The Man Who Would Be Nyder

Nyder was a long time undergoing restorative surgery, recovering from each operation only to go under the scalpel again. The entire process was excruciating, but he endured. The day came when Cennell pronounced that the worst was over, removed the fixator screws and the external armatures, sealed the wounds, and cleared him for normal activity such as bathing. The doctor thought it would be rather a relief for Nyder to be able to use the regular showers, rather than being scrubbed by the medical staff every other morning.

Nyder had been dreading the prospect, actually. He'd kept a little apart from the regular Security Elite men, but he was certain they could tell he was not like them. His size, his manner, his accent, all marked him as Standard. And what better place to put him down, to put him in his place, than in the showers where everyone would be naked and unarmed?

But there were no private showers in Trainee quarters, and he wasn't quite familiar enough with Slai to dare to ask to use his. So he gritted his teeth and donned a thick cloth bathing robe and rubber gloves that rolled up over the punctured, raw skin of his hands and sealed themselves at mid-forearm. It was normal procedure to wear clothes to the shower room, then strip: but Nyder's fingers were still as stiff as old leather, and he didn't want to stand there fumbling with his clothes. Or risk being trapped, tangled in his own garments when they attacked.

If they attacked, he reminded himself. If.

He went to the shower room, hung his robe on a hook in the locker area, and went inside with a steady tread and a blank face.

He had been half-hoping to have the place to himself, but there were several guards there, talking and laughing as they scrubbed themselves under the hot steamy water. They were all tall, lean and muscular. Perfect specimens of Kaled masculinity. Nyder felt very small and tattered next to them.

They fell silent as he entered, and watched as he soaked himself down, scrubbed himself all over with soap, rinsed and rinsed again. He gave himself an extra minute under the hot water, letting it redden his skin, enjoying the feel of the heat on his scalp, before turning off the showerhead and leaving. The Elite men hadn't said a word to him, and as he stood in the locker area and carefully wiped himself dry with a towel - he couldn't press too hard with his hands or they ached - he wondered what sort of stories they would tell about him once he was gone.

Might as well let them get on with it, then. He put on the bathing robe, pulled the hood up over his bristling hair (it had grown out just long enough to cover the lice scars), and stalked out. He could shave in his quarters, if he used both hands.

In the shower room, the men were waiting to hear the sound of the door closing behind Nyder; then there was a burst of conversation, just as he had feared. But the content was not what he would have expected.

"Did you see those scars?" said Jula, over the hissing of the water. "He looks like he's been in every battle in the war!"

The little Trainee's scars were quite a shock to the Elite, who had never faced battlefield duty. His arms had been slashed in a disturbingly mechanical-looking way, neat patterns of parallel scars, and there were other scars, across his back and chest, on his calf; even one of his feet had a pink dimple of scar tissue. The body of a soldier, who'd fought in the Wastelands and survived. Combined with Nyder's mysterious origins and cold manner, it was all quite an impressive package.

"And who wears rubber gloves in the shower?" wondered another guard.

"Maybe they're mechanical hands. Or he's an experiment," suggested Jula. "Maybe he's got the touch of death, or something."

Knowing Davros, that would be possible.

* * *

Doctor Cennell located a book on therapeutic hand exercises for his patient. Nyder read the book with tight concentration, did every exercise exactly as many times as it said to and no more, and eventually regained movement and control, made his fingers work again. His arms and hands would never be as strong as they had been, and he would bear the scars for the rest of his life, but he could pull a trigger or cut a throat - "All the important things in life," Slai would chuckle.

He taught himself even as he rebuilt himself. Once he could hold a pen, he scrawled down every word he read or heard that he didn't understand, then looked them up later in the dictionary and learned them by heart. He read every rule addendum and supply form and personnel registration slip, memorising them, analysing them. He even taught himself to type, first with a pen in his fist, then with two fingers and finally four.

And he watched: watched and listened. As carefully as he had imitated the other children in the Barracks, he imitated the Elite. He purged profanity from his vocabulary, and the Standard accent from his speech. He walked straighter, held his head higher. He was always watching, always working to improve himself.

He was working for Davros, an incalculable privilege. He sometimes actually saw him, was close enough to touch him. Not that he ever did, of course: Davros' body was old, frail, and prone to infection. Slai had told him once that Davros was never to be touched with a bare hand, never touched at all unless it was specifically necessary, and Nyder remembered that. He remembered everything.

Finally he was in a situation where he could learn as fast as he was able, where nobody would tell him to stop or slow down or do it over so that someone else could keep up. He gulped down Security procedures, interrogation protocols, command tree nomenclature, scientific glossaries. He was fascinated by science, by what the Elite Scientists were creating here. It was a way of making the Kaled race invincible, and immortal. Make them the final victors in the war. It was victory, total victory, and he was honoured to be a part of it.

