I looked at Sebastian, who awaiting my reply with a strange look on his face.
“Yeah, I’ve flown those ship classes before,” I said. “But—”
“But you don’t want to leave Eve, right?”
I thought back to last night and how I’d sat in Eve’s bunk, thumbing through old photo albums of her back on Earth. She was always laughing, surrounded by friends. It was so obvious that everyone at her school had thought she was special, that they got the same type of limitless feeling being around her as I did, even though it was such a different brand of it.
“It’s like you were a different person,” I’d said to her.
“Same person, different circumstances.”
“I used to be a lot different,” I’d said, almost out of breath, dizzy from sitting so close to her.
“Do you miss it?” she’d asked.
“All the time.”
And then I’d imagined being someplace else. Back home. Back when everything was okay. I’d never really liked going out on the town much, preferring the outdoors, but in that moment I wanted to take her to all the best places in New London. I wanted to blow a hundred aries on a meal at Capa Reis. Go dancing at Shandra’s. Go see a play at the NLS Theater.
But more than that I wanted to do something great, be something great. If we could save her brother, maybe we could save other people, too. She had talked about wanting to develop cures to other rare colony diseases that infected few enough people that they weren’t really worth any biotech corporation’s time, so everyone who contracted them was just fucked.
At first I hadn’t been quite sure what I could add, but the more I thought about it, the more the idea crystallized of repurposing my father’s shipping fleet to airlift the drugs to the most distant colonies, which otherwise wouldn’t have access.
Who knew what we could do; we just needed to graduate first, so the Fleet wouldn’t arrest us at the first planet we landed on.
Sebastian moved slightly into the space that I was staring off into. “Isn’t that it, Aaron?”
“I’m sorry, Seb.” And I meant that; I was sorry. And I might have been making a huge mistake, but I didn’t have a choice. “This is where I have to be. I’m sure you’ll find someone else who can fly that wants to leave.”
“I don’t know any other pilots with your certs. I’m not even sure who else I could bring this up with,” Sebastian said, despair creeping into his voice.
I’d known that was what he’d say, but I still flinched. It felt like a fire had started in the corner and was leaping across the hammocks and the bunks, causing the seemingly ingenious use of space to crumple in on itself, to reveal a smoldering, overcrowded chaos. Suddenly I smelled the socks, underwear, and bags of sparring gear poking through the deodorant and air freshener and the usual stale glaze of recycled air. It hit me that there was only a thin layer of perception holding everything together and once it was peeled off, there was no going back.
“I’m sure there’s someone,” I said finally, managing only the kind of empty platitude that people say when they want to wash their hands of something. I could tell myself that Sebastian wasn’t my responsibility, but we’d looked after each other this whole time and now I was abandoning him.
“Even if you got off the station, where would you go? It’s not like you’d just be able to go home.”
“Home is the last place I’d go.”
“They’d be looking for you. All the reasons you gave when I suggested running, I could give back to you.”
I stole another look at the camera. Sebastian knew about them, too, and I was surprised he was discussing this so openly. But there was still so much I didn’t understand and hoped that maybe he knew something I didn’t.
“And stealing a ship . . .”
“We’d give it back after we worked something out,” he said. “There’re plenty of colonies outside the Fleet’s jurisdiction that don’t have extradition agreements.”
Even though I felt justified, he intimidated me with how smart he was, and out of fear that he was going to surround me with well-thought-out logic, my next words tumbled out unsure and piecemeal. “Places you’d want to go?”
“Sure. Being here puts things into perspective.”
“Well . . .”
I was already beginning to doubt myself, but when Sebastian said, “Aaron, I don’t want to get in your way. That’s the last thing I want. I’m serious.” I felt even worse because it was true. He wasn’t trying to hold me back or guilt me into helping him. He was just trying to figure things out like he’d always done. “It’s just . . . it’s just I really don’t think Rhys was an accident. I wasn’t sure about Pierre or Reiman, but I am about Rhys. I know your instructor had a close call, but it just doesn’t smell right, especially considering what the others say. They’ve been here longer than us and I . . . I—I think we should give more weight to their opinions.”
“Listen, I don’t trust Caelus. It’s just that I don’t trust those other guys, either,” I said.
“You keep saying that, but I don’t understand. They’ve helped us and they’ve—”
“And they’ve had a lot of reason to,” I said, knowing that I couldn’t wait to tell him any longer.
“Sure, but—”
“Seb, stop. Just listen. You know that first night when I was attacked in my bunk in C2?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it wasn’t Caelus or Taryn’s people.”
“What do you mean?” Sebastian seemed mystified.
“It was Fin and this ex-C3 guy, Zoellers.”
He gaped at me.
“I realized it had been Fin when I saw cord marks on her hands, exactly where they’d be if she’d been holding it to try and strangle me.” I paused to let that sink in. “And remember how Rhys and Brandon were evasive about Zoellers that night after we beat the Bs in a Challenge?”
“Yeah, I guess,” he said, looking sick.
