The Exiled Earthborn

by Paul Tassi

  Standard tools of warfare weren’t to be forgotten either. Lucas began running through practice assault formations with all members of his training squad in full combat gear. He learned how to clear corners, breach doorways, engage enemies behind cover, and a host of other tactics that made him part of a singular unit with the rest of the squad. Though they still towered over him, no one dared think of him as a weak link any more.

  What little he saw of Asha before, he saw even less of her now. Phase Two training left almost zero free time, and even meals were inhaled on the fly. He’d occasionally pass by her training chamber, watching her practice the same techniques he was learning with her own squad. He silently cheered when she landed a cross kick on Maston during a training bout, but his stomach clenched when he took her by the leg on her next try and slammed her down to the ground like a paper doll.

  Lucas had gleaned select pieces of information in passing from his squad as he trained. It was revealed that for all his physical prowess, Maston was not tank-bred. He may have had good genes, coming from a long line of military nobility, but no one spent billions to purposefully craft him the way the other Guardians had been assembled. His skill and power was earned, much in the same way Lucas was trying to earn his own now. Still, it didn’t make Lucas hate him any less.

  Graduation day was fast approaching, but Lucas was kept in the dark about what his final test would be. He’d passed all his Phase Two training exercises with flying colors since his stint in the med bay, and he’d grown stronger and tougher than he’d ever been on Earth or aboard the Ark. He felt like he was ready for anything as he was called to assemble in the large water chamber on the fifth-level deck. The room was cavernous and tanks three stories high glowed blue with liquid fuel for the Spear. In addition to the twenty training Guardians, Maston, and Asha, Alpha was present as well, looking around nervously as he didn’t want anything in the room to sustain damage during whatever was about to happen.

  The chamber was dark, with only the ambience of the tanks shedding light on the group. Maston spoke in a solemn tone once they were all in place.

  “High marks in training exercises are one thing, but to be a Guardian there has to be more to you than what can be read off a scroll. You’ve proven you deserve to be in this chamber, but that’s all you’ve proven. Today we will see how deep your commitment to our continent and our planet runs. Needless to say, because of your … place of origin, you have more to prove than any Guardian who has come before you.”

  Lucas wasn’t sure where this was going, but it sounded sufficiently ominous. It was freezing in the vast room, and the air smelled like burnt metal.

  “The female is first,” he said, as if he were talking about zoo animals. “Secure him below.” He motioned toward Lucas. Wrev and Axon gestured for Lucas to exit the room. He wouldn’t get to see her trial? He supposed it was in order to not give him an advantage by knowing what to expect. He locked eyes with Asha one last time before the metal doors shut behind him. She smiled, but Lucas caught a glimpse of panic in her face.

  A full deck below in a small storage space, Lucas was left alone. He hadn’t even bothered asking either of the guards who waited outside the door what was happening, as they were obviously sworn to silence. Lucas couldn’t hear a sound from upstairs and tortured himself envisioning every sort of scenario he could be facing. It would have been annoying if Maston had pitted him and Asha against each other, something he had half expected, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Lucas was secretly hoping he’d have to face Maston himself in some sort of duel, but there was nothing to indicate that was what lay before him. His knee was bobbing up and down uncontrollably like it had the first day on the promenade in front of millions of Sorans, but Asha was not there to steady it.

  Lost in his own head, Lucas was unsure how much time had gone by in the cramped storage room before Axon and Wrev reentered and summoned him to return to the water chamber. As the doors opened, the Guardians all stood before them, but Asha was nowhere to be found. The metal floor beneath his boots was wet and seemed like it had been cleaned mere moments ago.

  “Where is she?” Lucas demanded of Maston who stood in the middle of the group with his arms crossed.

  “Is she hurt?”

  Silence.

  “Did she pass the test?”

  Silence.

  “Answer me, damn it!”

  “She is alive,” Maston said coolly. “But one more word and you will fail automatically.”

