(Fallon)

The Manitoba and COG Fleet Twenty Three have been in transit to Earth for four days, and the most heartfelt part of the trip has come. As I lay in my birth, reading up on my newest duty assignment, the lights dim and I sigh, cursing myself for being awake. I swing my legs out and slid out of the bunk before getting dressed and walking to the hatch where I stop.

'Miiora would want to know, it was the most pivotal moment in Human history.' I think to myself before walking over to the Tymerian's sleeping form and patting her bed, failing to wake her. She had her face buried in a pillow when I decide to shake her shoulder but before I make contact, she wakes up. Her left eye snaps open and she tilts her head to look at me with one eye with an annoyed gesture.

"Come on and get dressed. you'll want to see this."

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(Miiora)

It is the middle of what passes for night on this ship, and Avery Fallon and I were walking down one of the passageways, when I notice something strange as we walk, the mood on the ship has turned somber. Eventually we ascend a ladder to enter a dome shaped room with hexagonal tiles on the walls. I look around to see there are other Humans here as well as a few other confused looking former slaves. The walls began to flicker and a panoramic view of the outside of the ship appears, revealing this to be an observation deck of some kind. Off to one side of the ship lies a yellow star and on the other, a red planet with cities visible do to their contrast. Above the planet was a space station, the size of the Manticore station above Eques. The space around the station is alight with activity, everything from warships to what I can only assume are civilian vessels buzzing all around the station or between the station and the planet.

"Is that-?" I ask as I look at the planet. Despite the military presence, it looks almost hopeful like it has a spirit all its own.

"No, but it is where we changed."

"Mars was our first colony, our second home. For thousands of years we would look up from Earth and dream. Then, one hundred and twenty-two years ago, we colonized Mars. Over the course of decades, we terraformed her made and her soil bare life. From there we expanded, we lived and had hope for the future. We had a dream that one day, our red planet would be what Earth could not. Then the Lankies arrived in Sol." He explained calmly and all around me I heard others explaining the same thing to other liaisons.

"But I thought you could defeat the Lankies?"

"Now we can, but back then, we didn't have a prayer. When they arrived, the NAC and SRA, who were the only nations who had ships bigger than a frigate or the scarce cruiser at the time, made the run. We hit the Lankies with everything we had. It wasn't anywhere close to enough, they scythed through us as easy as waving your hand. They destroyed the fleet and colonized mars in a matter of weeks, a feat that took us decades. Only the ships who were in lunar drydock were left. We set up a picket with any ship that could fight, and we held the line, but we knew that if the Lankies came, they would take Earth with no effort. When they did, the only thing that saved us was that they only sent one ship. That allowed Colonel Campbell to make the ultimate sacrifice. He sling shotted, went at full burn, and rammed his ship, the Indianapolis, at a thirtieth the speed of light into the Lanky Seed ship. He gave us the chance to destroy that ship. Then we gathered our forces, and after a year we went back. We had with us the two newest ships in our arsenal, the first Siege breakers both created by the NAC, but we shared the other with the SRA, a gesture that continues even today eighty years later. The ships were the NACS-SB-001 Archangel, and SRA-SB-002 Minsk. We hit them with everything we had to rescue the civilians that were still alive on Mars in shelters. We didn't have any of the stuff you saw on Bagmare, no nation had anything like the Atlas. The only nation that rivaled the NAC was the SRA and they went too. We sent dozens of ships, thousands of Marines from both the NAC and SRA as well as a regiment from NE, and any anti-LHO weapon we could come up with in that year and it came out to a draw." He continues before pausing.

"Millions died when the Lankies took Mars. Thousands died in the first attempt at a counterattack after they took it. When we went back to save the civilians the Siege Breakers destroyed their small fleet, but we lost the Archangel as we landed the troops. We saved the civilians but before we could do anything else they pushed us back. Thousands more died when we left, but we discovered that the Lanky settlements are only the beginning. After the majority of the fleet went back to Earth, leaving behind a Watch, we learned that the Lanky settlements were just the beginning, like the tip of a very large iceberg. Seed ships emerged from the cities and we destroyed them, their hulls were the color of Mars’ dirt meaning that the ships grew under their settlements. After we learned this, we destroyed them, we nuked every Lanky settlement on the planet we could find. Weeks later the Watch we left behind was destroyed. When we saw more seed ships arriving from our nodes we knew-"

"You had to take mars back."

