2

The more Elise rushed, the slower I moved. I was actually in a good mood, despite her attempts to antagonize me. Nebs hadn’t caught us yet, and I knew more about my mother and sister than seemed possible only weeks ago. I didn’t know when I would see them again or if they were still alive, but I knew more of the story and could feel a plan growing in my subconscious mind.

Maybe it was a lie just like everything else I’d been told about her situation, but the truth was out there and I was going to find my mother and my sister and protect them from the Union no matter the cost.

The door to our training room slid open. We’d been improving the place ever since taking possession of the Jellybird. There were still only two treadmills, but I had supplemented the basic resistance machines with some extra ship parts I’d converted into a decent weight set. None of it was pretty, but I was now able to push my muscles to their limits on a regular basis.

Accepting the fact that I was fighting a one-man war against the Union was very motivating. I didn’t have allies, I had people I needed to protect.

X-37 had nearly convinced me this was a flawed assumption. His analysis suggested I was defaulting to habits and training that were now irrelevant—but what did he know?

Maybe it was her youth, but Elise was even more fanatical about training than I was. She didn’t seem to fear anything. Full contact sparring matches with Path, heavy weightlifting or grappling lessons with me, or even riddle contests with Tom or Henshaw—Elise would accept any challenge or dare. Sometimes I wrongly assumed she had no fear.

I went to the small locker room and changed into workout gear—something I could run or fight in comfortably while still resembling our tactical equipment—and thought about some of our more dangerous scrapes. Assuming Elise was fearless in all situations was a mistake. We had nearly died several times since we’d met, and I knew what terror looked like on her face.

She probably recognized what I looked like when I was ready to piss my pants—an expression not many people witnessed and lived to tell about. I tried not to think about fear during a mission, but I was still human, even if parts of me didn’t look it.

It was time to get busy, so I focused on what needed to be done. Returning to the training area, I directed Elise toward the virtual shooting range on the starboard wall.

“Let’s start with a sidearm, then an HDK, and then practice transitioning between the two weapons,” I said, laying my jacket, Reaper mask, and rolled up stealth cloak on a table for later in the session.

She nodded seriously and went to the gun locker. After typing in the combination with practiced efficiency, she reverently removed two of the handguns we used on the virtual range. I had drilled her in safety from our very first lesson. She treated these weapons as though they were real. Wanting to learn and in love with shooting, the girl didn’t joke around or argue with me when we were handling weapons.

“What are the five principles of marksmanship?” I asked.

The weapons were on the equipment bench now, slides locked back to show they were unloaded. She stood attentively, but not at attention like a soldier would stand.

“Stance, sight alignment, grip, trigger pull, and follow through,” she said.

“Good. And what’s follow through?” I tested her.

“Not jerking the gun toward the next target prematurely. Holding it on the target until the shot has actually been fired,” she said, chin held high. “The time needed for this is almost imperceptible but very important for accuracy.”

I picked up the first weapon and examined it carefully, checking the slide function, trigger mechanism, and the magazine feed. That done, I made sure the slide was locked back so that it was obvious to anybody even vaguely familiar with firearms that it was unloaded and there was no bullet in the chamber. Placing it on the table felt good—a routine I had followed for all of my adult life.

Elise nodded crisply, then stepped forward to check her own weapon. She moved with the precision of a professional soldier. When she was done, I held out a hand and she placed it in my palm. I checked it again.

She had been impatient with these procedures when we first started practicing with guns. Now she respected them and I could imagine her teaching somebody else in the same manner. She would never be as big or strong as I was, despite her impressive athleticism, but with the right training and application, weapons helped her level the playing field.

I gave her permission to fire on the virtual range and observed her technique. I noticed bruises on her forearms and one on her temple from her sword practice with Path. The man was slightly under average height and very lean but could do a lot of damage with a practice sword.

