Stolen Valor

by Kal Spriggs

  We fell out and started to hurry to the bay doors. “Entrant Vars, wait a moment.” Richardson told me.

  “Sir,” I stopped and turned, bracing to attention. I felt a nervous sweat break out on my scalp.

  Richardson waited until the rest of my flight had left before he spoke. “You’ve recovered well. Any lingering effects from the accident?”

  I caught his emphasis and swallowed, “No, sir. I feel fine.” I felt tired and my whole body ached and I was having trouble focusing, but I put that down as much to lack of sleep and general exhaustion as to the horrible incident. I really hoped that I was still me, but I didn’t have any reliable way to measure that, not outside of a full brain scan… and for obvious reasons, I wanted to avoid them doing a full brain scan on me and maybe learning that I wasn’t who I’d said I was.

  “Good,” Richardson seemed to hesitate. “I think you’ve made good progress, Vars. Especially volunteering for the patrol. You’re integrating well with the flight. You’ve a surprising amount of charisma and that’s earning you a place here.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I told him.

  “That said, I’d caution you. We’re coming up on the final phase of Second Screening. You’ve earned some enemies, Vars, and those enemies might focus on the entirety of the Flight in order to remove you from the Institute.”

  “Sir?” I blinked. For just a moment, I took that as a threat.

  “Something to think about, Vars,” Richardson waved a hand. “Dismissed.”

  “Sir,” I nodded and turned to jog away. A dozen thoughts went through my head. As I fell in with the others of Jade Flight, I wondered if Richardson had been trying to warn me… or if it had been a threat. What if he’d taken some kind of bribe? What if he’d been the one to sabotage my electrodes? But then why would he have administered the double dose of quick heal? That didn’t set right by me. And as far as a warning, well, from what I’d seen already, I was already going to be at full alert. I didn’t see how I could be more alert.

  But you could take yourself out of the equation, Shadow whispered in the back of my mind. You have a contact with someone who can get you offworld. You could go home. Leave all this behind. The Admiral is still alive. Your sister is still alive.

  Put that way, there was certainly an option. I could avoid all of this. I could volunteer for the next patrol. I could join the other renegade entrants. There’s still spaceport security, I cautioned.

  I might be able to falsify passcodes for you, like I did for the assassin I helped to slip inside the barracks, she answered. Not just for you, either, for all of them.

  I hadn’t realized that was an option.

  I could go home. I could slip off this horrible planet. Aboard the freighter, I could probably convince them to go to Century or a system nearby where I could get a ride home. If I left on the next patrol, I could be home in a month, maybe less.

  That beat the idea of hiding undercover here for months or years, didn’t it?

  ***

  Chapter 10: I Run Into My Old Playmate

  “Fos… you still alive?” Lokka spoke from the vent above me.

  I was in the middle of cleaning the latrines and I glanced around to make sure no one was in earshot. “Lokka, do you find this all amusing?” They were cleaning the showers down the way a bit and the noise should screen what I said. I hope.

  “Watching humans fight over food,” Lokka chortled. “I took video. Clan enjoyed, many views. Trending is what humans say, yes?”

  “Yes.” I grunted, not looking up. I considered that for a moment. “Care to help me out?”

  “No cleaning, that looks boring,” Lokka chittered.

  “I was thinking spying, sneaking, you know, stuff you’re really good at,” I said.

  “Interesting…” Lokka answered, “go on.”

  “There’s some humans hiding in the tunnels down below. Can you keep an eye out on them?”

  “Want me to talk to them?” Lokka asked.

  “No, I don’t fully trust them. There are Hunters going through the tunnels, I want to know what they’re doing down there, too,” I told him. “Also, I have a ration meal stashed in my wall locker. Do you think if I stash it somewhere…”

  “I can get it when they put you down for the night,” Lokka chittered. “Everyone snores, especially you. No one notice, then.”

  “They have monitors,” I cautioned.

