Chapter 25: New Finger

I moved my kit from the Barracks room that we had used the previous night across to the Finger One Barracks. This was a move from one side of the semi-circle to the other, from the furtherest East to the furtherest West. My new barracks was right on the bank of the river. I stood in the door and waited to see what would happen next.

After a short while the Cadre Finger Leaders started sending warriors out to the different barracks; I could hear them calling names and then see the warriors leaving the formation to return to their original barracks, collect their kit and move to their new homes, just as I had done. Three warriors came to my new barracks to collect their kit and move out before the first of my new finger arrived to join me. As he walked up to the barracks carrying his kit, I tried to guess what sort of man he was. He was tall, somewhere over six feet, and very bulky. I couldn’t tell whether this was a hold-over from his previous build or not, but he looked as if he was a typical body-builder with an extreme development of his muscles. As he came up the stairs, he looked at me without saying anything, until I realised that he was waiting for me to clear the path into the barracks. I moved aside and let him in. When he had dumped his kit, I was waiting on the ground in front of the barracks and I asked him his name.

"I’m Bradley," he grunted and came to a stop next to me. We both watched as the rest of my new finger straggled in one by one. It took about ten minutes for the rest to gather. Once the last straggler was there, I looked them over.

"My name is Cy Peters. Being appointed as a ‘knuckle’ to a new Finger has been a huge surprise for me, so I have probably just as little idea what to expect as you do. I think we should spend some time introducing ourselves while we wait for more information. I come from Durban in South Africa and I was in the Army there. I saw combat in Angola and Namibia at section level in Motorised Infantry, and then later on as part of a Mechanised Battalion Group near the Lomba river. I was a reserve force soldier for twenty three years, doing time in the army for between thirty and ninety days every year. My last deployment was as a company commander on peace keeping operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although there wasn’t all the much peace to keep up in the North East where we were. Before I joined up for War World, I was the battalion training officer. You might recognise me from the Combat Competition. Brad, what about you?"

"Bradley Commons. Called Brad, not Bradley," came the surly response. I was British Army. Got to Staff Sergeant and they kicked me out. Wouldn’t let me stay in for my thirty years cause I wasn’t a Sgt Major. Did a few tours in Ireland, one in Aden. Latest was a tour to the Sand-Box."

"Thanks Brad. Next?" I asked of a short wiry man.

"Jeremy Ellis. Jerry to my friends. Originally from Kenya. I was the son of British expatriates and I volunteered for the British Army and ended up doing the P course. I instructed for a while on secondment from the Paras. Did a combat tour in Cyprus fighting the Greeks. I got out after my five years but found I was getting bored on my Dad’s farm, so I signed up with Mad Mike Hoare. Did two contracts with him in the Congo. After that I had had enough soldiering, so I bought a farm in Rhodesia. I was in the BSAP there and did a lot of tracking. I have been retired for a long time now and was living in Mooi River."

"Interesting. Seems we have eaten some of the same dust," I said with a smile. "You didn’t live that far away from me either. Next?"

"That’ll be me." The voice came from a woman around 5’8" in height with a close-cropped head of brown hair. "I’m Shelly Booth. Grew up in Chicago. I have no military background, but I know weapons and fighting." The last was said with a touch of defiance.

"I would be interested to know where you learnt about those Shelly?" I probed gently.

"I ran with a gang," came the succinct reply.

"Ok. Makes sense. That’s Brad, Jerry and Shelly. Next please?"

"Bill Riley. I did twelve years in the US Army. My last tour was with the 10th Mountain in the Stan."

"Light Infantryman hey? Carry light, Sleep Cold." I grinned at Bill. "What rank?"

"I left as a Sgt. Up or Out got me RIFd".

I could see that there was an incredible amount of resentment there. Bill had the classic American soldier’s build; heavy in the arms and shoulders.

"OK. And you?" This was to the last member of the finger. A short, blond, Barbie type.

