“Well, when Stephanie comes back, we’ll have a chance to find out,” he told him, and there was no doubt in his voice. The Stephanie he knew wouldn’t punish an entire planet for what its government had done.
If any mages survived, she’d find them. She’d make a point of it.
Harper didn’t say that, though. He merely hauled himself to his feet and winced when his body reminded him it wasn’t as young as it had been when he’d first seen the Tempestarii.
Lord! Had any of them been that young? He winced again and leaned on the wall.
The Marine shifted as though to help him but stopped when he caught the look on the chief’s face.
“Take him to the captain.” Harper gestured to the boy. “I’ll wait until he’s done and you can escort us both.”
Emil’s attention had been caught by the movement at the wall. When the Marine looked at him, he glanced at the boy and Harper and nodded.
“Come on, then,” he instructed, and the boy moved forward with the Marine a few steps behind him.
The chief nodded when he saw the renewed purpose in the boy’s stride and couldn’t help admiring it. He caught the Marine’s anxious glance and didn’t move from the wall. There were still so many of the crew who needed to be tested.
The captain offered the bar, and the boy took it and held it firmly.
“So,” Emil began, “how do you feel about Stephanie Morgana?”
“I still believe she’s a hero,” he answered, “but now I know why so many of us would follow her into Tegortha’s maw.”
Tegortha’s maw? Harper wondered and made a note to check what company the boy had been keeping.
If Emil found the kid’s answer strange, he didn’t show it.
“And how do you feel about her return?” he asked.
“If she can free my world, I’ll follow her, too,” the boy declared and yelped in surprise as the bar froze to his hand.
The Marine with the bucket chuckled and lifted it again.
Harper felt a surge of pride as the captain directed the boy to dip the hand holding the bar into the water so he could hand it back.
He smiled but didn’t move from his place until the Marine escorting them signaled him. This time, they were led through the door to the captain’s left—the one that said they’d passed.
As they were escorted from the testing area, the Tempestarii pinged Emil’s private comms channel.
Captain, I’m afraid someone is trying to hide.
Far from the Tempestarii, Ivy opened her eyes. She was seated in the doctor’s office again, but this time it was empty.
“Roma?”
“My apologies, Ivy. I have something I need to show you before you commence training.”
“Okay…”
“This will be a long training session in real-time,” the AI began and appeared in the doctor’s seat beside her. “We will realign the bones in your wrists.”
The girl winced. “So…uh, will I feel it?”
“You should not be aware of the realignment,” Roma reassured her, “although there may be some tenderness when you wake and you will have some remedial exercises to perform when you are out of the pod.”
“You say that like I won’t be out of it that often,” she commented.
“This is true. However, for the periods when you are out of it, you will have exercises to perform, especially once we deal with the misalignment in your shin.”
“And the Huntington’s?” Ivy asked.
The doctor stilled. “That treatment is not going as well as we had hoped.”
“And?”
“While we have shortened the affected chain, we need to shorten it more to ensure it no longer threatens your system.”
“And?” she pressed when the doctor stalled again.
“Your body is proving unusually resistant to the treatments required to delay factors affecting onset.”
“Which means?” Ivy asked, sounding exasperated.
“Treatment will take longer,” Roma told her.
Ivy tried to quell the disappointment that surged through her. She almost couldn’t bring herself to ask the next question, but the AI was looking at her as though she was waiting.
She sighed. “By ‘longer’, you still mean you can cure me.”
“At this stage, we believe that is still a possibility.”
The girl gulped but stiffened her spine. “When will you know if that’s changed?”
“Not for some time, but we will tell you if we become sure.”
Her eyes prickled and she nodded. She sniffed hard and blinked them away. “But you’ve had some progress, right?”
“Yes,” Roma told her and changed the subject. “Are you ready for training?”
Ivy nodded and tried to put her jumbled feelings in order.
The AI gave her a quizzical look. “Are you sure? Because we can…”
“I’m sure.” Ivy held one hand up in emphasis. “Frog promised to help me with a few things. He’ll be disappointed if I don’t show up.”
“He is a construct,” Roma told her shortly. “I can add that understanding to his programming.”
“Please don’t,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
That was greeted by a look that suggested the AI had her doubts and the girl stood quickly.
“When you’re ready,” she said and kept her voice as steady as she could.
“Very well,” Roma replied, and the doctor’s office gave way to the training room.
Frog stood in the center of the room when she was deposited to one side of the mats.
“How did the doctor’s visit go?” he asked, and she lowered her head.
She considered telling him it had gone well but shunted that thought aside. “They’re not sure they can do what they said,” she told him and he sighed.
“So…by not sure, they’re not sure it won’t work either?”
“That’s about it,” she confirmed and moved into position opposite him.
He nodded, but before he could begin, she interrupted him.
“Before we start, may I ask a favor?”
“Which is?” he asked.
Ivy bit her lip and took a breath.
“Can you teach me the appropriate way to greet your teacher?” she asked.
