Only War Lasts Forever

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 4

Several days passed. Or at least Jaan thought several days had passed. On the average planet, several days would have passed by now. But in space, keeping track of time was different. Each planet had its own way of measuring time, but there was no one planet that everyone could agree on as being the “standard” for time measurement.

To combat this, long ago in the days of peace a collaborative effort had been made to create a “standard time” that everyone could at least acknowledge as being some sort of medium for when interplanetary travel was involved, as well as the obvious military application it had. Jaan had learned about this time measurement during his days in school. They called it “basic”. It was based off of the average median time it took for several, highly populated planets to orbit their respective stars.

Even though the average naturally inhabitable planet had the approximate same time as the planets like itself, there were always slight differences. Still, Jaan’s teachers had told him basic time was about the same as the time on Fondain IV, so he needn’t worry about the difference when short periods of time were concerned.

However, this was no short period of time. He had a small clock that displayed basic time, but he was not sure how many days had passed on Fondain IV. He tried to do the math, but the numbers escaped him. And when he tried asking Helix for help, he got a dramatic story interpretation of his predicament, instead of any actual numbers.

“A man, far from his home planet and even farther from its time.” Helix had said, with that grin he had, “Such loneliness and feelings of detachment must in some way pierce his very soul. One can only imagine the feelings of depression and the longing for home this lost spirit is suffering.”

“Oh, you’re a big help. Thanks a lot.” Jaan had said bitterly.

Either he had simply ignored Jaan, or was honestly unaffected by his sarcasm, Helix bowed in a dignified manner and continued speaking.

“Only I, Sir Helix Trunt, was able to help this wayward man find solace in the cold of space.”

Eventually, Jaan gave up. He wasn’t sure if he would ever find out. Regardless, his real thoughts were about Andi. Jaan had enlisted solely for the fact that he was intending on taking care of him until he could do things on his own. Until then, however, Jaan had to watch him. But, he had absolutely no clue where in the universe Andi was. Jaan assumed he was on another ship that was nearby and was heading for the same course as he was, but he had no way of being sure. For all he knew, Andi could have chickened out at the last second and could still be on Fondain IV, living with Jaan’s parents and helping out at the shop.

Jaan doubted that, however. Andi seemed very determined to do this, and he wasn’t the kind of person to give up easily on a goal he had set for himself. Still, Jaan had no clue what Andi was doing, or what had happened to him so far. He avoided telling Helix about his cousin, simply because he did not want to hear a dramatized reenactment of the past few weeks.

During another one of Helix’s seemingly endless story sessions, the lighting inside the room became a dim red. This signaled that they were landing on a planet, and that everyone aboard should strap themselves down. This was because the gravity of a planet would affect all who were on board, and could cause serious harm to anyone who was, for example, upside down when the planet’s gravity began to take effect.

The red light had signaled before, and Jaan just figured that it meant they were stopping off on the next planet for recruitment purposes. Once the ship had landed, and it was noticeable due to the size of the vessel, Jaan unstrapped himself and stood up and stretched, letting his legs get used to gravity once again.

They weren’t normally let out whenever they landed on a planet, so it surprised Jaan when the door to the room opened and the lights in the room turned off, signaling that all in the room should leave. Jaan and Helix both walked outside of their room, as did all of the other recruits who had been locked in their rooms this entire time.

A soldier that Jaan did not recognize stood at an entrance to the area to where their rooms were located. He barked for them to get in line, and they did. He then had them follow him, down to the same area where they had gotten on board.

Once there, Jaan saw the same officer who had met them the day they had gone aboard, Lieutenant Abrams. The lieutenant began speaking once everyone had arrived.

“Alright, listen up! As I hope most of you have already guessed, we have arrived at one of our most prized training centers. As you will soon find, the nickname “Hell” is an apt one. Not only is the training going to be grueling, but the weather is constantly changing back and forth between extremes. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly why we value this planet so much. It’s weather alone forces you to mentally and physically prepare for a constantly changing battlefield.”

The lieutenant had a look of satisfaction. His speech had done what he had intended: to scare them.

“Alright maggots, get moving! You’ll find the designated path once you step outside. Follow it to get to the training center. And be warned: if for some reason you stray off of the path, you will almost certainly die. Either the harsh weather will kill you in a couple of days, or even sooner than that you’ll be killed by some of the even harsher local wildlife. Stick to the path and you’ll reach your destination safely. That, is your first test.”

The exterior hatches opened and the access ramp was lowered. The crowd was hesitant, and Jaan admittedly quietly to himself that he was too. However, Jaan’s roommate, Helix, seemed invigorated by the idea of facing perilous death.

“Come now, comrades! Will we let death mock us? Or will we mock death?” Helix pushed his way to the front of the crowd, pulling Jaan with him. He pointed towards the path and shouted. “Once more, dear friends, into the breach!”

