“100 more pushups! Then, I want you to do 10 sets of ten laps around the track!” shouted a middle-aged bald man.
He was wearing a gray jogging suit with the dark blue M1 on his chest and arms. His shouts were extra loud as he was using a cybernetic implant that could amplify his voice up to 10x louder than normal.
The underground training room made it so his voice bounced off the large walls. It had been this way all morning as the new trainees continued to work on various tasks given to them.
The bald trainer paced back and forth in front of the several tens of rows of trainees.
“For all you new probies joining us today, I won’t accept half-assed attempts! Either do it right the first time or do it all over from the start!”
Arron looked around as he easily continued to complete each task without any problem. The same thing could not be said for the several hundred other probationary trainees who were grunting and groaning as they continued on with the torture.
Both Iboi Semore, and Timid Shymus were sweating and panting heavily between loud grunts as they joined Arron on the track and tried to keep up with his fast pace.
“Probie 223 Arron, get over here!” shouted the bald trainer man.
Arron let his huffing and puffing dorm mates and jogged over the bald trainer.
When he stopped in front of him the trainer started talking again.
“Probie your…” instead of speaking at a normal voice level the trainer’s voice was still magnified ten times causing Arron to slap his hands over his ears to block the noise.
The bald trainer reached up with his right hand and tapped on his throat changing the volume setting.
“Your performance in all the tests has been number one. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when trying to compare the rabble over there with someone from the military. The military knows how to train their soldiers,” said the bald trainer. His normal voice surprised Arron as it was softer and far quieter than Arron would have guessed.
“Thank you sir!” said Arron, saluting out of habit from the military.
“No need to salute Probie, we aren’t in the military anymore.”
“You were in the military also?” asked Arron, surprised to see yet another veteran in the M1.
“Served under the chief. We were just young grunts back then…,” said the bald trainer as he looked off into the distance reminiscing on the past, maybe about when he had hair or possibly his time in the military during the Troubles. Arron didn’t know which it was.
“Any way you pass. There’s no point in having you waste time training with these wrecks anymore. You can head on to your next training class.”
Arron waved to his grunting and gasping dorm mates who were still running around the track but he got no response from them.
He left the large room and stopped out in the narrow hallway and tapped on his messages and found his schedule. The next training was… Target practice.
The large indoor shooting range was only down the hallway from the physical training room.
Arron entered the shooting range and found it to be nothing special, it was just a well-lit regular large weapons range for training the recruits in shooting.
The large room was silent as there was only the shooting instructor sitting in a hoverchair near the entrance.
Arron walked over to the large sleeping man who had drool running down his cheek into his large bushy red beard.
“Ummm… Sir, I’m here for training…” said Arron, hesitant on whether or not he should be interrupting the man’s sleep.
With a start, the man jumped up onto his feet his large parsteel fists were raised ready to fight as he scanned his surroundings for danger.
When he found Arron standing alone nearby he relaxed and nonchalantly wiped some of the drool away with his sleeve.
“You a new probie? Are you lost? Shouldn’t be anyone here for several more hours…” said the large man’s gruff voice.
“I passed all the requirements and was told to come here.”
The shooting instructor looked at Arron more closely before nodding.
“I am Al, your shooting instructor. Follow me,” said the large instructor as he walked over to one of many large metal lockers emended inside the right wall near the entrance.
With a wave of his right hand over the lock scanner he opened the locker and took out two pistols each from one of the many shelves that held several hundred of the old surplus pistols.
Al slammed the locker shut and handed Arron the smaller black pistol.
“This is the DualPockmark v1 pistol, the standard issued weapon for all M1.”
Arron was forced to listen to a list of nearly 100 rules of what not to do while at the shooting range.
When Al finished he walked over to the left wall near the entrance and pulled down a folding parasteel table.
“Before you can start shooting you must show you can properly take care of your service weapon,” said Al as he took his own DualPockmark v1 and quickly dismantled it and put it back together.
“Your turn,” said Al waving Arron forward.
Arron had never used the DualPockmark v1 before but was still able to take it apart and assemble it within a respectable time.
Al stood there watching Arron’s every move. He had a holo menu open and furiously typed out notes and tapped certain options as he watched.
“Alright step up to booth 1,” said Al pointing to the shooting booth all the way next to the right wall.
“Alright, you have ten tries today. Show me what you got.”
“Um, instructor the ammunition?”
“Don’t need any. It already has a special laser blank inside that gives proper feedback each time the trigger is pulled.”
Arron stepped up to the shooting range and a green holographic target with many rings popped up at 100 yards and started to move slowly left and right.
Arron took a deep breath aimed the pistol as soon as he flipped off the safety a white holographic target assist popped up.
Pa!Pa!Pa!
Sure enough, after each shot, there was a small kick from the pistol but it was manageable allowing Arron to finish the ten shots quickly.
Each time the pistol let out a bark a red dot appeared on the green target. All ten of the shots were grouped inside the first to center rings.
“Good. You’re not a screw-up who can’t hit the side of a barn even with the target assist. Come over here,” said Al.
Arron returned and handed back the DualPockmarkv1 to Al and received the second pistol.
“You passed the first test so you can try your luck with this bad boy. Do you know what it is?”
“Yes, it’s a Fatboy,” said Arron looking at the pistol in his hand.
It was quite a chubby pistol and had gained the nickname ‘Fatboy’ due to its two magazines and the twin barrels one above the other.
The Fatboy was created during the early years of the Troubles as a compact all-in-one weapon for the soldiers. The large lower barrel could fire large .50 cal bullets which were good for handling lightly armored targets while the upper barrel fired smaller rounds for soft targets like humans.
The Fatboy had long been retired from military service and all the surplus weapons in stock were sold off by Mother and Father to any of the Police forces of the Mega-city who wanted to buy them.
Only two forces bought them with the main buyer being the M1 and the second buyer being the first-floor police station. They bought them just as a backup because they were cheaper than the new weapons that were being used on the upper floors.
“So you understand its quirks?”
“It has no target assist, only iron sights. And the only digital component it has is the digital display of its current ammunition”
Al nodded and waved for Arron to disassemble and assemble it. When Arron completed that task he went back to booth 1.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The roars of the .50 cal rang out as he continued to shoot blanks at the several green moving holographic targets that winked out one after another after being hit.
As the gun continued to bark one shot after another his hands could only feel a buzzing numbness as he held onto both the front grip and the pistol grip. His arm muscles strained as he fought to keep the gun under control.
When the last target disappeared a score popped up in front of instructor Al on his wrist datapad.
“Impressive,” said instructor Al, “Next, test.”
Arron continued to breeze through the basic courses using several different weapons from the M1 arsenal and in the end, he passed with flying colors.
