Son of Justice

by Steven L. Hawk

  “I’m usually at the front of the pack,” he tossed out to the four. “Would you like to hear how I do that?”

  “All ears . . . buddy,” one of the men answered.

  “First, I tell myself that this walk, this pain, this phase of training . . . Well, I tell myself that it can’t last forever. At some point, it’s going to end. Then I remind myself it will either end with me behind the pacer, bound for a trip back to Earth, or it will end with me in front of the pacer, ready for the next challenge.”

  “You’re a . . . genius,” the man gasped. The sarcasm was evident despite his lack of breath. “How come I . . . never thought of that?”

  “But that’s just the start,” Eli continued. He flinched as a grain slapped him in the chin. He wiped the back of his hand over the sand-bite, noted the tiny streak of red it came away with, and erased the tiny stain against his pants. “After I remind myself of that, I put everything out of my mind except for one thing.”

  Several moments passed, but he refused to speak until someone asked the obvious question. Finally, the second man spoke up.

  “And what’s that?”

  “Left . . . left . . . left, right, left,” Eli answered. He stepped onto his left foot and began. “I just keep repeating it over and over and over, like a mantra.”

  He kept on repeating the litany, matching the words with the footfalls hitting the ground. After a minute, he felt more than saw the four walking beside him, each now in step with his cadence. He repeated it over and over and over.

  “Left . . . left . . . left, right, left.” They didn’t say a word, but fell into his rhythm, matched him pace for pace as they covered the ground. He increased the pace by slow degrees until—finally—they were moving faster than the pacer following silently but steadily behind them.

  Ten minutes after starting, the small group caught up with two more stragglers. Eli didn’t stop calling out the pattern. He just jerked a thumb at the two, indicating they should fall into line behind them. The two fell silently into place and kept up. The group soon fell into a rough semblance of a formation, with two troops in front, two in the middle, and two in back. Eli marched to the left of the small formation and called out the pace.

  By the five-kilometer point, the group had grown to fourteen. Eli continued calling out the steps, but the group could move only as fast as the slowest person. And some were faltering. Despite his best efforts, they began to lose ground to the pacer. A quick glance behind showed the hovering orb had regained its former position a quarter of a kilometer back. He was beginning to doubt if they could all make it, but refused to concede a single person to the Minith unless there was no other choice.

  “Left . . . left . . . left, right, left.”

  At seven kilometers, the group had grown to twenty. They were aligned four wide, with five rows total. After some consideration, Eli instructed the four in front of the formation to fall to the rear. Those in the rear had some protection against the heated wind blowing in their faces, and trading off the forward positions made sense. They kept it up on a rotating basis, with the front row dropping to the rear every five minutes or so, and the action seemed to help. The group picked up the pace. Hopefully, it would be enough.

  At the eight-kilometer mark, with only two kilometers left, the first person dropped out of formation and stopped. Eli kept calling out the pace, but immediately pulled one of the stronger recruits from the formation. He pointed at her—she was one of the original four, he noticed—and then pointed at his spot next to the formation.

  “Left . . . left . . . left, right, left.”

  With hand motions, he let her know that he wanted her to begin calling the cadence. She started tentatively, but he called out the steps with her. Together, they counted. When he felt she had it, he turned back toward the recruit that had fallen behind.

  He retraced the twenty meters to the young private, who was now bent over, throwing up. The private still had his pack on his back, but his plasma rifle was on the ground, and his hands were planted firmly on his knees. He didn’t appear to have any inclination of continuing. Eli read the name on his sleeve.

  “Simms, that pacer isn’t going to wait for you. You gotta get moving.” Simms just waved a hand dismissively and dry heaved. Eli looked behind the man and saw the metal orb approaching. He knew it wasn’t coming at them any faster, but it sure seemed to be eating up the distance now that they weren’t moving.

  “Can’t . . .”

  “You want to wash out? Get sent back home?” It was a question that they both knew the answer to, but Simms didn’t seem capable of moving another step. Eli scrambled for a solution, any solution. Only one possible answer came back. He didn’t stop to second guess. “Drop your pack. Now!”

