The others complained that the ceaseless light made it impossible to distinguish day from night.
As the hours dragged on, the threshold at which all further pain became dulled by exhaustion was reached and exceeded. In the same breath, cadets would sweat and exasperate about the cold.
Their whispers became louder and more insolent; loose talk implying desertion became commonplace even under the nose of Instructor Zephyr, and though they scraped and debased themselves whenever he wielded the blunt rod of abuse, their lids could not completely conceal the defiance that flamed within.
Past a secret door was an elevator that crushed its inhabitants into each other and which screeched as it moved. They endured the discomfort in silence, all wit expended. With a judder and hump, they reached a canteen suffocating with grease and steaming broth, and the cadets streamed out, gasping and grumbling.
There were more Ash grades here, damaged and bleeding like them. Batch 247-B fraternized with the others out of necessity, because combat had seeded a hotbed of growing enmities within. That the batches were so miscible spoke to their common experience.
Here, as before, white light, fitful activity, minute after minute, hour after hour. Frigid cubicles stacked high with buckets fashioned of crystallized polyethylene terephthalate bearing flesh-food or grain or both; the blast of heat from story-high ovens blazing hecatombs of sustenance ripe; lines shuffling, enshadowed by servo-arms whirring to-and-fro doling out unequal portions according to a precise calculus. A whole world, trapped in the miasma of exhaustion; even winners had no appetite.
It came to Betelgeuse' attention that the gist of their deployment to the edge of the universe, the Frontier as it had come to be known in the parlance, was far from secret. To those who had come from Ash genetics and who were steeped in Ash sensibilities, the standing Requisition Order this last three years was old news: all cadets chosen by the Ash Incunabula were to be mustered for the war against the Chimerae. Only their specific destination had been kept hidden until now.
Betelgeuse smiled wryly, sitting there in the canteen before Shinzosuke of Naga. How much things had changed since the last time his head interacted with a pillow. He had still nursed so much blind hope then.
'Lily-livered' Edith sat to Betelgeuse' right, head bowed, stirring a coagulate of soup in lazy arcs and inspecting the surface lacework of yellow oil fissure into tiny droplets. The bowl was her only ration. She kept her bandaged left hand under the brown plastic tabletop, but further evidence of her trouncing by Bellevue 'Bong-Water' was plastered onto the sides of her lip. Patches of discolored gauze had been stuffed into her ear, light dressing for the wounds she had scratched into her ear canal.
She had ignored Betelgeuse' questions regarding her Increment, ignored pretty much all his attempts at communication, but kept close by anyway.
Shinzosuke from batch designation 246-D was an Ash of four generations hailing from Naga, a city located in the Naga Valley delta. His batch was bound for Opalia, as he explained, moon to the gas-giant Ops which orbited the binary star Arcturus. There, the Chimerae incursion was threatening to destroy the Democracy's only Gate within the star system P-Delta-Sigma-73, thereby cutting off the Democracy's access to one of the three uranium-rich planets currently under its control, Caria.
Over five centuries, the Chimerae had staged small-scale incursions into the Democracy's territory, and each time the legions of Ash would be there, the first bulwark against the enemy. This, the latest inter-star-system incursion by the Chimerae, was the reason for the Requisition Order. That their training period had been reduced to a mere three days meant the war was coming to a climax.
Three days? 72 hours? It feels we've been here far longer than that.
Shinzosuke had learnt the cunning ways of the Chimerae from his parents and their parents and their parents before that. Intelligent and versed in the ways of scientific war, the scythed Chimerae's method comprised two key aspects: guerilla and tank warfare. The Chimerae wielded Blitzkrieg, sabotage and harassment tactics to great effect, and wherever possible prioritized the targeting of civilian areas and supply depots. If Shinzosuke were to be believed, the Chimerae were by nature cowardly and would generally avoid skirmishes unless they outnumbered their enemy three to one.
'That's called being tactical,' mused Betelgeuse.
"How far is it from P-Delta-Sigma-70?" Betelgeuse asked, spooning a greasy piece of pasta into his mouth. A piece of gauze was plastered onto the middle of his face, spanning cheek to cheek and covering his smarting nose, making it irritating to eat.
"No clue," Shinzosuke shrugged, wiping the sweat from his forehead and brushing back a cliff of spiky-black hair to reveal oily skin and a receding hairline.
"Heard about carbon exoplanet Desert before?"
"Nope."
"Well, I'm headed there. Any idea how long it'll take?"
