport until replaced by automated anti-grav boards which could safely whisk the user anywhere. Again they were perfect for the training. Taking the candidates far outside any comfort zone they’d ever known and forcing them to adapt.
Lieutenant Rayne was fast on the pedal cycle, average in the water, and reasonably quick on the run. Varying levels of fitness was the biggest challenge for all the candidates. That and the will. Would they have the will to complete the grueling exercise?
There was one minor but very important issue the candidates were not aware of. Each member of a group carried part of a code which when combined by proximity near the finish, disengaged the electric barrier to cross the threshold.
The instructors had drilled it into them—if you failed the exercise, you failed the program. It wasn’t true, but it was a sacred secret.
The Academy designed the exercise to encourage participants to help each other complete it. The course itself wasn’t indicative of your ability. Just completing it in the generous time was all that was required.
Five hours later, Rayne’s group dropped their pedal cycles and rested. Their group was the last. Everyone else had finished. They tried their best to aid a struggling group member along, but Lieutenant Commander Stuart slowed them down during the swim and the ride. He just didn’t have anything left for the run.
There was much arguing in the group. The monitoring drone overheard everything.
“We can’t just leave him,” one said.
“If we don’t complete this, the past six months would have been for naught,” another argued.
“If we leave him, he’ll fail,” someone else said.
Stuart lay flat. “I’m done. I can’t go another meter. Nothing works. I can’t put one foot in front the other.”
He was huge too. Not overweight. Just three heads taller than all of them. He’d grown up on a half-g world. Any kind of physical activity in one-g took its toll.
“Aaron, we have to do something and carry him,” someone said.
Rayne shook his head. “We’ll never make it. If we carry him at that pace, with the time we’ve lost, we’ll fail. I’m gone.”
Lieutenant Rayne stood and began his run.
Three hours later Rayne and his team huddled by the barrier. The rest had hoisted the incapacitated Stuart and carried him.
Avery approached Aaron.
“Why did you leave your group, Lieutenant?”
“The mission is paramount. My mission was to finish the exercise, same as everyone else. I did it.”
“You finished. But you didn’t bring the code.”
“What code?”
“The code Stuart carried. Everyone had a code. Everyone a role. You left him behind.”
Aaron shrugged. “He’s one person. For the good of a mission a captain might have to sacrifice a crew member or possibly more for the ultimate good.”
“How do you determine the ratio of what is acceptable?” Avery asked.
Rayne raised both eyebrows. “Ratio?”
“Ratio . . . Lieutenant Commander.”
“Right, sorry. Lieutenant Commander.”
“When would the amount of people become more important than the greater good? You said you couldn’t let one man ruin the mission. What if it was ten? A hundred? A thousand. When does it become too many?”
Rayne shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I suggest you search within yourself and find out, Rayne. That one man you left behind or that one man you sacrificed just might have been the one to save everyone. Just know that it isn’t and shouldn’t be just a numbers game.”
Rayne just stared. The arrogant smug-faced future captain just blinked at him.
When Rayne moved away, Avery took out his handheld. He appended a note to his assessment of Rayne.
Silently, discreetly, rude.
Chapter 21 – Special Crew
“Delusional heroics and grand wayward ideals” – Rachael Delaine
Bridge
Phoenix
Aaron surveyed the smattering of equipment lining the deck.
Hammerhead was positioned behind Reliant, both facing the hangar doors. Off to the side of Hammerhead, the marines already donned their sleek, black combat armor and were checking the rest of their equipment.
Just beyond them, Lee tinkered with his favorite projectile sidearm. He called it the new and improved version two-point-zero, but never elaborated on the improvements. Aaron wasn’t certain what use it was against combat armor, but for that Lee carried an HVKW—high velocity kinetic weapon. Similar in principal to the railgun on a starship, it used electromagnetic force to launch a high velocity slug.
Lee wore a custom made suit to accommodate his bionic arm. Next to the rifle on the deck was a multi-barreled pulse blaster. Capable of discharging three-hundred pulse rounds per minute. Aaron shook his head.
“Lee, that’s little big to lug around on an operation like this.”
Lee stopped tinkering with the sidearm. “Quite right, Commander. I’m not taking that. I brought it from the armory for Star Runner. She doesn’t have any weapons, might come in useful.”
Aaron looked at the weapon. “How will we mount it? Bolt it on to the hull?”
Lee looked thoughtful for a moment. “That might work. A quick appli—”
“No, Lee. We’ll figure out how to weaponize Star Runner, something along these lines. But for right now I think we’re good.”
Lee shrugged. “I’ll just leave it in the weapons locker on her cargo deck for now then. Never know when you need to bring the pain, Commander.” Lee hoisted the weapon and carried it up Star Runner’s ramp inside the cargo bay.