Rise Against the Faultless (8 page)

The day that we were supposed
to start our simulations, Oren had returned. He was wearing a cast and sling on
his left arm and had an eye patch over his right eye. Not everyone that left
did return, but none of us dared to ask him what happened. He was in an
especially dangerous mood, which I knew was only going to be trouble for me.
“Simulations begin today, everyone. You will have teams of five, and there will
be three teams fighting at once.  Your protective gear should keep you from
dying, but don’t think that it will keep you from getting hurt. Don’t do
anything stupid. Team leaders will be Terra Sharp, Raily Stone, and Dione
Wilkerson.” Terra Sharp and Dione Wilkerson? Are you kidding me? The director
of operations and the man who made his life’s mission before arriving here
making
my
life miserable. “The objective of this game is to locate and
retrieve the man being held hostage somewhere in our staging set. You will be
given clues as to his captors and his location. You must bring the hostage back
alive, or you will be disqualified.”

The only ray of hope that I saw
in my dismal situation was that I was allowed to choose my team first. I
secured Lo and Jubal right off the bat. With all of Jubal’s kidding around, he
was an excellent shot and actually quite serious in matters of work. Besides, I
knew that he would protect Lo. Shane was a given on my team, but if I had the
chance to pick him I had to admit to myself that I would, his counsel alone
will be worth it. I was allowed to choose one person from Service if I liked,
rather than another person from Combat. Although, no one thought it was a good
idea.  Cyril had already asked that I leave her out of it, so I respected her
wishes, but I did have someone else in mind that I felt like I could trust,
Glyn Steed.

I knew that these simulations
could throw curve balls, and I needed all the smarts that I could get on my
team. Glyn would bring knowledge of medicine and science to the team that could
prove to be invaluable. I didn’t know how much Glyn would appreciate being pulled
into this, and I heard the snickers when I chose her. The look on Dione’s face
was full of haughty pride. He thought he had secured victory at that point,
over me anyway. It took them ten minutes to retrieve Glyn from cleaning the
dining hall. Although we hadn’t spoken much in school, I had always liked Glyn
and respected her. I only hoped she felt the same way about me, especially
after doing this to her.

She ran up to me with the
biggest smile on her face, undaunted by the jeers from the other teams. I heard
Dione make the remark, “Always was a Grime lover.” She ignored him and mouthed
the words, “thank you” to me. What were they having her do?

Oren announced, “Okay, now that
we’re all here,” he paused to give me a snide look, “we can begin. Team leaders
are allowed two weapons, team members can have one. If you are ‘fatally’ struck
with any of our mock weapons, your PID will warn you that you’ve been injured
fatally. When you are ‘killed’, you will be immediately removed from the field.
Do not communicate with your team anymore, just leave without resisting. Team
leaders who are killed forfeit their team’s victory. So, team leaders, don’t
die or you lose. Bring the hostage back to this very spot, alive, and you win.”

“Teams will begin at different
points in the field and you will not know the location of other the teams.
Clues will be provided through the Team Leader’s PID. Figure it out, fast. Get
to your positions, it’s time to begin.”

We were outfitted with our
weapons and a purple band to tie around our arms. Dione’s team was yellow and
Terra’s was blue. I quickly assessed each of my team member’s strengths in my
head, so I would know how to position them once we were on our way. Jubal’s
sharp eye would be ideal for keeping watch ahead for the enemy. Lo had killer
instincts for situations. She could tell when something didn’t seem natural and
I bet would be able to sniff out a trap. Glyn’s skills were obvious, but I
needed her to be protected since she hadn’t had any combat training, so she
would need to stay with Shane. Shane’s Command experience would provide me with
perspective that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to see.

Now, blue and yellow team’s
weaknesses. I had fifteen seconds until the simulation began. What do I know
about the other teams?  Dione was a bully and would more than likely use brute
force to accomplish what he wanted, rather than thinking things through. He had
chosen mostly muscle for his team members. He could possibly be tricked or
lured into a trap himself. Terra was efficient and level headed. She wouldn’t
act rashly, but her experience may give her overconfidence that could lead to
mistakes if she underestimated us. The buzzer sounded and the first clue
appeared on my PID. “Hostage was taken approximately 2 hours ago from the
Northwest quadrant of the field. He was seen being carried out by two armed men
accompanied by another female scout. They were headed south. Clue 2 will follow
in thirty minutes.” A hologram of the map of the field appeared with the exact
coordinates from which the hostage was taken.  Our starting point was almost
exactly opposite from that point.

I talked through what I could
glean from the clue with Shane. “Ok, if two people were carrying a man could
make it about 2 miles per hour to about this point if they were still on the
move, but more than likely they will be holed up in a shelter somewhere. Even
if they changed directions, that would leave these 4 shelters left that they
could have feasibly reached in that time period. Now, here’s what we know about
our hostage. He’s male, probably of small stature since it only took two men to
comfortably carry him.”

