Standard Entry
Day 0 | — | 07:40 | Earth, America sector | Rain, low cloud | The recruiting hall, Houston spaceport
You grew up under them. The sky filled one morning before you were born with millions of silver ships, any one of them enough to end the world alone, and there was no fight. Earth was conquered by arithmetic. Nobody has ever seen the Vael. Everybody has seen the Voice: it has been on your arm every day of your life.
Everyone is recruited. That is the price of being allowed to live: soldiers, for worlds the Vael would rather not terraform, against things that live in the flora and the fauna and do not think — or did not, until they met a legion. We are the exterminators of this sector of space. We are paid, and we are slaves, and we fight in Roman formations because the empire wanted a thousand years of service behind the name.
The hall is a hangar. Beyond its far wall, through rain, the spaceport: a transport sphere the size of a stadium sits on its engines, waiting to take today's intake up to the ships in orbit, and something with too many arms moves behind its bridge glass. An air car for someone very rich is lifting off a pad you will never stand on.
You have been tested. Your arm was read, your body measured, your mind sampled by a machine that hummed for eleven minutes and said nothing. Now the booths.
Eight of them, in a row, under eight names you have known since school: SABINA · GALLICA · FERRATA · CLAUDIA · AUGUSTA · EQUESTRIS · VALERIA · RAPAX. Best to worst. The last two are the ones nobody wants. Sabina's booth has a carpet, a queue of the beautiful and the connected, and a legion that never dies — honour guard, bodyguards, royalty and rich children on random planets, the best pay for the least risk. You do not get to the front of that queue. You do not get to the front of any of the six.
Sabina:
"No."
Gallica:
"Next."
Ferrata:
"Arm's fine. It's the rest. No."
Claudia:
"Not this cycle."
Augusta:
"We have our numbers."
Equestris:
"You can read? Good. Still no."
Then the last two booths, side by side, and nobody in line for either — except one man. Valeria's table has a recruiter, a tired veteran with a stylus, and in front of him a sunburned recruit in a gold chain is explaining, loudly, why he should be allowed to bring a cooler.
McGale:
"Buddy. Buddy. It's for morale. Half of it's yours. — Hey, you. Yeah, you, looking lost. Valeria. Get in line behind me, we'll die together, it'll be great."
The Valeria recruiter does not look up.
Valeria:
"We take anyone. Sign, or go to the end of the row."
Rapax's booth is a folding table. No carpet, no queue, no banner — Rapax does not recruit. It does not need to. Everyone the seven reject ends up here anyway, and everyone knows what Rapax is: the worst worlds, the least pay, the highest death ratio in the Legions.
One clerk sits behind the table with a stylus and a list. She does not look up until you are standing in front of her. Behind you, McGale is still talking.
The Clerk:
"Name. Sector. What you're good for."
She holds the stylus over the list.
The Clerk:
"Muster is oh-five-hundred tomorrow, Pad Nine, that sphere. Miss it and the Voice finds you. Don't bring anything you'd mind dying in."
Your arm reads:
ARM — LEGIONARY Rank: RECRUIT · Legion: — · Body: 1 · Deaths: 0 SYNC: none on record Muster: 05:00 · Pad Nine
[Answer in your first message: which table you sign at — Valeria, behind McGale, or Rapax with the clerk — your name, your sector (America, Euro-Asia or Africa), the specialty you want (light, heavy, bio, tech, engineer), one line of who you were before today, and what you do with the day you have left.]