by Kal Spriggs
“All powered by muscle?” I couldn't help but wince as I thought about that. It sounded incredibly exhausting.
“Yep, and lots of combined effort,” Mackenzie smirked. “If the rowers get off beat, the generator loses power and the shell loses balance. If the coxswain exhausts the rowers, the whole thing could crash.”
“What happens then?” I asked. I couldn't help but tap the hull of the grav-shell. It wasn't particularly thick, and it made a dull noise from my knuckle. Clearly it was some kind of fiber, rather than sturdy metal.
“Well, you can really get going in one of these. In the professional races, they're going as fast as two hundred kilometers per hour. You hit the ground at those speeds and, well, it's not good.”
I turned to look at him in shock. “Don't worry,” Mackenzie's easy smile reassured me, “Daisy here is only rated for around sixty kilometers per hour. We're strictly in the amateur leagues. I've had her at seventy KPH before, but that was with my previous cox, and he graduated last year.”
I shook my head, “I can't imagine going that fast in something like this.”
“Oh, trust me, even going at thirty KPH feels like you're in serious trouble,” he replied. “We'll start you off slow. Competition racing doesn't start for another month, so we've got time to break you in. But practices are two hours every evening and two hours every morning from here on out. You'll be getting up before your inspections in the morning, so you'll get a pass on those, but you'd better keep your room inspection-ready. This isn't a free pass.”
I straightened at that, “Yes, sir.”
He waved a hand, “None of that, no rank in the grav-shell bay.” He snorted, “I'm the team captain, though, so if I tell you you're out, you're out. So don't abuse the little perks you get from being on the team, understand?”
“I do,” I said. Honestly, I didn't see many perks to the sport. I'd be up even earlier than the other plebes, I'd spend four hours a day at this, and there looked to be a solid possibility of death or injury. Still, I didn't see a good way to get out of it. Maybe I'd get lucky and he'd think I wasn't cut out for this.
“Go ahead and mount up,” he said with a nod. He flipped down a thin cord ladder and I fumbled up it and climbed into the cockpit. “Snug, right?”
I felt like I could barely breathe. The seat was formed of the same thin spun fiber material as the hull. I had a tiny harness that probably wouldn't do much to keep me from flying out in the event of a crash.
“Mind the back-bar. You're short enough that you can rest your head on it, at least.” I did so and I could barely see over the front. “Perfect,” he said. “Here's the controls.”
I had expected some kind of digital display. Instead there were some thin rods, which were connected in with wires. Mackenzie reached in and shifted one, pointing to the side. I looked over and saw the left outrigger shift slightly. “It's a mechanical control system. You've got pitch and yaw, here, with altitude there. The trick is to trade speed for height. When we hit a slope, you milk it for everything it's got, when we're going across flats, you call a power ten or twenty and the rowers pile in the effort to build height, which you trade for more speed.”
“Um,” I frowned, “how do we stop?”
“Why would we want to do that?” Mackenzie laughed at my expression. “There's an emergency safety. That's here,” he flipped up a clear plastic cover and pointed at a big red button. “It's a capacitor with enough juice to bounce the whole thing. It goes on and the coils will bring us to a stop, then lower us to the ground. It disconnects our generator in the process.” He shrugged. “Never had to use it, not even with a temporary cox.”
“Okay,” I said, “what about non-emergency?”
He laughed and reached down to grab the central strut. To my surprise, he lifted the craft, me included, right out of the rack. “Generally you just need to slow us down and we can hop out and stop it. It's not too heavy, even with you in it.”
“Got it,” I said.
“Great,” Mackenzie smiled. He waved to one of the others, “Stroud, we're going to take Daisy for a quick spin.”
“Sure thing!” Stroud jogged over. He was just as tall and lanky as Mackenzie, though with blonde hair and blue eyes as opposed to Mackenzie's brown hair and blue eyes. Stroud had a similar, easy-going smile and attitude. I wondered if they were related or something.
