Mako (The Mako Saga: Book 1)

by Ian J. Malone

  “Mr. Tucker, would you care to join?” Reynolds called from across the pavement.

  “Are you kidding?” Danny exclaimed. “You couldn’t pay me to get in the middle of this.”

  “Mr. Baxter?” Reiser said to Link who shook his head.

  “Sorry Doc, but I’m with Crockett on this one. Besides, I’ve been a pack-a-day man since I was 15 years old, so something tells me I’m not exactly Usain Bolt material—Power Ranger duds or not, ya know?”

  Satisfied for now, Reiser took hold of the whistle and stopwatch around his neck and turned to his two participants, each of whom was now fully braced for the match ahead.

  “Alright, this is no different than what you were doing before,” he instructed. “Just visualize yourself running as fast as you can and let the suit do the rest. Remember, don’t run. Think about running.”

  With the sudden chirp of the whistle, the duo exploded off the starting line to the outpouring of cheers from their friends as they pushed and kicked their way into the first turn.

  “Don’t run,” Reiser called, seeing their physical exertion. “Just imagine the act in your mind.”

  Feeling the intense strain on his body, Lee did his best to follow the instructions as the gap between himself and Mac slowly began to widen.

  “C’mon Lee,” she managed a breathless taunt through her gazelle-like stride ahead of him. “All I’ve heard about from Danny is what kind of great shape you’re in these days, now bring it!”

  Struggling through the agony of his slam-pumping heart, throbbing knees, and splint-stricken shins, Lee tried to focus on Reiser’s advice as his pace continued to slow. His breath now ever so fleeting, he closed his eyes and cleared his mind of both the pain and the swishing brown ponytail ahead, fighting to concentrate. Then instantly, as if in some strange out-of-body experience, the ripping burn in his joints began to subside, and upon opening his eyes, he was startled to see that the incredible sense of relief that now poured over him had in no way hindered his speed. To the contrary, the gap between him and Mac was now beginning to close.

  His confidence and determination fully renewed, Lee took aim on his cocky adversary, stalking her into the backstretch as his speed grew with every step. Meanwhile, Mac—having sensed he’d found his second wind—steadied herself for the final turn as the explosion of cheers poured from the starting line.

  Launching ahead—his arms and legs churning now in perfect concert—Lee felt his pulse quicken as she drew almost within reach, and he could all but taste the win, not to mention the sheer satisfaction he’d draw from shutting her up.

  Alas, it was not to be, for just as his fingertips bristled the ends of her ponytail, Mac shot forward in a final, lightning-quick burst and beat him back to the finish line by a solid three steps.

  “Well done, brother,” Hamish said with a clap of Lee’s shoulder. “Well done indeed.”

  Failing to share in the sentiment, Lee hunched onto his knees to catch his breath and glowered over at Mac who took a high-five from Link, already reveling in the victory.

  “That’s how we do it in my yard, baby!” she gloated between breaths while toweling off.

  “Helluva try, Lee,” Danny added. “Seriously bro, you almost had her.”

  Never one to let a win be tarnished, Mac sashayed past the duo to accept a bottle of water from Reynolds.

  “Do or do not, sweetie,” she teased, unscrewing the top and taking a swig. “There is no try.”

  “Whatever,” he muttered, not quite sure which was more irritating, his failure to adapt to the suit in time, or losing to her—a point he knew he’d be hearing about for a while. “Guess I was a little late to the party in figurin’ this thing out, huh Doc. How’d I do, anyway?”

  “A 5.2 40,” Reiser answered, never looking up from his tablet.

  Discouraged over the notion that he could’ve sworn he’d done better than that, Lee dropped his head and grabbed a towel.

  “Mind you,” the doctor added, “that was on the front 40. Dr. Reynolds?” he called. “What was Dr. Summerston’s time on the backstretch?”

  Reynolds glanced over her data. “4.41.”

  “Holy crap, Lee,” Link blurted in astonishment. “You’re outrunning half of the Noles’ receiving corps with that time. Nice!”

  “Yeah, but he just couldn’t take li’l ol’ me, now, could he?” Mac quipped behind them, having already spied her 4.32 on Reynolds’ screen before it was announced.

