“No, of course not,” Bel Lissa conceded. “I just hope that she doesn’t try to find a way to turn our secret into credits.”
“Don’t worry yourself on that score,” Sarah assured her. “I will keep an eye on her and keep guiding her on the right course. Besides which, who would buy that information?”
“True enough,” Bel Lissa agreed. “Well, you’ve got her in with us now and I hope that she proves to be all that you expect.”
“She hasn’t disappointed me yet, Inish,” Sarah replied. “I am certain that she will be a valuable asset to the Agency when her time comes.”
Bel Lissa stood. “I hope so. Well, bian sarà to you, Sarah.” She left the room.
Now alone, Sarah leaned back on the couch, closed her eyes and rubbed at her temples. It had been a stressful night and she was glad for the solitude. Although Maya still thought that she had her freedom and even enjoyed an advantage, the girl was slowly gaining the sense of loyalty and attachment that Sarah needed her to have. And thanks to Skylaar’s support, the notion of formal training was becoming less and less repugnant to her every day.
The road ahead was still a long one, but she was certain now that she would eventually be able to mold Maya into the shape that she intended for her. The Goddess’s will would be done, whether Maya wanted it or not.
USSMC Training Facility, 75th Training Battalion, Hella’s World, Hecate System, Artemi Elant, United Sisterhood of Suns, 1043.02|01|02:28:33
Kaly marched along in silence, enduring the cold that numbed her face and made her exposed hands feel like they were on fire. Her platoon was headed for the weapons range, by way of a 4-kilometer march through the low hills that surrounded the training base. In reality, the range was only a quarter of a klick from the barracks, but going straight to their destination wasn’t the Marine way. Instead, Sa’Tela had opted to take them on “the scenic route.”
After all, Kaly thought, watching her breath mist the air, why waste a perfectly good opportunity to get in a little torture before breakfast? She smiled at her grim humor, but only a little; her lips had cracked from the daily extremes of heat and cold and it hurt to smile too widely.
Several icy minutes passed before the platoon finally reached its destination. There, Kaly and her companions were given an opportunity to unload their meal packs and eat.
The Corps had spared no expense in making its rations as delicious as they were nutritious, and they were one of the few comforts that the recruits were allowed to enjoy. Like many armies before them, the Sisterhood Marines had learned that a good, hot meal could make all the difference in a fighting force’s morale.
Some of the selections the stores had offered had been utterly foreign to Kaly, catering as they did to a wide divergence of tastes and customs, but when they’d stocked their packs for the march, she’d managed to find a few dishes that were both familiar and appealing. While the sun rose in the barren sky overhead, she sat on the ground and savored a self-heating plate of chikka eggs and biscuits, topped off with dashes of Ototsaa pepper sauce. As far as she could remember, this simple meal had never tasted as good as it had since she’d started Basic, and she dug into it with gusto.
She was just scooping up the last speck with her spork, when the DI’s announced that everyone was officially finished. They were told to put away their mealpacks, and assemble at the firing line.
This was a series of shallow depressions paralleling each other in the otherwise featureless sand, and facing a low line of dunes. At each spot, a small marker post displayed a number, and Kaly saw that there were enough places there for the entire platoon. Out on the dunes, another, larger group of signs marked out locations that corresponded to the positions in front of them. Beyond these, at the top of the largest dune, a final sign proclaimed the distance in meters.
Sa’Tela began with a review of the approved firing stances; standing, crouching and fully prone, followed by the range rules and safety measures. When she was finished, she had them demonstrate the stances and recite everything back to her.
This was more than just a desire on her part to feel reassured. It was also an integral part of the training process. Even though the recruits had already learned all of this, and more from the PTS feed, hands-on repetition helped to complete the inductive learning process and fully embedded the knowledge in their minds.
“Well,” Sa’Tela said at last. “I suppose we’re about as ready as we’ll ever be. I’m not too comfortable letting you silly cows handle live weapons, but the Corps gives me no choice. Take up your positions and try not to kill each other.” With this left-handed blessing, everyone stepped forwards to the firing line and took a place.
