The rifle was heavier than it looked.
Jack let the barrel dip, forcing his shoulders to round under the weight.
The cold steel bit through his gloves, the balance point forward and awkward.
Underneath the bulky, standard-issue jacket, he carefully guarded his right side, letting his bruised ribs dictate a shallow, uneven rhythm to his breathing.
He let out a controlled, raspy breath, just loud enough to be heard.
Kovac watched him from two feet away.
The drill sergeant’s eyes moved over Jack’s stance, noting the minute tremor Jack had carefully allowed to creep into his wrists.
Kovac’s expression remained carved from dark stone.
“Platoon, collect weapons,” Kovac barked, turning his back.
“Double time to the Ash Range.”
While the other recruits surged toward the steel crates to claim their rifles, Jack stepped aside, cradling the weapon Kovac had already handed him.
Through the heavy pressure doors of the armory, the platoon filed into a low, damp concrete tunnel that opened into the vast, biting chill of the Ash Range.
Twelve numbered lanes stretched across the concrete floor, separated by waist-high steel barriers pocked with old impact scars.
At the far end, fifty yards into the gloom, lay the target trenches.
Beyond them, the massive slatted range doors stood open to the grey morning, letting in a bitter wind and a fine, persistent mist of volcanic grit.
As he took his place, Jack’s eyes did what they always did—they mapped the space.
Twelve lanes.
Two range officers standing on the raised platform behind them, their hands near the manual line overrides.
The heavy steel pressure doors behind the platoon were already locked, their automated gears sealed.
Downrange, the open gate led only to the barren, wind-swept ash fields, a landscape mined and monitored.
There was no clean exit once Kovac locked the line.
Jack set his rifle on the steel range bench at Lane Four.
The movement forced a sharp, cold ache through his side, and he allowed a small, tight wince to show on his face before smoothing his expression.
To his left, at Lane Three, Vance hoisted his own weapon with a theatrical grunt.
“This thing weighs like a dead loader,” he said, flexing his thick fingers.
He glanced over at Jack, a wide grin plastering his face, but his eyes lingered on Jack’s guarded posture with a quiet, calculating curiosity.
Kayla stood rigid at Lane Two.
Her hands were pressed flat against her thighs, her face pale as she stared at her rifle like it might detonate.
She looked down at her own numb, shivering fingers, then back at the heavy steel frame, utterly unsettled by the machine in front of her.
Ryker took Lane Five.
He snatched his rifle from his bench by the pistol grip, cradling it with the effortless, practiced familiarity of an academy legacy.
His jaw was set, his chest pushed out, and the deep, angry purple bruise on his cheek from the night march stood out sharply against his pale skin.
He held himself as though the volcanic grit caking his uniform was entirely beneath him.
He did not look at Jack, but the tension in his shoulders spoke louder than any glance.
Kovac climbed onto the raised platform behind the firing line.
The morning light from the open range doors caught the side of his scarred face, illuminating the thick tissue around his jaw.
He held up a dummy feedstock cartridge, the grey casing dull in the weak light.
“Initialization,” Kovac said, his voice cutting through the wind.
“Insert the feedstock cartridge into the lower receiver port. Push until you feel resistance, then rotate the latch clockwise until it seats.”
He demonstrated the motion with a crisp, practiced snap of his wrist.
Jack picked up his cartridge.
The metal was cold, the surface scored with fine manufacturing marks that felt rough against his palms.
He brought it to the receiver port and stopped.
His thumb had found a ridge in the guide rail, a microscopic imperfection where the metal had worn thin.
If he forced the cartridge straight in, the internal pins would catch and jam.
He would have to angle it slightly, presenting the guide rail first.
He looked at the cartridge, and the memory came without warning.
New Chicago, five years ago.
The air in the cramped geothermal substation had been thick with the smell of scorched ozone and melted solder.
Nolan’s hand, rough and warm, had slid over his own, gently guiding the heavy soldering iron away from a delicate copper trace.
“You have to feel the metal, Jack,” Nolan had said.
He was only fifteen then, his face young and free of the hard lines that would come later.
“You can’t force it. If you push too hard, the board cracks. Tilt your wrist. Let the friction tell you when to stop.”
Under the sleeve of his jacket, a faint, cool thread of sensation rippled along Jack’s left forearm.
There was no interface, no voice, but his nerves suddenly felt incredibly clean, his muscles settling into a perfect, quiet alignment.
Jack tilted the cartridge.
He slid it into the receiver port at an angle, feeling the guiding rail catch and slide.
He rotated the latch until it clicked into place, the mechanism seating perfectly.
He did not let himself smile, immediately letting his hand fall away with a faked, clumsy tremor.
Across the range, the other recruits fought with their weapons.
Vance was cursing under his breath, slamming the heel of his palm against his jammed cartridge in Lane Three.
