by Amie Kaufman
WHO YOU
ARE.
Pauchok: I know who I am mother****er
AIDAN: EXCELLENT.
AIDAN: I FEAR THIS SHIP WILL NEED KNIVES SOON, LITTLE SPIDER.
AIDAN: SHARP ONES.
Pauchok: wtf is that supposed to mean
Pauchok: …
Pauchok: aidan?
Pauchok: you there?
Pauchok: …
—CHAT TERMINATED—
It’s late at night in the Kerenza IV hospital, and Asha Grant is on cleanup duty. One Marguerite Syvertson bled out in this operating room earlier today, and though her body and the trauma team that tried to keep it in one piece are gone, plenty of her blood remains. Someone has written We Remember on the wall in marker, the letters scrawled with an angry urgency.
Grant’s wielding a mop and a grim expression, the bed shoved to one side of the room, the floor halfway cleaned, when the door to the hallway edges open and a small figure slips inside, closing it immediately behind her.
“Katya, what are you doing here?” Grant keeps her voice to a whisper, dumping her mop back in her bucket and crossing from the clean half of the floor to the tiles smeared with blood. She drops to a crouch and pulls the girl into her arms as if she can shield her from the carnage behind her.
Katya doesn’t seem to notice the state of the floor, though she certainly doesn’t complain about the cuddle, winding her small arms around Grant’s neck, burying her face against her shoulder. She’s wearing a bright pink puffy jumpsuit, now closer to gray from her time spent crawling in the ceiling and various ventilation systems. Her greasy blond hair is tied back in a dirty ponytail.
Here’s the weird thing. About a month earlier, a lifetime away, once upon a time on the Hypatia, Kady Grant watched helplessly as Katya’s mother, Martha, collapsed in her counseling group, grieving for the way her children died in the BeiTech attack.
Kady was told her cousin Asha was dead in that same assault, her apartment destroyed in the first wave of missiles.
But here is Dead Asha Grant, holding Dead Katya Kowalska in her arms. She found her a couple of months after the invasion, fending for herself, half-dead with a fever, all skin and bones, and she brought her back to life.
Isn’t that strange?
“Katya,” Grant whispers, drawing back, holding the girl by the shoulders as she studies her. “You mustn’t come out, do you understand? You have to hide. If the soldiers catch you, they’ll be very bad to both of us.”
“But there’s nothing to do,” the child whispers back. “It’s so boring. And I get hungry.” She’s playing with the end of her ponytail, winding it around her finger, wisps of her blond hair standing out around her head like a halo.
Grant strokes her hair and tugs her little jumpsuit straight, smoothing the fabric with both hands. She finds a lump at the girl’s waist and unfastens a button, reaching inside to check what’s stashed there.
She pulls out a small plush toy gladiator, dressed in green and brandishing a wilted plush sword. It’s the mascot of one of the two McCaffrey Tech geeball teams. Grant stares down at it, frozen in place. “Katya, where did you get this?”
“It’s mine,” Katya replies. “I went shopping. I’m a big girl.”
The color leaves Grant’s face completely. “You went outside the hospital?”
The little girl’s expression goes still, the calculation clear a moment later; evidently this is a greater sin than she thought, and she should deny it.
“No,” she says, a beat too late.
Grant looks as though she wants to throw up. “Katya, are you kidding me? We talked about this, we talked about this a million times.” Every ounce of the pressure she’s under is channeled into her voice, her whisper crackling with fear and frustration. “You can’t go outside. You can’t let them see you, they’ll…”
But the little girl’s face is crumpling, not in an artful ploy to avoid a telling-off, but degree by degree as she tries to stop it. Her lips tremble, pushed hard together; two pink spots rise on her cheeks, tears welling up.
And Grant stops, pulling her into a hug, letting her wipe her eyes (and probably her nose) on her scrubs, staring into nothing over the child’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, giving her a squeeze. “I’m sorry, baby girl, I didn’t mean to get angry. You just can’t go outside, do you understand?”
There’s a mumbled sound from her shoulder. It sounds affirmative.
“Did you get bored? I’ll get you something to do,” Grant tries. “I’ll find you something to draw on, how about that? Maybe another candy bar, if you promise-promise-promise to stay inside, yes?”
