The Commander Read online

  The Commander

  By Kevin Groh

  Blurb:

  The young privileged son Carter Sanders, who grew up on the human colony Utopia Beta, is drafted for military service. Together with new comrades, he learns to be a soldier in the following two years. Mean instructors, difficult lessons, dangerous training missions, and an unexpected battle turn the thoughtful young man into a deadly fighter whose name becomes a legend.

  About the Author:

  Kevin Groh is an industrial engineer and works in digital marketing. In addition to his profession, he is also involved in fantasy and science fiction. He has always been enthusiastic about magic, aliens, and superheroes, which has been further enhanced by his many years of enjoyment of books, films and video games from these genres. He usually calls himself a 'nerd' with a smile.

  For this reason, he writes exclusively in these genres, whereby there are occasionally also mixtures.

  Omni Legends

  The Commander

  Guardian of Utopia

  By Kevin Groh

  [email protected]

  www.omni-legends.com

  Map design: Sarah Richter Illustration

  Cover design: Jesh Art Studio

  1. Edition, 2019

  © 2019 Kevin Groh – all rights reserved.

  Kastanienweg 2

  35321 Laubach

  Hesse, Germany

  [email protected]

  www.omni-legends.com

  Immerse yourself in the world of Omni Legends

  More short stories, the Omni-Wiki with all important characters, places, objects and planets, links to more of my works and my blog can be found at www.omni-legends.com

  Stay up to date and follow me:

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/OmniLegends/

  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kevin.groh.791/

  I dedicate this book to

  Thomas, Marika and Lisa,

  who have always supported me along the way.

  Especially I would like to thank Anna:

  You believed in me and encouraged me to continue.

  Without you this book would never have been written.

  Inhaltsverzeichnis

  A Life of Prosperity 10

  Osilon 24

  The Tormentor 36

  First Steps 58

  Old and New 84

  The Burden of the Recruit 109

  Teambuilding 126

  Getting Serious 149

  Friendships and More 166

  Reluctant Mission 184

  Progress 200

  Turn of the Year 223

  Simple was Yesterday 231

  Nirvana 242

  Tangible Infinity 271

  Advanced Techniques 289

  Consequences 317

  Calling 334

  The Retro Week 361

  No Choice 379

  Ground Warfare Exam 403

  The Fruits of Labor 417

  War of the Recruits 429

  The Guardian of Utopia 458

  A Life of Prosperity

  ›The way of peace is a bloody road.‹ The golden letters seemed inappropriately noble compared to their dark meaning. However, the headline was a good match for the other books on the shelves. It was the last volume on philosophy and existentialism that Carter had been missing to complete this area of literature for himself. He found the title quite dark, although he agreed with the author in many respects. He browsed the contents of the shelf. There were history books, sagas, and legends, romanticism, non-fiction, adventure novels, and philosophy. The bottom row featured heroic stories and fantasy titles that he had never touched before.

  His father had once told him that one could only achieve something in life if one was smarter than the average. And the ordinary citizen learned all his knowledge through a poor education. He had private lessons since the age of five because his father thought the education system was corrupt. People would be raised to zombies without wills, he always said. When he was ten years old, he opened his first more serious book and had taken a liking to it. Therefore, he had decided to read at least one shelf row full of what he considered to be an important category of literature. He would thus have a sound basic understanding of various areas of knowledge and it would not be so easy to fool him. But this had the disadvantage that Carter didn’t know what to do with many people because their know-how came from the aforementioned school education and couldn’t keep up with his level of intelligence. He usually felt quickly bored when he talked to others. This reinforced their impression of him being a spoiled and arrogant guy with a rich parental home.

  He sat down on his office chair and looked at his living room. It was the largest of the five rooms in his apartment. He had a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, an office and an open plan living area with stairs and a veranda. No other eighteen-year-old had such comfort. He saw his Holo-ID lying on the table and gently moved his finger over it. From the small chip card came a slight glow, and a rotating holographic projection of him appeared. He looked at his image. He was 1.85 meters tall, of athletic stature and, he found, with a bold face. His medium-length, dark brown hair was combed to a parting.

  He didn’t have a strong beard yet, so he shaved it all off. The narrow nose and the thin lips made him look stricter and more serious than he was. He had green eyes and a scar over his right brow that ran through part of it. As a child, he had driven with his hoverboard and crashed against a barbed wire fence at full speed. He was lucky it hadn’t caught his eye. Most of the scars had been removed, but this had been left because the hair would not have grown back there anyway. Next to the floating silhouette, he read his name: Carter Slade Sanders. When he was younger, he found double names terribly annoying. His father had him from some movie. Over the years, however, he liked the sound better and better and meanwhile, he was very fond of it.

