Raiders

by Malone, Stephan

  Doctor Palmer said, “It’s not going to be a big deal Lieutenant. Really. The intel that we can potentially get out of this would be critically valuable for us and the City. Sparring her will be no different than anything that you’ve already done back in your training.”

  Aurelia rolled her eyes at the ceiling and said, “Right sure that’s because I sparred with genetically modified and highly trained people in basic all the time.”

  Doctor Palmer paused momentarily and then said, “Trust me, this will be simple. If you do this you will be using a combat polearm in full armor. You won’t even get a scratch. I promise. Kama doesn’t know how resilient and protective our modern armor is. She’s lived a life using hand-assembled scraps of leather and metal.”

  “Doc, again, no. I’m sorry but I’m not gonna do it.” Aurelia responded.

  “Okay well, The Colonel himself was informed and he is gonna contact you soon. I just wanted to break the news to you because he can be sort of rough you know.”

  Aurelia bolted into a stand and started to pace around the Pod. “Doc this is nuts! Christ on a vine you guys can’t ORDER me to do this!”

  Doctor Palmer responded, “Well he can, actually. Lieutenant, look you will be doing the City a great favor if you do this. I would suggest just do it.”

  “Jesus I don’t fucking believe this! Haven’t I already done enough for the City already? There has to be a way out of this shit!”

  Doctor Palmer sustained a calm tone and said, “I don't know, Aurelia. Honestly my guess is that the Colonel will bump you up a rank if you go through with it. Just think of the pay increase! It’s not like this wouldn’t come without any benefit to you.”

  Aurelia sat back down. “Doc thanks so much for the heads-up but I have to go. Jesus I don’t believe this shit.”

  “No problem, take it easy and think it over. And be ready when the Colonel calls you. Bye guys.”

  Aurelia and Julian simultaneously said, “Bye” into the wall console. Julian looked at Aurelia with a screwed up look on his face and said, “Are you gonna do it or no?”

  Aurelia looked at her feet and without raising her head said, “I don’t know,” lay down on the couch again, sighed and then closed her eyes.

  Six

  Four days passed until Aurelia finally decided to go through with the sparring exercise with Kama. It took three urgent calls from Colonel Palmer and a personal visit to their Pod but in the end she consented. They guaranteed her a military promotion although Colonel Palmer stressed that it was off the record he even mentioned such. Promotions were supposed to be administered after a heroic event, not before.

  All told it was still a strange way to get information from a military prisoner but Kama was not an average combatant. The Colonel added an additional ten thousand credit bonus for Aurelia and Julian but only after he felt that he was losing the bargain with her even though he really wasn’t. Aurelia was an excellent bluffer. Perhaps it was this instinct within that kept her alive against Kama and her deadly Coilgun just a few short weeks ago out there in the borderline forests.

  She was told to report back to the Military Centre in 48 hours in full armor and to take the standardized regimen of vitamins and trace minerals the night before. She liked to throw in cayenne pills into the mix. The pepper helped flush out her lymph and dilate her blood vessels even if they did hurt her stomach a little.

  Aurelia and Julian arrived back at the Centre and walked by the familiar stir-fry stand they passed a thousand times before. There was a strange and undefined comfort to be found as the cook clanged and sizzled with his wok. The sounds and smells of the food permeated the Centre’s lobby hall. Aurelia was not hungry though. She supposed that an order of lo mein noodles with sesame oil, garlic and white pepper would be an unwise choice so close to a physical workout. Was this an exercise? She thought as they walked to the elevator. Julian walked faster than Aurelia since she wore her full battlesuit while Julian was unencumbered in regular casual City clothes. She shouted to Julian who was about 10 meters ahead. “Hey slow down. You’re pissing me off.”

  Julian spun around in an instant and paced back to her. “Sorry I was spacing out thinking about this shit. Hope you kick her ass.” He smiled slightly.

