by James Cox
Nor was he satisfied with breathing alone. Ko forced Micah through several strange steps and postures. He jabbed Micah or slapped him with a short rod. Though not a nerve lash it hurt worse than one! Soon merely standing had Micah breathing in short, sharp gasps. Just when he was ready to collapse Ko moved to the next recruit.
Left to himself Micah tried to relax. He heard Ko nearby but that troubled him the least. Darkness enfolded most of the room and Micah absolutely knew he saw things moving through it. Evil and hostile things!
Dinner that evening held an unwelcome surprise. A third dose of Fear waited but with no vigorous exercise afterward to wear it away.
Micah drifted in and out of nightmares. He woke, sweat-drenched and trembling, tired past any rationality. Then he fought sleep only to lose, drifting off again to the place the terror waited. While awake he heard the others moaning, doubtless fighting their own dreams.
***
The next morning a haggard line of recruits faced Sergeant Hile. He smiled, cheerful and sinister as ever. As the medics moved down the line they skipped several people. Hile began reciting their orders but a voice interrupted him.
“You missed me!” The voice belonged to Teague. “Give me my shot! You skipped me, you prollie!”
Micah braced himself for a torrent of profanity but such was not Hile.
“Well, children. It seems we have a problem. Stand at rest.”
Micah and the others turned to watch as Hile walked to Teague. Teague looked awful, skeletal and gaunt.
“Do you have a problem, Mister Slug?” Hile's voice hardened.
“Yeah! This slaggie didn't give me my antidote!”
“Why, Mister Slug, do you think that is?” Hile moved his face barely an inch from Teague's. “Why, Mister Slug, do you think this fine Commonwealth soldier would not give you your antidote? Your performance, Mister Slug, is well below what it should be. You are not learning, Mister Slug, and you are a slacking lazy goldchit. I hear you are concerned about your Status. You have none, Mister Slug. You did not receive your antidote because you are not WORTH your antidote. You are a worthless waste of Commonwealth resources, Mister Slug, and the Commonwealth is not served by dumping its dear credits into your sorry hide.”
Teague, darkening throughout the tirade, finally lost what control he had. Quick as a viper he struck. With no visible effort Hile caught and held Teague's wrist.
“LET ME GO you zilchie meat! Give me my antidote! My father will...”
The crack of Hile's slap sounded like a rifle shot.
“Oh dear me,” said Hile, “We have a demand, children.”
Hile held out his hand and one of the medics put a hypo in it. Without looking Hile popped the cap.
“You want your antidote, Mister Slug? Then have it!”
Hile sprayed the small tube in Teague's face. Teague flinched away, blinking hard and coughing.
“Prollie meat bastard,” said Teague, still coughing. He coughed again, gasping for breath that didn't seem to be there.
“Do be careful, children, when taking your antidote,” said Hile, “It does not react well to the air here.”
Teague coughed harder, blood trickling down his chin. When he swayed and fell Micah could see a chemical burn across his face.
“When exposed to the air here,” continued Hile, “the antidote becomes very corrosive. If you inhale it our medics here cannot save you.”
Teague, struggling on hands and knees now, sprayed the ground with a fine mist of blood. he tried to curse but lacked the breath for it. One of the recruits moved to help Teague but the medic reached out and restrained him. Without looking.
Micah tried to step toward Teague but fear of Hile and his medics held him back. Then guilt and shame washed over him and he started forward. Then he stopped: he'd not had his antidote yet.
Teague bubbled and gasped for several minutes, visibly weakening toward the end. Hile kept his silence and never lost his smile. Finally, when Teague lay still, Hile resumed his place at the front of the line. He allowed the medics to finish their shots before resuming the orders. Micah was ashamed of the relief he felt when the hypo hissed against him.
Micah worked against a flat, sour taste in his mouth all day. It started before breakfast and even the day's artificial terror could not wash it away. Teague wasn't really a friend but Micah wished no ill on him. His body was gone when they left the mess hall and neither Hile nor any other mentioned it. There was no service and when Micah read the orders for the afternoon Teague's name simply wasn't there. As though he'd never existed.
