Free Atlas by Isaac Hooke

few days into the seventh week, I awoke to a high-pitched whistle in the middle of the night.
    "General Quarters!" came the voice over the main circuit. "General Quarters! All hands man your battle stations. Up and forward to starboard, down and aft to port. General Quarters, general Quarters. Incoming rockets, starboard side! Incoming rockets!" The klaxon sounded five times and the message repeated.
    My heart was beating fast. It had finally come. Battle Stations. The culmination of Basic training.
    Two Petty Officers rushed into our berth.
    "RPOC!" one of them said. "Integrate your division and get your soldiers into full battle dress! You have five minutes !"
    Ace was our RPOC (Recruit Petty Officer in Charge) tonight. He saluted, then turned to us. "You heard the man! Dress and grab the spacebags!"
    We dressed and mustered with the women in the compartment outside. I grabbed one of the heavily-laden spacebags on the way out. There was one bag for every three recruits. It didn't feel too heavy, but I knew it would feel like an anchor as the evening wore on. I wouldn't have to worry about that, though. Someone would relieve me, right?
    Bowden separated us into two teams, Red and Yellow, and assigned two petty officers to each team as facilitators. Alejandro, Tahoe and I were in Red team. Shaw and Ace ended up in Yellow.
    PO1 (Petty Officer First Class) Rao explained the rules. "Everything you've learned in Basic has been building to this. You've been called to arms and it's time to perform! Though the majority of you will move on to your rating schools, in less than a month some of you may be stationed on starships. So while this is a practice run, I want you to treat it like a real mission. And you'll be graded as if it were. This is serious business.
    "Every tiny mistake you make, that's one strike against you. Three strikes and you're out—you get rolled back to a junior division and have to repeat Battle Stations. If you make any major mistakes, you're rolled back on the spot, regardless of how many previous strikes you have. Stop during any of the runs, or otherwise refuse to train, you're out. Same goes for any gundecking or 'gaming the system' type strategies, which won't be tolerated. You do what's asked of you in the given time allotted, no more, no less. Understood?"
    " Yes sir! "
    He nodded. "Good. Luckily for you, passing is more a matter of avoiding strikes than accumulating any sort of score. Survive the night unscathed, and you're in the Navy."
    Ace gave the order to proceed to the first event and we began the half-mile jog to Building 1312. The snow was just blowing around us. Blizzard conditions.
    "It's times like this that I really hate you," Alejandro said beside me. " Caramba . Why did I ever let you talk me into leaving my sunny country?"
    "Who's speaking?" PO1 Rao shouted.
    Alejandro quickly clammed up.
    Once we reached 1312, Rao explained the first objective. "Sino-Koreans have ambushed your destroyer class starship and taken out your engines. A boarding party is trying to seize your ship. You're unarmed, so your orders are to extract your injured shipmates and move them to a secure area for treatment. The BEARs are offline." BEAR stood for Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot. "So it's up to you to perform the extraction of your shipmates. Provide first aid and bring the injured to the designated area as quickly as you can. You are a team, first and foremost, an individual, second. How you function as a cohesive team in times of danger will mean the difference between life and death. Live by the rules of honor, courage and commitment and you will do well, not just here in training but in life itself." He picked out three of the taller recruits, including Tahoe. "You, you and you, you're going to be the casualties."
    The 'casualties' were led away. The assistant RPOC on our team assigned corpsmen, scouts and defenders, and then divided the remainder of us into four-person parties. I was teamed up with