Disgraced
Copyright© 2025 by Ogreface
Chapter 3: A Test or a Challenge
“It is not only a case of been seen in their company,” Dane suddenly heard the duke saying at the head of the table, “they actually make it a subtle challenge; one they know I cannot accept but this time they made it a challenge I cannot ignore either.”
“How do you get out of such a dilemma, Your Grace?” Lady Lucinda asked.
“By being sneaky, and by pulling rank,” the duke said before he started laughing. “I might be way too old to accept any challenges from the marines, but I have been told about somebody who might just fit the requirements.” Dane had not followed the conversation, so he was not sure what they were talking about, but then the marines were mentioned. Then, to his horror, the duke looked him in the eyes. “Dane Galan, are you ready to represent your duke in this challenge?”
Dane wished he had listened to what was going on. He knew that the Sagan system didn’t have its own military force. There was a secondary training base to the Imperial Marine Corps. Most of the time the base was empty except for a small group of marines near retirement doing caretaker duties at the base.
The only military forces in the system at that time were the Imperial Marine Cops on the space station and the marine contingent onboard the Imperial Navy frigate guarding the jump gate. The Home Guard marines guarding the ducal palace and the residences of the two viscounts didn’t count.
Dane suspected that the two groups of marines must have been invited to the surface for the festival. They seemed to have made some kind of challenge to the duke, which he wanted to pass on to Dane. Being the oldest but non-heir son of the senior viscount in the system, Dane knew that there was only one correct response.
“I am at your service, Your Grace,” Dane said.
“Good,” the duke said with an even bigger grin. “Tomorrow morning, you will be fetched by the marines. Whatever they want you to do, do it to honor me and Sagan.”
“Do you have any idea what they are planning, Your Grace?” Lady Margo asked. Dane could kiss his mother for asking that question.
“Not sure,” the duke said with a shrug. “It usually involves some test of fitness and maybe marksmanship. I have been told that your son is quite adept with the saber, which happens to be the preferred weapon of marine officers when fighting in closed quarters. They even have a shorter version the other ranks use onboard spaceships.”
“Better you than me,” Gavin muttered so the duke and the two viscounts at the other end of the table couldn’t hear him.
“Dane is actually quite fit,” Debra commented casually. “He runs every morning at sunrise.” Dane felt as if he could shrink to a speck as all the young girls looked at him with unreadable expressions.
Dane was kind of worried about the next day. He was not too concerned about doing what the marines expected of him, but he was concerned about failing the duke, thus making the duke look bad through his own actions or inabilities. As a result, he was up and dressed before sunrise the next day. During past visits, Dane had made friends with the duke’s servants and particularly with the kitchen staff. How else would he get hold of a snack when he didn’t want to wait for supper?
“Dane Galan?” a voice asked behind him as he finished off the glass of orange juice one of the kitchen helpers poured for him. He turned around to find a marine officer, a captain, based on the three four-pointed pips in a triangular pattern on his shoulder boards.
“Yes sir,” Dane said as he stood. He was not surprised to find he was half a head taller than the marine. The captain looked him up and down and even walked half around Dane as if to examine Dane.
“You will do, come along,” the captain said as he turned and walked out of the kitchen.
Outside the kitchen was a marine shuttle. Dane knew about them, having seen images of them, but he never saw one in person. The shuttle was not at all streamlined; it looked more like a half-finished construction experiment. The main body was a rectangular shape with rounded corners. The body was also on the inside of a sturdy pipe frame. The shuttle was standing on four flat round feet or struts, which were attached to the pipe frame. The cockpit was attached to the rectangular body via a short, round tube and had a rounded triangular shape with the entire forward-facing surface being made of some clear glass-like material. The cockpit reminded Dane of the head of a praying mantis. There was an open sliding hatch on the side of the main body and that was where the captain was heading.
“Come, Galan, hop in, we have somewhere to be,” the captain said as he climbed up the steep set of steps leading into the body of the shuttle.
The inside was large enough for many marines, but there were only two marines inside, standing near the short passageway leading to the cockpit. One of them moved past Dane and closed the hatch as the captain walked through the passageway into the cockpit.