“Yes,” Shane added, “if we
headed in the Northwest direction for the next hour, we should be able to reach
this point, which is central enough to the four shelters to be able to reach
any of them in a reasonable time once we receive our next clues.” So we did
just that. I instructed Jubal to head in front to keep a look out and gave him
a signal to use in case he spotted something. We had started in the woods near
a small creek, which we followed as long as we could so as to not leave any
tracks behind. 

After about fifteen minutes of
hiking, I heard Jubal’s signal. We all took cover as quickly and quietly as we
could. Before I knew it, Jubal was beside me. “How many were there?” I
whispered.

“Two, about 50 yards ahead. One
of them was walking a good distance ahead of the other, and being all loud. The
other was trying to go without being seen, and I almost missed her, but I
caught sight of her blue armband.”

Terra’s team. Great strategy.
She was sending out scouts. “One is a distraction, he’ll try to take as many of
us out as possible before we get him. The other is the informant. She will run
back to Terra to give away our position.  We need to bring them both down as
quietly as possible, we don’t know where the other teams are. Focus on the
girl. She’s apparently the fastest one and we can’t have her giving us up to
Terra. You and Lo skirt around them both and come up behind her. Get as close
as you possibly can to her.  Shane, Glyn, and I will take him out. He’ll be
more apt to make a bold move since he’s a sacrifice, so don’t let him see you.”
I looked to Shane for approval, and he gave me a nod. Jubal led Lo off into the
woods after giving me the boy’s exact location. We spotted him fairly quickly
and I took him out with one shot before he even saw us coming. He let out a
loud yell when he was hit, to let his comrade know we were there, but hopefully
by now Jubal was hot on her tracks.

We continued on our path after
Jubal returned with confirmation that he had taken out the girl. Good, Terra’s
team was down by two. I won’t make the mistake of underestimating her, though.
If she sent them away, she must have confidence in her ability to complete the
job without them, they were disposable to her.

Our second clue gave us little
to no more information than we had already gleaned from the first. “Hostage is
suspended at his current state. There are five armed guards.” So the shelter
scenario was looking all the more likely, but something about the word
suspended kept nagging at me. We headed for the closest shelter to us with
Jubal on point.

This time, it was Lo who
stopped dead in her tracks. “Something isn’t right, Rai. Take cover.” We all
got down, and in a few seconds, Lo’s intuition was confirmed. Jubal spotted
four yellow members, including Dione. They were headed in a north eastern
direction, and we were about to cross paths.

“We don’t have much time, we’re
going to surround them and open fire on my signal. Shane, Jubal, come up behind
them to the south. Lo, Glyn and I will go around north directly in their path.
Shane, you and Lo can get closer in while we cause distractions from all sides.
They’ll be more confused and have a harder time getting organized. We got in
position and I had Dione in my sights. With one shot, I could stop his entire
team. He had two people on his sides as guards, but the shot was going to be
easy for me.  Then it fell apart.

Glyn fell down and, at the
noise, Dione hit the dirt. I got to Glyn and dragged her out of their sights
just before Dione launched his sparky in her direction. It might not kill with
one shot, but it would hit a wide enough target to slow down whoever was in the
area. Unfortunately, that was me. I covered Glyn’s body with my own after
pulling us both as far behind the sparse cover that I could find. When Oren
warned us that the weapons could hurt, he wasn’t just spewing hot air. The
intense burning sensations took me by surprise. The faux blue flames landed on
my right arm and leg. I rolled on the ground to put them out. That didn’t stop
the burning, though, and now he knew where we were. I sent Glyn running in the
opposite direction and told her to find cover. I had to get away from this spot
before the next wave of flames hit.  I spotted some large boulders about twenty
five yards away. I sprinted for them running in a zigzag pattern. Thankfully,
the rest of my team was keeping the yellow team busy, all except for Dione. I
risked a quick look over my shoulder to see him steaming towards me, ready to
fire. Great, not only is a psychopath bent on making my life a living hell, but
he’s also a firebug.

I heard loud static sizzle
before I felt it. I was able to dodge most of it, but got burns on my back. I
couldn’t stop to roll this time. I reached the boulders in time to avoid the
third wave. I immediately rolled to put my back out, which was partially
protected from my gear. Dione would be here in a matter of seconds. I couldn’t
rely on my stinger. I would have to disarm him and take him down hand to hand.
He wouldn’t expect me to be ready on my feet, so I couldn’t take the luxury of
nursing my wounds. “Fight through it,” I told myself. I stood and pushed the
pain to the back of my mind. I heard him approach, no slow in his pace, he was
ready to deliver the last blow. As he barreled around the corner I hit his neck
so hard that he fell back to the ground. He immediately tried to use the
sparky, which I pushed to the side and bent his arm until it fell to the
ground. He cried out in pain as I dug my knee into his torso and I used his
moment of weakness to pull my knife and push it into one of the kill spots in
his suit. His PID let us both know that he and his team were out of the game.

