Warp World (39 page)

“I’ve seen you use a blade in a fight. You know how to do this.”

Ama nodded but the action was merely automatic. Fismar didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. She glanced quickly over her shoulders, searching. Where was Shan? She would know, Shan would tell Fismar she wasn’t ready and get her out of here. Get her somewhere safe.

But all Ama saw were other Kenda, training, fighting, a few sneaking glances in her direction.

To watch the shape-shifting demon.

She nodded again, and stepped back in imitation of the fighting stance she had seen Tirnich use. After a series of deep breaths she raised the knife. Then she froze in place. The blade tumbled from her fingers. There was a muted clatter and she turned to run.

Fismar darted around her and cut off her escape path. His face hovered inches from hers, moving as she moved, maintaining the intrusion on her space. “Running, Kalder? Is that what you’re going to do when the time comes? Abandon the unit? Abandon your family? Is that what you are now?”

“I’m not ready.”

“I’m your enemy right now,” Fismar said. “I don’t care if you’re ready. I don’t care if you had a bad day, or a bad week, or if you’re completely karged out of your head. You’re in my way and my job is to put you down. You gonna make that easy for me?”

“Let me go.”

Fismar grasped her left hand and leaned closer, their noses almost bumping.

“Make me, Outer.”

Ama tried to yank her hand away but Fismar held it fast.

“Let me go!”

Fismar’s grip was iron-hard and his face stayed a finger’s length from hers, his eyes glaring an accusation as he pressed closer. As much as she struggled, Ama couldn’t break free and Fismar’s fingers tightened until she could no longer feel her hand.

“GET OFF ME!” She pushed against his chest with her free hand.

Fismar sidestepped in a lightning-quick motion, twisted Ama’s arm and yanked it up between her shoulder blades. Using her trapped arm, he directed her back to the mat where she had dropped the knife. “Pick it up.” He forced her to bend forward.

She scooped up the knife but Fismar jerked her upright again, snatched it out of her hand, and pressed the blade to her throat.

Ama looked up to see all the men staring at the scene.

“What’s your name?” Fismar demanded, digging the blade against her flesh.

The question sent Ama back to the training room, to Gressam’s inquisitions. She knew what the wrong answer would mean. Her body stiffened.

“This caj is called Siara.”

“Wrong!” Fismar raised his knife hand and flicked, slicing across Ama’s throat.

Ama gasped, the watching Kenda were no longer silent.

“Back off, Squad Leader Wyan,” Fismar ordered.

The wiry Kenda appeared from behind Fismar and took a few steps back.

“You see any blood?” Fismar demanded, nodding to the spot where he had sliced Ama’s neck.

Wyan and the rest of the men shook their heads, tense but unsure. There were more whispers of
O’scuri
.

Fismar tossed the knife to the ground. He dug his fingers into Ama’s neck, working them around the sliced skin, as the watching crowd shifted uneasily.

“What are you doing?” Ama thrashed to free herself.
“Stop!”

Fismar held her fast. His fore and middle fingers probed and clawed, and then he yanked his hand away in a quick snap.

“Nen’s death!” someone in the crowd shouted.

Ama felt a burning sting and cried out. Fismar released his hold and spun her to face him.

In his hand, he held a ragged flap of her skin. She raised her hands to her neck, shaking. She felt no blood, only—

Air. Her dathe. She felt the air on her dathe. Her jaw hung open as she touched the thin slits of skin that Gressam had taken from her.

Her legs gave out. She dropped to her knees, running her fingertips over and over the newly freed skin.

Then Fismar was crouched in front of her, speaking in a voice that was low but firm. “They can tell you you’re worthless, they can change your name, they can change your skin, they can—” He held up the piece of false skin. “They can cover up everything that makes you who you are, but they only win if you let them.”

He threw the limp piece of fake flesh to one side.

“Go on,” he said.

She pulled at the loose flaps that remained until one side of her dathe was completely free.