  Lucas held his tongue, forced to be content with his answer. Though “alive” could have any number of different caveats attached to it. Lucas eyed the wet floor worriedly.

  “Your final trial begins now. A single opponent. Defeat him, and you will be welcomed into our ranks. Fail, and we will tolerate you on this mission, but you will never be Guardian.”

  Lucas cared less about being a Guardian and more about proving to Maston that he would not be beaten. He would win.

  “Step forward,” said Maston to no one directly. But the recipient of his command obeyed nonetheless.

  Silo.

  Lucas knew the game here. Maston had picked a Guardian that was a friend of his. Surely under threat of excommunication, Silo would be forced to go full-steam at Lucas, but it could have been worse. Lucas had already knocked Axon out cold, a man even bigger than the enormous Silo, and he’d also faced two opponents in the ring at times. Silo would certainly be a challenge, but he felt confident. Lucas nodded at him, but Silo surprisingly refused to acknowledge him. He was taking his newfound role of challenger seriously. But his face told a different story. He looked … angry.

  As amiable as the two had been, Lucas had never seen Silo fight for more than a minute or two at a time when he’d glanced into one of Asha’s training sessions. Presumably she had been assigned to fight someone from Lucas’s squad. He looked around the room and saw that Kiati was missing as well. Were they in the med bay? It had likely been a brutal brawl, knowing the two of them.

  Lucas was snapped out of his thoughts by Maston’s voice.

  “Begin.”

  Silo charged at him with the force of a ten-ton elephant and a roar to match. Lucas barely reacted in time to roll over the top of him and avoid the human battering ram, a move he’d picked up in training a week earlier. He was light on his feet and dodged swing after swing from Silo, landing a few of his own inside the man’s ribs. Unfortunately for Lucas, it felt like he was pummeling metal.

  Silo fought like a man possessed, and it was clear his rage was somehow authentic. A thrust punch straight out of a Jartanne scroll caught Lucas in the solar plexus and rocketed him a few feet backward while he tried to keep himself from tumbling to the floor. Another few swings connected shortly after and Lucas found his head spinning as he desperately avoided seeking comfort on the ground. He caught Silo’s neck with a well-executed high kick and jammed an elbow into his eye on his next spin. Lucas was a fan of Baali-stanno ever since he’d heard the story of Sha’len, the Xalan-slaying monk. As Silo was practically as tall as a Xalan, it seemed like the appropriate technique.

  Every expression in the room was unchanged as the two traded blows in the dim light. Even Alpha was stone-faced, and for once not constantly checking a readout or data nodule on his wrist display.

  Lucas was cut and blood spilled into his eye, which he was forced to rub away with grimy hands. Silo too was bleeding, and red gushed from his mouth and dripped onto the floor below, mixing with the water that had recently cleaned it. Lucas imagined Asha’s bout had yielded similar results.

  But it was far from over. Silo charged in with another flurry of strikes, which were lightning quick for a man of his size. Lucas blocked what he could, but found aching ribs and growing nausea in his gut after the assault was over. He bought some time by hacking away at Silo’s knees with a series of low kicks, another Baali-stanno tactic, and temporarily paralyzed one of Silo’s legs with a punch to his quadriceps in a specifically targeted nerve cluster. Silo had
to limp back and shake the rust out of his dead leg, his eyes still burning with anger. Fighting this intensely made sense from a following-orders perspective, but why the unbridled fury?

  There was little time to consider as a quick roll and a lunging grab from Silo had Lucas in an unfortunate headlock. He hammered away at Silo’s midsection with his free hand, and only when he slammed his skull into his chin was he able to shake himself free. Two quick blows to the ear made Silo back off once more.

  Exhaustion was setting in now as Lucas’s hands and feet felt like they were dipped in lead. For each new barrage of strikes, his knuckles became even more mangled, and it was no longer fair to assume the blood on each combatant was their own.

