Vanguard Word Update

2.5k words. Sorry about the delay I've been feeling a bit unwell, but I'm back!

PS: I went back and adjusted the start of the scene, so theres a bit of overlap between this and the last update.

***

They stopped at one of the briefing rooms, half the space filled with rows of chairs, facing an upraised stage with a projector screen on the wall behind. Dozens of people were already inside waiting for them. They were fresh-faced, wearing blue fatigues and sporting their Private badges. These must be other groups that had shipped out to the Hub for training.

The Seargent that had accompanied them here handed them off to another officer, the two chatting briefly as Cadell and the others idled around. The ride to the system had been mostly uneventful for Cadell – he’d spent move of it catching up on some sleep – but the others seemed to have gotten to know each other quite well.

He felt a little left out, memories of the friends he’d made in boot camp flashing through his mind. They’d all shared the same dream of travelling the Galaxy as a band of brothers, but the moment they’d finished their training, they’d all been split up into different units, and hurried off to other worlds and colonies. As far as Cadell knew, nobody else from boot camp had been shipped out to the Hub.

“Alright alright, settle down,” the Seargent said, turning to their group once more. “When I call your name, come forward and I’ll give you a number. We’re gonna be splitting you up into your new teams, and your number will represent which one you’re in. The rest of the platoon’s already started, so it shouldn’t be hard too hard to find your squad mates.”

Cadell lingered along with the others as they were called out one by one, some splitting off in pairs as they went to find their squad mates. The numbers went from one through to ten, Cadell guessing there were around forty other men in the platoon, including his group, but the quadrant looked large enough to hold well over a dozen platoons. The Alliance was not strapped for soldiers. Which was strange, considering how the recruiters back home had talked about the Alliance’s desperate need for more volunteers.

“Private Cadell?” the Seargent called, Cadell shouldering his way to the front.

“Yes, Sir?”

“Let’s see here,” he said, muttering over the loud din of mingled conversations as he held up his datapad. “You’re in squad number… Oh.”

“’Oh’, Sir?” he asked, the Seargent furrowing his brow as he tapped at the screen.

“Hold on a moment.” The officer scrolled down the screen, blinking when he read off a certain section. “Aha. I see. You’ll be in squad number eleven, Private.”

“Eleven? I was never much good at math, but I thought there were only ten squads, Sir?”

“The Lieutenant’s always making last decision calls like this,” The Seargent grumbled. “Looks like you made an impression on him, Private. He asked for you specifically.”

Cadell stammered, not having the slightest idea who this Lieutenant was. There had been one Lieutenant Dawson back on his homeworld, but Dawson hadn’t done much else but scream at him.

“What for?” Cadell asked, but the Seargent shrugged back.

“You probably know better than I do, Private. He’ll be here before long, you can ask him yourself soon enough.”

“And who else in this odd squad, Sir?” Cadell asked.

“How should I know? The other elevens are in here, and I’m not going to hold your hand and find them for you. Now make way, you’re holding everyone up.”

Cadell stepped aside, turning to the rest of the organising platoon, not really sure where he should start. Most of the teams were in groups of five or six, and the ones that weren’t complete gave him odd looks when he asked if they were elevens.

When he felt as though he’d checked with half the platoon and found nothing, he threw up his hands, separating from the mass in hopes of getting a broader look at the platoon. He didn’t want to bother the officers for information, but who was this Lieutenant, and what had he done to be isolated like this? Apart from a decent score at the firing range, he was just like all the other recruits on the colony. Maybe his squad was comprised of former farmhands only.

Just as he was considering asking an officer for advice, he noticed a couple of guys lingering away from the main groups. It was just the two of them, dressed in alliance blues like everyone else, but unlike everyone else, they weren’t shouting out their squad number or gathering members.

Cadell wandered over, and the two gave him curious looks, stopping their conversation.

“’Scuse me, fellas, either of you wouldn’t happen to be in squad eleven, by chance?”

“That’s us, mate. Lucky elevens,” one of them replied, Cadell looking him up and down. By his tanned skin and accent he guessed he was Australian. He wasn’t far off from enlistment age by Cadell’s guess. “You got roped into our secret squad too, hey?”

“Yep,” Cadell said, nodding. “The Seargent didn’t say why, though.”

“He didn’t tell us squat either,” the man replied. “It’s actually a bit refreshing, don’t you reckon? I froze my arse off for months, doing the same old drills back on Apollo, but five minutes on the Hub and we’ve got a little mystery brewing.”

