The War in the Waste

by Felicity Savage

  Then again, maybe Butch had hoped the opposite. He was that kind of man. It was the reason Crispin admired him.

  “Not one of my boys from those days left except him! Queen damn it! He fucks up again and again, and what do you know? He turns up at the end of every battle like a bad penny. And it was always an accident, and no one can prove it wasn’t. Much more of this, and I’ll have to consider an own goal.”

  Crispin swallowed the last of his biscuit. “No, no, don’t do that” He reached inside his flight jacket, pulled out a chocolate bar, and offered half to Butch, who stuffed it into his mouth as fiercely as if it had been a piece of the Kirekuni’s flesh, barely bothering to pick off the colored wrapping. “He’s just a coward, see. No backbone. You know how strictly disciplined the lizards are—well, I think discipline is all that holds them together. He doesn’t understand that as one of us, he has a responsibility to himself, and to the Queen, to be brave. If one of our boys fucked up the way he does, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself—but Ash doesn’t get it, he doesn’t hold himself responsible. You can’t fault him for what he is. Just hope his luck turns on him, that’s all.”

  “What gets me going,” Butch said broodingly, “is that I have to let him off every time. Just because of what you said. If I were to start passing out punishments for plain old cowardice, I’d have to flog every man in my crew.”

  “They’ll give him a razzing though, don’t you worry. Francke was popular.” Crispin turned to watch the last of the men leave. Their shoulders were slumped. Two had their arms around each other. Crispin’s own crew had not come out of the battle as cleanly as he had thought; young Jack Harrowman was in the sick bay with a screamer wound to the shoulder. It was Harrowman’s closest friend, Fergus Dupont, who was being supported by his comrade.

  “If I know them, they will.”

  “They do often enough anyway. It’s not like it has any effect. No.” Butch turned to Crispin with a sudden, wicked grin. “I’ve taken some steps. Told him to report what really happened to Vichuisse. Not his version—my version. Made him repeat it after me until he knew it by heart.”

  “Good going,” Crispin said, and forced himself to smile. Sometimes Butch’s way of dealing with his men disgusted him. “It’s about time Vee got an idea what really goes down around here.”

  “Especially what with all the strange noises we’ve been hearing lately. Promotion city, huh?” Butch shook his head. “If you ask me, he’s getting a tad bit too big for his boots.”

  “They’ve been tight on him since day one, if you ask me,” Crispin said with feeling.

  Butch shifted in the warmth of the dying fire and rubbed Carrie’s stomach with his foot. She whined in her sleep and rolled onto her back. Butch laughed, stretched, and peeled off his flight jacket. “Indeed! Any more choccy hidden about you, Cris?”

  Silently, Crispin took out his second bar and broke it without removing the wrapper.

  Half an hour later the fire went out. Crispin kissed Butch farewell outside the mess hall. This ritual had developed from the early days of their friendship into a superstitious touchstone, a charm for staying alive. Nights like this, when the moon hung wide and bright as a grin in the sky, were the lizards’ favorite sort. Neither of them mentioned the possibility that they would later be wakened, or killed in their beds, by an attack. Watching Butch’s back recede into the dark, Crispin felt a swell of affection for him. He put the last piece of chocolate into his mouth. Licking his fingers, he wandered around the corner of the mess, intending to stop by the regulars’ barracks and see whether any of his men were awake.

  The buildings lay low and dark in the moonlight. Not a sliver of light showed anywhere. Barracks and hangars alike were constructed out of knotty, poor-quality Wraithwaste-pine lumber, so there ought to have been thousands of chinks, but every building was painstakingly lightproofed inside with black canvas. The rain had stopped; the wind carried wetness on its back. Rounding the northeast corner of the mess hall, Crispin halted. Two figures were standing by the door next to the northwest corner of the building. The shorter pushed close against the taller, who was flattened against the wall. The thought that it was a lovers’ tryst leapt into Crispin’s mind. He was turning to retreat when he recognized Flight Captain Anthony Vichuisse’s furious voice.

