The atmosphere in the military canteen had been buoyant a few minutes ago. Now that the briefing had started, a sense of doomed silence fell upon the cadets as the reality of their tenuous position seized the room. "The HSK is a ruthless, ruthless test," Sargent Nolan's lectured from the podium. "In the past six months this damned Chinese test has massacred more than a platoon of our finest men. And we've yet to even catch sight of it in the wild."