Welcome
to Hell
A lot of Agents look back on their years at the Academy as
the worst experience of their lives, as though it were five years of the most bizarre
intense fraternity hazing that the Devil himself could have thought up. Armed-forces
basic training times a million. And, to be honest in many ways it is. It is a
truly excruciating time. both mentally and physically. it sits like a black
stain on the wall in the dungeon of memory. Agents wish they could block it out
but they never will.
The other side of that same truth is that not a single OZMA
agent isn't proud of having graduated from it, as proud of it as they are of anything
they've ever accomplished. They know that the time in hell is necessary. We'd
all be dead meat out there in the field if we hadn't been put through the
Academy's brutality. The fact that I can come upon an exsurgent gnawing the
limbs off a little girl and not throw up, wet themselves or break down crying
is testimony to the success of their training. When they see the little
glimpses of hell that punctuate their mission, they can always say. 'This isn't
so bad. I've been through worse.'
Only the elite make it into the Academy, and those who make
it out ... They are something else. something beyond that, something almost
godlike. Just as importantly, they are
literally Consortium men. Inside and out, they belong to the Planetary
Consortium. Those selected for training are already some of the most competent
people alive. An elite section of the Intelligence department, called "the
Committee" observes potential recruits, whittling thousands of names down
to just a few hundred every five years before the real selection begins.
Potential trainees must have little in the way of close
ties. When a person becomes an OZMA Agent, the Consortium doesn't want some
snooping brother trying to find out where he disappeared to. Experience has
shown the committee that existing family is the greatest temptation for an
Agent or cadet to go AWOL. ( another reason that it permits so few agents to
have outside lives ). It's rumored that on rare occasions, the Consortium will
authorize the "disappearance" of one or two family members to aid in
the enrollment of a particularly appealing candidate.
When an appropriately skilled and unconnected candidate is
discovered, Committee members watch their every move for at least a year,
sometimes longer. Often, an existing Agent will befriend the candidate at his
job or pose as a neighbor and ask leading questions - never enough to reveal
any information about the Project, but enough to gauge the recruits potential
reaction. Then the first real contact is made.
The candidate is secretly forknapped and in VR simulspace,
the Project's mission is generally outlined, with the candidates potential role
in the conspiracy explained in detail. If
the recruit breaks mentally and tries to escape or threatens to go to the
authorities, the fork is deleted.
If he finds the prospect appealing, even exciting, the
Committee members arrange for his disappearance from normal society. Usually,
an deftly constructed fatal accident or similar tragedy will occur, and the new
recruit is resleeved at the academy to begin training.
The raw recruits who enter the Academy are talented men and
women from many fields - soldiers and policemen, engineers and programmers,
teachers. and athletes. The graduates who leave the Academy are Project OZMA
agents, the most effective spies. detectives and soldiers ever forged in the
fires of evolution and shaped by the hands of man.
Cadets are selected less for their skills than for their drive
and potential - physical, intellectual and emotional. The combination of real
passion and emotional stability is one of the rarest combinations the species
can produce.
These criteria alone make the physical requirements seem
almost reasonable... not that some agents
don't seem crazy - some are, but it's a special kind of crazy. As for the
skills, those can be taught.
The First Few Days
Starting with the orientation speech. the instructors and
administrators try to be up-front about what 's going to happen. They tell you
from day one that you're in for a hell of a ride. But most of the recruits
don't listen. These are men and women from all over the solar system,
hand-picked because of their skills and natural abilities. Most of them are
overconfident, puffed up and cocky. They're already used to adversity and think
they've seen it all. Nothing scares them.
When they walk in. the recruits are excited. Just taking in
the place with its campus-like feel. They hardly notice how the upperclassmen
look at them - the pitying looks they get as they receive their uniforms and
are shown to their barracks. They talk and exchange stories with each other;
everyone is easy and confident, all smiles and back-slapping. The first few
days are a cakewalk, just looking around, scouting it out. Everything seems
about like they expected.
