The conference room at High Command smelled faintly of recycled air and old coffee. Holo-maps pulsed in the center of the table; red and blue icons blinked like feverish heartbeats. Around it, the brass and staff argued in clipped tones. The numbers had been ugly enough to pull everyone awake.
General Veyra didn't bother with rhetoric. She set a flat hand on the holo-table and pushed a series of feeds into the air. "We have a logistics problem and a training problem," she said. "FAWS solved the reload issue—Carbine X works—but we are burning through ammo like it's water. That is not sustainable."
Colonel Maren, jaw tight, tapped a graph that showed rounds-per-kill across several engagements. "Look. Even where Carbine X is deployed, units are averaging fifteen to thirty rounds per Hivebug. The supply chain can't keep that up if we engage on multiple fronts."
An analyst cleared his throat. "The data suggests a root cause beyond weapons. Soldiers are hitting armored plates more than weak points. Under stress they fire at mass rather than at vulnerability."
Silence hummed for a moment, until General Veyra pushed the discussion to a decision. "Technology alone will not win this war. We must change the way our soldiers think and move. Effective immediately: select elite infantry regiments will undergo intensive ammo-discipline training. They will be taught to count rounds per target and to shoot for weak points—joints, sensory pits, undercarriages. This must become reflex, not thought."
The order landed like cold rain. It was practical. Brutal. Necessary.
---
Three days later the training grounds at Vetra-9 looked less like a boot camp and more like a crucible. The obstacle courses and simulated canyons were littered with moving holographic targets shaped and armored to mimic the real Hivebugs. Smoke machines, vibrating plates and mechanized limbs added unpredictable motion. Drill instructors paced like wolves.
Sirius watched from the FAWS balcony, arms folded, a small frown settling under his habitual grin. He'd not been asked to design the curriculum—this was a doctrine decision from above—but he could feel the logic in the order. He could also see its limits. You could force discipline with drills and hours, but instinct took blood and repetition. And training had to be relentless.
Down on the range his friends were lined up in a formation that looked too tight for comfort. Jinx Alvarez bounced on the balls of his feet in a way that made him look all teeth and electricity. Stone Varga stood like a cliff—broad, patient, immovable. Bear Ivanov's shoulders filled the harness, like a bear in a too-small cage. Whisper Kade moved through drills with a medic's economy; she'd learned to think between beats. Sparks Novik fiddled with a diagnostic tablet, half-annoyed, half-curious. Shade positioned himself on a low rise, eyes narrowed through a spotting scope as if reading a map of insect nerves.
The first round of drills was basic: controlled bursts at moving joint targets. Every hit on the joint scored a green tick. Hits on the carapace flashed red and penalized the shooter's time.
"Controlled breathing!" the chief instructor barked. "Acquire the joint! One, two rounds—finish! Reset!"
Jinx charged first, grin turning sharp as he aimed and fired. He got a green tick, then another. The instructor clapped once—an involuntary, surprised sound. "Good. Again. Make it muscle."
Stone's heavy hands steadied a drill rifle and he's forced himself into finer motor control than usual; the heavy rifle was not built for finesse, but Stone learned to bite into the recoil, to track the hinge. His green ticks were fewer but clean.
Bear, in his mech training harness, had to slow the servos and take microbursts. His usual instinct had been to lay down heavy suppressive fire. Now he learned to target the knee joint on moving dummies. It felt like asking a sledgehammer to dance, but Bear adapted, grunting a laugh when he finally scored a clean hit.
Whisper's hands were steady, fingers precise. She used to patch holes; now she had to prevent them. Every green tick was a life saved later in the medbay, and she felt that truth in her palms.
Sparks, the weapons systems operator, had a different test: repeated cycles where she had to reconfigure sight patterns in mid-burst, recalibrating aim to weak spots as targets shifted armor plates. She cursed at the first hundred failures, and then, slowly, found a rhythm that pleased her.
Shade's work was quieter—long-range precision against ocular nodes. He barely spoke, but the counter on his scope gave him small private satisfactions: one green, two green—his way of smiling.
