Twenty-Three
“This is madness, Job, sheer madness,” Senator Borge declared to his longtime friend and political rival. Ice cubes clinked in the tumbler that was now nearly empty of the expensive Scotch that President Nathan kept especially for his friend and opponent. The president’s personal living quarters, built on the site of what had once been the United Nations building in Old New York City, were sparsely but tastefully decorated with priceless original silk batiks depicting the rise, decline, and eventual rebirth of Nathan’s native Masai tribe.
Strom Borge detested the room. “It’s completely irresponsible of you as Commander-in-Chief to allow such a thing. Over twenty billion people have died in this damned war. And here you are, worried that we might be infringing on one person’s rights, for the love of All.”
Looking out the enormous pane of plastisteel that served as the room’s east wall, facing forever into the rising sun, Job Nathan sighed in resignation. He was tired of arguing, but he was not about to alter his decision. “We’ve talked about this enough, Strom. And don’t play your guilt trip scenario about war casualties, either. Believe me, my friend, as much as you might like to believe otherwise, I have felt each of those deaths as if they were members of my family. Unlike your hero of twentieth century Eurasia, Joseph Stalin, I don’t accept those figures as simple statistics; they are all human beings – every single one of them. And making Reza Gard another statistic is not going to help the war effort.” He turned away from the window, his face creased with age and the strain of leadership. “We’re losing this war, Strom, as I am sure you are well aware. It may take a number of years for that to become clear to the general populace, but the fact remains that we cannot replace our losses as fast as they are incurred. We don’t trade planets with the Kreelans; they take them from us after bloody fighting, as if there is no end to their resources, which maybe there isn’t. They never give us a chance to return the favor. And our losses have been accelerating over the last few years.”
He turned to look out the window again, his eyes taking in the ocean waters that once had been poisoned, but that had in the centuries since been restored to sufficient purity that the water once again was teeming with life. “Reza represents what may be our only chance, Strom, and our decision now must be the right one, and not simply for his sake. If I were confident that your methods were the best for the situation, I would have acted upon your suggestions and those of General Tensch. I would sacrifice one life, a thousand, a million to end this war. But that is only wishful thinking, and I will not punish someone who has committed no offense – other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time as a child – for the sake of fantasy.”
“So,” Strom said quietly, watching the president with an almost predatory gaze, “you are confident that Reza is actually going to pan out as a Marine, then?”
Nathan shrugged. “I think it will be an interesting experiment in culture shock,” he said. Borge smiled politely, but obviously was not amused. Going on in a more serious voice, the president said, “General Tsingai has taken responsibility for getting Reza prepared for Quantico and overseeing his training there, and Zhukovski’s recommendation to have Mackenzie and Carré assigned there as temporary duty instructors was accepted by L’Houillier, with my endorsement. As for how well he will adapt to his new environment – or it to him – who can say? The most important thing is that the matter is settled unless or until something untoward happens.”
Strom Borge looked at his friend with an expression that was calculated not to show his true feelings. “You realize, Job, what will happen if you’re wrong, if Tensch, the others and myself are vindicated?”
“Yes, my good senator,” Nathan replied coolly, raising his brandy snifter in a mock toast. “I will be slated for early retirement, or worse. Would you have me thrown in prison? Shot, perhaps? Then you, Strom Borge, will be the next president of this Confederation.”
Borge smiled thinly. That will only be the first step, he thought to himself as the last of the scotch slithered down his throat.
***
General Tsingai and his newly acquired special aides – Carré and Mackenzie – had done their best to prepare Reza for his introduction to the Marine Corps at Quantico. Quantico was the Confederation Marine Corps’ primary training facility, located almost five hundred light years from Earth and the North American city after which it was named. Tsingai, a veteran of many campaigns, was the post commandant. It was a far more significant assignment than it had been on Earth, for Tsingai’s domain encompassed not only the planet of Quantico, but the rest of its star system, as well.
Despite the tremendous resources at his disposal, however, Tsingai remained somewhat at a loss as to how to deal with his latest, and in many ways most significant, challenge. Reza had been among other humans for several months now, but unlike most humans who came to live in a culture different from the one into which they had been born, humanity had made virtually no cultural impression on him at all. He could speak the language well, he understood the things he was being taught, but he consistently failed to adopt anything that would have made him a bit more human. Even the best efforts of Carré and Mackenzie, who appeared to be the only two who could draw anything at all from him, failed to get him to open up to human ways and loosen his tongue about his experiences in the Empire.
“Well,” Tsingai said to both of them as they all stood watching the induction about to begin in the massive courtyard below, “I guess we’ve done what we can. Now we wait to see if he sinks or swims.”
“He will be all right,” Nicole said quietly beside him.
“Yeah,” Jodi added. “It’s the others who had better watch it.”
