Verron_Serve and Protect

by Douglas Varnell

  Amber arrived at 5:00 AM and the man they jokingly called Andre the Giant, after a former World Wrestling Champion, was already hard at work at the elevated powerlifting area’s squat rack. She could hear the plywood and two-by-fours creek under the weight he was lifting. She was on her second set of bench-press when she paused to take a long hard look at the big man. At seven-feet tall and over 375 pounds of solid muscles, the big black man was indeed a giant. Everyone said he was a University of Colorado superstar and went on to play pro-football for Denver. He made All-American twice and was considered one of best defensive linemen in the NFL. He was three inches taller than “Too Tall Jones” and bigger than “Refrigerator Perry” by almost 100 pounds, but could still run the 40 in under 5 seconds. He was a superstar, until he got drunk one night and crashed his Lamborghini. That had been over ten years ago and he had been a real blessing as the strength and fitness coach for five of those years. On several occasions Amber had seen him bench press over 600 pounds and he regularly did squats with over 700. Amber would smile when he would grunt and groan while doing his bench press and squats. One morning after he had left without unloading the bench press, Amber slid under the bar and easily did eight reps and didn’t have to groan a bit. In fact, compared to the infinitely variable machines used on Verron, it felt almost lite.

  The big man took his time working out. He would do a few squats then sit back and drink from the gallon of milk he regularly carried with him to the gym. As he rested between sets he would unwrap his knees and after a few minutes rest, slowly rewrap them again, load additional weight on the bar and squat again. Amber wasn’t certain how many sets he had done already this morning. He was the only person she knew that got his day started as early as she did. She had just finished doing 20 reps at 225 pounds and was sitting on the bench a few minutes before she did it again. She couldn’t help but notice the four one hundred pound plates on both sides of the forty-five pound bar as Andre grunted and groaned and screamed in order to sike himself up for the heavy lift. He wobbled back from the squat rack slowly to keep his balance. As he grunted and groaned he managed to do four reps and then struggled to keep his balance as he began to take the two or three short steps back to the rack. Suddenly, just as he was placing the heavy weight on the rack, he lost his balance and stumbled to his right just as he was placing the 845 pounds on the rack. His hand was between the crushing-weight of the bar as it began to slip from his shoulders. He could no longer hold the weight steady after his hand was crushed between the bar and the rack; he began to stumble backwards with the weight still on his shoulders trying hard not to pass out from the pain. In a flash Amber was behind the big man and took the weight from his shoulders and gently placed it on the rack in front of him. She then lowered him to the ground and noticed that his little finger was no longer attached. She swallowed hard and looked at the squat rack. There on the edge of the rack was his severed finger.

  While Andre rolled on the floor writhing in pain, Amber reached over and removed the finger the metal rack. She said a short prayer and decided to try what King Verron had done with Zeus. She took the big man’s bloody hand and pulled it towards her. He resisted any touch of his throbbing hand. Amber looked at him and said, “Quit your whining you big baby, I’ve seen people with severed legs whine less than this.” He relaxed his arm and allowed her to cradle his hand in her lap. She then informed him, “I’ve never tried this before, and if it doesn’t work, then I guess you’ll be taking a ride to the emergency room. Now shut-up, be still and let me concentrate on what I’m doing.” Amber took the severed finger in her left hand and held his plate-sized hand in the other; she then pressed the section of finger against his nub and held it in place in the grip of her palm. For a moment nothing happened and she felt pretty foolish, then she felt a power rush from her that almost left her breathless and in a few minutes she began to feel light headed. Just before she passed-out, she let go of Andre’s hand. The finger was reattached and other than a lot of blood, looked perfectly fine. She slumped beside the weight coach and told him, “See how it works.” He looked at his hand with all five digits still attached and began to turn it as he opened and closed his huge hand. He couldn’t believe his eyes as he looked on in amazement. He then noticed Amber almost passed-out and slumped against the nearby workout bench. She looked at him and softly muttered, “My bag, energy bars. Get all of them.” Andre walked quickly across the gym to her gym-bag and carried it back to where she was sitting, turned it upside down and dumped four foil wrapped energy bars onto the floor. One by one he began to open them and hand them to Amber. By the second one her eyes began to clear. A few minutes after the fourth, she managed to get off the floor and sit like a normal person on the bench.

