The Sword

by J. M. Kaukola

  Hill struck him, and again, these blows without a single ounce of mockery. Firenze tried to block them, and he tasted cloth. A thigh slammed over his face, locked his shoulders to the mat.

  The movement stopped. Firenze had a moment, to think, to gasp for air. Hill hopped from his hold, snatched up Firenze’s legs, and twisted them up. He threw them down, and glared, hard - not at Firenze, though, but at Sergeant Clausen, who stood at the opposite corner of the mat, an expression frozen between laughter and exasperation.

  "Stop!" Clausen ordered. He shook his head, and snapped, "Princess! That's two broken legs, and one busted shoulder! You aren't doing anything, you're dead!" He paused, turned to Hill, and asked, “And, Reaper? You had to break his legs after you won?”

  The pressure vanished. Hill released him, and staggered away. Firenze lay on the mat for a moment, gasped for breath, and tried to focus. A hand grabbed his, and pulled him to his feet.

  He stumbled to the wall, leaned on it, arms over his head, and tried to breath.

  Behind him, he could hear Hill cursing, as he limped, back and forth, on the squeaking mat.

  Clausen’s voice cut through the mental fog, “Everyone, pay attention! This is what happens, when you flash your ugly bits at the enemy.”

  Hill, voice strained and short of breath, replied, “Sorry, Sarge. Didn’t think Princess was gonna ring the bells.” He groaned, and Firenze could almost picture him doubled over, hands on his knees. Hill asked, “Hey, Princess? Little warning, maybe? ‘Hey, Reaper, just so you know, I’m a little bitch who kicks people in the dick!’ Common fucking courtesy.” He followed with a pained laugh.

  Clausen said, "Nice job, kid. Hell of a fight. Point of note: that kind of shit only works on someone not trying to kill you. Life and death on the line, the other guy will just finish you, and then realize how much horrible pain they're in. If your goal is to leave them a fond memory, sure, go on. Otherwise, forget pain. Disable, or kill. Every time."

  Firenze turned, and nodded. “Got it.”

  Hill was still leaned against the ropes, face ashen, as if he was fighting the urge to vomit. Beside him, Kawalski was obviously swallowing the urge to laugh. She punched Hill on the shoulder, hard, and told him, “Quit your bitching, Reaper. It’s not like you need those.”

  Hill snapped back, “Fine. You come in here, and let Princess cunt-punch you! Tell me how funny it is!”

  All that earned was a snicker.

  Hill turned to Firenze, and dropped his glare. He admitted, "Nice shot."

  "Thanks?" Firenze said. He tried to move his arm, work the soreness from the bones.

  "No problem." Hill said, with a wince.

  "Okay, pack it up.” Clausen ordered. "Final score: Reaper eight, Princess one. It’s a comeback!"

  Firenze didn’t know how he did it. Clausen was always so cool. So level. Confident. Every time he spoke, it was just certainty, unflappable calm, and pure competence. It didn’t matter what happened, how wrong something went, the Sergeant kept a laser-focus. It was ‘that needs to happen’ and ‘get this done’, adapt and respond. Just once, Firenze wished he could muster half that composure.

  Instead, Firenze was covered in sweat, headgear to his shorts, drenched and stinking. His breaths were ragged, his arms and legs shook, and every muscle burned. At least, this time, the burn felt a little good. He’d done something, even if it was just punching Hill in the cojones. The ache wasn't shame, it was reinforcement. He’d knocked some measure of weakness out of himself.

  He was getting better, he knew it. Eight and one was better than nine and zero. Sometimes, he didn't even survived the sims. He’d come kilometers from where he’d started.

  It just wasn’t enough.

  If this goes wrong, it’ll be my fault.

  He pushed that horrible voice out of his head, and snatched up his towel. There wasn't a choice. No matter what the Colonel said, he didn't have option. If he walked away, he was dead. They'd take him, scrag his box, and throw him down a deep, dark hole. There was no way out but forward. So he fought on.

  "Hey, Princess!" Hill called out. "You owe me a drink."

  Firenze dropped his towel, and glanced up. Hill knelt across from him, grin plastered on his face as he tucked the flaps of his shirt back under his belt. Firenze stared, in confusion, tried to sort out what he’d heard.

  "You heard me. Now, normally, I don't let people smack my balls until they buy me a drink. Ergo, you owe me a drink." Hill explained, with a horrible emphasis on the foreign word. Behind him, Kawalski laughed into her sleeve.

