Obsidio

by Amie Kaufman

  “Thanks, big man,” Carter says. He’s skinny, balding, shaking Karalis’s hand so hard his knuckles go white. “Have a drink tonight, eh?”

  Karalis clenches his jaw. You can see all the things he wants to say churning behind his teeth. But the BeiTech trooper watching from the doorway barks an order to move out. And so Karalis can only nod. You can see it in his eyes, though. The thanks. The goodbye. Speaking for everyone who can’t. Who doesn’t even know.

  And Carter grins.

  Can you imagine that? Sacrificing yourself like that? When you look down the barrel at your ending, will you be able to smile at it the way this guy does? I can’t imagine what’s going through his head. The needs of the many, maybe? Thinking he’ll see his family soon? I dunno.

  I’ve never seen a man march to his own funeral before.

  Other workers give him birthday wishes, the resistance members among them shaking his hand a touch too hard, a few even giving him hugs. But the BT goons yell at everyone to get to work, and the miners trudge to their duties.

  Carter is a power-loader driver, and he’s pulled duty (assigned by Karalis) down in Tunnel 74-a today, one of the major tributaries leading to the newer hermium deposits. Temperatures in the mine are freezing, and his breath hangs in the air as he rides the elevator down frozen shafts to the seventy-fourth level. As he steps off, he smiles at a few more birthday wishes, takes some grim slaps on the back.

  His power loader—a large bipedal rig with pneumatically assisted arms and legs—is waiting for him at the refueling station. He checks the gauges, pops the engine bay housing and does some tinkering. Cam quality isn’t good enough to see what he’s doing, but the four BT goons guarding the station don’t think much of it. These pounders were trained for attack and seizure and weren’t ever meant to serve as occupation forces. They look like they know as much about mine equipment as I do.

  The tunnels are dark earth and black granite, lit with fluorescent strips and caked with ice. Frozen stalactites hang from the tunnel roofs, the stone occasionally creaking—damage to the colony during the initial bombardment wasn’t heavy enough to compromise the mine, but that doesn’t mean everything down here is 100 percent stable. Pushed to fill their quotas, the Kerenzan workers can’t go as carefully as they’d like. These tunnels aren’t as safe as they should be. And it doesn’t take much to make them a whole lot more unsafe.

  Carter straps himself into his loader. Marches down Tunnel 74-a with a slow, lumbering tread. Pistons hissing. Metal feet crunching on the floor. I can’t really see his expression on these cams. Can’t see if he whispers a prayer or looks frightened or maybe still grins just like he did in that locker room. As he plods past a major support structure, all I see is a quick movement of his hand over his controls. A twitch, really. Then a bright flare of light from his engine housing. An earsplitting boom a moment later as his loader blows itself apart.

  Alarms blare. The picture shakes, dust and stalactites falling from above. Whirling black smoke. An ominous creaking floods the audio track as the support structure Carter’s loader detonated beside begins to buckle.

  And then, with an awful, shattering roar, a sound like the entire world is coming apart, the tunnel collapses. Thousands of tons of stone tumbling down, cutting my feed to static and burying Marcus Carter a few kilometers beneath the surface of the frozen planet that is now his tomb.

  Like I say, some birthdays are happier than others.

  Footage opens inside the cold belly of McCaffrey Tech, Kerenza IV’s high school. The windows are piled high with snow. The walls are lined with lockers, and strung between the support pillars are banners for the school geeball teams, the Gladiators and the Renegades—the planet was so isolated the only way for the kids to play was to play each other. Once this school echoed with lessons and questions and students’ laughter. Now the only sounds are moaning winds and the slow buzzzz of an aerial sentry drone outside and the heavy tread of Private Duke Woźniak’s boots as he clomps down the hall on his way back from the head.

  The whole school has been repurposed as a barracks for the BeiTech invasion forces. The location is central, the facilities designed to house hundreds of kids. It’s just kinda odd seeing two BT goons in ATLAS rigs standing guard next to a poster for a student dance. According to the notice, the shindig was supposed to have happened in March, five weeks after the invasion.

  Most of the students didn’t make it to that one, I’m guessing.

  Private Woźniak offers a salute to the two other goons as he clomps past.