  “Huh?” Simms looked up from his feet for the first time, unsure of what he was being told.

  “Drop your pack,” Eli repeated. “Can you move on if you don’t carry the pack?”

  “I can’t just . . . leave it here and move on. What good is . . . that?”

  “We’re not leaving it behind, Simms.” Eli didn’t wait for the other man to reply or understand. Instead, he handed his shotgun to Simms, then reached out and pulled the pack from the exhausted man. He met no resistance, and let the pack drop to the sand. Simms straightened, noticeably relieved to have the weight lifted from his shoulders. Eli readjusted the load on his own back, then reached down for Simms’s pack. “Hand it up to me.”

  Simms stared at Eli, his mouth open in shock.

  Beep.

  “Now, Simms! No time to waste,” Eli shouted while pointing at the discarded pack.

  As if in a daze, Simms slung Eli’s shotgun over his shoulder, reached down, gripped the shoulder straps and hoisted the weight up. “Turn it around so the straps face me.”

  Beep.

  Simms turned the pack around and watched as Eli reached his hands through the straps and hugged the bulk to his chest. He used his right thigh to help hold the pack in position.

  “Now loop the straps over my shoulders,” Eli grunted. He couldn’t believe what he was attempting to do, but it was the only thing he could think of. Without a word, Simms pulled the straps over the back of Eli’s shoulders and stepped back. Eli bent his knees, tested the security of the load, and began a slow, but steady walk in the direction of the finish line.

  Beep. The short hairs on the back of Eli’s neck itched in response to the warning sound. He refused to turn around, but it seemed as though the pacer couldn’t get much closer without passing them.

  “Let’s go, Simms. Now!”

  Without thinking, Eli quickly fell into step with the female recruit’s cadence. She and the formation were sixty meters ahead, but the wind blew her words back toward the duo. Ignoring the hot stabs of agony that tortured his being and struggling against the weight of two packs, Eli extended his step, anxious to leave the pacer, and its obnoxious “beep” behind. Simms now carried both their weapons and managed to keep up.

  “Left . . . left . . . left, right, left.”

  He pushed everything from his mind, including the newly discovered inability to draw enough oxygen into his lungs, and concentrated on her voice. He suddenly regretted not getting her name.

  At kilometer nine, Eli saw another person fall out of the formation ahead. He groaned, his body running on fumes. He knew he was too spent to help.

  “Don’t worry, Jayson,” Simms said from his side, before stumbling ahead. He appeared tired, but could obviously move quicker now that he wasn’t carrying the additional weight. “I’ve got this one.”

  Eli managed to lift his head from and watch as Simms reached the female recruit and spoke a few words. By the time he reached their position, each had a strap in one hand, and with the load hanging between them, they struggled toward the finish line. For someone who had been ready to quit just minutes before, Simms seemed determined now. Eli wanted to pat him on the back, tell the pair “Way to go” or something, but he couldn’t. His hands
were full, and he no longer had enough strength to do more than take the next step and gasp hungrily for his next ragged breath. The anger that had set him on this path had passed. He imagined the pacer breathing down his neck and wondered if he’d be the one to wash out. For a moment, he wondered whether he should have ever turned around, but it was a fleeting thought. No, he’d do it all over again, if it meant saving just one of his fellow humans.

  Onward he pushed, refusing to give in to the pacer on his tail, the Minith who controlled it, or the pain that racked his body and threatened to keep him from his goal.

  Step after step. Ragged breath upon ragged breath. Pain on top of pain.

  With less than half a kilometer to go, Eli stumbled over a rock and his right knee buckled. He managed to utter a slight curse before his body—and the weight of the two packs he carried—smacked the ground in a tumbled mess of clatter and exhaustion.

  His mind screamed “Get up!” but his body refused to listen. The arms that held the pack to his chest were quivering bowls of jelly. The legs that had carried him so far, nothing more than useless slabs of dead, tired meat. He rocked side-to-side in frustrated anger but couldn’t even push himself to his knees, much less regain his feet.

