Primus: an original novel by me; Chapter 1: It's time.

"Wake up.  You gotta wake up!" I say to myself over and over again. "It's just a dream, Max, you gotta wake up!" Finally  I gasp for air and sit up in an almost violent manor. The primary sun is barely on the horizon as day breaks. "Almost time." I anxiously sigh to myself. Today I am 18 years old and I will enlist into the military. Service is mandatory here,  and for obvious reason. The rebellion of primus began two hundred years ago, when the galactic federation of earth stopped sending supplies for tech, and left us to die.

The search for other intelligent life was abandoned over fifty years ago because we can't fix what we have any further than what we've already done.  This is not a friendly planet, either. In the winter, we have nearly perpetual sunlight because primus orbits two stars, well sort of. We are a moon to a planet that  orbits two stars. And in the winter time, Exodus, our moon's host planet,  is in between both stars. It only orbits one of them, but we still get the light from the other one.

The terrain here is luscious and thick jungle.  The animals are large and provide plenty of food for us, but the water is poison unless we extract all the lead from it. Most of the insects will leave you alone, but some are pretty nasty.  Our villages are small and relatively easy to defend, but are usually a great distance from a military installation. We don't have cars like what we learned earth has, but we do have small ATV type vehicles. 

"I'll see you later, mom!" I exclaim as I leave the bungalow. I'll have to walk to the installation today unless the soldiers show up to bring me in, but I doubt they will. We were just hit with a federation attack last week, so it's all hands on deck. The base is only ten miles so it'll take me a couple of hours to get there.  I'm excited to go, but I wouldn't go if I had the choice. "I hope I get navy." I think to myself "navy almost always survives." 

After 3 hours of walking,  I can finally see the base. It's intimidating with it's 25 foot high walls of concrete, and guards every 10 feet.  "Office is straight a head. Keep your head down and don't say shit to anybody." A guard says to me as I walk through the gates. "Understood" I told him "but.. " "not a word." He says. I nod and continue walking. I ran out of water a while ago and I can feel the cramps in my legs. I get to the office and the general tells me to sit down and shut up. I do so and he begins to look me up and down. "What branch are you lookin' for?" He asked me in an irritated fashion. "Navy." I told him without hesitation. "They're the most likely to survive, sir." "You're right, but they're the smartest we have, and you look about as dumb as a box of rocks." He tells me, unimpressed by my appearance. "I'm top of my class and physically fit enough to perform all the tasks the navy would have for me, sir." I explain to him, but his face seems less than impressed. "Tell you what. We'll give you a test and see just how smart you are." He grins as the words escape his lips.  I've never taken a placement test before. I never thought that I'd have to. 

He starts walking down the hall way and sort of gestures for me to follow. I do so without him having to say anything. We get to a small room with a single computer. On the screen it asks for an admin password, and the general types it in.  I sit down and begin the test. "Oh by the way, there's no retries, so give it your all." He says as he leaves the room.  I score a 4300 and stand up. The door is already opening before I have time to get to it. He tells me that I failed. "Marines for you." He says mockingly. "There's gotta be a mistake. I'm top of my class for Christ's sake!" I scream at him. "Too bad." He said in an almost cheerful tone. "Marines." The word is imlamted in my head. I can't stop thinking about what went wrong or why the score was bad. 4300 is a giant number. I don't understand why they did this to me!  Why me!? After I got home that night,  I cried   . "I am going to die. I am going to die!" Over and over again until I fell alseep .