Micah worked himself as hard as he could. Apart from the Fear trying to paralyze him Micah wanted to wear down his conscience. It was wrong and Micah did nothing to stop it. Whenever he closed his eyes Micah saw Teague; he saw Teague coughing his life onto the hot, hard ground. He saw Hile's smile and the medics' hard stance as they prevented one brave recruit from helping.
That night Teague joined the nightmares waiting for Micah.
***
Three more received no antidote the next morning. Micah saw his as a dose of guilt. Hile said that one day without wouldn't kill them but Micah had no desire to test that hypothesis.
That night Hile announced an evening run, full kit and full Fear. They'd had them before but never under the influence of Fear. Micah stumbled and hit the ground from more than the artillery sims, only to be dragged to his feet either by himself or by a sergeant's lash. Around midnight they reached a well-lit clearing.
Two medics waited with hands full or Fear hypos.
Chapter 3. The Good Soldier
Tears streamed down Micah's face as he ran through the darkness. The sergeants wore small, dim lights on their helmets and only they knew the way back to the base. Micah should have known but his brain fuzzed and fogged and quailed from the too-familiar terror. Artillery sims detonated in the distance and the not-so-distance but Micah had no fear for them now. He'd welcome one detonating beneath his feet. He knew that would kill him. He prayed for it. He saw Teague now; his nightmares haunted his waking world. Micah's body hurt, his mind hurt and his soul had left him ages ago. The sergeants shouted and cursed, goading or lashing some poor recruit, perhaps himself, but Micah knew only to run. His body felt odd, like a too-loose garment, worn and threadbare. His only reality was the fear and the pain.
After an eternity Micah found himself detached. His eyes still saw the darkness, his legs still burned, pillars of pain, but something else hovered before him.
Micah saw it as a datafractal: red-pulsing, twisted, obscene and wrong. It mocked him and ridiculed him, casting weakness and doubt on him. Its elements throbbed in time with his painful pace, its heartbeat his agony. Micah tried to banish it but it merely laughed. It laughed at him and fed off him, off his pain and his despair. That it should so torture him infuriated Micah. The thing tried to flee Micah's anger but the fear feeding it held it firm.
With a savage glee Micah forced his fear, his anger and his pain into the thing. It bloated, fed to satiation, and screamed against the hot rage holding it there.
A strange vitality flooded Micah. His legs still hurt but he barely felt it. The fear still pulsed inside him but he shunted it aside. The wind of his running cooled his face and the air, sweet and foul, flooded into his lungs. Someone laughed insanely. The sound of it spurred some atavistic and primal fear within Micah. With a shock he realized the laughter was his! But trying to stop it broke his pace so Micah let it continue.
***
They had a bare two hours to sleep before Assembly. Micah knew his nightmares returned but he remembered nothing of them. Thankfully. His body hurt as never before and the edge of his mind hovered around some revelation. Micah pushed that down and concentrated on preparing for the day.
“My my, children. You all look so tired today.”
All the ones there had received their antidote but the numbers were far, far diminished. Micah wondered if the others hadn't simply run off in the darkness. The m
edics, meanwhile, handed out new hypos. Not antidote and not fear.
“You have tasted the fear,” said Hile, “Now know the flame. Today's training will be long and difficult. Any work you think you have done before will pale to nothing against what you will now do. None of you standing here will survive to see the night. Even with a week's rest you would not be able to face what you will today.”
Micah felt a small stab of fear but it vanished with the feeling.
“You have with you the means to survive. The Flame will cleanse you. It will wash away your tiredness and your pain,” said Hile, “It will make you alive! If you take it. It will make you alive and you will KNOW you are alive!”
The recruit next to Micah pressed the injector to his wrist. It hissed and after a few seconds the man trembled, shook and stood straighter than any here had a right to! His eyes burned brightly and he appeared ready to tackle several nights of running.
