Poor Man's Fight (19 page)

“Don’t bullshit me, Malone!” Janeka said, slapping him hard across the face. She slapped him again. “Fight, god dammit!” Again, her hand came back. “Fight!”

Tanner
forcefully blocked her third slap. His eyes flared. Janeka’s lip curled back. “Somebody start a clock!”

“Aw shit,” Tanner mumbled, but then it was on. He blocked, dodged and gave ground, taking a few shots that he just wasn’t fast enough to avoid. Janeka wasn’t just better-trained or more experienced; she was frightening. The left cross and right crescent kick both came so hard and fast that even though he blocked them she still knocked him around.

Janeka didn’t let up. She threw out swings and strikes and advanced into his space as he backed away. He took a hook to the jaw, then a snap kick to the hip that sent him tumbling to the ground, and barely rolled out of the way of the stomp that came in to follow it up. Janeka swung another foot up into his side even as he scrambled to his feet. He grabbed at it, twisted and pulled, yanking the sergeant off her feet. She landed on her hands, spun and practically flew back up; by the time Tanner was standing again, he had her foot coming up for his face. He slapped the foot down in time, but couldn’t block the fist that came straight at his nose, knocking him back with a resounding crunch.

The blackness behind his eyelids erupted with flashes of color. Most of the flashes were red. Something struck his stomach and something else hit his hip, but they didn’t hurt nearly as bad. Tanner’s eyes opened
again. His anger and training blended. He caught her on the cheek with a solid, forceful right cross.

He followed up, but she was ready for it. Janeka caught his left arm, twisting him around and sending him spinning past. Tanner lost his footing, stumbled and immediately recovered.

Janeka smirked. “You starting to fight back, or having an epileptic seizure?”

Blood flowed freely from Tanner’s nose down across his mouth. He hardly
noticed. “Can you even spell that?” he snarled.

Janeka’s
lip curled back. She came at Tanner again. He countered with his own advance rather than backpedaling as he had before. Tanner came out worse in the exchange but held his ground, attacking more often than he defended. No observer would have claimed he was winning, but the fight was no longer one-sided.

Anger gave way to determination. She was faster, stronger and in every way better, but Tanner would be damned if he gave up. Fists and feet kept flying, but eventually Tanner took a risk. Janeka used speed and extension; he thought, in less than a heartbeat and without real consideration, that perhaps she wasn’t as good close in. Hooks and uppercuts led to tangled arms. Tanner pulled in and went for the head butt.

Janeka did exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. Foreheads slammed together. The two staggered away from one another.

A roar that could have been a crowd or just the death-cries of
millions of brain cells filled Tanner’s head. He found himself on his hands and knees with no memory of how he’d gotten to the floor. Something inside told him he desperately needed to get up. He shoved himself to his feet, dizzy and more than a little lost. Tanner found Janeka pushing herself up off the floor just a few feet away.

Janeka. That’s what was so important. He was fighting Janeka for some reason. She had hurt him. Tanner swept in with his foot coming up at her head as if kicking a football.

She caught his ankle, twisted and flung him face-first onto the floor. He felt her foot land straight onto the small of his back. Pain shot from that one spot all through his body, overwhelming even the terrible feeling in his face.

“Rivera,” he heard Janeka grunt, “look him over.”

“Nnngh,” Tanner managed. He shoved himself to his feet, found Janeka turning to look at him in surprise, and promptly slammed a right hook into her chest. He meant to hit her jaw, but he was a touch disoriented.

She had his arm then. Had it fully extended, punched him repeatedly in the side with that third arm he never knew she had until now. Locked into that position, he couldn’t stagger back or get away; she had his arm, to which his popping ribs were connected, until there was another pop in his shoulder and he got perhaps another inch further away from her even though she still had hold of his wrist.

Hitting her meant everything. He remembered that. He held the thought, and when she let him go, he spun around with his left hand out and slapped her across the face.

The sergeant was shocked. He registered that. A boot came up into his jaw then, slamming him backward. The floor hit him, too, on the back of the head and more or less everywhere else on him all at once.

Someone shouted. He couldn’t really understand it. Janeka loomed over him, stepping close with a surprised look on her face. She was even more surprised when his legs swept up around hers and pulled her down in one of the few ground-fighting moves Tanner had been taught. Tanner pivoted upright, cocking back his right arm to throw another blow at her only to discover that it didn’t work right anymore.

He glanced toward Janeka, but saw
only the sole of her boot coming at his face.

***

Nothing in particular woke him. It was a strange thing, waking up naturally and not at the instigation of outside stimuli. Something warned him to jump to his feet before his bunk collapsed, but that order seemed to come from a long way off. It was like he was yelling at himself from down a long, dark hall. Moreover, there was no bunk above his. There was just the ceiling. The only light came from the small monitor off on one corner.

He was in a hospital room.

“Good evening,” said exactly the sort of voice that was usually used by machines. “Please rest. A nurse has been summoned.”

Yup. Hospital. He tried to sit up, but found it very difficult to move. Thin, barely-flexible blue plastic encased his shoulder, as well as his elbow and his hand. He realized his ankle was similarly wrapped.

It was the sort of stuff one put on broken bones.

“Glad to see you awake,” said the man who entered. He had a middle-aged look about him, Tanner thought. “I’m Doctor Hsu. I imagine you’re pretty out of it right now, though. Can you understand me, recruit?”

“Did I wash out?” Tanner mumbled.

“I’m sorry?”

“My company,” he said. “Did I wash out?”

“No, no,” the doctor
chuckled. “Though you got a day off that I imagine nobody in your company envies. I haven’t seen anyone this beat up in a long time. Not without having to do a criminal incident report,” he added somewhat darkly. “How are you feeling?”