  She clarified, "What Reaper's trying to say is, tomorrow’s rest day. We're going to the bar. You need to be there."

  Firenze asked, "There's a bar in this shithole?"

  "Scooch won't leave home without it." Hill replied. "For rest days only, but it's solid."

  "It'll get you drunk." Kawalski offered. "So it works."

  Firenze froze. He’d planned on tuning his counter-intrusion kit. Lauren had suggested a couple of tweaks, and he’d been looking forward to implementing them. He opened his mouth, to demur, but he was cut off.

  “Don’t bitch out, Princess.” Hill said. “You can cuddle your computer tomorrow.”

  Kawalski snorted, and said, “I bet you’ve got some real sick shit on there, don’t you? You gonna share?”

  “That’s not- I’m not-” Firenze tried to protest. He glanced to the door, looked for an escape.

  Instead, he saw Clausen, the great mountain of a man leaned against the frame, nonchalantly updating his tablet. Clausen worked diligently, efficiently, whistled silently as he flicked the touch screen to and fro. As if prodded, the sergeant glanced up, and met Firenze’s gaze. Clausen smirked, nodded, and went back to work. Firenze got the message. You’re going. You don’t have a choice. Don’t make it look bad. Fantastic.

  Firenze turned back to Hill, smiled broadly, and lied, “Sure, sounds like fun!”

  "Hell yeah! Roger that!" Hill said. "Get cleaned up, first. Can’t have you getting nerdstink on everything. Might scare off the ladies." He turned, to wiggle his eyebrows at Kawalski, in a grotesque pantomime of seduction. Her reply was to shove him from the mat.

  She turned to Firenze, and ordered, “Twenty-one hundred, be there.”

  And that was that.

  Half an hour later, Firenze found himself at the Kessinwey "bar". It met the minimum definition of a bar, at least. It was, in fact, long table over which alcohol was served. Anything more was sorely lacking. The bartop was a deactivated conveyor, the freezers were coolant units from a dead assembly line, the dart boards were hung from control panels, and the billiards tables were holoprojected on flipped-over drive baseboards. The tables were workbenches, the seats were scrounged from cockpits and cabins. Clausen called it 'workable', Hill called it 'classy', Firenze was terrified of dying from drinking coolant, since Rutman brewed his beer inside god-knows-what.

  The beer itself was good, if a bit strong, with an aftertaste clinging to the roof of his mouth. Rutman called it a "Turbo Ale", but wouldn’t give any more information. Still, the second drink was easier than the first, and the third downright palatable. After a glass, he stopped worrying about running back to his room. After a couple, he was downright sociable.

  Not that he did much talking. Most of the time was spent swapping stories, ones known so well that any one of five people could tell it, with call-outs and in-jokes so dense he had to keep notes. He’d thought he’d had some good stories, from dronetown and school. He’d planned on trying to tell one, but by the time Hill got "-and when you see the mortar teams running, you don't ask questions. You try and keep up." Firenze knew that he was horribly outgunned. That was fine, though, because he’d nearly fallen out of his chair from another cackling fit.

  For a few moments, he could almost forget that he was sitting in a desolate hole, preparing to die. Almost.

  Hill continued, "-so there we were, trying to extract this sumbitch, and we've gotta bug a vertol ride.
Now, we're tired, we're ragged, and this VIP is about four hundred pounds over the damn weight limit for the bird. So we're standing outside the vertol, chucking gear out the sides while the Path is shooting up the whole damn place, and the Captain keeps asking me, 'Corporal! Is this bird under weight yet?' And I'm just ripping out seats and fire extinguishers and throwing them down the side of the compound until we finally get light enough to fly.

  "Now, we get about two klicks out of the city, and boom-ba-boom, a fuckin' hyvel blows the left turbine right out. Kapow. Now we're doing loopdeloops over the jungle, and shit's flyin' out the doors like its a fire-sale. Damn thing breaks up, and the part that I'm strapped in goes with the intact engine. Interesting thing, Princess, is that the V-30 keeps fuel inside these really cool little sealing containers, and most of the systems run themselves. This damn bird can fly itself home without half its fuselage." Hill leaned forward, slurred his words as he motioned around. He'd been hitting the drinks a little harder than most.

