“That’s wonderful,” Owen whispered. “Got our own little squad, but does anyone have a plan?”
“I’ve got one,” Brent said, matching Owen’s whisper.
“Of course you do.” Hiroko added, as the last recruits joined them. “I expected nothing less!”
“The instructor can’t see us out here, but who knows if he has listening devices, so everyone be quiet from this point on,” Brent said when all the recruits were close enough to hear his whispering. “Dante come with me. Everyone else stay here until you get the idea, then repeat.”
“Understood, sir,” Dante responded in a low voice that spoke for everyone.
Brent and Dante slowly advanced toward a nearby tree. Brent grabbed it and started gently shaking it. When most of the leaves had silently fallen to the ground, he motioned for Dante to face away from him. With Dante’s back turned, he started imbedding leaves in his uniform. After a few moments, the back of Dante’s uniform looked like the surrounding ground brush. He then gestured for Dante to do the same to his uniform. Having gotten the idea, the rest of the six paired up and headed toward nearby trees. A few minutes later, Brent’s haphazard squad was done and ready to move out.
“We will split into two groups so that if this doesn’t work we won’t all get caught,” Brent whispered. “I’ll lead the first group and Owen will take the second.”
Brent searched the ground cover until he found a branch.
“Owen and I will take a handful of these branches, and when the ground cover gets sparse along our path we will throw them against a tree to provide more leaves to add to our cover,” he explained as quietly as he could. “To keep the instructor from figuring out our plan, the rest of the group will also bring some branches and throw them against other trees randomly. If this works we should make the clearing before the instructor figures out where we are.”
Everyone nodded and started searching for branches. When everyone had a handful or two, Brent pointed in the direction Owen was to take and started on his path. Once the two groups had separated enough, Brent hit the ground and started crawling slowly and silently toward the clearing in the center.
“He can’t be serious! He wants us to crawl?” Hiroko whined.
“Shush, you want to pass this exam right?” Owen asked, dragging Hiroko to the ground with him. “Can’t let Erin get the last laugh now, can we?”
Out of the corner of his eye Brent saw the rest of Owen’s group do the same. Once on the ground he lost track of them. This trick of his might work better than he expected. At the rate Brent and his group were crawling, it would take at least three times as long to get back to the center as it had taken to get to their beacons. On the plus side, in the seeming eternity of slow progress the recruits improved their crawling until they were almost silent.
After a long period he could once again make out the structure ahead. The instructor was still in his chair, but now four searchlights, one on each side of the fortress, scanned the near woods. Brent assigned them arbitrary directions in his mind, calling the one patrolling his area the south light. He could make out a display on the arm of the instructor’s chair; the green gray light it emitted hinted at some sort of night vision. He came to a complete stop. This was a new development he hadn’t counted on.
“Dante, throw a branch to your right at a tree halfway between us and where the second group should be,” Brent whispered urgently. “Wait, throw it closer to us. Owen might have gotten closer without knowing it.”
Dante nodded slightly and threw a branch. Dante hit the tree squarely, causing it to produce a loud, hollow tone. The south light patrolling their area of the woods zeroed in on the noise instantly. Brent could hear the motors whine as the instructor and his chair swiveled until he was facing the tree the light was focused on. The instructor hunched over the view screen on the arm of his chair. After several unbearable moments, the light resumed its patrol pattern, and the instructor started checking the other facings. Owen was sure to have seen that and would get the message. The lights were sensitive to sound.
Once more Brent and his group resumed their forward crawl. Their progress was slow but silent. The camouflage blended in so well that they didn’t have to freeze save for when the light swept directly over them. He started to wonder how the other recruits who hadn’t joined them were doing. The instructor had been silent since night had fallen, and Brent had a feeling that when he caught a recruit he would be anything but quiet about it.
His ponderings came to an abrupt end when he realized the ground in front of him had only sparse covering. They would need more leaves on the ground to keep hidden. However, he knew that if he threw a branch at a tree in front of them to provide cover, the south light would zero in. The group would have the attention of the instructor focused squarely on them. If their camouflage didn’t hold up they’d be spotted in an instant. Brent remembered the swiveling chair. The instructor had to face the direction of the light. Perhaps the instructor couldn’t scan more than one area at a time.
“Dante, I want you to try and hit the furthest tree on your left you think you can hit. Everyone else, I want your heads down, eyes on the ground and no movement until I say so.” Brent whispered his command.
As Dante sized up the distances, Brent readied for his own throw. Dante pulled his arm back and tossed the branch as hard as he could without making a sound. As soon as the branch left Dante’s hand, Brent threw his own branch. Dante’s hit first, and the west facing light aimed at the tree as did the south facing light a few moments later when Brent’s branch hit its target. The instructor’s chair swiveled, stopping first on the west facing. The instructor studied his display for an excruciating amount of time. Then the chair to swiveled to the south facing. Brent turned his head and stared at the ground. He knew that his eyes would reflect and become two beacons of light on the instructor’s display.
