by Greg Dragon
Memory 03 | One Shot
Samoo LES kept on nodding as Rafian went through a series of attacks in the corner of the room. They had been together for ten months following the attack on Helysian and Rafian had grown into a prime candidate for the cadet program.
He was nicer to Rafian now, offering him real chow from the dining halls when he could and telling him war stories from the past whenever they had time together. Rafian had grown fond of the old man and had developed a real love for training and military logic.
Samoo had given him a tiny pistol a while back, a gift for being quiet and doing as he was told. The pistol had a fried ejection rod, so there was no way he could shoot himself. Without toys, vids, or any of the things that children his age played with, Rafian made the gun his favorite toy. At first he was content with playing “Starfighter and Aliens” by himself when things were quiet, but out of boredom one day, he dismantled the gun only to panic and scramble to rebuild it for fear of making Samoo upset.
As providence would prove, he was unable to fix it and was punished harshly by being hung with straps on his wrist. He was left to hang for a long time and then made to run more miles the next day. When his temper had cooled, Samoo took the opportunity to show Rafian how to reassemble his broken weapon. This was typical of their relationship: Samoo would dish out hard penalties but would turn it into a teaching moment afterwards.
When it was time for the captain’s test, the two were actually sad that they would be going their separate ways. The test was nothing special to Rafian. Six different officers took him on a series of physical courses with obstacles, all of which he passed with flying colors. He was given a verbal exam on military history, the Anstractor galaxy, and the history of the Geralos’ occupation of Vestalia. He impressed them all with his skill, knowledge, and intensity, so it was decided that he was worthy enough to join the Galactic Cadet Corps (GC2).
Rafian was given the rank of “twelfth grade,” the equivalent of where a nine-year-old would be in the standard system used for cadets. He was given a bed in the military bunk hall for the GC2 and was introduced to his commanding officer—a tall, skinny fourteen-year-old boy named Weine.
Once the adults had left and he was alone with Weine, the boy’s true colors came out.
“Come with me, char,” Weine commanded, using a derogatory slur.
It was a painful carryover from Vestalia’s past and not many people knew what it meant. Rafian, however, knew the word’s meaning, and he decided that Weine was going to be a problem. He nodded obediently, though his mind was sorting out how he would deal with the insult later.
Rafian had known he would be bullied, but if it was going to be at the hand of the top boy, it was not something he was willing to deal with.
The boys walked around to the sleeping area, and Weine showed him where the bathroom was. He then showed him the girls’ bathroom, reminding him that it was off limits. He took him by the gym, the mess hall, and finally, the flight-simulation deck.
Rafian’s first few days at the camp were rough, due to the various cliques and exclusionary attitudes of the children there. But he kept to himself, stayed out of trouble, and did what he could to fit in.
One little girl who caught his eye was a cadet named Vani. She was his age, eleven, only she was a fifth-grade cadet who excelled in the academic areas of their military life. It was rumored that her father was a colonel on another floating fortress, which made her practically military royalty. Even if this was untrue, she acted like a princess, so Rafian was one of the few cadets that actually liked her.
Weine, however, was exactly as Rafian assumed he would be: a bully in fancy clothes. The use of the racial slur and his inappropriate behavior with the girls was him at his nicest. He would routinely prank the younger boys and make their lives a living hell while showing a face of great potential to the adults who supervised them.
To Weine, Rafian was fair game because he had no parents. He anticipated making him his punching bag for as long as he could. The cadets looked down on Rafian, whom they saw as a tramp that got a lucky ticket into the academy. They made fun of him for having a low rank for his age and there was no end to their insults.
After a year had passed and Rafian proved himself worthy by acquiring a few more ranks, he decided he had had enough of Weine and his antics.
Now at twelve years old and as tall as his commanding officers, Rafian had become quite a soldier. With nothing else but the pride that Samoo had given him, he studied the books and principles of the standard space marine even more than was expected of a cadet his rank. His focus for the year was to get bigger, stronger, and smarter, and he accomplished this beyond his natural gifts.
Weine had this thing that he would do: he would grab a few other officers and kidnap a small boy to lock him away in a locker for the night. He knew that the trauma would make the kid struggle the next day with his exercises. Whenever Weine would nab a victim, he and the other officers would drill him extra hard the next day and then laugh when the child failed.
With one eye closed and the other intently watching as they targeted a quiet boy named Levi, Rafian snuck out of his bunk and silently followed the three bullies to the area with the lockers. Here Levi was gagged and trapped for the night.
Earlier in the day, Rafian snuck a metal pipe into his room and hid it under his bunk in anticipation of this very moment. He armed himself with it, holding it to his back as he pressed to the side of the door and peered inside. The boys had just imprisoned Levi despite his pleas and cries.
Rafian walked into the room, pressed the lock switch to freeze the door closed behind him, and forced the three boys to face him with no hope of reinforcement or escape.
“What are you doing here, char?” Weine asked with a look of worry in his eye.
The answer he received was a shot to the face from Samoo’s pistol that Rafian had rigged to shoot nonlethal rubber bullets. However, on the basis of the results, no one would know that the bullet was false. The boy’s face erupted into a bloody mess as he fell to the floor, screaming loudly from the pain.
“Stupid, thyping kid,” Rafian said, trying to sound as cool as Samoo despite his heart beating rapidly. “You cowards call us names and pick on those who can’t fight back.”
One of the other kids pleaded, “Come on, Raf, I didn’t do anything. It was Weine’s idea, I swear!”
Captain Samoo LES was a war hero on Vestalia. He was a war hero because he was captured by the Geralos for two years, tortured and beaten within an inch of his life, and managed to escape through hand-to-hand combat. Samoo knew how to destroy people with and without a weapon, and his compassion for young Rafian led him to teach the boy some of these very skills during their time together. Though Samoo would not be proud of what his student did to those three boys, he would have been proud to know that beyond the tears, the anger, and the misunderstanding, his lessons had stuck.
When it was time for exercise, breakfast, and the typical events of the morning, Weine and two other officers were in the infirmary getting treated for permanent injuries. Rafian was in front of the cadet commander, explaining his actions and why he had felt he had to intervene. It was a situation the cadet commander could not fathom how to fix because the wounded boys were in leadership positions.
A large-scale investigation that spanned the better part of six weeks was launched. Many outsiders, including parents and the new Alliance government, were involved. It was a messy ordeal, and while the marine vessel drifted in deep space, the brass worked out the cadet massacre (as it was playfully dubbed) and what to do with the boys who were involved.
In the end—thanks to Captain Abe RUS—the three bullies were given the harsh sentence of expulsion from the cadet academy. Rafian was imprisoned and given anger-management courses in addition to three weeks of community service. It was the best result he could have hoped for, but unbeknown to him, his status was elevated among many in command.