  “I can disable, conduits easy to access,” he answered. “Your girlfriend coming, see you later fos.”

  I glanced over my shoulder just as Jonna settled next to me, a cleaning brush in her hand, “We’re not up for patrol tonight, the instructors sent me a schedule.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” I answered. “Anything else?”

  “You should go with them,” she told me, not bothering to clarify who she meant. She didn’t need to be more specific: she was telling me to desert with the other entrants.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” I admitted.

  “Don’t think. Someone tried to fry you already. I’ve got too much going on to try and babysit you. This stuff with House Mantis—”

  “They want you dead, too,” I said. “There’s this business with your father…”

  “My father is none of your business,” Jonna hissed.

  “Fine, whatever,” I snapped back. “Maybe I could help you if you actually told me something.”

  “I’ll tell you something,” Jonna ground out. “We’re going into Second Sweep soon enough. And the people who already fried your brain are going to have a target on you. If you stick around, they’re going to throw a lot more at us than we can survive.”

  “I don’t even know what that final phase consists of, how am I supposed to make an informed decision?” I looked over at her. For just a moment, I didn’t care about the monitors, I just wanted her to acknowledge that I had a right to know. After all, I was the one that would be risking my life if I tried to run. She’ll be back here.

  Jonna looked at me and met my gaze. “Sorry,” she said after a moment, before going back to scrubbing at the floor. “Sometimes you fit in well enough, play the role of Vars well enough, that I forget you’re not from here, that you haven’t spent years training for this like the rest of us.”

  “Final phase, they drop us in one of the ruined factories outside of the city. We have to get to the exit, and the doors only open if we have everyone in the flight, alive or dead. There’s a few hundred criminals and convicts, plus washouts from First Screening. They’re all equipped with implants that kill them if they leave the boundaries of the engagement area. Any of them that kills one of us gets a pardon and a ticket to anywhere they want, plus enough cash for them to start over.”

  “Are we armed?” I asked.

  “Kavach exosuits and TBA-2s, but they’re armed with a mix of light and heavy weapons,” she said. “And they’re very, very motivated. We are their ticket off-world.” Jonna told me.

  “The obvious solution seems to be to stick together, we move quick, no problem, right?” I asked.

  “Remember I said a mix of light and heavy weapons?” Jonna asked. “They don’t mix up the exit, it’s always in the same place. These guys will know where we have to go. Many of them have been there for years. They set up ambushes, strong-points, barricades. If your enemies know which run you go in, they might give them more ammunition, better weapons, more equipment.”

  “Won’t that throw off any follow-on flights?” I asked.

  “Do you think the people gunning for you really care?” Jonna asked.

  I didn’t have an answer for that. “Besides, the overall approach is the harder they make it, the better they ensure that only the toughest, smartest, and most capable entrants will survive.”

  I considered it as I went back to scrubbing the area under the sinks. The problem was two-fold. The final part of Second Screening, a lot of us would be tired, worn down, and the weaker flights would be hungry, getting little or no food. Don’t forge
t what they said about quick heal burning up calories, Shadow reminded me.

  They wanted to cull out the weak, the slow, the tired. And requiring us to bring our wounded or dead out with us meant that there was a critical level, where each person who carried someone else wasn’t able to fight. At a certain point, a flight wouldn’t be able to move forward, then their attackers would swarm them and finish them off.

  Adding more weapons and ammunition to the hostiles in that situation would make the situation worse. The attrition would happen faster, slow us down quicker. “What’s the normal strategy for it?”

  “Work the edges, do some kind of feint and pull them out of position, circle around their people and move for the exit,” Jonna told me. “That’s the best play. There are some stealth options that work better at night. We can use our sensors and see better than the hostiles in the dark.”

  “And what happens after Second Screening?” I asked.

  I could see Jonna shake her head out of the corner of my eye. “You don’t get it, do you? After that is Third Screening. That one is about ranking, almost no one dies, but it’s all about positioning. The talented and connected set themselves up for success, everyone else scrambles for whatever they can manage. But even if you make that far, there’s no way they’ll let you last here. They want Vars dead. They’ll keep it up until they find a way.”

