Work on the farm never stops.

Up at 4AM to fight for warm water in the shower, then run to breakfast before it’s gone and you have to settle for the burnt bottoms in the pots.

On the truck at 4:45 to go work the fields until the water break at 9, the break to both drink and pass water. If you need to take a dump you must shovel it into the compost piles.

At 9:15 you need to be back on the truck, then off to then pens to shovel feed in one end and shit out the other. You must hurry because you have to be done at 11:45. The trucks leave on time, and you cannot go if your work is not done. It is a long walk back when you are left, and you will miss lunch at noon.

The afternoons are spent shooting, Jim’s favorite activity, followed by PT, practicing hand to hand combat and running obstacle course.

***

Jim is a hard bodied 16-year-old. His story is typical for all the young trainees. When he was little, he lived hand to mouth in a rundown trailer with his mother and siblings. When he was old enough, he was sold to the farm, just like his older siblings were, and the two younger ones will be, as soon as they are old enough. Their trailer was one of many, all occupied by women producing kids for the farm. A fucking baby farm this place was.

The farm takes in new bodies constantly. They have to be young, no older than 5 or 6. It takes lots of labor to grow food for her Majesties space rangers. The young ones are worked hard on purpose, causing the weak to fall out naturally, becoming pig food. By the time they are 8, they are tough, resourceful little survivors, conditioned to prefer routine and follow commands to the letter.

This is also when the afternoon combat training start. From 8 to 16 years of age these kids follow the same routine every day, without exception. You keep up or you become pig food.

When you make it to 16 you are ready for life on a battle ship. Life in space is exactly like life on the farm. You follow a rigid schedule that sets an unforgiving pace. You hustle or you die.

***

For the first time in 11 years Jim leaves the farm. He boards a carrier with just the clothes on his back, to be transported to his assigned post. Everything he needs will be provided.

Unlike the puke buckets that bring the young ones to the farm, this carrier has view ports. Jim was surprised to see how small the farm was from up here. He will not miss it.

The carrier passed through clouds and Jim’s senses were overwhelmed by what he sees. The carrier is moving through what can only be described as a huge fucking space that makes you feel insignificantly small. A huge fucking enclosed space. Judging by the curvature of the clouds and the patchwork landscape peeking through, they must be in a sphere or a cylinder. A sphere or cylinder so large it wouldn’t fit in Jim’s brain.

An artificial sun hangs in the center, on the axis, and the cylinder is spinning. After a while the terrain change to barren rock, and eventually a large group of buildings appear below. The carrier descends and performs its complicated dance with an ever-moving landing patch.

This motion is unsettling and someone vomits loudly, while others curse or laugh at the unfortunate soldier. Jim is not bothered, he goes with the motion, flows with it. The carrier seems to do the same, and eventually gravity from the spinning cylinder embraces the carrier, and it becomes part of the moving landscape.

They are rushed out of the carrier onto a truck. The carrier engaged its auto flush system and expels the vomit with a rush of hot water and air. This mechanism is usually used to clear out body parts and gore when the carrier is used in battle to transport rangers to and from the frontline.

Jim wonders if he was born in this habitat, and where his mother and siblings were. His worldview got a big adjustment in the last few hours.

***

They arrive at their new home, a collection of standard Quonset huts with showers and toilets at one end, and two rows of beds with footlockers. He is assigned infantry duty and attached to a squad.

No time is wasted. Jim gets his uniform, and is then transported to be fitted to his mechanical space suit. These suits are mindless robots you climb into, then establish a neural link with its very basic brain that controls its movement and balance. Jim is familiar with these suits; he grew up using similar mech-suits on the farm. This one promise to be new, and fast with all its parts optimized for battle. It should also smell better inside, not like old farts like the ones at the farm.

After suit fitment their personal weapons are issued, and the young soldiers were transported back to barracks with suits in tow.

***

For the first time in 11 years Jim has free time. The others were as unaccustomed to this as he. Weapons were disassembled, cleaned and reassembled. Jim noticed a female ranger, Julia it said on her nameplate, was matching him for speed. A competition starts between Jim and the girl.

Others notice and gather around to watch. Against all things rangers stand for, Jim lets her win, and she knows it. After the cheering and congratulations subsided, she walks over to Jim. He thought she was wanting to chat so he rose to meet her when she head butted him back onto his ass. ‘Don’t do that again’ she says into his ear, winks at him and walks away. Jim grins like an animal. He likes her!

Their platoon leader enters and calls their attention, announcing an officer on deck. A tall grim looking man enters and orders them at ease. He removes his cap, runs his fingers through his hair and slams the cap back on his head.

He clears his throat and introduces himself.

‘I am vice admiral Olufsen, and I am here to tell you some truths. You may sit or stand it matters none to me. All I ask is that you pay attention.’

He starts walking down the aisle between the beds with his hands behind his back.

‘You young men and women completed the harshest, most unkind preparation to be soldiers I have ever witnessed. I want you to know that this is not standard practice on earth. You had to be prepared this way because of the very nature of this mission. This is a suicide mission. There is no return to earth for any of us. All of you were not born on earth. You probably noticed that we are inside a cylindrical habitat, a hollowed-out asteroid. We gave it spin so we had gravity, earth normal I must add. It was then loaded with water and soil from earth to create the fields you all have tended for so many years. We constructed this world. You were born not so far from here to mothers who still cry about you, but gave you up because it was their patriotic duty.’

He turns around and walks the other way.  Some rangers look troubled, they hated their mothers.

