6
May
The third in the JNY serial. I’ll have a fridayflash tomorrow, as well.
This was hell. At least, it was Jenny’s idea of hell. JNY-35197 had been pulled off the desert planet with the last of the remaining humans, shoved into cold storage, and shipped to an icy rock in the boondocks. From a desert to a god-damn ice cube. In a women’s suit. Jenny must have been assigned to a real joker at command.
At least he wasn’t being shot at here. When those bombs had covered the sky with ash, and nothing came to stop the juggernauts, he and the rest of the grunts had run. No last stand for him, no heroic death. Bugger that for a lark. Jenny had been locked in a building for most of his life, he wasn’t going to die just yet.
Of course, command wanted to make him suffer for being alive. No information, no idea of the time in cold storage, nothing. Just another bungalow at the ass end of the universe, another forty soldiers, and mindless patrolling.
To pass the boredom, Jenny had started talking to the survivors from the original forty grunts. He’d asked about their lives. All the grunts had been standard organ replacements, locked in some building, exercised, fed. Dull, dull, dull. Just like him. They all had names that were a play on their ID numbers too. ZCK-25468 was Zeke, LHA-98734 was Laura, and on it went.
Life was just like being back on the desert planet, before the aliens had come. Pointless missions, non-existent command, crap food. Only difference: the training sims had been upgraded. Now they had aliens to shoot at, instead of other humans. Whoopee.
The beep that signalled orders came out of the speakers, and Jenny perked up. Most interesting thing in weeks. Command started speaking, but it was meandering gruel, nothing important. At least command had a different voice. Then Jenny perked his ears. Raiding practice against other bungalows? That sounded fun.
The next day, suit technicians came, taking away the old ones and replacing them with infiltrator gear. Less armour than the battlesuit, more electronics. Jenny and the other grunts spent the next month studying, learning how to use the advanced technology. He wondered why these suits were being given to replacements, and not real humans. Maybe the reals were all dead. Or maybe the replacements are more expendable.
Either way, JNY-35197 didn’t care. He got to play with interesting gear. Made for the first time in a while he had fun. Training was tedious, constant orders from command, always barking, barking. Still, Jenny got good at being stealthy, and then he got very good. Jenny was point man for the whole pack of forty.
Another month, and command said the grunts were good enough to test. Then the raids began. Against themselves, against other teams, defending other teams. Jenny ‘died’ a lot, but he got better. Soon he lead the forty to victory in a raid, and then another. Life was looking up, looking fun. And then the aliens came again.
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