Free Welcome to the Marines (Corporate Marines Book 2) by Tom Germann

Now he points over his shoulder with his thumb at the back wall where no one is standing and carries on. “These are the physical fitness instructors that will help break you into the new super-soldiers you will become. And this,” he carefully looks for and finds the three scary people and gestures at them with a gently waving hand while smiling carefully as if this will stop the woman from coming over and pulling his arm off his body and beating him to death with it, “is the instructor cadre for the final phase: armour candidates.”
    A quiet murmur runs through the hall at that announcement. I guess that most of those here had thought that it was automatic that they would carry on right through into the armour part. I know a bit more than they do, thanks to some comments I overheard back when we first left. I don’t think many of us will make it all the way at all.
    I just have to work harder than anyone here and hope that I make it through. I’m hopeful that if I do well enough and they invest enough time and money in training me, they might ship me off-planet to work on one of the new colonies where they are desperate for people. All our training would help set us up for that. A lifetime there would be much better than being killed or locked in a cage for the rest of my life.
    The madman continues. “Your first course of study will be beginning shortly. You will each be put into a ten-candidate section. You will eat, go to class and work together with those candidates in all things.”
    He starts walking up and down the stage, gesturing at an audience only he can see. “You are likely not used to the routine of real learning that you will be carrying out here. You will start off with a physical fitness class every day to tone you up and get the nannite packages working to maximum effectiveness. You will then eat and head to class. You will be in class one day and then tested the next. You will be constantly tested every day that you are here. There will be big and small tests. Tests are the most important thing that you can have during this phase of training. Of course, the results are there as well. But you will all deal with that to the best of your ability. Or you’ll fail.”
    He turns back and wanders over to the podium. No one is talking; we are all processing what he had said. Constant testing and lots of schoolwork. I was bad at schoolwork.
    We are directed to stand as the staff leaves the auditorium and then we’re told to break up into groups of ten that are labelled on the overhead screen.
    The disembodied voice is very nasal and annoying with its directions. I first think it’s an AI but it has too much of a personality. I find my group after some looking and we head off to the room we were directed to. We are off and moving.
    It’s strange how they have broken us up into our group, but they must have had a reason for it. As we went off to our different lectures, we formed into larger groups, but we were never in the same larger group. It changed almost every class and we did not see all the rest of the candidates as we moved through our training day. In any class there were fifty of us. For physical fitness classes we were in groups of a hundred.
    The class groupings never make sense. Every section is a ten-candidate grouping. Now when five sections show up, they are five different sections every time. We rarely have the same sections together more than once or twice in a training week.
    Classes are hours long, with short breaks to keep us from falling asleep.
    The physical fitness instructors expect very high standards of fitness and push us more than I have ever been pushed at school or by friends. Running for cardio, circuit training that leaves everyone breathless and most of us end up throwing up, and weight-training until we feel like we have been pushed to the limits.
    Our schedules show us in class seven days a week. On Sunday we finish two hours earlier but Monday shows on the schedules