Tsingai grimaced inwardly. “You’re sure that he understands that he is not to act like some warlord down there? We’re risking a lot of lives by letting him keep his weapons. If he harms anyone…”
“He will harm no one who does not threaten him with death, General.” Nicole strained to see the dark figure in the crowd below, but could see nothing but a mass of bodies, slowly aligning like iron filings trapped in a magnetic field. “This he promised me, and it is a vow he will keep.”
Frowning, Tsingai watched the crowd of inductees as the drill instructors, the DIs, began forming them up. He hoped the two women beside him did not notice the white knuckles of his clenched hands.
Somewhere down below, they heard a DI bellow.
***
“Line up on the white lines, NOW!”
Reza stood like an ebony pillar among the crowd of inductees who filled the courtyard outside Quantico’s main in-processing building. The other would-be Marines favored him with wary, sometimes frightened, glances and quiet mutterings. He wore his armor and weapons, and carried his few precious belongings in the hide satchel that had accompanied him as a gift from the Empress, for it contained all the few material things he treasured, besides his weapons. He had politely refused the general’s request to adopt some form of human dress after learning that what little off-duty time he had would be his own; he would proudly wear the uniform of the Corps, but he found the civilian clothing unattractive and ill-fitting. Most difficult for the general to accept, of course, had been Reza’s refusal to surrender his weapons to anyone, for any reason. He was a warrior, and his weapons were a part of his body, his soul. He also refused to cut his hair, but never explained why. General Tsingai had grudgingly agreed to these unusual accommodations, but only after very intense arguments from both Jodi and Nicole.
Reza looked at the men and women around him. They ranged from a youthful seventeen to a trim forty, of all different colors, shapes, and ways of life. They were clothed in a bewildering variety of clothes that Reza found somewhat comical and completely alien to the ways of the Kreela. But the diversity in clothing only underscored the fact that Quantico, and the other installations like it, served as temporary melting pots to even out the gaps inherent in the regimental system.
Apparently, Reza was perhaps more diverse than some of his companions could handle. He met their stares, could sense their unease like the predatory animal he was. These were the same feelings he had encountered from almost everyone he had met so far in the human sphere, most especially from those in the high council chamber in which he had been judged, and apparently found worthy. Part of him wanted to reach out to those around him, to tell them that he bore them no ill will, that he had come to fight for them, with them.
He was jostled from behind, and he reacted instantly and instinctively, whirling about with the claws of one hand ready to slash at the eyes as his other hand went for the blade of the short sword that had been a gift from Tesh-Dar.
“I’m sor–” a young inductee, a gangly boy about the same age as Reza, apologized before his face blanched and his eyes bulged from their sockets with surprise and fear at the whirling apparition before him.
Reza stopped his defense and counterattack, relaxing his body instantly. He regarded the young man quietly, noting the complete lack of threatening feelings from this mere child. He noticed the sniggering that took place in the row of people behind the boy, and understood that they had pushed him into Reza to see what kind of reaction they could get.
“Really really I’m sorry I didn’t mean to bump into you I–” He was babbling in a steady, fearful stream.
“What is your name?” Reza asked quietly of this young human who evidently had volunteered to be a Marine. While military service was compulsory, service in the Marine Corps was rarely enforced by draft placement; the Corps had all the volunteers it could handle. What courage might lay beneath the surface to make this timid creature want to seek his Way in the Marine Corps?
“Uh… Eustus… Eustus Camden. Look, really, they pushed me I didn’t–”
“Be still, Eustus Camden,” Reza said, and the boy instantly quieted. Reza watched and felt the emotion’s of the young man’s tormentors, gauging their reactions. What courage this boy may have, he thought, was ten-fold what they possessed. “I was told that trainees may choose their room-mates,” Reza went on, fighting through the accent that he physically could not suppress from his speech. “I choose you.” Ignoring the stupefied gasp of his new human tresh, Reza turned back around toward the front rank.
Behind him, Eustus Camden turned to the three recruits behind him – his tormentors since childhood – to give them his best version of a withering stare, but they sniggered and made faces at him.
“Looks like you got a new buddy, Eus,” one of them hissed.
“Go to Hell, you bastard!” Eustus spat in reply.
“You there!” a voice burst through the ranks. “I MEAN YOU, BOY!”
Eustus felt like shrinking into a tiny ball and evaporating as a DI that looked like a human fireplug with a built-in PA system instead of vocal chords stormed up to him and began berating him for talking in formation.
Dear Lord, Eustus thought. What have I gotten myself into?
As the DI reviewed some fascinating aspects of Eustus Camden’s heritage, a ripple of excitement went through the crowd. The doors to the in-processing building had been thrown open. It was time.
Things had changed little over the centuries in how new blood was brought into the military. Each rank was filed in with mechanical precision, aided where necessary by the DIs and a liberal application of psychological pressure that would become all too familiar to the recruits over the next sixteen weeks.
The lines filed into the front of the main administration building quickly and in good order. Almost all the trainees had several months of prior training conducted by local training centers. Some, mostly those who were coming from Territorial Army units to join the Corps, had considerably more.