  At this end of the mess hall, Vichuisse lived in lordly isolation: his quarters were not accessible from inside the mess, and his windows commanded a view of the empty Raw. Standing outside his front door, he was lambasting someone, not bothering to keep his voice down. A hissing, chinking sound punctuated his words: the cat-o’-nine-tails slapping against his thigh. Crispin sidled away. But he had been seen.

  “Kateralbin!” He heard the unmistakable note of pleasure that entered Vichuisse’s voice every time he spoke to Crispin. “Sneaking about at night? Still in an aggressive state of mind? Why don’t you come and have a word with our friend here?”

  Reluctantly Crispin went forward. Vichuisse stood back, hands on his hips. The moonlight cast his shadow in a bulky puddle around his feet. “Or are you here to join in the fun? Mmm?”

  The Kirekuni stood with his back to the wall, his long, pale, ratlike tail lashing around his ankles.

  “No—sir,” Crispin said, his eyes on the Kirekuni. “I was just going to see if my men were still awake. Sir. I wanted to congratulate them on the job they did today. They handled the intercept marvelously. I thought.”

  “It’s what they’re trained for, Kateralbin.”

  “I was going to stop by sick bay, too, sir. Jack Harrowman is in with a shoulder.”

  “I know that,” Vichuisse said. “I make it my business to stop by sick bay myself. So that my lieutenants don’t have to.” At the captain’s voice, Crispin turned sharply to look at him. The moonlight blackened the sockets of the little, deep-set eyes. “Kateralbin, you tend to assume altogether too much responsibility for your own good,” Vichuisse said gently.

  “Any responsibility I have is your gift, sir.”

  “Tch, tch, tch! The past is the past!” Vichuisse clapped Crispin’s shoulder, all fizzy good humor. “I suppose Lieutenant Keynes told you the story, mmm? The story of our little lizard friend’s cowardice this afternoon?”

  Crispin winced. The Kirekuni was anything but little. He was the tallest man in the squadron—taller even, by an inch, than Crispin. Somehow that made his silence in the face of the insult much worse.

  “I know what chums you and Keynes are,” Vichuisse said with vile innuendo.

  “Yes, he told me about it, sir.”

  “I’ve been giving Ash a talking-to. But you’ll agree that in a case like this—where a pilot’s misjudgment caused the death of another pilot, a member of his own crew, no less—a talking-to is insufficient.” Vichuisse swung the cat-o’-nine-tails against his palm. Only Vichuisse, Crispin thought with a surge of disproportionate anger, would indulge in a flogging by moonlight! Couldn’t he have waited until tomorrow? And yet such bizarre acts were completely in character for the captain. There had been the time some money was stolen from his rooms, when Vichuisse made every man on the base turn out and stand on parade in the snow, in their underwear, while he personally searched their lockers.

  The Kirekuni remained motionless.

  “Yes, sir?” Crispin controlled his voice.

  “Should you like to taste what responsibility really is, Kateralbin?” Vichuisse said, smirking.

  Crispin and the Kirekuni stood face-to-face on the western side of the mess hall. Crispin had led him around the corner to ensure that Vichuisse would not be able to spy—there were no windows on that side, and what with the wind, unless the captain were actually to come outside, he would not be able to see or hear a thing. And to come outside would have been beneath Vichuisse’s dignity—as well as proof that he did not trust Crispin to carry out his orders.

  The thing is that he does trust me, Crispin thought. If there’s a single one of us lieutenants he trusts, it’s me. That’s
why he made me a lieutenant.

  But hard on the heels of conscience’s prickings came a thrill at the thought of depriving Vichuisse of one of his unfair victories over his men.

  The Kirekuni was standing at ease, probably waiting to be ordered to unbutton his flight suit. In the moonlight his skin was as white as bone, his hair—slightly longer than the regulation buzz cut—sleek as the fur of a black cat.

  Crispin jerked his chin in the direction of the regulars’ barracks. “Dismissed, Ash.” Then, when the Kirekuni did not move: “I said, you can go now.”

  “Ten of the best!” Ash’s voice betrayed his astonishment. “Wasn’t that what Vee said?”

