Earth's Last Judgement Ch. 03

Oz watched Corporal Greaves eat from across the dining hall. This would be the first time the man had left on patrol since they were paired together. It could be the last time he'd ever see his instructor. The boy ate at his food mechanically, not noticing it until it was gone.

He had the man's combat uniform pressed and ready before Greaves had returned from breakfast. The corporal changed in silence, not sparing the boy a glance.

"Chores before simulator," Greaves reminded him. "And get into the top thousand, private," he said before the door slammed shut and headed out for duty.

For the first time since he had arrived at base, Oz was on his own.

There was no time at all to savor it, though. The chores Greaves needed doing were going to take him all over the base, and he would need as much time in the sim as possible. When he finally had the new pair of boots polished, and his hands cleaned, he still had two hours to spare in the flight simulator.

Clearly, his wasn't the only trainer that had been sent off. A quarter of the cadets inside were on their own today. He ignored the suggested training programs and instead opted for the free flight mode. He hit the start button and climbed inside.

When the screen booted up, he found his ship was already in flight and the sky an ombre, fading from black to blinding blue. There was no one to advise him, no voice on the radio, and no goals.

He pulled at the controls, and the world spun with each shift of the joysticks. The ship righted itself with ease, maintaining height without his help.

"Let's take you for a spin," Oz whispered.

He pushed the sticks forward, and the gravity shifted, ripping toward him as he fell into a dive. The simulator shook and the G forces pulled at him until he blacked out.

He jerked back awake as the pod slipped open again. Oz slapped the start button and slid back inside.

Little by little, he felt out the controls. It was built to be intuitive, the books had said. It was simplified to the point where any civilian off the street could get inside and give the enemy hell. A soft squeeze of the trigger set the gun burring away beneath him. A touch of the thumb and he could lock onto a target. The next squeeze of the gun trigger turned that target to dust. It was as easy as breathing.

But it was one thing to have the control layout memorized, and it was another to know it all by feel without looking. And it was another thing entirely to do it all while spinning under high G forces. Greaves hadn't been lying about that.

It took a few more crashes until he could dive to the earth and pull back in time to recover. If he struck a few trees along the way, the shields could take it without complaint. Outcroppings of rock, on the other hand, would send him spinning. And that usually meant biting it into the ground a few rolls in.

After an hour, he backed out and selected program two. 'Dog Fight', it read.

They were higher in the atmosphere this time, with the blue glow of the planet only reaching the bottom of his view screen.

"Enemy incoming," an automated voice called out. "Eighty seconds out. Class A fighter, one."

Oz nodded. Class A's were fighters, small and nimble like his own.

Finally, some combat.

"Lock on: Auto" he called out, his voice cracking with excitement. He heard the chime of confirmation. "Fire on: Auto." The chime rang out again.

"Forty seconds."

Oz pressed down harder on the throttle. "Thirty-one seconds," it corrected.

With a moment to spare, he snapped the joysticks hard in opposite directions. The G forces hit him faster than he expected. He had planned to pull out of the barrel roll immediately, but his body could hardly move now. The world was fading away, like it was sinking into a drain. He squeezed his eyes shut, then reversed the handles with one final effort.

To his surprise, it worked. For a moment, at least.

He had over-corrected. His insides suddenly shifted in the opposite direction. The G forces rose as he spiraled again. And then it was too late. The pod slid open as he began to be sick over the controls.

"Not bad, for a minute there." It was Greaves.

"You're alive," Oz said in surprise.

"Just a route patrol. And you would be alive, too, if you had pulled out of that correctly."

"Did I kill them?"

Greaves leaned over the training computer, and tapped at the screen. "You did. Or at least the computer did. And in good time, too."

The man waited for Oz to climb out of the seat and clean himself off. "It is good to trust in the computer's ability. It can react faster than you can."

The corporal dialed something up on the program as Oz stripped off his shirt and climbed back into the pod.

"But, if there are multiple targets and friendlies around you, and there usually are, you cannot depend on the auto-tracking all of the time. The system does not know to stop firing until it can confirm that the target is destroyed. That wastes ammo. Try it again on manual now."

"Yes, sir," Oz called out as the pod slid shut.

"And, when you spin that fast, you will not be avoiding enemy bullets. You make yourself a larger target. If your auto-fire had not destroyed the enemy before they fired, you would have died all the same."

This time, when the screen came on, Oz found himself flying in formation with four friendlies beside him. They met the enemy less than a minute later. One target on the ground, four in the air.

He squeezed a burst of fire at the first, then chased a second with his gun rattling hard beneath him. As he finally locked onto the target, though, the sound beneath him died to an empty rattle. A second later, rays of light shot through the cockpit as bullet holes realistically tore into his ship. He screamed, despite himself, and the pod slid open.

Greaves grinned at the boy's shock. "How many bullets can this thing carry?" the corporal asked.

"Twelve hundred," Oz panted.

"And how many do you fire per second?"

Oz shut his eyes and tried to remember the number. "Sixty.. seven?"

"Correct. Giving you how many seconds of continuous fire?"

It was harder to do the math with Greaves starring at him. He shut his eyes and tried to picture the numbers. "Less than eighteen."

"Not good enough."

"Seventeen... point nine," Oz told him. "But I didn't fire for that long, sir. It was a four second burst on the first target, two on the second. I shouldn't have been firing before I had a lock but I had the bullets to spare. And-"

"You never have bullets to spare. Remember that," Greaves told him. "How many bullets were onboard the ship when the program began?"

Oz started to speak. Then he realized he'd been tricked. "Oh, that's bullshit, sir."

