by Rob Buckman
“But,” he sighed, “if you do something that endangers another person’s life, or gets them killed or injured, then you can be held responsible.”
“Like what?”
“Like driving a ground vehicle to fast and injuring or killing your passenger or a pedestrian.”
“And the punishment?”
“Death if it is determined that you did it willfully or without regard to another’s safety.”
“My lord! That's rough.”
“But it’s just. Remember, no innocent person is ever punished.”
“And under the truth drug, you can’t lie your way out of it, unlike here.”
“Exactly.”
“And in your case?”
“There are degrees of punishment.” He sighed, wiping the sweat from his face.
“In my case, it was determined that I didn’t intend to kill them. No premeditation.”
“And so?”
“I was given an immediate post interrogation block against ever duel again.” From the look on Jan’s face, he could tell it was taking a while to sink in.
“So if you draw a sword, or a weapon, you get an intense pain in your head?”
“Yes, very quickly to the point where I am incapable of fighting.”
“Is it immediate?”
“If I have the intention to fight, yes. It starts immediately. If, on the other hand, I’m in a situation like today, it’s more delayed.” It was as if a light dawned and Jan’s face lit up. It explained so many things.
“Was there another alternative?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“Death.”
“Ouch, sorry I asked.
“Only the guilty are punished on my planet, Jan.” It was a little more complicated than that, but he wasn't about to go into detail about what ensured a ruling was carried out.
“Now I know why you avoid confrontation that could lead to any sort of a fight.”
“Now you have it.” He sighed, wiping his hands across his face.
“Can you even practice with a sword?”
“Oh yes, no problem there. It’s just the intentional act of fighting.”
“So, your body releases a chemical, as adrenaline, this block kicks in.”
“Right, but I don’t think its adrenaline, I can run or do anything that causes the body to release adrenaline without any effects.”
“Then what is it?”
“Something to do with anger I think.”
“So, don’t get angry when you fight.” She said it so simply that Mike all most didn’t get it.
“What… what did you say?”
“I said, don’t get angry when you fight. Stay completely calm and you won’t set of that, that bomb or whatever you call it in your head.” He looked at her a moment, a puzzled look on his face.
“You know, I’ve never thought about it before, but you are right, that could be the answer.”
“Not that I want you to dodge Avalon justice, but I can think of many situations as a Naval officer where you will be called upon to fight in some manner.”
“That’s true. I just hadn’t thought about it before.”
“Have you ever done meditation?”
“A little, the teacher at my Dojo had us meditate before lessons.”
“Didn’t learn much, did you.”
“About meditation, no. About fighting, yes.” He grinned at her, feeling better now.
“I can’t offer you are additional insights to meditation, but I think, if you get the chance I’d take it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“And keep from getting mad about things,” she grinned back at him.
* * * * * *
The incident wasn’t mentioned, but Mike noticed that his fellow cadets kept a wider berth than usual. The class work increased as they learned and dissected battle after battle, understanding why one side had won or lost. It was odd in a way, to sit in a classroom that so many of the officers they talked about had sat in. They had probably had the same or similar lessons, and as some wag said, from the same instructors. What had they thought as they sat here, what dreams of glory, of commanding great ships in life or death battles far from the shores of England. Their history instructor began one of the lectures that Mike looked forward to, taking them back to that fateful day that all Royal Naval cadets must learn about.
"On October the twenty first, 1805 off a headland on the South West Coast of Spain. Horatio, Viscount Lord Nelson engaged the combined Spanish and French fleet under the command of Count Villeneuve in what we know as the Battle of Trafalgar. In that battle, the British fleet captured 20 enemy warships and sunk many more without losing one of their own...” The instructor's voice droned on, adding another layer to the heavy air of the classroom.
The room was hot, almost stifling, with the smell of wet uniforms and drying boots, and a quick look at the clock over the door told Mike that it was a long way till lunch. The instructor's voice had an almost hypnotic quality, and a glance around the classroom told him that more than one cadet was almost asleep, including Janice. This particular civilian instructor had a bad habit of making life difficult for cadets that fell asleep in his class. With a quick nudge, Mike pushed a book off the edge of the desk. It landed with a loud thud on the wooden floor, jerking Janice awake.
"Do you have difficulty holding onto your books Cadet Gray!” The instructor snapped, moving between the desks towards him. Mike immediately stood up, partly out of reflex to a belligerent approach, partly to take the man on face to face. Older and heavier he might be, and use to intimidating cadets, but Mike would be damned if he let this twit get to him.
"No, Sir. I do not have difficulty in holding onto my books, mealy my concentration.” It was almost an insult, but not quite.
"And why, pray tell, is that!” Now they were eye to eye, and if Mr. Anderson expected to see this Cadet back down, he was mistaken. There was no give at all.
