Sacremon (Harmony War Series Book 1) (10 page)

           
She wanted to build his confidence up into making a mistake; she could move that blade damn fast. If he got into her personal space but didn’t protect himself from the cross cut or stab she performed, he’d be screwed.

           
“The EMF has a great number of tools that allow us as humans to become the best damned soldiers Earth has ever seen. Among them are our medical machines. We can heal cuts, internal bleeding, rebuild lost limbs and more. Getting stabbed is a minor injury. Remember your medical classes,” she cast an eye around the room but didn’t turn from Mark.

           
“It is a lot better to get stabbed here than on the ground in the middle of a firefight for the first time. Only body blows, you hit someone in the head your ass is mine,” she growled. I could see the rest of the staff looking at the recruits with threatening gazes.

           
So don’t stab her in the head, but put her down. Oh how I’d like to do that in a different way,
Mark felt a smile on his lips at his own immature thoughts. When your adrenaline was up and you were in a shitty situation, your brain thinks of some of the weirdest possible shit.

           
Mark let it happen, allowing the humor to release some of the tension and focus.

           
“Something interesting Recruit?” Fredrickson asked, not pleased with his smile.

           
Mark moved in closer, flicking his blades, his left down and his right up as if giving the thumbs up.

           
“More like it,” she said, Mark could see the hunger in her eyes. The want, no the
need
to fight.

           
This was the universes greatest game, human against human. Blades, skills, and bodies against one another.

           
Mark’s features cooled as he took a breath. He felt clarity overcoming his adrenaline induced twitches, asserting control.

           
Fredrickson saw her opening and jumped in the four feet, her blades coming up.

           
Mark reacted, his left blade came up to block hers, he sensed more than saw an opening, his right blade stabbing in.

           
He felt nothing as he backed away from his target. She whipped around, her blade coming back and across his back.

           
He winced, his leg hitting her knee; she let out a grunt and rolled away.

           
Mark waited instead of following up.

           
It had all occurred in seconds, Mark hadn’t been doing anything fancy, he’d been just reacting with the training that had imprinted into his brain.

           
Fredrickson’s grey sleeve was now red with blood; his left blade had cut her arm when defending.

           
His right blade had caught her back, missing her more vital side. His right shoulder blade hurt, he moved it, checking mobility, growling at the pain, using it to focus more.

           
“Well done recruit, there might be something worth the EMF’s time in you,” Fredrickson said, her weapon still up and ready, their fight had just begun.

           
They circled; Fredrickson didn’t want to rush in again.

           
Mark felt the blade in his right hand, rolling it around as he clenched his back muscles to feel the scabbard on his back.

           
He got closer, within five feet, slowly, carefully.

           
She was waiting him out, her blade moving to keep limber.

           
Mark threw the blade in his right hand at her shoulder.

           
She turned away from the blade. Her eyes not leaving Mark as he used her turn to get in close, pulling the blade from his scabbard out.

           
She looked to his right hand pulling out the blade behind his back. Pain blossomed on her face as she looked to her right, there in his hand was his second blade his middle finger through the ring in it turning it into a single-blade knuckle duster.

           
His blade went through her chest and up to her shoulder blade.

           
She grunted, fire in her eyes as she drove her right arm in behind Mark, pinning him to her as she fell.

           
Mark felt a pain in his lower back, as if it had gone painfully and completely numb. His right hand came up and he buried his blade in her gut.

           
They hit the ground a hissing and grunting mess.

           
“Get off of me and leave the blades in,” she hissed.

           
Mark pushed off, trying to not aggravate the blades in her and the one in his lower back.

           
Tyler and Alexis were there, Mark could see Fei and Lastrade moving in as well.

           
Balhauser was yelling.

           
“Good fight,” Mark said.

           
Fredrickson turned and smiled to him.

           
He couldn’t help it, he started laughing, Fredrickson joined in, wincing in pain from the blade in her gut.

           
“Will you two idiots stop laughing?” Tyler said, sounding annoyed more than worried.

           
Mark gave a noncommittal grunt.

           
It was a cool feeling rather than pain as sealant was put on his new wound.

           
Alexis was putting the paste on Fredrickson at the same time.

           
“Just another day in the EMF,” Fei said, sighing as if he had seen this kind of thing a million times before.

           
They were taken to the medics, who looked excited to be finally doing something. With all of the trained troopers on ice and only the flight crew wandering around the command deck and engineering areas of the ship, they had little to do.

           
“On three. One!” Qui the medic pulled the blade out of Mark’s back.

           
Mark glowered at him, as he hummed; using sealant inside Mark’s back fixing his kidneys. Another solution was injected into his thigh making Mark relax, two more needles and a spray of sealant on his back he was good to go.

           
A final needle cleared his senses and he got off of the table gingerly, his back was itchy, but as he looked in the mirror it was closed with a glue-like substance, it didn’t hurt anything like before, just another cut turning into another scar.

           
Mark looked to the medic; it had taken months for him to recover from similar injuries on Earth.

