Somewhere I heard a man clear his throat. “Blues of Corinth, the victor of the Challenge are the C3 Storms, who are hereby awarded seven hundred forty-six points in take-all fashion to do with as they will,” said Commander Marquardt, the man that we’d met yesterday in the Tread Room, who’d watched us arrive today with the dogs. The way he seemed sensitive to the approval of the older students, shaking hands and slapping backs, reminded me of my uncle Charlie, a primary school Karachi coach who acted like he was just one of the guys on the team. It was as if he had dedicated his entire adulthood trying to transport himself back in time to rectify some unhealed adolescent ridicule.
“Mars’ top military official, Admiral Kerr, has been touring the station and decided to sit in on the Challenge. Admiral, would you like to say a few words?”
I only vaguely knew who this was from little things I’d seen on the news, but it caused a stir, and all heads turned as the admiral walked through the opposite door wearing the same blood-red Mars uniform as the commander. He had a war-ravaged, bellicose face, looking like one of those old guys at the gym who breathed loud and grunted just to show how fit and ageless they were.
Instead of one beast, there were four now, barking and yapping louder than ever, blotting out the silence from the hushed Blues and pilots. But they all went mute when the admiral snapped his fingers.
“Thank you, Commander Marquardt,” he said, the walls of the lobby amplifying the projection. “This is the fourteenth day of my fourteenth year overseeing this august station, and this is the kind of conflict that illustrates why this place is so special. Why the Fleet sets us apart, autonomous, on this island in space. I’ve borne witness to many a fine Challenge. Many were closer calls than this, down to the last ships, but not one involved a day-two Green defeating a decorated Black against such great odds. I doubt that one over there,” he continued, gesturing in Sebastian’s direction, “knows even half of our twisted thicket of rules.”
I chanced a glimpse in Caelus’ direction. His body was partially blocked from view, but his face showed through the window of limbs—a specter’s face.
“But Lieutenant Baez deserves equal credit. A commander doesn’t always do the cutting, but he selects and sharpens the blade. Since I know many lesser men would’ve let that one idle, a special congratulations is in order.”
Brandon beamed as the Storms’ cheers and the barking hounds collapsed the silence. His eyes scanned the room, soaking in the approving shouts of his peers, but I saw him freeze when he met the block captain’s stare.
Caelus’ lips moved quick and silent from across the room, mouthing two words that were somehow unmistakable: ‘I know.’
Chapter 12
I’d never gotten drunk before. I didn’t want to now, either, but Brandon had pushed me to the point where it had become uncomfortable to refuse and since I wasn’t looking to make this, out of everything, a big deal, I had started accepting the shots I was plied with. They came close to shooting me with Zeroes, too—three of them holding me down—but that was too much and I broke free. It was funny; if Zeroes were as great as billed, what did my doing them matter?
Pierre seemed to feel the same way. Brandon had insisted that he do a shot with him, Fin, Fingers, and some of the others, but was too far gone to notice the liquid jetting by when Pierre tossed it out over his shoulder.
My senses were wobbling from the alcohol, my mind drifting back to Admiral Kerr, Taryn, and, finally, Caelus, seeing the calm on his face as he mouthed the words “I know.”
What did he know? There was so little I understood about this place. It all felt like I was teetering on the edge of a nightmare, but the alcohol pulled me back, narrowing my view but expanding me inwardly, supplying me with a lightness that began to crowd out the anxiety. My eyes passed over Sebastian and Pierre and I felt even lighter because they reminded me of Verna. Then I thought of the girl I’d seen on the catwalk again, and I felt like I was dissolving into the floor.
A boy with a thick neck and powerful arms staggered up to me. “You must be the one everyone’s talking about.”
I nodded toward Sebastian, who was talking to a group of Blues while he braced himself against a corner, barely able to stand. “I think you mean him.”
“No, not the fat one. He did well, but you beat the shit out of Taryn Miller. God, I wish I could’ve seen that. Will you do it again? Pretty please?”
The words were only partially intelligible and his breath reeked of firewater, their name for whatever that clear liquid in the bowl was.
