The Requiem of Steel

by David Adams

  “No.” She tried not to think of James and the Tehran, dead in space. She tried not to think of what might happen to Velsharn. She tried really, really hard. “I won’t satisfy your curiosity. Nothing we say here matters, if what you told me is true. If the fleet is gone… then we have nothing. You might as well shoot me now and save us all the bother.”

  Kest considered for a moment. [“Very well. In the morning, you will be executed.”] He glanced over her shoulder, to the guards behind her. [“Take her away.”]

  She was led back to the elevator and didn’t say a word, watching the doors closing and imagining they were crushing Kest’s stupid little head.

  Back in her room, Liao found a small metal box waiting for her. Cautiously, she opened it. Inside, she found the contents of her cell in Zar’krun. Inks. Glues. Pens. Her… notes. The so-called wall of crazy.

  With careful deliberation, Liao put the ripped-up pieces of parchment back on the wall. She placed the strips for Decker-Sheng, and those who had escaped, back into the box. Freedom box. The one representing Kest, she set to one side, the same area as the Toralii guards. Kest was the enemy.

  She stared at the mismatched patchwork of parchment stuck to the walls, trying to draw some kind of conclusion from it. The puzzle pieces were there. They were all lined up… everything. Everything she needed to solve the riddle and escape was there. She just had to—

  The cell door opened with a faint hiss, and two guards escorted O’Hill inside. He had a tray of dozens of round blue cakes. “Permission to enter?”

  No was the right answer—she needed to think—but Liao waved him in anyway. Maybe he could help.

  “I got you some left over blue cake things, Captain,” he said, crumbs still staining the corners of his mouth. “They’re delicious. You should try some if you haven’t already.”

  Food was her last consideration right then. “O’Hill…”

  “Wait, they bought the wall of crazy you were building in your cell?” O’Hill put the tray down on her bed and looked at it with her, obviously trying to be polite. “Wow. Very… kind of them. I know you were attached to that.”

  “Yeah,” Liao said, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “They’re great. I think it’s Kest playing some kind of game.”

  O’Hill squinted at her. “Ma’am, I was kind of hoping it would stay in Zar’krun. It’s not healthy for you to be obsessing over something you can’t change. And Kest? Games? No way. He’s a teddy bear.”

  She felt as though she might gag. “Kest works for Toralii intelligence. He was manipulating us. Good cop, bad cop. Oldest trick in the book, and we fucking fell for it.”

  He looked like a fish that had been whacked on the head. If she hadn’t seen what she’d seen, that would have been her face, too. Maybe she did look that way, all those levels away, in that room… watching the fleet, watching those aliens die in a flash of light.

  “Y-you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “He dragged you away from dinner to tell you that?” O’Hill turned to face her, now, realisation dawning. “What did he want?”

  She put her fingers to her temple. “He… showed me the fleet.”

  Hope flickered over his face, then she silenced it with a glare.

  “No,” Liao said. “They’re walking into an ambush. The Toralii have nearly fifty ships rallied against the Washington, the Madrid, and the Telvan. They were almost an hour away from a jump point… there’s no way they can win.”

  “Well,” O’Hill said, his tone surprisingly light. He picked up one of the blue cakes and popped it into his mouth. “If it’s true, Captain, we’re fucked. War sucks.”

  She didn’t know quite what to say. “Yup.”

  O’Hill pointed to her prosthetic hand, munching on the blue cake. “But you’d know all about that. War costs an arm and a leg, apparently.”

  Liao was almost offended—almost—but she managed a bit of a smile. It was funny. “I guess.”

  “I’d love for that to happen to me,” O’Hill said. “Think about all the jokes I could make. I shoot a guy? That bitch just got handicapped.”

  She chuckled politely. “I… guess. I never thought being maimed would be a useful vehicle for jokes.”

  “Every bad thing is a useful vehicle for jokes, Captain. That’s how I deal with it.” O’Hill raised an eyebrow. “How are you dealing with this?”

