CHAPTER FIVE
MEWAC – SIC installations, 14H15, 22nd of January, 2771
“I find myself unable to stress enough how unacceptable your behavior was,” Lieutenant Templeton said solemnly.
“I briefly considered making a reference to the military virtues, but I think I’ll give them a rest for now. I will say is this, however. There are three things a soldier must learn before he can become a functional member of his unit. Firstly, the soldier must learn how to do. To do the things that are expected of a soldier. Fight, eat, shower, make his bed, wipe his ass, and so on. Secondly, the soldier must learn how to learn. To learn how to discipline his mind so as to accept newfound knowledge more easily and understand how to exploit it. All this means nothing, however, if one hasn’t first learned how to be! How to exist in this institution, to respect its traditions, its constituents and its laws! You have both failed in this third lesson, and that is why you will be punished.
“Recruits Toni Miura and Ian Templeton, You are both found guilty of behavior unbecoming, and are hereby sentenced to go into orbit for a period of no less than three days from the end of this hour. If either of you return to ground before the end of that period, these events will become known to Captain Damien, who may then decide on what is in the best interests of this subunit,” the lieutenant finished in a monotone.
Despite Mason’s best efforts, Lieutenant Templeton had adamantly decided that no one would be taking the Walk on their first day of training. Ray had been whisked off to Medical Bay and, after a cursory examination from the orderly, redirected via ambulance to Leiben CHC. Oddly enough, he suffered no consequences besides what had already befallen him in the casern.
By MEWAC tradition, to go into orbit simply meant that, for the period of allotted time, in no way could any part of the convicted recruit’s body touch the ground. The only way that such a feat could be accomplished was if the condemned was carried around all day by his fellow platoon members. Drill instruction, physical training, weapons training, civil and military moral studies, signals, topography, vigilance and counter-vigilance, camouflage, eating, drinking, defecating, showering, sleeping, every single daily task, including dressing and undressing himself, would be executed as he was held aloft by his mates. The lieutenant had chosen not to go into detail as to how that should be accomplished; they were apparently expected to figure it out for themselves. But he had solemnly informed his subordinates that, it being a most important tradition, the local base inhabitants would be unusually informative in the event of any cheating taking place. Moreover, surprise inspections would be used as a means to ensure compliance with the sentence.
Mason beamed delightedly, having apparently discovered hog heaven.
As anticipated, the punishment turned out to be just as agonizing for the platoon members as it was for Toni.
The days that followed proved surreal. The entire canteen would burst into delighted applause every time he and Ian were carried in, as if celebrating virgins being offered up for pagan sacrifice.
Figures moved silently in a darkened casern as six platoon members relieved another group holding a snoring Toni aloft, said recruit diligently faking his slumber. He slept almost not at all in those nights, discomforted as he was with the notion of resting while his mates were in effort. Ian did not share his concern, although every time he fell asleep, one of the recruits holding him up would give him a stiff shake. Empathy for their senior had died on that Monday, a state of affairs that Ian made no effort to correct.
The showering arrangements proved particularly harassing for Toni. In their first attempt, his complement had attempted to simply hold him up as he showered, the effort proving impossible due to the shower heads being set too low. The solution they finally decided upon proved feasible but profoundly embarrassing. A loudly complaining Gordie held a naked Toni under the shower as if they were newly-weds, an amused Hirum armed and ready with soap and shampoo.
Nothing, however, came close to the complications surrounding use of the latrine. Toni made every effort to avoid the scenario, eating as sparingly as possible in an attempt to last the three days in orbit without evacuating. The pressure, however, soon began to accumulate, and before long his platoon members were groaning at the impending prospect. Mason took pains to personally inspect the procedure, striving to ensure that Toni’s buttocks at no moment touched the toilet seat, his mates going so far as to dismantle the toilet stall nearest the bathroom entrance to make room for three.
No words were immediately available to describe Toni’s shame. The remaining MEWAC personnel, however, had no difficulty in describing the episode to the uninformed over beers at the local bar.
Toni somehow managed to keep up with the training. More importantly, he came to understand that if at any time his fellow recruits had gotten tired of the punishment, they needed only have dropped Toni to the ground before Mason’s feet. The consequences would only have been his and Ian’s to suffer. Yet such a thing never happened.