"I grew up on a farm in Wyoming. Lived around horses and did pulled my weight but I got sick of being the butte of Dumb Blonde jokes. I decided to take the opportunity when it came up. I lost one brother to Desert Storm and another to an IED in Iraq just last year. I figured that if they had been alive, they might have liked to take advantage of this opportunity, so I came in their place. "

"OK. You didn’t tell us your name?"

"Oh. Sorry. I am Bridget Amory. Folks were of German stock."

"Ok Bridget. Thanks. Right. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s try something else. How far did you guys get with the mental side of things?"

I watched them while I asked this question. I had been surprised to see that all the men had beards and mustaches, so I guessed that they had not got quite as far along as I had with my old Finger.

"[Can you all hear me?]" I asked when I got only a few mumbled responses. As it turned out, they could all hear me, but they could not send at all. I had to pick up their replies from their minds, rather then having them send it back to me. After a little observation, it was obvious that their mental development was sorely lacking.

"[Finger Leaders,]" I heard Hand Evans calling, "[Take your new fingers down to the Jetty. We are going to start out with a bit of a swim. When you are there, swim up-river till you reach a large rock {image} on the left bank. The rock is about two klicks upriver. Get out of the river, and wait next to the rock.]"

"[Can everyone swim?]" I asked the Finger as we walked rapidly the hundred meters or so to the jetty. All of them said they could so as soon as we were there, I dived into the water with the Finger following. Two klicks was a very long way to swim to my old way of thinking, and the last time I had swum that far was when I competed in the Midmar Mile a few years before. I had experience now though of what my body was capable of here on War World.

I started out at a very slow pace, doing an easy breast-stroke while I checked on my Finger. They were all OK except for Brad who seemed to have progressed as far as doggy-paddle before deciding that was all he needed to know about swimming. I realised that I had automatically moved into the meditation state, and I was at first surprised that the rest of the Finger hadn’t followed me in doing so. I suddenly felt the other ‘knuckles’, the members of my old Finger, as they also entered the state we had used for the Sword Dance, so I reached out to them.

"[Are you guys doing OK?]"

"[Yup,]" Desrae replied, "[although it looks as though our Finger was something special. This lot {image/taste}]"

I laughed. Desrae’s image showed a bunch of drunken slobs falling around and vomiting on each other.

"[It’s not that bad.]"

"[Almost. We need to get these guys as much up to speed as we can Cy. Interacting with them has made me realise we are already light years ahead.]" Desrae’s scathing tone came through clearly.

"[Agreed. Why not start by seeing if we can get our Fingers into the ‘battle mode’ first, then we can see if that helps us with teaching them the other stuff we know?]"

"[{Agreement}]" came back from all four of them.

I reached out to my Finger "[I want you to follow me in your minds.]"

As I got each person’s attention I started guiding them into the battle mode state. I started with Brad as it seemed to me that he had the most to benefit from learning how to do it. While I was struggling with him, we were swimming at a snail’s pace. This didn’t worry me too much as I could see in my Mind Map that there were at least three Fingers that were having problems and were proceeding slowly. It took me much longer than I had thought it would, but eventually the whole section had managed to move into battle mode. Once they were there, I started pushing swimming techniques at them. The change in Brad was startling. He learnt from this process very quickly and the section started moving at last with a fairly rapid over-hand crawl. As we swam, I started trying to confirm my initial suspicions that the warriors that I had been given had barely scratched the surface of the potential of the mental aspects of what I had found available. I checked with Desrae and the others and they were adamant in confirming my thoughts. I decided to move this up the chain a little and contact Finger Roberts. He very quickly confirmed what I had suspected. He explained to me that the real forging of a Finger normally happened in battle where the bonds between the members would be created under extreme stress. it was only after this first battle that we were supposed to really start coming into our mental abilities as we fed off the synergy from a bonded Finger. He pointed out to me that we had been an aberration, which was why they were experimenting with placing us as knuckles to see whether we could use our abilities to short-cut the process.