The Ninth (17 page)

“You idiot!”  Hiroko started pushing Owen away.

Brent placed a hand on her shoulder before she could continue.

“Dante and I will be checking on the other recruits.  If you need us just call.”  Brent said, nodding to Dante.

As he took his hand off Hiroko’s shoulder, Brent leaned near her ear.

“Don’t let embarrassment steal this from you,” Brent whispered so only she could hear.

Hiroko stared at Brent with a startled expression as he and Dante left.  After they had gotten a ways away from the pair, Brent glanced over his shoulder to find the two embracing again.

“Florence Nightingale effect, sir?” Dante whispered his question to Brent.

“I doubt it.  Pretty sure that’s the real thing, Dante,” he answered.

“How can you be sure?”

“Trust me, I just know.”  Brent glanced at his hands, the warm sensation still lingering.

The battlefield was littered with unconscious doubles.  A great cheering grew in intensity.  Brent slowly realized it wasn’t just the crowd above but the recruits were cheering as well.  The last recruit had finished his match, and the double was on the ground.  Dante tapped him on the shoulder and pointed up to the grand chair above.  The chair was empty now; not even the cushions remained.  The sun above the open coliseum started to set, filling the arena in a deep crimson.  A bright white light came from the end of the arena as the doorway back to the academy opened.

The recruits sluggishly moved toward the safety of hallways and abandoned the doubles behind them.  Out of the corner of his eye, Brent spotted Hiroko and Owen walking toward him, hand in hand.  He chuckled to himself as the sight reminded him of several cheesy romance films he had seen.  Several other recruits joined Brent in laughter as they walked out of the arena into the brightly lit station.

“You all sound like a gaggle of geese.”  A monotone broke through the laughter.

Having been so absorbed, Brent missed the entry of the instructor.  She still had a regal look, but now there was extra venom in her eyes.  The recruits grew silent as they too noticed her anger.

“I take it we all passed.”  Brent dared the instructor’s wrath.

The instructor bristled; smoldering hatred filled her eyes.  Brent didn’t back away.

“I thought she said we’d fail if we attacked someone else’s double?”  Erin apprehensively  piped up.

“It was singles combat,” Dante asserted.  “As long as we never engaged two targets at once we were not in violation of any rules.  Isn’t that right, sir?”

“Precisely.  When Erin ran into my double the two of us weren’t actually fighting,” Brent explained.  “He was charging and I was preparing, but we weren’t exchanging blows.  It was a break in the battle.  When Erin attacked my double she had simply traded opponents.  Her own double didn’t know what to do.  Erin hadn’t joined up with me against my double so she hadn’t failed.  Thus, it couldn’t continue attacking Erin or it would be in violation of the instructor’s rules.  So Erin’s double just stood around, unsure what to do.”

“What about Owen?” Hiroko asked meekly.  “He put himself between me and my double.  Doesn’t that mean he failed?”

“Your double was about to attack you, but again that was a pause.  When the double’s strike hit Owen,
it
was the one to change targets.  Isn’t that right, instructor?”  Brent threw down the gauntlet.

“The other instructors had warned me not to underestimate you.  Tell me, did you figure it out when the girl gracelessly ran into your double or when the boy took the finishing blow for the frail girl?”  The instructor was careful not to use the recruits’ names.

“Erin tipped me off; Owen confirmed it.” Brent responded.  “There was no way you could resist humiliating us as soon as possible.  Before the fight even began you made that clear.  You couldn’t even wait until you finished your lecture to draw attention to the fact I wasn’t listening.  The fact you
didn’t
draw attention to Erin or Owen was all I needed to know.”

Nathan had never really paid close attention to the exams.  Unlike the troopers who enjoyed them regularly, Nathan had no reason to.  He wasn’t a division leader, so scouting the new recruits was pointless, and he had access to far greater sources of entertainment.  Truth be told, there wasn’t much entertainment value in the exams to be had.  There were moments, of course, those riveting encounters where every second held the audience in rapt attention.  However, in between those precious moments there were long stretches of dull, uninteresting happenings.

Nathan found himself longing for those boring exams of the past.  Today had been more frantic than the sum of his tenure as the Administer to the academy.  The combat exam was no exception.  When Jack had convinced him to shake things up, to change the exams, Nathan had accepted without question.  How naive he had been.  He had even placed a bet on the whole affair, his favorite spice for an otherwise tasteless reality.  If Nathan had known the outcome of accepting Jack’s request, he would have turned him down flatly.  Well, he would have resisted.  It was too late for second thoughts now.  The combat exam had been disastrous.

Group D ignored the instructor’s warning and ganged up on the doubles.  Instead of twenty sparring matches, it was one bloody mass of forty struggling recruits.  In the heat of the calamity, the recruits couldn’t tell the real from the copies and did just as much damage to their fellow recruits as they did to the doubles.  Being failed by the instructor was the least of their worries as they were carted off to Medical with twenty sets of broken bones, ruptured organs, and internal bleeding.  Nathan had seen wounded in combat zones in better shape.

Group E had fought until the last recruit dropped.  They were all in Medical now.  That raised the count to a solid forty.  A few in group A had overpowered their doubles, but the other fourteen were in worse shape than some from group D, up to fifty-four in Medical.  Half of Group B had prevailed, and only seven of them needed medical treatment.  At the outset, the leader of group B ordered half the squad to help out the others.  They failed instantly of course, but the ten matches of two insured the victory of the other ten.  Being able to tag team the doubles allowed them to gain victory, but for an unlucky seven, even the tag team strategy hadn’t saved them from a trip to Medical.