If I could say one thing to new recruits as they come in.
I'd tell them 10 savor those days, to etch them into their minds as a comfort
to be returned to again and again. On the morning of the fourth day, it all
changes. That's when they pass out the schedules.
The Curriculum
Academy training is divided into two equally important
areas: education and drills. Education, or academic learning, is the most
intense scholastic training a person could receive without breaking their mind.
Simulspace, accelerated to the maximum of current technological limits, extreme
psychological behavioral conditioning, infomorphic forking to multiple simultaneous
classes and then psychosurgically re-integrating to an Alpha Ego. The material
is not all that difficult (at first), but the sheer volume of information that
is learned is astounding - chemistry, physics, electronics, information
technology, languages, mechanical engineering, sociology...The list goes on.
The instructors expect you to read and know the material from two to three textbooks a week. If you fail a
test. you get incredibly thorough and abusive tutoring from an instructor with
the personality of a Rottweiler.
If you fail it again...well, no one really knows,. There is
no flunking out of the Academy, though the term is used to describe a cadet who
snaps under the strain and foolishly runs for it. You can't drop a class, or
withdraw from study; the only way to end the schooling is looking up at a
headstone.
At the same time you're receiving this force-feeding of
knowledge, the drill sergeants run you through an unbelievably physically and
mentally challenging battery of drills, most of which are extremely dangerous.
Serious injury and "placing out" (no one is said to have simply ..
died" in Academy training) become commonplace. and friendships become a
luxury. When Agents talk about training being hell, they are referring to the
drills, which are run every day except for Sunday.
Each day is equally divided. One month you'll do book
learning in the morning, followed by a hearty lunch and drills in the
afternoon. The next month it's the other way around. Either one might be
bearable by itself. but the combination amplifies the stress enough to strain
the most hardened cadet.
After six months, when you've finally had all you can take,
they send you on furlough to some out-of-the-way pleasure-resort. Everything is
paid for - many cadets realize for the first time that they'll never have to
worry about money again - and you get a week in paradise.
But it never seems like long enough. Just when you think
your mind and body are back to normal, just when you've finally managed to let
go of the sick vigilance that's been rammed down your throat, they drag you
back in.
Book Learning
To illustrate the breadth of knowledge that the Academy
requires OZMA Agents to master, i'11 run through a brief summary of the subjects
every recruit must learn. Basically. you're required to know everything about a
few subjects, and a few things about everything.
Now. I've made it sound like every recruit has to sit
through every minute of every class to survive. That's not true. Most potential Agents already have achieved experience
in one or two fields, and high competence in several others. The Academy doesn't Want to waste resources preaching to the converted. Trainees may take
placement tests during the first week (after hours) to "test out" of
subjects that they feel they already know. In fact the administrators have designed
the curriculum with the expectation that each recruit will test out of at least
two subjects. Those who don't had better be phenomenal students, or they're
pretty much recycler-fab bait
This list only covers the first two years of schooling. Once
a recruit is enlisted in a department their education becomes much more specialized.
The basic year-three to year-five curricula will be covered shortly.
Basic Science
Agents must take courses in basic chemistry, physics,
biology, zoology, botany, anatomy. medicine. ecology. geology and astronomy.
This is equivalent 10 college-level course work. but proceeds much faster.
Special emphasis is placed on the known anatomy and habits of exsugents and
exobiology. Academy instructors surf Blacknet and read squad reports carefully
for any new information that lhey could add to their classes.
In addition, the specific details of our alien-infected
enemies are covered in xenology. xenobiology and xenopsychology.
Parascience
All recruits are tested for Watts-McLeod psi ability upon
entering the Academy. Those with the infection are given added course work in
'parascience'. learning Lo develop and master their psychic powers. The added
work exempts them from certain classes and drills - at their sergeant's
discretion. Cadets with the gift generally held in high regard for their
usefulness in field work, and while not coddled. they certainly have it easier
than the rest.