"Mainly, Sir, due to the fact that it is so hot in this room, that I am having difficulty staying awake. Could I suggest we open one or two windows a few inches to freshen the air in this room?”
Harrison Anderson had expected something else, what, he was not quite sure, but certainly not a carefully worded insult buried in a polite request. He hadn’t given Mike Gray that much credit, and wondered if the young man standing before him realized what he had just said. It might just be, that coming from one of the out worlds his familiarity with Earth Anglic wasn’t that good.
"So, you feel that my lecture is putting you to sleep do you?” He watched the cadet's eyes, to see if he was laughing at him, but found nothing but mild curiosity.
"Oh no, Sir. We are all here to learn as much as we can about naval history. Your insightful lecture on the subject are so clear and concise that we are all sure to pass this class with flying colors, but not if the stuffy air in here deaden our senses.” Mike cocked one eyebrow at the instructor.
“That would be a waste of your time as well as ours, now wouldn't it, sir?" Again, Mike posed it as a question, thanking his rather sarcastic Grandfather on Avalon for teaching him that lesson.
Anderson looked at Mike a moment, unsure, yet the clear, fresh face before him showed little guile, the eyebrows raised just a fraction in question, adding emphasis. He turned and walked back towards the front of the class, then suddenly spun on his heels to look back, hoping to catch a smirk on the young man's face. There were none, nor the usual snickers and grins from fellow classmates in on the joke. If anything, they all had a slight look of surprise, as if they too were wondering about this strange young man.
"Yes, I agree Cadet, we should open a few windows to let some fresh air in.”
It helped, as week after week they reviewed the battles of the past, dissecting the who, what, where and how. Most of the class still fell asleep, or pretended to look interested, but for Mike this was bread and meat. He loved it, loved understanding the why one side won or lost, o
r how a brilliant maneuver, or just dumb luck would turn the tide of victory one way or the other. Some of the classes were tough, even for him, as they tended to bog down in the gray areas of Naval Law and ethics. ‘Conduct Unbecoming’ and ‘Conduct Prejudicial to the Good order of Naval Discipline’ were the worse. They were a catch all, and used for anything from insubordination to treason. They were used when no other specific charges could be found and covered a multitude of sins. To Mike it was an open invitation for abuse and misuse. King’s Regulations, which went hand in hand with Naval Law or ‘The Uniform Code of Naval Justice’, as it was officially known, weren’t much better. Within the cover of the manual there were so many contradictions that it was almost, but not quite laughable. In one case, the regulation stated that a person on duty could consume one half pint of beer. Yet another stated, that if a person on duty consumed one half pint of beer or more, they were to be considered drunk on duty. Someday Mike felt as if his head was stuffed with cotton wool when he left the class, unable to figure out what the instructor was telling them. By the end of the second year, over half of the people who had arrived with him had gone on to different training schools, yet they were never offered any reason as to why, or how they had failed.
The instructors and the periodic review board had determined their abilities were better suited in other areas of ship handling, engineering, navigation, weapons, environmental or damage control. In time some or all might sit in the Captain's chair, but they would need to gain experience in other area's first. In the final year, it came down to fifty out of the hundred and thirty-two who had originally arrived here who would graduate as potential bridge officers.
“Hay! Mike. Did you see Part 1 orders for Monday?” Janice asked, bouncing into the room.
“No, why? What have we got?”
“You’re not going to believe this, its SERE training.” Her eye glowed at the thought. Mike just looked blank for a moment, his mind elsewhere in a navigational problem.
“And SERA would be…”
“Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape.” She laughed.
“Right.”
“But guess where.”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea.”
“At the Jungle warfare Training school in South America, at a place called El Charco.”
“Heard of it, but I can’t place it.” He instinctively punched in the name on his porta-comp, seeing an aerial map of South America pop up, then slowly zoom into a section on the West coasts straddling the equator.
The reference on the side bar said that this was once a political division known as Ecuador, long since integrated into the Andino Republic. The region now simply known as Quito, which curiously enough was the name given to the region during the time of the Inca. The school was located in the foothills on the Eastern side of the Andes in the Amazon jungle. Mike flicked his eyes down the general information bar, picking out rainfall, temp, humidity, local population, and main animal life forms.
“Interesting place.” Not that this was his first time in the jungle.
“How come?” Janice asked, looking over his shoulder.
“The temp is about 95 degrees, and the humidity is about the same.”
“Yuck! Hot and wet.”
“You could say that. It rains at least once a day, sometimes twice in the rainy season.”
“And I’ll bet it’s the rainy season, right?”
“You’ve got it. It’ll be wonderful for your fair complexion.” He chuckled, hearing Janice groan.
