First to Fight Read Online Free Page B

for Gifted Children, that a ten-year-old upperclassman took to chasing him during recesses and after school, boxing his ears and kicking his rump, singing, “Fin-u-can, Fin-u-can, I can kick your new can!” Dean endured the torment as long as he could, and then one day he laid the bully’s head open with a field-expedient cosh made from a sock and a piece of concrete he’d found in the street. The next day he was expelled from the prestigious school. Joseph Finucane Dean was not only an intellectually gifted child, but in the art of attack and defense, a precocious one.
    “During your initial interview, Mr. Dean, you did not give your full name,” the recruiting sergeant explained.
    “Uh, Finucane, sir.”
    “Is that with an E?”
    “Yessir,” Dean answered, “terminal E,” he emphasized, and then felt embarrassed at maybe sounding too pedantic.
    Joe Dean was sitting in the Confederation Marine Corps recruiting office as the result of a spontaneous decision on his part—especially since he’d always dreamed of joining the army, in the footsteps of his late father, who had been a highly decorated veteran of the First Silvasian War. He had lived and breathed army and could hardly wait until he finished college to enlist.
    On a cold and blustery day, a too-familiar kind of day in the bleak and inhospitable city called New Rochester by its wearily cynical inhabitants, Joe Dean had felt good for a change. He walked lightly through the portals of the Federal Building and slipped into one of the interview booths reserved for the army recruiting office. Immediately, a computerized display activated and he found himself staring into the face of a young woman dressed in a pale green army uniform. She was very pretty, and he wondered idly if it was the image of the recruiter herself or one generated in cyberspace.
    “My name is Sergeant Sewah Fernandez-Dukes of the Confederation Army Force,” the image on the screen announced. “May I have your full name?’ Dean felt a twinge of doubt, almost dismay. Somehow, the beautiful woman with the alluring voice just didn’t fit his idea of what it was he wanted to be if he donned a uniform.
    “Uh, yes, ma’am: Joseph F— ”
    “Gawdamn, Bulldog, I was so hungry I could’ve eaten the north end of a southbound kwangduk !” a powerful voice announced from the corridor at just that moment. Joe Dean stuck his head out of the booth and instantly the image of Sergeant Fernandez-Dukes disappeared from the screen. Two men, one short and squat and the other, the one who had just spoken, big—Dean estimated his height at about six-four and guessed he must weigh fully 250 pounds—were passing by. Both were dressed in impeccably tailored uniforms, bloodred tunic with a stock collar over navy-blue trousers. The bigger man’s sleeves were adorned by huge gold chevrons worn points up with rockers underneath, so many Dean couldn’t remember moments later how many there were. Other stripes marched up from the cuff in diagonal slashes to meet the lowermost rocker of the man’s rank chevron. A bloodred stripe slashed down the outside seam of the big man’s trouser leg, and a bronze collar device—an eagle rampant on a globe floating on a river of stars, a ribbon scroll in its beak—glinted powerfully in the light. Tucked under the big man’s right arm, the one closer to Dean, was a plain ten-inch stick of black ebony capped by the same eagle device. He carried the stick wedged tightly in his armpit, his right hand grasping the stick just below the eagle’s head.
    The other man was short and squat with broad shoulders and thick arms on a short torso mounted on short, bow legs. He walked bent forward aggressively, his head thrust out while his arms pumped energetically back and forth, his hands balled into huge fists. Dean could see he talked out of one side of his mouth, and when he laughed, it sounded like a dog’s rark! rark! rark!
    The two men passed on down the corridor,