Dione was furious, but
immediately left without comment. When I got back to the spot where we had
ambushed the yellow team, everyone was there already except for Glyn. She was
probably still hiding somewhere. They had already gotten everyone from the
other team except one when I had ‘killed’ Dione. She had cleverly hid under one
of the other team members so that they didn’t know anyone survived until she started
erratically firing from underneath him. She had nearly hit Jubal, but he
noticed her first. I tried to remember her face for the future. Shane then noticed
my hobble, “What happened! Are you ok?” He didn’t wait for a response, only
lifted me off my feet and planted me on the ground. He rolled up my pants leg
carefully to reveal the flaring red skin. I winced as the material brushed up
against the tender flesh.

“It’s nothing. We need to get
out of here before the same thing happens to us,” I said it as convincingly as
I could but as I said the words the burn was becoming more and more intense.
Maybe when I shot that first boy his screams hadn’t been all for show. I had
checked the health on my PID and I was down to thirty percent, my suit had
assessed the damage done. I wasn’t sure how much further I would be able to go
on like this. He knew I was right about getting out of here, but the worried
look on his face told me that he had felt the sting from the sparky before. He
wrapped it quickly and we set out to find Glyn, but she found us first. She ran
up to us, out of breath like she had been running in circles since I had sent
her on her way. Was she that lost out here? I briefly questioned my judgment on
asking her on the mission.

She breathlessly held out a
small plant to me. “Put this... on your wounds,” she gasped. I looked at her
questioningly. Had she hit her head when she fell? “It will relieve some of the
pain. I followed you and Dione. I would have shot him, but I was afraid I would
hit you. When I realized how bad he got you I went to find something to help.”
I applied the sticky ooze from inside one of the broken leaves to my burns and
felt an instant relief. The burn was still there, but I knew I’d be able to
last much longer like this. Lo helped me with my back as we wrapped the leaves
around my body over the cooling medicinal inside. It was a good idea to have
Glyn here after all.   

After another five minutes of
hiking, Shane announced that we were no less than about 200 yards from the
first shelter. I hadn’t seen any signs of disturbance on the path that we had
taken, but there were any number of ways that Terra’s team could have gotten to
this point. She could already be staked out here waiting for us. We all inched
closer to the shelter, taking extra care not to make any noise while navigating
the undergrowth. When we got within seeing distance, I climbed up a tree about
20 feet with Jubal’s binoculars. I spotted the ratty looking shelter. There was
nothing but sticks and old felt cloth holding it together. There was a burlap
sack hanging from a tree a few yards away which I assumed held supplies. I saw
three of the supposed five guards outside. The others must be inside with the
hostage, if these were the guards we were indeed looking for.

“Lo, I need you to create a
distraction. Careful to watch out for Terra’s team. Her scouts probably gave
her the confidence to move faster than we did, and if this is our target, I
have no doubt that she’s close by. We’ll meet you after we’ve raided the
shelter.” Rather than throw ourselves into the shelter for Terra to easily pick
off, we could lure the guards to another location and sneak into the shelter to
find the hostage.

“Wait, take these,” Glyn handed
her a mixture of pastes and powders. “This won’t ‘kill’ anyone, but mix them
together and throw them against something hard and you’ll have your
distraction. Don’t get it in your eyes and cover your ears.” Lo adeptly snuck
off in the direction of the shelter.

Ten minutes later, there was an
ear piercing explosion and a cloud of blue dust wafting above the trees. I
looked at Glyn and just laughed. The plan had worked. Two of the guards headed
off in the direction of the explosion, leaving us with only one to contend
with. I gave Jubal the job of taking him out, while Shane, Glyn and I made our
way inside the back of the shelter. We got close enough to peek inside. There
was one guard keeping watch, and, in the corner on the floor with their arms
and legs bound was the hostage.  The hostage was blindfolded and just beyond
where the guard was standing. “Ready?” Glyn asked me.

I kept looking for the last
guard, but didn’t see her.  Something just didn’t feel right with the
situation. I hesitated on going in, and glad I did, because just then, Terra
made her appearance with another of her teammates. She came up behind the guard
and silently “killed” him with just a knife to his side.  I was impressed with her
stealth and skill, she was just as smooth in movement as she was in speech. Her
teammate began untying the hostage, and that’s when I realized what was wrong.
The hostage was a woman. I couldn’t quite tell before, but it dawned on Terra
as quickly as it dawned on me. Before Terra could kill her, the last guard
under disguise took out Terra’s unsuspecting teammate who had not caught on
yet. If the hostage isn’t here, then where is he? Then it hit me, the word
suspended in the last message. The burlap sack hanging in the tree a few yards
away wasn’t supplies, it was the hostage.

