Two months.
David, Assistant Squad Leader, Echo Squad, 2nd Platoon, 336th Company, Stellar Army. Rank: Private First Class (for f**k's sake). Clad in his finally paid-off, faintly sweat-stained Power-Assisted Infantry Combat System (PAICS), he felt like a bargain-bin Iron Man, if Iron Man's "arc reactor" was a buzzing battery pack on his back and he couldn't fly.
The good news? His weekly pay was now twelve hundred credits, two hundred more than his Assistant Mechanic salary at Pioneer. The bad news? Holy hell, the bad news. That goddamned PAICS climate control undersuit and body glove had cost him a fortune, nearly wiping out his savings from the first few weeks. The mess hall's synthetic nutrient paste provided all the calories and micronutrients needed to live and fight, but the taste