Helix let go of Jaan and confidently strode out of the ship down the ramp. Jaan decided that if the mad merryman could do it, he could too. He began walking out, though not in the same stride that Helix had, and the rest in the group began to come out as well. Immediately, his face was hit with a heat unlike any other heat he had felt before. He felt his entire body begin to heat up, and his clothes were drenched in sweat by the time he had hit the dirt path.

Jaan’s thoughts crossed to Andi. If Jaan could barely handle this, how was Andi faring? He thought it would be such a waste and that Andi might finally give up if he failed before he even started. Thinking quickly, Jaan turned around and shouted up to the officer still standing in the ship.

“What about the other ships? Where are they?”

Lieutenant Abrams looked down at Jaan, a perplexed look on his face. Soon, though, his confused look was replaced with a toothy smile. “They are on different parts of the planet, all heading for the same training center. Though, I doubt that the weather is like this at those places too.” He was laughing as he closed the hatch and waved good bye to the sorry recruits now doomed to walk in the heat.

Jaan wasn’t sure what he had meant, but he hoped that meant that maybe Andi was in a place with a nicer climate.

Jaan turned around and took in the landscape. It seemed to basically be a hot, humid jungle. The dirt path was a brownish red, and the mud stuck to their feet worse than any glue Jaan had seen. The sun was so bright, he had a hard time looking at the sky period, but from what glimpses he could catch it appeared to be as orange as fire. The path they were on was a winding one, and every time they took a turn there seemed to be just another one up ahead, so they could never quite see where they were going.

Jaan decided to keep pace with Helix, who was the only person Jaan knew out of the group. Helix was at the head of the group, still striding in that same confident manner as he was before, undaunted by the heat. Once he caught up with him, he noticed that Helix’s face was a fiery red, and seemed to be coated in sweat. Jaan mentioned that he should slow down, but Helix refused.

“If I slow down,” he said, “will the weather cool? Will clouds come out of nowhere and pour a ceaseless rain, so as to quench the heat that has overtaken us?”

Almost as if on cue, clouds did begin to form. Very quickly they blocked out the sun and began raining. The temperature dropped very fast and soon the ground was a slick sheet of mud. Everyone who was once drenched in sweat was now drenched in rain.

“How did you do that?!” asked Jaan, shocked beyond belief.

Helix shook his head. “I did nothing to change the weather, my friend. Recall, if you will, the lieutenant’s words before we disembarked. ‘The weather is constantly changing back and forth between extremes’ he said. I have good reason to believe that this such a thing is what he was talking about.”

Jaan considered Helix’s words thoughtfully. “So, you mean to tell me you knew that this was going to happen?”

“Ha ha ha!” Helix threw back his head as he laughed, his hot breath freezing in the air. By now the temperature had dropped enough to the point that he was wrapping his arms around his body in an attempt to stay warm. “Jaan my friend, I knew I everything I knew, which was and still is nothing. All I did was prepare myself for the unexpected, and steadfastly remained determined to not let the weather hold me back.”

Helix’s logic surprisingly made sense to Jaan. He decided that unless it got really bad he would do the same. They had been walking for sometime, when once again there was a shift in the weather. The rain stopped, but the clouds did not disappear. Instead, the angry, dark gray that they once were had changed to a mellow, pale gray. Soon, snowflakes began falling, and not shortly afterward the ground became even more difficult to walk in, because it was a mixture of wet, freezing mud and snow.

Some in the group began to fall behind compared to Helix’s unchanging pace when wind began blowing fiercely and brought with it more snow, effectively creating a blizzard. Jaan was worried about the people behind them, and told Helix as much.

“Believe me, I share your concern, my friend, but what is it you wish for me to do? I am naught but a humble man who is simply making his way towards his destination.”

“That’s exactly it. They’re following you. You gave them the courage to march out into this. Do you think you could do it again?”

Helix looked at Jaan and gave a slight smile, or at least Jaan thought it was a smile. It was hard to tell in the blizzard. “Jaan, do you not see it? Who’s footsteps in the snow are they looking to follow? Yes, you see it now. They are following you, Jaan. It is you who must rally them to your backside.”

Jaan had turned to look, and, in fact they were. The people in the front of the group were following his footsteps and the people behind those people were following the people in front of them.

“But why? I didn’t do anything.”

“I must disagree with you. To them, I am naught more than a mad poet who was a lunatic to have jumped into the fray as I did. But you Jaan, you took the steps of a cautious man, one who is sure of his footing yet still watches where his soles tread.”

“I was merely following you. I figured, if you could do it, why can’t I?”

“But do they see it as that way? Surely, you must understand. From their point of view, your first steps were that of a brave man. Of a man who didn’t go without fear of danger, but went in spite of that fear. Your actions are what leads them on now. If you wish to do something about it, then do so now. They will listen, and they will act.”