  “You winning, Duke?” one asks.

  “The Duke is always winning,” the private replies. “You boys take it easy now.”

  “I’ll take it any way I can get it on this rock,” comes the reply.

  Private Woźniak chuckles, pushes open the door to Classroom D, Applied Sciences, the former domain of one Ms. Elsa Colfer. It’s a squad doss room now, a dozen military-issue cots laid out in neat rows, pushed apart to make room for the nightly card game hosted by the fine folks of Lieutenant Christie’s 4th Platoon, Delta Company. There’s a boarded-up window on the left-hand side of the room. Almost seven months ago, Kady Grant broke through it to make her escape when the bombing began.

  Gathered around two benches that were once host to high school lab experiments are half a dozen professional killers. Woźniak is the only one still in his power armor. The rest of the BeiTech pounders are in “boots and utes”—the utility uniform of winter camo and footwear. They look smaller outside their ATLAS rigs. Male and female, different skin tones. If you squint, you could almost mistake them for human.

  Sergeant Oshiro is studying her cards, her sharp black bob brushing the edges of her lashes, cigar between her teeth. Supply situation being what it is, she’s not actually smoking it, but it’s not a game of Jacks and Knives without someone chewing a stogie. As Woźniak enters the room, she looks up and shakes her head.

  “Still wearing that ****ing suit, Duke. You nervous in the service?”

  The big man shrugs as he takes his seat. “You wanna wander around in your jammies while the insurgency is blowing up our landing zone, you be the Duke’s guest.”

  “You’re not even wearing your helmet,” Oshiro mutters. “What about your dome?”

  Woźniak pats his armored rump. “Gotta look after the valuable merchandise. They don’t make quality like this every day.”

  Oshiro nods. “It is your finest feature. But that probably speaks more to the state of your face than the quality of your ***.”

  “You should spend less time admiring Duke’s *** and more time folding that **** you’re holding.” The speaker is Private Corey Markham, a blond playboy-looking pounder with all the swagger that comes from being the shortest man in the room.

  Oshiro narrows her eyes. “You mean ‘that **** you’re holding, ma’am’?”

  Markham just smirks, takes a sip of what might be gin from a plastic cup. Oshiro stares at her cards, fingering a square coin on a gold chain around her neck.

  “You’re playing it a little too loud, Private. I ain’t buying it.” The sergeant finally declares, pushing forward a stack of chips. “Raise thirty.”

  Markham looks sidelong at Private Karpadia. The woman has dark brown skin, her long black hair tied back neatly. The stack of chips in front of her puts her around second place, and she’s giving no clues up to Markham.

  The private looks back to Oshiro, who grins around her cigar.

  “Okay, Sarge,” the private finally says. “I call.”

  Karpadia smiles like a shark, immediately pushes her stack in. “Call.”

  All eyes turn to the last player in the pot, Specialist Rhys Lindstrom. The kid’s had a lot to take in since he landed first thing this morning. Getting shipped down to a hellhole like Kerenza IV. Watching squaddies get blown apart by an IED. Rediscovering th
e love of his life at the other end of the universe, only to have her tell him she never wants to see him again. And then coming face to face with two and a half thousand corpses in an unmarked grave. From the empty cups around him, it looks like Private Lindstrom is doing exactly what I’d be doing in his place, if only I had the damn hooch.

  “Cherry,” Oshiro prompts. “It’s your bet.”

  The kid blinks at the squad around him. Woźniak watching from across the table, Markham’s prettyboy smirk, Karpadia with her bottomless dark eyes and, lastly, Oshiro.

  Are these his comrades? Or animals, like Grant said?

  Maybe something in between?

  Lindstrom blinks at the gold coin around Oshiro’s neck. Hiccups.

  “What is that thing, Oshiro?”

  The sergeant runs the coin along its chain, shrugs. “Present from my father. Got it in the Cortes campaign. Gave it to me the day I joined the academy.” Oshiro kisses the gold with a smile. “Said it’d bring me luck.”

  “Your dad was at Cortes?” Markham whistles.

  “Jesus, Markham, you haven’t heard of Masaru Oshiro?” Woźniak scoffs.

