Toni had never heard him speak bitterly before.
“I thought you loved the army, Corp.”
“You know, Toni, I hate the army. I hate today’s army, the one that exists. What I do love is the army the MEWAC could have been if there wasn’t so much bullshit flying around. Never forget this, kid. Even in times of peace the Enemy still exists. But this enemy is on our side. Every soldier napping on sentinel duty, every asshole sergeant with a chip on his shoulder, every officer making mountains out of molehills, is the enemy.
“And you’ve gotta watch out for the enemy. I heard what happened on your first day in the SIC, kid. That was just dumb. You think Ian’s your enemy? Take a better look around you. At least he was trying to do his job right. You’re the ones who screwed up, you were the enemy on that day. You gotta be true now, kid. A few months from now I might have to salute you, and the last thing I want before me is another sarge or officer with a chip on his shoulder. So be true, pay attention to your classes and make me proud, alright kid?”
The criticism bit deeply into Toni, mostly because he knew that Baylen was speaking from the heart of his own experiences, and there was no adequate retort for such words. He was also appalled at the idea that he would soon outrank the veteran standing beside him.
The weeks wore on at a snail’s pace and Toni kept putting in his best. The dope wasn’t all that fueled him anymore, his occasional conversations with Baylen having proven to be more powerful medicine, and his persistence finally began to pay off. The platoon had weekly field exercises to contend with, but on the Friday of their sixth week came the field navigation evaluation each would have to pass to qualify for their week-in-the-field.
The morning was spent under examination in the dimly-lit classroom, each examinee nearly touching his nose to the exam sheet in order to read the questions there. Toni was in the Zone that morning, his tics having subsided due to the scale of the challenge before him. By morning’s end and as a subdued platoon filed out of the freshly whitewashed building, he knew he had aced the challenge.
Lunch was heavy but Toni ate light, anticipating strenuous activity for the afternoon. Soon they would be tackling a navigation course, and he intended to finish before the Special One, as Ian had begun to be called.
Toni harbored no hostility towards his senior, having begun instead to view him as a rival. He had no illusions, however, about which of the two of them was the more capable.
At fourteen hundred hours, the SIT’s entire complement of fifteen recruits stood in formation under the eternal red sun, the orb’s heat turning the humidity from the wetter uniforms into steam as the drill team contemplated them. The lieutenant began to brief the platoon.
“The following examination will be comprised of a topographical course, followed immediately by an orientation course. I should add that the first course is essentially a treasure hunt, since at its end you will find an envelope with the printout map you will be needing for the second course. Each recruit will be set loose at five minute intervals. You will be armed with a map, a scale meter and a set of hectametric coordinates. If you happen to be caught together on any part of the course you will be failed. I should add that there would be no point in doing this anyway since the first three objectives are unique to each recruit.
“You will also each carry a GPS marker that will be on your corpse at all times. By collating the marker’s data at the end of your run we’ll know which objectives were reached and which were not. There will be penalties for failing an objective. If, however, you are unable to finish or you should fail to hand in your marker, you will find yourself privileged to continue your training ... in the FICs and far away from us. Is that clear?”
All present hollered their understanding in unison, and before long the drill team had handed out the gear and sorted the group into single file, the most senior of their number at the fore.
“Recruit Templeton, you have one minute to consult your map.” Baylen warned.
Ian put a knee to the ground and spread his map out, aligning it with his surroundings. He briefly consulted his coordinates and then placed the transparent scale meter over the map. After a quick look-around he stood, stowing the gear away as he patiently waited for the start signal. Thirty seconds later he was off at a sprint, disappearing into the bushes north of their position with no sign of slowing down.
The minutes passed by, Toni waiting patiently as the recruits before him were released into the wild. He didn’t worry about competing against Ian anymore; calmly he decided to run well within the limits of his body, consigning unto the God of the Underdogs the task of leading his rival astray.
“Recruit Miura, you have one minute to consult your map.”
Taking two quick steps forwards, Toni put a knee to the ground and spread the map out before him, taking care to orient it correctly. The effort proved to be a simple one, as he’d already seen his mates do the same only minutes ago. Consulting the initial coordinates on the slip of paper he’d been handed, he superimposed the scale meter over the map’s appropriate grid square and took note of his first objective. A smile came to his camouflaged lips.
The MEWAC water tower was visible from any point of the immediate area not covered in trees, and indeed as he peered south it was there to be seen, four reinforced concrete pillars supporting a cylindrical water tank up to a respectable height of 25 meters. Toni confidently stowed his gear and then set off at a canter at Baylen’s signal, noting that there were no significant obstacles to overcome, only a steep, continuous ascent to the crest that the tower occupied. Within four minutes he reached his objective, and as he slowed to a stop near the closest pillar he found the first snag of the day.
The navy blue envelope was clearly in view, tied as it was to one of the many rungs that ascended the northern pillar. The tower was, however, besieged by a massive growth of thorn bushes. How his instructors had managed to place the envelope without leaving their hides behind was beyond his understanding. It was also beyond his patience to discover how, and so he launched himself forward at a mad sprint, terribly aware he would be hating himself over the following few days.