  Beep.

  The worst agony—that of defeat—crashed down upon him, and he cried out in rage. The weight of his failure felt like all the dirt in the world being shoveled onto the lid of his casket.

  Beep.

  Unable to move, his chin sank into the sand-covered soil of Telgora, and he raged silently against the inevitable. His eyes closed against the tears that threatened and spent his final speck of energy to curse the Minith sergeants.

  Beep.

  He was done.

  * * *

  Dark. Heavy breathing all around. Snoring?

  If he hadn’t known better, Eli would have thought he was back in the barracks with the outer shutters closed against the perpetual Telgoran sun. The sounds he had come to know over the past few weeks surrounded him. The feel of the mattress beneath him was familiar. Even the unique smell of the place—a worn combination of body sweat, oil, and stale farts—was spot on. But that couldn’t be. He was a washout.

  Wasn’t he?

  He tried to sit up, but a hot blast of pain knocked him flat on his back again.

  “Uhhh,” he groaned and agreed with his body that lying down was preferable to sitting. He heard a rustling from above and saw a shadow appear over his head.

  “EJ, you okay, man?” The shadow was Benson’s noggin looking down at him from the top bunk. He was back in the barracks.

  “What . . . what happened? Why am I here?”

  “Private Jayson, you pulled a real-life Justice on that march,” the shadow-head offered. “Who knew you had it in you?”

  “I pulled a . . . a what?”

  “A Justice, EJ,” Benson said as if talking to a five-year old. “You know . . . something a hero would do. Where the crud are you from, anyway?”

  Eli had no intention of answering that question. At least not completely. He had been born on Earth, but had spent the last twelve years of his life on Waa. He wasn’t up to date on Earth-side slang, but he had a good idea of what “pulling a Justice” meant.

  “What am I doing here?” he asked, still confused. “I washed out.”

  “Um. No,” the other man stated. “You didn’t.”

  “I didn’t finish.”

  “Well, that’s not exactly true. You didn’t finish on your own, but you finished.”

  “What?” Despite the pain, he turned to the side and pushed up to prop himself on his right elbow. Nothing was making sense. He remembered hitting the ground, trying—and failing—to get up, the pacer’s beeping, then . . . nothing.

  “That female from Third. Tenney. She crossed the line about two minutes after I did. She pointed at me and asked if I was Second Platoon,” Benson explained. “She didn’t even wait for an answer, just yanked my arm and said ‘Let’s go.’ I’m not sure how she knew you were in trouble, but the next thing I know, we’re headed back out. Only this time, we’re heading for the pacer, not away from it.

  “Johnson from First and a couple of others saw us heading back out and they followed. Five minutes later, we come up on you lying face down in the sand. I’m not sure how she knew you were in trouble, but the pacer couldn’t have been more than twenty meters away when she tossed one pack at me and another one at Johnson. How the crud did you end up with two, anyway?”

  “Long story,” Eli replied. “So, what happened then?”

  “Well, then Tenney pulled her own Justice.” Benson sounded both awed and amazed at what he was relaying. Eli couldn’t help but feel some of that as well. “That lady picked you up, tossed you over her shoulder and started humping your body back toward the finish line. She had to hand you off to me before we got all the way back—you’re not all that light, it turns out—but just seeing her lift you out of the sand was a sight I’ll never forget. When she did it, Johnson and I just stared at each other and trudged along behind.”

  “Wow,” Eli mumbled, not knowing what to say. Adrienne had saved him from washing out. “Why would she do that?”

  “Same reason you went to the back to help the laggards, I guess. It was the right thing to do.”

  Eli thought about Simms and the other recruits he had helped keep ahead of the pacer. He was afraid to ask how many of their fellow humans had washed out, but did anyway.

  “Not a single one,” Benson replied. “That was your doing, EJ. That was your Justice.”