---
The training rules were harsh. For every red hit (a waste on armor), squads suffered extra repetitions and tactical penalties. Drill instructors timed reloads, counted rounds and logged each variance. Instructors shouted not only at aim, but at reasons: "Why did you fire three rounds at center mass?" "You panicked. Count your breath! Count your rounds!" The system built a psychological feedback loop: waste and you suffer; precision and you move faster. The goal was to make counting automatic.
Sirius watched them sweat and sometimes winced. He knew the math—hit the joint, you cut the bug's mobility; hit the eye, you blind it; aim low and it collapses. But training men to override panic was not something that a schematic could hand him; it was grind, humiliation, tiny victories, and repetition until reflex replaced fear.
Between drills the recruits ran scenario after scenario under staged stress—flash-bangs, simulated bone-rattles, smoke that filled the mask. They had to pick joints with one hand, reload with the other, and then move. It was theatre designed to break easy habits and replace them with new ones.
When Jinx's grin finally landed steadier and his rounds per kill dropped visibly over a set of drills, he whooped despite the instructor's glare. Stone clapped the rapid-assault kid on the back like a salute. Bear whooped low through his teeth. Whisper allowed herself a small, exhausted smile. Sparks punched the air and then cursed herself for it. Shade looked up and gave a rare nod.
Sirius felt something ease in his chest. It was small—one day, one set of green ticks—but the sight of friends adapting fed him in a way raw metrics never could.
---
Not everyone adapted at once. Some soldiers flailed, panic pulling their fingers. The drill instructors were clinical but not cruel; they needed men who could think under fire, not robots. The penalties were real: a unit that accumulated too many red hits lost its preferred positions in simulations and was forced through extra conditioning. That created friction—yells, some resentful looks, the grinding machinery of morale—but the brass had decided that the pain of training was preferable to the pain of empty crates and dead squads.
High Command circulated daily bullet-count briefings to monitor progress. "Improvement is visible," Colonel Maren reported to the General. "Across week one, elite squads dropped their rounds-per-kill metric by 27% on average when the drills were enforced." General Veyra's eyes narrowed at the screen. "Keep pushing. Extend the program. Make instructors available across the forward sectors."
But at headquarters, not everyone celebrated. Logistics argued until midnight, scribbling new supply schedules and staggering drops to account for uncertain gains. "We will need time to get crates to those who adapt," one logistics officer said. "We also need FAWS to finish their sensor arrays. Those techs must accelerate."
Sirius overheard that and felt the old itch—to do more than watch from above. He wanted his counters ready yesterday. He wanted to give them the tool that would make counting effortless. For now, the burns of training were their only weapon.
---
Night fell across the range and the lights dimmed. The men trudged back to the barracks, muscles buzzing with exhaustion. Inside the FAWS bay, Sirius stood at his bench and let his hands run over parts—micro-rails, spring detents, tiny connectors—imagining how a small display could mount on a carbine, or how a digichip could read the micro-mag's output without getting fouled by ichor and dirt.
He thought of Jinx laughing despite the aches, of Stone's steady thumbs, of Bear's reluctant adaptability, of Whisper's tired grin, Sparks' nagging curiosity, and Shade's quiet approval. Training could change habits; technology could shorten the path to instinct.
He tapped the corner of his workstation and allowed a faint smile. "Keep counting, guys," he said to the empty room. "I'll get there."
ARI's voice threaded in, cool and precise. "Mission queued. Weapon-mounted display prototype suggestions compiled. However: training must precede mass rollout. Do not deploy in field without trials."
Sirius nodded. Of course. Discipline first. Tool second. He turned back to the bench and began sketching again—little screens, tiny connectors, rugged casings. The world outside still burned. Inside, they were building a new set of reflexes, one drilled shot at a time.
Tomorrow, they would test the next scenario. Tomorrow, the brass would look at cleaner numbers. And Sirius, whether they knew it or not, would be the quiet gear that helped the soldiers count every bullet—and buy them the seconds to live.