“Well, I went to Psych and found him. He admitted it. He was pretty messed up, but he admitted it. Told me that Rhys had given the order to hurt me—to try and scare us into helping the weaker side.”
“And you’re just telling me this?”
“I wasn’t sure until I saw Zoellers. You were doing well and getting along and . . . I don’t know . . . you were safe.”
“I’m hardly safe, Aaron. None of us are. Just going to training I feel like something bad’s going to happen . . . I’m getting pummeled, falling below the line in the Tread Room, and next term I’m going to have to deal with the Weapons Room and the Mat Room. I’m just not built for this.”
Sebastian got up and started pacing, running his hands across his buzz cut. “So that’s what I’m worried about. But Pierre and Rhys and Fin? There’s gotta be a mistake––there’s no way they would’ve done that.”
He looked at me beseechingly, hoping to see a flicker of doubt.
“I didn’t think so, either.”
“Then we’re even less safe than I thought we were. We should’ve already left. We should’ve left a long time ago.”
“Seb, I can’t. But I can teach you how to fight. Mat training. Weapons training. Obviously, you’re not going to be taking down Taryn Miller anytime soon, but you’ll be able to make people think twice.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Have you fired a Pegasus rifle before?”
“No.”
“Let’s start in the Weapons Room then. Five a.m. tomorrow.”
Teaching him hand-to-hand would only be symbolic, considering how far behind and uncoordinated he was, but most people could become competent with a firearm. Given how much the charges hurt and how many times he could potentially be shot next term, it was the best place to begin. Besides, the last thing he needed was to fall below the line in something else.
“But, Aaron, I can’t . . .”
“You can, and I’m going to help you. Alright?”
Sebastian looked at the wall, shaking his head.
“Alright?”
“There is no in between, man. Either we go or we don’t. But let’s not pretend that this is going to . . .”
“That this is going to what?”
Sebastian put his head in his hands. “Nothing.”
“We have to try. We have to try our best. Okay?”
No response.
“Okay?”
“Whatever,” he said finally, in a dull voice.
There was a stirring from above and two arms appeared over the sides of the top hammock and started swaying back and forth, in time with a tremendous yawn. After a few moments of silence a face peeked over the side.
It was Brandon.
It felt like the vastness of space had entered the room and a cold emptiness was being drawn up with every breath. Brandon was making such a large show of waking up, stretching like a cat and wiping the sleep from his eyes, that it seemed he’d heard some, if not all, of our conversation.
“Brandon . . . don’t you have class?” Sebastian asked.
“Why, are you my mom or something?” he said. “What’s the point in being the SO if you can’t sleep in a little on the weekends? Right?”
“But don’t you have a test in—”
“Who cares? I’m making a tactical withdrawal in that class so I can consolidate my energy. That’s what Dr. Richter says smart leaders have always done and it seems to me, Aaron, that that’s advice that could be of service to you, too.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.
This appeared to amuse him. He jumped down from his hammock and sat on one of the beds catty-corner from mine. “It just seems like you’ve got your fingers in a lot of pies. Dining with Caelus. Playing sorcerer’s apprentice in the biolab. In addition to all the top-notch work you’re doing for us, of course. I’m surprised you have the time.”
“And I’m surprised you’ve been following me,” I said, feeling ill as I tried to rack my memory over exactly what we’d been talking about before and what the implications would be for Sebastian and me if Brandon had heard it.
“It’s an SO’s job to keep tabs on his wing . . . assuming of course that you’re still part of it.”
Sebastian turned to me. “You had dinner with Caelus?”
I flushed reflexively, feeling even sicker.
“Candlelit. In the captain’s quarters,” Brandon added.
“I thought it was only fair that I heard him out. What do we have if we can’t even talk to each other?” I asked, my voice getting louder. Despite the whirring of the air vents, the room was suddenly both hot and cold and, while I didn’t feel like I’d done anything wrong by meeting with Caelus, I could feel my undershirt start clinging to my chest.
“Not a lot, with people like you believing anything they hear.”
“I didn’t . . . didn’t believe everything,” I said, tongue-tied. “And we didn’t talk about much.”
“So just harmless chitchat then,” said Brandon. “Catching up on station gossip. Who’s got the highest scores. Who’s screwing who. Who’s hit the stims a little too hard. That kind of stuff, huh?”
I didn’t answer.
“The thing is, Aaron, that doesn’t sound like you at all. And it especially doesn’t sound like him.”
“But it does sound like you, Brando.” This from a Blue named Kate who’d walked in as he’d begun his diatribe.
Brandon bit his lower lip, annoyed, before standing up and walking over to the window. “So should I be fearing for my job, then?” he asked.
“No, but I don’t think that’s going to stop you,” I said. “You’re just that kind of guy.”
Brandon shook his head, scoffing.
“Come on, Brandon. You’re smart, right? Obviously he made an overture, that’s his game. But I told him to get lost,” I said.
“And that took you an hour?” he asked.
“Takes even longer with you.”