Surprised, Frog drew a breath to answer, then closed his mouth and thought about it for a moment or two.
“We didn’t use a greeting in our military classes,” he told her, “and Stephanie only taught us the royal greetings for Meligorn, but when I was growing up, Marcus’s big brother dragged us both to this training center. I forget the style, but I remember we had to greet the sensei like this…”
He straightened, stood with his heels together, and bowed slightly. As his body lowered forward, he uttered out a brisk, “Onegaishimasu.”
It sounded more like a polite request than a command and she stared as he straightened. “What does it mean?”
“What?”
“The word you said.”
“Onegaishimasu. We were told it meant something like ‘Please teach me,’ or so Carson said, and he didn’t joke much.”
“I’ll need to hear it again,” Ivy told him, and he slowed the pronunciation as he repeated it.
When she had it syllable perfect, she tried the bow. It took a few attempts before she was sure she could do it correctly and she took her position in front of him.
“Onegaishimasu,” she said and bowed in greeting.
When he acknowledged it with one of his own, she stepped back and dropped into a defensive position with a smirk. “Just because I respect you doesn’t mean I won’t kick your tail.”
Frog shifted into a combat-ready stance and smiled slightly. “Then let’s move forward with your disappointment, grasshopper.”
He darted forward and swept her off her feet, and she landed hard on the mat while he darted back and waited. As soon as she was on her feet, he beckoned for her to come at him.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Ivy told
him. “I won’t fall for that one again.”
Her opponent chuckled, darted in, and jabbed her twice in the ribs. “Now, what have I told you about blocking?”
“You’re not teaching me how to do anything except how to get hit,” she grumbled. “I’m not your punching bag, you know.”
“It was your idea to try to put me on my tail,” he mocked.
“Maybe you could teach me how to hit you first.”
“Wouldn’t that be self-defeating?” he asked with another lunged attack.
This time, she remembered how to move her feet and sweep his strikes aside with her hands.
“See? You’re better already,” he said encouragingly. “Now you have to work out how to get in close without me hitting you.”
Ivy tried, but every time she closed, he moved out of her reach until finally, she lost her temper and charged him.
Frog watched her come, waited until the last minute, and stepped aside. He tripped her and grinned as he kicked her tail to tumble her fully onto the mat.
“Try again,” he ordered.
Rebellion flitted across her face, and she rolled upright and folded her arms. For a moment, he thought he would have to goad her into action, but she scrambled to her feet.
“Remember what I taught you,” he said and tried to remember how Lars had approached this part of Stephanie’s training. Of course, she’d had more training than Ivy had, but still, there were some parallels.
Scowling, she circled instead of coming in directly, then darted in and then back.
“You know you have to hit me, right?” he snarked.
“You know I want to do that, right?” she retorted acidly and made another attempt.
Thankfully, she remembered to counter his defense and landed one blow on his chest as he swept her other fist aside.
“Not bad,” he told her. “Now do it again.”
At the end of a half-hour—during which he corrected her footwork, her approach, the way she struck, and what seemed like everything else imaginable—she’d improved enough for them to take a break.
The kata that followed revealed more flaws, but she was undoubtedly making progress.
“I’ll have Roma put you through the self-defense programs the colleges used to train their students,” he told her and grinned when she gaped indignantly at him.
“Why didn’t you do that to begin with?” she demanded.
“Because I needed a baseline of hopeless, very hopeless, or simply ‘use her as bait’ to work from.”
“Just…” Ivy narrowed her eyes. “Tell me you didn’t mean that.”
“Why? Will it make you feel better?”
“Should it?”
“It would have made me feel better. Lars had a ‘use them to trip the enemy’ category.”
That startled a snorted laugh out of her. “He did not!”
Her patent disbelief made him laugh, too. “No, he didn’t, but I’ll get Roma to plug you into some extra training anyway. It’s what Remy did for John.”
“He did?”
“Sure, but not before he’d gone through this stage as well.”
“Well, that makes me feel a little better.”
Frog smiled. “Good. Roma?”
The lights in the room faded and one wall lit with a scene of several figures running down a narrow corridor.
“Is that…a ship?” Ivy asked.
“Yup. This is the inside of a pirate ship,” he told her. “Now, watch Steph.”
Her mouth hung open as she studied the dark figure who took the lead. She was the only female in sight, so that had to be her. She stared, stunned by her first glimpse of the Heretic of Regime legend.
She’d thought John was something, but this was truly extraordinary.
Frog nudged her. “Pay attention.”
It took effort to push herself past her first reaction at seeing a myth, but she complied and soon understood what he wanted her to understand.
While Steph had magic, she didn’t use only magic to fight her foes—and would have been in considerable trouble if that was all she’d relied on in her battles.
“Is that why John had to learn how to fight?”
“Exactly, but you won’t use magic, so this time, I want you to watch the guy to her right.”
“Who is it?”
“That’s Lars. The one on the other side of her is Marcus.”
