The Soul Monger

by Matilda Scotney

  “I don’t want to do this. I want to stay here on the asteroid with Xavier,” Helen said miserably.

  “My concern,” Laurel said, conscious she probably wasn’t helping, “is we’ve got hardly any time to master these skills before we need to use them.”

  Cere overheard. “Hand to hand is a supplement to weapons,” she half-smiled at Helen. “Take a rest, have some water while I demonstrate your field equipment.”

  “Does that mean no more fighting with the android?” Helen’s face was a picture of hopefulness.

  “No,” Cere’s reply was brief and to the point.

  “It’s probably weapons, Helen,” Marta said.

  Laurel frowned. “It disturbs me, the thought of killing someone, even if they are the enemy.”

  “Kill or be killed, Laurel.”

  “We have to follow you…boss.”

  “Don’t call me that, Helen.”

  “We don’t have titles—what should we call you?”

  “Harry just called me Team Leader, but it’s only so you two can hone in on me—like a beacon. He’s the real boss, and I’m glad of it. I wouldn’t recognise one end of a battleground from another.”

  Helen sighed. “Me either.”

  “Six of us might be useless against such a determined enemy,” Marta said.

  “The League doesn’t think so,” but even Laurel had her doubts.

  Eli and Chloe joined them later, quickly followed by Harry and Xavier. Xavier still seemed uneasy. In contrast, Eli looked rather pleased with himself. Cere brought out the combat droid again, now fitted out in stealth armour and covered from head to toe in the black, sinister uniform of the enemy. A darkened band stretched over the eyes, reflecting light away like a pair of sunglasses.

  Helen shrank in her seat. “Is this what they wear? They look like Robocop.”

  Cere nodded. “All of them, same haircuts, shorn over the ears, same clothing. And they don’t use female combatants. The armorial band across the rib cage is indestructible, so don’t waste your time aiming for the heart, always go for the head or neck. This muscle here…” she turned and hoisted up her shirt, exposing her perfectly toned lower back, “… is what helps you stay upright. If you can’t get a clean shot, try to disrupt that muscle; it’ll knock them off balance, then you can finish them.”

  “Are you positive we’ll be able to tell them and the Semevalians apart in a fight?” Chloe asked.

  “Not positive, but going by what I saw earlier, I think you will.”

  Helen’s anxiety showed on her face. “What if there are hundreds of them? How will we point them out to you lot?”

  “Helen’s right,” Marta nodded. “I don’t like the odds.”

  “I’m not a whole soul,” Cere said, waving away the question. “You’ll have to figure it out when you get there. I do know, with you, we have more than we had. My duty is to teach you weaponry and defence; not how to read minds. Now, each of you has an TI?”

  “The pinkie ring?” Helen held up her hand, making flicking movements. “What if it falls off when we’re fighting?”

  “It won’t,” Cere looked from one to the other. “Once embedded, extraction can only be achieved surgically, or if you’re reckless and cut off your finger,” Cere’s gaze lingered on Helen, the only one she believed likely to suffer a mishap of that nature. “Applying the spit to the enemy’s temple can temporarily disable them, but you have to get close enough. Any weapons you bear on your body calibrate to the interface signature, so no-one else can use your weapon.” Cere handed each of them a small device, like a wireless computer mouse, but without moving parts. “These are licks; now you have the TIs inserted, these will secure onto your pronated wrist.”

  Laurel demonstrated pronation to Helen, and the lick connected easily, magnetising against the skin. A single command of “lift” by the interface user disconnected them. As soon as she finished demonstrating the fixation of the device, Cere turned sharply, and a single, whip-like flash from her wrist disintegrated the android standing beside her.

  “You aim, think, and it fires,” she said, disengaging the weapon, and paying no mind to the android residue landing on her hair and shoulders, the rest of it floating through the air around her. “In your quarters, you’ll find new uniforms. Two separate weapons ports are built in, one connected to your elbow, so you can shoot if you go down or if you’re rolling; the second is a stiletto, more rudimentary, but they have their uses. We’re going to work with the licks for a while; get you used to them. We’ll look at the others tomorrow.”

