Basic

I followed the signs to "Basic Training". It was another one of the circus designer's pipedreams, domed rooms of material all over the shop with a few antennas and satellite dishes adorning it. The "front door" had a large wire mesh covering it with a slit in the middle you had to fit through. At first I figured this was to keep it protected and secure, if there's rifles and stuff in there, but... we're in a war to save the earth. I think who has guns and ammo is irrelevant as long as they're human and running in the direction of the Bane.

I walked in and saw a small row of seats in front of a projector screen, all of them with a bum on except the one at the furthest back right corner. I sat down and tried to introduce myself to the woman next to me, she can't have been more than 20 on a good day. How on earth was she genetically suitable to be an elite soldier of this "AFS"? It was all so wrong. I heard the crunching metal of the mesh door being forced behind me and saw the most stereotypical soldier type entering. An easy 6 foot, with biceps like plant pots and wearing the same form of uniform as us, except he had a golden wings-and-logo symbol on his arm which I took to mean he was in charge of... something. The way he yelled when he spoke meant it was probably us.

"I am Gunnery Sergeant Gibbs, formerly of the glorious US Marine Corps, now, your very own personal trainer in basic combat." Great... every war needs it's gung-ho shouting and yelling marine sergeant. He went on about the way in which we were to be trained to be elite soldiers, or as he put it "rank amateurs pretending to know something about fighting", within a week. The projector screen booted up when he told it to do so. Fancy, I thought, but not that fancy, I had a friend with voice activation on his plasma TV back home. It showed a map of a small area, it was all desert and had one long column in between two sand dunes, with a few walls of sandbags dotted along it. A red marker at the top of the column announced it was the 'Bane insertion point', and a blue marker at the bottom denoted itself as the 'AFS dropzone'. Gibbs said we would be thrown into the thick of it from the off, fighting projections of what they called the Bane 'soldiers' just to see what our past life on Earth had given us in the way of combat experience. For me... i'd seen my share of war movies, played around on rifle ranges a bit as a cadet when I was younger, but never anything remotely military. Give me my mixer and some mortar though and i'll wall us in, that'd stop the Bane. Probably.

The Gunnery Sergeant showed us into a room seperated by a curtain next to the main seating area. It had 12 lockers, one for each of us, and each had a surname on it. I wandered over to the one that read 'Pvt. Oriagi' in big black letters and noticed the combination lock on the door. Gibbs had wandered off, presumably we were meant to know what our codes were... I looked around and no, everyone else was about as flustered as me. Then I heard a very quiet yelp of excitement, and saw the young girl I had sat next to with her locker open. "It's your birthday!" she shouted out, and we all started fiddling with the locks. One by one the very heavy doors to the full-size lockers swung open, amidst a few sharp intakes of breath from the men and an occasional whimper from the girls.

In two robust looking brackets on one side of the locker was a large red-and-black contraption. The magazine poking out and trigger gave me the hint it fired bullets and made a lot of noise. On the other side were hooks with very large pads and panels hanging off of them, that looked like they would fit snug over the human body, armour I figured. And on the shelf above was two stacks of metal boxes. Ammo magazines, one stack for the pistol, and one for the rifle, was the best guess. The Sergeant walked back into the room wearing a similar suit of this body armour, and carrying a large rifle like ours, except with an extra scope here and torch there, like it was customised to his own needs. He pointed at the timer above the only other exit to the room, a small LCD panel showing a countdown from just over 6 minutes. It was labeled 'Time until Insertion'. I immediately took this to mean if we weren't wearing the armour in 6 minutes we'd be getting shot at a lot more.

I pulled out the pads and started sliding on the torso piece, hopefully the right way round. Then the leg panels, and a few pads for over the forearms. As with the jumpsuit this was a very good fit, I was beginning to think they had taken our sizes back home somehow. I took two of the pistol magazines and put them into the pouch in my belt I found earlier, and did the same with five of the rifle magazines. Damn that thing was getting heavy. Finally I put another of the pistol magazines into the gun itself, with a resounding click and no bang, which I took to mean I did it right. I grabbed the rifle and looked it over carefully in my hands, it wasn't nearly as heavy as it looked. There were a few buttons on the top, labelled for, I would imagine, simpletons like us 12 that had never used a gun before. "Ultra Violet Range Marker", "Semi-Automatic (1rnd)", "Burst-fire (3rnd)", and "Release Clip". I pressed each to toggle between the modes, noticing the cool purple dot that showed up momentarily where I was pointing it when I pressed the marker button, and the way the "clip" dropped out when I hit the button and the red light above it went out when I reloaded it. In the war movies i'd seen, rifles always had a handle on the side that the hero pulled ...heroically... before opening fire, but this had nothing like that. Not even a safety switch. I think Gibbs must have realised I was thinking this as I looked the gun over searchingly, and said "It ain't got one, son. It's a clever rifle. It knows if you're pointing at a comrade or a little green guy using techno-whiz inside it. Weird ain't it, a gun with a brain." Too bloody right it's weird. What on Earth am I doing with it?