  The pounder’s eyes widen. “Holy ****, Oshiro, that was your dad?”

  “Why?” Lindstrom slurs, blinking among the pounders. “Who’s Masaruoshiro?”

  “History lesson later, Cherry,” Oshiro growls. “Your bet. While we’re still young?”

  “ ’M thinking.” The kid hunkers down over his cards, hiccups again. He blinks at the plastic cup of liquor beside him. “Wha’s this we’re drinking anywho?”

  “Ah, sweet Sadie,” Karpadia smiles. “Nothing like her in the ’verse.”

  “Sadie?” Lindstrom peers into his own cup suspiciously. “That’s a…girlsname.”

  “Dragomir from air ops cooks it up down at the LZ,” Woźniak says. “Named it after his ex-girlfriend back on Jia III.”

  Lindstrom frowns at the word “ex-girlfriend.”

  “Why’d he name it after her for?”

  “Cuz when he cheated on her, the young lady in question let her displeasure be known by kicking Drag so hard in the dangles he almost had an aneurysm.” Woźniak lifts his cup. “And three shots of this stuff has about the same effect.”

  “*****es be crazy,” says Markham, shaking his head.

  “Watch your mouth, Markham,” Oshiro warns.

  “What, you never had a fem go psycho on your ***, Oshiro?”

  “Child, please,” the sergeant scoffs. “I’ve had more crazy ex-girlfriends than you’ve had dates with your sister.”

  Markham smirks. “I’m very fond of my sister, I’ll have you know.”

  “You see this?” Oshiro unbuttons the collar on her fatigues, pulls down the tank underneath to expose a fifteen-centimeter scar below her collarbone. “That’s Aisling Wood, first-year academy. She caught me in bed with Rowena Harding, came at me with a ****ing combat knife. That is crazy.”

  “Jesus,” Woźniak mutters. “You beat her off?”

  “Speaking of beating off,” Markham smirks, and holds his hands out as if to steady the room. “I’d just like to savor the thought of the sarge in bed with Rowena Harding, if I may.”

  Karpadia chuckles, shaking her head. “You’re a ****ing pig, Markham.”

  “What about you, Karps?” Markham asks the woman. “You got any love and war wounds?”

  Karpadia takes a hit of Sadie and smiles. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

  “Come onnnn,” Woźniak says.

  “Don’t hold out on us, Karps,” Oshiro warns.

  “All right, fine.” Karpadia stands, pulls her cargo pants down to expose her military-issue briefs. She twists her leg to show a dark circular scar on her inner thigh.

  Oshiro leans forward, squinting. “Are those…teeth marks?”

  Karpadia nods. “Kasey Princell. Dated her about six months, second semester. Grad party, we were getting down to it in the provisions room, and bam.”

  “I know Kasey.” Oshiro raises an eyebrow. “What the hell did she bite you for?”

  Karpadia laughs as she pulls her fatigues up. “Because I called her Aisling.”

  “Aisling Wood?” Oshiro gasps. “My Aisling?”

  “Ais was a fox, what can I say? Sometimes the mind wanders.”

  “You ladies are incorrigible,” Woźniak chuckles. “The Duke approves.”

  “What about you, Duke?” Karpadia returns to her seat, takes another drink.

  “Wellllll, the Duke’s got no crazies in the closet, but look here.” The big man pokes out his tongue. His fellow pounders lean closer, making sounds of disgust.

  “Where the **** is the rest of your tongue?” Markham breathes.

  “Basic training, right? We’re on our first furlough in six months. The Duke goes back to his girl Liang in Měilì City. Her parents are out of town, so they have the whole apartment to themselves.” Woźniak glances around the group to make sure everyone is listening, leans in conspiratorially. “Now, this fem was beautiful. Kill you with a look. The Duke is talking Elizabeth Andretti in Terminus gorgeous, yeah? But here’s the kicker. She…sort of had a thing for feet.”

  “Feet?” Oshiro blinks.

  Woźniak nods. “She liked it when the Duke sucked her toes.”

  “…Okay.”

  “So, Liang and the Duke retire to her boudoir. And the Duke slides off her boots and he’s taking care of business, when all of a sudden he hears the security system deactivate and the front door start opening.”

