by Justin Sloan
“I nudge real damn hard.”
“She can take it.”
Napalm didn’t like the situation, but he nodded. If they were going to be on a team together, he might as well do his best to ensure she could hold her own.
“And the second part of why you called me out here?”
Hadrian raised an eyebrow. “I thought you would’ve guessed. It’s time for our own one-on-one lessons.”
“I’m confused,” Napalm admitted. “What would you like to teach me that you haven’t yet?”
With a laugh, Hadrian nodded. “While most of my powers come from my people, it’s true that you taught me much about the powers of energy. I believe I have reached a point where I can repay the debt. Come, join me in the training chamber.”
Napalm followed the old man, the appearance Hadrian wore now, into a training room. The two waited for the doors to close, and then Hadrian smiled. It wasn’t the smile of a general looking down on his troops, as one might expect from someone who was effectively an Elder of the universe. It was friendly, nostalgic.
“Use your energy against me,” Hadrian commanded. “As you would an enemy.”
Napalm hesitated and, in that instant, Hadrian flicked a wrist. As if the light were alive, bits of it moved and circled Napalm, lifting him into the air and spinning him.
“Will the enemy allow hesitation?” Hadrian asked, moving around him, still smiling pleasantly.
As the light began to squeeze, Napalm struggled, trying to push back.
“I don’t have these powers!” he said, grunting as a sharp pain hit his ribs.
“Ah, but you do.” Hadrian waved a hand and the light released him. Napalm fell to the floor, catching himself at the last minute.
He looked up, confused. “I was the one who taught you this skill. How can you tell me what I can and can’t do?”
“Because I’ve been studying, practicing… and experimenting.”
Napalm shook his head as he stood. “You have abilities beyond what I’ve taught you. That doesn’t mean I can do the same.”
“You think I don’t know which abilities do what?” Hadrian’s smile faltered, a slight annoyance crossing his face. “All I ask is that you try. Instead of focusing the energy in a large area so that you get the explosion, try to pull the energy into yourself, and then control your surroundings.”
Napalm licked his lips, then blinked, wondering if he’d heard the old man right. “If I do what you say and mess it up… I create an explosion within myself.”
“Then don’t mess it up.”
“You’re insane.” He turned to leave the room, but Hadrian caused the light to circle him again, turning him back around. “If you could do this, imagine what that would do to your hand-to-hand skills. They would be obsolete.”
Napalm stood glaring, then finally nodded. He trusted Hadrian, so he might as well act the part. And it was true that his close-range combat needed work. Or to be made obsolete.
“Close your eyes, focus,” Hadrian said, smiling.
Napalm did, trying to ignore the doubt plaguing his mind.
“What do you think of the team?” Hadrian asked, walking around Napalm.
“I’m trying to focus here,” Napalm said, eyes still closed, imagining the energy coming in toward him.
“You think Samantha’s too young,” Hadrian observed. “She’s not. That one’s more warrior than many out there. Possibly one of the best you’ll ever meet.”
“Then why ask?”
“It wasn’t about her that I wanted to know your opinion.”
Napalm ignored him for a moment, focusing instead. He felt the room shudder, his energy trying to break free. A heat washed over him, forming in his gut.
He released it with a shout.
“Agh! This is pointless!”
Hadrian just nodded and said, “Try again.”
Instead, Napalm went on the offensive. “If you aren’t sure about them, why’d you put them on a team with me?”
“In fact, I never said I wasn’t sure about them. I asked what you thought of them.”
“The ROK Marine will be good in a firefight, no doubt there. Dex… shit, I’d never want to go up against Dex with a sword. Or a gun, for that matter. Carma seems… tough to handle?”
Hadrian laughed. “Her kind can be.”
“And then there’s me,” Napalm said. “Hot headed, literally. But also figuratively.”
“As much as you like to say that about yourself, I don’t think any of them has anything to worry about from you.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“You’re a softy, Napalm.” Hadrian shrugged. “Prove me otherwise, focus, use your mind. Don’t be afraid to hurt your old student. I’m a big boy, I can pick myself back up.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about.”
“So you’re a coward, then?”
At that, Napalm felt the heat surge and burst outward—it wasn’t even a conscious act. The air shifted around Hadrian as if it would explode, but then the old man flicked his wrist and it was gone.
“Within you,” he said, “and no more of this hot-headed bullshit!”
Napalm stepped forward, shouting, and then steeled his emotions. He pulled in and thrust his hands forward. It was more of an impulse than anything else, a visualization technique, maybe, but it worked. Energy moved forward like an extension of his hands, and he lifted Hadrian into the air.
The old man had to counter Napalm’s maneuver before his head smashed into the ceiling. When he had recovered, kneeling on the floor, he looked up with a broad smile.
“You see?”
“Holy flames.” Napalm stared at his hands, unable to believe what had just happened. Nobody on his planet could do anything like he had done. Only the rare ones were even born flame-blessed.
In a society where physical power meant everything, he would rule if he ever returned. How ironic then, that he never meant to.
