As promised, Sparrow was in the small gym hidden within the racks of equipment. She was chewing gum while doing painful-looking crunches on a mat. “Rehab,” she said in response to Kira’s querying look.
After finishing her set, Sparrow rolled onto her knees. “So?” she said. “Three months. Were you able to keep up with your training?”
“Yes.”
“And? How’d it go?”
Kira knelt as well. “Good, I think. It was hard to tell at times, but I tried my damnedest. I really did.”
A crooked little smile cut Sparrow’s face. “Show me.”
So Kira did. She pressed and pulled and ran and otherwise performed all the exercises Sparrow asked of her … while also shaping and reshaping the Soft Blade the whole time. To Kira’s satisfaction, she did well. Not perfect. But very close. She never lost control of the xeno to the point where it stabbed or lashed out; at the most, it formed a few studs or ripples in response to the stresses imposed on her body. And she was able to form intricate shapes and patterns with its fibers. It felt as if the organism was working with her, not against her, which was a welcome change.
Sparrow watched with focused intensity. She gave no praise and showed no sign of approval, and when Kira continued to meet her demands, she merely asked for more. More weight. More complexity with the Soft Blade. More time under tension. More.
At last, Kira was ready to call it quits. She felt that she had done quite enough to demonstrate her new skills. But Sparrow had other ideas.
The woman hopped down from the bench where she was sitting and strode over to where Kira was standing by the weight rack, panting and sweating. She stopped only centimeters away: too close for comfort.
Kira fought the urge to step back.
“Make the most detailed pattern that you can,” said Sparrow.
Kira was tempted to argue. She resisted, though, and—after thinking—willed the Soft Blade to imitate the fractal it had shown her on more than one occasion. The surface of the suit rippled and deformed into an almost microscopically detailed design. Holding it in place wasn’t easy, but then, that was the point.
Kira sucked in her breath. “Okay. What else do—”
Sparrow slapped her cheek. Hard.
Shocked, Kira blinked, tears forming in her left eye, the side Sparrow had hit. “What the—”
Sparrow slapped her again, a bright, icy shock that sent stars shooting across Kira’s vision. She felt the mask start to crawl across her face and the Soft Blade start to spike out, and with a mighty effort, she held it in place. It felt as if she were holding a high-tension wire with a metric ton of weight at the other end, pulling her forward, threatening to snap.
She set her jaw and glared at Sparrow, now knowing what the woman was up to.
Sparrow grinned—an evil little grin that did nothing but piss off Kira even more. It was the sadistic superiority of the expression that really got to her.
Sparrow slapped her a third time.
Kira saw the blow coming. She could have ducked or flinched or protected herself with the Soft Blade. She wanted to. She also could have struck back with the suit. The xeno was eager to fight, eager to stop the threat.
A moment’s lapse, and Sparrow would have been lying on the floor, blood oozing from a half-dozen different wounds. Kira could see it in her mind.
She took another breath and then forced herself to smile. Not an angry smile. Not an evil smile. A flat, calm smile that said, You can’t break me. She meant it, too. She and the Soft Blade were working together, and Kira felt a solid sense of control, not only over the xeno, but herself.
Sparrow grunted and stepped back. The tension in her shoulders slacked. “Not bad, Navárez.… Not bad.”
Kira allowed the pattern to melt into the surface of the Soft Blade. “That was really fucking risky.”
A quick laugh from Sparrow. “It worked, didn’t it.” She returned to the bench and sat.
“And if it hadn’t?” In the back of her mind, Kira couldn’t help but feel a sense of triumph. She really had made progress on the way to Bughunt. All those practice sessions alone in the dark had been worth it.…
Sparrow clipped a bar attachment to the weight machine. “You’re going dirtside tomorrow to poke around an alien city, looking for some scary-ass alien superweapon. Shit could go sideways real fast, and you know it. If you couldn’t handle a little something like this”—she shrugged—“you shouldn’t leave the Wallfish. Besides, I had confidence in you.”