"The furthest Frontier star system is Castro, which takes about a year of direct Gate-to-Gate travel and eighty days if there's a Goldie daisy-chaining between Gates. They'll send a Goldie if things are this urgent, so Sixty to seventy days thereabouts should be a safe bet."
Betelgeuse masticated his food slowly, as if deep in thought.
"It's closer to fifty," Edith began meekly.
Betelgeuse glanced at her. She had pushed the bowl away uneaten and raised her head so the light reflected off her pupils. Her eyes were soft and deep. Assailed by the canteen's smells, her small and upturned nose twitched delicately. Dark bags hung under her lashes.
"… You see, some of my aunts and uncles fought in the last incursion. One of the uncles had been deployed to Desert too. He's told me about it before—said that it's rocky and very dry and very red and very gray. They'd been sent to garrison Sylvan Protectorate cities…"
"That incursion was fifteen years ago… I was three then," Shinzosuke interpolated. "My brother died in that war."
"I'm sorry," Edith murmured, bowing her head to inspect the tabletop.
"Don't be. It was a long time ago. My parents have told me so much about him I feel I had known him personally. See…" fiddling with his pantpocket velcro he retrieved a thin rectangular case and flicked the plastic flap open. He proffered the open side to Betelgeuse and Edith, fingering within the slight smile of a man caught off-guard and frozen in time. It was a picture of his brother, sharp-jawed, keen featured, no older than Shinzosuke and not much different in complexion and frame. In the background the colors of the sky and cliffs had washed out and looked almost watercolor. Shinzosuke's brother was wearing a white shirt darkened by sweat that mixed in with the splotches upon the surface of the photograph. He was sitting on an ALICE pack full to bursting and relaxing near a cliff edge; in the distance the ground picked up in an escarpment that ran all the way to watercolor land.
"What was his name?" Edith asked, her eyes brimming.
"Shoei," Shinzosuke said, flipping the case closed. Betelgeuse nodded for no reason.
"I feel like I'm walking in his footsteps."
"Not completely, I hope," Betelgeuse remarked. "Better to survive and come back. Have you seen the cost of manufacturing new eggs? I doubt your parents can afford another child."
"Haha!" Shinzosuke burst into bright peals of laughter, attracting the attention of ghoulish faces. "Too true, but who can really say for sure? It's life ain't it? It's Heisenberg uncertainty, by nature. You might very well be looking at the last Harada."
Betelgeuse was about to retort when someone called out to them.
He turned in the direction of the voice to see Norma, gauze plastering up the side of her jaw. She didn't appear to be carrying any food.
"—I was just on the other side by myself… mind if I join?"
Betelgeuse locked eyes with Shinzosuke.
"Yeah, sure, sure… be my guest. More's the merrier," Shinzosuke waved his hand nonchalantly.
Smiling prettily, Norma sidled in to the seat beside Shinzosuke.
"Let me introduce Shinzosuke, from batch 246… was it 'C'?"
"Yes yes, 246-D," he stressed. "Hi, hello."
"And I'm Norma! What were you guys talking about?" she returned, looking Shinzosuke in his eyes. A warm and attentive expression adorned a face that jutted close to Shinzosuke's face. She smiled, but kept her lips pursed.
Betelgeuse noted that she didn't ask for Edith's name, nor did she appear to care.
"About where we are stationed," Shinzosuke offered. "We were just talking about Desert—"
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
"What a coincidence, you're stationed there too?" Norma interrupted.
"No, no, as I was telling Betel here, I'm bound for Ops. Star system P-D-S-73," Shinzosuke corrected.
"I see, well… "Norma began, then trailed off, retreating to a more normal distance. She glanced at Betelgeuse, her expression warm as ever. "I really do hope you have a comfortable time. What's the news on Desert anyhow?"
"That it's red, gray and waterless," Betelgeuse began.
"Aw shucks," Norma sighed.
"Courtesy of Edith," finished Betelgeuse.
The table fell silent as Norma glanced at her nails and Shinzosuke resumed sibilantly slurping noodles of pasta.
"Ah, hello, hello!" Norma exclaimed, suddenly standing up and putting her hand out, soliciting for a handshake. "I'm Norma!"
"E-Edith," Edith managed, placing a limp palm in Norma's hands. She endured the brief contact and then retracted her hand bashfully.
"So, 'red, gray and waterless'... which sounds about right considering it's a carbon planet. The rivers are poison gas, you know," Norma submitted sagely, nodding to herself.
"I'm more worried about the Chimerae," Betelgeuse mused. "Shinzo was just mentioning how the slippery bastards make a habit of targeting civilians."