  The first phase of the Mimic project was spent in much the same fashion, beginning first with rudimentary skill exercises such as walking and running, before advancing on to weightlifting and a handful of minor agility drills—each one opening at a relatively low difficulty level before getting progressively harder. Little by little, the group continued to improve, and by the end of the week, even Reiser had to admit his excitement over how quickly they seemed to be picking up the curriculum.

  ****

  Five days later, the group awoke early in preparation for the first day of phase two, which was scheduled to begin at 08:00 with Noll in the gym. Having stopped by the mess hall for a quick breakfast before hitting Reiser’s lab to suit up, they made their way across the track and over to Noll, who waited anxiously for them alongside one of the training mats. Falling in at the head of their loose, single-file line, Lee glanced over to see Reiser and Reynolds—now acting as observers—enter the room and set up shop with tablets off to the side.

  “Eight-Two!” Noll barked, snapping them upright and addressing them by their squadron designation. “Welcome to day one of your real training. Right off of the bat, let’s be clear about one thing: While you may have shined back on Earth, playing footsies and patty-cakes with some pathetic excuse for a child’s army game, none of that means a damn to me, is that understood?”

  “Guess the gloves are finally off,” Lee thought, fairly certain of the sergeant major’s happiness to finally be able to voice his true feelings about them.

  “Out here, you’re in my house which means you’ll abide by my rules,” Noll went on. “You’ll do what I tell you, how I tell you, when I tell you, or so help me god, I will personally kick all five of your screwball asses off of my ship, and out of my fleet without breaking so much as a fake sweat! Ruah?”

  “Ruah?” they mumbled, a little shell-shocked.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?” he screamed.

  “Ruah!” they shouted.

  “Better,” Noll chirped, pacing their line. “I’ll be straight-up honest with you, folks. I don’t like you, and I sure as hell don’t like the fact that you’re here. But that’s not my call. The only thing I can control is right here, right now, and as far as I’m concerned, if the brass is hell-bent on calling you a squadron… civilian, logistical, R&D, or whatever, then it is my duty and obligation to make damn sure you’ve earned the right to carry the label.” He halted and returned to the center of the line. “With that little bit of housekeeping out of the way, you should know that there are a number of very specific reasons why I do business the way that I do as it pertains to training the people under me—two of which directly concern you. Reason number one: In order to know the limits of the Mimic technology, we have no choice but to push the people using it to theirs—plain and simple. That means, in order to discover where the machine breaks, we must first learn where the man breaks. Reason number two: As a 27-year veteran in the Auran Infantry Division, having taken part in and or led 52 successful engagements in this war, and as a former DI in the Auran Military Academy,” he paused in delight. “Well, ‘wide open’ is the only way I know how to train green recruits. Now, over the course of the next few weeks, you will learn how to fight. You’ll fight with guns. You’ll fight with blades. You’ll fight with explosives. You’ll fight with your bare hands, and while each of you will become specialists in one or more of these areas, it is my job to make sure that your entire team becomes fluent in all of them. So make no mistake about it, people… this is my arena, and at
the end of the day, my job is to make you worthy to stand in it. To do anything less is a downright disgrace to the uniforms you currently wear.”

  Danny turned a cautious eye to Lee. “Okay, this guy’s starting to freak me out a little.”

  “Ah, excellent!” Noll beamed, spinning on his heels to stand nose to nose with Danny. “I see we have our first volunteer of the day. Outstanding!”

  “Volunteer?” Danny gulped.

  “That’s right, Mr. Tucker, and please allow me to express my sincere joy that it would be you.”

  “Me, sir?”

  “That’s right. According to your file, this was your area of expertise in Dr. Reiser’s simulation. Plus, by virtue of your occupation, you’ve had similar training, which makes you the perfect candidate to assist me in our first drill.” Noll returned to the mat and assumed a lazy stance beside one of two hash marks in a circle. “Please join me on the mat.”

  Reluctant to move, Danny surveyed the anxious faces of his friends before taking his position on the opposing hash mark.

  “Now, attack me,” Noll instructed, maintaining his casual stance with no obvious sign of a defense.