  “Won’t be a problem. Even if she is a genetic freak or what the fuck ever she is. Mutant.” Aurelia stifled out a brief, evil chuckle, amused at herself. “She can smack me all day long and I’m not going to feel shit in this armor.” She extended her right hand forward as they walked. “But what about her armor! Fucking toy leather is all that getup is.” She wiggled her hands in front of her. “Wooooo. Badass Raider armor, I'm so scared. Well, she’s asking for it. Stupid idiot. Chosen my ass. I’ll show her chosen.”

  Julian raised his eyebrows. “Damn you know something?”

  “What?” Aurelia huffed out.

  “I think you really need to do this. For you.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know. What I do know is after I’m done smacking her silly I’m going to thank her for knocking me up a paygrade.”

  “Wow, heh,” Julian said.

  Aurelia tried to look straight at Julian who now walked abreast of her but couldn’t swivel her head around since her battlesuit was too stiff in the neck. She moved her eyes all the way to her left as far as she could push them. “Yeah, you’re gonna see wow in about fifteen minutes.”

  Julian knew her well enough. Aurelia was dead serious. “Just hope you’ll feel a little better after dishing out some payback. You’ve been through a lot. I don’t feel like I’m doing enough for you though.”

  Aurelia looked forward and said, “Shut up. You know I love you. Some things a girl just has to do on her own. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You do what you gotta do baby. I’m with ya,” Julian said.

  They passed the security drone and reported to Special Training Arena number five. The Arena was in reality a twelve meter square shaped room, about thirty-two by thirty-two feet. The floor consisted of a hard rubbery substance that softened only when it was forcibly hit. Walking or shuffling on it had no effect for it remained firm and relatively solid otherwise. The walls were padded all-round and the ceiling was about 15 meters high which gave the Arena a visually unusual appearance.. The tall ceiling made the room feel much larger than it actually was but it was a necessary choice for the Military’s training needs.

  To the soldiers the array of twelve Special Training Arenas, six on either side of a secured soundproofed hallway was simply referred to as The Pit. The Pit had an anteroom where people could change and shower and/or be debriefed. There was even an emergency basic medical bench available if needed.

  A soldier dressed in standard fatigues greeted Aurelia and Julian in the anteroom and saluted her straight away given her rank. “Lieutenant, ma’am, Specialist Noonan. Assigned to assist you with this exercise.”

  Aurelia waved his salute down with her hand. “Thanks, I’m ready though I don’t need any warming up. Just give me my polearm and unlock number five and we’re about good here.”

  Specialist Noonan paused and looked at her feet for a second and said, “Uh, sir, ma’am, sorry but I got these special instructions to do this exercise.”

  “By whom?” Aurelia asked.

  Specialist Noonan raised his head up and with a respectful tone said, “By the Colonel himself and Doctor Palmer. They were specific on this one, ma’am.”

  Aurelia resigned her voice and said, “Okay sure. Whatever.”

  Noonan said, Hold on a second,” and then reached into a nearby storage locker. He removed a thin headband with two tiny adjacent-to-the-ear transducers. “Here, this is a translator comm set. It’s bone conducting so your hearing won’t be affected. It is toothed into the City computer translation cloud so it’s pretty fast on turnaround time. Kama only speaks Mandarin so we are gonna let you talk to her while you two are together in there. She will also be wearing the same device. Translation starts as soon as you pause for more than six hundr
ed milliseconds.”

  “So we will be able to talk to each other,” Aurelia asked.

  “Yes ma’am. Doc Palmer thinks it will be a good idea. He says it will help her tell us more.” Specialist Noonan shrugged. “I don’t know ma'am, I’m just the peon here.”

  Aurelia looked at the Specialist and briefly laughed. “Great. Noonan can you do me a favor?”

  “Uh, sure ma’am. What?”

  “Please stop calling me ma’am, I’m like three years older than you. You make me feel like I’m ninety.”

  Specialist Noonan tweaked his mouth into a subtle smile and saluted out of nervousness. “Yes ma’am, I mean Lieutenant, ma’am.”

  “Just Aurelia. We’re not in combat.”

  Noonan glanced over Aurelia’s shoulder toward Julian who stood directly behind her. Julian shrugged and nodded with his eyes closed as if silently telling the Specialist, Just how she is.

