“My opponent would have you believe I hate the military, but that is not true. He would have you believe that I would cut down our effective force. That is also not true. What I propose is shifting one full brigade ship into a more humanitarian role. No longer will every human contact come with death to the aliens we meet.” – From the final debate, October 3265.
Weeks passed, and life on the Washington was slowly returning normalcy. After Nessa’s implant, she’d had a serious change of heart. Jack knew that something significant happened, but if Thea or anyone else knew what it was, they weren’t telling. What wasn’t surprising was how much time the Breaker spent in the gym. It seemed like every time Jack ran into her, she was working hard to whip herself into shape and practicing acrobatics he could only dream of doing. Even before her injury, Nessa had made it a point to spend at least two hours a day sharpening her dexterity. The actual surprise was that she’d finally started devoting a small chunk of each day to true relaxation. She even went back to eating meals with the squad like they had on Algol.
He wasn’t complaining about this change of pace and heart. It was something he’d worried about for a long time. But even though it threw him off balance to see someone make such a violent shift in their daily life, it was reassuring to see her take the initiative in making those changes.
“Hey,” he said, walking into the room he shared with Thea. A cabin with both a bedroom and living space was expensive on an enlisted budget, but it had proven its worth day in and day out. “I know you can’t tell me private details, but is Nessa ok?”
“You mean, other than the fact that she’s still pining over a lost leg and pushing herself to recover what she perceives as lost potential, even though she is arguably better than she was before?” Thea replied, putting down her tablet and looking up at him from her chair, “Nope, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh. Care to elaborate? Is there something wrong with the leg or is there something else that I need to know about?” he laughed, collapsing into his own chair and handing her a cup of tea.
“Well, frankly, she’s doing like crap. Yeah, she’s trying to do better, but she has this deep-seated mindset that she has to be so much more than just a soldier. Socially, I’ve seen more progress in the last few weeks than I have in the past year, but that isn’t saying much. She thinks she has to be the tip of our spear and forgets this is a shared burden.”
“What about the leg?” he said, pulling a cream cheese and lox bagel out of the paper bag in his lap.
“She has a little pain, but I think it is all psychological. Until she’s tested it in battle—actual battle, not sparring—she won’t accept it. I’ve scanned her body several times and never found a reason for her to feel that pain.”
“There is a syndrome named after that exact situation, you know,” he replied, pulling out his own breakfast and taking a sip of coffee.
“That’s true. But sadly, the only thing we can do is to be there for her,” she replied, “Oh and by the way, we are having dinner at Fresco’s with the squad tonight, and we’re paying.”
“And I’m just being told now?”
“I’m sorry. Were you planning on brooding in the cabin tonight instead? I’m sure you think taking lunch with the group is enough, but it’s not. You’re our leader and you need to bond with us. Sure, we may have been on Algol together, been through the shit together, and dealt with loss together. But none of that gives you a pass to ignore the social aspect.”
“Don’t I need to back away from a social aspect? My judgment was clouded because I was too familiar with both Nessa and Ortiz. I could have done better. They both got hurt because of the bad calls I made.”
She threw a chunk of her bagel in response, drawing his attention when it bounced off his forehead. “Maybe you and Nessa have more in common than you think. If you would pull your head out of your ass for long enough to recognize that you can’t save everyone, you’ll remember that you were fighting, too. You didn’t fail her, and she didn’t fail herself. She made a snap decision in the heat of battle, and it was the wrong one. That’s it, that’s the entire story. There is nothing else to digest about the situation. Also, Can I have that back?”
“I get it, but I need to learn from that mistake. With only two weeks left before we get put back on assignment, I need to study the details of our last mission so I know exactly what I could have done better,” he replied, handing the chunk of bagel back to the blonde Viking woman.
“You could do better by being there for your people. Besides, we already have our next duty assignment. Haven’t you bothered to look?”
He had done no research on the new mission, and she knew it. What was the point? He couldn’t change the outcome, so why did the details matter?
“No.”
“Well, I did. We are going to a garrison, Jack. Six solid months of guard duty on a small, low-development world. From what I’ve been able to gather, the Post Commander doesn’t even assign human guards. Instead, he trusts Automatons to do the actual guarding and only brings in humans if there is trouble.”
“So we have six months of sitting around with our thumbs up our collective asses?” he asked, swallowing his coffee and standing up to get ready for the day.
“No, we have six months of R&R. The other guys from our company said that last time they were here, only one platoon at a time stayed back at the base. All the others left to go exploring the wilderness every day and just be.”
“That actually sounds nice. We could take a few weeks to hike around the mountains. Hell, if you and I are lucky, we might get another chance to sleep under the stars without company.”
