Gunny McNeill put his foot on her back, keeping her from rising off her hands and knees.
“Look Lysander. You’ve done great,” he said in a reasonable tone. “You’ve lasted beyond Holstein and Vioble,” he told her, naming the two other female Marines who’d started out in the course. “Heck, you’ve lasted longer than half of the men. I think you’ve proven our point. Now it’s time to move on. I’m sure with your, well, shall we say, ‘connections,’ you can get a nice plum billet. Maybe right here on the “T” at headquarters. Just think of it: a clean, air-conditioned office, steady working hours, a chance to hobnob with all those colonels and generals.”
Esther didn’t even feel guilty that she’d been thinking those very thoughts. It was true. She didn’t belong at RTC. Life would be so much easier for her if she just rang out. It was right there. She could drop her 75kg pack in the dirt, catch a ride back to the school, and ring out. By evening, she’d be clean, comfortable, and with new orders to her next duty station.
She knew RTC would be difficult, but she’d never grasped just how difficult. Most of it seemed to be simple torture, to see how far the RTs[8] could push them. This forced march was just one example. In six years in the fleet, Esther didn’t think she’d ever carried more than 35 kg into the field. The Corps kept finding ways to lighten the load and still be able to take the fight to the enemy, and a Marine’s gear was the best yet developed by man—expensive, but you get what you paid for. So why was she kneeling in the dirt of Camp Prettyjohn with 75kg on her back? Supposedly because a recon Marine could be assigned to train a foreign force that did not have access to modern, light-weight gear. “Supposedly” was the key word here. Esther thought the real reason was simply to try and break her and her fellow “polliwogs.”
And it was working. The class had started with 113 candidates. After 13 days, 66 had been dropped with 63 of those DOR.[9] Esther could make that 64 DORs right then and there, and her misery would be over.
I can’t! I won’t.
But she knew that was bravado. She wanted to ring out, and she might as well do it instead of later and save herself days of misery.
All I have to do is drop my pack. That easy.
Her right hand drifted to her pack’s quick-release.
Maybe McNeill saw that, maybe he didn’t, but he said, “Your father would be proud of you for even getting this far.”
Esther’s hand froze where it was. No, her father wouldn’t, she knew. General Ryck Lysander was many things, and he was a good father, Esther thought. But he was not “proud” of failure. Results mattered, participation trophies did not. If he was still alive today, Esther was sure he would still love her, but he would not be proud of the fact that she quit.
With a shout she pushed up, knocking the gunny’s foot off her pack and him on his ass.
“I am not quitting!”
She fell into a crippled old man’s shuffle, barely moving, but moving all the same.
“Stupid fool!” the gunny yelled at her. “You’ve got 40 minutes to finish, and you’re still five klicks away. Just give up.”
Esther put her head down and willed her feet to move faster, not seeing the smile that crept over the gunny’s face.
Chapter 17
Esther had to bend forward at the waist, keeping her aching back straight, as she crept gratefully into her rack. The day and into the night had been a ball buster, and by the glory of the Divine Architect, there weren’t any early-morning night evolutions on the schedule. The RTC staff had been known to add a few things to the syllabus, but after watching them leave together for the evening, for once, Esther thought they might be safe, and she should just lick her wounds and go to sleep.
After four weeks, the torture had almost become routine. The class was down to 38 polliwogs, but barring injury or academic failure, the general consensus was that those who remained would make it to the end.
That didn’t mean Esther was home free. Physically, she was breaking down, but mentally, she’d reached her purgatory. The training was hell, but she knew she had the will power to just absorb it. All she had to do was avoid mistakes, and she’d reach her heaven, which was simply to leave Camp Prettyjohn, never to return.
“Come on, Lysander! Get your ass up,” Delany shouted as he pounded on her hatch.
“Go away!”
Captain Delany Garrett didn’t let up.
“You’re coming with us.”
“Eat me!”