Reza soon was lost in the flurry of questions, computer scans, and the rest of the modern paperwork required to become a Marine. Most of the forms, Reza had to leave blank or nearly so. Nicole and Jodi had anticipated this and had researched what they could to help him fill in the information. He meticulously wrote in the names of his parents, which he had been unable to remember but that Jodi had discovered in his mother’s service records. And then, something that meant a great deal to him, Nicole had thought when she coached him through it, he signed his name, Reza Sarandon Gard.
Next was the physical exam. Every recruit bemoaned it because they had all gone through at least one in the previous months and were tired of being scanned, probed, and poked.
“Strip!” shouted a short Filipino sergeant major with a face like parched leather and a voice that pierced the group’s ears like a squawking parrot. The group of about a dozen recruits, which included Reza, was already undressing. Men and women were examined in the same room at the same time, for the war had left little room for the modesty of earlier periods; it did not take into account race, creed, color, or sex, nor did the Corps.
After seeing what the others were doing, Reza began to unclasp his armor, carefully putting the pieces in the plastic bins provided for the purpose. While he had refused any medical examinations while on the Aboukir, Nicole and Jodi had said this was required to become a Marine, and he had decided to allow it. Only his collar and its pendants remained as he slipped the last of three bins into the wall lockers where they would stay until the in-processing was finished.
“In the name of God,” Eustus uttered from behind him. He was staring at Reza’s back, his mouth hanging agape, as was everyone else’s who could see.
The nearby recruits took a few steps back, shocked speechless by the tendrils of scar tissue that undulated across Reza’s body.
“Looks like he got caught in a tiller,” quipped a dark-skinned woman who appeared to be quite unimpressed.
“Gross,” hissed a woman with blond hair cut nearly down to her skull. She turned away, making a face of disgust.
“C’mon, goddammit,” growled the sergeant major. “None of you are any better looking!”
Putting away their feelings toward Reza in hopes of avoiding any more serious action by the sergeant major, the recruits slowly shuffled to the exam booths set up around the room. The ones who had to stand in line waiting for the medtechs continued to gawk at Reza.
When he came to the head of the line at his station the female medtech carried out the requisite tests with hardly a look at any part of his anatomy other than what happened to be of immediate clinical interest. He watched her intently, intrigued by the compact high technology equipment with which she worked.
His interest made her nervous. The unblinking stare from his sharp green eyes was beginning to upset her, but she did not become really upset until she saw the results of his gene and DNA scans on the computer. This was the first time that Reza had allowed anyone close to him with medical probes, and it appeared that the machine had decided that he was not really human, delivering a message proclaiming “species unidentified.”
“Stay here,” she ordered tersely. She got up to speak with the sergeant major. “This is all wrong,” she told him quietly, glancing nervously at Reza. “And I know there’s nothing wrong with my equipment. I just calibrated it this morning.”
“I know, corporal,” the sergeant major replied. “Just log the results and pass him on to the next station. The… discrepancy was anticipated.”
The medtech hastily finished the remaining details and let Reza go with the others, relieved that she no longer had those predatory eyes burning into her.
The naked recruits gathered up their things and followed their Filipino chaperone to the next stop, the quartermaster. There, each was measured and fitted for the camouflage combat uniforms they would wear for the duration of their stay. They would not receive a dress uniform until graduation. That was the first and only official function – other than a possible court-martial or two – that they would attend during basic training.
Reza received his uniform with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. He was intrigued by the weave of the fabric, yet he was concerned at how little it offered in the way of protection. His armor was a second skin to him, and he was not enthused by its replacement.
They finally got to their last stop before the noon meal was to be served: billeting. In this one respect, things had perhaps become more civilized, less regimented, in that there were only two trainees to a room. In active duty units the troops often lived in open bay barracks, usually with thirty or forty men and women to a bay, but Quantico had been laid out differently at its inception for reasons no one quite remembered, and the quarters had never been updated. But one thing that both the Quantico dorms and open bay barracks had in common was that they were entirely coed. The women were billeted with the men, whether they were in barracks or semi-private rooms. This often caused a stir among the troops from the more conservative worlds, but it could not be helped. The time of sexual equality had, more or less, finally arrived.
“Gard, Reza!” called the Marine sergeant handing out the billeting assignments. Reza stepped forward, still chafing at the feel of the training center uniform he now wore. He carried his armor and satchel in his arms. The young man handed him a key. “Room 236. Across the courtyard, second floor, turn right.”
“I wish to specify Eustus Camden as my roommate,” Reza said.
The Marine glowered at him. “Move out!” he shouted.
Reza left as the man called out the next name, assuming that the sergeant had granted his request.
As luck would have it, he did.
“Remember, people, chow at twelve-hundred. That’s twelve o’clock for you civilian and Territorial Army pukes!” someone shouted from the room behind him. He assumed that “chow” meant food, but he was not sure. Shaking his head in puzzlement, he joined the stream of new recruits making their way to the rooms they would be sharing for the next six weeks.