“And what of you? If I ask you to do something, will you do it?”

“Though you think you were following me out into this madness, it was in fact you who propelled me into it. Knowing I had a companion who would back my somewhat repulsive antics gave me the courage to be myself, thus I went out as the lead man. If you weren’t there, I probably would have favored simply waiting in line to leave.”

Jaan hadn’t realized everything that Helix brought up, so he was at first perplexed about what he should do. Keeping those things in mind though, Jaan turned to face the group.

“Hey! Everyone! This storm is getting pretty bad. I suggest that we should just all wait here until it passes, otherwise we may get lost. If you wish to continue though, that’s fine. But it might be better for the group as a whole if we stay together.”

Jaan promptly sat in the snow and huddled himself together. Helix did likewise and placed himself directly next to Jaan. Others from the group did the same and sat around Jaan and Helix. Eventually, everyone had huddled into one giant circle.

The snowstorm seemed to last a fair bit longer than the rainstorm had, and they were at one point buried completely in snow. After being buried, Helix leaned close to Jaan.

“Do you hear it, Jaan? The howling of the icy wind have dissipated. I think we may be able to push on now.”

Jaan nodded and stood up. Or, he tried to. There was a wall of ice directly above him, as if the layer of snow had sealed them in. He wasn’t sure how deep they were under the snow, but he figured that it must be someways down.

Jaan leaned towards Helix. “We’re stuck. The snow must’ve frozen on top of us.”

Helix gave a quiet chuckle. “I know, my friend, I know. I already tried twice before, but I wished to see your reaction. And may I say, it was rather bland.”

Jaan gave a slight frown, which only caused Helix to chuckle more. He then tried thinking of ways to get out. Realizing that the weather may soon change, and perhaps back to the sweltering heat of before, he decided to just sit tight and wait.

Unfortunately, some of the others did not feel the same way. There was a scream a short distance away from Jaan, followed by some incoherent talk of needing to get out. It was one of the other recruits.

“The snow is frozen! We’re all sealed in! We’re gonna die in this teeny tiny hole! I don’t do well in tight spaces! Get me out, get me out, get me out! I need to get out!”

Several people began talking at once, some telling him to shut up, others trying in vain to get him to relax. Jaan tried to speak over the chatter, but his attempts were unsuccessful. The only thing he could do was wait until either the snow melted off of them, or everyone else quit talking. Despite the noise, Jaan noticed that Helix seemed calmed, or at least as calm as a madman can be. He leaned over and asked Helix what he thought should be done.

“Nothing, my friend, nothing. When fate deals you a bum hand, you fold and reshuffle the deck. All we can do is wait.”

And wait they did. It seemed to be sometime in the evening when the heat came back. Though the light was fading, the temperature was rising, and with that the snow began to melt away. The man who had been panicked before calmed down once he could stand up. Jaan felt better too. However, some of the other recruits were angry with Jaan.

One such man spoke his mind. “Listen here, you! We all thought that your idea made sense, to just wait out the storm. But we were down there for hours, and with that screaming moron, too! We might have been able to get to the training center by now!”

Jaan at first was going to throw out a defensive retort. Instead, he decided to take the chewing out. It was after all his fault that they had gotten stuck. If he hadn’t said anything, they might not have stopped and they might be there by now.

Either way, the light was fading fast and the temperature was once again rising. While the weather absolutely baffled Jaan, he did know that the sooner they found an indoor area the better. He began to walk, once again keeping pace with Helix’s brisk stride. This time, however, the other recruits did not seem to be following him as they were before, as when Helix had pointed it out to him earlier. Instead they seemed to just be walking, following the path on their own.

Several hours later, as well as several storms later, the group that Jaan was with had finally arrived at the training center. It was essentially a large, transparent dome with numerous buildings of uniform shapes but different sizes inside of it. There was an entrance into the dome, attached on the ground level to the dome’s exterior. Guards were stationed just outside of the dome, inside the entrance. When the group had approached the door, the soldiers inside opened the hatch and greeted them, albeit with a subtly mocking toning, through a loudspeaker.

“Welcome to Hell’s Oasis, ladies and gentlemen. We hope you enjoy your stay.”

Jaan wasn’t sure what they meant by “Oasis”, but he assumed that meant things were better inside.

It was better. The climate inside was controlled through the use of different machines, each kicking on or shutting down when necessary. The ground was also solid pavement, not the clingy, reddish mud that stuck to their feet and added considerable weight to them.

When they arrived inside, there were some fierce looking soldiers, about three of them, standing together side-by-side, facing the group of recruits. Jaan assumed they were the drill instructors, because they sure did not look like a welcoming party.