Micah heard a chorus of hisses as he pressed the hypo to his own wrist. Cold, searing fire washed through him leaving refreshment, energy and LIFE in its wake! Micah's muscles trembled but with eagerness and not fatigue. Something pulsed, just below awareness, but Micah pushed it away. He felt better than he'd ever felt before. More alive and more ready! He felt! He felt the slight breeze on his cheek, he heard the rustling of every person around him, he smelled the faint caustic tinge in the air. He saw colors brighter than he'd ever seen them before.
“Very good, children,” said Hile, “We'll begin today's training now.”
The medics walked out again, this time with Fear.
With the first touch of terror the horrid thing Micah constructed the night before leapt into the air before him. With the light of day and the Flame it frightened him not at all! Ruthlessly Micah fed the fear into it, holding it and making it serve him.
With his mind its clearest in weeks, Micah faced the day's challenges.
When Micah closed his eyes to sleep the nightmares awaited him. Micah screamed a challenged and faced them. He faced them and fought them. The tried to frighten them and he fought them. They tried to shame him and to kill him and he fought them. Teague, his face scorched and scarred, approached Micah and accused him. Micah drove a knife he didn't remember having into Teague's heart and let his dying fall draw the blade out.
***
The days blurred into weeks. The training grew harder and each week saw fewer of them out for Assembly. After each loss Micah pushed himself harder, grimly determined not to be among their number. With each dose of Fear the strange thing Micah formed grew stronger and more pervasive. With each dose of Flame his control of it grew equally strong. He knew, somehow, that it represented an edge; an edge he determined to use to full advantage!
Micah found himself and four other recruits singled out. Their training was harder and their doses of Fear more frequent and stronger. Still, the others had a hard edge to their eyes. A hard edge Micah found staring out the mirror at him each morning.
Micah realized the true depth of the change within himself in Ko's domain.
Ko's dance grew more and more complex daily and he brooked no imperfections. After his first dose of Flame Micah smelled a bitter bite to Ko's overly sweet incense. As he and the three others progressed the incense grew stronger and the dance grew harder. Micah duffed a step. Ko lashed out with his stick, and it hurt, but Micah simply stared at him coldly. Ko almost smiled as he stepped back, acknowledging accomplishment and not defeat. The next afternoon Micah reaped the fruits of his action.
“Defend,” said Ko.
The sergeant whose name Micah didn't care to read stepped in and punched without warning. His fist sank into Micah's belly, knocking him down and knocking the air out of him.
“You worthless piece of slug meat,” said the man, “Your mommy could've stopped that. If she hadn't been torquing every prollie in town!”
Something inside Micah snapped! He rolled to his feet and charged the sergeant, breathing evenly and deeply, pain simply gone. The movements in Ko's dance became deadly punches and kicks driven by a fury totally focused on the man. Micah attacked and counterattacked with each defense. His opponent pressed hard but never landed a finger. After a time Micah registered Ko's voice saying something but the words slid off him. The sergeant looked worried now and Micah intensified his attack. The sergeant defended totally now with no thought of attack. Micah felt arms grasp his, and pain, and he twisted to bring his hands and feet into play. The other recruits hovered around his awareness but not importantly. Shapes flitted around Micah but his quarry still stood before him.
Face bare amazement now the sergeant defended with all of his skill. Micah felt time slowing around him and his own senses speeding up. He feinted and his foe defended, opening himself fully to Micah. Micah struck, and struck, and struck again. The man lay on the floor before him, wrist, leg and ribs broken, his face a mask of agony.
“ENOUGH!!”
Micah snapped back to his senses with his foot mere inches above the sergeant's face. Ko stood nearby. Around the room lay three other sergeants with the recruits hovering aggressively over them.
“Places! Hai!!” snapped Ko.
Micah and the others moved and stood. Waiting. Medics came for the fallen men. Micah's heart sank as he realized what he'd done and what he was ready to do. Regulations were clear on assault of a superior and specifically on assaulting an instructor. Micah forced himself to stand calmly. Ko's strange music played in the background and Ko himself sat and meditated.