  “Do we get ordinary guns?” Chloe examined the lick attached to her wrist.

  “I assume you mean sidearms? No.”

  “And our weapons match theirs?”

  “The enemy uses a barbaric form of weapon that rips holes in its victims,” Cere’s matter-of-fact response was sobering. “It promotes excruciating death at worst; serious maiming or injury at best. I’ll show you these weapons later. The enemy’s advantage is the personal stealth, but...” she smiled ever so slightly, and with unmistakable satisfaction, “they don’t have you; our greatest weapon.”

  Not a woman distracted by either sentiment or profound statements of fact, even if she delivered them, Cere held up a rectangular box in her left hand, undoing it with her right to reveal a segmented belt. She drew Helen to her feet and placed the belt around her middle. A tiny dot of light gleamed at the point the belt intersected just above Helen’s navel. Cere covered the dot with her palm, and instantly Helen’s trunk and head became encircled with similar armour to that which Cere wore earlier. Cere didn’t withdraw her hand. With the stealth active, she couldn’t see Helen, but for the rest of the group, apart from Harry, Helen was still visible.

  “You’ll have seventeen minutes before the stealth destabilises and you become visible,” Cere told them. “It only conceals anything within the field,” she tossed a towel over Helen to demonstrate, but it did little as they could see her, anyway. Cere tapped the belt, and it folded, leaving only the rectangular box in her hand. Demonstration over, Helen was directed back to her seat with a slight push.

  “When you as whole souls are scouting,” Cere said, “you will use stealth. But don’t forget you’re still solid; don’t expect you can walk through walls or are immune to attack if somehow you are identified.”

  “What if we need to pick up something while we’re wearing it?”

  “Don’t,” she glanced at Helen, believing she’d covered that point.” It won’t conceal whatever you pick up, because it’s outside the stealth field, you’d attract attention.”

  “What if we need to speak to each other?”

  “You are empaths, Helen, find a way.”

  “I’m not at that stage yet.”

  “You haven’t tested it.”

  Helen quietly grumbled that Cere’s sympathy gene had been removed, causing a subdued ripple of laughter amongst the whole souls.

  “For people who aren’t empaths, you speculate a lot about what we can and can’t do,” Laurel said.

  “Faith is our philosophy,” Cere responded. “Faith that the little we do know is accurate.”

  With Cere refusing to enter further debate, they listened attentively as she outlined the various stages of occupation, favourite strategies employed by the enemy, even statistics on lives lost, both military and civilian. She explained the enemy ground forces used only two weapons; the first, a band which fitted across the knuckles of the dominant hand. The band fitted much like a knuckleduster, with three ports emitting a slicing pattern beam; stun, disable or kill. Cere advised every band the League soldiers recovered from enemy corpses were set to kill.

  Cere also showed them “bramble” droids, nasty, rolling machines that resembled large, rolled-up hedgehogs, usually used as guards. The bramble droids fired spines at their victims, resulting in crippling disability and ultimately, an agonising death, depending upon which part of the nervous system was targeted. The more Helen learned of the
enemy’s weapons, the more anxious she became, almost melting into a puddle of fear at the description of the bramble droid’s capabilities. Cere stopped her graphic accounts to give Helen a few minutes to recover and to receive some reassurance from Laurel and Marta.

  The cost of the war regarding casualties was sobering. Cere was an informed teacher, and when she finished, allowed questions. She dealt with each one in her to-the-point manner, after which, when she deemed the Q and A session concluded, the tireless and precise trainer escorted them to a separate training section, deeper inside the asteroid, where they were informed, again with a glance at Helen, less damage was likely. That is unless they shot at someone. The whole soul’s complaints—mainly Helen’s— about the long flight to the asteroid, their flagging energy, and not having received food, were dismissed with a flick of Cere’s eyebrow.

