by Diana Palmer
She still had her virtual Nagaashe, which lived with her in her quarters. It was a sad memory of the happiest time in her young life. Despite her anger and bitterness about what had happened to her father, the little serpent was a companion who helped fill her few leisure hours with delight.
* * *
AS JASMINE LEARNED more defense tactics in military training and progressed to virtual surgeries in her medical training, she marveled at the differences in her life from the pampered young woman of yesterday to the fearless, competent soldier of today. The daily exercise had slowly turned her soft body into a hard weapon of war. She learned hand-to-hand killing techniques, along with chasat practice and use of tech to spy on the enemy. She learned the differences in Cularian species, their pharmacology and physiology, and how to administer drugs and perform surgical techniques. The classes, all of them, were like honey to a bear. She discovered a natural talent for medicine. She discovered an even-stronger one for combat, sometimes overcoming some of the tougher male students.
One of them was the Rojok who’d chided her on her first obstacle course. She took great pleasure in heaving him a little too far off the mat during hand-to-hand practice.
“Dupont, that was sloppy,” the instructor said curtly. “Five kuskons off your record.”
Kuskons were like demerits in the Terravegan military. She only smiled blithely. “Sorry, sir, my hand slipped,” she added with a wicked grin at her ruffled opponent.
The Rojok instructor made a harrumphing sound and turned to a student who was trying unsuccessfully to throw his opponent. “No, no, Kraslok, not like that! Use his strength against him. Tollek, show him!”
“Ouch,” the opponent she’d thrown whispered.
She chuckled under her breath. “Sorry,” she whispered.
He laughed, too.
After class, he walked out beside her.
“Rusmok.”
She glanced at him. “Sorry?”
“My name. Rusmok.”
“Oh!” She stopped walking. “Jasmine Dupont,” she said, looking up at him. It was a long way. She noticed that his hair was cut short. In the Rojok military, haircuts denoted rank. Chacon’s hair was to his waist, which meant he had the highest rank in the military. Recruits had short hair. Even Jasmine was obliged to follow this rule, so her platinum hair curled around her small ears toward her beautiful face. Soft blue eyes looked up at her companion.
He smiled. “You have surprised us all,” he said after a minute. “There were some complaints that a female was being forced into our ranks.” He shrugged. “Mine was one of them. It is difficult to adjust to this change, when we have always been a male fighting force. However, you perform the exercises as well as any of us.” He put a hand to his back and made a mock grimace. “Better than some,” he added amusedly.
She laughed softly. “It surprised me, too,” she said honestly. “I lived in a very sheltered environment. I had never even seen an alien when I went with my father...” Her voice trailed off. Grief almost overwhelmed her.
Rusmok turned and looked down at her. “We know of your father’s tragedy,” he said quietly. “The Cehn-Tahr are too fond of rules and too rigid in their social structure. We have been allies with them infrequently, but over the centuries, our natural disposition has been to decimate them on battlegrounds.”
“I don’t speak of what happened,” she said after a minute. Her face hardened. “But there is no race in the three galaxies that I hate more than the Cehn-Tahr. I will never agree to treat one, not even if they court-martial me.”
He chuckled. “I can assure you that our contact with the Cehn-Tahr these days is limited to saluting our president’s bonded companion, Lyceria. She is Cehn-Tahr, but nothing like others of her race,” he added. “You will see. She is kind and gentle. And very pregnant,” he added with a grin. “The first Cehn-Tahr and Rojok child ever to be born in our culture.”
“Lyceria is the Cehn-Tahr emperor’s daughter, isn’t she?” she asked.
“Yes. An exceptional person. We revere her.”
They started walking again. “I read about her in one of the Tri-D virtual magazines,” she said. “She was captured with the Holconcom and held at Ahkmau...” She grimaced, glancing up. “Sorry.” She knew that the infamous prison camp was something the Rojok were still having to live down. Its depravity was exposed after the Morcai Battalion’s formation. In fact, the Morcai Battalion—half-human, half-Cehn-Tahr—had leveled Ahkmau after its escape, with some covert help from Chacon.
He waved away the apology. “Ahkmau is something we all have to live with in the military. None of us believed that something so disgusting could even exist until we were faced with the truth, after Mangus Lo’s removal.”
“He was your leader before Chacon,” she recalled.
“Not quite. Mangus Lo’s nephew, Chan Ho, succeeded him, but he was overthrown by Chacon and millions of veteran soldiers from other races—even Cehn-Tahr, surprisingly.”
“It must have been quite a battle.”
He smiled. “It was glorious,” he said. “I was there, at the last battleground, when Chan Ho surrendered. The cheers were deafening. Chacon had planned to remain as military commander, but he was elected president by acclamation. Not a single dissenting vote.” He glanced at her. “He was always revered by his soldiers. Even by his enemies. His tactics are taught at military academies across the three galaxies.”
“He was very kind to me,” she said. “He offered me this position. I had nothing left after my father died. I couldn’t even get a job.” Her face hardened. “The Cehn-Tahr government offered me a scholarship. I refused.”
He frowned. “An odd gesture.”
