Spoils of War

by Terry Mixon

  This wasn’t something that One Twenty-Four had ever pondered. Yes, she’d daydreamed about ending Thirty-One’s life, but that had only been longing, not belief that such an event was within her power.

  The girl was her greatest tormentor. She’d often wondered how much simpler life would become if the other girl was no longer in the crèche. Still, she’d never considered the possibility that creating such an outcome might be an option for her.

  Was it allowable to simply slay one’s enemies, even within the crèche? Somehow, One Twenty-Four doubted that. If so, the number of girls to reach maturity would be far lower. That couldn’t be what the Singularity desired.

  She glanced toward where Thirty-One stood with her hangers-on. She and the half dozen girls that belonged to her clique were all staring at One Twenty-Four. Judging by Thirty-One’s expression, the other girl’s thoughts closely mirrored her own.

  That did not bode well for her. Not well at all.

  “I can see that some of you are considering the implications of my words,” Keeper said. “Let me be clear. You are not allowed to kill any of your rivals here. To do so will result in your immediate expulsion from the crèche if I become certain that is what occurred.

  “Even as one of the rulers of the Singularity, there are limits imposed upon your behavior. It is unacceptable to use brute force when something more subtle is viable. Outmaneuvering your foes is laudable. Simply slaying them when other options are available is beneath you.

  “The Singularity is not ruled by brutes or brawlers. We are led by thinkers and planners who consider potential actions and their implications upon our society before they act. If you cannot do so, then you are not fit to lead.”

  Keeper paused to allow that to sink in. After a few moments, she continued.

  “That does not mean there won’t be instances where you must exercise force, so today we will begin learning hand-to-hand combat. If you must fight, it’s unseemly for you to have no skill, and I will not have my girls flailing around if they are forced to defend themselves. That would bring dishonor to the Andrea Line and to me personally.

  “In this room, and in this class, are the only times that you are allowed to fight one another. I understand that there are times inside the crèche where punishment must be rendered. That is not what I’m speaking about, and you already know your limitations as relates to those actions. Am I clear?”

  One Twenty-Four and the rest answered in unison. “Yes, Keeper.”

  “Good. I will designate partners for each of you, and you must subdue your opponent. I understand that you have no skill at this point. This exercise is meant to exemplify how such training will be helpful to you in the future.

  “The basic rules are simple. Each of you will attempt to pin the other to the mat. When one of you cannot rise, you have been defeated.

  “It would behoove you to pay very close attention to what your crèche mates are doing. Learn from their mistakes as well as their successes. When the time comes, you will only have the skills you have trained in and those which you can observe and deduce for yourself.

  “Use your mind. Outthink your enemy. If you can maneuver them into a position where they have no good options, you’ll win. Remember that physical force is the last resort, not the first. Your mind is the key to victory. Use it.”

  One Twenty-Four stood there as Keeper selected the first two girls, secretly glad that she wasn’t chosen. She watched as the two girls struggled against one another, pulling hair and striking one another with their hands. It all seemed so… ineffective. Surely there must be a better way to subdue one’s foes.

  Why was Keeper forcing them to fight, knowing that they had no skill? What purpose did this exercise truly serve?

  They couldn’t be meant to learn what to do from watching one another. That would simply be idiots mirroring idiots. No, this was meant to show them exactly how helpless they were.

  That had to be the purpose of this lesson. The real insight was that One Twenty-Four and her line sibs were dependent on Keeper to make them strong. It was one more way to bind each of them to the Line and cement their obedience to Keeper’s will.

  Once she understood, she put her concern out of her mind. What Keeper was doing didn’t bother her, because that was just the way things were. The thought exercise was still useful, because understanding why one did things was often more important than understanding how one did them.

  The first pair eventually ended their conflict when one of them tripped, and the other jumped upon her back. It was ungainly and uncoordinated but effective, she supposed.

  As she watched pair after pair go through combat, One Twenty-Four started to see a pattern. Each of the girls was mimicking what those who’d gone before had done. That meant perpetuating what were obviously ineffective fighting techniques.

  What would be more efficient? Fists were better than open hands, that was obvious, but placement seemed to be critical.

  And then she saw something that opened her eyes. One of the girls fell, but during her fall, the back of her arm struck the other girl in the stomach. The struck one bent over and gasped for breath, allowing the first to tackle her.

  One Twenty-Four knew from personal experience that elbows hurt if you struck them on things, so one would have to be careful about their use, but it seemed that a fast-moving elbow made for a good weapon. It increased the amount of force applied to a specific area. That was just fundamental physics.

  The stomach, as she had suspected, seemed vulnerable to this kind of thing. There would undoubtedly be other locations on one’s body where such a strike would be effective. She just needed to determine what they were in the time that she still had available.

  When the latest girls were sent back into the crowd, Keeper again looked over the group, but before she could speak, someone in the crowd did so.

  “Keeper, may we choose our opponents?” Thirty-One asked, a predatory curve to her lips.

  Keeper considered the girl for a moment and then nodded. “I will allow it this time. Who do you wish to fight?”