***
“Battalion, ten-HUT!” The Filipino sergeant major brought the recruits in the auditorium to attention. “Listen up, trainees,” he began. Reza frowned to himself. He had a terrible time understanding the man’s accent; he was not alone. “Your first week is now over,” the sergeant major continued. “It was easy. You had a day to rest. That was easy. Now you will begin to learn how to be real Marines, not just boys and girls in ugly Quantico uniforms.” He smiled, his perfect white teeth blazing from his rawhide face. “That will be very hard. Not all of you will make it. Some of you might even get yourselves killed, and more than a few will cry for their mommies and daddies.” There were a few nervous laughs in the captive audience, but the sergeant major was quite serious. “But whoever finishes will be worthy of the uniform you will receive when you graduate. That will be a real uniform, not the toy soldier costumes you wear now.
“You already met your classroom instructors last week. Most of them are officers or NCOs who are on a break between combat assignments. You will see some of them again during your advanced courses. Providing you make it that far.” Aquino’s flawlessly polished black boots clicked on the polished wood of the stage as he strutted to the side that held a podium bearing the Marine Corps emblem, a galactic swirl overlaid by crossed sabers. He was so short he would have almost disappeared behind the podium had he been speaking from it, but the medals on his khaki uniform dispelled any notions about his size affecting his combat abilities. “Instructors, POST!” he barked.
Five people marched out onto the stage and assumed parade rest facing the trainees. The sergeant major gestured toward the screen behind him that held the new week’s schedule. “Starting tomorrow, you will do PT for three hours, starting at oh-six-hundred. Every day.” The trainees groaned. “Captain Thorella will be your primary instructor.”
An ox with arms and legs instead of four hoofed feet stepped forward from the line of instructors. His uniform was specially cut to accommodate his enormous frame of hardened muscle. He snapped his hands to the creases of his trousers as he came to attention, a fierce grimace on his face.
The trainees groaned again.
“Oh, no,” Eustus muttered beside Reza. The good captain was already well known to everyone in the group, and Eustus and Reza had become two of Thorella’s personal favorites during their break times between the intro week classes.
“Pipe down,” Aquino ordered. “If there’s anyone out there who’s better qualified, step up.” He glared at the trainees. The moaning abruptly ceased. No one came forward. “In combat,” Aquino continued, “there is no substitute for proper physical conditioning. Captain Thorella will ensure you are ready.”
Thorella smirked at his new victims. “See you at The Bridge tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced to more groans and muffled curses before he stepped back into line. The Bridge was a log across a creek where Thorella “instructed” trainees in the arts of gravity and physical humiliation. It was well-known from its brutal reputation.
“You will have two instructors in common skills and small unit tactics,” Aquino went on. “Staff Sergeant Taylor and Gunnery Sergeant Walinskij.” The two stepped forward. “Common skills will be every other day for three hours during block one of your training. Small unit tactics will be on the remaining days during the same time period. Short duration deployments for field exercises to try out what you have learned will be announced later.
“Light weapons training will be by Gunnery Sergeant Grewal Singh.” Singh broke the tradition of the preceding cadre by smiling as he stepped forward. Singh was well versed in the fine art of being an asshole, but he preferred other, more palatable methods of getting his points across to his students whenever possible.
“And, a special guest to Quantico, Navy Lieutenant Jodi Mackenzie will see to your close combat needs.” She snapped to attention, stepped forward exactly seventy-five centimeters, and stomped her right foot down at her new posting. She did not smile, nor did she scowl. Her face bore the neutral calm of a complete professional. Someone in the audience whistled. Mackenzie paid them no attention. She would undoubtedly find out who it was during hand to hand exercises. They would not be whistling then. “While Lieutenant Mackenzie is by trade a fighter pilot, she has the benefit of recent experience during the Rutan campaign, where she fought with and eventually came to command the 373d Marine Assault Regiment.”
The sergeant major did not have to mention that Nicole Carré was a classroom instructor, whose instruction blocks included military history and battlefield automation. The recruits had already gotten a dose of her curriculum, and most of them were still reeling. She was sitting in the back row of the auditorium with the other instructors who had already been introduced to the recruits.
The sergeant major nodded, and Mackenzie resumed her place in line. “All of the instructors here have at least one full year of combat experience. Carré, Thorella and Mackenzie have received Silver Stars in the line of duty, and the rest have received citations for gallantry. Some of you out there have combat experience. I expect you to put it to use here. If there is a point of contention between you and an instructor, I will moderate it myself. If you have an idea to improve our tactics or training,” he paused and looked directly at Reza, “I want to hear it. We are training you not only to fight, but also to complete your mission, whatever it may be, and hopefully to survive. You are no good to the Confederation dead; make the Kreelans die for their Empire instead.
