Thieves of Light

CHAPTER TWELVE

The first hours were devoted to making Bhodi familiar with his new weapon. Unlike the weapon he had been provided for the audition, the Allison was no clone of the standard Photon pistol. Physically, it had a longer, slimmer barrel (the correct term was focus tube, Bhodi learned), a rakish sighting ridge along the top (which seemed a poor substitute for a LED sighting light), and more weight in the grip.

Most importantly, it had a faster response. With the Photon pistol, Bhodi had learned to space his shots a second and a half apart, since the arena's scoring system could deal with nothing faster. That conditioning had to be unlearned. As Pike had demonstrated to him that morning, with the Allison it was possible to get off several effective shots in a single second.

Another part of Bhodi's reeducation was the concept of the effective shot. With the Photon pistol, a hit was a hit was a hit. With the Allison, what Pike called "holding" a target was as important as hitting it. Once the output setting was at maximum, longer holding times were the only way to get more energy on target. And it was concentrated energy, not good targeting, that did the damage.

"If all you manage is to light up your opponent, you might as well not have fired," Pike said. "All you've done is give away your position, like being the first to turn on your flashlight in a dark room."

Bhodi asked about more powerful weapons and was told that the Allison was the most powerful "free" sidearm available to the Guardians. Free in this context meant that it was dependent on its internal source of energy.

But there were heavier weapons in the arsenal, heavier both physically and in the sense of having greater energy resources, and Pike did not neglect them. In fact, Pike made a point of acquainting Bhodi with every personal energy weapon available to the Guardians. There were twenty-six such standard arms, from a two-shot derringer too small to contain a microgenerator and which used expendable piezocapsules instead, to a shoulder-mounted bazooka-like pulse phaser that would have been at home as the main armament on a fighter ship.

Special attention was given to the weapons of choice of the rest of the company. "You need to know what's at your side or your back," Pike said. "But beyond that, you never know when you might need to fight with a weapon pried from a dead friend's hand."

Pike himself carried an Allison with a modified sight, plus two of the tiny derringers. He showed Bhodi how he could conceal the derringers in the palm of his large hands to give the appearance that he was unarmed when he really was quite well defended.

Tivia's sidearm was a Bracke, slightly less powerful than the Allison but a more comfortable fit for her smaller hands. "Not that she likes to use it," Pike added as Bhodi turned a Bracke over in his hands. "If she can get away with it, she tries to go the whole mission without drawing it. Or if she has to draw it, to go without discharging it."

"Seems like that could be dangerous, to herself and the platoon. Pride goeth, etcetera."

"It's not pride. It's tradition, and tradition is Tivia's blind spot," Pike said. "The sergeant's had a few run-ins with her about it."

The other three members of the platoon formed its heavy-weapons team. With his size and strength, Li-hon was a natural for the pulse phaser and its relatively small 140-pound backpack power unit. Lord Baethan literally was a weapon-a Celtan-designed three-beam phaser was built into his right hand, so that all he needed to do was raise it and think the command to fire. The triphaser drew on the same power source as did Lord B. himself, which meant that as long as he could fight, he could fire.

True to form, Parcival had designed a unique weapon for himself-basically a modified Allison mounted on an articulated arm atop Parcival's hard-shell electronics-crammed backpack. Using an autotargeting system, the weapon could fire hands-off from any position in a 180-degree rainbow arc from over Parcival's right shoulder to over his left, at any azimuth from minus twenty degrees to plus fifty, and in any direction.

Though the autotargeter was still a hair too slow and a bit too easily fooled for any of the others to adopt the weapon, it did free Parcival's hands to operate the jammer-scanner "black boxes" he wore on his right wrist and left forearm. Real-time intelligence and electronic dirty tricks were Parcival's most important battlefield contributions.

"There's a lot to learn," Bhodi said dubiously as they wrapped up their armaments survey.

Pike patted his shoulder. "Not more than you can learn."

Pike was true to his word. In three short days, he gave Bhodi what he needed most-he gave him his confidence back. And he did it by making war a game again.

It started with target practice on a marvelous high-tech firing range. But to get to it, Bhodi and Pike had to transport down to the planet. Like all of the gunnery training facilities, it was located in Rejia's sterile outback, part of a cluster of low, sprawling buildings that reminded Bhodi of a GM automobile plant he had once seen during a family vacation.