  “One Twenty-Four.”

  One Twenty-Four’s blood ran cold. Where she’d been planning on how to simply fight someone, she knew that Thirty-One wanted to injure her. She wanted to cause pain and wouldn’t be satisfied by merely winning this fight.

  “Both of you step onto the mat,” Keeper ordered.

  One Twenty-Four stepped onto the mat and watched as Thirty-One took her place across from her. The other girl didn’t seem afraid. She was obviously already imagining how she’d cause One Twenty-Four harm.

  If Thirty-One won now, her behavior would only grow worse. The only way to stop that—or perhaps only to slow it—was to make the other girl respect her enough to become cautious.

  Perhaps that was what Keeper had been speaking about earlier. If you couldn’t defeat an enemy outright, you needed to make them weigh the consequences of crossing you.

  Now she just needed to figure out how to do it.

  When Keeper gave the word, Thirty-One raced forward, her hands already reaching for One Twenty-Four’s hair.

  Dodging was almost impossible, but she tried to step aside. The move failed, and Thirty-One grabbed her by the hair and struck her on the side of the head.

  The blow sparked sudden pain in One Twenty-Four’s ear. It felt as if she’d ran into a wall. Her vision spun, and she saw stars.

  No, her vision hadn’t spun, she’d tried to turn away from the strike and now had her back towards her enemy. That turned out to have been a terrible mistake.

  Thirty-One jumped onto her back and wrapped an arm around her neck, squeezing tight until One Twenty-Four couldn’t breathe. She tried to dislodge the other girl, but even though they were precisely the same size, it seemed as if her opponent had a grip of iron. Nothing she did loosened the bar across her throat one millimeter.

  If only she could be on top of the other girl. If only she were the one beyond her reach.

  And th
en an idea occurred to her. If she couldn’t be behind the other girl, perhaps something else could be.

  She threw herself back, and the two of them slammed into the mat. It padded them from falls but wasn’t thick enough to truly cushion them from an impact. The force of the landing jarred One Twenty-Four, but it was far worse for Thirty-One. The other girl’s breath whooshed out of her body.

  With Thirty-One momentarily stunned, One Twenty-Four was able to wriggle free of her grip.

  Her first impulse was to run away while she could, but she immediately realized that distance was not her friend. As soon as she recovered, Thirty-One would come after her once more, even angrier than she’d been before.

  No, One Twenty-Four had to end this fight quickly and decisively.

  She drew her right arm back and struck down with her elbow at the other girl’s head as hard as she could. The back of her elbow struck Thirty-One across the face with a dull crack, and blood began flowing from the girl’s now flattened nose.

  The impact made Thirty-One scream and thrash around, completely uncoordinated now. That allowed One Twenty-Four to spin around, sit on her enemy’s stomach, and bring her fists down upon the girl’s face.

  She struck Thirty-One again and again, her fingers smarting with every blow until she learned to use the bases of her fists as the impact points. After half a dozen strikes, Thirty-One fell limp.

  One Twenty-Four paused to consider whether it was appropriate to continue hitting the unconscious girl and decided that it was not. That wasn’t the purpose of this lesson.

  She stood, stepped away from her unconscious and bloodied enemy, and faced Keeper.

  All throughout the fight, the woman had said nothing. Now One Twenty-Four saw that she was smiling.

  It wasn’t a smile of pleasure. In fact, it bore a marked similarity to Thirty-One’s cruel expression earlier. She suddenly realized that Keeper had taken pleasure in watching the violence.

  “You have done surprisingly well, One Twenty-Four,” Keeper said. “Most excellent. You’ve vanquished your foe decisively, and you’ve learned to utilize the most potent tool in a physical conflict: your mind.

  “Congratulations to you in this moment of insight. Learn from this moment and focus yourself so that you may serve the Singularity with the mind that granted you victory today.”

  Keeper turned and gestured at several of the girls who’d already fought. “Take Thirty-One to the infirmary, place her on a bed, and wait with her. I’ll be along as soon as this class is done.”

  One Twenty-Four watched the girls carry Thirty-One out of the room. Her enemy’s clique was staring at her with dismay and raw hatred now. Far from solving any of her problems, defeating Thirty-One had only made them worse.

  Still, she wasn’t sure what other choices she’d had. Victory would’ve emboldened Thirty-One. There had been no reasonable course of action available to her, so she’d picked the one with the most immediate benefits. Now she’d pay for her temerity.

  Thirty-One couldn’t allow this insult to go unchallenged. Worse, the girl wasn’t stupid. She’d learn from her mistakes and make One Twenty-Four pay dearly for humiliating her.

  One Twenty-Four sighed and stepped back, rubbing her aching fingers. She’d deal with Thirty-One and whatever came next. That was the way of the Singularity and, she supposed, the ultimate lesson for the day.

  6

  Grace followed Anders through the cramped corridors of the small ship and found herself less impressed with every step she took. Bright Passage needed a thorough cleaning, and that hinted at trouble for its probable maintenance record as well, unless this was all some big charade.

