Training Part 2

Well, that should put a bite in their production quotas. Paul thought with an inward smile. The furious Ungalit were already flinging Usama away from his vanquished opponent and calling for medical assistance. Johanssen looked dead to Paul but after what the Soulless went through in the months leading up to flight school, he was not willing to bet stims on a prognosis.

Turning from the scene, he walked to a corner of the massive gym and sat down. All around him acts of premeditated murder played out. Ever since coming from the vats, the students had one thing on their minds: dying. Since the prime directive embedded in the neural chips precluded the option of suicide, everyone else was game. For the instructors the challenge was updating the list of prohibited combat moves used by the students to kill each other. A quick check on his memory banks showed Paul the list was at seven hundred and forty six. It did not matter. Sooner or later someone always found a way through the List of the Proscribed and effected a murder.

Someone was looking at him. Panning the room, he could see one of the Ungalit instructors pointing him out to another. Despite only three months at the training school, he had learned to read Ungalit expressions. To him, the first instructor looked worried. He could see the second Ungalit motioning him to approach. Bored, he turned his head away and looked at the more interesting acts of attempted homicides performed across the gym.

"I summoned you!" A heavy thread accompanied by a basso-profondo announced the massive Ungalit's arrival. Like the rest of his race, the Ungalit maxed at three tons, all bone and muscle. Slopping over his shoulders and back, Ungalit were blessed with thick, armor-plated hide that covered most of the body from neck to knee. Its short stumpy hind-legs belied its ability to move with stunning speed over short distances. The four-fingered forearms were powerfully corded in muscle. To come to grips with an Ungalit was to court death. Not even Rhizon fared well against trained Ungalit troopers.

The instructor was incensed. The ignorant savage seated in front of him was taking advantage of the fact that Congress forbade murdering the hairless little Finik! With ever lessening Rhizon quotas reducing the navy's effectiveness, executions - the customary method of disciplining fledgling Ungalit troopers - were out of the option.

"Do you wish I use this? I will if you do not walk out to the mat." The instructor was holding out a neural disruptor. If he depressed the button, Paul would find himself in a world of pain impossible to describe. The disruptor targeted nerve endings everywhere starting from the brain down to the soles of their feet. It was the only way to stop one of the Soulless.

Paul contemplated letting the instructor use the disruptor. It would be a welcome change to the ennui of the day. Perhaps, with luck, he would manage a trip to the recovery vats. Weighing his options in his mind, he chanced to glance towards the older instructor. Ah. He is worried. He cannot be worried for me, so he must be worried for his young protégé. Paul thought to himself. That put a different color on the matter altogether. What he had looming over him was someone ignorant to the ways of the locals.

According to what he read, Ungalit made the perfect infantry troops. Incredibly strong, their obedience to orders was unmatched by any other race in the known universe. Unfortunately, they only accepted orders from those they deemed superior to them. This presented a problem to Nan`Shardar Oversight because it meant the Ungalit never accepted commands from other races. If the older instructor was worried it meant he was inferior to the new guy. He could not order the match stopped!

Why not have some fun? Paul asked himself. The Ungalit must have asked around. Someone, probably the head instructor, must have told him whom to break in order to earn the respect of the other trainees.

Unfortunate.

Paul knew he would have to be fast. The Monitors would be watching. Ordinarily, the neural chip embedded in the cortex prevented him from even thinking of harm towards his instructors. In the gym however, though allowed to spar with their trainers, they were barred from causing debilitating injury to the instructors. When the initiative begun the Ungalit were incensed that Congress deemed them needful of protection from the puny Finik. After a decade leading battalions of normal human soldiers across wastelands destroyed by war, the Ungalit warriors were used to their weaker opponents. It took at least five fully-grown men to cause an untrained Ungalit concern; more to pull him down. Even then, it was iffy.

Within weeks, they revised their initial opinions of the Soulless. After two months, they considered Physical a highly dangerous proposition and generally preferred to train from afar. Without contact. With neural disruptors close to hand.

Walking onto the training mat, Paul turned to face the Ungalit trainer. Another in his place would have corked his brow in a show of nonchalance aimed at provoking the massively thewed opponent. He could not be bothered to expend such extravagant facial expressions. Besides, he had bigger concerns plaguing his mind.

With a roar, the Ungalit instructor charged his puny opponent. Thinking to overwhelm his opponent in a blitzkrieg attack, the Ungalit headed his charge with the central horn on its face. The battering ram would have pulverized Paul had he remained in place. Well armored and protected by its skin, nothing short of a plasma blast could penetrate an Ungalit's hide. To charge against his weaker opponent in such a manner meant the Ungalit wanted to cause permanent harm. As in kill him.

Tsk tsk. Do they still do that? An amused thought run across Paul's mind as he read the Ungalit's intention milliseconds before it begun its charge. Had the three-ton behemoth been able to read Paul's mind, he would have seen himself die in four different ways. The least painful was a precise lance strike to the solar plexus aimed just where the plates joined. Such a blow would have caused the Ungalit's diaphragm to collapse and caused a slow death from suffocation.

Paul simply stepped to the side and followed up the motion with a roll back across the Ungalit's advancing feet. The move was completely unexpected and the instructor, who had aimed a follow through stomp where Paul should have been, was stymied. With a roar, the monstrous figure pirouetted on its left hoof and twisted to land where Paul was at rest. Once again, there was no one home. Paul used the instructor's turn to step in close to his opponent and shadowed his movements. For all intents and purposes, he was invisible.

