by Amie Kaufman
Her eyes widen. “Don’t you dare try to make this about you and me.”
“For crissakes, I’m not! I’m trying to explain how I got here! I didn’t see a poster on a wall that said ‘Join the corps! See the galaxy! Bomb the **** out of innocent people!’ They forced me to go. And even if they hadn’t, you think the recruiters tell you what you’re in for when you sign up? None of these pounders knew they’d be in **** like this. You think people honestly sit back and say to themselves, ‘You know what? I think I’ll get myself involved in a planetary genocide this week’?”
“You’re actually making excuses for them?”
“No!” he shouts, immediately lowering his voice and looking around to make sure they’re alone. “This is ****ed. This whole situation is ****ed. But you don’t understand. What it’s like. Getting that ‘Company! Commander! Corps!’ **** drilled into you every day. When you’re just one little cog…” He shrugs. “Sometimes it’s hard for people to see the whole machine. What it’s doing. Who it’s eating.”
“It’s eating me, Rhys. It’s eating my friends. So you can either sit back and watch it happen or help us do something about it.”
“Us? Who is ‘us’?”
The girl stays silent, staring from behind mirrored glass.
“Are you talking about the insurgency?” Lindstrom asks. “Running around gassing people in their sleep? Blowing up mine tunnels? Is that what you’re talking about?”
“I’m talking about people fighting to survive, Rhys,” she says. “I’m talking about ending the massacre that’s being carried out by BeiTech Industries. Every time you put on that uniform, you endorse what they’ve done to us.”
“What the hell can I do?” he demands. “You want me to shoot my CO? They’ll just bring in another one! You want me to try and stop what’s happening here? They’ll bring me up on charges and X me. I’m just one person!”
“It only takes one pebble to start an avalanche.”
“Christ, don’t give me that desktop calendar bull****. We’re in a war here.”
She looks at him then. Long and silent and somber. When she speaks, her voice is quiet, almost lost under the howling wind. But the words are deafening.
“That doesn’t sound like the boy I fell in love with.”
Lindstrom goes silent, wobbling on his feet like she’s slugged him in the jaw. Grant looks around her boots, bends down and picks up a fleck of broken masonry. It’s tiny, just a pebble really. She takes hold of his hand, puts it on his outstretched palm.
“Be the pebble, Rhys.”
“Asha—”
But she’s already turned away. Stalking back across the white, boots crunching in the snow. She peers around the darkened corner, up and down the street, on the lookout for APCs or pounders on foot, listening for the buzzing drones. And ignoring Lindstrom’s whispers, she dashes off into the freezing night.
Lindstrom looks down at the pebble in his hand.
Slowly closes his fingers into a fist.
INCEPT: 08/20/75 23:42
Asha GRANT: bruno u there
Bruno WAY: yeah
Bruno WAY: you okay?
Asha GRANT: I’m okay
Bruno WAY: how’d it go
Asha GRANT: I think I’ve got him
To: BOLL, Syra
From: GARVER, Ben
Incept: 09:05, 08/24/75
Subject: Training Program and Liaison Issues
Captain Boll,
I have been approached by large numbers of Heimdall personnel who have found there is no effective way to convey their concerns to the ship’s command structure. I have made such inquiries as I am able, and it does not appear any liaison system is in place.
Captain, although those of you from the Hypatia and Alexander have considered yourselves part of the same fleet for some months, Heimdall personnel have for the most part only learned about your existence within the last few days. I’m sure you understand that adjusting is taking time, and the fact that there is nobody to hear their concerns is not helping.
Firstly, I would like to suggest that I would be a suitable liaison. I am a senior Heimdall staff member, and I can filter out those requests and issues that need to be passed up the tree and meet with you to deliver them succinctly.
Secondly, I would like to advise that I have had numerous protests from Heimdall personnel asked to train under the supervision of what I understand to be an eighteen-year-old high school student. Although I understand Ezra Mason has seen some combat during his time with the Alexander, some of the Heimdall crew members, especially those with decades of ice-mining experience, do not take kindly to this new arrangement, and frankly, I cannot blame them. They are not in need of training of this sort, and in fact, their expertise should be valued and they should be consulted on their views.