“But I don’t want any pissing contests,” he went on after a slight pause and a less-than-surreptitious glance at Reza to see if his earlier words had gotten any reaction, which – somewhat to his disappointment – they hadn’t. “You are here to train. If you knew it all you would be in the Fleet Admiral or Marine Commandant’s chair. You aren’t. Remember that. Are there any questions?” He looked about the auditorium. “No? Good. That concludes the morning brief. Drill sergeants,” he called to the DIs interspersed through the hall, “take charge of your platoons and get them to their training…”
***
The next day, at The Bridge, Eustus stood in a momentary daze as the blood from his broken nose pattered into the water that slowly passed under the log on which he and Thorella were standing. Each held a pugil stick, a pole about a meter long with a bulbous pad at one end and a padded hook at the other.
“Awww,” Thorella said theatrically, “what’s the matter, recruit? You need mommy to wipe your nose for you?” He laughed as the younger man’s face set itself into a mask of venomous ferocity. “That’s better, you queer,” Thorella sneered as Eustus came toward him. “It’s nice to see you show some balls for a change.”
Thorella had been the king of The Bridge since his arrival at Quantico. He loved it. He was a towering mountain of a man, his flexing biceps larger around than most of his contemporaries’ thighs. His face was molded in a permanent grin that would have made his face very attractive except for the black, darting eyes that were without depth, without feeling. He was cunning, intelligent. He was a killer, and he enjoyed his chosen profession. No matter what the prey.
This was the first day on The Bridge for this batch of recruits, the morning after Sergeant Major Aquino’s briefing. Thorella requested the cadre put Reza up first, but they had opted for tradition. Thorella took his place as King of the Bridge and waited for voluntary opponents. If no one came forward to challenge him, names were called alphabetically. Two of the recruits voluntarily came up to try their hand at knocking Thorella from his perch, but both wound up with soaking uniforms and splitting headaches.
In a short time he had worked his way through the trainees to Camden, who now stood on the opposite end of the bridge.
“Take it easy on me, kid,” he smiled, his little obsidian eyes glittering with anticipation. He had something special planned for this one.
“Fuck off, sir,” Camden hissed through his bloodstained teeth. He did not know how to swim, and even though he knew the water below was not deep and there were instructors standing by to pull people out, he was not thrilled with the prospect of being knocked down – semiconscious, undoubtedly – into the cold stream. He gripped his weapon tightly, hoping to anticipate Thorella’s moves.
Thorella waited casually for Eustus to come within range before feinting a blow to Eustus’s feet, then he hit him in the face just hard enough to split his lip, but not so hard as to send him spinning from the log. As Eustus fought to recover, his face now streaming with blood from his violated nose and now his mouth, Thorella slammed him hard in the stomach, driving the wind out of him.
Gagging and dripping blood, Eustus fell to his hands and knees, barely retaining his grip on his useless weapon.
“C’mon, recruit,” Thorella complained, “you’re disgracing my uniform by even wanting to call yourself a Marine. Some blue-skin is going to use you for a tampon if you fight like that. You’d probably like it, just like your buddy Gard.”
Eustus did not take Thorella’s last insult lightly. His family had been raised on a very small outpost settlement not far from Quantico 17. Too small to support even a single regiment, it more than made up for its small size by the devotion to duty of its inhabitants: the Camden name had appeared proudly on a succession of Marine uniforms. Eight gold stars now hung in his widowed mother’s house for his father and the sisters and brothers who had died in the line of duty. Only Eustus and his youngest brother, Galan, remained, and his little brother would volunteer for service when he turned seventeen. That was the way things were. And when Galan finally finished school and left to join the service, his mother intended to finish her days helping the sons and daughters of other families in the sector military hospital. She expected to outlive her two remaining sons, but that would not stop her from continuing her contributions to the war effort.
His heart in a cold rage now, Eustus lunged into a fierce but technically uninspired attack that the captain easily defeated. Drawing Eustus into the trap, Thorella moved very close to him, first driving the hooked end of the stick into Eustus’s crotch behind the screen of his body. As Eustus gagged and began to sag to his knees, Thorella hit him in the face again with the padded end, bruising his right cheek.
As the young trainee toppled backward, Thorella snagged his left foot with the hook and yanked it toward him. Eustus hit the log with a loud crack; had he not been wearing a helmet, he probably would have fractured his skull.
Grinning like a death’s head, Thorella contemptuously kicked Eustus’s unconscious body off the log, sending him tumbling into the water below where he was retrieved by two waiting trainees who had already taken their plunge.
The sergeant major frowned slightly, but said nothing. He held his silence not because Thorella was an officer – Aquino’s power as senior enlisted man in this camp on Quantico far overshadowed the captain’s – but because he believed that a bloody nose here and there helped to toughen his trainees for the deadly fighting that awaited them among the stars: if they couldn’t handle this, they would never be able to handle combat. The captain had overstepped the bounds somewhat with Camden, but not so far that any action could really be taken against him. But Aquino would be watching. And he wished that Thorella did not appear to enjoy himself so much.