Knowing better than to stick
around, Terra snuck out the way that she came in. I knew that it would only be
a matter of time before the other guards came back and we had to figure out a
way to get that hostage down. I shared what I had surmised with Glyn and Shane.
We stuck close to the shelter as we made our way around to the tree, since, no
doubt, Terra’s last teammate would be a spotter nearby.

I heard someone fire, but not
at us. Jubal must have spotted Terra, but there was no alert, so he must have
missed. Good, she’ll hopefully believe we’re all together, out in the woods
watching her. I spotted the burlap sack, hanging 15 feet above the ground. How
in the world are we going to lower him down? The rope was only long enough to
reach the branch above him, so we couldn’t lower him with that. The tree was
unclimbable. Shane’s mind must have been on the same track as mine, because he
blurted out, “I’ve got it. We’ll cut this felt down and catch him in it when he
falls. We’ll have to shoot through the rope, though, which will draw some
attention. We’ll have to be ready.”

“Excellent, let’s do it now,
before the guards get back.” By the time we got the largest piece of felt cut
from the shelter that we could, Lo had made her way back to us. No doubt Jubal
was still on watch, but it would be hard for him to protect us if someone came
up from behind. Shane severed the rope with one shot, but the noise would soon
have Terra and the guards hot on our trail. Not thirty seconds after we had the
hostage untied, did we hear another shot. It was a guard. Thank you, Jubal. We
all took cover behind the nearest trees and braced ourselves for the next guard
or Terra to appear. Nothing happened. We waited, 15, 20, 30 seconds and saw
nothing, heard nothing. This was scarier.

We couldn’t wait any longer.
Time was running out and we had to get this hostage back. Lo was out front
again, while Shane kept watching the back. Glyn and I held on to the hostage so
that we could make him take cover at a moment’s notice. The guard would likely
now be looking to kill the hostage rather than try to get him back. Jubal met
up with us five minutes into our journey back. I asked him and Lo to scout
ahead, and, if they could, bring me the guard back without killing him. Shane
immediately knew what I was up to and gave me an approving nod. They made a
great team and worked together so seamlessly, I could see why he was so
infatuated with her. They returned to me thirty five minutes later. Jubal had a
bandage wrapped around his left arm over a wound that seemed to be bleeding
profusely, but he had the guard in tow.

“I’m fine, he explained before
any of us could get too worried.” Lo didn’t seem to be buying it, though and I
knew then that time wasn’t my only concern for getting back quickly. Jubal
still insisted on being point, even though he had a light sheen of sweat and
was looking paler than usual. Shane and I walked the guard until we came up to
the stream that we had used to get to this point before. There was a clearing
where we would be completely vulnerable if left out there for long. Now, we
just had to let Terra find us.

Shane was already a step ahead
of me and fired off three rounds. He unstrapped his purple armband and put it
on the guard. “Alright, make your way out into the middle of that clearing, and
act like you have a weapon, or you’re dead.” I instructed the guard. Terra
couldn’t be far away. It only took a few minutes before the guard was shot in
the open and Terra had given away her position. It took me getting into
position and three shots, but I took her down. I felt elated. We didn’t have to
kill her other teammate, she was out of the game. We now just had to make our
way back to the rendezvous point. As I passed by her, she smiled and called
out, “Good job, purple. You’re the first to beat me.”

As my team made our way back
with the hostage, the rest of Combat was waiting. As soon as we got within
sight, they all erupted in a roar “Raily, Raily, Raily!” They were cheering us
on. The crowd hugged and patted me on the back. Our entire fight had been
broadcast so strategies could be discussed. Oren’s usually smug face wasn’t
smiling, but I could see that even he was impressed. He gave no congratulations
except, “You’re gonna wanna work on that time, newbie.” I kept hearing bits of
conversation and whispers that we were the first team not to lose a member and
win.

There were nurses waiting on us
to fix our wounds. A couple of them were fawning over Jubal’s arm, though he
insisted it was nothing and paid the pretty nurses no attention. He kept
telling them to go make sure that Lo was alright, though I couldn’t see a
scratch on her.

“You kept it together out
there, hothead. Nice job.” Shane said. I knew he was referring to Dione.

“Thanks. You weren’t too bad.”
He glanced down at my leg. I had forgotten all about the pain with the
adrenaline rush of winning.

“Why don’t you go have that
thing checked out?”

“Why, are you worried about
me?”

“Just being a friend,” he
snickered and walked off to let me have my celebration.