Iggie, seated next to him, didn’t acknowledge his sickness. Neither did Tomia. He appreciated that. To do otherwise would have made him look feebler than he already did.
“Attention, cadets. We will be docking in five minutes. Check your sleeves for your assignments.”
Wiping his mouth off and stuffing the bag under the seat in front of him, Cam called up the assignment on his sleeve. Big letters flashed in red: REPORT TO A-BARRACKS.
“What’d you get?” Iggie said, leaning over her seat to check out his assignment. “‘A’ barrack?” she whistled and sat back down. “Careful with those assinos. Can’t be fighting everyone.”
Bracing his stomach, Cam glanced at the empty seat in front of him. Marten never made the flight. And now, even sick, the other kids left him alone. Still, he didn’t like her implication.
“Why? Who’s in ‘A’?”
“Usually the older kids, some of the best-ranked cadets.”
Cam’s heart sunk. Why’d they have to put me with the best?
The proctor.
Cam tensed his entire body, trying to keep from screaming.
Why is he doing this to me?
Kara. He reminded himself of her, of his only purpose. I’ve survived worse than this, he convinced himself.
“Chak it,” Iggie said with a wave of her hand. “Those snobby kids just know games. We know how things really work.”
Cam took a deep breath, but didn’t answer, trying to keep himself from another round of vomiting as the ship quaked under the starbase’s tractor guidance system.
Once de-boarded from the starship, the other kids dispersed without a single goodbye, leaving Cam to follow the instructions on his sleeve to A-barrack. The Academy, a sleek, hulking Dominion starbase with curving walkways and fast-moving lifts cruising down the corridors, made him uneasy. Even the most modern buildings and schools on Calenthia didn’t have the same amenities and features as the starbase. As he passed by classrooms, he caught glimpses of both live and holographic teachers lecturing on everything from advanced gaming theory to astrophysics. Bright-eyed kids in crisp blue and black uniforms, sitting at interfaced desks, took notes on datapads or removable optical readers. Before his school got bombed-out, the best he could hope for in his over-crowded classroom was a good view of the teacher—assuming a teacher showed up to class.
After passing by a set of guards, Cam found the barracks near the mess hall. Kids ranging from age six to early teens milled in the hallway and between barracks, some chatting, others rough-housing, some exchanging homework questions and notes on datapads. A few threw glances his way, snickering under their breath. Cam kept his eyes forward or on his sleeve, navigating his way to the barrack designated “A.”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
A hand shot out and grabbed him by the collar as he tried to step inside, pulling him back into the hallway.
Cam turned toward his assailant. A boy with red hair and freckles grinned at him, his mustard-colored eyes searching his face. “No rubes allowed.”
Cam bristled.
“What’s a rube?” one of the other boys chuckled.
Cam kept his eyes on the red-haired boy, but alerted to the small crowd of kids his age and older drawing up around him.
Please help me, he thought, pleading to the guards positioned near the entrance to the barracks. Stop this before it gets worse.
“A poor little Cerkan orphan. Diseased and dumber than dumb.”
“It’s rub, Stempton,” an older girl said, rolling her eyes in front of her own circle of friends and looking perturbed. “Like street rubbish.”
“Stay out of this, Shiggla,” Stempton said. The other girl flipped him off and continued on another conversation with her entourage.
The bully got in his face. “We don’t want your kind.”
Cam said nothing, terrified, not knowing what to do. The soldiers didn’t move, nor did they give notice to the rising argument. Stempton, taller and stockier than him, and probably trained in hand-to-hand combat by the looks of all of the award ribbons decorating his uniform, would crush him if he chanced a fight. Not that the rest of his cronies, about the same size, wouldn’t join in and help him demolish the skinny street kid from Cerka.
Cam thought of Kara, how she could calmly talk anyone down from their alcoholic mother to violent neighbors and vigilante thugs, but he wasn’t Kara. And Kara wasn’t here. Not smart enough, not good enough, he had to do something.
He bit down on his tongue, hard. Blood gushed from the bite, but he didn’t swallow it, letting it build in his mouth.