Toni’s feet touched down amid much fanfare a full seventy two hours after entering orbit, and training suddenly became that much easier for the remainder of the week.
By the beginning of the second week, however, the pace of activity had begun to accelerate. Each recruit was distributed a veritable pharmacopeia of compulsory medication, beginning with Ultarine, a selective androgen receptor modulator. The SARM was, as was briefly explained to the platoon, a drug especially designed to duplicate the androgenic effects of anabolic steroids, sans their annoying side-effects. But Ultarine had its own side-effects, centering on loss of body moisture through sweating and urination, and the occasional diarrhea. Accordingly, every recruit was required to carry a canteen on his belt from that moment onwards and required to guzzle three liters of water a day outside of meals.
Metaracetam and Ampakinatam were also on the menu, the first intended to improve memory retention and the second to enhance attention span and alertness. Toni came to suspect that it was the second pill that was responsible for the almost fluorescent yellow urine he began to pass.
Aside the intense physical fitness program, Toni was soon dealing with long hours at a desk or in U-formation out in the open, soaking in as much military lore as his instructors could dish out. He had always been prone to becoming lost in his own thoughts, but the medication had performed a miracle of sorts; he hung on his instructors’ every word, committing all to memory with obsessive interest. The list of aptitudes they were expected to accumulate had seemed menacingly vast on his first day, but gradually he began to gain confidence in his ability to meet expectations.
The clear downside to the nootropics was their side-effects. Toni’s level of alertness was so high that he usually found himself mentally exhausted at the end of their day, which wasn’t a problem at all until they began to be pulled from their beds for supplementary training. Recruits often went into standby mode in those hours, their minds having closed up shop for lack of stock, only their most basic goods still on display.
Some cracked in those days and others crashed, but Toni did neither; instead he operated in a dream-like state, and sometimes he was surprised to discover in their conversations the next day that there had been supplementary training in the night. Sometimes he would remember those times as if they were dreams, and sometimes not at all.
He told no one about the lost time, of course.
He also kept quiet about the obsessive and repetitive behavior he had begun to exhibit in his spare time, although not for fear of embarrassment. He had noticed other recruits pacing about erratically, biting at their fingernails until they bled, and engaging in all manner of repetitive tics. One was spending far too much of his free time alone in the remotest of the latrine stalls.
By their fourth week of training Toni could no longer call himself scrawny. He was putting his all into the physical exercises and the dope’s magic was doing its work. He had gained a full six kilo-mass in that time, and the first thing he bought with his initial paychec
k was an anti-scarring salve.
In their fifth week of training, the same day recruit Debusey suffered a mental breakdown, earning him a one-way ticket out of the SIC, Toni spoke with several of his mates about the Orbit Order, still curious as to why they had put up with it.
“Wasn’t that hard, honestly,” Gordie replied, ignoring the outraged retorts of his somewhat weaker mates.
It was Hirum, however, possessed of a characteristic directness that Toni had begun to appreciate, who gave him a straight answer.
“Listen, Toni. What you guys did was stupid. But I honestly didn’t know any of you well enough to just give you over to the Screamer like that. And to tell you the truth, we all got to know you better after the order ...”
“Yep, a little too well, maybe –” Ray added with a sly grin.
“Listen,” Hirum insisted. “What I’m saying is that if anyone was going to take a dive at the sarge’s feet, it would have been Ian. Not you. We even talked about that for a while, but nobody stepped up ‘cause then you would have taken the Walk as well.”
“I didn’t know you guys were still so put out with him,” Toni observed quietly. He hadn’t missed the collection of scowls at Hirum’s statement.
“Let’s just say he got a little too comfortable at being carried around like that. You, at least, were just as pissed off as we were,” he replied somberly.
Corporal Baylen showed up that week to assume the mantle of assistant-instructor, taking upon his shoulders the added task of training his charges in hand-to-hand combat. The platoon was introduced to the base’s Combat Training Square, where they took to assembling every second day, weekend or not, for HHC training. Baylen loved the Art, as he liked to call it.