“You’re crazy, you know that?” But Kira smiled as she said it.
“Nothing new there.” Sparrow started to do pulldowns on the weight machine, using fairly light weight. She did a set of ten and then stopped and hunched over, eyes screwed shut.
“How’s your recovering going?” Kira asked.
Sparrow made a disgusted face. “Well enough. The doc kept me at a slightly higher metabolic rate than normal in cryo, which helped with the healing, but it’s still going to be another few weeks before I’m rated to get back in an exo. And that really burns me.”
“Why?” said Kira.
“Because,” said Sparrow, massaging her side, where she’d been injured, “I can’t fight like this.”
“You shouldn’t have to. Besides, we’ve got the UMC with us.”
Sparrow snorted. “You grow up on a colony or what?”
“Yeah. What’s that got to do with it?”
“Then you ought to know you can’t off-load responsibility on someone else. You have to be able to take care of yourself when shit goes down.”
Kira thought about that for a moment as she put away the weights she’d been holding. “Sometimes we can’t, and that’s when we have to rely on other people. That’s how societies work.”
Sparrow sucked her lips against her teeth in an unpleasant little smile. “Maybe. Doesn’t mean I have to like being disabled.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
5.
As they left the hold, they passed by the Marines, and Kira greeted them as she had on the way in. The men started to reply, but then they saw Sparrow and their expressions grew cold.
Tatupoa jerked his chin toward her. His tattoos gleamed like sapphire wires amid the shadows cast by the storage racks. “Yeah, we looked you up. Just keep walking, gas-head. We don’t need your like around here.”
“Private!” barked Hawes. “That’s enough!” But he avoided looking at Sparrow, same as the others.
“Yessir.”
Sparrow kept walking and didn’t react, as if she hadn’t heard. Confused, Kira kept pace with her. Once out in the hall, she said, “What the hell was that about?”
To her surprise, Sparrow leaned with one hand against the wall. The shorter woman looked as if she were going to be sick. Somehow Kira doubted it had anything to do with cryo.
“Hey, are you okay?” said Kira.
Sparrow shivered. “Oh yeah. Blasting on full jets.” She ground the heel of her free hand against the corners of her eyes.
Not knowing what else to do, Kira said, “How did they figure out who you are?”
“Service records. Every ship in the fleet carries a full set of ’em, aside from the black bag, spec-ops grunts. Bet they ran my picture through the files. Wouldn’t be hard.” Sparrow sniffed and pushed herself off the wall. “You tell anyone about this and I’ll kill you.”
“The Jellies might get to me before then.… What’s gas-head mean? Nothing good, I guess.”
A bitter smile twisted Sparrow’s mouth. “Gas-head is what you call someone you think deserves to be spaced. The blood boils off, turns to gas. Get it?”
Kira eyed her, trying to read between the lines. “So why you?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Sparrow muttered, straightening up. She started to walk away, but Kira stepped in front of her.
“I think it does,” Kira said.
Sparrow stared her straight in the eyes, jaw muscles working. “Get out of my way, Navárez.”
�
�Not until you tell me, and there’s no way you can force me to move.”
“Fine, then I’ll just sit here.” And Sparrow dropped into a cross-legged position.
Kira crouched down beside her. “If you can’t work with the Marines, I need to know why.”
“You ain’t the captain.”
“No, but we’re all putting our lives on the line here.… What is it, Sparrow? It can’t be that bad.”
The woman snorted. “You have a seriously faulty imagination if that’s what you think. Fine. Screw it. You want the truth? I got kicked out of the UMCM for cowardice before the enemy. Spent seven months in lockup as a result. There, you happy?”
“I don’t believe you,” said Kira.
“The specific charges were abandonment of my post, cowardice in the face of the enemy, and striking a commanding officer.” Sparrow crossed her arms, defiant. “That’s why gas-head. No Marine wants to serve with a coward.”