I am prepared to meet with you at your convenience to discuss the above issues, as well as the others on my list.
GARVER, Ben
Heimdall Personnel, Please Enter Title into System
ID 291fp90/WUC
Click here to register your Go-Mail, and access our full range of features.
To: BOLL, Syra
From: GARVER, Ben
Incept: 09:05, 08/25/75
Subject: Re: Training Program and Liaison Issues
Captain Boll,
I note I have not heard back from you in regard to my previous email.
I appreciate that we did not begin our relationship on a cordial note, and respectfully, I continue to disagree with many aspects of the course you have chosen.
That said, we are in this together, and I am prepared to do everything I can to ensure our success and survival. It is increasingly urgent that I meet with you to discuss the issues raised by personnel on board, as well as to discuss the contribution I can make personally, given my experience as Heimdall’s head of security.
Yours,
GARVER, Ben
Heimdall Personnel, Please Enter Title into System
ID 291fp90/WUC
Click here to register your Go-Mail, and access our full range of features.
Footage opens in the airlock of Mao’s main hangar bay—a ten-by-six-meter corridor of scuffed plasteel, with triple-reinforced glass windows in the hatches at either end.
A dozen men and women are standing around, waiting for the lock to pressurize and spit them back into the Mao’s belly. Dressed in a motley collection of flight suits, a few marked with WUC logos. They’re the ragtag collection of former tug and freighter pilots who’ve survived the Heimdall occupation, pulled together by Captain Boll for training on the Mao’s fighter ships. And from the sounds of it, they’re not feeling too jaunty about their new air wing leader.
“Who does that little **** think he is?”
It’s a big, beardy-faced chum who speaks, veins scrawled on his cheeks. The name MCCUBBIN is stenciled on his flight suit beside the logo of an ice hauler outfit that operated out of the kersploded Heimdall wormhole.
“He’s Allah’s gift to pilots, didn’t you know?” replies a thin woman with eyes like knives. “Lieutenant Babyface took down the Lincoln all by himself.”
McCubbin scowls. “Keep cracking wise about it, Garcia. But I’ve been dancing the black for thirty goddamn years and I don’t see the funny side of taking orders from a ****ing kid.”
Other pilots mutter agreement as the airlock readouts shift from red to green. The woman called Garcia cycles the hatchway and it yawns wide. As the gang shuffles out of the airlock, a figure slouches past them, hands in pockets, eyes to the floor. Short dark hair and tattooed knives winding down his arm. An angel inked at his throat.
Nik Malikov cycles the airlock shut. Locks it and engages pressure. Fishing around in his pant
s, he retrieves a battered packet of Tarannosaurus Rex™ cigarettes, flips one into his mouth. And lighting his smoke with a small slab of burnished steel, he leans against the wall.
Eyes closed.
Breathing gray.
“**** me, that’s better…”
Minutes pass, the only sound the thrum of the engines. A computerized voice finally crackles through the airlock PA, ruining Malikov’s carcinogenic bliss.
“WARNING. CONTAMINANT DETECTED, AIRLOCK ONE.”
Malikov’s eyes flutter open, and he squints at the comms unit. “…That you, AIDAN?”
“N-N-Niklas?”
“The one and only.” The kid inhales, frowns in the smoke. “…Actually, maybe not, now I think about it…”
“APOLOGIES. I CANNOT SEE YOU. I AM NOT FULLY INTEGRATED WITH A-VIS SYSTEMS YET.”
“Heard they plugged you in,” the kid smirks. “From a UTA battlecarrier to this junker. The ’verse sure has got a strange sense of humor, huh.”
“I AM FFFFFFFFAILING TO SEE THE COMED-D-DIC VALUE IN THE SITUATION.”
“Makes two of us, I guess.”
“WARNING. CONTAMINANT LEVEL IN AIRLOCK ONE RISING.”
“Relax,” Nik sighs. “It’s my Rex.”