And for that, Katya lifts her head. “For real?” The sniffles are still there, but they’re abating. She laces her fingers together behind Grant’s neck, leaning back to put her weight on them, then hauls herself in for another hug. “I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“That’s it,” Grant whispers. “Good girl. I’ll get you some more candy, but only if you’re quiet as a mouse.”
“The cleverest mouse,” Katya promises.
“Good girl. The cleverest mouse never gets caught, does she?”
“She’s way too clever,” Katya chants.
“That’s right,” Asha replies. “If I boost you up inside the ceiling, can you crawl back to above the supply closet? I’ll bring you some dinner there when I’m done, and tomorrow I’ll try and get you another candy bar, okay?”
“Okay,” Katya replies, still subdued. “And something to draw on?”
“And that,” Asha promises.
The deal done, they tuck the toy back inside Katya’s jumpsuit, and the little girl allows herself to be boosted up into the ceiling cavity. Once she’s gone, Grant uses the handle of her mop to poke the ceiling tiles into place again.
Leaning on her mop, she bows her head to rest it on her hands, as if she’s praying. Her eyes are squeezed tight shut, and the shadows beneath them show. It’s been over a week since she made her appeal to Rhys Lindstrom. She has no way of knowing if he’s avoiding her, or simply hasn’t found a way to get back to the hospital, or has just decided not to help her at all.
All she can do is wait.
It’s a couple of minutes before she straightens. She peels one hand away from where she’s gripping the mop white-knuckled, stares at that tattoo on her wrist. Samaira. Her hand is still a fist, and her eyes are glued to the letters inked into her skin. She drags in a slow, shuddering breath, lets it out just as choppy as it came in. She tries another, and another, and eventually she manages one that’s a little smoother.
And then, because there’s nothing else she can do, she turns to confront the bloodied room once more.
INCIDENT INCEPT: 08/16/75 (02:18 TERRAN STANDARD)
LOCATION: KERENZA IV (OCCUPIED WUC MINING COLONY)
IDENT: LINDSTROM, RHYS
RANK: SPECIALIST
_________________________________
Lieutenant Christie,
This is my official report on the incident of 08/29/75. To be honest with you, I’ve not had much need to write many After Action Reports aboard the Magellan, so apologies in advance for errors in tone/protocols. I expect Sergeant Oshiro will also be logging an incident report with you shortly, so between the pair of us, you should have a full picture of events.
If I am required to testify at court-martial, of course I will make myself available.
Sitrep:
Just before midnight, 08/29/75, I paused my assigned repairs to the relay systems in the Kerenza colony power plant to get some rack time. Security detail had just completed shift change, and Sergeant Oshiro and I bundled back into a waiting APC, along with the four troopers who’d just wrapped up local patrol duty:
Marcino, Ray, Master Sergeant
Ali, Kazim, Corporal
&n
bsp; Zhōu, Yingtai, Private
Lewis, Linden, Private
I’d been cooped up in the station’s basement all day, so I called shotgun with Zhōu, while the rest sat in back. We rolled out from the plant around 00:30. Curfew was in effect, and the streets were empty.
A cold front had dropped from the north, and wind was picking up. Snow was coming down thicker than I’d ever seen, and Zhōu and I both switched to thermoptics since visibility was shot. We were just trundling, barely above walking pace, relying on GPS and the APC’s collision-detection systems to get us back to barracks.
“You were on the Magellan, right?” Zhōu asked.
She was just an insectoid shape in the driver’s seat, the cluster of optics and heat sig from her ATLAS’s power core glowing bright red.
“That’s right.”
“Musta royally ****ed someone off to get posted down here, Cherry,” she chuckled. “You **** in the admiral’s chow or—****!”
Zhōu hit the skids as the collision alarms sounded, tires crunching in the snow as the APC crashed into a rusted dumpster resting in the shadow of the partially collapsed cineplex—the snow was coming down so thick, even collision detection hadn’t spotted the container until it was too late. Metal groaned as Zhōu slammed the APC into reverse, started to back it up. But as we pulled free of the trash ’tainer, I saw the flash of a heat sig spring out from beneath the lid and go running down the APC’s passenger side.