“I doubt you Suit-pukes will have any need for this training, your thirty millimeter cannon should be keeping you clear of that, but this training should help you become more agile on your feet, and you can certainly use that. Two weeks from now the LT will begin to participate in these classes, and so we’ll be adding some fall-rise and lateral-impact training to your repertoire before then. Trust me when I say you’ll need that when you face him. I think by then we’ll have begun your absorption tests as well.”
Nobody had asked what absorption tests were; they all knew better than that. Two weeks later, they found out.
The absorption tests were simple in their design; a recruit was told to remain stock-still in the middle of the CT square, where he would be subjected to a series of shoves, kicks and (if the Screamer was around) blows to the body in ever increasing intensity, said recruit being expected to absorb the punishment in place without flinching, swaying or (most especially) falling down. Staying on one’s feet proved to be impossible, though, unless that person’s name was Gordie. His body had sucked in the Ultarine like a sponge, and he was slowly becoming as solid as a rhinoceros.
The ultimate goal of the exercise, as they were eventually informed, was for a future Suit driver to become accustomed to performing in combat while under enemy fire. Toni gradually began to imagine every slap as the direct impact of an anti-materiel grenade, every kick or shove the nearby detonation of an artillery shell. Mason’s were direct artillery hits. By the end of the second week of absorption tests, rationality and lucidity were tested both during and immediately following every pounding.
It proved to be somewhat difficult to strip down and reassemble a Lacrau after a few blows to the skull.
After a while, the tests began to gain entertainment value; the male recruits found special interest in contemplating the violent femmes as they were put through their paces. In those tests it also became clear why Hannah had made it thus far.
The exercise began with the intimidating encirclement of the subject by the three members of the Drill Team, Baylen adding to the pressure by fixing the female recruit with a dead-eye stare. And it was the stare itself, apparently, which tended to get her going. Standing with her feet widely spaced apart, her arms stretched out beside her, she would bite down on her lips to suppress a giggle, an effort made even harder by the face-pulling recruits sitting at the sidelines. Toni noticed that simply smiling at her in those moments was enough to get her going. The bully team then spiraled inwards and she would find herself being shoved every which-way, holding her knees slightly bent so she might react faster to any push, pull or kick. The only time he ever saw her smile falter was when she received a particularly vicious blow to the head. Mason at his best, of course. Other than that, her morale had proven unshakeable.
Watching the other femmes taking punishment had its own entertainment value. Sueli kept her face tightly expressionless as she was buffeted left and right, but when struck just right she would briefly show the endearingly outraged expression he kept watch for. Rakaia, in true Terminator style, would put up a mean face. She was, however, the femme who fell most frequently, being of slighter build than the others, and each time she would rise with a furious expression, as if wishing death and destruction to the world for not being of more substantial size. Toni often wondered whether she was counting the days until her chance at driving a real Suit. He certainly was.
Baylen’s arrival had been accompanied by a torrent of speculation as to what had kept him off-base for so long. Some said he had gotten into trouble with civilian authorities over a bar-fight, an idea most promptly discarded since no obituaries had recently been reported by the media. Other speculated that he had finally managed to bed Captain Damien’s teenage daughter, trying to make the connection between one’s arrival and the other’s sudden bout of irritability. Still others whispered that the corporal was currently the prime suspect in a rape investigation, although no one had volunteered the victim’s identity. Toni kept silent whenever he heard the whisperings and tried not to say anything stupid. He already knew why Baylen had been delayed, but had been asked by his instructor to keep it quiet.
Toni didn’t quite know why Baylen had confided in him, but was beginning to suspect that he came across as trustworthy.
The conversation had taken place after-hours, as Toni coated the casern’s exterior walls as punishment for an infraction he could no longer remember. Mason had decided that Toni shouldn’t end basic training before putting a fresh coat of whitewash on the Company building. Baylen sometimes loitered about while he worked, ostensibly to supervise the job, keeping up a low drone of conversation as Toni smeared the walls, the corporal’s deep drawl pleasant company after the Screamer’s daily abuse. Sometimes the recruit would get a heads-up from his corporal, and those warnings had more than once proven useful in keeping clear of Mason’s radar.
And then, out of nowhere, he found his instructor dropping the name of Miriam Reeves.
“The sarge from Valhalla?” Toni asked, trying to remember her face. It had been quite pretty in a very freckly sort of way.