Parascience training has no set curriculum, because each
Async's abilities are unique. Each is assigned to a faculty Psi-Ops sponsor,
trained individually and given assignments and lessons based on his or her
particular talents. Recruits with telepathic ability are given special training
in Grey telepathic communication which requires a great deal of patience,
intelligence and raw psychic power to master. Those cadets who d, however, are
prized agents, always drafted early by their chosen department and specifically
requested by mission sponsors.
Technology
The Technology department built a special complex at the
Academy in B.F. 60 that has become the model for other departments. It is
constantly kept state of the art, and the instructors who teach there are
considered the best - even grudgingly by instructors in other departments. The
required course work is extensive, and must be broken down into sub-sections:
Computing: All Agents must be familiar with computer
systems, from fabricating microchips to programming AIs. Agents must learn to
repair any type of circuitry and understand the myriad formats of connections
and cabling that supplement Mesh communication. In addition. each recruit must
choose at least three distinct computer-based knowledges to learn.
Vehicles: The ability to repair, maintain and operate a
number of vehicles, from a lunar rover to a transatmospheric shuttle required.
Weaponry: Much of what is done in later drills involves a
plethora of weapons. In weaponry classes. potential agents learn how to use,
dismantle, clean, repair and build a number of weapons, from knives to missile
artillery.
Engineering and Mathematics: The Technology department also
takes care of teaching engineering and mathematics courses. Agents are required
to have a basic working knowledge of algebra, trigonometry, calculus, drafting
CAD blueprints. electrical engineering and mechanical engineering.
Philosophy and Logic: Philosophy isn't ignored at the Academy; Agents joke
that..."Why am I here?" takes on more relevance there than
anywhere. Principles of logic are covered
in depth and turn out to be very useful in other disciplines. including
computer programming, info-sec and
science. Ethics courses tend to be weighted toward Justifying the Consortium's
activities, but nonetheless are taught expertly.
Social Sciences: Agents receive intense training in sociology and psychology
They also are given a special course in Kinesics.
History: The Academy history department teaches history a little bit
differently from your standard liberal arts college. Consortium historians have
pieced together the real history of the world. The fact is, much of what
traditional history teaches us has glaring holes in it due to the infopocalypse
of The Fall.
Academy course work reflects this by adding facts about the
Titans, the Governments, the first discovery of many of the Pandora Gates, the
history or space colonization and pre-fall geopolitics, the various types of
military programs that have been uncovered that were thought lost or hidden
from history and so on.
Languages: Recruits are required to learn two languages other than
their native tongue. The most common are English, French. Japanese, German,
Russian and Spanish.
How They Make You Want To Die
Someone spent some serious time and effort thinking up the
various drills that make up the Academy's "extracurricular
activities". Half of every day (save Sunday) is spent maneuvering and
fighting in zero gravity, freerunning through dense habitat architecture in
Parkour training, bathed in blood. hacking up vomit or swimming through filth.
When recruits come into the Academy, they feel like the biggest, baddest
warriors in the system. After the first drill, theyre bawling like babies.
Drills start out on a precise schedule. Trainees are given a
whole year's schedule, With brief description of the drills, so they have ample
time to prepare (mentally and physically) for the upcoming exercises. The
sergeants know that the drills are hard and want to give the recruits a fair
shot at surviving them. If anyone fails to complete a drill . they receive more
intense and nasty personal attention until they do...or they place out of the
exercise.
In addition to hospitalization time, every potential agent
receives 10 excuses a year. These exempt them from any drill for any reason, No
questions are asked the sergeant simply marks the recruit absent and marks off
an excuse. Cadets are told that no one has remained at the Academy for a single
day after an eleventh absence.
Year One: Endurance
The first year is spent conditioning the body to withstand
the pressures of the coming year's drills and the rigors of field work. Without
the endurance drills, the rest would be pointless. These drills also serve to
weed out the mentally unfit very quickly. Especially the so-called
"weeding drills" which tend to have a higher body count.
