The Hounds of Helghan (11)
With one hand holding a lit cigarette, and the other balancing a hefty book on Terran World War II battles, Radec was enjoying his break from paperwork when Metrac entered his office. The general waved his hand faster than Radec could put down what he'd been holding.
"As you were, Colonel. Might I ask where you've sent off my sister?"
"I haven't sent her anywhere. Not yet, anyway." Radec quickly noted where he left off before shutting the book and turning his attention to the visiting general. "She's back from an assignment in the eighth sector, and now she's over at the shooting range. Did you need her for something, sir?"
Metrac waved his hand again. "No, leave her be. She's better off not being at the funeral."
Radec might not have noticed with his helmet on, but with it off now, he noted the weariness sunken around Metrac's eyes.
"I came here to retreat from the funeral attendants," the general said. "I hope you don't mind. Endless rounds of courtesies can be such a pain. Your office has something of a calming effect on me."
"You furnished this place, sir. Feel free to use it as you see fit."
Metrac strode up to peer past the left office window. "I think of life being like a shuffled deck of cards, Colonel. You don't choose the hand you're given. I happened to get the best cards anyone could ask for: the eldest child by fifteen years, an only son, wealthy parents...that set me up for playing the game of life any way I wanted. I didn't want to marry, and I chose to join the military, so the duty to marry well and carry on the family name fell onto my sister's shoulders. That's why my mother was so hard on her. You could say it's my fault." Metrac shook his head. "The things I've overheard her say to Runa over the years, awful things...fortunately you and I were not born as girls, Colonel." And he said with a grimace, "I'd much rather go through academy training again then endure schooling on being a proper woman."
Radec made no interjecting remarks. He figured it wasn't his place to offer an opinion on things he didn't know about, like being the oldest child, or the only son, or a woman.
Metrac averted his gaze from the window to direct it down at Radec, who had remained seated and had been listening with polite attention. "I digress," Metrac said with a sigh. "I'm probably boring you."
"No, sir," Radec replied. "Not at all."
"The point is, I don't blame my sister for electing to be absent during the services this week. Her debutante ball is the last high society event she attended, and she seems determined to make it her last. I remember my mother only with warm fondness, because she had spoiled me rotten while I was growing up, but I know Runa would think otherwise." Guilt crept into Metrac's voice. "I suppose our mother poured all her affections onto me and drained that font dry, so Runa had nothing left but the worst of her."
It had been years and years since Radec last thought of his own mother. Unlike the Metracs, who held good and bad thoughts of their mother, respectively, Radec had neither about his. He had no mother to remember, since she had chosen not to be a part of his life. In place of a nonexistent mother was his father. Or rather, a sorry excuse of a father. The tide of bad memories that resurfaced made the colonel almost crush the cigarette he had pinched between his fingers.
Metrac chuckled to himself. "I'm rambling again. Tell me, Colonel, how has my sister been since serving under you?"
That he knew how to answer. "She is an asset to my division. Hard-working, efficient, diligent..." And has much in common with myself, which went on unsaid.
Metrac cracked a small smile. "Your favorable opinion of her is reciprocated. Not that I need to ask her to tell. She seems much happier under your thumb than my parents'." He turned away from the window, his boots resounding across the office floor as he crossed it to leave. "Well, back into the fray I go, and enough of me being an older brother trying to look out for his sister. She doesn't need anyone looking after her."
Radec was left to himself as the office doors slid shut behind Metrac. He tried to pick up where he left off in his reading, but found that Metrac's visit had taken up all the time he could spend tolerating sitting in one place. Now he felt the itch to get up and get moving. Radec snubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray, slipped on his helmet, and headed for the shooting range.
He came in time to catch Runa hurling her last knife into the target.
"Good throwing," Radec said from behind her, "although I'd say that the last one was more forceful than necessary."
The young lieutenant whirled around at his voice, even though he had kept it at conversational level, nearly lost in the cracks of practice shots in the distance.
"If you throw too hard, the blade goes in too deep and you'd have a difficult time pulling it back out to reuse it," he went on, though not unkindly. "You don't have as many knives as you have bullets, and you can't afford wasting precious extra seconds in the thick of battle." Likely not news to Runa, but as her superior and head of a military academy, Radec felt justified in reminding her like a teacher to his student. No such thing as too many reminders, in his opinion.
She nodded to acknowledge his feedback, then said, "Sir, I shouldn't be surprised that you were coming." She breathed heavily as if she'd been running, instead of standing in place to throw knives.
He tilted his chin to the side. "I have a knack for coming and going unnoticed."
Jorhan Stahl, the chairman of Stahl Arms, was in the middle of developing advanced cloaking technology. As with most of the weapons and equipment he developed, he picked Radec to test it out. The two men had an efficient partnership going, with Stahl producing cutting-edge technology while Radec tested them.
"What better man to entrust my products to than with one of the most feared and respected soldiers of Helghan?" Stahl once remarked. "You are the finest that the army has to offer, and I offer only the finest for the army."
Even without this new cloaking and teleporting device he would equip one day, Radec went about his quiet way that tended to catch people off guard.
He studied the target Runa had been using for practice. He couldn't read her mind, but with his keen eye, the knives—how they landed, where they landed—could give him hints of what went on in there.
Many years ago, Radec was a captain when an operation had taken him to Suljeva, where he wouldn't have bothered to visit otherwise. There, he couldn't help asking the locals about his father. Not for a friendly reunion, of course, but to make his father see that he was no longer a skinny little boy to beat down.
