“I probably can’t. But I might be able to help you control yourself, and that’s the next best thing.”
“We don’t have a lot of time.”
Sparrow thumped herself on the chest. “I don’t. But you’re going to have a whole hell of a lot of time while the rest of us are stuck in cryo.”
“And I’m going to spend most of it sleeping.”
“Most, not all.” Sparrow flashed a quick grin. “That gives you a real opportunity, Navárez. You can practice. You can better yourself. And ain’t that what we all want? To be the best we can be?”
Kira gave her a skeptical look. “That sounds like a recruitment slogan.”
“Yeah well, maybe it is,” said Sparrow. “So sue me.” She gingerly swung her legs over the edge of the exam table and slid down to the floor.
“You need help?”
Sparrow shook her head and, with a wince, straightened her posture. “I can manage. Thanks.” She picked up a crutch next to the bed. “So have I recruited you or not?”
“I don’t think I have much of a choice, but—”
“Sure you do.”
“But yes, I’m willing to give it a shot.”
“Outstanding,” said Sparrow. “That’s what I wanted to hear!” And she swung forward on her crutch and headed out of sickbay. “This way!”
Kira shook her head, put down her cup, and followed.
At the central shaft, Sparrow slid an arm through the center of the crutch and started to climb down the ladder, careful in her movements. She grimaced with obvious discomfort. “Thank god for painkillers,” she said.
Down the shaft they went, to the bottom deck. There, Sparrow led Kira into the port cargo hold.
Kira hadn’t seen much of it before. It mirrored the layout of the starboard hold, the main difference being the racks of supplies and equipment bolted to the floor. The four Marines had taken over a section between the aisles. There, they’d set up their suits of power armor, as well as their cryo tubes, sleeping bags, and various hard-cases of weapons and Thule knew what else.
At the moment, Hawes was doing pull-ups on a bar placed between two of the racks while the other three Marines were practicing throws and disarms on a patch of clear deck. They paused and straightened up when they noticed Kira and Sparrow.
“Yo, yo,” said one of the men. He had thick, dark eyebrows and lines of blue script in some language Kira didn’t recognize tattooed up and down the muscles of his bare arms. The tattoos shifted as he moved, like long waves on water. He pointed at Sparrow. “You were the one what got perforated by the Jelly, yeah?”
“That’s right, Marine.”
Then he pointed at Kira. “And you were the one what perforated the Jelly right quick, yeah?”
Kira dipped her head. “Yeah.”
For a moment she wasn’t sure how the man was going to react. Then he broke into a big smile. His teeth glittered with implanted nanowires. “Well done. Most excellent!” He gave them both a big thumbs-up.
One of the other Marines approached them. He was shorter, with huge shoulders and hands nearly as big as Hwa-jung’s. Looking at Kira, he said, “That means you’re the reason we’re off on this crazy-ass trip.”
She lifted her chin. “Afraid so.”
“Hey, not complaining. If it gets us the jump on the Jellies, I’m all for it. You convinced old man Akawe, so you’re good by me.” He held out one of his paw-like hands. “Corporal Nishu.”
Kira shook. His grip felt like it could crush rocks. “Kira Navárez.”
The corporal jerked his chin toward the tattooed Marine. “This ugly lug is Private Tatupoa. That one over there is Sanchez”—he pointed at a thin-faced Marine with mournful eyes—“and of course you met the lieutenant.”
“Yes I did.” Kira shook with Tatupoa and Sanchez, and said, “Pleased to meet you. Glad you’re on board.” She wasn’t sure if she was, but it was the right thing to say.
Sanchez said, “Any idea what to expect when we arrive at this system, ma’am?”
“The Staff of Blue, I hope,” said Kira. “Sorry I can’t tell you any more. That’s all I know myself.”
Then Hawes came over. “Alright, that’s enough, everyone. Let the ladies be. I’m sure they’re busy.”
Nishu and Tatupoa gave them salutes and went back to grappling while Sanchez watched from the side.
Sparrow started past, and then she paused and looked at Tatupoa. “You’re doing it wrong, by the way,” she said.