Weeding drills are the most agonizing of the Academy's many
agonizing drills, all the more so because they're unannounced. They often test
cadets psychological endurance and serve as benchmarks in a recruit's training,
but their primary purpose is to gauge a future agent's physical and mental
ability to withstand surprise adversities.
Their exact nature varies - perhaps a 10 mile hike under
live fire after a long day of other drills - but it is usually as surprising as
their timing.
Since all other drills are explained and scheduled, these
earn a special place in cadet's hearts. They also tend to be more lethal.
Stamina
Stamina drills start with 10-mile runs. If you can't run 10
miles when you come into training, you'd better learn - fast. Within a month, trainees are running marathons. By
the end of the first year, recruits must finish a triathlon. Stamina drills focus mainly on
strengthening the body with long term aerobic activity. Swimming, treadmill
cross-country running and free climbing are the primary activities.
The second, less emphasized, part of stamina training
involves maintaining certain stances for extremely long periods of time. In one
drill. a recruit must hold a pencil against the wall with his nose for three
hours, If he varies from the stance and the pencil falls, he has to start over
...and keep starting over till he gets it done. This is motivation enough.
Severe Exposure
After a nice, 20-mile run, there's nothing like a couple of
seconds of exposure to the shadowy vacuum of space. Nicknamed
"Walkabout" the exposure drill ia a weeding drill. Each recruit must
undergo the drill three times in the first year, and the drill always is
unannounced. Trainees who are absent on the day a Walkabout is supposed to
start are not exempted from it; they just have to do it later. Only about 85%
of freshmen survive all three trips.
Mental Strain
Some of the more creative drills fall into this category. In
one example, a recruit is strapped to a chair where he is forced to solve logic
puzzles on a computer, With every wrong answer or excessive delay, a hypodermic
needle filled with an unknown substance inches closed to his neck. The trainee
has no idea how many questions he must answer. or what's in the needle (a
strong tranquilizer). Speaking of drugs, the recreational variety can't be
obtained at the Academy as much as some cadets might crave the escape they
bring - but they're often used in the mental strain drills. By the lime a
cadet's seen his last drill of this sort, he will never be tempted to use drugs
recreationally again.
An example of another drill in this category secludes
trainees in isolation tanks for 10-hour stretches. the only stimulation being a
man's voice mumbling incoherent poetry.
Year Two: Competition
In the first year, the recruits are only trying to survive.
The only competition is against the Academy's training schedule and against
their own inner demons. After the second furlough, in the late summer after the
first year. the trainees return to the Academy to find that they've been
ranked.
At first, the ranks
are arbitrary and highly fluid. but after a few weeks they become more serious.
With the rankings comes an intense spirit of competition, which the trainees
hungrily adopt the ranking system brings a sense of control over one's life at
the Academy, something that is sadly lacking during the first year. Recruits
are ranked in two categories, mental and physical, and the drills are set up as
contests - a year-long tournament - to determine the seeding going into the
Draft.
Although year two is not lethal (at least, not
intentionally), it is very stressful. The recruits are never sure what the
rankings are for. except that they are somehow important in the coming years.
Everyone becomes an enemy, and maintaining and improving ones rank becomes an
obsession for most cadets.
Mental Contests
Mental prowess is proven almost entirely through games of
strategy and tactics, the purest measure of a person's mental acuity. The
remaining mental contests include other strategy games. like go and backgammon. quiz challenges and debates. Competitors are
given preliminary ranks based on practice games played throughout the year;
these are finalized in a big tournament at the end of the second year.
Physical Contests
Physical rankings are based exclusively on 'sports - two
sports to be specific: swimming and rugby. Both of these sports emphasize total
body conditioning and a certain amount of mindless energy. Recruits must choose
one sport to participate in, and this division creates additional competition.
The swimmers think of the rugby players as graceless thugs, while the rugby
players regard the swimmers as effete wimps. Physical rank is determined
through a series of tournaments held throughout the year, and (like the first
years, drills), half of each day is taken up by conditioning and practice. As
with the mental contests, a final tournament in each sport is held t the end of
the year, determining the cadets final ranking.