  The Specialist said, “Okay Lieutenant. Aurelia.” He saluted once more and then fitted the headband over her head. The transducers sat directly ahead of her ears. They would send audio vibrations to her inner ear by way of her skull bones.

  He placed her headgear armor and the band seated perfectly snug against a small ridge built into the helmet. Aurelia couldn’t even tell that she was wearing earphones at all. They were feather-light and completely flexible and soft all the way around. If there was any metal in them she couldn’t feel it for they felt like a singular piece of molded soft silicone.

  Aurelia adjusted her helmet to her liking and said, “Okay, now what?”

  Noonan produced a one and a half meter long polearm, not terribly long as far as polearms go, but it looked tactically useable. Aurelia shrugged. “Cool.”

  She took the polearm from him and smacked it into a row of lockers with a sideways thrust. The polearm beeped and a synthetic voice emitted from it. “Critical!”

  “That's polearm trainer. It is intelligent. Got a six-axis accelerometer and pressure sensors throughout. It calculates a critical blow to the enemy with the sensors. If the strike is non-critical or ineffective it will just bleep once with a quick bloopy sound.”

  Aurelia said, “Well that’s cute as all hell. So is this how you determine the winner? A critical blow?”

  “Three actually. Three crits and the winner will be declared.” Noonan paused and waited for Aurelia’s response as she studied the polearm some more. She considered that things were a little different with this venue than in her basic Military centre training days.

  “So say she wins. Will this be for nothing? Will she give us any intel?” Aurelia asked.

  “Doc Palmer thinks she will talk either way, but he also said, uhh, what was that he said. Oh yeah.” Specialist Noonan scratched his head. “Actually ma'am, I mean Aurelia, well hell the doc was kinda confusing on that point.”

  “Right,” Aurelia smacked the polearm ends, right first then left against the lockers.

  The polearm bleeped twice and responded in synchronicity to her strikes with a synthetic voice effect, “Critical! Bleep! Critical! Bleep!”

  Aurelia gave a satisfied smirk and said, “Yeah.” And then she rested the polearm's end onto her right foot and said, “Okay let’s get this shit over with.”

  “Great. Remember that Julian and the Doc will be able to talk to you and vice verse. Those bone phones are full duplex. They work both ways.”

  “Lead the way.” Aurelia followed Specialist Noonan after he handed Julian a headband. They walked down the Pit’s corridor and stood just outside the door of Arena Five.

  Noonan said to Aurelia, “Julian and the Doc will be watching from the Doc’s office.” He jerked his thumb at the doorway. “We got an eight-K dome camera installed in the Arena there. Doc has a curved organic display in his office. Camera takes sharp pictures even though the technology is really old. They will see everything.”

  Aurelia remained silent and nodded while they stood at the Arena door. Noonan pressed his thumb and ring finger onto a two-finger scanner-lock and the door clicked with a resonant mechanical ker-klunk. He opened the door about quarter ways and said to Aurelia, “Now my orders are if anyone actually gets hurt we're gonna shut this party down right then and there. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Aurelia stepped into Arena 5 and the door closed behind her, again with a respondent ker-klunk followed by something internal to the door lock that reminded Aurelia of a small whirling motor or perhaps a tiny hand drill.

  She looked across to the room’s opposing side and there she was. Kama, the one and only, fully wrapped in her leather Raider battlegear, headdress and all. The headdress caused Aurelia to pause momentarily since she had not seen this piece before when they last met. Kama’s headdress nearly covered her entire head, even her nose and ears. The headpiece made Kama look like she crawled out of some long lost dungeon from the early Middle Ages. The edges tapered away from the top to allow for head movement and draped over her shoulders in the front and backside too. Metal inlays protected Kama’s critical head areas, her temples and the sides of her neck. Kama looked up to stare at the motionless observation camera. The camera was bolted firmly into the Arena’s corner, directly above and to the right of where Aurelia stood.

  Aurelia remained motionless for a moment and said, “I just want you to know there um, Kama that you really are out of your fucking mind.” She twisted her polearm once round to no particular end. “You really are.”

