Barclay nodded. He’d already learned this the hard way in the unarmed combat exercises. He still had the bruises to show for it. It wasn’t so much the throw that Ferghal achieved, though that had been bad enough, but the follow through. He’d had to sit out the rest of the session recovering from it. Ferghal had been cautioned to remember he was in training and not supposed to kill his partner.
Laschelles hesitated. “You didn’t tell me those Lacertians were friends of his. One of them almost got me after I planted the trace.”
Barclay shrugged. “But he didn’t get you, and the trace is planted, so it doesn’t matter.”
“I still don’t see what you wanted them tagged for.” Laschelles eyed Barclay warily.
“None of your never mind. My uncle’s got people who will deal with those two from now on. They won’t be testifying at any enquiry, and we’ll be rid of them. Bloody fossils. Belong in a museum.”
Laschelles held his tongue. He didn’t know what had set Eon against Heron, and he didn’t care to ask. Eon’s family connections were powerful people, and his own family had links to the firms the Barclay family controlled. It paid to keep them sweet. His record with the Fleet wasn’t good enough to ensure his success. Barclay’s connections might be essential to his future.
THE FRENETIC PACE OF THE FIRST WEEKS SET THE PATTERN for the rest of the course. The class settled into the routine and formed the friendships and study groups that provided the peer support they needed. Harry and Ferghal struggled at first, especially in the classroom. In part it was the technology, but a larger part was the distraction of the AI link. Harry soon realised it was better to use the blocking device and take copious notes, which he then sorted out in the quiet of his cabin during his free time.
But where they really set themselves apart was in the practical exercises. Their early training at sea gave them an advantage over their peers.
“How do you fellows manage to do this so easily,” gasped Keiron after a gruelling session on the obstacle course set with climbing nets, crawl ditches, tunnels, crossing spaces on lines and bridges, and scrambling up angled slopes and walls. “You seem to go up those scrambling nets and across those rope bridges as if you have an extra pair of hands and feet each.”
Ferghal laughed. “If you had been chased around the rigging of a man o’ war by a boatswain’s mate with a starter, you’d soon learn to do it our way.”
“I hate that single line crawl,” groaned Elize. “And you went along it hand over hand,” she protested to Harry. “Weren’t you afraid of falling?”
“No . . . why should I be?” Harry was genuinely puzzled by the question. His mind flashed back to the voyage across the Great Southern Ocean in HMS Spartan, with the life and death struggles in the rigging as they fought the sails, the gales and the dizzying spiralling of the masts. They had lost two midshipmen and several hands to the storms. The old saying of “one hand for the ship and the other for yourself” came to mind. Suddenly it dawned on him that none of his companions had ever experienced anything like that. He softened his reply with a grin. “At most I would have fallen about ten feet. As Ferghal said, our experience clambering around the rigging in a seventy-four gave us confidence for this kind of exercise. But you excel at tasks which we have not the skill for.”
This theme was picked up again when it came to combat training, as neither of the pair fully understood the concept of “going through the motions” in any form of combat. To their way of thinking, close combat was life or death — an attitude stamped upon them in their early days at sea where death had many forms, and no quarter could be expected in the heat of any battle.
“Ouch,” groaned Howie, picking himself up after being thrown over Ferghal’s hip in a classic wrestling move. “Do you always play for keeps like that?”
“Sorry,” Ferghal said, and he winced when he heard the yelp of pain from a class member whom Harry had just disarmed, but he couldn’t help grinning when the instructor hurried over to assess the damage. “It comes hard to remember that this is a sport. In our day, if you were this close to an enemy, it was life or death.”
“Well, I’m damned glad you aren’t waving a weapon around,” grumbled Howie. “You fellows are pretty near lethal without any. I’m black and blue after that.”
Harry knelt next to his fallen adversary and surveyed the damage. “I’m sorry, Haslar, but I appear to have dislocated your shoulder. Don’t move. I will summon the warrant officer and ask for a medic to attend you.” He stood then hesitated. “I really am most sorry. I do not seem to be able to adopt this way of not completing a throw.”