“Better sit down and fasten your harness,” one of the marines said as the other one sat down on the middle row facing Dane and the hatch. Dane sat down next to the closed hatch and copied the second marine who sat down next to the first one.
Dane could feel as the shuttle suddenly lifted and banked without any sound except the sound of some electric ventilation fans. He had time to look around. The seating inside the shuttle consisted of four rows running lengthwise in the body. Two of the rows were against the outside wall, the hull, while the other two rows were back-to-back in the middle of the body. The back was mostly in the dark, but Dane could make out that the back wall was slanted upwards and outwards.
The shuttle made a number of turns and a few times made a sudden drop before climbing steeply with the nose at least at forty-five degrees upwards. The two marines were watching Dane intently, as if they were expecting him to complain about the way the shuttle was flying. He started feeling a bit weird after twenty minutes of that and was glad that all he had was a glass of orange juice.
Finally, the shuttle leveled out and suddenly settled down. Instantly the two marines were out of their seats just as the captain came back from the cockpit. The captain just gave him a curious look as he led the way out of the shuttle, with Dane following.
Dane found himself in a marine base somewhere in the mountains with a dense forest surrounding the base. The captain led Dane to an equipment store with a marine with three chevrons on his sleeves behind a counter.
Over the next hour, Dane were issued with regular marine combat fatigues, boots, and a jacket. Unlike the regular marines, his fatigues had no insignia on. Where the regular marines wore a black beret with a badge on, he got given a floppy cotton hat with a slanted brim. The marines called it a bush hat.
Then the captain took Dane to the mess hall. About forty marines busy having breakfast in the main room, but the captain took Dane to a smaller room where two other officers were having breakfast. While the marines ate off square metal trays and drank out of metal cups, the officers got served by other marines on porcelain plates. There were two officers with single pips on their shoulders.
The three officers asked Dane about his level of education and what he planned to do after finishing high school. Then they asked him about his daily fitness activities. They seemed pleased when he told them he got regular training with the saber.
“How good are you?” the captain asked.
“According to my tutor, salvageable,” Dane admitted.
“Don’t they all say that?” another lieutenant commented.
“We can test you against properly trained marines,” the captain said. “Just so you don’t end up with expectations beyond what we have planned for you, you will be spending at least one night here, maybe another night as well, before we will take you back, and yes, we have the duke’s permission as well as your sire’s permission to do this.”
After breakfast, Dane got issued with a field kit which consisted of a framed backpack, a waterproof shelter, a collapsible spade, a sleeping bag, a two liter metal water canteen, eating utensils, and a small black crystal powered personal stove. He even got another set of marine underwear and a personal hygiene kit which contained a toothbrush, soap, hairbrush, and two towels. It was a female marine with a sexy figure who seemed to be in her thirties who issued him the equipment. She even showed him how to pack everything into the backpack.
“The saber is a regular officer’s weapon,” the female marine explained as she showed him how to attach it to the backpack or to his utility belt. “Other ranks get a short sword, called a spike.” She showed him a spike. It was a straight double-edged weapon of about sixty centimeters long. Both the saber, a curved blade of ninety centimeters with a single cutting edge, and the spike had a simple but effective streamlined hand guard.
“If you were trained with regular marine weapons, she would have issued you with a firearm as well, but for now the saber will have to do,” the captain commented while watching the process.
By mid-morning Dane was mostly equipped like a marine. From the stores, the captain took him to a large barn with a sandy floor and open sides. A number of marines were making their way there as well. Over the next hour Dane watched as the marines got a refresher course in hand-to-hand combat, followed by what turned out to be a series of demonstration in the use of the spike.
Then an older sergeant came over and invited Dane to spar with him using a wooden practice sabers. They were the same size, shape, and weight of the sabers that Dane used at home. While Dane was shown what real sabers looked like and how they handled, he didn’t have one of his own and was never allowed access to the viscount’s sabers, which were actually collectors’ items or ceremonial items. Either way, those sabers were never meant to be used in a real fight.
Dane was careful, as was the old sergeant but the longer they spared, the more aggressive the sergeant got, and the more Dane had to defend himself from getting stabbed or slapped with the blunt wooden saber. It soon became evident that the sergeant was taunting him, trying to get him to lose his cool.
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