“Did you hear me, rub?” Stempton said, pronouncing the insult correctly as he slapped Cam’s shoulder. “We don’t want your kind!”
Cam stayed firm, slowly rolling up the sleeves of his jumpsuit. Stempton’s eyes, as did the rest of the group’s, fell to the grafted skin and crisscrossing scars on his arms.
Horrified, Stempton muttered, “What the—?”
Cam spit out the contents of his mouth right into the bully’s face.
“Chak!” Stempton cried, pawing the blood from his eyes. Grabbing him by collar, Cam pulled the bully forward and tripping him with his right foot. He fell with him, on top of him, straddling Stempton and seizing him by the neck.
“No fighting!” shouted two of the Dominion guards from down the hall. The rest of the kids immediately dispersed, but Cam leaned into Stempton’s face. Wide-eyed, Stempton froze as Cam revealed his blood-stained teeth.
“Stay away from me,” he whispered.
Rough hands ripped him off of Stempton and shoved him against the wall. Cam didn’t resist the soldiers, or react to the shockwands aimed at him, their tips sparking and sizzling.
“This goes on your record, cadet!” one of the soldiers threatened.
Cam didn’t care. He got the reaction he wanted as Stempton scrambled to his feet and hurried off in the opposite direction.
All of you, stay away from me, he thought as the other kids stared and pointed at him.
After the commotion died down and he was sent to his barrack with a warning, Cam found the top bunk furthest away from the rest of the kids, at the end of one of the rows. With only fifteen minutes to check in to and key his storage locker, change uniforms, and report to mess hall, he climbed up on his bed and faced the wall. Tongue throbbing, and mouth tasting like the inside of his mother’s cast-iron stew pot, he let the tears fall onto the starched sheets, promising himself they would be his last.
Chapter 7
No one bothered him after the incident with Stempton. Any time he entered the showers, or training gym, the area around him cleared out. The same happened in the mess hall. No one sat with him, but no one paid him any attention either. At least until Iggie and Tomia showed up.
“Hey,” Tomia said, dropping her tray down across from him. Iggie threw her leg over the seat next to Tomia and plopped down. “Thanks for the rep.”
Cam, poking one of the umber cubes of pressed meat with his fork, shrugged his shoulders.
“No, I mean it,” Tomia said, opening her pre-packaged meal and organizing the contents. “One week, and no one talks to us. Stempton’s let everyone know that ‘all Cerkans are psychos.’ It’s great.”
Iggie laughed, and then slammed her milk drink in one gulp. “Saved us having to kick some rich-assino butt.”
Keeping his head down, Cam stabbed at a cube of meat.
“I mean, I get playing the part of a psycho, but don’t be psycho,” Tomia said, placing her hand on Cam’s. He froze.
I’m not. I just… He couldn’t finish the sentence, let alone speak, stunned by her touch.
“It’s like on Calenthia, always a battle. But it’s better not to go at it alone.”
Colin.
His gut squeezed down and his heart beat against his rib cage as he tried to shut out the memories of the boy he betrayed.
(Murdered—)
“A rat-chakker like Stempton is bound to come back a
t you for embarrassing him. It’s better to keep a few friends, yeah?”
Remembering the three pieces of dried fruit, he called out silently, you don’t want to be my friend.
When she finally lifted her hand, Tomia changed topics.
“What class schedule you guys get?” she asked, taking a bite out of her bread roll.
Iggie replied with a mouth full of green gelatin. “Calculus with that crabby ol’ professor Vosh, chemistry, biotechnics, and intro to combat.”
Tomia whistled. “You got off easy. I tested into that advanced astrophysics class. There’s so much chakking homework.”
Both girls looked at Cam, expecting his reply.
Cam cleared his throat, preparing himself for their negative response. “Basic training.”
A glob of green jello dropped from Iggie’s open mouth. “That’s it?”
Cam stabbed his fork into the imitation meat. “Yeah.”