The Draft
By the end of year two. all the recruits are fully aware of
the purpose of the rankings. They aid in the Draft. The Draft is the selection
of trainees by Ozma department, each recruit is hand-picked by the department
heads (with the assistance of close aides). By that time, about 150 cadets
remain of a class that started with roughly 200 bodies, and the Draft takes
about a week to complete.
It starts at the beginning of the second-year tournaments.
where the department heads and their aides. watch the top-ranked cadets compete
for their respective titles. Each trainee selects three departments of choice,
and the departments all have "draft picks" which they trade, barter
and wheedle out of each other. The selection process strongly resembles that of
professional sports, Every cadet gets selected eventually, although the
lower-ranked ones may not get into one of their preferred departments.
Once the Draft is over, the rankings are meaningless except
as social badges for those who competed well during the year (kind of like
graduating first in your high-school class). Early draft picks will, however,
be more likely to be chosen as squad leaders in the coming years, and generally
rise higher in the departmental infrastructure. The "old boys club"
of aging department administrators tend to promote this altitude. Although
cadets in general do not have a great deal of influence within their
departments, lower-ranking cadets have to work much harder than their peers to
advance and gain respect.
The most important part of the draft is that afterward, all
cadets notice a subtle shift in how they're treated. Previously, they were meat
- well instructed and obscenely motivated meat - but meat nevertheless. After
the draft. drill sergeants start treating them with just a little respect. It's
as if the drill instructors have seen the beginnings of an Agent in the cadet.
Department Curricula
Combat department curriculum
Cadets who are drafted into the combat department hold
illusions of never having to crack open another text-book. After the mental
bludgeoning they've received in their first two years of schooling this is an
understandable desire, but it doesn't work that way.
True, combat operatives spend the majority of their time in
actual training, learning through brutal experience, but they also spend at
least two hours of every day until graduation studying in no particular order,
tactics, diplomacy, strategy, martial-arts history, military history, anatomy,
armory, ballistics and demolition.
In addition, Combat drill sergeants insists that cadets
learn about combat psychology and zen meditative techniques.
Intelligence department curriculum
Years three through five take the spooks in the Academy into
the realms of social maneuverings and international intrigue. Intelligence
cadets are the first recruits to experience training outside the Academy
habitat.
They are sent on month-long trips to some of the solar
systems hot spot, immersed in the culture and language, and develop skills in
surveillance, social engineering, infiltration and general subterfuge. By graduation,
Intelligence operatives are fluent in at least four languages other than their
native tongue and can get by in two or three others. They can also blend
seamlessly into the background in a half-dozen cultures, in nearly any social
setting. Intelligence operatives are reverently referred to as the
"Invisible Operatives".
When not on these field trips, the cadet's classroom
instruction continues at its usual breakneck pace. They study diplomacy,
intelligence gathering and analysis, technology, advanced psychology for
psych-ops, history and transhuman cultures
Security department curriculum
The SecOps training is varied and intense. From firefighting
to paramedic training, to poison detection and remedies, to fairly advanced
medical training, their schooling runs the gamut. The focus is on safety and
crisis management, but SecOps also learn a great deal about psychology and
behavioral modification. When things go bad on a mission, the SecOps are the
ones who have to keeps things under control and get everyone to safety.
As well, Security cadets face a battery of miscellaneous
classes, including ballistics and demolition, languages and diplomacy,
technology and science, medicine and chemistry
Science department curriculum
In their last three years, cadets who are drafted into the
science department crank the intensity of their education up yet another notch.
The most scholarly of the five departments, Science believes that its Agents
must have the equivalent of at least two doctorates minimum!
Called "geeks" by their peers, Science cadets are
the most erudite when the day comes to leave the Academy. They study cutting
edge biology, genetics, engineering, chemistry and delve deeply into extensive Consortium studies of
xenoflora and xenofauna, xenoecology and xenopsychology. They also research
medicine, genetics, cell-biology, physics, electronics and pharmacology.