Bhodi's concept of a firing range was based on what he'd seen in police dramas-shooters lined up on one side, targets lined up on the other, like a bowling alley for guns. But the range was shaped more like a baseball field, only larger. The angle between the "foul lines" was 120 degrees instead of ninety, and the curved back wall was easily 250 meters away, too far for even a Mike Schmidt or a Kirk Gibson to hit one out.

But there was only a single shooter's station, more or less where home plate would have been. In the first exercises, Bhodi stood on the shooter's station and potted a series of stationary red disks located at a distance of twenty-five meters, evenly spaced in an arc from left field to right. When he had proved himself at that distance, a new set of targets popped up from the floor at fifty meters, then a hundred, then two hundred.

It was easy shooting. The Allison was lovely and cooperative, and Bhodi quickly learned to trust and admire it. There was never an errant shot or a misfire Bhodi could blame on the weapon. There were few enough Bhodi needed to blame on himself, for the sight was true and the weapon steady in his hand.

But it did not stop there. In the following days, Pike systematically added complications that elevated the level of the challenge. Bhodi was presented with a mixture of targets at assorted ranges and instructed to shoot the closest ones first. He was offered targets that popped up momentarily from the floor or flashed diagonally across the range.

In time, all variables were exploited. Exercises were conducted in the equivalent of full midday light, twilight dimness, and moonlit gloom. The targets themselves shrank, reduced in increments from the size of a human head to the size of a clenched fist.

"Do you know, I'm good at this," Bhodi said to Pike after slicing a half-second off his time in the ten-target speed test.

"Yes, you are," Pike agreed. "How does it feel?"

"It feels good. Except there's something wrong."

"What's that?"

"Well-it's too easy. They're not shooting back, for one thing. Which means I'm standing here flat-footed, something that'll never happen in combat."

"Very true," Pike agreed. "And I've been waiting for you to say something about it."

The next day, Bhodi was brought to a second gunnery arena, adjacent to and the same size as but outfitted very differently than the firing range. The arena floor was broken up by waist-high sand-colored walls into dozens of trenchlike boxes of assorted sizes.

"The dueling range," Pike said. Halfway across the arena, a claw-fingered, four-armed monster rose up from behind one of the walls and pointed a pistol in Bhodi's direction. "Your opponent."

Bhodi stared. He remembered the creature from Li-hon's presentation on board Fraanic. "Not real, I take it."

"A simulacrum. But programmed with the fighting reflexes of the real thing, as best we know them from our combat recordings."

"Does it have a name?"

"Around here we call it Warriarr-double 'r' on the end, a little pun. What the species calls itself we don't know. We've never captured one. We've never even recovered a body." Pike paused. "But then, that's true of most of the species that make up the Arrian Alliance. Anyway, these beasties are the ones we run up against most often."

"Cheerful thought."

Pike shrugged. "I'd rather fight Warri than the Bugs or the Dogs."

Bhodi had little trouble deciding which species Pike was referring to. The squat canyon-jawed Dogs and bulging-eyed Bugs had stayed in his mind as vividly as the Warri. "Why?"

"The Bugs are faster than Warri, and awfully good shots. And the Dogs are just plain tough. They keep coming long after you think they should have gone down."

"How do you match up when you run into all three at once?"

"Happily, the Arrians don't mix it up much. There's no telling whether it's a racial thing-pride or prejudice-a problem of discipline, even something religious. Maybe the Bugs think the Dogs smell bad, and vice versa. Anyway, more than half the Arr squads are made up wholly of Warri. The rest are usually all one species, plus a Warri commander and maybe a Dog."

"So the Warri run the show."

Pike nodded. "There's even some thought in the Intelligence branch that the Warlord of Arr is Warri."

"It would seem to make sense, considering," Bhodi agreed.

"Whoever the Warlord is, I hope he never wises up and starts sending out mixed squads. Right now, our battlefield organization is one of our big edges. In pure size and strength, the Qeth are the only Guardians who match up with a Warri, a Bug, a Dog, or a Destructor. And the Celtans are the only allies who match up in toughness. Hell, the Warri don't even wear any armor in combat."

Shaking his head in disbelief, Bhodi asked, "How can battlefield organization overcome that?"