Esther had spent most of her childhood with senior officers, and a general didn’t faze her. But now, after seven years in uniform, the ranks structure had been welded into her mind, so it still felt odd calling the captain by his first name, much less yelling “Eat me” to him. But that was the recon culture. Members of a team tended to call each other by first names or nicknames. Outside the team, it was still rank and last name, so the class OIC was “Major Kierkirk,” but among the polliwogs, everyone from the junior Sergeant Allison-Gibley to the senior Major Singh went by their given names.
Except for Esther. With only a few exceptions, she was “Lysander.” She wasn’t quite sure why that was, but there didn’t seem to be any animosity to it.
Now that she was prone in her rack, all Esther wanted to do was to slip into Morpheus’ warm embrace. Tonto, a decidedly weird staff sergeant, had pointed out that word “morphine” came from “Morpheus,” and with sleep at such a premium at RTC, Esther now thought of sleep as an addiction, and she was always ready for her “Morpheus fix.”
“The fight’s about to start, and you said you were going to watch it with us,” Delany said.
“Up and at them, Esther,” Gator shouted through the door.
The fight? Oh, hell! That’s why the staff was leaving.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Tamara Veal was back up for a fight, her third. And just as in her last fight, it was taking place late at night local time for her. If this had been just any other fight, Esther would give it a pass and just sleep. But Iron Shot was a Marine, and Esther felt obligated to watch in support, especially as she’d missed the gladiator’s last fight because she’d been on duty. What made this bout doubly interesting, however, was that this was the second time that it was the humans who had made the challenge, this time to recover New Budapest, which had fallen to the Klethos two years earlier.
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Give me a moment!” she shouted as she rolled out of the rack, her back screaming in protest.
Moving like an old lady, she slipped on a baggy pair of sweatpants and a micro-panel shirt and ran her fingers through her hair before opening the hatch.
“Where’s Cowboy?” she asked, trying to blink the sleep out of her eyes.
“Already at the Club,” Gator said. “He’s been there since we got dismissed.”
Esther followed the other two across the Quad to the all-ranks club. They could watch the fight on their PAs, but Marines tended to gather together to watch them, especially when a fellow Marine was fighting. They could go out into town, but Camp Prettyjohn was out in the boonies, on the far side of Camp Charles, so the logical spot was the club.
Most of this class as well as the follow-on class were already in the small club, packing it tightly. As clubs went, this one wasn’t much, but it had a top-of-the-line holo projector, and it had a 12-station Sanyo chiller, the same high-end device found in the top-of-the-line civilian clubs.
Esther’s class had taken over the left side of the holo-room. Gator pointed at Cowboy, who’d staked out a couch in the front, and the three climbed over outstretched legs to get to him.
“About time you got here. I couldn’t even get up to get a beer with these claim-jumpers ready to swoop in,” he said.
Esther and the others flopped down beside him. The couch was lumpy, but it was right in front of the holo, which was still broadcasting the pre-fight commentaries.
“OK, what do you want?” she asked Cowboy.
“I want a Blue Peak,” he said, referring to his favorite brew as
he did whenever the occasion presented itself. “But since this is such a low-class operation, I’ll take a Dilliards.”
Esther got up, pulled a Dilliards out of the box, and popped the tab, letting it cool down. She picked a Nasty Red, thinking a cider might be a bit more refreshing and wake her up. The cider didn’t have its own cooler, so she dialed in a 12 on the chiller and put in the cider. Ten second late, the door opened, and her cider came out on a tray.
“Make it last,” she told Cowboy as she handed him his beer.
She was surprised to see Iron Shot already moving forward to her opponent, and she checked her PA. The fight wasn’t supposed to start yet.
Then she realized that this was the gladiator’s last fight. Esther had seen it several times on her PA since it happened, but never in this kind of setting. Watching it on the holo while surrounded by fellow Marines somehow made it seem more real.
The talking heads analyzed the short fight and gave their projections on the upcoming one. Not surprisingly, every talking head predicted an easy win for the chief warrant officer.
“Hey, enough of this analyzing shit. The fight’s about to start,” “Edgy” Hwei, a fellow lieutenant shouted out.