“Depends,” I said.
“On what?” he asked.
“On if I’m still standing,” I replied, looking down at the drink in my hand.
“Oh, cu-come on, man. Don’t be dramatic. I’ve had twice as much as you, eeeeasy,” he boasted, slurring his words. “Do you know how I know? Your eyes are clear, hardly any glaze at all, but mine . . . mine are frosted like a donut.”
He took out a pocket lasercutter and studied his reflection in its metal casing.
“Yep. Sure are.” He nodded and then, stepping a little closer, clanked his glass against mine. “Can’t believe I’m standing next to the guy who’s gonna save us from the big bad Caelus. Marin, right?”
“Aaron,” I replied. “And all I did was hit somebody.”
“All you did was hit somebody? That’s nice. I hope you don’t all you do something like that to me,” he snickered.
“Really. It wasn’t—”
“Your ‘not much’ is quite a friggin’ lot around here. More guts than Brandon could ever muster. He’s squeamish about conflict. Calls it biding his time. But do you want to know what I call it?” he asked, frowning.
“What?”
He brought his face really close and whispered in my ear, “Being a fucking pussy.” Then he broke into a fit of laughter that shook his whole body. “Rhys. Now, that’s who could be lieutenant. But nope . . . nope, nope, nope. Wouldn’t think of making a play to take it. Always the good guy to a fault. Are you a good guy, too, Aaron?”
“I try to be.”
“Well, then you’re dead already.” The grin turned to a scowl. “Good guys lay down their aces against someone else’s kings all classy and well mannered, secure in the knowledge that they’ve won the hand. But you see, they’ve only won that hand if everyone else in the room agrees that they’ve won that hand, and the person across from him with the kings accepts that he’s lost that hand. Do you understand what I’m saying? Because if even one of those there things isn’t true, the hand’s just gettin’ started, really, and any confidence in the ‘rules’ is just going to get in the way of you playin’ well. You did see Caelus’s face after we beat him, didn’t you?”
I nodded, feeling faint.
“And did he look like he accepted the result?”
The room was suddenly too loud, the voices too sharp, too cacophonous—glasses slamming into tables, people stumbling over each other. It was as if I’d become aware of somebody or something nearby that we didn’t want to wake up. That we were going to get the police called on us and our parents notified. Obviously that didn’t make sense, but the firewater was taking hold, permeating every thought, whisking me back in time to when I was a kid with all my childhood fears.
“Because that should tell you everything, bud. Caelus won’t let us just sashay into the sunset after that little ‘altercation.’ No, sir.” He paused. “But that’s tomorrow’s headache. This,” he said, relaxing his shoulders and brandishing a large glass of firewater, “is tonight’s.” He chuckled so loud and with so much assurance that I couldn’t help but laugh through the apprehension, too, our cups clanking together in a messy coupling.
Taking a healthy gulp, he started up again. “Aaron, Aaron, Aaron, which sounds a lot like Taryn.”
“And what’s your name?” I asked, matching his swig and then taking another. Both the firewater and the deep, blithe tone of his voice were calming—a defiance slicing through the things I didn�
��t understand—letting me ease back into a casual, drunken stance. An imaginary lightwall drawn around me, drawn around all of us.
“Daries Maxwell. First corporal to Sergeant Rhys.” He gave a half salute with his free hand. “All jests aside, he’s the only one of ’em I trust not to get us killed.”
“He seems quiet,” I said, looking across the room at a tall, well-built, acne-scarred boy standing in the corner.
“He is quiet. But he does what Brandon talks about.”
“Brandon can’t be that bad, can he?”
“Well, he’s Caelus-approved. Think about that for a second.” Daries wiggled the tips of his fingers and almost dropped his glass. “He blusters enough to make you think he’s about to do something, which keeps the Storms happy and Pierre hopeful, but he’s tame enough not to ever cause Caelus any real trouble.”
“But what about tonight—the Challenge and all?” I asked.
“Nah, that had Pierre and Rhys plastered all over it. The only reason Brando went along with it was because he didn’t think it would work. But now Caelus is fuming, which is the real reason he’s getting so pissed over there. Brando’s not celebrating; oh no, he’s drinking away the fear.”