“Buddha,” Reza heard someone whisper in the silence that fell over the trainees who waited their turn with the troll who guarded the bridge. It was the first remark of a hushed torrent of resigned commentary: “This is bullshit.” “I can’t believe they’re letting this guy get away with this.” “Oh, man, we’re going to get our asses creamed.”
And, what Reza understood to be the classic epithet: “Oh, shit.”
He considered their comments, as well as what he had just seen. He himself was not overly impressed with Thorella’s method, as it was trivial gameplay in terms of his own experience. What offended him was the reasoning behind Thorella’s tactics: it was not to instruct or inspire, to make the trainees more competent in battle. Even in Reza’s first days in the kazha, while the tresh were often cruel, they did not spar with him without useful purpose. No, he thought, Thorella’s actions were born of his personal hatred and contempt for those around him. More specifically for Eustus and, as he was well aware, for himself.
Thorella made a theater of yawning and stretching before he called out, “Who’s next? Darman! Get out here. I–”
Before the young woman, who was clearly trying to mask her fright, could step up, she felt Reza’s hand on her arm, gently pushing her aside as he stepped forward.
“I request the honor to fight you, captain,” he said formally. Reza had decided that a lesson in humility was in order.
“You understand the rules, trainee?” the sergeant major said before Thorella could reply to Reza’s challenge, but it was more a statement than a question. He did not want a bloodbath on his hands, regardless of who started it. Thorella was much bigger than Reza, but he was not sure that size and the captain’s appreciable skill would make up for the unknowns that presented themselves with the younger man.
“I believe I understand Captain Thorella’s rules, Sergeant Major Aquino,” Reza replied carefully. “I shall obey them.”
Aquino’s eyebrow arched. Captain Thorella’s rules, he thought. This should be interesting. “Very well. Continue.”
“All right, you little slime-bag half-breed,” Thorella whispered under his breath. “Let’s see just what color blood you’ve got.”
Reza ignored the stick one of the other trainees offered to him.
“Take your weapon, Gard,” Thorella ordered.
“I have no need of it,” Reza replied as he stepped onto the log. He felt clumsy in his combat boots and exposed wearing the flimsy camouflage uniform rather than his armor, but he thought he would be sufficiently agile for the job at hand. He waved away the helmet one of the trainees offered him.
“This is more like it,” Thorella said, impressed, as he removed his own helmet, tossing it aside. Even if Gard was a loser, he thought, at least he knows how to go down right. But he was also eager to see how Reza would look after the unpadded grip of the metal bar had been smashed across his shoulder blade. Or the side of his exposed skull.
Reza walked about a third of the way out onto the log and stopped, his eyes never leaving Thorella. His scarred, tan face was calm, his callused hands hanging at his sides.
“Well, come on, freak,” Thorella said, his mouth a cruel smile that split the lower half of his face like a crevasse.
Reza offered him a hand gesture that he had seen used by some of the other trainees. He did not know what the extended middle finger meant, but understood that it was entirely offensive in nature.
“You arrogant little prick,” Thorella said as he made a lightning-quick thrust at Reza’s midsection. Had it connected, he probably would have broken some ribs.
But Reza had somehow disappeared, and Thorella found himself flying through space, propelled by the enormous force he had put behind his own attack. “Shit!” he hissed as he fell, face-first onto the log, scrabbling desperately for a grip before he fell into the water. The hooked and padded stick slipped from his grip and disappeared into the stream with a splash, accompanied by a series of gasps from the watching trainees.
Quickly regaining his feet, Thorella found Reza standing casually a couple meters away, behind him, watching with that stare of his. But now he also wore a slight smile – something he had relearned from Jodi – on his face.
Thorella was incensed, but he kept it well beneath the surface, in the same place he kept all the feelings that seethed within him that could not be exposed to the light of public scrutiny. “Not bad, punk,” he said amicably as he flashed a wolfish smile at the onlookers. I’m going to tear your guts out for that, he screamed to himself.
Reza said nothing as he waited.
Thorella moved forward cautiously, his body fluidly transitioning into his favorite hand-to-hand combat stance, edge-on to Reza, his arms raised to their strike/defend positions.
Aquino was growing concerned. Thorella’s stance was not one he wanted to see practiced here: the technique he was intending to use was for killing only, and was only learned and practiced under very carefully supervised conditions. Still, he hesitated to say anything. Just as much as everyone else, he was curious as to what Reza would do.
Thorella was nearly within striking range. He was not planning any feints or drawn-out sparring contests. He wanted to hurt Reza, hurt him bad, hurt him now–.
Thorella’s cruel smile vanished, to be replaced with the feral snarl of a rabid animal. He darted forward with agility amazing for so bulky a body, making a vicious thrust at Reza’s midsection with his left hand, closed in a rock-hard fist.
Reza deflected the blow without discernible effort and stepped aside, his booted feet solidly balanced on the sloping side of the log. He felt it roll slightly and compensated for it; the log was not fixed in place. A few chips of wood fell into the running water below.
