Sergeant Lizzy spun away from Jon, hissing. "Who's the cockroach who laughs about killing the enemy?"
Another snort. It was coming from Clay.
"I laughed, Sergeant!" the brute said. "That kid couldn't kill a mouse with a baseball bat."
Sergeant Lizzy marched toward Clay. She scowled at the beefy recruit. "You think you're a killer, recruit?"
Clay scoffed. "Hell yeah! I ain't no wuss like Taylor. I've killed before, you know. Spent time behind bars. I don't need no goddamn chick to teach me how to kill."
Lizzy arched an eyebrow. "Oh, you're hard, are you?"
"Goddamn right I am!" Clay gripped his crotch. "I'm hard as hell. Wanna see, babe?"
Lizzy took a few steps back. Her eyebrow rose higher, and her mouth rose in a crooked smile.
Oh shit, Jon thought, watching the scene unfold. This is not gonna end well.
"Come on!" Lizzy beckoned Clay with her finger. "Come to me. Show me what you got."
Leaving the formation, Clay strutted toward the sergeant. He raised his fists, smirking. Sergeant Lizzy unslung her rifle and handed it to Jon.
"Hold this for me, will ya?"
Jon held the weapon. It reminded him of his brother's rifle.
Lizzy assumed a fighting stance, rocking on her heels, fists raised. Her prosthetic hand, when curled into a fist, formed a metal ball like a mace. Her smile vanished, and suddenly her face was all cold determination. Clay barked a laugh and lunged at her, fists flying.
It happened so fast Jon barely saw it.
Sergeant Lizzy sidestepped, dodged a fist, grabbed Clay, and flipped him over.
He hit the ground hard, tried to rise, and Lizzy's boot slammed down on his forearm.
They all heard the sickening snap.
Clay screamed.
"My arm!" he howled. "You broke my arm!"
Everyone stared in silent shock. Jon cringed. He could see the arm bent at a sickening angle.
Sergeant Lizzy pointed at Becky—or as everyone called her, Bucky. The bucktoothed recruit was trembling, her face pale.
"You! You're his friend, yes?" Lizzy said. "Take him to the infirmary." She whistled, and a drone flew toward the platoon. "This drone will show you the way. Go!"
Bucky helped Clay rise to his feet. He cradled his broken arm, grimacing. Bucky began leading him away, hand on his shoulder.
"You fought well, boss!"
"Don't touch me." Clay pulled himself free. "I can walk on my own. That psycho bitch broke my arm, not my legs."
Bucky brayed out laughter. "Good one, boss."
"Shut up, shut up!"
The pair walked away, following the buzzing drone.
"Ah, don't worry, Clay!" Etty called after him. "These days, doctors can grow you a new arm in no time. Not sure there's any hope for your micro-dick, though."
Jon returned the rifle to his sergeant. She slung it across her back.
So much for this all being an act, Jon thought.
Sergeant Lizzy looked at the platoon. "I bet some of you thought this was all a joke, right? Just a Hollywood drill sergeant, busting your balls for laughs. Let me make one thing absolutely clear. If you displease me—I will break every bone in your body! You will envy Recruit Clay Hagen. And that is nothing—nothing—compared to what the slits will do given half a chance. The slits won't just send you to an infirmary with a broken arm. They'll flay you alive, lock you in a bamboo cage, and leave you to rot in the sun. From now on, you obey me without question. If I say jump, you don't even ask me how high. You jump to the goddamn ceiling. I will train you to be hard. To be killers. Because if you are weak, we'll need mops to soak you up and send you home in a bucket. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Commander!" they all cried.
Sergeant Lizzy nodded. "Good. Welcome to boot camp, worms! Welcome to your first day as soldiers."
Chapter Twelve
A Thousand Little Lights
She walked through the jungle, a girl mourning, a girl alone.
Red smoke and ash hung behind her, curtains closing on the old story of her life. Before her spread the wilderness.
She was Maria Imelda de la Cruz of San Luna, Bahay, but here in the jungle, she was nobody. She was a lost soul. Her world had shattered. Her village had burned. Her family was dead. Her life had become like a rice seed husk fluttering in the wind, empty and forgotten.