“You’re not a coward,” said Kira, earnest. “I’ve seen you in combat. Hell, you went right after that little girl like it was nothing.”
Sparrow shook her head. “That was different.”
“Bullshit.… Why do I think the whole ‘striking a commanding officer’ is the real cause of this?”
With a sigh, Sparrow let her head fall back against the wall. The impact of skull with plating produced a thud that echoed up and down the hall. “Because you think too damn much, that’s why. His name was Lieutenant Eisner, and he was a real asshole. I got transferred to his unit during the middle of deployment. This was back during the border war with Shin-Zar, see. Eisner was a shit officer. He kept getting his unit into trouble in the field, and for whatever reason, he seemed to have it out for me personally. Kept riding me no matter what I did.” She shrugged. “After one of our ops went tits up, I’d had enough. Eisner was using some bullshit excuse to chew out my gunner, and I went over and told him off. Lost my temper and ended up popping him in the face. Gave him a real doozy of a shiner. Thing is, I’d been posted to guard duty and I’d left my watch, so Eisner had me brought up on cowardice before the enemy.”
Sparrow shrugged again. “Seven years of service down the drain, just like that. Only stuff I got to keep were my augments.” And she made a muscle with her arm before dropping it.
“Shit,” said Kira. “Couldn’t you fight the charges?”
“Nah. It happened out in the field during combat operations. The League wasn’t going to ship us back for an investigation. The footage showed me leaving my post and hitting Eisner. That was all that mattered.”
“So why don’t you go in there and explain?” said Kira, motioning toward the hold.
“Wouldn’t do any good,” said Sparrow. She stood. “Why should they believe me? Far as they’re concerned, I’m hardly better than a deserter.” She slapped Kira on the shoulder. “Doesn’t matter anyway. We don’t need to like each other in order to do our jobs.… Now, are you going to get out of my way or not?”
Kira moved aside, and Sparrow limped past, leaving her alone in the corridor.
After thinking for a long minute, Kira climbed up the center of the ship and made her way to Control. Falconi was there, as she expected, and Nielsen too—looking far better than she had the previous day.
She and the first officer exchanged companionable nods, and then Kira went over to the captain and said, “Any news?”
“Not at the moment.”
“Good.… I have a favor to ask.”
He looked at her, wary. “Is that so?”
“Will you come with me to the planet?”
Falconi’s eyebrows rose fractionally. “Why?” Across the room, Nielsen paused reading something on a display to listen.
“Because,” said Kira, “I don’t want to be down there all alone with the UMC.”
“You don’t trust them?” said Nielsen.
Kira hesitated a second. “I trust you more.”
Falconi let her hang for a few seconds, and then he said, “Well, today’s your lucky day. I already arranged things with Akawe.”
“You’re going?” said Kira, not quite believing.
“Not just me. Trig, Nielsen, and the Entropists too.”
The first officer sniffed. “Just what I wanted to do on a Sunday afternoon.”
Falconi grinned at Kira. “There’s no way I’m coming this far and not getting out to see the sights.”
The knowledge eased Kira’s concern somewhat. “So Sparrow, Hwa-jung, and Vishal are going to stay on board?”
“Exactly. The UMC are bringing their own doc. Sparrow still isn’t cleared for duty, and Hwa-jung doesn’t fit in our exos. Besides, I want Hwa-jung on the ship in case anything goes wrong.”
That made sense. Kira said, “Who’s taking the exos then?”
Falconi jerked his head toward Nielsen. “Her and Trig.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Nielsen. “I’m perfectly capable of—”
The captain didn’t give her the opportunity to finish. “Yes, you are, but I’d rather have my crew in armor for this trip. Besides, I’ve never cared for exos. Too restrictive. Give me a plain old skinsuit any day of the week.”
6.