  For such tiny devices, the licks were lethal. Safety protocols were in place but weren’t foolproof. It was perhaps for that reason, Helen went first into the firing range without a partner and with only projections as target practice. As the holographic enemy rushed her from every side, she again ended up on the floor with her hands over her head in a defensive position. The holoenemies knuckle weapon packed a sting. Helen recorded a few strikes, but predominantly, the whip-like beam which burst from her wrist lick the instant the thought formed mostly missed its mark. Watching the display, Laurel’s body tensed every time Helen fired, willing the shot to reach its target, but it seldom did. Eventually, Cere decided Helen had had enough, and unceremoniously hoisted her to her feet, half carrying, half dragging her over to Laurel to prop up. Without a word, Cere took both Chloe and Eli together.

  “I hope they don’t shoot each other,” Marta’s concern reached Laurel without her committing that concern to speech. Laurel looked up from comforting Helen, “me too,” she sent back.

  Chloe and Eli, working as one, took on the holoenemies. Chloe got struck once in the arm and stumbled, but regained her balance, unharmed. The pseudolethal lick beams flew in every direction, scoring hits against the holoenemies, but not once were Chloe and Eli at risk from each other’s fire. At the end of their session, the pair returned breathless and excited. Cere checked out the damage to Chloe’s arm, dismissing it as, “nothing.”

  “How is it we can master such complex exercises and weapons without more extensive training?” Marta asked as the weapons simulation reset for the next round.

  “They’re machines,” Eli said. “Chloe and I sense machines.”

  “But you’ll be fighting humans.”

  “Not so much on the ground,” Eli corrected her. “Chloe and I will be in the fleet, we’re flying; this half-soul, quarter-soul thing, I get it, but technology makes better sense to me.”

  “And me,” Chloe added. “Harry said Eli and I will be involved with combat training, but because of our reflexes, we’re better suited to flying and aerial engagement.”

  Marta turned to Laurel. “Darlen said once that we don’t know ourselves. Do you remember?”

  “I do, he said we didn’t realise our potential.”

  At that moment, Cere called Laurel and Marta to the arena. Marta slipped off her jacket and slapped the lick against her wrist. She glanced back at Laurel as she led the way.

  “I think we’re about to find out.”

  Chapter 17

  As Xavier was not required to take part, he looked after Helen while Marta and Laurel breezed through the combat simulation in the arena. He greeted them with a grin when they returned. Helen didn’t watch the simulation, preferring to lean against Xavier’s shoulder with her eyes closed.

  “Good job,” he said. “You’re doing well, all of you.”

  Laurel glanced down at Helen, and Xavier blinked slowly in response to Laurel’s concern, “She needs more time. That’s all.”

  Laurel nodded, understanding.

  Precise and efficient—although Helen described these attributes as ruthless—Cere allowed Helen only a brief respite, though she did make a concession in that she didn’t take the assaults up a notch, as she did with the others, thus allowing Helen to work at a slower pace.

  Three short bapth and water breaks punctuated the remainder of their day; the rest of the time Cere worked them relentlessly. As it occurred to them Helen’s appraisal of Cere might have merit, Cere dismissed them, instructing them to return the following morning.

  Between the flight from the consular ship and a day of gruelling exercise, the whole souls were exhausted but had at least gained a reasonable standard of skill with the wrist licks, even though not one of them missed being on the receiving end of one or two of the holoenemies simulated weapons.

  Asde accompanied them back to their new quarters where a young woman awaited them. In appearance, the girl looked to be around Chloe’s age. She wore the olive-green uniform of the League Constabulary, the colour of which served to highlight the same pale, green-tinged skin hue as Canon Akkuh. Her hair, drawn back in a tight plait sported a tiny curl which sat almost upright just above her hairline. For a soldier, she looked more like a pixie.

  “This is Issie,” Asde introduced the newcomer. “She’ll organise meals and uniforms and assist you in learning base and military protocols. She only speaks Seera.”

  Everyone promptly responded with, “Hi,” which meant nothing as a word to Issie, but she understood the smiles of greeting.

