William Forstchen - Article 23

Malady wearily shook his head.

"No, no," he sighed. "I'm not a hard ball, Mr. Bell. Give me that."

Malady bounded forward, moving with the ease of a ballet dancer in spite of his massive bulk. He took the bat and held it up, clenching the weapon a third of the way up from the handle.

"A lot of fools try the way you did, son. They'll only get one good swing in. If your opponent can dodge it, they'll be on you before you can recover. In low gravity you'll just spin around like a top and then catch a knife in the kidneys. Use both ends of it, just like old Robin Hood and his merry men used the quarterstaff like this."

Malady feigned a blow to Justin's head with the spiked end, recovered, and then drove in with the butt of the handle, stopping the blow at the last instant so it was just a light tap under the chin. Justin realized that if it had been for real he'd be ordering a new set of teeth.

"OK, try it again."

Malady tossed the bat back and returned to the middle of the circle. Nervously Justin gripped the bat the way Malady had shown him. He edged into the circle, trying to focus on Malady's eyes as the instructor had told them to, while watching the movement of his hands and feet with peripheral vision.

He tried a blow to his opponent's shoulder with the spiked end, but Malady easily danced out of the way. For Justin the whole ritual was very disconcerting. He liked and admired Malady; during the summer the instructor had taken him aside to share a few stories about Justin's father. Malady's creased features had crinkled with delight when he had talked about "the skipper," and how Justin's dad had once saved his life in a barroom brawl on Mars. Yet now he was supposed to try and beat the life out of him. Of course he knew the attempt was futile, no plebe had ever bested Malady with any weapon let alone with bare hands. He wondered if Malady ever boasted about how he had most likely thrashed every officer in the service at some time during his or her career.

Justin tried again, this time jabbing for Malady's face. Malady stepped past the blow and moved to close in. Justin danced backwards, moving clumsily in the heavy gravity. He reversed his hold on the bat with his left hand and now used it to jab straight at the instructor. He almost connected, but Malady dodged so that the handle of the bat just scraped across his arm.

Malady grabbed the bat just below the spikes and jerked it back, dragging Justin along with it. His foot lashed out, tripping Justin so that he went down hard. Malady then jerked the bat up, trying to wrench it out of Justin's hands, but he refused to let go.

Justin felt the light tap of a knee go into his solar plexus, just enough to let him know that if it had been for real his spleen would most likely be wrapped around his backbone.

Justin let go and backed away, holding his stomach.

"All right, son?"

Justin nodded, not willing to admit that the blow hurt.

"Good move there, cadet, coming in with the butt of the handle. Don't go for an arm though unless you hit it square it'll skid off the way it did with me. Go for the ribs, face or stomach."

Justin nodded, wondering how he'd react if this situation were ever for real. These exercise periods with Malady always made him feel clumsy; he wondered if the legendary Marine looked at him and felt he would never match up to the legend of Captain Jason Bell.

Malady casually tossed the bat to the side of the circle.

"All right, kiddies, let's get down to some basics here. Now, the Old Man talks about the lofty vision of the Corps and all that, but when you cut out all the fancy talk and gold braid it comes down to guts. It might be nothing more than dealing with a couple of drunk miners in a bar who don't like a uniform and decide to express their antisocial behavior on your face. Or it might be a riot on a habitat like we had last year when a rumor spread about Kelson's Disease and everyone was trying to break quarantine and get out. Or it might be a nest of Thugees and you gotta clean 'em out. Your fancy book-learning down below in the classrooms or whether you're the best pilot in the universe won't mean squat.

"And you people make me wanna puke. All of you huffing and puffing just because there's a little pull on. Hell, you think this is bad wait until we thin the air outta here, put you in pressure suits and have you fight!"

He blew out noisily.

"All of you, extra exercise detail up here in the one-and-a- halfer, an hour each day for the next two weeks you're all as flabby as my big Aunt Sally."

Everyone knew better than to groan or express the slightest dismay. The regulations were clear on personnel hitting each other, but Malady wasn't above a bit of a rough "demo" if he took a dislike to someone.

"We're going back to straight old FT, then to open hand combat; these little toys will hafta wait till you've grown up a bit.

"Now give me twenty, then dismissed!"

Justin felt like his arms were turning to jelly as he struggled through the last push up, made worse by Malady kneeling beside him and barking out his dismay over Justin's performance.

Staggering with fatigue, he hurried to shower and change, glad to see that Matt was waiting for him in the corridor.

"Man, was he tough!" Justin groaned.

"Yeah, I got a bruise on my butt to match the bump on my head for the last session. Jeez, you'd think we were trying out for the Shore Patrol units."

"Heard it gets worse," Justin sighed. The dreaded full contact training would start later this year. Even though everyone wore padded protection, it still sent some cadets to the infirmary or worse yet, right out of the program if they backed out of a fight no matter how bad a mismatch Malady might have set up. Justin knew that some of the mismatches were deliberate, to see if a smaller or weaker cadet had the guts to go into a fight he knew he would lose. Backing out was not an option if you wanted to stay in the Academy.

"Hey, cheer up, we're getting off ship today. Come on, we got to hustle to be on the other end of the ship in ten minutes."

Justin followed Mart's lead as his friend ducked into a down tube. Staying on the steps since they were still in the one-and-a-half-gravity zone, the two followed a rush of cadets heading towards the low and zero-gravity areas in the center of the ship. Matt handled the descent like an old hand, but Justin still found the gravity shift to be slightly disconcerting. As they reached the quarter gravity level Matt was bounding and floating down three and four steps at a time, while Justin hung on to the hand rail. When they finally reached the one-tenth-gravity floor, a number of cadets around them split off down side corridors to head to their next class. Justin recognized some friends from his own platoon, all of them going in his direction.

Matt, still leading the way, stepped into one of the tubes that ran the length of the ship. He touched down on the moving walkway heading to the stern of the ship and called for Justin to follow.

Justin eyed the moving walkways. They were nearly identical to those found in any large airport or shopping district, the only difference being that here hand straps, suspended frpm the ceiling, traveled at the same speed and gave nervous cadets something secure to hang on to. Stepping onto one was as easy as walking when done on Earth, but here in the one-tenth gravity near the center of the ship it was an entirely different matter.

"Come on, Bell, you're holding up the line," someone shouted behind him.

Justin saw an opening between two groups of cadets and took a shuffling step out onto the moving path. He started to lose his footing, and reaching up, he grabbed a handle, which jerked him along. Other cadets piled in around him, the more experienced setting off with leaping bounds down the track.