Steel World (3 page)

The robot immediately stopped slashing and retreated to its side of the ring. I straightened from the crouch I’d been in and took a deep breath.

“Was that it?” I asked aloud.

Silly me.

The robot reset itself. It came at me again, but this time it was slashing up and down—and its practice sword was moving faster than before.

I’m not a total dummy. I side-stepped and lifted my blade high at a horizontal angle, so it would intercept its up-down slashing.

Another snap and buzz. Again, the robot retreated.

A smile appeared on my face. It was the possibly the first smile of my long day. I felt like I was getting the hang of this.

Then it came at me again. This time, it was thrusting at my chest, pumping the sword at me like a piston. I knew by now that the brass knob at the end of its weapon would give me a nasty jolt if it touched me. I guess the legionnaires wanted to give recruits the proper encouragement. From what I’d seen in the sawdust, that jolt wasn’t going to be a fun sensation.

My smile was gone. I didn’t see how I could stop it this time. The blade was moving faster than ever, stabbing, moving that sword-tip back and forth constantly.

I advanced and tried reaching way out to whack at it. That didn’t work; the thing was moving too damned fast. It almost got me with a thrust when I tried to hit its blade with mine.

I retreated until I had a wall behind me. Not knowing what else to do, I was forced to dash to one side. The skeletal robot turned after me, surprising me. I hadn’t seen it react to any move I’d made up until that moment. It didn’t even have eyes. I wondered if a remote operator was running it, or if there were cameras in the walls of the arena giving it an optical feed.

Finally, a plan formed in my mind. If it was only making lateral thrusts at a predefined height, why not get under it?

I waited until it came in close. At the last moment, I dropped to the floor and slashed up to hit its weapon with mine.

It worked. The buzz, flash and retreating taps of its webbed metal feet were now familiar.

I scrambled up and set myself, legs bent and weapon held ready. I was breathing harder now. How many times was I going to have to outsmart this frigging thing?

The robot transformed as I watched. It now stalked me intelligently, moving like a hunter tracking prey.

I tried stepping to one side and ducking low. Neither move helped. That brass knob at the tip of its weapon followed me with precision. It pointed its weapon directly at my chest at all times and walked toward me.
It was no longer restricted to a single form of attack.

This was it, I figured. I made a growling sound and walked toward the thing. I didn’t want to be caught up against a wall with nowhere to go.

It came to meet me. I slashed at its sword, missed, then thrust at the robot itself. It made a little swirling motion with its weapon, never touching mine. Then it thrust the point toward me.

I tried to turn my body, to dodge the tip, but it grazed my left shoulder. I heard a snap and experienced a numbing jolt of pain. I felt a little sick.

I was on my knees. The robot lowered its weapon and walked away, returning to its starting position.

Feeling pissed off, I slashed my weapon after it. I didn’t go for the legs, or the sword—I hit it on the power cord, which trailed from its right foot.

There was a snap and a wisp of blue smoke. The robot stiffened and stopped moving. Then, slowly at first, it toppled, pitching forward onto its face. I scrambled up and rubbed my shoulder, grinning.

The door behind me rattled open. I saw the tech specialist with clenched teeth standing in the doorway.

“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to hit the power cord, splat?” he shouted at me.

“Sorry, Specialist Feldman,” I said loudly, reading his nametag. “No one gave me any instructions.”

“Get the hell out of here!”

Grumbling, he shouldered past me and went to service his robot, which now looked like a tangle of coat hangers. I felt no sympathy for either of them.

Another tech waited outside. She was short, pretty, and had a freckled mouth that was twisted up into a wry grimace. She looked me up and down.

“You’re tall,” she said, “and crazy.”

She offered me my silver disk. I took it and thanked her.

“Don’t keep wrecking stuff, splat,” she said. “The legions don’t like that. No primus wants a man who breaks the equipment.”

I nodded, trying to look contrite. I think I failed.

“Why do you guys keep calling me splat?” I asked as she turned to go.

She looked at me in surprise, eyebrows upraised. “Don’t you know? No one in your family has served?”

I shook my head.

She smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “You know you’re going to be jumping out of ships, right?”

I nodded. The usual mode of troop deployment was to drop from space onto an enemy world. It was done with pods, tiny capsules that fell from orbit like bombs.

“I’ve seen the vids,” I said.

“Well, what do you think happens to a new recruit who panics on his first jump?”

I thought about it for a long second as she chuckled and walked away.

Then I finally got it…

Splat.

After the medical and physical tests came the psych people. They gave me more tests—the written kind. These were run by specialists as well, bios and techs mixed together. There was one woman among them who was different. She wore insignia I’d never seen before.

I tapped the shoulder of a short, swarthy candidate next to me.

“Who’s that?” I asked him.

The guy frowned at me then looked in the direction I indicated. He had thick limbs and a mess of dark, curly hair. I could tell right away he didn’t like being tapped.

“Carlos,” he said. “My name’s Carlos Ortiz.”

“Okay, Carlos, who’s that lady over there?”

“I don’t know. But she’s wearing a sunburst—that means she’s a primus.” He was already back to looking at his screen.

This impressed me. She was a real officer, and not just an adjunct—a
primus
! She was near the top of the command structure of her legion. The only rank higher than primus was that of tribune—the brass who commanded the entire unit.

I squinted, trying to see her legion affiliation. I finally made out a circle with a woven set of lines running over it. There were a lot of people around wearing those.

“What kind of legion is that? That globe-looking crest? I don’t recognize it.”

