New Recruit Training Camp

To the eyes of an aristocrat like Augustus, the passenger cabin of this transport ship could only be described as crude. The cramped quarters were packed with new recruits from every corner of Korhal.

The young men from the capital city of Sterling always carried an indescribable sense of superiority in their every movement; the recruits from the oceanic city of Aurora bore a lingering, briny scent; and Wolf, an industrial city that rose to prominence on the back of its mines, produced men who were all broad-shouldered and burly.

Although he was the son of a senator, Augustus received no special treatment in the military. Even though Angus Mengsk had eyes and ears everywhere in Korhal's political scene and wielded terrifying power, the Federal government would never allow him to interfere in military affairs—after all, in recent years, Angus could be said to have single-handedly stoked the Korhal people's passion for rebellion and independence.

In this light, Augustus actually had to worry about whether he would be targeted within the military. As for blatant persecution or an opportunity to kill him, the Federal government likely wouldn't go that far, at least for now.

Nowadays, on major social platforms, at gatherings of the old nobility and famous entrepreneurs, and in the salons of high-society ladies, people were all whispering about the hypocrisy of Angus Mengsk.

In public and during speeches, Angus would scream himself hoarse denouncing the corruption of the Terran Confederacy, calling on the people of Korhal to resist brutal rule and exploitation, yet behind the scenes, he had sent both of his sons into the Federal Marine Corps.

People believed that Angus was clearly playing both sides: on one hand, inciting public sentiment while promoting his own company's products to reap staggering profits; on the other, pledging loyalty to the Federation to keep a path of retreat open for himself.

This was also why Angus had been absolutely furious about Augustus joining the military. His two sons, far from wanting to become his heirs, not only failed to support his cause but instead kept doing rebellious things that sent his blood pressure soaring.

The fact that Arcturus Mengsk, as the eldest son and heir of the Mengsk Family, had not only avoided being ostracized but was actually rising through the ranks in the military, showed that the Terran Confederacy was happy to use this as ammunition to attack his father.

After everyone had boarded the transport ship, a recruitment sergeant walked into the cabin and climbed the boarding ladder.

"Listen up, boys! At the recruit training camp on Turaxis II, you will become the bravest warriors in the entire galaxy."

The recruitment sergeant bared a set of gleaming teeth, looking at the excited reserve recruits.

"The glorious and great military camp is waiting for you!"

"Turaxis II? Isn't that a combat zone? The recruit training camp should be on a planet that hasn't been hit." A recruit dressed in relatively decent clothing suddenly shrieked.

"Shut your mouth, you piece of shit..." The sergeant's expression shifted, and he immediately spewed a string of words that, to Augustus, were incredibly vulgar and unrefined, including many Edge World slangs he couldn't even begin to understand.

"Listen up, ladies." The sergeant pointed at the recruit's freckled nose and said, "The generals in the command system have unanimously decided that live combat should also be part of recruit training."

"Wait until you survive long enough to retire before you go crying into your mother's arms. The military wants real soldiers, not some damn cowards!"

It seemed the situation on the front lines had become so dire—with severe attrition and a shortage of manpower—that the military was forced to deploy untrained recruits to combat zones ahead of schedule just to maintain their control and military deterrence.

As the ship's engines let out a deafening roar, Augustus thought this to himself while, like the other anxious recruits, he strapped himself into the uncomfortable acceleration seat to prevent himself from slamming into the bulkhead and breaking his neck during the ship's interstellar jump.

The last to board were two warp-drive technicians. The Peace Dove transport ship retracted its boarding ladder, cargo bay, and landing gear. The four massive downward-facing air thrusters on the sides and tail of the ship surged with scorching, bright light, sending the Peace Dove four thousand feet into the sky.

Then, the thrusters folded and rotated further to face directly backward, and the troop transport carrying Augustus soon turned into a speck of light disappearing into deep space.

This transport ship, capable of deep-space travel, was manufactured at a starport owned by the Bennett Group and could carry about three thousand soldiers along with their corresponding ordnance and supplies. Augustus estimated that there were at least five thousand people crammed on board now, as some unlucky fellows were tied down in the aisle right by his feet.

After a dizzying sensation of weightlessness, the Peace Dove entered a stable sub-warp orbital state. After confirming there were no officers nearby, Augustus struck up a conversation with the surrounding recruits.

During this time, Augustus did a good job of concealing his aristocratic status, wearing only the cheapest set of clothes from his wardrobe, but others could still judge that his family background was far from ordinary based on his attire. Those designer shoes alone were worth at least 200 credits—and that was just the price on the Sterling black market. After being repackaged and rebranded by shops in the slums, that price would double or triple.

That amount of money was enough for an average slum family to buy food for two weeks. If Augustus were to walk through the streets of the slums or even an ordinary residential area wearing this, there would be plenty of desperate people who would knock him out and drag him into a dark alley, and they wouldn't even leave him with his underwear.

Augustus, who had never been in contact with the civilian class, was still unaware of all this, but he still managed to make the surrounding recruits believe his fabricated, vivid identity. They all believed Augustus was the child of a merchant family that once had some assets but was on the verge of bankruptcy due to the war and asset taxes.

Augustus's handsome appearance and gentle, humorous tone quickly established his central position in this small, temporary circle. He only spoke slightly about his motivation for enlisting, and everyone else poured out their own experiences and everything they knew about joining the military.

Among them, some were attracted by recruitment advertisements and various propaganda documentaries, yearning for military life. One was the child of a miner from an Edge World whose parents had died at the hands of the Kel-Morians; he had just reached the minimum age for enlistment this year.

Another was a gangster who had only hung out in the Victoria District of Sterling, scraping by on smuggling and trafficking before enlisting; he had joined solely to get the 5,000-credit Federal enlistment bonus, monthly salary, and soldier's allowance because his daughter was suffering from a serious illness.

Before enlisting, this street-thug leader had already written his will.

From this, Augustus gained a general understanding of the life led by the civilian class of the Terran Confederacy. It couldn't be said that they were living in total misery, but at least for most, life was barely guaranteed. However, as the war continued, the Federal government had increased various taxes and raised the rates for consumption tax, income tax, and other basic tax items.

Corrupt officials and the founding families and major conglomerates that secretly controlled the Federal worlds exploited the name of war to engage in massive exploitation and rake in fortunes, while more and more fathers and mothers could only work themselves to the bone to earn enough bread to fill their children's bellies.

As for the temptation of the Federal Marine Corps' generous enlistment bonus and the promise of fame and fortune, it drove more people with nowhere else to turn to choose to join the military.

Next, Augustus played a game of Zha Jin Hua with the other recruits—a card game they had never heard of—and won quite a bit of money from these poor devils.

Time slipped away quietly amidst Augustus's hearty laughter and the frustrated curses of the others. At 4:00 AM local time, the Peace Dove exited the hyperspace jump orbit and entered a double orbit of a deep-green gas giant's companion planet, landing at the starship port of a Federal interstellar supply station on its seventh moon.

Before the maintenance technicians refilled the Peace Dove's fuel tanks and gave the wings a fresh coat of paint, the "caring" captain and sergeant major allowed these recruits to stay and spend money in the bars and restaurants of the supply port, hoping they would spend the salary they hadn't even pocketed yet.

Augustus returned all the money he had won, and took a portion of the 60,000 credits his mother had given him before his departure to treat all the recruits in his cabin to a big meal.

Status updated, feel free to tip (hahaha), extra chapters for Guild Masters, one extra chapter per Guild Master (since I write slowly, I cannot save up many).