Another chapter, this one is passing revision at the moment, it's also quite early in First (chapter 11 - Pressure Room), so I thought I pass this one to you - it tells of Jarod seeing a fellow Soldier in training. People who know a bit about the story might as well guess the name of this other Soldier.
Again, this is passing revision and therefore might contain grammar/vocabular errors. It's just a nice tease.
Quote: "Jarod was standing next to Damian, who was clearly paying attention to something else. Jarod, curiously, followed Damian’s stare through the training room. The training room was a rather large room aboard the Caterpillar IV, spanning about 45 meters in width and length. The height of the room was rather modest for the carrier, being nothing but a tiny 5 meters high. The dimmed rays of light that fell through the solar filters from the outside reflected off the metal plating of the floor and walls. Overall, the room gave an efficient but dead impression. Jarod recalled his house, surprised at the speed at which everything in the past few weeks had taken place. Two weeks ago he had been at home, waking up for normal life, and now he was here, in a galactic war following Soldiers’ training.
He was incredulous that the Soldiers’ gifts were in fact a genetic mutation that needed to be trained – which means his father had probably gone through the exact same training. A surge of pain shot through Jarods heart. His father, his mother, they were gone. Things had been going so fast that he had had little time to realize what had exactly happened. At night he had been exhausted, falling asleep almost immediately. He had not dreamt since that faithful day, but he remembered waking up to the heart piercing scream of his mother once.
Damians gaze was fixed upon the central structure of the room, and his hands lay on a computer panel that was directly connected with the 12 meters wide cylindrical room inside the training room. The top and bottom meter of the room were metal, the rest was transparent glasslike material. Jarod wondered if the material was actually glass as he noticed what Damian was staring at. He gasped: a man was floating in the room, emitting a strange sort of aura Jarod did not recognize. Jarod took another close look and realized the aura had an opaque look to it, as if it was actually a solid object around the static human form inside it.
“Material aura”, Damian said from behind him.
Jarod was getting accustomed to the fact that Damian seemed capable of reading minds. “How come he’s floating?”
“He’s in a zero point four-gravity environment.”
Jarod turned back towards Damian, who didn’t remove his gaze from the person. “You mean, there’s lower gravity in that room?”
Damian nodded. “Yup, kid, and there’s not even enough pressure to have breathable air in it. Near total vacuum.”
Jarod was shocked. “But… but…”, he stuttered, “there’s no air? How can he breathe then?”
“That’s what the aura is for. You see, the reflective aura is the basic form of protectional aura’s. While they deflect most material impact, they do not affect environment and can not hold things inside of them, making them the ideal choice…”
“For combat, as you can fire weapons from inside of them while being protected”, Jarod interrupted.
“Yup, correct. Now, this type of aura is the Material aura. It blocks everything, keeps things inside, but is far harder to create and sustain. The outward pressure of the air that’s contained in the aura makes it even harder to sustain. It’s a tough exercise, this one. We lower the pressure in the room, enlarging the pressure difference over time.”
Jarod took another look at the man in the pressure room. He didn’t move at all, but Jarod could see he was focussed on maintaining the aura around him. The man was probably one or two years older than Jarod, and had blonde, short hair in spikes. Jarod, out of habit, searched for the eyes of the man but couldn’t find them – they were closed. Since his youth, Jarod had been fascinated by the human eye – it was one of the things he felt was infallible when estimating people’s characters and attitude.
While Jarod was looking at the closed eyelids, they suddenly opened, causing Jarod to flail and jump backwards in shock. The man seemed to scream soundlessly as the aura shattered into thousands of miniature fragments that started fading away immediately. He grabbed with his hands at his head, still suspended in midair but then fell to the ground. Damian sprinted by Jarod as the cylinder started to separate horizontally rapidly, the top half sliding into the ceiling and the bottom half into the floor. Before Damian had crossed the 7 meters to the structure it had completely disappeared. Damian knelt down at the lying figure. Jarod, slightly scared, moved towards them as the lights that had been illuminating the room dimmed, giving the scene a dark look.
Jarod heard Damian reassuring the man, who appeared to be named Keith. Jarod could now see him clearly, with bloodshed green eyes. He was wearing a traditional Remnant Soldier uniform, a blue robe with a single stock sword on his back. Over the robe he wore a normal bodyarmor and the usual ballistics protection. The green eyes searched around the room, clearly searching for some reference as to where they were.
“Well done. Well done. Four minutes at zero point four. Calm down, Keith, everything’s alright. Calm down."
The man was clearly confused and hyperventilating, but started to calm down slowly. He seemed to regain control of his body quickly.
Here, meet Jarod.”, Damian said, gesturing at Jarod. Jarod fixed his eyes upon Keith, who returned the stare. “Jarod is new here; he was our assignment two weeks ago”.
Keith took a long look at Jarod, looking more interested all of a sudden.
“Jarod, this is Keith. He’s one of our top Soldiers in training. I think I’ll have you two train together. Jarod shows potential.”
Keith nodded. He smiled as he scrambled to his feet in a miraculous effort.
He extended his hand to Jarod.
“Nice to meet you, Jarod”. Keith had a friendly voice and Jarod returned the polite words.
“Jarod, Keith”, Damian said, addressing them one by one. “I’ll be putting you together for training from now on. I think you’ll learn more if you practice a lot of sparring.”
Damian turned around. “Here, Jarod, follow me, I’ll show you the sparring room.”
Jarod wanted to object, giving the Material aura a go, but Damian had read his mind again.
“We’ll teach you the material aura another time”, he assured as he stepped through the door."