She walked through the morning, and though her heart was full of grief, she found beauty in the rainforest.
A drizzle fell, pattering against the leafy canopy, whispering a song as soothing as the sea. Ferns rustled, rivulets trickled around mossy boulders, and roots and branches coiled, weaving a tapestry. Maria climbed and crawled, battling branches, roots, and rocks, every step a calculation.
There was so much life here. Glimmerbirds fluttered above, their long blue feathers trimmed with gold. They trilled for mates and hunted berries, iridescent spirits of the woods. Fangwoods snapped a million hungry jaws on a million hungry leaves, snatching up flowerbugs. Braids of moss dangled from curling boughs, filled with scurrying little mossballs, marble-sized animals some children kept as pets. Gabi ahas serpents dangled from the branches too, mimicking the braids of moss, indistinguishable until they opened their jaws to snatch prey.
I've always feared this forest, Maria thought. But I should have feared home. Now I've become one of these creatures.
She wondered if she would see the dreamtoad here. He had spoken to her. She remembered his words.
It will be the only way to save her. You must use his knife.
So Maria had taken the knife. She had peeled it off her father's burnt corpse. A knife with an antler hilt. It hung from her hip, forever tempting.
Draw me. Plunge me into your heart.
She walked onward in a daze, wandering through a misty dream. She climbed over roots, over branches, and the forest floor vanished beneath her. A mourning monk scurried along a tree, then paused to stare. The animal's eyes shone within a hood of dark brown fur, following her. A serpent coiled, a red fruit like a heart in its mouth.
She was lost here. She could no longer smell the burning village. No longer see the sky nor ground. The world was wood and moss, yellow eyes and fluttering feathers and the cries of strange birds in the shadows. The trees soared, twisting, braiding together, a cathedral the size of a planet, and Maria was like a mossball in a dangling vine, a single small being scurrying up and down, invisible.
And always in her hand—the knife.
The way out.
The path to her parents and her god.
She touched the cross that hung from her neck, and she wondered if God truly saw this strange forest on an alien world. She had been born here, her family had lived here for three centuries, yet Bahay had never seemed more strange.
The rainforest wrapped around her. Consuming her. Absorbing her.
Be one with us. Become one with ancient life.
And she realized that Bahay was alive. That here was a single super-organism, conscious, thinking, seeing, breathing. That it was digesting her.
The Bahayan people, even after so long, were still but parasites. But now she would truly become one with the world.
Draw me. Plunge me into your heart. Water the trees with your blood.
Shadows deepened.
Maria could not see the sky, could not see Bahay's twin moons nor suns. But she knew that Sargas, the larger sun that burned like a cauldron, was setting. Night would soon unfurl its dangerous cloak, and the shadows would advance, harboring whispered temptations.
Maria found a rug of moss between coiling roots and curtains of vines. Here she sat, but she would not sleep tonight. She would remain on guard. She would survive the night. She held her knife before her, waiting.
The light dimmed.
Creatures stirred and hissed around her.
Things creaked. Something breathed. Something raced by. She could smell them. The night predators of Bahay.
Maria held her knife fi
rmly as the last light vanished.
The rainforest became a black pit, darker than the chasms between galaxies. A midnight symphony awoke, playing a song of creaking wood and rustling leaves and snorting beasts. The aromas filled her nostrils, a blend of moss, water, leaves, and the fur and feathers and scales of the night creatures. Maria could not see, but she thrummed with awareness of this world living, moving, breathing around her. This vast organism, this consciousness of a world. It scared her. And it was so beautiful.
I will be one with you, she thought. I have no more village. No more family. I will be human no more. I will wet the moss with my blood, and mushrooms will rise from my body, and I will become one with the forest.
She placed her knife against her chest.
She took a deep breath, prepared to plunge the blade.
And then she saw it.
A tiny orb of light, no larger than a star. It hovered before her like an anglerfish lure.
"Crisanto?" she whispered.
The orb of light floated ahead as if watching her. Its dim glow illuminated coiling roots and branches. A single light in the vast darkness. A single companion in the endless emptiness of existence.