  He made his eyes wander. Certificates for successful fencing competitions and his awards for perfect exam results were hanging over his desk, but they meant nothing to him. In the living area, water gently splashed down a stone wall, and on the other side, a niche was recessed in the stone wall with an artificial fire burning. It formed a clear contrast to the 100-inch projector TV on which he had spent several evenings playing video games or watching movies. He never had many friends. The private lessons and the general dislike of a lot of people had contributed to that. Most of his peers in the upper class were extremely arrogant with no justification whatsoever. They rested undeservedly on the wealth of their parents and in some cases had even less education than a worker’s child, although they had the means to cultivate themselves. The laborers always seemed like the more pleasant people to Carter because they were direct and honest. They usually did not hide any secret intentions or ulterior motives. They were involuntarily poorly educated and considered him a snob just because he came from the same class as the arrogant idiots he couldn’t bear himself. For this reason, he had not found friends in either group.

  He looked at his favorite wall in the living area, the armory. There were three hand-forged swords - a Japanese katana, a European two-handed sword, and a Persian shamshir. The katana had been a gift from his sister Zoe. He was fascinated by medieval martial arts since his father had watched some old movies with him. Beneath the swords were two bows. One was a recurve bow, an improved version of the former rider’s bow and popular as a piece of sports equipment. The other was a compound bow, not made of fiberglass but light metal with counterweight and castors. This form was widespread among marksmen’s clubs and enthusiasts, but mostly only legally usable in a protected environment.

  Since he was little, weapons, martial arts, and adventure stories had fascinated him. At the age of four, he always wanted to play with wooden sticks, spi
n them around and hit things.

  Carter stepped up to the window and looked at the property. It was a vast area with lawns, some woods and a creek running through it. The weather was sunny, not too warm and almost windless. He smiled and lifted the recurve from the mounting. Dressed in his worn jeans and a black tank top, he left the apartment. He had thrown over a brown leather quiver with twenty sport arrows and stretched a brand new string on the bow. He loved to run on the meadow and through the groups of trees, sliding under sloping tree trunks or jumping over boulders. A few months ago he had seen a documentary about the acrobatic sport called parkour and considered it so cool that he had tried it ever since. He still had problems with somersaults and high jumps, but many other things worked surprisingly smoothly by now.

  After about fifteen minutes he arrived at a small wooden cabin he had built himself. It consisted of only one room, in which his old bows, a heap of arrows and a few wooden swords were lying around. A table stood under a canopy, and next to it was a fridge with drinks. He sat down briefly and looked at the view. The cabin was located on a hill from where you could see the next town in the distance. New Denver was there, dark and mighty. He pondered how Utopia had come about.

  About two hundred years ago there was a growing problem of overpopulation on Earth. Medicine became better and better, food became cleaner and healthier, and with the right medication, almost everything was curable. The mortality rate decreased drastically, the average age of people increased and more was built vertically than horizontally. It would probably have gone even faster if the birth rate had also risen, but due to loneliness, media and technology people drifted apart and set astronomical demands. There were hardly any functioning interpersonal relationships, everyone thought only of themselves and love was a term from movies, just like the word ›happy‹. The space program of the leading government had discovered a colonizable world in an adjacent star system and they were ready for a test. It had taken almost 150 years for this new habitat to be colonized. The planet was called Utopia Beta. Carter thought it was a joke to call Earth Utopia Alpha.

  Since the governments of the homeworld had failed, Utopia Beta was run by large corporations, which had led to a distinctive capitalist culture. The border between rich and poor had been pushed to the extreme and there was no middle class. The only exception were the members of the military, who, depending on their rank, also lived in a middle segment, but this was hardly noticeable in the total population. The rich lived in large estates on the south side of the world, while half of the northern hemisphere was dominated by metropolises and the other half by huge quarries and mines. The planet was financially independent of Earth, which was due to the unique substance that was only available on Utopia Beta: Synthium. It was a material that could neither be called metal nor organic. It was versatile and not yet fully researched. Syntech had the monopole on all mines where Synthium was extracted and on all facilities where it was processed. Carter’s father, Magnus Sanders, was a member of Syntech’s supervisory board and a personal friend of the company’s founder, who had died three years earlier.

  Magnus had been a respected developer before his time in the leadership team and had invented the technique by which synthium could be formed. This had revolutionized the planet’s economy and made him rich. He ran the Syntech research headquarters in New Denver, which is why the estate was so close to the metropolis.

  Carter looked up at the sky and remembered the day when he had been told that Earth had only one moon and he couldn’t really believe it. He had become accustomed to seeing the three huge rock planets orbiting Utopia.

  He straightened up and saw his straw target standing a few feet away. He positioned himself and tested the traction of the string. It was a bit stronger than the last one, but the reinforced fiberglass would easily withstand the additional pressure. Carter put on an arrow and aligned it. For a while he had a visor screwed on, but he preferred to shoot without it. When he let go, the arrow hissed away and drilled his way a hand’s width from the middle into the target. He pondered and tried again. He attempted it seven more times but did not hit the exact center. Noon passed and one of the butlers asked via the communicator when he wanted to eat. Carter decided to use the day a little more and practiced some movements for his parkour arts. Then he went back to the house.

