“Representative from each team here.” A person ran over to me, I was happy to see they were all the ones I had elected to take leadership roles—though I’d tell them that later.
My team moved to the side so that the leaders could be closer, but that they could still easily hear.
“A new rule, no one is to make unwanted sexual moves on another, or they will be dealt with by us. That said, sex is not allowed, we don’t need a girl getting pregnant.” Horrified and uneasy eyes looked back at me as Rick raised his hand.
“Yes?”
“They’re kids, why do you think they’d do anything like that?”
“They’re just becoming teenagers. Do you remember how horny you were when you hit puberty?” All of them went red, only Choi and Rick met my eyes, sex and sexuality was a highly talked about subject in their previous trades.
“They haven’t set up any way to stop people having sex. With everyone at peak health, with all the hormones that come with being at that state. It’s best we look to stop such a situation arising.”
The leaders nodded and went back to their groups. Wiry and his bigger sidekick looking over at my briefly as I related the rules to my team, all of them looking mildly disgusted.
“It’s just in case.” I said, shrugging.
“You’re Salchar.” Charles said, as if that was the end of it.
“So what will we be doing for training?” Rob said, moving past it.
“Defense and using a person’s force against them.” All of them leaned forward in interest.
“How?”
“Well we’ll get Yasu to help us.”
“Alright everyone, into formation, one to the right five to the left.” Everyone lined up in a block in front of me except for Wiry and Yasu.
“You’re in need of training, thankfully we have one of the best trained fighters in the world.” I heard Yasu snort as I felt a grin spread across my face.
“Yasu Ono.” I gestured to her with an open palm as she looked at me in confusion.
“Everyone please turn and bow to Yasu, asking her to teach you to defend yourself.”
I did so, asking her as the others followed. I stood upright first, seeing the look of anger on her face.
She bowed to us.
“I will accept you all as students.” Her fighting style held onto the belief that no one should be without protection, if a person asked to learn then they had to be taught, unless they were to use their talents to cowardly murder someone, instead of a fair fight.
Plus now she can’t attack any of us except Wiry who didn’t ask her for training.
“Now it is time to turn you into something useful.” I saw the glimmer of a smile in her eyes as she began to truly train us. I had thought the physical training before had been bad, this was body shattering. Every exercise was made to inflict pain, in such a way as it was negligible in a fight, it was surprising how much the pain implants had numbed us to pain, our muscles quivered with exertion as they remembered the movements Yasu had ingrained in us with simple words. We ate, we slept and we repeated. I had the movements down and could see how they combined into the complex movements that Yasu performed at her own level.
I didn’t know how long we’d been awake and training when Taleel walked into the room. Everyone scrambled to get into formation. Wiry showing he didn’t care for the arrangement I had made, by purposefully taking another’s position.
“That’s my spot.” Yang pleaded.
“That’s my spot.” Wiry mock-whined as Yang rushed to another spot.
“Fuck head.” Yang muttered. We had moved past trying to get the kids to not swear. They had grown up enough to have the right. Taleel stopped in front of us as we were all in position.
“We’ll continue fighting, you win you get treatment and food for the day, you don’t well you know what happens.” Taleel’s four jaws pulling back in a look of sadistic pleasure. “If you win, you’ll have the entire day to do as you wish.”
“Go.” He said as the door opened again and again I walked through it without pause like the others already shaking themselves into their own teams. We would worry about training later, we needed to focus on winning today.
We walked in this time facing a new team, this one sporting vicious cuts and bruises unlike my own team.
I walked to the center, “Clean fight, no low blows, gouging, biting or scratching? My rules.” I said putting my hand out.
One walked forward with a cocky swagger gripping my hand.
“No fucking way.” He smirked as he pulled me forward his left fist cocked. I dropped my weight yanking him to me as I dropped on my back he lost his balance falling towards me, I had my legs between me and him. His weight fell on them as I pushed, using his own momentum to throw him up and over me. He wind milled for less than a second as his head cracked off of the floor blood instantly welling up from the wound.
I picked myself up giving the man a glance. I wiped my hands turning to the other squad.
“Anyone else want to fight dirty?” My voice cold.
“We’ll fight fair.” Another large man said coming forward shaking my hand before stepping back a few steps as I did the same.
Looks like most teams are just going for the biggest guys to be their leaders. I thought to myself the younger ones of the group shaking visibly.
“Alright, let’s get ‘em!” This time I rolled back as they advanced on us and my squad on them. I quickly found Yasu I breathed a sigh of relief as she and Wiry were as far from me as possible.