  “You don’t get it, do you!” Crispin shifted the cat-o’-nine-tails to his left hand. “Go to bed! And if you don’t have nightmares about what happened to Francke, I swear you’re not human.”

  “You can’t do this,” Ash objected.

  “You want a flogging?”

  “I want one more than I want to be obliged to you.”

  “No payback involved.” Crispin waved the cat-o’-nine-tails in the direction of the barracks. “Move.”

  Ash tilted his head and screwed up his face, as if he were trying to see right into Crispin. A thread of discomfort colored Crispin’s determination. He did not know the Kirekuni; Ash was not in his crew, so there was no reason for them ever to speak. Besides, the last thing Crispin wanted was to be seen associating with the other outsider of the squadron. But it wasn’t merely the racial stigma that made Crispin avoid him so assiduously. It was the way Ash looked at him. Whenever they were in the same room, Ash’s gaze followed him, picking him out from the others. Of course, everyone had done that at first; even when he was just a rigger they had stared. But then they got used to him. New men soon learned that certain slurs which would have been perfectly acceptable anywhere else were not allowed in 80 Squadron: Crispin’s crew saw to that. But the hungry way the Kirekuni looked at Crispin had not changed in two and a half years.

  “Where did you get your last name, Ash?” Crispin said suddenly, without meaning to. “How would they say it in Okimako?”

  Ash shrugged. “My mother gave it to me.”

  Disappointment washed through Crispin.

  “And her mother gave it to her, and her mother... ” Ash took a step forward, as if trying to see into Crispin’s face. “You’re not jerking me around, are you? You’re not.”

  “No.”

  “Akila. It’s a very common name in Kirekune. Very old.”

  Crispin laughed. “And Mickey? That’s not Kirekuni either!” Ash had a given name when he came, Butch had said once, some funny-sounding lizard thing but we took care of that quick enough... He took care of it himself, really... Declared one day that from now on he was going to be called Mickey, so we couldn’t take the mickey out of him anymore. The boys laughed, of course—they thought it was rich... “How would they say that in Okimako?” He gave the word the lilt that had come in her voice whenever she said her name, or her mother’s. “Miki?”

  It took him completely by surprise when the Kirekuni flinched. Ash laughed, shook his head, and almost staggered against the wall. “Damn you, Lieutenant,” he said, chuckling. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “You’re not on parade.”

  Ash extracted a cigarette case from a pocket of his jacket, then struck a lucifer dexterously with his tail, keeping both hands cupped around the cigarette. Crispin watched in unwilling fascination. It was a marvelous trick—made you wonder why all human beings had not been born with tails. When the Kirekuni got his cigarette burning, Crispin said without thinking, “Got another?”

  “No problem,” and Ash went through the whole routine again before Crispin could retract his words. But when the lit cigarette was in his fingers he felt a touch of panic. Now he would have to stay here until they had finished smoking. Their relations had been temporarily transformed from those of regular and lieutenant, to those of two pilots having a cigarette together after a harrowing evening. Ash must have felt the shift in the hierarchy, too. He leaned against the wall, the cigarette drooping from his fingers. “So Lieutenant, what do you think of this war?”

  “Blessed Queen! What a question.”

  “Do you know what I think? It’s a bloody farce.”

  “That’s not a particularly original opinion.”

  “The freeze on negotiations is just stupid. If you’d had the opportunity to compare both sides, like I have, you’d know what I mean.” Ash put his head back and looked at the sky. It was empty except for the bombers’ moon. “We’re going to be completely overwhelmed in ten years. Twenty at the most.”

  “Don’t tell the captain that.”

  “Oh, I’d never dare!” Ash grinned and shuddered with exaggerated fear. It was unmistakably a fag gesture. “The only one I’d ever say it to is you!”

  “Can’t see why.” Crispin exhaled smoke. “You don’t know me.”

  “But I do know you, Lieutenant” Ash fixed him with that steady, dark gaze. “You just don’t know me.”

  “You’re taking liberties, Pilot. Watch it. And if I were you, I’d go to bed as soon as you’ve finished that. Your crew is on dawn patrol duty, if I remember right.”