  “House Mantis wants you dead, too,” I noted. “And you made it sound like you have other enemies.”

  “Of course I do,” Jonna hissed. “But you being around just makes it worse. You need to get out of here, for both our sakes.” She pushed back and stood up, walking away without another word.

  ***

  A few hours later, I stood with my flight on the parade deck. We’d just finished crawling the entire length of it, holding our TBA-2s in our hands while we crawled across the rough pavement on our elbows until most of us had bled through the elbows and knees of our fatigues.

  My arms and legs trembled with exhaustion and the pain of the abrasions had become a burning that ate away my self-control.

  Of course, that was when Iron Flight marched up next to us, looking crisp and sharp, their uniforms clean and unstained. I recognized Jerral right away, the broad-shouldered young man shooting me a smirk as their instructors put them at rest.

  Our instructors put us on rest a moment later. “You have five minutes to drink water and eat.”

  There was no way this was a coincidence. Iron Flight and Jade Flight had fought too many times already. I’d fought Jerral during Tangun’s Steps. They had to know that there would be a fight.

  And I’m exhausted and hurting. It was a trap. We were at a disadvantage. The instructors were stepping back, giving us the room for a fight to start.

  I could see others of Jade Flight shooting me looks. They knew what was going on… and why. Jerral and the rest of Iron Flight was here to mess us up, to mess me up. Maybe even to cripple or kill me. No one made eye contact with me, even Jonna looked away.

  “Hey Vars,” Jerral called out. “Not so big outside of your Kavacha armor, are you?”

  I straightened to my full height, feeling every muscle in my body ache as I did so, “Jerral, not so brave without a perfect setup and the instructors holding your hands, are you?”

  His face flushed and he stormed over at me, his rage only partially feigned. “I’ve had enough of your lip, Vars. I think I’m going to finish what I started during First Screening.”

  I was a bit taller than him, my arms and legs were longer, but he was thick with muscle and broader of shoulders than me. And he looked fresh. We’d been working hard all day… had the instructors let his entire flight have an easier time in training to give him the edge?

  “Prince Ladon says hello,” Jerral growled at me as he came at me, his chin tucking down to his chest, his arms starting to pump. He wasn’t quite running, but it was a quick gait that told me he wasn’t going to slow down, he was going to hit me with every bit of his weight and then he was going to pummel me.

  Something in me snapped. I was exhausted, hurting, and afraid. But most of all, I was angry. I was tired of being bullied and berated. I was tired of the games. I was tired of being called Vars. I was tired of everyone telling me I wasn’t good enough.

  I didn’t wait for him to hit me. I charged him. As we came at one another, I brought my elbow across to slam square into the center of his forehead.

  Jerral stumbled back, even as I felt the impact all the way up my shoulder and into my chest. My arm had gone numb from the hit. Jerral swayed a bit and blinked his eyes. I didn’t wait for him to catch his bearings. I stepped forward and drove my knee up into his groin, hard enough that I lifted him off his feet a bit. “I’m tired of you, Jerral,” I snapped.

  He started to drop to his knees but I caught the back of his head by his hair. I drove my bleeding elbow into his face. Once. Twice. The third time, I heard his nose break. He’d become dead weight and I let him go. He fell limp to the ground and I stepped back. I went back over to where I’d been standing and pulled out my rations, tearing open the package and ignoring Iron Flight. I started eating.

  My hands trembled as I did so. I could barely get the food into my mouth, my fingers felt numb. Half of it was reaction to the fight, but the rest was anger. Pure rage. I wanted to go over and kick Jerral’s downed form until I couldn’t walk any more. But I crushed that part of me down. That wasn’t me. That was this place and whatever drugs they mixed in with the quick heal. Jerral was a jerk, but I wasn’t going to cripple or kill him over it.

