God's Dogs Book 2

To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.

Carlos Castaneda

The next morning at PT, Moss provided the grounding meditation for Blue Platoon, and across the parade field, Quinn did the same for Red Platoon.

This time the recruits were in formation and standing in the ‘get ready’ stance called wuji – feet shoulder-width apart, knees unlocked, shoulders sunk, and hands at their sides.

Then they envisioned growing roots from their feet into the ground – deeper and deeper until they wrapped those roots around the planet’s core. Then they relaxed their bodies, and like trees they let the roots hold them to the earth. Then, finally, they envisioned nature energy – qi in one of its forms – flow up through the roots to flood through them.

The PT, physical training, proceeded from there. The sergeant led them through a grueling workout of pushups, crunches, burpees, and then a 5K run. The Coyotes joined in with the PT, but the recruits found they couldn’t keep up no matter how hard they tried.

During the first week, the recruits were subjected to harsher and harsher treatment, and the dropped on request (DOR) began. Toward the end of the week, both platoons were back in the lecture hall for their ‘core values’ training.

Master Sergeant Gomez began, “When you DOR from here, you will find the ‘core values’ of the militia to be different from the core values of the Coyotes. In the militia, the core values include loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage. These values are self-explanatory in theory, but the discipline required to live by them is what makes Penglai’s militia the most fearsome, respected, and honorable in all of League space. It’s what sets up apart from others because we live by those values – officers and enlisted alike.

“The Coyote code is much simpler, while at the same time more comprehensive and more demanding. Coyote River will explain.”

River walked onto the well-lit stage as Gomez exited.

“Good afternoon, recruits,” she said in an even and welcoming voice. She appeared relaxed, like a pacing panther surveying her wild domain.

“Good afternoon, Coyote River,” the recruits responded and sat taller in their seats.

“Coyote Quinn told you that we strive to do the right thing in each moment of our lives. What would that mean as a practical matter? What are the steps involved in that task?”

By now the recruits knew better than to shout out an answer. The drill instructors used rhetorical questions to set up the more prideful for humiliation.

River went on, “First you must develop the wisdom to know what the ‘right’ thing is, and that complicates the equation. What the right thing to do in a given situation may be one thing for me, and something different for you.

“Wisdom comes from knowing yourself and gaining the self-compassion to honor that self. I know my strengths, my weaknesses, my vulnerabilities, my personal challenges, my faults, my own experiences, which include what I’ve learned from my mistakes. I am, however, a mystery unfolding. Yesterday’s me is not today’s me, and the decision before me today is one that may have gone differently yesterday. Today I may move forward; yesterday I may have retreated. Therefore, the deeper self, what in yoga is called the Self, must also be listened to. In addition to that, I must be a student of human nature and recognize patterns of behavior, read body language, be sensitive to cultural differences, and so on. All of this and more contributes to the building of wisdom.

“Once I know what to do, I must have the courage to actually do it. The word ‘courage’ comes from the French word ‘coeur,’ which mean ‘heart.’ In Buddhism, the heart is seen as naturally open with compassion. It is your natural state. Fear is what closes the heart. If I’m to open the heart, I need to act with courage. I must defeat the fear. So, what are you afraid of? Physical injury, death, embarrassment, disappointing your family, punishment, being ostracized, and so on. The more subtle fears come wrapped in very logical rationalizations. They are seductive in their power. Those must all be defeated.

“Finally, after I’ve taken the action I’ve taken, I must have the faith to let go of the outcome. The universe is in charge of outcomes. Outcomes are beyond my control. My teachers told us this is the most difficult of the three – letting go of the consequences of the actions I take. I have found that to be true, because forcing outcomes, which seems only natural, is truly the road to the insanity of becoming a control freak.

“You see, you are an expression of the divine. You are a ‘word made flesh,’ and the word spoken that is you is unique and filled with purpose. But you didn’t speak the word. The Great Mystery did. When you act, you fulfill your purpose on behalf of the divine. From then on, though, it’s the divine’s problem, not yours.”

River paused and gazed at her audience. She could feel their discomfort. She could sense the struggle of the ego-self pushing back against the true self in the recruits. She was speaking to the true self, and it was listening, which fully terrified the false self – the ego-construct they had used for years as a life raft through the rapids of their lives. Coyotes abandoned the life raft and learned to swim in those turbulent waters. That was one reason there were so few Coyotes. Not many possessed that level of courage or faith.

She suspected there would be a few DORs after this presentation.

“Consider these three core values in your meditations: wisdom, courage, and faith. That’s what is demanded of a Coyote. When you can trust yourself to live life like that – to do the right thing in each moment, you begin to earn the armament of the spiritual warrior: the sword of discernment and the shield of truth. We will discuss that later on. Class dismissed.”

She ambled off the stage to where the rest of the team was waiting.

Moss told her, “I didn’t know you could do that.”

“What?” she smiled at him.

“You know, charge the whole room with empowered words.”

“I didn’t notice.”

Quinn began chuckling. Pax gave River a sideways hug.

