I am a convicted murderer.
I've been condemned to die.
I am sitting in my cell, staring up at the chronometer on the wall.
According to official Brutor Tribe Tribunal proceedings and records, in two hours, I'm going to be taken into the death chamber of this facility, and I will have a choice in how I meet my death, in Brutor Tribe fashion.
And then I will die.
My execution has been set for months now. No one has come to visit me during that time.
I don't think anyone will mourn my passing. Not even me.
I am nervous, though less nervous than I thought I would be.
The time drags by, each minute seeming to pass by excruciatingly slow.
My hands don't shake. I'm pleasantly surprised by that.
Finally, inexorably, the chronometer turns to 00:00 New Eden standard, then, finally, to 00:01.
According to Republic judicial proceedings, Adrean Kurelius just died.
Officially, I am now dead.
I'm sitting on the edge of my cot in the cell, staring down at the floor. Being officially dead is an oddly disturbing feeling, surreal and unsettling.
The metallic echo of my cell door unlocking, and the metal whine of the ancient hinges as the door is pushed open draw my eyes up.
Two men walk into the small cell, both of them wearing what I now know is Valklear uniforms. One is a Brutor, and by his size probably has some Vri'Tosh ancestry. The other is a wiry man, a Sebiestor, I think.
Their bearing marks them as soldiers. Their movements mark them as warriors. And the set of their eyes marks them as dangerous.
Both of them position themselves in my cell, facing me, standing with a relaxed wariness that you see in well-trained fighters.
"It's time." The wiry man finally says.
I slowly stand up, more nervous than I show. Both of their eyes follow me as I stand up.
"Heh. Big fucker isn't he," the Brutor says, looking up at me.
"Hold out your arms, hands together, everyone goes out restrained." I hold out my arms in a now-practiced and familiar motion, and feel the equally familiar touch of metallic restraints around my wrists.
"You fucking freak out, we carry you out of here..." The Brutor says as he wraps a black hood over my head. I cant see anything. My body tenses up, but I remain still.
I'm lead out into the cell block, and after that, I can not tell. I walk when told to, I stop when commanded, all the while trying to remain calm.
I grit my teeth and try to do what I'm told. I figure there will be much of that in my future.
For what feels like the next day, I'm lead like a bound, dangerous animal, my wrists and ankles restrained, a hood over my head. At one point I hear what sounds like shuttle engines, and told to sit in an uncomfortable metal chair and I feel the added G's of some kind of take-off. The moments drag on in darkness.
I sleep at some point, I wake still blindfolded, unsure of where I am. I wait as I listen to the shuttle rattle around me. I hear the coughs and sounds of humanity around me, can smell their nervous sweat, but no one says a word.
At some point a hypo-needle is rammed into my arm, and my body goes numb, and I sleep again, finally waking in what feels like a different chair. I am hungry, and my body aches from the constant restraints. Both chairs have been far too small for me.
I'm told to walk, and I feel sunshine on my skin for the first time in what feels like days. I can hear other footsteps around me, shouts for all of us to move.
I'm pushed into place, and I start to hear shouted commands, to "stand at attention", "stop moving", "shut up or I'll shut you up."
Finally the hood is pulled from my head, and I blinking into what seems like blinding light. Tears stream down my face as my eyes adjust from the pitch blackness I had endured for days.
I am standing in a row of other men, all of them dressed in prisoner fatigues like I am. In front of us are perhaps two dozen hard looking men in military uniforms, many of them carrying assault rifles. I make sure to keep my head looking forward, as each man's hood is removed in turn.
I'm standing in a crowd made up of the most exceptional examples of murderers and thieves and worse that the Republic has to offer. Each one has proven that they will kill or worse to get what they want.
These are the future soldiers of the Valklear. These are my future squad mates, bunk mates.
These are the men I will have to entrust with my life in future battlefields. The realization is a daunting one.
I carefully examine my fellow recruits. Many are what I expected. Vicious looking thugs, gang-members still sporting their gang affiliated tattoos, some with Angel marks, large and dangerous men with scars and scowls and a dead look to their eyes.
