Special Forces 01 by Honor Raconteur Page A

clueless I’ve been.
    There was the honk of a car horn from the driveway that broke his chain of thought. It was time to face the music.
    “That’s my cue,” Rys noted. “I’ll see you soon, Sara. And don’t worry about the eye, all right? This isn’t the first time something unplanned has happened to it.”
    He beat a hasty retreat before she really had a chance to respond.
    Anne had somehow managed to change, brush out her hair, and add a touch of makeup in the ten minutes she had been gone. Women could be incredibly fast when it was necessary. The clothes were understated, but extremely flattering on her, highlighting her waist-length blond hair and brilliant blue eyes. Rys wished both of his eyes were on line and working at optimum efficiency, so he could fully enjoy the sight standing in front of him.
    She took in his black and white uniform with raised eyebrows. “Do I take it from your attire that I finally get the full story, then?”
    “I don’t see why not,” he responded as he slid into the passenger seat next to her. “You’ve obviously figured out what I am, I don’t see any point in hiding.”
    “Well, I knew that you were military.” She shifted the car quickly into drive and started down the street, setting a pace that was more than marginally faster than the speed limit. “And taking your age into account, you could only be Special Forces. I understood that the only teenagers involved in the war were the Special Forces soldiers.”
    “Affirmative,” he confirmed simply, stating a fact without comment.
    “I’m actually disappointed in myself for not putting that together sooner.” She shook her head, an exasperated sigh slipping from her mouth. “You’re much too polite to be an average teenager.”
    That statement tickled his sense of humor, and set him off laughing. “They drill manners into you at the academy; it is the foundation of discipline.”
    “I believe it. So, you may start from the beginning, and we won’t be leaving anything out. Why did you sign up?”
    He relaxed back into the seat, gearing up for a long debriefing, and stared blindly into space as he visualized his first response. “About ten years ago, they approached all of the war orphans with the option of attending the academy. It was a way to feel like we were part of something more important than ourselves, so quite a few of us said yes. I entered the academy when I was eight.”
    “Eight?” she repeated incredulously, the shock on her face was crystal clear. “Isn’t that a little young?”
    “Of course it was young, but Fourth was desperate. Nova outnumbered us a hundred to one. We needed to utilize all of our resources, including our population, to the best advantage possible. They had to train us to be faster, smarter, stronger, and more capable than our enemy. Each one of us would be worth more than any of their soldiers, by a factor of ten. It was the only prayer we had of coming out of that conflagration alive.”
    “Nova has much to answer for.” Anne’s voice was even but razor edged, as her hands tightened on the steering wheel, turning her knuckles a deathly white.
    Rys didn’t trust himself to speak just then; it was too close to the surface for him. He took a slow, deep breath, shoving all of the anger and pain welling up inside his chest back down into that special place he reserved for things he couldn’t do anything about. When he was more confident of his control, he continued, “Anyway, I graduated from the academy at fourteen. They assigned me to a Special Forces unit to garner experience and learn how to effectively transit theory into practice. It was on my second mission that I lost the eye.”
    “Can you talk about how it happened?”
    He shrugged apologetically, and shook his head. “I’m afraid not. That mission is still classified.”
    “I understand, never mind, then. How do you get along with the artificial eye? Was it a big adjustment for you?”
    “It was