The DI’s then walked down the line, making sure that everyone had their blasters pointed downrange, and issued them live battery packs.
“All right!” Sa’Tela announced. “This will be a move-by-the numbers exercise. One: Charge-up! Insert your battery packs now.”
In unison, Platoon Carli slammed the ‘packs into their Mark 7’s with a loud clack that echoed across the desert. It was a sound that Kaly would eventually come to know all too well, and able to pick out of a forest of noises, anywhere. A sound that would cause her to tense reflexively in anticipation of combat.
At the present however, everything was still too new, too unfamiliar, for it to be anything more than a general component of her nervousness. Training with the energy rifles was at the very core of Marine education and she desperately hoped that she would make the grade. Those unfortunates who failed at this phase were processed out immediately, with no exceptions. The Grey Book stated it bluntly: “Every Marine is a riflewoman. Failure to qualify on the firing range consititutes a fundamental failure to be a Marine.”
Sa’Tela gave them the next order in the practice drill. “Two: Switch on your power.”
Kaly found the power-up switch on the right side of Athena’s polished frame and flicked it over. The Mark 7 began to hum, lending its deep voice to that of its sisters.
“Three: From the standing position, grasp your weapon. Do not, I repeat, do not put your finger on the firing stud until I tell you to. Point the weapon downrange at the berm in front of you.”
“Four: Pointing your weapon downrange, sight in on the target immediately in front of you.”
As she said this, a group of white plastisteel silhouettes, shaped vaguely like bipedal life forms, popped up from the ground at the foot of the dunes. They seemed to be over a parsec away, and Kaly wondered if she would even be able to hit hers at all.
“Five: Switch on the weapons transmitter stud.” From the PTS feed, Kaly had learned that this was another switch located just above the power-up. She found it and as she activated it, the gun sent a signal to her psiever, which created an image of a crosshairs in her field of vision, showing her the actual aim-point of the weapon. She carefully moved her blaster around until it rested exactly on the center of her target.
“Six: Now that you are psionically integrated with your weapon, you may bring your finger into the trigger guard and depress the firing stud. Fire one, I repeat, one shot. Fire now.”
Kaly pressed the trigger-button. The Mark 7 discharged a bolt of pure energy with a loud crack. Ozone filled her nostrils as the shot hit and disintegrated her target into a million tiny pieces.
“Good work, N’Deena,” Sa’Tela said from close behind her. In her anxiety, she hadn’t heard the DI’s approach. “You need to work a little more on your hand-mind-eye coordination, but that was a good start. You might just have picked the right name for your blaster after all. Keep it up.”
Kaly did her best to maintain her outward composure, but inwardly, she swelled with an angry pride. That’s right, she thought, I did do it right, didn’t I? Even you had to admit that, didn’t you?
Sa’Tela let the platoon fire a few more rounds before she took them through the next phase. “All right, hatchies,” she said. “Now that you have had the luxury of firing with the psiever link, we w
ill now learn to shoot the old-fashioned way, and the Marine way, with open sights. You will switch off the transmitter stud now.”
Kaly obeyed and the cross hairs disappeared from her vision.
“Some of you might be wondering why we are doing without such an important feature of the blaster. The answer is simple; like any piece of technology, it can fail. If you do not have the fundamentals of basic marksmanship ingrained into you, then such an event could prove fatal. You will now be taught what Marines have been learning for centuries.”
Sa’Tela then led the Platoon through the ancient art of shooting; how to sight the target through open metal sights, how to breathe and when not to breathe, and when and how to fire. For many of the recruits, this phase proved to be the most frustrating, but Kaly suddenly found herself benefiting from her upbringing on rural Persephone, and her experience with chemical slug-throwing rifles. Unlike them, the Mark 7 had no recoil whatsoever, and once she got used to the sights, she was able to score hit after hit with it.
