Read 1. Just One Damned Thing After Another for Free Online

him, was the type to hurt the things he feared. I tried to keep a discreet distance from him and remain politely aloof, but he sensed my dislike and I would pay for it one day.
    I survived unarmed combat. I even survived First Aid and Fire Fighting. So I was feeling pretty pleased with myself until Major Guthrie knocked the smirk off my face with Outdoor Survival. Apparently, we would be regularly driven to places unknown and left for two days to die of starvation and exposure. I hate the cold and wet and when I discovered this would be part of the final examination in November, I started to make plans. Not to cheat exactly, because that would be wrong, wouldn’t it? More like dealing with the situation on my own terms.
    They kicked up the simulations programmes until we were in Hawking morning, noon, and night. I loved these sessions. I loved walking down the hangar, joking with Nagley or Sussman. I loved entering the pod and smelling that special pod smell. I loved checking the lockers and stowing my gear, settling myself in the lumpy chair, beginning the start-up procedures, laying in my pre-calculated co-ordinates under Chief Farrell’s watchful eye, taking a deep breath and initiating the jump. I loved dealing with the hair-raising scenarios that followed. The sessions were so real to me that I was always surprised to open the door and find myself still in Hawking.
    We simulated missions where everything went according to plan, but only a couple of times because that almost never happened.
    We simulated missions where we were attacked by hostile contemporaries. That happened a lot.
    We simulated missions where we became ill with something unpleasant. That happened a lot too.
    We simulated missions where the pod caught fire.
    And everyone’s favourite, missions where we all died. These were usually scheduled for a Friday morning so we finished in time for the afternoon exams. Nothing good ever happened on a Friday morning. Enough could go wrong without tempting Fate. Or History. And for non-trainees, Fridays afternoons were usually reserved for the weekly bloodbath (or friendly football match, as it was officially known) between the technical and security sections – an event often resulting in only marginally fewer fatalities and ill-will than Culloden.
    The final exams loomed ever closer. Not long to go now – the culmination of all our hard work. Unless you were Sussman of course, in which case, you’d barely worked at all. They posted the exam schedule. Every single one had a pass mark of 80% and we had to pass every single one.
    First was Weapons Expertise on the Monday. I laid about me happily, smiting hip and thigh with enthusiasm. I got Big Dave Murdoch and not only could I hold him off, but I managed to land a couple of good blows as well. I felt pretty pleased with myself and he winked at me.
    Archery was a doddle, as was target shooting. Guthrie scribbled away and I hoped this was a good sign. They gave me a pile of miscellaneous tat and fifteen minutes to fashion a weapon. In the absence of any fissionable materials, I came up with a pretty good slingshot that David himself would have been proud of and when asked to test fire, I took out the small window in the gents’ toilets on the second floor. Much more scribbling happened.
    Fire fighting was easy. Electrical, chemical – you name it, I doused it. There was good scribbling for Fire Fighting.
    Wednesday was Self Defence. I made no headway at all with Weasel as he none too gently chucked me around all over the place, grinning his stupid head off all the time. I waited until a particularly heavy fall then placed my hand on my lower stomach, curled into a ball and uttered, ‘Oh God, the baby!’
    Weasel stopped dead, saying, ‘What …?’ and I hacked his legs out from underneath him, leaped to my feet, ran across his chest, and rang the bell, which was the whole point of the exercise. Weasel shot me a filthy look and, at this point, there was no