EVE®: Templar One (13 page)

The female cadet was too stunned to do anything but watch.

Vince unleashed a furious punch to Harris’s nose; it shattered in spectacular bloody fashion.
The cadet staggered backward toward the curb, his back facing the street.

Then Vince followed with a kick to his chest, knocking Harris directly into the path of the oncoming street cleaner.

DOMAIN REGION—PARUD CONSTELLATION

PENIRGMAN SYSTEM—PLANET VI: CLAVELON

SOVEREIGNTY OF THE AMARR EMPIRE

Present Day

Vince noticed a falcon soaring far overheard and saw it so clearly that he could count the number of feathers in its tail.
He also knew its exact range, heading, and speed, and if he chose to, could use any of the weapons arranged in front of him to blast it out of the sky with a single shot.

Instead, he was fascinated by the creature’s beauty, and committed its image to memory for study later on.

Before Empress Jamyl walked away from Vince on the battered shores of Xerah, she left him in the care of a priestess that he was to address as Instructor Muros.
Her objective was to guide him from virtual imprisonment into a new reality.
If he could remember anything of his past, he would marvel at his elite physical prowess, such as the ability to run without tiring, lift great weights with startling ease, and react with almost preternatural quickness to any threat.

For all he knew, these things were as natural to him as they were to everyone else, and this was exactly what Instructor Muros wanted him to believe.

Vince no longer felt as though he were cast in a dreamscape.
Instead, he was overwhelmed by his physical senses; every detail of his surroundings seemed amplified and relevant.
He felt anxious all the time, especially after mental and physical training exercises, concerned that there was still more to learn, or something vital that he was missing.
It was an obsession with thoroughness, Instructor Muros explained.
The desire to serve Amarr had become manifest in his soul; it was an eagerness to please the Empress and perform the work of God, and he was encouraged to embrace it with all his might.

Vince accepted this as truth, and made sure it was always at the forefront of his conscience.

He and Instructor Muros were alone at a nondescript Imperial Armaments training facility.
From this elevated vantage, their location seemed isolated: There were no traces of civilization for as far as the eye could see.
Only midlands vegetation and the occasional roaming herd of wild livestock grazing on distant prairies dotted the land.
The facility itself featured a small barracks and firing range; if not for the raised searchlights, it would appear the place had been abandoned long ago.

“Do you know what these are?”
Instructor Muros asked, pointing toward a rifle rack.

“I do,” he answered.
“But … I’m not sure how I know it.
I’ve never actually
seen
any of them before.”

Arrayed before him were plasma rifles, arc cannons, various explosives, and electronics, all of which he could explain the inner workings of in intimate detail, down to the smallest nuance.
Yet he was certain he had never studied weapons before.

“Your new mind was created with this knowledge,” she explained.
Like Vince, she had a presence about her that was unnatural.
Her skin was pale; grayish blue veins appeared beneath the skin around her jaw and temple.
She had a fighter’s build—long, athletic limbs; a tight, muscular core; and broad shoulders.

“Your body was made to use those weapons.
Pick up the plasma rifle.”

Vince did so and was immediately surprised.
He knew it should have been extremely heavy, but instead it felt light, almost comfortable.

“Look downrange,” she said.
“Fire at the targets.”

Fifty meters away, a narrow stone target sprung up from the ground.
In one fluid motion, Vince raised the rifle, deactivated the safety, and pulled the trigger.
The muzzle exploded violently; the force of the recoil drove hard into his shoulder, which somehow had the strength to absorb the enormous impact.

A glowing pockmark the size of a man’s fist tore through the stone target, and Vince’s ears were ringing from the weapon’s report.

“Very good,” she said.
“As you can see, the basic muscle memory for handling this weapon has been set for you.
There isn’t a single unmodified human alive who can fire that rifle accurately.
Try it again—this time at multiple targets and with full automatic enabled.”

Vince’s thumb instinctively switched a lever from its semiauto to full position.
Several targets popped up at various ranges one after the other; he answered by squeezing off quick successions of bursts.
Some hit, sending chunks of exploding rock hurling through the air; others missed the mark, angering him.
He could feel immense heat radiating off the weapon and wondered how he wasn’t burned.
As the clip ran out of charges, a coolant flushed through the barrel, making a whining relief sound.

“Your aim will improve with time and practice,” she said.
“Perfect marksmanship cannot be completely burned in during the neural mapping sequence.”

She began pouring a glass of water.

“Put the weapon down and drink this,” she ordered, setting it next to the weapon rack.

As Vince went to take the glass, it shattered in his hand.

“This is something you’ll need to learn,” she said, pouring another glass.
“Your skin was damaged while firing that rifle.
But the nanotech in your bloodstream was able to dull the pain and make repairs as you continued firing.
Learning to control your transition between environments quickly—moving from plus-human strength, to just human—will take some time.
Now put that combat vest on.”

Vince knew the vest was inordinately heavy, but it proved easy for him to wear.

“Those plasma rounds cut through stone so easily,” he remarked.