  Kama returned her eyes back to Aurelia from the camera above. As she did so she said something in Mandarin Chinese, utterly indecipherable to Aurelia. About a half second later the translation came through Aurelia’s bone phones. “Restore honor and I will tell you what you want. We do this first!”

  Aurelia noticed that Kama did not wait for her translator from her end for she responded way too fast. “She can understand me fine. Hey Doc I know you can hear me. Why the hell are we using these stupid headphones?”

  Kama said nothing and stood in place as if she were a statue of flesh and leather and metal. The Professor sat in his office and observed the arena with Julian. The curved monitor arced around them both.

  The Professor responded to her through the headphone downlink. “She can only understand a word or two here and there. Don’t worry about that now. Just deal with it.”

  Kama shifted her weight against her polearm and spoke again in Mandarin. Translation, “I understood enough of what you said to know you called me a crazy.”

  “You are.”

  “I know. But I am so much more,” Kama said.

  Aurelia decided that talking time was over and initiated a defensive walk. She recalled her training in Basic. Her instructors drilled into her that all hand to hand combat is ninety-five percent defense and five percent strike, the precise opposite of what they used to show in most of the old movies made in Hollywood, back when there was an actual California. Great warriors knew this truth. The Vikings, the Romans, the Huns. Such lessons were not lost, not even in 2511.

  Aurelia cautiously paced sideways, always focused forward straight at Kama. She maintained a continual situational awareness of the Arena’s physical limitations: The walls, the floor and even the variations of light and shadow. She recited her lessons in her head over and over. Assess your target. Anticipate their moves before they execute them. Defend. Defend. Defend. Only strike when there is no chance of your enemy taking advantage of your loss of defense post-attack. Feel your weak zones, always. When in doubt, Shield them out.

  JJesus, all I want to do is smack her in the freaking head, Aurelia thought.

  With an almost casual flow Kama started to move from her standstill. She matched Aurelia’s position keeping herself about half a meter shy of what she believed was Aurelia’s maximum reach with her weapon. She watched, observed and paced in step. Then, she stopped.

  Aurelia stopped too. She felt her own nervousness now and was somewhat unsure of herself but tried her best to mask it. She balanced the polearm in front of her and stood and
focused on the enemy Raider.

  “..Doc no let me say something. Don’t let her get to you. She’s just screwing with you baby..” It was Julian’s voice.

  Aurelia made no indication that she heard him and remained still. For a few seconds more Kama remained still too She said nothing and then suddenly twisted her left hand round and swooshed her polearm into a circle. She twisted the thing behind her back and as she did so the weapon windmilled in the free air behind her. The weapon landed firmly onto her right palm which she positioned perfectly to receive it’s momentum. The whole room resonated with a definitive smack. Kama smiled and then tapped the polearm in front of her, left to right as if she were a blind person tapping a feeling cane to find her way home. Her weapon bleeped subtly with each tap, slowly and rhythmically. Tap, bleep. Tap, bleep.

  “Still messing with you hun, just stand your ground like you learned. You’re doing great.” Again, Julian spoke but this time his voice hinted of nervous undercurrents that only Aurelia could detect.

  Kama shrugged her shoulders and as she did her battlesuit creaked with the now familiar sound of distressed, well-worn leather. She jerked her head to the side and suggested to Aurelia, come now child, come hit me if you can.

  A rushed windblown sound that sounded like a whiffle ball only deeper and louder reverberated across the Arena. Aurelia charged her with a full frontal defensive position and then in about a quarter second her polearm was in a full windup top to bottom and slightly offset to the right. Whoosh and then an immediate teeth jarring ka-crack followed through. Aurelia rebounded from her attack and stepped back. To her surprise Aurelia was stunned as Kama simply raised her polearm with her right arm alone, her weak arm to meet Aurelia’s offensive strike. Kama did not even change her position at all excepting the singular motion. Kama kept her polearm raised as a bored affect visaged across her face, like she had just shooed away a pesky mosquito on a lazy, orange summer day.