Hile entered along with a lieutenant Micah didn't know.
“Well, children,” said Hile, “it seems you're ready to grow up.”
Hile stood in front of Micah.
“Are you proud of yourself, Mister Slug?”
Micah saw the hardness in Hile's eyes. They'd court-martial and execute him meek as easily as not.
“YES SERGEANT!!” shouted Micah, as hard as he could.
Hile nodded.
“You'll begin advanced training tomorrow.”
***
Advanced training, discovered Micah, lived up to its name and then some. Here he found the weapons training he thought lacking before. He and the four others trained with every weapon used by Commonwealth soldiery from single-shot finger pistols up to simulated starship ordnance. They faced obstacles that would fire back, obstacles capable of maiming and even killing an unwary recruit. In Master Ko's domain they honed their unarmed fighting skills to an unbelievable degree. Then, lest his charges grow bored, Ko introduced weapons: knives, swords, clubs and half a hundred others. Then he announced the amazing concept that anything at all could make a lethal weapon given sufficient will and ingenuity.
Besides combat training they studied politics, engineering, history, science, chemistry, computers, literature, mechanics and a hundred other subjects whose rationale Micah could not fathom. Still, he learned. There was no question of withholding antidote now; Micah knew he and his fellows would make it!
Micah woke, wrenched from sleep by the nightmares he thought he'd contained. Al “Kitten” LaRue snored on the bunk beside Micah's and Holder Jamison shifted above. Mick Martin and Billy Joe Tyler also slept soundly. The five of them had their own room now with space for another five once they graduated.
Micah knew better than to try to sleep. He rose silently and ghosted down the hallway to the bathroom. He washed his face, rinsed his mouth and deopaqued the window. It wasn't long after midnight and the day's lessons had been grueling. They were now and Micah thoroughly enjoyed them! True to Hile's words he had expanded himself and stretched his own personal possible far, far beyond what he could have known.
Something wriggled at the edge of Micah's consciousness. It felt important yet the harder Micah tried to unearth it the deeper it dove. He and the other four improved regularly. Their instructors hinted at it and Micah could certainly see that in himself.
Where he'd been thin and supple before Micah was now hard-muscled and simply hard. He'd be no holovee
pose-thug for certain sure but he knew he could take on any three of them without breaking a sweat. Micah dipped those thoughts into his brain without luck. His revelation avoided that bait.
Micah thought often of his family and of Jennifer. He'd written quite a few letters but received no answers. Not that he could fault them; they all had their own lives. In fact, he reasoned, it was for the best they'd written him off.
Still nothing. Micah could feel it but not see it. Frustrating.
Sound intruded on Micah's cogitations. Equatorial nights were unnaturally quiet so the barracks had sounds supplied. Gentle surf. Birds. Occasional soft rain. Soft rain... Sleep.
Micah yawned and started back to his bunk.
No!!
Micah forced himself awake. Something about the sounds... He'd heard them a hundred times. At first they were strange but soon he'd acclimated himself to them. Now they blended into the background. Micah forced himself to listen and to concentrate on them.
A strange and unexpected dread prickled Micah's spine. The innocuous sounds changed subtly. The surf sounded more like a plasma cannon on full aperture. The birds almost sounded like people screaming. Gentle rain covered distant thunder that sounded like artillery. Something more disturbing lurked under that. Micah could almost hear it. Almost...
Micah shook his head and crawled into his bunk. Time enough tomorrow to puzzle it out.
***
Micah flexed his fingers and concentrated on the holohud. The ethereal instrument reported his altitude, speed vector, distance to target and myriads of other essential bits of information. The cuff around his arm tightened and he felt a jolt of fear. Ignoring it was more of an annoyance than anything now but any distraction could prove fatal.
The TacSim, better by far than any hologame Micah had ever played, bucked and rolled with Micah's maneuvers. He launched his last smart for a medium-distant AA emplacement and concentrated on his target. Today he flew a transport tasked with depositing a squad for a hardened emplacement assault. Presumably he'd join them after he landed.
