*** Patrick ***

  As usual, Patrick started his day half-awake, waiting for the rain-bird to demand his presence at roll call. Slowly he realized that today was different, today the recruits were enjoying a small festival in celebration of clearing a leaf slime field within the time limit. It had been their fourth expedition to an infested location. The basic strategy had remained the same each time, the difference was the recruits’ spear skills were improving, especially against small, fast targets. Patrick was pleased with his progress, he was almost at the first tier with his spear skills.

  There were no group training sessions today, instead a number of mini-tournaments were being held throughout the day. Patrick still had a duty shift, today he was partnered with Dot for Patrol duty from 6 until 8. Patrick liked the Patrol shift, it was easy since the field camp was in a low risk area. There were no real threats in the area, just a few random weak monsters from time to time. The administration felt it was important though for recruits to become acclimated to life in the corps, which meant pitching in. To make patrols more productive the trainers also used that time to tutor recruits on organizational practices. Patrick liked working with Dot since she was very casual and he could ask about anything. The only downside was she liked to tell tall tales of her exploits.

  Arriving at the dining facility Patrick grabbed a tray with eggs, hash browns, and a thick pudding that had no equivalent from his life on Earth. The pudding had the consistency of mashed potatoes, but once it was in your mouth it melted instantly. There wasn’t an initial taste, but it had a chalky after taste. It wasn’t his favorite, but it was filling.

  Patrick joined the rest of his quad at one of the tables. Rohan was busy talking to Tiny while Kayla and Maria were eating and listening with skeptical expressions. It wasn’t clear how Tiny got her nickname. While she was a little on the short side, she was also big boned.

  “Morning Quad, Tiny”

  Tiny replied, “Howdy Spoons, just the person we were looking for.”

  “okay, should I take that as good news or bad news?”

  Maria volunteered, “Bad news.”

  Rohan: “For the thousandth time, there is no regulation that says we can’t cook, grow, or procure our own food.”

  Maria: “Just because it doesn’t say we can’t, does not mean that we can.”

  Tiny: “Anyways, Shifty and I were talking about selling deep fried squirters. Sounds great right! Since your Shifty’s quad mate, he wanted to give you first shot at helping out. I don’t mind, but we are ready to move on this now, so if you want in then we need to know ASAP.”

  “Squirters? … You mean those armored caterpillars that are everywhere?"

  Shifty: “The shell is just on the top, the bottoms are like jello. And they are not everywhere, there are probably only 50 in the whole camp.”

  Kayla smirked and added, “Yeah, mostly around the latrines.” Which also got a chuckle out of Maria.

  “What do they taste like?”

  Tiny: “Everything tastes good deep-fried.”

  “So you haven’t tasted them? Do you know if they are poisonous?”

  Rohan: “We are practically invulnerable now, it will be fine. So can we count on you for frying them up?”

  Tiny: “ and some gathering. “

  Rohan: “Yeah, mostly cooking though. We meet back here after lunch and you can fry up the first batch.”

  “ahh, I didn’t agree to anything. I only started cooking detail a few days ago, and haven’t ever deep fried anything. I don’t even know what we have for grease here.”

  Rohan: “Deep frying is simple as pie, and you’re a natural at cooking, much better than Moose or Lefty.”

  Patrick gave a small nod, “Thanks, but I’m not sold on this. I think you are better off with Moose, Lefty, or one of the camp cooks helping out.”

  Rohan: “You sure, once this takes off you will be kicking yourself.”

  “Thanks again, for thinking of me, but maybe next time. Good luck with it. Switching topics, what games are you all participating in?”

  Tiny: “None, it’s a day off, and I am take-ing it easy to-day.”

  Maria: “You should participate, this is a reward for clearing the slime field. I am going to do them all, except for the strength and mana channeling because I have smithing duty.”

  Kayla: “Me too, I have patrol from 8 until 10, but will be at the rest of them. Be prepared to be wowed, as I dominate the day.”

  Tiny: “Ace might have something to say about that.”

  Kayla grinned and said “I guess we’ll see.”

