Resting his hands on his hips, Hawke looks me over. “In the Army it’s customary to salute your commanding officer. With the right arm, please.”
Silently, I raise my robotic arm and salute him.
“That’s better. Believe it or not, Armstrong, I’m not angry about what you said in the gym. I appreciate a soldier who’s not afraid to speak his mind. In the days ahead there’ll be times when I’ll ask for your opinion. I may not agree with you, but I’ll always hear you out.”
I don’t believe him. Not one bit.
“At the same time, though, I insist on discipline. If you want to be a part of this unit, you’ll have to follow my orders.” He narrows his eyes. “Understand?”
I wait a few seconds to make my reluctance clear. Then I synthesize a single word: “Yes.”
“Say, ‘Yes, sir.’ That’s another little custom of ours.”
“Yes, sir.”
He nods, satisfied. “All right, now we can start.” He points at the fence surrounding the fake prison camp. “Your goal is to get out of the camp, but you’re not allowed to go through that fence. You’ll be disqualified if you try.” He turns around and points at the large, gray building beyond the barracks. “You have to head for that building and follow the red arrows to the exit.”
I aim my camera at the barracks and the gray building, scanning in both the visible-light and infrared ranges. “Where are the obstacles?”
Hawke grins again. “Well, we call it an obstacle course, but that’s probably not the best name for it. It’s more like a war game.”
“A war game?”
“Yeah, my men are the opposing team. If they tag you before you leave the camp, the game’s over.”
Now I’m starting to understand. I see why Marshall and Jenny spent only a few minutes on the course. The soldiers probably “tagged” them right away. DeShawn, Shannon, and Zia had longer turns because they must’ve done a better job of evading Hawke’s men. I train my camera on the guard towers where I saw the sentries a minute ago, but the men seem to have disappeared. Did they duck out of sight?
“Where are the soldiers?” I ask. “And what do you mean by ‘tag’?”
“You’ll see.” Still grinning, he starts to walk away. “Better get moving, Armstrong. You’re in the kill zone.”
I’ve played enough video games to know what this means. The kill zone is the most dangerous section of the battlefield, usually located between two enemy positions. While General Hawke marches off I scan the guard towers again, turning my turret from one to the other. In both towers the sentries rise to their feet, and as they emerge from hiding, I notice they’re no longer holding assault rifles. Instead, they’ve hoisted M136 anti-tank guns to their shoulders.
Uh-oh. Bad news.
In the next instant three things happen in quick succession. First, I start running toward the barracks. Second, I curse out General Hawke for arming his men with guns that could cripple a Pioneer. And third, I observe a bright flash in the guard tower to my left. It’s the backfire from the launch of the M136’s high-explosive shell. A hundredth of a second later I observe a similar flash in the guard tower to my right.
Panic floods my circuits. I’m finished! I’m toast! In midstride I catch a glimpse of the shell hurtling toward me from the left. It’s a bullet-shaped projectile about three inches wide and nine inches long, with six steel fins at its tail end. The fins are there to stabilize the shell’s flight, like the foam-rubber fins on the tail of a Nerf football. Then my electronic mind makes a terrified leap and retrieves a memory from earlier in the day, when DeShawn threw the Super Bowl football at me and I turned on my radar to measure the ball’s speed. Of course! You idiot! Turn on your radar!
It takes three hundredths of a second for my electronics to start transmitting radar signals, which echo against the shell and bounce back to my antenna. According to the readings, the projectile is moving at 650 miles per hour, which means it’ll hit me in less than a quarter-second. But when I calculate the shell’s direction I see that it’s off-center. I can dodge it by jinking to the right. It’s a classic football maneuver, and for a moment I feel like a quarterback again, like Eli Manning dodging a defensive lineman. As soon as I make the move, though, I realize it won’t do me any good. I’ve stepped into the path of the second shell, the one speeding toward me from the right.
That’s why they call it a kill zone. They can get me from both directions.
My system freezes as the shells close in. I try to access information on the amount of explosives packed into an M136 shell, but my circuits won’t cooperate. All I can see are the radar readings and the paths of the projectiles, which I picture as a pair of white lines slanting downward from the guard towers.
That’s when I realize my mistake. I forgot about the height of the shells! I switch to a three-dimensional view and see that the second shell is aimed a bit high. Pitching my torso forward, I dive for the ground. My acoustic sensors pick up a loud whistle as the first shell flies past me, and then an even louder whoosh as the second shell speeds overhead, just inches above my turret. Then I hit the ground and my torso slides fifteen feet through the mud.
The shells strike the ground forty feet away, but to my surprise I don’t hear any explosions. Using my robotic arms to lever myself upright, I get back on my footpads and turn my turret to see where the projectiles landed. Splattered across the mud are two new splotches of Army-green paint. The M136 shells were dummy rounds, full of paint instead of explosives.
It makes sense once I stop to think about it. The dummy rounds won’t damage the Pioneers, but they’ll show a direct hit by splattering paint on our armor. And until the moment of impact, they look realistic enough to terrify us. I can just imagine how Shannon must’ve reacted when she was on the course a few minutes ago. And Jenny, she must’ve been scared out of her mind. I’m so angry at Hawke I want to throw one of the fake shells at him, but instead I stride toward the barracks. I’m going to finish this obstacle course, and then I’m going to tell the general what I think of his stupid exercise.
I pick up speed as I head for the first row of Quonset huts. I’m sprinting forward at thirty miles per hour when I see a soldier step from behind one of the barracks. He holds another M136 anti-tank gun, but now I know what to do. I angle to the left and take a flying leap, using my momentum to scramble up the curved wall of the Quonset hut. With the help of the new sensors attached to my footpads, I gain traction on the hut’s corrugated steel. I charge over the top of the barracks and slide down the other side, landing with a thud next to the soldier. Then I rip the M136 out of his hands and crush its barrel with my steel fingers.
The soldier stumbles backward, petrified. I feel a rush of satisfaction—Are you scared, tough guy? Had enough? But the feeling sours as I stare at his quivering face. He’s one of General Hawke’s pawns, just like me. He doesn’t want to be here any more than I do.
Tossing the gun aside, I race past the next two rows of barracks. I don’t see any other soldiers, but they could be hiding inside the Quonset huts. In a few seconds I reach the large building with gray concrete walls. I’m facing the back of the building—there are no doors on this side and only a few windows—but when I look closely at the base of the concrete wall I see a small arrow drawn in red paint. It points to the left.
I turn left and run. The wall is marked with splotches of green paint, and the ground is littered with the broken casings of anti-tank shells. There was clearly a lot of shooting here when the other Pioneers ran the course. Then I see another red arrow on the wall, this one pointing at a lone window seven feet above the ground, the same height as my turret. The window has no glass; instead, it has a grate of thick steel bars.