Codename: Freedom - Book 4 - Chapter 10

Using bursts of speed, I played the angles to only have to face Sergeant Xavier or Brice one at a time. I whittled them down with each exchange. Even my energy use was minimal so it seemed it would only be a matter of time before I came out on top.

It was difficult to think of anything else besides the fight at hand, and too much of a distraction would be a sure way to lose, but I tried to stay mindful as to why this fight was happening in the first place. It didn’t make a lot of sense if the colonel just wanted to humble me through day one beating. I was sure these two sergeants weren’t the strongest fighters they had, and their unique psionic abilities weren’t the most effective to use against me.

Did the man know I would win? If so, he could’ve set up the fight assuming so, but why? Did he want to worsen relations between Genesis and Freedom participants instead of improving them as he’d said? Perhaps he wanted the hostility to remain to make use of the opposition between us, but it simply wasn’t necessary. Genesis participants consisted of soldiers and Freedom was made up of pro athletes and gamers. There was no reason to aggravate the rivalry that would naturally exist between both groups. Even if we were all on good terms, the competition would remain fierce. With the type of people involved it was only natural. Unless he actually wanted us to go beyond hostility and hate each other. Seeing the crowd’s reaction, I doubted that would work if it were his true goal.

Despite my correct use of Petra, internal defenses, the longer the match went on, the more the energy overflow affected me. At first, my internal walls had just shuddered as they braced against the active force. But after a few exchanges, the energy was enough to press into my body, even if it were only a fraction of an inch. After it entered, Petra would recover and force it back out. It seemed my rank F psionic defense wouldn’t hold indefinitely against rank E energy even when it wasn’t hitting me directly.

The movements I had practiced for the last few months in Freedom were now natural enough that I didn’t have to think about their execution. They weren’t just a set of one-dimensional techniques, though they may have started that way. Combinations of psionic abilities was a concept few Freedom participants could understand except in the theoretical sense. The reason was that most of them only had a couple of abilities unlocked. Internal walls and empowering aura, or Petra and Enischyo, were the most common. Petra was activated by stopping the internal rotation of your energy and building up its internal pressure to brace against the force from outside the body. It worked the best against psionic energy, but it could also help defend against physical attacks. Enischyo supercharged the body with excess energy to drive a person’s speed and strength to the limit. Combinations between these two such abilities couldn’t be considered a combination at all. It was just the difference between offense and defense after all.

A real combination that had been practiced to the extent my movement technique had would become as natural as taking a step. My aura flooded energy into my body, charging it with power. My explosive lunge caused by multiple muscles groups was empowered by this charge, but as I moved, I cycled the same energy toward the ball of my foot at the precise moment it left the ground. This repurposing of energy was a simple concept, but it wasn’t easy at first. However, like learning to walk, after becoming proficient with it you could use it in countless nuanced ways.

To give my internal defenses a break, I lunged toward the see-through wall. Without even touching the ground, an extra push of energy through my foot sent me soaring higher into the air and into the wall at breakneck speed. I spun to face downward as I landed in a crouch with the aura flaring. My opponents had eagerly followed behind me. There was no delay between landing on the wall and bounding off with psionic grace. I soared over my opponent’s heads and tucked my arms close against my chest as I spun. Xavier had been right behind me and I was gone before he could react. As I flew over his head twisting, I reached Brice who had been further away and cranked my shoulder back as if throwing a hook. That was all it took to ram my knuckles into the side of his face and send him wobbling off to the side.

I landed and immediately started backing away to make use of the advantage I’d just earned. I calmed my internal energy and regained control of its movements with an execution of Petra. With my energy still, I assessed my condition. Nothing seemed to be wrong despite both sergeant’s fist technique penetrating my defenses with their most recent attacks. This little bit of time I bought myself should act as a good reset—not letting it happen again.

They came from both flanks.

I surged sideways to face Brice head-on. He slowed enough to parry my jab before countering with a right cross of his own. I defended against it easily enough when Xavier’s fist flew in over Brice’s shoulder. He brilliantly used his partner as a cover for his attack.