  Amber pilfered through a side pouch and found one more bar and stuffed it in her mouth. Andre had gone to a vending machine and gotten her a Gatorade. As she slowly sipped the cold drink, Andre asked, “What just happened here? How did you do that?” Amber smiled, and replied, “The things a girl has to do to get someone to talk to her. I was wondering if you would still ignore me. Guess I got your attention, huh.” He took a long look at the girl before him and realized he had totally misjudged her. He smiled and extended his big hand in greeting, saying, “Hi, my name is Andre Vandermuellen, my friends call me Andre the Giant, I would very much like to call you my friend.” Amber shook his hand and replied, “I’m still starved, let me get a shower and change and you can buy me breakfast. I hope you have lots of money.” As she was walking away he told her, “Today you’re my guest at the team’s training tables. All you can eat for nothin’.” About thirty minutes later Amber appeared in her commandoes and her dragon cap. Andre had changed out of his blood soaked clothes and had on a very, very big Air Force Academy sweatshirt and a pair of denim carpenter pants. On his shaved head he wore a white knit Kufi. Amber suddenly realized why the snub from Andre, he was not only black, he was also a Muslim. She couldn’t help but smile at the awkwardness of the situation. Before she could say a word, he quickly asked, “Your five foot six, maybe 120 pounds, you just lifted 845 pounds like it was a feather while simultaneously lifting my big butt. Then you reattached my severed finger better the best surgeon alive. I don’t give a darn if you are an uppity white girl I want to be your friend. Will you tell me how you did it?” Amber smiled at his honesty and said, “You have to promise to tell no one what just happened here. It has to be our little secret. If you agree, I’ll tell you more while you feed me.” Andre laughed as they headed for the door, saying, “I’ll say nothing. Folk’s around here already think I’m crazy. If I tell them about this, they’ll lock me up.”

  There were plenty of stares when Amber and Andre entered the chow hall, laughing and joking with each other. There were even more stares as Amber went through the serving line and got loaded down with triple portions of eggs, steak, potatoes, orange juice and fresh fruit. It looked more like the tray Andre should be eating. He had his usual six hardboiled eggs and large bowl of fruit. As she ate, Amber told her new friend about the unique abilities of the Dragon Guard. She didn’t actually tell him everything, but did let him know that they each had enhanced strength and abilities to do unusual things. She told him about her grandfather and tried to explain why he was like he was. She then told him, “Andre, not everyone on Verron agrees with King Verron, but no one can argue the fact that what he is doing is working. I know for a fact that he truly wishes that all races and religions could get along, but it just isn’t going to happen in our lifetime. He’s trying to do the best he can with what he has to work with and goes out of his way to help those in need, regardless of who they are.”

  She then told him about the Klelta, Tecalna, Beriya-Haven and Molnar. She told him about the almost 19,000 Kurdish, Iraqi and Syrian Christians he had just taken to Verron and how careful he was to hurt no one but the members of ISIS when he attacked their positions. Next, she told him about the project in Mississippi and why he chose that location. What really go
t his attention was the projects he had planned for Africa and that they were scheduled to be the first recipients of the antivirus formulas. Andre shook his head and smiled his contagious smile and replied, “So you’re saying that if King Verron had been here instead of you, I would have had the same results.” She laughed and told him, “Actually King Verron would have probably realized you were about to hurt yourself and snatched the weight from your shoulders before you began to fall. He’s like that, always one step ahead.” She was finally finished with her meal and realized that if she didn’t hurry she would be late for class. She got up to leave and thanked him for breakfast, saying, “Does this mean you’re going to speak to me in the morning?” He held up his big hand with the reattached finger and said, “THANK YOU! Now you probably won’t be able to get me to shut up.”

