Chapter 08: Kit Issue

Embarrassment aside, Desrae's change made me acutely aware of the reality of physical changes in general and fired off a series of speculative thoughts about healing and regeneration. I started to take note of the changes in my own body. If felt as if I was experiencing the benefits of six month's road-work from one two hour run. I could feel that my legs were stronger and that the slight belly I had developed had almost disappeared. I had thought I was just getting my second wind, but this was definitely more than that!

I realised that we had run further than I had thought, and that our pace had been increasing constantly. We were now running almost twice as fast as we had been when we set out. In spite of the pace, I was surprised that I wasn't hacking and coughing from my years of smoking. I couldn't remember when, if ever, I had run as fast as this with as little effort. It seemed that the effects of processing were starting to pay off with an improvement in my lungs as well as everything else.

As we ran on, I saw that we had almost completed the circle and were returning to the parade ground.

"Looks as if we are almost finished the run." I said to Desrae, glad of the opportunity to talk about something that deflected the embarrassment I felt.

"About time. I have always hated running." came back from Desrae, with a touch of bitterness that I hadn't expected to hear from her.

"Oh?" I queried, intrigued.

"Mostly because I blame running for the extreme pain and discomfort I experienced with early onset of arthritis" she explained.

"OK. That explains it."

"All better now though" she said with a self-satisfied smile.

When we arrived back on the parade ground, Fist-Leader Ryon was waiting, balled fists on hips and feet spread. Basically, the typical NCO stance. He had a scowl on his face as we ran in in drips and drabs, but stood patiently, obviously waiting for everyone to get back. We all fell in again into formation and stood waiting to see what would happen next.

"Right," started Fist Ryon, "I see all of you managed to drag your lazy carcases back here. Now let's get started properly. Take a careful look around you. See if you can spot the people that you arrived with or that you got to know. You might find that you don't recognise them anymore. That's the effects of the processing starting to kick in. We have no idea what it is that Marek and his crew actually do to us when we get here, but we all enjoy the benefits of it. The purpose of our activities so far has been to kick start the process. You will learn more about this as we progress, but essentially, your body and mind will respond to what you do to make your more efficient at it. This means for example that if you exercise, then your body adjusts to match that exercise. It is just like normal training, except that the effects are incredibly fast. The first stage of the process is pretty much the same for everyone, but the amount of focus you apply to it will determine how far you can move into the second phase. What this means to you is that there is no magic wand effect, you still have to work, and work hard, to achieve the best results. It just means that the results are achieved a lot faster than they would be normally, and that it is possible to train to do things that you might not have been capable of doing before.

"Some of you will also have noticed that illnesses or injuries that you had before have either been repaired, or have progressed a long way on the path to being repaired, just in the last few hours. The same thing applies to that as to normal training; if you are injured, you just have to send a signal to your body that you want it to be active, and it will start repairing itself to enable you to do so. This does not mean that you are bullet-proof, just that you can recover from most things, even some of the most severe injuries. Kinda handy seeing as there is no real concept here of a hospital. Just the rough-and-ready first aid of your comrades, and their assistance to start moving again so that your body can heal itself.

"Let's move on to the reason that you are here. This is War World, and you are here to fight. I know that most of you come from situations where there were projectile weapons and lost of mechanisation, so that you were transported in some or other way to and from the battlefield, in a vehicle or an aircraft. That is not the situation on War World. Here we rely on our bodies to transport us and on our physical and mental strength to fight. Our weapons are primarily swords.

"You will have realised that our structure here is somewhat different to what you might have been accustomed. Here is what you need to remember:

Five Warriors make a Finger,

Five Fingers make a Hand

Five Hands make a Fist and

Five Fists make a Fight.

You will now be divided into Fingers for the balance of your training."

Following that interesting speech, one of the people that had been pointed out as a Finger-Leader started calling out names. Once the five people that he had called out had joined him, the next started. The third called out my name, immediately followed by Desrae's, and we moved quickly to join him. Once all five of us in this new Finger were there, our Finger-Leader ordered us curtly to follow him and moved off. We followed like ducklings after their mother as he walked rapidly towards one of the buildings.