Shooting Range

A gust of frosty air cut across the open field and bit deep into Nimue's cheek. Looking down at the girl beside him, David could see the redness spreading across her face in a temperature-induced blush. Yet she didn't flinch or hug herself for warmth; her only reaction was a slight twist in her mouth and instinctive shivers that ran down her thin, exposed arms.

So she's getting tougher, he noted. Or she's just afraid of what I'll do if she complains. Either choice worked for him, though he preferred to see the first option in the girl's stoic demeanor.

He raised an arm, exposed like hers for better flexibility. He could feel the sting of the wind just as much as she did, but decades of experience had him tossing the discomfort into a tiny, ignored part of his mind. She would learn to do the same, and at a much earlier age than he had. Yet another gift he was giving her, even if she hated him for it now.

"Those are your targets," he told her, pointing out the bricks he'd set up fifty meters away. They were crumbling, degraded slabs of concrete not fit for anything but target practice. They'd make for a good start.

He slipped the handgun out of its holster on his hip and handed it down to Nimue handle-first. It was a bulky M6 knockoff, surplus from the war that he'd bought for cheap over five years ago. Worthless trash by most standards, but like the concrete it would be killing, it would serve its purpose here.

She took it from him with both hands. The first time she'd held it, she hadn't been ready for the weight and nearly dropped it. That had earned her a cuff on the ear, a lax punishment compared to what was usually meted out. Now it only trembled a little as she held it out before her, but her grip was still awkward and uncertain. But this was just the beginning. She'd learn.

"Sight up the target, just like you practiced," he ordered, stepping back. She brought it up, her tiny arms straining to keep the weapon stable. The barrel trembled as she trained it on the closest brick.

"Hold fire," he commanded, just as he'd explained he would back in their bunker's exercise room. She didn't shoot, her finger hovering a few centimeters from the trigger. Her teeth were bared from tight concentration. A lock of dark hair slipped out from her uncombed mop, but she didn't so much as jerk her head to toss it aside.

The air around them was deathly quiet, interrupted only by the occasional gust of wind that shot across the makeshift firing range. David waited a few seconds longer, making sure the girl's grip on the weapon wasn't about to give out.

"Now," he said slowly, carefully surveying her small, bulging muscles. If she lost it now, he'd have to remember where and when she'd let herself give in after he was done punishing her. "What do you see?"

Her eyes flickered off-target as she glanced at him with surprised uncertainty. They darted back in an instant, but he caught it all the same. Not enough to merit a punishment, but he couldn't let her go on thinking she could slip something like that by him.

"Eyes on target," he told her sternly. "Now, tell me what you see."

"A brick." There were no titles or formalities between them. He established his authority strongly and frequently enough that he didn't need a slew of honorifics every time they spoke.

"That's what it is alright," he agreed. "Then you fire, what do you see then?"

"Then?" There was an edge of panic in her voice. She knew she was failing some test and was already anticipating the punishment that would follow. He would need to find a way to break that mentality soon enough, but for now it would suffice.

"It's the cold," he announced gravely, layering his voice with faint warnings. "That's the reason you're acting so stupid today. Use your imagination, and tell me what you see."

"It's gone!" she yelped. "The brick, it's gone!"

"There we go," he agreed. "It's gone. Now lower the weapon and tell me what you see."

The speed with which the pistol fell to her waist told her how tired her arms were, but the rest of her body slumped as well. She was disappointed she hadn't gotten to shoot.

"You'll get to pull the trigger soon enough. Half rations tonight." She would need to learn to mask her body language. Right now he and anyone else could read her like an open book. "Tell me what you see."

"A brick." Her voice shook with frustration.

"Then you fire, what do you seen then?"

This time it only took her a moment to respond. "No brick."

"Before?"

"A brick."

"After?"

"No brick."

He took a step back and nodded his approval. "Better. Now, do that again in your head, then make it real."

All he had to do to get inside her mind was watch the way she tensed up, angling her body and shifting her legs as she made the brick the center of her universe. A mistake, but one he himself had made the first time he had fired a gun.

It hadn't been all that different from this, really. His father had taken him out to a field, taught him how to use the family's hunting rifle, then set up some logs and told him to take them out. It was the only time he could remember ever doing anything alone with the shadowy giant of his father, something they had done at noon when he was sober. He'd missed the first three shots, then tightened up and hit the target with the last two shots in the clip. His father had grunted something unintelligible, then taken the rifle, reloaded, and emptied five shots into a distant tree just to show how much better he was.

David didn't often think of his father, and now that he did he felt a strange surge of pity for the long dead Michael Thornhill, a man who now seemed so pathetic it was strange to think that he had once been the pinnacle horror of David's life.