The man blinked. “Excuse me, ma’am?”
“When you tried to throw him.” She indicated the corporal.
“I think we know what we’re after, ma’am. No offense.”
“You should listen to her,” said Kira. “She was in the UMCM also.”
Next to her, Sparrow stiffened, and Kira had a sudden feeling she’d made a mistake.
Hawes stepped forward. “That so, ma’am? Where’d you serve?”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Sparrow. To the man with the tattoos, she said, “Your weight needs to be more on your front foot. Step forward like you mean it and pivot, hard. You’ll feel the difference immediately.”
Then Sparrow continued on her way, leaving the four Marines looking after her with a combination of bemusement and speculation.
“Sorry about that,” said Kira once they were out of sight.
Sparrow grunted. “As I said, doesn’t matter.” The tip of her crutch caught on the side of a shelving unit, and she yanked it free. “Over here.”
Buried at the back of the hold, past the crates of rations and pallets of equipment, Kira saw three things: a treadmill (rigged up for use in zero-g), an exercise machine (all cables and pulleys and angled grips) of the sort she’d used on the Fidanza, and to her surprise, a full set of free weights (dumbbells and barbells and anchored piles of weighted disks—giant poker chips colored red, green, blue, and yellow). When every kilo cost you in propellant, every kilo became precious. The gym was a minor extravagance of a sort Kira hadn’t expected to find on the Wallfish.
“Yours?” she asked, gesturing at the weights.
“Yuh-huh,” said Sparrow. “And Hwa-jung’s. Takes a lot to keep her fit in one g.” With a huff, she lowered herself onto the bench and stretched her left leg out in front. She pressed a hand against her side, over the bandages. “You know the worst part about being injured?”
“Not being able to work out?”
“Bingo.” Sparrow gestured at her body. “This doesn’t happen by accident, you know.”
There was nowhere else to sit, so Kira squatted next to the bench. “Really? Didn’t you get gene-hacked like those guys?” She motioned back toward the Marines. “I read somewhere that with the tweaks you get in the UMC, you can sit around eating whatever you want and still be in shape.”
“It’s not quite that easy,” said Sparrow. “You still have to do cardio if you don’t want to get gassed. And you still have to work hard if you want to build top-end strength. Gene-hacks help, but they sure as fuck ain’t magic. As for those apes … there are degrees. Not everyone gets the same mods. Our guests are what are called R-Sevens. Means they got the full set of augments. You gotta volunteer for ’em, though, as it ain’t healthy long term. The UMC won’t let you run like that for more than fifteen years, tops.”
“Huh. I didn’t know,” said Kira. She looked back at the weights. “So why are we here? What’s the plan?”
Sparrow scratched the side of her bladelike jaw. “Haven’t you figured it out? You’re going to lift weights.”
“I’m what?”
The short-haired woman chuckled. “Here’s the deal, Navárez. I don’t know you particularly well. But I do know that every time you screw up with the xeno, it seems to be when you’re stressed. Fear. Anger. Frustration. That sort of thing. Am I wrong?”
“No.”
“Right. So the name of the game is discomfort. We’re going to impose some carefully calibrated stress, and we’re going to see what that doe
s to you and the Soft Blade. Okay?”
“… Okay,” said Kira, cautious.
Sparrow pointed at the exercise machine. “We’ll start simple-like, since that’s all I can count on from you.”
Kira wanted to argue … but the woman had a point. So Kira swallowed her pride and sat. One by one, Sparrow talked her through a series of lifts, testing her strength and the strength of the Soft Blade. First on the machine, and then with the free weights.
The results, Kira thought, were impressive. With the Soft Blade’s help, she was able to move nearly as much as a heavy exoskeleton. Her relative lack of mass was the greatest limiting factor; the slightest wobble of the weight threatened to unbalance her.
Sparrow didn’t seem much pleased. As Kira struggled to squat a bar loaded with an absurd number of plates, the woman tsked and said, “Shit, you really don’t know what you’re doing.” With a growl, Kira straightened her legs and dumped the bar onto the waiting rack and then glared at Sparrow. “The suit’s protecting you from your bad form.”