“I think it’s annoying,” the other man added. He was older than Cadell by a year or two, arms crossed over a heavy-set chest. Grooming regulations must be less restricted wherever he was from, as his face was covered in a dark, trimmed beard. “I didn’t come here to play detective, I came to fight the Confederates.”

“Don’t listen to him,” the younger one advised, raising a conspiratorial hand to cover his mouth. “Kurtis can’t see the world unless it’s through a thermal scope. I’m Hunter, by the way.”

“Mitch, though everyone calls me Cadell.”

“Then I welcome you to the squad, Cadell! How was your flight in?”

“Long, and as boring as watching grass grow,” Cadell sighed. “Three months with not much else to do but to sleep through it all.”

“The wonders of space travel, eh? Wish they’d bloody hurry up and invent FTL already, so we don’t spend half this war just travelling to the fight. Ever been on the Hub before, Cadell?”

“Never. You?”

“It’s my maiden visit as well. It’s amazing, isn’t it? I hope they let us out of the quadrant at some point, I’d like to see what a proper Hub home looks like.”

“Quiet, you two,” Kurtis grumbled. “Someone’s talking to the birds.”

“Bloody hell, really?” Hunter replied, his eyes snapping toward the left. “I was starting to think they were mute or something.”

“What are you talkin’ about? What birds?” Cadell asked, but as he followed their gaze, he got his answer in the next moment. Among the platoon, there were two figures standing head and shoulders above their human counterparts. That was the only way to word it, because they weren’t human.

Their heads were narrow, fluffy things, made narrow by the black beaks jutting from the place where a mouth would be on a human. They were tall, maybe eight feet skirting nine, with a familiar body plan of two legs and two arms, but that was about where the similarities ended. Instead of skin, they were covered in a thick layer of feathers, the stems waving in the artificial breeze like miniature fields of wheat.

Both wore form-fitting shorts that stopped just above their knees, their long thighs ending at a joint that bent backwards, much like a dog’s. The feathers on their digitigrade legs gave way to a dark, bony colouration at the shins, their feet ending in four clawed tips, three at the front and one at the back.

Kurtis’ description of them was apt, as their most prominent features were the giant wing sheaths on the underside of their forearms, each one about the same size as a small surfboard. They looked like wings currently tucked away, but they couldn’t be used for flight, could they? The birds looked to weigh four, five hundred pounds at the least.

They also had tails trailing from the back of their rounded thighs, stopping just short of the floor, and shaped vaguely like a folding fan. The colours of their feathered bodies were striking. One was a vibrant blue that bordered on green, while the other was a deep orangey red, as though all of her feathers were rusting. The creatures were obviously females, the way their matching blue vest conformed to her shapely figures putting all doubts aside.

From what Cadell had read up on the Alliance before his transfer, the faction had got its namesake shortly after a deal had been struck with an alien race calling themselves the Balokarid, who shared the same hatred with the Confederation like the rest of the Outer Reaches.

It shouldn’t have surprised him he might find a few aliens on the station, but his jaw dropped all the same. He’d never seen so much as a picture of one before, and he had to admit they were impressive creatures, and not a little intimidating as well. They were so… large.

“I wouldn’t keep staring if I were you,” Hunter advised, nudging Cadell with an elbow.

“Didn’t know we’d be trainin’ alongside Balokarids,” Cadell mused, struggling to keep his eyes off the two aliens. They were chatting with an officer, though chatting was not the right word, the human looked like he was doing all the talking.

“You didn’t see their ships on the way in?” Kurtis asked. “Those big, weird carrier starships that are obviously not manmade?”

“Ah… no, must have been looking the other way,” Cadell replied. The last thing he remembered was the pilot telling them they were an hour out, and then his shuttle was in the hangar.

“I’m surprised there aren’t more of them,” Kurtis continued. “I heard from a friend in the Navy that each carrier holds about fifty thousand birds at once. And there were four or something altogether.”

“Maybe they were handpicked, like us?” Hunter suggested. “But you’re right. We were one of the first groups to arrive, but those two were already here waiting. Why you think that is, mate?” he asked, directing his question to Cadell.

Before he could respond, the man talking with the aliens turned, his voice rising up like a gunshot as he addressed everyone. “Shut up and listen up, maggots! The Staff Sergeants are going to get you situated with the rest of the quadrant now. There’ll be plenty of time to weigh you down with crap later, so you can leave your belongings here for the time being. Fall out, everyone.”

The rest of the group gratefully shouldered off their packs, Cadell setting his aside along with Hunter and Kurtis. When the three of them made to join the rest of the recruits filing out of the briefing room, the officer standing near the aliens got their attention.