Au Sujet De Moi - That's "All About Me", to you.

If you're reading this datafeed, you're probably wondering who I am, and how I got into the AFS. I'll try to explain as best I can. I started writing down my memoirs when this all started, and i've only just got chance to upload them, so here's the first.

The only name I have that you need to know is Oriagi. I did have a first name, but since all this new fangled cloning stuff has started, there's not much point in giving one out to each clone of me. The basic principle of these clones is that when your body suffers fatal injuries, you have all your memories and instincts and 'training' imported into a different body, which is an identical you. Quite snazzy compared to what I was on Earth. I was a bricklayer on Earth. Nothing special but I had a wife and kid. They weren't in the "program" though, so they couldn't come with us.

When Earth was attacked the Government announced there was a special program for people with a certain genetic trait that made them "elite" fighters, and they would be taken to a specialised training facility to be equipped to combat the invaders and defend Earth. What actually happened was a little different.

There was me and one other guy from my street that got taken. There was a bunch of men in black suits that came knocking at our doors in the middle of the night and I got told to pack essential clothing as I was one of these people with fancy DNA. They took me into a black vehicle I didn't recognise, some sort of armoured car I think, where I saw a few other people looking as scared as I felt. We were given some snacks during the journey and they must have had drugs or something in them, one by one everyone fell unconscious, I held on 'till I was last but I couldn't keep my eyes open.

The next time they did open there were some funny looking craft flying overhead, a bit like something from a movie set hundreds of years in the future, with intensely blue engines... except they were facing downwards. I now know these to be standard dropships, developed on Earth as a prototype and used extensively now. I got up and found myself in what can only be described as organised chaos. There were hundreds of these aircraft around, flying, landed, and hovering over the tents. There must have been thousands of them, each with about 10 of us so-called "Receptives" in them, or entering them, or running around outside them screaming and crying for their families and their homes. We each had a footlocker by a small metal-framed bed, with an almost military looking jumpsuit and an advanced looking weapon in it, a handgun, with bits and pieces attached to it you wouldn't recognise. I think the only thing that stopped people going mad and trying to fight their way back home with the pistols was the fact they had no bullets. A fact I kind of appreciated, everyone around me was a bit weird, and the guy from my street was nowhere to be seen.

Eventually a man came into the tent who walked like he owned the land underfoot. He said his name was General British and that he was grateful we had come ...like we had any other choice. He gave us a small speech, most of which went in one ear and out the other after he started saying things like "an unfortunate conclusion to humanity", "evacuating the good ones", and something that at the time I didn't register as odd - "alien technology in the form of galactic wormholes to other planets, light years away".

We were all shepherded out in rank and file to a large hall with many thousands of chairs, all surrounded by a structure like a circus tent who's designer has smoked something funny. This British figure stood at the forefront when all of the chairs were filled. I found his speech on the datafeed later on, this is what it said:

Bane have taken our cities…our planet…our home. They have slaughtered our families and destroyed nearly everything we hold dear. But all of that changes today, because what they cannot take from you, what they cannot destroy, is your spirit.

You are now a soldier of the Allied Free Sentients. It is soldiers like you that make a difference in this war. Soldiers with strength of body, strength of mind, and strength of spirit! Brave soldiers who are willing to do whatever it takes to eliminate the Bane scourge. Together, the AFS will stand tall against our oppressors and will fi ght until we are free to reclaim all that was taken from us.

As a member of the AFS, you will receive the best training, the most technologically advanced weapons, and if you are a receptive, access to an ancient knowledge so powerful that our enemies will fall before us. This training facility will help familiarise you with some of the tools that will be available to you, as well as intel about the Bane and their forces. Learn as much as you can. Bane are brutal and merciless creatures, and the more knowledge you have, the more prepared you will be to defeat them.

You are the future of the AFS. Each Bane threat that is eliminated, every inch of ground that is reclaimed helps ensure the survival of humanity. We are counting on you, soldier.

Dismissed.

We all sat quietly after he finished, and more men in black suits came round handing us an A4 folder thicker than my neck, with "AFS Field Guide" on the front. I curiously flicked through the first few pages as we were walked back to our tents. It detailed things about advanced armour suits, weapons like i'd never seen before and some creatures that didn't bare looking at, let alone thinking about. So I was a soldier then. I was going to war. I was going to kill other... things, hopefully before they killed me.

When we got back to the tents we found a new computer terminal in each one, and a few speakers that had been installed next to each bed. These were a personal tannoy according to the computer, that would announce when each soldier was to be sent to one of the various training facilities. It also told us to read through the AFS folder before training started tomorrow. I checked my watch, and it was about 5PM. Normally i'd have been eating dinner at 5PM, but due to rationing we only had two meals a day, breakfast and a late supper. At least they had good food here, I noted as I smelt the cooking from a long way off. But I would have smelt or seen or heard anything that took my mind off my family. My glorious family. My amazing wife, and my beautiful little boy. Their images are still in my head to this second, and my greatest fear above all this is one day i'll forget what they look like, one day in the future, when we'll forget about what the Bane did to Earth, to humans and to all that we held dear to us.