  His apartment was on the ground floor and his father lived on the three levels above. While he was still walking across the meadow, he saw a shuttle approaching. Magnus had to be done for the day. Carter smiled. His father was an enormously important and busy man, but he always took time for him since the two were alone.

  Carter’s sister Zoe was four years older than him and had studied economics. She had been best in her class and had taken a leading position for a construction company on Earth. There she had married a historian named Eddy and already had a son named Terry. They both stayed at home while Zoe made a career in the tough business world.

  His mother, Sarah, had been very busy coping with the new demands after his father’s rise to the upper class. But Magnus had many enemies because of his attitude. One day there was an assassination attempt on the two and she was shot. Ever since Magnus had bodyguards with him when he was not on the property. Despite the long working hours, he managed to be a good father to Carter and Zoe.

  Carter showered and changed, then he went upstairs to see him. The staff had already finished dinner and served them salmon on vegetables with caramelized carrots and baby potatoes. Since there were no salmons on Utopia, they were imported from Earth. Carter was chewing on a piece of fish when his father looked at him and grumbled: »Sorry I’m so late today. I had to struggle with several representatives of the military. These people are like vultures!« Carter tilted his head. »Why did they show up this time? Aren’t there already enough upgrades for their soldiers?«

  »According to them, there is never enough. I’m not saying that upgrades are fundamentally bad. Equipping war-disabled and crippled people with sophisticated multifunction prostheses is a great thing. Even these new intelligence upgrades for scientists and military strategists I can still understand. But when they started to develop weaponized and dangerous models that would turn a human into a killing machine ... That’s where I draw the line! I know from a friend in the Air Force that there are unofficial talks about forced upgrades.«

  »You mean they want to force soldiers to have their body parts replaced by prostheses even though they’re healthy?«

  »It seems so.«, Magnus replied. »And if you consider that the selective conscription law can force every young citizen into military service, the thought is frightening. Imagine being forced to be a soldier first and then simply having your arms amputated and exchanged for some spare parts equipped with weapons. You couldn’t defend yourself against it and in principle, the military would own your body. We are talking about a new form of slavery ...« He shoved a fork into his mouth and after some chewing said: »Apart from that, I don’t think Synthium should be used for such things anyway. We are still discovering new characteristics of this material and who knows what it can do to human physiology when exposed to the right conditions. This is irresponsible and potentially very dangerous.«

  He looked at his son for a while and then shook his head briefly. »Excuse me, Carter. I’m just talking about work again.«

  He waved off: »Oh never mind! There is so little happening here all day that I am glad to hear something different. I watch the news only sporadically because most of it is just manipulated crap anyway, which is supposed to lull the education-weak classes into safety. I just look at that to follow the developments. Since I have finished private lessons, I lack employment. I’ve been pondering what to do about it for weeks.«

  »Have you already come to a conclusion? Or are you still with the martial arts choreographer and reconnaissance pilot?«

  Carter smiled because his father teased him with the two most ridiculous ideas they had during their brainstorming.

  »A
ctually, I was thinking about doing an internship at Syntech. Not in your area, because I’ve never had a thing for research and development. I’m not the type for endless tinkering and experimenting.«

  »Syntech has more divisions than just the development department. You can dig in the mine.«, his father laughed.

  »I was thinking more about weapons development. By that, I don’t mean upgrades, but conventional weapon technology. Rifles, pistols and heavy weapons. Less developing itself, more in the area of field testing and improvement. And one day I hope to rise to your league. I think your job is one of the few that really do make a difference. Decisions you make ultimately affect the entire planet.«

  »That’s true, but it also gives me a lot of sleepless nights. Before my time in the office chair, I didn’t have any gray hair ...«, he laughed.

  In fact, his father had gone from the kind and vital man he knew from his childhood to a dignified businessman. Gray streaks, wrinkles, and occasional eye-rings had become a common sight. Nevertheless, he was rich and the staff was proud to work for him. Syntech had helped many people.

  The two finished their meal and decided to watch a movie at home before Magnus wanted to exercise. A few days ago they had started watching a long series of old superhero movies. One of the main characters had built a high-tech armor in which he could fly.

  Carter wondered which of the technologies would one day really exist. Such exo-suits already existed, but shrinking a human was not possible so far. There was also no indestructible metal, even if Synthium came quite close. After the movie, Carter went into his apartment and played a few rounds with a friend from Earth via the ComNet. He had met her in virtual reality and they had a lot in common. However, she was a little older than him and worked for a large financial company. She had wanted to visit him for a long time, but due to the war, only a few flights for private persons were possible.