Shauna pinged me before I could contact her. "You hear? We're moving out!"

"Yeah, we're going to Paradise."

"Paradise!" She laughed. We hadn't been together since my promotion to sergeant, we'd both been too busy and I was way too tired. It hit me then that I might never see her again, once we left our base on Camp Alpha, we'd probably be on different transport ships, then assigned to different sites scattered across the surface of Paradise.

"Hey, uh, good luck on qualifying for infantry." I didn't want to call to end, and I didn't know what to say.

"Thanks, that'll have to wait until we get there." There were loud voices in the background. "Joe, I have to go, let's keep in touch?"

"Sure." And that was it. At least we'd be on the same planet.

You might think that 'two days and a wakeup' means we had two full days, plus a luxurious full night of sleep, before we had to assemble for departure. You would be wrong. The 'wakeup' happened at zero dark stupid, it felt like my head had barely hit the pillow before lights snapped on in the tent, and my feet had to hit the dirt. Getting up at zero dark thirty was nothing new to me, and I didn't resent it even though I was not by nature a morning person. Or even a mid-morning person. My sister was an annoyingly cheerful morning person, and growing up I'd wanted to smother her with a pillow more than once.

Anyway, I had to get up at zero dark stupid, which meant I then had to wake up my fireteam. The difference between zero dark thirty and zero dark stupid, is that zero dark stupid means you rouse out of bed, get all your gear ready and assemble for departure inspection, only to stand around for three fucking hours when you could have used those three hours for something productive, like sleeping. As a sergeant now, I had to endure the resentful glares from my team while keeping a neutral expression on my face.

The whole departure was a clusterfuck. The Kristang wanted their dropships loaded as quickly and efficiently as possible, which meant cramming the maximum number of people aboard in a frantic rush, even if that meant splitting up platoons, squads or even fireteams. When we finally boarded a dropship, Baker and Chen had their feet in the door when the MP held out a hand to stop anyone else from boarding. "We're full, move on to the next ship," she announced.