However, he was right. The instructor could only view one direction at a time. The tree he had hit was only a few feet ahead of him and his squad. Most likely the instructor was looking directly at them, hopefully without knowing it. Brent and the entire group remained perfectly still, holding their breath awaiting the bellow of the instructor when he found them. The beating of his heart became thunder in his ears. He wondered if the instructor’s equipment could hear it.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw the west facing light start its patrol pattern again, but Brent dared not lift his head yet. He noticed the movement of the south light, but it was too slow to be on the patrol pattern. The instructor must be controlling it directly. Each second hung as the light slowly panned around Brent, searching for the group. Without warning a loud thud could be heard from his right. The south facing light paused for a moment, then began moving at its normal patrol speed. Brent ventured a small glace ahead. The east facing light was targeting a tree, and the instructor had rotated to face it. Owen must have thrown a branch.
“All right, move on, but slowly, and be ready to stop at any moment, eyes on the ground,” Brent whispered.
Again, Brent and his team inched ahead; the instructor was still examining the east side. Before long, they reached the edge of the woods. There were no more trees between them and the fortress. Brent was wondering how best to approach when he heard two thumps almost simultaneously. At once, Brent and his entire group came to a dead stop, dropping flat on the ground. He could still make out the west facing light moving on its patrol path, but he couldn’t see the south or east. Owen’s group must have needed more cover, but the question was, were they in the south section with him or the east. This would be the third time the south had been hit and the second for the east. The instructor must have figured out he was being played with.
A bigger problem was what to do about the final stretch. There was meager cover after the woods ended and no trees to steal cover from. The only thing Brent had on his side was that the instructor could only see one direction at a time. However, with all the activity on the south, the instr
uctor would be suspicious of anything else they did. Brent shifted his gaze toward the tree Dante had hit in the west. It was a far distance into the west side, maybe far enough to distract the instructor.
Suddenly, the searchlight came directly over him. The brush immediately around him was as bright as if it was day again. He held absolutely still. If the instructor had spotted him, he wouldn’t give away the rest of his group. The light slowly continued along the extreme edge of the woods; the instructor hadn’t spotted him. After an additional pass of the edge, the light returned to its patrol path. Brent gazed up and found the instructor analyzing the east side carefully. Owen was most likely in the east or southeast and was likely pinned under the inspector’s gaze.
“Dante, I want you to hit another tree to your left, as far as you can,” Brent whispered.
Dante heaved another branch deep into the west and ducked his head before it even hit the tree. The light in the west focused, and the instructor hesitantly panned over to the west. Brent stared in the direction he thought Owen to be and urged him with every fiber of his being to take the opportunity and close to the fortress. A few moments later a dull thud could be heard in the distance. None of the lights he could see altered from their patrol patterns in any way. The sound must have come from the north. Owen had returned the favor. Brent eyed the instructor like a hawk, waiting for the movement of the chair. It began to pan to the north.
“This is it. Double time!” Brent put as much force in his whisper as he could. “Move as fast as you can without making noise, stop only if the light falls on you. Go!”
He launched ahead, crawling at a speed near that of walking. While the area ahead was devoid of leaves, making for poor cover, the lack of leaves also meant there wasn’t anything for them to step on inadvertently and give them away. Swiftly and silently his group approached the fortress, only stopping once as the light scanned over them. However, with the instructor’s attention in the north, the few leafy clumps in the middle of the barren clearing went unnoticed by the automated searchlight. As Brent reached the structure, he saw Owen’s team nearing the fortress from the east. He waited as Owen’s group got closer, and then all eight touched the fortress in unison. As soon as they made contact, the night ended and the sun quickly rose to noon.
“What in the world?” came the booming voice of the instructor as he searched for the recruits. “Behind me! Perfect! So many, two, four, six, eight! Now how did so many sneak up all at the same time? I must be loosing my touch.”
“Does that mean we pass?” Owen asked.
“Of course! I was hoping at least one of you would make it. Never would have believed eight! Pity I didn’t get a single one of you. It never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t eliminate at least one out of twenty.”
“Wait a minute, twenty?” Hiroko gesticulated at the otherwise empty field. “There are only eight of us here. What about the others?”
“They gave up!” the instructor said, nodding toward the opposing tree lines. “I saw the signs of them coming. Figured I’d get one or two of them before they knew what hit them. But sadly no. When they got to the thinner parts of the woods, they sat behind the tree line and waited. I could hear them muttering among themselves but couldn’t spot them and activate the bracelets.”
“What?!” Hiroko shouted angrily. “You mean they sat around and chatted quietly while we did all the work?”
“That about sums it up.” The instructor started laughing so hard it sounded like dull thunder.
“This is horrible!” a bookie in a white and purple uniform lamented as he went over the figures. “Cain, why did you ever take his bet?”
“What would you have done, Daniel?” Cain sniped back defensively. “Told the Administer his credits weren’t good enough to place a bet?”
“I told you we needed to put a cap on bets!” a female bookie in tan and green said haughtily.
“No, you didn’t, although I wish you had,” Daniel moaned. “This won’t end well for us. Four thousand credits on an underdog. A nobody!”
“Who would have thought the Administer, of all people, would place a bet, and one so large? What was the payout when betting closed?” Cain asked, hoping his figures were wrong.