“Yep,” Baylen confirmed. “That’s why she had her eye on me when I took Happyface to the back, to keep me outta trouble, see?”
Toni nodded silently and returned to his work, his defined forearms lime-smeared up to his elbows.
“There’s nothing wrong with a corp and a sarge getting together, you know. But it’s gotta be off-base, and there was a rumor going round we were getting intimate in the sergeants’ mess quarters. And then Captain Damien heard about it ...” Baylen didn’t quite spit the name out, but the resentment was there nonetheless.
Toni simply nodded and made a noise of encouragement as he worked.
“So I was called to his office one day, and he told me there was an enquiry into the matter. I told him he needn’t worry, that I and the sarge were respecting the institution. But some people are queer, you know? My saying that confirmed that we were together, and he didn’t like that at all. Told me I would never train another platoon. So I put in a few off-days, compliments of the FIC commander, you know him, big fella. Only came back for the enquiry proceedings, and that was ugly. Gotta be the most unpleasant business I’ve ever gotten mixed up with. I tell you, Toni, this army
is asleep at the helm. We’re worried about who’s sleeping with who when we should be worried about our mission. You might not have noticed it yet, but eventually you will. We’re going through the motions of training, we talk about operations and tactics and strategy and all that, but ultimately we’re asleep, sleep-walking through our jobs since there’s no boogeyman to fight out there. About the last time this army was awake was with the PBI, and that was about twenty years ago ...”
“The PBI?” Toni suddenly felt more than passing curiosity at the conversation.
“Phantom Battle Incident. There was a time just before I joined when some of the research hubs were thinking of separating into independent states, you know.”
“Never heard about it,” Toni said, trying to remember his history lessons in Leiben High and drawing a blank in his effort.
“Of course you didn’t. That isn’t taught at school, and there was only some talk about it in the media and Civilian Network, but at the height of the crisis there was a training incident involving a few tanks, friendly-fire during a live-fire exercise. Someone botched things up and, by the time it got leaked to the media, it was supposed to be a full-blown battle. I was fourteen years old at the time, and seeing everyone scared shitless like that gave me more of a hard-on for the service than anything else could have. Some Cavalrymen and Arties died on that day, twenty-four, I think. Anyway, that must be the last time there was a real honest-to-god Red-Alert on any military base. Since then it’s been slow slumber.”
Toni was surprised by the tone; he had never heard Baylen speak so bitterly before.
“I thought you loved the army, Corp.”
“No, Toni, I hate the army. I hate today’s army, the one that exists. What I do love is the army the MEWAC could have been if there wasn’t so much bullshit flying around. Never forget this, kid. Even in times of peace the Enemy still exists. But this enemy is on our side. Every soldier napping on sentinel duty, every asshole sergeant with a chip on his shoulder, every officer making mountains out of molehills, is the enemy.
“And you’ve gotta watch out for the enemy. I heard what happened on your first day in the SIC, kid. That was just dumb. You think Ian’s your enemy? Take a better look around you. At least he was trying to do his job right. You’re the ones who screwed up, you were the enemy that day. You gotta be true now, kid. A few months from now I might have to salute you, and the last thing I want before me is another sarge or officer with a chip on his shoulder. So be true, pay attention to your classes and make me proud, alright kid?”
The criticism had bitten deeply into Toni, mostly because he knew that Baylen was speaking from the heart, and there was no appropriate defense against such words. He was also appalled at the notion that he would soon outrank the veteran standing before him.
The weeks wore on at a snail’s pace and Toni kept putting in his best. The dope wasn’t all that fueled him anymore, his occasional conversations with Baylen having proven to be more powerful medicine, and his persistence finally began to pay off. The platoon had weekly field exercises to contend with, but on the Friday of their sixth week, he was faced with the field navigation evaluation that each recruit would need to pass in order to qualify for their week-in-the-field.
The morning was spent in examination in the dimly-lit classroom, the examinees’ noses nearly having to touch the exam sheet in order for them to read the questions there. Toni was in the Zone that morning, his tics having subsided due to the scale of the challenge before him. By morning’s end and as a subdued platoon filed out of the freshly whitewashed building, he knew he had aced the challenge.
Lunch was heavy but Toni ate light, anticipating strenuous activity for the afternoon. Soon they would be tackling a navigation course, and he intended to finish before the Special One, as Ian had begun to be called.
