Jal Genys, Commander of Squadron F of the Tinarian Republic Militia had seen her fair share of battles. In fact, that was even a bit of an understatement. The reality was, she had fought in, won, ended, and even started her fair share of battles. The Hindle border skirmishes had been quashed only about three years ago now. They were small battles in comparison to the great Crusades of her grandfather’s time, but she had had ample opportunity to prove herself.
The Militia was the thin line between chaos and order – that’s how she was taught and that’s how she continued to teach others. The Republic of Tinaria was a pearl of civilization in the middle of countless political degeneracies. With each new conquest, each new small nation coming under control, a bit more order reached out to claim a piece of that degeneracy.
Tinaria was a hand, steady and strong, offered to other nations as a way to overcome their own insurmountable inadequacies. And when the reaching fingers of diplomacy were bitten, the Republic responded with the only other option—a fist. Geny’s job, like all the other Commanders, was to make sure that when the fist was used, it would only have to be used once.
Which is why, upon reviewing the training exercises of the new recruits, she immediately knew she had her work cut out for her. Walking briskly down the line, she observed the soldiers practicing their physical feats and combat sequences and was careful not to outwardly cringe. Was this really the best Yarva had to offer? Surely there were children in Tinaria who would already know these exercises by heart. She had certainly practiced them a thousand times with her sisters as a little girl, and that was before any of her real training had even begun.
It’s true that Yarva had only recently come under control of the Republic—if you could call several decades recent. Nevertheless, it was the newest nation to enjoy the protection and order that Tinaria’s vast resources provided. Even calling it a nation was exaggerating, it was really only a small collection of villages beyond the northern Mountains of Athe. For generations, the Yarvans had lived a life in relative isolation, subject to the dangers of poverty and outside threats. Tinaria had stepped in to help with both. Sending a small batch of recruits to the Militia every season seemed a very small price to pay in return, at least Genys thought so, especially after the Yarvan Crusades took some of the best lives Tinaria had to offer. Now upon seeing the quality of said recruits, she wondered if it was worth even that.
She continued down the line, careful to make her face an unreadable mask. These future soldiers would know soon enough what she thought of them, there was no need to betray any information through expression or emotion – that was inefficient. Besides, it was a good policy to keep one’s personal thoughts personal. Or at least it seems like a good policy until one finds themselves face to face with a two-and-a-half-foot tall, half-metal man with a single eye in the middle of his face.
Genys leaned down to inspect the thing. “You’re a little… different there aren’t you?” she asked it.
The creature nodded. “An injury back in Yarva I’m afraid.”
She bent over even further to take a closer look. “Just one injury?”
The little creature bowed its head in shame. “Yes.”
“Must have been quite the injury, You’re fit for service though?”
“According to the recruiter yes,” the thing said.
“That works.” Genys turned then to the other recruit. He was short as well, not quite as short of course but definitely much more so than a Tinarian and a Yarvan. And not only was he stocky in build, but his eyes were very dark and his skin almost seemed like it had a yellowish-reddish complexion. “You’re not injured as well are you?”
The little one interrupted. “He doesn’t speak Tinarian yet I’m afraid, and yes he’s healthy.”
“Healthy?” Genys asked. This time when the smaller one opened its mouth to answer the taller one spoke instead.
“No.” He held out his arm and flexed his fingers. “Strong.”
Genys looked at him for a moment and then back to the smaller one before breaking out in a husky laugh. “I like that!” she said. “If you’re going to learn Tinarian I suppose ‘strong’ is a good word to begin with, especially here.” She turned and began walking toward the row of tents lined up at the end of the field, motioning for them to follow.
“Names?”
“I’m Orv, and this is Jack,” the small creature said.
“Orf and Jok,” she said, nodding. “First couple of days are always the hardest, remember that.” She moved along at an incredible pace, especially with her giant weapon in hand. The two recruits did everything they could to keep up with her.
“You’ll want to quit, but that’s not an option, not here, not in Squadron F. I’m known to have a pretty good record Militia-wide. In fact, it’s excellent, one of the best, and I don’t expect that to change.” The three of them walked past a group of Yarvan recruits struggling through a specific exercise. Genys took a look at them before continuing. “Usually my soldiers are a little more... well-experienced, but the higher-ups thought I was the person for the job and new challenges mean new opportunities. That’s what we live by here. New challenges. New opportunities.” She suddenly stopped, turned around, and faced them. “We don’t quit, we don’t retreat, and we never surrender.”
“Absolutely,” the small one said.
“Yes,” said the other in a strong accent.
“Excellent.” Genys motioned to the thick blue canvas structure to their left. “This is your tent. Claim a bunk and then meet us outside.”
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Several minutes later, Jack and Orvalys were on the field amongst a group of other recruits, awaiting further orders. It was the first time Jack had seen these Yarvans. He didn’t expect them to differ from the Tinarians, but they surprised him. They were all a bit shorter – almost his height – and their skin didn’t have the same greenish hue that the Tinarians did, they were just fully a dark hue of teal. Instead of the light violet eyes of the Tinarians, theirs were a striking deep purple. The recruits were covered in dust and dirt and sweat-soaked clothes. Most of them were still breathing heavily, and it was obvious they had been pushed way past the limit of the physical movement they were used to.