  Desallo, one of the combat engineers, cut in, "What that means is, right now, Reaper and the VIP are strapped into part of the plane, that is now flying itself. Except its got no control, and it's doing terminal ballet over the deep jungle."

  "Right!" Hill agreed. "And the damned Pathies won't stop shooting at us. So we spin out over god's country, crash land klicks from bumfuq, and have to march through the nastiest jungle on earth, just to get back to the extraction point. Did I mention that the Path were still shooting at us?"

  Firenze agreed. "About four times."

  "Good, 'cause they were. Anyhow, we crash into this mud pit, and I get to the veep, and bastard went and caught a piece of shrapnel on me. Dead as dirt, big ol' hole in his head, pop. Problem is, my mission is to extract him, dead or alive. So, I start dragging his four hundred pound corpse through the jungle. Radio's dead, everything's cooked, I've got one banged up subgun, two magazines, and half a day's rations. It's near boiling out, there's about one hundred klicks to the green zone, and I've got to drag Porky the Veep through a Path division to get there."

  Rutman jumped in, "So, there he is, out of contact, out of luck, and still stuck on mission. What does his happy ass do?"

  "My happy ass marched itself to extraction, that's what it did." Hill replied.

  "And how?" Rutman prodded. "Tell Princess how you did it…"

  "I went through a lot of shit! I had to adapt!" Hill excused. "Path patrols, snakes, mosquitoes, malaria-"

  "So," Rutman finished, "he catches malaria somewhere in the fucking jungle, dragging this bloated corpse through the swamps. Two weeks later, he staggers over the perimeter of an airbase tarmac, he's half naked, armed with an empty Path pistol and a bowie knife, rolling this black and blue thing in front of him, wearing leaves like a crown. Completely basted out of his head, like he'd been licking dart frogs or something."

  "I had malaria, Scooch! Malaria!" Hill protested.

  "So the Lieutenant waltzes on over, pissed as hell that this is occurring during a base inspection, and demands, 'what in the seven hells are you rolling onto my tarmac'. Reaper just looks up and says, 'Diplomatic VIP from Coreza, sir. Also doubles as flotation device, bunker, and downhill kinetic weapon, sir!' Well, the family was standing right there, and they're horrified, so the Lieutenant tries to patch it up, and yells, 'God damn it, soldier, all we needed was his identicard!' And Hill just turns, says, 'Well piss on that, sir, I'd have used him for a campfire.' and fucking passes out, right there on the tarmac, just belly-flops! I think the el tee had a fucking stroke."

  Firenze tried not choke. Around the table, others laughed, except for Hill, who just sat there in earnest silence, completely unperturbed by the absurdity of his tale, and perhaps confused as to why it was so funny.

  Kawalski glanced to him, blurry-eyed, and said, “You think that was bad, Princess, you should have seen Tansana. Scooch, remember that fucking rook?”

  Rutman cackled, and slapped Hill on the back, so hard that the latter man nearly hit the table. Hill popped up, a confounded look on his face, but Rutman demanded, “Reaper? Remember that kid in Tansana?”

  “Donkey? Course!” Hill declared. He turned to Firenze, leaned forward, as if to communicate some great secret, and whispered, “He’s the hero of the Authority. True fucking steel.”

  Despite himself, Firenze asked, “What-”

  Rutman jumped on the story. “Okay, so, we’re moving across Tansana - Path has the city, locked down tight, they’re blasting vertols out of the sky, and they’re bunching the AA in with civies, so orbitals can’t just scrag ‘em. We’ve gotta clear this quench gun-”

  Hill chimed in, “Big fucking gun. Four centimeter, hopper fed. Sounds like a goddamn lightning storm. Pathies got it tucked into a church yard. Local legs tried to move on it, went quiet, we get told to go poke at it.”

  Rutman continued, “We get caught on a balcony. Big stone thing. Dark age building. I mean the whole deal: pillars, stained glass, fucking ceramic plant troughs. Architectural fucking wonder. A real treasure.”

  “Path shoot it to shit.” Hill added.

  Rutman said, “So, we’re all lying prone, beneath this three foot stone wall. Beautiful red stone. And across the courtyard, there’s this bell tower, and some fucking asshole with a heavy k-gun. Anyone stands up, they’re getting blown in half. Guy’s a hell of a shot-”

  “Never let anyone talk you up a tree.” Diaz advised, from the end of the table. Diaz was a marksman, real introverted. A marksman. Firenze hadn’t ever heard him speak. Diaz glanced down, at the stains on his nearly-empty glass, and remarked, softly, “It’s a good rule.”

