Free The Reaper Plague by David VanDyke

reported to
her. She told him to stand to one side. “At ease,” she called, and
the platoon relaxed slightly. “Many of you have a mistaken idea
about Edens – what the Unies called ‘Sickos’ in their more lurid
propaganda. They told you that Sickos can’t fight. Does anyone here
think Edens can’t fight? Come on, be honest.” Some of the younger
or bolder normals raised tentative hands.
    “ So, Corporal Donovan,” she
said, turning to the looming soldier, “I want you to attack me.
Remember, I will heal from anything short of death. Come at me any
way you want to – hands, feet, rocks, sticks, that knife on your
belt, whatever you like. And make it good. I hate a weak effort.”
She took a half-step backward and loosened her joints, opening up
her gaze and focus to encompass her opponent.
    Donovan, nodded, stepped back, put up his
hands and threw a couple of snapping jabs to test the waters.
    She’d picked him because taking down a big
man is always more impressive. She’d found they usually weren’t as
skilled as smaller people who’d had to rely on something other than
bulk, but Donovan was different. Obviously had some boxing
training. This is going to be even better than I expected.
    Neither Donovan nor the rest of the onlookers
could know how she’d trained in FC Special Operations Section. How
at first Spooky had drilled her personally, then brought in skilled
instructors in the combative arts. How she’d driven herself to
muscle failure, to battered broken bones, to shock and to pain, and
how she’d gotten up each day fresh and healed and done it all over
again, until there was no fear of pain left in her, no terror of
destruction short of death itself.
    So she contented herself with letting him
punch for a while, blocking his jabs and his hooks, dodging his
uppercuts and absorbing his body blows, with no response, no
expression.
    Then she smiled and gave him a deliberate
opening.
    He reacted as expected, throwing a straight
right that would have put an ordinary woman – or man – on the
ground.
    She ducked into it so his massive fist hit
her in the top of her forehead, right at the widow’s peak. Perfect . Her head rang and her scalp split in an impressive
crimson spray. She stepped away for a moment, wiping the backs of
her hands across her face, smearing the blood, letting her head
clear. Then she put her guard back up and nodded. Try again.
It’ll heal .
    Donovan went for the body as she kept her
arms high, kept wiping her bloody face, kept accepting the
hammering of his fists. Donovan hit her harder and harder as he
realized she wasn’t going down despite being outweighed by a
hundred pounds, despite feeling her ribs crack under his knuckles.
She saw the puzzlement come into his eyes, heard the cries of the
troops as if through an echo chamber, smelled and tasted her own
blood sucked into her nose and mouth as the bellows of her lungs
pumped in rhythm.
    She hadn’t thrown one punch since the start
of the fight, and Donovan was finally slowing. Four or five minutes
of intense combat tired the fittest man.
    Now to administer the lesson.
    Left-right, left-right, Repeth slammed
triphammer blows to his ribs until he dropped his hands. She threw
sharp elbows to his shoulders and arms, stomped his insteps and
shins, kicked his thighs and buttocks and torso, punishing him,
inflicting hurts without striking to the head, without the risk of
knocking him out. Her skill and her exquisitely trained athleticism
and her Eden Plague-perfected health allowed her to concentrate her
energy into one incredible burst of effort. In nine seconds and
twenty-five blows she had him kneeling, cringing, helplessly
shielding broken ribs.
    The impacts of her fists and feet became more
deliberate, but didn’t cease.
    One part of her, the softer part, felt bad
about the beating she meted out. The harder part, the steel forged
by the fires of her instructors and her own adamant will, the part
that knew beyond doubt