Because the angle wasn’t outside of my peripherals, I shifted and managed to block the second strike with a shielded handed, but Brice’s energy was already bombarding me. The first assault did more than just shake my walls. The energy pressed into my body. As Xavier’s energy overflow joined with Brice’s, my walls were pounded back to an excessive extent, and my body rocked back uncontrollably.

It was sudden enough that I forced myself upright only to overcorrect and fall to a knee. It felt as if a fist had slammed into me unhindered and had been lodged into my chest cavity. My walls were on the brink of collapse. I was about to lose.

With a snarl I called upon my energy, demanding it to heed my call. My walls snapped back into place with such force that it repelled the foreign energy from my body and then some.

The control of my limbs were restored, and I erupted from my knelling state, thrusting my foot into the chest of my closest opponent. The power coursing through me exceeded anything I’d ever felt. Seeing the sergeant fly across the enclosed stage, I hesitated. The next moment, I turned to Brice whose hands were up. He was backing away.

It took me a few seconds to connect the dots. The silver light flowing from me was the last clue I needed to understand what the colonel had been planning. Both of my opponents were up and had dropped their auras. This had all been intentional. They had purposely helped me breakthrough…

With the fight over, I turned to my psionics. I feared the result might be a temporary one, so I began shifting from note to note, ability to ability, to see how my psionics responded. By the time I’d flowed through my entire range, I was convinced. There was something that felt off, however. Some part of me felt fatigued or maybe strained. I cut off my psionics a moment later—not wanting to take any chances until after I spoke with Victoria.

Glancing up, I saw both sergeants just standing there watching me in anticipation. If I had to guess, this probably wasn’t the first time they’d done something like this. They weren’t sure how I was going to respond. With my Psionic Power reaching rank E, the challenge they could provide me was a thing of the past. I considered teasing them, but I didn’t want to push my psionics more than I had to until I knew more. Besides, now that I knew why everything had transpired as it had, how could I possibly be angry?

The audience that had been stunned into silence suddenly woke up from their stupor and howled like a thunderclap. It seemed building some goodwill between Genesis and Freedom participants was the Colonel’s intention after all.

I just shook my head—a grin slowly coming to my face. “Are you sure you’re not actors?”

Snickers followed and both men hurrying forward to congratulate me.

Xavier rubbed his chest where I’d kicked him as he replied, “You like that, huh? We’re kind of a one-trick pony. It’s the only act we do and there haven’t been any new victims to use it on in a while, so we’ve gotten rusty.”

Brice gave me a hard smack to my shoulder before responding to his friend, “Rusty my foot. You’re always a jerk. No acting required. And the Major here whooped us.”

Seeing that the sergeant didn’t hold anything back when patting my shoulder, I realized it was probably the military that had helped Kline develop such a skill.

I skipped the saluting because it didn’t feel appropriate, so I shook each of their hands as I thanked them. “I have to ask, with your fist technique, are you able to further focus your energy into a more concentrated form?”

Holding out his hand, Xavier made a fist and silver energy became a thick layer over it. The energy was far more focused than it had been during our fight. “Yeah, we’re able to manipulate how compact the energy is,” he said, walking me toward my entrance. “Once you get a feel for boogey-bubbles—also known as spook cushions, zeezees, sizzle shields—you’ll know why compressing your energy isn’t always the best means of attack. Splash damage, princess!”

Brice took pity on me after seeing my confusion. “He means force fields. It’s a rule in the military that everything gets a nickname. The cleverer and more ridiculous the better. There’re many different types of gear that activate protective fields. You’ll have a week-long course on the different types of technology used, but you’ll be more interested in psi-fields since you’re a high-rank psionics user. Such gear makes use of your psionic energy to produce its barrier and you can control the level and shape to a certain extent.”

We’d already left the arena floor when I stopped them in the hall. “You’re saying even those without the psionic shielding ability can make use of it if they have the right gear?”