“You see that?”
Zhōu cursed, ripped off her driver’s harness. Squinting out through the blastspex windshield, I saw the heat sig disappear down a narrow alley between a couple of abandoned stores. Small. Fast. Human.
Zhōu was already out of her seat, kicking open the driver’s door and bailing out into the blizzard, VK rifle humming to life.
“Contact! Contact!”
Master Sergeant Marcino’s voice crackled over comms. “Report!”
“Unidentified body, heading east. Six-six-three, nine-oh-five.”
“Copy that, foot pursuit, pattern gamma. Calling backup.”
I heard the rear hatch of the APC hiss, boots in the snow. I stumbled out into the gale, VK in hand. Zhōu was already powering off down the alley in pursuit, Ali and Lewis dashing down the block. Marcino pointed to me and Oshiro.
“You two follow me!”
Oshiro glanced my way. “Sir, I’ve orders to keep the specialist under guard—”
“If he’s in ****ing uniform, he’s pounding ground with the rest of us. Move it!”
Marcino was off through the snow, barking into comms for backup. With a curse, Oshiro shouldered her flechette cannon and yelled at me to get the lead out, and we were off in pursuit, the whole world sketched in pitch black and howling white.
I’d not really run hard in an ATLAS before, couldn’t help but be amazed. The suit’s nanoweave muscle augmented my every movement—even on foot, we must’ve been pushing 50kms an hour. My eyes were fixed on Oshiro’s heat sig in front of me, watching the readouts flash on my Heads Up Display. GPS rendered a 3-D grid of the surrounding five blocks, displaying the other squad members as glowing phoenix logos, spreading out and moving quick. I’ll say this for Marcino’s team—they knew their stuff.
We heard a burst of auto-fire; my HUD indicated it was Zhōu firing, the ammo counter on her VK dropping to eighteen rounds, then empty—whoever we were chasing, she’d unloaded a full clip at them.
“Visual?” Marcino hissed. “Who’s got visual?”
“Sarge, he’s headed your way!” Ali warned. “Seven-three-two, over?”
“Roger that, got him.”
I caught a heat sig in my optics, a figure darting across the street ahead of us.
“FREEZE!” Marcino roared.
The figure glanced up, muscles tense. We had thermal imaging, HUDs, GPS, the world grid mapped out for us. Our target had nothing—some snow goggles and winter gear, a bulky satchel in one hand. He twisted away, hurled himself toward another alley as Oshiro took a knee and opened fire, shredding an abandoned 4x4 parked nearby into scrap. The figure froze as the sarge’s targeting laser lit up his chest.
“Next burst does the same to your ribs!”
“On your knees!” Marcino roared. “Knees, mother****er! Now!”
The figure raised his hands, dropped his satchel, sank down in the snow. Zhōu, Ali and Lewis barreled into the street as MSG Marcino and Sergeant Oshiro closed in on the figure, weapons raised. Another three targeting lasers lit up the figure’s chest.
“You move, you die,” Marcino warned.
The MSG moved up slowly, eyes on that satchel. Everyone had heard about the airfield bomb, the explosion at the mine. Marcino was in no hurry to lose his legs to an IED.
“Is this thing gonna blow if I touch it?”
“N-no,” the figure said, voice trembling. “I’m sorry, I—”
Ali slammed the butt of his VK into the back of the figure’s neck and I heard a squeal, high-pitched. Terrified. That’s when I realized…
“It’s a kid,” I said. “She’s a kid.”
“I give a ****,” Ali snarled, putting his boot in. “Making me run? After curfew? You’re in deep ****, you little *****.”
Zhōu knelt and opened the satchel carefully, bringing out a fistful of rectangular packages, sealed in wax paper and marked with BeiTech ident stamps.
“Protein packs,” Oshiro muttered.
“Military issue,” Marcino growled. “Where’d you get these?”
The girl on the ground was groaning, clutching the boot print Ali had left on her belly. Marcino knelt in the snow, gauntleted fist closing on the girl’s shoulder and hauling her up out of the white. She squealed in pain, beginning to cry as the MSG ripped off her hood and ski mask. The mask was pink. Grubby. Dotted with designs I realized were teddy bears.