“Now you’re getting it,” she replied, finishing her drink and standing up. “We will need to keep our skills up, but this is really an assignment to relax and recover.”
“I’d like that,” he said, “Speaking of training… Do you think I could beat Nessa in her condition? If I’m ever going to come close, I might as well use her weakness to my advantage… right?”
“Wrong. Not that you shouldn’t try, but there is no chance that you win unless she’s having a truly rotten day.”
“Again,” Nessa growled, picking herself up off the floor of the training room.
The members of Spier squad stood in a circle—fully armed and armored—with Nessa in the center of the ring. Blood dripped from her knuckles as she straightened and tightened the grip on her sword. Her entire body was actively bruising from the sheer number of hits she’d taken, but she still stood. While the others weren’t in tip-top shape either, they were all much better off than the Breaker herself.
“What the hell is going on here?” Sergeant Sanchez asked, assuming the worst and preparing to step in.
“She wanted to train against multiple opponents from multiple angles,” Alec said with a shrug. “It’s really not as bad as it looks. She’s been kicking our collective asses for the past few hours.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Why was she on the floor?” he asked, the blue Light of his power dimming.
“Because West got very lucky with a shield bash and knocked me off my feet,” Nessa replied, spitting a wad of blood on the floor as she retook her stance. “Now, again.”
As soon as the words left her mouth, a crimson projectile flew toward Dave with incredible speed. If not for his reflexes, it would have knocked him out of the match in the first five seconds. Instead, he wrapped himself in a thin barrier of blue Light that caught the dagger mid-flight.
From behind, two threads of monofilament wire snaked toward her, only to fall dead after a conjured glaive cut them down. Not slowing the fluidity of her attack, she repositioned the weapon and slammed it into Candice’s stomach.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Jack stepped back, raised his rifle, and placed her in his sights. Based on everything he’d witnessed, it should have put her down for the count. But before he could track her movement, she closed the gap and pulled the weapon from his hands, tossing it across the room like unwanted trash.
Spinning around, Nessa shoved her squad leader in front of her, using him as a shield to absorb incoming fire before delivering a powerful kick with her cybernetic leg that sent him flying. Before he could recover his feet, a high-pitched beep from the middle of his back alerted him to the magnetism grenade she’d placed there a moment before being dragged to the edge of the room to meet the twin she’d lodged there under cover of movement.
Sanchez watched in fascination as the young girl defied the odds and defended herself with flawless precision. He’d trained with Spier Squad in the past, but every time he saw this young group of soldiers, it reminded him of just how much natural skill they had. The way she fought—constantly dodging, blocking, and countering every attack—was a thing of pure beauty.
Dave dropped the shield for a split second to grab the dagger and toss it far from her reach. Seeing that brief opening, the girl twisted, pulling it back to her hand by the monofilament wire attached to the hilt and throwing a second dagger at the now unprotected Aegis.
He knew what she was doing. If he remade the barrier, she would simply pull the second weapon back and relaunch it at another member of the team. If he didn’t, he was out of the match. The only way this would work out was to catch the weapon with another perfectly timed barrier, just like he had the first.
Deciding to take the path that would protect the highest number of squad mates, he waited a split second, but was ultimately too slow. The second dagger was no longer a threat, but neither was his right arm.
Attempting to counter, Dave focused his shield directly in front of him and shoved. The shield bash wasn’t exactly an elegant technique, but it was always effective.
Unless you tried it on the same enemy two rounds in a row.
The strike missed Nessa and instead slammed full force into a Crawler drone that was preparing to strike. Now, Jenkins’ only weapon was rendered useless for the rest of the fight.
Not wanting to wait for the others to lose, the Possessor stood and patted Warren on the shoulder before walking away in search of water. It was only a matter of time before the other man was also back in his body and free to relax around the water cooler. When it came to fighting Nessa, it was always just a matter of time.
The only person who seemed out of her element was Cecile. Instead of the long-barreled sniper rifle she was so used to, she was holding a weapon straight out of an old video game. And if she was even marginally better in hand-to-hand combat, she might've even had a chance to use it.
Sadly, the squad would never know if her gun-blade idea would pay off. The moment she raised the weapon and became a threat, Nessa’s improvised shoge whipped through the air and wrapped itself firmly around the woman.
Struggling with the grappling line around her, Cecile noticed a small disk attached to the weapon’s hilt. Before she could pull it off, the training grenade flashed a bright crimson. Knowing she was out of the match, the defeated Breaker walked away and sat on the sidelines while struggling to remove the wire wrapped around her torso.
Nessa dropped the wire that allowed her to fling the weapon around like a miniature cyclone and drew the hilt she used for two-handed weaponry. Sparking it into a massive warhammer, she caught Thea in the ribs a split second before a pair of glowing green hands could grab her.
