Free Pledge Allegiance by Rider England

thick chains from steel beams running along the ceiling. The window showed a beach with a deep blue sea lapping up onto golden sands. Men and women frolicked in the surf, all of them wearing bathing suits and all sporting perfect bodies.
    It was supposed to be motivational, I supposed, but I found it distracting as bikini-clad lovelies ran past the window. I knew the scene was a projection but the scale and perspective had been adjusted perfectly to make it seem as if the beach really was just beyond the gym window.
    I took a pair of boxing wraps from a shelf near the bags and began to wrap my hands tightly enough to support my wrists. I wondered if there were workout clothes somewhere in my closet. Vess had thought of everything else, so I was sure there were, but my uniform would have to do for now.
    “Captain.” I looked up to see Sumiko coming toward me, walking gracefully past the treadmills in a black kimono. She had a grin on her pretty face and her eyes were alight with what I could only guess was joy. Maybe I should try meditation myself sometime if this was the result.
    But right now, I just wanted to hit something.
    “Hi, Sumiko,” I said, nodding to her.
    “Would you like to fight with me?” she asked hopefully.
    “Well, I was going to hit this bag a few times to let off some stress.”
    She nodded, grinning. “That will be a good warm up. When you are ready, I will be waiting over there.” She pointed to the fighting area. “Do you have a favorite weapon?”
    “A blaster pistol,” I said.
    She laughed, and said in a sing-song voice, “Captain, you are so funny. I will choose the weapons, then.” Humming to herself, she skipped back past the treadmills to the fighting area.
    I wondered if I had bitten off more than I could chew. The onna-bugeisha had a reputation of being fiercely-skilled warriors. Sumiko’s personality seemed at odds with that but I’d been around long enough to never judge someone by outward appearances. I also made sure I didn’t let her age fool me. She was only in her early twenties but that meant nothing as far as her skill went. She could have been training since she was a young girl, probably had been if the stories about the onna-bugeisha were true.
    Although I was older than her, Sumiko Shibari probably had much more fighting experience.
    I completed wrapping my hands and put on a pair of boxing gloves, giving the heavy bag a few experimental jabs before increasing the force of my blows. I hit the forgiving leather with a combinations of jabs, straights, and hooks for five straight minutes. I even kicked the bag a few times, working my legs.
    By the time I was done, I was breathing hard and covered in sweat but at least I felt better. Endorphins coursed through my body, the natural drug giving me a temporary high. My muscles felt pumped underneath my uniform, especially my shoulders and upper back.
    I slid the gloves off and went over to the padded fighting area.
    Sumiko was waiting for me, standing at the edge of the mats with two energy lances in her hand. The lances were each six feet long, much taller than Sumiko. Still, I had a feeling that she knew how to use them expertly. She’d chosen them, after all.
    “Are you skilled in the energy lance, Captain?” she asked as I got closer.
    “I wouldn’t say skilled, no.” The last time I had used one of these weapons was during a battle against the Horde on a faraway planet called Seragen. The Horde aliens on that planet were beetle-like creatures that attacked us in waves like hungry cockroaches. I was holding an enemy bunker as part of a team of marines and we’d run out of ammo. After scavenging for hand-to-hand weapons to fight off the big bugs, we’d found energy lances and swords.
    They weren’t what we were used to, and we had to rely on muscle-memory acquired during our academy training to use them effectively, but we managed to hold off the enemy until air support arrived.
    “We can use a different weapon