Trembling, Ama moved her fingers to the other side of her neck. With both hands, she used the new, long nails to carve and saw into the thick, false skin, prying it up until she had enough of a grip to tear. In a swift, hard motion, she tore away the other patch, remaining silent as the pain seared her. She sucked air in through her teeth but it was already fading. Just as quickly, she tugged off the remaining, ragged pieces.

Free. Her dathe were free. She tilted her head back, sucking in air as her bottom lip quivered. She knelt, blinking at the ceiling, unable to believe what had just happened.

Around her, she heard the murmurs of the men. Now they whispered
Kiera Nen
, as they had done at the temple.

“What’s your name?” Fismar whispered.

“Ama.” She wiped her face; her jaw was set.

“You ready to fight now, Ama?”

She lowered her eyes to his and, in the motion, felt something fall away from her. Something else moved into its place, something ice cold and vengeful.

“Yes,” she said.

“Prove it.”

In this new state, Ama’s body moved of its own will. As if from a distance, she watched herself turn, stride to where Fismar had tossed the knife, and scoop up the weapon. Her fingers shifted to find a comfortable grip on the hilt that was at once unfamiliar and second nature. She didn’t step into the fighting stance; her knife hand hung at her side, loosely, the way she had once held her seft.

“Good,” Fismar said. “Come at me.”

Ama lunged; Fismar deflected the blow and then called her forward again. She repeated the motion several times and each time he easily avoided her, redirecting her strikes.

“Out of practice, but not bad. Now I’ll show you how to do it properly.” He raised his chin and spoke for the benefit of the ogling troops. “First lesson: let your opponent do the work for you. Energy, what do we do with it?”

“Take theirs, make it ours!” the men shouted.

“Exactly. We don’t fight harder, we fight smarter. We direct our enemy’s momentum and use it as our weapon.”

At his words, Ama realized that Fismar wasn’t breathing hard, hadn’t even broken a sweat. She had attacked in earnest, but he had moved her around as easily as she might have directed the skins of her boat to catch the wind. Harnessing energy.

At the thought of her boat, she raised a hand to the side of her neck where her dathe breathed freely once more.

“One more thing about all this,” Fismar continued. “I’m not teaching you how to take somebody’s knife away here. I’m teaching you how to stick people with knives. Out in the World and beyond, you see somebody coming at you with a knife, you shoot the parentless karger. I see any of you trying to hand-disarm a bastard with a knife, I’ll chop up whatever bits they leave of you. That clear?”

The Kenda shouted back their reply.

It surprised Ama to see how far the men had come since she had last seen them. She shifted her hand to her collar and this time she didn’t lower it. She ran her fingers along the edge, the unyielding material that marked her as property, and felt her brows cinch together and her molars clamp down.

“Alright, quit standing around and get back to work!” Fismar yelled. “Kalder, over here.” He pointed to the spot in front of him as the others fell into pairs behind them.

“Gonna have to tell the boss about that.” He jerked his chin to indicate Ama’s freed dathe. “Blame’s all mine, so are the consequences, understood?”

Ama nodded.

He pointed to the knife in her hand.

“That’s a Voyagen combat blade, fiber-weave with eversharp edge. Or so they claim. It has characteristic huchack-fiber toxicity, which means if you even nick ’em the flesh will start to rot away around the wound periphery. Put it in the innards and, unless they get quick medical, they’re done. Got it when I graduated from the academy.”

“It’s a good knife,” Ama said.

“It is. And now it’s yours, so earn it.”

Progress. Fismar crossed his arms and surveyed the warehouse. In one corner, Manatu was teaching Prow’s squad to use the weapons that had arrived just three nights earlier. In a little less than ten weeks he had done his best to rub out the primitive mumbo jumbo about technology and magic that these men had been drilled on all their lives. From what he saw now, his efforts had been mostly successful and the men were making a fair enough showing for their first time with a chack.

Viren’s squad had already run through the weapons and Fismar was pleased to see they had at least one natural, Swinson, in their ranks.

A loud crash drew his attention to the remaining two squads. Viren and Cerd were supposed to be running a combat exercise through today’s crate maze, one squad against the other, with the new electronic harnesses used to mark injuries and kills.