“Cassie, turn the volume,” Cowboy said, speaking right at the projector’s mic.
“Cassie” might be a fairly primitive AI, but she’d have learned by now the habits of the Marines. After measuring the ambient noise levels, she raised the volume so that everyone could hear.
Unlike the previous fight on New Budapest, where the human gladiator had been killed, there were few spectators on site for this one. There were more than a hundred of the Klethos surrounding one side of the ring, which had been constructed by the side of a river. A lone d’relle knelt at the side of the ring. It still seemed off to Esther. She’d watched 30 or 40 of the combats, and each time, the human gladiator was there at the fighting ring first and waited for the Klethos to arrive. This time, as the challenger, Iron Shot would come last.
As usual, Esther studied the Klethos, not just the d’relle in the ring, but the “regular” Klethos witnesses. Both species were sticking with the stylized combat for now, but that wasn’t a guarantee that it would always be like that. Esther thought it probable that humans and Klethos would break out in total war at some time during her career.
Each Kethos was a nightmare, straight out of Lucas-Dreamworks. Three meters tall, with huge, taloned feet, the bird-like-looking creatures didn’t need any of their four arms to take down a human. Esther knew that if it came to that, only human ingenuity and ability to improvise would carry the day.
“Here she comes!” one of the polliwogs from the follow-on class said.
CWO3 Veal came striding to the ring, her second in tow. Esther had seen pics of Veal before she’d become a gladiator. She’d been a big woman, a shot-putter on the Marine track and field team. But that was nothing compared to what she was now. Almost as tall at the d’relle she was going to face, she probably outweighed her opponent. Her muscles were huge, all genetically augmented, and she’d loss almost all female characteristics. The only feminine things about her was her glorious red and yellow hair, accented by the two braids for her two kills hanging across the left side of her face.
Esther felt a surge of pride, both as a Marine and as a human being. The genetic modification the gladiators underwent had a price. If a gladiator didn’t get killed in the ring, she’d die of the Brick, Boosted Regeneration Cancer. Twenty percent of Marines who’d gone through regen came down with the Brick. Her father had. But it normally could be managed. With the crimes against nature that the gladiators had to go through to achieve their size, the Brick was deadly. They had at most five years before it claimed them.
“Iron Shot!” Delany said, the fanboy evident in his voice.
CWO3 Veal had reached the side of the ring where she stood for a moment before reaching behind her. Her second handed the gladiator her sword. Although it dwarfed Esther’s dress sword, it was essentially the same weapon, a Marine Corps mameluke. There had been much discussion about that. Iron Shot was the only current gladiator with a mameluke, and she was one of five Marines in the corps of gladiators.
Esther felt her tension rise. CWO3 Veal had made somewhat of a name for herself for her hakas. Everyone leaned forward to see what she was going to do. She didn’t unsheathe her sword, which was surprising, but stood there, staring at her opponent before breaking into motion.
The gladiator, with exaggerated, long-legged steps, moved to the center of the ring, drew her sword, then placed the scabbard on the sand, one end facing her opponent, the other back to the ten gladiator witnesses. She then placed her mameluke on the ground, making an X with the scabbard. She slowly backed up, and raising her arms gracefully over her head, started her haka. Stepping slowly, she touched each of the four quadrants made by the X, feet barely touching. Gradually, she built up the speed, her legs blurring into motion while her upper body remained still.
“A sword dance!” someone murmured.
Esther recognized it. She’d seen Scottish Sword dances on the holos, most done by lithe, petite dancers. Seeing the huge gladiator nimbly dance around the sword and scabbard was mesmerizing.
Esther kept expecting her to miss, to hit her sword. This was not a dancer’s prop—this was a real sword with a real blade, one with which she would soon take into battle.
Iron Shot’s feet flew through the steps, landing in each quadrant in turn, barely missing the sharp blade that lay there, waiting to cut an errant foot. Then she added bending to the side, one upraised arm reaching almost to the sand before coming upright to repeat the move on the other side, all the time her feet beating tattoos.