“An odd people,” she retorted.
“Agreed.” He stopped just outside the commissary. “Your Terravegan government also has a military.”
“And you wonder why I didn’t agree to study there,” she said, smiling. “Let’s just say I’m not entirely confident that I could stay clear of the three-strikes law.”
“Ah,” he replied. “We all know of that. Patch exposed your medical authority. We found it intensely amusing, watching your politicians run from the Tri-D press.”
She laughed. “I wasn’t paying much attention to the news in those days. I was still at school.” She frowned. “Who’s Patch?”
“Percival Blount,” he said. “He’s called a pirate, but he heads what government exists on Benaski Port. He’s human, but we consider him a good business partner.”
“Benaski Port! I’ve heard of it.”
“It is an infamous destination, full of vice and danger.” He glanced at her and grinned. “When we go on maneuvers, it is a favorite place of ours for R & R. I will enjoy acquainting you with its depravity,” he teased. “If you survive basic training,” he added with a wicked grin.
“I’ll survive,” she said, and laughed. “I wouldn’t want to miss the depravity,” she added, tongue in cheek.
He chuckled softly.
* * *
“THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE,” she panted, trying to climb a virtual wall in one of the holodens reserved for military training, with no success at all. She couldn’t even get up a foot. Her hooks kept sliding off the stone. “They give us these—” she shook the two hooks at Rusmok, her climbing partner “—and expect us to scale that!” She pointed at the solid face of the wall.
“Observe,” he said, ignoring the harangue.
He placed one in each hand and slid one, hook side down, along the wall and up until it encountered an invisible indentation and latched on. He followed with the other one. “You must feel for the depression and put the hook in it.”
Her lips fell open as she followed his example. She laughed. “Incredible!” she exclaimed.
“Beat you to the top, Dupont,” he drawled.
“You wish.” She started up ahea
d of him. “Shouldn’t have shown me how it’s done, Rusmok,” she called back down.
He laughed.
* * *
“STOP MONOPOLIZING OUR only human,” one of two other recruits told Rusmok as they sat down beside them with their trays.
“It is she who monopolizes me,” Rusmok replied haughtily, “because I am obviously superior to the rest of you.”
Jasmine laughed wholeheartedly. “He’s right,” she confessed. “Nobody in the unit is half as obnoxious as he is. He sets a new standard for it, in fact!”
He glowered at her in mock anger. “Excuse me. Nobody in the entire unit is as completely obnoxious as I am.”
“I stand corrected,” she replied, and saluted him with her spoon.
“I am Delsox,” one of the other recruits introduced himself. “That is Tollek.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she replied with a smile.
“Is it true that Chacon himself invited you to train with us?” Tollek, who was the youngest of the three, asked with awe in his voice.
“It is, indeed. I ran into him at the spaceport on Terravega while I was waiting on a job interview with an anthropologist.”
“An anthro-what?” Rusmok asked.
“Someone who studies the physical history of humans. Bones and such,” she amended when she realized they didn’t understand.
Rusmok shivered. “We have no such field of study here. We are a superstitious people,” he explained. “Our dead are placed in great stone vaults which are only opened by outworlders, and then only to place new residents inside.”
She stopped with her spoon of grelkosh—a sort of Rojok meat pie, very tasty—halfway to her mouth. “You don’t, forgive me, cremate your dead?”
There were faint gasps. “No!” Tollek said huskily. “It is sacrilege. We believe that in the afterworld, our bodies are given new life. How can we have new life with no body?”
She blinked. It was a question she’d never entertained. Her father had been cremated. All Terravegans were, as a matter of course, because there was so little available land. Pressure domes contained the population and space was always at a premium.
“What do your people believe?” Rusmok wondered. “Do you believe in a life beyond death?”
She stared at him. “Well, I’m not sure,” she confessed, a little ashamed. “Daddy was a philosopher. He read the classics, from the time of Dolmar the Great—a human who helped colonize Terravega. That was two thousand years ago. He said that we died and nobody knew what happened then. Of course, we have religious people who do believe in an afterworld. The Allfaith subscribers think we go to a place of eternal green fields and flowing clean streams of water.”
Rusmok chuckled, along with his classmates. “We believe the afterlife is a glorious desert with many life-forms and endless places to stalk and hunt game.”
She’d run into this obsession with hunting before. It seemed to be a staple of Rojok society. Stalking techniques were taught here alongside battle tactics.
“I think I might like hunting,” she remarked.
There were huge smiles.
“I’m taking a group out at week’s end to hunt sandsabers,” Rusmok told her. “If you would like to come, you would be welcome.”
“True,” Tollek said at once. “Delsox and I are also going.”
“Will I need to bring a weapon?” she asked.
“We don’t use chasats on hunts.” Rusmok chuckled. “We use teralek and miskol.”
She pursed her lips. “Okay, my meager Rojok isn’t adequate to translate that.”
“Nets and spears,” Rusmok said with a grin. “It is a test of courage as much as a hunt. And before you ask, we eat the sandsaber and send the teeth and claws to researchers to use in concocting new medicines to combat disease in our young.”