“So tell me what I’m doing wrong,” said Kira.
“Sorry, buttercup. Not what we’re here for today. Put another twenty kilos on, then try to use the suit to brace against the floor. Like a tripod.”
Kira tried. She really did, but the weight was more than her knees could withstand, and she wasn’t able to split her attention between the Soft Blade and the effort of balancing a bar that was more than heavy enough to kill her. She could stiffen the material around her legs—that much she could do—but extruding any sort of support at the same time was beyond her, and the xeno didn’t seem inclined to provide additional help on its own.
Quite the opposite, in fact. Beneath her jumpsuit, Kira felt the suit shifting and forming spikes in response to the strain. She tried to still herself (and by extension, the suit) but was only partially successful.
“Yeah,” said Sparrow as Kira racked the bar. “That’s what I thought. Okay, over here, on the mat.”
Kira obeyed, and the moment she was in place, Sparrow threw a small, hard object at her. Without thinking, Kira ducked, and at the same time, the Soft Blade lashed out with a pair of tendrils and smacked away whatever the object was.
Sparrow dropped flat on the bench, a small blaster appearing in her hands. All emotion had vanished from her face, replaced by the flat-eyed intensity of someone about to fight for their life.
In that instant, Kira realized the woman’s bravado was just that—a cover—and that she was treating Kira with the same caution as a live grenade.
The skin around Sparrow’s eyes tightened with pain as she pushed herself back up. “As I said, you need practice. Discipline.” She tucked the blaster into a pocket in her slacks.
By the bulkhead, Kira saw what Sparrow had thrown at her: a white therapy ball.
“Sorry,” said Kira. “I—”
“Don’t bother, Navárez. We know what the problem is. That’s why you’re here. That’s what we have to fix.”
Kira ran a hand over the curve of her skull. “You can’t fix the instinct for self-preservation.”
“Oh yes we can!” Sparrow snapped. “That’s what separates us from the animals. We can choose to go out and march for thirty klicks with a heavy ruck on our back. We can choose to put up with all sorts of unpleasant shit because we know our tomorrow selves will thank us for it. Doesn’t matter what kind of mental gymnastics you have to pull in that mush you call a brain, but there is sure as shit a way to keep from overreacting when you get surprised. For fuck’s sake, I saw Marines out drinking their morning coffee while our point-defense was picking off an ass-load of incoming missiles, and they were the coolest, calmest motherfuckers I ever saw. Had a little poker game going with bets to see how many missiles would get through. So if they could do it, you sure as hell can, even if you are bonded with an alien parasite.”
Somewhat abashed, Kira nodded, took a breath, and with a concerted effort, smoothed the last few bumps on the Soft Blade. “You’re right.”
Sparrow jerked her head. “You’re damn right I’m right.”
Then just because, Kira asked, “What sort of drugs did Vishal pump into you?”
“Not enough, that’s for sure.… Let’s try something different.”
Then Sparrow put her on the treadmill and had her alternate between running sprints and attempting to coax the Soft Blade into performing certain tasks (mainly reshaping itself according to Sparrow’s instructions). Kira found she couldn’t concentrate past her panting and the pounding of her heart; the distractions were too great, and they kept her from imposing her will upon the Soft Blade. Moreover, sometimes the xeno would attempt to interpret what she wanted—like an overeager assistant—which usually resulted in it shooting out farther than she intended. But fortunately not with blades or spikes, and not so far as to endanger Sparrow (who nevertheless stayed as far away as the meager area would allow).
For over an hour, the ex-Marine worked Kira over, testing her as thoroughly as Vishal and Carr had. But not just testing, training. She pushed Kira to explore the limits of the Soft Blade and of her interface with the alien organism, and when she found those limits, to strain against them until they widened.
Throughout, Kira kept feeling the odd pains in her abdomen. They were starting to concern her.
One thing Sparrow had her do that Kira hated: poke herself in the arm with the tip of a knife and attempt, with each poke, to keep the Soft Blade from hardening in protection.
As Sparrow said, “If you can’t withstand a bit of discomfort for future gain, you’re pretty much a waste of space.”
