train (n)
A connected line of railroad cars. From the verb meaning “to drag behind.”
training (n)
Instruction, discipline, or drill.
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July 192 (Station Year), Kumamoto
“I have a question, Instructor.”
The young employee raised a hand. The instructor eyed her name tag and saw the tadpole symbol next to the name, indicating a new employee in the training program.
“You have permission to ask, Shimabara,” intoned Instructor Yokoi, who wore a short-sleeved uniform. Miika Shimabara lowered her arm ninety degrees, like a clock hand rotating, and pointed out the window.
“Is that a military division training exercise?”
Beyond the glass pane was a bizarre sight. A rope was tied to the rear of a truck, with the other end wrapped around the wrists of a young man who was running behind it. The organic oxide engine belched black smoke as it trundled along slowly but still slightly faster than a human could comfortably run. The young man looked miserable. Moisture from his sweat stained the wheel ruts in the dried earth.
Other new employees were riding on the bed of the truck, along with a few senior employees, who yelled “Run faster!” to the unfortunate man and smacked their hands against the side and back of the truck. Cicadas buzzed and hummed ceaselessly from the woods behind them.
“No,” the instructor replied coldly. “That is part of our new member training. All of you are going to undertake the exams soon, and the lowest score of the group will be forced to take the trip back to the dorms in that manner.”
An uneasy stir ran through the twenty or so new recruits in the training classroom.
“May I ask one more thing?”
“What?”
“Why would you do that?”
“To ensure you take your training seriously,” replied Instructor Yokoi, quite earnestly. “It is our responsibility to maintain the peace of all of Kyushu and protect her lands. As you know, Kyushu has been in conflict with Yokohama Station over the Kanmon Straits for fifty years. So long as the military division, our pride and joy, continues to protect the strait, the fires of war will never come to Kumamoto. But our success demands your focus and dedication at all times.”
“Thank you for your answer, sir. I understand now,” Miika responded, lowering her head in a manner as smooth and precise as a machine. The instructor asked if anyone else had a question and glanced around the room, but no one raised a hand.
“Then we will conduct a training exercise with weapons today, as planned. Be prepared, because the person who performs the best will be given preferential treatment within the division.”
The JR Fukuoka branch in Kumamoto, on the west coast of Kyushu, used buildings that had initially been erected for a different function decades ago. Compared to the headquarters in Hakata and the frontline base in Kitakyushu, the structures were considerably older. They’d originally been made of white concrete, but after so much time, they were all stained black from the soot created by organic oxide reactors.
Located at this base was part of the engineering division, the intelligence division, and the facilities for training new employees.
JR Fukuoka was a government-run business contracted by Japan to oversee the local region during the Winter War. There’d been multiple such entities around the country at the time, but this one always had a stronger military presence due to its geographical proximity to the Korean Peninsula.
However, as the war continued, Yokohama Station’s self-replication buried the island of Honshu, and the Japanese government ceased to be about two hundred years ago. With its parent organization lost, this business transformed into a sovereign nation.
With fifty years of successfully holding off the station’s creep over the Kanmon Straits under its belt, JR Fukuoka had earned the trust of the Kyushu populace. The police arm of the military division functioned smoothly, public order was tightly maintained, and the worst of their problems was friction between refugees from Shikoku and the native citizens of Kyushu.
The testing range for shooting exams faced a hill on the campus. The mound was very small, only two meters tall, and wooden humanoid targets had been placed at equal intervals along its length. Each one had concentric circles where the heart would be on a living person.
Instructor Yokoi held up an electric pump gun to demonstrate what the trainees would be using. It was a weapon developed in the Winter War that could use any piece of metal as a bullet. With the ability to find ammo anywhere, soldiers could fight for months without needing to resupply. According to what they taught in history class, this turned all of the military arenas of the world into chaotic guerilla battles that allowed the conflict to persist until it had entirely burned out any remaining shreds of civilization.
Guns were standard among Kyushu civilians for self-defense, but only short ones with twenty-centimeter barrels were legal, and they didn’t do much more than slow down an enemy. The weapons used in firing training here were JR Fukuoka’s own eighty-centimeter-long guns; they had a monopoly on the production and possession of them. The armament was about as thick as Miika’s arm, but it wasn’t that heavy when slung over the shoulder because most of the interior was hollow space for the projectile’s acceleration.
Even when Instructor Yokoi wasn’t speaking, his mouth was open. He probably had a bad nose and could only breathe through his mouth. Due to the dryness this caused, he always carried around a water bottle with him.
“We’ll be using these pellets. They have the least trajectory curvature,” he stated, holding up a metal ball about a centimeter across. “However, you don’t know what you might be using in a battle. You can learn how to shoot with ideal bullets like these, but success comes down to instinct. If you don’t understand after watching, you’re not going to after a lesson, either.”
In other words, it was an aptitude test to see if the new employees had the smarts to fire a weapon they’d learned nothing about, Miika surmised. She didn’t quite know what to expect from actual combat, though.
“I have a question.”
“Yes?”
“What is the purpose of practicing with these guns?” Miika inquired.
The instructor glared at her mockingly. “To protect the population.”
“Who are we supposed to shoot to protect the population?”
“Being able to judge that on your own is what separates fully-fledged adults from the rest.”
“I understand, sir.”
When her turn came around, Miika loaded six of the metal balls into the gun she was given, as instructed. The bullets seemed unnaturally small for the size of the weapon.
It was her first time handling a long gun, but the item’s construction was straightforward and easy to use. The metal pellets had just a faint scent of earth to them. Undoubtedly, they’d been used in training exercises like this one before. Collecting them from the dirt had to be a chore.
After ensuring that the firing mode was set to single shot, she pulled the trigger.
Pam! Boosh. A small hole was gouged out of the flank of the human target. Miika lowered the barrel and shot twice more. Each one hit a knee.
“Are you aware that you get a higher score for hitting the heart?” questioned a senior employee holding the scoring chart behind her.
“I determined that aiming for the legs would be a better means of controlling the enemy’s range of motion.”
“Look, this is a test, so just do as the instructions say.”
Miika exhaled with undisguised frustration. “Yes, sir.”
She raised the barrel and fired. The pellet grazed the target’s shoulder and bounced off the dirt behind it. Then she lowered slightly and fired the two remaining bullets into the chest.
“See? You can do it,” the man said. He wrote Military Division Aptitude: B on the scoring sheet. The grades went from A to E.
Mika thought it was much easier to adjust your aim during the exam if you hit the target on the first try and more difficult if you didn’t. In fact, the new hire who took the test after her missed by a wide margin, striking the dirt behind the target. The next shot hit the ground, and that left the pupil totally rattled. His hands shook as he continued, and each of the last four rounds missed the mark.
Instructor Yokoi told him, “You should try your luck with the intelligence division.”
Everyone understood the derision behind that statement. The unlucky young man ended up dragged behind that truck at the end of the day.
Although it was not recorded in any official capacity, everyone knew there was a clear hierarchy among the various sections of JR Fukuoka. The military division was on top, and next came engineering. Given that the company’s entire purpose was to protect the homeland and its people from Yokohama Station across the strait, that priority would never change. Next came several administrative-type divisions, and last was the intelligence division.
Those who fought at the strait were the most important, and the engineers who made their weapons were the second most crucial. Their purposes were the easiest to understand. The intelligence division was the lowest rung because nobody really knew what they were good for.