  That evening when Andre was at home, he realized that his crushed elbow he had suffered in his car wreck and his arthritic knees hadn’t bothered him all day. As he was moving his arm around to check the pain, he saw in the mirror a sight that almost took his breath. The long scare that ran from above his elbow all the way to the middle of his forearm was gone. He leaned forward to take a closer look in the mirror and realized the scar above his left eye, where he had been elbowed when his helmet flew off, was also gone. As he whipped the steam from the mirror for an even closer look, he realized the scar from his busted lip and the soreness from his twice broken thumb was also missing, and his knees felt like he was twenty again. It was his off day from the gym and he headed over to the medical clinic to see the team doctor. He immediately told Lt. Colonel Brackett that he wanted a complete set of X-Rays; knees, hands, both arms and his lower back. The doctor was about to question his request and before he could say anything, he said, “Please trust me on this and ask me no questions, because I promised not to say anything.” It took a couple of hours, but the team orthopedic surgeon came into the examining room with two complete sets of X-Rays. He looked at Andre and said, “These X-Rays were taken when you came to work here five years ago. This set was taken today.” Shaking his head, he asked, “What the hell happened? There is no scar tissue, evidence of broken bones and your arthritis is gone. By the way, I also think you once again have an appendix.” All Andre could do was smile; after all, a promise is a promise.

  It had been a stressful day for Amber, but still better than the week before. After having breakfast with Andre, a lot of the Academy jocks were treating her better and evidently Cadet Commander Bass and the other upper classmen had already begun their campaign of relationship building. One of the Cadet Captains she had never met, but she knew talked about her behind her back, asked her, “If I promise not to be rude or talk about you anymore, can I go on the field trip too?” She looked at his name tag and answered, “Captain Gray, I still have to talk to King Verron about the field trip, but if he approves the trip, I will try to take as many as I can.” He smiled and replied, “From the size of that ship you people flew to rescue the Mars, I’d say you could take the whole Academy.” Amber wanted to be pleasant and humorous and replied as she walked away, “Not quite, we’d probably need to leave a couple of buildings behind.”

  Her biggest frustration of the day was a terrestrial navigation section of a physics class. The professor was very knowledgeable, but a few thousand years behind Verron technology. She had read the entire physics text book before leaving for Verron, it took her about an hour, and had pretty much memorized its content. The professor would keep asking her questions in hopes of tripping her up and she would always answer, “Do you want what this book says or what happens in actuality?” She would then quote word for word what was written in the book; usually she would politely stop there, but today she couldn’t resist saying something to the obnoxious professor.

  She spoke out saying, “Professor Packler, you are no doubt a brilliant educator and I see that you wrote the textbook we are studying from, so you will no doubt take offense to what I am about to say. (Holding up the book) This textbook is one of the best written books on the history of terrestrial navigation I have ever read. One day I may make it required reading for the students at the Verron Military Academy, when we have one. But everything in this book is about five thousand years behind what I live with every day. No doubt what you are teaching these men and women will be greatly beneficial to their ability to fly the aircraft in the current U.S. fleet of airplanes and spacecraft, but we have 10 year-olds flying aircraft more advanced than your best fighter. I have nothing to learn in this class, but if you would like to learn more, I will be glad to teach you.” With that she got up and left the room, which simply does not happen at the Air Force Academy.

  She had one more class that she was auditing at 1000 hours and decided to go outside and sit in the cold to calm down. She walked into the next class that consisted of about half the cadets from her previous class. Most of them gave her questioning looks, but finally one of them asked, “Do ten year-olds really fly ships that will outperform our best Fighters?” Amber pulled out her Verron built com unit and pulled up a video of Tala receiving her pink Speeder for her 10th Birthday. She turned it so those now surrounding her could see the short movie. For the next 10 minutes they watched Tala perform all sorts of absolutely impossible aerobatics, including stopping in mid-air to wait on her friends to catch up. When the video finished, she added, “The little pink Speeder no longer exists. Unrestricted, it is capable of Mach 20, can fly in outer-space, never needs refueling and this particular ship and the pilot survived a Mach 3 crash into a mountain pass and a subsequent avalanche. King Verron decided not to put it back in use, so we ran further tests. It survived a crash at Mach 10 and exploded in a crash at Mach 20. The ten-year-old is now a 15 year-old Captain and my cousin, Princess Tala.”