  Fleet might have masked the ship’s condition with a false appearance, but until she started poking into corners and asking questions, she wasn’t going to assume anything.

  The control room—or bridge as Anders had almost referred to it—wasn’t set up like an Imperial warship’s bridge. In the course of her service, she’d been to a couple of the small ships while she’d been on missions.

  On those ships, there’d been a large viewscreen set toward the front of the bridge. A number of control stations and consoles sat in front of it, and the commander’s seat was at the rear of the chamber, potentially with a few more chairs and consoles arrayed along the walls behind it.

  This ship had a more communal feel. The three consoles were arrayed in front of the command seat, facing inward so the captain could see the operators. There was a wall screen, but it was small and located low on the front of the center console in front of the captain’s seat, obviously solely for his use.

  Seated at the consoles were two women and a man in civilian clothes. They didn’t look like Fleet, but they had to be. Other than glancing at her and Anders, they maintained their focus on their work.

  The consoles themselves were different from anything she’d seen on an Imperial warship, too. The controls were made up of manual switches. For the life of her, she couldn’t imagine why. Who needed to actually flip switches to make things happen? Even merchants used touch screens.

  Anders had been standing at the hatch with a somewhat aloof expression as she’d circled the control room. “She’s not much to look at, is she?”

  “Not really,” Grace agreed. “I’m not familiar with civilian vessels, but this seems odd. And I’m not even talking about the ship being run down. The layout is screwy, and the consoles are archaic.”

  He nodded. “That’s because it’s not something that we see very often inside the Empire. Bright Passage is a merchant ship, but she was built inside the Singularity. It’s one of their standard designs and more than two centuries old. Even when she was new, she wasn’t at the cutting edge of technology by any stretch of the imagination.”

  Grace gave the control room another look, taking it in with new eyes. That information changed her calculus. The entire ship was a cover, but not quite in the way that she’d imagined.

  “I see. So, this is the way she was when we captured her?”

  “She wasn’t captured. Assets inside the Singularity purchased her, and she was smuggled out for modifications related to this mission. All of her registration paperwork is intact, and everything is in order. As far as the Singularity is concerned, this is one of their merchantmen.”

  He turned toward the rear of the control room. “My office is just outside. If you’d come this way, we can finish our introductions there.”

  She nodded at the officers at the consoles and followed Anders to his office.

  Like the control room, it wasn’t in the best condition. The smallish compartment held a battered desk, a few cabinets, and a basic computer setup. Everything looked worn and more than a little frayed around the edges.

  He made his way behind the blocky desk and sat in a chair that squeaked dangerously under his weight. It had springs? Seriously?

  He gestured toward one of the other two chairs in the room. “So where do you want to start, Lieutenant? That is your rank, isn’t it?”

  Grace allowed one corner of her mouth to inch up as she sat. “It used to be. As of this morning, I’m a free citizen. I’ll wager that you’re in the same position, aren’t you, Lieutenant Commander Anders?”

  That made him smile slightly. “Touché. My transition came a few months ago, but that’s exactly the position I’m in. I think we need to settle a few things up front. The most important thing is to make certain that we’ve both read our sealed orders. I’ve had mine a while, but yours came up with the last message packet we received.”

  Her implants received a connection request, and she accepted. Moments later, an encrypted file arrived, and she studied it. The headers were all correct for the Imperial Marines, and it accepted her authorization codes and began decrypting.

  Once the process was complete, she scanned the text quickly. It was as she’d suspected. She was in command of her marines and the raid proper, but she had to work jointly with the Fleet officer to get there. He was charged with operati
ng the vessel and dealing with any issues delivering her platoon to the target and extracting them from the Singularity.

  Buried at the bottom of the orders, however, was one bright spot. Anders was obligated to take her opinions and concerns into account and couldn’t just overrule her on general principles. There’d have to be some negotiation, but she wasn’t entirely at his mercy.

  Even so, she supposed it shouldn’t bother her. Marines were used to taking orders from Fleet types like Anders. It wasn’t unusual for her people to only have control over direct combat operations.

  She was pleased to have what influence she did and hoped that Anders wasn’t going to prove to be an obstacle to the mission rather than an asset.

  When she refocused her attention onto the ex-Fleet officer, he was leaning back in his chair, watching her with much the same expression as Colonel Grimsby had worn earlier in the day.

  He was assessing how she was reacting to what she’d read. He probably wondered exactly how much trouble he was going to have managing her.

  “You already know that I was a marine lieutenant and that I’ve brought a platoon of marines,” she said. “All of my people have worked together for quite some time, and they’re good at what they do. What I don’t know is who you are and what capabilities I can count on from you.”

  Before he could respond, she held up one hand. “I’m sure that you’re an excellent officer and that your crew is just as good. Where the sparring is going to come in is how we interpret our orders.

  “Neither one of us has complete control over what takes place on this mission, and we both want it to succeed. If we’re going to fight, that means that our chances of success go way down.

  “I don’t want that, and I’m sure that you don’t either. What we’ve got to do is find a way to work together and show the universe a united front.”