“Where the hell have you been, maggots!” One of them started yelling and walking forward, as if he might hit someone. “You were supposed to be here hours ago! In fact, you’re the last group in! And because of that, you’ll be getting water and stale ration breads for your meals for the next two days.”

The angry soldier walked back and took his place next to the other soldiers. Another soldier began speaking, loudly, but not in an angry voice. “Now, ya better listen closely! Where y’all are standing? This’s Hell’s Oasis. And you? You all are a bunch of worthless boots, and this is the one spot on this planet that is actually inhabitable for a human for long periods o’ time. So praise every second you get to be on this planet alive, because without this stuff, you’d die very soon. Make no mistake, we’re not keeping you here. If you want to leave, then by all means, do so. Good luck living out there, though.”

“Let no illusions rest in your minds,” This time the third soldier spoke. “this will be tough, for all of you. You will be broken. You will be fixed. And you will be broken again! We’ll see to it!”

Everyone in the group, including Jaan, was extremely nervous. None of them had thought that enlisting was going to be this much of a pain. No one spoke up though. The three soldiers in front of them looked like they could each by themselves take on the entire group in hand to hand combat. The only one who seemed to be undaunted and unshaken was Helix, who was grinning in that mad fashion as he always was.

“Now,” this time the second soldier spoke up, “you are designated group number 3. You are not to do or say anything unless your group has been selected to do so. Do you understand!”

There was some grumbling, murmurous agreement from the group, each saying “yes” in his own quiet way. This clearly did not satisfy the soldiers in front of them, as the first soldier began yelling at the group.

“What’s that?! What’d you say?! We didn’t quite catch that.” He looked over at the two soldiers standing next to him. “It seems like group number 3 wants to make their namesake become a reality. Maybe they want to make it three days of water and stale ration breads!” He then turned back to the group. “But you know what? I’m feeling kind of merciful today. If you can repeat yourselves, only correctly, we won’t punish you too harshly.”

The group was absolutely baffled. Clearly none of them had any experience with military protocol. Jaan himself was utterly lost. His mind was racing to see if he could think of anything that might help. He looked to Helix, who seemed to be just bouncing around inside his own head, and remembered that he had payed attention to the officer’s words. It was at that moment that Jaan remembered his discussion with Captain Jocelyn, and he then applied what his memory gave him to speech.

“Sir! We understand, sir!”

The first soldier, the one who seemed to have the hottest temper, walked over to Jaan. He stared at Jaan with the hardest and meanest look Jaan had ever seen. Jaan thought the soldier might punch him, or kick him, or do some other violent thing to him. Instead, the soldier simply yelled.

“That’s right, space fodder! And don’t you forget it!”

The soldier walked back over to his spot, and then the third soldier took his turn to speak, or yell, rather.

“As we have said, you are group 3. You will be given a brief tour of the training compound, then you will be shown to your living quarters. You will be given five basic hours to sleep, chat, or do whatever the hell you want, so long as you are in your living quarters. Afterward, we will march your asses up to the supply building, where you will be issued a combat uniform, boots, and everything else you will eventually come to love. You will then be taken to the psych-evaluation chamber, where we will probe your mind for everything, from the things that my sweet old grandmother can do better than you, and things that my sweet old grandmother can do much better than you! You will then be taken to the briefing room, where we will sit your sorry asses down, and tell you just how sorry your asses really are. As for what happens next,” both he and the other soldiers laughed, “you will have to wait and see.”

The first soldier once again yelled, “Do you understand!”

This time, the group knew what to do, thanks to Jaan’s example. “SIR! YES, SIR!”

“Good! Now, follow me and move out! Keep in line, boots!”

The three soldiers began a quick paced jog in the direction of the barracks, and Jaan got to have a better look at the compound. There wasn’t much to it aesthetically. The buildings were uniform in shape and color, and the only way to tell the difference between any of them were the signs on the doors. There also did not appear to be a lot of activity going on. In fact, Jaan had not seen a single other person besides these three soldiers and the guards. Perhaps they were all inside, or perhaps they were at a different part of the compound. Jaan imagined that there probably was not a whole lot to do around here for the ones who worked here, aside from yell at the recruits and scare them incessantly.

As they continued marching, Jaan noticed that the dome was, in fact, not a full dome. About a quarter of the dome seemed to have been cut off, much like a piece of pie. The rest of the dome was still sealed with the ground, however. It made Jaan nervous thinking about the constantly changing weather outside of the sealed, climate controlled area, and the missing section was exactly where they were marching towards.

When they arrived, Jaan’s suspicions were proven correct. They left the sealed compound, and walked right out into the once again sweltering heat. The buildings that Jaan assumed where the “living quarters” looked like they were built to last through every kind of violent weather storm and that was it. When they stopped in front of the building with the sign “3” on it, Jaan knew they were where they were supposed to be.