So Kira kept stabbing her arm, biting her lip the whole while. It wasn’t easy. The Soft Blade insisted upon squirming out of her mental grasp and stopping or diverting the descending blade. “Stop that,” she finally muttered, fed up. She stabbed again, only not at her arm, but at the Soft Blade, wishing she could cause it the same pain it had caused her.
“Hey! Watch it!” Sparrow said.
Kira looked to see a spray of jagged thorns extending half a meter from her arm. “Ah! Shit!” she exclaimed, retracting the thorns fast as possible.
Her expression grim, Sparrow scooted the bench back another few centimeters. “Not good, Navárez. Try again.”
And Kira did. And it hurt. And it was hard. But she didn’t give up.
2.
Kira was sore, sweaty, and hungry by the time Sparrow called a halt to the proceedings. And she wasn’t only tired in body but in mind; contending with the xeno for so long was no easy matter. Nor had it been much of a success, which bothered her more than she liked to admit.
“It was a start,” said Sparrow.
“You didn’t have to push quite so hard,” Kira said, wiping her face. “You could have gotten hurt.”
“Someone already did get hurt,” said Sparrow in a cutting tone. “I’m just trying to keep it from happening again. Seems to me we pushed just hard enough.”
Kira glared at her. “You must have been real popular with your squad in the Marines.”
“Let me tell you what it was like. This one time in training, there was this dumbfuck from Stewart’s World. Berk was his name. We were doing a stint on Earth—you ever visit Earth?”
“No.”
Sparrow half shrugged. “It’s a crazy place. Beautiful, but there’s living things wanting to kill you everywhere you go, just like Eidolon. Anyway, we were doing a manual-fire drill. That means no implants or overlays to help. Berk was having a rough go of it, and then he finally gets in the groove and starts hitting his targets. Bam, his gun jams.
“He tried to clear the blockage, but nothing doing. Thing is, Berk had a temper like an overheated kettle. He’s swearing and kicking, and he gets so worked up, he throws his gun into the dirt.”
“Even I know better than that,” said Kira.
“Exactly. Our range master and three drill sergeants descend on Berk like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. They chew him a new one, and then they
have him pick up his rifle and march across the camp. Now, out by the back of the dispensary there was a hornet’s nest. Ever been stung by a hornet?”
Kira shook her head. She had lots of experience with bees on Weyland, but no hornets. They hadn’t been cleared by the colony terraforming board.
A faint smile curled Sparrow’s lips. “They’re little bullets of hate and fury. Hurt like a sumbitch too. So Berk is ordered to stand underneath the hornet nest and poke it with his rifle. And then, while the hornets do their best to sting him to death, he had to clear the jam in his gun, strip it, give it a good field cleaning, and put it back together. And the whole time, one of the sergeants is standing nearby, covered head to toe in an exo, shouting at him, ‘Are you angry now?’”
“That seems … rather extreme.”
“Better a bit of discomfort in training than a Marine who can’t keep it together when bullets start flying.”
“Did it work?” Kira asked.
Sparrow got to her feet. “Sure did. Berk ended up being one of the finest—”
Footsteps sounded, and then Tatupoa poked his square-shaped head around the corner of one of the racks. “Everything alright with you? Got concerned what with all the noises over here.”
“We’re fine, thank you,” said Sparrow.
Kira dabbed the last traces of sweat from her forehead and stood. “Just exercising.” Her stomach knotted again, and she winced.
The Marine stared at her, skeptical. “If you say so, ma’am.”
3.
Kira and Sparrow were quiet as they returned to the ship’s central shaft. There, Sparrow rested for a moment on her crutch. “Same time again tomorrow,” she said.
Kira opened her mouth and then clamped it shut. They would be jumping to FTL not long afterward. She could survive one more session with Sparrow, however difficult.
“Fine,” she said, “but maybe play it a bit safer.”
Sparrow pulled a stick of gum from her breast pocket, unwrapped it, and popped it in her mouth. “No deal. Terms are the same. You stab me; I shoot you. It’s a nice, simple arrangement, wouldn’t you agree?”
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars Page 37