“Yes,” she answered.
“Your vest has a layer of depleted uranium and active magnetic shielding to assist in diffusing plasma munitions.
Most conventional weapons can’t penetrate it.”

She removed another rifle from the rack.

“This one, on the other hand, can.…”

Vince had barely slipped the armored vest on when the instructor pointed the weapon at him.
Before he fully realized what was happening, the muzzle discharged, and pain ripped through his lower abdomen.

“Why…?”
he stammered, reeling backward.

She answered by firing a second time, roughly in the same area of his stomach.
Vince dropped to his knees, covering the wound; deep red blood with spots of silver began seeping through his hands.

“It’s part of your training,” she said, leaning the smoking rifle over her shoulder.
“You may be immortal, but you’ll still feel pain.
These are the horrors you must endure to defend our faith.
Now, stand up.”

Vince could feel something strange happening in his abdomen.
The pain had eased somewhat; patches of numbness and tingling surrounded the wound.
Somehow, despite the damage, he rose to his feet.

“Now man your rifle and shoot the targets downrange!”
she ordered.

The bleeding was slowing down much faster than it should have.
He hurried to the mount, grabbed another weapon, and began firing.

As he did, she began screaming in his ear.

“I have no need to run you into the ground, no need to improve your conditioning, no need to teach you how to fly a dropship or command a tank.
Your body and mind know how to do these things better than any mortal!”

Target after target exploded downrange; the
hiss
of coolant flushing the barrel indicated his clip was depleted.

“Reload!”
she hollered.
Vince felt tightness in his abdomen, with mild discomfort—or was it just awkwardness—at the extreme range of his torso as he twisted to aim for different targets.

He slammed another clip home like he’d been doing it for years.

“You’re wounded, but the nanotech in your bloodstream can bridge structural defects quickly, sealing off internal bleeding before it can incapacitate you,” she said.
“They’ll also attempt to repair damaged tissue, starting with ligaments and working to muscle.
Blessed as those micromachines are, they are finite!
Whenever you take damage, their number depletes.
If you keep getting shot up, they won’t be able to hold you together.”

She pointed toward a thick, cylindrical vial on the table.
Again, he was intimately familiar with what it was, despite having never actually seen one.

“Inject yourself with it,” she ordered.

Vince instinctively stabbed himself in the exposed flesh around the broken armor.
Three high-gauge needles punctured his flesh, and a rush of nanites, painkillers, and adrenaline flooded his veins.
It was so exhilarating that he gasped desperately, as though coming up for air from the bottom of the sea.

The pain vanished, and the bleeding stopped completely.
The wound was gory, but he felt energized.

“One more lesson remains,” she said.
A large armored vehicle with oversized wheels was approaching.
It stopped next to the weapon rack, right in front of the firing range.

“I want you to cross the range and touch the wall on the far side,” she said.
“That’s fifty meters of space.
You must hit the armed targets before they can harm you.”

Vince scanned the range.
It was wide open, with no cover to duck behind.

It was a suicide run.

“Listen closely,” she said.
“The will to live … the instinct to preserve one’s self, is as old as nature.
But as a Templar, you must learn to dismiss self-preservation
for life,
and instead preserve yourself
for the holy mandate,
a task that
only
the immortal can accomplish.
You must accept on faith that you
will
live to fight another day, no matter what happens.
You have no reason to fear
anything
.
Do you understand?”

Vince nodded.

“Now,
go
!”

Vince leapt onto the range, weapon held out in front as he strode.
His foot had barely impacted the dirt when the first target emerged; he caught it with two rounds.
At thirty meters several more targets popped up at once—and two were armed.

Vince only had time to blast one of them before he was blinded by a mist of his own blood.
Knocked off to one side, he struggled to bring the gun around to return fire, when a second burst caught him square in the chest and leg; he fell onto his back.
His anguish was desperate; he felt rage and fear as he attempted to pull himself forward …

… and then shock as another round punctured his back.

He could feel the life pulling away from his body; he did not have the strength to inject more nanites, nor would they do any good if he could.

Vince was aware of only one absolute in these final moments: Despite his faith, his strong desire to serve the Empress, and everything the instructor had told him,
he did not want to die,
and this terror was maddeningly familiar to some echo of his past.…

… And then for a moment, just the briefest, most horrible moment, he saw an apocalyptic vision of beings with jet-black eyes and a dark, ancient symbol that struck the greatest fear he had ever known into his soul.

He screamed—and then realized he was upright.
Breathing hard, he looked around frantically, then reached toward his abdomen.

There were no wounds.
He stepped forward only to realize he had been standing in what appeared to be like a vertical casket.
Others were neatly arranged alongside, and when he looked inside them, he saw inert copies of himself staring back at him.

A door opened; the gunnery range was outside.
A corpse lay strewn in the dirt just thirty meters downrange.
He realized he was standing inside the armored vehicle that arrived just a few moments ago.

Vince staggered into the daylight, still reeling from his vision, and walked straight toward the corpse.
He stared at his own gory remnants and remembered with perfect clarity how he had died.