Chapter 2: Red Horizons
The freight crawler reeked of stale air, body sweat, and overheating coolant. It was a rickety land-train designed to ferry cargo containers across the equatorial ruins to the space elevator base. Half its compartments were rusted shut. The rest were jammed with the castaways of humanity.
Kale sat near the back, crammed between an ex-miner with synthetic lungs that hissed every few seconds, and a wide-eyed girl no older than twelve with burn scars crawling up one side of her face. No one spoke. No one needed to.
Everyone in that transport was either running from something or hoping they'd be forgotten.
He didn't speak for the first ten hours.
He watched.
The crawler rolled across ancient highways and collapsed towers, through irradiated deserts and the blackened skeletons of cities. A land bleached of history and bloated with failure.
The farther they got from Sector 17, the more surreal it felt. As if someone had plucked him from a nightmare and dropped him into the prologue of something crueler.
Eventually, the crawler came to a groaning halt.
They had arrived.
The orbital elevator loomed over the cratered landscape like a god's spear thrust into the dirt. Metallic black and ribbed with magnetic coils, it stretched all the way up into the clouds, disappearing into the upper atmosphere where it connected to the skyhook ring.
Massive hangars and security checkpoints circled its base, swarming with soldiers, drones, and naval transports.
Kale stepped out, clutching his bag.
He'd never seen this much open sky before.
---
"Line up! Civilian cadet processing begins now!"
The voice was sharp. Female. Amplified through a field-modulated command rig.
A woman in sleek black naval armor walked between them—tall, built like she'd fought through riots and orbital drops without blinking. Her face was lined but youthful, her dark hair buzzed short, eyes hidden behind visors that flicked blue with each scan.
"Lieutenant Commander Veya Hart," she barked. "You are now under my command for pre-academy clearance. Fail here, and you don't get to Mars. If you don't follow every instruction exactly, I'll have you recycled as suborbital garbage. Is that clear?"
A murmur of hesitant affirmations followed.
Kale said nothing. Just nodded once, sharply. She noticed.
They were herded through biometric scans, blood draws, implant baseline readings, and preliminary psych screens. Most were confused, tired, or simply stunned. A few were rejected on the spot—either flagged as mentally unstable or physically unfit.
Kale passed them all.
But not unnoticed.
---
"You're from the Graveyard."
The voice came from the line ahead. Kale turned slightly.
The speaker was a boy around his age—but everything about him radiated not from Earth. Tall. Blond. Skin clean enough to make him look fake. His uniform was custom-fit despite being regulation, and a family crest shimmered subtly across the collar.
Kale didn't answer.
The boy stepped closer. "That's what they call it, right? Sector 17. The Cradle of Rot. Heard they use human teeth as currency there."
Still, Kale said nothing.
The boy smirked. "No humor? Shame. I'm Rell Varik. Titan-born. Valedictorian of the Ganymede Stratium."
Kale raised a brow. "That supposed to mean something?"
"To most people, yes."
"Guess I'm not most people."
Rell's smirk widened into something colder. "Good. Makes it more fun when I beat you."
---
They were assigned to Drop Shuttle 19.
Thirty of them, jammed together in a cargo hull barely converted for human transport. The shuttle vibrated violently as it broke Earth's atmosphere. A few of the cadets puked into sealed bags. Some cried. Others stared ahead like they were already dead.
Kale didn't blink.
He was too busy memorizing faces.
There was the girl with the burn scars—she made it through somehow. She sat rigid, silent, eyes always scanning. Then there was the hulking brute of a boy who hadn't stopped stretching his arms since boarding, muscles practically bursting through the seams.
Across from Kale sat a lean, wiry kid with spiked implants along his jaw and temples. His eyes glowed faint green—combat mods.
Street mods.
The kid caught Kale's stare. "Name's Ox. You?"
"Kale."
"Slum?"
"Yeah."
"Same. Rio basin. You?"
"Nairobi."
Ox nodded once. "Hope you're smart."
"Why?"
"Cause the ones like us?" He grinned, showing two metal teeth. "We don't get do-overs."
---
Mars.
The shuttle docked at the Olympus Mons Naval Academy with a sharp hiss and the screech of mag-brakes. The artificial gravity hit them like a punch to the chest. Mars wasn't Earth. Lighter gravity, yes, but the academy ran internal fields to simulate pressure changes, stress environments, and more.
Everything was heavier here.
The air.
The stares.
The silence.
They were marched through black corridors lined with discipline posters and data-scrolls. No windows. No laughter. Just the grind of boots on metal and the low hum of high-security infrastructure.
At last, they entered the orientation hall.
A massive domed chamber carved into the very rock of Olympus Mons. The walls were reinforced with polished alloy, and the ceiling displayed a live feed of the Martian sky—red dust clouds drifting lazily over the black horizon.
A figure waited at the center of the room.
Tall. Black uniform. Silver stripes and medals polished to mirror shine.
His face was chiseled from stone. Gray hair buzzed to the scalp. One eye replaced with a cybernetic lens that glowed faint blue.
He stood perfectly still until the doors sealed behind them.
Then he spoke.
> "Welcome to Hell."
No theatrics. No greetings. Just those three words, spoken like a prophecy.
"I am Commander Eli Tarsis," he continued. "And I will be the last thing between you and an early grave. This academy is not a school. It is a crucible. A meat grinder. A testing ground for the future commanders of humanity's last war."
He paused, letting the weight settle.
"You are not here to be educated. You are here to be stripped. Broken. And if you survive—rebuilt. The xenos do not care about your bloodline. Your pedigree. Your pain. They will tear through your armor, your ships, and your cities like dry parchment."
He stepped forward.
"And you will either stop them—or you will burn with the rest."
---
Kale didn't flinch. Didn't shift. But inside, something twisted. Not fear. Not excitement.
Focus.
He could already feel the battlefield forming—unseen but present. A world of whispered rivalries, power dynamics, and quiet wars waged in dorms and training simulations.
He wasn't the strongest. He wasn't the richest.
But he saw the game.
And he knew how to win.