I forced myself to blink away tears before scratching in a few hours shut-eye that night, which was slightly helpful as I was rudely awoken by the tannoy next to my ear that kindly announced it was 6AM and I was to report to the basic training facility on the western side of the base. I got dressed into the jumpsuit, which was an incredibly good fit, strapped the utility belt on which, I found, had a medical kit, a pouch for extra pistol magazines, and a holster for the gun itself. I picked up the pistol, strapped it into the holster as best I could, and set off following the signs for the Basic Training facility. They had signs in this place. Like I said, at least it was organised chaos.

The End of the Beginning

It hit us like a ton of bricks. Of course, just a proverbial ton of bricks. There are no bricks anymore. No mortar. No builders. No-one to build houses for.

To save doing the explaining, i'll quote something written by an anonymous journalist from somewhere in North America at the time. Nobody knows if he lived afterwards or how the article got uploaded onto an Allied Free Sentients (AFS) datafeed, but it did and everyone has read it. But it didn't take much effect on us, we were there. We all were.

There was no warning to alert the people of Earth when the Bane attacked. No communication. No demands to be met. Nothing at all.

On a day that began without any news of international significance, scientists across the globe detected an object, massive in size and with an albedo below 4%, moving toward the Earth. As it approached, smaller objects broke away, settled into formation, and accelerated at unimaginable speed. Clearly there was alien intelligence at work, but to what end?

The Bane, a horrific army of hostile alien races, had launched a full-scale invasion. The craft, as it was later learned, was a Bane shardship. These severed shards of shattered worlds, long drained of their resources, carry a massive payload of weaponry, dropships, troops, and supplies across vast distances. Governments argued with each other and within their own power structures about how to respond. Several major powers pushed for an increase in military readiness. Others stayed quiet and hoped for the best.

At the civilian level, there was panic. Few had anticipated this event or anything like it, and local police forces had difficulty maintaining civil order as people reacted with rioting and hoarding of basic resources. Some cities had surprisingly few problems, while others reported numerous break-ins, beatings, and fires.

Those difficulties did nothing to prepare the populace for the assault. As the second day drew near, the dropships came. Thousands upon thousands of combat-ready Thrax and Bane military units laid siege to the major cities of every nation. There was no attempt to threaten or cow anyone into submission; it was an outright slaughter. Weaponry that was centuries ahead of human technology was used on a global scale, killing millions.

Shockingly, no human weapons of significant power were deployed. Nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and other ordnance were absent, limiting the scope of the war. Smaller communities were left almost entirely unmolested, save for the side effects of widespread fear. The day drew into evening, and as the hours passed, Earth’s responses grew. Small arms were distributed freely, often without government oversight, and both military and civilian partisans counterattacked with increasing tenacity. Word spread that the enemies were killing with impunity, taking prisoners only as a whim, but destroying so many areas that no one could depend on relief.

This inescapable fear drove many to outright resistance, and Earth’s enemies suffered massive losses of their own. Though the Bane had superior technology, they lacked the numbers to overcome local resistance groups. Asymmetric warfare made it difficult for the Bane to employ forces to optimal effect. It was building-to-building warfare, with explosions and fire everywhere, and eventual victory. Or so it seemed.

The surviving Bane returned to orbit, but the shardship continued to approach. Earth’s military powers launched missiles in abundance, but damage against the shardship could not be confirmed. Even worse, SETI researchers soon found that the Bane retreat was intended only to protect their troops from the final stage of the attack. The Allen Telescope Array tracked the shardship as it advanced toward Earth. The strange craft was not intended to return from whence it came, it was a weapon in and of itself. Contained within were the seeds of an alien infection; scores of deadly organisms and hostile creatures collected from decimated planets across the galaxy.

Among the survivors, a lucky few were ferried to hidden locations across the globe. Many of these people were handpicked by a top secret organisation known only to a few officials in the highest echelons of the world governments. Only the members of this organisation knew about the wormholes. Fewer still knew the secrets of their origin, but they served as the only hope for the survival of the human race. The exodus continued until the very last moment of impact, and in a breath, all contact with Earth was lost. Her fate remains unknown, to this day.

By cataloguing human experiences from these events, it is hoped that a history of this era, however ambiguous, can be constructed and passed down, even as we adjust to these new lands. Look for our forthcoming publication, as we delve into Experiences of the Final Days: Survivors’ Stories.

There has been no other uploads to that particular feed, I'd say that's a good thing, memories of Earth are something to be cherished but we shouldn't be dwelling on them. We should be focusing on, quite bluntly, kicking the living daylights out of the Bane and anyone that was involved with taking down Earth. They'll live to regret the day they insulted the Homo sapiens.