Carlos looked up from his test again in annoyance. We were both going through an onscreen battery of goofy questions about what we’d do in a given situation, and what we liked and disliked. I was bored already.

“This test is timed, you know. Don’t you even want to get selected?”

I shrugged. “There don’t seem to be any wrong answers to any of the questions. I’m not worried.”

“There’s always a wrong answer, trust me.”

“Okay, okay. Just tell me what legion that primus is from.”

Carlos looked at her again, then laughed. “That’s not a legion emblem, dummy. That’s Hegemony. Haven’t you noticed? Most of these Mustering Hall pukes have those. They aren’t from any legion. They’re from Earth Forces. Probably retired losers or people connected enough to stay out of space.”

I gave him a dark look. I didn’t like anything he’d said. I especially didn’t like being called a dummy. Couldn’t a man not know everything in this place without being sneered at? I was a lot bigger than him, and I considered leaning on him slightly, but the moment passed. I didn’t think it would help me to be disrupting the tests.

“Recruits!” barked a female voice suddenly.

I turned, startled. It was the primus, and as she stepped near I saw she looked suspicious.

“Are you two cheating? That’s grounds for instant dismissal.”

“No, ma’am,” I said.

“This guy is some kind of rube from the sticks,” Carlos said, pointing at me. “He’s clueless, and probably too dumb to cheat.”

I gave him a frown but kept quiet. The primus looked me up and down, then stalked away. Over her shoulder, she said. “Shut up and finish your profiles.”

“Yes, sir!” Carlos said with false cheer.

I obeyed the primus. The questions weren’t difficult—they were absurd, in fact. If I was trapped in a room that was filling with water, but had been ordered to stay there, what would I do? I tapped option C:
Find a way out
.

The next question flashed up. When I stood in line at the supermarket, did I switch lanes when another line looked shorter? I snorted. Option A:
Yes.

The questions went on. Contrary to Carlos’s opinion, I’m not a dummy. I might not apply myself to foolish tests—or to pointless classes in school—but I realized the questions were trying to figure out my personality. I’m naturally a take-charge kind of guy, so I went with it. Maybe they’d give me a squad command, or at least consider me for the job.

When I finished, I stood up. Carlos stood up at the same time, glancing at me in surprise.

“What?” I asked, but I knew what he was thinking already. He’d miscalculated and hadn’t realized I was a foot taller than he was. I towered over him.

“Nothing,” he said quickly. “I’m just surprised you’re done already, after all that chatter.”

We moved toward the exit together.

“It was easy,” I said. “I figured they must want a man who isn’t a coward. I just answered naturally.”

He squinted at me, and chuckled. “You made yourself out as a real leader of men, didn’t you?”

“Of course. Who else are they going to pick for squad commander?”

Carlos laughed. I realized after a moment he was laughing
at me.

“You big retard,” he said. “They don’t want men who take charge. They want men who follow orders like robots. You’ll be lucky to get a contract wielding a power-mop!”

I glared at him, and I swear, I almost took him down right there. The only thing stopping me was the primus. I could see her, watching us. She was watching all the recruits as they left the area. As we happened to be standing at the exit, she was looking right at us.

A moment later, my silver disk dropped out into a tray. I picked it up and pocketed it. Carlos did the same, and we went our separate ways.

I marched straight up the ramps out of the testing pits to the encircling recruitment stations. I saw Victrix was close, and I’d always liked the look of their dragon-head emblem. I stepped up and stared seriously at the attendant.

“I’d like to be considered for recruitment, sir,” I said. This time I got it right, as the guy was a centurion. You were supposed to call them “sir”.

He didn’t say anything. He reached out his hand and made a grabbing gesture. I almost shook his hand—it was a close thing. Then I wised up and put my silver chip into his palm.

He dropped it into a slot and stared into a screen for about five seconds.

“No. Next!”

I was stunned.

“Excuse me, sir?” I asked. “Could you tell me if there’s a problem?”

“Yeah,” he said. “There’s a problem. It’s you. Now move along. There’s plenty more where you came from.”

I headed to Germanica next, then the Iron Eagles. It was much the same. They took one look at my data and passed…rudely.

I walked away in shock. This wasn’t going the way I’d expected. Here I was, an able-bodied man with an education, unable to get the time of day from these people.

I figured, okay, so I wasn’t the best of the best. I could understand that. There were hundreds—maybe even thousands—of recruits in this hall, and only so many could be given a slot. It was time to leave the picky units behind and look for a less demanding group.

I moved down to the second tier legions. These were good, reputable outfits, but something less than famous.

They didn’t want me either.

After a dozen tries, I stopped and stared at the silver disk in my hand. I felt lost. I’d staked everything on this working out. I’d left home, sold all my stuff…

What was on this disk that they didn’t like? Was it the man who ran the robot who’d screwed me? Had he given me an “F” for effort? Or was it that psych test? Had that little bastard Carlos been right? Could they really want a mindless killer?

I looked up at the big skylight overhead. The sky was orange up there. I knew the sun was setting. I’d been here all day and gotten nothing for my troubles but a swift kick in the pants from everyone.

Disgusted, I made my way back up to the door where I’d entered many hours earlier. I found Specialist Ville still there. He appeared to be very interested in his tapper, a screen imprinted on his forearm. He was tapping at it, but as I approached he pulled up his sleeve and straightened his spine.

He looked me up and down for a second, then I saw a flicker of recognition.

“Washed out, didn’t you?” he asked me.

“No luck today,” I said, adopting a determined expression.