“Also, we tan the hides and give them to the poor for winter, which is harsh even on Enmehkmehk.”
Obviously, someone had told them that she didn’t like killing animals and that she was a vegan. She wondered who. She hadn’t liked those things, true, but her attitudes had adjusted to the realities of life on Enmehkmehk.
“There is snow.” Tollek sighed and smiled.
“Snow?” she asked. “What is snow?”
They all had arched eyebrows.
Rusmok laughed. “Frozen water that falls from the skies in great huge white flakes. It covers the ground and makes marching challenging. We learn to fight in it, because many conflicts come about on worlds where snow is eternal.”
She sighed. “So much to learn,” she said. She looked up. “You know, I was a vegetarian before I started training here. Impossible to continue it in a place where nothing is served that doesn’t contain meat.” She chuckled.
“We are carnivores,” Rusmok said easily.
“I noticed,” she teased. She sighed. “Well, when in Rome...”
“What is Rome?” they wanted to know.
She opened her eyes wide. “Why, I don’t really know,” she said. “The reference is one that I’ve heard used all my life, but nobody knows where it came from. Basically, it means you adapt to the place where you live.”
“A sound piece of advice.” Rusmok glanced at her. “You aren’t squeamish? Hunting sandsabers is messy. And bloody.”
“Nothing is bloodier than Dr. Amalok’s dissections,” she said with a mock shiver. “He sets a new standard for it, in fact.”
“And his lectures.” Tollek groaned. “He never seems to lose enthusiasm for the most dangerous life-forms.”
“Something even graduate officers refer to.” Rusmok sighed. “He is a legend at the academy.”
“I love his lectures,” she said, drawing stunned attention from her companions. “I’ve never even encountered alien life-forms before. It’s all new and fascinating to me.”
“I had noticed her rapt attention in class,” Tollek said with amusement.
“Dr. Amalok noticed, too,” Rusmok mused. “Have you noticed that he seems to lecture directly to her in class these days?”
“That’s because most of the rest of the class is asleep.” Delsox chuckled.
“I just hate the labs.” She sighed, finishing her meal. She put down her spoon. “Don’t you people eat dessert?” she wondered aloud.
They stared at her.
“Dessert,” she emphasized. “I haven’t had dessert since I left Terravega.”
“We have deserts all around our capital,” Rusmok began.
“Not deserts,” she emphasized. “Dessert. It’s a pastry or a pudding,” she explained. “Sweets. Pies with whipped cream. Cakes. Puddings with tapioca or vanilla or chocolate.” She was going dreamy at just the memory.
“Empty but fattening calories,” Rusmok murmured, finishing his own meal. “Useless to a soldier.”
“They’re not useless,” she moaned. “I lie awake nights, dreaming of empty but fattening calories. Oh, what I wouldn’t do for a cookie!”
“A what?”
“A cookie! Wait.” She pulled out her virtual device, used for calculations in most of her classes but also attuned to the galactic Nexus. “Here.” She showed them a picture of cookies on a plate.
“More useless but fattening calories,” Rusmok teased.
She actually groaned. “It’s hopeless. You don’t know what you’re missing. You truly don’t.”
“In which case, why should we miss it?” Tollek asked.
She put up the virtual device and rested her elbows on the table, cupping her pretty face in her palms. “I wish I could cook.” She sighed. “I’d try to make my own.”
“You can buy—what did you call them, cookies?—when we get to Benaski Port on our first R & R,” Rusmok said comfortingly. “It will give you something to anticipate.”
She brightened. “I forgot! Well! If I have cookies t
o look forward to, I can survive anything.”
“Eat too many, and you will never scale the holowall again, and our instructor will fail you,” Rusmok chided.
“I can always find an antidote. After all, I’m a doctor. Well, almost,” she corrected. She looked from one of them to the other. “If one of you would like to break something, I’ll prove it to you. I already have my wrist scanner.” She pulled up her sleeve to reveal the minicomp which was embedded in the soft skin of her wrist. It was standard procedure for medical students in all military, something borrowed from the Terravegan military, which had initiated it decades ago.
“Wait until our days off.” Tollek chuckled. “You will have work on the sandsaber hunt, I can assure you.”
“It is true,” Delsox added. “Someone always falls off an embankment or gets too close to the claws and teeth. There are many injuries.”
“I used to be deathly afraid of cats,” Jasmine remarked as she sipped the teskor that passed for human java, in a thick mug. It had a form of light caffeine that made it essential to military personnel, whose maneuvers were often unexpected and interrupted sleep.
“Truly?” Rusmok asked.
She nodded. “When I first came here, they administered an unusual drug that rid me of any phobias. I didn’t know such a thing existed. I expected years of therapy by psychoanalysis.”
Rusmok smiled. “We have many medical techniques that are unknown to outworlders. We rarely share them.”
“This was a very good one. I would hate to miss the hunt,” she added.
“You will not throw up at the sight of so much blood and gore?” Tollek teased.
“I would never disgrace my unit by such an unprofessional and juvenile display,” she promised him.