Toni harbored no hostility towards his senior, having begun instead to view him as a rival. He had no illusions, however, about which of the two of them was the more capable.
At fourteen hundred hours, the SIT’s entire complement of fifteen recruits stood in formation under the eternal red sun, the orb’s heat turning the humidity from the wetter uniforms into steam as the drill team contemplated them. The lieutenant began to brief the platoon.
“The following examination will be a two-part topographical-orientation course. The first part is essentially a treasure hunt, since at its end you will find an envelope with the printout map that will be needed to complete the second. Each recruit will be set loose at five minute intervals. Said recruit will be armed with a map, a scale meter and a set of hectametric coordinates. If examinees happen to be caught together on any part of the course, they will be failed. I should add that there would be no point in doing this anyway, since the first three objectives are unique to each recruit.
“You will also each carry a GPS marker to be kept on your corpse at all times. By collating the marker’s data at the end of your run, we will know which objectives were reached and which were not. There will be penalties for failing an objective. If, however, you are unable to finish or you should fail to hand in your marker, you will find yourself privileged to continue your training ... in the FICs and far away from us. Is that clear?”
All present hollered their understanding in unison, and before long the drill team had handed out the gear and sorted the group into single file, the most senior of their number at the fore.
“Recruit Templeton, you have one minute to consult your map,” Baylen warned.
Ian put a knee to the ground, spread his map out and aligned it with his surroundings. He consulted his coordinates briefly and then placed the transparent scale-meter over the map. After a quick look-around he stood, stowing the gear away as he patiently waited for the start signal. Thirty seconds later he was off at a sprint, disappearing into the bushes north of their position with no sign of slowing down.
The minutes passed by and Toni waited patiently as the recruits before him were released into the wild. He chose not to worry about competing against Ian; he would run well within the limits of his body, consigning unto the God of the Underdogs the task of leading his rival astray.
“Recruit Miura, you have one minute to consult your map.”
Taking two quick steps forwards, Toni put a knee to the ground and spread the map out before him, taking care to orient it correctly. The effort proved to be a simple one, as he’d already seen his mates do the same over the preceding minutes. Consulting the initial coordinates on a slip of paper, he superimposed the scale-meter upon the map’s appropriate grid-square and took note of his first objective. A smile came to his camouflaged lips.
The MEWAC water tower was easily visible from any open area in its immediate vicinity, and indeed he found it when he peered south, four stout concrete pillars supporting a spherical, ballasted water tank up to a respectable height of 25 meters. Toni confidently stowed his gear and then set off at a canter once Baylen had given the signal, seeing no significant obstacles to overcome, only a steep, continuous ascent to the crest of the hill occupied by the tower. Within four minutes, he had reached his objective. As he slowed to a stop near the closest pillar, he found his first snag of the day.
A navy blue envelope fluttered clearly in view, tied as it was to one of the many rungs ascending the northern pillar. The tower itself was, however, besieged by a massive growth of thorn bushes. How his instructors had managed to place the envelope up there without leaving their hides among the thorns was beyond him. It was also beyond his patience to discover how, and so he launched himself forward at a mad sprint, terribly aware he would be hating himself over the following days.
As he reached the obstacle, Toni pounced, catapulting himself towards the pillar in a ballistic trajectory. Curling into a tight ball, he flew onwards until, as the pillar approached, he kicked his legs out and splayed both arms before him, reaching out towards the nearest approaching rung. His legs connected first, colliding against the reinforced concrete a split-second befor
e his hands clasped the rung. Strong as he was, however, inertia was stronger, and it was his helmeted skull that finally put a stop to his momentum, clashing against a higher rung with enough force to dent the steel.
So that’s how they did it, he thought through the daze, feeling overproud for having managed to evade the thorns entirely.
With a free arm he snatched the envelope from the rung and stowed it away in his pocket, before twisting his body and neck about for a look-around. The new predicament slowly dawned upon him.
His drill team had not leapt over the obstacle to gain access to the pillar. The reason he knew this was because, had they done so, they would then have had to contend with jumping directly into the thorn bushes themselves. Those bushes appeared entirely undisturbed. In fact, they appeared quite intent on losing their virginity to the imprudent recruit hanging above them.
