Incipience

Chapter 3

The last three weeks onboard have been routine and devoid of life. Every day at 4:15 am an alarm comes blaring through the speakers, by 4:30 am everyone's finishing up in the bathroom, by 4:45 am we're all filing into the training hangar, and by 5:00 am we're kicking off our daily weight training—well, the majority of the group that is. Chloé and I always start off our training session with laps, mostly because of our consistent refusal to salute. 

From there we train until 8:30 am when Rombag releases us to the mess hall where breakfast is served. While everyone eats, a tutorial covering the skill of the day is projected all across the room. An hour later, we're back in the training room practicing and refining whatever we were just shown. This continues until Rombag feels that we've earned the right to food, which is usually somewhere around 3 pm. 

After the first two days, we all caught on that lunch should be spent eating for the first fifteen, twenty minutes at most while the rest of it is napped away in the barrack. Can you really blame us? The gravity is increasing by the day and we're getting worked like dogs, so some rest is definitely needed.

Lunch passes by quickly, then we're back training. It turns out that Inovarians are very competitive beings, so our afternoon sessions are usually spent facing off against each other. They have us wear these little monitoring bracelets so they know whether or not we're giving our all during a match. Those caught throwing matches are punished, so there's no slipping through the cracks. At the end of each day, we are ranked by scores, general statistics, and improvements during dinner. Those who rank well get to watch military propaganda as a "reward" while those who fared poorly have to put in some extra time in the gym before getting dinner. So far, Chloé and I have ranked very well, given that most of our competitions thus far have had to do with endurance and agility, but we still have had to put in a few hours at the gym because of our refusal to salute.  My body feels worn and beaten down, but I absolutely will not give into Rombag's requests. There's no way in hell I'm going to honor those Nazi bastards in any way, shape, or form.

...

Today's the first day since we came on board that we've been given the day off. The medical director for this barrack, Geqvi, forced Rombag to give us all a two-day medical leave because too many of us have been having fainting spells from over-exhaustion. I'm inexplicably grateful to Geqvi even if its reasons for letting us relax are purely selfish. Unlike Xiomoazi, the scientist I met on my first day, Geqvi is very uncaring, lazy, and crass. They told Rombag to leave us alone for the next two days simply because they were sick of having to nurse so many of us back to health. 

One day Chloé fainted during training and I went to go visit her in the infirmary during dinner. I was eager to go into the medical bay, partly to make sure that my friend was okay, but my main motivation for going was to see what more of them look like. Unfortunately, Geqvi is as unfriendly as they come and has elected not to show their face. 

Inovarian warrior code of conduct bars all soldiers from showing even an inch of skin when they're off-world in order to stay battle-ready. All of the crew members onboard this ship save for the medics are soldiers in the military, so it's fair why we haven't been able to see any their faces as of yet, but I feel that the medical staff refusing to reveal themselves is just petty. They know we're dying to see what they look like, and yet they openly refuse! Xiomoazi has been the only Inovarian that I've met and liked thus far, and 90% of that is due to the fact that she's shown herself.

"It's nice to just relax, no?" Chloé asks from beside me, effectively shaking me out of my thoughts. 

I look over to see Chloé looking as happy as can be. She's currently lounging beside me, basking in the artificial sun in the ship's pool room. Many of our peers are splashing around to their heart's content, but the two of us are just fine being near the water. You'd think I'd be the first one to dive in the pool, with me being an islander and all, but the water smells too artificial for my likings. It'd feel like a betrayal to my namesake to jump into something that looks and smells like it was mixed in some factory.

"It's nice to relax, but I wish I had something else to do," I reply honestly. "I'm not the type to just sit around."

That much is true. If I had a book or something to keep my mind occupied, I would be as content as ever, but just laying here is boring. We can't even be bored and comfortable since there's nowhere else to sit or lay down beside the concrete surrounding the pool. You can tell this area wasn't meant to be a hangout spot or anything of the sort because there are no chairs, tables, shade umbrellas, etc to make the space look and feel more welcoming.

"If you're so bored, tell me something interesting."

"Like what?"

"I don't know, tell me about your family, where you grew up, what your life was like."

Huh, now that I think of it, Chloé and I haven't really had many in-depth conversations about ourselves since the first day we met. 

Rombag is very strict about us keeping quiet during our punishment laps (which are getting longer by the day), we're constantly on the move during training, meals are eaten quickly in order to fit in power naps, and the two of us pass out almost instantly at lights out,  so we haven't had the time to get to know each other all that well. Ours has been a friendship filled with comfortable silence, which is admittedly bittersweet. Back home, Johni and I would chatter away constantly. If we were together, we'd be talking about what's going on in our lives, the funny things that we saw, or even the sad things that we've experienced. 

I've missed having someone to talk to, so I'm happy to give Chloé a rundown of my life. I tell her about my favorite things about living in St. Thomas, my family, my friends, my goals, and my aspirations. In the middle of talking about the last two, my enthusiasm subsided. 

There's not much point in talking about things that'll never happen anymore.

 I dreamed of being an anthropologist and making some sort of huge breakthrough on some ancient civilization or some modern mystery, but now that's going to be impossible. I doubt I'll ever get back to Earth, and even if I do, there's no guarantee it's even still inhabitable. Knowing the Inovarians, they probably set something off to destroy the planet after we took off.

Seeing my sudden sullenness, Chloé makes to cheer me up. She dives into a few of the crazy stories of her childhood and teenage years. Within minutes, it feels as if all is forgotten and my chest feels a lot lighter. This is the closest I've been to being happy in weeks.