“Numb. Can I have a new body now? I think I broke this one.”

“Corrective surgery doesn’t go quite that far,” the doctor said with a kind smile. “At any rate, you didn’t break that on your own. Do you remember how you got here?”

“Had a match with Gunnery Sergeant Janeka,” Tanner said.

“You didn’t have a match,” the doctor corrected. “You had a fight. Matches don’t get this rough. Look, you’re a little too groggy from the painkillers we used. We’ll put you on subtler stuff now, but the concussion you suffered limited our initial options.”

“So I didn’t wash out?”

“No,” the doctor shook his head. “You’ve only been out a day. You’ll be here tomorrow, on light duty with your company the day after that and fit for full duty in another two that at the worst.”

Thinking
clearer now, Tanner read the display on the monitor across the room. It showed a shifting display of his body systems, first skeletal, then muscular, then cardiovascular and finally vital organs. He had focused in biological studies in school, and Everett provided excellent first aid training. Tanner knew what the body on the display was supposed to look like. What he found instead was ugly.

Medical care for the Archangel Navy was certainly of high quality, but only rich people could afford the sort of care that would bounce them back from this sort of condition within days. “Isn’t this expensive?” he asked.

“You let us worry about that,” the doctor smiled again. He patted part of Tanner’s arm that wasn’t covered by isolation plastic. “In the meantime, you need to relax and then let the cobwebs clear so you can talk to Lieutenant Alvarez.”

“Hmh?” Tanner blinked. Alvarez was the only officer on base whom the recruits knew by name; ultimately all the company commanders reported to him. He was low-ranking in terms of officer ranks, but as far as recruits were concerned, he might as well have been God.

For a moment, the doctor looked like he wasn’t sure if he should speak further or not. “You suffered a severe beating,” he said. “I sent out the notifications as soon as we had you at rest. You need to give a statement, and then there will likely be an investigation.”

“Why?”

“Sparring matches don’t break that many bones or cause internal bleeding at multiple points, son,” the doctor said. “We’re bareknuckles here because we can afford it and because the instructors feel it’s more realistic, but that’s no excuse to take things to this extreme. You have rights, and that includes the right to not be beaten to a pulp.”

Tanner
quietly shook his head. “No. I could’ve stayed down. Tapped out. I didn’t.”

“She could’ve stopped,” the other man said gently. “She didn’t.”

“I’m not gonna toss the gunny down a garbage chute ‘cause I lost a match.”

“Did you have designated observers for this ‘match?’” Hsu asked. “
I can’t say we trained in hand to hand like this when I went through training. This is new stuff here. But I know the rules and regulations. Did any of them call the match finished?”

Tanner didn’t answer. He didn’t really care for the implication. “Well,” the doctor shrugged, “it’s not your call how to handle this. It’s the lieutenant’s. But let the painkillers
settle so you can think clearly before you decide how you feel about it, okay? You’re spending the night here anyway.” His holocom beeped. The doctor gave it a flick, calling up a holographic display that he read with a scowl.

“I’m thinking clearly already. No investigation. Not ‘cause of me.”

The doctor’s eyes went from his holo display to meet Tanner’s. “She just requested to see you, actually. Your company commanders asked to be notified as soon as you were conscious.”

Tanner blinked. Janeka went from an abstract concept to something real. He wasn’t sure he could stand at attention right now, and he definitely didn’t want to be yelled at. He had never known anyone so intimidating...

...and yet he hit her. Repeatedly. She put him down, repeatedly, but he had struck back. She was flesh and blood.

“I can send her away. I can do that. I outrank her by quite a bit,” he added comfortingly.

“No, sir,” Tanner shook his head, realizing now who he was talking to. Doctors were officers. “Please don’t. It’s okay if she wants to see me, sir.”

“Do you want anyone in here with you?”

“No, sir,” Tanner shook his head again. “Thank you, sir.”

The doctor nodded. He glanced down at his display again, calling up a new set of graphics and then explaining things about
the healing process, but Tanner only paid half attention. He should have been fascinated. Tanner had no real interest in becoming a doctor, but it was all still biological science. Once upon a time, he was supposed to intern for a research center. Instead, he was spending his summer in an emergency shelter, cleaning out ventilation shafts by hand, absorbing verbal abuse and having his ass kicked.

“Anything you need?” the doctor asked.

“Sir,” Tanner mumbled, looking to the curtains on one side of the room. “Is that a window?”

“Yes,” he said, walking over to the door without a second thought. “Here you go.” He pressed a button on the wall.

“Oh, no sir, I don’t think I’m supposed...” Tanner tried to object, but the doctor was already gone. The curtains slid open. The hospital building was one of the taller structures in Fort Stalwart. Other floors had mostly neighboring buildings filling up their windows. Tanner’s window had stars.

He looked out at them for a long time. Everyone he loved was out there somewhere. Not one of his school classmates was on this planet. The ones he loved most weren’t even orbiting the same star as him anymore. His father and Connie
lived in a whole different system. Allison was all the way out on Earth.

Feeling very much alone, Tanner tried to blink away the tears that came to his eyes. They blurred his view of the stars.

“Recruit Malone,” broke in a harsh, familiar voice. Tanner looked over to see Janeka in the doorway, sporting a black eye. “Permission to enter?”

“You need permission from me for anything?”

“You’re in a hospital bed. There’s a proper etiquette.”

Tanner blinked in surprise. She seemed to completely ignore the
tear tracks. At least the tears had stopped before she arrived. “Permission granted?”

Janeka nodded, then stepped forward to stand next to his bed. “The doctor says you’ll be back tomorrow.”

“Yes, sergeant,” Tanner replied. “I’m kind of surprised. That looks...” he gestured at the display. “I didn’t think the Navy would go to this sort of trouble for training injuries.”