He hesitated before nodding. “Yes, and no. There aren’t a lot of people that have unlocked the real shielding ability even among the Genesis ranks. Normally, getting a psi-shield allows someone to channel their aura into it and it filters their energy, changing it into an energy shield. In your case, you’ll need to get the right kind of psi-gear that won’t mess with your ability. That kind will still filter your energy, but it will enhance your shield and not create one. It’s far more efficient. So you’ll still have a large advantage over us shieldless peons.”

I joined my laugh to theirs.

Another soldier joined us and soon we arrived at a nondescript door down one of the numerous halls. The man directed me to go inside and both sergeants said their farewells.

As soon as I turned around, I felt my arms being crushed into my sides and my ribs compress. An instant later, I was being picked up into the air and looking down in horror at a musclebound beard-man with crazy eyes.

Kline’s toothy grin was almost as blinding white as the glare off the top of his bald brown head. Putting me down, he didn’t even have to wind up to send me teetering off to the side from the force of his pat to my shoulder.  My suspicions from earlier had to be wrong. He hadn’t learned his atomic back slapping ability during his time in the military. He had developed the skill himself and the military had been forced to adopt it out of awe at his expertise. At least that is what I imagined to be the case.

“Good fight,” he said.

This was nothing new. It had only been two weeks since I’d seen him. “So you just showed up to finish me off?”

He huffed. “Nah. Just wanting to make sure beating those two weaklings doesn’t go to your head.”

I mimicked his hauteur. “Then don’t let it go to your head when you get crushed.”

He made an impish snarl. Giving him a good look, I saw that he wore a shirt and pair of shorts identical to the ones I had been given.

“It’s good to see you, man,” I said. “Do they have you fighting?”

“You know it. Think they’ll be able to pull off that trick with me and get me to rank E as well?”

I shrugged. “I was really close to the next rank already.”

A click from the door interrupted us and we both stepped back to give it room to open. Victoria stepped in wearing the Space Force dress uniform and skirt that looked excessively formal on her for some reason. I knew she wasn’t one to wear makeup, but the tawny glow to her skin and bright eyes made the outfit look bad in comparison. Of course, that didn’t mean she looked bad. I might’ve been biased.

“There will be no more forced breakthroughs,” she said, giving Kline a stringent look for a second before relaxing her gaze. “We’ll discuss training philosophy later. How are you, Kline? You kept the facial hair I see.”

With an exaggerated cupping of his hand over the whiskers of his chin, Kline pumped his brow. “Me? Ha! Even our basic training is a joke. As for the beard, perk of being famous. The US military almost begged me not to shave. How about you, girly. I suspect you're experiencing some real pressure even if we’re making out easy. You okay?”

Her stare remained on him for a few long seconds before the stiffness to her demeanor seemed to melt off of her and she laughed. “I’ve missed you guys. The pressure is nothing I’m not used to. I just hope not to make any silly mistakes. Are you ready to go? Your match is coming up soon, and your opponent won’t be holding back as they did with Lucius.”

He reached over without turning and pushed me. “Don’t worry. Major Kline doesn’t play no games,” he replied with a flex of his arms.

Despite the transformation I’d gone through during Freedom, he still had me beat in muscle mass—the monster.

It was only a few minutes later when someone arrived and escorted Kline out the door.

Finding myself alone with Victoria, I was preparing a compliment when Oliver poked in his head.

Victoria waved for me to follow her, and we left the room. Her diplomatic posture had returned. “While outside the Vanguard simulation, we’ll most often only be recorded during training and events like your fight from earlier. Even if you’re a spectator though, assume your reaction is being recorded, and it is still likely that someone might hear your conversations.”

“Thank you, Colonel Golshan,” I replied, trying out her last name for the first time. It wasn’t her true family name, but one adopted with the backstory she’d been living with since before Freedom began. The backstory wasn’t a simple one either. She was the niece of a retired US Senator, a distant member of the last reigning royal family of Niger before its change to a republic, cousin to an ex-German president, and related to two current CEOs of major corporations. For anyone else, such a backstory would be an excessive exaggeration they could never live up to, but for her, the reality was even more outrageous.

“Major Lucius Edwards,” she said, giving me a sly glance.