  What could she say? O’Hill was right; if the fleet was really destroyed, they were more fucked than ever. Liao wanted to mention Kest’s promise of execution, but she kept it to herself. “I’m operating on the assumption that the recording is a fake.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Because if it’s real, our whole species is dead, and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it, so I don’t lose anything by hoping.”

  O’Hill chewed thoughtfully. “Righteo, Captain. Guess you’re right.”

  It wasn’t fair. Life generally wasn’t, as a rule, but their situation was different. Most people had to deal with different kinds of unfairness—losing the car keys while running late, crashing a car that had recently been cleaned. But this? Their whole species, dead or soon to be, because of some twisted vendetta the Toralii had against her?

  “About the religious thing,” Liao asked, somewhat cautiously. “When things got really dire… normally, I’d ask Kamal to tell me a story from the Koran.”

  “Yeah,” O’Hill said, an unmistakable hint of scepticism in his voice. “I’m sure that helped you, Captain.”

  It usually had. She found no value in faith, but the stories of hope and overcoming adversity appealed to her, especially in her darker days. “Actually, it did. I was kind of hoping you knew some Koranic stories.”

  “All I know is the good Bible, sorry.”

  Liao slid her prosthetic fingers down her arm. The metal of her fingertips was cold. That was good—it helped her focus. “Sounds like you don’t like Muslims.”

  “Curiously enough, though, the people I see who call Islam the ‘religion of peace’ are white Western liberals, not the people leaving Islam.”

  She snorted a little at that, but even as she did, she had to acknowledge the truth. Islam was heavily suppressed in China. “Do I look like a white Western liberal to you?”

  “Good point.” O’Hill picked up another blue cake and took a bite. “I went to Syria, you know. Pretty much some of the most beautiful countryside in the world, there, being fought over by savages chanting, ‘Allah Akbar.’ God is Great. If their religion is so fucking great, why does he allow such horrible things to happen to his most devout followers on a daily basis?”

  “Strange sentiment coming from you. I thought Christians and Muslims worshipped the same God.”

  “My vision of God is big enough that I don’t need to fight his battles for him, Captain.” O’Hill twisted on her bed, turning towards her. “The story of Abraham and his sons is told in the Book of Genesis and the Koran, but with certain differences, with Muslims emphasising Ishmael as the older son of Abraham, with Christians and Jews emphasising Isaac as the favourite son of Abraham. So really, the whole Christianity-Islam split is about a two-thousand-year-old popularity contest.

  “You know why it’s the Tehran, a ship from Iran, not a representative of the entire Islamic movement? Because they all hate each other. Arabs hate each other. More than each other, they hate the Jews. Then the Persians, then sub-Saharan Africans, then Asians, then Europeans… if they fought Israel as hard as they fought each other, it would no longer exist. They couldn’t stop fighting over what to call the ship, who would be in command… only Iran got off their arses fast enough and managed to finish it in time to launch. The Muslim nations will never unite. Sectarian, religious, nationalistic, ethnic, tribal, or clan level hate… take your pick. You drill it down, they will always have something to cut each other’s throats over.”

  She digested that. “Sounds like the Toralii. The Alliance and the Telvan don’t get along. Yet they work to
gether when there’s a common enemy… only to go back to shooting at each other when we go away.”

  “Maybe we should go away, wall ourselves off like the nations of Earth. Partition ourselves up… make divides. Separate. Isolate.”

  Liao was quiet for a moment. “You seem to know a lot about this.”

  “Yeah. My dad was a vet. US Army, just like me. Went to Iraq. Afghanistan. Went all over the place. I loved watching ISIS videos as a kid, learning about them, studying them, because I knew one day I’d have to fight them. Them or someone just like them.” He shook his head as though trying to clear away a painful memory, and his voice got softer. “You know… I once saw this jihad video released by Islamic State. I must have seen a hundred of them, but this one stuck in my head. I watched the same thing, over and over and over, and what I saw was both beautiful and terrible. The Syrian sky at twilight, endless tracers like streams of falling stars drifting overhead, men blown into hunks of meat by automatic weapons fire, their bodies twisted in death. The video showed their faces. Showed the militants pouring petrol over them and burning them, obstinately to keep the smell down. Showed three guys holding down some terrified kid—couldn’t have been more than fourteen—so a forth one could slit his throat, hacking through it with a blunt knife.