“Well, N’Deena, I thought I was going to throw you when we turned off the signal,” Sa’Tela said as she watched her shoot. “It looks like I owe you another compliment. That’s two in one day, hatchie. You’d better not get a swelled head.”
“Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” Kaly replied.
“Good, carry on.”
Kaly grinned, imagining how much of a strain the compliment must have been for the DI to give. Get used to it, bitch, she thought, letting off another perfect shot. There’s a lot more of that coming.
Platoon Carli spent the rest of the day at the range working with their blasters until Sa’Tela was more or less satisfied with the results. Then the trainees received a surprise. Instead of marching back to the barracks as everyone had anticipated, the platoon was ordered to go to a nearby clearing and pitch their tents for an overnight bivouac.
Kaly had been camping many times, both for pleasure, and when she had been a traveling repair tech, and had little trouble assembling her tent with Lena’s assistance. But some of the women, hailing from more urbanized worlds, were not as seasoned, and experienced problems. As soon as they were able to, Kaly and her battle sister did their best to help those nearest them to erect their shelters. Although neither young woman knew it, their actions did not go unobserved. Sa’Tela and N’Vera watched them from a distance, and took quiet note.
Eventually, all the tents were assembled and their evening meal arrived by hovertruck. Unlike the morning’s packaged rations, the food was fresh, and although it tended to get a little sand in it now and again, deeply satisfying to the weary recruits.
Kaly went to bed in her tent that night feeling a sense of accomplishment that was shared by most of the platoon. The DI’s must have also felt this as well, because they allowed everyone the luxury of sleeping until dawn.
CHAPTER 9
USSMC Training Facility, 75th Training Battalion, Hella’s World, Hecate System, Artemi Elant, United Sisterhood of Suns, 1043.02|02| 05:41:67
“All right, hatchies,” Troop Leader n’Teri said. “I will be your Instructor for today’s module. We have now entered an important phase in your training. Today we will focus on personal hand-to-hand combat skills.”
Without even realizing that she was doing it, Kaly had started to drift off to sleep. But Lena n’Gari noticed, and elbowed her in the ribs. “Wake up, N’Deena!” the girl whispered. Kaly shook her head and sat up straight.
N’Teri continued speaking, apparently unaware of Kaly’s transgression. “The point of these lessons will be to enable you to defeat a larger opponent in situations where you do not have any other weapon than your hands and feet. Does anyone here believe that I cannot defeat them in single combat?”
She waited, but no one challenged her. They knew better.
“You disappoint me,” N’Teri frowned. “If no one here wants to try me, then I’ll have to call on someone for my demonstration.”
Oh, Goddess, don’t pick me, Kaly thought. Please, pick anyone but me. Incredibly, she, and everyone else, got their wish. The DI turned to Senior Troop Leader Sa’Tela, and signaled her. The woman nodded and went out into the hall outside. After a minute, she returned, accompanied by two military policewomen… and someone else.
It took a moment for the identity of the figure to register. When it did, Kaly’s jaw dropped open in revulsion and amazement. It wasn’t someone else, it was something else; a Hriss.
“Hatchies,” N’Teri announced, “meet Hvaarka. He is a full-blooded Hriss Warrior captured during a recent operation to retake a planet that his clan had raided. Ordinarily, he would have died with his clan-mates in the fighting, but he was severely wounded, and our forces elected to capture him for his possible intelligence value. He is now a prisoner of the Sisterhood Correctional Service, and working off a sentence of piracy by helping the Corps. He will assist me today during this module.”
The Hriss stepped forward, rewarding the class with a gaze composed of pure evil. Kaly’s mind screamed in outrage, A Shovelhead! A Goddess-cursed Shovelhead! The DI had mentioned that Hvaarka had been captured during a recent raid, and that meant only one thing: he was one of the raiders that had attacked her world. Images of the carnage on Persephone seared her brain like fire, each as clear to her as if she was still there.
Kaly didn’t realize it, but she had begun to growl, a deep visceral sound that came up from her very depths. If she had had her Mark 7 with her, she would have gladly killed the Hriss then and there.