* * *

Nyder had been under Slai's training for months before he dared offer himself to the man. He'd been expecting the order to kneel or to spread for a long time; almost all of his superiors had asked it of him at some point or another. Then he'd decided that Slai just didn't find him attractive. Fair enough; Nyder could agree with that. But he didn't seem to be bedding any of the other men either. And something in Nyder told him that he should try to repay Slai for everything the man had done for him.

They were practicing on the combat training floor, in full protective gear; Nyder had also sprayed his hands with synthetic skin to protect them. They were fighting with long staffs, and Nyder was showing Slai a little backwards strike that managed to ping his opponent in the knee every time he thrust forward - even if Nyder closed his eyes first.

"How do you manage that, Trainee?" said Slai finally, stepping back and pulling off his face mask to show the fight was over.

Nyder stepped back as well, and pulled off his own mask, letting the chilled air of the room hit his face. "It's the Combat Forms all the Elite are drilled in. You always have to match the Forms, so your knee is always in the same place at the same time. All very well and pretty - as long as you aren't fighting other Elite who see a counter for it."

Slai grinned fiercely. "Glad to see you're willing to consider having to fight the Elite."

"Traitors are everywhere," Nyder said flatly, repeating one of the phrases that Slai had drilled into him. His voice wasn't quite as flat when he asked, "Why haven't you ever ordered me to your bed, Commander?"

Slai paused, for a very long moment. He rolled the staff over the back of his hand in a circle, his eyes locked on Nyder's sincere face. "That's a rather personal question, Trainee," he finally said.

"I'm sorry, Commander." He swallowed, and said in a rush, "I'd just rather know about it up front rather than have you surprise me."

Slai narrowed his eyes, and looked Nyder up and down. "If I said I wasn't going to order you to bed, ever, and I would never surprise you that way - could we leave it at that?"

"Of course, Commander. I mean - you are the Commander."

"That's right…." Slai's voice trailed off. "And I pay a high price for it, believe me. A price that anyone who follows after me has to be willing to pay." He shrugged out of the heavy protective jacket. "Come with me, Trainee."

Nyder came along willingly. He took off his own gear and left it for cleaning, and went into the empty training room showers with Slai. It was when they were under adjoining showerheads that he realised why Slai had always gone to his own quarters to clean up, before.

Slai's body was that of a hero: shoulders wide, every limb rippling with muscles, his chest and stomach taut and hairy. There were only a few scars on him, but they were - distinctive.

"Machine pistol blast," said Slai, his hands indicating the torn flesh between his legs. "I stepped between Davros and an assassin, and I'd do it again, a thousand times. The doctors tried to fix me - but I found out that these parts have even a lower priority in medical training than fixing hands."

The two men looked at each other, each with pain in their eyes.

Slai went on, "I was lucky my pelvis and spine weren't involved. Now Doctor Cennell makes synthetic hormones for me, and I inject myself. It keeps me big," he said, striking his chest with one fist with a sound like a war-drum. "And I have to be big, to be Security Commander." He turned and put his face into the hot water, letting it run over his shoulders and chest, feel it tickling in his ears.

When he took his face out of the water, Nyder was waiting with a soapy washcloth in one scarred hand - he didn't have to wear the gloves anymore in the showers. "May I wash your back?" he asked.

"Go ahead," said Slai, turning. He allowed himself to relax as the smaller man reached up and scrubbed at the top of his shoulders, then started working his way down his back. The soap suds trickled in long streams, following the muscles of his back, streaming down his legs.

"You're so big," said Nyder from behind him, scrubbing industriously and feeling the solid muscle under his hands. "I look at you and see a stone wall, or a tank, or a field cannon…"

Slai stretched his arms out to his side, letting Nyder scrub at him. He looked left and right, at the great heavy lines of muscle wrapped around the bones of him. He flexed his arms and heard Nyder made a noise of admiration.

Slai flexed all over, and held it, and thought of the hard hours he spent every day in the exercise room, testing and stretching every muscle, pushing himself just a little bit further every time. Getting bigger, getting stronger. For a reason.

"I am a wall," he said. "The wall between Davros and his enemies. I have to be. I have to be the biggest and the strongest. I've got to protect him, just as you have to, Nyder. He's the only hope our people have."

For a long time Nyder touched and admired Slai under the hot water. It wasn't sex, it wasn't even arousal, but it was all he could give.

* * *

Nyder found himself working in Davros' presence more and more often. There was some escalation of Davros' projects in the making, and he was reviewing all of the security procedures as a part of this. More and more stringent loyalty tests were being run on the Elite staff, and the results triple-analysed. Slai and Davros would meet to discuss those results, and Nyder would be there at Slai's elbow, watching and listening and learning.