“Again,” Hadrian said, whipping his cloak behind himself and taking up an offensive stance. “Only this time, we spar.”
With newfound confidence, Napalm prepared himself.
WHEN HIS TRAINING with Hadrian was over, Napalm made his way to the mess hall to grab a snack before hitting the rack. He had to admit he had learned more in the last half hour than the previous few years, but his body had taken a beating to get there. His back was aching as he hobbled in, but he stood straight as he noticed he wasn’t alone. Samantha sat at the same spot she’d been that first day, now eating green jello. He went to the kitchen and nuked a sausage and some potatoes, appreciating these Earth customs.
When he returned to the table, he found a spot nearby.
“For someone who claims not to be a kid…” He didn’t finish the thought, just nodded at her choice of food as he sat his plate down next to her.
She glanced at his sausage and laughed. “Really? You want to go there? For someone who makes a very obvious show of checking out Carma, you sure seem excited to jam that wiener down your throat.”
He frowned. “It’s a sausage. And… aren’t you young to be making jokes like that?
She shrugged. “Shit, I’ve been fighting alongside Marines, soldiers, and all manner of fighters for the past four years. If you can tell me an inappropriate joke I haven’t heard, I’ll give you a free lesson in hand-to-hand. It looked like you could use one, back in the training room.”
“Oh, no. Please.” He stood, deciding it was time to head back to his room for sleep. “More hand-to-hand combat lessons are the last thing I could want right now.”
7
HADRIAN’S SHIP: TRAINING ROOMS
Samantha had only been practicing for three days, but already she found herself in love with her sword. She couldn’t understand how she had ever been without it. It was like having just discovered a second arm after thinking you only had one your whole life.
However, while others were called off individually by Hadrian to train, she had not been. It was s
tarting to bother her. What made them so special that they got to spend time with him when she didn’t? Her questions about her past, about the memories she had about him and the images she had seen, were starting to take their toll. She thought about approaching him and demanding answers, but the timing hadn’t felt right.
Instead, she put that frustration into her swordplay and maneuvering around the obstacle course. She had even been allowed through one of the side doors, where a different sort of obstacle course had been set up specifically for testing one’s ability with the sword. She would duck under spinning blades, come up with a thrust to a target, roll aside, and strike at another target. There were plenty of noncombatants she was to avoid hitting, and usually she did pretty good at that. The first two times through she nearly chopped off an old lady’s head, but today she sliced inches above, narrowly missing the old lady and hitting the next target just before it disappeared.
It was her fourth time through that day. Afterwards, she wandered back into the main room and looked for the others, but could only see Dex. He was in the corner, sitting cross-legged on the floor and apparently meditating. She wasn’t sure what good that would do. From all the fighting she had done against the Syndicate, sitting and focusing on your breathing hadn’t led to any victories.
Her curiosity about the other doors was getting the better of her, so she approached one with a surreptitious glance around to make sure nobody was watching.
She reached the door, but it didn’t slide forward like the others. Frowning, she tried pushing on it, but no luck. It was a simple gray door on the silvery-blue wall, with no door handles or obvious way in.
Well, that’s annoying, she thought. Moving on to the next door, she tried again, but it was the same.
Growing frustrated, she turned and kicked the door.
Dex was up in a minute, his hooded face turning her way. A murmur passed, and though she didn’t understand it, the tone of it translated well.
“Sorry,” she said, then sheathed her sword.
Dex and Kwan were the only two on the team she hadn’t gotten to know much at all. Dex because he didn’t exactly speak, and Kwan because he only spoke English in short bursts.
Standing there now in front of Dex, she wondered what he was capable of. Holding out a hand, she made a fist and then shrugged in a Care to spar? kind of way.
Dex bowed his head, robes flowing about him, and took up a defensive stance. His dark hands formed fists, sticking out from the robes, and he brought one leg forward, leg bent slightly, bare foot on its toes. She saw he had only three toes, and hands with three fingers and a thumb larger than normal.
A murmur flowed from Dex. Samantha tilted her head, then struck. It was a simple jab, moving forward to test her opponent.
With a slide to the side, Dex took her arm and flipped her over herself.
“Damn,” she said, lying on her back with the wind knocked out of her. “I like that.”
She stood and turned to face him again, this time more hesitant. She moved in with a kick, but used it as a fake so that she could spin and try a backhand. Dex hip-checked her and sent her stumbling over herself, then whipped around to land two soft jabs on her gut. Dex thrust his hand out, stopping so that the skin of his knuckles barely touched her throat.
The touch was like ice, but his proximity brought with it a scent of gunpowder. Perhaps that would have been an unwelcome smell to some, but to Samantha it took her back to days fighting alongside her mom. To the years that followed and led to her and Dan growing closer.
And then she was in those memories, floating from one to the next, until she was pulled backward from them, struggling to hold on.
She stumbled and caught herself on the wall. With a deep breath, she looked up at Dex and stared.
“How the hell are you doing that?”
Dex simply nodded, then turned and went back to his corner where he resumed his meditation.