  “Seriously, sir?” Danny smirked. “We both know how this ends. I come at you, and you plant me. Do we really have to go through the charade?”

  Noll frowned and squared himself. “Son… if I have to come off of this mark to initialize contact, you can rest assured that being planted will be the least of your concerns. Now, grow a pair and attack me!”

  Danny resumed his sheepish stance on the mat and tried to shake out his nerves as he formulated an attack in his mind. Then, acting on what he believed to be a fairly well-conceived plan, Danny charged at his instructor, swinging a left-handed blow at Noll’s head in the hopes of distracting him from the right he’d hoped to land on his body.

  A collective gasp later, Reiser’s med monitor spiked hard as Danny crumpled to the floor with bruised ribs and a busted lip.

  “Bloody brilliant move, Danny,” Hamish chuckled.

  “I’m glad you find that so amusing, Lunley,” Noll snarled. “How about we see if you—and all your cute little body pictures—can do any better. To the mat, now!”

  A thunderous thud later, a dazed Hamish lay flat on his back, gasping for the breath that had just been so effortlessly slammed from his chest.

  “Get your big ass up and back on the line!” Noll seethed, sending Hamish wheezing to his feet. “The fact that you’re the size of a wall means crap to me! Tucker came closer to hitting me than you did, and he’s half your weight, but at least he had some semblance of a plan! Now, for the rest of the day we’re gonna work on some basic sparring techniques that’ll hopefully serve to help you look more like trained soldiers, and less like infantile buffoons. As Dr. Reiser has told you, the trick here is to lead with your mind, not your limbs… because we all know how that ends, don’t we?” He snorted a laugh. “At the conclusion of every day, I’ll select which one of you has shown the least amount of progress throughout that session, and he or she will get the dubious honor of a little personal tutoring time with me back here on the mat.”

  The group winced at the thought.

  “Alright,” barked the sergeant major. “Once more… Ruah?”

  “Ruah!” they shouted in unison.

  “That’s a good way to start, Renegades. Now let’s begin.”

  Chapter 19: Range Hot

  For the purposes of orientation, phase two opened with four days of casual, non-contact sparring drills designed to expand the group’s knowledge of the various kicking, punching, blocking, and combination techniques they’d need to know before advancing to padded contact drills; and as before, their learning curve seemed to steepen with each passing day. By day five, having moved on to pads, they were still taking their fair share of lumps, but whereas they’d initially managed one, maybe two blocks before taking a shot, now they were managing 10 and 12 if, in fact, they took one at all.

  As time went on, their progress was undeniable, a fact which was particularly noticeable in the case of Danny, whose virtual expertise with Auran martial arts gradually began to show in the speed of his response times and his diminishing need for the M-suit’s assistance. During one particular sparring session, while Lee and the others continued to battle the awkwardness of their suits to work on basic defenses, Lee glanced off to the side to see Danny—dressed only in a tank top, fatigues, and protective gear—completely immersed in a heated, full-contact match with the same opponent who, just two days ago, had pinned him in six moves. Watching him closely, Lee marveled at the speed, precision, and grace with which Danny now fought—spinning, ducking, and sliding away from his adversary’s attack, while mounting one of his own with a near-seamless fluidity. It was almost as if he’d been doing it his whole life, and yet it’d barely been a week. Some three and a half exhaustive minutes later, the frantic exchange came to an abrupt end as Danny, having sidestepped yet another kick to his head, caught his opponent’s leg in a joint lock and swept the other out from under him, slamming the young man to the mat with a bone-jarring thud.

  “Excellent adaptability, Mr. Tucker,” Noll applauded. “You’re starting to blend elements of both the Eastern and Western styles into a hybrid of your own. That’s good, very good.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Danny said breathlessly, as he leaned down to offer a hand to his defeated partner. “I can’t explain it,” he panted. “It’s just… instinct. I don’t even think about it anymore. I just move.”

  “That’s what you want,” said Noll, a decorated amateur boxer back in his day. “Now go grab some water and let’s run through it again.”

