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visibly deflate. Clearly, he saw how futile his entire life’s work was if the aliens didn’t make an appearance. Hundreds of captains had donned the stripes and ran their ships and then died of old age without ever even laying eyes on an extraterrestrial. All of their training and expertise was for naught.

  He pasted a phony smile on his face and said, “Who wants to take an escape shuttle for a spin?”

  I raised my hand as did the entire class.

  Flight

  While I waited my turn to go off in the escape shuttle, I saw Mr. Humboldt talking to the captain. He pointed in my direction and I froze. The captain seemed to mull something over in his head and then he shrugged.

  Mr. Humboldt walked over to me and said with a smile, “I told the captain that you have more space walks than anyone else in camp. I asked him if he’d be against letting you take your new skin for a spin out there. He said he would allow it.”

  I smiled and asked, “Can I do both? I still want to ride on the escape shuttle.”

  “That suit you’re in is its own shuttle, son. It’s equipped with thrusters.”

  “Thrusters don’t really work that well sir,” I said fearfully. I just knew one of these instructors would be the death of me.

  “Trust me Jack. You’ve never operated anything quite like it. You’ll be fine.”

  I was led to the airlocked bay where the escape vehicles are housed. It was very dark and very quiet until the bay doors opened up to outer space and the shuttle flew in. I held my breath but I found out right away that I didn’t need to breathe since I was a robotic super soldier. That was a weird realization.

  My metal feet stuck firmly to the deck when the atmosphere started to drag me out with it. I think they’re magnetic but I don’t know

  Humboldt was with me this entire time. We watched the bay doors close and then the students clopped off to safer regions of the Conquistador.

  The pilot remained seated, sealed his craft back up and gave me the thumbs up. Then the airlock opened up again.

  I heard Humboldt say, “Activate flight controls.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Just repeat what I said.”

  I said, “Activate flight controls,” and then my entire vision changed. I saw through my own eyes but I was also looking at numbers and stuff that scrolled up and down, left and right.

  Humboldt said, “Ignore all the readouts and ask for manual control.”

  I felt like crying. “Manual control please.”

  My legs cinched together under their own control and then I realized I was floating an inch above the deck.

  Humboldt said, “There aren’t really any controls, per se, you just use your mind and your will to force the skin to move.”

  As soon as I tried it, it reacted and I shot out of the airlock like a bullet. I panicked. The suit was throwing me out into deep space and I still wasn’t sure how to control the damn thing. I willed it to turn about and it did so instantly. I could now see the entire ship. It was enormous; far larger than I would’ve guessed.

  I willed the suit to gently move me in the direction of the ship and it did what I wanted it to do. I was already getting the hang of it. I just had to make my thought-commands really prominent in my own mind and the suit would obey. I considered getting right back into the airlock but I’m a bit reckless so what I did instead was I strafed the ship. As I passed the cameras, I did little barrel rolls and loop-de-loops. I could imagine my classmates talking about it for weeks afterwards but then I screwed up and got too close to the thrusters of the Conquistador. I didn’t get close enough to sustain injury or anything but my reaction must have looked hilarious because my panic manifested itself in the suit and it tried to take me in multiple directions all at the same time.

  I recovered, and realized my heart wasn’t racing, but that was because I had no heart. I made my way back into the airlock and the bay doors shut behind me. Humboldt was shaking his head at me but he did say, “You got the hang of that quicker than most do.”

  That made me mad because what if I hadn’t? What if I couldn’t get the hang of it at all? I’d be floating off into the void right now.

  I think I got lucky because it seemed like no one saw my near miss of the thrusters. Either that or I didn’t look as silly to them as I felt when I reacted to them. I don’t know but I’m thankful nonetheless.

  The captain was smiling when he said, “Handles like a dream, right?”

  “I was surprised by that. Why can’t we use one of these in training?” I didn’t mention that a skin would have saved dozens of lives lost during my stay at Deep Training Camp Eighty Seven.

  “They’re too expensive. At last count there are only twelve hundred units. We just don’t have a unit to spare.”

  That was bullshit though. These skins were just collecting dust before we showed up.

