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Chapter 12 – Sand and Steel
The Martian sun loomed high over the blood-red horizon, its pale light scattering across the academy's brutalist training fields. Dust curled around boots and armor, whispering like ghosts of battles long past. Kale Drayen stood at the edge of the combat zone, visor down, pulse racing beneath his cadet uniform. The atmosphere was dry, thin, and biting.
He stared at the sandpit before him. It stretched two kilometers across—half real, half holographic. But every trap, turret, and drone hidden beneath that terrain was painfully real.
Another culling test.
Another attempt to weed out the weak.
"Squad Omega. Step forward," barked the drillmaster, a scarred veteran of the Earth-Mars Conflicts named Sergeant Krav.
Kale's boots crunched forward with the others. Ox was to his left, massive and quiet, his helmet resting under one arm. Kora stood to his right, visor gleaming, eyes burning with calm intensity. Behind them, a mix of wary and battle-hungry cadets stood tense—some from Earth's arcologies, others from Luna's domes and the orbital colonies. And a few, like Kale, from the gutters of forgotten places.
Their objective: breach the field, locate three "black boxes" scattered across simulated enemy territory, and extract them without losing more than 40% of the squad. A failure meant reassignment to the Infantry—Drop Troopers sent to plug xeno advances on breach worlds. A pass meant another step toward command.
There would be no second chances.
"This test is not fair," Kale thought, adjusting the shoulder harness of his training rifle. "But then again, war never is."
Sergeant Krav's voice crackled through the comms. "Three clicks. Thirty drones. Ten turrets. Four minutes. Survive. Adapt. Overcome."
The horn sounded.
They sprinted into the sandstorm.
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The first turret revealed itself in under thirty seconds, shredding the air with plasma bursts. Kora dove left and rolled behind a synthetic boulder, laying suppressive fire while Ox tore up part of a collapsed wall and used it as a shield. Kale moved behind them both, analyzing the pattern of turret fire.
"It's tracking motion, not heat," he called out. "Ox—throw your shield forward and fall left. Kora, count to three, then shift right. I'll handle the backend."
"What backend?!" Kora snapped.
But she listened anyway.
Kale ran wide around the field, circling until the turret caught sight of him and rotated with a whine. At that moment, he triggered a decoy drone, tossing it toward the center of the pit. The turret whirled, confused—splitting fire between decoy and cadet.
In that second of hesitation, Kora popped from cover and sent three bursts into the sensor array. The turret coughed smoke and shut down.
"That's one," Kale breathed. "Move. Next quadrant."
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Cassian Dorne, observing from the high gallery, narrowed his eyes.
"So he's got a brain," he murmured, arms crossed.
Lie Cadence, leaning on the edge of the railing beside him, didn't respond. Her gaze was locked on Kale, watching how he took command without barking orders. How the squad, initially strangers, moved in sync with him after just minutes.
"He adapts fast," she finally said. "Doesn't lead like a brute."
"No," Cassian said flatly. "He leads like a manipulator."
She smiled faintly. "Then maybe he belongs here."
---
The simulation dragged on. Each quadrant was a new hell—drones ambushing from crevices, sonic mines disguised under dust, cloaked sniper bots on high ridges.
Kale didn't rely on raw speed or brute strength. He mapped patterns in real-time. When two cadets were pinned under a crumbling platform, he rerouted power from their suits' servos to trigger a shock pulse that scrambled the drone's optics. When another cadet froze mid-run, Kale physically dragged him into cover while rerouting the squad's path to avoid predicted kill zones.
By the time they reached the last black box, only two had been wounded. None lost.
"Three boxes secured," Ox reported, his deep voice calm even in exhaustion.
"Time?" Kora panted.
Kale tapped his wrist HUD. "Three minutes, fifty-two seconds."
Then silence.
The dust settled. The simulation flickered to a halt. The world returned to static steel and observation decks.
Sergeant Krav's voice cut through the comms.
"Squad Omega. Simulation complete. Pass. One of only two units today. Debrief in 30 minutes."
The squad collapsed to the ground, panting. Some whooped. Others cried.
Kale just sat, staring at the red sky, sweat soaking through his suit. Not from exertion—but the weight of command. Every decision, every call he made—it could've cost lives in a real war.
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Later that evening, the academy hall buzzed with subdued celebration. Kale sat on a bench outside the mess, chewing on a protein bar and staring at the vidboard streaming updates from the outer colonies.
"Zeta Outpost, Breach Sector 9"
A small UN frigate—a model Kale recognized as Saber-class—was breaking formation. Plasma fire raked its hull. Xeno ships, angular and covered in bioluminescent glyphs, danced through the dark, cutting human vessels with precision.
The feed cut off abruptly. Static.
Kale exhaled slowly.
"They're dying out there," came a familiar voice. Kora.
"Yeah," Kale replied.
She sat beside him, silent for a moment.
"You don't celebrate much."
"Nothing to celebrate yet," he said. "We passed a simulation. Real war won't be that clean."
Kora nodded, then turned to him. "You saved two cadets back there. Could've sacrificed them to pass faster. Why didn't you?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Then: "Because I want them to follow me one day. And no one follows someone who throws away lives to shave seconds."
She blinked. "You're already thinking that far ahead?"
"Always."
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[Border War Report – Classified Feed
"Admiral's log. We lost another patrol in the Ophira Drift. No survivors. They're adapting faster than we thought. These aren't just savages with teeth. They know how we fight. Worse—they know where we are."
"The xenos—they speak in bursts, almost like pulses. We're trying to decode it. Every system we lose means fewer places to fall back to."
"God help us if Mars falls."]
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[Quote of the Chapter:
> "In war, the moral is to the physical as three is to one."
— Napoleon Bonaparte]