The two of them pushed Daisy out of the bay and into the desert. “For now, focus on keeping her straight and on the flat,” Mackenzie said. The entire craft shifted as he and Stroud mounted up. They were seated above and behind me on the rower chairs that projected off the two outriggers and they'd scampered up faster than I thought was possible. “Now,” Mackenzie said, “normally, the coxswain calls out commands, but I'll walk us through, since we need to get moving before we sink.”
“Power ten, three, two, one, power ten!” He barked. He and Stroud began to row. I couldn't help but watch the pair of them move, in perfect synch so that the craft didn't as much as shift. “Alright, ease us forward a bit, but be gentle, she's very responsive,” Mackenzie said.
I tweaked the controls ever so slightly. The entire craft surged forward. I was so startled that my first instinct was to jerk at the controls, but I stopped myself before I could do that. Instead I eased back a bit and our pace slowed. “You're drifting starboard,” Mackenzie puffed.
I tweaked the controls and we swung to port, then further in that direction. I over-corrected and brought it back into more or less a straight line.
“Good, now we've lost some altitude,” Mackenzie puffed, “so to gain it, we're going to do a power five.” He paused for a moment, then bellowed, “Power five on two! One, Two...” Both Mackenzie and Stroud began to take deeper strokes, the entire craft surged as more power flooded into the coils, “one, two, three, four five!”
We'd risen almost a meter in the air. I tweaked the controls and turned some of that into speed. To my shock, the Daisy responded a lot more than I expected. It felt like we were racing across the desert and I started to panic.
“We're good,” Mackenzie puffed. “Ease up a little and turn us around, that's a good introduction, for now.”
I followed his instructions and turned us in a broad, slow circle. As I did so, I searched for the grav-shell bay, thinking I must have missed it somehow. Then I realized that it was the distant spot, near the horizon. “Wow,” I gasped.
“Yeah, we go a lot faster and further than you realize. Most of these races we go fifteen or twenty kilometers, but some of them are forty or fifty kilometers,” He puffed. “Take us back nice and slow. Stroud and I need to practice different rowing speeds. I think you're about ten pounds lighter than our last coxswain, which is good, but neither of us have been practicing at all for the last couple of months, so we need the workout.”
I nodded, but I didn't know if he saw. As we headed back, I tweaked the controls steering us in as straight a line as I could manage, slowly feeling more and more confident as the shed drew closer. Surprisingly, I even found myself enjoying it. There was something incredible about harnessing the power of the two rowers. The entire craft floated in the air from the brute force of two men. The Daisy sped across the desert, hovering just above the sand. We arrived back at the shed just as the sun began to dip towards the horizon. Stroud and Mackenzie hopped out at the same time and Mackenzie gestured at me to dismount.
I did so, feeling oddly stiff as I did so. I watched as they racked the light craft. I felt oddly forlorn as they did so. I missed it. I didn't have a clue what I was doing, I doubted I'd be much more than additional weight to the two rowers without lots and lots of practice and effort. But I already enjoyed it.
“Well,” Mackenzie patted Daisy. “Thanks for coming Armstrong. See you in the morning?” He gave me a smirk, as if he knew exactly how I felt.
“Yeah,” I said, “Sure thing.”
***
“Look what we have here,” A deep voice growled from behind me in the corrido
r. I'd just got back to the barracks areas from grav-shell practice. I hadn't expected to encounter anyone, not for how busy everyone seemed to be, especially not for this time of day.
I turned and saw Bollander. The big woman gave me a smirk. Beside her I saw Thorpe. The two of them were so big that I didn't even notice Sashi Drien standing in front of them until she spoke, “Armstrong, you lost?” Sashi’s hostile tone shouldn't have hurt, but it did.
“Just on my way back from practice,” I replied. I took a reflexive step towards the stairwell as I did so. I didn't like being outnumbered and alone, especially not by Ogre.
“You're in our barracks area,” Bollander growled.
“I'm under your barracks areas,” I replied, taking another step towards the stairs. Yet as I did so, Thorpe sidestepped to block my escape in that direction. I might slip past him, but his arms are long enough that he might grab me.
“You shouldn't be down here, anyway,” Bolander growled. “Right Drien?”