  Lucas caught a boot to the chest that reminded him of a certain kick from a towering metal robot just a few weeks earlier. Silo had a power behind his strikes that was physically impossible for Lucas to match. Writhing on the ground, he barely rolled away in time as Silo came crashing down onto the metal grating with a knee meant to cave his head in.

  Speed was the only option. Lucas flipped up to his feet and caught Silo in the chest and face with three quick kicks in succession. Avoiding another straight kick, he punched Silo in his extended kneecap, causing him to land painfully in the wake of the kick. Another two blows and the leg was even more useless than it was before. It only took one more low sweep to get him to the ground.

  He tried to rise, but Lucas planted a boot on his shoulder and shoved him down. He tried again, but Lucas floored him again with a straight punch that shattered the bridge of his nose, causing blood to spray everywhere. One last time, the bloodied man tried to get up and Lucas brought down both his fists in an axe handle that knocked him out completely.

  He had won.

  Hadn’t he?

  Lucas looked around the room. There were no cheers, there was no celebration. Even Alpha looked grim. The mood was tense, but Lucas’s heart rose as the room’s doors opened and Asha limped inside. She was very obviously hurt, but alive as Maston had promised. She’d missed the fight, but would be there to see him pass the test. But she too wore a stoic expression like all the rest.

  Maston eyed Asha as she entered, then slowly walked toward Lucas.

  “He’s out. I beat him,” Lucas said with his arms extended. “Is that it? Do I pass? Or do you want a piece of me too now, Watchman?” Lucas’s mind was hoping that was the case, but there was no way his body could handle it.

  As he approached, Maston took out his silver energy pistol. Lucas tensed instinctively, but the gun remained at Maston’s side until he reached Lucas. When it was lifted, the handle was presented first, the barrel pointed at Maston himself.

  “You’ve won,” he said coldly. “Now end the fight with honor.”

  Maston pressed the gun sideways into Lucas’s chest and released it, forcing him to catch it on instinct.

  “What?” Lucas said in disbelief. He couldn’t mean—

  “Kill him.”

  Lucas looked down at Silo who was slowly coming around.

  “You’re insane,” Lucas said. “You’d have me kill one of your best men, for what?”

  “For his failure,” Maston said, now walking backward away from him. “Any Guardian who would fall in this arena to someone with inferior genetics and limited training does not deserve to wear the uniform. He has outlived his usefulness. The combatants agreed to this stipulation after they were chosen.”

  Lucas looked down at the gun, then over at Asha. There were tears in her eyes, and Lucas realized something. She’d come back, but where was Kiati? She hadn’t … This was a joke, right? A set-up. But things started to add up in his mind. The clean floor, the rage in Silo’s eyes. What had he just witnessed before Lucas came in? What would make him fight so viciously? Asha stared into his eyes and mouthed two words.

  “Do it.”

  Lucas’s head was spinning. He was in cryo, right? In a pod maybe? This was just a nightmare. She couldn’t have … But Lucas thought back to the woman who had left him for dead on Earth, the one who had tricked and murdered her way through the desolate landscape, surviving at the expense of others. He thought that person was gone, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe deep down she’d never changed.

  “Do it,” she whispered again, this time more fiercely.

  Lucas looked down at Silo who was now blinking at him through bruised, bloody lids. Lucas raised the pistol with a shaking hand. Silo nodded weakly toward him, finally returning Lucas’s sign of respect from the start of the fight. The rage in his eyes had subsided.

  Lucas’s finger twitched, coming within a millimeter of the trigger. Every muscle in his body was contorted into knots. He was nauseous, dizzy, and in anguish, though not from the fight he’d just endured. This was asking something impossible.

  It was impossible.

  “No,” he said forcefully as he threw the gun down on the floor. It clattered toward Maston, who looked up with that same hateful smile.

  “Congratulations,” he said. “You’ve failed.”

  “I don’t care,” Lucas said angrily. “I’m not a barbarian. I don’t need this.” He turned, but stopped as Maston called again.

