COD

1540 4D

With a gaggle of other sweat-soaked nineteen-year-old recruits, Andrew Luce and his friend Nexi Harren sat on a hard bench deep in the City‘s labyrinths of stone. All of them stared while the trainer lectured on the uses of the electric hand club. To Andrew, the man’s voice sounded like a more-disciplined version of his father’s.

Fresh from the underground streets, Andrew and Nexi had just joined the City militia. Andrew had grown up tough, fast, and strong; though he was now smaller than his huge younger brothers Raul and Norwell, he could still beat them at wrestling, penetrating their adolescent, still-clumsy defenses to topple them to the floor.

Andrew, Nexi and the other recruits had just finished the Thousand-Step Circuit, a double-time trip up and down five hundred slippery steps of a nearby City airshaft, in full street gear and body armor. Andrew‘s body, lean and hard as a rock, now felt to him like jelly; his shock of stiff dark hair was coiled with salty sweat. He glanced over at Nexi, whose lighter-brown, close-cropped head drooped in exhaustion.

“On sufficient impact, the club’s shaft delivers a sharp blast of electricity through a switched conductive surface matrix. When you use it as a prod, the business end, see? gives the same wallop through these two little prongs.” The words echoed loud off the painted rock walls.

“This is your cod. It’s your best little friend, always on your hip, always hard and charged and ready.” The listeners exchanged grins. “I said, on your hip. That means here.” Gesture to the outside of the leg. “Not here or here,” pointing to the small of the back, then the groin.

Nexi nudged Andrew and started to mumble a joke; Andrew bent his head down to listen. “Why do you think? Luce? Hey, Luce!” Andrew looked up. The trainer stood over him with a soft, ugly smile. “Luce, you’re gonna help me show these other idiots why not. Come up here.”

The trainer took him by the arm and led him to the front of the small room. “Now, Luce, strap it on. No, not there, put it next to your stones. That is, if you still got ‘em after that last stairclimb.” A laugh, half relief, half anticipating, rippled through the room.

The ozone smell of fear came up in Andrew; his father had used that tone of voice, mocking, calm, like the charge buildup before the lightning. He stiffened; Nexi‘s shook no.

“Come on, Luce, it’ll be fine. Do it. Buy you a kaff later.” Andrew‘s fingers fumbled the cod‘s carrying strap into place along the inside of his thigh, the handle jutting up past his groin. “Now you’d think this is a good close place to carry it, huh?” Nods. “All right, Luce, gonna take a swing at you. You been trained — do your shit. And pay attention.” The trainer, a burly, short man with a pale brown coll-scarred face, launched himself at Andrew just as they came to stance.

Andrew blocked, swung and connected, but not hard; the other man went down at his feet in a ball. As Andrew raised a foot to stamp on his neck, the trainer’s hand shot up, seized the handle, wrenched it downward, and squeezed. The fully loaded cod exploded its charge into Andrew‘s testicles.