Everyone in Brent’s group passed the exam, but that didn’t mean they did it in one piece.  Six of them had been rushed off to Medical.  Sixty-seven.  Out of one hundred able-bodied recruits, sixty-seven were now in Medical.  Although those fortunate thirty-three recruits didn’t
require
a trip to Medical, they took one anyway.  Not one of the recruits had managed to survive the exam without sprains, bruises, or a few cuts.

“I’m finished.”  Nathan sighed.

“What are you talking about?”  Jack raised an eyebrow.

“I never should have listened to you.  The old exams were boring, but safe!  I’ll never live this down.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.  You’ll be fine.”

“How can you be so certain?”

“Don’t forget I’ve got the full support of the military in my back pocket.  I toss around the word Lazarus, and I could get away with murder.”

“I think you just did.  Those recruits are in pretty bad shape.”

“You are just being melodramatic.  I’m telling you that you’ll be fine.”

“But . . .” Nathan sighed more than said.

“Not another word.  We have more to worry about than our career options.”

“Oh?”

“Did you notice anything strange about that exam?”

“You mean besides the pile of bodies?”

“I’m serious.  Did anything strike you as out of place?”

“I’ve never been any good at guessing games, but I’ll bite.  The setting was a strange one; never seen anything like that.

“I doubt anyone has.  The instructor spent hours going through the archives looking for the perfect setting for what she had in mind.  As it turns out, that structure predates the Great War.”

“
Seriously
?  And here I thought it was some odd rim world civic center.”

“She just stumbled across it by chance.  I’m sure you noticed the awe it inspired in the recruits.”

“It didn’t seem to interest Brent in the slightest.

“Exactly!  He disregarded it as if it was a common sight.”

“Well he
did
come to us through Lazarus.  Could it be a memory?”

“Impossible.  He was only an infant when we recovered him.  There is no way a child that young could have memories that detailed.  On top of that, Brent never had any problems with his surroundings.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, lets say for the sake of argument that Brent
did
have memories of a structure that predates the Great War, then it only makes sense to say that he himself was from the same era.  A child from such an ancient period would undoubtedly suffer from future shock.  The simplest devices we take for granted would be unexplainable wonders.”

“Can’t argue with that.  If stacking shaped rocks on one another to fashion crude structures was the most advanced you knew, how would you react to a skyscraper?  And before you remind me, I do remember you telling me about his extensive knowledge of jump mechanics.  But if he isn’t from some ancient era, why was he so comfortable with the surroundings?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.  Although, that’s not the only mystery from the exam.”

“Wait, there’s
more
?  Can’t you settle for pushing me to my wits end once per hour and leave it at that?”

“You were the one that wanted to be my accomplice, remember?” Jack asked with a grin.

“Me and my big mouth.”  Nathan sighed.  “So let’s hear it.  What kind of nightmare fuel are you fretting over?”

“Do you remember when Brent was addressing the girl?”

“Which one?”

“The one who had been asleep in the last exam.”

“Oh yes, I remember her now.  What about her?”

“When Brent was trying to get her to attack the boy’s double, do you remember what he called it?”

“I’m sorry Jack, I wasn’t exactly hanging on his every word.  I was a little distracted by the
body count
.”

“He called it an Echo.”

“An Echo?  I would have called them shadows myself.”

“
Funny
,” Jack said, not amused.

“Sorry.  You have to admit it could have been a slip of the tongue.  The boy was in the middle of a battlefield after all.”

“I suppose, but it still troubles me.  He’s usually so analytical.  It didn’t seem right for him to use such flowery speech in the middle of combat like that.”

“What? Echo?  It’s not that odd of a word, plus it’s not really all that out of place.  An echo is when you hear your voice reflected, and they were fighting reflections of themselves.  I can understand what was going through his mind.”

“You make a fair argument, but what about his reaction to the kiss?”

“Are you going to nitpick
everything
he did during the exam?”

Jack said nothing as he shot a incredulous glance.

“Right, mystery child of potential doom,” Nathan said with a sigh.  “He did seem to have an adverse reaction to it.  Wait.  You don’t think he’s gay, do you?”

“I doubt it’s that.”  Jack let out a laugh.

“You don’t have to laugh.  It could happen.  So what’s your
brilliant
analysis?”

“Sorry, Nathan, I just didn’t think of that.  Brent is a Weaver, right?”

“That’s what you tell me.”

“Well, when the two embraced they shared an emotion.  What if Brent was overwhelmed by it?”

“Are emotions really that strong?  I mean, I always knew you were sensitive to strong emotions, but I’ve never seen you retreat from someone.”

“True enough, but we don’t know how powerful a Weaver he is.  Back on Trica he did some amazing things.  Impossible things.  Perhaps he is more sensitive to emotions than we thought.”

“A fair assertion, but why did a kiss do it?  Zimmer wanted to rip off his head for passing his exam so easily.  No reaction from Brent then.  In the mess hall he had two full divisions ready to beat each other to a pulp.  Even that didn’t seem to affect him until his life was in jeopardy.”

“I don’t know the answer to that, Nathan.  Maybe he is limited to positive emotions.  It isn’t common, but then again, nothing about Brent is common.  I’m looking forward to the next exam.  I wonder what we’ll learn about him next.”

“Hold on, Jack.  Next exam?  There won’t be another exam today.”

“What?”  Jack sounded alarmed.

“I’ve got word from Medical that most of the recruits won’t be going anywhere tonight.  Maybe we can reschedule the last exam for tomorrow.”

“That’s not an option, Nathan.  It has to happen
tonight
.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”