“You’re something else, River,” Moss muttered.

The recruits filed out to their next task, and the team followed, splitting up to attend to the two platoons.

During the following week, unarmed combat training began. They helped out demonstrating fighting techniques, coaching the recruits on proper execution, and slapping down the few bullies that unmasked during sparring. They quickly filed DORs.

During the orienteering training, which required the recruits to pair up and find different way markers in the nearby forest using only a compass, the team had fun ambushing the unwary recruits as they struggled to follow their compass headings.

Then came the obstacle course. Each Coyote duo went through the obstacle course first to demonstrate the necessary teamwork to successfully negotiate the course. They set successive records for time in doing so.

Week 3 began with firearm instruction. They used training laser rifles at this point. Some of the recruits were rank beginners and needed coaching on all the basics. Once they all mastered the various positions – standing, kneeling, sitting, and prone, and they could hit the stationary targets out to 300 yards, the more challenging types of shooting began.

The team demonstrated how a two-man team went through the tactical challenges. Those were staggered pop-up targets that the shooter advanced against. Once again, they set time records for these courses.

Tracking and concealment took them back to the woods. The Coyote pairs amused themselves again by ambushing the recruits.

They continued to instruct the recruits in the morning and the evening. They concentrated on entering and using the qi-field. They stayed basic with repeated exercises in grounding and awareness, because those were the prerequisite skills to the advanced powers.

Week 4 was when the recruits put their training to work. By this time, though, they numbered 48, almost equally distributed between the two platoons. The Coyotes had been monitoring the recruits and did identify five or six they thought should make it through boot camp.

During the next two weeks, Gomez suggested they put some effort into motivating those recruits. He didn’t see what they were seeing, even though the sergeants reviewed the recruits’ progress and potential every few days. But, then again, that’s one reason the Coyotes were here: to help in the selection process.

After a forced twenty-mile hike with a full load, Blue Platoon made camp at the site in the foothills where they would set up an ambush for Red Platoon. Red Platoon stayed at the base and ran the obstacle course again, and worked at the firing range with various fire-team drills.

In the foothills, River approached two of the young women she saw as having potential. One was a wiry, strong Asian girl that was much too serious about getting everything right. Her determined scowl warped her naturally pretty face and darkened her brown eyes to smoldering coals.

River ghosted up and asked, “Do you know what kind of tree you’re putting your tent under?”

The young woman jumped, and her partner chuckled. “She does that, Jian. Just appears out of nowhere. We ought to be used to it by now.”

Jian looked at the tree and then to River. “No, Coyote River, I don’t.”

“It’s from the cottonwood family on Earth, transplanted here during terraforming. It grows near water, and it has a habit of dropping branches in even a light wind.”

“Oh,” Jian exclaimed. ’We shouldn’t put our tent here?”

“Or you could clear branches that might fall on you.”

The other young woman, taller and sturdier in build with the weathered look of a Tibetan, studied the tree. After a moment, she said, “I think we’re out of the line of fire.”

Jian checked as well, but observed, “If Coyote River thinks it’s dangerous, maybe we should move.”

“I never said it was dangerous,” River replied.

Jian frowned and turned to her friend, “Nina, should we move?”

River cut in, “Remember the other day when you kept looking at a certain bush, but then you moved on?”

Jian’s frown deepened. “Not really.”

“You sensed my presence, because I was projecting it. But then you ignored your intuition. What does your intuition tell you about this tree?”

Nina’s eyebrows rose as her eyes darted from River to Jian. Jian gathered herself and walked over to the tree. Laying a hand on its slabbing bark, she spent a moment trying to divine something about the tree.

“It’s strong,” Jian said, “and no limbs are ready to fall.”

’I agree,” River said lightly. “What have you learned?”

“I need to trust my intuition better,” Jian said uncertainly.

“How?”

Jian’s eyes widened, but she knew better than to stutter out a non-answer. After a moment, she said, “I may need help recognizing my block, Coyote River.”

“Lighten up,” River said in her command voice.

Nina chuckled at that and Jian flushed.

“What about you, Nina? What will keep you from completing this course?”

Nina sighed. “My well of energy depletes faster than I can refill it. At some point, I’ll collapse and not be able to get back up.”

“Touch the tree,” River instructed. “Ask that it share its strength with you. And don’t forget to express gratitude when it does.”

Nina did so, and River went on, “We didn’t push you to live in the qi-field for no reason. Adjust your mindset. The living world is not objects. It’s a web of interconnected energy. You know how to maneuver in that web. Start doing so!”

Then River ghosted away without a sound.

“I think,” Jian began and stopped.

“Yeah. She just rocked our world.”

“Broke it is more likely. Something broke.”

“The walls hemming us in, maybe?”

Jian finally laughed. Her face smoothed out. Her eyes took on a sparkle. “Now we just have to worry about agoraphobia.”

“Huh?”

“Wide-open spaces not bounded by the walls of our beliefs and cultural conditioning.”

Nina half-smiled. “Well, they did say letting go was hard.”

“And scary.”