As he reached the obstacle Toni pounced, catapulting himself towards the pillar in a ballistic trajectory. Curling into a tight ball, the recruit flew onwards until, as the pillar approached, he kicked his legs out and splayed both arms before him, aiming his hands at the nearest approaching rung. His legs connected first, colliding against the reinforced concrete a split-second before his hands clasped the rung. Strong as he was, however, inertia was stronger, and it was his helmeted skull that finally put a stop to his momentum, clashing against a higher rung with enough force to dent the steel.
So that’s how they did it, he thought in wonder, proud that he had managed to avoid the thorns entirely.
With a free arm he snatched the envelope from the rung and stowed it away in his pocket, and then he twisted his body and neck for a look-around. Slowly it dawned on him that he had been very mistaken.
There was no way his drill team had jumped to gain access to the pillar. The reason he knew that was because, if they had done so, they would then have had to contend with leaping without a running start directly into the thorn bushes themselves. And the bushes appeared entirely undisturbed, making it clear they intended to lose their virginity to the foolish recruit above them.
Plucking up his courage, Toni launched himself into the vegetation, fear morphing into horror as the bush’s tentacle-like branches attached themselves to his body. After several fruitless attempts to delicately weave his way out, Toni finally hid his hands in his armpits, lowered his center of mass and tucked his chin into his chest, presenting the offending thorns with the top of his dented helmet. He then forged a path among the thorns through brute force, arriving on the other side of the obstacle with spiny clumps of bush still attached to him.
Ignoring the vegetation and his numerous injuries, Toni went down on one knee and opened the envelope, finding that his sec
ond objective waited on the firing line of a deactivated shooting range due east. Swearing under his breath, he set off once more.
The shooting range posed no challenge, aside from a brief minute lost trying to locate the objective. He finally found the letter atop the range’s mast, requiring him to lower it by the halyard as one would a flag.
Toni’s third objective took him east, and his fourth further east still, bringing him close to the end of the map allocated to him. He was on his way to the fifth objective, a crest situated due south of his position, when he came across a disorientated Rakaia.
“Need some help?” He asked.
“No! I mean, yes! Oh –” she groaned, clearly hesitant with accepting assistance.
Toni shrugged and kept jogging.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“Delta Morana,” he replied over his shoulder, “still got a click of running ahead of me.”
“You’re going the wrong way,” she countered, her brow furrowing in concentration, “you should be descending, not moving towards high ground.”
“All deltas are summits, Tani, that’s why I’m moving to high ground. You’ve got your peaks and valleys confused.”
She yanked out a crumpled map and gave it a long, hard look.
“I knew that ...” she stated in an undertone.
“Good luck.” He shouted, already on his way.
Delta Morana was the kind of high point a lion would have enjoyed to rest on, had a lion been born in the history of the planet. The trees huddled together as they neared the summit, creating a continuous canopy, only to be interrupted by a collection of granite-grey rocky outcroppings. At their center a solitary white pillar presided, its presence forming in his mind the image of a puritan pastor preaching to his woefully sinful subjects.
The pillar’s northern face was unapproachable, and so Toni began to circuit the outcroppings from their eastern side, glad to be out of the sun due to the shade the densely packed trees afforded. Already his uniform was wet under his armpits, as well as where the Tier 1 travel-pack rested against his back. He gauged how best to reach his objective, keeping close to the rock face as he searched for a way in. A whizzing noise became apparent and he turned his head up towards the sound.
The rock struck him hard against his helmet, breaking its chin-strap and knocking him out cold.
Toni returned to consciousness with an unknown presence close beside him, feeling hands passing over his body as if healing by touch alone. Thank the gods I have been found, he thought in relief.
He wondered whether one of the family gods his father prayed to had arrived to rescue the firstborn son, or whether the pillar he had seen moments before had transformed into the pastor he’d imagined it as. He rested a tremulous hand on the priest’s shoulder in thanks, only to have it slapped brusquely away.
That just isn’t right, he considered, trying hard to focus on the stranger’s face.
Hazy features slowly sharpened until, eyes slowly widening in surprise, Toni found himself staring up at a very edgy Ian.
“Wha ... What in hell are you doing?” Toni demanded weakly.
“Something you’re not gonna like, mate ...” he retorted as he searched through his comrade’s vest pockets.
Toni tried to rise and received a stiff punch to the face, and he momentarily descended back into the grey abyss.
“Let go, let me go or I’ll break your fingers!” He suddenly heard someone growl, and he returned to consciousness to find Ian’s wrists firmly gripped in his own hands.
From his senior’s reddening fist hung a pendant with a fluorescent yellow GPS marker.
Inside Toni’s mind all the disjointed pieces began to fall into place, and a hot ball of rage suddenly ignited deep inside.
“You’ll break my fingers? How exactly will you do that, you son-of-a-bitch?” He roared as he began to rise.
Ian blinked stupidly for a brief moments. Then he twisted his wrists inwards and inflicted a vicious kick against Toni’s skull that laid him flat on his back again. Free of the vice-grip, the recruit then took off at a sprint. Toni’s tautened torso bounced back to a sitting position as if acted upon by a spring, the final assault serving to establish new priorities for the remainder of the day.