After a few seconds Charles found me and we joined the fight beside Rick. He was a ground technique guy. A lot of his holds were like those I’d seen in MMA tournaments. He would wait till an opponent hit the floor and wrap them up, either making them tap, knock them out, or were left with painful injuries. Then push them aside and wait for another to fall.
I was a brawler. I punched, kicked and charged at every opportunity, my body taking a pounding as I got in close and laid a series of rapid blows on my opponents. My techniques used my opponent’s momentum allowing me to land vicious hits, or throw them-like I had their first leader.
My go to move in MAT was a punch that would knock off the enemies’ visor and then kill them in the gas of the habitat or allow me to hit them in the face. In reality it had gotten me a few knockouts.
I caught a fist to the face, I spun backwards out of reach spitting blood from my cut lip as I saw my attacker, the second big guy that had accepted my terms who was grinning.
I grinned back, a laugh coming from me as we came back together. I got my arms up as he pummeled me with shots. I came down low, striking upwards underneath his guard and catching him in the ribs. He pulled back, more surprised than hurt. A new attacker swung a wild round house at my head. I ducked under twisting my body, hammering him on the chin as he dropped to the ground.
I turned to look at my first attacker, seeing him and Charles exchanging blows. The boy glancing to make sure I was okay.
I advanced to help him as a voice came through the walls.
“Times up, move to separate walls.” I gave the man a two finger salute he repeated the gesture.
We retreated to our side dragging those that couldn’t get there themselves.
“We’ll fight according to Salchar’s rules.” The new leader of the opposing squad said, nodding to me as I nodded back.
“You aren’t going to win against us we’re too strong together!” I said in a singsong voice, riling them up, but hopefully they’d do just as my group had. I needed people to be able to work together after this if I had any chance of pulling one over on the defense force.
“Return to your pods.” We did so, not having to wait long before Taleel showed up.
Taleel came in, a grin on his hellish face.
“Good stuff squad, you’ll have another fight today. Same as always the med facilities as you need them.” After so many fights we’d grown into a routine which Taleel had accepted, he must have been
making a killing betting on us. Which made our losses that much worse as he usually lost a lot of credits, taking every last one of them out on us.
Our food cart floated in as I went to the med room the arms awaiting me as I braced myself.
It seemed that the defense force didn’t believe in such things as anesthesia meaning you were awake for whatever work the arms did on you unless you gracefully passed out. Then it would wake you up afterwards.
The restraints came together around me and the chair leveled out as the arms began moving. Thankfully the med machine was quick as I was finished in a few minutes my body back to normal as I walked out rubbing my gums. I’d only had hell fire added to my system. The drug worked as a combat healer, though as its namesake it hurt like all hell with any wounds. Making my gums painful and itchy as my teeth went back into place with their connective tissue being reconnected.
Rob motioned me over, handing me my food and chopsticks. The usual goop replaced by purple looking noodle and blue pieces of something chewy and the added smell of vinegar to the previous play dough. Though even with the different looks and smells it still tasted like the metallic sour stuff we’d had since we’d been recruits. I didn’t know why it was noodles instead of the lumpy soup, but those with experience with chopsticks helped those who didn’t know which was the right end with some downright hilarious results. I still don’t know how Rick managed to send his chopsticks flying and end up wearing his meal. The man might be smart, but he is somewhat clumsy.
I wolfed down some of it, nodding to myself before turning to everyone.
“Leaders on me.” The representatives quickly gathered around with their own meals.
“Wish I could use these damned things.” Rick said as he held them in a fist and scooped the food into his mouth.
“After living in Korea for so long I was bound to pick it up.” I said before diving in again.
“Much prefer a knife and fork.” Marleen, one of the women I’d consented to being leader said. She had a hardness to her that I knew would give her team and the squad a rock to stand on, and would keep people in line, once she knew what the line was.
“What did you do before Marleen?”
“I was a Mechanic.” From her physique I didn’t doubt it, I did wonder if she had a jack in her shop or if she just preferred to lift the car as she worked on it by herself.
“Ah.”
I looked to the other leaders of the groups. Rick was mostly the brains behind it, and it had worked miracles. In the first ten or so fights after the new organization we did okay, but once people started relying on it we had gotten progressively better. We must have had one or two fights between every sleep period which made up our rough estimate of days we had been training since fighting which I guessed to be seventy.
The first was Hoi he was a largish brute, and had been a cop before being recruited, despite his outward appearance he was gentle and polite, and had the unenviable task of corralling Wiry and Yasu. Abella was Latina and one hell of a looker; she’d been training to become an IFBB pro, a hard weightlifting discipline.
After talking for a bit, eating our new food and getting a better feel for them all I looked to them all, the mood changing from a light one to one of people ready and waiting for orders in a second.