Tomia and Iggie fell silent, studying him. Turning red, his mind conjured their judgment, their deduction of his wrongful placement in the Academy, of the imposter he was.
“What the hell do they have planned for you?” Tomia finally asked, spreading butter onto the remainder of her roll.
Cam hated the question, too afraid to even consider an answer.
“Are you willing to follow Commandant Rogman’s every command?”
He shoved the memory aside and took a bite of his meal. “Don’t know,” he finally said. “Don’t care.”
Other kids might have questioned him, prodded him for a better explanation, but neither girl did. On some level, he guessed they understood him, or at least the driving force for getting off of Cerka.
“Chak, this stuff tastes weird,” Tomia said, pushing aside her half-eaten tray full of food.
Cam didn’t understand how she could pass up free food, even if it did taste artificial and carried a lingering chemical aftertaste. For the first time in years, his stomach didn’t gurgle and ache from hunger, and he could eat something that he didn’t have to scrape the mold off or fish out of garbage.
“They’ll just make you eat more next time,” he said.
Tomia considered his point, twirling her spoon around her fingers. The Dominion kept strict watch of their intake, recording their every meal when they turned their trays. If she didn’t finish her food, they’d just double the next meal.
“Hey, look.” Iggie nodded her head at the peculiar new kids that had arrived a couple days after them. Painfully skinny and young, the pair of girls and one boy looked lost and out-of-place. “It’s those weird kids from Fiorah.”
Fiorah, Cam thought, dredging up what little he knew about the black-market planet located in the backwash of unregulated space. Nobody survives Fiorah.
Especially not young kids. How’d they not get sold off?
Or worse.
He hadn’t yet crossed paths with them, but had heard rumors of the new arrivals. Words like freak. Diseased. Launnie. Names he understood all too well, even in foreign slang. But there had to be something special about them—something valuable to the Dominion—or else they wouldn’t be here.
Or did you make a terrible promise too?
“They’re not that weird,” Tomia commented. “Just…human. And really young. Five, maybe? I bet they’re the youngest here.”
Leaning forward, he tried to catch a better glimpse of the trio.
“They’re twins,” Iggie said, regarding the two girls. Identical in appearance, at least from a distance, the two girls walked up to a food administrator and waited for a tray to pop out. The boy, tray already in hand, floated his eyes over the sea of children in the mess hall, brows pinched up by concern.
“Triplets,” Cam said. Tomia and Iggie gave him a side-eye. He would have added, they’re close, like my little sisters, but he didn’t think they needed, or wanted, to know about his former family.
“This won’t be good,” Tomia muttered, watching the trio try and find a spot to sit next to Stempton and his cronies.
“Gross—launnies!” Stempton turned around in his chair and stuck out his foot to trip one of the girls.
“Be careful, Stempton,” one of his buddies at the table laughed. “They’re probably diseased!”
The girl caught herself before spilling her tray full of food, but instead of walking away and finding a different table, she stood her ground, shoulders hiked, eyes ablaze.
“That kid’s got balls,” Iggie snorted.
The chatter in the mess hall died down to an exchange of mutterings and whispers. Cam’s chest tensed, as if it were him, not the triplets, in the bully’s headlights.
“Move your foot,” the girl said, tone defiant, confident, as if she could possibly stand up to a bully twice her size.
“A launnie doesn’t talk to a Crexan like that.” Stempton spat something her direction, inciting her further.
“Crexan?” The girl rolled her eyes.
Cam couldn’t believe her moxie. Questioning his descent—anyone’s descent—guaranteed a fight. No one wanted to admit a mixed bloodline, especially one muddied by unfavorable human genetics.
“You got something to say to me, launnie?” Stempton said, rising from his seat.
The boy grabbed his sister by the arm and pulled her in the opposite direction before she could respond. But as they turned away, Stempton shouted, “that’s right, just walk away, rat!”
The girl slammed her tray down at the nearest table where Shiggla and her band of loyal followers sat.
“Move, kid,” Tomia muttered.
Shiggla sneered and pointed her finger away from their table. “There’s no room for little launnies here.”