“Yeah, you shouldn't,” Sashi snapped, glaring at me.
This didn't look good. I didn't really know much about fighting. “I don't want any trouble.”
“You think you're tough, just because you killed some thugs?” Bolander growled. “You think we should be afraid of you?” There was an edge of anger and something else in her voice. I didn't understand it. I didn't understand any of this. I had beaten out Bolander and Thorpe in the final exercise during the Academy Prep School, but it hadn't been personal, they'd been trying to do the same thing. For that matter, Sashi had shot me during the same exercise... after I'd saved her from Bolander.
“Well, you're about to get a lesson, one you should have learned already. Don't mess with Ogre!” On her cue, Sashi lunged forward to grab me, but I dodged to the side. Thorpe leaned in, his arms going to grab me, but I ducked under his grasp and then ran for the stairs. I saw Sashi and Thorpe collide and both of them went down in a tangle.
Bolander was quicker than I'd expected, though. She caught me just as I reached the stairs and spun me into the wall. I tried to punch at her, but she caught both of my wrists and cranked them up over my head. “Time to teach you a lesson...”
“Stop right there!” A deep female voice snapped. “What do you think you're doing, plebes?”
Bolander released me and Thorpe and Sashi Drien untangled themselves. “Plebe Armstrong was in our barracks area uninvited, ma'am.” Bolander started.
“Assault upon another cadet is against Academy policy,” Commander Scarpitti snapped. Her harsh accent added extra force to her words and I saw all three of my attackers go pale as she glared at them. “Worse than that, you're beating up on another cadet with unfair odds and a significant size advantage. Bolander, Thorpe, and Drien, I'm putting the three of you on report for this. Do you understand?”
“Yes, ma'am,” All three of them snapped.
“Now get out of here,” Commander Scarpitti barked. As the three of them departed, she waited and then gave me a friendly smile, “Seems I arrived at the right time, eh, Plebe Armstrong?”
“Yes, ma'am,” I nodded in response. I was still shocked that they'd been so willing to resort to physical violence.
“You should use a bit more caution,” Commander Scarpitti said. “A certain level of rough-housing is to be expected. They probably wouldn't have done more than rough you up a bit, but they might have gone a bit far. Many companies have rivalries going back several decades. Ogre and Sand Dragon have been feuding since as far as anyone can remember.”
“I see, ma'am, thank you, ma'am,” I spoke on autopilot. I still couldn't believe that they'd been willing to pound on me just because.
“The three of them will be in trouble with the rest of Ogre for getting caught. They'll also face some administrative punishment, but that's not going to make them like you any better. So in the future, I'd recommend that you travel with friends late at night, or at least avoid empty corridors. Understand?”
Commander Scarpitti didn't wait for a response. She strode off, leaving me in the empty corridor. I was more than grateful for her intervention. But I was also surprised by how little she seemed to care about what they'd intended to do. In my mind, violence like that wasn't warranted and it should have received serious punishment. Instead, I felt like whatever punishment they'd receive would only make them come after me even harder... or in a more devious fashion.
Alright, I told myself, I have enemies, I already knew that. I'd just have to keep my eyes open. First, though, I needed to get back to my barracks room, hopefully without any other incidents.
***
Chapter Six: Knowing Where I Stand
The alarm klaxon went off well before dawn on Saturday morning. It was followed a moment later by a voice, “This is a drill, this is a drill, this is a drill. Load practice ammunition and proceed to grounds defense positions.”
My clock said it was just after two in the morning. Sashi and I fumbled around, drawing on our uniforms and gear and then rushing into the corridor. I loaded my rifle with a magazine of practice rounds as we ran. The first set of drills had been dry; that was, without any ammunition of any kind loaded. If we were loaded, that meant there was at least a chance that we'd face some kind of opposition.
I arrived at my assigned position. Cadet Petty Officer Trask waited as the rest of us funneled into our positions. Our bunker overlooked a desolate stretch of desert. “Third Squad, Sand Dragon Company, we have reports of enemy infiltrators in our area of operations. Expect contact with enemy forces in team size or smaller. They'll have small arms, expect harassing fire. If you take fire, call it up. If anyone is hit, we'll go through evacuation procedures.”