The rest of the day passed in a mood of quiet intensity. The crew bustled around, preparing for the descent to the planet, while Kira reviewed the procedures for preventing contamination while in an unknown (and potentially life-bearing) alien environment. She knew them by heart, but it was always good to read them again before the start of an expedition.
Ideally they would have spent months, if not years, studying the planet’s biosphere from a distance before daring to put an actual human on the surface, but given the circumstances, that was a luxury they couldn’t afford. Still, Kira wanted to reduce the chances of contamination—in either direction—as much as possible. The planet was an incredible source of information; it would be a crime to infect it with a set of human microbes. Unfortunately, even the most thorough decontamination couldn’t remove every foreign body from the surface of their equipment, but they’d do the best they could.
After some thought, she drew up a list of recommendations: best practices for protecting the location and themselves, based off her professional experience. She sent the list to both Falconi and Akawe.
He continued to grumble, but after some more discussion, he agreed to implement her guidelines during the landing mission.
Kira returned to examining the images Gregorovich and Horzcha Ubuto were collecting of planet e, as well as the rest of the system. She didn’t learn much, but she kept at it, hoping to spot something else that might help them find the Staff of Blue.
Dinner, when it came, was a friendlier, more energetic affair than the previous one. Nielsen was there, and though everyone was somewhat on edge about the upcoming trip, a sense of optimism pervaded the air. It felt as if they—and humans in general—were finally going to be able to make significant progress against the Jellies.
Most of the conversations revolved around what they might or might not expect to run into on the planet, as well as the best pieces of equipment to take. Room on the UMC shuttle would be limited, so they had to choose wisely.
Sparrow, as Kira expected, was disgruntled at being left behind o
n the Wallfish (Hwa-jung didn’t seem to mind either way). To which Falconi said, “When I don’t have to worry about you ripping your stomach back open, then you can climb into an exo, and not a moment sooner.”
Sparrow conceded the point, but Kira could tell she was still unhappy. To distract her, Kira said, “So I’m curious; is Sparrow your first or last name? You’ve never said.”
“I haven’t?” Sparrow took a sip of wine. “Imagine that.”
“Her name is just listed as Sparrow on her ID,” said Falconi, leaning toward Kira.
“Really?” said Kira. “You only have one name?”
A twinkle appeared in Sparrow’s eyes. “Only one that I answer to.”
I bet the Marines could tell me for sure. But Kira wasn’t about to ask them. “What about you, then?” she said, looking at Trig.
The kid groaned and buried his head in his hands. “Aww, man. Did you have to ask?”
“What?” Around the room, the rest of the crew grinned.
Vishal plopped his cup down on the table and pointed a finger at Trig. “Our young companion here has a most interesting name, yes he does.”
“Trig’s just a nickname,” said Sparrow. “His real name is—”
“Nooo,” the kid said, his cheeks reddening. “My aunt had a weird sense of humor, okay?”
To Kira, Vishal said, “She must have; she named the poor child Epiphany Jones.” And everyone but Trig laughed.
“That’s a … unique name,” Kira said.
Falconi said, “It gets better. Tell her how we found Trig.”
The kid shook his head as the rest of the crew tried to talk at once. “Come on! Not that story.”
“Oh yes,” said Sparrow, grinning.
“Why don’t you tell me yourself?” said Kira. The kid wrinkled his nose.
“He was a dancer,” said Hwa-jung, and nodded as if she’d shared a great secret.
Kira gave Trig an appraising look. “A dancer, huh?”
“On Undset Station, around Cygni B,” Vishal added. “He was making a living performing in a bar for the miners.”
“It wasn’t like that!” Trig protested. The others tried to break in, and he raised his voice to be heard over the clamor. “Not really, honest! My friend worked at the place, and he was trying to find a way to attract business. So I came up with the idea. We put some Tesla coils on stage and used them to play music. Then I rigged up a skinsuit to work as a Faraday cage, and I stood between the coils and caught the lightning bolts with my hands, arms, that sort of thing. It was awesome.”
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars Page 43