  “The camera showed the kid kicking and gurgling as he died. Then the camera panned around, and it caught one of the dead—a soldier from whatever other rebel group they were fighting. He had been hit with an RPG, and the top half of him was almost gone; on the bottom part, his pants had been blown almost off his body, revealing his butt crack. The filmmakers blurred it in post-production. The mangled, bloody top half of him? That was fine; let the world see that. The kid with his throat cut? We saw that in crisp, high-definition, digitally stabilised and colour-adjusted 1080p… with a slow-mo replay of the first cut at the end, just in case we missed it. But some guy’s bare arse? Gotta censor that.”

  Silence. Liao simmered. Kamal was her friend, and his religion was important to him. He wasn’t a jihadi. They had discussed it, and he abhorred the process. O’Hill’s assessment wasn’t fair.

  It wasn’t fair—that seemed to be her mantra lately.

  “But,” O’Hill said, his voice quiet, “you know what? Despite all that, I can’t bring myself to hate Islam.”

  “Sounds like you do. A little bit.”

  “Nope.”

  “How do you justify that belief after… all that?”

  O’Hill pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m critical of it. I’m critical of everything—even Christianity. Even me. We’re not perfect. Jesus wasn’t perfect. Hell, I’m a patriot, and even America’s not perfect; Christopher Columbus was a rapist, a slaver, and an all-around piece of shit, and people build statues of him. It’s easy for me to say, ‘You know, hey, Mohammad was fifty-four when he got married to a girl named Aisha, who was nine. Nine years old! But…” He shrugged, half-heartedly. “Captain, that’s just how things were done at the time. People raped. People enslaved. It’s not about our past—it’s about our future.”

  “I’m sure Kamal would agree with you.”

  O’Hill closed his eyes and took a slow, easy breath. “I suppose I am not perfect, either. If compassion would damn me, then that is a burden I am willing to bear.” He was silent for a moment, as though he wanted to ask a deep, personal question but couldn’t find the right way to phrase it without offending her. As though the barest shreds of military protocol were still in effect. “Captain, may I ask… have you cried yet? For Cheung? You two were close, yes?”

  A little more than workmates, that was true. Cheung had been there since the beginning for her and had stood by her during Sheng’s mutiny. “No, I haven’t.”

  “You should.”

  That was not a good idea. She wanted to but couldn’t. “I’m a leader. I have to promote strength to those people here. I’m their commanding officer.”

  “You’re also a human being. Do it in private. Away from prying eyes. The Toralii are here to study us; what image do we paint? Of unrepentant savages, out of touch with our emotions? No. You wanted a Koran story? How about a lesson from the oldest story ever found, ever recorded. Humanity’s first tale: The Epic of Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh, the strong hero, cried for seven days because one of his friends died. And he was the manliest, most authoritative, most leader-y man to ever lead. Achilles cried at the death of Patroclus. David cried in the Bible, and he was a warrior king. Melissa Liao doesn’t have to pretend she doesn’t cry.”

  A small smile tugged at her lips, and despite the temptation, she maintained her composure. “You seem to know a lot about crying.”

  O’Hill shrugged. “I read a lot.”

  Reading… reading had done her a fat lot of good to get out of prison. Liao turned her attention back to the wall. She repurposed the plan to escape Zar’krun for New Evarel. It would need to be modified. Adjusted. She could come up with something. She could…

  For a brief moment, she thought all those things, then just as fast, she dismissed them. Planning to escape was pointless.

  Her legs found some kind of purpose. She walked over to the pieces of parchment on the wall, snatched up one, and threw it down. Kest. Then another. O’Hill. She tore pieces off with both hands, gritting her teeth, scraping them off with her fingers, and throwing them over her shoulder.

  “Oh no,” O’Hill said. “Not the wall of crazy. Anything but that.”