Team size, I thought, that is four or five personnel. We'd gone over the evacuation procedures the last drill, but only as a basic exercise. I had a cheater card so I could read off it, but I felt nervous at the thought of reading it out on the net.
Despite that, I hurried to my firing position. It wasn't much more than a notch in the trench, with a little bit of overhead cover for when the sun came up. I turned on the night vision setting on my helmet visor and scanned the desert. I didn't see how anyone could hope to sneak up. The desert looked flat and empty. I figured someone would have to be stupid to try to sneak up on the position. There wasn't anywhere to hide.
I heard what sounded like a shot. A moment later, I felt an impact on my shoulder, just between my shoulder armor and my chest armor. “Shot fired,” I reported, “I'm...”
The world went dark.
***
I woke up, flat on my back. There was a bit of camouflage netting above me. I looked around and saw that I was on a stretcher. “Took a round already, eh?” A soft voice spoke. I saw another plebe seated next to me. “Yeah,” I said. I sat up, “I guess I should get back to my unit.”
“Nope, you get to sit this one out,” a cadet said from the other side of me. “All casualties remain here until reset.” She grinned at me, “I'm Cadet Third Class Connie Elliot, by the way. Welcome to the aid station. You're our first guest this morning.”
“Cadets run the aid station, ma'am?” I asked. She was surprisingly cheerful for someone who’s job it was to patch people up.
“That's correct,” She gestured at the plebe on my other side. “Ivy Company are medical officers in training. We operate as medics and nurses during the drills. Your company dropped you off here as a casualty, we treat you, and get you back to the fight after the drill ends.”
“How long will it go?” I asked.
Before she could answer, I heard a shout from the front of the room, “Casualties inbound!”
“Got to go,” Elliot said. She and the plebe rushed to the front of the room. I watched as they went through a full inspection of the two cadets they'd brought in. “Gunshot wound to the leg, hear-rate irregular...”
I tuned it out as I got off the stretcher and winced at the bruise on my shoulder. The training rounds were heavy enough to leave bruises and they delivered a mild
tranquilizer. I'd been hit by them before, but it wasn't something I'd been eager to repeat.
A moment later, they put the comatose cadet's stretcher down next to me. “She's terminal,” Cadet Third Class Elliot said. “Call it.”
“Time of Death, zero-seven-three-nine,” her assistant reported.
“Got it, dose her,” Elliot nodded.
I looked over and I paled a bit as I recognized Sashi Drien. Apparently she'd been a casualty, too. The hit had caught her on the side of her neck and she already had a massive bruise. I watched as they hit her with a stimulant to counteract the tranquilizer.
She sat up a moment later. When she saw me, she glowered, “You shot me!”
“I did not,” I snapped.
“Play nice,” Elliot chuckled. “Both of you were hit by the raid teams. Neither of you came in from even the same sector. So shut up and play dead.”
“Dead?” Sashi and I both asked at the same time.
“Dead,” Elliot grinned. “Both of you took fatal wounds. You're combat casualties until the drill resets. After that, you get to go back out there... until you die again. So play nice and shut up, I'll have more casualties to triage.”
We stayed quiet as she walked towards the front of the room. Sashi and stayed quiet for a long moment. “Sniper?” I asked after a long moment.
“Yeah,” she said.
After a long, awkward, silence I said, “Me too.”
Neither of us said anything for a long while. I sat on the edge of my stretcher, facing away from her. I thought about how she and Bolander and Thorpe had ambushed me earlier in the week. “You get punished?”
“That's what you want to know?” Sashi's voice was harsh. “Do you have any idea... you know what? I've got nothing to say to you.” I could hear the hate in her voice and that hurt more than anything she'd actually said.
Part of me wanted to turn around and shout at her. It felt like she wanted me to apologize. Like that would ever happen, I thought to myself. She was the one who'd betrayed me. It was her family's stupid feud that had ruined our friendship.