  Eli plopped back down on the mattress. The previous agonies of aching muscles and shredded feet were nearly forgotten, little more than echoes. Amazement, and a sense of wonder at what the three platoons had done, washed over him. He remembered something that his dad had once told him. He now knew it was true. A single unit working together can do what an unlimited number of individuals could never hope to accomplish.

  “Wow,” he repeated. Further words escaped him.

  “There’s only one problem,” Benson mumbled just before the shadow that defined his head disappeared. The slight tremble of the bed indicated that he had flopped heavily onto his back. “Twiggy wasn’t very happy. Neither were the other two sergeants.”

  Eli smiled, pleased to know that their effort at winnowing out more humans hadn’t succeeded.

  “He wants to see you first thing in the morning.”

  Eli’s smile disappeared. His ability to keep a low profile had apparently ended. He considered how the sergeant might react to his actions and wondered what kind of trouble those actions had called down on his head. It was a brief thought, though. With a realization that was as sudden as it was unexpected, Eli found he didn’t really care what the alien thought, or how he might react.

  “Hey guys,” a female voice interrupted. He lifted his head and saw Adrienne Tenney approaching the bunk. The unofficial leader of third platoon nodded to Benson, then ducked under the top bunk and sat down on the edge of Eli’s bed. “How’s the patient?”

  “The patient’s fine,” Benson replied, still looking down from his perch. “For now, anyway. He’s got a date with Twiggy in the morning, though. You might want to check back then.”

  “I’m not worried,” Eli offered, but the titled head and blank stare he received from Benson informed that maybe he should be. “Okay, maybe I’m worried a little bit. Not much I can do about it now, though. What’s done is done.

  “I understand I owe you a ‘thank you,” he said to Tenney as he pushed his tired body into a seated position. Somehow, it didn’t feel right to be lying down with her sitting less than a foot away.

  She waved a casual hand at the suggestion. “Don’t mention it, Jayson. You saved a bunch of my guys with the advance warning. And those theatrics at the end of the march. What made you turn back and help the stragglers?”

  Eli pondered the question. He knew what made him do it—his loathing for the Minith sergeants, and the overwhelming need he�
�d felt for his kind to succeed—but he didn’t think he could adequately verbalize any of that, so offered up a simplified version. “I didn’t want to lose another person. That’s my new motto: ‘No more washouts.’ From here on out, I’m going to help anyone who needs it.”

  “Very nice,” Tenney nodded, then cocked her head and squinted, as if studying him. “I like that.” She then reached out her right hand and gently squeezed his knee. Eli swallowed the knot in his throat and tried not to shy away from the unexpected attention.

  “Well . . . feel free to use it,” he said. His tongue seemed thick in his mouth and he felt a flush of heat cross his face. He wondered if she’d notice. He didn’t know why she made him feel so self-conscious, but it had nothing to with her recognizing him. No, it wasn’t that. This felt . . . different. He’d never had much opportunity to speak with girls; there weren’t many on Waa. “And really. Thank you for saving my skin. You’re the only reason I’m not a washout.”

  Tenney nodded and stood up. The height of Benson’s bunk meant she didn’t have to duck to be seen.

  “Well, this guy here helped,” she said, pointing her chin up at Eli’s bunkmate. Benson had grown quiet over the past two minutes, which was completely out of character. “I’m going to head back to my platoon now. Good luck with your sergeant tomorrow. I’ll check back to see how it went.”

  “Great,” Eli replied, his voice cracking with the single word. He cleared his throat. “I’m sure it will be fine. As far as I know, I didn’t break any rules.”

  She offered Eli a small wave, nodded a goodbye to Benson, and turned. Eli couldn’t help but watch as she walked down the aisle and out the door. When she was out of view, he turned to find Benson staring at him, a wide grin plastered to his face.

  “What?” he asked the upside-down face that peered back at him.

  “I think she likes you, EJ,” Benson said, retracting his head. The bed shook slightly as he flopped heavily onto the mattress of the top bunk. “And I know you like her.”

  Eli found his mouth moving to contest his friend’s assertions, but he suddenly—surprisingly—found himself incapable of forming a single word.