• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

And then the shouting started.

It was as if a bomb had exploded amidst the nervous group of draftees. Chaos, yelling, confusion, and a hundred thousand demands were suddenly thrust upon Davin from all directions. Officers in olive-gray uniforms or white stormtrooper armor swarmed all over them; the recruits stood at attention, rigidly trying to emulate statues as the officers moved to within millimeters of their faces, screaming demands.

Davin’s only thought was to try and survive, to get out of this mess alive—he couldn’t think, and every time he tried to answer a question that was screamed at him, someone else would thrust their face next to his and demand something else.

Davin started yelling, not caring what he said, or whom he was speaking to, but only reacting, attempting to look as though he were busy answering someone else’s question. He raised his voice and shouted at the top of his lungs—and the ploy seemed to work. With all the confusion that surrounded him, with a stormtrooper major screaming in his face to try and disorient him, he succeeded in diverting attention from himself. But this was only the beginning of six months of hellish training that would mold Davin into one of the Emperor’s own elite troops.

After what seemed hours, Davin and the rest of the recruits were led running down a pathway to the barracks. A huge prehistoric-looking man waved them to stand at one side of the passageway. The recruits scampered in fear. They lined up against the wall and snapped to attention. The burly man threw them supplies: generic dark uniforms, helmets, socks, underwear, handkerchiefs, emergency equipment, medpac kit, survival gear, and personal-cleansing equipment.

Davin accepted the supplies, but was too afraid to ask what he should do with them. One small voice, attached to a man who towered over the rest of the recruits like a solarflower grown in rich Gamorrean dirt, said meekly, “I … I can’t take this anymore!”

Instantly, Imperial uniformed bodies swarmed over the man. A voice shouted, “You people—over here! Move it!”

Bending backward under his load of supplies, Davin staggered to join a line of recruits who looked like piles of crawling military storehouses. The group was led away, shown to their bunks. Davin deposited his blue duffel bag and armload of material on a cot. Two other recruits shared the room with him. Davin grinned tiredly and introduced himself. “Hi, I’m Davin Felth.”

The first man shook his hand firmly. “Geoff f’Tuhns.” He took a quick look around the corner and held out a bag of greasy-looking food. “Want a bite?”

Davin glanced in the bag and felt his stomach flip. “No, thanks.”

Tall, big-boned, and sporting a head of flaming red hair, Geoff did not look as if he could ever fit inside stormtrooper armor. Looking once more around the corner, he sighed and stuffed a handful of food in his mouth. “If you brought any food, you’d better eat it now. I managed to hide this from them,” he said, “but they threatened punishment if they caught me with any more food.”

“Mychael Ologat,” said the second man. “What do you think of all this?” As small as Geoff was tall, Mychael looked as though he could fit in Davin’s duffel bag; but his muscles rippled underneath his taut skin.

Davin was still shell-shocked from the reception getting off the Gamma-class shuttle. They hadn’t been on the military training planet for more than an hour, but with all the supplies he had been issued and the amount of ground they had covered, at Davin’s normal pace it would have taken over a week to get these same things done. He shook his head. “They told me the military would change my life, but this is crazy. I expected to get some time to look around.”

“Don’t count on it,” said Geoff, speaking around a mouthful of food. “We’ve been here since yesterday, and from what I’ve heard, this is only the welcoming committee. The really tough stuff comes later.”

Mychael’s eyes grew wide. He stood facing the door, and he managed to blurt out, “Uh-oh—here comes trouble.”

Geoff dropped the bag of munchies