In this way Reza entertained Thorella for a while, parrying the larger man’s thrusts while allowing himself to be pushed toward one end of the log, ostensibly cornered.
“Stand and fight, you bastard,” Thorella snarled. “You’ve got nowhere else to run, now.”
The fist that lashed out like a knife toward Reza’s throat would have killed or crippled him had it found its mark. Instead, it found the wall of Reza’s palm, his fingers closing around Thorella’s larger hand like a vise. The sound of the impact echoed over the streambed like a rifle shot. Thorella tried to pull away, but quickly discovered that to do so was impossible: it was as if his hand had been set in concrete with reinforcing steel around it. He had never encountered a grip so strong.
“What is wrong, captain?” Reza inquired politely. He began to increase the pressure on Thorella’s fist, simultaneously canting it at an angle that began to force the captain to lose his balance on the log or risk having his wrist broken.
“If you let me go now,” Thorella whispered threateningly, “I’ll let you off easy. Otherwise…”
“Do not threaten me, child,” Reza said contemptuously. “Your lack of honor and courage disgrace your bloodline, your peers. Were I not bound by my honor to the strange laws of your people, I would slay you as the beast that you are. Beware, captain.”
Thorella’s eyes bulged with outrage. “Why, you little motherfu–”
He did not have enough time to finish the sentence as Reza flicked him from the bridge as if he were no more substantial than a wad of paper. Howling obscenities, Thorella flew through the air until he hit the water, throwing up a tremendous splash that would be the subject of delightful recounting among the trainees for weeks.
There was another collective gasp among the recruits. Thorella had never been dropped by anybody, and Reza did it his first time on the bridge. With his bare hands. For a moment, there was total silence.
Eustus was the first to react, clapping and whistling his approval. “Way to go, Reza!” He was quickly joined by the rest of the trainees.
“What a belly-flop!” someone exclaimed amid the chorus of laughter from the trainees. Some of the instructors smiled. The little leather-faced Aquino nodded, impressed, and that did not happen very often.
“You mean to tell me that somebody finally got that asshole?” Reza heard a voice in the group ask, incredulous.
“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” said another.
Thorella suddenly burst from the water, sputtering with rage. He slapped at the surface in impotent fury at having been bested. When he finally contained himself, he looked up to where Reza stood on the bridge, silently watching him. Thorella put on his smile again, the lower half of his face smeared with blood from his tongue where he had bitten it as he hit the water. The blood made him look like the water had washed away the skin of his face to expose the red muscle tissue and ivory skull underneath. He pointed a finger at Reza in warning. “Watch your back, freak,” he hissed. “Watch your back.” He winked like they had a mutual secret, and then he moved off toward the shore.
The hatred Reza saw in the man’s eyes left little doubt as to the future. He knew that someday he would probably have to kill him.
***
“What’s the matter, Marine?” Thorella sneered. “Can’t you take it?”
Ever since Reza had tumbled him from the bridge, Thorella had made even more of an effort to make their lives completely miserable. Sometimes he enlisted other officers and NCOs – and even some trainees – to aid him in his mission, but mostly he preferred to administer his harassment personally. The post command staff, while conscious of his singling out Reza and Eustus for special attention, generally made no move to interfere as long as Thorella kept his actions within the unwritten limits of cadre deviltry. For the most part, he complied. Grudgingly.
Eustus cursed to himself as he tried to keep from collapsing into the gravel. He had been doing pushups now for five minutes straight after a grueling five kilometer full-pack run with the rest of his platoon, and his traitorous arms were shaking like the bass strings of a harp, about to give out. His hands were bleeding from the jagged rocks under him, the edges of the sharp granite shards of The Pit doing their best impersonation of razor blades. He looked up at Thorella’s square face.
“No pain, no gain, sir!” he huffed in a less than respectful voice.
“Yeah, Camden, but in your case it’s no brain, no pain.” Thorella got down, right into the younger man’s face, so close that a drop of sweat from Camden’s nose trickled onto Thorella’s. “You drop out on me, you start eating gravel, and we’re gonna take a nice long run through the bogs to warm up your legs, Camden. A nice long run.” The bogs were a notorious hell for the trainees, a series of ankle deep patches of soft ground and reeking standing water that made running more of an excruciating experience than it normally was. Thorella knew without a doubt that Camden wouldn’t be able to hack it after everything else he had been through that morning.
“Fuck off, sir!” Eustus hissed enthusiastically through clenched teeth.
“Keep it up, dickhead,” Thorella warned quietly, the ubiquitous smile etched onto his face. Eustus wanted to barf right between his eyes, but he didn’t have the strength to spare. “Let’s see how your buddy’s doing over here.”