  “Oh hoooo,” Markham grins, taking a drink. “Plot twist.”

  “It’s her ****ing parents,” Woźniak says. “Their flight got canceled and it was six hours to the next one, so they came back home to wait. And when Liang hears them open that door, she panics and kicks the Duke so hard in the face he bites the end of his ****ing tongue clean off.”

  “Jesus Chrrrrriiiist,” Lindstrom winces. Hiccups again.

  “Couldn’t they just reattach it?” Oshiro asks, bewildered and horrified.

  “That’s the killer of it all, fem.” Woźniak leans back in his chair for the finale. “Liang is so scared of what her mother will say if they catch the Duke there, she shoves him in her closet. And he’s stuck in there, half his tongue in his hands, for four ****ing hours until her folks left to get the next flight. By the time the Duke got to the med center, it was too late to reattach it.”

  “**** me, that is bruuuuutal,” Markham chuckles.

  “Poor baby,” Oshiro coos. “And you were just trying to be a gentleman, too.”

  “No justice in this ’verse, Oshiro,” the big man says. “No. ****ing. Justice.”

  The game disintegrates into laughter, Karpadia falling off her chair. Even Lindstrom is caught up in it, momentarily forgetting the troubles piled on his shoulders. Oshiro’s the first to recover, looking to the rookie and wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

  “So what about you, Cherry? You got any femscars?”

  The kid looks at his sergeant for a moment. Hiccups. Takes another belt of sweet Sadie and stands. Hauling his fatigues up and wobbling a little on his feet, he turns sideways and shows his bare ribs. There, etched on the skin and taut muscle, so faint you can barely see it, is what looks to be…

  “Is that a tattoo?” Karpadia blinks.

  “Used to be.” Hiccup.

  “Pfft,” Markham scoffs. “So what? Half the pounders down here got ink.”

  “You ever had a tattoo, Markham?” Lindstrom slurs.

  In response, the private stands and proudly pulls up his shirt. There, inked onto the perfect washboard abs underneath, are three words in flowing Gothic script.

  Company.

  Commander.

  Corps.

  “Corps,” Woźniak says, raisin
g his cup.

  “Hooah.” Oshiro nods, taking a shot.

  “Hurt when you got it done, right?” Lindstrom asks Markham.

  The short private shrugs. “Didn’t tickle.”

  “Well, take the pain of getting a tatt, multiply it by…ten—hiccup—and that’s how much it hurts getting the ****ing things burned off.”

  “You musta really liked that girl,” Karpadia says. “And then really not liked her.”

  “You fall in love enough, you’re gonna be nothin’ but scar tissue. She taught me that.” The kid pulls his fatigues down, wobbles on his feet, hiccups again. “She taught me pretty much everything.”

  “Couldn’t make out the name,” Oshiro mutters. “A something? Aria?”

  Lindstrom plops into his seat and finishes his drink, suddenly sullen.

  “Doesn’t matter what’r name wuz.”

  He leans forward, pushes his entire stack into the pot.

  Hiccups.

  “All in,” he declares.

  Markham scoffs. “Rookie, you’ve had too much love from Sadie.”

  “Call me, then.” Hiccup.

  Oshiro shakes her head, pushes in her stack. “I’m afraid I must concur with Private Markham’s reconnaissance, Cherry. You’re ****faced. I call.”

  “Call,” says Markham. “Nice knowing you, Lindstrom.”

  “Call,” says Karpadia. “Let’s see this pat hand, Cherry.”

  Lindstrom sits up straight, flips his cards.

  “Jacks and Knives,” Woźniak crows, grinning at the kid. “You pounders got snuck.”

  “****,” Karpadia whispers.

  “Goddammit,” Oshiro sighs, throwing her cards into the muck.

  “Hey, waitaminute.” Markham narrows his eyes as he stares the kid down. “What just happened to your ****ing hiccups, rookie?”

  Lindstrom is sitting straight in his chair now, not seeming half as drunk as he did a moment ago. His eyes are clear, hiccups miraculously cured, as he reaches forward and drags armfuls of chips over to his side of the bench. The game dissolves into a storm of muttered curses. Woźniak slaps Lindstrom on the back with a wolfish grin.