We Dare

by Chris Kennedy

  “I don’t know, either,” he said. “But we’re learning. Always learning.”

  “We’ll get there,” she said as the sun slipped away. The sky hummed in eerie harmonies as a hundred firework drones shot up from the boats. With a thunderous roar and a blazing red fiery burst, the festivities began.

  “Soldiers of the future,” he agreed.

  She smiled up at him wistfully. At last, in the coruscant glow of a blazing sky, he caught the spirited gleam in her eye.

  “I suppose that can mean a lot of things,” she said. “The future.”

  * * * * *

  Luke R. J. Maynard Bio

  Luke R. J. Maynard is a writer, poet, scholar, lapsed medievalist, musician, and wearer of sundry other hats in the arts & letters. Born in London, Ontario, Canada, he received his PhD in English Literature from the University of Victoria in 2013, and his Juris Doctor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law in 2019.

  Luke’s first CD, Desolation Sound, was released in June of 2018. His first novel, The Season of the Plough, will be released by Cynehelm Press in July 2019. Luke currently lives in Toronto.

  * * * * *

  Follow Luke Online

  Web: http://www.lukemaynard.com

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/lukemaynard

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lukerjmaynard/

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  Imperfect Mind by Jason Cordova

  A Kin Wars Universe Short Story

  I did not cry when the men wearing dark suits took me from the Holding Home in the dead of night. Tears had stopped being a thing years ago, after my parents had deposited me on the steps of the rundown building the day after my third birthday. Faint memories of their angry faces haunt me on occasion still, but the sadness was long gone. Which was a good thing. Showing weakness in that building meant you became prey to the older, bigger kids.

  Since I was technically an adult when the Praetorians arrived, I had been expecting it. I did not fight or resist. That would have been a futile gesture. I merely lowered my head and acknowledged that I was no long the responsibility of Sister Verona or the others who took care of the Imperfect children. There were no belongings for me to gather except for an old, ratty sweater I had received the previous Restoration Day. Sister Verona was not a cruel woman, though. She made certain that I could keep the clothes on my back, much to the annoyance of the Praetorians who were there to remove me from the premises.

  Instead of moving me to another city, as I had expected, they took me to a military base on the outskirts of town. From there I was thrown into a shower, which terrified me initially because it was a waste of water. I also burned myself, since I’d never experienced hot water before except for cooking. The Praetorians didn’t seem to care, though, and had me scrub every inch of my body with a strange lotion, including my head. That was far worse than the hot water, but eventually every single hair on my body fell off. My armpits and between my legs were bare skin for the first time since I had started maturing at ten. Since I typically wore my hair on my head short anyway, it didn’t bother me that much. Losing my hair between my legs bothered me greatly, though. The more I looked like a boy, the safer I’d be.

  Unfortunately, standing naked in the middle of a room of Praetorians, it was hard to hide that I was not a boy, especially with everything bared. They didn’t stare and gawk, like most of the older kids did when they found out I was a girl. The two men simply continued to go about their business, making certain I was clean and hairless. It was terrifying and painful, yet not nearly as bad as I had been expecting it to be.

  We whispered in the dark about what happened to kids like us, the genetically imperfect, after they were removed from a Holding Home. The stories about being sold into slavery for rich men and women to be used as play toys haunted our dreams. Even the sisters who watched over us didn’t help, reminding us to be careful when we walked out their doors because bad people wanted to harm us. We didn’t understand. We couldn’t, not really. We were kids, innocents. The warnings did nothing but infect our dreams, temper our hopes, and lead us to the realization that we were a subclass of human, not even worthy of being treated as equals. Over the years we accepted this, understood our role in the great society that was the Dominion of Man.

  After the showers, I was led into a room where a bunch of men and women wearing long white coats waited. They looked me over and inspected me, making sure that my imperfections were not clearly physical. They weren’t. I was born with Duane Syndrome, which affected my eyes. The men and women didn’t seem concerned by this, though, which was odd. I knew my eyes were different. Always have. It affected the way I saw things at times.

  “She’s a good candidate,” one of the gathered people declared. A woman, and from what I could tell, she seemed to be in charge of the group. Everyone else nodded in agreement and seemed pleased with her decision. I didn’t know what I was a good candidate for, only that it was better than being sold into a gangster’s brothel. Still, standing there in the middle of a group of strangers with nothing on made me a little nervous. She must have seen this and clucked her tongue. “Get her into a medical sheet. We’ll begin the implant procedure immediately.”

  “Implant procedure?” I asked, becoming warier by the second. She tried to smile at me in a comforting manner but obviously wasn’t used to dealing with people because it more resembled a grimace than anything else.

  “Yes,” the woman replied. “I am Doctor Pulvere. This is a test facility for a new combat weapon, and we were looking for volunteers. The Praetorians tasked with watching your Holding Home mentioned that you were available, healthy, and expressed an interest in helping, so here we are.”

  “Oh,” was all I could think of to say. It wasn’t like I really had much to offer anyway. I was an Imperfect, a genetically inferior human being. My life was worth less than everyone else’s, so why not offer to help? I’d always been like that as a child, eager to help others with the chores. It kept the beatings from the bigger kids to a minimum. “Okay.”