As Fismar walked toward the commotion, his ears cocked. A faint smile traced itself on his face. He wasn’t surprised at what he found: another squabble between Viren and Cerd’s squads. Nor was he surprised that the troops, so caught up in their ongoing rivalry, failed to notice his approach.

Two men hurled insults about sisters and mothers, questions of manhood and lineage. Cerd was first to intervene, stepping forward to put a hand on his man’s shoulder.

“Step away, brother,” Cerd said. “Control your men, Viren. There’ll be another fight another day.”

“Did we bruise your trooper’s feelings, Cerd?” Viren said. Around him, his men paced. All dressed in the new training harnesses, all with lights blinking orange to indicate they were dead. Keer kicked a heavy crate and sent it tumbling.

“Take your failure like men,” Cerd said.

Swinson appeared at Viren’s side. “Mother-rutting son of a whore! I’ll show you how I take my failure!”

The rest of Viren’s squad shouted their encouragement.

Cerd cocked his head. “Keep shouting, see how far it gets you. In a real fight, you and everyone in your unit would be dead after this, Swinson. And that’s what matters.”

“Better to die with honor than live as a traitor,” Viren quipped.

“You question my—”

“Training Lieutenant!” one of Cerd’s troopers yelled, as they finally noticed Fismar. Swinson’s mouth slammed closed as everyone slid into presentation.

Fismar appraised the men standing in formation in front of him. “Seems you troops have some aggression to work out. Viren, your squad rotates with Wyan’s for hand-to-hand. Cerd, your troops move to the firing line. Cerd, Viren, with me.”

Inside the small, dusty room he called bunk and office, Fismar gestured to a pair of chairs. When Viren and Cerd took their seats, he began. “You heard the Theorist talk about our mission. Now, what he didn’t say is that the clock is set on this: thirty-three days, Storm allowing. So we’re going to finalize our command structure now and move forward with a hard training pace, get everyone acclimated with the gear and ready to operate.”

Cerd glanced at Viren, then nodded at Fismar.

“Thirty-three days?” Viren let out an exaggerated sigh of relief. “And I was worried we wouldn’t have adequate time to prepare and make peace with Nen for our inevitable deaths.”

“Bilge humor,” Cerd said. “Talk like that doesn’t help us.”

“Humor?” Viren raised a hand to his heart. “I’m surprised you know that word, Cerd.”

“Enough,” Fismar said. “I’ve given you two children a free ride with this feud of yours because I thought after your asses had been run into the ground hard enough you’d start using that energy more productively. Guess I gave you too much credit.”

“Apologies, Training Lieutenant. I—”

“I don’t want your kargin’ apologies, Cerd. Your little war with Viren is tearing this unit in two. It stops now. You take away unity you might as well shoot every one of your
deckies
in the head, right now. Understood?”

At the men’s contrite replies, Fismar continued. “Cerd, as of this moment, you’re my second in command. Viren, you’re third.”

Cerd nodded soberly and pressed his lips together.

Viren dipped his head slightly in acquiescence, though there was a hard glint in his eyes. “Congratulations, Mascom,” he said to Cerd, with no goodwill in his tone.

“Give us a minute, Cerd,” Fismar said.

Viren snapped off a jaunty salute as Cerd exited, then he turned his face to Fismar, his trademark grin in place. “This is where you tell me what a bad boy I am, I assume?”

Fismar sat on the edge of the rickety desk, put together from scrap. “No. This is where I tell you that being third in line means you’re two lucky shots away from inheriting all this, and you damn well better step up your production to be worthy of it. You’re a natural, but you work your kargin’ mouth more than you work your brain.”

He gestured toward the training area from which they had departed. “This whole unit could be yours very damn quickly. If that happens then you are going to be responsible for every life here, and more besides. You’ll have to answer to the boss, take the objectives he gives you and make them into functional targets that can be achieved. Or tell him that, in your
very
respectful opinion, it’s karging insane and you recommend against it. And then be ready to carry out his orders anyway, if that’s how he wants it. Right now, Cerd is more ready to handle that than you are, but you need to get it together and take responsibility for this entire unit and not just your cronies. Am I clear?”