With a groan of dismay, Toni launched himself into the vegetation, and fear quickly morphed into horror as the bush’s tentacle-like branches wrapped themselves around his body with his every move. After several fruitless attempts to delicately weave his way out, Toni finally shoved his hands into his armpits, lowered his center of mass and tucked his chin into his chest, presenting the offending thorns with his helmet’s dented dome. He then forged a path through the thorns by brute force, exiting the obstacle moments later with spiny clumps of bush still attached to him.
Ignoring the vegetation and his numerous injuries, Toni put his knee down and opened his prize, finding that his second objective awaited him on the firing line of a deactivated shooting range due east. Swearing under his breath, he set off once more, finally finding a blue envelope resting atop the range mast, requiring him to lower it by the halyard as one would a flag.
Toni’s third objective took him east, and his fourth further east still, bringing him close to the end of his map. He was on his way to the fifth objective, a crest situated due south of his position, when he came across a disorientated Rakaia.
“Need some help?” he asked her as she stumbled about.
“No! I mean, yes! Oh –” she groaned at her sudden dilemma.
Toni shrugged and kept jogging.
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“Delta Morana,” he replied over his shoulder, “still got a click of running ahead of me ...”
“You’re going the wrong way,” she countered, her brow furrowing. “You should be descending, not moving towards high ground.”
“All deltas are summits, Tani, that’s why I’m moving to high ground. You’ve got your peaks and valleys confused.”
She yanked out a crumpled map and gave it a long, hard look.
“I knew that ...” she stated in an undertone.
“Good luck,” he shouted over his shoulder, already on his way.
Delta Morana was a resting spot a lion would have enjoyed, had a lion been born in the history of the planet. Trees huddled ever closer to each another as they neared the summit, gradually forming a continuous canopy, only to be interrupted by a collection of granite-grey rocky outcroppings. At the center of those rocks a solitary whitewashed pillar presided. To Toni’s eyes, it looked like a puritan pastor preaching to the wilderness.
The pillar’s northern face was unapproachable and so Toni began to circuit the outcropping from its eastern face, glad to be out of the sun due to the shade afforded by the densely packed trees. Already his uniform was wet under his armpits, as well as where the Tier 1 travel-pack rested against his back. He puffed along doggedly as he gauged how best to approach his objective, keeping close to the rock face so he wouldn’t miss the way in. A whizzing noise then became apparent and he turned towards the sound.
The rock struck him hard against his helmet, breaking its chin-strap and knocking him out cold.
Toni returned to consciousness with an unknown presence beside him. Hands passed over his body as if the presence was trying to heal him by touch.
Thank the gods I have been found, he thought drowsily.
Perhaps one of the family gods his father prayed to had arrived to rescue the firstborn son. Perhaps the pillar he had seen moments before had somehow transformed into the pastor he had imagined it as. He rested a tremulous hand on the priest’s shoulder in thanks, only to have it slapped brusquely away.
That just isn’t right, he considered, trying hard to focus on the stranger’s face.
Hazy features slowly sharpened until, eyes slowly widening in surprise, Toni found himself staring up at a very edgy Ian.
“Wha ... What in hell are you doing?” Toni demanded weakly.
“Something you’re not gonna like, mate ...” his senior retorted as he searched through his comrade’s vest pockets.
Toni tried to rise and received a stiff clout to the face. He momentarily descended back into the abyss.
“Let go, let me go or I’ll break your hands!” he heard someone snarl through the fog. He returned to consciousness to find Ian’s wrists firmly gripped in his own hands.
From his senior’s reddening fist hung a pendant with a fluorescent yellow GPS marker.
Inside Toni’s mind, disjointed pieces fell into place all at once, and a hot ball of rage ignited deep within.
“You’ll break my hands? How exactly are you going to do that, you son-of-a-bitch?” he growled as he tried to rise.
Ian blinked stupidly for a moment. He then twisted his wrists inwards and inflicted a vicious kick against Toni’s head that laid him flat on his back again. Free of the vice-like grip, the recruit then took off at a sprint. Toni’s torso tautened and bounced back to a sitting position as if acted upon by a spring, the final assault serving to establish new priorities for the remainder of the day.
First he would find Ian and kill him, and then he would complete his course.