She couldn’t have been more than ten. Stick thin. Dirty and ragged. Dark, stringy hair that hadn’t seen shampoo in months. Big brown eyes, filled with tears.
“What’s your name?” Marcino demanded.
The girl just blubbed, crying out in pain as the sergeant squeezed her shoulder.
“Give me your goddamn name!”
“Huang Ying,” she gasped.
There was a pause as each of us called up the civilian directory on our HUDs, scanned the names of every civilian in the colony. Zhōu announced her finding first.
“No record,” she said. “Anyone else?”
“Negative,” Ali agreed. “She’s unregistered.”
I blinked at that. Every civi in the colony who hadn’t been liquidated after the occupation was tagged and logged into our database. For this girl to be unregistered, she’d had to have escaped the sweeps that rounded up the populace after the invasion, somehow remained hidden for—
“Seven months…,” Oshiro muttered. “Jesus.”
No wonder she looked almost starved. She must’ve been scrounging off stolen protein packs, gnawing them raw, sleeping in that dumpster, other places thermoptics couldn’t find her. She was just a kid. How the hell had she lived through all that?
Marcino drew out his service pistol, pointed it at the girl’s head.
“That settles that, then.”
“Hey, waitaminute,” I said, stepping forward. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Any unregistered civilian is to be liquidated on sight,” the MSG said. “Any civilian caught out after curfew is to be liquidated on sight. Any civilian stealing military property is to be liquidated on sight.”
“Sarge, she’s just a kid!”
“She’s an unregistered thief caught out after curfew. Orders are orders.”
“You’re just gonna shoot her? Are you ****ing crazy?”
“Hey, Oshiro, get a leash on your cherry,” Ali growled.
“Oshiro, what the ****?” I demanded. “Stop them!”
Oshiro looked at me then. Red thermoptics burning in all that night and white. The little girl was crying, tears frozen in her lashes, ice in he
r hair. Her pink ski mask covered in teddy bears laying in the snow. The sarge looked at the chevrons and rockers on Marcino’s arm. Six to her three.
“Master Sergeant Marcino,” Oshiro said. “Permission to speak, sir.”
The pistol cracked. Louder than that howling wind.
Louder than any sound I’d ever heard in my life.
Blood on the snow.
Blood and pink teddy bears.
“Permission denied,” Marcino said.
He holstered his pistol, looked at his squad.
“Zhōu, call it in, wait here for the cleaners. Everyone else back to the APC.”
I don’t remember moving, I just remember crashing into Marcino with all the force my ATLAS could generate, smashing us through a brick wall and into an empty apartment building beyond. We spilled into some abandoned living room, frost on the windows, dust on the knickknacks, my armored fist slamming into Marcino’s armored face and barely scratching the enamel.
I felt hands on my shoulders, Oshiro roaring in my ear to stand down. Marcino slugged me on the chin, Ali between us, bellowing at Oshiro to put a lid on me, Zhōu demanding I get my hands in the air, rifle trained on my chest. Voices raised, servos and nanoweave muscle whining, Oshiro wrestling me to the ground.
“Get a hold of yourself! Lindstrom! Calm the **** down!”
Zhōu still had her rifle pointed at me, Marcino dragging himself off the floor, boots crunching in the ruins of the living room, the broken picture frames and shattered glass.
“Get him up,” he snarled.
Oshiro glanced his way. “Sergeant, the specialist is—”
“Get him up!”
Oshiro hauled me to my feet, one gauntlet on my forearm to make sure I wasn’t going to fly at Marcino again. The MSG looked me up and down, running his fingertips across his suit’s jaw where I’d slugged him.
“Nice shot,” he murmured. “Striking a superior officer a popular pastime up on the Magellan?”
“You just shot a ****ing kid,” I spat. “You’re not an officer, you’re an animal.”
Marcino tapped the stripes and rockers on his arm. “These say different, Cherry.”
I noticed a series of crosshatched lines over his heart. Seventeen in total. A kill tally, I realized. An old scripture quote was stenciled across his breastplate: “I AM NOT COME TO BRING PEACE, BUT A SWORD.” MATT 10:34.