  Unexpected Arrival

  A rumbling kind of siren blared that made the captain jump. He mumbled, “That’s odd. I wasn’t told of additional arrivals.” To Humboldt he asked, “Did you schedule any more students to come aboard?”

  Humboldt shook his head.

  The captain grabbed me by the wrist and said, “Follow me.”

  As I allowed him to lead me below deck, I asked, “What’s up, sir?”

  “We have an unauthorized arrival and I need you for protection.”

  I almost laughed until I remembered I was wearing the body of a Marine.

  We made it to the skin bay in time to see a Marine suit fall from its cables and hit the deck with a thud. It looked confused at first but then it saw us approaching and held its hands up defensively.

  “Check with your comm. officer,” it said. “You should be receiving a distress signal any second. We came under attack. I barely made it out alive.”

  “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “I’m the technician, doctor Bolder, who sent you here. I was wearing the lab coat.”

  The captain interrupted. “What happened?”

  “The training camp was infiltrated.”

  “By who?” With expectation in his tone, he asked, “Was it the Enemy?” Some people called the aliens by the name Enemy.

  “No, it was the Skeptics. They were killing students and staff off left and right. They nearly got to me too.”

  I grabbed him by the throat and asked, “Who else can operate the teleporter?”

  “Just me,” he replied, confusion playing across his rubbery face.

  “Then why are you here? You should’ve stayed behind to help more of them get here.”

  The captain added, “You fucking coward. They’re all stuck there now that you’re here.”

  “You don’t understand captain. They’re all dead.”

  Traitor

  The captain said, “Tell me you disabled the link to my ship.”

  “I couldn’t. I had to get here and if I’d have cut the link, I’d be stuck with those murderers.”

  “That’s fine. We can do it from this end.” He pulled a thumb sized device from his pocket and hit a button. It looked like a primitive kind of radio. He opened his mouth to speak and then there was a loud pop and his head disappeared. His headless body hit the deck with a soft thud. I tried to wipe the captain’s blood out of my eyes but it was difficult with the overly large hands.

  The tech screamed and batted at the blood splotches that hit him, which would have been funny, given he was wearing a suit designed to stomp asses, but under the circumstances, it was not.

  I wheeled around in time to see a space Marine point a laser rifle at my chest. I froze, confused, and waited to die.

  But when I saw the nametag on the skin, I was even more confused. It read Samantha Salazar.

  She walked into the skin bay and shut the door behind her. “No one move and no one say a fucking word and you both might just survive this.”

  The tech guy said, “Ok,” and she shot him in the head. He fell over and the floor shook from the impact. Mrs. Salazar mumbled, “I
said don’t say a word, asshole.”

  I stared at her but because she didn’t have human eyes, it was impossible to read her.

  She shoved me back against the wall and trained the rifle on me with one hand as she walked over to the unused skins. There was a thunk as one of them hit the floor. The skin looked at her, then at her nametag, and smiled. “It’s Bosley,” he said in a male voice. “The others are right behind me. How’s the situation here?”

  “I haven’t made a move yet. I figured I’d wait for you guys to get here first.”

  Bosley walked to the headless captain, bent down and fingered the stripes on his bloody shoulder and said, “This is a good start.”

  There was another thunk as another Marine came to life. It happened again and again, until I was surrounded by eight super soldiers.

  One of them asked her, “Should we be worried about those kids? We’re outnumbered if they decide to fight.”

  Mrs. Salazar went to each soldier and reached under their faceplates, one by one. She fiddled around a bit and then tugged something small and square out of each. She tossed them on the floor lazily and then said, “We don’t need to worry about those brats now. We’ll just initiate the all-stop on the suits and they’ll go off-line. We’ll be fine. I just disabled ours.” Then she did the same to her own.

  I considered reaching inside my faceplate but I was pretty sure that move would be my last.

  All eyes turned to me and Mrs. Salazar said, “Leave him with Bosley. The rest of you come with me. Cover me until I get to the all-stop. After that, it’s a free-for-all.”

  Bosley

  Bosley was a fucking