The Unseen War

Chapter 3

Earth Year 3010, February 4th

Twenty-four Months after the Attack

Life in the military was difficult but the fact of the matter was that my town, while not that big of a town, had sparked an unspoken war between the humans and most of the OtherWorlders. There were some OtherWorlders that took our side, but without definite proof of who had bombed us, most OtherWorlders were trying to remain neutral. For the most part our human based military had seen very little combat in the years building up to this. Sometimes, during training exercises, we were attacked by Tracers or we moved to a place to intercept Tracers. Overall though only about a tenth of the military had actually seen combat after two years.

The humans on earth had been preparing for a large-scale assault since the attack. It's been two years since and the general feeling with the soldiers was that they wanted war to start. Many of them didn't even know where the Charges had landed, and there had been no leads to tell us who had orchestrated the attack.

Most of the training that we were being put through was done in space and it had been a full year since the last time I had been on solid ground. There were plenty of times that they separated me and Siasana but recently they had put us in the same squad. Our thoughts were that some form of evidence had been found and we would be shipping out shortly. Maybe it had been by chance that me and Sia had been put back together, but it was more likely some kind of psychoanalysis that said we would train and fight harder with someone we cared about.

We still were allowed our own personal bunk which I thanked Sia for. It was easier to wake up in the middle of the night without worrying about an entire garrison. I rolled in my blanket that I used for 'sleeping' on the floor wishing I was only just waking up, even if it was from a nightmare.

"Welcome back to the OtherWorlds." Sia said when she saw me stirring. "Get any sleep?"

"Barely any." I said, sitting upright to look at her.

"You know I can take the floor every once in a while." Sia said, throwing her blankets back and standing up.

I sighed before responding. "If that was the only issue, I would take it."

We got dressed in silence, waiting for the Reveille. The digital trumpet sounded out and we stood up and exited our room for the muster. The commanding officer came through and did his usual spiel, yelling at anyone who was new or underdressed from getting out of bed late. We were forced to do pushups for a Whist who hadn't been in proper uniform.

The daily exercises had become second nature to me at this point. After two years of these drills it was more like a muscle memory than an exercise. I even would do extra sets between certain drills. I also had started exercising when I would wake up at night. It was easier than trying to go back to sleep. Sia still struggled with her exercises. She didn't keep up on them in her freetime, saying that only building specific muscles was useful for her skills. I never really argued the point with her, feeling personally that being ready for whatever people were going to throw at you is an important skill no matter what your skill set was.

I had tried a couple of times to figure things out about Sia, but aside from me calling her Sia instead of her full name I felt like things hadn't really changed since our first month together. Nothing too meaningful had happened aside from sharing a room. Most of the soldiers made fun of me cause they thought that I was the one being standoffish. I just literally didn't know how to interact with her in a personal way.

After the muster was done, we went for the usual Nutra-soup for breakfast, more commonly known as space mush, which was more nutrition than flavor. I sat by myself while Sia wandered off to do whatever she wanted, usually she would take a second meal from a soldier to throw it away. She said it was to keep her personal skill-set in check. Whether she would just steal it while they weren't looking or she talked them out of it didn't matter, she was skilled at both. I didn't like the idea of her taking another soldier's meal but considering how bad the space mush tasted, she was probably doing them a favor as long as she switched her targets day by day.