  Following another week in the Praetorian’s gym, the group finally got a break from the dim, gray surroundings of the ship’s interior when they were deployed to the planet’s surface to begin their weapons and urban tactics training at Fort Manning, a coastal base just outside of the Auran capital city of Retaun. During the first week, the group spent the bulk of their time on the base’s firing range, learning the proper use and operation of the Auran forces’ two primary weapons—the short barreled A-90 assault rifle and the 40-caliber sidearm—before eventually seguing to a variety of other weapons and artillery, the latter of which was of particular interest to Hamish who’d long since craved a chance to handle something with a little more juice.

  For Link, meanwhile, the exhilaration of spraying a target with a fully automatic weapon was nothing short of addicting, though that thrill was soon eclipsed by the introduction of the S-29 sniper rifle—without a doubt his gun of choice back home. On the day that Noll had returned from the armory, holding the weapon, Link’s eyes had practically glowed with excitement at the chance to handle its sleek black frame and long-range firepower.

  “Now we’re in business,” Link beamed, inspecting the rifle’s elegantly crafted design as he cradled it in his hands. Then, wasting no time, Link turned to an open lane on the range, placed the butt of the stock to his shoulder, and took hold of the rifle’s bolt action slide to rack in a round. With a long, deep breath—his expression filled with intensity—Link leaned into the high-powered scope and took aim.

  ****

  BLAMMMM!!!

  “AWW, SHIIIITT!”

  “Yeah, about that recoil…” said Danny, spotting the massive bruise under Link’s left eye while the others giggled around him.

  “Oh, like that wouldn’t have happened to any of you fools,” Link defended, massaging his face and ejecting the empty casing that jingled to the pavement below.

  In the days that followed, Link was all but a resident on the range, running through magazines as if they were kid-sized TV dinners and cursing like a sailor with every off-target shot, meanwhile everyone else rotated from A-90s to sidearms, though not without the occasional demo of a new piece here and there.

  For Lee, however, there was just something about the simplicity and deadly accuracy of the sidearm that appealed to him. Maybe it was the challenge of maki
ng a single, calculated shot count under adverse conditions that intrigued him. On the other hand, it might just as easily have been his childhood love of westerns—films which were often times defined by their classic, street-side showdown scenes involving two men, standing alone, with nothing but their revolver skills to settle a dispute. Whatever the reason, when given his choice on the range of what to use, the sidearm was usually Lee’s first option, though he kept his quick-draw practicing to himself, wanting no part of the ribbings and Doc Holliday jokes that he knew he’d get for it.

  On the final day of range training, as each of them returned to the armory to relinquish their weapons, protective goggles, and earmuffs for the evening, their eyes caught sight of two soldiers walking across the gravel toward the far end of the course, accompanied by a thinly built third man who struggled beneath the weight of the rather bulky weapon strapped to his back. Eying the boxy receiver assembly and long, cylindrical barrel saddled in the man’s right arm, Lee followed the thick, gray cable that connected them to a large, oversized backpack which hung on his shoulders like a sandbag. Not exactly sure what to make of it all, he guessed from their note-taking that this was a test-firing of some sort.

  “Range Hot!” the third soldier shouted, lifting the colossal barrel toward an abandoned truck, some eighty yards down the course and shifting his weight to counter the recoil.

  With a high-pitched, electric hum, the gargantuan tube spun to life in a fiery blaze of blue, sending a massive volley of explosive projectiles ripping across the range and straight through the vehicle’s armored plating which offered about as much protection as a raincoat in a rock slide. Once the noisy, spark-filled cascade had subsided, Lee’s stare bolted straight for Hamish, whose giddy expression all but trembled with anticipation.

  “What… the bloody hell… was that?” he stammered, all but glowing as he turned to Noll.

  This brought an uncharacteristic grin from the sergeant major. “That, Mr. Lunley, is the first working prototype of the ERG-212 anti-aircraft weapon—or as we all call it, The Harbinger. In short, it’s an electrically powered, miniature railgun capable of dispersing up to 8,000 rounds per minute, with a sustained rate of fire of 2,500 rounds per uninterrupted burst, allowing it to penetrate virtually any surface—armored or otherwise—at or up to 200 yards under maximum projectile velocity.”