"Ladies and gentlemen, take this creed to heart. This is your rifle. Pick it up and activate it."

I knelt down and removed the rifle from its plastic wrap. Notwithstanding everything Ruiz described about the rifle, the MP-35 did not appear especially impressive. It had heft but was not unwieldy, was well balanced and well sized for maneuverability. On the side of the rifle stock was a sticker. "TO ACTIVATE WITH BRAINPAL: Initialize BrainPal and say Activate MP-35, serial number ASD-324-DDD-4E3C1."

"Hey, Asshole," I said. "Activate MP-35, serial number ASD-324-DDD-4E3C1."

MP-35 ASD-324-DDD-4E3C1 is now activated for CDF Recruit John Perry, Asshole responded. Please load ammunition now. A small graphic display hovered in the corner of my field of vision, showing me how to load my rifle. I reached back down and picked up the rectangular block that was my ammunition—and nearly lost my balance trying to pick it up. It was impressively heavy; they weren't kidding about the "high density" part. I jammed it into my rifle where instructed. As I did so, the graphic showing me how to load my rifle disappeared and a counter sprang up in its place, which read:

Firing Options Available

Note: Using One Type of Round Decreases Availability of Other Types

Rifle Rounds: 200

Shot Rounds: 80

Grenade Rounds: 40

Missile Rounds: 35

Fire Rounds: 10 Minutes

Microwave: 10 Minutes

Rifle Rounds Currently Selected.

"Select shot rounds," I said.

Shot rounds selected, Asshole replied.

"Select missile rounds," I said.

Missile rounds selected, Asshole replied. Please select target. Suddenly every member of the platoon had a tight green targeting outline; glancing directly at one would cause an overlay to flash. What the hell, I thought, and selected one, a recruit in Martin's squad named Toshima.

Target selected. Asshole confirmed. You may fire, cancel, or select a second target.

"Whoa," I said, canceled the target, and stared down at my MP-35. I turned to Alan, who was holding his weapon next to me. "I'm scared of my weapon," I said.

"No shit," Alan said. "I just nearly blew you up two seconds ago with a grenade."

My response to this shocking admission was cut short when, on the other side of the platoon, Ruiz suddenly wheeled into a recruit's face. "What did you just say, recruit?" Ruiz demanded. Everybody fell silent as we turned to see who had incurred Ruiz's wrath.

The recruit was Sam McCain; in one of our lunch sessions I recalled Sarah O'Connell describing him as more mouth than brain. Unsurprisingly, he'd been in sales most of his life. Even with Ruiz hovering a millimeter from his nose, McCain projected smarminess; a mildly surprised smarminess, but smarminess all the same. He clearly didn't know what got Ruiz so worked up, but whatever it was, he expected to walk away from this encounter unscathed.

"I was just admiring my weapon, Master Sergeant," McCain said, holding up his rifle. "And I was telling recruit Flores here how it almost made me feel sorry for the poor bastards we're going up against out—"

The rest of McCain's comment was lost to time when Ruiz grabbed McCain's rifle from the surprised recruit and with one supremely relaxed spin clocked McCain in the temple with the flat side of the rifle butt. McCain crumpled like laundry; Ruiz calmly extended a leg and jammed a boot into McCain's throat. Then he flipped the rifle around; McCain stared up, horrified, into the barrel of his own rifle.

"Not so smug now, are you, you little shit?" Ruiz said. "Imagine I'm your enemy. Do you almost feel sorry for me now? I just disarmed you in less time than it takes to fucking breathe. Out there, those poor bastards move faster than you would ever believe. They are going to spread your fucking liver on crackers and eat it up while you're still trying to get them in your sights. So don't you ever feel almost sorry for the poor bastards. They don't need your pity. Are you going to remember this, recruit?"

"Yes, Master Sergeant!" McCain rasped, over the boot. He was very nearly sobbing.

"Let's make sure," Ruiz said, pressed the barrel into the space between McCain's eyes, and pulled the trigger with a dry click. Every member of the platoon flinched; McCain wet himself.

"Dumb," Ruiz said after McCain realized he wasn't, in fact, dead. "You weren't listening earlier. The MP-35 can only be fired by its owner while it's on base. That's you, asshole." He straightened up and contemptuously flung the rifle at McCain, then turned to face the platoon at large.

"You recruits are even stupider than I have imagined," Ruiz declared. "Listen to me now: There has never been a military in the entire history of the human race that has gone to war equipped with more than the least that it needs to fight its enemy. War is expensive. It costs money and it costs lives and no civilization has an infinite amount of either. So when you fight, you conserve. You use and equip only as much as you have to, never more.

He stared at us grimly. "Is any of this getting through? Do any of you understand what I'm trying to tell you? You don't have these shiny new bodies and pretty new weapons because we want to give you an unfair advantage. You have these bodies and weapons because they are the absolute minimum that will allow you to fight and survive out there. We didn't want to give you these bodies, you dipshits. It's just that if we didn't, the human race would already be extinct.

"Do you understand now? Do you finally have an idea of what you're up against? Do you?"

But it wasn't all fresh air, exercise, and learning to kill for humanity. Sometimes, we took classes.

"During your physical training, you've been learning to overcome your assumptions and inhibitions regarding your new body's abilities," Lieutenant Oglethorpe said to a lecture hall filled with training battalions 60th through 63rd. "Now we need to do this with your mind. It's time to flush out some deeply held preconceptions and prejudices, some of which you probably aren't even aware you have."

Lieutenant Oglethorpe pressed a button on the podium where he stood. Behind him, two display boards shimmered to life. In the one to the audience's left a nightmare popped up—something black and gnarled, with serrated lobster claws that nestled pornographically inside an orifice so dank you could very nearly smell the stench. Above the shapeless pile of a body, three eyestalks or antennae or whatever perched. Ochre dripped from them. H. P. Lovecraft would have run screaming.

To the right was a vaguely deerlike creature with cunning, almost human hands, and a quizzical face that seemed to speak of peace and wisdom. If you couldn't pet this guy, you could at least learn something about the nature of the universe from him.

Lieutenant Oglethorpe took a pointer and waved it in the direction of the nightmare. "This guy is a member of the Bathunga race. The Bathunga are a deeply pacifistic people; they have a culture that reaches back hundreds of thousands of years, and features an understanding of mathematics that makes our own look like simple addition. They live in the oceans, filtering plankton, and enthusiastically coexist with humans on several worlds. These are good guys, and this guy"—he tapped the board—"is unusually handsome for his species."

He whacked the second board, which held the friendly deer man. "Now, this little fucker is a Salong. Our first official encounter with the Salong happened after we tracked down a rogue colony of humans. People aren't supposed to freelance colonize, and the reason why becomes pretty obvious here. The colonists landed on a planet that was also a colonization target for the Salong; somewhere along the way the Salong decided that humans were good eatin', so they attacked the humans and set up a human meat farm. All the adult human males but a handful were killed, and those that were kept were 'milked' for their sperm. The women were artificially inseminated and their newborns taken, penned and fattened like veal.