  “Excellent!” she clapped her hands excitedly. “Doctors Hiram and Keebler will prep you in the next room.” She turned and looked at the Praetorians still on either side of me. “Your services are no longer required. Thank you.”

  The Praetorians left and two men, the doctors I assumed she had been talking about, led me into a smaller room off to the side. There was a sheet which I could put on to cover my nakedness. I quickly donned it and sat down on a cold metal stool as the two doctors moved behind me and began to inspect the back of my head. They argued quietly for a few moments before one of them held the top of my head still with one hand. With the other he drew a small circle and then added something to the inside of it.

  They rubbed their fingertips over my smooth scalp for a moment before murmuring something. I couldn’t understand them; their accents were thick and heavy. I knew that some accents in the Dominion were strong on worlds within the Core, but I’d never actually heard any of them before. On Solomon, everyone sounded about the same. Wanting to ask but not knowing how, I simply remained mute as they finished their brief examination. Standing me back up, I was returned to the large room. Instead of a large group of people waiting for me, there was a small bed on wheels and a lot of lights. Tools were gathered on a small tray next to it, and Doctor Pulvere stood waiting. She wore a strange mask and gloves and was now covered with a sheet very much like the one I wore. The doctor motioned for me to lay down on the small bed. I began to, but she instructed me to flip over onto my belly instead of lying on my back.

  The pain I experienced over the next two hours was something that I could never properly describe. The best I could manage was that it felt as though electric wires were being dragged across my brain inside my skull. It was excruciating, and despite the shots they gave me, I felt everything. I was crying but unable to move because of an injection they gave me in my spine before the surgery began.

  They cut open my head in the back where the
doctors had drawn earlier and put something inside me. There was a lot of pressure behind my eyes for some reason, and I could hear the doctors talking about something, but the words made no sense to me. I tried to tell them that the pain was too much, but nothing came out but tears. They poured out of my eyes and dripped down my nose, falling to the tiled floor where they pooled over time.

  After what felt like an entire lifetime, they were finished. Intellectually I knew that only two hours had passed, because the doctor’s words became understandable again once the pressure behind my eyes went away.

  “No time to waste,” Doctor Pulvere told the gathered group as they wheeled my bed out of the large room and down a long corridor. I was slowly beginning to get the feeling back in my hands and feet as we arrived in a very dark room. Lights came on, and I tried to wince but couldn’t. My face hadn’t recovered yet from the injection and was frozen still. “Here we are. Let’s get her into the mask and don’t forget the goggles this time! The way the last test subject’s eyes melted almost made me lose my lunch.”

  Unceremoniously they hoisted me off the bed. I almost threw up, but since I really didn’t have control of my body just yet, I merely felt sick. My heels dragged along the rough surface of the floor, and I could almost feel the skin cracking from the friction. If it kept up for much longer I knew that there would be two trails of blood from my heels opening up soon. Fortunately, they reached their destination before that point and stopped dragging me.

  An oxygen mask was put on my face and secured, then a pair of goggles went over my eyes. The air which poured into the mask and filled my lungs was richer than anything I’d ever breathed before, and the feeling in my legs and arms came back. I could see decently well through the goggles. Uncertain what was planned next, I allowed the two men carrying me to lift me off the ground completely.

  They removed the thin material covering me, and I was naked once more. The two men didn’t seem to notice or care as they focused on their task. I was then placed into a large device that seemed too big for my tiny body. It quickly dawned on me that it was human shaped, but much larger than the average human body. I could feel the tubing from the oxygen mask on my shoulder. I wanted to squirm, but the device I was in seemed to be more restrictive than I thought it would be.

  Suddenly, I felt something warm and slimy at my feet. I struggled as the sensations made their way up my legs, passing my kneecaps. I began to panic, but then I heard Doctor Pulvere’s voice in my head.

  “Relax,” the woman whispered. I suddenly realized that her voice wasn’t in my head, but next to it. A helmet of some sort lowered down over the top of me, and I was sealed inside. The goop continued to crawl up my legs and touched my thighs. I squirmed uncomfortably. “This is a gel designed to protect you once you’re inside the mechanized infantry suit. In a moment you will feel a slight pinch in the back of your head, and then you will see everything that the Mark One sees.”

  Mark One? I had no idea what that was, but I fought the urge to panic as the gel substance reached my stomach. The only blessing of the strange sensation as it crept up my body was the warmth. That was actually nice, though a part of me began to wonder just how far the gel stuff was going to go. A minute later I found out just how high it would go.

  Completely submerged, the panic returned. However, before I could focus on the fact that I was probably going to drown in a moment, a horrible pinching sensation made me scream. It was loud and echoed throughout the warehouse. Light assaulted my senses, and my skin felt cold and clammy. Bulky and heavy, I was no longer a tiny and underfed young woman. I was something far bigger, monstrous. Unable to hold back my emotions any longer, I began to bawl my eyes out.