And then, among the twisting trees—another light shone.
And another.
And another.
They rose from the forest. Dozens. Then hundreds.
The Santelmos.
They floated before her, around her, above her. Glowing white orbs like the stars. They were very young, most only the size of marbles. A few were even younger, barely more than dapples of light. Children. Youths. Like her.
They flowed around her, leaving trails of light, and when Maria raised her hands to touch them, she saw that she too seemed to glow. Her skin had become silvery like starlight. The Santelmos stroked her hair, tickled her, raced around her, and she laughed.
A thousand little lights watched her in the darkness. A thousand little lights would guide her. She tucked away her knife. She was not alone.
Chapter Thirteen
Basic Hell
War was hell.
Everyone knew that.
But hell had seven circles. And the first was called basic training.
Jon hated it. He hated it more than anything in the universe. He hated it more than he loved music. He hated every waking hour, and every aching, cold, miserable night.
Actual battle, he thought, might actually be a relief.
"Go! Faster, worms! Run!"
Sergeant Lizzy stood on a hovering platform, hands on hips, watching them run. Officially, she had named the platoon Lizzy's Lions. But the sergeant just referred to them as worms, maggots, cockroaches, and a host of other creepy crawlies. Never lions. They had definitely not earned their manes.
"Faster, dammit!" she shouted.
Her hoverform thrummed, blasted out smoke, and lifted her several feet in the air. In this hovering chariot, Lizzy followed the running recruits. She gazed down upon them from on high, a goddess of wrath.
And we are mere mortals, Jon thought.
"Faster!" Lizzy cried. "There's a freckled slit running away from you. Chase that bastard! Go, maggots!"
Jon ran, sweat dripping inside his battlesuit. The thing was damn hot and about as breathable as a plastic bag. The rest of his platoon ran at his sides, armored plates clanking. They were running a loop along the curving inner surface of Roma Station. Jon felt like a hamster in a wheel.
The platoon ran past an armory, a mess hall, and concrete barracks. The buildings all sprouted from the curving walls, facing inward like teeth in a lamprey mouth. As the platoon ran, the centrifugal force kept their feet on the curving wall. They told Jon that Roma was calibrated to simulate Earth gravity, but Jon felt sure they were sneaking in an extra g or two. He felt much heavier here than on Earth.
The tubular Roma Station had a large diameter. It felt like ages before Jon completed a loop.
The recruits ended up where they started. Jon was sweaty, shaky, and close to collapsing.
"Another loop!" Sergeant Lizzy barked. "Go!"
Jon nearly dropped dead then and there.
The sergeant approached him, snarling, and raised an electric whip. The lash hissed and crackled like a serpent woven of lightning.
"Go, Taylor! Run! You don't even stop if you die, soldier! Go!"
Jon kept running.
"Goddammit!" Etty said, jogging at his side. "She's a slave driver, ain't she? First my people had to suffer the Pharaoh, now Sergeant Lizzy. Kill me. Just kill me."
"Stop… wasting… breath on… talking." Jon panted, running at her side.
Etty was much smaller than him. Perhaps that gave her an advantage. The little Israeli complained, but she had barely broken a sweat. Her green eyes shone in her tanned face, and she flashed him a smile.
She's enjoying this, Jon realized. The little bugger's actually enjoying this. She's mental.
"I'm dying…" George huffed, face red. "I can't… I'm dying…"
Etty grinned at the lumbering George. "Come on, ginger giant! You got this! We're only on the second loop."
George groaned. "You're on your second loop? I'm only on my first. I can't… I…"
The giant collapsed.
Jon tried to lift his buddy. But George weighed over three hundred pounds. Nobody was carrying him anywhere.
The platoon kept running, sans George.
More recruits dropped off, exhausted.
Jon ran onward.
He was not naturally athletic. At high school, he had usually skipped gym class, going home to compose music instead. Somehow, he managed three loops around the station. Barely.
Bayonets were stabbing his belly. Fire blazed in his lungs. Sergeant Lizzy was shouting at him, cracking her electric whip. The lash bit Jon like a snake. Electricity bolted through his battlesuit. But he could not physically take another step.