“The robes are part of it,” a voice said.
Samantha spun and saw Hadrian, hands folded behind his back. The bright lights glinted off of his blue armor.
“Come again?”
“The robes,” Hadrian repeated. “They have a bit of a life of their own. Think of it like biotech, much like this armor.” He held out one of his arms, moving it and looking at the armor. “It adapts, grows to fit the wearer.” With a wink, his golden cloak suddenly flipped around him, and he flashed from one side of her to the other in an instant.
“Your cloak…?”
“A gift from Dex,” Hadrian said with a nod. “Perhaps you too will receive a gift, once you’ve proven yourself.”
“And the armor?”
He smiled. “That will come much sooner. It’s one of the reasons I’ve come to speak with you now. Well, that and the fact that you’re going around kicking my doors, which I can’t have.”
She blushed, but then the memories flashed back and she blinked.
“The biotech does more than just adapt the robe to the wearer,” Hadrian offered. “It’s been known to have other effects as well.”
It didn’t totally make sense, but that wasn’t what she was worried about. Instead, her mind was racing with ways to prove herself to Dex so that she could get herself one of the robes. Gold wasn’t exactly the most practical for battle, but that fact might be countered by how amazing it looked.
“The door,” Hadrian said with a gesture toward it. “Are you sure you’re ready?”
“I have no idea what’s beyond, so how can I be?”
He smiled. “Are you ready?”
“Yes,” she answered immediately, not allowing any hesitation this time.
As they passed, Dex seemed to be turning his head to observe, though it wasn’t clear. The door didn’t move this time either, but when Hadrian waved his hand across a portion of it, it lit up and slid open.
This room was nothing more than a large circle of white and silver reflective plating with a metallic gray and black swirl of a ball in its center, large enough for a person. As they approached, the metal moved aside like liquid, forming an opening perfect for her to fit in.
“Your spirit is what sets you apart, but it could also get you killed. It’s time you overcame yourself.” Hadrian nodded and motioned for her to enter the opening in the liquid metal.
“I hope you’re not serious,” she said.
“Either you’re ready, or you’re not,” he replied. “But if you’re not, I need to help someone who is.”
She held up a hand, focusing on her breathing to pull herself together. Hell, if she was going to travel into space and put her life on the line to serve under Hadrian, she knew better than to doubt him.
She nodded, then approached.
The metal was moving within itself, with nothing in one place for more than a second. Patterns of gray and black moved inside, occasionally interrupted by bursts of blue or red light.
She paused with a look back. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me anything here? Just throw me into the deep end?”
“A wonderful choice of words,” Hadrian replied. “Just… go with the flow. This is the first real test of your training. Your first real reward will follow, if you prove yourself worthy. Lucky for you, we both know you will.”
Her smile turned serious, and she took a deep breath before turning and ducking into the opening.
She immediately regretted it. The metal closed around her and she felt herself fall into it, surrounded by the substance—almost like it was alive.
For a moment she couldn’t breathe, and then the liquid metal was passing over her, forming waves, blue and red lights weaving through like snakes. She wanted to scream, to lash out and break free, and then…
… she was free, but not on the spaceship.
She stood in a rocky cavern, an opening on one side where tall, pointed mountains of red rock jutted into the sky. A slithering sounded behind her, and she turned to see the red lights again.
Wait, no… those weren’t l
ights, they were glowing red eyes. A blue was reflecting from somewhere too, and she spun, trying to see if there was another set of creatures with blue eyes coming at her. A glance down, however, showed a thin layer of metal armor covering her with small blue lights along it.
Growling came from the red-eyed creatures and she took a step away, looking for a weapon. Then a thought hit her—the lights, they had to serve some purpose, right? She pressed a finger to the one at her waist and, as she had hoped, a sword formed in a sheath.
Not just any sword, she saw as she drew it. Her sword, Soulcrusher.
She turned, holding her sword steady, and prepared for the monsters to attack. She was damn sure ready for them.
8
IN THE METAL
Samantha braced herself, mind racing to remember all the training she had received over the last three days. Three days—not nearly enough time! As much confidence as she had felt seconds ago, now she was starting to step away from the dark forms in the cavern with their glowing eyes.
If she just turned and ran, what would happen?
The thought hurt. Not just on an emotional level. She actually felt the armor tighten around her.
Well, then, forget that as an option. Her fingers shifted on the sword’s handle and she watched one pair of eyes moving to the left, unblinking and focused on her.
She had never backed down from drones and mechs back on earth. Syndicate warriors were nothing compared to her. So a few rodents with glowing eyes wanted to pick a fight?
“BRING IT!” she shouted, and charged them.
Now the armor was snug around her skin, pulsing at certain points. It amplified her strength and made her more alert, more flexible.
Too bad this was a simulation—she could get used to it!
And then she saw the first creature. They weren’t rodents at all. Some were like snakes, others a mesh of bats and lizards, clinging to the walls and ceiling. They ranged in size from miniature dog to the size of a dire wolf.