"Oh, not only that, they know how to torture. They do it all: flaying, frying, boiling, mangling etcetera etcetera. They're particularly into targeting human genitalia. Seeing how their biology is totally different—I mean, I doubt they're sexually attracted to us, but deviants in every society amirite? I'm convinced they're doing some serious anthropological research to come up with all of this. Anyway, just like us humans they've learnt to stick very large and very hot things where they're not supposed to go," Shinzosuke jabbered. Betelgeuse stared at Shinzosuke's plate of half-finished pasta, wondering if it would be polite to ask if he could have any.
"H-how do you know all that," Norma queried, her face drained of color. Edith was back to playing with her soup coagulates, her eyes shaded by a tangle of hair.
"Parents, who else?" Shinzo returned.
A series of notes blasted through the speakers, signaling the end to lunch or dinner or whatever the meal was. They glanced at each other with heavy expressions.
"Hey, Shinzo, if we don't see each other again," Betelgeuse added, his voice nigh on drowned out by a sudden profusion of activity, a thousand guttural echoes layering one atop another as metal legs dragged across tile, "godspeed."
----------------------------------------
Mealtimes proved small respite from the relentless gauntlet of waiting, dozing off, coming to, enduring the Instructor's abuse, fighting, getting patched up, waiting, dozing off, coming to in a fit of sweat, so on and so forth.
By the third cycle, the world was a blur. Betelguese had got through the second cycle relatively unscathed, but nursed a swelling left elbow where Knievel 'the Quack' had struck him no less than four times over the course of his third match.
The trip to the cramped cubicle they called an 'infirmary' had managed to reduce the swelling somewhat (courtesy of aspirin and the use of the aptly named 'Rejuvenator' which the emotionless Medicae had afforded), but his mobility was impaired enough that continued use of his left arm would be less than ideal.
By the fourth cycle, Betelgeuse had hardly enough bandwidth to follow the puppet dance repeating ad nauseam before him.
While he was able, he ran through the math in his mind:
A hundred and fourteen people makes fifty-seven matches per cycle; assuming 10 minutes a match, each cycle might run as long as 570 minutes, or 9 hours and 30 minutes. And that's not accounting for matches like Norma's…
Betelgeuse shot a glance at Instructor Zephyr, his vision wavering under the pressure of exhaustion. The man kept a close watch on the combatants, his composure unruffled, not an ounce of tiredness apparent on his face. Earlier, a drunken swing from Robbie 'Cromagnon' Birch looked likely to clip Zephyr in his jaw (who knew if it had been done on purpose?), but the man leaned back unconcernedly, letting the fist pass mere centimeters from his lip.
How the hell does he do it? Some kind of immunity? No, that's nonsense. He's a dexterity-type. A Hollow.
Betelguese endured heroically the urge to collapse on that cold, gray concrete, as the overhead light beat upon his consciousness the constant and unceasing drumbeat of somnolence.
While the actions of the combatants had slowed considerably owing to exhaustion, Instructor Zephyr had introduced the use of weapons: cadets could choose between long bos five feet long and one inch in diameter, and batons two feet long and one point five inches in diameter, in so doing substantially increasing the chances of injury. The training weapons were fashioned of a hard and rough-surfaced plastic that Betelgeuse found surprisingly weighty.
Betelgeuse had selected the baton he now held between his folded arms. The choice of a one-handed weapon was obvious, given his elbow injury.
Those who had injured both arms were out of luck—as far as Betelgeuse could tell, Instructor Zephyr's method for matching combatants tended not to take prior injuries into consideration.
The match that had been playing out in slow-motion ended and a new command rapped against his skull.
He would be going up against Gombrovich.
Moving to the center of the arena seemed an artifact of the subconscious; he blinked and when he opened his eyes he found himself there, groping around his exhaustion. Spent adrenal glands got to work, doing what they could to sharpen his senses. His heartbeat pounded in his ears.
The flow of time regained some of its normalcy.
Shit-Eater's left elbow still swelled a mottled purple. He had ripped off the bandage, revealing its oddly bent countenance to Dog Balls.
They circled crabwise by convention, Betelgeuse' Edom-ursi facing Gombrovich's Agni-chordate.
A minute passed without a single exchange. Betelgeuse' heartbeat started to slow.
Gombrovich lunged violently, aiming the tip of his baton at his opponent's solar plexus. Betelgeuse, ready for him, caught the baton on the underside with his own, smashing it askew; but Gombrovich, now close enough to smell the odor wafting from Betelgeuse' unwashed body, swung his left fist into Betelgeuse' jaw, causing him to stumble and fall.