The last year of study for potential Science Agents involves
an intense, hands-on examination of captured exsurgent-infected,
former-transhumans, the myriad recorded studies of infected, biological
mutated/evolved exsurgents is studied in mind-numbing detail. Geek trainees are
the only cadets allowed to view the secret collection of active TITAN
technology and exsurgent specimens preserved by OZMA scientists.
Technology department curriculum
With the possible exception of Combat department trainees,
no one goes into their third-year schooling with as much enthusiasm as freshly
drafted techies. The promise of a warehouse full of experimental technology is
enough to make the most reserved techie drool with anticipation.
The Technology Annex is packed with state of the art R&D facilities. The covert lab contains the most illegally powerful computer in the
solar system, equivalent to pre-fall TITAN hardware and home to a contained
Promethean proto-TITAN.
In these exciting surroundings, tech cadets study robotics,
engineering, imaging and sound technology, applied physics, network engineering
and a vast array of programming and operating software. The incomprehensible
electronics and materials of the TITAN's machines are endlessly disassembled
and studied.
Year Three: Combat
Many recruit' think that combat is what the Academy is all
about. This is what they wanted from the day they walked through the
airlock...Well, the combat drills they go through are nothing like what they
dreamed of - unless they dreamed of a 300-pound bull-sergeant synthmorph
thrashing them day after day.
A lot of cadets come into the Academy knowing bow to fight,
and tend to breeze through the early days...but their time comes. They are
quickly sorted
out and placed in "advanced" classes, where they
face opponents of comparable ability. They soon wish they hadn't been 'o full
of spit and bravado.
All cadets go through a heavy battery of combat drills, but
those who have been recruited into the Combat department train twice as long as
their counterparts, While the Tech department hackers are spending half their
days breaking into their first real hypercorp or government systems, the Combat
grunts arc snapping each others limbs and learning to recognize a gun model
from the sound of someone cocking the weapon.
The year of combat drills, like most of the other years.
Starts out hard and intense, weeding out the unfit in a hurry. Later drills
tend to be more about refining and building on the knowledge so harshly gained.
In addition to !he rigorous training schedule, cadets must maintain the
physical conditioning that they achieved during the previous year,
Manhandling and Skullcracking
The martial arts are taught with very little reference to
their ancestral names. Karate, kung fu, jujitsu, judo - all are mashed together
into a bastardization that the instructors separate into the categories
"manhandling" and "skullcrushing".
Manhandling includes judo-like submission and restraining,
in which the opponents, strength and weight are used against him. The techniques
taught include locks, holds, throws and pins. The idea is to incapacitate and
disarm the opponent with a minimum of broken bones and internal bleeding.
Skullcracking feeds the other urge. The opponent is to be
reduced to a quivering mass of snapped limbs and bleeding organs. The goal is
the death or permanent maiming of the enemy. and all methods, honorable or not,
are taught. The body is dissected and mapped out. laying bare the most
vulnerable spots - the eyes, solar plexus, groin, kneecaps, chin and elbows.
Most of the time. cadets fight each other. The instructor
will pair off trainees of comparable skill, and fights are stopped at
unconsciousness· On occasion, a particularly cocky recruit will find himself
paired off with the drill sergeant, forced to fight for what he fears will be
his life. Those who manage to knock out the sergeant are respected and revered,
telling about the feat for years to come. Every so often, those who fail are
actually killed and lose ground to resleeving and the mental trauma that
accompanies it.
Stabbing and Shooting
Once recruits have mastered unarmed combat, they graduate to
weapons. They don't get to stab and maim each other with real knives and
swords, but the practice ones they train with can inflict bruises, broken limbs
or more serious damage. and thus are fine for their purposes.
Cadets are also trained in the quick and accurate use of
every type of gun, from .22 pistol to 30mm Gatling autogun. The Academy's gun
obstacle courses are some of the best, and most lethal ever created. Fashioned
like movie studio backlots, they are designed to be unerringly realistic.
