A Disturbance of Shadows by Jake Enholm

Author:Jake Enholm [Enholm, Jake]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-03-22T06:00:00+00:00

0650 GMT, 20 August 3165

Quantico, North America

“Candidates that survive high intensity operations during their small unit leadership evaluation tours have a particularly hard time putting up with minutia when they return to garrison life. Care must be taken to keep them from dropping at this point, they are extremely valuable assets.”

Colonel Salent Trent, Guidebook for OCS Staff Members

After SULE, life in Quantico seemed to reach new levels of stupid. There was a never-ending barrage of moronic field exercises whose only accomplishment was a test of our patience. Fifty percent of the candidates who had gone out on SULE had not reappeared with Delta Company. The statistics weren’t shared outside the company staff, but one of the candidates saw them on a company report:

Killed in action: 6%

Failed SULE: 35%

Incomplete: 9%

We didn’t know what happened to candidates that failed but later I found out that they were de-tanked, reversing their organix to their original state in a process as painful and dangerous as the original augmentation process.

I was also reunited with Umbra who has matured in my absence from a porn-addicted adolescent Machina to a porn-addicted post-adolescent Machina. We moved into different barracks across the large black parade deck, the large barracks that could accommodate our new physiques. We sneered at the obstacle courses on the other side of the parade deck where the ‘little candidates’ did their physical training, ate in the large section of the chow hall reserved for tanked candidates (where the food was still revolting), and sat in our own section in the back of the auditorium that had seats large enough to accommodate us. I wasn't the only Delta Company candidate that had fresh scars, ten percent of us had been wounded and the company staff no longer treated us like raw recruits.

Most of our time was being spent in virtuals, alternating between battle sims and low intensity ops. They weren’t too bad, but after what I'd been through they seemed like a waste of time.

Umbra hid in my wall locker in our barracks room during the long duration virtuals, doing what he does, occasionally wondering off base. After Delta Company's second virtual fight, Umbra played back a conversation for me that he'd recorded between Major Wash, the staff company commander and Capt Bla'air during an inspection of our room.

“West’s and Freemans’s quarters sir,” Bla’air’s voice said.

“West huh?” Wash’s deeper baritone sounded disgusted. “What to do about him?”

“What do you mean sir?”

“I mean he does well academically, but he’s weak. I don’t want him in a position where he can harm the Marine Corps.”

"I'm not sure Headquarters Marine Corps would agree with you sir. Especially after his SULE tour."

"That was a fluke. Morally, he's reprehensible. I don't want him leading Marines."

“You don’t want him to get a combat MOS.”

“That’s exactly what I mean.” Wash said.

“He’s at the top of the bottom third of the Company. We can inflate his leadership score a bit and put him in the bottom of the middle third. Then give him adjutant or supply.

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