“Of an unknown passing each and every exam?” Daniel’s response was more of a growl than anything else. “Twenty against, at least. If that Brent kid manages to pull it off, the Administer will get twenty creds for each and every one of his four thousand.”
“Eighty thousand?! Can’t we cancel the bet?” the girl asked hopefully. “Call it a conflict of interest maybe? He is in a position to manipulate the outcome, right?”
“I wish it was that simple, Ruth,” Cain said desperately. “I did some checking. Not only are the instructors conducting the tests, they concocted them. That Weaver that accompanies the Administer gave them suggestions but no exact details or guidelines, so we can’t even cancel his portion of the bet. The bottom line is the Administer has no more control over the outcomes than we do.”
“Even if we could somehow revoke the Administer’s bet, it wouldn’t do us much good.” Daniel sat back and sighed. “Word spread quickly. We’ve got at least a dozen large bets all on Brent and that blasted group C.”
“Maybe they will make a mistake or two,” Ruth ventured. “If Brent fails even one exam most of the bets will go in our favor.”
“Just look at the monitors!” Daniel shouted in exasperation. “Group A gave up and hid behind the tree line until time ran out. Group D was disqualified for taking off the arm bands and walking in the open back to the instructor. Group E tried to distract the instructor with two recruits while the others snuck up behind him. The instructor figured it out and took out the entire squad. The two ‘distractions’ actually made it to the base while the instructor picked off the other panicking recruits. Group B charged the instructor in mass. They lost half the group in the attempt, but they did manage to reach the instructor.”
“Your point?” Ruth folded her arms.
“His point is that out of five groups, only three actually reached the goal,” Cain answered for Daniel. “And only one of those three managed to do it without the majority of the group failing. This Brent kid is making the rest of the recruits look like chickens running around with their heads cut off.”
“Just look at the troopers, Ruth,” Daniel said disgustedly. “All of them are crowding around the monitors showing group C’s exam. The cheering can be heard all over the station! The kid is putting on quite the show.”
“What if we let people make some more bets?” Ruth was grasping at straws. “You know, get some suckers to cover our losses?”
“What would be the point in that?” Cain dismissed the idea. “No one would be foolish enough to put credits on the losing groups, and the last thing we need is more on Brent. We are already in the hole; you want to keep digging us deeper?”
“Well, what if we changed the payouts?” Ruth was desperate.
“If we did that we’d lose all credibility as bookies.” Cain was firm in his answer. “Once a bet is made you can’t change the terms.”
“She might have an idea.” Daniel was rubbing his chin.
“You insane?” Cain eyed Daniel. “I know things are desperate, but we can’t be that reckless.”
“Fortune favors the bold.” A grin emerged on Daniel’s face. “I’m not suggesting we follow either of her ideas, but both of them!”
“Both of them? I get it!” Ruth was giggling. “We open for new bets with new odds. It won’t change the bets we already have so no one can complain.”
“Precisely. We don’t even have to rig it.” Daniel’s mind was set. “Right now every group but Brent’s is a long shot.”
“What happens if the other groups do well?” Cain’s words cut through the other bookies. “I hate to rain on your parades, but what if the first exams were flukes and all five groups do well from this point on?”
“He has a point, Daniel.” Ruth’s voice ooz
ed with defeat. “I guess it really is hopeless.”
“Okay, so just opening for new bets is a dumb idea. What about a new kind of bet?” Daniel wasn’t about to give up that easily.
“New kind?” Ruth asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Sure.” Daniel was obviously working out the idea as he spoke. “Right now we have a myriad of wagers on individuals and groups based on if they pass or fail the exams. If they pass an exam some people make creds, others lose them. What if we started a competition pool?”
“Competition pool?” Cain was intrigued.
“We start an open pool. Which group will end up on top.” Daniel was tripping over his words as he spoke. “We let people place bets on whichever group they want whenever they want. No refunds, of course. When today is over, the pot is divided among those who bet on the winning group.”
“And this helps us, how?” Ruth asked skeptically.
“Did I forget to mention we take a nominal fee on each bet?” Daniel was practically glowing. “No matter who wins, we do! The winnings are completely based on what people pay in, so it can’t pull us under, and with a small commission on each bet, maybe we’ll make enough to end today with a profit!”
“Sounds reasonable, but with us so far in the red there is the chance we’ll still be in trouble when all is said and done,” Cain said, accepting the idea.
“Fortune favors the bold!” Daniel was already rushing off toward the mess hall. “Let’s spread the word!”
“Is it just me or did Daniel seem almost giddy?” Cain asked as he watched Daniel run off.
“I didn’t know Daniel did giddy,” Ruth said. “Maybe this was bothering him more than we know. Oh well, it’s a good plan. I’ll start hitting up the stragglers here.” She got up and headed toward a group of troopers still lingering outside the observation room.
Cain had been working with Daniel for almost two years now. In that time Cain had gotten used to Daniel’s sour nature. Cain couldn’t bring to mind a single occasion Daniel had been so energetic. Something had to be wrong. Cain bolted after Daniel, the sour spot in the pit of his stomach growing.
The Ninth Page 7