  She waited for the epiphany to come. For the answer to find her. Finally, the wall was clear, and she had learnt nothing. “Sorry,” she said, her voice quiet. “I just…”

  “Hey, it’s okay, Captain. Let’s… talk about something else. You okay?”

  “Great.” A distraction was actually what she needed. Taking a breath, Liao steadied herself. “Yeah. So… I don’t really understand a lot about American politics. You’re a space Republican. Tell me about that.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” O’Hill spoke with the forced-calm of someone who was trying not to upset someone. “Being a Republican is usually being pro-life, pro-small government, all that nice stuff.”

  “Pro-life. Pro-choice.” Liao shook her head. “Everyone’s pro something.”

  “Ain’t that right, Captain,” O’Hill said. “Oldest political trick in the book. To be anti-something is to be defined by that other thing. If you’re pro-something, you get control of the narrative, and those who disagree with you have to operate within the chalk lines you draw.”

  Liao absently kicked one of the stray pieces of parchment. “I’m not pro-life or pro-choice. Not in that way. My rule is simple: my body, my choice. A woman wants an abortion, she can have one. If not, that’s fine, too.”

  “Maybe to you that’s better,” O’Hill said. “I see it differently.”

  Abortion wasn’t exactly the best topic to bring up with her, but it took her mind off Kest. He wasn’t a foetus. “How so?”

  “I see the rights of the unborn as more important than a woman’s dislike of discomfort.”

  “And I see the right-wing as hypocrites of the highest order.”

  O’Hill struggled down some words that he obviously wanted to say. “Aye, ma’am.”

  After more silence, the door opened. Two guards were waiting to take her somewhere.

  No more moving. No more being ordered around. Liao’s rage flared up again. With a roar, she sprung towards them, steel fist leading the way. It hit the first guard in the face, sprawling him on the deck. The second Toralii pulled out a plasma pistol. She slapped it away; the shot discharged into the bulkhead, melting a round hole. The weapon clattered to the deck. She snatched it up and, with a quick motion, put two shots into the prone Toralii. The second one, weaponless, hit the alarm around his neck.

  Liao shot him, too, splattering purple blood over her front.

  Slowly, her anger subsided. Purple lights flashed all around her. Pacifiers would be on their way, and she couldn’t defeat them all with a pistol.

  The fight f
lowed out of her. What had she done? She put the weapon down and stepped back into her room.

  O’Hill, wide-eyed, said nothing the whole time.

  She realised the blood made the chest area of her prison garb see-through. “You’re staring,” Liao said. “Stop it. I know there aren’t many women here, but just stop it.”

  “Huh?” O’Hill shook his head firmly. “What? No. The Pacifiers will be here soon, and they won’t like this. You have blood all over you.”

  “So I have.” Liao tried to wipe down her face with her sleeve, succeeding only in smearing the blood all over everything. She gave up.

  O’Hill held up a hand. “Lemme get you a cloth or something. Before the guards shoot us both. Wouldn’t want to die messy.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Liao said, a touch more defensively than she meant to. “There’s a change in the drawers under my bed. Get it for me, and then you best get out of here. If the Pacifiers think you helped me with this…”

  “Don’t worry,” O’Hill said, pulling open a drawer with his foot and taking out a new suit, just like the old one, minus the blood. “It’s best I stay here. I won’t look. I’m not interested in you like… that.”

  It seemed insane to be discussing such a thing when armed guards were coming to take her away, but she simply didn’t care. “Not interested?”

  “Not even a little, ma’am.” O’Hill tossed her the suit. “Here.”

  “You like boys?”

  “Nope. Neither.” O’Hill casually flopped over onto her bed, staring up at the ceiling. “Never been into anyone, male or female. Don’t get what all the fuss is about. You put your food holes together. Gross. Sex is gross.”

  Liao changed; the process was as swift as it was efficient. Toralii clothing was engineered well. “Sometimes I envy you,” she said, but regretted the words instantly. She missed James and wanted nothing more than to not feel that pain, but she wouldn’t have given up being with him no matter how it hurt to be apart from him. “What’s that… like?”