  Issie rattled off the rules. Meals were taken at specified times in the galley. No food allowed in the quarters. Uniform codes strictly observed without variation and a nightly curfew enforced for those off-duty. Helen wasn’t interested in the rules, listening with only half an ear while she looked around, locating two washing slots housed behind panels; tiny, but having two of them meant less queuing.

  The new uniforms, as Cere said, were waiting for them. Each set provided a single fresh red uniform, several sets of undergarments—which doubled unhygienically, Laurel thought, as activewear, and several one-piece, two-toned combat suits identical to Cere’s. Issie issued instructions not to try them on until the morning. Sets of sleepwear were likewise provided, a singlet and shorts in a fabric that was unexpectedly soft. Laurel couldn’t wait to wash off the day’s exertions, slip into the nightwear and bag one of the bunks.

  But Issie had other ideas. They needed a proper meal, and she had a speech to deliver on protocols, her fragile appearance and sweet manner masking a will of iron—and a voice that commanded attention. Even Helen’s meanderings didn’t go unnoticed, and she was brought back smartly into line. They each assumed, incorrectly, she’d come to support them when they contended with language or had problems finding their way around; maybe to help explain the complexities of the new uniforms or show them how to avoid shooting themselves with the built-in weapons. They would learn, over the course of the next few days, the five foot nothing, sergeant-major (as Helen called her) Issie had the dedication of a matriarch and took her duties seriously. Issie supervised the cleaning of their quarters, washing, eating, preparation of uniforms and the tiny details that naturally accompanied human daily rituals. Privacy, modesty, shyness; none of these had any place in Issie’s army. Any infraction of rules—Helen’s usually and once surprisingly, Xavier’s—was reported to Commander Harry, who always accepted her reports with the appropriate gravity, then set them aside with a grin when she was out of sight.

  Issie arrived each morning as the lights came up to supervise her charges while they observed the set routines. Daytime meals consisted only of bapth and water. In the evenings, Issie shepherded them to the galley for dinner. She brooked no protests regarding food preferences and decided herself which meal provided variety and nutrients.

  Issie drilled them in prepping uniforms, conformity to clothing hygiene policies and even posture and hairstyles. The penny finally dropped as to the meaning of Asde’s reference to “stinks’, when Issie used the term herself while checking their smart red uniforms. Standard Issue Non-Combatant. It had nothing to do with smell. Th
e acronym was STINC.

  The women’s hair started to grow; Laurel’s curls were taking on the characteristics of a dandelion clock—that stage where curly hair can’t be tamed. Issie decided Laurel’s hair was too unruly for combat conditions and directed Helen to “fix it.” Helen did her best, but Laurel’s head ended up covered in tiny plaits, twisted around thin, flexible wires. Laurel hated it, but Issie approved, so it was left at that.

  They grumbled about Issie to one another at night, but as the days unfolded, they grudgingly accepted their capacity to run as a unit had increased and with it, the growing awareness of each other’s thoughts. Cere’s rigorous discipline developed their stamina and physical strength, but Issie’s dutiful example and application of regulations and routine helped them establish expectations of high standards.

  One evening, two weeks after their arrival, as the women left the galley, Harry caught up with Laurel.

  “I wondered where you were, Harry,” she said. “Is Xavier and Eli with you? I haven’t seen either of them since lights up.”

  “They’re busy,” he gave her a non-committal reply. “I checked out the training briefly. You’re very agile, Laurel, that stunt where you leapt up to the landing shaft under the ship was impressive.”

  Laurel felt pleased with her new abilities. She’d seen the simulations of League soldiers in situations where they were cornered and needed to be creative to escape. She’d improved on at least one.

  “Cere brought in some of your soldiers to demonstrate a few escape tactics,” Laurel said. “I figured I could expand their techniques; I might need it if I get ambushed! We’ve discovered our abilities change with each test or trial; once that ability is freed or whatever transformation takes place, it remains with us.” Laurel smiled. “I’m not too keen on the telepathic aspect though. It’s invasive. Marta, Xavier and I are practising switching it off, not very successfully if we don’t focus. We can hear Helen, Chloe and Eli as well.”