Soldiersworld

Chapter 1

"Name." 

"Thomas Jace Rainwell."

"Alright. Majors Hawk and Kestrel will accompany you to your new assignment. Meet them outside the barracks." 

As Tom left the Assignment desk, he wondered if Hawk and Kestrel were going to be his unit. Each units' soldiers were renamed after a certain group of animals. He'd figured it out from the pairs of soldiers that ran Basic Training- Orca and Porpoise, Ocelot and Lion, Wolf and Husky- and also, they were all in pairs. Tom wanted to know desperately who his partner would be, and what his codename would be. 

Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder. "Excuse me." Tom turned to look at the person whose hand rested on his shoulder. He was shorter than Tom, but not short. He had dirty brown hair and blue eyes that reminded him eerily of a hawk. He could guess which soldier this was. "Are you Thomas?" His voice was soft and rough. The accent was strange; Tom thought it might have been Spanish.

"Yeah." said Tom. He realised he was at the bunker door. He looked at the other soldier standing there, a very short boy with grey-blue eyes and dark, short-shaved hair. He stared at Tom with no emotion. Suddenly Tom felt very uncomfortable, and turned back to Soldier Hawk.

Hawk observed him lazily, slightly inclining his head, then straightening again. "Follow Kestrel and I." He made a gesture to Kestrel, and he lined up with Hawk. They began marching in the traditional soldier's way down the hall. Tom followed, staring at their backs without change. 

Before Tom knew it, he was in the soldier's barracks. 

"From this point on, your name is no longer Tom." Hawk said. "You will be known- legally- as Osprey. You will be the lead soldier in your pairing. You will be a part of my unit, the Raptor unit. You will go through Raptor training. We will be in active duty in one month." 

Active duty, thought Tom- no, Osprey, he was Osprey now- I'm going to be an active duty soldier. Active duty. 

"Who's my partner?" Tom/Osprey asked- he was unsure what to think of the name change.

"You'll meet them soon," was Hawk's vague reply. He and Kestrel promptly left.

Tom was left alone with his thoughts. He didn't think he could ever completely accept the name Osprey, even though it was technically his legal name now. He hoped his partner wasn't as eerie and cold as Hawk and Kestrel seemed to be (or maybe they weren't so bad when you got to know them, Tom didn't know)- and that his partner maybe wasn't as short as Kestrel was.  

He was going onto active duty. Actual combat. Fighting. 

I could get killed.

It didn't matter. He was becoming something new, finally.

---

He reported to the first day of training at 4:00 AM, eager to meet his partner. Seven other soldiers, excluding Hawk and Kestrel, stood at parade rest, awaiting- to Tom's surprise- Kestrel's command. Hawk stood behind him. 

Tom quickly joined the rank and went to parade rest.

"Soldiers, aten-hut!" shouted Kestrel in one of the thickest Slavic accents Tom had ever heard.

"HIT!" responded the soldiers, snapping to attention.

"Soldiers, you will now receive your partners!" shouted Kestrel. Tom was certain that if Kestrel hadn't shouted, then there was no way to understand the accent. He stepped back, and Hawk stepped up. 

Aha, thought Tom. Kestrel does the shouting. Hawk does the talking.

Hawk looked over all of them and said, "Soldier Kite! You are paired with Soldier Vulture," 

Kite. Creative name for a bird, thought Tom as a large man walked over to an even larger man. 

Harrier was paired with Owl. Falcon was paired with Goshawk. 

That left a small, feminine figure standing to the left of Tom to be his partner. 

"Soldier Osprey! You are paired with Soldier Peregrine."

Tom turned to Peregrine. He couldn't tell if Peregrine was actually a female or not. Their face was covered by the typical soldier's mask, minus the goggles, revealing shining silver eyes that reminded him all too well of a different person. But this couldn't be Tord- he had never had a frame like this, with feminine hips and possibly a bit of a chest. On his face, Tom could see scars on Peregrine's right side, along with one crossing their left eye. You don't know, whispered Tom's brain, if Tord could have got those in the explosion-

NO, thought Tom. Tord is dead.

He decided, just to make himself clear on that, to assume Peregrine was female. 

He stood back in rank with Peregrine. Peregrine looked up at him- Tom realised he had not got his wish and Peregrine was, in fact, only a little taller then Kestrel- but she was not cold; something about her eyes told Tom she was smiling. Tom tried to smile back through his mask, but he seriously doubted that Peregrine could tell through his black eyes.

---

After the first early morning training session, called General Training, they ate breakfast in the mess hall. Peregrine went elsewhere to eat, because Tom could not find her anywhere. 

---

Unit training was the most interesting. 

Tom thought it would just be him training with the unit, but it turned out it would be one-on-one with Peregrine, and Hawk's voice would command them through ear units. Also, they would be in virtual reality. 

"Well," Tom said to Peregrine as they hooked in to VR, "This is going to be interesting."

"No kidding," said Peregrine. To Tom's dismay, her voice sounded neither male nor female. It wasn't Tord's, but there was something...

Shit. It was definitely Norwegian. It was more worrying, but he shook it off. It's not Tord! His voice was male!

And suddenly Tom was whisked into VR. 

It was much more real then Tom would have liked. They were in a semi-dark house, the flashlights on their helmets switched on. "Soldiers." Hawk's voice sounded through virtual earpieces, "Our unknown enemy is in this house. Your mission is to isolate it. Treat this like a real life situation," added Hawk, "Because this is one of the possible things the threat could be."

A shout emitted from somewhere in the house, followed by a thud. Tom glanced at Peregrine. He couldn't tell what she was thinking; her goggles were pulled over her face. "Begin your mission." said Hawk. 

Remembering basic training, Tom stepped in front of Peregrine, who immediately took his back. 

A scuffling noise emitted from their left. Tom led. A dark hall led to a door. The scuffling was coming from stairs to their right. "We're going downstairs," Tom whispered. They began the descent; despite being backwards, Peregrine seemed untroubled. 

The scuffling stopped as they reached the bottom, and began down another hall full of doors. 

"Oh my god," came Peregrine's voice. "There's blood all over the floor."

Tom looked down and almost gagged. Peregrine had failed to mention the bits of matter in the blood. Tom hadn't seen anything like it. The chunks weren't just red, but yellow too. 

"Oh no. Oh god. Oh god," said Peregrine. 

"There's a body, isn't there?" Tom asked, sick to his stomach. 

"No... whatever did this has to be alive. Not a gun. Not a bomb," Peregrine's response was horrifying. It was true- surely there would've been noise if this had been a gun, or a bomb. Not a single shout, a thud... whoever it had been attacked hadn't expected it.

"They were jumped. They were jumped! Peregrine, get ready-"