"You're three years too late, Cap'n," an old miner had told him in a slight slur at the town's only bar. "What with all these collapsed shafts an' tunnels lately, you'd think that's how he went out." Then the miner held aloft the foaming beer mug he'd been guzzling down. "Actually he had too many of these, tried to walk home, an' tripped on a rock, an' busted his head open on 'nother rock. So, erm, you won't find him here no more, 'cause he's dead."
In response, with no living father to take revenge on, Radec returned to Pyrrhus and emptied every firearm into targets at the academy shooting range. With that brief revisit to his past, the colonel could relate to his subordinate. Even without General Metrac coming into his office divulging dysfunctional family dynamics, Radec could still tell what had weighed heavily on Runa's mind.
"Join me in the sparring room," he told her. "I need a sparring partner, and it has been some time since we fought with knives for the first time. I want to see if you've made any progress." Then, in an effort to sound less demanding, he added, "If you're so inclined, of course."
The ghost of a smile flickered across her pale face. "I've been practicing. I too am curious to see if I can find better footing against you now, sir."
Rising to a challenge without open disrespect or defiance...Radec liked that in a soldier.
He and Runa relocated to the sparring room, and soon they sent sparks flying as they engaged with knives in hand. The lieutenant had indeed learned from her mistakes and evolved from a fresh graduate. Her honed reflexes saved her from many a fatal stroke. Her moves were more unpredictable and less pedestrian. She became better tuned to this deadly dance of exchanged feints, parries, lunges, slashes, and stabs.
However, as much as she trained, she would never outmatch him in raw strength. Elite shock troopers were never chosen and made for that. Her weakness was his advantage. The colonel used his blade to twist hers away from him, leaving her open to be grabbed by the wrist. He intended to buckle in her arm and bring her down to submission, but she surprised him with her legs that wrenched and swept out from under him. In trying to incapacitate her from above, he neglected to account for her lower body movement. A rare, careless mistake. Damn it. He paid the price of that mistake as he careened backwards. His back made a solid thud on the floor. Runa pounced, pinning his left arm with a boot and his right with her left hand. In her right hand, the edge of her knife was poised just an inch from his neck.
And in that instant, Radec no longer saw Runa looming over him in unexpected victory, but his brother Coran, smug and leering, holding aloft a knife slick with the blood of a skinned puppy.
The primitive, reptilian part of his brain stirred and snapped. Radec retaliated with a fierce headbutt and heaved himself off the floor, freeing his arms from Runa's weight.
His helmet, a customized colonel's model, was sturdier than her lighter elite shock trooper helmet. Her head snapped back from the impact and she sprawled onto her side a few feet across from him.
Her cry of pain, followed by the breath knocked out of her chest as she landed, snapped Radec out of the past and brought him back to the present. He rushed over to her. "Lieutenant, are you all right?" Pressing concern sharpened his voice.
Runa responded with a muted groan as she staggered to her feet. She peeled back her helmet to reveal blood flowing freely from her nose. The lower half of her face was covered in dark, wet redness. "I-I'm sorry, Colonel," she mumbled through a bloody mouth.
"No, I'm the one who should apologize." Radec made Runa open her mouth and show her teeth. Good, nothing cut or broken besides her nose. He grabbed a towel meant for wiping away sweat, and thrust it out to Runa for her to use for wiping away blood instead. "I had used more force than necessary. That was uncalled for." He couldn't help slipping out a bitter laugh, and he said dryly, "Didn't I just tell you that a few minutes ago? Some military schoolmaster I am for not following my own advice."
"There's no fairness in a real fight," Runa replied, this time in between dabs of the towel against her face. "You've taught me that, sir. It's my fault for forgetting. I should be ready for anything in a fight."
"Make that two of us," he almost said. Until now, he couldn't remember the last time he had been beaten in a knife fight. He blamed his blunder today on letting himself become too confident and complacent in his own skills. As a high-ranking officer who had built quite a reputation for himself, he had a sense of pride to uphold. That reputation would take a hit if word got out that anyone lower-ranked could get the best of him in combat.
"You still won this round, sir," Runa said. "I may have brought you down, but you took me out when I least expected it."
Radec shook his head. "I'll give you this one, Lieutenant. You've indeed made progress since we last fought. Good job." He forced himself to meet her eyes. "And again, I apologize for my excessive show of force."
For some reason, he would not begrudge acknowledging Runa for her improvement and victory today. Perhaps because she didn't seem like the type who'd openly gloat about one-upping her superior.
It took several minutes for Runa to staunch the bleeding from her nose. She did so without complaint, without even a flicker of anger or resentment towards him.
Irritation at himself, however, suddenly boiled from the pit of his chest. "You're dismissed and done for today," he said shortly. "Get some rest. That's an order, not a suggestion."
Runa slipped the helmet back over her head and retreated from the sparring room without objection.
Once he was left alone, Radec slammed his fist against the wall. He cursed himself for his lapse of control and precision. He thought he had made huge strides in his life, that he had come far from the shadowy, frail roots of his past. Turns out that the past had its way of sneaking up on him, like the way Runa had swept out his feet from under him and brought him down. Coran's face, his knife, sprang unbidden from the depths of his memories again. Radec shut his eyes and a cold knot tightened in his gut. Underneath this decorated uniform, under layers of grit built from years of training and fighting, was a frightened little eight year-old boy Radec couldn't exorcise from himself. Did Runa see that? The flash of boyish, trauma-rooted fear masked by strength? He didn't want to know the answer.
I was going to have chapters 10 and 11 be one chapter, to show parallels of Radec and Runa struggling with baggage from their pasts, but it got long so I split it into two chapters.