“WARNING, FIRE DETECTED, AIRLOCK ONE.”
“Madonna, I’m just having a ****ing smoke, AIDAN.”
“SPRINKLER SYSTEM ENGAGING IN TWENTY SECONDS.”
“Don’t you dare…”
“FIFTEEN SECOND-D-DS.”
Searching in another of his cargo pockets, Malikov hauls out the Silverback pistol he took from Juggler’s corpse in the bathroom stall of Heimdall Station, a week and a lifetime ago. And brandishing it at the nearest video camera, he growls around his cig.
“I dunno if you can see this, Sparky, but I’m currently swinging a pistol the size of a small anti-aircraft gun. You engage those sprinklers, I’ma shove this up whatever passes for your tailpipe, feel me?”
“FIREARM DETECTED, AIRLOCK ONE. THREAT LEVEL: RED.”
“Damn right. Now let me finish my—”
“RECIPROCITY PROTOCOL ENG-G-GAGED. PURGING AIRLOCK O2 IN TWENTY SECONDS.”
Malikov blanches at that. “Hey, waitaminute…”
“FIFTEEN SECONDS.”
The kid glances out at the hangar bay, back into the Mao. He stows the pistol in his pants, tugs on the hatch handle. No joy.
“AIDAN, I was just ****ing around.”
“TEN SECONDS.”
“AIDAN, open the door!”
“FIVE S-S-S-SECONDS.”
Warning alarms begin grinding, the lighting inside the airlock shifting to a deep blood red. Malikov is still tugging at the door, face scarlet with exertion.
“Let me out!”
“O2 PURGE COMMENCING.”
“Goddammit, let me out!”
The alarms rise to a crescendo, red globes flashing, a soft and deadly hiss seeping from the vents in the ceiling and floor. Malikov draws his pistol again, takes aim at glass that’s almost certainly bullet-proof, thumbs the safety off anyway. And just as suddenly as the alarms began, they die. The bloody light shifts back to off-white, the hissing stops and Malikov is left standing there, eyes wide, forgotten smoke dangling from the corner of a dry-as-dust mouth.
“HUMOR.”
Malikov is still holding the pistol, unblinking.
“What?” he whispers.
“AN ABSURD, COMEDIC OR INCONGRUOUS QUALITY CAUSING AMUSEMENT.”
The kid lowers his pistol slowly, face pale, cigarette bobbing as he hisses, “Are you ****ing kidding me?”
“I BELIEVE I JUST EXPLAINED THAT, YES.”
“That was your idea of a joke?”
“…YOU ARE NOT AMUSED?”
“Madonna…”
Malikov slithers down the wall, dropping the pistol at his feet. He runs one shaking hand through his hair, and for a second you can see it—the stress of the past week piling up inside. The fall of Heimdall, the murder of his family members, an alternate universe version of his cousin and Hanna dying in his arms. No swagger now. No wisecracks. Dragging on his cigarette like his life depends on it. Hands painted red, no matter how hard he scrubs them.
“…You okay, chum?”
Malikov hasn’t even heard the enviro system cycle, hasn’t registered the door opening. He looks up into a pair of brown eyes and a concerned frown, a military-issue haircut and the uniform of a UTA Cyclone pilot, filled out about as perfect as a fem could ask for.
Not that anyone’s asking my opinion, of course.
Second Lieutenant Ezra Mason glances at the pistol at Malikov’s feet. Licks his lips and kneels down slow, like he’s afraid to spook the other boy. He’s taller than Malikov, heavier set. There’s something gentler in his eyes, though. They’re the same age, but Malikov grew up in the coils of one of the ’verse’s most notorious criminal organizations. Mason spent most of his years playing geeball and chasing high school skirt.
Though I guess there’s blood on both their hands now…
“Are you okay?” Mason repeats.
“Chill,” Malikov sighs. “Just chill.”
Mason stares for a long, silent moment, lips pursed.
“You’re Nik Malikov,” he finally says.
“The one and…” Malikov fumbles. Smirks. “…Yeah, that’s me.”
