Boot Camp

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This early draft was where I thought Scott, being pressed into the service of the mercenary outfit called Brothers, would of course be sent to some sort of boot camp. In Australia. This is a good example of how far afield the plot bunnies can range unchecked. You'll notice that I also kept in plot notes (bunny droppings?) as if I already knew this particular direction was fast leading to a dead end. But hey, Scott and Water at a boot camp? Too good not to pass up. Mara is introduced as other than Saint Mara here. We jump to another scene after the notes where Water apparently had been a bad little siren and now Scott was paying for it - this was a first draft which, for me, is less about writing than tossing out ideas.

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Scott was determined that his first day in the Standley training center outside of Alice Springs would be his last one. Nobody believed in air conditioning out here, save for the lazy turn of a creaking overhead fan about as archaic as the dusty landscape outside. A fresh set of green fatigues clung to him in the Australian heat like a broken promise. Someone’s bad idea of a stage costume right down to the gold Lieutenant pips on his epaulets. He sat on the bench seat outside of the Commandant’s office trying to avoid stares with a young Latino woman who shared both his uniform and the disposition of a student waiting to see the Principle. Her hair was even shorter beneath her cap than the massacre that barber committed on his scalp.

Her dark almond eyes finally caught his one time too many. She laughed. “Hi. Mara Martinez.” Her words couched themselves in a crisp highborn Spanish accent.

“Scott Rellant.” He waited for the eyes-wide recognition, but it didn’t come. “Where you from?”

“String of Pearls along the Castellan Range.”

“Not Earth, I take it.”

She shook her head. “Asteroid colony. And you?”

“Mostly North America. So what’re you in for, Miss Martinez”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s what I’m here to figure out.” She plucked at her loose fatigues. “This isn’t me.”

“No kidding for both of us,” he agreed. “Somebody’s made a mistake. I’m an analyst. Not supposed to be here. You don’t look like the mercenary type either.”

“I thought I’d be flying for Operation Exodus. The Church sent me here instead. So what do you analyze, Scott?”

“Stuff,” he deflected. Better than telling her he hadn’t a clue, other than it probably involved the Shreen.

The Commandant’s door swung open. A uniform with stripes and a sneer regarded them for a long pregnant moment. “He’ll see you two now, sirs.” The last word spat out as if it were bad tobacco.

Trading looks, he and his brief acquaintance followed the soldier through a threadbare office and shepherded into a smaller Spartan room. Still without air conditioning.

A balding officer with three silver pips glanced up from his desk. “Rule one. Stand at attention before a superior officer. Keep gawk’n and it’ll be a week’s pay.”

“Sorry, sir,” Scott muttered, trying his best to look like a tent pole.

Mara let out an exasperated breath beside him. “I’m not supposed to be here. I’m not…”

Another glance. “Not supposed to be here, sir. One week’s pay just went out the door, Lieutenant. Care for two?” He slid back his chair and finally acknowledged their presence with eyes set in leather pits. “You two tourists signed your contracts, so what you think isn’t worth spit. This is where Brothers sends little morsels like you to grow a pair.” He slapped a scarred hand on top of two black folders arrayed on his desk. “Desert survival. Unarmed combat. Small arms. The tourist package. I put you sprogs through the real thing and there won’t be enough left to ship home to momma. That’s why the officer rank, so the rest don’t chew you a new one. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll even be worth those pips by the time we’re done with ya, but I doubt it. In the meantime, you will walk, talk, and shit like an officer. Someone salutes you and you don’t salute back, it’s fifty bucks pay. There’s always the hot box if you piss me off. Got it?”

“Got it,” Scott returned. He didn’t expect to regret signing that paper so soon.

“That’s one week’s pay for you too, Lieutenant.”

“Got it, sir.”

“God damn right you do. Both of ya get the hell out of my office.”

They will make you into the same monster as your father.

Shut up, Water.

1. Scott meets Mara when they are protesting to the commandant about not being military

2. Maybe have adventure with her in King’s Canyon?

3. Definitely have run-in with Frenchy who recognizes him

4. Premise – the mission is super-secret so there will only be Scott, Mara, and Aaron DiSante. Scott will be taught separately to operate underwater. Mara will be taught separately to fly the Sanctuary run. Neither will be told anything about their mission until the last possible moment. Mara will “overhear” a plan to return one of the Reliquaries to Petal. It’s a cover meant to mislead them.

Scott gripped his lifeline and fought to recover a missed foothold in the sandstone. The fifty-pound backpack and rifle didn’t help any more than being eighty feet up a cliff in the blazing Australian sun. “You want to kill me, now’s your chance.”

You’ll know when it’s my chance.

“You got somethin’ to say, sprog?”

“No, sir!” he yelled through gritted teeth.

“Then quit lollygag’n and get your bloody arse up here!”

He scrambled up the jutting clefts offering the least hospitable climbs in King’s Canyon Gorge, avoiding the instructor’s sneer after reaching the overhanging ledge. He was in enough trouble already.

“Three seconds too damn late, Rellant. We’re all gonna have ourselves another romp until this runt gets it right!”

The other eight men gave him murderous glares, but said nothing. They knew better after last Thursday. Bastard should’ve left him alone. Having to uncork Water on that gorilla was bad enough without her taking advantage of the unarmed combat training he thought he ignored.

“Detention squad. On the line!”

He took his place at the end of a dusty cadre of back-alley soldiers. Most were here for the same reason he was – negligence. The Brothers euphemism for not knowing when to stop beating someone to the point where they were no longer combat effective. Water nearly killed that Foreign Legion castoff before he’d gotten control back. He’d spent a day in the hospital himself with wrenched muscles. His assailant shipped out to a Perth hospital ahead of a discharge.