"It is not," Greaves replied. "Check your ammo levels early and often, and you will never be surprised."

"Let me go agai- Wait," Oz said. "How am I supposed to take out five targets with six seconds of fire?"

He stopped for a moment. The answer was obvious: Kill them faster.

"Nevermind."

This time, Oz took out three targets before running his ship through the center of an ally's. There was a fireball and a hiss of steam inside the pod before it kicked him out again.

By the forth try, he had it. Only two on his own side had died, too. By the time their session was up, that was still the best he was able to manage.

"Tomorrow, I'll beat it, sir."

"You survived and the enemy died. That is beating it, private."

It didn't feel like a victory, though. "How did I rank?" Oz asked.

"Two thousand thirty," Greaves replied.

Oz stumbled. "What?"

"I did not say that you couldn't do better. The ship does most of the work," Greaves told him. "It is easy to fly it and shoot. This misleads a lot of new recruits. They think its easy to master this ship, too. Run the program a thousand times, then see if you cannot do any better."

"Yes, sir," Oz said sullenly.

"It is program six. Do not feel too bad about being unfamiliar with it. It is more advanced than they tell me to give you. I wasn't in the mood to watch that baby shit today, though."

Oz thought about it for a moment. "That seems a bit unfair, sir," Oz said. "I didn't get much of a chance to break into the top thousand on program two."

He wanted his reward.

"You had a chance," Greaves replied, waving him off.

"I was warming up when you got there, sir. Learning through constant failure, like you say."

Greaves grinned, despite himself, and glanced at the boy through the corner of his eye. "It was passable flying. I don't know if you have done enough to earn something extra, though."

Oz opened his mouth to debate him, but thought better of it. It was no use, and the man wasn't wrong.

"But... you did beat number six. A lot of these other cadets will still be failing that by the end of the week."

Oz saw the man eyeing him again. He tried not to smile and jinx whatever it was that was happening.

Greaves sighed. "Alright, come on." Oz broke into a grin.

The corporal led him down a stairway to a stretch of hallways Oz hadn't seen before. It was the third floor dormitories. Greaves navigated the maze of passageways with familiar ease. "These are for the new corporals, and a few of the lower ranks. They won't be getting trainees of their own for years to come."

They entered into the A wing. A few people turned to them with confused looks, then quickly saluted Greaves as they recognized him.

The corporal pulled open the door to the bathroom and ushered Oz inside.

"Free meat, boys," Greaves called down the hall.

The corporal pulled the boy further inside and directed him onward.

"Thank you, sir," Oz whispered.

"You owe me now, kid," Greaves whispered back.

He had the boy undress beside the lockers. A few men were in the showers already, and raised an eyebrow in their direction. "Free meat?" they asked.

"Free meat," Greaves called over to them. They grinned widely at each other, eager as children. Oz rushed to kick off his shoes.

"Over on that seat there," Greaves told the boy, pointing to a raised stone step that ran along the back wall. It was hardly a foot off the ground.

Showers lined the walls inside the room, six to a side. A few of them were still running, making it warmer inside, and keeping the air thick with moisture. The scent of cheap, military soap hung around them.

Oz sat down on the step, near the center of the room, gasping slightly as his bare butt touched the cold stone. The men in the room had already begun to queue by the time he was settled.

"Free meat day," he heard them laughing to each other down the hall.

The first man grabbed the boy's head as he was watching the queue. Oz put his hands behind his back and let the man take what he needed. The man had clearly been desperate to spar. He took Oz's mouth roughly, and buried himself deep in the boy's throat, holding him like that until he was finished.

Oz gagged and was still trying to catch his breath when the next one stepped forward. He grabbed Oz by the hair and pushed his cock between the boy's lips.

Oz sucked at him greedily. The room was silent, other than the hiss of the showers and the wet sounds of his own mouth. He opened one eye and saw that the line was already out the door. The crowd was watching him with a predatory hunger. His cock jutted upward and began to spill clear, slick fluid down the shaft.

A few were gentle, but most thankfully weren't. The weaker ones had tasted bitter and thin. He knew he should appreciate anything he was given, but he'd grown spoiled. He couldn't help but think that these were a waste of his time now.

The strongest of them tossed him into the spray of the shower, thrust a bar of soap between the boy's ass, and mounted him there beneath the stream of hot water. Oz came before the man did, howling until his voice became raw.

"That man's going to be a sergeant some day," he told Greaves later that night. The corporal agreed.

"Time's up," Greaves howled at the crowd, an hour later. The room burst into groans and dark mutterings. But they knew better than to demand more from the corporal.

"Cadet, up!" Greaves barked. "We're hitting the gym."

Oz climbed up to a standing position using the wall for help. His lips were puffed, his belly was full to bursting, and his face was red and blotchy. Semen ran freely down his leg and chin as he hobbled back to collect his clothes. He dressed quickly without showering.

"Until next time, boys!" Greaves shouted as he slammed the bathroom door closed. Oz could hear their cheers and laughter from inside. He would have grinned, if his mouth wasn't so sore.

"There's a next time, sir?" he mumbled.

"When you've earned it," Greaves replied.

Oz nodded back.

His body was spilling over with power, from sparring with Greaves and those men. Nothing would stop him now. He would master the flight programs. He would do it before anyone else. He would fly until the G forces were a sweet caress. He would kill with surgical precision. He would earn Greaves' approval, again and again and again. He would grow stronger every time.

He hit the weight bench with a fury like never before, doubling his records, screaming through the weight of the bar until it submitted to his will. His cock jerked wildly between his legs throughout, spilling its glossy fluid with every push, bringing him closer to becoming a true warrior.