“Damn it, Harry,” gritted the other as the medic arrived. “Knowing you’re sorry doesn’t make my shoulder hurt any less. That wasn’t a recognised hold and throw. I suppose I should be grateful you were only trying to disarm me.”
“It’s not a bad dislocation, sir,” said the medic. “I’ll ease it back into place then take you to the medical centre to be checked just to make sure.” Turning to Harry, he inquired, “Mr Heron, isn’t it? Hold your colleague steady for me while I manipulate his shoulder, please — thank you, sir.” A gasp escaped Haslar Grundon when his shoulder popped back into place.
“Mr Heron, Mr O’Connor,” called the Master Warrant Officer. Harry and Ferghal stood at attention before him. “Gentlemen, your methods are very unconventional, and at this rate, you’ll have eliminated most of the class before we are finished. I’m moving you into a coaching role so you can teach some of your classmates a bit of your aggression — controlled aggression, I might remind you, so don’t kill anyone. This is about learning to defend yourselves, not eliminating the opposition to gain promotion. Got it?”
“Aye, aye, Master,” they chorused, abashed.
Harry muttered, “All these rules! If I am not to fight to win, what is the point of fighting? I may as well surrender and save us both the effort.”
This remark got him another telling off from the instructor.
In fairness, it was not all one sided. Both had at different times been bested by others in the class, usually when they acted in overconfidence, and both had learned some hard lessons in the process.
Ferghal confided to Harry. “Just when it seems I have begun to understand the way things are done here, I find I have not understood something as I should.”
“I too,” agreed Harry, rubbing a bruise on his arm. “I cannot bring myself to attack a woman no matter how frequently I am told they are the same as us and perhaps more deadly. I simply cannot strike a woman.” In this he was stating nothing less than the truth. Harry had real difficulty with the concept of launching what he considered an assault upon a lady. It was foreign to his notion of honourable behaviour, something no gentleman would ever do. And he paid for it in bruises sustained in the unarmed combat sessions, the most recent of which he had received from Elize.
“Aye,” agreed Ferghal. “It goes against all we were taught. My Da’ would take the whip to me if I laid a hand on any woman in anger.”
Ferghal fell silent as his mind drifted to a rather shapely young woman named Siobhan Stevenson who had captured his interest. As smart as she was beautiful, she was specialising in environmental engineering. He flirted shamelessly with all the female cadets, at first to their surprise and then their amusement, but Siobhan was unique enough to quell his interest in others, for the time being.
When he introduced her to Harry, Ferghal said teasingly, “Siobhan is wanting to know about the climate in our times.”
Catching his friend’s mood, Harry grinned and said, “You mean the lady is interested in the way the land was ever boggy, and the ice froze on the roads, and when it melted, we slogged through filth and mud, and the women’s skirts were ever tinged with dirt at the hem?” He grinned. “Ah, the joys of our old Emerald Isle — the grass was always green because it never stopped raining.”
“Get away, the pair of you!” She laughed. “I’m Siobhan Stevenson,” she sa
id, extending her hand to shake Harry’s. “Ferghal keeps telling me about the beauty of County Down. I would love to see it one day,” she added with a wink to Ferghal.
“We can certainly make that happen!” Ferghal said with his usual boisterous enthusiasm, and they all shared a laugh.
Chapter 6 – Frustrated Attempt
Harry and Ferghal enjoyed the survival exercise. Their knowledge and skills — much of it gained in landscapes and conditions almost identical to the terrain chosen by the instructors — made it even easier. Looking at the latest offering of gulls’ eggs, mushrooms, small fish, berries and dandelion leaves, Elize commented, “How do you guys know about this stuff? I’ve never seen anyone catch fish like that.”
