It is the year 30,621 of the Cadre calendar.
Our nation, the Fahren Empire, has been at war with the Frith Conglomerate for longer than our archives have ink to record. I asked my grandfather once when the first shot was fired. He just looked at the bruised purple sky, adjusted his oxygen mask, and shrugged. He didn’t know. His father didn’t know. It has been a millennium of iron and fire, a slow-motion collision of two civilizations that forgot how to stop.
“F-7712,” a voice crackled through the overhead vox-casters. “Proceed to Lane Seven for biometric verification.”
The sound snapped the tether of my thoughts. I blinked, the dry air of the Sector 4 transport hub stinging my eyes as I pulled myself away from the history of my people and into the loud, metal reality of the present.
I was standing in the middle of a cavernous hall of black basalt and reinforced steel. It was a space designed to move people like water through a pipe. Around me, the line of seventeen-year-olds stretched back into the smog-choked shadows of the Citadel.
This was the day we all waited for. In Fahren, you don’t really exist until you get your assignment. Some of the guys in my block had been making jokes about it for weeks, betting on who would end up in the infantry and who would be lucky enough to get assigned to the orbital kitchens. Others just sat in silence, their eyes fixed on the floor, already practicing the stoicism the Instructors expected of us.
I checked my pocket one last time, feeling the small, smooth stone my mother had pressed into my hand this morning. She hadn’t cried. Fahren mothers don’t cry when their sons are drafted; they just make sure your boots are polished so you don’t get a demerit on your first hour.
The girl standing directly in front of me turned around. She had dark hair tied back in a messy knot that definitely pushed the limits of the Academy’s grooming regulations, and she was chewing on a piece of synthetic stimulant-gum.
“You’re drifting, Seven-Seven,” she said, her voice carrying a cheerful, sharp edge. “If you stare at that vox-caster any harder, it might actually start liking you.”
“Just waiting for the gate to move,” I said.
“Aren’t we all?” She grinned, revealing a flash of white teeth. “I’m Mir. F-1102. I’m hoping for a Vulture slot. My brother says the food is better in the flight decks, even if the life expectancy is shorter.”
“Kael,” I replied, then corrected myself. “F-7712.”
“Stick with the name while you can,” she whispered, winking. “Once we cross that threshold, we’re just biological components for the Mandate. Try to look a bit more excited, Kael. The Instructors are watching the biometrics. They like the ones who look like they’re ready to kill something.”
I looked toward the end of the hall. The heavy, hydraulic blast doors were sliding open with a low, rhythmic thud that vibrated in the floor tiles.
Behind those doors lay the processing center. We’d grown up on stories of the “Interface”—the surgery that would link our nervous systems to the Empire’s war machines. It wasn’t something to fear, not really. It was just the next step. You go to school, you turn seventeen, you get your ports, and you fly. That was the Mandate.
“Eyes forward!” a Peacekeeper barked, tapping a shock-stave against his armored thigh as he paced the line.
Mir turned back around, her shoulders squaring with a practiced, military grace. I looked up at the high, vaulted ceiling. Through the reinforced armorglass, I could see the faint, flickering trails of the orbital defense platforms. They looked like stars, but they were the only stars we ever saw through the pollution.
The line surged. The cold, recycled air of the military wing hit my face, smelling of antiseptic and oil. My life as a civilian was over, and my life as a weapon was beginning.
The Fahren Empire was calling, and I was ready to answer.