* * * * * *
As predicted, it was pouring with rain as they exited the shuttle and ran to an open sided, palm-thatched hut. The Royal Marine instructor stood in the Center of the room, glaring at 24 wet, sweaty cadets. He looked cool and comfortable in his jungle cammo, oblivious to the 100-degree heat and 99 percent humidity.
“As you all know, or I hope you do by now, your escape pod is programmed to locate and head for the nearest M Class planet.”
“The good news is, your escape pod has indeed located an M Class planet and dropped your sorry assess into my backyard.” He gave then a mirthless grin.
“The bad news is, that you have landed in Red Zone, the leader of which has aligned himself with forces opposite to that of Earth.”
“This is going to get worse, I can tell,” Williams muttered.
“How much worse can it get?” Jan muttered back.
“Probably a lot worse,” Heartmore whispered, “so stick with me, Jan, I’ll get you out of here.”
“Yeah, right. I don’t think so.” On past performance, Heartmore couldn’t find his way to the toilet without instruction, a map and a Seeing Eye dog.
“The very bad news is, you are blue team members. Which means, for those of you a little slow on the uptake, is that we get to hunt you down and capture your sorry assess.” Now he was grinning, like a shark just before it strikes.
“Behind me, you see the members of the hunting team whose pleasure it will be to capture you.” He paused and half-turned towards the ten men and woman standing behind him. From the cammo pattern, seven were Royal Marines, but three of them wore a different type of BDU.
“To make this little exercise a little more interesting, we have the able assistance of three members of His Majesties Special Air Service. I’m sure you will enjoy their special brand of interrogation, when you are caught!” He added for emphasis. That didn’t sound good at all, and his ‘when’ didn’t go unnoticed.
“As an added incentive, and to make life a little sweeter for you, the person or team to cross into Blue territory gets a three day pass.”
“All right! Now we are talking.” Someone in the back remarked. The instructor’s grin got wider, and the rest chuckled.
“I have to add that to date no one has won the three day pass.” No one bothered suppressing the groans. “So, from here, you will endeavor to make your way to El Chaco, which is in blue territory and safety.”
“Time frame for the mission, sir?” Mike asked, unsure of the man rank, as he didn’t wear any insignias or badges on his uniform.
“Open ended, or until you are all captured or,” he paused and laughed, “someone makes it across the finish line.”
“How are we supposed to get to, um, El Chaco, was it?” Williams asked.
“Seeing you are all on foot, and the escape pod doesn’t come with ground vehicles, I suggest walking would be your best option now wouldn’t it?” The luckless Cadet had the grace to blush.
“Each of you has an emergency transponder,” he said, tapping a two-inch disk on his lapel. “But, and I emphasis but, do not use it unless there is a real emergency. To do so means an automatic failure of this course, and the need to redo. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.” They all responded.
“Good. You now have a one hour head start, so I suggest you make the most of it, GO!” He yelled, and twenty-four cadets scattered out of the hut, and out of the clearing.
An hour before, they were all sitting in a nice comfortable, air conditioned shuttle craft, all expecting to be put down at some nice clean military base for a briefing, breakfast and some classroom work. They hadn’t expected the shuttle to dump them in the middle of a jungle clearing dressed in their winter clothes. Other than a raised, native style house and a group of instructors, there was nothing else, no air conditioned building, and especially, no food. As they exited, each was handed a small sack, containing a bottle of water, three MRE’s, a compass and a map of the region. Other than that, the sack contained a small knife, filter straw for water and some nylon cord. Lastly, a small first aid kit and a can of quick heal and some field dressings. Eyeing the contents, Mike had a feeling this exercise wasn’t intended to last long. There was none of the usual survival tools, such as fishing line and hook, fire-starting material and the like. Not that he needed much himself. Most of Avalon two main landmasses consisted of verdant jungle, and he’d spent as much time in them as he did piloting the old tug so he was no strang
er to this. A different jungle it might be, but the basic rules were the same. While the instructor was giving them the good and bad news, Mike pondered the situation. He had one of two choices. He could either go with the flow and let himself be captured, or simply evade the hunters and head to the safe zone. Two things made the choice for him, one was the cocky attitude of the ‘hunters’, the other the look on Janice face. This had to be scary for her considering the way she grow up. Jungle training wasn’t considered part of a young girl’s education. Her’s leaned more towards tennis, horseback riding, how to act correctly in all situations, except this one, of course, and generally act like a lady at all times. Even with a compass, taking any sort of a straight line in any direction was impossible, but you’d have to experience it first hand to really understand what they meant. Like most of the cadets, Janice didn’t and would probably become hopelessly lost within an hour or less. Loyalty to you shipmate was one thing his grandfather had pounded through his thick skull on a number of occasions, and not something he’d forget or discard casually. He let out a soft sigh and considered his plan of action.