Many others, however, are not what I expected. Their hands are not calloused, their bodies well-fed and without scars, many of them appearing mundane or even un-athletic. Many of these men would not appear out of place in a luxurious restaurant or inside a financial institution. Nothing sets them apart from an average looking citizen.
Except their eyes. Their eyes are anything but normal. They're as cold and tempered as the most vicious violent criminal here.
Even being far out of their element, and many of them having little obvious physical training, none of these men seem scared or nervous, even when surrounded by hardened criminals and with soldiers pointing assault rifles at them.
These men are anything but ordinary, and I make note of it.
My eyes move to beyond the crowd of recruits and the soldiers herding us into ranks. We're standing on a concrete slab, with various grim looking buildings surrounding it. Beyond the buildings, a massive fence surrounds the compound, its razor-wire glittering in the bright sunlight. Beyond the fence, an arid landscape, with dusty mountains and hills, the bleak landscape broken up by patches of gnarled and grizzled looking trees and scrub brush.
My eyes are again brought forward by an drill instructors loud yelling and the sounds of an assault rifle being shot into the air. Many of the recruits jump and duck down a bit.
Many do not.
If the recruits are hardened, the soldiers have been carved from scowling rock and iron. Their eyes sweep over us in a way that I imagine a butcher would look at a herd of livestock.
Finally, one man steps forward from the rest, his face somewhere between utter disgust and utter apathy when confronting what he sees before him. He seems older, but old in a way that seemed to strengthen him. His eyes are dark, his close cropped hair grey. I cant tell his tribe, the idea that he was once a mere Minmatar somehow incredulous. His eyes move over the assembled ranks slowly, seeming to take the measure of each one of us.
"Welcome, inmates of
class 5242,
to the Farm."
He doesn't seem to be yelling, but his voice seems to find my ear like he was standing right in front of me.
"This is the place were worthless pieces of barely human filth such as yourselves are turned into the finest soldiers in the whole goddamn New Eden cluster..."
Some of the recruits begin to look around, their heads snapping forward as instructors bark orders for eyes front. The speaker stays calm, his expression unwavering, seeming to pause without giving the impression of being interrupted.
"As of now, Class 5242 has exactly 403 inmates in it. History and statistics tell me that in the next seventy-two hours, twenty three of you will die. Some of you will try to assault your instructors, in which case they will kill you. Some of you will try to escape, in which case you will die on the fence or we'll simply let the desert kill you for us."
"Some of you will truly piss us off, and we will activate the biotoxin capsule that's been injected in each of you, which will release a slow acting and extremely painful poison that shuts off your bodies major muscle groups one by one. And if you simply fail to perform up to our exacting expectations, we send you back to whatever dank hole we found you, which for most of you means you rot in a cell or take a short walk to the death chamber."
He pauses a moment, seeming to gauge our reaction.
"In this place, you have one of two options, you either die as individuals, or you live as a unit."
"This beautiful scenery around you might look like the toughest and most demanding training facility in the cluster, but that is an illusion. This place is nothing short of a battlefield. And this battlefield will be your home for the next twelve months."
He pauses one more moment, his gaze unwavering as he stares into our ranks.
"These soldiers around me might seem like the hardest and most skilled soldiers and operators within the Republic and beyond, but that too is an illusion. As far as you scum are concerned, me and my fellow instructors are the living embodiment of War itself."
"And like War itself, we are cruel, we are uncaring, we are arbitrary, we are relentless, we are inhuman, we are demanding, we are merciless. We will find any weakness in you, and we will exploit it, if there is any doubt within you, we will feast upon it."
"Like War itself, we will bring suffering and hardship upon you, and push you to places you can't possibly imagine. Like in War, you will have to rely on those in your unit, for not one of you alone has the strength to endure what we will inflict upon you."
"I say it again inmates, when faced with the kind of War you are now faced with, you can either succeed and survive...... or fail and die."
"My name is Master Sergeant-Trustee Lucien Vr'cal, and as the head instructor of the Farm, I have the honor, the privilege and the burden of turning you into the finest soldiers in the Republic. I will be the one directing the War that you will soon find yourselves in, and my mission is quite simple..."
"I am not going to train you. I am going to try to kill you."
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