The Recruitment: Rise of the Free Fleet by Michael Chatfield Read Free Book Online Page A

matter as we ate it without thinking to stop the gnawing feeling in our stomachs and to feed out aching bodies. Then a pause in which most of us tried to get some form of rest, the children tired after some time, giving up on crying and blindly obeying until they could collapse into a huddle and shut their eyes against the world that wanted nothing more than to push them around.
     
    I don’t know how long we continued like that, with no clocks or the lights ever being off, everything was just repetition; physical training, eat goop and get yelled at about space, weapons and how to survive—with periods of attempted rest strewn about and constant fear, pain and discomfort.
     
    Sleeping never seemed to be enough. We were always tired. We did nothing but obey. I knew that the light had something to do with it. My entire body hurt including my eyes. It felt as if it would never end.
     
    Taleel used a little black box with him that ranged from one to ten, at the first level all of your nerve endings felt as if they had been set on fire and you would collapse to the pain in writhing agony with Taleel yelling and kicking for you to get up. Level two was harsher and left you unable to stand for longer, three and four were much the same, but with the inability to rise from your nerve endings in agony trying to reset themselves as you fought to get up. At five your body went into uncontrollable convulsions for a few moments, six, five minutes, seven-ten. Taleel would leave the person in pain, making the rest of the group to do pushups, sit-ups, squats, run, anything that would build muscle and hurt our bodies.
     
    Before I had thought that I was in decent shape. Through the constant strain on my body produced by the environment, intersped with periods of explosive effort. I felt as if I was a wet rag, unsure of how I got up most of the time. I think it was a combination of the food which allowed us to pack on muscle mass as if it was fat and the fear of having our pain implants go off at level seven. We lived in fear, and that fear brought us together as we brooded on how much we hated the Sarenmenti. The young ones were growing up more in a few weeks than should’ve been expected for them to do in a few years. We were all growing at unnatural speeds, the ten year olds after I think it was two or three months looked as if they were fifteen, the fifteens like they were twenty. I had packed on mass, I couldn’t see a mirror but I thought I was bigger than Bok Soo.
     
    We were becoming automatons, we would do anything Taleel asked, no matter how it affected our dignity. We were never clothed and at night we slept in piles. Nudity was no longer an issue nothing was, other than surviving.
     
    The only thing that mattered was not getting a Seven. Seven was a dreaded number, it not only caused your nerve endings to be in complete and utter agony as if someone was pulling out every ending and fiber out with pliers, but made your muscles convulse so hard that your last meal would re-appear. At eight you would void yourself at both ends.
     
    After that we never wanted to see what nine or ten would do. I still shudder inside to this day when I hear nine or ten.
     
    Yet through all of this pain somehow we got to know one another, I don’t know how we found the time as we trained our bodies all day, got sleep at any time possible with the lights on, showering, as those that didn’t run hundreds of laps, losing any chance to sleep. Even as we slept our sleeping implants trained us. Waking up the next day knowing new ways to kill people, or operate a rail gun that we’d never seen and a Mecha we’d only imagined in video games.
     
    After some time we began fight training, with Taleel watching as we beat one another up. I remember the first day we started the fighting, he walked into the room.
     
    “As you know causing damage to PDF will add time to your service, in fight training this is the one time that this is null and void. You