  They all quickly grabbed their seats when the Advanced Calculus professor entered the room. He collected their homework and as usual singled out Amber’s for closer scrutiny. Today he was excited, she had a wrong answer. He wasted no time pointing it out to Amber and the rest of the students and chastised her as he called her to the board to work through the problem she had missed in front of the other cadets. When she got to the part where the professor had spotted her mistake, she turned to the class and said, “I’m not certain how long this book has been used by the Academy. It says in the front that it was published four years ago, so I assume it has been used all this time. Unfortunately when I read through the book I found three glaring mistakes, pointing at the board she continued, and this is one of them.” She then proceeded to explain her answer and how she came to the solution, it was obvious by the look on the professor’s face that he had never personally worked through the problems in the book and only verified the answers through his teachers answer guide. When she finished he only replied, “You said there were three.” She then had them turn ahead of where they were currently studying to page 397 and 456 and worked through the more advanced calculations soon to be studied. The professor took out his cell phone and took a picture of the neatly written formulas Amber had written on the board. Class was over by the time Amber was finished. As she was leaving, the professor softly said, “I stand corrected.”

  Still thinking about her day, Amber entered her apartment and slumped on the couch. She looked around and realized she missed her home. She thought a moment and decided, “The heck with this, what point is there in having The Power if I can’t use it.” She changed clothes and took a gateway from her apartment to the Robert’s Range. After a 3 hour run in the clear mountain air, she returned back to Colorado Springs. While still standing in her kitchen drinking a big bottle of water, a knock came on her door. She quickly opened the door to be greeted by Robert smiling his mischievous grin. She gave him a big sweaty hug as he entered the apartment, saying, “Well, I just left the Dean’s office. You’ve had a busy day; one professor claims he is 5000 years behind the times and has written a good history book, the other claims you found mistakes in his text book that he has been teaching wrong fo
r nearly four years and that the senior cadets are making plans for an unauthorized fieldtrip to Verron.” She smiled as she drank her water; it seemed like even bad news was good when it came from Robert. She responded with, “And that’s not the half of it, you should have seen what happened in the gym this morning.” He gave her a questioning look and asked, “Well, are you going to tell me or not?” She decided that she would be completely honest with the man she thought she could learn to love. She then told him every detail of the incident in the gym. He kissed her on the forehead and replied, “Will I ever grow tired of learning more about you. Go get cleaned up, I have reservations of La Baguette. I must take you out since it was a direct order from the Commander of the Joint Chiefs.” She was laughing as she headed for the bathroom to shower, as she said, “I can’t wait to hear all about this.”

  It was still early when they left for their restaurant. Robert decided he would make a stop at the Porsche – Audi Dealership to check out the possibility of trading his 8 year-old Audi A6 for a newer model. He was in love with the new Audi A8 Quattro. There was a sleek black one with gold anodized wheels sitting in the showroom. He and Amber walked in and she soon had no interest in the Black Quattro. In fact she had never had any great interest in cars at all, after all she had a spaceship, but she had just fallen in love with a bright red Porsche Cayman GTS sitting in the showroom opposite the Audi. While Robert talked to the Audi salesman and even had the used car manager take his old Audi for a ride to set a trade-in price, Amber took a closer look at the Cayman GTS. She opened the door to sit in it and was quickly approached by a salesman who acted like he was God’s gift to women. He was just checking out the cute girl sitting in the Porsche. She asked if she could take it for a test ride and was actually talked down to, when he answered, “We only allow people to drive these who actually qualify to buy one. If you like, I will be glad to take your information and run a credit check to see if you qualify.” Amber was more than a bit upset at the man’s condescending attitude. She climbed out of the car and slammed the door, asking, “I would like to speak to the manager, please.” The salesman at first didn’t want to comply, so Amber walked across the showroom floor to the girl at the switchboard and demanded, “Will you please have the manager come out here right now, I would like to speak with him immediately.”