At Lane Two, Kayla stood frozen, her fingers too cold to grip the stiff loading lever.
A recruit three lanes down let out a sharp, frustrated cry as his latch refused to seat.
Ryker locked his cartridge with a clean, practiced snap.
He raised his chin and looked down the line toward Jack, a sneer of triumph already forming on his lips.
Then he saw the console light on Jack’s lane.
It was already yellow, waiting for calibration.
The sneer wavered.
“Calibration,” Kovac barked.
“Adjust the magnetic focusing dials on the barrel side panel. The console will tell you when you have reached baseline.”
Jack looked at his display.
The calibration grid was a familiar shape, a pattern of concentric circles he had seen on scrap circuit boards and broken industrial cutters a thousand times.
But the numbers did not align.
The focusing coils inside the barrel housing were worn, the internal pins drifted far out of tolerance.
The rifle wanted to pull to the right.
If he fired at the marked calibration settings, his plasma bolts would scatter.
Jack closed his eyes, letting the memory wash over him.
The small, dark space Nolan had built for them in the ruins of the substation.
The smell of stripped wire and heated resin.
Nolan’s voice, patient and low.
“The coils are like the ignition system on an arc welder, Jack. If the feed isn’t clean, the arc won’t hold. You have to feel the gap. You can’t trust the gauge. The gauge was built for a machine that isn’t broken yet.”
Jack opened his eyes.
He reached for the focusing dials with his right hand.
His left hand rested on the rifle’s receiver, feeling the faint, high-frequency vibration of the internal coils through the heavy metal.
The standard calibration procedure listed three fixed positions: neutral, medium, and high.
The coils did not care about the listed positions.
Jack’s fingers found the main dial.
He did not look at the console.
He did not check the green alignment indicators.
He adjusted the dial with tiny, deliberate movements, feeling the physical resistance of the internal pins through the brass housing.
A quarter turn.
A half turn.
A micro-adjustment so fine his thumb barely seemed to move.
The internal pins aligned.
He felt the tiny, satisfying snick of the gears seating deep within the chassis.
Beside him, Kayla’s console flashed red.
She was staring at her dial, her fingers shaking with the cold.
She looked over, her eyes catching Jack’s hands.
She saw his scarred fingers moving with a fluid, unthinking precision that did not belong to a conscript who claimed to have never held a weapon.
She did not look angry; she looked deeply unsettled, her brow furrowing as she filed the sight away.
Jack did not meet her eyes.
He adjusted the secondary dial, felt the last pin seat, and pulled his hands back, immediately letting them loosen into a cold-stiffened wobble.
The console light on Lane Four turned green.
First.
Jack folded his hands behind his back, hiding them.
He stared straight ahead at the concrete wall of the range, his face blank, his heart beating a steady, even rhythm.
Ryker slammed his palm against his rifle’s side-panel.
The sound echoed across the range, metallic and sharp.
His teeth were bared, his eyes locked on the green light of Jack’s lane.
His own dial kept flashing yellow, refusing to settle.
“Control your lanes,” Kovac said.
The drill sergeant walked down the line, his heavy boots crunching in the volcanic grit.
He stopped directly behind Jack’s station.
Jack felt the weight of Kovac’s presence like a physical pressure.
He did not turn.
He kept his gaze fixed forward, his hands resting lightly on the bench.
Kovac leaned over Jack’s shoulder, the smell of grease and cold rain coming off his uniform.
“You calibrated this.”
It was not a question.
“Sir, yes, sir,” Jack said, forcing a shallow, rib-strained breath.
Kovac said nothing.
He studied the glowing coordinates on the console, noting the perfect alignment of the internal readings—settings that bypassed the standard presets entirely.
He looked at Jack’s hands, which were now trembling slightly.
Kovac’s silence was heavy, analytical, storing the anomaly away.
The drill sergeant straightened.
“All lanes. Fire the sequence.” He tapped his wrist pad.
“Targets are at fifty yards. You do not fire until your console reads green. Understood?”
“Sir, yes, sir,” the platoon answered in a ragged chorus.
At the far end of the range, the holographic targets ignited.
They were crude Vorthak shapes—tall, jagged, multi-limbed silhouettes projected in flickering red light.
Doctrinal weak points were marked by glowing orange nodes on the chest and shoulders.
Lane Three fired.
The plasma discharge was deafening, a cracking, bone-rattling boom.
The blue-white muzzle bloom washed a wave of dry heat across Jack’s cheek, and Vance’s wild shot impacted the concrete floor downrange, throwing up a shower of sparks and scorched grit.
Vance grunts in frustration.
“Damn wind.”
Jack did not look.
Lane One fired, the bolt scattering high and chipping a fist-sized chunk of stone from the concrete wall.