“Doesn’t strike you as the most pleasant of experiences does it?” Jack said in hushed tones.
“I’m telling you, as far as hiding places go this is the one we want,” Orv responded. “Anything potentially tracking us will have a much harder time finding us in the middle of a military organization. We’re surrounded by combat-trained soldiers and there are weapons everywhere. It makes defense all the more achievable in the event of an attack. Safety in numbers and all that.”
“An attack?” Jack asked.
“Well, hopefully not,” Orv said. “Not if my calculations are correct. It’s been quite a lot of chronic math, but I’ve determined for now this is the best place we can hole up until we sense the opening of a gateway. At that point, we can make a new plan on how to reach it. Thankfully the potential of exploration is high. The Tinarian Republic seems to be in the business of expanding.”
“So, now we’re in the business of it too?” Jack asked quietly. “You know what ‘expanding’ looks like right?”
Why won’t he just tell me things?
“Of course I do!” Orv whispered. “We’ll obviously keep our hands clean. We’re just here to use the general chaos of this conquest-happy republic to throw off the Professor, or anything he has working for him.”
Jack looked at the little creature sideways. “Working for him? What would he have working for him?”
“That’s a question you don’t really want me to answer,” Orv said. “Trust me.”
So far that’s been a whole lotta trust.
“Yeah, ok,” Jack said.
Orv took a deep breath and turned to face Jack. “Listen, I know this is requiring a lot of confidence from you and you don’t necessarily owe that to me. Actually, you absolutely don’t owe that to me. What I do know is that you’re in extreme danger. You can choose to not believe me on that if you want, but I can tell you there are serious consequences in doing so. If we can just keep up appearances for long enough here, we’ll have enough time to find another gateway and make a plan.”
Jack perked up a little. “A plan to what?”
“A plan to hide,” Orvlays said. “To stay alive.”
“Oh, ok.”
“I wish I didn’t have to ask you to trust me,” Orvalys said. “Honestly I’m not sure I would if I were in your position but—”
“Oh, I do,” Jack said. The words just kind of came out of him, as if he knew he was going to say them before he did.
Orvalys stopped mid-sentence. “Huh?”
“I do trust you.”
The homunculus seemed surprised. “You do?”
Jack shrugged. “It’s just one of those things. I survived for a long time in Nymia. I fought a lot of people. There was a lot of danger, but—” Jack tried to keep his voice low. He wondered if he was saying all this genuinely, and not just because he wanted it to be true. He might be scared, but if he knew one thing, it was that making a friend he could trust was the best way to combat that fear.
“It was the kind of life that teaches you how to make a pretty quick judgment about someone,” Jack continued. “I made a lot of enemies but I made a lot of friends too, and when you stitched me up in that alleyway I kind of just knew you weren’t dangerous. I knew you were one of the good ones. I knew I could trust you.”
“Ah,” Orv said. He spent a moment searching for the right words. “In that case I um… well I… I guess I should say thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Jack said. “And as far as plans go, I think it’s a good one. You’re obviously the one who knows more about what’s going on here. I’d just like to be kept in the loop a little more.”
“I apologize. I do struggle with that,” Orv said. “I’ve just got a lot of calculations going on in my head.”
“I know,” Jack said. “Me too. A different kind, but me too.”
Orvalys laughed to himself softly. “I suppose I underestimated the resourcefulness of Jasku Warking. That’ll come in handy here.”
Jack made sure Commander Genys was on the other end of the field before speaking again. “You know, I feel good here. It’s not my home, but it’s another world at least, and it’s already better than Earth. Nymia feels—I don’t know—closer than it has in a long time.” He hoped again he was saying it all because it was true, and not just because it was what he should say, or what he thought Orvalys wanted to hear. Part of him wanted to say something else—wanted to take some sort of control, but for whatever reason he knew he just couldn’t. Something was stopping him, some sort of wall he’d been building for close to seven years now, and every brick was made of failure.
Resourcefulness of Jasku Warking, my butt, he thought. Jasku Warking would have figured this world out by now. Jack wasn’t Warking and hadn’t been for a long time. He knew even if he wanted to he couldn’t handle any of this alone.
“Well that’s our end goal after all,” the homunculus said, interrupting Jack’s thoughts. “You do know that don’t you? After all, this is done?”
“What is?” Jack asked.
“Nymia,” Orvalys said. “Getting you home.”
Jack suddenly felt his eyes welling up and tried to hide it by looking away. It struck him all at once unexpectedly, and he didn’t know if it was what Orv had said, or just hearing someone else say Nymia out loud. His emotions that usually he felt he was so good at keeping in check just flooded up and mixed with each other. He felt sadness and waves of fear but they mixed together with a sort of glimmer of hope as they overflowed.
Most of all that glimmer reminded him that his home had been real. He had really lived there, and It was really still out there somewhere, waiting for him.
Jack cleared his throat. “I uh… I appreciate that.”
Commander Genys’ voice suddenly rang out over the crowd. “Alright, recruits listen up because I’m only going to say this once!” Every person snapped to attention. Orvalys and Jack did their best to copy the stance of the recruits around them.
“For the record,” Orv said out of the corner of his mouth, “I want it to be known that I am dangerous. I’m just selectively dangerous.”
Jack, still with tears in his eyes, almost laughed out loud.