Another life, another person, David told himself, watching as Nimue brought the pistol up to bear. How interesting, to think of the boy he'd been as yet another mark that he had targeted, disposed of, and forgotten. Hector Thornhill had killed David Kahn, and then David Kahn had killed Hector Thornhill. It didn't really matter which body was still breathing now; David Kahn had come out on top, like he always did. Hector Thornhill had simply flared out and been forgotten.

A crack split the air as Nimue fired. David wasn't surprised at all when the brick was left standing, untouched by the errant bullet. No, it wasn't surprising but he stepped in to deliver punishment anyway.

"You had plenty of time to line that one up," he chided, swinging his hand down into Nimue's arm. Two fingers extended, striking just outside one of her tiny pressure points. Not enough to fracture, but enough to hurt and keep hurting for the rest of the day. She gasped and staggered to the side, but didn't drop the M6. That was good. Progress.

''You see, Michael? I'm not like you at all,'' David Kahn thought dispassionately. It was a qualm he had dealt with early in Nimue's training, to repeat his father's sins by striking a child he was charged with raising. He had inflicted the pain to make his point, stopping far short of doing any lasting damage. Michael Thornhill would have gone for bruises, pounding all over the body without restraint until his baser instincts had been satisfied.

"Now, think it out and shoot again," he ordered. "This isn't a practice weapon, it's real. So each shot you miss costs me money that I don't like paying. Miss again and you miss dinner."

She pulled the gun up again, struggling with the doubled pain of her aching muscles and the reddening welt on her arm where David had hit her. She was biting her lip, actively fighting the pain. More progress. Soon, maybe even within the next few months, his physical punishments wouldn't work anymore. She'd have learned to put up with the pain, to defeat and ignore it, and that meant David's methods were working.

The pistol cracked again, and this time the brick cracked and toppled. David saw it all through eyes honed by decades on the battlefield. It was a close call; the bullet hit the upper-right corner, tearing off a small chunk and knocking the rest back. Not a direct hit, but a hit nonetheless.

"Better," he conceded as she lowered the pistol and turned to face him. Two years ago when he'd started the training, those brown eyes of hers would have trembled with fear and loathing so soon after a punishment. Now they bored into him, seeking his approval.

"That's one hit," he told her. "I want fifty more in two hours. Go stack another brick."

She scrambled to comply, flicking the pistol's safety on and clipping it to her training belt as she did so. That was good; David would have had to call the whole thing off and put her through something truly grueling if she had failed at something as basic as that.

"Every time you fire," he intoned as she darted about the field, hefting another brick to replace the one she'd shot. "You will see the target, and then visualize what it will look like after you've pulled the trigger. I want you to see that perfect hit and then make that perfect hit. Don't let your body give you anything less."

The brick stacked, she sprinted back to her shooting position and got the pistol ready again.

"With practice, you'll do this without thinking about it," he continued, folding his arms across his chest. "With practice, it won't slow you down to do this. And with practice, you'll never miss a shot because your mind won't let you miss a shot."

As if invigorated by his lecture, she aimed and fired, hesitating for only a few seconds between the two. This time the hit was even shakier than the first, but it still knocked the brick down into its predecessor.

"Again," he ordered, and she ran to obey.

"Not only do you improve your accuracy," he continued. "You respect exactly what the weapon in your hands is capable of. That will be what separates you from you and the trash I kill every day I'm on a job. Any thug can pump off a few rounds without thinking. A professional knows and understands what their tools are capable of, and that makes them think every time they use them. I'm not chucking in a decade or so of my copious free time to raise a thug. What are you, Nimue?"

"Nothing. I'm nothing." They'd gone through this routine before, but it was time to shake things up.

"Not anymore you're not," David told her. "You know how to fire a weapon. In this galaxy, that makes you something. What it doesn't make you is something worth a damn. So what will you be, once I'm finished making you worth that damn?"

"A professional." She ran the word over her teeth as if it were a magic spell. In a way it was, a sacred word he pounded into her every day without end. Professional.

"Good girl. Now, shoot again."

And so they went, on and on for the rest of that chilly afternoon. All told, Nimue fired sixty more times before it was all said and done. She missed two more shots, both towards the end when her arms shook without end and she could barely keep the gun up. Both failures were met with jabs in the same sensitive place, and she received each punishment without flinching.

The next day they went at it again, and then again and again and again. He moved her on to two bricks at a time, then three. She shot in the morning, the afternoon, and the evening, in the cold, the wind, and the rain. She shot and shot until her fingers blistered and scraped raw agains the M6 handle, until her trigger finger twitched and pulled against triggers that weren't there even while she slept. After a month she was so used to the M6's weight she had trouble aiming the lighter pistols he had her practice with from time to time. She could empty an entire clip in six seconds, and over half the time on these speed runs she struck home with ever shot.

It was their first experiment with firearms, and it went better than David could have ever imagined.

Ten years old, and Nimue could handle a pistol as well as any one of the UNSC's special forces operatives.

It was a good start.