Fighter's Mark by Tommy Muncie

Author:Tommy Muncie [Muncie, Tommy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tommy Muncie
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

C h a p t e r 15

I didn’t want my family to watch me take my fleet oath, but I knew I couldn’t keep them away either. Neither could most of the other new recruits. I didn’t want the proud goodbye and the hugs. Everyone else seemed to take them with the same trepidation. We all knew what was coming. As soon as these good civilians were out of sight, the polite and smiling NCOs were going to treat us like we belonged to fleet now. Shaven heads and all.

We all knew the rules: they couldn’t physically touch us, but trust me when I tell you it never goes through your head when you’re nose to nose with someone who’s done 15 years plus of what you’re about to. You don’t think about how it’s all a show, and you don’t dare question it, or stand up to anyone. You believe that as soon as you do, no rules will matter. These guys, their job is to make you the property of fleet. It’s up to them how they do it, and even if they don’t smash a fist into your teeth, you’ll wish they just would, because that would get it over with. Some punishments cut deeper than your teeth into your own tongue.

How they did it to me? Jack Delgado did it, the wiry sergeant in charge of our intake. His leathery face looked even older because of the glasses he wore, but nobody could have thrown a punch that would have any hope of knocking them off. His height alone meant few could have reached his face.

He put me in front of the thirty shaven–headed strangers and made me talk about my life, because I was the youngest. He knew it all anyway, and so did the two corporals under him. They just wanted me laying myself bare so they could whip me.

Swimming was for faggots. My family bought my looks and the cover–up of all the records so nobody would think I was a designer child. He made me show my feet to everyone and said maybe my father really did fuck his sister.

The games? I wasn’t going to win; he knew all the names of the Fourteen Lands entrants and the times they swam. By the time the laughter show had finished with me, they had almost no time to do anyone else before the craft left for Ikaresketh, because I had too many ways to prove I was a waste of space. So they did one other, someone who had already served in fleet for ten years as space crew and search and rescue, finally here because he’d earned his right to try for a commission. He was allowed to laugh at the quips they made at him.

Time for kit issue before we boarded.

‘Not you, Murdoch, you can wait right here.’ When everyone else was gone, he gave me my speedos. So he’d been through my bag. Another rule that didn’t matter then. ‘When you get your kit, you just fold it up and bag it.

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