Chapter 10: Enlisting (1/2)
Khan didn't manage to make the girl talk, so he limited himself to resume his training. The mana flowed faster toward his brain and body under his attention, and the tingling sensation never stopped running through his skin.
The ride on the truck went by quickly. The transport only took a few hours to reach its destination since it flew above the Slums. When it landed, a couple of soldiers unsealed the fabric covering the container and told Khan and the girl to jump off.
A spectacular scenery unfolded in Khan's vision. He had the familiar Slums on one side and a tall structure on the other. The entrance to the domain of the Global Army resembled a massive metal palace surrounded by towering walls.
The walls were black and protected Ylaco's central districts. They surrounded the actual city and the various training grounds. The Slums were only dumps built around those defenses.
'I remember this scene,' Khan thought while inspecting the defensive walls and the tall structure.
Khan didn't recall much about his life inside Ylaco, but he had often visited his father at work with his mother back then. The structures of the Global Army shared a similar style, so he could sense a certain familiarity in that scene.
”Just enter the building and fill the forms,” One of the soldiers said to Khan and the girl. ”Enlisting is easy. What comes after not so much.”
The girl performed a proper military salute. She placed both arms behind her waist and straightened her back, but the soldier ignored that gesture.
'Her situation must be similar to mine,' Khan guessed. 'Maybe her family still has ties with the Global Army.'
The people in the Slums rarely joined the Global Army. That force promised power and training, but it also imposed obligations and dangers.
The Global Army could compel its best soldiers to defend specific outposts on distant planets or go to war against threatening creatures born from mana. That job had a high death ratio. Most of those who enlisted from the Slums directly refused the mana core to remain on Earth.
Moreover, the citizens of the Slums didn't trust the Global Army enough to put their lives in its hands. The behavior of the soldiers in those districts made them lose any desire to become part of that rotten system.
Of course, Khan had no intention of becoming one of the lazy soldiers pretending to enforce order in the Slums. He wanted to travel to different planets and hunt for the Nak, even if that would turn him into a slave of the army.
The girl immediately ran toward the entrance of the tall structure, and Khan slowly followed her. He wasn't in a hurry to enter the training ground since the enlistment period would still take a few weeks to end.
A few soldiers stopped both of them at the entrance. They didn't bother to ask for documents since Khan and the girl clearly came from the Slums. Still, they took their signature and registered their fingerprints before allowing them inside the building.
”Hold on a second!” One of the soldiers suddenly said after Khan registered his fingerprints. ”You are already in the system, but your last name has been erased. You must come with me.”
Even the girl stopped to look at the scene. It wasn't too rare for the people in the Slums to have a relatively important past, but the erasure of the last name was a serious matter.
Khan inspected the soldier, ignoring most of her features. His focus was on her uniform. The woman had a star on both arms.
”Have you ever heard of Bret, the previous head of the science division?” Khan asked.
His identity wasn't a secret. The Global Army already knew who he was, but Khan wanted to avoid wasting time. The soldiers would have to ask many authorizations to find the censored files connected to his last name.
The woman's eyes lit up. She didn't know Bret personally, and she had never met him. However, she knew the story about the scientist who lost everything after the Second Impact.
”I'm his son,” Khan added when he noticed the changes in her expression.
The soldier wanted to add something, but the details of that story began to fill her mind. A holoscreen came out of her watch, and she pointed it at Khan while whispering a few faint words.
The screen quickly became green, confirming Khan's story, and the soldier let him proceed without asking further questions.
'I hope Dad didn't make people too angry here,' Khan sighed while proceeding through a large hall.
The soldier would definitely warn the higher-ups about Khan's arrival, but he couldn't do much about it. His identity would have come out sooner or later anyway.
Technology that Khan had never seen filled the hall. A dark metal almost made the entirety of the furniture, and electric torches shone on the tall ceiling. A series of desks featuring holoscreens occupied half of that room, while comfortable chairs stood on the other side.