“It’s practically a feast compared to what the others found,” exclaimed Keiron. “I heard some of the Dreadnoughts complaining that we must’ve had food caches hidden.”
Senzile laughed. “We’re being shadowed by a couple of instructors checking we haven’t got supplies and a replicator.”
“Good luck to them. Here we go — a feast fit for the High King at Tara.” Ferghal removed the fish from its wrapping of leaves after taking it off the small and almost smokeless campfire that Harry had built using pieces of dead wood, some moss he’d cut from a bank that burned with a bluish flame, and wood shavings.
The four midshipmen accepted the portions Harry passed round. “As soon as I’ve eaten, I’ll relieve the sentries,” Keiron declared. “I can hear their stomachs complaining from here.”
Elize laughed. “All I can say is I’ve learned more about survival in the last twenty-four hours than in all the lectures we had in preparation.” Wiping her hands on the grass and rinsing them in the stream a few yards off, she said, “Come on, Keiron, time to let the others get some food.”
FROM COVER NEARBY, OTHER EYES WATCHED THE GROUP. “Heron is the one on the right. O’Connor is the heavy built redhead to the left of the woman next to the fire. Use the tranq darts as soon as those two are out of sight.”
“Clear, Leader One.” The speaker breathed in the aroma of roasted fish. “That smells damned good. Never had rations like that on my courses.”
“Don’t think they get them on these either. Those two are pretty good at foraging. I have no idea how they caught those fish without any equipment.”
The leader slid deeper into cover. “Kat, Sonja, Mick — we’ll take out the main group and grab the two we want.” He pulled out a tablet that displayed a map. “They’ve got two sentries, one here and the other in this direction. Work round and neutralise them. We’ll take this lot down as soon as you confirm you’ve tranqed the sentries.”
“You’re the boss.” One of the team eased carefully into a better position as the first three slipped away, their camouflage uniforms blending with the vegetation. “I don’t get why we have to take them alive — we could just waste them and be done with it. If they’re dead, they can’t testify.”
“True, but we’ve been told to take them alive and deliver them to the client.” The leader smirked. “And that’s why we’re being paid a premium.”
“I’m not complaining — there’s seven of us against a bunch of youngsters. Piece of cake.”
The four stalkers moved closer to the group round the small fire. The leader positioned himself and prepared the tranquilliser projector he carried. His team were all professionals, one-time Special Forces from various nations, ruthlessly efficient. He checked his map display. The trace devices showed Harry and Ferghal exactly where he could see them. He smiled when he saw Harry scratch his leg absentmindedly. Soon that “bug bite” will be the least of your problems, kid.
“Sentries down.” The voice in his earpiece was calm. “All clear.”
He keyed his link. “Go.”
HARRY FELT THE STING IN HIS SHOULDER, and his instinctive reaction to brush off whatever had stung him ended in a limp arm swing as he slumped to the ground unconscious. Elize collapsed across him as Senzile fell, spilling his freshly served food. The fourth member of the team fell against Ferghal, taking the dart aimed at him. As she knocked him off balance, he fell, but being the only member of the team still conscious, he was also the only witness to the arrival of four Lacertians.
“Stay down, Sword Wielder,” said one of them. “Do not move.”
As suddenly as they appeared, the Lacertians faded into the landscape.
Ferghal heard a plasma discharge followed by a brief cry of pain. “What t’ divil?” His eyes darted across the visible landscape from his prone position.
“Abort! Abort!” the leader of the stalking team ordered into his link. Cursing, he wriggled backward then used his infrared goggles to spot any concealed Lacertians. Quickly he shed his Special Forces camouflage gear revealing the outfit of an instructor, and slipped on an armband proclaiming him to be an exercise director. “Damn, damn, damn,” he muttered. Where the hell had the Lacertians come from? They weren’t the cadet group obviously. He’d taken care to make sure they were in a different area entirely.
Two more instructors joined him. “What the hell went wrong?” asked one of them.