  It’s the best way to make sure he doesn’t try this again, a voice whispered in the back of my head. I wanted to blame that voice on Shadow, but I knew it was me. Jerral isn’t the problem, he said it himself, Prince Ladon sent him after me.

  Crown Prince Abrasax had probably told his son to make an example of me. Or maybe the Prince just had it out for me himself. It didn’t matter. I couldn’t keep this up, not with enemies like that. As Iron Flight dragged Jerral away, I finished my rations and decided that I was done here. I was going to go home.

  Jonna doesn’t want me here, Princess Kiyu has barely acknowledged my existence, it’s time to cut my losses and get out before someone kills me.

  I just wish it didn’t feel so much like I was running away.

  ***

  Shadow had put together the false identities, based off of the scans on our implants, all she had to do was upload them. For mine, she couldn’t do that until we got away from the Institute: there was too much risk that someone would scan my implant and pull up the false identity. She could and did link with the network and insert the identities into the database. There was some risk of that being detected as time went on, but since I wasn’t planning on sticking around, I didn’t care if someone noticed the network had been hacked.

  I had to wait almost another week for Jade Flight to end up with an assigned patrol. Every day I was slipping spare rations into my wall locker and I had to hope that Lokka was actually giving that food to the deserters down in the Underwarrens.

  In the meantime, I focused on the classes and training, doing my best so as not to draw attention. As the days wound onward, I took out my anger on other flights whenever we went into Tangun’s Steps or during the daily brawls for rations. Every time I did it, though, I felt like I was losing some part of myself.

  “Jade Flight, you’ve got patrol duty. I need three volunteers,” Richardson growled.

  I stepped forward immediately. A moment later, I saw Jonna step forward. To my surprise, Osmund stepped forward almost at the same time. Well, I hope he’s not there to spy on us.

  Richardson gave me a hard look, almost as if he suspected something. But after a moment, he just gave a nod. “Move out.”

  This time, there wasn’t an instructor there to escort us, so we jogged to the lift on our own. It was oddly liberating to be running through the spire on our own, without an instructor yelling at us or Richardson watching our every move.


  Daewa Tong stood at the lift, awaiting our arrival. I felt a start of shock as I saw Jerral waiting with a patrol team from Iron Flight, but the big young man didn’t even acknowledge my presence. I filed that away, but I didn’t trust it.

  Tong spoke up as the last patrol team arrived, “I’ve transferred your patrol routes to your implants. There are two missing patrols out. If you see any signs of them, their weapons, or locate their remains, plot them on your route.” He clearly didn’t expect them to still be alive at this point.

  The descent in the lift ratcheted up my anxiety. Jonna had been pushing me to run. I didn’t worry about her letting me go. Osmund, though, why had he volunteered? Had he reported on us to Intelligence? Was this a trap? For that matter, what if the deserters hadn’t been getting the food? I knew that Lokka was intelligent enough to understand, but he was also unreliable.

  I brought up the patrol route we’d been given and I wasn’t surprised to see that it ran off in another direction from the last one. It would have been too convenient if it ran where I needed. As the lift doors opened, Jonna led the way out, with me watching our backs as the other patrol teams went off in their directions. I kept an eye on Jerral, but he ignored me as he led his group off in another direction.

  Jonna paused a short distance down the first tunnel, though, and led the way into a narrow alcove where we wouldn’t be seen from the main corridor.

  “Well?” She pulled out a small lamp out of her pocket, lighting up the area so she could look at us both in the face.

  “I may have a way to help the deserters from Garnet Flight,” I told her. “I want to go help them.”

  “I figured,” she grimaced and then looked at Osmund.

  “Yeah,” Osmund sighed, “let’s just do it, okay?”

  Jonna killed her lamp, “Okay, we’ll have to circle around through areas the others are patrolling, and we don’t know their exact patrol routes, so we need to move quiet and slow. If the other patrols see us, they’re going to assume that we’re either trying to ambush them or that we’re trying to desert.”