What. The. Fuck.
I saw two of my soldiers today. The ones I send on those simulated missions. I fuckin' saw them.
I was sitting right there in the canteen, chasing peas around the plate while my mind replayed that last Op over and over again. Only luck had brought Lance Corporal Haugen back to the Skyranger, limping along on Martinez's shoulder while "Hulk" blazed away with his LMG to keep the thin mints at bay. Now she was laid up in the infirmary for the next week-and-a-half. I put my fork down in disgust and looked up, and there they were.
LCPL Jang and CPL Garcia were right there. Fresh trays of shitty government food in their hands, laughing. I must've gone white as a sheet, because they saw me and saw one hell of a hazing opportunity.
"Hey
jefe, look what the cat dragged in!" "Must be one of those new rooks, looks like he about wet his pants from the excitement of seeing us grizzled vets!" "That's right, rook. What you're lookin' at is a genu-ine double-ace here! Ol' Terminal Boy here has put the lead to ten of those x-ray scum!" "Only got number 10 'cuz you can't aim for shit, Kefirz." "Shaddup!"
I knew Kefirz couldn't aim for shit. I was the one cursing at him three days ago when his rocket missed and blew up a console filled with alien nav data instead of the very pissed off glowstick leveling a plasma rifle at my squad. My apparently very real squad. Terminal had been the one to dive in, shotgun blazing, to save the day.
This... this has to be a joke. A sick, sick joke. They must use motion capture to program such a hi-fidelity simulator. These must be the actors. There's no way these have been real operations - no brass would pull off that Ender's Game shit so brazenly. Would they?
Would they?

~ Ferrard