He bit his lip again harder, his smugness fracturing. “What have I ever done to make you say something like that? Huh? I’m serious. When you got here everyone was saying it was too risky to bet everything on you guys—that we’d worked too hard to take a leap of faith on someone so ambivalent and moody. I convinced them it wasn’t faith. I convinced them that you were the real deal. Got you out of C2. Showed you the ropes. And then the funniest thing happened. They started warming up to you, saying how nice you were, but all I could think was, Why isn’t he nice to me? I’m the one who vouched for him. And I thought, Well, maybe he’ll be nice after I get Fin to get his U-dev back, but nope. And then it was, Maybe he’ll be nice after I fast-track him into our Challenge rotation even though he doesn’t have any experience, but nope. If anything, you got meaner. So what—”
“Brandon, I think you’re reading way too much into things. We’ve had disagreements, but it’s never been personal—”
“How could it not be personal? Huh? I’ve never understood that excuse. Everything’s fucking personal. You say it’s not when you don’t want to bother to explain yourself. I just don’t know what it is I did to you.”
I wanted to shout out what they’d all tried to do to me in C2 again, but caught myself. If Brandon was as perplexed about my lack of loyalty and appreciation as he still seemed to be, he probably hadn’t heard us discussing Finn and Zoellers. And given the fact that I wasn’t about to go join Caelus either, it was probably still best to keep it that way. “Nothing.”
“Then why have you been avoiding me?” asked Brandon.
“I haven’t been.” I had, of course, but I’d been avoiding everyone in C3 and C4.
“And what have you been doing in the biolab?”
“Just helping a friend,” I said, my heart rate rising.
“Your friend. Is she your girlfriend? Are you two . . . you know?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Actually, as SO, it kind of is. And seeing how you’re living under my roof in C3 instead of your initial assignment”—he paused to cough—“I’d say you should’ve disclosed this a long time ago.”
“In that case we are, every day in your hammock, actually, while you’re in class. That is, the ones you actually attend.”
I didn’t know if he’d believe me, but since many of the bunks and hammocks had sheets and blankets draped over them to give privacy, there was a fair amount of this kind of fraternization going on.
“That’s funny.”
“Is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know if you read the initial briefing I sent when you got here, but it’s Storm policy that all intimate or romantic relationships are disclosed. And there’s a fucking reason for it. Can you guess what it is?”
“Because you’re nosy,” Sebastian chimed in.
Brandon glared at him before turning back to me. I shrugged.
“Espionage, obviously. It’s happened before. It happens all the time. Someone in some other wing or block wants some info, so they put their hottest girl or guy to work sniffing it out. Huge shake-ups have happened as a result. Entire battle plans divulged. You wouldn’t believe the kind of shit people reveal after they start having sex.”
“Dude, I don’t know what your problem is,” I said, losing patience. I wanted to leave, but he was up pacing in tight circles, blocking the way to the door. “Considering it’s block to block, you’d think that’d be more of Caelus’ job to worry about.”
“And that’s exactly the problem,” said Brandon, looking me right in the eye.
“What is?”
“That he hasn’t said anything. Do you know what that means?”
“No, but I bet you’re going to tell me.”
“It means,” he said, raising a finger, “he probably has a hand in it. Maybe he didn’t put her up to it directly—he could’ve had Whistler do it; they’re friends, you know, but yeah . . .” He looked down and started nodding at the floor, looking pale and sweaty. “Yeah, yeah . . . that’s probably what it is.”
I got up
. “Do you want to know what I think it is?”
“What?”
“That you’re jealous and you’re trying to get inside my head. Trying to break us up.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he said, moving closer. “Especially given everything that’s happened around here lately. With Pierre. With Rhys. With—”
“What do they have to do with it?” asked Sebastian, still sitting on the lower bunk.
“Shut up, fatty; no one asked you,” Brandon shot back.
“Don’t tell him to shut up.”
“Or what? Are you going to beat me up? That seems like the only thing you’re good for: beating people up and fucking sluts from other blo—”
I didn’t think. I just unloaded on him. First a punch and then, when he was on the ground, a kick to the stomach so hard that I felt the air rush out of him.
“You should really get to your fucking class,” I said, kicking his fallen U-dev over to him.
“Aaron.”
Brandon was gasping after me as I made my way toward the door.
“Aaron.”
I kept walking.
“Aaron!”
I turned half way around.
“Just . . . just because someone says something . . .” I’d clearly knocked the wind out of him and he was struggling to get the words out. “. . . reasonable . . . doesn’t make it true.”
When I got to Military Psychology a few minutes later, I was surprised to find the room dark, cadets scattered in clumps around inside.
“People were saying they had some classes canceled yesterday, so maybe this is the same thing,” said a Blue from E Block, sitting on one of the desks.
“You’d think they’d have the courtesy to send us a note,” said someone else. “It’s the weekend for Christ’s sake; we could’ve actually slept in for once.”
“I can understand the professor not showing if they have tenure or something. Whatever, they’re checked out. But the freaking TA? Come on.”
“Maybe they’re having a wild sex party somewhere,” said the first Blue.
“I would so do Professor Tillman. She’s quiet and kind of creepy-looking, but I bet she’s a savage in bed.”
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