“Where do you think you’re going, elevens? You haven’t even got your whole squad together yet. Front and center.”

Sharing a confused glance, the three of them made their way over, lining up in a row before him. The officer’s eyes were a hard shade of blue, and there was a little blemish below the one on the left – a burn mark if Cadell had ever saw one. His pristine uniform was smooth, but every inch of his skin was course and rough.  

To Cadell’s surprise, the two aliens filed in line, standing to Cadell’s immediate right. Their size was even more apparent up close, Cadell having to tip his head just to look them in the eye. The one closest to him, the one with rusty red feathers, didn’t meet his gaze at all.

“Eye’s front, Private Cadell,” the officer barked, and he snapped to attention before his brain even registered the movement. “Alright you recidivistic, backwatered colonials, let’s cut right to it. My name is Lieutenant Marek, and it’s my responsibility to train you in Alliance doctrine. You might refer to yourselves as the best damned gunslingers just cause you got through basic training, but until you prove you’ve got what it takes to be an Alliance trooper, all I’ll refer to you as are pieces of shit.”

Marek’s accent was hard to place – Russian or maybe Polish – perhaps he was from the Inner Reaches. He paced before the five of them, stopping in front of Hunter.

“You three are probably wondering why you’ve got two aliens in your ranks. These are recruits Samiha, and Kazlu. Orders from on high are to ascertain how effectively a mixed species fireteam can operate in a firefight, and you’ve all been hand-picked to be a part of this little experiment of the Senator’s.”

He locked eyes with Hunter, the young man swallowing a lump in his throat. “Don’t think this makes you special in any shape or form, Private Jones. You’re the first names we drew, and you’re not the last by a long shot. You’ll learn to live with the Balokarids, bunk with them, eat with them, fight with them. Any of you can’t make the cut or have a problem with that, and you’re out of the program.”

“The same goes for you two, as well,” a new voice added, the five of them turning to see another Balokarid saunter into the room. It was another female, her feathers a bright, crimson red, with black bases to give the alien a kind of dual-tone. Her rounded hips rolled with each long stride as she came to the Lieutenant’s side, standing at least three heads taller than the officer.

Unlike her kin, this one wore a very ornate set of clothes, her torso wrapped in what looked like metal plating that brought to mind images of knight’s armour. Sling were crossed over her chest, and handing across them were all sorts of little carvings and necklaces, beads and feathers pinned across dangling pieces of what looked to be jewelry. She wore a belt around her wide hips, where a flowing gown lilted between her long legs, and on her head she sported a tall headdress that covered the top of her brow in an impressive sheen of golden feathers.

Her getup gave her a tribal appearance, those charms and fetishes on her belts looking starkly primitive for a species that could create starships.

“This is a human installation,” the new alien continued. Her accent was strangely fluent, without much hint of an accent as if she’d lived on Earth all her life. “and the program is of their design as well. As such, I expect you to follow their laws and customs without question.”

“This is Kith’sla Shaliyya,” the Lieutenant introduced. “She’s the leader of the Balokarid Clan, and since this program is a joint operation between our two people, you will treat her with the same respect you give me. She’ll be in the quadrant for a short while overseeing her recruits, and consider this a standing order that you do not bother her unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“It’s quite alright, Lieutenant,” Shaliyya replied, smiling at the smaller human. “Interacting with aliens for the first time is bound to cause some misunderstandings. Believe me on that. If any of you have questions, my door is always open, as you humans say.”

Cadell met the eyes of the Kith’sla – which must mean leader in their language – and he found himself returning her smile. If there was ever a good cop, bad cop scenario, she and the Lieutenant fit the bill to the letter.

“You’ll be studying Balokarid history later during the program,” Marek said. “I’d consider her offer if I were you. The same goes for you, recruits, if you have any trouble acclimatising to my facility, come straight to me.”

The two Balokarid recruits nodded their feathery heads, Cadell noting the one with rusty feathers had a striking set of amber eyes. From this angle it was hard to tell who she as looking at, her iris was large enough the whole room might take up her entire peripheral, but he felt her calculating gaze on him all the same. She did not grin back when he did, however. Perhaps the beak didn’t allow her to? That didn’t make sense. Kith’sla Shaliyya was as expressive as any human. Maybe the alien was just nervous.

“Now that we have the introductions done and dusted, it’s time you caught up with the others, team eleven,” Marek said. “Now get moving, there’s only going to be the one tour before drills start.”