The Jack's Story (BRIGAND Book 2) (2 page)

I liked school, but I liked fighting more.

I averaged a couple of battles a week. By battles, I mean getting my ass kicked by kids, bigger, tougher and uglier than me.

I was a fatherless, motherless waste of DNA, so it never mattered much how low the other guy was on the hierarchy of shit. I was everyone’s target and once word got around that I would never back down, well the fights got more interesting.

Usually I’d let them get their shots in, waiting until I knew I wouldn’t last much longer, just letting myself get more and more pissed. Then I’d unleash all that rage at once. I’d pretend the kid was any one of the lowlifes that regularly visited my home and I’d go all zee on them, punching, kicking, gouging, and even biting.

You’d think that my willingness to wade in would put some of those grits off, but for some reason fighting back just made it more entertaining for them which didn’t really matter to me – except they started bringing their friends. Suddenly it was me against 3, 4 sometimes even 5 other boys. I still didn’t care.

Then they started bringing weapons.

It was summer – not like you could tell in the wards. I knew because school was on break for a couple of months. There was this one little posse that hung by the sensostalls across the street – the pods where the scuts that were too poor to buy an actual whore could get their rocks off for a microgram or two. I picked up on the extra few seconds of eye contact they directed my way as I headed out for vapes and condoms. Their entourage of sluts, little Diedra’s in training, snickered at me when I walked by. I could feel the beating coming, piling up like a dust storm on the horizon. I could have run straight home. I might be shakupita, but I wasn’t no vag.

Fuck that. I was a warrior.

Beech, the leader of the group, the same shit pile who gave me my first smackdown, circled me.

Tug, a small nervous kid from the fringe of the quad, called out to him just before he was gonna make his first punch, "Hey, someone’s here!"

We all swiveled our heads to search out the unlikely intruder. No authority, or guards, came this far beyond the perimeter of the school. The only adult we ever saw this far out was Chipraw, a local dealer, and he didn’t care how badly we bloodied each other as long as we didn’t interfere with his customers.

But a stranger hovered near today, lurking just inside the border of the school. He stood too far for me to make out the exact style of his uniform but the color was instantly recognizable – marine shipboard grays, with glaring red stripes on his shoulder. A recruiter. As soon as I saw the man, I knew I was in for serious trouble. Beech was gonna show off and I was the victim.

Military service was one of the easiest tickets out of the Depot. Their slogan,
Anyone’s son will do
, wasn’t entirely accurate. Anyone’s son – if you could prove their training wouldn't kill you and waste their time. The Marines recruited young. Generations of research had taught them the younger, the better. Which made me Beech’s one way ticket out of the Depot. I only hoped I survived the demonstration.

Beech grinned at his mates and then waded in with his fists. Instinctively, I knew I couldn’t afford the time to spin up my anger and unleash on him at the end. He wasn’t going to hold back and if he got in a couple of good ones it would be the end of me.

I hated the thought that these grits, the ones that branded me shakupita, would be the ones to take me out. So I went on the offensive. I lowered my head and charged into them, my arms pinwheeling in a flurry of extravagant blows. With arms, legs, and body flailing, I circled around and thrashed at all of them like a dusty little tornado.

The pipe stopped me. Out of the hazy whirlwind of my assault, dull gray steel swooped into my line of sight and then caromed off my forehead.

My footing suddenly became unsteady and a slow thought lazily entered my brain – that maybe I should lie down and let it all go. Someone grabbed me from behind and pinned my arms to my sides. The crush of those arms blocked out the pain. It blocked out the hissing ring in my ears, the bloom of pain in my skull. All of my attention was focused on those arms. I was helpless. Immobile. And something inside of me flipped.

As if it was all happening to someone else, I thought, "So this is what it’s like to go zee." I called upon strength that only adrenaline, surging it’s biochemical magic through my blood, could produce.

I threw my head back, smashing the crown of my skull into someone’s mouth. There was a satisfying crunch, teeth maybe, and I heard a grunt of surprise and pain. The grip pinning me loosened and gave me enough of an opening to throw both of my arms straight up above my head, extinguishing their hold and allowing me to slip downward. With my arms free I pivoted and drove a fist upward into my captor’s crotch. Air and spit flew out of him as he folded over his pain. I jumped straight up, throwing a foot sideways, making contact with someone’s face.