  “Why’s that?” Firenze asked.

  Kawalski answered, “Because, if you take a rifle up a tree in a warzone? You ain’t climbing back down.”

  Hill said, “Path ain’t too bright. But they got guts for days.”

  “And they can shoot.” Rutman said. “So, it’s me, Reaper, Dag, and Nugget - we’re all lying there, command keeps telling us that someone going to flank the goddamned sniper, and we need to stand by. We can’t crawl more than ten goddamn feet, because that oh-so-pretty stone has gaping fucking holes, there’s no hard cover unless you feel like sprinting ten meters through a kill zone, and, oh, yeah, we’re babysitting this fucking leg infantry.”

  “Kid is green as you, Princess.” Hill said. “His unit got cut up, and he’s the fucking radio tech without a link. He’s got about eight hundred feet of fiber on his back, no officer, no handset, and no TACNET. Useless as tits on a chest plate.”

  “But, he’s small. He’s got that outer-zone scrawny thing going on. Fucking stick arms, but thighs like a whole turkey. Probably has to run down rats to feed his fucking family. Reaper keeps looking at him, gets this real ‘thinking’ look on his face, and I swear, the kid’s about to piss himself.” Rutman had to stop, to regulate his breath, so he didn’t trip over his own words. He punctuated with a drink, and continued, “So I ask him, ‘what are you thinking?’. And he says, ‘I armed the hyvel’.”

  The data packed into Firenze’s skull gave that phrase meaning. The hyvel - hyper velocity rocket - was a man-portable antitank/anti-fortification weapon. It was stored in a telescoping tube on an infantryman’s back. To arm the rocket, a soldier would give it a quarter twist, and then pull it out to its full length. This motion would start the firing sequence, and, once taken, the weapon had to be discharged.

  Hill explained, “Look, no one was gonna out-shoot that guy. I thought I’d just knock down his goddamn nest.”

  Rutman said, “This is a predicament, because Hill’s gotta stand to shoot the hyvel. Which means someone has to distract the sniper-”

  “And that kid looks quick.” Hill said.

  “You didn’t!” Firenze cried out. “That poor kid-”

  Rutman says, “Now, this kid is scared shitless. The only reason he believes us is because we’re big-bad ASOC, but even we know this is a stupid fucking plan, and he can tell, so I tell him, ‘hey, you get ou
t there and draw fire, I will buy you all the drinks’. He tells me to fuck off. Hill looks at him, and says, ‘hey, kid, I will get you laid like a goddamned hero’. He’s still not buying it. So Dag tells him-”

  Kawalski interjected, “I tell him that I’ve got leverage on the local assholes, and that I will bail him out of whatever bullshit these two get him in.”

  Rutman nodded. “And this kid - probably doesn’t even fucking know how to shave, he’s starting to get into this. He’s terrified, but he’s gonna be the hero, so he starts taking off his fucking armor. Just pop, off comes the carapace. I’m staring at him, and he says to me, in this little-kid-angel-voice, ‘it won’t stop a k-gun, I need speed’. Mother fucker strips down to his fucking cartoon-donkey-covered shorts.”

  Rutman turned right to Firenze, and said, “So he pops up, arms flailing, and he sprints - I’ve never seen someone run so fucking fast - like he’s last to the food line, and the first shot misses him - blows a goddamn pillar in half-”

  Hill continued, “I pop up, lob a hyvel, and drop the tower. Done.”

  Rutman finished, “And this kid, this glorious, lunatic kid, he turns around, with this shit eating grin, his fucking donkey-decal boxers, and the biggest fucking terror-boner you’ve ever seen, and he asks, ‘am I a hero, yet?’. Mother fucking A.”

  “What happened to him?” Firenze demanded.

  “He became fucking legend.” Hill said, and raised his glass. “To Donkey. Hero of the fucking Authority.”

  They toasted to that.

  After, Firenze slipped away from the table, pleading biology. His bladder had turned murderous, under the tide of beers, but more to the point, he needed to escape the crowd. It wasn’t that he wasn’t enjoying himself. He was. But he was always a man for quiet corners and careful study, not for boisterous exchange. He could fake it, for a while - he’d trained hard at that - but it drained him.

  He’d stay. He was enjoying himself. But he’d stay, and engage from the edge of the social storm, not the eye.