           
“Miracle of modern medicine, we can fix nearly anything as long as you get here still breathing and your skull is mostly intact,” Qui said, putting his tools away.

           
“Huh,” Mark said, looking at his wound. He didn’t want to check out how true that was, but stabbings were looking a whole lot worse.

           
“Now you’re thinking if major injuries aren’t an issue then I can let myself take more damage and worry about them later,” Fredrickson said, she had been on the table next to him. Blood was still on her clothes but her wounds were also just scars now.

           
They’d cut open her clothes to get to the wounds, where he’d cut into her chest and shoulder there was now a swell of flesh, the tight smart clothes acting as the world’s best push up bra.

           
“If you do that, take extra sealant, IV’s and immune boosters,” Qui growled. “There won’t always be a medic but if you know how to do basic self-heal you can get through most scrapes,” Qui looked to Mark and Fredrickson.

           
“Quite right, the medics have more important things that dealing with simple stab wounds and shrapnel when they’re fighting for your brother or sister’s life,” Fredrickson said. “Now stop staring at my boob recruit! You’ve seen enough tits, dongs and vaginas in the showers.”

           
Mark averted his gaze, turning a bright red.

           
Fredrickson laughed, it was the first time he’d heard her laugh, hell it was the first time he’d seen her smile.

           
He grinned, shaking his head.

           
“Go draw new smart clothes and get washed up, the day’s still young,” Fredrickson said.

           
“Yes Sergeant,” Mark said, hurrying off.

           
“That one’s going to be trouble,” he heard Qui say.

           
“Yes, but I think he’ll be the kind of trouble that Troopers need,” Fredrickson said.

           
The hell does that mean?
Mark thought, not knowing if that was a compliment or not.

***

           
The next day they were fitted for full body armor. Plates clipped to one another, covering their upper body and legs. It was heavy but comforting.

           
The final piece of the kit and the most advanced was their space rated helmet.

           
The helmet had a HUD on it that displayed a myriad of information. From a person’s heartbeat, their respiratory intake to flight plans, tagged enemy locations, and the ammunition levels of a user’s rifle could be displayed.

           
Their hand to hand and melee weapons training moved from being their focus to a secondary skill as they turned to weapons handling.

           
“This is the E-12, bullpup rifle, ambidextrous safety and charging handle. It relies on an electronic ignition system. That means no more big firing system, that and the propellant mix the EMF has come up mean this puppy fires smaller rounds at a higher rate of fire and speed,” Balhauser pressed a button and pulled a box from the rear of the gun.

           
“The magazine holds a hundred rounds. Hold down the trigger and you’ll waste it all in less than a minute. First we’re going to go over clearing the weapon and making sure you don’t shoot someone,” Balhauser looked like he didn’t trust anyone to not do this, even with unloaded weapons and no rounds in sight.

           
 They met the repulsor, the section and platoon support weapons. They were fed by a reinforced belt feeders attached to either ammunition boxes or a massive ammo pack repulsor gunners wore on their backs.

           
Recoil systems meant they could be fired from the standing, most gunners fired from the hip, their helmet’s overlaying where they were hitting.

           
There was a bipod built into the weapon and there was the ability to mate two of them together on a stationary tripod for double the fun.

           
They fired hundreds of rounds per minute, sounding like the worlds loudest and greatest chainsaw.

           
“This is the AMR, stands for Anti-Material Rifle, it packs a forty-five calibre round. I know some of you might be going ‘ohh but I thought the seventy-five calibre rounds were the shit!’ Well that’s the reason you’re recruits,” Fei said, grabbing a round from the table it was about as long as his middle finger and thick as his thumb.

           
“This thing will fuck your day up, better propellant and because there are no Geneva conventions anymore, this thing will hit the target and shatter. If this hits your arm, you now don’t have an arm, leg, same thing. Wearing armor, you have a fifty-fifty chance of surviving if this thing hits you in the chest. Now we’re going to fire this rifle for familiarization, if these things come into play then the EMF have lost their minds or we’re so deep in the shit they don’t care about their expenditure report.”

           
Tyler was studying the rifle, it was bullpup like the E-12 but longer, about four-foot-long in total, with a muzzle break at the end of the rifle which seemed to add to the deadly lines of the destructive weapon.

           
Tyler felt a grin on his face, the weapon was just asking to be fired, it wanted its power to be unleashed.

           
A week later and Tyler was behind the gun, Balhauser next to him.

           
With weapons training they were taught a bit more like adults, the instructors teaching them instead of yelling, inspections were still the same and fuckups were dealt with group PT. But here on the line they were honing an art, the art of killing an enemy kilometers away.

           
“I’m not going to fuck around you, talk me through what you’re doing. I know you’re a good shot I want to make sure that you’re going through the steps,” Balhauser said conversational, almost comforting.

           
“Target identified, accounting for wind speed, time to target, oddity of straight ground before simulation of planet curvature, gravity at one point four, cleared to fire?” Tyler asked.