“I can see that a few of you know what a Hriss is,” N’Teri observed. “Good. Now for our first lesson. Recruit N’Deena, step forward!”
Kaly obeyed and N’Teri handed her a combat knife. Its plastisteel handle felt cool and inviting in her hand.
“N’Deena, I noticed that you have some personal reservations about our guest. I understand from your file that you were a member of the Persephone colony. Well, here’s your chance, girl! He and his friends murdered your people. Kill him.”
The guards standing next the Hriss faded back and Kaly’s vision narrowed down to the creature, and nothing else. For his part, the Hriss regarded her with an expression that reminded her of amusement, and he made a noise that sounded like a cross between clicking and a bad cough.
“He’s laughing at you girl,” N’Teri whispered into her ear. “He’s laughing at all the people you knew that he and his friends slaughtered. Did you know that before he came here today he told me that he personally enjoyed killing your people? He said they were weak, and that they died screaming like cowering rabiteths.”
That was all Kaly could handle. With a scream of primal rage, she launched herself at him, wanting nothing less than to rip him wide open with the knife and bathe in his steaming entrails.
She never achieved her desire. At the last possible instant, the Hriss sidestepped and slammed his fist between her shoulder blades. Kaly grunted as her lungs expelled all of their air and she slammed into the mat. To her credit, she managed to get up and turn around for another attack, but the Hriss surprised her again, sending his foot into her stomach even as he wrenched the knife from her hand. In seconds, she was down again, and he was on top of her, pressing the blade against her throat.
“Stop exercise!” N’Teri barked. The Hriss laughed one more time and stood. “That is lesson number one. Undisciplined hate does not kill your enemy. It kills you! Klaar?”
“Ma’am, yes, ma’am!” the class yelled in unison.
N’Teri helped Kaly up from the mat and then retrieved the knife from Hvaarka. The odd-looking pair exchanged something in what Kaly imagined was Hriss'ka, and then the DI addressed the recruits in Standard.
“And now for lesson number two. Recruit bel Jeera, come forwards.”
Aliz bel Jeera was the de facto leader of a group Kaly and her friends had come to call “the rebels.” A street-tough from the south side of Thermadon, Bel Jeera had resisted the DI’s discipline from day one of Basic, smirking behind their backs, and genera
lly challenging everything. Bel Jeera clearly thought that she knew more than anyone around her, even the Instructors and this had made her attractive to the platoon’s complainers, who had gathered around her like she was a magnetic field.
The young woman grinned at a few of her followers, and swaggered out onto the mat to take her place opposite the Hriss.
Both of them got down on their haunches and eyed each other cautiously. Then they began to circle around one another, each looking for an opening in the other’s defenses.
Bel Jeera made the first move, lashing out at the Hriss with a series of savage kicks that Kaly thought must have aided her in street fights back on her motherworld.
Hvaarka retreated from them, and Bel Jeera laughed as she pressed the advantage. “Hah! This is too easy!” she exulted. “I thought these shovelheads would be a challenge.”
With a malicious smile painted on her face, she wound up for a reverse kick at the creature. Even as she prepared to move, Hvaarka rushed forwards and came inside her guard. He grabbed at her leg before it was fully cocked, sweeping her backwards off her feet at the same time with his free arm. Bel Jeera toppled over with a cry of alarm, and then Hvaarka was on top of her, with both of his six-fingered hands grasping her head, ready to snap her neck like a green twig.
“Stop exercise!” N’Teri commanded. “Overconfidence is one of the deadliest enemies one can face on the battlefield. Even if you are certain of victory, always keep an eye on your opponent. Sometimes, at the last second, your enemy may hand you a surprise. Now, for our third lesson. Recruit Enggredsdaater, come forwards.”
Bel Jeera sullenly returned to her seat and Enggredsdaater, unarguably the largest woman in the class, stepped up to the Hriss. “You may attack when ready,” N’Teri instructed.
Things would go much differently with her, Kaly thought.
Sisterhood of Suns: Pallas Athena Page 32