Sometimes, Davros would call Nyder to his office alone, and quiz him on what he had learned from his training. The questions would come bullet-fast, and Nyder would stand there, at attention with his hands behind his back, only his lips moving as he answered the questions as fast as Davros shot them at him. This was a combination of pleasure and torture for him: excitement at the Supreme Commander's attention, and terror at the fear of making a mistake.

During one of these questioning sessions, the topic of supply renewal procedure came up, and in his haste Nyder used the wrong word. Instead of saying 'a thousand', he said 'ten-hundred'.

"Stop!" ordered Davros, and his voice became a cold metal purr. "I am not interested in Standard mathematical slang, Trainee. When you are working for me, you will use the exact and precise term, the correct term, for everything. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Davros," Nyder said, struggling to keep his face calm. He was certain the back of his neck was flushing: even when his face didn't turn red, his neck would betray him.

"'Ten-hundred', indeed." Davros backed his chair away a fraction, as though avoiding something unclean. "I'm surprised that this sort of nonsense is being taught, even at the Standard level."

Nyder writhed inside, but gave the honest answer. "They didn't teach me that, Davros."

"Explain."

"They never taught me to count past a hundred. They taught up to that, then explained two hundred and three hundred, and said it went on from there. I," Nyder swallowed, "I made up the word ten-hundred for myself. Davros."

The silence in the room pressed on Nyder's ears like a concussion blast. That silence was broken by the sound of Davros' chair moving closer to him, closer than he had been at first. Close enough that Nyder actually had to look down a little bit, to keep his eyes on the Supreme Commander's face.

"They never taught you…any math at all, involving numbers greater than hundreds?"

"No, Davros."

Davros was still. "Dismissed," he finally snapped, and Nyder smartly saluted and stepped briskly out of the room. Outside, his face and his walk were calm and smooth, but for a few moments his chest heaved as he drew in deep, panicked breaths of air. Then he relaxed. He was all right.

In his office, Davros was very still, thinking. He had realised that there were great and necessary gaps between Elite and Standard education; there was no point in wasting information on soldiers who would not live long enough to make any use of it. But not to teach any numbers above the hundreds! Trainee Nyder had already shown a definite aptitude for math; it was a part of that upward-sweeping learning curve that defied Davros' most optimistic predictions. For a man, for a child, to not have the concepts and axioms of math explained to him, to have to make up his own words in order to think about math; it would be like performing a scientific experiment with - with only one hand. Or none.

He thought about this for some time.

* * *

There was a meeting scheduled in the Kaled Dome, important enough that Davros was to attend in person. Certain of the Dome Councilmen wanted to confer with the Supreme Commander about his new projects. Slai would in attendance as well, as the senior Security officer, and Nyder was to accompany them. For the first time, he would stand before his people's leaders as one of the Elite, in their uniform. Nyder was cringingly certain that they would see right through him. That they would detect his Standard origins; pull him out of line, cut him down…

Slai deliberately ignored Nyder's endless picking at his immaculate uniform with his black-gloved hands. Finally though, he touched Nyder's arm and said in a low voice, "You'll wear yourself out with all that twitching. Calm down!"

Nyder forced himself to stop fidgeting, but he was still hyper-alert. He and Slai had examined the empty Dome conference room, floor and walls and ceiling and furniture, with eyes and with equipment. Others of the Security Elite had screened the six Councilmen who would attend the meeting.

Now they were to escort Davros inside. They walked side by side down the Dome corridor; Davros' chair moved behind them, surrounded by more guards. Slai opened the door to the conference room, and through the widening gap Nyder saw a long table, and a cluster of five men at the far end who looked up.

Five.

Without thinking, reacting purely out of instinct, Nyder turned and kicked. Kicked with both feet, lifting himself almost parallel to the ground in a single convulsive motion. His boot heels struck Davros' chair dead centre. It was a heavy chair, but the kick sent it hurtling backwards down the corridor, between the guards. Nyder's legs were just at full extension, and he had not had time to fall to the ground, when the bomb went off.

Slai had reacted as well, to his subordinate's actions and to the sudden sense of danger, by lunging to put himself directly between Davros and the doorway.

The Security Commander's great size served him well, one last time. Like a bullet in a gun barrel, his body absorbed the blow of the explosion, which hurtled him and Nyder into Davros and down the corridor. The blast stripped flesh from bone, ripped ligaments and shattered organs - but the bulk of two bodies was between Davros and the worst of it.

The last thought in both Nyder and Slai's minds was the same, the certain belief that they had saved Davros, a wordless shout of exultation that meant Victory!

And then darkness.