  “You really should see this,” he said. “Don’t you want to witness your companion’s triumph?”

  Lucas turned back and saw a holoscreen being projected into the middle of the room. It was so large, the three-dimensional figures in it were actually life size, and rested on the ground where Asha and Kiati’s fight had taken place. Asha watched the reenaction of her own bout intently, nervously glancing up at Lucas periodically.

  After going blow for blow, each side battered and bloody, Asha finally landed a knockout kick under Kiati’s jaw that sent her sprawling. Again, Maston approached her with the gun and uttered similar words to her as he had to him.

  Lucas didn’t want to see this, but he was rooted, unable to tear himself away. For what seemed like a year, she leveled the gun at Kiati’s head, shaking as he had. Then, without warning, it fired. The recorded echo boomed throughout the chamber as it assuredly had when it was live. Asha staggered backward, dropping the gun. But then Lucas saw something that almost knocked him over.

  Kiati slowly rose up from the ground, unharmed by a blast that didn’t actually fire a thing at her. The image disappeared and Maston walked into the center of the chamber.

  “Rewired test fire mode,” he said, pointing to an indicator on his gun. “Says it’s live, but no energy output.”

  Lucas felt even more sick.

  “Of course I wouldn’t sacrifice a single Guardian to either of you, are you mad?”

  He was almost laughing now.

  “But it proves you lack the will to make the hard choices. Out there, mercy will get you killed. Will get all of us killed, or worse. And that is why you will never be one of us.”

  “Do it,” she’d said. She tried to tell him it was all a ruse, but he didn’t understand. But how had she done it, believing it would kill the woman in front of her? It was hard to believe. And it was ugly. Very ugly.

  In the med bay a short while later, Alpha was treating Lucas’s wounds, which were numerous, though he wasn’t on the brink of death like a few weeks ago. Three beds down was Kiati, sleeping off her injuries sustained during her encounter with Asha, but still very much alive.

  “These Sorans,” Alpha said as he shot cauterizing gel into a cut on Lucas’s chest, “their cruelty almost rivals that of the Xalans. Though in Paragon training, death would not have been a mere illusion.”

  “I’m done with them,” Lucas said. “All of them.”

  “All of them?” came a voice in the doorway.

  It was Asha. She wore fresh fatigues with a winged Guardian emblem stamped on the sleeve. An emblem both their uniforms had long been missing.

  “I shall leave you two to discuss present circumstances,” said Alpha as he shuffled past her and out of the room.

  “I told you to do it,” she said. “I wasn’t supposed to come back,
but I had to try and let you know.”

  “And who told you to do it?” Lucas asked, his question laced with anger. “You had every reason to believe you’d kill her,” he said, motioning to the unconscious Kiati nearby.

  “And how many times did you pull the trigger in that situation back on Earth?” she shot back.

  “I didn’t with you.”

  “Only because Alpha stopped you. I saw the look in your eyes. You would have left me in that crater with a hole in my head without a second thought.”

  Lucas wasn’t sure he could deny that, given the situation at the time, but he pressed on undeterred.

  “This was different. This wasn’t about survival. This was about joining their little murderous club.”

  “Are we honestly going to lecture each other about murder here?” she said, annoyed.

  “Kiati and Silo are not cannibals or separatists trying to kill us.”

  “You think they’re our friends?” she was shouting now. “You think they would have hesitated to snap our necks if Maston ordered them to?”

  “Yeah,” Lucas said, “I’ve seen what Maston’s orders can do.”

  “He was teaching you,” Asha said. “You were stronger than you ever were after that ordeal.”

  “Now you’re defending Mars Maston?” Lucas said in disbelief. “A man who ordered me to be beaten half to death and did god knows what on Vitalla?”

  “Vitalla wasn’t his fault!” Asha blurted out, almost immediately realizing her mistake.

  The resulting pause was an eternity.

  “He told you about Vitalla?” Lucas asked slowly. “And you didn’t tell me? What’s he done to you?”