  After another half hour of friendly banter Patrick left to get ready for the first contest. The shield games were likely to be chaotic as they had just started practicing with shields three days ago. The shields were large kite shields two feet wide and four feet high. The outside was plain medium blue indicative of its water resistant properties. Inside it had two sets of handles and straps to allow it to be held with the arm either horizontal or vertical. There was also a strap that could be used to carry the shield on your back. The first two days they practiced the shield paired with a spear. The spear was a foot shorter than the ones that they typically used. Everyone was strong enough that wielding the spear one handed was feasible. It was awkward though, and felt weird compared to wielding one with two hands. Yesterday they practiced using the shield with a club as the main weapon. The trainers felt that clubs required almost no skill for basic use, so drills focused on how to move the shield proactively. With a spear the shield was more passive because the goal was to stab your enemy before they got in close. It was a backup in case something went wrong, or to help out against ranged attacks. With a club the expectation was that the enemy was going to be next to you and the shield needed to be more proactive to block incoming attacks.

  Patrick got dressed in his fighting kit and went to the yard where the shield and club tournament was starting at 5. Seven other recruits were there, most standing around chatting. Ace and Blaze were both off in their own little areas practicing moves. Patrick grabbed a club and shield and joined the group talking.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  When Trainer Fire arrived everyone drew numbers from a bucket to decide on the tournament bracket. Patrick had the second match against Zeus, who, ironically, was originally from Egypt.

  Ace’s obsessive training paid off in the first match with him easily getting to three points and his opponent scoring zero.

  Patrick was next and felt he had a decent chance, Zeus was relatively skilled, but was a bit gullible. They lined up six feet apart and the trainer called “Begin”. Patrick and Zeus both edged forward until they were within striking distance. Patrick made a couple of moderate strength swings with the intention of hitting Zeus’s shield.

  ‘I’ll build up his confidence and then look for an opening.’

  Each time Patrick attacked, Zeus made a counter attack. On the fourth attempt Patrick swang high, but did not put his full strength into it. Zeus raised his shield to counter and then attacked. Patrick was ready and pushed Zeus’s attack out with his shield, then dropped his club down to score an attack on Zeus’s outstretched arm.

  Resetting their positions, Zeus started out more aggressive this time. Patrick imitated a turtle, just defending while Zeus worked through his annoyance at losing a point. After ninety seconds Zeus slowed and started to look for openings. Patrick then started to circle around on Zeus’s shield side, sending probing attacks towards his left shoulder. Patrick kept widening his swings, tempting Zeus to imitate the attack he had made. After another half dozen exchanges Zeus tried for Patrick’s arm, but Patrick pushed his shield to deflect the attack. This pattern repeated twice more, then on the fourth attempt Patrick pushed his shield to deflect and reversed his direction to get on Zeus’s right side where he backhanded the club into Zeus’s lower back for the second point.

  The last point was the quickest, Patrick dashed his shield to the outside of Zeus’s and attacked his left leg for the third point. Zeus grunted to Patrick’s “Good Game” as they bumped fists to wrap up the match.

  Blaze defeated Kayla three to two in a relatively close match. Maria won her match against Lefty. Lefty blamed his loss on having to fight right-handed. The trainers had rejected his request to wield the club with his left hand.

  ‘Ace is going to be tough, I think my best bet is to focus on defense and look for any openings.’

  Ace took the first two exchanges. Patrick didn’t make any glaring mistakes, Ace just kept control of the tempo and Patrick couldn’t find any openings.

  ‘I need to shake things up and go for high risk, high reward. A conservative approach isn’t working.’

  For the third exchange Patrick started with a flurry of attacks, and then waited in a defensive stance. Ace cleanly parried the initial attacks and then started his attack sequence. Three strikes in Patrick imitated a berserker again with another flurry to disrupt Ace. Twice more and the reckless attacks yielded a point on Ace’s right forearm.

  Patrick tried the strategy again, but it failed when Ace caught him in the ribs during an attack. Patrick and Ace exchanged “Good Games” and left the ring.

  Maria won her match against Blaze three to one, and then lost the final match against Ace two to three. A couple of people were a bit sour about their losses, but overall everyone was gracious about their wins and losses. The tournament finished up at 5:50 and Patrick had Patrol duty at 6. He was already in his fighting kit, so he stopped by his locker to grab his spear and headed over to the main gate to wait for Dot.