Ian sprinted lithely into the eastern wilderness with Toni’s marker firmly gripped in his fist, his furious junior in hot pursuit. The terrain was uneven and cluttered with obstructions, but that played in Toni’s favor; after having spent his youth exploring the farm and the surrounding wilderness, his skill at tackling obstacles was perhaps the highest of the platoon.
“You bushwhacking, yellow, thieving backstabberrr! I’ll kill, I’LL KILL YOU!” he roared, his bruised and punctured body fueled by outrage into a leg-pumping frenzy. His thighs burned fiercely but he scarcely acknowledged the pain; in due time that pain would wrap around him like a python, but for the moment it was no worse than a rat-snake nipping at his heels.
On the other hand, he was closing the distance between them fairly quickly.
Ian suddenly made a left turn and began to forge a path northwards through the bushes. Toni peered beyond and realized why: the way ahead was barred by an extensive interlocking growth of thorn bushes.
As the desperate pursuit continued, Toni had time to consider what would happen if Ian were to escape. He was horribly certain that if he were to return to base without an explanation for his missing marker, he would be failed from the SIT. He was also quite certain that Ian had already completed his own course. But he couldn’t understand how Ian expected to get away with it. If the drill team were to read his marker’s data afterwards, they would discover that he had inexplicably returned to an objective of the first part of the course after finishing his. He couldn’t possibly hope to –
And then it hit him.
Ian had hidden his marker somewhere safe before searching Toni out. The data it contained would give him all the alibi he needed.
Which meant that Toni’s future was presently running on two legs and trying hard to escape him.
All of a sudden, the two recruits came upon a wide, dried-up riverbed, its multitude of large, polished rocks presenting Ian with an unexpected obstacle to a clean getaway. A livid Toni tackled him and for a brief moment both were airborne. They then came crashing down onto the rocky ground.
The recruits rolled among the jutting rocks, Ian’s steel helmet clanging loudly as it collided against granite. Toni stood q
uickly to face his senior, only to find the Leibenese already on his feet, his fists held high as he glared hatefully from between scraped forearms. Toni’s jaw tightened at the prospect of imminent pain.
He had no illusions about which between them was the better fighter.
Toni launched himself forwards and tried to tackle Ian again, only to receive a stiff kick to the face that blocked his advance in an instant. He opened the distance hastily, blood coursing from his battered nose as he scrutinized his adversary’s fighting stance.
Ian appeared as unapproachable as a battle-tank. His senior’s expression slowly relaxed and became impassive. He had apparently chosen to bide his time.
Toni finally smiled.
“You must have trained really hard to be able to fight like that,” he quipped, stooping down to pick up three good-sized pebbles, “but it’s a pity you never grew up on a farm. Probably couldn’t throw a stone to save your life, could you?”
The pebble whizzed through the air, its movement a blur as it struck Ian’s upheld arm. The recruit winced with sudden pain and he gripped his wrist, only to be struck by a second pebble against his helmet. A third stone collided against Ian’s jaw with a dull thwack, sending its victim down onto a knee as it escaped clattering among the rocks. Before Ian could recover, Toni had closed the distance; he received a kick to his head with enough force to send the battered helmet clanging over the river bed with chin-strap twirling.
Ian clinched at his junior’s legs and planted his own squarely beneath his body, and then he lifted Toni high into the air, twisting his body around before sending his victim crashing onto the waiting rocks.
The impact expelled all the air from Toni’s lungs with a hollow “humph”; he clawed desperately at Ian’s torso as a wave of nausea threatened to overcome him. His senior calmly placed the palms of his hands against Toni’s chest and began to push inexorably, and his grip slowly began to slip and weaken.
Toni stared at Ian’s splayed hands with furrowed eyebrows, suddenly realizing that there was no GPS marker in them. He remembered that he hadn’t seen the senior place it in his pockets during his escape.
Finally, he understood.
Toni’s knee briefly jockeyed for position and then promptly ploughed into his adversary’s crotch. He managed to repeat the act once before Ian clamped his legs together and rolled stiffly away. He stood and his eyes flashed over his surroundings, finding nothing. He then set off at a run, leaving his groaning adversary behind.
