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That was just to get us into shape.

On the first day of squad tactics, they dressed all fifty of us still remaining up in full ODST training gear and dropped us off at the base of a mountain.

“Get to the top and you can eat and rest back in your barracks to night,” our drill sergeant, O’Reilly, said with an all-too-familiar grin.

Our guns were loaded with TTR rounds. They were fake bullets with paint inside that contained particles that reacted with nanopolymers in your gear. Your clothes (or in the case of us training ODSTs, our signature black body armor) stiffened to immobility when shot with a TTR round, and then an anesthetic in the paint left the part of your body it hit paralyzed.

Day two of training, O’Reilly had walked up and down the line with a TTR pistol, shooting us in the leg and then shouting “Run! Run! Run!” as we limped off in confusion. Anyone not quick enough was shot in the other leg and told “Crawl, soldier!”

Once I’d found myself completely paralyzed while a trainer squatted overhead and screamed into my face that I was a worthless excuse for a soldier, and a “fine example of the best the CMA had to offer.”

One day, on the mountain, I had an MA5B assault rifle with sixty TTR rounds loaded.

The fifty of us waited for the Pelicans that had dropped us off to thunder away, and as quiet descended, we looked nervously at each other.

“What do you think’s in there?” someone asked, looking at the forest that covered the low flanks of the mountainside.

“I’m guessing trainers with their own guns who’re—” I didn’t get to finish. The person next to me was hit in the chest. The TTR round splashed red, and he went down stiffly, his body armor locked up as he toppled to the ground.

“Sniper!”

The forty-nine of us remaining scrambled for cover in confusion, and by the time I’d found a boulder to shove my back against, I could see eight more sets of black ODST body armor stiffened up, splotched with red, and their occupants dropping to the ground.

A nervous Marine slammed into the boulder next to me. He caught his breath, then popped up to scan the area. The loud impact of a TTR round struck his exposed helmet, and he slumped down over me with a grunt. “Dammit.”

In just minutes, half of us had been struck by fire from somewhere high inside the forest. I could hear laughter.

I shoved the “dead” Marine off me. If we remained here, we’d all be done in another minute, and no one would get to the top. “There are only a handful of them,” I shouted. “We have to rush them, some will get hit; the rest will get into the trees. Then we’ll have a chance.”

And in the far distance, I heard Felicia shout back, “He’s right. On three!”

“One, two, three!” I burst out from behind cover with the other twenty-four and rushed for the tree line.

I got within five feet of the tree line before a TTR round hit me in the stomach and I sprawled into the bushes, frozen in place.

Up the hill, in the trees, the battle raged on. I heard Felicia’s voice at least once more, giving orders, then swearing.

After half an hour a trainer walked out from the shadows of the forest and looked down at me. “That was the first useful thing you’ve done in three weeks, maggot,” he shouted, and then left me lying there.

When the armor freed itself up hours later, I milled about with my fellow soldiers. All fifty of us, scattered around the base of the mountain, spent a chilly night around hand-built fires, hungry, until we were picked up the next morning.

We were then assembled into fireteams after and given tactical training. Felicia led our small team: Mason, gangly and blond, hailed from Reach. Kiko from Eridanus II. We fell into a tight team that managed to hold its own.

The next time on the mountain, Kiko and Mason laid down suppressing fire into the forest that Felicia and I dashed for. Once behind cover there we laid a stream of TTR rounds ahead so that Kiko and Mason could follow.

Leapfrogging and keeping an arc ahead of us constantly under fire, we were able to get halfway up the mountain before a trainer moved around behind us