Free Zein: The Homecoming by Graham J. Wood Page A

saw the error of his assumptions as Kabel whipped round, blocking the incoming blow and punching with his left hand into the solar plexus of the third man, who collapsed to the ground. Engrossed with this move he didn’t see the copper pipe come spinning through the air, thrown by the second man and though Kabel just activated his personal shield in time, the force knocked him off his feet.
    The fourth man saw his opportunity and he raced in with the second man and they both brought their seckles up to strike the telling last blow when, with a heavy grunt from Kabel, a spinning seckle traversed in a split second hitting and removing both seckles and spinning the two men around. Kabel followed up with two kicks to both the men’s chests to send them toppling backwards.
    Clapping broke out breaking Kabel’s concentration as Amelia and Gemma whooped their support from the sidelines of the training mat. Kabel wiped the sweat from his forehead and provided a flourishing bow. He then made his way across to the fourth man and offered a hand up.
    ‘Good move, Linus, using that intelligence well, you nearly had me,’ said Kabel.
    ‘Lord Blackstone, I think you give me too much credit,’ said the huge soldier rubbing his bruised chest gingerly. The other soldiers stood up, each with a rueful smile.Under strict instructions not too hold back they still came second best in the training sessions. They all saluted the Chancellor, respect clearly seen in their demeanour, and traipsed off to the showers.
    ‘Well done, bro, now are you going to stop playing with the hired help and have a real fight?’ said Tyson, with a sardonic tone whilst slowly clapping the spectacle in derision. He had entered the gymnasium just in time to see the sparring.
    ‘Tyson! There is no need for that,’ admonished Amelia as Gemma passed a towel for Kabel to dry his sweat covered upper body. Gemma handed him a drink of ice cold water from one of the many drinking fountains in the training arena.
    The training arena was a massive room covering half of the forty-eighth deck with only the main aircraft and shuttle decks below it. It had a training capacity for a thousand soldiers at a time, with state of the art technology that worked on every muscular element of the body and included a hologram simulation area, now renamed the Coliseum, after the famous Roman monument, enabling whole platoons to practice battle movements and tactics across all manner of terrains.
    The Coliseum was placed at the far end of the arena and was shielded off from the main arena by massive sliding doors. Behind the doors, members of the Tyther clan had spruced up the original environmental programmes, providing experience across desert, sea, fields and urban areas. If in single combat you were killed a bleep would trigger in an ear device and the training session would end. If a group exercise, then the programme would calculate the algorithms of the tipping point where the battle was won or lost either based on numbers slain or terrain taken. The area was amplified by the written code, which meantthat once you entered it could feel like it was a particular city, country, ocean or continent and already during the last six months one exercise had gone on for days, until a senior officer called an end to the exercise.
    ‘Amelia, I am only pointing out that fighting with those foot soldiers is hardly going to improve his skills to match Zylar’s.’ His statement earned a glare from Linus as he made his way to the showers.
    ‘So what do you suggest dear brother?’ Adrenalin causing Kabel to rise to the challenge. Amelia shook her head at Tyson sensing the wildness in her partner.
    Tyson ignored her. ‘Why don’t we have a go in the Coliseum and fight the Ilsid?’
    ‘Sounds good, which programme?’ said Kabel, not backing down.
    ‘How about one of the urban ones?’ Tyson retorted and Kabel accepted without reservation.
    ‘Kabel, there is no need to do this,’ said