“Alright, we’ll be fighting soon get your people ready.” They nodded all of the leaders had been in fights before, they knew how to look after themselves. I could tell from watching them.
“Yasu! Could you come here please?” I asked sweetly smiling at her as she looked as if the food had gone bad as she slowly stalked over.
“Yes.” Yasu ground out, as if the words physically hurt her.
“For basic training do you want to split people up into groups based upon their skill, the most advanced being instructors?” I looked to Yasu, extending my olive branch of working together.
“I’ll sort it out myself.” Olive branch tossed in the wind. She stalked away as she began telling people to move to different parts of the pod. Splitting them up as I had suggested.
Some people just can’t play nice.
Time to get suited up!
Shrift looked at the Humans he’d heard about as they walked through his sacred armory looking at his perfect nine foot Mechas lining lined up on their racks.
They’d been recruits for five and a half months, they had moved from basic technology to knowing of all current technology. They knew every race that made up the Union, they could disassemble and reassemble any weapon in record time, they knew battle history, they knew how to kill with their bare hands and they had nearly reached their bodies’ maximum efficiency which had been modified by the PDF’s supplements, drugs, training and implants.
While they knew all of these things it was in general terms and they didn’t know how to put most of these things into practice in the real world. Such as they knew the purpose of a mecha, how to turn it on and such, but they didn’t know how to use it, how the specific sciences or technologies worked together to get it working.
Shrift was happy he wouldn’t be dealing with the recruits after training. It was the period when the most deaths and injuries occurred. Recruits weren’t shown how to handle weapons and any other vital equipment other than the mecha. The PDF believed that if a recruit made it past four months of being a Mecha in the Mecha corps then they were worth something. Otherwise, they were just useful cannon fodder. Which is why recruits got the worst jobs.
These humans had been given a special privilege of being introduced to their Mechas first as they held the current record for wins during training. They’d been in close to a hundred fights, one to three a day every day, and still they kept up a six to one record. Shrift watched them closely. There was something scarier about them than the Sarenmenti, sure the Sarenmenti were deadly, and they looked like what Shrift imagined engine demons would look like, but these humans seemed to have an edge to them. Instead of laziness, and only doing what they had been told, these ones had initiative, they thought further than what they were told. That act of thinking made Shrift take a second glance at them.
It wasn’t just that they thought though, it was that they had purpose, they had drive. Shrift compared them to Taleel
Taleel was already wearing his Mecha as he brought his squad into Shrift’s armoury. His plasmid daggers in their scabbards giving off a greenish blue hue as the plasma which made the blades so deadly was held within an electrostatic field.
He had his rail gun strapped across his back with a pistol in his drop leg holster. It painted the picture of deadly Mecha, yet there was no drive in Taleel’s eyes. Instead there was a dullness to them. The only emotion that showed was sadness hidden behind joy as he hurt his recruits. Shrift banged on the knee joint as he looked away, frustration at the system he found himself in and how he and Taleel had to do what they were told. Otherwise they and their recruits would get punished more.
Shrift pushed that thought aside as he focused on working on the knee joint of one of the Mechas. The bugger’s magnetic bearing was off kilt and causing the whole thing to lock up.
“Shrift!”
“What you want Taleel! Some of us have to work!” Shrift twirled waving a crowbar at the officer. Taleel recoiled as Shrift moved towards him. The Sarenmenti might be big and deadly looking, but the Kuruvians were known for their strength and smarts. It was the basic reason why none of the Sarenmenti ever picked fights with them.
“You want someone ask for them with a damn hello, or, are you busy! Especially if it’s the Kuruvian looking after your own armour!” He advanced until he metres away from the humans he was to train.
That goes for you all too!” He said brandishing his crowbar bringing himself to his full height of four foot, his upper’s wielding the crowbar as he crossed his lowers. Their eyes popping from their heads at the sight. Heh, they look kind of cute. Shrift thought as he caught one not looking at him in surprise, but studying the Mechas instead.
“What’re y
ou looking at?” He demanded as the boy looked straight ahead.
“Mechas sir!”
A look of disgust crossed Shift’s face.
I’m no officer. I am just Shrift.” He said, making sure all of them had got the message.
“Be easier to work on that with a jack than trying to crowbar it out.” The human continued.
“Oh would it?” Shrift asked brandishing the crowbar in front of the man’s face. To his credit the man didn’t flinch at all as he took the crowbar walking over to the Mecha.
“Yes.” He turned to the tools locker opening the drawers.
“Shrift.” Taleel said in warning.
The Recruitment: Rise of the Free Fleet Page 8