"Christ, did it ever," Terry said. "They dressed that poor bastard out like he was beef."

"I wish they had shown us that before we signed up," Angela said. "I might have decided to stay old."

"It's war," Mark said. "It's what happens."

"Let's just do what we can to make sure our guys make it through things like that," I said. "Now, I've cut the platoon into six squads of ten. I'm top of A squad; Angela, you have B; Terry, C; Mark, D; Sarah, E; and Martin, F. I've given you permission to examine your recruit files with your BrainPal; choose your second in command and send me the details by lunch today. Between the two of you, keep discipline and training going smoothly; from my point of view, my whole reason for selecting you folks is so I don't have anything to do."

"Except run your own squad," Martin said.

"That's where I come in," Alan said.

"Let's meet every day at lunch," I said. "We'll take other meals with our squads. If you have something that needs my attention, of course contact me immediately. But I do expect you to attempt to solve as many problems as you can by yourself. Like I said, I'm not planning on having a hard-ass style, but for better or worse, I am the platoon leader, so what I say goes. If I feel you're not measuring up, I'm going to let you know first, and then if that doesn't work I'm going to replace you. It's not personal, it's making sure we all get the training we need to live out here. Everyone good with that?" Nods all around.

"Excellent," I said, and held up my tumbler. "Then let's toast to the 63rd Training Platoon. Here's to making it through in one piece." We clunked our tumblers together and then got to eating and chatting. Things were looking up, I thought.

It didn't take long to change that opinion.

The day on Beta Pyxis is twenty-two hours thirteen minutes twenty-four seconds long. We got two of those hours to sleep.

I discovered this charming fact on our first night, when Asshole blasted me with a piercing siren that jolted me awake so quickly I fell out of my bunk, which was, of course, the top bunk. After checking to make sure my nose wasn't broken, I read the text floating in my skull.

Platoon Leader Perry, this is to inform you that you have—and here there was a number, at that second being one minute and forty-eight seconds and counting down—until Master Sergeant Ruiz and his assistants enter your barracks. You are expected to have your platoon awake and at attention when they enter. Any recruits not at attention will be disciplined and noted against your record.

I immediately forwarded the message to my squad leaders through the communication grouping I had created for them the day before, sent a general alarm signal to the platoon's BrainPals, and hit the barrack lights. There were a few amusing seconds as every recruit in the platoon jerked awake to a blast of noise that only he or she could hear. Most leaped out of bed, deeply disoriented; I and the squad leaders grabbed the ones still lying down and yanked them out onto the floor. Within a minute we had everyone up and at attention, and the remaining few seconds were spent convincing a few particularly slow recruits that now was not the time to pee or dress or do anything but stand there and not piss off Ruiz when he came through the door.

Not that it mattered. "For fuck's sake," Ruiz declared. "Perry!"

"Yes, Master Sergeant!"

"What the hell were you doing for your two-minute warning? Jerking off? Your platoon is unready! They are not dressed for the exertions to which they will soon be tasked! What is your excuse?"

"Master Sergeant, the message stated that the platoon was required to be at attention when you and your staff arrived! It did not specify the need to dress!"

"Christ, Perry! Don't you assume that being dressed is part of being at attention?"

"I would not presume to assume, Master Sergeant!"

"'Presume to assume'? Are you being a smartass, Perry?"

"No, Master Sergeant!"

"Well, presume to get your platoon out to the parade ground, Perry. You have forty-five seconds. Move!"

"A squad!" I bellowed and ran at the same time, hoping to God my squad was following directly behind me. As I went through the door, I heard Angela hollering at B squad to follow her; I had chosen her well. We made it to the parade grounds, my squad forming in a line directly behind me. Angela formed her line directly to my right, with Terry and the rest forming subsequently. The last man of F squad formed up at the forty-four-second mark. Amazing. Around the parade grounds, other recruit platoons were also forming up, also in the same state of undress as the 63rd. I felt briefly relieved.

Ruiz strolled up momentarily, trailed by his two assistants. "Perry! What is the time!"

I accessed my BrainPal. "Oh one hundred local time, Master Sergeant!"

"Outstanding, Perry. You can tell time. What time was lights out?"

"Twenty-one hundred, Master Sergeant!"

"Correct again! Now some of you may be wondering why we're getting you up and running on two hours of sleep. Are we cruel? Sadistic? Trying to break you down? Yes we are. But these are not the reasons we have awakened you. The reason is simply this—you don't need any more sleep. Thanks to these pretty new bodies of yours, you get all the sleep you need in two hours! You've been sleeping eight hours a night because that's what you're used to. No longer, ladies and gentlemen. All that sleep is wasting my time. Two hours is all you need, so from now on, two hours is all you will get.

"Now, then. Who can tell me why I had you run those twenty klicks in an hour yesterday?"

One recruit raised his hand. "Yes, Thompson?" Ruiz said. Either he had memorized the names of every platoon recruit, or he had his BrainPal on, providing him the information. I wouldn't hazard a guess as to which it was.

"Master Sergeant, you had us run because you hate each of us on an individual basis!"

"Excellent response, Thompson. However, you are only partially correct. I had you run twenty klicks in an hour because you can. Even the slowest of you finished the run two minutes under the cutoff time. That means that without training, without even a hint of real effort, every single one of you bastards can keep pace with Olympic gold medalists back on Earth.

"And do you know why that is? Do you? It's because none of you is human anymore. You're better. You just don't know it yet. Shit, you spent a week bouncing off the walls of a spaceship like little wind-up toys and you probably still don't understand what you're made of. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that is going to change. The first week of your training is all about making you believe. And you will believe. You're not going to have a choice."

And then we ran 25 kilometers in our underwear.

Twenty-five-klick runs. Seven-second hundred-meter sprints. Six-foot vertical jumps. Leaping across ten-meter holes in the ground. Lifting two hundred kilos of free weights. Hundreds upon hundreds of sit-ups, chin-ups, push-ups. As Ruiz said, the hard part was not doing these things—the hard part was believing they could be done. Recruits were falling and failing at every step of the way for what's best described as a lack of nerve. Ruiz and his assistants would fall on these recruits and scare them into performing (and then have me do push-ups because I or my squad leaders clearly hadn't scared them enough).

Every recruit—every recruit—had his or her moment of doubt. Mine came on the fourth day, when the 63rd Platoon arrayed itself around the base swimming pool, each recruit holding a twenty-five-kilo sack of sand in his or her arms.

"What is the weak point of the human body?" Ruiz asked as he circled around our platoon. "It's not the heart, or the brain, or the feet, or anywhere you think it is. I'll tell you what it is. It's the blood, and that's bad news because your blood is everywhere in your body. It carries oxygen, but it also carries disease. When you're wounded, blood clots, but often not fast enough to keep you from dying of blood loss. Although when it comes down to it, what everyone really dies of is oxygen deprivation—from blood being unavailable because it's spewed out on the fucking ground where it doesn't do you a goddamned bit of good.