The boy tried to get his sister to change seats again. “Come on, let’s find another table.”
“The only thing you should find is the ejection hatch,” Shiggla hissed. “Since when did they let launnies from Fiorah into the Core? This is an elite academy, not a chakking shelter. I don’t want some slum disease because I had to share the bunks with a Fiorahian.”
“What assinos,” Tomia said, tightening her grips on her milk drink, deforming the carton.
“Yeah, you rotten street rats!” one of Shiggla’s cronies said.
Other kids at their table joined in:
“Scabs!”
“Lurchins!”
“Deadskins!”
“Jeez…” Iggie said. “Now that’s getting real personal.”
Deadskins. Lurchins. Scabs. All terrible names for fourth-class humans, the lowest class of Sentients in the galaxy. Cam didn’t know how he’d handle such insults, especially in front of the entire mess hall. Fourth-class humans were laborers, meat stock for flesh farms—not Academy material. And to be labeled as such meant that every cadet—even the older ones with nothing to gain from beating up a fresh recruit—would target them for destruction.
You’ve got to end this now, before it gets worse, Cam thought, drawing from his own experiences.
“I’ll take on any one of you passyes right now,” the girl said, pushing her meal aside and stepping into the aisle.
“What’s a passyes?” Iggie chuckled.
Tomia shrugged. “Probably Fiorahian.”
She’s too upset. She’s forgetting her Common, Cam thought. He caught something—a coolness in her brother’s gaze, and the strange posture her sister assumed; as if both of her siblings trained their attention on the vocal sister, not the mounting tension amongst the other kids.
“Whoa!” Stempton laughed from the next table over. “Please, don’t hurt me little rat! If you bite me, I’ll get the plague!”
Cam watched as Stempton made gurgling sounds and pretended to keel over. While his cronies laughed, the triplets stayed put, the brother and second sister keeping their attention on the angry one as she tensed her whole body for the fight.
The boy whispered something. The irate sister’s shoulders relaxed, her fists unclenched.
No way, Cam thought. What did he whisper for her
to back down like that? Anger like that couldn’t be reasoned with, couldn’t just evaporate under spoken sensibility.
“Go sit back down, launnie, before you mess your pants,” Shiggla sniggered.
The triplets picked up their trays and moved to a table near Cam, Iggie, and Tomia, toward the farthest corner in the mess hall. A few of Shiggla’s and Stempton’s lackeys threw half-eaten pieces of food their direction, but the trio didn’t react.
Cam continued to watch them, even as the general interest in their presence died down and the rest of the kids in the mess hall resumed their previous conversations.
“Looks like Stempton found someone new to pick on for a while,” Tomia remarked as Iggie finished off the last of her tray. “It’ll keep him off our backs.”
“Sucks for them,” Iggie said, licking off the food bits on her fingers. “That guy’s a real assino.”
“They’re too young.” Tomia straightened up, lips pursed. “They shouldn’t be here.”
“I dunno. I like that mouthy one,” Iggie said, angling her fork at the triplet girl who gave lip to Stempton. “Bet she’ll handle herself.”
Tomia hugged her arms to her chest, staring at her tray full of half-eaten food. “This place will kill them.”
Cam dropped his fork, but quickly picked it back up.
“Huh?” Iggie said, just as shocked.
Tomia leaned forward, eyes darting back and forth as she whispered her secret. “I heard that some kids die in the Academy. Training accidents, bad battle sims.” She nodded her head in Stempton’s direction. “Psycho competition.”
Mouth dry, heart thumping in his chest, Cam reached for his drink, but retracted his arm as soon as he realized his shaking hand.
Iggie sighed. “They won’t last a week.”
“They’ll need friends,” Tomia said.
Something his sister would say, something she would do. Thinking of Kara’s sacrifice, of his last moments seeing her before her abduction, Cam blurted out, “What good will that do?”
Both Iggie and Tomia both cocked their heads at him. Flicking his eyes away from them, he mumbled the rest of his thought. “I mean, we don’t know them is all.”
Blue Sky Tomorrows Page 5