  Ash gazed down at the cigarette in his hand. “I’ve never needed much sleep . Do you know why I give so much thought to the war?”

  Crispin laughed. “Are you implying the rest of us daydream about Shadow girls while we’re shooting down Kirekunis?”

  “You’d be surprised how many do. No. It’s because I’m not a fatalist. You lot are fatalists through and through. Say what you will, a century of defeats hasn’t left the Ferupian spirit unharmed. I’d say every man in this squadron, apart from a few slackers, is prepared to lay down his life for the Queen. Assumes he will lay it down. I’m not like that. I think about how things are going to end.”

  “This isn’t the infantry. One has to want to be a pilot. Maybe in Kirekune it’s different.”

  “Just one of many things that’s different. I never wanted to fly. Oh, sure, I got used to it. I even got to like it. But, Lieutenant, I admit it, I’m a coward at heart.”

  “No shit!” Crispin laughed. He took a drag of his cigarette and scrutinized the Kirekuni through the cloud of smoke.

  Every trace of humor was gone from the pale face.

  “You’re the first man I’ve ever heard admit that,” Crispin said slowly.

  “I don’t want to die! That’s why I sometimes get spitting furious at the Queen and all her generals, whoever’s responsible for making the negotiations break down, for keeping this war going on and on and on. I’m never going to get pensioned off; did you know that? I’m a traitor. They can’t discharge me to wander freely around the Queen’s country. And what’s my chances of surviving another fifteen years at the rate I’m going? I hate it, but I’m going to lay my life down for Ferupe, too!”

  “I’ve never thought much of the idea of dying either,” Crispin said abruptly, surprising himself.

  “But you aren’t a coward, Lieutenant.”

  Crispin sucked the last drag from his cigarette and threw it to the mud. “You wanted me to give you ten of the best, didn’t you?” he said with disgust.

  The Kirekuni grimaced. Then, with motions so fast that Crispin flinched back, he took out and lit another cigarette. “Oh, yes, Lieutenant!” ‘The self-mocking laughter was back in his voice. “I’d have just loved it! You still can if you want!”

  “In the name of the Queen,” Crispin said, and turned on his heel. He hesitated. Ash leaned against the wall, long limbs indolently askew, enjoying his cigarette with obviously exaggerated pleasure. “Tell me one more thing, Ash: did you mean to kill Francke?”

  Ash’s face twisted, and he spat on the ground. “Significant! I’d be more justified in suspecting you of offing Fischer in the heat of battle! You’d never have got to be a lieutenant if your lieutenant hadn’t been shot down, would you?” He mimicked Crispin’s tone. “Did you mean
to kill him? I’ve been a pilot three times as long as you have! It happens to everyone.”

  “Not as often as it happens to you.”

  “You want to know the real reason I fuck up? It’s the crap design of your damned Gorgonettes.”

  “What?” Crispin said.

  “You’re tall, too! You’ve got to have some idea of what it’s like to crouch in that cockpit for hours at a time without being able to straighten your neck or your legs. Tends to make you antsy, doesn’t it? Might even skew your judgment, having to look down through that thick windshield at an angle. That’s one thing. And for another, I’m left-handed.” Ash shook his left hand in the air. Stupidly, Crispin looked at it. “Nearly all Kirekunis are, the way nearly all Ferupians are right-handed. No, it never occurred to me, either, until I had to try and fly a plane with the controls reversed. I’m getting better at it. But still, the whipcord is so sensitive, and if you’ve been doing everything that requires delicacy with your good hand for twenty-one years, it’s going to cause a few problems when you’ve suddenly got to exert microcontrol—and keep a two-ton daemon in check—with your worse hand. Just one tiny little unintentional spasm means a deviation of several degrees, or several dozen mph, when you’re in the air. You’re a pilot. You know what I’m talking about.”

  Crispin found his voice. “Why don’t you get them to refurbish a KE for you? Or at least install the cockpit in a Gorgonette.”

  “For me? I’m a traitor, Lieutenant. Come on. If I even asked I’d be daemonsmeat.”

  Crispin shook his head. “Wouldn’t want your problems, Ash.” He turned away. “Take my advice. Get some sleep.”