We ended up in a private room with boxed seats and Peter was the only person there when we arrived. Besides small talk, there wasn’t much new information that passed between us over the next couple of hours as a series of matches between Freedom and Genesis participants took place.

Kline charged his opponent with his rank F aura at full power. A tall lengthy soldier a full psionic rank higher launched a silver psionic bolt right at his chest. My old friend’s aura disappeared in a split second—replaced by his psionic walls. It was the ability he’d trained more than anything else. Shrugging the bolt off as if it were nothing, he didn’t even slow down.

His opponent was so flabbergasted that he almost didn’t respond in time as the boulder of a man shot for a double leg takedown. The soldier sprawled back in time, getting both hips back while he placed pushed against Kline with his torso. He knew what he was doing. His reaction was so quick that Kline even rocked backward from an almost kneeling position.

With some insane cat-like reflexes, Kline twisted with his back almost parallel to the ground and his aura flared.

The soldier slammed back first into the floor. He tried to wrap Kline up with his legs, but he was obviously dazed.

Instead of trying to go for a full mount, Kline half laid back and half hopped. Grabbing ahold of the man’s leg, he looked like he was pushing his feet into the guy’s groin and hip. Then leaning back in a straight ankle lock, his aura dimmed from rank F orange down to rank G red.

Even though it looked like he was going easy on his opponent, the guy’s aura became wild and yet he only lasted another second before screaming through grit teeth and tapping frantically against the floor.

Getting his feet under him, Kline leaped into the air. Landing in a wide stance with his arms outstretched, his pecks danced as he flexed.

Seconds. Two, maybe three had passed, and it was already over…

Many of the better psionic users from Freedom, like Mel and Barrell won fairly easily. Mel just ran around and pelted the guy with psionic bolts. Barrell, well, he was just too athletic for his opponent to deal with. As things progressed past the initial matches, there was a change in momentum and Genesis began to win with ease. There were a few exceptions. Cornelius won his match easily enough, Olivia was untouchable against the woman she fought, and some of Prodos’s captains did well, but by the end, Genesis had won 213 matches to Freedom’s 47.

Some of the better Freedom fighters like Peter, Oliver, and Wilson didn’t compete, and the sample size was fairly small. Only one gamer, Treetop of all people, used his lengthy jab to draw out the match and win after a round that lasted almost twenty-five minutes. There was only so much time set aside for the event, but I believed the sampling to be fair. The average Genesis fighter was simply at a higher level than those fresh out of Freedom. I didn’t think it was because of the level of skill, but Genesis participants simply had had more time to master their psionics.

When it was time to go, we stood from our seats and Peter released Destiny’s drone that he’d been tinkering with then gave me a quick briefing. “I’ve given Destiny the details of the gear she’ll need to become a secure unit. You probably won’t get to see your men for a few days outside of your cube. They’ve put you and Kline together for basic training because you’re the same rank. Just follow his lead. He’s done this before and all they’re going to be teaching you guys during how to look and act like soldiers. So expect a lot of marching.”

“We’ll talk again once you get in your cube this afternoon,” Victoria said, stepping up. “The first half of the day will be tedious for anyone viewing through the metaverse for the first few months. That’s where the second half comes in. Other than what we’ve already discussed, I’ll leave the rest as a surprise. It’ll be the fun part.”

I smiled when she did but remained unmoving until she tilted her head to the side in question.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” I insisted. “If you need anything, ask.”

The playful side of her peered out from behind her well-mannered cloak and she rolled her eyes. “Get going already. The fun part is coming for me as well.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She held back a laugh and swatted me on the chest. “Go.”

I turned to Peter, then Oliver, and with an understanding nod, I left.

Once in the hall, I called out to Destiny. “So if I don’t want to be late to my first day on the job, where should I go?”

She darted forward to hover before me at head level and a miniature figure of her in a uniform matching Victoria’s perfectly without the designations of rank appeared. “Major. Follow me, please.”

“Uh, thank you…”

“Calling me Destiny is fine. AIs are often named in the military and aren’t given ranks.”

“Okay then. After you.”

“Thank you, sir. This way.”

As she flew down the hall, I let out a long sigh before following behind.