“And Pierre doesn’t know this?”
Daries seemed to phase in and out of inebriation, one second sloppy, the next sober and sure-tongued. “Deep down he does; he’s just pretending to pretend to pretend not to, unwilling to believe he’s been backing a lemon all this time. I feel for him and all, but Pierre’s still a fool, and it’s not going to go well for us if he keeps it up. That is, if we let him.”
“But if the Challenge was Pierre’s idea, and if he saw that in Sebastian, he can’t be that stupid.”
“Not stupid, he just sees half of people. He had no problem seeing what Sebastian was capable of, but he can’t do it the other way. He can’t see what Brandon’s not capable of, and that’s enough right there.”
“Enough to what?”
“To lead us over a cliff.”
Pierre came up from behind and draped an arm around each of us. “Glad to see you two are getting acquainted,” he said.
“Ah, Pierre, we were just talking about what a big fuckup you are,” Daries bellowed, gyrating as he laughed.
Pierre laughed, too. “I suppose Aaron deserves the truth.”
“Speaking of truth, why are we here right now?” asked Daries.
“What do you mean? We’re celebrating.”
“Why? Because Brandon told us to?”
“Well, I think the guys deserve it.”
Sergeant Rhys stepped up beside me. “They deserve to have this win followed up, and points alone aren’t enough. Not without the bodies. Not without votes. We need to be down in the Great Room right now, letting everyone see us out unafraid, not drinking ourselves retarded.”
Pierre’s eyes sparkled with acknowledgment. “Fair enough,” he said softly. “But what about Brandon?”
“What about Brandon?” Daries shot back. “It’s not going to help our cause rallying the people on the fence when they see that.” He pointed and I looked over just in time to catch Brandon urinating into a clothes hamper in C3’s far left corner.
“Jesus,” Pierre muttered.
“Aaron, you in?”
Chapter 13
The shouts that started in my dream were pulled through into consciousness, but I didn’t quite believe they were real until I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard Brandon’s voice in my ear. “We gotta go! Get dressed—we’ve got thirty seconds!”
It seemed like we had just climbed into bed moments ago and it didn’t make any sense that we would be getting out again. Images of laughing and firewater and the Great Room got progressively blurrier as they cycled by. I was so tired and was about to pull the sheets up over my face when a hand slapped me on the cheek and I was jarred into the present. “Let’s go! If we’re not on time, he’ll hit us with it again tomorrow night! Come on!”
I rolled out of the hammock and stepped into my uniform in a fog.
“This is just to get back at us,” said a voice behind me.
“Caelus’ wing’s doing it, too,” said another.
“Collateral damage. If he’s miserable, everyone’s got to be,” said Daries, sitting on the bunk next to me, putting his shoes on.
I followed the column of C3s out into the corridors or “tubes,” their Corinth name, trying not to think about how cold it was. The mornings had been cold on Mars, too, so I was used to it, but with the sun climbing in the distance and the wind playing across the water, the scene had been exalted. One with a reason that you could see and grasp, as opposed to the ducts buried under floors and behind walls here, venting whatever was punched into their interface.
“Where are we going?” I asked Fingers, who was jogging next to me.
“Tread Room, then the Weapons Room if it’s what I think it is. It’ll be a shit show, but whatever you do, don’t stop moving.”
“How often does he do this?” I asked.
“Just enough not to kill us.”
When we arrived at the Tread Room, the Fires from C1 and 2 were already there, lined up in two neat, staggered rows. I counted maybe thirty or thirty-five total, but the room was so long and flat and empty that it seemed to swallow them up, making it feel like there was only a handful. White, sharp light was slamming down from panel after panel of buzzing industrial fixtures and my eyes, which still hadn’t fully adjusted, felt swollen and bombarded.
Caelus looked down at his U-dev. “Three minutes, thirty-two seconds. If you were being boarded by a competent opponent, every key area of your ship would’ve been captured by now. That still puts you in the upper seventieth percentile of Corinth wings, but two months ago you did it in three minutes, seventeen seconds. So, Brandon, can you explain to me how you’ve managed to get fifteen seconds worse in that time?”
