Kara Discovered: Episode 2: The Platoon Assembles

Jeffries men, get ready to go into the unknown

Feb 19, 2025

Colonel Lipton and Major Wilson’s shaved heads and bright yellow on green Legion dress-uniforms stood out as Jeffries’s disk arrived at the gate. Though neither was going through with him, both were looking across it at the plant. Major Wilson would be bringing two more platoons over and take command once Jeffries’ men fully scouted the area and had their own sandpaper uniforms, but Wilson hadn’t bothered putting one on. According to the schedule, those platoons crossing was still weeks away. Unlike Jefferies and his men, Wilson and his men all still had their medical nanites and natural teeth. They could not cross without having those removed, so there was no point in he and his men suiting up. The only backup they currently could give was making sure nothing they didn’t want crossed the gate.

Jeffries ran his tongue over his toothless gums. He still wasn’t used to that, but those teeth had had to go. The enamel on teeth would turn liquid and toxic there, so those had gone months back. Every medical nanite had also been purged. Those turned even more toxic than teeth.

“First to arrive, I see,” Lipton, a man who had no intention of crossing, said as the plate settled to the deck.

Buy Me a Coffee

“An advantage of being in my quarters at my desk when the alarm sounded. I didn’t have far to go to change. I expect all my men will be here long before the scientists,” Jefferies replied.

Major Wilson laughed. “I expect so. Not one of them took part in your dress rehearsals.”

He gave Colonel Lipton a hard look. “And I didn’t have the authority to make them mandatory.”

“None of us did.” The Colonel said.

Jeffries gave him a hard look. He knew damn well that the only reason Lipton didn’t have the authority to order compliance was he never asked for it from either command or the Terran government, who had hired the legion for this. He didn’t want to risk upsetting Armstrong or the University there, as he called Armstrong home and had for centuries.

At nearly four hundred years old, Wilson was hard to read, but Jeffries thought that he agreed. Not that the taller black man would voice it. He’d been under Lipton’s command for a long time, and junior officers who voiced such got all the crap assignments.

Jeffries changed the subject. Pointing at the plant, he asked, “Anyone seen anything else out there?”

Major Wilson turned back to looking across the gate and answered, “All we have is that dune one hundred and ninety meters away is higher than this door by half a meter. It is long enough to block our entire view of anything else.”

Jeffries grunted, “Damn inconvenient. What good are the lasers mounted inside the door that can hit targets at fifty kilometers if they can only see less than two hundred meters?”

“You can’t rely on them for defense, anyway,” Lipton said, stating the obvious. “They are just to make sure nothing can get past the gate that we don’t want here.”

Jefferies’ Top Sergeant, a man that looked thirty, but had been in the legion three times longer that Jeffries had even been alive, arrived next. “Did you have advanced warning, sir?” the bald senior NCO said.

Suppressing a smile, he answered, “Not this time, Top. I happened to be in my cabin doing paperwork. This time, I am not first simply because I know when the drill is happening.”

As Jefferies expected, eight of the other bald men in his platoon, sergeants all, each with more time in the legion than he had even lived, were the next to arrive. It was a strange ritual that had evolved over the centuries, but shaving one’s head was a sign of committing yourself to a career in the legion. With modern technology, bald men were so rare, if you saw one in a crowd on any of the older colonies, it was a good bet he was career Legion, uniform or not. His own platoon, all handpicked for this, was more than half men with shaved heads. These senior sergeants spaced themselves along the wall as they had done many times, with enough space for the eight men in each of their squads to fill in the gaps.

The six corporals that made up his own staff arrived next in mass, despite the fact that they were to be the tail end of the group. Jeffries had hopes that each of them would go career, and had put them in his staff to see that they got all the training he could give them in that direction. They didn’t lead the others by much, as men were showing up and taking their place even as those six took the tail position. It was no surprise that Corporal Yohan Jules was the last of the eighty-man platoon to arrive and take his place. The man never did things until he had to.

Then they waited. Not one of the four scientists they were there to escort and keep safe had arrived. Wilson held up his tablet. Three were still in their rooms getting ready, and the fourth in the infirmary.

Hurry up and wait. A slogan going back longer than The Legion by a long time.