“Yes, sir,” I answered with a salute.
The Commander dismissed me to my duties and I repressed a sigh. Salt in the wound, right? Good enough to guard them from here to the Pavilion, but not good enough for the Touchpoint. I shook my head in a vain attempt to clear it and headed for the front of the auditorium.
As I made his way to his duty station, I saw Dagan gesture wildly from across the auditorium to catch my attention.
What are you doing?he signed curiously.Why aren’t you getting in line?
I’ll tell you later,I signed curtly, ducking my head.
Before Dagan could respond, I turned away, effectively ending the conversation. I knew there was going to be hell to pay for this. Dagan was already queued and wouldn’t be able to come after me, but that didn’t mean I wouldn’t hear about it at dinner.
What I’d done to earn a friend like Dagan, I would never know. I’d never forget the day they’d met.
I’d only been twelve and was struggling with training. Transferred from the orphanage to the Soma Academy, none of my instructors knew sign language, so I had had to rely on my lip-reading ability to understand orders. The instructors did not make allowances for my hearing challenges in any way. It wasn’t always possible for me to see the faces of those giving instruction, nor did all of them want me to. Many of them felt I shouldn’t have been admitted to Soma training to begin with, so they didn’t go out of their way to help.
I was quickly falling behind in many subjects, simply because I couldn’t hear the instructions. Back in the orphanage, I’d at least had Lady Helena to talk with or provide clarification. Here, I had no such support. The attitude of my instructors had rubbed off on the young Somas in their charge. That, plus the increasing levels of competition that was fostered amongst the young Somas as they trained, had led to increasing isolation.
On that particular day it had been the end of the quarter, and they were having their final fitness exams. Fitness was one of the areas in which I still significantly excelled. I didn’t have to rely on teachers to give much in the way of directions. A pushup was a pushup, after all.
This session’s final test would be an obstacle course that was known for breaking some of the less able Somas. Four of my fellow recruits had already failed out of training because they couldn’t manage it, but I was confident that this, at least, I could ace.
Dagan had just been assigned to our unit that morning, having transferred from another city. He’d joined the roll call when the instructor began giving orders to the group. From what I could make out from my vantage point, Dagan explained that he had completed his finals before the transfer.
I struggled to get a view of Captain Kopanos in order to read his lips and understand the orders given to the group. Kopanos was one of the instructors who seemed determined to make sure I didn’t graduate.
The training compound had multiple trails that circled around and back toward the main buildings and they were often told to take different routes on any given run. Our final score would be based on how they placed in the race.
“You all know the drill. The test will have you run the western slope—” I had been able to make out before one of the other cadets deliberately moved between me and the instructor. The larger body of the older cadet had prevented me from catching the rest of the orders, no matter how I craned his neck. I the bodies of the cadets shake as they laughed at something Kopanos said and a few glanced my way, but I hadn’t caught what was said. Of them all, only Dagan hadn’t seemed to find whatever Kopanos was saying to be funny.
Mentally, I’d just shrugged. I would just complete the obstacle course, then follow the rest of the group and do what they did. It had happened before, and I knew that asking the instructor to repeat their instructions wouldn’t go down well.
Captain Kopanos was one of the instructors who seemed to despise him, though I couldn’t think of anything I might have done to deserve his enmity. The captain had made it clear he didn’t think that I should be allowed to train with the “real” cadets, despite the fact that my performance was usually better than anyone else in the unit, especially when it came to the obstacle course.
I loved running. The rhythm of it set my mind free. I didn’t have to struggle to focus on faces every minute, which became exhausting after a while. I could just let myself breathe, feel my heart pump and the blood flowing through my veins as I ate up the miles of the track. I knew this course like the back of my hand. I would lose some time waiting to find out what path to take after the mud crawl, but I was confident I could make it up and still at least be in the top five finishers.
I waited for the command to start, and the whole group took off.
I easily passed all the members of my unit and was the first to reach the course. I scrambled up and over the walls, swung across the rope course and crawled under the razor wire, utterly focused on my run. I knew we were being tracked by long distance cameras and our performance recorded for review. I didn’t dare slack off.
The part I hated the most was a slog through a swampy section of the course. It was the midway point, which meant that I would have to spend the second half of the course muddy and itchy as I ran.
I had just emerged from the muddy wallow when someone grabbed my arm pulling me up short.
I turned to glare at whoever was trying to stop me. To my surprise, I saw it was our newest addition who had dragged me to a halt, doubled over with one hand on his knee as he gasped for breath. I tried to pull away from his grip, but Dagan refused to let go.
“Damn…fast…stop…they…not going to…”
“What?” I asked, trying to read Dagan’s lips as he gasped.
“It’s a fake, a trick,” Dagan said as he straightened up, his eyes flashing with anger. “The captain told them not to tell you. The exam is delayed until tomorrow.”
I’d looked at the other young Soma in disbelief. He was still in the dress uniform he had reported to Kopanos in, which was now sweat stained and askew from chasing me. He was breathing hard from running to catch up with me and had lost a dress shoe somewhere along the way.
I looked behind him, and sure enough, there were no other members of the team in sight. The obstacle course was completely deserted, except for the two of them. I glanced up and saw the cameras blink red and green and saw the shutter blink that indicated someone had saved an image.
“Fuck,” I swore, looking down at my mud-covered body. “Dicks.”
“Pretty much,” the new recruit said, finally catching his breath. “What’d you do to piss off the whole unit?”