“Okay.”
This time, she focused on the two bodyguards who flanked Stephanie as her instructor provided a running commentary.
“See how neither of them gets in front of her?”
Ivy nodded. The two guards didn’t move ahead of her, but they dealt considerable damage to anything that tried to launch an assault from the side. More importantly, though, they kept the pressure off her and made sure she wasn’t overwhelmed as she eliminated the bulk of the pirates who attacked them.
“Is that what you think I’ll be doing?” she asked.
Frog rolled his eyes at her, and the footage changed to a scene of her and John fighting on the top floor of the balloon.
“Are you saying you haven’t?”
“Well, I wasn’t very good at it,” she pointed out. “In fact, I think John did most of the fighting.”
“Next time, you’ll be better,” he assured her.
“You mean next time, I won’t have to climb to the top of the balloon so some lunatic can drag me off it?”
“I didn’t see you saying no.”
“Are you kidding? Didn’t the recording catch the sound of us on the way down? There’s your no right there.”
Frog smiled and pushed to his feet. “So, how do you feel about a change of scenery?”
Roma responded to the signal, and Ivy gasped as the training hall twisted into a departure lounge overlooking a docking bay based on Star Base Notaro. Her eyes became the size of saucers.
“Where is this?”
He gave her a disbelieving look. “Have you never seen the inside of a space station before?”
“And what are we doing here?” she asked as she scrutinized her surroundings.
“This space station is about to be attacked. Our job—together—is to last through killing a wave of Dreth pirates.”
She looked at the training gear she wore. “I don’t think I’m dressed for this.”
Frog grinned. “You have a point. Freeze scenario,” he ordered. “Roma?”
“I’ve got you covered,” Roma told her, and Ivy’s avatar rippled. “There.”
“That’s better,” he said approvingly as he studied her carefully. Ivy took a moment to have a good look at herself.
She was dressed in light battle armor with the unfamiliar weight of a heavy hand-blaster at one hip and a battle knife at the other. A larger blaster was slung over her shoulder and several grenades hung from a bolero across her chest.
“You know I don’t know how to use half this stuff, right?” she asked and wrapped her hands hastily over the grenades. “Not that I mind.”
Her instructor chuckled. “I’ll give you a quick rundown.”
It took ten minutes, but by the end of it, she had the basics of safeties, grenades, and how to change magazines.
“I don’t even know if I can shoot straight,” she muttered as she holstered the blaster.
“As long as you’re not aiming it at me, you’ll hit something you need to.”
“Really?” she asked. “How can you be sure?”
“Trust me, you’ll know.” He glanced at the ceiling. “Roma, start the scenario.”
“Restart commencing.”
Ivy looked around. The sky beyond the windows remained clear and the concourse empty.
“What now?” she asked as a ship came into the dock.
It came in under power, and Frog snapped his helmet shut. She hurried to do the same and bolted after him as he headed to the cover of a vending machine. There was no point in asking why.
“Here they come!” he said through her visor comms. “
Boarding party!”
“Boarding what?”
“You’ll see,” he told her as the ship rose over the docking platform.
Its hull kissed the glass of the observation windows running the length of the concourse and she noticed an open hatch. An alien stood in the doorway, fully suited as he slammed his hand against the inside of his ship.
“What are they doing?”
“Tethering,” Frog answered shortly. “They’ll send boarding tubes out on every level and attack us from several different places.”
As he spoke, the hatch leapt away from the hull and drove into the wall beside the glass. The initial thud was followed by a sickening crunch and the shriek of tortured metal, and a short, solid metal tube blocked all sight of the aliens on the other side.
“Here they come,” he told her. “If we can stop the boarding party here, we beat the first level.”
“How many—” Ivy began as the wall fell inward and her companion opened fire.
The first pirate staggered back, only to reappear again being carried by his comrade behind him. Frog’s next three shots were blocked by the body as the invader barreled forward.
Alarms blared around her and the station’s lights flashed red. Frog dived to one side and fired twice to catch the pirate in the side of the head.
“They’re huge!” she protested as he fell and dropped his crewmate’s body.
“They’re Dreth,” he yelled in response. “Don’t let them get close.”
She raised her blaster and began to shoot, but another thud and clang drew her attention to the other end of the concourse.
“There are more!”
“Your point?”
He was busy with the Dreth who emerged from the boarding tube, so she bolted toward the second entry being made and fired the heavy blaster while still in motion.
Her aim was off, but it was enough to get their attention. Shouting and pointing, they raised their weapons and returned fire, and she borrowed a maneuver from her instructor’s handbook.
She vaulted high over the incoming fire and twisted to retaliate as she descended. That was more effective than her earlier attempt and the heavy rounds of the blaster drilled through their suits and felled them.
They clustered together, which gave her another idea, and she yanked a grenade from the bandolier as she landed. Pivoting, she activated it and threw, then backed away, shooting as they followed.
Michael Anderle - [Heretic of the Federation 03] Page 13