As I cocked my arm back to throw another punch the metal bar came at me again – at my eyes. In the weird relativity of adrenaline, I had time to realize that, if it made contact, my eye sockets would crush like the carapace of a beetle and an explosion of blood and bone would shred my brain into pink soup. There wouldn’t be time to counter or block. I'd be dead.

The pipe descended and then slowed as a thick fingered hand grabbed my attacker’s arm. Momentum carried the pipe into the bridge of my nose, delivering a solid smack that flashed bright white into my vision. Then the hand yanked the arm backwards so fast I heard it snap and one of Beech’s minions fell back on his ass, cradling his ruined limb in his lap. His whine was thin and high like a baby with no tit to suck.

I looked up at my rescuer and locked eyes with the coldest stare I’d ever seen. His eyes were so blue you could almost see through them.

The marine. Now I was scared.

The kid on the ground kept crying, with snot hanging out of his nose, as he held his broken arm to his chest. The marine stared at all of us but didn’t say a thing.

Beech cleared his throat. "Hello, Sir. Sir, we were – "

The recruiter thrust his palm at Beech’s face and we all flinched in unison expecting him to get slapped. Then he jabbed a finger at them.

"Leave."

It was Beech’s turn to look like he might cry. "But, Sir, we’re…"

The recruiter directed his stare to Beech then simply uttered, "Now."

They ran away.

He turned back to me and, despite the clench of apprehension in my belly, I pulled my shoulders up and straightened my back.

He loomed a meter above my head and said, "Relax, kid."

So I tried. I dropped my shoulders. My body ached in places that weren’t supposed to hurt and holding myself in an upright posture was exhausting..

"What was that all about?" he asked.

"Dunno."

"You don’t know? And..." his voice trailed off and I crinkled my eyebrows in confusion.

"Address me as Sir." He helped.

"Dunno, Sir."

He gave me the once over again. I fidgeted slightly under his scrutiny, trying not to imagine what he thought of me in my dingy stolen shoes, which were mostly held together with glue, but at least fit me better these days.

"What’s your student number?"

"11982," I replied.

He flipped his arm over and pulled up his sleeve, then punched at the inside of his forearm. A holographic image hovered a centimeter or so above his skin – an image of me, my student records.

He glanced over my file and then turned his hard stare on me once more. That stare said he could kill me as easily as pissing. I didn’t doubt for a second that he could rip out my innards through my nose.

"Family?"

I shook my head.

"Where do you live?"

I remained silent. I didn’t want to be disagreeable, but I also didn’t want the moms receiving unexpected visitors on my account. Military types, especially marines, had a tendency to tear up the decor. So I didn’t say anything. I resigned myself to the fact that my silence would probably piss him off. That he’d wrap that hand around my skinny neck and squeeze. Instead, he smiled. His teeth were big and white, with a little gap in the center..

"You’re ok, kid." He said. "I’m Gunny Ripla. What do you call yourself?"

Automatically, I almost replied with "Boy" but I stopped just in time.

I needed to be someone. I needed to have a name.

So I blurted out the closest thing I could think of. "Roy! My name’s Roy, Sir."

He raised one eyebrow. "Interested in the Marines, Roy?"

"Yes, Sir." I didn’t need time to think, time to process. For a dust eater from the Depot this was the rough equivalent of discovering a wealthy relative. I wasn’t going to let it slip away.

"Good. Anyone you want to say goodbye to?"

I thought about the moms, about Nanette and Sophie, but I shook my head again. I didn’t know what would happen if I went back there and I wasn’t going to endanger my chances of getting out – or their business.

Ripla nodded. Maybe he understood more than I was giving him credit for. "We leave tonight, Roy. I’ve spent too long in this place already."

"So have I, Sir. So have I."

I stepped beside him, in rank. Ripla put his big hand over my shoulder and gave me one pat on the back.

That’s how I joined the Marines – I was ten years old.

I was good at it. Fighting I mean. I was good in training. I was better when it mattered, in combat.

