The year is 2319, and the war with the Apeps had been over for fifty years, well at least on paper.
That was what the Treaty of Earl promised: peace inked in cold signatures and sealed in orbit above a burned-out moon on Jupiter. The Apeps, fanatical serpentine conquerors who worshipped annihilation as a sacred act, had been pushed back beyond the fractured borders of human space. In exchange, they swore restraint. No more system-wide purges. No more cleansing fires. No more human losses carved into census records and mass graves.
Fifty years later, the ghosts of that war still walked among humans.
Worlds once tuned habitable in 2200s, that turned green remained cinders. Star lanes still avoided entire regions where wreckage fields drifted like metallic graveyards. And every so often—just often enough to keep the fear sharp—there were skirmishes with mercenaries, warriors and the Apeps. Some patrols never returned. A listening post may go dark. Human defectors slipping across the line, joining Apeps in servitude covinced it was better than dying. Apeps deserters crawling the other way, hunted by their own kind for heresy and becoming criminals, mercenaries, or warriors. Semi-peace, the politicians called it.
Heinrich Wynn had never believed in peace.
He stood at the viewport of the transport shuttle, jaw clenched, eyes fixed on the growing shape of Astra Primus. The academy hung in high orbit above an almost barren world of earth where only some cities still thrive in colonies, it's an immense ring-and-spire construct of gunmetal and blackened alloy. Radiator fins jutted from its hull like serrated bones, and defense platforms orbited it in disciplined patterns. It wasn't beautiful but It wasn't meant to be.
It was a fortress that taught people how to kill.
Heinrich was nineteen years old, officially a recruit, unofficially still an orphan stray that had learned how to kill. His hands were scarred—knuckles split and healed wrong. The faint line along his temple was where a knife had cut bone during a gang fight in the ruins of Old Chicago. Earth hadn't been kind to him, but it had been hell. Hunger. Violence. Survival all in one.
An attack on a smuggler run taken his parents when he was 7. Not in some heroic last stand, not in a blaze of orbital fire—just a refugee transport disguised as a smuggler deal gone wrong, the wreckage was later found and they body were found damaged beyond recognition. Heinrich had grown up after that in state housing and street alleys, learning early that nobody came to save you. By thirteen he was running with gangs. By sixteen he was good at hurting people. By eighteen he was either going to end up dead or disappear into a penal battalion.
Instead, Colonel Kane Sr. had found him.
Heinrich still remembered the first time he'd seen the man: tall, broad, posture like it had been welded into place. Kane's eyes had been old in a way that had nothing to do with age. He'd watched Heinrich fight three other boys over ration credits and hadn't intervened until Heinrich went for the throat.
"You want to get yourself locked up," Kane had said afterward, voice flat "or do you want to be something better?"
No one had ever asked him that before.
Kane Sr. was the colonel appointed to oversee Astra Primus, the most ambitious military project humanity had attempted since the war. The logic was brutal and simple: if the Apeps came again—and everyone knew they would—then humanity would not survive by numbers or treaties. It would survive by quality. By soldiers trained beyond endurance, beyond mercy, beyond fear.
Astra Primus was built for that purpose alone.
The shuttle shuddered as it aligned with the academy's primary docking ring. Around Heinrich, other recruits sat in rigid silence. Some stared straight ahead, trying to look fearless. Others whispered prayers to god. A few already looked broken, their bravado leaking away with every kilometer closer to the station.
Heinrich said nothing. His stomach was tight, but not with fear but with anticipation.
The boarding ramp slammed down with a hydraulic scream, and cold, recycled air rushed in. The first thing Heinrich noticed was the smell: antiseptic layered over metal and sweat, with something sharper underneath—ozone, maybe, or burned lubricant. The second thing he noticed was the silence. Not the absence of noise, but the kind of silence that came from being told to be quiet in a harsh tone.
They were met by instructors in black combat uniforms, faces hard, insignia minimal. No welcoming speeches. No speeches at all. Just orders barked with surgical precision.
"Move. Line up. Eyes forward."
Heinrich moved.
The processing was merciless. Names were stripped away and replaced with numbers. Medical scans probed old injuries and potential weaknesses. Psych evaluations dug into memories Heinrich would have preferred to leave buried. Every flaw was cataloged. Every strength questioned. Anyone who failed a standard was escorted out without ceremony, their dreams ending in a side corridor they would never walk back from.
By the time they were marched into the barracks, Heinrich's muscles already ached. It had been less than six hours.
"This place is a hell hole," someone muttered from the bunk across from him, voice shaking.
Heinrich didn't disagree.
Astra Primus did not pretend to be humane. Training cycles ran until recruits collapsed. Instructors punished hesitation more harshly than failure. Sleep was rationed. Pain was constant. The message was carved into them with every drill and every blow: the Apeps would show no mercy, and neither would this academy.
For Heinrich, the cruelty felt familiar.
He adapted quickly, his body hardened by years of street violence and hunger. Where others broke, he endured, Where others hesitated, he remembered the first he did and promised to never do again. Still, Astra Primus will find ways to hurt him that Earth never had. Gravity-adjusted combat chambers will probably crush his lungs. Live-fire simulations will force him to choose who died. Instructors will push him until rage threatened to consume him—and then pushed harder.
Whenever he thought about quitting, He thought of the Apeps—serpentine shapes moving through fire, their religion built on extinction. He thought of the treaty, of the fragile line holding back another genocide. He thought of Kane Sr., and the chance that had been offered not as mercy, but as a test.
This place will be a training ground and a hell hole, and Heinrich understood that more than others and he knew Astra Primus was only the beginning.