Brandon was wearing his brave face. “No, sir.”
“It’s not a physical thing; we’ve moved up in the conditioning biomarker rankings. It’s not a sleep thing; we have the same six hours allotted as before. That means it’s a mental thing. That it’s a matter of want. That it’s a matter of leadership—yours, Brandon, but ultimately mine. And so to set it right, we will be doing this every night until both our wings are under B Block at three minutes. And I know what you’re thinking—that you’ll be tired for class.” He bit his lip. “And you’re right. But you won’t be so tired that you slack, because you’ve been down that road already and know that it leads back here. Back to this room. Back to me. Every. Single. Time. So why don’t we come together as a unit—as teammates and partners—and take care of business so we’re not tempted to let each other down again.”
Caelus reversed the small semicircle he was pacing in and stopped. He was pale. Lithe. Almost delicate-looking, in a way. He had muscle, but not nearly as much as Taryn, who stood, arms folded, to his right. However, despite the disparity in their physiques and the vicious hits Taryn had landed on my face, for some reason it was Taryn whom I’d much rather take on again than Caelus. It was hard to explain, but everything I could imagine saying or doing seemed exactly like what Caelus would want. He seemed so in control that everything felt like just a small, zoomed-in section of something long and detailed and carefully orchestrated. Everything felt like a trap. It was paralyzing. I was thinking slower. Moving slower. When he called out, “Greens, you’re off on the side, doing standard inclines, while the rest of us do team drills,” my movements were confused and sluggish, my breathing shallow as I ran to a lane.
“Watch carefully, Greens—you’re up next!” called Caelus as he took a place at the head of one of the tightly-packed lines of eight or nine that were forming in the lanes. “If one falls, we all fall. Just like out there.”
The tread started moving and I started jogging. The acceleration was slow, but every time I thought it had settled on a speed, a few seconds would pass and I’d realize I was running faster. I’d spent nearly every w
aking second of the past nine months training and conditioning for the Rim so, despite the exhaustion and the ill feeling I was getting from Caelus, my body wasn’t revolting in the same way that some of the other Greens’ were. Sebastian, especially, looked like an organism who’d been transplanted into an alien planet’s soil. He was already sprinting to keep up—losing his balance and then regaining it in an awkward teeter to stay in his lane. Then he did fall. He got back on and then fell again.
I was about to say something when Caelus called out, “Paulus has your lane set to your physical Aques, but they’ll adjust based on your performance and biometric data. It pushes you, but it knows yours limits. So just keep at it, Sebastian.”
He didn’t fall the next time he got on, but I nearly did when a medicine ball appeared out of nowhere and sent the Green next to me somersaulting into my lane. Another medicine ball came flying—which I ducked—but only barely managed to dodge the following one, that came in low and fast immediately thereafter.
And then I felt the firewater starting to come up, slowly at first, and then all at once. I wasn’t alone: in a few moments, entire lanes were covered in it. People were slipping and lines were getting knocked over. This was the shit show Fingers had referred to, and doubtlessly Caelus’ reason for doing it.
This went on another twenty minutes before Caelus called out, “All right, now that we’re warm we can head to the Weapons Room.”
I had vomited three or four more times and gasped in the fresh air as we exited into the tube, my esophagus still on fire. The last time I’d gotten sick had been in grade school and so I was rediscovering what not having control over your body felt like. It was embarrassing and humiliating and I was angry at Brandon for not knowing better. No wonder Caelus wanted him where he was.
The Weapons Room was just as bad; we had to do grasshoppers and planks and push-ups every time we weren’t in a drill; and when we were, targets would pop out of nowhere and hit us with electric charges. Even in the protective suits we’d put on, it reminded me of the defibrillator they’d used on me after the accident, and it made me feel worse still. More than the physical agony, it was the sensation of fresh loss—the common thread that could pull an entire memory out of nothingness in a series of sharp, staccato flashbacks.
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