Reza was as solid as stone, Thorella noted despairingly. The big captain looked around for some sandbags or something to pile on the smaller man’s back, but he could find nothing nearby, and it wasn’t worth the effort to go looking too far. He might miss something. “How do you feel, freak?” He tugged on Reza’s hair like he might an animal’s tail. Someday he was going to cut it off and put it with the other trophies in his collection, he thought smugly.
“I am well, Captain Thorella.” Reza refused to call him “sir”.
“That’s good, freak. Know why? Your buddy over here’s starting to look a little tired, and I was thinking you might want to help him out. Camden!” He barked. “Recover and get your ass over here!”
Eustus heaved himself up and staggered to attention in front of Thorella.
“Stand on his back,” Thorella ordered. Eustus just looked at him, his face a question mark. “I’m talking to you, trainee dickhead. Mount up. Now.”
Eustus opened his mouth to tell Thorella just where to take it when Reza interrupted.
“Go ahead, Eustus.”
“No way, Reza. This is totally–”
“Just do as I ask of you.” He looked up. “Go ahead.” Eustus shook his head and did as he was told, placing his booted feet carefully on Reza’s back. He threw a look at Thorella that left few doubts as to his thoughts. The captain only smiled more.
“All right, Marine. Start knocking ‘em out. I’ll count cadence, trainee dickhead here will count repetitions. In cadence, exercise! Ooooooooone…” Reza lowered himself to the ground, his arms like hydraulic pistons. “Two…” He raised himself back up. “Threeeeeeeee… four.”
“One,” Eustus spat, enraged that this kind of thing was allowed to go on. He looked around, careful not to upset Reza’s balance. No other instructors were in sight. Unless they wanted to fight Thorella – he had no doubt that Reza could hammer him to the ground, but they would both get tossed in prison – they were stuck.
The pushups were brutal, a slow count down, a pause at the bottom, and a fast push up to be in time for the next repetition. If you got behind, you found yourself starting from zero all over again.
“Thirty.” Eustus was amazed at Reza’s strength. He was lifting most of his own body weight, plus the additional eighty kilos Eustus boasted. He imagined that someone as big as Thorella could maybe do something like that, but Reza was almost half the larger man’s size.
Thorella was beginning to get impatient, but he reminded himself of the old adage that good things come to those who wait. His smile became a toothy grin in anticipation. “Ooooooooone… two… threeeeeee… four.”
Reza made it, but he was beginning to slow down. His pace was just slightly off. “Thirty-one.”
“Bullshit,” Thorella snapped viciously. “It’s zero, trainee. Zero.”
Eustus snarled and was about to leap for Thorella’s throat, damn the consequences, when another voice joined in.
“That is enough, Thorella!” he heard Nicole bark. “Camden, get off of him! Reza, on your feet.” Greatly relieved, Eustus stepped down. It was like getting off a sheet of spring steel. He leaned down to help Reza get up.
Reza nimbly got to his feet, not even breathing hard, as Nicole stormed across the field like a miniature whirlwind, her normally neutral expression distorted with a very unprofessional look of anger. “What the hell is going on here? Reza, are you all right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” The lactic acid that remained in his muscles was already dissipating. But he was ravenous from the temporary change he had made to his metabolism. He would be making several passes through the mess hall line this afternoon.
“I’m not through here, ma’am,” Thorella tried to bully her. The only time the two of them came in contact was over Reza and Eustus, and then it was a clash of the titans, at least from Eustus’s point of view. “If you recall, I am in charge on this field.”
“Not anymore, captain,” Nicole snapped. “If anything like this ever happens again, I will put you up on charges.”
“Well, well,” Thorella chuckled, not the least bit intimidated. He stepped closer to the petite Navy officer, his bulk looming over her like a freight train beside a bicycle. “Not only is she going to pull rank on me, she’s going to write me up next time. Maybe I’ll get a spanking, too?”
Sadly, his intimidation was not having the desired effect. Nicole did not budge.
“You can do whatever the fuck you please. Ma’am,” he told her, finally giving up on simple intimidation. “But on this field, I am in charge, regardless of what you say. And if you interfere in my business again, I’ll write you up.” He rendered her a mock salute and stomped away like a prehistoric beast, screaming at other gasping trainees doing grass drills, ordering them to recover for a quick run through the bogs before they hit the showers.
Nicole saw the blood on Eustus’s hands, then took one of Reza’s hands in hers, looking it over. She was shocked at how callused it was. The gravel had not made any indentations in the skin. “Both of you, I want you to go to the infirmary and get checked out. And I want you two to stay together so you can protect one another. I do not trust him.”
Reza did not trust him either, but he did not understand the depth of emotion Nicole felt. Perhaps, he thought, it is only a protective instinct. He turned back to her, his eyes blazing with a cold fire that had been ignited under an alien sun. He made an expression that might have been a smile except that his teeth appeared poised to tear something apart. “Do not worry, commander.”
“What a shithead,” Eustus mumbled as they walked back toward the compound. Reza frowned at his friend’s description, trying to conjure up a suitable image in his mind. After a moment, he smiled.