Following Ian’s escape route in the opposite direction, Toni’s eyes darted about for the fluorescent marker until, four hundred meters from the riverbed, he finally found it swaying on a branch well inside the sea of wild blackberry bushes they had skirted. Grimacing at what he was about to do, Toni bounded into the brambles at an insane sprint, coming to a halt four paces short of his objective due to the branches’ tearing embrace. Covering his bleeding head with his savaged arms, he forged a path through the remaining gap until he was able to clutch the marker away from its resting place. With a step back and an excruciating turn, he prepared to make his getaway.
Ian stood blocking his way out with shoulders hunched, his bleeding chin tucked into his chest as he eyed his junior with dead eyes. There was nothing to be said between them. Toni considered the odds.
Coming to a decision, he did an about-face and launched himself into the brambles again, screaming with rage and pain as he continued to forge a path through the thorny growth. Chancing a quick look over his shoulder, he saw Ian backing up for a running start.
The height of the thorn-growth gradually rose above head-level, and Toni was relieved to find empty pockets beneath the bush that he promptly began to tunnel through. Moments later he tore through the sea of thorn’s opposite side and sped off, leaving an enraged Ian howling and lost behind him.
Toni’s legs pumped furiously as he opened the distance between them, exhilarated by his escape, but somehow ashamed. There was something very craven about running away from an enemy.
He coursed over a crest and into the valley beyond, before turning south and circuiting a humble koppie to veer west. Finding a dense growth of bushes, he took shelter inside it, taking special care to first make sure that the particular variety lacked thorns.
Battered and bloody hands removed the map from a pocket, pricking themselves a thorny branch still attached to his uniform. He splayed the chart on the ground, not bothering to orient it since the bushes prevented him from viewing his surroundings. He studied the map carefully, comparing it with his memory of the terrain he had just crossed. What he saw there made him apprehensive.
His escape had somehow taken him beyond the edge of his map. Simply turning west would not be enough to help him return to it, however, since he then ran the risk of passing below it. He would have to take a north-westerly course, one which would take him dangerously close to the sea of thorns, and towards where he had last seen his senior.
After a careful search of his surroundings, a grim Toni left his temporary refuge and set off at a brisk jog. The terrain was littered with small rocky hills, and with clumps of trees interspersed with myriad bushes. Feeling naked in the open ground, Toni took a page out of his training manual and chose a more winding path from grove to grove in order to avoid being seen. As he came upon the summit of a low hill, Toni finally saw a landmark he was familiar with.
To the west, perhaps a kilometer away, rested a delta-point crowned by a whitewashed central pillar. He smiled tremulously as he remembered what it had reminded him of. What a sight for sore eyes you are, pas–
A sound from behind caught his attention but it was already too late. Ian collided violently against his body and the two recruits rolled downhill, arms flailing violently, before dropping off a short precipice.
Toni returned to consciousness surrounded by unfamiliar terrain. He rose to his feet but promptly collapsed onto his rump in disorientation. He watched in dazed fascination as a blood-streaked Ian, his uniform in tatters, calmly approached him.
“I need to thank you for your love, Tonesy ...” Ian snarled before kicking viciously him in the groin.
Sudden pain exploded from below and Toni curled into a defensive ball in slow motion, steeling himself for a pummeling. Ian stooped over him rained a flurry of concussive blows upon his body, roaring in fury every time a fist connected. Finally exhausted by the effort, he tore Toni’s pockets apart until the fluorescent GPS marker fell to the disturbed ground. Snatching the device up with a huff of satisfaction, he then leaned towards his adversary’s ear.
“I’ll be having an orgasm when I see you walk. That’s why you’ll see me smiling when you pass me by –”
“And what, exactly, do you think you’re doing, soldier?”
Toni heard the woman but was unable to see her through the blood in his eyes. He did recognize the voice, however. Cleaning the blood from his face with a dirty cuff, he blinked furiously and peered in her direction.
A small army camp was laid out before him, nothing more than a smattering of tents beside a shallow stream. To Toni’s weary eyes, it was Napoleon’s Grande Armeé. Several soldiers stood or squatted beside a water purification apparatus, considering the battered recruits with surprise or mild amusement. A pair of corporals stood flanking Lieutenant Rose as she fumed not five meters away, considering the pair with a humorless half-smile.