Betelgeuse regained his footing even as the world swam, swinging his baton wildly in an attempt to deter a follow-up attack. When his vision cleared, he saw Gombrovich stalking him carefully. The man's face was sallow, but his eyes were focused.
Again, an interminable circling. Betelgeuse suppressed the urge to commit. He would wait as long as it took for his opponent to initiate the attack.
Gombrovich advanced hard and fast, raising his baton and bringing it down overhead as if aiming for the white gauze over Betelgeuse' face; Betelgeuse sidestepped to the right, but Gombrovich was ready, carrying his momentum over to his shoulder and barreling into Betelgeuse.
Sneaky sonuva—
Catching Gombrovich's shoulder and moving with him so as to dissipate the momentum, Betelgeuse twisted around and lurched into the air.
The combatants tumbled in a mess of flailing limbs. Batons clacked onto the floor and rolled in opposite directions.
Clumsy armlocks were attempted then thwarted. Betelgeuse tried to regain his footing, but Gombrovich, his face uncomfortably plastered to his opponent's back, hugged his arms around Betelgeuse' waist.
Agni-chordate's got an advantage in this situation. Got to open enough space to strike.
Betelgeuse whipped his torso around violently and struck Gombrovich's temple with a vicious back elbow, stunning him and twisting out at the moment Gombrovich's grip slackened. Betelgeuse regained a crouching position and, at the next instant, leapt forward onto Gombrovich, straddling him between powerful thighs.
Ground and pound.
Betelgeuse, his lungs close to bursting from the strain, let loose a flurry of hammer fists; Gombrovich raised his forearms over his face, and the moment he did so Betelgeuse brought his forehead down hard into his opponent's stomach.
Gombrovich retched, vomiting all over himself and the floor, a portion of the spillage dribbling over Betelgeuse' hair.
Betelgeuse refused to let up. Snaking around, he caught Gombrovich in an ankle lock, ready to end the fight.
"Stop, stop! I'm done, I can't go on any longer!" Gombrovich breathed.
Betelgeuse, hyperventilating, glanced at Instructor Zephyr, just as he did in the fight with Douglas. He found in that mask nothing that could pass for guidance.
"Don't break it, please! I beg of you!" Gombrovich whimpered. "Instructor, please!"
Betelgeuse could hear the audience murmuring. He wasn't about to throw the match, but hurting an opponent that was already defeated struck him as unnecessary.
The Edomite should not pursue the destruction of his opponent at the cost of his honor. So saith the time-honored principles as instilled by the Edomite Bishopric. Should the calculus be so simple?
Caught between the principles of the Elders and his own doubts, Betelgeuse wavered.
The air seemed to harden into gelid crystals, as a dark and suffocating aura suffused the surroundings. Minute vibrations transmitted from Gombrovich's flesh to Betelgeuse' arm, gradually increasing in intensity until a painful resonance was achieved.
What is this?
Betelgeuse' hesitation proved adequate opportunity for Gombrovich. With incredible speed the latter whipped his foot from Betelgeuse' slackening grip and coiled about the floor like a serpent, catching his opponent by the scruff of his cadet suit. Gombrovich regained his footing; bearlike strength mixed with feline agility as he dragged a canal through his own vomitus then flipped Betelgeuse violently up and over his back. Betelgeuse smashed down onto the hard floor with a resounding whump.
'An Etching! No doubt about it!', he thought, teeth clattering from the force of the impact.
Gombrovich advanced tirelessly. Winded, caught in a fog of pain, heart pounding in his ears, Betelgeuse kicked wildly, managing a lucky strike to Gombrovich's knee. The latter pitched, then slipped on a mixture of puke and blood.
There, the baton. Just out of reach.
Lunging, Betelgeuse gripped the baton, then tottered back drunkenly toward an unarmed Gombrovich.
The world was spinning so much that Betelgeuse could not tell up from down. In the confusion a blazing sense of indignation rose within his chest, the shadow of his former self come to haunt him with a visage roiling with nightmarish visions of rage.
The anger was his. Why did he have to serve a system whose only relation to him was one of exploitation? The system was a creature of the Elders' teachings, parsed through the medium of his parents.
If all of it were mere deception…
Squeezing every last ounce of strength from his aching bones, Betelgeuse swung the baton at Gombrovich's wrist, snapping it through.
A sickening crack like he had rarely heard before echoed through the space, and the command was given to halt.