Wicked grins broke out all across the gym. Some of the students stopped their own fights to watch. Everyone knew they watched a dead Ungalit. Even the other instructors knew. From the corner of his eye, Paul could see the instructor fingering the disruptor. The poor guy thought to press the lever before Paul caused an 'accident'.

Paul was in a conundrum. Most of the moves he could use to kill the massive beast beside him were already proscribed in his chips. A quick perusal of his databanks showed he could not strike against the Ungalit's chest where the plates met. He could not even strike its throat, the next most obvious spot to hurt an Ungalit. He could use his opponent's momentum during a turn to lash out against its knee, snapping the joint and incapacitating the creature. Unfortunately, the other instructors would stop the fight and he would not earn his prize: the fool's death.

By now, the Ungalit was incensed with rage. He sensed his opponent was toying with him by remaining close enough to feel but just out of reach. Rolling to its right, the massive creature threw its elbows around and hoped to clip the human. Such a contact would have shattered any bone it touched. Unfortunately, the Finik seemed to anticipate his moves and simply rolled away.

Paul was back at rest where he begun the 'match'. He could see his opponent's chest heaving for air. Despite their ability to run for hours and still fight afterwards, the creature seemed to be out of breath. Taking a closer look, Paul saw that his opponent was not gasping for breath. He was angry. Livid with fury. This gave him an idea…

For the first time since the fight, Paul moved towards his opponent. Seeing his lieutenant about to depress the neural disruptor, the instructor bellowed a command. He would not be cheated out of his victory!

Paul paused his advance. That the Ungalit had stopped his opponent from frying his brain mildly surprised him. He took a few milliseconds to contemplate whether to let the fool live. Nah. Best make sure the idiots do not challenge us again too soon. Besides, if I play this right I'll earn myself a week in the vats. Decided on his course of action, Paul moved to 'trade' blows with his heavier opponent.

One did not 'trade' blows with Ungalit. You punched at them and hoped they never punched back. Flicking a heel at the nerve bundle just below Ungalit's snout, the explosive pain caused the instructor to tear. A quick jab at its swinging arm connected with the fleshy spot at the joint while another struck at the nerve bundle just above the left knee. Diving under the massive minotaur, his right foot connected another un-armored spot on the creature's thigh close to its crotch. The operation took fractions of a second and Paul was rolling away leaving his opponent in pain.

Now…

Furious at being embarrassed by the hairless ape, the Ungalit charged at Paul. Butting, a reaction as natural to the species as breathing, he aimed for the figure lying on the mat a few feet away. For the first time, seeing its opponent out of position and on its back, the Ungalit took its chance and rushed to gore his opponent.

Disaster.

When Paul struck at knee then thigh, he flooded his opponent's body with bio-electrical warning signals. With the greater pain the Ungalit experienced from the blow to its snout, its brain did not have enough time to process other signals. Charging across the mat with head lowered, the Ungalit's left knee gave out and the massive creature stumbled and fell. Instinct, honed from years of personal combat against hundreds of opponents saved the monster. He could fling its arm out and arrest his fall. Though his mind served him well in his final moments, his body failed. The arm, numbed following the strike aimed at its joint, failed to obey the command to reach out. The Ungalit's horn met with the floor and dug in. three tons of pure bone and muscle propelled the body forward and exerted immense pressure on the instructor's neck. With a snap ringing across the gym, the neck broke.

The silence was deafening. The other instructors, just moments ago exuberant at seeing the humans finally put in their place, now faced the death of their newest lieutenant. Jaw dropped and stunned speechless, the elderly Ungalit instructor could only gape at the human, barely two furlongs long and weighing no more than a baby kreechling, stalk towards him. For the first time since receiving orders to train the pilot trainees, he could see the student grin.

Paul never smiled. Even now, it was a grimace on his face. Paul could not blame the instructor. All he wanted was for the Ungalit to panic and depress the disruptor. If he was lucky, he would let it go on for too long and Paul would die.

Seeing the human pace towards him woke the instructor to dreads he'd spent years trying to forget. Turns ago, Gamar had led an infantry team into a Rhizon town on Rho`oxkun besieged by the Vord. A race inured to violence, the expressions of dread on the inhabitants' faces cost him months of sleepless nights. The Rhizon in the town had experienced horrors too terrible to describe and Gamar forever wondered what it was they had seen.

Now he knew. Death stalked the training halls that day. In its desperation to counter the Vord Terror the Nan`Shardar Union had made a pact with a great danger. Ungalit warriors dreamt of having their souls collected by Rahsoul, Collector of Souls. It was an honor and their right. Not all were lucky. Sometimes, Rahsoul was chased away by a Greater: a more ancient deity whose tasks included collecting the souls of the gods as well. Al`Raksha, Reaper of the Damned. Any that fell into His clutches was doomed to fight in His eternal wars.

Stubby fingers scrabbling at his waist, panic caused the instructor to overreact. Had he stopped to think, had he the time to process, he would have known that no human in that hall could attack an instructor. Gamar, veteran of cycles of combat and two-time receiver of the Ardalit, the highest mark of honor awarded to peerless Ungalit warriors, was not thinking straight. Finding the disruptor, he depressed the lever. The human did not fall! Somehow, he was still standing. Now, in full panic, Gamar kept depressing the lever and only stopped when his own subordinates knocked him out cold.