Opponents jump out at recruits from dark utility tunnels and maintenance
grills. Gun-toting bots fire live ammunition from within dark alleyways and
storefronts. Although cadets are allowed to wear light armor during these
drills. many an unlucky trainee ends up in the Infirmary or resleeving.
The better part of the year is spent in gun training. For
most Agents, the gun becomes a symbol of survival, a reassurance in the face of
overwhelming odds. Even the most studious Science Agent carries two or three
pistols on a mission.
Although all cadets are expert marksmen, there are always
the elite few who think of the gun as a "wimps weapon" and opt to do
their dirty work with fists, feet and hand weapons. They quickly learn to heed
the wisdom of the founder of the Combat department, " If you don't carry a
gun, you'd better have a helluva lot of knives."
Blowing Things Up
The final part of combat training is in demolitions. From
hand grenades to plastique, all operatives have to be well versed in the art of
turning things into pieces of things. Cadets learn about fuses, timers,
detonators, radio-controlled bombs. mortars and artillery. Combat department
agents also learn how to construct and operate larger bombs. from tactical
nuclear warheads to strategic thermonuclear weapons (which everyone hopes he'll
never have to use). In addition, all
cadets are taught how to recognize specific types of explosives and how to
defuse many types of bombs, improvised explosive devices, chemical explosive accelerant
mixtures from easily obtainable materials and so on.
Year Four: Society
The fourth year at the Academy is a welcome break from the
rigorous physical training that has tasked the cadets to this point. As with
the previous year trainees must keep up their physical conditioning ( passing a
strenuous physical exam every three months), and most don't need to be told to
spend their spare time on the firing range. but other than those things. year
four is relatively calm.
This year begins the agent's training in dealing with people
and situations outside of the conspiracy. During real field missions, agents
have to be prepared to take on any identity from a senator to an indenture.
Agents have to be convincing and comfortable in any situation, from a
late-night firefight in a hotel lobby to
a black tie charity ball at a hyperelite's mansion habitat. As such, this is the first year that cadets are
taken out into the field. Cadets are selected on a rotating schedule for weekly
field trips, while the others stay at the Academy, learning different social
customs, how to recognize breeding and rank, how to gamble. which fork to use
for salad the difference between "shaken" and stirred," etc.
Elaborate scenarios are developed by the instructors, and
cadets are dropped in with specific goals but no foreknowledge of where the
scenario will take them. A single days, drill might take them from the lair of
a sleazy anarchist narcotics dealer to the penthouse suite at the Ascot. While
this all sounds exciting and fun the penalties for failure are extreme. The
instructors work hard to make these scenarios realistic, and when a cadet makes
a social faux Pas, or otherwise gives his squad away, the scenario is played
out. If that means the recruit is taken out back and beaten ... well, that's
what happens.
By the end of the fourth year. each class is down to about
130 cadets, and the years, end is celebrated by a huge formal ball, called the
General's Ball, which doubles as the year's final exam. Set up as a quagmire of
political intrigue, renegade agents, basement dwelling exsurgants,
double-crossing rogue psionics and their mind controlled lackies, the General's
Ball is both nerve-wracking and fun.
Year Five: Teamwork
By the fifth year, surviving cadets feel like they're ready
for anything. They've been beaten and brutalized, wined, dined and refined.
They've learned how to serve tea to a congressman ... or break his neck with
one hand. But they soon find out that the hardest drills are yet to come.
The cadets are divided into squads and run through some of
the most harrowing adventures that they'll see outside of field work. Each
month, they are assigned to a new squad and sent on a new selection
of drills, each harder than the last. Here is a small
sampling of the types of drills that fill the fifth and final year.
The Six-Day Maze
The six-day maze isn't really a maze, and you'd better
finish it in less than six day's or you probably won't. A squad of four to
eight cadets is dropped in one end of a long, narrow Martian canyon with no
food or water, one knife and one handgun with six bullets. The canyon is filled
with traps, TITAN headhunters, fractals, Hunter-Killers, sometimes some
nanoswarms, sniper-turrets and a couple of hidden caches of weapons.
