The next day, at The Bridge, Eustus stood in a momentary daze as the blood from his broken nose pattered into the water that slowly passed under the log on which he and Thorella were standing. Each held a pugil stick, a pole about a meter long with a bulbous pad at one end and a padded hook at the other.
“Awww,” Thorella said theatrically, “what’s the matter, recruit? You need mommy to wipe your nose for you?” He laughed as the younger man’s face set itself into a mask of venomous ferocity. “That’s better, you queer,” Thorella sneered as Eustus came toward him. “It’s nice to see you show some balls for a change.”
Thorella had been the king of The Bridge since his arrival at Quantico. He loved it. He was a towering mountain of a man, his flexing biceps larger around than most of his contemporaries’ thighs. His face was molded in a permanent grin that would have made his face very attractive except for the black, darting eyes that were without depth, without feeling. He was cunning, intelligent. He was a killer, and he enjoyed his chosen profession. No matter what the prey.
This was the first day on The Bridge for this batch of recruits, the morning after Sergeant Major Aquino’s briefing. Thorella requested the cadre put Reza up first, but they had opted for tradition. Thorella took his place as King of the Bridge and waited for voluntary opponents. If no one came forward to challenge him, names were called alphabetically. Two of the recruits voluntarily came up to try their hand at knocking Thorella from his perch, but both wound up with soaking uniforms and splitting headaches.
In a short time he had worked his way through the trainees to Camden, who now stood on the opposite end of the bridge.
“Take it easy on me, kid,” he smiled, his little obsidian eyes glittering with anticipation. He had something special planned for this one.
“Fuck off, sir,” Camden hissed through his bloodstained teeth. He did not know how to swim, and even though he knew the water below was not deep and there were instructors standing by to pull people out, he was not thrilled with the prospect of being knocked down – semiconscious, undoubtedly – into the cold stream. He gripped his weapon tightly, hoping to anticipate Thorella’s moves.
Thorella waited casually for Eustus to come within range before feinting a blow to Eustus’s feet, then he hit him in the face just hard enough to split his lip, but not so hard as to send him spinning from the log. As Eustus fought to recover, his face now streaming with blood from his violated nose and now his mouth, Thorella slammed him hard in the stomach, driving the wind out of him.
Gagging and dripping blood, Eustus fell to his hands and knees, barely retaining his grip on his useless weapon.
“C’mon, recruit,” Thorella complained, “you’re disgracing my uniform by even wanting to call yourself a Marine. Some blue-skin is going to use you for a tampon if you fight like that. You’d probably like it, just like your buddy Gard.”
Eustus did not take Thorella’s last insult lightly. His family had been raised on a very small outpost settlement not far from Quantico 17. Too small to support even a single regiment, it more than made up for its small size by the devotion to duty of its inhabitants: the Camden name had appeared proudly on a succession of Marine uniforms. Eight gold stars now hung in his widowed mother’s house for his father and the sisters and brothers who had died in the line of duty. Only Eustus and his youngest brother, Galan, remained, and his little brother would volunteer for service when he turned seventeen. That was the way things were. And when Galan finally finished school and left to join the service, his mother intended to finish her days helping the sons and daughters of other families in the sector military hospital. She expected to outlive her two remaining sons, but that would not stop her from continuing her contributions to the war effort.
His heart in a cold rage now, Eustus lunged into a fierce but technically uninspired attack that the captain easily defeated. Drawing Eustus into the trap, Thorella moved very close to him, first driving the hooked end of the stick into Eustus’s crotch behind the screen of his body. As Eustus gagged and began to sag to his knees, Thorella hit him in the face again with the padded end, bruising his right cheek.
As the young trainee toppled backward, Thorella snagged his left foot with the hook and yanked it toward him. Eustus hit the log with a loud crack; had he not been wearing a helmet, he probably would have fractured his skull.
Grinning like a death’s head, Thorella contemptuously kicked Eustus’s unconscious body off the log, sending him tumbling into the water below where he was retrieved by two waiting trainees who had already taken their plunge.
The sergeant major frowned slightly, but said nothing. He held his silence not because Thorella was an officer – Aquino’s power as senior enlisted man in this camp on Quantico far overshadowed the captain’s – but because he believed that a bloody nose here and there helped to toughen his trainees for the deadly fighting that awaited them among the stars: if they couldn’t handle this, they would never be able to handle combat. The captain had overstepped the bounds somewhat with Camden, but not so far that any action could really be taken against him. But Aquino would be watching. And he wished that Thorella did not appear to enjoy himself so much.
“Buddha,” Reza heard someone whisper in the silence that fell over the trainees who waited their turn with the troll who guarded the bridge. It was the first remark of a hushed torrent of resigned commentary: “This is bullshit.” “I can’t believe they’re letting this guy get away with this.” “Oh, man, we’re going to get our asses creamed.”
And, what Reza understood to be the classic epithet: “Oh, shit.”
He considered their comments, as well as what he had just seen. He himself was not overly impressed with Thorella’s method, as it was trivial gameplay in terms of his own experience. What offended him was the reasoning behind Thorella’s tactics: it was not to instruct or inspire, to make the trainees more competent in battle. Even in Reza’s first days in the kazha, while the tresh were often cruel, they did not spar with him without useful purpose. No, he thought, Thorella’s actions were born of his personal hatred and contempt for those around him. More specifically for Eustus and, as he was well aware, for himself.
Thorella made a theater of yawning and stretching before he called out, “Who’s next? Darman! Get out here. I–”
Before the young woman, who was clearly trying to mask her fright, could step up, she felt Reza’s hand on her arm, gently pushing her aside as he stepped forward.
“I request the honor to fight you, captain,” he said formally. Reza had decided that a lesson in humility was in order.
“You understand the rules, trainee?” the sergeant major said before Thorella could reply to Reza’s challenge, but it was more a statement than a question. He did not want a bloodbath on his hands, regardless of who started it. Thorella was much bigger than Reza, but he was not sure that size and the captain’s appreciable skill would make up for the unknowns that presented themselves with the younger man.
“I believe I understand Captain Thorella’s rules, Sergeant Major Aquino,” Reza replied carefully. “I shall obey them.”
Aquino’s eyebrow arched.
“All right, you little slime-bag half-breed,” Thorella whispered under his breath. “Let’s see just what color blood you’ve got.”
Reza ignored the stick one of the other trainees offered to him.
“Take your weapon, Gard,” Thorella ordered.
“I have no need of it,” Reza replied as he stepped onto the log. He felt clumsy in his combat boots and exposed wearing the flimsy camouflage uniform rather than his armor, but he thought he would be sufficiently agile for the job at hand. He waved away the helmet one of the trainees offered him.
“This is more like it,” Thorella said, impressed, as he removed his own helmet, tossing it aside. Even if Gard was a loser, he thought, at least he knows how to go down right. But he was also eager to see how Reza would look after the unpadded grip of the metal bar had been smashed across his shoulder blade. Or the side of his exposed skull.
Reza walked about a third of the way out onto the log and stopped, his eyes never leaving Thorella. His scarred, tan face was calm, his callused hands hanging at his sides.
“Well, come on, freak,” Thorella said, his mouth a cruel smile that split the lower half of his face like a crevasse.