They tagged me early for Boarding Specialist – the marines who led the way in a ship to ship assault. I loved being on point. I’d eventually grown into my big feet. A late bloomer – that’s what I was. I got so big that I almost didn’t fit into my assigned role – the destroyer, the bringer of chaos, a Rip Jack. Most of the other guys in my specialty were smaller – made it easier to fit into shipboard passageways. I didn’t much like tight spaces – so I tore them open. Worked just fine. I was big and mean and crazy enough to hack my way through a ship’s hull with nothing but a power axe and my trusty puncher. I loved how scary that made me.

But then the claustrophobia started getting to me something fierce. I never talked to the doc about it – no sense talking about something you can’t change. The sleep tubes they stuck us in for long orbit travel were just too damn small and when you’re out in the black for as long as I was... well you get shoved up in those tubes one too many times and sometimes you go a little apeshit.

That’s how I found myself in front of Ripla again – in the infirmary of the Dawson's brig. The docs had been in and out, asking me questions about where I grew up, about how I felt about my mother, not knowing my father, about my military 'career'. Of course I didn’t give a rat’s ass about those things. I just didn’t want to be shoved into a plastic sphincter and drugged into a coma anymore.

Then Ripla showed up. At first I thought he was there to help the docs – to open me up – get someone in here that I respected. But I should have known better. Ripla was a master at one thing – recruiting. He used to tell me, "Anyone’s son will do but only I can spot the special ones." I knew he meant the best or the worst, all depends upon what the Corps needs.

I sat across from him in a cold metal chair at a white table. He tossed down a folio that lit up with text and images, of me. My file.

"I hear you busted up a transport pod."

I shrugged. "Got tired of being a suppository."

He raised that damned eyebrow again, except now I noticed there was gray hair popping out in spots. "I hear you busted up three marines too."

I scowled. I did feel bad about that, but I wasn’t about to admit that I didn’t remember doing it. I broke a couple noses, Crawleys’ jaw, and maybe rearranged Ricker’s shoulder. They’d only been trying to help me. I didn’t want to admit I’d lost it.

He swiped through some pages on the folio. It was all a show and he knew I knew that. Hell, he didn’t even need the folio. He was a Jack like me. He had access to all of my information through his cuts. Could even call up caps of the incident directly to his occulars. The folio was old-school. Tactile. A prop.

"You here to decommission me, Gunny?" I didn’t want this drag out any longer than necessary.

He leaned back a bit in his chair and steepled his fingers together under his chin, the most thoughtful gesture I’d ever seen from him. "No. I’m collecting people for a special assignment."

I didn’t move.

"You interested?" he asked.

I almost smiled at the memory of when he first recruited me. But I wasn’t a beat up Depot grit anymore. I had skills. We both knew I what I was.

"Does this special job involve long rides in small places?"

Ripla smiled. "No. Mostly inner system stuff. No tube hops."

I nodded. "And I suppose it would be off the record then?" He knew I had received intelligence training. Inner system meant inter-faction shit. Which meant politics. Off grid, with high probability of getting dead.

Ripla nodded. "Deep. And pretty lethal."

I smiled. "Just the way I like it."

"I have some questions for you first."

I leaned back in my chair slightly and let my arms drop to my sides. "I got nothin’ to hide, Sir."

The smallest smile pulled at the corners of his narrow lips. "Alright then. Let’s get started."

Then he did go to his cut. He shared a connection to a doc in white medical utilities. I recognized him. The Dawson's head-cracker. Staff-level brass. Probably went straight from school to a desk. Guess he was too scared to see me in the skin.

The pink-skulled doc cleared his throat and asked, "Do you think about death?"

I shrugged. "Not really."

"Do you have a death wish, or do you fear dying?"

I leaned forward and rested my forearms lightly on my knees. "Look, we’re all dying. It’s just a question of how fast. It’s the only thing I know for sure, so ‘no’ I don’t fear it, I don’t think about it, and I’m not trying to hurry things up."

I leaned back and folded my arms up high on my chest over the thick slabs of my pectorals.

The little pink doctor opened his mouth, ready with more questions, when Ripla cut the link and he disappeared. Then he leaned forward on the table. "What are you afraid of?"