When she added spinning, the watching lieutenants burst into cheers. This was amazing, the best haka Esther had ever seen.
With a final flurry of spinning and steps, Iron Shot hooked the hilt of her sword with her foot and lifted it spinning in the air. As it came back down, she snatched it out of the air and converted the move into the challenge lunge with a loud shout.
Challenge issued.
Everyone one in the room watching jumped to their feet, screaming. Esther could hear the entire club erupt as a couple of hundred Marines screamed out their appreciation.
The d’relle waited almost ten seconds before she got up. She almost slid into her initial lunge, then started spinning around the ring, orbiting the gladiator. She did twelve huge spinning jumps in a row, her sword singing through the heavy air.
“Look at that. Iron Shot’s enjoying the d’relle’s dance!” Gator said.
Esther thought the XO was right. CWO3 Veal was watching the d’relle’s every move with slight smile on her face.
It was a pretty good dance, Esther had to admit, powerful and graceful at the same time. She ended with a flourish, down on one knee, sword pointed at the gladiator.
Challenge accepted.
Then, the d’relle did something unusual, very unusual. Instead of retreating to the edge of the ring, instead of launching an immediate attack, she bowed low at the waist, pulling all four arms up at the elbows, exposing the back of her crest and neck.
“Do it!” someone shouted.
Esther knew what he meant. Esther could end the fight with one blow, killing the d’relle and reclaiming New Budapest.
Something told her that the gladiator wouldn’t. Honor was the way of the Klelthos, as her father had discovered. She didn’t know CWO3 Veal other than what was on the holos, but she didn’t think dishonor was part of her makeup.
The d’relle slowly straightened up from her honor bow and stared at CWO3 Veal. Tamara stood still, then repeated the bow to her opponent—to the gasps of the everyone in the room. She stayed low for several heartbeats, her neck exposed, before straightening back up herself. The d’relle nodded once at Tamara before raising her sword.
“Freaking amazing,” Delany said from beside Esther.
And then the fight was on. Both d’relle and human darted in
and out, swords almost too fast to follow. Normally these fights were over within 30 seconds with either red human or blue Klethos blood staining the sand of the ring. This fight went past 30 seconds, past a minute. It was a beautiful, deadly dance. They were dance partners.
Esther knew what a parry and riposte were, if for no other reason than Queen Killer, the Hollybolly flick of Celeste, the first superstar among the new female gladiators. There had been resistance to the change in genders, which was predicated by the Klethos refusing to fight men, once they realized human physiology, thinking it dishonorable. Celeste changed all of that, and now it was simply accepted. Esther wasn’t an expert in swordplay. Marines didn’t use them in combat, after all. But still, she could appreciate expertise at work, and that was what she was seeing.
She gasped with the rest when the d’relle almost took off COW3 Veal’s left hand, leaving it dangling by a thread of tissue. Still they fought on, scoring hits, mingling blood, red and blue, as they came together and broke apart. The d’relle darted in and the gladiator over-corrected. Esther didn’t understand sword-play, but she realized the danger, and she cried out when the d’relle ran her sword deep into the gladiator’s side.
She almost missed the gorgeous overhead swing by the gladiator, though, as it connected at the base of the d’relle’s neck, mameluke biting deep.
The gathered polliwogs cheered, but the cheers faded as the two warriors stared at each other, dropping their weapons. To Esther’s utter amazement, the two clasped arms, and supporting each other, sank to the ground.
On the holo, the UAM observers were shouting encouragement, but neither gladiator nor d’relle carried on the fight. They sat, facing each other, arms clasped as their blood mixed in the sand.
“What’s going on?” Delany asked. “Why don’t they do something?”
Esther didn’t know how much time had passed while the two stared at each other. Five, ten minutes? Or an eternity?
The d’relle started leaning forward, ever so slowly, and finally, unable to stave off death, collapsed onto CWO3 Veals’ lap.
Esther's Story: Recon Marine (The United Federation Marine Corps' Lysander Twins Book 2) Page 13