"Thats right." He says

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nDzLtCGoFo

"We went back, and this time we had them locked in. We had the research, we had the tech, we had the largest fleet in history, we had the numbers. It took twenty years and at first, it was going well. In space, we met the Lankies at every turn, we drew blood and so did they. On the ground we fought for every inch, every grain of red soil, the hundreds of thousands who had died in the six-year war since we first encountered the Lankies, and every one who had died to get us this far. Every colonist, every man, woman and child, who couldn't fight the Lankies when they arrived and we were winning. But the Lankies kept adapting to our strategies, and changed their strategies in turn to counter ours. And setback after setback, loss after loss, turned what was supposed to be a quick and bloody win, into twenty years of hell." Fallon continues sadly.

The image of the rugged but beautiful red planet changes to show a planet covered in scars, large black marks mar its surface and thick black storms rage over most of its surface. Only in some rare places do spots of red soil appear. Around the planet, the station lies in pieces and the hulks of what look like hundreds of ships both human and the massive hulks of Lanky seed ships drift through space.

"That's all Mars is today. It's hell down there, but it's ours again. We united under one flag, the COG, and refused to go quietly into the night. Now the COG is only formed when a threat to the species arrives, be it a Lanky fleet or now the UEC. Now when anyone passes Mars, we hold the watch. We remember the fallen, we stand the watch, we honor their nobility, we honor their bravery. Remember Mars."

"Remember Mars." the other humans in the room echo in unison.

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As we pull into the human space station called Gateway, I grab my kitbag and walk out of the exit hatch of the Manitoba onto the human space station. We walked to the shuttle bay and board a shuttle to go to our new temporary duty stations. Trombley and Forbes were going to TA base Barkan outside of Boston, we shook hands and went our separate ways. Snafu walks away from both Fallon and I, on his way to another shuttle to a place called Coronado, California. He stop like he wants to say something and I stood from my seat but he walked away. I turn to Fallon but see that he is also standing up to walk away.

"Whelp, here we are. I have to report to Luna for my new training. After all, Grayson and I are the only ATLAS pilots left. Look Miiora, follow your PDP, it'll show you where to go. I'll see you in a few months alright, stay Frosty ok." He says to me and holds his hand out. Instead, I give him the tymerian gesture for goodbye, or hug. He chuckled before walking away, holding his kitbag over his left shoulder and waving behind his back with his prosthetic.

A few weeks spent on board Gateway station later, I enter a shuttle to go to the basic training station. The shuttle is filled to the last seat, the cushions are worn, the belts of the harnesses are frayed, and the carpet in the center aisle is a loose collection of fibers that had long lost any semblance of coherence or pattern. It seem they use the oldest equipment they could find as if they wanted to avoid spending a dollar more than necessary on their recruits. The shuttle's engines sent vibrations through the hull and a few minutes, later we were in the Earth sky.

"We’re flying over PRC Pittsburgh 7 now." All of us former slaves looked out of the scuffed windows and we were surprised. It was like something out of the UEC's worst nightmare. Identical looking high rises, all clumped together in a sprawling mass of concrete that resembles a rodent warren. This is where one of my best friends grew up and I almost felt bad, no UEC settlement is this dirty, but now I know why he doesn't like talking about it.

We arrived at the base at four o'clock in the morning and have been airborne for five hours. We could be anywhere in the North American Commonwealth, from Northern Canada to some place called the Panama Canal. When we stepped off into the shuttle, we were whisked off into a waiting bus. As the shuttle left the station, I saw that we’re in an urban area, but there were no high-rise buildings anywhere, and I saw snow capped mountains in the horizon behind the buildings of the city.