Jon collapsed, wheezing.
The last few soldiers fell around him.
Only one soldier kept running. Etty.
She completed one more loop, then rested, breathing heavily, hands on her thighs.
"Damn, that was a good workout!" She grinned at Jon and wiped sweat off her brow.
He could only moan.
And the day was only getting started.
* * * * *
It got worse.
They climbed an obstacle wall—an instrument of torture from the depths of hell. The metal barricade towered, inlaid with blades, flashing lights, and nozzles that kept spurting fire. As the recruits climbed, the wall did its best to cut, blind, and burn them.
The recruits had no ropes. They climbed by gripping whatever they could—sometimes it was a rock, sometimes it was a blade. If they fell, they fell onto mattresses below. Very far below. And very thin mattresses.
Several soldiers plummeted down. One snapped a leg, and his screams echoed through the station. No, those mattresses weren't much help.
"Climb, go, faster!" Sergeant Lizzy screamed from below.
Jon climbed a hundred feet. His limbs shook with weakness. He grabbed a protuberance on the wall, thinking it a rock. It sliced his hand—a blade! It was designed to only cut skin deep, but it still hurt like hell.
Jon cursed. He stuck his fingers into a crevice instead. They were slippery with blood. He reached for another crack, hoping to find another fingerhold. Fire burst from the fissure.
Jon pulled his hand back. He tilted sideways, dodging the spurting fire. The heat singed his cheek. His head spun. He lost his grip and nearly fell.
Climbing nearby, Etty grabbed him. She pulled him back onto the wall.
"Hold on there, big boy!" she said.
"The big boy fell already," Jon muttered. George was moaning somewhere on the mattresses below. "Hopefully if I fall, it'll be onto him. He's softer than any mattress."
"Dammit, soldiers, the slits are almost here!" Sergeant Lizzy shouted from below the wall. "Stop chatting and climb!"
Something whistled. Something
pinged against the wall beside Jon.
Again. Again. One soldier screamed and fell.
Jon gasped. "What the hell?" He looked down. "Sergeant Lizzy is firing on us!"
The sergeant stood below, a crooked smile on her face, her blond braid tossed across her shoulder. She was holding her rifle, taking potshots at the wall.
A bullet slammed into the wall beside Jon.
Another soldier screamed and fell.
"Rubber bullets!" Jon said. "Dammit!"
Rubber bullets wouldn't kill him, perhaps. Definitely not in a battlesuit. But they would leave ugly bruises, maybe even break bones. And certainly knock him off this wall.
He and Etty kept climbing, faster now. Jon grabbed a round red stone. Hot! He hissed and pulled his hand back. The skin was charred. He tilted, nearly fell. Fire spurted from a hidden spout above, blinding him.
Etty scurried past him, but then a bullet hit her leg, and she screamed.
And she was falling.
Jon grabbed her. He tried to hold her up. But his wounded hand slipped, and they tumbled down together.
Etty thumped onto the mattress with a yelp.
Jon missed George, sadly. He landed hard beside the giant, knocking his breath out. For long moments, Jon could only lie there, gasping for air.
Nobody succeeded in cresting the wall that day.
And it got worse.
* * * * *
All day, Lizzy tortured them.
The recruits crawled under barbed wire. Over barbed wire. Through barbed wire. In their underwear—no battlesuits allowed. They screamed as barbs tore their skin.
They sludged through pits of mud that rose to their armpits. Ravenous eels swarmed in the sludge, shocking them with electric bolts.
They ran through a forest of metal trees, each leaf a blade, as Lizzy zipped around them on her hoverform, firing her rifle. Her rubber bullets left nasty bruises. One even snapped a recruit's rib.
"Come on you worms, go, move, faster!" Lizzy screamed. "Do you want the slits to get you? Go!"
They ran through a forest of strip curtains, stumbling between the dangling plastic strands. Jon supposed the strips were meant to mimic jungle vines. It felt more like battling giant jellyfish tentacles. He panted, and a rubber bullet shrieked over his head.
The Earthling (Soldiers of Earthrise Book 1) Page 10