Cadets must make their way 10 miles to the other end of the
canyon, retrieve a poorly sealed box full of poisonous robotic spiders and
bring it back intact to their starting point. The secret weapon caches include
a few more bullets for their pistol, an extra pistol or two, and some more
knives. Sometimes there's even a shot-gun with some shells.
The squad can also retrieve rifles and bullets from the
robot snipers that populate the walls of the canyon - if they can get to them
without being shot.
Squads who don't make it back within six days are left for
dead by the instructors waiting at the launch point. They are given another
three days to make it back to the Academy chapterhouse (another 20 miles away).
If they don't show up, they are tracked down through satellite surveillance. If
they're not already dead. they'll soon wish they were: they have to do it
again.
The Sacrifice
The sacrifice drill is something every squad goes through at
least once, and it can take the form of any type of drill. from a trek through
a fake Sewage treatment plant to a desert hike. At some point in the drill, it
appears things have broken down in potentially deadly fashion. It becomes
"clear" that most of the squad is going to be destroyed unless one
cadet does something obviously life-threatening to save the entire group. Maybe
he has to hold two wires together to keep a bomb from going off while the room
fills with water and the squad escapes or he might need to stay behind in a
collapsing tunnel. lifting the other squad members to safety. The instructors
will not let the heroic trainee actually die. but will stage it in such a way
as to make the remaining squad members think so. They will not intervene if no
one steps-up to make the sacrifice. and a few squads have come back from a
sacrifice drill mentally scarred upon resleeving and requiring psychological
trauma treatment.
The Log
In the log drill, a squad is run through one of the more
difficult gun courses. It's set up in a fake, run-down tenement building. where
combat synthmorphs and robot snipers bust down doors and squad have survived
and conquered this particular course during year three, but this time there's a
difference - the group members are attached to a six-foot log which they have
to carry with them through the course of the six-hour drill.
Each member is attached to the log via a 5' length of steel
chain that's clamped to a different body location on each cadet ( leg, arm,
wrist, ankle, waist or neck ). By the end of the drill. trainees have learned
to maneuver the log around hallway corners, through doorway>, and up and
down stairwells. The log also can be uaed as a shield from gunfire, a battering
ram or makeshift weapon.
Hell's Kitchen
In this drill a squad is armed to the teeth and sent to hunt
a titan terminator in a tiny, leaky habitat out in the belt filled with
shipping crates. The main airlock doors open only to deadly space, but a few
cramped access tunnels allow access. They know the terminator is in there
somewhere, and they are told not to return without its powerless mechanical
body. What they don't know is that the crates arc filled with benzine and
shredded paper. and any stray gunfire is likely to set the whole habitat
ablaze. The terminator is remote-controlled and pretty tough to take down.
Getting out with the body without becoming plasma barbecue is quite a
challenge.
Graduation
The Academy has no final exam. The 125 or so remaining
cadets finish a drill, then are marched to the Academy's medical annex, backed
up, their training bodies cryogenically stored and their new morphs, with the
terrifyingly enhanced OMICRON muse AI implanted, awakens them to the sweetest
two words they will ever hear, "Congratulations Graduates" No cadet
ever forgets it.
An afternoon of speeches and pomp follow. but most graduates
stand through it in a happy daze. Finally, they're led one at a time to the
private office of the General for a small but formal individual ceremony and
personal congratulations from General Steele. The General also takes the time
to pen a hand-written letter to each graduating Agent, commenting on their
performance throughout the training, commending them on their particular
abilities and expressing his confidence in their ability to perform in the
tough times ahead.
The new Agent receives a final furlough to another unnamed
pleasure habitat, this time for a month. It's probably the last time they'll
string 30 days of leave together. After that, the gentle voice of Omicron will
be a constant companion.