  “Shh, it’s okay,” Doctor Pulvere tried to calm me down as my cries seemed to echo throughout the cavernous room. “You’re suffering from temporary sensory overload. Let me dial back the receptors, then you can adjust to the new sensations.”

  The room suddenly wasn’t too bright, and my skin didn’t feel as heavy or strange. I was normal, but not. I looked around and found that while I was unable to move my head, I could still see all around me. The warehouse seemed small compared to what it had felt like a moment before. Even Doctor Pulvere, as tall as she’d been when I’d first been led into the operating room, was tiny as she stood behind a metal desk. There was a long fabric-encased line which extended from the back of the desk to somewhere behind me.

  “What happened?” I asked between sobs. Doctor Pulvere winced and pressed something I couldn’t see at her desk. I tried to soften my voice and regain control of my emotions. “Doctor?”

  “Much better.” She nodded, ignoring my question for the moment. “Now try to lift your right arm.”

  Carefully, I lifted my right arm in front of my face and gasped as I saw that instead of my normal dark brown arm, a giant robotic one was before me. Instead of panicking like I had before, I instead focused on my breathing as I inspected the arm.

  It was a flat, dull gray color with large plates of what I figured was armor stacked on top of one another. Bulkier than what I thought robotic arms should look like, it took me a few moments to realize that I was looking at armor covering my body. I was seeing with the robot’s head somehow, though I was at a loss to explain it.

  “How am I seeing this?” I asked Doctor Pulvere.

  “The implant nodule in your head is called a cortex implant,” she explained. “It allows you to interact with the Mark One suit as a second skin instead of actually wearing it. It should feel more natural than standard combat armor. It’s our prototype mechanized infantry suit.”

  “Okay,” I muttered and lowered my right arm. I did my left next, and then we worked on walking. It quickly became apparent that I was overcompensating, to which the doctor simply told me to walk normally.

  “Don’t make exaggerated movements,” she told me again and again as I struggled through the movement tests. Eventually, after much trial and error, we figured it out, and I was moving around the warehouse as only a five-meter-tall mechanized infantry trooper could.

  “I like this,” I admitted after I trotted a few steps, quickly pirouetted, then landed on my right foot while kicking out with the left. It was a move I’d perfected while in the Holding Home to protect myself if a boy refused to accept “no” for an answer while delivering the maximum damage to his male bits. After the time I made Jarl vomit and pee blood for two weeks, the other boys at the Home stopped harassing me for good.

  “You are naturally graceful,” Doctor Pulvere told me. I could feel my face heating up in embarrassment inside the suit and was glad that I had both the breathing mask and helmet on to hide in. She continued on, unaware I was blushing. “If you had been Perfect, you probably could have trained to be a dancer.”

  “But I’m not,” I said as I stood upright. The suit definitely felt more natural to me now than before, and it mimicked my movements perfectly. I didn’t even have to think about it anymore, I simply did, and it followed suit, mimicking my motions at the same time I performed them. The doctor had been right; it did feel like a second skin.

  “No, you’re not,” she agreed with my previous statement. I wasn’t mad about it. It was simply a fact of life.

  “What else can this do?” I asked, curious now as I strode over to where Doctor Pulvere was at her computer.

  “The suit can handle weapons as well, such as heavy machineguns and even recoilless anti-tank rifles,” she replied. I nodded, pretending to know what she was talking about. I had no idea what a recoilless anti-tank rifle even was, though I was a little familiar with the term “machinegun.” I’d seen a vid once where the hero had one and had fought the evil villains, agents of the Caliphate. Very noble death at the end for the hero, and the love interest moved home to care for their beautiful Perfect child. Doctor Pulvere continued, seemingly unaware of my ignorance. “We are designing a rotating cannon for the arms but we’re still working on the physics of that, plus identifying the attachment points an
d where to place spare ammunition. We might make the arms bulkier and simply allow it to be stored there. We’re working on that.”

  I still had no idea what she was talking about, but it sounded like she did, so I changed the subject. “This should have blades on the arms or something, for stabbing faces. What about knives sticking out when I make a fist?”

  “I like the way you think.” The doctor grinned. She typed in something on her computer and looked back up at the suit. “Definitely something to keep in mind for future upgrades to the suit. How do you feel about a field test?”

  “A what?” I asked as I felt a certain giddiness envelope my senses. I’d experienced something like this before, when one of the boys had smuggled in some Blizz and we had sat in the cellar later that night, tasting the stuff. It made my brain tingle with pleasure, and I’d done some stupid stuff afterwards with the older boys. I didn’t have that desire now, thankfully, but it still made me feel really good.

  “Go out into the field and test this,” she asked again as she continued to type on her keyboard. Oddly enough, I felt the need to do this. The tingling sensation disappeared and was replaced by a desire to serve. I couldn’t explain it, but the desire to go out and fight was appealing. I was nodding inside the suit before she had even finished asking the question.

  “Yeah, we can go and break bad people,” I suggested in a cheerful voice. Doctor Pulvere looked up at me for a moment before slyly smiling. Making her happy made me happy for some reason, so I was really beginning to understand her. I pressed on. “Maybe we can go kill some pirates or something?”