  —

  Dot approached the gate with a wide grin and called, “Hey Spoons, good to see you are early.”

  “Just looking forward to more of your war stories. How are you today?”

  Dot: “Living the dream, living the dream.”

  They took care of the bureaucratic necessities and started their shift. The field camp was in a large meadow, the moat and embankments surrounding it, with only two openings, here and at the rear gate on the opposite side of the camp. The recruits had cleared shrubs and bushes 150 yards outside of the camp. The patrol route was in this cleared area, roughly 100 yards outside the moat. During a few patrols an elephant sized sloth-like creature had occasionally appeared in the distance. Otherwise it was just dispatching any nuisance critters that they found along their path, and investigating anything unusual. On two sides of the camps there were some light woods another 200 yards away.

  Dot walked with practiced strides and asked, “So what do you want to learn about today?”

  “Everything, as usual. This life is so new to me, I don’t know where to start. … Are a lot of the worlds as wet as this?”

  Dot: “Weather getting you down? Well, cheer up, other than ocean worlds, this one is one of the wettest. For example, almost 70 years ago I was stationed on a desert world around a white super giant.”

  “Desert world, is that a mana type, like this is a water world?”

  Dot: “Nah, it was just bone dry. Earth mana was at about a third, and water mana was really low, but other than that a regular mix. The corps was there … “ Dot continued for ten minutes, “ … and the locals were impressed at how quickly I used their desert suits. The suits were tricky to put on, since a correct fit was needed to keep all the moisture in, and they were tricky to channel, needing a combination earth, air, and water mana. Well I … “

  “Excuse me Dot, I’ve got a question. So did the suit have three different magic parts, or was it just one magic item that you had to channel all three into?”

  Dot: “Caught that did you, yeah it was one item that needed all three types. The whole suit, although it had different parts, all functioned as one item. Let me tell you it is VERY tricky to channel multiple mana types at once. Not only do you have to keep separate pools for them all. Not only do you have to split your focus enough to put them all in the right place. On top of that the trickiest part of all is timing the channelings. Right now you just have been doing infusions, which doesn’t care about timing. When you get to more sophisticated items there is a lot more skill involved. And these desert suits are one of the most complicated items around. … ”

  Patrick half-listened while Dot continued off on her new tangent. It was tough to pick out which parts were exaggerations and which parts were real.

  ‘It makes sense that there are more complicated magic items, the stuff on Sol was as sophisticated as modern technology. We haven’t seen anything too complicated since then.’

  “I’m sorry to interrupt again Dot, why don’t we have any more complicated magic items here?”

  Dot: “Money, money, money. One of the things you need to remember is that the corps only spends the bare minimum needed to get the mission done. Magic items are expensive and are not needed for basic training. Anyways …. “

  Five minutes later, “What did the worms eat?”

  Dot: “Beats me.”

  “Well how could there be giant worms out in the desert without a lot of food?”

  Dot: “Mana absorption, just like we can absorb mana from the environment, monsters can too.”

  “What are the limits to that?”

  Dot: “Mana isn’t infinite, there is only so much. That’s why the worms each had their own territory, because if they were close together they would run out of mana. That’s also why the quads and hexads assign split who uses what types of mana.”

  “huh, I hadn’t thought about that but it makes sense. Another question, it just occurred to me that in all of your stories that every world had 16 hours each day.”

  Dot: “... Yeah, what’s your question?”

  “That just seems like a big coincidence, that they all had days that were the same length.”

  Dot: “I still don’t get what you are asking. A day has 16 hours.”

  “So every world has 16 hours in a day.”

  Dot: “Yup, nice and simple, how did you miss that?”

  “Where I’m from time was defined relative to the speed of light. So different worlds would have different length days.”

  Dot: “Weird”

  “I guess, so would my term of service be shorter if I was stationed someplace with really short days?”

  Dot: “No, our contracts are based on galactic time. You would have to check with the officers to get the conversion from local time to galactic time.”

  “ok thanks, change of topic, after our patrol I’m going to participate in the mana channeling, absorption, and then the free form sparring competitions, any advice?”

  Dot gave Patrick some pointers as they continued their patrol.