Lane Five fired in rapid succession—three quick, angry shots from Ryker that went high and left, chewing uselessly into the background barrier.
Ryker was letting his frustration ruin his stance.
His rifle hummed against his chest, the pre-fire charge whine building in the barrel, a rising frequency he felt in his teeth.
His console read green.
He raised the rifle, fitting the stock carefully into the pocket of his shoulder to guard his injured ribs while locking his frame.
He timed his breathing to the peak of the charge cycle, holding it for half a second.
He squeezed the trigger.
The bolt left the barrel with a sharp, contained crack.
The recoil pushed hard into his shoulder, but he absorbed it, maintaining his stance.
The blue-white bolt struck the projected shoulder node perfectly.
The holographic target shuddered, the red projection flickering.
Jack adjusted his aim.
The second shot, half a second later, took the opposite shoulder node.
The third shot, timed perfectly with the capacitor’s recharge, took the center chest node.
The red silhouette dissolved into digital static.
The range fell quiet, the air thick with the sharp tang of ionized air and burnt carbon.
Jack lowered his weapon, letting his shoulders sag and forcing his arms to tremble as if from the physical toll of holding the heavy frame.
Beside him, Vance’s mouth was slightly open.
His usual grin was there, but his eyes were sharp, scanning Jack’s hands with a new, quiet suspicion.
“Brother,” Vance muttered, his voice low and laced with a strange, careful humor.
“That was beautiful.”
Above the lanes, the master scoreboard flickered to life.
Instead of a name, it listed Jack’s cold, clinical designation: Recruit 0-8-4-3: 100%.
Underneath, the reality of the draft was laid bare: Platoon Average: 37%.
The institution had recorded the miracle while erasing the man.
The whispers started immediately, low and sharp.
“How did a slag-born get a perfect?”
“Did you see his hands?”
“He didn’t even look at the display…”
The consoles on all lanes suddenly flashed blue, the capacitors letting out a long, heavy hiss as they vented and locked the weapons cold.
Before the sound had even faded, Ryker slammed his warm rifle onto the steel bench.
He stepped away from Lane Five, his boots hitting the concrete hard as he crossed the yellow line into Jack’s lane.
“You,” Ryker snarled.
Jack turned.
Ryker was in front of him, his face flushed an ugly, blotchy red, the purple bruise on his cheek livid.
Ryker grabbed Jack’s collar, his fingers twisting into the heavy fabric.
He shook him once, hard.
“No one calibrates a coil blind on their first shot. You tampered with the housing. You bypassed the calibration locks. You are a cheat, 0-8-4-3.”
Jack did not react.
He kept his hands at his sides, allowing himself to slide back against the steel bench, keeping his face a mask of dull obedience while faking a tight wince as the metal pressed against his bruised ribs.
“I read the intake roster, 0-8-4-3,” Ryker spat, his voice dropping to a hoarse, venomous whisper.
“New Chicago salvage caste. No academy training, no weapons certification. You’re a scavenger who crawled out of the ash, and you brought your dirty black-market tricks with you.”
Ryker’s finger dug into Jack’s chest, shoving him back.
“You think I don’t know your sort? You people strip military wrecks for parts and sell whatever still hums. You think you can hustle your way through the Bastion?”
Jack stayed silent.
He did not clench his fists.
He did not look at the perfect trajectory from Ryker’s chin to the concrete.
He kept his hands flat against his thighs and waited.
A heavy, scarred hand came down on Ryker’s shoulder.
Kovac.
The drill sergeant had moved without sound, his massive frame stepping between them like a wall of solid iron.
He did not look at Ryker.
He looked down at Jack, his gaze cold, analytical, and heavy with a terrifying focus.
Kovac’s hand rested on the hilt of his sidearm.
His voice was quiet when he spoke.
“Range officers. Lock Lane Four. Run a full diagnostic on the calibration log and coil housing.” He paused, his eyes drilling into Jack.
“And bring the portable biometric scanner.”
Jack’s chest tightened.
Two Range Officers stepped forward from the observation platform.
They carried diagnostic probes, the wires trailing back to a portable console unit.
The air was heavy with the smell of ozone and the fine volcanic ash drifting through the open doors, and the portable console’s screen flickered weakly, struggling against the magnetic hum of the range.
The officers stopped in front of Lane Four.
One held out a hand, his face blank.
“Let’s see your forearms, recruit.”
Jack looked at the metal probe.
His left forearm, hidden beneath the standard-issue jacket, held the subdermal interface.
The device was silent and invisible, but the probe was coming closer, its tip humming with a low, searching electric charge.
Jack raised his arm.
Slowly, he pulled back the sleeve, exposing his skin to the freezing air.
The probe hovered inches from his flesh.
Jack forced himself to breathe.