"Because it takes advantage of our advantages. We're faster-even I can outrun anything but a Dog. And we're more versatile. Like I told you before, we're all different. We all have things we do better than anyone else. It's a good team-a good platoon-or at least it was."

"Was?"

"I don't know what we are, now. We haven't fought as a platoon in three months-just pairs. Me and the kid, Tivia and Lord B."

"Why?"

"I guess because Li-hon's not ready to take us out again. Do you know how casualties go in the Force? A platoon can go six months or a year without losing anyone. Then somebody goes down and it seems like you'll lose a replacement or two and another regular before you find the fighting sync again. That's why he wants you, Bhodi. He thinks you're the missing piece that will pull us back together." Pike gestured toward the simulacrum. "Ready to find out how you match up?"

Bhodi undipped his Allison. "Sure."

"Then put your helmet on," Pike said. "Warriarr's weapon is real."

The dueling range's deadly game of hide-and-seek had two objectives. Once you had your enemy located, you tried to keep him from moving. Once you had him pinned down, you tried to keep him neutralized. Ideally, you maintained enough fire superiority to be able to keep your head up and the whole contested area in view.

In that kind of pop-up, snap-shot combat, it was difficult to take out your opponent. Unless Bhodi froze while exposed, his helmet would keep a head shot from being a killing shot, though he could be temporarily blinded by the dazzle if he took one in the faceplate. And Warriarr's single ailette, projecting up from his right shoulder like a metallic wing, made a perfect head shield when he turned sideways to the line of fire.

In the first minute, Bhodi learned that he was quicker than Warriarr. If he was already up when Warriarr poked his head above the wall, Bhodi could usually duck down before the simulacrum got off anything other than a blind prayer shot. Or Bhodi could stay up and try to burn some energy around or through Warriarr's ailette to his unprotected skull.

The danger for Bhodi was when Warriarr would stay up, letting Bhodi hold target harmlessly on the ailette, and then return fire left-handed around the edge of the shield, like a counter-punching boxer. Warriarr fried Bhodi's faceplate twice before Bhodi learned to pull off of the shield and pop a blast inside the little angle formed by the edge of the ailette and the wall, right under Warriarr's pointed chin.

It was a tough shot, but when Bhodi could make it work, it invariably sent Warriarr ducking for cover, giving Bhodi the heads-up advantage. It also seemed to make Warriarr angry. After Bhodi's first chin shot, Warriarr disappeared momentarily, then rose up to his full height, offering Bhodi a free shot at his whole torso-if Bhodi cared to face the murderous crossfire from the twin pistols Warriarr held in both his lower hands.

Bhodi declined the offer, retreating hastily behind his own wall to reconsider his options. What was it I told David? The best cover is cover you don't depend on for too long — He didn't know if he was allowed or expected to do what he was considering. But then again, Pike didn't hand out any list of dos and don'ts -

The moment there was an interruption in the laser fire raking the top of the wall, Bhodi sprang up and dove forward over the wall into the next trench. Scrambling along on hands and knees, he went as far to the right as he could.

He paused there a moment, listening, wondering where Warriarr was and where the simulacrum thought he was. A peek would tell him the first, but the price might be betraying the second. And if he was going to expose himself, he wanted to gain something for it. Tensing his muscles, he drove himself upward and forward over another wall.

In mid-dive, he caught a glimpse of Warriarr. Warriarr likewise caught a glimpse of him. Laser fire blazed overhead as Bhodi hit the floor, making the material of the walls sizzle and pop. Bhodi ignored the angry noises and scooted to the left as fast as he could. When he ran out of trench, he went for his Allison. Praying that he had the angle, he rose up, the Allison blazing away.

His first shot caught Warriarr on his unprotected right lower shoulder blade, just below the crisscross straps that held the ailette and two sheathed throwing knives. It was not a critical area, but as Warriarr turned in surprise-and perhaps in pain-Bhodi caught him full in the face with a shot that he held until Warriarr toppled over backward and disappeared.

Vaulting the walls like a hurdler now rather than a high jumper, Bhodi approached the "corpse" cautiously.

"Well done," a voice said from behind.

Bhodi turned. It was Pike, reentering from the observer's booth.

His face still a blank, Bhodi looked back to the inert form of the simulacrum. Then a broad grin spread across his face as he holstered the Allison.

"Yeah," he said happily, more to himself than to Pike. "Well done."