“Damned if I know.” A stealthy movement caught his eye, and a Lacertian stood before him.
“We have summoned the medics, Commander.” The Lacertian made the gesture of salute their people used, but its eyes bored into him. “And your defenders of law. Two of the attackers are dead, another survived, and another escaped.”
The leader maintained an air of nonchalance. “Lieutenant Alberts, go and check.” He looked up as a Medivac skimmer passed over them and settled close to where Harry’s party had camped. Moments later, a second and then a third arrived escorted by two troop carriers that discharged their Marines as they settled. The Marine Captain saluted. “Commander, we’ve a report some of the students were attacked. Apparently an attempt to kill them.”
“What?” The leader hoped his genuine alarm would be read as concern for the students. “We were just checking on the teams now. The Britannias were our next check. Where are they?” He glanced up as Lieutenant Alberts returned looking sick.
“What’s happened to them?” the leader demanded.
“One of the students is dead — took two of the tranq darts, at least that’s what the medics think. And three more dead — look like special ops of some kind. One of them died just before the medics got here.” He gestured as if checking his pockets for something. “Pity. Might have told the Red Caps something.”
A Royal Marine major arrived with two Warrant Officers in tow. “Seems someone was trying to take out Heron and O’Connor. We’ve sent out a recall to all student teams and instructors. The exercise is terminated, and this entire area is under quarantine. The forensics team is on its way.” He held the Lieutenant Commander’s eye. “The three attackers the Lacertians took down are all instructing staff.”
“What?” The Lieutenant Commander feigned surprise. “You’re sure?”
The major’s gaze didn’t waver. “Yes, so as a routine precaution, we’ll need to know the exact position of everyone on this exercise in the last twelve hours.”
HARRY RECOVERED CONSCIOUSNESS IN A MED-UNIT. His eyes focussed on the face of the MedTech next to the bed. “Where am I?”
“Easy, Mr Heron. You took a tranq dart. Lucky they got you back here pronto and got a counter dose into you.
“Tranq dart?”
“Yes.” A Surgeon Lieutenant joined them. “They obviously meant you to be out of it for a long time — the dose would have knocked down an ox.” He checked the monitors. “Did you see who put the dart into you?”
Harry’s mind was fuzzy, and then he remembered. “I thought it was an insect sting, sir.”
The Lieutenant finished his checks. “Yes, that’s the whole idea. They make those darts so tiny that you think nothing of them, but you should be feeling fine now. Your system is clear of the drug — the fastest I’ve ever seen that happen. Typically, a man of your si
ze and build would have traces in your system for several hours yet, but you’re all clear . . . amazing.”
Sitting up, Harry glanced round at the other members of his team, all of them semi-conscious. “There were eight of us. Six of us are here. Where are Ferghal and Selina?”
“Midshipman Schaaber took two darts, one probably intended for Mr O’Connor.” The Lieutenant paused. “The overdose killed her. The Investigation Branch are treating it as a homicide. Cadet O’Connor is supplying them with details. He is the only surviving eyewitness.”
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER ARI VALLANCE DID HIS UTMOST not to show his concern at the presence on the College of the special investigators from the Security Investigation Branch, dubbed Crushers with some justification.
“So the College has been placed on Security Code Red,” he said with an air of casual interest. “An overreaction, surely.”
The Head of School thrust his hands behind his back. “Command and the Director don’t think so. The three killed by the Lacertians were all on the staff here, and the Crushers think there are more sleepers.”
“Do they know who they’re working for, sir?”
“The Consortium, apparently. Damned if I know what drives people to join that mob.”
Ari Vallance shrugged. “Money. People will do just about anything to claim the bounty Johnstone Research is offering.”
“Possible, I suppose. Damn. It disrupts everything.”
More than you think, thought the Lieutenant Commander. The Head of School was a full Captain, but he preferred the life of an academic to that of “chasing about the universe,” as he put it.
Harry Heron: No Quarter Page 5