“How the hell she thinks she’s off her game, I’ll never know,” Jack commented, giving up on freeing his armor from the wall and just taking it off instead.
“She is,” Sanchez replied, drawing an incredulous look. “Watch how she shifts her weight. She favors one side while using the other to make small balance adjustments. She refuses to put her full weight on the prosthetic. She clearly doesn’t trust it.”
Nessa circled the two remaining soldiers, hammer in hand, and ready to strike. In possibly the worst decision he could have made, Alec had agreed not to use either his Gatling guns or the mounted cannons. Instead, he only fought with the punch blades attached to his armor.
She pressed Dave’s shield with everything she had, throwing grenade after grenade at the protective dome to drain his stamina. Her advantage finally came when Dave tried to capture her instead of trying to wait out her energy.
Blocking yet another grenade, Dave reduced the size of his shield from a two-person dome into little more than a buckler. Shuffle stepping forward, he swung his sword in a wide arc and caught nothing but air. He reversed the weapon's momentum and attempted to catch her on the backswing, but she blocked him.
Changing tactics, Dave raised his shield arm and shoved. The buckler-sized super dense shield expanded in a concave dome as the Aegis tried to ensnare Nessa.
Reforming her hammer into a sword, she slammed it into the ground and used it as a springboard to fling herself out of the trap’s range. The maneuver would do more than just get her out of the snare, it would place her close enough to Alec to remove him from the match.
With speed to rival a god, the Breaker drew yet another hilt and brought it to life as a dagger. Dropping to her knees, she slid under the wiry man’s attack and slashed his thigh. The training armor instantly mimicked the effect of being hamstrung, going limp.
Before he could hit the ground, Nessa grabbed him by the gorget and used him as a shield—like she had with Jack seconds before—while pushing toward the last remaining enemy. Shoving the Dragoon toward Dave, she struck when the Aegis dropped his shield to intercept his friend.
And that’s when Jack saw it.
Trying to close the gap, the fiery redhead put more weight on the new leg than she was comfortable with. In a flash of fear and panic, she lost control of her attack and slipped. Before she could even think about recovery, a force field wrapped around her body and pressed her relentlessly into the deck.
The trap had finally worked. She had lost.
It took nearly an hour of being ignored before she caught the hint and stopped asking for another round. She brooded about her defeat for a while before realizing the conversation had moved past training and onto their next assignment.
“We will be stationed at the garrison anywhere between six months and a year. It’s been a long time since anyone in our company was dirt side for more than a few days. I believe this break could almost end up being nice.” Jack explained.
“Sounds like we’re being shoved into the corner,” Dave said. “What did you say to piss them off?”
“Nothing. Or at least if something was said, it was done by someone with more rank than me.”
“They’re just sending Spier Squad?” Cecile asked, taking a long pull from her sports drink.
“No, it’s all of us,” Sanchez shouted from the weight racks, clearly eavesdropping on the conversation.
“Thank you peanut gallery,” Jack said, casting an annoyed look at the grinning NCO, “But he is right. It will give us a chance to grow as a company, not just as individual soldiers. I plan to set up joint training missions that will focus on our ability to act as a unit instead of just on the individual level. We tried during this last mission, but we need to perfect that art.”
“And the ‘fun’ quota?” Alec asked, drinking a cup of coffee he’d gotten from a bar at the side of the room.
“The purpose of the trip is to train, but learning to work together is significantly more important. I think we will spend most of our time trying to relax, but doing it in a way that forces us to work together.”
“We’ll be there too,” the voice from the weight bench butted in.
Ignoring Sanchez, he continued, “You have two weeks to get your things packed for a long deployment. If you have a personal cabin, I suggest releasing it because it is very possible we won’t return to the Washington. I’m sending you the Platoon barracks roster now, and it will tell you which room on the Company ship is ours. We all have a wall locker, so anything that won’t fit in there needs to be sent off for storage on Phoenix.”
“Long deployments aren’t that bad, but you can forget about personal space,” Sanchez said, giving up on the pretense of his workout and walking over to the squad.
“Well, I guess this pushes up the timetable on my decision,” Dave said sheepishly. “I need to get in touch with Officer Barca and get that experiment program running.”
“You’re going through with it?” Cecile asked.
“Yeah. I figure it’s the only way to really make sure I can do my job. I mean, we’re dealing with creatures that make our weapons and armor seem like paper. I have to do something or we are all screwed.”
“If that’s your decision, I think we can all respect it,” Jack said in way of agreement, “But it looks like we all have a lot of crap to get done. How about we break for lunch as a group, then get started?”