First he would find and kill Ian, and then he would complete his course.
Ian sprinted lithely into the eastern wilderness with Toni’s marker held in his fist, his furious junior in hot pursuit. The terrain was uneven and cluttered with obstacles, but it played in Toni’s favor; he had spent his all his youth exploring the farm and the surrounding wilderness, and his skill at tackling obstacles was perhaps the highest of the platoon.
“You bushwhacking, yellow, thieving motherfuckerrr! I’ll kill, I’LL KILL YOU!” He roared, his bruised body fueled by outrage into a leg-pumping frenzy. His thighs burned fiercely but he scarcely acknowledged the pain; in due time that pain would wrap around him like a python, but for the moment it was no worse than a rat-snake nipping at his legs.
On the other hand, he was closing the distance between them fairly quickly.
Ian suddenly made a left turn and began to forge a path northwards through the bushes. Toni glanced beyond and realized why: the way ahead was barred by an extensive growth of thorn bushes.
As the desperate pursuit continued, Toni considered what would happen if Ian were to escape. He was horribly certain that if he were to return to base without an explanation for his missing marker, he would be failed from the SIT. He was also quite certain that Ian had already first completed both courses before having decided to jinx his. But what he couldn’t understand was how Ian expected to get away with it. If the drill team were to read his marker’s data afterwards, they would discover that he had inexplicably returned to an objective of the first course even after finishing both of his. He couldn’t possibly hope to ...
And then it hit him.
Ian had evidently hidden his marker somewhere safe before going after Toni. Its data would give him all the alibi he needed, what with his uncle as LT and Mason strutting beside him.
Which meant that Toni’s future presently ran on two legs and was escaping him.
All of a sudden the two recruits came upon a wide, dried-up riverbed, its multitude of large, polished rocks presenting Ian with an unexpected obstacle to a clean getaway. A livid Toni ploughed into his back and for a brief moment both were airborne, and then they came crashing down onto the rocky ground.
The recruits rolled among the jutting rocks, Ian’s steel helmet clanging as it collided against granite. Toni stood quickly and faced his senior, finding the Leibenese already on his feet, upraised fists held high as he glared hatefully from between his scraped forearms. Toni’s jaw tightened with the prospect of pain.
He had no illusions regarding who between them was the better fighter.
Toni launched himself forwards and tried to tackle his adversary, only to receive a swift kick to the face that blocked his advance in an instant. He opened the distance and observed Ian’s fighting stance, blood coursing from his battered nose.
His stance appeared unapproachable, and his expression slowly became impassive as he bade his time.
Toni smiled.
“You must have trained hard from early on to fight so well,” he quipped, and he stooped down to pick up three good-sized pebbles, “but it’s clear to me you never grew up on a farm. Probably couldn’t throw a stone to save your life, could you?”
The pebble whizzed through the air, its movement a blur as it struck Ian’s upheld arm. He winced with sudden pain and gripped his wrist, only to be suddenly struck by a second pebble against his helmet. A third stone impacted against Ian’s jaw with a dull thwack, sending its victim down onto a knee as it escaped clattering among the rocks. Before Ian could recover Toni closed the distance and kicked his head hard enough to send the battered helmet clanging along the river bed with chin-strap twirling.
Ian clinched his junior’s legs and planted his
own squarely beneath his body, and then he promptly raised Toni high into the air, twisting his body before sending him crashing down onto the waiting rocks.
The impact expelled the air from Toni’s lungs with a hollow “humph”, and he clinched desperately to Ian’s torso as a wave of nausea nearly overcame him. His opponent calmly placed the palms of his hands against Toni’s chest and began to push inexorably, and he felt his grip slowly began to slip and weaken.
Toni stared at Ian’s splayed hands with eyebrows furrowed, suddenly realizing that there was no GPS marker there. He then remembered that he hadn’t seen the senior place it in his pockets during his escape.
Finally, he understood.
Toni released Ian and plowed a knee into his crotch. He managed to repeat the act twice before Ian clamped his legs together and rolled away. He stood and flashed his eyes over his surroundings, finding nothing. He then set off at a run, leaving his groaning adversary behind.
Following Ian’s escape route in the opposite direction, Toni’s eyes darted about for the fluorescent marker until, about four hundred meters from where he had intercepted his senior, he finally found it swaying on a branch well inside the sea of wild blackberry bushes they had skirted. Grimacing at what he was about to do, Toni bounded into the brambles at a sprint, halting four paces short of his objective due to the branches’ tearing embrace. Covering his bleeding head with his savaged arms, he forged a path through the remaining gap until he clutched the marker from its resting place. The hardness of the device against the palm of his hand felt divine. With a step back and an excruciating turn, he prepared to make his getaway.
Ian blocked his way out with shoulders hunched, bleeding chin tucked into his chest as he eyed his junior menacingly. There was nothing to be said between them. Toni pondered his chances were he to try and approach him.
Descent into Mayhem (Capicua Chronicles Book 1) Page 11