She fired two rounds, checked her accuracy, then repeated the procedure until I told her to move on to the next drill. With the marksmanship fundamentals well established, she performed tactical exercises—double taps, head shots, and precision shooting to the hip area—shooting the pockets we called it. The fastest way to incapacitate a soldier, no matter what kind of armor they were wearing, was striking them in the hips with a supersonic projectile. The victim of such an attack might not die but definitely wouldn’t be walking or running anywhere soon. There were a lot of arteries in that area as well, so it was often more deadly than a torso wound.

Elise was a tough kid. I hated that she had to be that way. This was a young person who had never known a real childhood. Her father had subjected her to experiments, claiming it was needed to cure a childhood illness, but I had my doubts. One thing my insomnia-driven pondering had convinced me of was that Doctor Hastings would have put her in the program with or without an illness to necessitate it.

The man had wanted his daughter to be stronger, faster, and smarter than anyone in the Union. What I couldn’t decide was whether or not he wanted this to satisfy his ego or make her bulletproof in a harsh galaxy that gobbled people up like they were nothing.

She finished with the handgun, disassembled it for cleaning, then looked at me curiously. “Did I do something wrong?”

“No, you are definitely improving,” I said, then waited for her to finish cleaning and reassembling the handgun.

When she was done, I took my turn on the virtual range while she watched me and coached my mistakes. She was surprisingly mature about this. Outside of the training area, she was constantly busting my chops. In here, she was serious and professional—not childlike in any way.

“I know your shots are right on target, but it looks like you’re milking the trigger and squeezing too hard with your grip like you’re always telling Tom not to do,” Elise said.

“Thanks,” I muttered, then worked earnestly to improve my technique. I was a damn good shot, but that didn’t mean I could afford to get sloppy in training or in real life.

We finished with handguns, did the same thing with HDK rifles, then worked on transitioning between the two and performing speed reloads.

“That’s enough for today,” I finally said. “We need to stow these guns and do some conditioning.”

“What about the mask and the stealth cloak?” Elise asked. “Maybe if you practice putting them on more smoothly, you’ll be able to do the prank.”

“You’re obsessed with pranks,” I said.

“You started it.” She was already laughing in anticipation of the prank. She seemed to be far more into it than I was. Sure, I loved a good laugh, but I didn’t think ghosting around Tom and moving things was going to be that funny.

I had started it. I’d snuck up behind Path and startled him, something no one had believed possible. It was one of the few times I’d seen him unbalanced. He’d laughed afterward, and that was worth it.

The sword saint was always relaxed and easy to be around but seeing him belly laugh was a rare treat.

“Fine,” I said, putting on the jacket to practice drawing the mask from inside of it with my right hand and the tightly rolled stealth cloak with my left. I slipped the mask over my face and spun out the cloak at nearly the same time, disappearing with almost flawless precision as my vision turned blue and a half-dozen tactical readouts enhanced what I could see.

“Not bad,” Elise said. “You’re getting better. Now give me ten more reps.”

“Anything for you, kid,” I said, smiling stupidly as I repeated the procedure over and over—draw the mask and cloak, activate it, put it away, and start again.

She wouldn’t let it go at that. Before we were done, I had to demonstrate the amazing accuracy and speed of shooting while wearing the mask. The interface between my mask, Reaper eye, and the weapon was thrilling, even for someone like me.

“Heart rate elevated,” X-37 advised.

I squinted my left eye slightly, paused, then blinked, practicing a new non-verbal communication X was supposed to interpret as “no shit.”

“Are you winking at your LAI again?” Elise asked.

“No,” I lied.

“Well, whatever you’re doing, it’s weird. Like you have a twitch or something,” she said.

“It’s not a twitch,” I said.

“So, you are talking to X,” she asserted. “Maybe you should stick to the hand movements to covertly talk to X.”

I slaughtered several targets as they popped up on the virtual range.

Elise clapped her hands enthusiastically after I mowed down two, three, and four waves of digital enemies in one of the more advanced training scenarios.

“I wish I had a mask like that,” Elise said. “And some cybernetic enhancements.”

“No, you don’t, kid,” I said.

“Stop calling me a kid.”

She was right. I needed to break the habit sooner rather than later, but I wasn’t going to admit she was right—not yet anyway.

OceanofPDF.com