Just as Johnny felt his lungs were about to burst like broken bellows, every step felt like treading on red-hot knife points, and his mind held nothing but "fond memories" of Carmen and "heartfelt greetings" to eighteen generations of Sergeant Dragovich's ancestors—
"Tooot! Toot-toot-tooot!!!"
An urgent, piercing emergency assembly call, utterly different from the usual training whistle, suddenly cut through the wind howling over the route and the recruits' oxlike panting like a sharp spike of ice.
All the recruits still "wriggling" or "struggling" forward froze involuntarily, including Johnny, whose vision had gone black at the edges and whose soul felt ready to leave his body.
Their bodies reacted faster than their brains. The conditioned reflex drilled into them through relentless training almost made them turn around the instant they heard that particular call.
But then came deeper bewilderment and... a trace of foreboding.
Emergency assembly? Now? In the middle of a loaded cross-country run? That wasn't Sergeant Dragovich's style. That devil preferred solving problems by "drilling you to death," not interrupting his own "artistic endeavors."
Soon, several camouflaged Chimera armored personnel carriers came bouncing along the dirt road bordering the training route from the direction they had come, engines roaring. The duty NCO's hoarse but unquestionable shout rang out from their roof-mounted loudspeakers:
"Entire company, attention! Orders from base! Loaded cross-country training is terminated immediately! All personnel, regroup and board the vehicles! Return to base! Repeat, return immediately! This is not a drill! Move, move, move!"
Training... was over?
Johnny exchanged a glance with Royce, who looked just as wretched beside him. Each saw disbelief and deep wariness on the other's filthy face, crusted with sweat and frost.
In the recruit regiment of the 48th Colchis Auxiliary Army, the odds of training being interrupted without reason were even lower