Cobra(9)

He turned and set off toward the distant tower at a fast run, the trainees forming a ragged mass in his wake. Jonny wound up somewhere in the middle of the pack, striving to keep his steps rhythmic as he fought the self-contradictory feeling of being both too heavy and too light. Five kilometers was twice as far as he'd ever run in his life—at any speed—and by the time he reached the tower his breath was coming in short gasps, his vision flickering with the exertion.

Bai was waiting as he stumbled to a stop. "Hold your breath for a thirty-count," the instructor ordered him briefly, moving immediately to the side to repeat the command to someone else. Strangely enough, Jonny found he could do it, and by the time those behind had caught up, both his lungs and eyes seemed all right again. "Now: that was lesson one point five," Bai growled. "About half of you let your bodies hyperventilate themselves for no better reason than habit. At the speed you were doing your servos should have been doing fifty to seventy percent of the work for you. Eventually, your autonomic systems will adjust, but until then you're going to have to consciously pay attention to all these little details.

"Okay. Lesson two: jumping. We'll start with jumping straight up to various heights; and you'll start by watching me. You haven't got your combat reflexes programmed in yet, and while you won't be able to break your ankles, if you come down off-balance and hit your heads it will hurt. So watch and learn."

For the next hour they learned how to jump, how to right themselves in mid-air when necessary, and how to fall safely when the righting methods weren't adequate. After that Bai switched their focus to the observation tower looming over them, and they learned a dozen different ways of climbing the outside of a building. By the time Bai called lunch break they had each made the precarious journey up the side and through an unlocked window in the main observation level; and at Bai's order they returned to the walls to eat, wolfing down their field rations while clinging as best they could ten meters above the ground.

The afternoon was spent practicing with their arm servos, with emphasis on learning how to hold heavy objects so as to put minimal stress on skin and blood vessels. It wasn't nearly as trivial a problem as it looked at first blush, and though Jonny got away with only a few pressure bruises, others wound up with more serious subcutaneous bleeding or severely abraded skin. The worst cases Bai sent immediately off to the infirmary; the rest continued training until the sun was brushing the horizon. Another brisk five-klick run brought them back to the central complex building where, after a quick dinner, they assembled once more in C-662 for an evening of lectures on guerrilla tactics and strategy.

And finally, sore in both mind and body, they were sent back to their rooms.

* * *

It was the first time Jonny had been in his room since his two-week stint in surgery had begun, but it looked about as he remembered. Heading straight for his bunk, he collapsed gratefully into it, wincing at the unexpectedly loud protest from the bed's springs. Pure imagination, of course—he wasn't that much heavier, despite all the new hardware he was carrying around. Stretching his sore muscles, he gingerly probed the bruises on his arms, wondering if he could survive four more weeks of this.

His five roommates arrived a minute or so behind him, coming in as a group and obviously in the middle of comparing notes on the day. "—tell you all Army trainers act like assembly robots," Cally Halloran was saying as they filed through the door. "It's part of the toughening-up process for the recruits. Psychology, troops, psychology."

"Phrij on psychology," Parr Noffke opined, leaning over the end of his bunk and doing some halfhearted stretching exercises. "That whole farrago about eating lunch ten meters up?—you call that toughening up? I tell you, Bai just likes making us sweat."

"It proved you could hang on without devoting your entire attention to your fingers, didn't it?" Imel Deutsch countered dryly.

"Like I said," Halloran nodded. "Psychology."

Noffke snorted and abandoned his exercises. "Hey, Druma; Rolon? Get in here and join the party. We've got just enough time for a round hand of King's Bluff."

"In a minute," Druma Singh's soft voice called from the bathroom, where he and Rolon Viljo had vanished. Jonny had noticed the pale blue of heal-quick bandages on Singh's hands when they entered, and guessed Viljo was helping the other change the dressings.

"You, too, Mr. Answer Man," Noffke said, looking in Jonny's direction. "You know how to play King's Bluff?"

Answer Man? "I know a version of the game, but it may be just a local one," he told Noffke.