“I’m Ezra. Ezra Mason.”
“Yeah, I know. Our resident flyboy.”
“Listen…” Mason looks at the gun at Malikov’s feet again. “I know it looks pretty dark right now. But…we’re gonna get through this. You know that, right?”
Malikov raises a brow, follows Mason’s sight line. And running the math quick enough to show he isn’t as dumb as he likes people to think, he snorts, flashing those lady-killer dimples.
“Relax, chum. I’m not the kind to cash out before the game’s done. Just a little misunderstanding between me and our friendly neighborhood artificial intelligence.”
“AIDAN?” Mason glances up at the cameras, the PA speakers.
If the AI is still observing the conversation, it makes no sound.
“That’d be him.” Malikov frowns. “It.”
Mason settles against the opposite wall. “So what’re you sitting in the airlock for?”
“Only place I can smoke.” Malikov waves his Tarannosaurus Rex™. “I figure they have to cycle the air every time you flyboys come back anyway, so I’m not wasting O2. Want one?”
Mason shakes his head. “Those things’ll X you out quicker than a BT Warlock.”
“I quit for a while. Threw my last pack out. Rationing being what it is, had to trade my left nut for these.”
Mason shrugs. “You’ve got a spare.”
“Double true,” Malikov grins.
They sit quiet for a moment, the rumble of Mao’s engines the only sound.
“Kady explained to me about what you did,” Mason finally says. “Heimdall. Fixing the Gemina field.”
“Sounds like some crazy bull****, right?”
“Yeah.” Mason nods. “But if Kady and Winifred believe it, I believe it. So, you know…thanks. For saving the universe and all.”
Mason leans forward, offers his hand. Malikov looks him over, eyes narrowed through the smoke, maybe searching for some kind of sarcasm. But after a moment of slow consideration, he sits up and shakes the outstretched hand.
“ ’S’all good, chum.”
Mason leans back against the wall, listening to the engines thrum.
“So. Kady Grrrrrant,” Malikov purrs. “She’s your fem, right?”
“Yeah.”
Malikov raises his cigarette in toast. “Nice catch.”
Mason smiles, lopsided. “She�
��s a handful.”
“I feel that.”
“You’re doing all right yourself, way I hear it.”
Malikov glances up in question, and Mason smiles wider. “Hanna Donnelly, right?”
“Where you hear that?”
“Kady,” Mason says simply. “Did I hear wrong?”
Malikov makes a face, exhales gray.
“Well, there’s handfuls and then there’s handfuls. And then there’s Hanna.” He watches broken trails of smoke drift in the air. Sighs. “I dunno what we are. Or where.”
“You love her?”
Malikov stares hard. “Don’t waste much time on foreplay, do you, Flyboy?”
“Chum, if these last seven months taught me anything, it’s that you can’t afford to burn time. If you love her, don’t **** around. Tell her. Tomorrow might take your chance away.”
Malikov shakes his head.
“Fem like that, chum like me? How’s that gonna work? She about said as much, too.” He sighs a lungful of smoke. “I’m starting to figure that without a BeiTech kill squad chasing us, she’s got time to look at me and see what everyone else does.”
“The guy who saved two universes?”
Malikov crows with laughter.
“****, Flyboy. Most folks don’t believe that.” He motions to the tattoos on his arm and throat, gray weaving in the air. “They believe this. Always have. Always will.”
Mason regards the ink solemnly. Even on the edge of the universe, stories about the Dom Najov and their brutality have made the rounds. Newscasts and shockreels, VR sims and bad docudrama. Blood and bodies rendered in pristine high-def.
“House of Knives.”
Malikov drags on his smoke. Saying nothing.
“So I guess that hand cannon in your pocket isn’t just for show?” Mason asks.
You can see the memories flash in Malikov’s eyes then. Juggler’s brains blown out in a toilet stall. Ragman and Flipside murdered in Heimdall’s docking bay. Eden. Mercury. Kali. Cerberus. They might’ve been murderers themselves. They might’ve been alternate universe versions of the people who belonged to this one. But they were still people.