The bus ride took another two hours and the landscape outside was almost like a colony in its undeveloped state. I see low rocky hills and scrub-like vegetation that sparsely covered the hillsides. Then we reach our destination. The sudden transition into a military base was startling and the giant alien skeleton decorating the entrance was even more startling. Finally, after many right angle turns onto decreasingly busy side roads, we pulled into a lot in front of a squat, unimpressive, one-story building that looked like an oversized storage unit. The doors of the bus opened and before any of us could contemplate whether or not to stay in our seats or show initiative and get off, an elderly soldier comes up the stairs at the front. She is elderly, her hair is covered in grey streaks, and her face is covered in wrinkles, but she carried herself well and does not let her age show, like a well-maintained piece of equipment. Having been with Avery Fallon all this time, I learned a few things and can see that she is wearing the camo pattern of the NAC’s Home World Defence Corps or the Territorial Army to some. Her sleeves are rolled up neatly with crisp edges in the folds and the bottom of the sleeve was rolled back down over the fold so the camouflage pattern covers the lighter-colored liner of the fatigue jacket. This soldier's expression is one of mild irritation as if our arrival has interrupted some enjoyable activity. She scans the bus for a split second and I felt her eyes lock onto me for a split second.

"Now..." she says.

"You will smartly step off this bus in single file, there are yellow footprints that fit every race on the concrete outside. Each of you will step onto a pair of those footprints. You will not talk, fidget, or scratch yourselves while you do this. If you have anything left in your mouths, it will come out and be left in the trash receptacle of your seat. Execute!" she added with a tone of finality and she stepped out without looking back, as if there was no doubt we will do exactly as she says. When we were all lined up in tidy rows, the soldier from the bus walked around to the front of our ragtag group, straightened out the front of her fatigues with a crisp tug, placed her hands behind her back, and her feet a shoulder's width apart.

"NOW." she says, her eyes falling on me again, and the way she emphasizes that word sounded like she was ensuring more than our attention. As if she wants to make sure we're mentally and physically in the present moment.

"You are among the ten percent of applicants accepted into the armed forces of the North American Commonwealth. Some of you, especially the native humans, may think this makes you special in some way. It does not! You may think that because you made the initial cut we will put in a lot of effort to shape you into soldiers, and help you overcome your individual weaknesses. We will not! You may think that boot camp is something like that stuff you've been watching on the networks. It is not! We will not hit or mistreat you, you may choose to stop following orders at any time. If you fail to obey an order, you will wash out. If you fail to make a passing grade on any examination or skill test, you will wash out. If you strike a fellow recruit or a superior, you will wash out. If you steal cheat or display a bad attitude, you will wash out. When you wash out, nothing will happen to you. You will merely be placed on a shuttle home, you will not owe any money or legal penalties. We will dissolve your contract and you will be a civilian once again. If you are a Former, you will be taken back to Gateway where you may choose to continue your previous job whatever it may be, or board a flight to Fomalhaut. We wash out fifty percent of recruits in basic training and half of you will get killed or maimed in your enlisted period without ever collecting your service certificate at the end. There are forty of you standing on this spot right now and only twenty of you at most will graduate from basic training. Only five of you will muster out in five years. If you find those odds troublesome you may turn around and board the bus behind you once more, it will take you back to the shuttle port where it will take you back to your processing station. If my speech has served to change your mind about being in the service, save yourself and the instructors the work and sweat and step back onto the bus NOW!" She pauses and looks on in anticipation. No one stepped out.

"Well it's good to see that some people have the guts to grab the short end of the stick. I am Command Sergeant Major Brianna Fallon! I fought in the Lanky war and I am going to be your platoons senior drill instructor. I do not care how badass you think you are, because I will fuck you up." She says.

"Now go through that door in single file and find a desk in the room beyond and quietly wait for further instructions. Execute!" the elderly woman said. We began walking to the door when I was pulled aside by Sergeant Major Fallon.

"My grandson speaks highly of you, and you better live up to my expectations. You Better not disappoint me."