The shuttle smelled like recycled air and nervous sweat.
Rows of recruits sat strapped into narrow acceleration seats, trying to look braver than they felt. Some talked too much. Some stared straight ahead. A few slept, heads bouncing against restraints every time the transport adjusted course.
Jace did none of those.
He sat near the rear window, eyes fixed on the black ocean outside, replaying the message on his wrist console over and over even though he'd already turned it off.
We regret to inform you…
Four words that erased a lifetime.
The stars beyond the glass didn't care.
"First time off-world?"
The voice came from the seat beside him.
Jace turned.
The girl sitting next to him had warm brown skin, dark hair tied neatly behind her head, and eyes that somehow looked calm even in a military shuttle full of anxious strangers.
"Yeah," Jace said. "Is it that obvious?"
She gave a small smile. "You've been staring out that window like you're afraid it might fall."
"Just making sure space is still there."
She chuckled softly. "It is. I checked."
He managed a weak grin.
"I'm Mira," she said, offering a hand.
"Jace."
Her grip was gentle but steady. Confident in a quiet way.
Across the aisle, another recruit sat hunched over a small data-slate, completely ignoring everyone around him. Pale skin, sharp features, dark hair that fell messily into his eyes. He was muttering under his breath while tapping lines of code across the screen.
"That one hasn't looked up once since boarding," Mira whispered.
Jace glanced at him. "Friend of yours?"
"Not yet."
The boy suddenly frowned at his device.
"Wrong," he muttered. "All wrong."
Jace leaned slightly forward. "Everything okay over there?"
The boy didn't look up.
"This flight path is inefficient," he said flatly. "They're wasting fuel on a three-degree arc adjustment they don't need."
Jace blinked.
"It's a military shuttle."
"Exactly," the boy replied. "Which makes it worse."
Mira raised an eyebrow. "You can tell that from a passenger seat?"
He finally glanced up.
"I can tell when machines are being stupid."
There was no humor in his voice. Just blunt certainty.
Jace gave Mira a sideways look.
"Great," he whispered. "We've got a genius."
The boy extended a hand without standing.
"Vaelis Korrin."
"Jace Calder."
"Mira Solenne," she added.
Vaelis nodded once, already turning back to his screen.
"Nice to meet you," he said, sounding like he was reading from a manual.
Jace sank back into his seat.
"Platoon 77, right?" Mira asked quietly.
"Yeah," Jace said. "You too?"
She nodded.
Vaelis didn't look up. "Same."
Jace exhaled.
"Guess we're stuck together."
None of them knew yet just how true that was.
⸻
The training facility floated in orbit around a gray, lifeless moon.
A massive ring-shaped station bristling with antennas, landing bays, and weapons platforms. Shuttles drifted in and out like insects around a steel hive.
As they disembarked, cold artificial air washed over them—clean, sharp, smelling faintly of disinfectant and metal.
A drill sergeant's voice cracked across the docking bay.
"Platoon 77! Form up on the yellow line! Now!"
Jace barely had time to take in the endless corridors and towering ceilings before he was shoved into formation with the rest of the recruits.
There were about forty of them.
Too few for a standard platoon.
That was the first odd thing.
⸻
Processing blurred into a blur of shouted commands and clipped instructions.
Uniform fittings.
Equipment assignments.
Identification tags.
Medical re-checks.
Psych evaluations.
Every step felt less like preparation and more like being packed into a box.
Jace noticed something else quickly.
Most of the recruits in Platoon 77 were… strange.
Not criminals.
Not screw-ups.
Just people who didn't quite fit anywhere else.
A girl who stuttered when nervous.
A boy with a prosthetic hand older than the model currently issued.
An older recruit who looked ten years past standard enlistment age.
Misfits.
Leftovers.
Vaelis fit right in.
⸻
Their first official training day began before Jace had fully figured out where the cafeteria was.
Physical drills. Combat basics. Weapons safety.
The instructors moved like machines—efficient, emotionless, uninterested.
"Again!"
"Faster!"
"Do it right or don't do it at all!"
By noon, Jace's muscles were screaming.
By afternoon, his pride was too.
He wasn't the strongest.
Not the fastest.
Definitely not the smartest.
But he was stubborn.
And sometimes that counted for more.
⸻
The first real moment that stuck with him happened in the equipment bay.
A diagnostic terminal froze mid-simulation, locking up the entire firing range system.
Technicians scrambled, cursing at the screen.
"Great," one muttered. "Old junk again."
Before they could call maintenance, Vaelis stepped forward.
"Let me see."
The technician frowned. "Kid, this is military hardware—"
"It's just a machine," Vaelis replied. "They're not complicated if you listen."
Jace watched as Vaelis knelt beside the console, not touching it at first—just staring, like he was trying to hear something no one else could.
"That relay is overloaded," Vaelis said after a moment. "The feedback loop is misreading its own output."
The technician stared at him.
"How would you even—"
Vaelis ignored the question, unplugged a small module, rerouted a cable, and rebooted the system.
The terminal hummed back to life.
Range systems online.
The room went quiet.
"How did you do that?" Jace asked.
Vaelis shrugged. "Machines make sense. People don't."
A few recruits whispered to each other.
"Guy's a freak," someone muttered.
Vaelis didn't seem to care.
Mira, however, watched him with open curiosity instead of judgment.
⸻
Later that day, during a sparring exercise, another odd moment happened.
One of the recruits twisted an ankle badly during a drill—collapsed hard, crying out.
The instructor barely looked at him.
"Medic will handle it. Move on."
Before anyone else reacted, Mira knelt beside the injured recruit.
"Breathe," she said calmly. "Just breathe."
She placed her hands gently around the swelling joint.
Jace swore he saw the redness fade faster than it should have.
Within minutes the recruit was standing again, confused but steady.
"Feels… better," he said.
The instructor frowned. "Lucky break."
Mira just smiled and helped him up.
Jace filed the moment away without understanding why.
⸻
That night, exhausted and sore, Platoon 77 gathered in their assigned barracks.
Bunk beds. Lockers. Thin blankets that smelled faintly of detergent and metal.
Jace lay on his back staring at the ceiling, listening to distant machinery hum through the walls.
Vaelis sat cross-legged on his bunk, dismantling a personal wrist unit and reassembling it for no reason other than boredom.
Mira quietly wrote in a small notebook.
They barely knew each other.
Yet somehow it already felt like they were in this together.
⸻
Over the next week, patterns began to emerge.
Extra evaluations.
Stranger assignments.
Unusual schedules.
Platoon 77 was tested more often than other units.
Observed more closely.
Pushed harder.
Jace started noticing glances from instructors when they thought no one was looking.
He couldn't shake the feeling that they were being measured for something no one wanted to explain.
⸻
One evening, as lights-out approached, Jace turned to Mira.
"Ever feel like we're not here by accident?"
She looked at him thoughtfully.
"Every day."
Across the room, Vaelis snorted without looking up.
"Of course we're not," he said. "Systems don't make random choices."
Jace frowned. "Meaning?"
Vaelis finally met his eyes.
"Meaning someone put us in this platoon on purpose."
The words hung in the air longer than they should have.
⸻
Jace lay awake that night staring into the dark.
Thinking about the medical scan.
The whispers.
The odd assignment.
Platoon 77.
Just a number, they'd said.
But it didn't feel like just a number anymore.
⸻
Somewhere deep in the station, unseen monitors quietly tracked their progress.
Files were updated.
Notes were taken.
And orders were already being prepared.