‘You are the toughest, most fearsome soldiers, bred in space for space, raised like livestock, conditioned and mistreated so you can become the fine killing machines you are today. This was necessary because we boosted this habitat 30 years ago, and set course for the home world of our long time enemy. We are almost there. Deceleration started, and we are approaching our target from behind their sun. The scientists tell me when we emerge from behind their sun we will appear as just another space rock, until the final moments when we fire our boosters again and ram this rock right up those alien asses.’

The young rangers cheer this proclamation loudly. When they quiet down he continues.

‘Earth is still battling these alien fucks near Saturn. Your earth trained counterparts are keeping them at bay, but the outlook is grim. The enemy seems to have unlimited bodies and craft to throw at us. We tracked the origin of these reinforcements to be here, on one of the larger moons of a dead planet. This mission will end this supply. There is no going back. This moon is a farm of sorts, where the enemy produce soldiers, weapons and provisions for its far-flung destroyers. After we destroy it, earth has a chance. Rest today, tomorrow we begin our preparations. Long live the queen! Rangers forever!’

The rangers all stand at attention and repeat the salute, and remain at attention until the officers were gone, to deliver the same message to the other squads. The admiral insisted on doing it this way. Many of the young rangers are grinning, eager to finally do battle, ready to die for their queen and comrades.

***

The next two months is filled with preparation for the assault. Every person in this rock will participate in the attack. Food is harvested, prepared and packed in rationed packs, and water collected and bottled. The breeding of soldiers stopped 5 years ago, explaining why new pukes stopped showing up. The last batch of young ones will pilot guided bombs to the surface of the moon. Their mothers are trained to run chain guns, and will lead the way clearing a path for the young bombers. Their current home will hit the planet. No matter how they tried they could not calculate a direct hit on the occupied moon.

There were 14 differently sized moons around the planet. Their target was not the largest moon, but the only one that emitted radio waves.

***

D-day arrives with the boosted habitat streaking past the targeted moon, having already released its deadly cargo D-30 hours ago. Streaks of light from the moon reached for the spinning habitat. The rock fires its own lasers at the moon, some hitting true, others just drawing lines past the moon into space.

Too everyone’s surprise two of the other moons, closer to the planet, also fire at the rock. The rock is hit and breaks into two pieces, both tumbling to the planet. Unexpectedly weapons discharge on the planet’s surface, missing the tumbling rocks but destroying the very moon that these earthmen and woman travelled so far to dispatch.

Space rangers are quick thinkers and the attackers split into 2 groups heading for the smaller moons. When passing the debris of the destroyed moon they are again surprised to see that it was a hollow construct, consisting of lattice work and tubes connecting large spheres. The outside was a layer of rock but everything else was obviously engineered. The enemy on this artificial moon was neutralized. They also breathe an oxygen and nitrogen mix like we do, and none of them was wearing protective suits.

This new information was valuable. The bomb riding pukes were sent instructions to delay detonation to occur 30 seconds after impact. Their mothers took the lead, and proved to anyone that might have called them baby farms that they are mothers first, and will protect their suicide bombing babies for as long as they can. They scanned the moons and picked their targets, coordinating between them so they do not all attack the same location, and opened fire.

Rail guns are kinetic weapons. They fire projectiles with tungsten cores using high voltage. The force experienced by the projectiles is known as the Lorentz force. This force is the product of the current, the resulting magnetic force, and the length of the rails. These guns were huge, and the ships they were mounted to used to be the power generators for their temporary world. It fired 500-pound projectiles faster than god can spit, and it was capable of firing multiple projectiles at the same time.

The baby farmers rained destruction on the two smaller moons, and instead of crashing into their target, they went around to get to the planet and help neutralize those lasers. They declared their love for their babies on an open channel, and many sobbed loudly. Half of the young puke bombers crashed into the moons, and the other half followed their rail gun riding bitch mothers to the planet beyond.  Behind them the two smaller moons were blown apart.

Reconnaissance drones recorded the battle and sent live feed to the control ship and earth command. Something was approaching from the planet surface, climbing through the thick cloud cover. Something large on an ever-widening circular path around the planet.

It was another moon, firing its lasers at the flying rail guns and bombs. Some of the rail guns break formation and head directly at the moon, straight to the laser installations, emptying their guns and crashing into the enemy weapons. These space ranger mothers are made of the right stuff.

Most of the bombs made it past this moon and entered the planet’s atmosphere, closely followed by reconnaissance drones. The upper atmosphere was thick yellow clouds obscuring the planet’s surface. Below there were vast installations built around craters, and inside some of these craters were more manufactured moons in various stages of construction.

The place was a fucking moon farm. The two parts of the old habitat impacted the planet, destroying many of these installations, and burying others in flying debris. The remaining ranger mothers emptied their guns at anything that looked like a weapon, then chose targets and rammed their ships into those. The young bomb riders followed close behind, coordinating targets between them, and each hit a moon where they nestled in their craters.

Jim and his squad lands on the planet surface, with the many other troop carriers that were spared because of the brave ranger mothers and their youngest offspring. This sacrifice was not lost on them, and they set out to kill as many of the enemy as they could.

Earth is advised of the significance of this planet, and it was recommended that another bigger rock with more mass be sent to their coordinates.

They are here now, and they will do as much damage as they can. It might take 40 to 50 years before any new asteroid can be captured and sent this way. They have time, and many young women and men.

They will establish a new ranger farm to supply all the soldiers needed to cause as much harm as possible to the enemy while they wait.